Chapter Thirty #2
“Uh-huh.” Bastian smiles so shyly that my stomach tips over. “I know you get thirsty and it’s good after—”
“After blood loss, I remember. Thanks.” I smile and sip it. Kira is turning off her flashlight and putting it back into her tote bag and kicking salt off her shoes.
“So, Lando’s been living twenty-one years, over and over, their magic bound up by the curse, without remembering?” Bastian’s hand is resting on my shoulder. I try to resist the urge to lean into it.
“It won’t happen anymore; your magic is no longer bound.
” Kira smiles at me. “You’ll never remember those lives you’ve lived and your life as Ariel will probably just become a memory of a memory.
” That makes sense to me. The memories of my past life are already shrinking inside me, becoming less mine and more Ariel’s.
They’re still there, if I look for them, but they’re not so overwhelming.
What matters more, the memories I can grab and taste, are the ones of Elizabeth, of my long, lonely summer, of Bastian and his kisses.
“And Lando will be safe now?” Bastian presses.
“Yes.” Kira gives me a nod. “You won’t die and start again.”
Bastian’s sigh of relief travels through my body.
“So I get my whole life?” I swallow the coconut water.
“If you want it, yes.”
At that, Bastian looks at me, his eyebrows raised. I remember the last thing I said to him in the lift, that I hoped the spell killed me. Now I have my past life back, memories I didn’t know were missing. I ask myself, Do I want to live more? I smile at him and nod. Relief splits across his face.
“Thank you for helping me, Kira,” I say. She nods thoughtfully and looks out over the forest, her brown eyes suddenly distant.
“My great-grandma had a lot of grief, and people do terrible things when they’re full of grief.
I told you I know what happens when a witch loses control of her power.
She lost control. I understand it.” Bisan’s mother was undoubtedly a prodigy witch, the kind that my father would have respected, but I can see in Kira’s face how the weight of her great-grandmother’s power has burdened her family.
Then she turns her attention back to me.
“But Ariel Lander made Bisan happy. Grandfather Samir knew that, and I know it, too. Besides, it was a war. There was meaningless death everywhere, but Bisan died trying to save someone. I think that makes her a hero.”
I think about everything I remember about Bisan Tavi now. It’s like knowing the story of a figure from history, or a relative from long ago. I remember her laugh, her smile, her magic. I recall the way she made tea before we went out in the ambulance and the smell of her cigarettes. I smile.
“She was a hero,” I tell Kira sincerely. “She really was, and not just to Ariel Lander. To lots of people.”
It feels right, I realize, to talk about myself and my past life this way. All of it belongs to Ariel Lander, the person I was. The future, however, that belongs to me.
Kira’s eyes fill with tears and she nods.
“Thank you.” She sniffs. “Okay. I’m going into college. I’ll see you around.”
“Okay,” I say. “Maybe we can get coffee.”
She gives me a long, calculating look and then smiles.
“I’ll see you at peer mentoring next week. But, yeah, maybe we could get coffee.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t get Elizabeth back,” I say softly.
With more perspective, the veil of my own anger has lifted and I understand what I’ve really felt around Kira has been a kind of fearful envy, a part of me terribly worried that Kira had a stronger claim on Elizabeth and if that was true, then I would lose something essential.
Now I know that people we lose are all treasured uniquely by the people around them, a cacophony of love, not a competition.
“You were her best friend. She deserved another chance to live.”
Kira shakes her head, eyes sorrowful.
“The curse laid against you, against Ariel Lander, was made by my family, and it took something from you. It took you out of the natural order of life and death. You were always owed correction, you were always meant to come back. But Elizabeth’s death was natural.
” Kira’s eyes rest fiercely on mine. “She might have been doing magic at the time, Lando, but she fell. It was a traumatic brain bleed. Her death was never yours to undo because you didn’t kill her.
It wasn’t your fault. Her death isn’t ours to hold. ”
I feel Bastian’s grip on me tighten. How far have we both come to learn this lesson? Too far, maybe, but in coming all this way, we found one another.
“Thank you.” I smile at her. “I know.”
Because I do know, now. I finally understand and something that has been pressing against my chest for months has lifted.
I think of Bastian telling me that he knew Shasta would want him to move on, to live his life.
