Magisterium (14 page)

“Time is running out,” she said. The blue of her eyes gleamed like the tip of a dagger. “But you can join us if you wish.”

She held out her hand and smiled, revealing row upon row of jagged teeth. Kevin’s hand squeezed Glenn’s tight. The woman made a rough sound like laughter and then glided down the hillside to join the others.

Glenn turned to Kevin, and in that second, the white light that had illuminated his face and everything around them suddenly blinked out. Glenn turned back to the lake to find all of it — the swan woman, the carriages, the Miel Pan — gone, and she and Kevin were dropped into complete darkness and silence, as if none of it had ever happened.

Glenn stared down into the night, shocked at the emptiness of it.

“So,” Kevin said slowly. “You, uh, believe in magic now?”

Glenn started to laugh. It leapt out of her and the harder she tried to control it the more it carried her away. Kevin was laughing too, and together the sounds of their voices brightened the night around them as they stumbled back down the path toward camp.

“But how?” Glenn said, breathless. “How is this possible?”

“Magic!” Kevin called out, hooting up into the trees. “It’s magic!”

“But if there’s magic, real magic, then what else does that mean?

What else is there?” Glenn was babbling, her thoughts coming a thousand a second. She stopped in the middle of the trail, remembering the pilgrim stones and their markings. “I mean, is there a god? Like, an actual god?”

“Are there vampires? Ghosts?!”

“Dragons?”

Kevin laughed. Somewhere along the path his hand found

Glenn’s waist and then his arm was around her, drawing her in close.

Glenn’s body quaked against his as she laughed.

“I mean, if this is possible,” Glenn asked in a hush, “then what else is?”

Kevin stopped and turned her to him, his hand pressed flat on her back.

“Anything,” he said.

Glenn’s breath left her parted lips and filled the narrow space between them with a white cloud. His lips, full and thick, were as close to hers as they were that night on the train platform. Had she felt this pull to him then? This heat? That night seemed so far away. Her heart was racing. They were tumbling together down a steep hill, out of control. Where might they end up?

Glenn closed her eyes tight, blocking him out, blocking out the Magisterium. She scrambled for clarity, fighting the pulse in her veins that wanted to drive her farther out into strange waters, out to a place she could never return from.

Alnitak
, she thought, imagining the steady blue light of the stars.

Alnilam. Mintaka.

Glenn whispered the words over and over until she slowly

emerged. The pounding in her chest slowed and the forest became a forest again, a place of trees and leaves and cold, empty dark.

She staggered back from Kevin. His hand dropped from her waist and lingered in the open air between them. “I think …” Glenn began, but her words dissipated.

Kevin reached out to tuck a length of hair behind her ear, his fingertips brushing her cheek as he did it. His hand hovered there, the heel of his palm hot against her cold cheek.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We can go back.”

Glenn wanted to say something else, thought there was

something she
should
say, but she couldn’t get ahold of her thoughts, so she nodded and they made their way down the path. As the trees

flickered past them, Glenn felt as if she was standing in the center of some great doorway, part of her in one world, part in another. Her head was light and floating. Every step was nearly a stumble.

The back of Glenn’s hand brushed the back of Kevin’s, and on the next pass Kevin opened his fingers wide and her hand fell into his.

They entwined, Kevin lacing his fingers through hers, their blood circling around and around each other’s until that spot seemed like the center of them both. Slowly, the world cleared. Glenn’s feet struck the uneven dirt road and the cold was on her skin.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear crystalline voices raised in song, and see the glow of unearthly lights.

Glenn woke before Kevin. It wasn’t long past dawn. Aamon had left at first light to scout the way ahead. She had almost told him about what happened the night before but couldn’t find the words for it, didn’t know how to let them out.

