The Wind Between Worlds

by Julie Hutchings

  Cymbeline put her arm around me and rested her head on my shoulder. “Your spirit is stronger,” she said so that only I could hear.

  Chapter 18

  The place the Earth Elemental had dragged Una was hellish, no doubt. That wasn’t the place I’d seen, The Gone, miniaturized and brought to life in my basement by the woman I loved above all else. The same woman who planned to destroy it.

  Who planned to destroy me.

  I was made of magic that the world needed. Finishing me and the Poisons wouldn’t only be murder—it would be destruction.

  Going home that night filled me with fury. How could it be home ever again? With every crunching footstep through the woods, all of us silent, I got angrier and angrier at the ridiculous charade we were all putting on. Waking up in our mothers’ houses, eating our cereal with them while they plotted our deaths, telling them about school while they suppressed our magic for their own benefit. Telling us lies about our enemies, enemies we’d never seen until days before—only to discover they weren’t so different from us. And we went to school every day like regular kids, and we met after school in the thick of the woods like criminals, and we were pursued by the women who raised us, to stop us from trusting our own coven. And then we went home to those same immortal killers and called them “Mom.”

  I was growing tired of the speed with which my world was crashing down. No longer would I sit idly by and take my mommy’s word for it. She may not have been as volatile as Una’s mother, or as mysteriously overbearing as Cym’s, or as horrifically devious as Vera’s, but she was keeping secrets from me; she was lying to me. How or why would I protect The Chains if she wouldn’t tell me the truth about who I was protecting it from?

  How could I do it dead?

  I hated that I could see even a little of her side. I understood that she couldn’t tell me what The Chains were, who they were, and not reveal that she’d murdered my sisters before me to save her own skin. How many years had the guilt driven into the core of who she was, Spirit, and torn her apart? It was all too easy to envision my mom giving in, buckling under the need to tell one of her many daughters the truth, but seeing no way out.

  The thought only made me feel jealous that anyone had had the relationship with her that I did.

  I wanted Lux. He felt like mine.

  Like I did every night, I pulled into our driveway, ready to see my mom act like a mom, but burdened down with the weight of chains on her shoulders even when she slept.

  The witch in me realized that her control of The Chains was a privilege. One that I was also afforded.

  “Hi baby,” my mom said, pecking me on the cheek.

  I smiled tightly, surveying her to see what lurked under the surface. It wasn’t that I was checking for her mood—her mood was always good. She always had a smile for me, even when she was hurt or depressed. I’d say disappointed, but I never disappointed her; I loved her too much.

  I was ready to disappoint her.

  “We should talk about what happened in the woods today, Mom,” I said, dropping my bag. I didn’t have to ask if she knew about our meeting place. It would be stupid for me to think she didn’t make the Elementals report everything back to her. They all had their own agendas, secrets, but they were afraid of her, and with good reason. “Did you know the Earth Elemental was coming after us?”

  “Baby, you’re always in danger from them, and from the Poisons, too. You know that. I trust you to handle yourself.”

  “Why? It’s not like I’m allowed to use magic.”

  “You don’t have to use it for it to be yours.”

  Her rationale and endless confidence in me was too real and didn’t fit into what was happening in reality. Anger bubbled over. I grabbed an apple out of the bowl on the counter and whipped it at the fridge, knocking down a bunch of magnets and a picture of her and I holding hands in a Christmas tree lot. The picture only reminded me of all the time I’d spent making up stories of a real family when I should have been using magic instead. I growled.

  With a deep sigh, she smiled sadly at me. “That kind of anger isn’t like you, Celeste. Of course you’re angry. I am, too, believe it or not. It hurts me that I can’t help you make sense of this mess, all the spider webs weaving in and out of each other. I hate that you’re in danger! Have always been in danger. Celeste, truth is how you see it. All we can do is weigh out truth and love and responsibility and need and make them work for each other.”

  “I’m starting to feel like there is no truth and nothing works.”

