by Norah Wilson
John looked at them squarely for the first time. Steadily. He was clearly still frightened; only a fool wouldn’t be. But he was mastering it. “You should have the glass from the window,” he said. “That’s got to be part of the mosaic too. That energy…”
“That first portal, child and the mother,” Brooke said, quietly. “There’s a bridge that’s blessed like no other! That was the verse! The window was the first portal. For Connie and for us. That—”
Unknowingly, Smith interrupted her. “I saved all the glass that I could. Bits and pieces, but the heavy wind, the crows always after something shiny…a lot of it was gone. What I collected, I put in a burlap bag and left in the basement at the house. I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. I’ll go get it for you, come back as soon as I can.”
Smith hesitated before he turned, as if wondering if they’d let him go. When they made no move to stop him, he carried on. But at the cave’s mouth, he stopped. When he looked back, he looked old, weary, tired beyond the exertions of this night. “There’s one more thing I have to tell you.”
“Oh wow,” Maryanne mumbled. “Why do I have the feeling this can’t be good?”
“The Kosnicks are planning on coming here to look for you tomorrow night,” Smith said. “To Hants High Mountain. They’re going to search every cave. Load their guns with every bit of iron they can turn into pellets. After what you did with Eustace, they won’t stop now until they find you. That’s why I came here tonight. I had to warn you. Vesta told me to watch over the Mansbridge Heller. I told her I always would. You haven’t much time.”
“I knew it. He’s the one,” Alex whispered. “The one who watches over.”
Chapter 28
Now and Never
Brooke
By late afternoon it was hot as hell, a comparison Brooke regretted conjuring the moment it crossed her mind. The sun beat down fiercely. Though her caster form couldn’t feel the heat as she worked by the pond, her original was sweating inside the cave, even as she rested on top of the sleeping bags, as they all did now.
Bryce had arrived within an hour of John Smith’s departure, again bringing supplies: water, Gatorade, laundered clothing. This time, he’d changed them back into the clothing they’d worn when they’d cast out, right down to Brooke’s boy cut undies and push-up bra. She’d lost weight. That was obvious by the relative ease with which her clothing went on. They had to be in the exact outfit they’d cast out in. Exactly.
However, there was one exception: Maryanne insisted on wearing the hagstone.
Brooke was never so glad to say goodbye to anything as she was those pull-up adult diapers. Of course, the challenge now was to not pee her pants in the coming hours.
This morning, Bryce had attended to their care alone. All three casters were occupied by the more urgent task of readying the ice, coloring in the picture with the blessed stones. As he’d silently worked, she’d noted that he was less awkward every time he’d helped them. Or maybe Brooke was just getting more used to the help. To this bodily dependence on others.
She shuddered at the thought.
Speaking of bodily functions, she was so freaking hungry! Not that she could eat. Just swallowing the water and sports drink Bryce offered when he came to tend to them was challenge enough.
Bryce had joined the casters outside as soon as he’d finished changing them, leaving their originals fully dressed atop their sleeping bags in the coolness of the cave. Now, hours later, Brooke could feel perspiration between her breasts and tendrils of hair sticking to her neck.
On so many fronts, time was running out.
And they still didn’t have all the answers. Far from it! But at least they knew they were on the right track. They had to be on the right track. Surely those lines in Vesta’s grimoire weren’t leading them astray…
Their bodies were feeling the effects of days of immobility, little water, and lack of sustenance. Brooke knew she looked gaunt. They all did. This afternoon, as she lay flat on her back, she felt a complete tiredness in her depleted body. Yet she couldn’t sleep. As Maryanne, still clutching her hagstone, snored on one side of her, and dream-controlling Alex peacefully slept on the other, Brooke lay wide awake. She thought about the destruction she’d brought to her friends and herself.
To so many.
