Chapter Thirty
First, I feel the familiar ache associated with the shift.
I distantly examine how my body feels, trying to work out what form this is and realize I can do it much quicker than before.
The ancient memory of decades of shifts completes the gaps in my knowledge.
I feel out the skin of this new male form.
Something about it is peculiarly familiar to me, the soft hair and the thin wrists. Then, I hear voices.
“What do you mean they’re the shifter from the book?”
“They won’t remember that, will they?” The voice is urgent, worried, but I feel such safety from it. “That’s horrible to remember, never being able to use magic, only living until twenty-one and then dying, over and over?”
“I doubt it, it was part of the curse to forget.”
“But … Lando won’t forget these years, will they? With Elizabeth and … and me? Will they remember who they are now?”
Even with my eyes closed and my mind full of the past, I am sure that Bastian Chevret is someone I could never forget.
“They’ll remember their past self but, yes, they won’t forget they’ve been Orlando in the present.”
I can feel someone stroking my hair. It is so pleasant.
Immediately, it’s chased by other memories, as if I’m watching them on a screen inside my mind.
My mother, stroking my hair back from my face as I dressed for the suffragist march; my father, stroking my hair as I recovered from my trench wound; Bisan, tucking a piece of my hair into my tin helmet before we went out in the ambulance.
My heart is suddenly full with it all. In a lifetime of thinking I had only really been loved by Elizabeth, now I know it is not true.
I have been loved, so loved, many times.
“Do you know what their name was before?” Bastian asks.
“Ariel,” I whisper, opening my eyes. “My name was Ariel Lander.”
I stare at them both, at Kira and Bastian, my mind brimming with the past. It’s as if I’m waking up from the most vivid dream and I am remembering all of it, stories of so many different shifts and faces unraveling inside my head.
I don’t look for Elizabeth because I already know she won’t be here.
The resurrection was not for her. I also realize that the person I really want to see, the last person I would want to see if I were dying and the first person I want to see when I wake up, is looking down at me, an intense and familiar frown on his face.
You can be sad about Elizabeth’s death and be happy about other things, Lando.
It’s taken a whole life of restored memories, but now I do think that Counselor Cooper might actually be a very good counselor.
“Lando?” Bastian asks tentatively. “Are you okay?”
“You came,” I whisper up at him. “How did you know?”
“Just a hunch.” Bastian grins.
I chuckle weakly and look between them. Kira, who reminds me of faces from the past, and Bastian, who reminds me of everything I’ve lived in these short years of being Lando. I turn to Kira. “You look like Bisan’s mother.”
“I know.” Kira tucks her hair behind her ear nervously. That gesture, how powerfully it reminds me of her great-aunt, and for the first time in this life, I feel a rush of fondness for Kira Tavi. “I’m sorry she cursed you.”
“That’s okay.” I sit up slowly. Bastian still has his hand on my back and I’m happy about it. “You … undid it?”
“Not me.” Kira shakes her head fondly. “It was my grandfather. Great-Aunt Bisan’s brother, Samir Tavi.
He was a great witch, Grandfather Samir.
He went to your old house and found The Witchlore of Bodies after the curse had been done.
He wrote the spell to undo it, called it the resurrection spell, locked it to anyone’s blood but yours.
He didn’t even know you had blood-locked the diary, too.
I didn’t know until you showed me. Did you do that yourself? ”
“Yes.” I see myself, or Ariel, creating the blood lock on the diary when my parents died. It’s a strange sensation. This morning I would have called it a vision and been unsure of it, but now it’s a memory and I am utterly certain I lived it. “But why would Samir do that? His sister died.”
I remember now how close the family was, how Bisan talked about her brother so fondly. I also remember the horror of their mother’s reaction. I felt it had been justified at the time, or at least, my past self seemed to think it had been.
“Yes, but he knew it wasn’t Ariel’s fault.” Kira winces. “Sorry, I mean your fault. He wrote the spell to restore your memories but then, well, he lost the book.”
“He lost it?” Bastian says incredulously.
“He was in the RAF. He hid the book in his parents’ house and they were bombed out.” Kira nods. “When Grandfather Samir got back, he looked for it, but it was lost. He tried to keep an eye out for children who might emerge, shifter babies orphaned by the war, but there were so many of them.…”
“And Ariel was a shifter, always changing appearance,” Bastian says slowly.
