by Kathryn Moon
“As soon as I know what we’re facing I’ll be able to start coming up with a solution,” I said.
“I’ll bring you up tea,” she said.
Her fingers were fretting at the cuffs of the robe and I wanted some way of soothing the anxiety out of her. But that was Isaac’s skill and she would be better off downstairs in good company. And I would work faster alone.
There were three drained cups of tea and the remains of a forgotten breakfast on my desk when the sun went out.
I looked up from the pages, squinting at the sudden dark of the room. Outside the window the sky had turned slate gray but soft clouds lay scattered across the sky as if it should have been a beautiful sunny blue day.
“Callum,” Aiden called from downstairs.
I scrambled out of my chair, bringing half a dozen books with me. The stairs were pitch-black and I made it down to the first floor more by memory than by sight. Isaac and Aiden framed Joanna at the front window of the sitting room, the three of them staring up. I pulled up behind Joanna and found the glowing black orb in the sky where the sun should have been. I winced at the burn in my eyes and backed away.
“Don’t look at it,” I said. The words snapped on my tongue and I clenched my jaw to bury the barking command.
Joanna turned right away, her arms folded tightly over her stomach in a too large sweater. Aiden’s probably.
“Can it eat the sun too?” she asked me as Aiden and Isaac drew away from the window.
“The sunlight,” I said. “The books call it things like the Hollow, Consumer, Devourer, Eater, etcetera…”
“Is this happening everywhere?” Isaac asked, glancing over his shoulder to the window.
“No, not yet. Canderfey and the Hand Woods for now. It’s…been locked up for centuries, at least that long from what I can find. The library, the woods, Joanna’s dreams, this is probably just its way of acclimating back to its appetite.”
Joanna was pulling books free from my arms, taking them with her to an armchair in the corner where she curled up in the seat. “If it was locked up then it can be again,” she said, as much to herself as to the rest of us.
“I told you we’d find a solution,” I said but she didn’t smile, just began digging through the pages in front of her.
“There’s a food shortage starting,” Isaac told me. “I contacted the campus and they agreed to help any locals in whatever way they can.”
“What’s a true name?” Joanna asked, looking up from the book I had found most useful and swatting away a curl from her face. “This says ‘The Hollow was caged by its true name.’”
I pulled another chair over to Joanna’s corner and Aiden and Isaac followed. “It’s a name of power, one we’re born with. Not the kind our parents give but one that holds the essences of our…our souls,” I said. “There are supposedly rituals you can do to learn your own. But knowing someone else’s true name gives you power over them.”
“Power to trap something for centuries?” she asked. “Something strong enough to eat sunlight?”
“Given what that creature is capable of, the hold of a true name might be the key to keeping it contained,” Isaac said. I nodded and Joanna lifted a hand to chew at her thumbnail.
“How do you learn the true name of something so old?” Isaac asked.
“That’s the next thing I’ll be searching for,” I said. “If I can figure out who caged it I might be able to find research of theirs that would help us.”
“If it took the true name to cage the Hollow years ago, would you need the true name to open the cage?” Joanna asked.
I smiled a little, I had thought of the same thing. I wanted to push aside the current disaster and take the day to learn more of Joanna’s magical instincts. She found patterns and errors in the world quickly. Once she had a better sense of what she was capable of, what other’s magical traces felt like, she would be even faster and sharper.
“I don’t know yet, it would depend on the cage,” I said. “Whether or not the witch or coven that designed it trusted that it would be left locked.”
“If it did take a true name then that means someone opened it intentionally,” Isaac said.
“Or experimentally,” I argued, thinking of the students. Thinking of the kind of student I had been growing up. I would have tested a lock to see if I could break it when I was younger. Consequences were a foggier concept that knowing my own strength at the time.
“We should go to the library,” Joanna said, shutting the book in her hands and holding it to her chest. Her gaze was already on the front door and her face was missing any hint of expression.
Isaac and I met each other’s eyes at the same time and I could see the worry. Joanna had fallen into the deep end of magic in a very short amount of time. And while it was a revelation that had to come sooner or later, a part of me regretted that we had been the ones to lead her there.
“There will be books on true names,” she said, looking at us finally. “And Gwen should know. Tatsuo and the others could help us.”
I tried to wrestle the grimace off my face before anyone noticed but Aiden laughed and I was caught out.
“Yes let’s put Tatsuo Ito and Callum in the same room together and see who comes out with more research,” he said.
“He’s a hobbyist,” I muttered.
“He’s my friend,” Joanna said lightly, rising from the chair and giving us her back. “And he’s very helpful.”
