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“I’m ready,” I said. It was a lie, but it didn’t matter.
He held out a hand to me, and though every cell of my being screamed against it, I reached out and took it.
23
Everything went instantly, blindingly dark, like the world was an eye that had blinked. Then the moment was over, and we stood on the windswept beach once more, hand in hand at the edge of the water in the dark, my nightmare come true.
No, not a nightmare. A memory all along.
A storm gathered out on the horizon, a menacing bank of clouds that twisted like a living mass in the sky. As I stared at it, lightning forked through it to strike the surface of the water. A gust of wind whipped my hair around my face. I breathed it in, savoring the tang of salt in my nose.
I turned my head and looked toward the lighthouse. Lights shone from the windows, but it was impossible to tell what might be happening inside. Had my friends realized I was gone? Was my mother okay? I had to tell myself that they would take care of her. They would go for help. It would be okay because it had to be. Because otherwise, I would never be able to go through with this.
Steeling myself, I turned my head to the other side, where I knew he was standing beside me. There he was, his face closer to mine than it had ever appeared in my dreams. I no longer had to crane my neck to gaze up at him. He turned as well, the blank gray emptiness of his face nonetheless giving the impression of an intense stare.
“What happens now?” I asked, though I knew at least part of the answer, because I’d been here before—only this time there was no Asteria to save me.
“You must walk with me into the sea. The sea guided the Vesper witches to these shores. You must relinquish your place here by offering yourself to the sea.”
I laughed bitterly, though nothing could have been less funny. “You expect me to just… let myself drown?”
“Certainly not. What use would you be to me dead?”
“Look, I’m not sure what mystical thing you think is going to happen if I just… walk out into the damn ocean, but I promise you it’s not going to end well for me.”
“Oh it will not be an ending, but a beginning. We will walk into the sea as two separate beings, but we shall emerge as two halves of the same whole. My eternal state, your magic, mixed together by the sea and joining us with immeasurable power.”
I simply stared at him, too horrified and fascinated to speak. For one fleeting instant, I saw it: the flash of the image in my mind. The Gray Man, taller, more terrible, smoke rolling off him like mist off the water, and me beside him: beautiful and terrifying, my hair streaming behind me, and dark power glowing in my eyes, as ancient and ungovernable as the sea crashing behind me.
And then the image shattered, and I was just myself again, shivering in the needling, misty rain that had begun to fall on us.
“It is our destiny,” the Gray Man said, as though he had seen exactly what I had just seen. And then, without another word, we began to walk forward.
I don’t know how I put one foot in front of the other. I hadn’t consciously decided to move forward. Maybe I had no choice. Maybe this was as inevitable as the changing of the tides, a foregone conclusion from the moment he saw me, a toddler chasing a cat in a garden. We had come full circle.
Still, a part of me was fighting it, the very human part, who was still sure I would drown, who was sure I had no power at all, and that I was sacrificing myself for nothing.
No, not for nothing, another voice inside me whispered. For my mother. For my family. For the rest of the people in this place that had always been my home, even if I hadn’t known it until a few days ago. Perhaps it was this that propelled me forward, as the bitterly cold waves broke over my shins, soaking my jeans, casting salty spray up into my face.
My heart was pounding like it would break through my ribcage. My breath came in short, sharp, panicked gasps. Tears gathered in my eyes, spilling over to join the salt already on my cheeks. And yet, no part of me was fighting to turn around, only to plunge inexorably forward to meet… whatever might happen. The water lapped at my chest now, rolling with a steady rhythm like it would rock me to sleep. I closed my eyes, succumbing to it.
Let it be like falling asleep and slipping into a dream. Please.
And then it began to happen.
A tingling sensation began beneath my ribs, and in the tips of my fingers. At first I thought it must be the numbing cold, but it was not. This tingling was warm and deep, like a promise. The Gray Man’s hand tightened around mine… perhaps he could feel it, too.
And then it was as though something broke open inside of me. It wasn’t exactly painful, but I had to brace myself against it. Something was waking up, filling me up, probing at my boundaries, urging me to surrender to it.Was this it?I thought.Was this what death felt like?
No, it was too bright. Too alive. It sang in my bones and seared beneath my skin. I realized it just as the water closed over my head.
This was what magic felt like.
Something inside me was singing for joy. It was true. There was magic in me, a magic I could barely understand, much less control; and yet it was mine, fully and completely. In the hum of it was a song older than the world, deeper than this ocean. And powerful… so powerful that it threatened to steal the last reserve of air from my lungs.
It was true. I was powerful. How could I ever have doubted it? But the wonder twisted instantly to fear. This power would belong to him before I could even learn to wield it. I would be his tool, just as he had said, and he would use me to destroy everything I tried to save. My anger screamed inside me.
You idiot, Wren. It’s all been for nothing. He was right all along, and you played right into his hands.
