Now conjurers, p.14
Now, Conjurers, page 14
“Mr. Nous?” Bastion said, in a little voice. His child voice surprised me, but not as much as hearing him speak without starting his sentences with an N.
“Mr. Nous?” Bastion said again. “I’ve come with a fancy. Please tell me my fare.”
Then the sound came: a sliding along the floor. A rustling. Or a slithering. Like something unfathomably huge was crawling toward us through long grass. It came from the picture, but also from around us in the Near-Depths of the room we had summoned with the Vision Thing. It was omnipresent enough that Brandy startled, flinching, and we all turned to look behind us. But there was nothing in the darkness. And when I turned back, something had changed.
There were arms peeking out of the split in the black curtains.
Arms in red gloves that went all the way up and vanished into the velvety darkness. Two impossibly long arms … with hands hanging down, just slightly outstretched. Red-gloved fingers. Nails like knives. Hands twice the length of any human hand.
“Ahhhh!!!” Drea said (summarizing my feelings perfectly, I want to add). She pointed at the red-gloved arms with one shaking index finger. “What the—”
“Back so soon, my clever one?”
And there it was. The oozing sound of the voice from my nightmare. I forced my gaze away from the arms that gestured through the flaps of the black curtain, away from little Bastion’s silhouetted back, and watched my friends. They reacted to the voice the same way I had, at first—it was bliss that bled into horror. A shiver that became a shudder.
But Bastion stood without moving on the screen, and when he spoke again his tiny voice was steady.
“I was stupid not to trust myself,” Bastion said. “About what you are. My sister is better. But I have to … to think about what I did all of the time. My mother was sad when she had the miscarriage. You … make people do evil, don’t you?”
He took a step forward, toward the red hands that looked poised to snatch him into the darkness behind the curtain. I halfway reached out—to try to stop him, I guess—before I realized it was useless and put my shaking hands at my sides.
“I did offer you a choice, clever one,” the thing called Mr. Nous said, amusement clearly coming through in its voice. “Your unborn brother’s life … or your eyes … for your sister’s health.”
“Yes,” Bastion agreed. “I made a mistake then. I was afraid to be blind. But now I’m afraid that I made an awful mistake by finding the key to begin with.”
“You could always take it off.”
“I know what happens if I do,” Bastion countered. I glanced to the side, at the horrified faces of my friends, and felt something start to slide into place in my mind. Something bad. Mr. Nous chuckled from the darkness behind the curtains, and it was the same laughter I’d heard the night we broke into the coroner’s office.
Whatever Bastion had been involved in … we were in it too. With this thing. This was the supernatural horror beyond human comprehension. It had been watching us.
“So then you need not make use of my talents if they upset you so. You know the Nine Rules. One fancy a year is all I require,” Mr. Nous said, in a tone that was definitely meant to be placating. It was as if a thousand wasps learned to speak English in chorus, and when they spoke it was with syrupy condescension. I was not placated. It was clear Bastion wasn’t, either.
“I know your rules! And I will only use one wish a year after this, just you bet!” Bastion said, raising his baby voice almost to a shout. “You call me ‘clever’ like it’s a joke. Like all these other people you got were just fun for you to have. But not me. I’m going to starve you. I’m going to keep you from—from amusing yourself. And when I die someday, I’m going to make it so nobody else ever finds the key!”
The laughter came from beyond the curtains again. Mr. Nous’s long hands tilted up toward the ceiling in a gesture of helplessness. “What can I do against such a will?” it said, no less amused than before. Then suddenly, the voice it used got much sterner. “Your fancy, then, clever one.”
“I fancy a world where—as long as I have the key—nobody else can pay my fare but me,” Bastion said, so perfectly that I just knew he had practiced saying it before coming to the dark midway.
I felt a tug on the green ribbon that bound my left wrist to the others and saw that Brandy had raised her hands to her face in a silent gesture of terror. Drea stared straight ahead with her brows furrowed above her bandaged nose. Dove took in the scene raptly, like she was learning the secrets of the universe.
