by Katrina Leno
She let herself look around, to notice things that she had either not noticed before or that had not been there before. Like—the grass around the town was not endless as she had thought it was. Instead, it stretched very, very far in every single direction, but it stopped just before the horizon, where Magpie could see, clearly, the sharp reflective surface of a great body of water. So Near was an island.
“Did I do that?” Magpie asked, but Hither was apparently not done being offended and did not answer her.
She tried to remember if she had ever written anything in the yellow notebook about an island.
I told you, not everything has to be written down.
“Oh, are you speaking to me now?”
It didn’t reply.
She continued down the hill.
The town of Near grew larger and larger before her. She wished it wasn’t quite so long a walk to reach the bottom.
And her next step brought her right to the front of the white gate.
She was so surprised that she couldn’t stop in time, and she slammed right into it.
“Ow!”
Be careful what you wish for.
And Hither seemed so tickled with itself that it grew a few sizes bigger and a few shades darker and laughed again, a strange full-body shudder that seemed a cross between a seizure and a shiver.
Magpie had wished the walk wasn’t quite so long, so her magical world had deposited her on its doorstep.
Right. So maybe Hither had a point. She did need to be careful what she wished for.
She opened the gate and stepped inside the town. Since her first visit was still a little fuzzy in her mind and her second visit, with Clare, hadn’t really allowed for any exploring, this was almost like her first time here. She made a point of paying attention. To how things looked. To how things smelled (like cotton candy, like caramel apples). To how things felt (she knelt to the ground and touched her finger to the concrete of a sidewalk; it was essentially the same as concrete back in Farther except springier, more forgiving).
She walked to the high school first.
It should have been a ten- or fifteen-minute walk, but she managed it in just a few seconds.
It was hard to understand how it happened. She was standing in front of one of the two gas stations in town, and with her next step, she was in front of the middle school, and with her next, she was in front of the high school. It was like a dream, where time and travel pass in the blink of an eye and it seems completely normal. Only afterward, when you think back, do you realize the impossibility of it.
If there had been any doubts before that Near was a perfect replica of Farther, they melted away when Magpie pulled open the front doors of the high school and let herself inside.
The halls were empty, but if she wanted to, if she stood and thought about it, she could hear classes in session. Distant voices shouting out answers to questions, pencils and pens being dragged along paper.
And there—walking toward her. Who was that? Elisabeth? Yes, it was—she walked clutching a stack of books to her chest, and when she saw Magpie, an enormous grin spread across her face.
“Hey, girl!” she said.
Magpie almost turned around. A force of habit: assuming no one would ever greet her, assuming no one would ever be talking to her, especially one of Allison’s friends.
But this wasn’t Farther. And Magpie wasn’t ostracized here.
But still—it felt a little strange. Smiling back. Making herself speak: “Hi, Elisabeth.”
“Such a beautiful day, isn’t it?” Elisabeth asked. Still smiling. Still happy to see Magpie.
“It is… yeah.”
“You should get out of here. Go to the mall or something. I’ll come with you if you want!”
“Oh, no. No, that’s okay. You should stay here,” Magpie said.
“Whatever you want!”
For a moment—just a split second—a shadow crossed over Elisabeth’s face. She was a girl, but she was also something else. She was also an impossible thing, a thing that could shape-shift and swirl into something else.
But then she was just a girl again. And she smiled—endlessly smiling, smiling—and disappeared down the hallway.
Magpie turned around.
Hither was still there. Or had it left and come back? Or was it in two places at once? Or three or four?
“Have you been here the whole time?”
I have, indeed.
“But right there? Right there the whole time?”
Here and other places.
Magpie rolled her eyes.
She left the high school.
She started walking down one street, then another, aimlessly letting her feet decide where to go.
And perhaps because humans are such creatures of obvious habit, she found herself, after ten or so minutes, at the beginning of Pine Street. Her street. And there—just a few houses in—her house.
Or rather—the perfect version of her house. With a lawn freshly mowed and devoid of brown spots and crabgrass, curtains open to let the sunshine stream in through the spotless windows, three clean shiny cars in the driveway.
Three cars.
Her mother’s station wagon and her father’s truck.
Which meant—she quickly realized—that in this world she had chosen to erase what had happened. She had brought her father back and cleansed the past six months of the echo of his one fatal sin. In this world her parents weren’t getting a divorce, because her father hadn’t cheated on her mother with her mother’s only sister. In this world they were still invited around for Christmas dinner. In this world her grandparents took her out to breakfast on Sundays and slipped five-dollar bills into her pocket when she left.
And the third car.
In this world Eryn hadn’t left, because Ann Marie hadn’t started drinking again. In this world their perfect nuclear family was still contained in this small house. The lights were on in the finished basement—in Eryn’s bedroom—and Magpie had crossed the lawn and was pulling open the front door before she even realized she had moved.