“It was impossible,” Kira says sadly. “He stopped looking but he passed the knowledge down to my dad, and my dad to me. Grandfather Samir loved Bisan so much, he was always so proud of her, and he hated that the person she loved was lost, too.”
“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Bastian asks, holding my shoulders protectively. I’m surprised by how gratified I am that he said “us.”
“I never thought any of this would happen. My dad knew the grimoire was in the exhibition, but even with the book we still had no idea where Ariel could be. In all the time I’ve known Lando, I’ve never suspected they were Ariel, and once I started to …
well, you wouldn’t have believed me.” Kira shrugs helplessly.
“You don’t like me, especially after everything with Elizabeth. ”
I watch Kira twist her ring on her finger, a ring that no longer feels antagonistic or threatening.
It only reminds me of Bisan, using her magic to help people in the Blitz.
Despite all my past resentment, I recognize how much Kira has risked to help me today.
The Tavi family may have brought a complicated mix of incredible joy and terrible sorrow into my past life, but that pain feels very far away.
Not as relevant as Kira’s actions, right in front of me.
“Well, when did you suspect?” Bastian demands.
“Too late.” Kira’s face is suddenly so sad, her eyes glassy, and I know what she means.
She didn’t know in time to save Elizabeth.
“Honestly, at the start of this term, I was just trying to look out for you, Lando. I knew it was what Elizabeth would have wanted me to do. Then you two started to get … involved.” Her eyes fix on Bastian’s arm around my shoulder.
He tightens it. I wonder if she’s thinking about the magic sharing, something practically unheard of between witches and shapeshifters, which we performed so casually in front of her.
If she is, she pushes past it to carry on.
“I worried it might be too soon. I didn’t know if you were a good person, Bastian, then after all the magic with Carl, I looked into you. ”
“You found out about Cameron,” he says quietly. Kira looks down at her shoes. Then she looks up at me with pleading in her eyes.
“I told my dad what I thought was happening, and he told me that spell just wouldn’t work unless you actually were Ariel Lander.
There was no other way to verify your true identity.
He said you might be having dreams of your old memories and stuff, so I tried to …
sound you out a bit. See what was going on. ”
I think of all her snooping this term. Now I can see the barely veiled desperation behind it all, trying to give me guidance without pushing me away. For the first time, I think I might actually appreciate the excessive efforts of Kira Tavi.
“But I didn’t start to think it was possible until I showed you the photo and it seemed like you knew Bisan.
I knew then that the best thing I could do was at least try and get you back to yourself.
I’m sorry I didn’t realize earlier—if I had …
If only Elizabeth had said something, if she’d told me… ”
“Kira.” I take her hand, pressing my thumb to her beautiful, familiar ring. I am engulfed in the scent of her ripe plum magic. “You couldn’t have known.”
She takes a deep, steadying breath and squeezes my fingers before pulling her hand away and sniffing loudly.
“But do we know for sure now?” Bastian says, voice still a little nervous. “You’re really a … hundred-year-old shapeshifter? You’re Ariel Lander?”
“I am.” I watch memories play out inside my mind.
Familiar and strange, remote but true. The longer my eyes are open, the more distant the memories feel, my body focusing instead on the sensation of dirt under my fingernails and Bastian’s warm hand gently stroking up and down my back.
“I was. I…” I swallow hard. “Sorry, I’m thirsty. ”
“Come on, let’s go outside,” Bastian says.
Kira helpfully packs everything back into my backpack for me and Bastian supports me as we make our crouched journey out into the daylight.
I press my bloody hand against the rune in the stone and the secret door swings closed.
I wait patiently while Kira uses a spell to carefully bury the other ingredients in the mud in front of the door.
I marvel at how unafraid I am now, watching the magic in her ring.
There’s even a tingling in my fingertips, as if I want to join in, possibilities of the future, potential magic itching to be released.
I take a seat on the sparse grass outside the cave, my back resting against the algae-covered rock. The air around me smells miraculous, fresh and wholesome, that particular scent of wet leaves drying in the sun, organic and sweet. Bastian reaches into his satchel and pulls out a coconut water.
“Did you bring that for me?” I unscrew the top.