by Danny Bell
“No one is getting hurt,” I seethed impatiently. “I’m going to make my staff, and when I return, I’ll drive out the evil and keep working to make my home a safe place for—”
“For the people who you deem worthy?” Jason finished for me. “For the people in your city? For the people you choose to place under your protection? Come on, Elana, what are you doing? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? You’ve got the moral compass of a fidget spinner.”
“When I’m in charge, I’m not going to kill innocent people!”
“Ah, but you will be in charge, right?” Jason asked smugly. “So much for people power, huh? At least when I was around, we had a paycheck and an espresso machine in the office. What’s your benefits package look like?”
“You’re twisting it again!” I exclaimed, starting to get worked up. “I’m not authoritarian, I’m—”
The answer clicked in me, and I could see it on Jason’s face the moment I knew that he knew it as well. I actually laughed in spite of myself. “Hey, for what it’s worth,” I said, taking the carrot out of his hand and throwing it into the fire. “I’m not sad that you’re dead. I’m not even affected by it. And maybe I should be because all life is sacred or whatever, but you did it to yourself. You were a sick piece of shit sociopath who got pleasure from killing people who had no idea about what was happening to them, and even at the end there, with my friends? You didn’t need to take them to get to me. And you didn’t need to show off either. You were a pathetic, weak little bully with a stupid hat, and the world’s a better place without you in it. The Knowing wasn’t siding with me, it was siding against you. And you know what? You can’t hurt me anymore. You don’t even exist.”
Jason looked smaller and smaller as I stood over him until finally, I raised a foot and pushed him over off the rock he’d been sitting on. “If I had anything to say to you, that was it. Now get the hell away from my fire.”
He looked up at me with something unreadable in his eyes, his white suit dirtied by the ground as he sat in an uncomfortable-looking defeated position, and then he simply vanished. I smiled, feeling something like satisfaction, and I put a bit of the wood under my head like a pillow as I waited for sleep.
It came quickly and left just as quickly, but today was a more comfortable day. I had some measure of nourishment, and I hadn’t been heartbroken the way I’d felt after the first night. The staff had been completed a bit more, and there was a second symbol burned into the wood that I also couldn’t focus on for some reason. This day felt more arid than the last, but not by much. Most of it was spent anxious about who to expect next. I hadn’t expected anyone at first, and after the first night, I had expected friends. Now with having met Jason Harris of all people, I had no idea about what to expect, and it worried me.
I was grateful when the sun set, and I knew the work was done for the day. My shoulders were killing me. I drank deeply from the stream by sticking my face in it, doing double duty by also washing off some of the sweat, and went straight back to the fire to grab a healthy stack of broccoli that I tipped toward the oak as if it had bought me a whiskey in a bar.
There was an audible rip as I tore into the leafy part of the broccoli, surprised at how amazing vegetables tasted when you really worked up an appetite. I moved a little closer to the fire to dry my skin and hadn’t even considered who might show up this time once the night fell. Three nights in, and I was already getting used to the routine.
There was a slight crunch of footsteps approaching the fire that made me look up, and I saw a woman, maybe Claire’s age, walking toward me timidly. I didn’t recognize her, but I had the overwhelming feeling that I should. She wore a purple blouse and matching ankle-length skirt made of some thin material that looked like it was from another time, maybe the sixties, and several necklaces that made little clinking sounds in time with her steps. Her eyes were kind, even though there was something unreadable behind them, and her face was warm but uneasy. She had dark, curly hair that reached her shoulders, and a bandanna held it back.
She kept walking toward me, her pace quickening slightly as she saw me, but her hands were crossed in front of her, the way I do sometimes when I’m anxious.
“Who’s there?” I finally asked, and she stopped just long enough to answer.
“Baby? Is that you?” Her voice was equal parts sad and hopeful, and my heart shattered with the immediate, impossible understanding.
“Mom?” I gasped. It couldn’t be her. I’ve never met her!