Then Mr. Nous spoke—but not in the falsely friendly way it had before. Its voice was much colder now, stripped of all the previous buzzing amusement. The red-gloved arms drew in slightly and remained perfectly still.
“You must know, my clever one—and you are clever—that life brings many trials. And trials bring further fancies and further fares. The price for my talents can be steep. To pay it all yourself will be … difficult.”
“I know that,” Bastion said. “I’m not afraid. And as long as I live, you won’t be able to hurt anyone but me. I hope it drives you crazy. That is my fancy. What is my fare?”
“You will regret this,” Mr. Nous said warningly. Its left hand pointed straight at Bastion like an accusation. “It will destroy your life.”
“I’m going to destroy your life, Mr. Nous,” Bastion said. Now his voice shook a little. “What is my fare?”
“Perhaps we should let the ones watching us decide,” Mr. Nous said. It seemed to have recovered its joviality from before, but the curtains shook around the red arms, and a cloud of fine dust fell from the distant ceiling of the tent.
“There isn’t anyone watching us,” Bastion said confidently. “Now you’re stalling.”
“Indeed they are watching,” Mr. Nous said, and the long red hands drew a gestural frame in the air. “Your dearest friends … your darling sister … your truest love. And you are dead. I will have eaten your heart, you know, if you follow through with this.”
Brandy flinched back, and Drea started to shout something, but Dove grabbed them both.
“Stop. Wait,” I whispered, and Dove nodded. I tried to stay calm. But I was afraid. Terrified. Confused. How could this thing—this monster from the past—be perceiving us?
“My fare,” Bastion said one more time.
The thing behind the curtains sighed in a way that made the very darkness around us creak and rock. “Very well. My clever one. If you insist. Your name or your voice.”
Bastion turned around suddenly, facing us, and I could finally see his face. If my heart had not already been broken the day we found him dead, I think it would have broken then. He was so tiny that I felt protective of him just like an adult would, and even though he had sounded so certain, I could see how his baby face twisted up in misery. He scrubbed his wrists together. Tears fell from his eyes and dripped down his chin.
“You don’t have to do this,” Mr. Nous said.
“I know you won’t give me another chance,” Bastion whispered. For a second, he looked right at me without seeing me. Then he nodded to the air, set his jaw, and turned back around.
“Mr. Nous, I agree. I give you my name,” the boy said. As he said it, a spark of vivid red light shot through the air between his body and Nous’s outstretched fingertips. The red hands moved through the air in a razor-sharp dance. Then the light vanished, blowing away the falling dust in the circus tent with it.
“You will see how kind I am,” Mr. Nous said, flexing its palms toward the boy who’d lost his name. “Though you doubt my intentions. I will even let you choose your new name, my clever one.” Then one hand vanished into the curtain and reappeared, quick as a striking snake, with a piece of crimson chalk. “Write it down.”
Our view followed as he took the chalk. I heard Brandy gasp when his tiny kid hand touched the red glove, but nothing happened. The boy with no name knelt and wrote carefully on the dusty earth. I knew what I would see when he stood back up:
B A S T I O N
was inscribed in red on the ground.
“He’s my favorite character. But I think I spelled it wrong,” Bastion said doubtfully, and only then did he have a name in my mind again. For a second it had been blotted out entirely, without me even realizing it.
