by E J Elwin
The starry night sky stretched out overhead like a vast glittering curtain. The stars were alive, millions of twinkling eyes blinking down at me. The giant silvery white moon was their mother, shining boldly at their center. It all looked so much closer than it had from the rocks outside the pub even though that was only three floors down.
I pulled my eyes away from this incredible sight and saw that there were other lights up here. Glowing lanterns were strung up around the perimeter of the roof, hanging just above the short brick parapets meant to protect someone from falling. The lanterns resembled the ones that had hung over the giant party in Portland except instead of red, orange, and yellow, they alternated in purple and white.
At the other end of the roof stood the shining jukebox from downstairs. I hadn’t noticed it missing. Its display glowed yellow as “Don’t Dream It’s Over” issued from it with remarkable clarity even over the sound of the ocean waves. The acoustics up here were outstanding.
The roof was totally bare aside from the jukebox and I wondered where Connor could be, since I was sure he was still here. How he had lugged the jukebox up here all by himself, I had no idea… “Don’t Dream It’s Over” faded away with soft repetition of its chorus, and there was a brief silence before the next song erupted from the metal speakers.
There was a swell of heat in my chest as I instantly recognized the song: Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face”, the song that had come to be immortalized in my mind from the day it had played in Rue’s Ice Cream Parlor when Connor and I first kissed. The achingly familiar combination of deep bass guitar and thumping drums pulsed through me and reverberated out over the ocean, and it was then that Connor appeared, stepping out from behind the jukebox.
My heart fluttered with surprise. He was dressed fully in black, in a stunning tuxedo that was perfectly tailored to him. His blond hair was sleekly combed back, shining in the light of the lanterns and the moon. He looked devastatingly handsome and more alive than ever, his cheeks rosy and bright. He wore a buoyant smile that made him positively radiant as he strode across the roof toward me. I walked forward to meet him as our song rang out from the jukebox. We met halfway, at the center of the wide cement roof.
“How did you do all this?” I asked in wonderment.
“Magic,” he said, with a sly smile and a wink.
I was about to ask him what he meant, when he raised his eyebrows pointedly and looked down at something on my knees. I followed his gaze and jumped in surprise.
The jeans from the Wardrobe Room were gone and replaced by smooth black dress pants. On my feet were gleaming black dress shoes like the ones Connor wore. I looked up and saw that I had transformed entirely. Long black jacket sleeves ended in shining silver cufflinks at my wrists, and I wore a white tuxedo shirt underneath, complete with black satin cummerbund. I felt a neat bowtie at my collar, then turned and saw that the jacket was a tailcoat, very similar to the one I had tried on in the Wardrobe Room. I raised a hand to my head and found that my hair was now sleekly combed like Connor’s. I hadn’t felt any of the pulling sensations that I’d felt during the James Dean transformation.
Before I could ask Connor how he’d done it, he extended his palm.
“Dance with me?”
All other concerns faded away as I looked into his eyes and took his hand. He held me close to him as the beautiful yet ghostly chorus of the song echoed around us. A woman sang softly in French alongside Billy Idol as he sang in English.
Connor’s hands were still cold in mine but not as much as they had been the last two times I’d been here. Maybe I was getting used to them. We swayed slowly back and forth to the music, holding each other tightly, my chin resting on his shoulder. The ocean waves crashing against the rocks around the building complimented the song beautifully, a unique rendition.
I couldn’t believe how happy I was. A week ago, as I lay hopeless in bed, I never could have imagined it was possible to feel joy like this again, or indeed that any of this was possible.
Something flickered in the sky. I looked up and my breath was taken away. The stars, which had already seemed so alive, were changing colors. Blue and pink, orange and purple, yellow and red, twinkled across the heavens, like the sky was filled with magical glittering candies. I felt like I could reach up and taste one. It was a stellar wonder, a celestial mural stretching out into eternity.
Connor whooped with amazement. “Okay, that—” he said, “I wasn’t expecting!” We stared up at the sky in awe. I felt again like I was inside a giant crystal ball, like when I had stood inside the rainbow force field, only this crystal ball was much bigger, its limits unknowable.
“Eyes Without a Face” came to the part where it took a break from its haunting French chorus to replace it with more playful lyrics and an energetic guitar riff. Connor surprised me by spinning me out away from him in a hilariously dramatic ballroom dance move. I stumbled, nearly tripping over my shoes, but laughed from the pure exhilaration of it all. We abandoned our slow dance for a carefree frolic, a lively mix of tango and waltz that was absolutely ridiculous but without a doubt the most fun I’d ever had. We mellowed back down as the song returned to the ethereal French refrain, and I landed against his chest, both of us panting.
A bright yellow shooting star streaked across the candy sky. I wondered if that was what I looked like as I’d traveled through space to get here. Could that shooting star be another witch traveling to some other realm, or to some distant spot here in the Halfway Place? It’s a very, very big place that takes on all sorts of appearances… There could be thousands, millions of people here, if only flitting through in an instant; but as I looked out at the endless ocean, its waves faintly mirroring the colorful stars, I felt like the only souls here were mine and Connor’s.