“Oh, Elana, it’s you!” My mother began to cry as she ran for me, and I ran to her just as quickly, our bodies colliding in an embrace.
I was sobbing as I held her, thick, heavy sobs that I couldn’t control. I was holding my mother; I had my mom back! We separated for a moment to look at each other, but there were no words there. We just laughed and cried and held each other again.
“I’m a mess,” I laughed finally, absently wiping at my face, unsure of why I was so embarrassed. My mom helped me and lovingly stroked my hair back and wiped away my tears.
“We both are,” she smiled, beaming at me with pride through pained, watery eyes. “Did you get my necklace?”
“Yes, thank you, sorry I couldn’t wear it here…” I trailed off at the end there, letting half of the sentence hang in the air dangerously. “I couldn’t bring it with me.”
I repeated my explanation with different words because I was afraid to say why I couldn’t bring it with me. I didn’t want this moment to end. “I know, baby,” she said. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t give it to you myself. I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” I choked. We sat down near the fire before my knees could give out.
“You’re doing so good.” My mom stroked my hair. “I knew you would.”
I already hated myself for what I was about to say, but I knew it had to be said. “Mom…you’re not here, are you? This isn’t even what you looked like, is it?”
She shook her head. “No. No, it’s what you imagine that I’d looked like, but you’re really close.” She laughed. She paused another moment as if searching for words and, right as I was going to say something to fill the void, she continued. “I’m not really here, you’re right, but I could be.”
My chest swelled with anxiety hearing that. I didn’t understand. I mean, maybe, but the implications…!
“This place is special, Elana, you know that. You could focus on me, make me real, and make a real life for us both. You could create a world where we’ve always been together and always would. You could make it happen.”
“I-I don’t think,” I stammered, looking for words. “I don’t think I could. I can’t create a whole new world! That’s insane!”
“Not a whole new world,” she corrected me. “A replacement world. You would need to give up your old one to make one for us. You couldn’t go back, but you’d be safe. With me. No one trying to kill you, no more magic and world-hopping. Just a normal life in a normal world. You and me. We could get a dog, any kind you like! We could live in a bookstore, and on Sundays, we could serve brunch. I could make crepes.”
I wished she hadn’t said that.
“I already live in a bookstore,” I said glumly.
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” she said absently. “I always knew you would like it there.”
“My mom wouldn’t ask me to abandon my friends,” I said softly. “My family.”
“Oh no, honey, of course not!” My mother held my head tightly against her chest. “They would still live, that world would still be there, just without you.”
I stood up so suddenly that it surprised her, and I felt manic as I tried to fit the pieces into place. “Okay, maybe it’s not a zero-sum game, right? This is the Knowing, and it likes me, so maybe I could get you back to my world! I could ask it, petition it, something! And when we get back, we can work on finding dad and—”
“Elana, baby,” my mom shushed with a sense of finality. “No.”
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“But—”
“That’s not what you’re being offered here, you know that,” she said, standing to her feet. She seemed so much taller than me. “This is the one chance you get and then, poof. That’s it.”
“You can’t ask me to lose my mom twice!” I shouted, tears returning. “There has to be another way!”
“Oh, Elana, come here.” My mom held me as I cried bitterly near the fire. I felt so small and desperate in her arms.
“It’s not fair,” I cried helplessly.
“It never is.”
“You knew that I couldn’t leave my friends in danger, but you asked me anyway.”
“I did, and I’m sorry,” my mother said bravely, I could hear her holding back her own tears. “It’s why I’m here. But you haven’t decided, and that’s also why I’m here. You know what you have to choose, and you need to say goodbye.”
“I can’t,” I cried. “Because if I do, when I do, you’re going to be gone and…and I…”
“My job is done. I did everything I could to give you the best life, but I also gave you a chance to do the most good. To be the person that anyone would be proud to call their daughter. I’ve already done that, and you proved me right. I’m so, so proud of you, I hope you carry that with you always. You’re so strong, like this oak.”
I looked up at the tree with her, and I laughed through the tears. “Like my name.”