“Bastion. This is my gift to you. I have given you this name, clever one,” Mr. Nous said. “And you may never give it to anyone else. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Bastion said. “But I—”
But we never got to know what Bastion was about to say, because the Near-Depths around us rippled and then ripped, tearing into a thousand strands of darkness that flew away, revealing the pink-and-green bathroom we had left. And Drea’s mom was standing in the doorway, screaming.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Saturday, April 10, 1999
The conversation that led to the confrontation that led to Bastion’s death—at least in my opinion—happened way back in April. It was a very warm Saturday, the kind of spring day that is a perfect preview of summer, and I had zero things to do at all except play guinea pig to Nic’s tattoo gun. We sat in full sunlight on the unfinished back porch while he worked on the line art I had requested for my hands. I remember that Nic was playing The Very Best of Cream on repeat while he practiced and that neither of us spoke much. The pain on my fingers as he inked the marks I had requested to symbolize the coven felt like … like the only sensation tethering me to the earth. The forest all around our house smelled of mud and growing things. When the tracks switched, I could hear the ambient noise of Dad working in the auto shop on the next lot. I had nothing much on my mind except for the next coven meeting, so when Drea and Dove showed up just as Nic finished inking the heart (for Dove) on my left pinkie finger, it felt like I had summoned them.
“Whattup,” Nic said, with a wave.
“Hey, Nicolas,” Dove said, waving a little and definitely using her “flirty” voice. I made a gag me face at her when Nic looked away.
“I thought you two were going into Amherst to buy yourselves more pentagram necklaces or something,” I said, but despite my teasing, I was happy to see them.
“That was a cover. Actually,” Dove said, pointing toward the driveway, “can we talk to you about something?”
“You need to let me wrap that up,” Nic said. “Don’t take off.”
“We won’t be long,” Dove said, winking at Nic. It was gross. Luckily, Nic seemed oblivious to Dove’s come-ons.
“White Room” started playing for what felt like the millionth time that day, and we walked away from the boom box as a trio, leaving Nic behind. I glanced at Dove, who looked neutral behind her little red-tinted sunglasses. Drea, however, looked nervous as hell. She did not have much in the way of a poker face.
Dove opened the door of her mom’s car, and I got in on the passenger side, looking between the two of them with suspicion.
“What’s going on?” I asked, and Drea pulled out the thick black notebook that served as North Coven’s grimoire.
“We need to talk about something. A spell we want to do,” Dove said, staring me right in the face. “Just the three of us.”
“Why just the three of us?” I asked. “What’s with the top-secret act?”
“He’s not gonna go for this,” Drea said, almost involuntarily. I looked back at her, feeling a little bit alarmed.
“Nez,” Dove said, in a placating tone. It was so unlike her to be placating that my alarm increased exponentially.
“Just stop trying to like, prep me for whatever you want to tell me, and just tell me,” I said, and Drea handed me the grimoire, held open to a new page filled with her green-penned scrawl.
“This,” Drea said. “This is what we’re trying to talk about.”
Things Bastion Attia Cannot Do, said the title. I felt uncomfortable immediately. “Guys …”
“Just read it,” Dove said, her big Attia eyes staring me down. “Please.”
I looked back at the page.
Things Bastion Attia Cannot Do (That we know of, so far)
Speak without an N to begin every sentence.
Say ''I love you.''
Dream.
Say his own name, introduce himself, give his name in any way.
Cry.
Apologize.
Give gifts.
Accept gifts.
Admit that he has obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Proposal: Execute a ritual to free Bastion from his compulsions. If not successful, create a secondary spell to allow Bastion to come to terms with the fact that he has compulsions.
The details of the spell went on to the next page, but I stopped reading to look up at them.
“What does Bastion think about this?” I asked.
“You know what he thinks,” Dove said. “He thinks he doesn’t have OCD. He literally will not even entertain the idea. He stopped all the meds and therapy my folks made him do right before high school.”
“So you didn’t tell him,” I concluded, handing the notebook back to Drea.
“I know it’s kind of uncool to go behind his back,” Drea said. “But he … I mean, you can like, see how he suffers with it, right? Nez. You know. He won’t do anything about it. So we need to help him.”
“And what did Brandy say?” I asked, staring Drea down until her cheeks turned pink.
“I didn’t tell her,” Drea admitted. “She would never go for this.”