The music and rushing waves filled my ears, and the sweet salty smell of the ocean filled my lungs, nourishing me. I could taste it. Then I was struck with fear. Fear that I would never know anything as beautiful as this again. The stars, the moon, Connor’s body pressed against mine… I wanted to stay here, on this roof in this other world, staring up at this sky and dancing with Connor forever…
“Eyes Without a Face” came to its wistful final lyrics, then the song was over. Connor pulled back and kissed me, and there was a moment of silence following the song in which only the ocean’s waves could be heard. Just like with his hands, I was now used to the coldness of his lips. They felt almost as they always had.
The smooth thrum of guitar strings broke the silence as another familiar song issued from the jukebox: “Disarm” by The Smashing Pumpkins.
“Let’s sit down,” said Connor.
He pointed at something behind me, and I turned to see a small table and two chairs near the jukebox. They had appeared out of nowhere because I definitely hadn’t missed them when I arrived. The table was draped in red cloth and bore two tall white candles that burned brightly side by side in a shining silver holder. There was also a large bottle of champagne and two gleaming tulip glasses.
“Aren’t I supposed to be the witch?” I asked, bemused. “How did you do that?”
He laughed as he took my hand and led me to the table, where he actually pulled my chair out for me and pushed me in after I sat down.
“You know how I told you,” he said, “that there were voices here that whispered to me?” I nodded as he took his seat across from me. “Well, they whispered this idea to me. They whispered it and I agreed, and then… all this just appeared. There’s obviously some magic to this place. Maybe I’m able to tap into it because of my connection to you and Harriet?”
That seemed to be the most likely explanation. It occurred to me that Harriet herself could have made all this possible, though she hadn’t mentioned it at all and I hadn’t noticed any change in the spell compared to the times Jessica cast it.
Connor popped the cork off the champagne bottle with a flick of his thumb, and it flew out over the lanterns and brick parapets into the ocean. A bubbly erup
tion of foam gushed from the bottle which Connor let drip over the cement before expertly pouring the champagne into the tulip glasses. I’d never seen him open a bottle of champagne and wondered if his dexterity was part of the magic or if he just had a natural talent for this task. Both were equally likely.
“So,” he said, “tell me everything! You kicked the Brotherhood’s ass, didn’t you?”
I smiled and he thumped the table with his fist, causing the candle flames to flicker in their silver holder. We clinked glasses and took sips of the champagne, which tasted just like the one Harriet had served and produced the same bubbly sensation of cheerfulness. I then began to recount the tale of everything that had happened since I last saw him, starting at the point when the girls and I donned our black cloaks and conical hats.
Connor was riveted, his eyes shining with excitement. I spoke quickly, knowing our time was limited. I described the Bonding Ceremony as best as I could; how Jasper’s eyes had glowed bright blue from his Sight Heightening Spell; how the Sacred Roses had bloomed in the trees and caused the twelve Brotherhood members to shoot each other; how the girls and I had made magical vows to each other and drawn blood over the shimmering Silver Solvent in the cauldron. Connor was fascinated by the the vows of the Ceremony.
“‘Henceforth, this coven I trust with my heart’,” he repeated the phrase. “That’s so sweet!”
When I came to the part about the violet fire bursting from the cauldron along with the rainbow force field, he nearly spit out his champagne.
“Wow!” he shouted. “And you just have to hold hands to make it work?!”
I nodded, taking in every detail of his face, warmed as I always was by the unabashed way he expressed his enthusiasm. As I described the bloody battle with the Brotherhood, he put his champagne down and leaned forward in his seat, a look of relish on his face like he was watching a thrilling boxing match. He looked very impressed as I detailed my experience fighting with my crescent axes, then thumped his hands together in a hard clap as I described torching the traitor witch with my flames.
“That was actually a really cool power she had,” he said. “It’s a shame she used it to help the Brotherhood blow us up.”
He said this lightheartedly but I felt a pang of sadness as I continued the story, a feeling that only intensified with his reaction to Harriet’s roasted swan comment.
“À la Arthur!” he shouted her phrase. “Oh, I miss her…”
It would be a waste of time to express my sadness over his absence in our lives, how I wished for him to be there in Seaside with us, and so I carried on with the story. He was gleeful as he heard about Sylvie’s fight with the last two men standing, then thumped the table again with his fist when I told him about Lizzie invisibly dropping both men with her crossbow.
“So she killed the Patriarch,” he said, his voice full of admiration. “Good for her.”
He poured us more champagne, beaming with appreciation as I described Harriet and Jessica burying the many Brotherhood corpses in the dirt beneath the clearing.
I then quickly described the revelations about Deidre’s life that we had seen in the Illusion Room. Connor didn’t need to know every graphic detail of the first vision, and I didn’t want to waste more time than we had to talking about the traitor who had helped get him killed. He was fascinated, however, by how Deidre had come to be involved with the Brotherhood.
“She fell in love,” he said softly, reminding me of how Lizzie had said something similar.
The music issuing from the jukebox was at a lower volume even though neither of us had touched the controls. It was as if the mysterious magic that had done all this had independently decided that we needed the music to be lower in order to have our conversation. The song was “Light My Fire” by The Doors. The magic also had good taste in music and a sense of humor.