My mom laughed with me. “Just like your name. Your mom was pretty smart, huh?”
I held her so tightly that I felt sure I must’ve been hurting her. “I love you, Mom!”
“I love you,” she said gently. “I love you so much.”
“I don’t want you to go!” I pleaded.
“But I know what you’re going to choose,” she said softly. “Goodbye, Elana.”
I’d been holding on to some idea that I could figure it all out, that I could choose to have it all if I’d only found a way, found something to bargain with. But my mind slipped for just an instant, and I made a choice, and just like that, my mother was gone.
I would’ve been better off if I’d lost a limb. I was in agony, a feeling unlike anything I’d ever felt before; I was devastated.
“How could you?” I screamed at the oak. “How dare you? That was my mother!”
There wasn’t much to throw at the tree, but whatever was immediately at hand was thrown. My knife. The bare bits of branch shavings. The makings of my staff. All of it bounced off without offense. I screamed at it, feeling suddenly cold and so far away from my home. Nothing cared but me.
I began to feel sickeningly sleepy, and I felt a wave of ravenous anger take hold of me. “No!” I declared, the word carrying every intention I had at the ready. “You will not just send me away! You will not move me into the next box or stage or…!”
The sleepiness left me, and most of the anger did too. That wasn’t unnatural, that was from me, it turned into vapor and left me as a sort of compromise to the universe hearing me. I fell down to my hands and knees in front of the tree and cried, the first time in my life that I felt these sorts of tears. I was somewhere new, and the word I spoke was meant for someone who was already gone.
“Goodbye.”
I did sleep then, the stars in the sky fading and turning into the darkness that only existed behind my eyelids, and when my eyes opened again, it was to see the sun cresting over the top of the oak like a crown or a halo. I was numb and unimpressed, but I got to work obediently to the steps that were required of me. I didn’t want to play anymore; it felt like I’d lost, and all the life was out of me. I looked at the ground and my work, no longer caring about what else might be out there. There was another blurry symbol, but I was unimpressed by that as well.
The night brought the usual trappings. The fire, the steam, the vegetables. I sat at my rock and waited impatiently, ready for it to be over with.
A firm but gentle hand gave my shoulder a squeeze, and I only flinched a little bit. “Hey, kiddo, you doing okay?”
It was Claire, looking for a change like she wasn’t exhausted with the day-to-day struggle of keeping a business running and dealing with me. I offered a small smile and gave her a hand a polite squeeze but didn’t answer.
“You should eat, it’s been a tough week,” she offered as she sat next to me, sharing my rock instead of taking her own.
“Not hungry,” I sulked.
Claire gave me a familiar disapproving look that I’d come to learn meant that she knew I was lying, but she didn’t call me out on it. “So, you want to be me when you grow up?” Claire gave me a little nudge as she said, a gentle ribbing.
My cheeks grew warm despite my mood, and I chuckled to cover my embarrassment. “You heard that?”
Claire was trying to coax a smile out of me. She might as well have told me to chin up. “Now, why would you want to do that?”
“You’re awesome,” I replied unhelpfully.
“You don’t want to be me,” she said wistfully. “Hell, I was supposed to be you, you know. I think we might’ve switched tickets by accident.”
“What do you mean?”
Claire gave me a look of mock disbelief. “Come on, Elana, what are you doing right now?”
I shrugged.
“You’re making a wizard staff!” Claire shouted, shaking me playfully. “I never did anything that cool. Grew up dreaming I would, though.”
“You own a bookstore!” I gaped. “You can’t mean that!”
“I sat in one place, never got to see the world. Not really.” She didn’t sound sad as she said it, just resigned. “You know, this is probably part of the disconnect I feel sometimes. The age gap. I love you and our little tribe, but you kids are in your twenties.”
“One of us is two hundred,” I amended.
“She’s probably throwing off the average,” Claire admitted. “But sometimes I see you and I think you’re all idiots, and then sometimes I look at you and I’m blown away. You know what I mean?”