“Get dressed,” Aiden said, grinning down at my still bare chest. “We’re going to the library.”
21. Joanna
If the tension of the two covens together in the staff library wasn’t bad enough—in Callum’s defense Tatsuo did seem to be baiting him by voicing aloud every bit of useful information he found—I could feel my bones rattling under my skin. It had started in Callum’s office, Gatekeepers in my hands and the imprint of the words almost shimmering on the page. An impression of letters scratched into the page like it had been drawn there with an inkless pen. Or a fingernail.
Let it out.
I couldn’t focus on any of the books in front of me. I only saw the letters spelled out, a cruder version of my handwriting. Was it still writing without any pencil or chalk? I didn’t remember making the words but I remembered the drowsy, drugged feeling while reading. I remembered the icy cold fear of waking, the itchy crawling in my head as I woke. The one I still had some mornings.
Isaac passed me, arms loaded with dark parchment scrolls, and I stirred in the window seat. The library lamps were turned up bright to combat the darkness outside. Aiden and Hildy were a couple aisles away, chatting about the city while they browsed books. I had been trying to read the same page for the past ten minutes. It was only information Tatsuo had already found three times in other texts. A true name might be a word, or a sound, or a symbol, or a color. Usually they were some combination and the older the name the stronger they became.
Bryce rounded a bookshelf and came to sit at the far end of the window seat. They were empty handed and watching me steadily. It was as likely Bryce had come to see me of their own volition as it was Callum or Gwen had sent them to check on me. I was snapping my thumbnail against my front teeth and Bryce arched an eyebrow.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, stuffing my hand under my skirt.
Bryce leaned forward, taking my bag from where I’d stashed it against the window by my knees. I dove forward to grab it back but I was too late, they were already taking out the book I had smuggled from the house. They flipped straight to the illustration of the Hollow, setting it face up on the bench between us.
I stared at Bryce’s face and they looked up from the page to me, green eyes glinting.
“Your words,” Bryce said, pointing to the slanted press of letters on the page. I could barely make out the it ou before it faded into shadow.
My breath caught in my chest and I exhaled, slow and shaky. “Is it a spell?” I asked, keeping as quiet as I could.
“Yes,�
� they said.
The start of a sob cracked free and I fastened my lips shut looking down at my lap while I blinked away tears. Bryce waited quietly for me to gather myself.
“Did you know?” I asked.
“I guessed,” Bryce said. “Will you tell them?”
“Should I?” I asked. Bryce shrugged and for a moment I thought they actually didn’t care. But Hildy laughed somewhere in the shelves and Bryce’s gaze twitched in her direction.
“Will you help me?” I asked, but Bryce had stiffened in their seat, turning to the stairs and back arching like a cat. There was a low sour note in the back of their throat and then Callum was appearing between the shelves and the stairs, the same tension in his shoulders.
“It’s on the campus,” Bryce said, prowling toward the stairs.
“Stay with Joanna,” Callum barked at the others.
Everyone shouted at once, Aiden and Tatsuo at Callum, Isaac at me, Hildy and Gwen at each other about which of them would stay with me. Bryce looked at me once over their shoulder and I skirted around Callum following their footsteps quick down the stairs.
“Joanna!” Callum yelled.
“It’s at the staff houses,” Bryce said, just loud enough for me to catch the words.
I pressed my hand over my pocket, feeling for the case of chalk, and then lifted my skirt to run faster, hearing the steps pounding down the stairs after us. Callum caught my elbow at the bottom of the stairs, Tatsuo passing us both to chase after Bryce.
“Joanna,” he growled.
“I helped the last time and I will again if I can,” I snapped, yanking back on my arm. “But this thing is back on campus and it’s a waste of time and breath to argue about it.”
“She’s right,” Aiden said, pushing us both forward as the rest of the group caught up.
“Everyone in the library,” Gwen shouted, hands raised to her mouth. “Find your way to the staff lounge behind the circulation desk as quickly as possible and remain there until the staff calls the all clear.”
I ran to the nearest table of students, ushering them out of their chairs and shepherding them to the center of the building before running back to my…my… My thoughts stuttered at what to call Aiden and Isaac and Callum and I shook them out, focusing on the front doors.
There was a dark outline in the sky past the trees and buildings, over what must be the staff housing. Bryce and Tatsuo were already on the grounds rushing there and the rest of us followed quickly, Gwen leaving last and locking the library behind her, a few startled faces still staring out at us.
“If I tell you to run, you run,” Callum said, his hand jamming into the air in front of him and drawing an enormous sword out as he looked back at me. The hilt curved back to his wrist like a pair of wings and half the blade gleamed bright and razor sharp, the other half dark and heavy.
