Chapter Eight #2
“Are you?” Bastian turns and starts to walk away and I have to jog to catch up.
I’ve never been good in social situations (thank you, homeschooling) but I’ve got worse since May.
I wonder if there’s any point in apologizing.
How would I even phrase it? Sorry, my parents kept me locked up and I’ve only ever had one real friend.
I’m pretty much socially illiterate. Then I think that he’s the one who can cast the spells and he’s the one helping me with this step toward getting Elizabeth back.
Also, he’s been kind to me, in a superior sort of way, and it’s none of my business why his mum left his dad.
At least he talks to me and he wasn’t a total arse about the panic attacks.
“Yeah, I am,” I say. “Really.”
Bastian sighs heavily and I wonder if he’s the kind of person who holds a grudge or needs to give a lecture before he accepts an apology. I steel myself for whatever is coming next.
“It wasn’t the cheese,” he says softly. “It was because of my brother.”
My stomach lurches painfully because I know that regretful, wistful tone. I know that whatever he’s sharing with me now is a secret, a painful one, and I know how hard this can be to do.
“I didn’t know you have a brother.”
I don’t want to ask what happened, but I want him to know it’s okay to tell me and I have absolutely no idea how to communicate that.
“I don’t.” I look at his face. It’s shadowed but his lips are pulled into a tight line. “I mean, I don’t have one anymore. Or I do, he’s just…” Bastian sighs and tilts his head back. “He died.”
It’s absolutely not what I expected. I don’t want to say any of the things people said to me when Elizabeth died. Instead, I say the first thing that pops out of my mouth.
“Oh, crap. Really?” I wince at my continued lack of tact, but Bastian doesn’t seem to mind this time, or he doesn’t notice.
“Yeah,” Bastian says, his voice suddenly distant. “Two years ago.”
“And your mum…?” I ask hesitantly.
“She and Dad were less and less happy anyway, before he died. My brother tried to shield me from it, I think, but he was only a year older so he couldn’t hide the way she was holding it together for us.
” Bastian sighs. “But then … when he was gone … it was too much. They both raised us to love exploring witchcraft, but after everything happened, Dad actively hated it. It’s like Mum was leaning into witchcraft to cope with the tragedy and Dad leaned the other way. They fought about it all the time.”
“What did you do?” I ask.
“Tried to ignore them,” Bastian says with a bitter smile. “Mum did her best but Dad became someone I didn’t want to know. He doesn’t even wear his ring anymore.” Bastian’s voice is full of disgust. I feel a flutter of disquiet.
“So you really don’t like people who don’t do witchcraft?” I ask, trying not to sound as nervous as I feel.
“No, it’s not like that, I don’t hate you because you can’t do witchcraft, it’s different,” he says fervently. “You don’t know what my family was like before it happened, witchlore and witchcraft was who we were. Then after, Dad said … if magic can’t save someone, what’s the point of it?”
Bastian’s voice breaks and I understand these are the words that have embedded their thorny edges into his heart. I know how it feels to live with words like that.
“And your mum just left you?” I’m definitely not the authority on family, but even I can see that’s an unkind thing to do to your grieving son. “Seems … harsh.”
“I’m an adult. She has to work, especially with the divorce. She did what she had to do.”
He’s still walking with purpose but there’s something raw in his voice that reminds me of the times Elizabeth would talk about how worried she was that her mum, who dreamed of her little girl getting married in a Barbie-and-Ken-style event, would find out she was queer and in a relationship with a shapeshifter.
“Did you want to go with her?” I ask. Bastian’s face twitches.
“I need to finish college,” he says quietly. I take that as a yes, and that he had absolutely no say in the matter.
“And you chose to move to Manchester?”
“I wanted a change. At least now Dad’s never around,” Bastian says bitterly. “He’s in London all the time. He only comes to Manchester for meetings and to make sure I’m not dead.”
Now there’s a parental dynamic that’s more up my street. I can hear the loneliness in his voice and I understand it, being alone in a city without a family, feeling like you don’t have an anchor, a place to return to.
“What was his name?” I ask abruptly.
“Excuse me?” Bastian almost trips over a small bush.
“What was your brother’s name?” I repeat.
There is a shaft of moonlight that falls across his face and he looks the most shocked I’ve ever seen him.
“Shasta,” he says.
“The Horse and His Boy.” I nod, recognizing the reference to the C. S. Lewis novel.
“Yeah.” He shoots me such a surprisingly fond look that I blush and look away.
“What was Elizabeth’s full name?” he asks. “No one’s told me.”
“Elizabeth Toppings.” I smile, because I always thought it was a cute name, making her sound like she should run a tearoom in the nineteenth century.
“Everyone talks about her at college when you’re not around,” he says.
“They do?” I turn to stare at him. He nods.
“They all talk about how sweet and kind she was, good student, perfect friend. It all seems kind of fake. I still don’t have any idea what she was really like as a person.”
“Oh. Um.” It’s suddenly too much to imagine everything I could tell him about Elizabeth, so much pressure that my mind is drawing a horrifying blank.
I end up blurting out the first things that come to me.
“She liked trampolining, she had one in her garden. She always took the pickles out of burgers. She loved Christmas movies.…” I feel uncomfortable, realizing that while I loved her so much, the closeted nature of our relationship meant that all the practical things I knew about her revolved around activities we could do in her parents’ house in secret or takeaway we ordered.
I can tell Bastian what was in her to-be-read pile, but I can’t tell him what she was like at a party.
I try to focus on facts. “Her best friend was Kira Tavi, from college, and her mum leads an Artemis coven in Alderley Edge. Her parents are both academics.”
“An Artemis coven?” Bastian repeats with a frown. “That’s a fertility coven.”
“Yeah.” It was one of the reasons Elizabeth was so nervous to come out as gay to her mum, who had always envisioned a particular future for her.
“You do know that most fertility covens would be against this spell we’re trying to do? That they think that only female-born women can give life?”
“Oh. Yeah.” I try to sound as if I’ve considered all of this but the truth is, I hadn’t even thought about it.
I’ve been so focused on the idea that of course Elizabeth’s parents would be happy to have her back that I didn’t consider how her mum’s beliefs might come into play.
But surely having your only child back trumps everything else?
As if he’s reading my mind, Bastian asks, “I know we’re still a long way off from this being a reality, but have you thought about how she might react to her daughter being resurrected this way?”
Nope, I think. Not even a little bit.
“Well, it’s like you said, we’re a long way off that.” I try to keep my voice light and my face neutral but Bastian looks like he isn’t buying it. I sigh. “Honestly, I think she would do anything to get Elizabeth back and if it’s something that involves risking my life, so much the better.”
Bastian opens his mouth, probably to ask more about Elizabeth’s mother, but then he closes it, his head snapping up, face watchful, nostrils flaring.
“What?” I ask, feeling trepidation creep along my skin.
“Did you hear something?” he asks, looking over his shoulder. I turn. Behind us, in the thick darkness, something moves.