Aspect Of Winter

by Tom Early

  My head was spinning. “I… I did that?”

  “No. You did not. Old Winter himself did, through you. A feat which has been thought impossible for so many thousands of years, that the possibility of it happening at all was never considered. But it did happen, and the Arcane Society is feeling the repercussions even now. It is important that you do not blame yourself for this, boy. It wasn’t you. You were used, merely as a tool, for a brief moment of fun.”

  I just stared blankly at him, my mind barely processing what he was saying. The man looked at me almost sadly, and then patted an undamaged spot on my arm.

  “I’m afraid that I had to seal your natural abilities altogether, boy, in order to suppress Winter fully. Those runes on your body are going to scar, and keep your power from surfacing, until such a time comes that I am led to believe the threat has passed. You may still use learned magic, but that is all.”

  “A-are my friends okay?” I needed to distract myself from what he was saying. Immediately.

  “Samantha Gray and Tyler Andrews? Yes, they both survived. Samantha used an ingenious adaptation of a basic defensive spell to seal herself out of harm’s way, and Tyler was safe in Limbo. Both of them are waiting anxiously for you at the Retreat. It took me three days to seal your powers fully.”

  “And everyone else?” I asked.

  The man’s eyes hardened into cold blue flecks. “The three children who died have been returned to their families, under the guise of having perished in yet another attack on the University. Every other individual who was at the Retreat when it happened, save for you, your friends, and Aria Tempestas, has been Mesmerized to believe that that is precisely what occurred. Your friends have been sworn to secrecy, as will Aria once she wakes up.”

  “What did I do to her?”

  The man bent over, and picked up a large pile of black and white feathers, showing them to me. My eyes widened, and I felt sick to my stomach.

  “You took her wings,” he said quietly, “and despite the attempts of our best healers, we can’t bring them back. She hasn’t yet woken up from a shock-induced coma.”

  I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Some small part of me looked at the feathers and started screaming. My breathing started to go out of control as a full-on panic attack hit me. I had done that? I had done something like that to a friend? My tongue felt leaden in my mouth, and waves of cold sweat rolled across my body. A high-pitched whine escaped my throat.

  The man frowned. “None of that, please.” He made a sharp motion with his hand and something slammed its way into my mind, forcing my emotions down to the very bottom. I blinked as the force departed, leaving my mind eerily calm. I took a steady breath.

  “Why am I still alive? Whether or not I was being controlled, I’m a risk, and I’m at least in part responsible for killing three people and harming many others. Why not just kill me?”

  He looked at me again, his gaze clear and untroubled.

  “I never told you who I am, did I. You may know me as Lord Didas, Janus University’s headmaster. And you are a student of the University, because you passed the three trials before this happened. That means it’s my duty to educate you, not kill you. I do not blame you for what happened. And on a more Machiavellian note, I consider you an investment.”

  I looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re easily one of the most powerful beings to be born into this century, or at least you have the potential to be. The University, as you’ve seen, has enemies, and you can help us to… deal with them. Especially the group that dared to attack us.” His eyes flashed with a barely contained fury as he said this.

  I stared incredulously. “In case you haven’t noticed by the fact that I killed your students, I’m not exactly safe to have around.”

  “You are correct, and that is why your powers have been neutralized in full for as long as I could manage. We have some rather significant assets at our disposal, and some of them are now devoted to figuring out a way to make you into something useful. However,” he stated flatly, “while I do not blame you for what happened, you remain a liability, a risk if left at large. I am not offering you a choice. You will attend Janus University, and will comply with everything we require you to. You and your friends will say nothing to anyone about this. If you do not, we will kill you. Do you understand?”

  That was more along the lines of what I was expecting. I swallowed thickly, tasting the bile at the back of my throat.

  “I understand. May I be released now, to see my friends? To see Aria?”

