A far wilder magic, p.36
A Far Wilder Magic, page 36
“What the hell is it doing?” Jaime mutters.
Its lips part slowly in a grin, each tooth locked together like a zipper.
Jaime turns his gun on it, but before he can pull the trigger, it lunges. Its teeth sink into Jaime’s calf with a sickening crunch.
He screams as his skin chars and bubbles. His gun clatters at his feet, and the mud drinks his blood, the earth running silver and red and black. As soon as he crumples, the fox releases him and clamps down on his shoulder. His flesh yields easily, exposing a stringy mess of red gore. Wes can only watch in stunned horror as he scrabbles to his feet.
Margaret unsheathes the knife at her hip. Its blade reflects the glowing white of the beast’s fur. She drives it into the fox’s back.
It screeches, a sound that rattles all his bones and curdles his blood. It’s awful, like a thousand human screams layered beneath a fox’s shrill, eerie cry. The hala thrashes until it finds its footing, then darts into the trees with the engraved hilt still notched beside its spine.
“Go!” Wes says.
“I can’t kill it without you.”
“I’ll find you in a minute.” His gaze flickers to Jaime. “I need to take care of him.”
Margaret hesitates but nods. Once she disappears into the underbrush, Wes turns his attention to Jaime. He lies at the toe of his blood- and mud-caked boots. He clasps a hand to the gaping wound on his shoulder, as though he can push the ruined muscle back inside. There’s a small part of Wes that admires him for holding it together as well as he is. No tears. No begging. He only glares at Wes, his eyes full of spiteful pride.
“Do it, then,” Jaime says.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb. Isn’t that what you’re staying for? Revenge?”
Wes can’t deny the prospect fills him with a strange sort of fascination. Maybe Margaret has always been right to doubt and fear him. There is something dark within him that enjoys this heady rush of power. It’s intoxicating to at last hold all the cards—to cradle a life in his hands. The divinity of God lives within each of them, but only an alchemist can harness that spark. Jaime’s is just a pale, insignificant glimmer against his.
This is what he wanted to be an alchemist for. To protect people from those like Jaime Harrington. For everything he put them through—for everything he would continue to do to the vulnerable populations of New Albion—it’d be just to put him out of his misery now, or at least to turn his back and let him bleed to death. No one would question it was the fox’s handiwork if he finished the job with alchemy. Ninety-nine percent of the human body is composed of six simple components. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. He wonders if it hurts or if the body goes up in flames all at once. He wonders if it would be as easy to dissolve a human as it would be to dissolve a stone. If All is One and One is All, what’s the difference, really?
Jaime clearly sees what’s on his mind. His throat bobs.
But Wes can’t do it.
He can’t solve a systemic problem like this. And it’s not enough to believe in a better future, as though it’s something as inevitable as God himself. He has to demand it. He has to work for it. And even though Jaime deserves to suffer, even though he will never change, even though he hates him, Wes can’t bring himself to wield this stolen moment of superiority like a club. If he wants to change the world and kill the hala with a clear conscience, he has to do this on his own terms.
“Come on, then,” Wes says. “Get up.”
As best he can, considering Jaime is twice his size and unwieldy as anything, Wes slings Jaime’s good arm over his shoulders. The ache in his ribs worsens with every step, but he manages to drag him to a tree. After propping him upright against the trunk, Wes shrugs out of his jacket.
“What’re you doing?” Jaime groans.
“Stripping,” he snaps. “Do you want to die or not?”
Jaime keeps silent, even though Wes can still feel the anger radiating palpably from him. He winces as Wes knots the sleeves just above the wound on his shoulder, tight enough to stanch the blood flow. “Why?”
“I’d sooner let you die, but I think Margaret would kill me for it, and I can’t let that happen yet.” He claps him on his good shoulder. “And now you’re in a Banvishman’s debt. Remember that.”
As much as he wants to stay to relish the bitterness and confusion twisting Jaime’s face, he has a girl to find—and a fox to kill.
