Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Wow.” I swallow hard and step inside. I’m beyond relieved that the stone doesn’t close behind us, so the dim, weak light of the outside can still reach me, here in the heart of the earth. “So this is Merlin’s cave.”
“It’s not actually Merlin’s, you know, humans just have a habit of attributing places associated with historical witchcraft to him.
All that poetic wizard nonsense. There’s very little historical evidence that he was ever here.
It doesn’t mean it isn’t a powerfully magical location, though.
” As Kira speaks, taking off her bag and starting to bustle, like she walks into ancient magical locations all the time, I wish it was Bastian giving me facts and acting like a know-it-all.
“Yeah, I got that.” I pull the ingredients out of my bag, along with the grimoire. Kira quickly moves the book, which is open on the page of the spell, to the top of the pentagram and pulls out a magnifying glass. “What’s next?”
“Put the ingredients on the points.” Kira kneels with her magnifying glass held over the page of the book.
I obey and set the hair, the name, the bone in their places.
With each one, I can’t help remembering what it took to get it.
Stop thinking about him, I scold myself.
He betrayed you. I watch as Kira sprinkles Elizabeth’s earth out of the jar in the center of the pentagram.
“And now?” I ask nervously. Kira doesn’t even look up from the grimoire.
“You’re an ingredient. You stand on the last point of the pentagram and…” She hands me back her knife. “You bleed.”
“Right, yeah, a pint of blood,” I mutter, recalling how Bastian explained it to me when we first read the book together. “From anywhere?”
“From … from your arms.” Kira reluctantly looks down at my wrist. I sigh.
It feels right, in a way, that this should be how I bring Elizabeth back.
After all, this was how I tried to get back to her the first time, by joining her in death.
This time, hopefully, she’ll be joining me in life.
“Be careful, though. Don’t do it the same place you did before.
We need you to bleed slowly, for the ritual. ”
“Morbid.” I set the knife farther up, by the crease of my elbow. “How will we know that we’re done?”
“Because the resurrection will happen,” Kira says impatiently. “Now, cut yourself and be quiet, I need to concentrate.”
“Harsh.”
I feel a sudden tremor of fear and doubt crawling up my gut, all the way to my throat.
The last time I did something like this, Elizabeth died.
Kira might be pretty annoying, but I don’t want her to die and I’m scared of what will happen, how Elizabeth will come back—what if we make a mistake and only bring her halfway back, trapped between the living and dead, making everything worse?
I feel like I can say none of those things to Kira, who lost her, too, but I need something to push me on.
Something to get me to do this again, put a blade to my arm and bleed, hoping to see her.
“I know she told you not to talk to me and she was afraid of her mum but … was she happy with me?” I ask abruptly. “Can you just tell me, was she happy?”
“Yes,” Kira says, her face softening. “Yes, Lando. She’d never had a relationship before, she’d been too scared of being herself. You made her incredibly happy.”
I hover the knife over my arm and, for a second, think about what Counselor Cooper said.
She told me not to be afraid of moving on.
For a second, I wonder if that’s what I’m doing here.
Am I so afraid of moving on that I’d rather risk my life for the chance of going back in time?
Yes, I think. Absurdly, I hear Bastian’s voice in my head: You deserve to be free from this, Lando.
This is how I get free. So I cut my arms. The pain isn’t as bad as last time, and as I watch the blood trickle down my wrists I think wearily, Here we go again.
“There are three positions you need to echo for me to get it started while I chant; you’ll know it’s beginning when you feel it. Then you just need to concentrate on staying alive,” she says.
“What are the positions?”
“The Web of Wyrd, Woden’s Power, and the Touch of Persephone. Echo me, okay? Eyes on me.”
I nod and lift my hands into the preparatory triangle as Kira does the same.
She moves her fingers into the netted position and I copy, the blood from my arms dripping to the floor.
Kira chants as we move to the thumbs upraised for the Woden’s Power, and her ring glows red, filling the cave with a deep, disconcerting light.
Fire without heat dances along the lines of the pentagram and the shadows leap on the walls and suddenly, all around me, I see alchemical symbols scratched into the ancient stone. I feel a nasty wave of dread.
We move to the Touch of Persephone, a cage-like grip of the right hand on the left wrist, and that’s when it starts.
It’s sort of how it felt when Bastian borrowed some of my magic, but it’s more intense.
A ripping, wrenching feeling; the core of me is being dragged out through the blood in my arms, the drips of it hissing on the dirt when they land.
I can do this, I repeat inside my head, I can do this for Elizabeth.
I try to focus on her, remembering her hair and her voice and the way she smiled, but suddenly I think of Bastian, wounded terribly but still caring enough to ask if my last shift took too much energy.
There’s a wave of sadness inside me, so overwhelming and deep that it threatens to haul me under.
I’m tired now, more tired than after my shift.
The magic is pulling more blood out of me than I can bear and I sway, feeling like I might faint.
I look dizzily down at the pile of Elizabeth’s earth, willing it to blow or rise, anything, but nothing is happening.
“It’s not working.”
I’m a bit frightened when my own voice seems very far away, but I can’t find my way back. The world is tilting away from me, or I am falling out of it, I’m not sure which.
“I don’t know why, I’ve never done this before—” Kira’s voice is panicked. “You’re bleeding too much, I should stop—”
“No, don’t stop!” I moan, dropping down to my knees. The earth is weirdly hot underneath me, but we must keep going. I remember what Bastian said about Shasta’s death, about needing it all to have a point. If we stop, I’ll be dying for nothing. “Keep going!”
“I have to stop!”
I know in my bones that if she stops, I’ll drift out of my body the same way my blood is running down my arms. I’ll drop into the earth and descend underneath it and there will be nothing left of me.