It had to be innate, her complete and utter unbelonging. Something within her, rather than something to do with the rest of the world. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought this. Yet she’d allowed herself to feel a sense of belonging with Alex and Maryanne. Until she’d lost that place too. Threw it away. Even if they got out of this mess, would they ever truly forgive her?
Why should they?
Congratulations, Brooke Saunders. Just one more thing she’d destroyed. More people she’d pushed away. She hated the hellish loneliness of the world, and it just kept getting lonelier. So why did she continue to do it? Why did she keep pushing people away all the more?
She sniffled. Oh, damn! She would not cry!
Outside by the ice, caster Brooke stripped off the penny glove and passed it to Alex. It was Alex’s turn now to hover over the ice, placing the stones, a task that was surprisingly grueling given how heavy their casts felt in the daylight. Exhausted, Brooke watched as Alex set a piece of pure white selenite in place. A stone of the moon, according to Maryanne. A crystal to bring down highest light.
The piece fit perfectly in place.
All the stones fit together like pieces of a puzzle within the dark lines on the ice.
All three of them had been taking turns, but after the first few hours, they’d decided Maryanne’s attention was more urgently needed decoding Vesta’s grimoire. She was close, she said, to figuring out the fourth and final of Vesta’s verses. Thus Brooke and Alex were alternating doing the work of ‘painting’ the picture.
Bryce was doing what he could along the edges of the melting ice in the pond. It was painfully obvious he was scared of the water. This wasn’t just any water to him. This was the place of his nightmares where, years ago, he’d almost drowned. If it weren’t for that caster… for Connie Harvell…Bryce wouldn’t be here. It must be scary for him to be so close to that water.
Well, he wasn’t the only one who was scared. Brooke was totally terrified of what lay before her.
Soon enough, they’d be placing their bodies out on the pond. They’d have to move quickly when that time came so that their collective weight didn’t break through the thin ice before they were ready. When the stones were in place, the sun was down, and by the silver of the moon, they’d make their cries of ‘I want in’ and—
And Brooke thought once again about Vesta Walker’s words.
Two have the power; but there may be more!
Hurry, when she sees you, go through the door.
There was always one more—one who didn’t quite fit in. And that one who didn’t fit was always, always her. Not in her mom’s new family, not with Seth, not at Streep, and not with the soaring sisters, Alex and Brooke. Even Vesta Walker, and whatever powers she had, knew it.
Inside the cave, Brooke’s original’s throat constricted. A couple times. It tightened as she fought the tears. She was losing that battle. Her nose and throat filled with them. Oh crap! She couldn’t turn her head, she couldn’t snuffle back the flow, and she couldn’t stop crying. Great, just great, that would do wonders for her legendary status in town. Brooke Saunders: the girl who drowned on her own snot. Miss Snot to a—
“I’ve got you.”
Arms were around her, holding her up. Sitting behind her limp body and propping her forward so her tears would fall down. Dammit! The tears did fall down as Bryce Walker held her. He wiped her nose with his sleeve.
Yuk.
She hadn’t even noticed him leaving the pond area and returning to the cave. He’d probably come in to get out of the sun and cool down.
“There…there,” he said, his voice squeaking on the second ‘there’. “Cry away, Brooke.”
As if she could help it… Asshole!
Brooke chastised herself for the thought. Squeezed her eyes shut tightly with it. At least she hadn’t blurted the insult out, if only because she couldn’t. She cried all the more to think of it, how even now as someone offered comfort and care, her first impulse was to push back before they hurt her. Before they screwed her over.
More tears began to fall.
“There, there,” Bryce said again, and it damn near broke her heart.
“I’d be scared too. I am scared. But this’ll work. It has to work.”
Bryce Walker had no idea. No idea how awkward he sounded, trying to be consoling. No idea that her tears went well beyond scared.
And most of all, Bryce had no idea that she had come to the barn too, on the night that his brother had died.
As she’d neared that barn, she’d heard the boys yelling. Heard the frenzied horses. Brooke had ducked away when she saw Bryce storm out of the barn and back toward the house. Then she’d gone in through the roof. Seth had been on the floor.