32
Margaret’s lungs burn like they’re full of seawater, but she doesn’t slow down. If she lets up even for a moment, the hala will go to ground. Everything they’ve suffered, everything they’ve fought for, will be for nothing.
The branches overhead tear the feeble wash of moonlight to shreds, but it’s enough to cast an oily, iridescent shimmer on the trail of the hala’s blood. Out in front of her, Trouble and Jaime’s hound are streaks of copper and black in the fog. They disappear through a thicket, and Margaret breaks into a clearing only moments behind them, shaking off leaves and trails of spiderweb. She’s just in time to watch the hala scrabble up the thick trunk of a redwood. Trouble bays triumphantly as he circles it.
Finally, it’s cornered.
Margaret unstraps the rifle from her back and takes aim. It’s almost pathetic to have something as majestic as the hala wounded and fearful in her crosshairs. It brings her no joy to end its long life—not when she feels a strange kinship with it. It’s more than her Yu’adir blood, more than the fact that it saved her life. It’s that, for hundreds of years, it has evaded everyone who hoped to kill it. It’s survived. Just like her, maybe that’s all it’s ever wanted.
Drawing in a shaky breath, she fires.
The thin branch it’s made a refuge of collapses beneath it, and although it desperately seeks purchase with its claws, it goes down, twisting through the open air before landing with a broken thud on its side.
The hounds spring immediately. Trouble seizes it by its scruff, Jaime’s hound by its leg. The hala snaps at them, writhing and screaming. It feels like a terribly cruel thing to let it suffer like this, but until Wes finds them, they’re both pinned.
She’s done it, but it feels nothing like triumph. She’s nauseated with guilt and indecision. The last demiurge will fall by her hand. A Yu’adir girl will be remembered by this country. Wes’s family will be safe. And Wes …
If he wants it, he will have the power to bend the universe to his will.
Her mother’s words torment her, even now. What idealist can deny the power to make any dream a reality? There’s no man alive who has the power of a god within his reach and turns away from it.
She trusted him with the magnum opus, but that was before there was anything tangible for him to claim. Now, staring down the reality of the hala, either the instrument of her downfall or salvation, she doesn’t know how to do what Mrs. Wreford implored her to: decide what’s best for her. Survival or hope. The pain she knows or a life beyond Wickdon, infinite in both disastrous and wondrous possibilities. Evelyn or Wes. Even now the two of them tear at her heart like hounds.
Leaves rustle behind her, and Wes stumbles through the underbrush, breathing hard and clutching at his side. His right eye is swollen shut, but the other is wide and shining with awe. Bruises, mottled purple like the band of a galaxy, rake down the side of his face. Even like this, he’s the most breathtaking thing she has ever seen. More than anything, she wants to keep him.
But she can’t.
Yesterday, she thought she was strong enough to leave her mother. For a night, she believed his love was enough to save her. But if she’s let herself doubt him again so easily, she doesn’t know if she will ever be more than this core of fear within her—than this cold, feral will to survive.
There’s a break in the clouds, and the cold light of the moon washes over the clearing. It looks as though they’re standing in the center of a giant transmutation circle. Magic shimmers in the air and prickles along her arms.
“Did we do it?” His voice is full of wonder.
“Almost.” All there’s left to do is for him to activate the array painted on the hilt of the knife. As he takes a step closer to the hala, Margaret lifts her rifle and aims it at him. “Don’t move.”
When the safety clicks, he turns slowly toward her, his hands lifted and his expression entirely unreadable.
“I told you I would shoot you if you gave me reason to,” she says.
“You did. And have I given you reason to?”
“No.” She searches his face. “That’s the problem.”
Confusion softens his features. “I don’t understand.”
“You’ve promised me everything.” Her hands tremble. “And yet, I still can’t … I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know how I’m supposed to trust that you won’t break your promises. I don’t know how I’m supposed to believe that you won’t leave the moment I close my eyes tonight, or that you won’t create the stone, or that we can be happy. That I can be happy. How can I know?”