“She’s a stick-in-the-mud,” Dove said.
“She’s right! I am not casting a spell on my boyfriend to change him!”
“We did a spell when I had leukemia,” Dove said defensively.
“Leukemia is not a psychiatric disorder! You’re talking about literally changing his brain without his consent.” I was appalled. I was mad at them. They both looked ashamed, too. Like they knew what they were doing was slimy, but they thought the end justified the means.
“We did that already,” Drea said. “With Brandy’s mom.”
“Okay. If Bastion someday has children and then starts beating and starving them because he thinks God is telling him they’re evil, I will consider casting secret spells on him,” I said. I sounded angry and sarcastic to my own ears. But I was pissed. What if they went through with this spell and were somehow successful? What if they changed some integral part of Bastion?
“I’ve seen him living with this for so many years,” Dove started, but I was in no mood to listen to her spinning out one of her speeches.
“I don’t care what you’ve seen,” I said. “I care about what he feels. He is living with it. It isn’t up to us to change his mind.”
“Dude. Doesn’t it bother you?” Drea asked. “It bothers me. Bastion is a genius. He could do anything he wanted, if he could do anything he wanted.”
“That’s true for everybody. It’s not more tragic that he has limitations just because he’s so smart,” I countered.
“Sometimes I feel like you don’t even care about his problems,” Dove said harshly.
“I’m not gonna go for this, Dove Bar, I don’t give two shits what way you try to spin it,” I snapped, and Dove looked away.
“Fine,” she said. “We’ll do it without you.”
“It’s not going to work without me,” I said, with an assurance I didn’t feel. But they seemed to agree. Dove looked down at her hands. Drea cleared her throat uncomfortably.
“Isn’t there anything we can say to make you change your mind?” Drea asked, in a tiny voice. She was sad when she spoke. She was guilty. And I believed that she believed this was the best way to help Bastion. Drea, our Voice, always was the most persuasive of all of us, and it was her actual sincerity that made her persuasive. That one sentence, and all the emotion inside of it, compelled me more than Dove’s speeches ever could.
I almost softened for a second. Not on the idea of doing the spell—I would never do that—but in my anger at them. I could see that they loved him. That they thought it was a way to help him. But it didn’t make the idea any less terrible.
“No. He won’t change his mind,” Dove said, scrutinizing my face with an up-and-down glance that was highly reminiscent of her brother.
“I gotta go,” I said. I hate serious arguments, and having one with two of my favorite people in the whole world had just completely sucked the life out of me.
“Nez—” Drea said, but I was already up and out and slamming the car door behind me.
Our interactions were pretty strained for a week or so after that. But eventually, things went back to normal. I don’t think Dove and Drea ever quite came around to my way of thinking, but we all moved on. And if the two of them tried to cast a spell by themselves, it clearly hadn’t worked.
I never told Bastion about it. Maybe that was a mistake, but ultimately … well, ultimately, it wouldn’t have changed anything.
But I thought about it, you know? I thought about the list of Things Bastion Attia Cannot Do (That we know of, so far). It got into my head a little. Maybe a lot. Enough that it festered, enough that I noticed when Bastion didn’t cry, even when he clearly wanted to. When he didn’t give me a present on my birthday and requested that I not get him anything for his. When he didn’t apologize for his mistakes.
I thought about it. Eventually, probably when I had thought too long about it, I said something about it … and that’s how the last fight I ever had with Bastion came about. It wasn’t just the last fight—it was our first fight. Our only fight.
But I’ll tell you about that later.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Monday, November 22, 1999
“What the hell are you guys doing? The … My Y2K water, my … The sink … What the hell, guys?” Jamie yelled, holding her hands to her face. “What the hell happened?”
“MOM! I thought you were working!” Drea shouted back, at equal volume.
“I WAS! I traded shifts with Chet because I was worried about you! Starting fights and telling me some person you know disappeared from the universe!”
