Witchlore

Chapter Thirty #3

“You’re calling them Ariel’s memories. Not yours.”

“You know how, sometimes, you look back on yourself at a younger age and think, ‘God, I don’t recognize myself’?”

“Oh, yeah, my boy band phase, age twelve.”

“Well, that’s how it feels. I’m happy to have it all back, it’s like it’s fixed something inside me that was broken.

” I think briefly of how the love of Ariel’s parents, my true parents, heals the wounds of the parents I have lived with in this life.

“But it is different. The intensity isn’t quite there. ”

“It might come back.”

“It might.” I can’t imagine it right now, what it would feel like to experience the sadness of my parents’ death all over again, to feel the desolation of Bisan Tavi’s death, but then I realize that if it happens, I will survive.

“You’re not … scared?”

We sit down on the edge of the rock, our legs swinging perilously over the trees far below, their beautifully colored leaves spread out beneath us in a vivid tapestry.

“No.” I am done being scared about things I can’t change.

“Well, you marched with suffragettes and fought in a war,” Bastian mutters, tapping his fingers against the rock. “Of course you’re not scared.”

“I’m not scared because you’re here.”

I gently put my hand on top of his. The truth is thrumming inside me: I can move on.

The past matters, it makes us, but today the future is wide and waiting.

Something that seemed impossible yesterday is now wondrously feasible.

I look out over the valley, the patchwork of green farmland and russet blobs of trees, dots of white sheep in fields, and silhouetted against a clear blue autumn sky, the city I have known in peace and ruin.

This is the land I was born in, this is my life and body and my world, and it is all stupendously beautiful.

“Do you feel … really old?” He turns his hand over and links his fingers with mine. “I must seem … I don’t know, young and daft to you now.”

“No.” I laugh. “Bastian, I can tell you absolutely that you are one of the cleverest witches I’ve ever met. Besides, I’m a teenager, I don’t feel old.”

“You don’t?”

“No.” My jeans feel like they fit badly and I’m thirsty, but I don’t feel particularly old or wise. “It’s like … it’s like I’ve watched a load of films. I can see it in my head, remember smells and tastes and sounds, but … it doesn’t feel like I did it.”

“And what about people?” Bastian’s looking at me very sharply. “Do you remember your feelings for them?”

“Yeah, but not the same way I remember my feelings for Elizabeth. I know that Bisan Tavi was the first person in my whole life to love me for what I am.”

“Other people might have done,” Bastian says. “In those years you don’t remember.”

“I doubt it.” I shake my head and watch the red tail of a hawk as it hovers, seeking out prey in the valley below. “In all versions of myself, I am always a shifter. I am always different. There aren’t many people like Bisan.”

“Or like your Elizabeth.” Bastian pulls the jar of the remaining dirt out of my backpack. “I’m sorry you didn’t get her back.”

He stares at me as I take the jar and roll it in my hands.

It feels heavy, like I’ve caged something that doesn’t belong caged.

Elizabeth is dead and it still hurts. It’s a sadness inside me that won’t leave me, just like Bisan will never leave me.

But I know now that I will shape myself around it and I don’t need to be afraid of that.

I don’t need to fight it. Elizabeth belongs where she is; she deserves rest, just like everyone else I have lost. I gently open the lid of the jar and tip it over the Edge, letting it sprinkle down onto the leaves of the trees.

Back down into the earth below. As I watch the dusty parts of it catch the breeze, I think that it was never about getting Elizabeth back.

It was about finding a way to live with myself. Finally, I feel like I can.

“Elizabeth was kind to me and amazing, and I’ll always miss her, just like I miss Bisan and my birth parents,” I say, setting the empty jar down behind us.

“But trying to bring her back wasn’t the right thing to do.

Just like trying to bring Shasta back wasn’t the right thing for you. It’s not moving on.”

Bastian’s eyes are glassy as he follows the flight path of the bird of prey. He nods slowly.

“Moving on is … so hard.” Bastian swallows his tears and turns to look at me.

I think I see all the pain and regret he feels in his eyes.

“I didn’t believe I could do it until I met you.

You … you made me believe living properly, living happily was possible, Lando.

Shit.” He closes his eyes and then opens them.

“Should I—should I call you Ariel? Or Lando Ariel? Or Ariel Lando?”

“No.” I shake my head. “Ariel was my past. I’m glad to have them back, but Lando is my present.”

And what is the future? a voice whispers to me, one that sounds to me like Ariel, as they wrote in the diary. I don’t know the answer yet. I know what I hope for, but I wonder if I’m still too scared to ask for it.

“What do you want to do next? I mean, you have all these memories and stuff, does it … does it change things?”

“Yeah, it does.” I smirk. “I think I’m going to do much better on my exams now my magic isn’t bound up by a curse.”

“Probably!” Bastian’s laugh carries over the tops of the trees like an air current. “I can still help you, if you want.”

“You’ll teach me how to summon hellhounds?”

“Maybe not right away.” He grins and nods down to my hands. “Do you want to test it?”

For the first time in this life, I am neither nervous nor self-conscious about the prospect.

I reach into my coat pocket and pull out the tiny crane Bastian made me on our first date.

It’s a little crumpled, but I set it on the stone between us.

I take a deep breath, but I know it’s there, just like I know my old name.

The curse is gone; I am returned to myself, every part of me.

I twist my hands, copying what Bastian did in the bar, my skin glowing softly, magic pulsing warm and delightful out of my fingertips.

I’ve been waiting for you, I think, my heart rising joyfully with it.

There are poignant tears in my eyes, tears of reunion, and my father’s words come back to me.