Her parents were watching TV in the living room. Everything was clean, neat, freshly vacuumed and dusted. To her left, the kitchen was spotless. A rack full of clean dishes set out on the counter to dry. A smell of the disinfectant spray her mother used: Fabuloso. To her right, the hallway that led to her and her parents’ bedrooms. And to the right of that, the stairway that led down to where her sister still lived with them.
“Sweetheart!” Ann Marie called from the couch. She stretched her arms backward over the top of the couch, reaching blindly for her daughter.
Magpie went.
She walked into her mother’s arms, and Ann Marie hugged her awkwardly, laughing at how much she had to contort her arms.
Gabriel Lewis reached a hand back and squeezed his daughter’s wrist. “Dinner’s in the oven, Magpie,” he said. And once he’d mentioned it, she could smell it—some kind of lasagna, her favorite, melting cheese and warming vegetables filling the house with their mouthwatering aroma.
Her mother let her go, and Magpie asked—cautiously, as if her words might break—“Is Eryn home?”
“She’s downstairs, honey. Let her know dinner is almost ready, will you?” Ann Marie said.
Magpie moved toward the top of the stairs, looking down at the basement. She knew her sister would not be like the sister of her real life—the sister who had to be paid to take Magpie to the movies, the sister who left Magpie on the front steps with no skills with which to take care of herself. This Eryn would be perfect, the Eryn of Magpie’s treasured imagination, the older sister who had waited and hoped and wished for a younger sister to love and look after and stay with.
This Eryn hadn’t left.
Magpie paused at the top of the stairs.
She looked around the living room and realized that Hither was not with her. Had it stayed outside? Had it not followed her into the house?
She glanced at her parents—smiling, c
ontent, watching TV. Her father saw her staring and winked at her. A quick shadow across his face.
But no—only her father.
Magpie walked downstairs.
The door to Eryn’s bedroom was open.
Magpie could see her—her beloved and perfect and needed sister—who was lying across her bed on her stomach with her legs bent at the knees and crossed at the ankles. She was reading a book, but when she heard Magpie at the door, she flipped it closed and beamed up at her. Her smile lit up her whole face. She was so happy to see Magpie that the entire room grew brighter.
“Gosh, where have you been?” Eryn asked. She flipped herself over on the bed, let her legs fall over the side, let her feet swing back and forth. “I’ve been waiting for you all day. I thought we could go swimming.”
And Magpie wanted this so much—she wanted to go swimming with her sister more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life—that they were suddenly there, in the backyard, in the pool, their suits on, and their hair knotted up in buns, and Eryn with a little turquoise-blue pool donut around her waist and Magpie lying on the pizza float, her hands dipping into the water, the sun shining so brightly, ignoring their mother calling them in for dinner.
“Let her wait a minute,” Eryn said, paddling over to her sister, dumping a cupful of cool water onto Magpie’s stomach. “Couldn’t you just stay in here forever?”
And she could, she could, she could, she could.
Magpie propped her arms behind her head and drifted along on the pool float, Eryn bouncing around beside her, an endless ball of energy, until finally she lunged and tipped Magpie off the float.
“I’m bored,” she said. “Let’s play a game.”
“What game?” Magpie asked.
“Close your eyes.”
“Marco Polo?”
“Close them,” Eryn insisted.
Magpie closed them. “Marco,” she said.
“Polo.”
“Marco.”
“Polo.”
Magpie dove and missed. Eryn’s laughter sounded like it came from a million miles away. Eryn always won Marco Polo; she swam faster than Magpie; she seemed always to be in a dozen places at once.
“Marco.”
“Polo.”
Magpie crept forward, her hands spread in front of her, listening closely for any noise Eryn made, any ripples in the water, any breathing. Surely she should have reached the edge of the pool by now. She walked slower, more cautiously, waving her hands around. There was no way she hadn’t reached the side yet. Was she walking in circles?
“Marco.”
“Polo—”
From right behind her: a whisper in Magpie’s ears. Magpie whirled around and reached out wildly but came up with only air.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” she whined softly.
“You can’t quit in the middle of game” was Eryn’s reply—at once next to her and far away from her and all around her.
Magpie couldn’t help but feel a little hurt, a little confused. Wasn’t Near supposed to be exactly how she wanted it? Well, she didn’t want to be in the pool anymore. She wanted Eryn to be nicer. She wanted to feel safe.
She opened her eyes.
And the pool stretched on forever, an impossible expanse of bright-blue chlorinated water covering an entire world. An entire world of cerulean.
And then she blinked, and she was standing on the pool platform, and Eryn was squeezing out her hair, hopping up on one leg to get the water out of her ear.
“You won,” Eryn said, her eyes flashing dark for just the briefest of moments. “You won, are you happy?”
“But I didn’t catch you.”
“You did,” she argued. “Look.”
She held out her arm. There was an angry red mark there, even now beginning to fade away, the unmistakable print of a palm and five fingers wrapped around the skin.
“I did that?” Magpie asked.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Eryn echoed.
“I’m sorry.”