“You can’t. Margaret, please … What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing! There’s nothing you can do and nothing you can say. I’m never going to get better. I’m always going to be broken. This is all I am.”
The wind gusts through the trees, hissing and seething.
“You’re not broken. You’re incredible. You’ve come such a long way since I met you, even if you’re still afraid. Even if you have doubts. When I look at you, I don’t see someone broken. I see someone hurting—someone healing. It’ll take time, but that doesn’t matter to me.” Wes tentatively closes the gap between them, until the barrel of her gun is nestled against his chest, right above his heart. “I love you. Please, let me.”
She rears back at the sound of those words, but he curls his fingers around the barrel and holds it in place. His expression is unbearably earnest, his eyes as warm and rich as coffee.
“I said it, and I’ll say it again. I love you, Margaret Welty. I think I’ve loved you since I first saw you. I love you now, and I will love you when we walk back into Wickdon with all the world hating us, and I will love you whatever happens tomorrow. Look me in the eyes and call me a liar.”
She can’t.
“As soon as it’s dead, it’s yours. You can give it to your mother if you want. Hell, tonight, we can burn it all to caput mortuum and scatter it in the sea, if that’s what it takes. No more words. No more promises. No more chances for alchemists like your mother to exist. And if that’s not enough, I…” His voice breaks. “We could throw the competition.”
He can’t mean that, the romantic fool. What a stupid, self-destructive thing to promise her. If her mother won’t teach him and he doesn’t have the hala’s corpse as proof of his skill, then he has no recourse to become an alchemist at all. “If we don’t win, you won’t become an alchemist. You won’t become a politician.”
“I know.”
“You won’t be able to pay for your mother’s surgery.”
This time, he hesitates. “I know.”
Margaret squeezes her eyes shut. “No. That’s not acceptable, Wes. I can’t ask that of you. I can’t ask you to give up everything for me.”
“That’s the only guarantee I can give you.”
“Then I don’t want it.”
As soon as the words leave her mouth, her vision blurs with tears. She doesn’t want to live in a world where he suffers because of her. She couldn’t bear it if she was the one to smother his dreams. A guarantee against something he’s already sworn not to do isn’t worth that. Nothing is worth that, especially when her peace of mind can never truly be guaranteed. She’s lived her whole life braced for another blow, but no amount of preparation or precaution has stopped them from landing.
All her life, love has been a scarce and precious resource, something earned or denied, something she starved for every day. But with Wes, love is different. It is reckless and inexhaustible. It is freely given. It simply is. Time and time again, he’s stayed beside her through her doubt. He’s shown her that she is enough, lovable despite her fears and her walls. That she is more than what happened to her and the pains she’s taken to avoid it happening again. And now, he’s given her the chance to prove it to herself.
For so long, she has survived. Now, she wants to live.
“All I want is for you to be happy. So I have to trust you. I do trust you.”
“I’m easy to please,” he says quietly. “Just let me take care of you. I swear I won’t let you down. I won’t leave you until you ask me to go.”
“Then don’t go.” Margaret drops her rifle and winds her arms around his neck. “I love you, too.”
Wes looks stunned, red zipping up his face. Then, he smiles at her so radiantly it hurts. “I wish I could lay you down right here, but we have a hunt to win.”
He is incorrigible, and she is so in love.
The fizziness in her chest dissipates when her gaze lands on the hala, puddled in the moonlight. Its sides heave laboriously, but it’s gone still and slack against the jaws of the hounds. This is the beast half of the hunters here today would’ve killed them for. The last demiurge: the last of the Katharists’ false gods, the last of the Sumic god’s children, the last of the Yu’adir god’s gifts.
Nearly all the fight has drained from it, but the trees still rattle and shiver as they approach. Margaret kneels beside it, and it’s almost a comfort when the voice of the wind sighs her name. It recognizes her.