I am alive with the truth of them: We are the bird, we are the river, we are the tempest, we are our own music, all the time, always singing.

Together, Bastian and I watch as the tiny crane takes flight, lifted by pearly magic, more gold and vibrant than either of my parents’ magic, but definitely, certainly mine.

Bastian holds his hand out for it but it soars above us, swooping on currents made of magic.

“Magic doesn’t have to be permanent to mean something,” I say softly. Bastian looks down at my glowing hands, the way my shifter magic ripples across the surface of my skin, transforming it so easily, freckles rising and then vanishing.

“It means everything.” His eyes are full of awe.

Very gently, reverently, he touches my glowing hand.

It’s instantaneous, the magical bond between us, the shocking, trembling intimacy of it.

It takes my breath away and all I can smell is his magic, tasting smoke inside my mouth.

From the way Bastian is breathing sharply through his nose, he’s feeling similarly overwhelmed.

“You felt like this, after the first time with the Black Shuck,” I say quietly. He nods and his eyes are wary.

“Like I had a part of you.” He presses his palm flat against mine. It helps somehow, the intensity of the feeling spreading out, becoming a pleasant hum of recognition through my body. “Your magic feels…”

“Right,” I finish for him, fumbling for the correct phrasing for having someone else’s magic touch me and not being afraid of it. “Safe.”

There are other words, too, which might come later, I hope, in this instinctual, magical dance we have, an unending expanse of the new compatibility between us to be explored.

“You’ve lived a long time.” His voice is suddenly timid. “I mean, you must have … Have you shared magic with a witch before?”

I shake my head. It’s one of the ways I can easily differentiate between myself and Ariel.

No matter how much they loved Bisan, Ariel would never have shared magic with anyone.

Unlike me, Ariel grew up with parents and shapeshifter traditions they wanted to honor.

This decision, this incredible rare thing that goes against all societal expectations for shapeshifters and witches, this is entirely on me.

“Just you,” I say. I watch as relief and joy battle across Bastian’s face before he suppresses them, face closing off into neutrality. He nods and stares down over the trees, his jaw very tense, like he’s holding something in. I know I have my own apologies to make.

“I lied to you, when I told you that I was just using you and none of it was real. I’m sorry I did that.

I was hurting and it was cruel and completely false.

Because my feelings were real.” I think about the nights we spent in his bed, skin bare, hearts touching, laughing and eating and sharing stories.

These memories are edged in gold, more alive to me than any of the others.

“It was the most real I have ever been.”

Bastian turns to look at me, a determined expression on his face.

“I have to tell you something,” he says urgently.

He takes a deep breath and delightfully, I know what’s coming.

“Bisan Tavi might have been the first person to love you for what you are, but she’s not the only one.

You said your feelings were real, but I need you to know that mine are real.

I feel very, very real about you. I don’t care that you’re, like, really over a hundred years old—”

“Not in this body! Come on, that’s unfair, I’m probably going to get carded more than you.”

“You’re a shapeshifter, you utter crumpet.” His face splits into a picture of wild glee. “You can make yourself look older.”

“Okay, but I only feel eighteen—”

“I don’t care, I love you, Lando,” Bastian interrupts me, catching my face in his hands, and I think he’s going to kiss me but instead, he stares at me.

Like he’s trying to map every freckle on my face before they change again.

“This, what’s between us, it’s the closest I’ve ever felt to anyone in my entire life. ”

“Me, too.”

In my mind there’s a feather-light string of beautiful sapphire-blue magic that smells like bonfires and sings through my blood then out through the center of my chest, connecting me to him. I don’t want it to ever go away.

“You said Lando is your present, but I want your future. Do you understand?” Bastian strokes my cheek and I shiver pleasantly. “I don’t care about the past; I want what comes next. I want … to be with you.”

I look at him, a slow smile dawning on my face, so wide that my cheeks hurt, and it’s not from shifting.

“Do you recognize this form?”

“Yeah, this…” Bastian looks me up and down. “This is the form you had when we first met.”

“I think I chose it because that’s what I want next, you know?

More of those moments with you.” I take hold of his hand, the magic in his ring chiming with the magic inside me.

I’m not afraid of it anymore. In fact, something inside of me is ready for what comes next, magic building, ready to fly free.

“This is my way of saying I love you, too, Bastian.”

“It is?”

“Yeah.” I laugh at his disbelief, that beautiful, open smile that I fell in love with first spreading across his face. “Is that okay?”

“It’s more than okay! It’s the best way anyone has ever said it to anyone.

” Bastian laughs and kisses me. If this is kissing with true magical compatibility, I can honestly say I have felt nothing like it in all my long life.

The last part of me that has been holding back stops waiting.

His magic and mine twist together, a breathless sense of completion.

He tastes of coconut water and bonfires and the future.

“You know I don’t need you to be in this form, right?” Bastian gasps heavily, eyes wide with excitement as his hands tangle in my hair. “All I want is for you to be you, Lando.”

Bravery, then, is this: someone’s eyes, full of acceptance. Someone’s hands, cradling me close. Knowing I am wanted, all of me, as I am.

“Okay.”

I smile at him and let the magic rise in me again.

I shift, feeling so alive, the fantastic ease of it that makes me laugh out loud.

Bastian looks at me in amazement. It doesn’t feel like tugging and pulling anymore, something shocking and unpreventable.

Now, it is wild and powerful as it always used to be and it is mine, fully mine, and I am coming home to myself.

I am pulsing with all the possibilities of what my form can be, freed from boundaries and expectations.

I am more than my body, I think joyously. I am more than my past. I am Orlando.

I know, whatever my form is next, I am loved.

“Let’s find out what that is,” I say.