Aiden

I would always hide behind the closet door in Mom’s bedroom when my sister and I played hide and seek. It made Lucy’s job ridiculously easy. She would get upset at me, the challenge seeker she was. But there was something about that closet that made me feel safe. The slanted shutters, the carpet, the alcove beneath the storage shelves. That’s where I would sit, waiting for her to find me. Anxiously awaiting the moment she would.

It was the first apartment we had where we all didn’t have to share a room. Lucy and I were young, but I still remember bits and pieces. I remember how Mom cried that first day we moved in. Not in a bad way or a sad way. A happy cry. She bought pancake mix that night and we had breakfast for dinner. She let me put ice cream on my pancake stack and didn’t even scold me for eating it all with my hands. Life was simple. Life was good.

I hid there with the intention of her finding me, so that we wouldn’t spend too much time apart. I was always afraid of being too far from my sister and mother, in a place where they couldn’t find me.

The church has lost all of its enchantments. All that remains is a cold fence, a deadness to the air. There is no magic here, not anymore.

For a brief moment, I am convinced the sanctuary had been set ablaze. But, as I toe the perimeter of the property, I’m able to discern the red and blue lights washed over the ruins. NYPD has placed barricades all around the block. There are ambulances out front. The stretchers are all empty.

Bodies are laid out all over the property in bags, some sealed, some not, all well beyond expiration.

The officers are chatting with the medical examiner at the gate entrance. I wonder how long it will take for them to realize there are no prints attached to these fingers, no identities to these bodies.

Maybe they’ll call it some freak phenomenon, a sign of the end of the world. Maybe they’d be right.

They’re all too distracted to see me scale the fence. I’ve pulled my black hood over my head, concealed by nightfall.

There are two bodies closest to the side entrance of the church, near Silva’s grave. I pause when I look at them, bloated and frozen stiff in rigor mortis. Wormwood’s arm is stuck outside the bag, reaching for his sister even after death. His blood has long since coagulated. It clings to his hands, arms, and chest. His eyes are slack and empty, seeing nothing of this world.

I pull open the door to the side entrance and step inside.

The church is in worse condition than we last left it. I don’t know how that's possible. Aftershock maybe. The glass is all shattered, the roof almost all caved in. Nothing separates me from the sky now. I could stretch up my hand and pierce right through it. 

The staircase beneath the trap door by the altar is hidden by a mound of rubble. Our secret is safe from mortal eyes. It makes me wonder if there was purpose behind this. Maybe Manon did some extra work to make it look more natural while concealing our secrets.

There is a strange calmness about me. The kind of calm that is not a peaceful calm, but an anticipating calm, the kind that exists as a premonition of mania.

I shuffle through the debris until there's enough space to wedge myself through. I do not think about death. I do not think at all. I squeeze through, down the staircase, into the cave.

It’s all ruins now. All of it. It’s unsalvageable.

I had prepared a bag at the foot of my bed a few days prior, just in case. It now sits at the bottom of the wreckage of my room, mostly in one piece much to my surprise. I burn my way through it, swing the backpack with my few belongings over my shoulder. I’ve worn my jeans today, a reminder of the ones I love. The ones I am leaving behind.

I clench my eyes tight as I walk past Alex’s room, knowing if I stopped I would start crying, which I cannot afford.

But I do pause outside of Silva’s study, making eye contact with the book that is still sitting untouched on her desk. I move quickly, wrap my arms around it, feel the warmth of whatever enchantment is imbued within it. It would feel wrong to leave it here, to rot. That must be the mindset that possesses me to tuck it into my bag.

The library is beyond destroyed, with not a single standing bookshelf. All of them are in pieces among the rubble around me, alongside books–or what remains of them–torn pages and covers and lost words, all of which will never be read again.

I begin to climb, half-crawling over the wreckage to the back of the room. I don’t give myself the time or space to feel anything, I can’t afford to, not now.

But the books still remind me so tenderly of Alex, of Wormwood too. I have to bite down hard on my lip to keep from slipping down this pit of sorrow. I take a deep breath. I keep crawling.