“You better not let it happen again,” Eryn threatened, but then she smiled so wide and so big that Magpie couldn’t tell if she was joking about all of it, about the entire thing. The red mark was gone. They were dry and clothed and sitting around the table for dinner. Their father was in the middle of a story about something funny that had happened to him at work. Their mother was laughing hysterically, the glass of iced tea in her hand shaking, the liquid slopping up the sides, almost spilling out. Eryn caught Magpie’s eye as she raised a bite of lasagna to her mouth. She winked.
This had always been Magpie’s favorite time with her family. If nothing interesting had happened to her father on any given day, he would make something up, spinning elaborate yarns that never failed to leave Magpie and her mother in stitches. Sometimes his family couldn’t tell the difference between fact and fiction; they would go around the table and take votes. Winner would get an extra helping of dessert.
Eryn had grown up and out of these dinners, and more often than not, she didn’t bother showing up anymore—but the Eryn of Near sat next to Magpie and kicked her feet playfully underneath the table and ate the lasagna even though it contained cheese and gluten, two of the things she’d sworn off forever.
And then they were finished with dinner and sitting cross-legged around the coffee table playing a game of Monopoly. Magpie was winning, and then she had won, and it was only after the sun had long gone down and her parents and sister had trundled sleepily off to bed that Magpie remembered that this wasn’t the real world. In the real world Ann Marie was in the hospital and Gabriel had filed for divorce and Eryn was probably doing yoga at the tail end of a three-day juice fast and Magpie had to be at school tomorrow.
“Wait—do I have to be at school tomorrow?” she asked Hither, who had appeared and draped itself lazily over an armchair in the living room, its feet propped up on the coffee table in a way Magpie didn’t like.
It removed its feet.
Do you mean do you have to go back? Or can you live here forever?
“Yeah. I guess that’s what I mean.”
Hither considered.
I suppose you could stay here. For a time.
“But what’s happening out there? While I’m in here? Is time moving? Or is this like in the books where the kids go into the cupboard and time freezes while they grow old?”
Are you asking if this is like a fantasy story? A fairy tale for good little Christian children?
“Well, when you put it like that…”
Let me try to explain it. Time is certainly not frozen, no. That would be impossible. The more accurate explanation is that time is moving here in the blink of an eye. So when you return to your home—to that place—it will appear as if no time has passed. But the two times—here and there—they are really just moving at very different speeds.
“The blink of an eye,” Magpie repeated.
So if you stayed here for a very long time, it would be like several blinks of an eye. So really, like no time at all.
“But Clare was able to get the pizza,” Magpie said. “When she left before me—it took me a little while to get up the hill but not that long. And it would have taken her more than the blink of an eye to pay for the pizza and get a slice and get back to the shed to wait for me.”
It gets tricky when people enter and leave at different times. It messes things up. It’s best to keep all parties together, keep hands and feet inside at all times, and follow all proper signage.
Magpie rolled her eyes. “That seems like a convenient answer.”
Convenient or not, it’s the truth. You’ve opened up a portal in a garden shed in your backyard that leads to a land that is at once inside you and outside of you. You’ve created a universe, and you want the rules to be simple and easy and tied up in a bow? Well, sorry to disappoint you. Nothing about this place is simple.
“It could be simple if I wanted it to be simple.”
Already getting full of y
ourself. Well, if you’re asking, my recommendation is that you leave. For now. Like I said before—you aren’t limitless, and it’s taken a considerable amount of energy to hold yourself here for as long as you have. You need some rest.
Even as Hither said that, Magpie felt something like fatigue settle over her body. The strange emptiness she’d felt after giving blood. The same rush to the head, the same gentle wooziness, like a series of small waves that kept crashing over her, gradually becoming more intense in their momentum.
“I guess I could get some rest. As long as—”
Near will not go anywhere. Whenever you want to come back, you may. Now that you have created it, it is in no danger of disappearing.
Comforted, Magpie nodded.
She pulled herself to her feet with some difficulty, some resistance fighting in her bones. She didn’t want to go, but she saw the logic in what Hither said; she felt her own strength failing as she walked out of the house on Pine Street and through the twilight-purple streets of the town she had made.
She met not another soul—and there was a strange comfort in that. How often could a girl walk alone through dark streets at night and not be anxious, not constantly casting backward glances over her shoulder, not constantly worrying about meeting someone she didn’t want to meet.
Well, you’re not exactly alone.
And there was a hint of something in Hither’s voice—hurt feelings, maybe? But how could it possibly have hurt feelings when it was an extension of Magpie, a reflecting board for her to basically have conversations with herself.
I am not a reflecting board, and I’m beginning to feel like you don’t listen to anything I say.
Huffing, Hither dematerialized and left her fully alone.
She didn’t mind.
If she wanted to call it back, she could.
Magpie was too tired to consider the trick she’d used before to skip the miles between the shed and the town, so she walked slowly, lazily, enjoying the solitude of a town without people. Or rather—a town without people at the present. But if she wanted people, she could have people. Anyone in the world she wanted to walk with, and they would appear, ready and willing.
But she would rather be alone. For now.