  She straightened her back, hair tumbling over her shoulders and the stacks of little chains that dressed them. She was as regal as a queen and as fearsome. Idiotically, I loved her so much in that moment. For her relentless stability in my life. For her commitment to me, for her commitment to herself. For never backing down. I wanted to be that.

  She would try to kill me before I could ever become it.

  “You’re getting stronger every day, Celeste,” she said without smiling, but the love in her eyes was unmistakable. “I want that to never end. I want you to grow, create, wish, dream, become the strongest witch this world has ever seen and keep The Chains in your pocket like you do Link, under control and balanced without the need of the Poisons or the Elementals.” Her words grew feverish, excited.

  “You’re lying to me.”

  She smiled then, blinking slowly, dreamily. “Even angry, you’re filled with such love. You’ll always have that. Even from those you hold dominion over. You reach us all the same way you reach to your stars…. as if every single one was as important and shining as those around it. You find the strength in everyone around you, and because of that, their strength is real.”

  “Mom,” I choked, head reeling from her admiration of me and how wrong it was in that moment, what a lie it had to be.

  “Baby, I know you.” She smiled sadly. “I know you, and that you’ll find some spark of good that just isn’t there.” It angered me as if it had been said about me and not him.

  I nodded, steeling my spine as best I could when I felt so weak. My voice was thick when I said, “He told me you were going to kill me.”

  “How would he know such a thing?”

  That simple question answered mine. She didn’t deny it, she wasn’t surprised. And she knew better; she’d told me herself Lux had powers even he didn’t understand. Of course he’d know things he couldn’t explain.

  And he knew me, the most inexplicable thing of all.

  “You’re right, Mom,” I said. “I trust you.” And I trust him, too.

  “But the boy—Lux, right? You have a connection to him. His spirit,” her chest swelled as if she was breathing his spirit in at that very moment, “isn’t unlike yours.” Her eyes narrowed, and I caught the lie I’d always been told—that the demons were bad and we were good. Now those things melted together. “This connection can help us, Celeste. We can win this thing.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it as a game to be won.”

  Tears flowed freely down her face then, weakening me more. I knew it to be true, but it made such little sense that this woman could do what she planned to. Not to me. The love in her called to the love in me.

  “Lux—” she began.

  “Is just a boy. He doesn’t have to be part of this.”

  “He’s not just a boy, Celeste. He’s stronger and more important than you think.”

  “He’s protecting me.”

  “So am I.”

  “I know more than you think, Mom!”

  “I don’t doubt that you do,” she said so mournfully, like she was at my funeral already. How silly, I thought. The Chains will prevent the world from ever realizing I was gone or here to begin with. I would be one of those links, covering up my own murder. “If we use every tool at our fingertips, we can change things.”

  “Lux is not a tool to be used.” I clenched Link in my pocket. “I am not a thing to be used.” Tears stung my eyes but I wouldn’t allow them to fall. My mom
didn’t try to hold me the way I’d come to expect, to count on, but her voice was soft.

  “Celeste, you’re a weapon. The Poisons, the Elementals, the demons, we’re all just pretty weapons, waiting to be used on each other or on ourselves.”

  When she brushed past me and went upstairs, she smelled like the deep, dark earth.

  Chapter 19

  Sometimes it’s best to jump in the game even if that game is awful and there’s little chance of winning. Like Monopoly after hour three.

  We were all lying to each other, confronting each other, allying with each other and seeking to destroy each other simultaneously. We sat across the dinner table from our only family and our worst enemies. We talked in the school hallways and hated it, and were best friends for it. We all wanted the same thing: to survive.

  Was this what The Chains stood for? It felt like a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Romeo and Juliet on crack.

  My Romeo had disappeared, stolen away before we could soothe all the emotions made raw. I had to believe he still lived, but if the Earth Elemental couldn’t force Lux to help take over The Chains, she’d kill him. She’d kill him rather than risk him helping the Poisons, or one of the other Elementals. She’d kill him for fun. I couldn’t bear to think of what she might be doing to him. Maybe she had him strung up for all of the Elementals to use, to mold to serve them better. They thought of him as a weapon; I thought of him as the other half of me.