I dust away the debris around the hidden doorway. And I barely feel the knife against my thumb when I slice open skin, just a dull pinch. I’m too heavy with anticipation, with moving forward, with numbing every feeling. I paint the rune I’ve memorized against the concrete in blood. I don’t have a plan, but I don’t need a plan. I just need to save Alex. I wait and…

Nothing.

That can’t be right.

I trace the rune again. And again. Still, nothing. No trap door, no ladder to the center of the earth. Just ash-covered concrete floors.

My heart rate begins to spike. I can feel the panic bubble in my stomach. What does this mean? I need to get down there. I need to see the Ferryman.

My hands curl around a thick slab of concrete peeking out from the wreckage. With all the force in my body, I slam it down onto the ground. The sharp edges cut deep into my hand, drawing more injuries, more blood. It has barely chipped the cave floors. I try again, hacking at the concrete with desperate abandon. It does not give. I’m not strong enough. I can’t do it.

This time there is nothing keeping me together. The icy, numb surface around my heart shatters. And everything falls through.

I slam my hands against the floor, and I scream.

No. No. No.

“Please!” I sob into the concrete, as though the earth could take pity on me.

What was the point then? What was the use in coming here? Now Alex is trapped between death and life and it’s all my fault. Because I could not stop him, and I could not save him.

“Why?” I cry. I have stopped wiping my tears away, they fall too fast for me to stop them. “What am I doing wrong?” I am trembling with anger, with a deep and endless sorrow, and that emptiness–that terrible emptiness that is even worse than agony.

I barely notice how I’m hyperventilating, not until I’m hunched over, chest heaving, dizzy and gasping for air. Even then, there’s nothing I can do about it.

“Please just take me instead. Not him.” My words, a stuttered mess, barely sound like anything more than sounds. I don't know who I'm pleading to. If there is a God, She has never answered my prayers.

The emptiness inside explodes. The pain in my chest truly feels like death, like my heart has shrveled and died between my lungs. My toes curl in my shoes, my bloodied hands shriveled into my chest. I contemplate it for a long minute, taking the blade and shoving it deep into my heart. Anything to stop this feeling.

I even take the dagger in my hand, study my reflection in the blade, my swollen eyes and raw-bitten lips. The pain is so evident there. And I press the tip to my chest, all curled up on that concrete floor.

It could all end so soon. I don’t care if I never make it back here. What would it matter if my heart lies elsewhere?

I’ll have Mom again, Silva and Mizuki. I don’t have to be in pain anymore.

But I see Alex’s face in the back of my mind, his beautiful smiling face telling me to live. Then I hear my mother’s voice–or my memory of it–telling me that this suicide is not sacrifice, but some cowardly desire to escape. And I hear Silva saying that love is full of pain, but it isn’t only. And I am more than this, more than pain.

It’s up to me to save Alexis. Only me.

The dagger clatters on the ground, and I am filled with a hurt so deep that I can no longer be empty. When my eyes open again, the veins beneath my skin are glowing. Then the runes. And my hair. My chest.

The light blossoms until my back begins to burn. I slide the backpack off of me and find that it, too, is warm to the touch. Light begins to seep from the crevices.

Aiden, a voice calls.

“Alex?” I ask, my voice all soft and grainy. I undo the zipper as fast as I can, searching for the source of the sudden glow. The branches.

I lay them out in front of me. The places where my blood has touched them burn brightest.

“Alex?” I call out again. It’s ridiculous to think he could hear me but… is it?

Before my eyes, the branches begin to transform. Like true magic, thick roots burrow deep beneath the concrete, breaking through the surface that I could not so much as scratch. They twine together, stretching up and out until I am knelt beside the trunk of a massive tree, under a canopy of pink and white blossoms.

On a whim, I trace that same rune onto the trunk. The smudges of blood seep deep into the wood, flashing a bright golden color. And then a door is in front of me, carved into the thick bark, swinging open.

I lift the bag back over my shoulder. I pick myself up.

***