Once, she asked her father how anything so terrible and destructive could possibly be a gift, even if God did place the secret of the making of the world in its heart. This is what he told her: There is a Yu’adir word for wisdom, chokhmah. Scripture tells us that chokhmah is the unspotted mirror of the power of God, the image of his goodness. Fear of the Lord is the foundation of understanding. We must always seek chokhmah, even at a great cost to ourselves.
Wes grips the hilt of the knife still embedded in the hala’s back. Between his fingers, she can still see the brightly painted transmutation circle. He looks up at her through the tangle of his hair, as though he’s asking her permission.
She nods.
He draws in his breath. The blade glows, as blinding white as lightning, as white as the hala’s eyes. It lets out a strangled, mournful yelp. It shudders, crumples, and does not move again. The hounds release their grip on it. The wind quivers, as tremulous as a long-held breath.
And there is less magic in the world.
Wes whimpers softly. Margaret crouches beside him to smear away the tears streaking his cheeks. He pulls the blade out and lets it drop between them. It’s coated in black caput mortuum that flakes off like rust.
“It spoke to me.”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know exactly.” He smiles ruefully. “I know it had to be done, but it still feels wrong.”
“My father told me that God gave the demiurges to humanity so that we could learn from them. He believed that an alchemist’s purpose is to always seek chokhmah, the truth.” She takes his hand in hers. “He said true understanding of the world doesn’t come without hurt and sacrifice. There’s a psalm he would quote. Chokhmah can do all things and make all things new. If there’s anyone who can do that—make the world a better place—it’s you.”
“Margaret…” His voice wobbles.
“Besides, your family will be safe. No one else will die because of it. And you believed it had dignity. Those are noble things.”
“Thank you.” He offers her a small, uncertain smile and squeezes her hand. “What do we do now?”
“We have to sound the call.”
He pauses. “What call?”
“The death halloa.”
“Excuse me? The death halloa? You made that up.”
“I did not. You do this, three times.”
She cups her hands over her mouth and lets out a whoop. It begins low and swells, like the rise of the tide. A three-part cry that Trouble takes up with an excited bay.
Wes blinks at her, perplexed, like he can’t believe such a sound came out of her. Then, he throws back his head and echoes her. By the third call, they’re both delirious, collapsing halfway through into breathless laughter. It hums in the stillness of the air. Before the silence smothers the woods again, the bright, clear sound of a horn swells in the distance.
It’s finally over.
Wes gives her a sly, silly grin that makes her heartbeat stutter. Despite his bruised face, despite the blood drying on their skin, he pulls her against him and kisses her until there is nothing in the world but the two of them.
* * *
Without Shimmer—the coward is probably off grazing in someone’s garden by now—it takes them the better part of two hours to make it out of the woods. Overhead, the night sky is impossibly clear and bright, the solid jewel blue of the ocean at dusk. The full moon is nestled in the clouds like a pearl in the mouth of a clam.
On the earth, however, grim reminders of the hunt remain. Ash swirls listlessly in the breeze. Blood beads on the leaves like dew. Bodies lie draped in white sheets.
Wes keeps Margaret tucked close into his side as they emerge into a wide-open expanse of field. A cavalcade rides toward them, little but charcoal smudges against the golden rye. Jaime must’ve done a good job spreading gossip. Margaret can tell by the look on their faces they share the same concern that chafes at the back of her mind. What will the crowds do when they realize who exactly has won?
As they approach, Wes whispers against her ear, “Do you think they’re going to feed us to the hounds?”
Margaret fixes him with a deadpan glare. “Probably.”
The hunt officials come to a stop in front of them. They sit astride a row of imposing black horses, their snorted breaths pluming in the air. The master of the hunt gives them a long, assessing look. “You kids wait here a minute while we figure out what to do with you.”
They return almost an hour later with Mrs. Wreford and a paramedic in tow. Her horse has barely slowed to a walk when she slides off its back and storms toward them, looking like a fluffed-up cat in her thick fur jacket.