  If anything was obvious it was that power needed to shift, and I’d far rather Lux attain it than the Elementals. Above all, he needed saving. I was the one to save him.

  I needed once again to speak with Una where the walls didn’t have ears. For that, I needed Cymbeline. I had to do everything I could to conceal our meeting. Cymbeline was surely already in the woods. Where else would she be? I rolled my phone over and over in my hand. Saying ‘meet me in an hour’ out loud was out of the question, and even texting was risky. I could just go there myself and hope the others would have the same idea.

  Actually, I thought, hoping isn’t all I can do.

  I went to my window and pulled aside the shabby chic curtains which weren’t shabby chic in reality, just old. I searched for the star I needed; not the star that twinkled the brightest but the one that blinked in and out of the darkness, disappearing like it had no right to be there but just wanted to try. I held my palm up, covering the star from my vision, and closed it fast when I thought the words, I Wish the Poisons would meet me in the woods in an hour.

  I’d never Wished for anything that I couldn’t see the result of immediately. And I had never Wished to virtually transport four unsuspecting people. I’d only find out if it worked when I entered the woods and saw Cymbeline filling empty picture frames with the Elementals’ magic.

  I flopped into the rocking chair in the corner, pulling the patchwork quilt over me, and my junk journal into my lap. I rocked, looking absently at an outdated star chart from India. It couldn’t help me. I had to help me. I wanted so much for the wise grandmother I imagined to be real. To sit in this rocking chair, fraying crochet blanket in her lap that her own grandmother had made, to tell me what to do in homespun riddles. To kiss me on the forehead like always, her lips still soft in old age. She’d show me that it was never the stars, but my heart that led the way. I wanted my fairy tale of her to be real. I wanted my coven to be more than a collection of prisoners created by magic, indebted to it. I wanted us to make mistakes and history together. I could Wish for it, let the magic create the coven and the family I dreamed of, just like it created me.

  I put my scrapbook down, the binding creaking, pages crinkling. I’d tea-dyed and burned and weathered the pages to make it feel old. To make it less of a lie. I rocked and the minutes went by so slowly that I started to panic, knowing how much more slowly they must be passing for Lux. I popped Ye Olde Anxiety Pill and washed it down with a sip of tea that was doing nothing to calm me. Then I took another one. There was no noise except for the creaking chair. Either my mom had legitimately gone to bed because it was ten, or she’d made herself conveniently scarce so I wouldn’t have to explain why I was leaving. The rules of war.

  Finally, the hour passed and instead of even trying to conserve power, a lie that I didn’t have to believe anymore, I Wished myself to Cymbeline’s spot. I heard voices in the cold woods, the stars guiding me through the night. I’d known that my Wish would work. It had been so easy. Every time I used my powers it felt better; I felt better.

  “….don’t remember what happened, I just got sucked out—I was in my room, painting my toes.” Una’s voice, loud and clear. I saw her holding up her naked feet when she spotted me over Delcine’s shoulder. She pushed the Witch of Sweets out of the way, making the half-clothed Delcine stumble into the single chair.

  “You couldn’t text us? Send fucking smoke signals or something? That sucked!”

  “Get a grip,” I said as threateningly as I could. “If I could do this to you, you don’t know what else I can do.” I stuck my chin up, and I meant every word when I said, “I’m the leader of this coven, the most powerful of all of us. You need to fall in line if you want to survive.”

  “Fall in line?” Una was getting angrier by the second, and actually, so was I. I’d maybe not been a fantastic leader, I’d made mistakes, but what had I done to deserve this kind of distrust?

  Lux.

  We’d all turned into liars one way or another.