  Didas looked at me almost pityingly, if he was capable of pity. “I’m afraid not just yet, Feayr. Some of the runes I must place to bind you can only be done when you are awake.” He made a strange gesture with his hand, and a blade of blue fire formed in it. “If you can manage to hold still, this shall go faster.” Without giving me a chance to say anything, he forced a rag into my mouth to bite down on, and then he began to drag the blade across my chest.

  I didn’t stop screaming for hours.

  **********************************************

  The next morning, I woke up in my old room, the one I had shared with Tyler, but he wasn’t there. I got out of bed slowly, apparently wearing nothing at all, lines of pain radiating up my body from the scars now crisscrossing it. I could barely stand, and it took me nearly a minute to hobble over to where I saw some clothes left on the table. I saw a full-length mirror propped against one of the walls, a new edition, and took a moment to look at myself. From the neck up, I looked awful, but normal awful. My eyes were sunken, and my face had a gaunt, harried cast to it, my white hair falling limply down and my eyes far more gray than blue. Everything below my neck, however, was a different matter altogether. It looked like some mad artist had taken a knife to my body, carving jagged lines in disturbing patterns all across my chest, back, and down my arms and legs. I looked away after a moment. After what I’d done to Aria, to everyone, this was nothing.

  The clothes were soft, loose white linen. I slid them on gently, hissing in pain as the fabric rubbed against the scars. They’d healed weirdly fast, but they still hurt a hell of a lot. There was a simple drawstring at the waist, and I looked like some bizarre twist on a hospital patient when I was fully dressed. I tried to reach for my magic one more time, just to make sure, and nothing happened.

  Who was I really, without my magic? That had been the one thing that made me unique for so long. It had kept me apart from everyone else, kept me from living a normal life. But it had also given me so much. I used to be able to do things nobody else could, and I loved it. I had built so much of myself around it, and now it was gone. It didn’t feel like I was missing something. It felt like I was empty. Nothing left but an empty shell, barely a person.

  I forced that line of thought into the back of my mind. I wasn’t safe yet. I couldn’t afford to break down. I hobbled over to the door, and pulled it open. A homunculus was on the other side, its utterly blank face staring at me from only inches away. Despite having no discernable expression, the creature radiated blatant hostility towards me, instead of the quiet hospitality it had during the Trials. I took a step back, frightened, and its pale white hand snapped forward and wrapped around my wrist, its grip like iron.

  “Please, sir, come with me at the request of the Lord.”

  “I have a choice?” I asked bitterly.

  “No.” It dragged me forward implacably, and I felt pain as my scars were stressed slightly. I followed it hastily, as it took me through the corridors one last time, stopping in front of a portal in the Gathering Hall, which was now entirely empty. The homunculus beckoned me through, and so I stepped in.

  After a moment of the dizziness I had come to associate with portal travel, I opened my eyes and looked around. I was standing just outside a room bathed in white light, with a bed in the middle of it. Lying there, eyes closed, was Aria. I couldn’t see any evidence of medical supplies in the room, no IVs or anything. A
soft white light was pulsing around her, however, so I guessed that was what was doing the healing instead. I padded softly over to her side.

  She looked incredibly weak, her long dark hair lying in tangled disarray around her head, her face drawn. Her chest barely rose beneath the sheets, those small breaths the only sign that she was alive. Her bronze skin no longer seemed vibrant, more gray than brown. Her hands lay atop the cover sheets, and I delicately clasped my hands over them, my eyes brimming with tears.

  “I don’t think there’s anything I could say that would make this better. I don’t think there’s anything I could do that would make me forgive myself, no matter how many times people tell me that this isn’t my fault. I took your wings, Aria, that most important part of you. And now, because of these scars, I feel the exact same way.”

  “I’m sorry, Aria,” I choked out. “Please wake up, so I can see you’ll be okay, that I didn’t kill you as well. Please wake up, so you can live as happy a life as I can give you, so Sam will smile and your family will smile. I’m sorry.”