The horses were frantic, tramping around. Brooke’s immediate reaction was to go to Seth. Help him. Save him!
But then he’d looked up. He saw her. His eyes grew wide at seeing the Heller and Brooke knew in an instant, he knew it was her. Not just a Heller, but Brooke the Heller. The Heller he wanted to send back to hell.
“You…you never meant a thing to me,” he sneered. “Just a lay.” Then he started writing Brooke’s name in the dirt—B R…
Brooke had jerked back, and the white horse had gone crazy. It trampled a screaming Seth beneath its hooves like he was a rag doll. Then he’d stopped screaming.
And Brooke had been glad to see it.
Then Huxley and Bryce had rushed in. Their pounding footfalls and their shouts fortunately penetrated her consciousness just in time for her to race away undetected.
Now Brooke was responsible for Maryanne and Alex being in this dire situation. As always, she hurt those around her so she could really destroy herself a little bit more.
Brooke started crying all the harder, and Bryce held her close.
Outside, Brooke’s cast tightened. Tightened all the more with all that she had done, and what she’d do this night. What she had to do! The thought of it terrified her. She raised her hands to cover her face, but stopped when she realized Alex had also stopped what she was doing and turned toward her. Not just casually, either. She’d stopped mid air, holding a small piece of ruby in the penny glove hand, and was watching Brooke closely.
“I’ve got it!” Maryanne cried.
Brooke felt more relief than she’d ever admit as Alex turned away.
“What’s missing?” Alex asked.
“Vesta’s last verse. The fourth and I know the final one! I’ve been going in circles, but…I’m quite sure this is it. This is it!”
“Tell us.”
Maryanne settled herself a second or two before she began:
Into the water, out goes the flame,
Dark, empty flying ones, you’ll never be the same
Race before they get you, when the moon is high, aglow!
Some may know the legend, but there’s more the legend knows.
Inside the cave, in Bryce’s embrace, Brooke wept all the more.
“There…hey,” Bryce said. “It’s okay, Brooke. I’ll take care of you. All of you. I promise—best I can. I’ll watch over.”
Chapter 29
Wary the Weary
Alex
There was a shifting sound below them, a warning crunch from the ice.
And right after it, Brooke laughed in a near-hysterical way that chilled Alex. Scared the nearly unscarable caster.
“There’s more the legend knows?” Brooke shrilled. “Of course there is! We’ve been following those verses and—”
“And we’re on the right track,” Maryanne said. “Literally and figuratively! Down through the water—water blessed—the pond.”
“We’ve already gone out through the flames.” Alex added.
“Have we?” Brooke asked.
“It could be the church they burned,” Alex said. “Maybe it was Vesta’s premonition. Or…someone’s.”
“Or maybe there’s more hell to come.” Brooke whispered.
“We’ll be fine, Brooke.” Maryanne laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll make it back because we have to. All of us. Soon this will be just a bad nightmare.”
Brooke nodded tightly.
Wake up now.
Caster Alex sent the message into the dreams of her sleeping original. She interrupted a dream she’d constructed where she’d been rollerblading around the front room of Harvell House, while Patricia Betts tried to chase her down, all the while shaking a handful of colorful papers at her. Alex had been eating jelly beans. Orange ones only, for some reason.
Alex stopped. Patricia Betts sat down and let the papers fall to the floor to fan out at her feet while the jelly beans rained down around them. Inside the cave, original Alex woke up.
She wanted to observe Brooke’s body, her original. Was Brooke awake? With her head only slightly tilted toward Brooke, Alex could see through the periphery of her vision the answer to that question.
Was she ever.
Brooke looked like hell. She’d been crying, letting out in here all the hysteria her caster self was desperately trying to hold back. She was propped up in Bryce’s arms while the poor boy did a horrible job at consoling her.