  “I was protecting you, for crying out loud. The Elementals are watching us, Una! This was the safest way to get all of you here without leaving a trail.” I cleared my throat and looked over the Witch of Shades at Vera, Delcine, and Cymbeline. “If we’re going to live, you all need to do what I just said—fall in line. Do your parts. Take my lead. Any one of us could bring down the entire coven if we don’t have each other’s backs.”

  Cymbeline’s eyes were like tiny moons in the dark. “I trust you,” she said.

  I only looked at Cymbeline a little harder in that moment, but I thought, I wish I knew how much she means those words. Not a real Wish, just a fleeting desire, but it was enough. Sharp visions came, of Cymbeline’s eyes popping open in the morning, the dust motes hovering over her face. I could feel them pulling the dreams from her mind to show the Air Elemental. Images of her mother’s fathomless eyes turning wild, screeching at her daughter that the breeze would tell her anything she asked and many things she didn’t, that the world was at her mercy because there was nowhere she didn’t touch—and the frigid ball of paranoia that the Elemental had become was all too clear. Cymbeline’s mother had stolen trust from her by being the stale, cold tension in the air, the delusions seeping from the wood paneling. That was what fed the emptiness in the Witch of Empty Things. What chance did Cymbeline stand?

  I gulped hard. “Thanks. Can you make some light for us?”

  Her smile shined in the night before she turned to the empty frames on the trees, they filled with golden light. Eerily beautiful, like the girl who made it. The Poisons looked unearthly under it; Vera with the glow dancing across her freckles, Delcine a dark and lusty vamp, Cymbeline an angel. And Una, in front of me, with one hell of a bruise on her cheek and furious eyes. A battle goddess.

  Delcine’s voice was scratchy, probably from crying and smoking when I plucked her out of her house. “If I don’t turn on the Fire Elemental now she’d be even more disappointed in me.” She laughed bitterly. “The bitch has it coming. I’m with you.”

  Vera stepped closer, head hung as it always was, preternatural eyes peeking out from beneath her hair. “Sisters,” she said.

  I nodded once to her and focused on Una, still looking like she wanted to beat me worse than the Water Elemental did her. Poor Una, misguided, out of control and hungry.

  “Una. Who really deserves that anger? Not me,” I whispered as she shook with rage. “You’re a survivor more than any of us. Don’t let your own anger be the end of you.”

  Fat teardrops rolled down her ch
eeks. Swiping her fingers through her mohawk, she let out a sigh that was more like a growl. It made me grin.

  “Sisters,” she said.

  I pulled her fast into one of my borderline intrusive bear hugs before she could say no. “Una, I won’t let you down,” I whispered. Then I pulled back, smirking at her stunned face from having been touched, and I said it to them all. “I’m not like the Elementals. I won’t let any of you down. Starting now, we trust each other. It’s a choice. We trust each other, and we show each other we’re worthy of it.”

  I told them about the time I’d spent with Lux at the park. That I’d seen inside him, been given visions—which shocked all of them, frankly. I don’t think they saw me as feisty enough meet a boy alone in the park at night. They probably still didn’t see why Lux would bother with me as a witch or as a girl. I told them that part of being the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son meant his brothers were in his mind, and that was why he seemed nuts. Add The Chains talking to him on top of that and the prophecy that he’d be the one to save The Gone from its captors, our mothers? He had a lot going on.

  We all looked around us a little harder, for the chain links under the ground, in the air, between the trees. They were there, as solid as ever, not speaking to a one of us. But the memory of the night that one grabbed Delcine by the ankle reminded me that they were sentient. A demon could hear them, but we didn’t. We hadn’t been listening to the right voices.

  “We have to find Lux, bring him back. I don’t want to think of him as a weapon, but he is part of this little army of ours now. I won’t let him be a Trojan horse.”

  “Trojan horse? Like the condom?” Del said.

  “Not exactly, Del. I’m asking you all to help me because I need him.” I swallowed hard. “I need him.”

  They all nodded, and I sobbed once, unable to hold back.

  “How will we do that?” Delcine asked.