It was a cold morning, almost bitterly so. Glenn drew her knees up to her chest under the blanket and wrapped her arms around them, trying to create a pocket of warmth. Despite the night’s sleep, she was exhausted. Light-headed. Scraps of the night before — the lights, the voices, the pale woman with sharp teeth — echoed in her mind. Giddy laughter bubbled up inside her again, carrying along that tumbling out-of-control feeling. The world she knew was gone and a bigger and stranger one sat in its place. How could Glenn explain any of it to herself? How could she make room in her world for them? Or for that girl who stumbled through the dark, hand in hand with Kevin, laughing?

Who was she? In the cold morning light, she seemed like a stranger. A creeping shame overtook her. Who had she been pretending to be?

There was a whisper of movement behind her. Glenn glanced

over her shoulder and there was Kevin, curled in a ball under the blanket, his green hair draped on the roots of the tree behind him.

Glenn turned away, remembering the thump of his heart against her chest, the warmth of his breath mixing with hers.

“Hey.”

Kevin’s voice was a rough whisper, husky and tentative. Glenn knew if she turned back again, he would have lost his familiar smirk.

That bright little grin that he usually had would be gone, and he would be looking at her the same way he did when they sat on that train platform and on the banks of that shining lake, steady and serious, as if he was seeing deeper into her, as if everything had changed and there was no going back.

“Hey,” Glenn said, flat and simple, even as that nervous twist from the night before turned inside her and the memory of his hand, warm on her lower back, loomed.

The ground rustled underneath him as he sat up and slipped into his boots. “I thought maybe we’d run over to the lake before we go,” he said. “See what there is to see. Morgan?”

She tensed as his hand touched her shoulder. Everything went still.

“Aamon said to wait,” she said carefully. “He’ll be back soon.

We should be ready to go.”

Kevin took a long breath and let it out. Glenn imagined him looking away from her and off into the woods, swallowing a hundred things he wanted to say. Glenn cursed herself. She had no business acting like she had the night before. She knew how he felt.

There was a tug on the blanket, and then Kevin’s boots scraped against the ground. When Glenn looked back at him, he was pulling on his coat.

“What are you doing? We should get everything together.”

“We don’t have that many things. I’m sure you can handle it.”

“Where are you going?”

Kevin finished tying his laces. “For a walk.”

Glenn sat listening to the leaves crunching under his feet. She knew she should let him go, blow it off, but something forced her hands down to the ground beside her and she pushed herself up.

“Kevin, wait!” she called. “Kevin!”

She found him when the trees broke and they were on the path again. Kevin turned left, hands shoved in his pockets and his head down like a bull. Glenn rushed after him and when she finally managed to get ahold of his jacket, she tugged hard and spun him around. The first thing she saw was a patch of blood that stained his new clothes.

Their run the night before must have torn it open again.

“Your side —”

Glenn reached for it but Kevin moved away from her.

“It’s fine,” he said, and then stood silently, waiting.

Glenn stared at the rocky path at her feet. “Maybe …” she began, shifting her feet in the dirt. “Look … I’m sure with Aamon I can get to where I need to go.”

Kevin didn’t move.

“So if you want to go …”

“If I want to go? That’s what you’re saying. If
I
want to go?”

“Kevin —”

“That’s what you stopped me to say? Of all the things in the whole wide world there are to say, that’s it?”

“I don’t want you to get in any more trouble. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“Well, thanks.”

“Kevin, I’m serious.”

“Did that mean nothing to you last night?”

I don’t want to be having this conversation
, Glenn thought, even as she knew it was inevitable, had always been inevitable. “I’m sorry, Kevin. Seriously. But I’ve told you before. I can’t —”

“Please. Not
us
, Morgan. I know
that
didn’t mean anything to you. I’m talking about them. You stood there beside me and saw something I can’t explain. Something I can’t even … I can’t even make the words for. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. It was magic. Actual, for-real, not-in-a-storybook magic! Did that mean nothing to you?”

“Of course! It was incredible. And I can’t explain it either, but unlike you, I’m not some weather vane that turns every time the wind blows. Just because something is beautiful, just because it’s amazing, it doesn’t change who I am. It doesn’t change the world!”

“Right, of course. You would say that.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you see everything that happened last night, and your first thought is to run away from it. Only you, Morgan. I swear, only you.”