  It wasn’t like the stories, the happy fairy tales my parents read to me as a kid. Aria didn’t wake up, and after an hour of just standing there helplessly, I left.

  Outside the room, the homunculus was waiting silently again. I wordlessly offered my hand, and it took me to another portal, just down a hall of white stone. I stepped through, and emerged in yet another room, where Sam and Tyler were both standing impatiently. Neither looked hurt, and some small part of me relaxed a little at seeing proof of that in person. Their faces lit up as they saw me appear.

  “Fay!” Sam shouted and ran at me for a hug. I barely managed to raise a tired arm to stop her in time, wincing from the effort, and her face paled as she saw me struggle with the motion. Tyler walked forward too, and laid a hand on the side of my face gently.

  “Hey,” he said quietly. “How are you doing?”

  I chuckled mirthlessly. “About as good as I could expect, given what happened to me.”

  “Don’t you dare blame yourself for what happened, Fay,” Sam said fiercely. “I can tell you’re doing that, and you need to stop. That wasn’t you. You didn’t hurt anybody.”

  “Stop, Sam. Just… stop. I might be able to deal with what I did someday, but I can’t right now. If I think about it, I’m going to collapse.”

  I heard Tyler’s sharp intake of breath as he caught sight of one of the shackle-like scars around my wrist. He looked at me in alarm.

  “Fay, what happened to you?”

  Sam gasped as well when she was the scar, and she gently pushed up my shirtsleeve, revealing more of the scars. I was too tired to stop her.

  “How far does it go?” Tyler asked, subdued.

  “Everywhere beneath my neck. They were very thorough in sealing me. Made sure not to miss a single spot.”

  Sam nodded shakily. “I heard about them doing that to you, but I never thought…”

  I let out small, broken noise, and her face fell. “Oh, Fay…”

  She stepped forward slowly, and cautiously gave me the lightest hug possible. It helped, a little. Tyler laid a kiss on my forehead, and stepped back.

  “Come on, Fay, let’s get you home. The portal’s just over there in the corner,” he said, pointing. “We were waiting for you.”

  I looked at him gratefully, and he gave me a small smile, his eyes full of pity. From anyone else except him and Sam, that look would have made me bristle. Instead, it just made me tear up. I hadn’t pushed away the people I cared about, the ones that mattered most. I would always feel the weight of how I had been used, but if I had Sam and Tyler to support me, then maybe I could keep going despite that weight. With Tyler bracing me and Sam leading the way, we went home.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I didn’t tell my parents what had happened. What could I have possibly said? And what if Didas found out? I came back, and all I told them was that I would be going to the University next year. They weren’t stupid. They could tell something was wrong, but they could also tell that I desperately didn’t want to talk about it, and so they left me in peace.

  Tyler and Sam came to visit almost every day, even after things had died down. Sam would bring her latest art pieces, or whatever book she was crazy about, and just talked at me for a few hours as I sat there quietly. Tyler would bring a new video game, or some takeout, and would occasionally drag me out to see a movie or something. He didn’t try to get me to speak or open up. He was almost as quiet as I was, but he held my hand so tightly that I thought it would break.

  And slowly, as my senior year began to wind down, I started to slowly open up again. It wasn’t easy, and I’d carry that day’s events with me forever, even if I couldn’t personally remember it. The guilt never left me, but my friends never did either. They made sure I kept standing back up when I couldn’t on my own, until one day, I could.

  It was on that day that I heard the doorbell ring. My parents were at work, and I was staying home from school because it was one of my particularly bad days, the days where just breathing hurt. Still, I managed to struggle to my feet, and walk downstairs to the door. I pulled it open, and standing outside, in a soft-looking purple shirt and black jeans, was Aria.