There, there? Who said that anymore?
And why did the words seem to make Brooke even more upset?
Memory niggled: “There, there, good horsies. We'll ride you carefully.”
Yes, that was familiar. The night the casters had stolen the Walker horses and had taken them for a wild ride. Brooke had said those exact words to the frightened beasts.
This was something more than Brooke’s usual drama, and something more than just the effects that they all were feeling—caster and original—having been locked out of their bodies for so freakin’ long.
Maryanne must have seen it too, the torment Brooke barely contained. Not that the gray lines had shown on her caster face, like when a caster shrieked. But there was an agony that had been growing inside Brooke all the while they’d been locked out, just as anger had been growing inside Alex.
Bryce wiped a damp sleeve across Brooke’s messy nose.
Inside the cave, Alex closed her eyes again. She’d let Brooke cry in what privacy she had.
She snapped her focus back into her caster consciousness when out at the pond, Brooke stated, “I…I need some space.”
“We’re almost ready, so don’t be long,” Maryanne said. “When the time comes, we’ll need to—”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t go far. I won’t screw this up too.”
She flew into the nearby trees.
One minute later, Bryce came out of the cave. He appeared as defeated, tired, and as heavy as the rest of them as he plunked down on the ground at the pond’s edge.
Alex looked down at the image of mother and child on the ice. Her cast was getting so heavy, but she wasn’t yet ready to hand over John Smith’s glove and the crystal laying to Maryanne. Carefully, she set down a nearly perfectly clear piece of azeztulite. The stone fit. It didn’t just fit on the ice; the azeztulite and every other stone they placed, fit into the ice. This rare crystal fit exactly into the baby’s hand as it lay across his mother’s robed breast, perfectly completing that ‘pane’.
Alex felt a wash of relief. There was something holy in the act. Something strong in trying. In fighting one fate, and have another fate fighting with you.
And there was something strong in fighting hell, and those who set hell’s fire.
Once again, Alex thought about shaking that old man who’d called them whores. And now, she was glad she hurt him. Frightened him with her righteous anger. She should have shaken him harder, rattled his false teeth right out.
“Why are you gr
inning all of a sudden?” Maryanne asked. She closed Vesta’s book and hugged it to her caster chest.
“You can’t see me grinning,” Alex said.
“I can feel you grinning.”
“Thinking of better times,” Alex answered. Then she pushed her thoughts of the old man aside. For now. She’d shake him that hard later, in her dreams.
Her powerful, controllable dreams.
There was a slight shifting sound. A crunch from below.
“That was the ice!” Alex said.
“I know.” Maryanne hovered low over the semi-frozen pond, as if trying to look for a break in a segment or seam, or a split in the perfect stained glass they were making. Alex did the same.
Neither of them saw anything different.
“It must have been below the surface,” Maryanne said. “All the weight of the stones. Today was so warm. Crap! I hope it holds!”
“It’ll hold.” Alex looked up at the sky. The day was waning. “It has to. And we have to be ready when the moon is—”
“When it’s high aglow.”
Alex nodded. She hesitated. Then said what had to be said. “We don’t have that special blue. The blue of the Madonna’s eyes.”
Maryanne said, “We have some small pieces of clear, blue quartz.”
“But that wasn’t what was in the original window.”
“I know.”
“You know as well as I do, there was something about those eyes,” Alex said. “The rest of the window may have been glass, but those eyes were –”
“Like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Maryanne said. “Not at the crystal shop. Not in any of Grandmother Beach’s books, and I’ve looked at every one. Even before Brooke broke the glass, I wondered. I took a few digital photos of the window and asked Grandmother Beach if she knew what it was. She didn’t, and that really bothered her. I’d never seen her that quiet.”
Alex was pretty quiet herself for several long moments.
“All of this,” Alex gestured to the melting ice. “Maybe Brooke’s right. Maybe it is all for nothing. We just might really be lost without those eyes.”