“This isn’t a field trip, Kevin. You were almost killed.”

Kevin snapped to face Glenn. “Exactly,” he said, leaning in close to her. “I was almost killed and I don’t want to go back. That’s the difference between you and me. We’re led up to the edge of a whole new world, a world we’ve been told our whole lives doesn’t exist, can’t exist, a world with things like Aamon and the Miel Pan in it. And me? I want to see more. I want to know if there are even
more
amazing things out here. But you? You want to turn around and go home so you can get your homework done on time.”

Glenn wanted to explode, at his childishness, at his unbelievable arrogance, but she refused to give him the satisfaction.

“We should go,” she said. “Aamon is probably waiting for us.”

Glenn started down the dusty path, leaving Kevin behind.

“You want it too,” Kevin called out. “You want to know what’s out here as much as I do. You just won’t admit it.”

Glenn stopped.

“You’re a scientist, Glenn! Tell me you don’t want to see that again. Tell me you don’t want to
understand
it.”

Glenn saw the lake as it was the night before, wide and black as slate and then dancing with light and magic. Her chest swelled at the impossibility of it.

“I want to go home,” she said.

Kevin shook his head, deflated, then walked up the path without another word.

“Kevin, wait!” Glenn said, searching for the right words and not finding them. “We have to go!”

Kevin waved her away and kept going, eventually disappearing when the path turned around an outcropping of rock. Glenn found herself alone with the enormity of the forest around her. She looked back toward their camp. Aamon was likely waiting. They had no time for this. Glenn took off after Kevin.

When she came around the first turn, she was surprised to see that Kevin wasn’t heading down the path that led to the lake but had turned onto a different trail, one they hadn’t seen the night before.

What is he doing?

She jogged up to the path, calling to him, but he didn’t slow down. The trail was narrow and rough, clouded over with fallen leaves and exposed roots. The canopy of trees was heavier over it and layered

with a crisscrossing web of ivy and vines. It was darker there, and as Glenn looked down, goose bumps rose on her arms and the back of her neck.

Another one of the stone obelisks stood at the path’s head. It was old and weather-beaten. Time had worn away the detail, but Glenn could just make out the inscription. At first it looked like the circles they’d seen on the other obelisks, but once Glenn wiped some dirt off the plaque and got a better look, she saw it wasn’t a circle at all.

It was the body of a spider, with long, multi-jointed arms

reaching out from it. Beneath it lay its web.

Glenn shuddered and turned back to the darker path.

“Kevin!” she shouted.

But Kevin was gone.

Glenn’s heart tripped hard. She could see clearly for nearly a mile down the trail, and no one was there.

“Kevin!”

There was a crash off to her left — someone was moving through the woods. Glenn caught a glimpse of his tan coat and the sound of footsteps running away. Why was he running? Glenn dove in, stumbling down a hill where the land fell off from the road, down into the forest. Kevin was hundreds of yards ahead and running like he was fleeing for his life.

It grew darker as she ran. The woods were like a curtain closing around her, until Glenn was surrounded by a swamplike murk, an eerie twilight. There was the sound of water running somewhere close by. It was slow at first, a quiet
whoosh
flowing parallel to Glenn’s path, but grew louder the farther she went. A river. Soon it was in front of her as well. A few more minutes, she thought, and she would run right into it and be cut off.

And so would Kevin.

Glenn made it through a tangle of trees and burst out onto the green bank of a fast-moving river. It was brighter there, and the sun dazzled her eyes. When they adjusted she saw Kevin standing at the bank of the river with his back to her. One side of his shirt was stained with fresh blood, but he paid it no mind.

“What are you doing?”

Kevin turned fully toward her now, but what looked at her was not Kevin. There was not the live-wire smirk she was so used to seeing; there wasn’t even his anger from earlier. Instead, there was something older and twisted inward. A silent determination that she had never seen before. Worse still, Glenn was positive that the person who stood in front of her didn’t recognize her at all.