  She smiled sunnily at me, and I just gaped.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked shyly, and a bit teasingly. “I’m sorry I took so long to come visit, but the mortal world is so… weird! I got sidetracked when I had to take a ‘cab’, whatever that was. I’d heard of it before, of course, but that’s totally different from actually getting in one for real. And ice cream! Sam told me I had to try some, and man, she was right! That stuff tastes really good! And then there are… oh, you’re crying.”

  I was? I touched my hand to my face, and to my surprise, it came back wet. Aria brushed away my tears gently, and swept me into a hug.

  “Oh, Fay, you’ve still been blaming yourself for this, haven’t you,” she murmured quietly. “After everyone told you not to, you’ve still been holding it inside yourself. But don’t you see? I’m fine,” she said, doing a little twirl and smiling at me. “I wasn’t for a while, and neither were you. That’s the nature of things, Fay, and it’s also the nature of things to get better in time. I may not have my wings anymore, and you may not have your magic, but we’re both still alive, aren’t we? We’re both still able to enjoy everything that life has to offer, and you just have to remember that.”

  I tried to say something, but no words came out. Aria smiled at me sadly again, and cupped my face.

  “Although I don’t believe there’s anything you need to apologize for, Fay, I forgive you. I know you needed to hear that, and I forgive you for that too. It’s okay to fall for a while, but you can stand up now.”

  She stepped back outside, still facing me, suddenly seeming a little shy.

  “I’m sorry, Fay, but now I have to go. I only had permission to tell you this much, and I had to fight for it. Tell Sam and Tyler I said hi, all right? I’ll see you all next year at the University!”

  With that, Aria walked back out to the road, where a taxi was idling. She beamed at me one more time, and then stepped in, before I had a chance to say anything at all.

  *********************************************

  Aria sat down in the cab, buckling her in before looking at the man sitting next to her. His cold blue eyes stared back at her calmly.

  “Did I do well, Lord Didas?” the girl asked.

  The man nodded once. “You did well. We need Feayr to be able to move past this, and Aria hasn’t woken up yet. Moreover, we can’t be sure she’ll be so forgiving without quite a bit of… encouragement, and time. Time we do not have.”

  Didas motioned to the cab driver, who adjusted the hat over its featureless white head, and began to drive. Next to him, Aria’s features began to slip and fall, losing color as they went. The homunculus peeled off the remainder of its false skin, before settling down again.

  The cab drove away silently, and then fade
d from the world altogether.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The next day, when Sam came to visit, I hugged her as hard as I could, and smiled for what felt like the first time in months. She looked at me, bewildered, and then burst into tears as she hugged me back even harder.

  “I missed you, you idiot,” she sobbed. “You might have been here, but you still left me. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “I won’t, I promise,” I whispered, tears streaming down my cheeks as well.

  We stayed like that for a long time. Later, I told her about Aria’s visit, and thought her face would split in two from the smile it had on it.

  Tyler came over the next day, and could tell immediately that something had changed. I met him at the door, smiling, and stepped forward and kissed him. He stood still for a moment, confused, and then melted into it, wrapping his arms around me. It took a concerned coughing noise from my mom a few minutes later to separate us, and she told me to leave the door open as I brought him up to my room to talk.

  Life went on. Sam stopped having a weekly romance with kids at our school. I think she’s waiting. I think I know for whom, as well. Tyler got into several colleges, and ended up choosing Tufts University, where his aunt had gone for graduate school and loved it. She helped him decide that it was the best fit for him, even though he had a full ride to Penn State. Thanks to his parents, money wasn’t a problem.

  When Tyler made his decision, Sam and I was invited to the party his team threw for him. It was there that a slightly red-nosed Tyler kissed me in front of his team and told them that anyone who had a problem with it could go fuck themselves, while Sam cracked her knuckles ominously behind him. About ninety percent of the team stood kinda still as they processed the information, and then came over and clapped the two of us on the back. I stumbled, and Tyler caught me, pulling me close into him. The other ten percent rolled their eyes and said it was shit like that that led to them figuring it out a while ago.