For the first time, I feel it. Like she has whispered it into my bones, I know with every part of me what Elizabeth would desire for my life.
I want to walk in these woods and remember the kisses we shared here.
I want to smile about it. I want to laugh when I remember her jokes.
I want to think of her with love and fondness every time I open a history book.
I want to honor her with my life by living it.
Kira smiles back at me, as if she knows, too.
“Happy Samhain,” she says.
“Happy Samhain.” My mind is flooded with memories of all the Samhains I have seen.
How wondrous it is, to have this one, here, with Bastian.
We both watch Kira walk away. I admire her cat-patterned leggings.
Maybe she’ll tell me where she buys them.
Maybe we’ll be friends. Anything seems possible right now.
Bastian is wrapping bandages around my arms and frowning.
“Your name before…” he says slowly. “Ariel Lander.”
“Yeah.”
“The boggart’s name was Elander.”
“I know, weird.” I smile and shake my head. “Maybe it was Samir’s way of leading me back to my name. Finding the right boggart in the right place with a bourgeois taste for goat’s cheese.”
“Yep.” Bastian smirks and gives me a sideways look. “You sound the same.”
“I am the same.”
Bastian nods but looks unconvinced. He stands up, brushing salt off his knees.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” He offers me his hand but then, looking confused, pulls it back. “Or you can just go home, if you don’t want to talk to me again.”
“I do want to talk to you,” I say honestly.
All my fury over Bastian’s lie has drained away, like it was iron in my blood that dripped out onto the dirt floor in Merlin’s cave.
With my restored memories, I understand how people can, astonishingly and miraculously, live through and with a grief that nearly killed them.
I survived Bisan Tavi’s death and, breathtakingly, met Elizabeth.
Then Bastian. It’s perplexing and I didn’t understand it before, the sting of Bastian’s betrayal and my own lack of awareness of how it feels to finally move on clouding the truth: Bastian changed.
People change. That in itself is its own kind of implausible magic.
I stand up, feeling my body move differently.
I look down at my hands and think I recognize them.
As we fall into step beside one another, walking past the small car park and into the forest, I catch sight of my reflection in a car window.
This is a familiar male form: same gingery hair, same pale skin and muddy green eyes.
This is the same form I had after Elizabeth’s death, the form I met Bastian in. I smile to myself.
Gently, we follow the path out toward the Edge, following the marked track underneath the trees, gourds and carved pumpkins laid against tree roots in bright flashes of orange and white and green for a children’s trail.
“Can I … Is it okay if I apologize to you?” Bastian asks nervously. I fondly watch the way he fiddles with his snake bone charm necklace. We’re both holding our hands loosely at our sides and occasionally, the backs of our hands brush.
“You’ve done that already.”
“You’re not angry anymore?” Bastian looks at me curiously. I sigh.
“I wish you hadn’t lied to me, but I would never have got my life back without you. And … I understand now. I understand how you changed. I believe you, that you didn’t mean to use everything we found to bring back Shasta, and I know that must have been hard. You love him.”
“Yeah, but there are … different types of love.” Bastian’s eyes flicker to me and then away. “I should have told you about Cameron, all of it.”
“You should have,” I agree. “I think we would have got through it. It was the lying, the keeping of secrets, that made it all feel malicious.”
“If it’s any consolation, I’m going to regret it forever.”
“Maybe not that long.” I catch his fingers with mine. I don’t mean for it to happen, but something warm and bright passes between our skin, a static charge, a hint of our magical exchange. Bastian jumps but squeezes my fingers back gratefully. “Are you going to lie to me again?”
“No, never.” He shakes his head. I believe him.
We drop our linked fingers and walk on together, climbing the hill up to the Edge.
The incline is slow and steady, the path through the forest and the crunchy, freshly fallen leaves opening up on the cliff top to the bare, rugged space of Alderley Edge.
The ancient stone beneath my boots, the stone that Merlin’s cave is carved from, feels lively and thrumming with potential.
I feel the magical possibility in the air like I never have before.
It quickens my blood, my spirit, and I smile with it.
“So, do you remember everything from the past?” Bastian asks as we step up onto the great weathered stones that look over the Cheshire valley.
“Yeah.” I nod. “Ariel’s memories are all there. I remember times of sadness, of anger, of pain, but it’s a faint memory. It doesn’t feel like it happened to me.”