“Like a golden retriever playing piano?” I asked.
Claire barked a laugh, a big ‘ha’ sound. “You never cease to amaze me. Yeah, just like that. Oh my god, that’s good,” Claire said to herself before moving on. “You were worried about what Abarta said about me, about me crying?”
I didn’t say anything right away, but Claire wasn’t letting me off the hook. “Worried about you, not worried about what he said,” I tried.
“It’s both,” she said knowingly. “And that’s fine—look, he wasn’t lying. He can’t, after all. I have nightmares. I do cry when no one’s around. But not from anything you do, it’s that I’m afraid of losing any of you. Like we lost Logan, sure, but also just in that natural way that we lose people sometimes when we drift apart.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I protested.
“For better or worse, right?” Claire teased. “I think you believe that now because you’re young, but there’s a part of me that has lived long enough to see people come and go, and that’s bad enough, but now there are other ways for you to go—unnatural ways.”
“I’m trying my best,” I said softly, not sure what that even meant.
“I know.” Claire nodded, letting that sit in the air for a moment. “Hey, you remember that time Alyce cheated on me right before my birthday?”
“Yeah.” I chuckled inappropriately in the way that was only possible when enough time has separated from tragedy to become comedy. “That was pretty bad.”
“Tell me about it,” Claire suggested. “Tell me that story, and for goodness’ sake, eat something.”
I did as I was told. I absently picked up a carrot and thought back on that time. “I hadn’t known you for very long. Already looked up to you, though. I’d known you for a full five minutes, and you were already pitching me on reading Andre Norton in a book club with you, said she was the best. I thought that was so goddamn cool.”
“I did always like her,” Claire agreed.
“Anyway, you real
ly liked Alyce,” I recalled. “I think you met her right before you met me. You didn’t date much, so this was exciting for you. Alyce was supposed to take you to a concert for your birthday—I forget the band.”
“Fiona Apple.” Claire filled in the blank for me.
“Aww, that’s right!” I exclaimed. “You liked that Criminal song. And then, like, the day before the show, literally the day before your birthday, she sent you a text, a two-in-one special of dog shit. She was seeing someone else, and she was keeping the tickets. Brutal.”
“And what happened next?” Claire pressed.
“I took you out for drinks at the Three Clubs. Olivia and I got whoever we could to come out. It wasn’t a concert, but it was nice. You seemed happy.”
“That’s not what happened,” Claire said flatly, and her eyes fixed on me.
I felt very naked. I didn’t know what was coming next, but I’d been contradicted.
“I’d been piecing together my entire life, cracking at the edges because I knew something at the time that other people didn’t, and that was that I wasn’t going to get better. That maybe I’d given up too much of my life for my store. I knew I didn’t have many people in my life, I didn’t have any kids and wasn’t likely to. I felt like Alyce might’ve been one of my last chances to be with someone, and something about me was unlovable if she could just leave like that. I would later understand how wrong I was, but in our lowest moments, it’s easy to believe the worst about ourselves.”
Claire took a long moment to stare at the fire, and I said nothing because I knew she wasn’t done. I knew there was more to the story. I knew because I’d been there.
“You didn’t owe me anything,” Claire continued. “We were friends, but new friends; I didn’t expect you to care about my pain, the pain I was doing my best not to show anyone. You insisted I come out, and you weren’t the loud bar type. It was uncomfortable for you, I know that. But you took me out anyway, in that stupid yellow car of yours that made me so happy to sit in. And there were so many people there, and they were all there for me. Olivia was responsible for that part of it, but you’d put her up to it. You kept a seat for me in the corner, cozy in the middle of a refuge. Dancers and drinkers, all of them wishing me a happy birthday, and in the middle of it all, I inexplicably began to cry for reasons that had nothing to do with the alcohol. You took me outside, bought me tacos from the truck next door, and you sat with me out there alone until I was ready to go back inside, and you never pressed about why I was crying. And do you know what I was thinking about while I was crying?”