“I don’t need to be your concern in this is, Callum,” I answered, my words biting out of my mouth.
“Stop,” Aiden said to the both of us, jogging to walk between us, hands raised. “We are not having this argument right now. Joanna, you don’t have a choice in Callum’s concerns. Isaac and I want you safe as much as he does, as much as we want each other safe.”
I swallowed and fixed my eyes past them, to the dark horizon, fighting back what I wanted to say. That I would have wanted them far away too. Because this was my fault. But they didn’t know that yet and it certainly wasn’t the moment I wanted to tell them. If I told them.
Fingers trailed across my back, shoulder to shoulder and I looked to Isaac at my side. There was a bright, clean glow resting over Aiden’s red sweater, something shimmering and white.
“Just a little color magic,” he said, eyes fierce on my face. “For protection.”
“Thank you,” I said, lifting his hand from my shoulder to hold it tight in mine.
A gust of wind carrying a bitter burnt stench swirled around us as we made it to the Burgess building. The ground trembled under our running feet and the shouting started in the distance. Callum and Aiden ran closely in front of us both and for a moment I couldn’t hear anything above the slaps of steps on the pavement. And then I realized that it was matching the cacophony of destruction on the far end of the campus. Dust and smoke were gathering in the air and echoes like thunder carried down the paths we ran.
My ears felt crushed under a heavy pressure that wanted to buckle my knees beneath me. People were streaking by us, others standing on their steps, screaming back at the darkness gathered in front of them, their hands raised to trace magic in the air. There was a storm whipping across the ground as we arrived, a torrent made from a smoke cloud and black shrouded fabric and a dark tear that ripped away the world to leave an empty hole, all swirling on the street in front of my little house.
And on either side of my house was wreckage, buildings turned to rubble and smoldering ash.
Bryce, small, delicate Bryce, was crouched in the middle of the street, shining a faint gold that the shadowy expanse skirted away from. Tatsuo stood at the edge, arms raised with short wooden staffs in either hand. Callum ran to join him and the storm seemed to coil in on itself, and explosion in reverse. It was gathering into a shape, a figure, and the words fell loose from my lips.
“It came for me.”
Isaac stirred at my side, as if he had heard and was about to look at me, when tangle of darkness slithered across the ground in our direction.
“Look out!” Aiden shouted and both he and Isaac moved in front of me.
I dropped to my knees, chalk already in hand, and scrawled in heavy letters across the pavement.
STOP
The wind was gone from my ears, and the shouting was stilled, and the roar of what must have been the houses crumbling was quiet. Aiden and Isaac were frozen in front of me, Callum and Tatsuo and Bryce in the distance. Between us was the Hollow, something like a body under smoky gauze. A body in the right shape but wrong pieces. All I could imagine, all I could really make out through the shifting film of airy black, was a squirming, twisting split. A mouth waiting to surge forward and swallow.
I held my breath, waiting, hoping I hadn’t hurt anyone.
I’ve waited for you, witchling, it said. And the voice was something like Bryce’s. Like layers and ringing but this was more scratch and hiss in my ears than a sound. You set me free and then you steal the food out of my belly. I wonder if you are friend or foe.
I had put a stop to the fires in the remains of the houses, and a stop on my friends, but the Hollow was floating through the still-life scene as if it were a piece of refuse picked up by a breeze.
“Foe,” I said. I meant to shout it but it came out as a whisper, my eyes busy tracking its approach.
A brave answer, the Hollow hissed. But you are not a foe when you are only a small, breakable thing that cannot hurt me. And you cannot hurt me, witchling. You can’t even protect your belongings.
Something like a hand reached out from the shadows, crawling through the air to Isaac.
“No,” I whispered, and I tugged at the back of Isaac’s jacket. “No, stop!”
Isaac swayed at my pull but stayed upright and held captive as the hand that looked more like a claw or a blade stretched closer. I stared down at the word on the ground, scrubbing my palm over it to try and smear it away and break my spell. But I had ground the chalk into the pavement and STOP stayed bright and unbroken, my hand scratched by the rough surface of the road.
I scrambled up to my feet, trying to place myself between Isaac and the Hollow but I was too late. The smoke scratched over Isaac’s right cheek, and into his hair. His eyes winced and a moan escaped his parted lips and his knees buckled. My arms were around him and he fell into me, the Hollow continuing to ooze over the ground on its way past us. It hissed and spat with laughter and the dark clouds over the sky cracked and drummed and rain came spilling loose as I sank down to the ground with Isaac gasping and groaning in my arms, red and gray and white streaking across his cheekbone.