I want to tell her again to keep going but my voice is gone completely now.
Everything is dark and I can’t see Kira or the flames or the cave anymore.
Maybe this is it, I think dizzily. Maybe I’m finally dying.
I’m struck and amazed by how unhappy the thought makes me.
It’s not Elizabeth’s face that’s in my mind right now.
It’s the smell of eucalyptus balm and coconut shampoo, it’s the feeling of a scarred collarbone under my fingers. Bastian.
Now, I might never see him again.
“No, keep going! It’ll be worse if you stop!” Suddenly, there’s another voice, this one even farther away, but richer, firmer, and full of conviction. “I’ll help you!”
The second voice joins the chanting, fibrous and strong, and through the ringing in my ears, I recognize it.
Through a veil of cloud over my eyes I see a blue light joining in with the red and, suddenly, the air around me is vibrant and purple, and I can see it and feel it again and I can smell bonfires, the strength of Bastian’s magic, roaring all around me.
There’s breath in my lungs and I begin to feel the cuts on my skin sealing.
The grasping, heavy feeling inside my body, pulling me down to the rocks beneath me, finally stops, and gratefully, I feel myself slumping forward. Warm, steady arms catch me.
“It’s finished, you’re okay, you’re okay—” Bastian says.
His scent engulfs me, slightly sweaty but still herbal and faintly antiseptic.
I blearily look up into his face, illuminated strangely by the purple fire still flickering all around us in the pentagram, barely trusting myself to believe he is really here. He came back for me, I think.
“You,” I croak.
“Me.” Bastian gives me a tremulous, tentative smile. “You, too.”
“I’m alive.”
“You are.” Bastian’s voice sounds so breathless with relief that I let myself lean on him as I stare blearily around me. Kira is sitting in front of the book, twisting her glowing ring nervously. There’s no one else in the cave. It’s a crushing moment and I slump a little farther against Bastian.
“It didn’t work,” I whimper in exhaustion. I don’t think I have it in me to do it again. “Elizabeth isn’t here.”
“The spell isn’t complete, Orlando,” Kira says quietly. She pushes The Witchlore of Bodies toward me. “You have to close the book and seal it.”
My hands are sluggish. I’m so tired. Despite everything, I find myself looking up at Bastian’s face.
His arm is tight around my shoulder and he looks down at me, his eyes glowing weirdly violet in the strange light.
I am so glad that I get to see him again, that the earth didn’t swallow me whole before I said all I needed to say.
Bastian smiles at me tightly, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“Here.” He makes the shape of the Eye of Horus over one of my cut arms with his ring hand. “Time to return the favor.”
I swallow dryly, my tongue and mouth heavy, but I manage to raise a trembling two fingers to blind his hand movement.
The effect is immediate. His ring glows, I smell fire, but more than that, I feel it.
It’s soaking up through my fingers, the strength of Bastian’s magic.
It’s like warm water, making me imagine the ocean near my parents’ house after the brightest day, crystal clear and shimmering.
Then there’s the taste of it inside me, smoky and vibrant, and I gasp, energy sweeping through me that I didn’t have before, and I wonder if this is the most intimate experience I’ve ever had, to have this precious, impossible thing shared with me.
I stare at Bastian as he pulls his hand away and see his knowing smile.
Why didn’t you tell me? I think desperately.
Why didn’t you tell me this was how you felt about me?
“Are you … sharing magic?” Kira’s eyes are wide as she stares at my hands, glowing with Bastian’s blue magic, Bastian’s strength inside them.
Her shock and perhaps revulsion makes me want to pull back, but Bastian doesn’t let me.
He holds on. He’s not ashamed of me, I realize.
He doesn’t have any regrets or fears and, suddenly, neither do I.
“It’s okay.” Bastian brushes a piece of bloody, sweaty hair away from my face and then kisses the top of my head. The light pressure of his lips peals with the song of his magic inside me, swelling to power, encouraging me to go just this little bit further. “I’m with you.”
It is exactly what I need to hear. With trembling, hesitant fingers, I close the book and press the triangle of my hands against its cover.
My hands begin to glow. I should have expected it, I realize, as the shift rolls through me, utterly unstoppable.
Immediately, memories swallow me and I remember everything.
I remember myself.
I remember the day I was given The Witchlore of Bodies by my father. I remember my seventeenth birthday and setting my pen to the page.
I remember my parents, their love and their joy and their fear for my future. I remember defying their expectations, refusing to settle in one resting form.
I remember switching into a female form to march with the Pankhursts, to stare down anti-protesters and face imprisonment along with my sisters.
I remember taking a male form when war broke out, switching into a younger form to go to France, to fight on the battlefields and cower in the trenches. To suffer on a bayonet in no-man’s-land and almost drown in the dirt.
I remember being brought home to St. Anne’s Hospital, the smell of the sea air in my room as I recovered.
I remember my father fading, our terrible, desolate last words to one another. I remember my mother’s death from influenza years later and the sensation of my loneliness stretching.
I remember war breaking out again and shifting into a female form to serve, too ashamed of my father’s death to face the fighting once again. I remember meeting Bisan and feeling my world light up.
I remember Bisan’s death. I remember standing over her grave.
I remember her mother coming to find me, I remember her last words to me before the magic hit: “You will forget the long years you have lived, you will forget your wealth, your experience, and my daughter. You will even forget how to use your own power! You will live only twenty-one years, without craft or coven, over and over, for all eternity, just as long as my daughter lived!”
I remember what I felt right before the magic engulfed me, cursing me to live over and over without remembrance. I remember I felt relieved. The last thought I have is Bisan, looking into my face and smiling. “I love you, Ariel Lander,” she says.
That’s when I remember my name. Ariel Lander. Orlando Southerns. I remember who I have always been.