“So that’s it. The Patriarch and the witch who was helping the Brotherhood are dead.”
“Aren’t there more of them, though?” asked Connor. “In law enforcement and stuff?”
“There are,” I said. “But I doubt they’ll be trying anything so soon after we wiped out forty-something members of their kill squad in one night. They won’t be finding witches as easily as they were either, now that Deidre’s gone.”
“I’m so proud of you, my love,” he said, his eyes shining in the light of the colorful stars.
“I never stopped thinking about you,” I said. “I couldn’t wait to come back here and tell you about it.”
He grasped my hand. “I never stopped thinking about you either, my love.”
I noted his repeated use of the phrase my love.
“When we were in the woods,” I said, “Jasper told me about the Symbol of the Sacred Four. It’s four triangles around a square, sort of like…”
I didn’t know how to describe it and instinctively looked around for something to draw it with, but saw only the jukebox and the bare cement roof. When I turned back to the table, there was suddenly a sheet of blank white paper and a pen. No, not a pen— a quill. It was made of what had to be a swan feather, because it looked just like the last remaining feather of Deidre’s that I had just seen a short time ago in Jasper’s bedroom. I looked up at Connor, who smiled.
“That was all you,” he said. “I didn’t do that.”
I grinned at him and then set to drawing the Symbol as best I could. Smooth ink as black as oil flowed easily from the tip of the swan quill. I’d never used a quill in my life, had only seen them in movies and illustrations in history books, but I knew that they needed to be constantly dipped in ink in order to work. This one didn’t, oozing out shining ink as if there were an endless reservoir inside the feather. I supposed it was the least magical aspect of the whole spectacle.
I’d been right about being able to draw the Symbol in one stroke without lifting pen from paper, an idle thought I’d had when I first saw it in the book of Ursula’s prophecies. I drew it slowly and carefully, seeing it clearly in my mind. Connor watched curiously as it took shape.
“This,” I said, “is a quartenna. It’s the Symbol of the Sacred Four. Jasper told me that it never meant anything, never had any power, because witches always thought the Sacred Four were a fairy tale. But now, we’ll be able to do things that have never been done before.”
I found that I was speaking in the same excited hushed voice that Jasper had spoken with, and which Harriet and Jessica often spoke with when talking about the Sacred Four.
“Before the Ceremony, Jasper said that there would be entirely new magic that the girls and I would be capable of. And he was right. The force field was first. He also mentioned my ash teleporting, how it was another thing not in the prophecy that had never been done before…”
Connor watched me closely and I could tell that he knew where this was going.
“We might be able to bring you back,” I said breathlessly. “Give me maybe a few days to look through some books in the library, learn some more about resurrection spells, talk to my sisters… and we may just figure out a way!”
I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for his excited reaction, but it didn’t come. He smiled softly and then looked down at the table.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to hide my disappointment at his lack of enthusiasm.
“Arthur, my love,” he said, and I found the phrase less and less comforting. “It’s not possible.”
“We can’t know that,” I said quickly. “There are things no one knew about the Sacred Four, not Jasper, Jessica, or Harriet, or even Ursula. What makes you think we can’t do it?”
“You know those whispering voices?” he asked. “They whisper a lot more than just party plans. They were the ones that whispered to me that this was called the Halfway Place when I got here. They were the ones that let me know you were a witch, a damn special one, and that the reason you hadn’t followed me here after the explosion was because of a gift you had…”
I remembered what he’d said when I f
irst visited him here: You know things when you’re here…
“The thing about those voices,” he said, “is they tell the truth. I don’t know who or what exactly they are… but they do tell the truth. And they’re pretty set on the fact that resurrecting ashes is impossible, even with this Symbol…”
“But— but—” I sputtered, “we can at least try! We’ve already done so much that witches used to think was impossible! We have to try!”
The resignation in his voice scared me. His certainty about his fate was crushing.
“Arthur…” he said quietly. “It isn’t possible.”
I watched, devastated, as his ocean blue eyes shined with tears. He didn’t break down and sob— in fact, he managed to hold a small smile— but it was definitely grief pooling in his eyes.
“My love,” he whispered. “There’s something else… There’s a reason I did all this tonight. It was the best way I could think of to say goodbye.”
I felt myself crack, silently, like a china mug cracking underwater.
“It’s time for me to move on,” he said.
I’d heard him with piercing clarity but sat there staring at him in disbelief all the same. A fracture opened up across my heart, bloodless for the moment, but soon to start pouring. After everything that had happened, after all my discoveries and new powers, I was still a hopeless grieving shadow. I was the same broken boy. Weak. Damaged. Alien. Incapable of surviving what so many other people could and did every single day on Earth.
“You can’t go,” was all I managed to say.
He only watched me with his same teary smile. It was agonizing to watch him cry.
“Stay with me,” I said, shaking with suppressed sobs. “Please stay with me.”
I leapt from my chair and fell to my knees in front of him, taking his cold hands in mine.
“Please stay with me.”
His bottom lip trembled and I’d never seen him struggle so much to hold his composure.
