Charlotte

  “Someday, no one will be able to tell us what to do or who to be,” Amelia promised. Her hand held mine and my heart pounded in my chest. It wasn’t the rush of her presence but of fear. That ominous cloud of ever-present eyes. The shocked horror of my father, like he could appear from around any corner at any time. The possibility terrified me. It alone was almost enough for me to pull my hand back. Almost. I continued to hold my friend’s hand. It was worth being caught. She saw me. Through everything. Through my name, my clothes, my father’s watchful eye, she saw who I really was. Serenity.

  “You think so?” I whispered. She gave me the confident smile only a child knows how to wear properly.

  “Oh definitely,” she promised. “You’ll be Serenity to everyone and I’ll be Amelia. And our kids will be whoever they want to be.”

  “How?” I asked. “How can we ever live like that? Amy, Dad will never allow it. He’ll never let us go.” Amelia’s face fails to falter.

  “He can’t stop us, not forever! Someday you and I can both go, far away from here, where he’ll never be able to reach us. And we’ll let anyone else who wants come with us. Mom says the world is bigger than your dad imagines with more people in it than he’s ever met. And when we are bigger, and have our own money, we can see it all, until we find somewhere that no one else goes to. Somewhere where no one is in charge of us and no one gets to choose our names for us!” she responded. But she was wrong. She didn’t understand. Even what we were doing was dangerous.

  “There is nowhere he can’t reach,” I whispered and she pouted.

  “Oh come on Sera, sure there is! If he could control everything, he would have already stopped us from seeing each other!” She insisted. The very suggestion forced me to look over my shoulder again. Our own little corner of the world remained untouched. It was a quiet spot under the stairs in a rarely-used wing of the mansion. It should have felt like a refuge, but it always seemed to increase my sense of shame. Like I was doing something wrong by hiding. By meeting up with a friend where we could be alone. Maybe it was just fear rather than shame, but after a lifetime with my father, I can’t tell the difference anymore. Always feel one with the other, that was the message of every beating.

  “If you say so,” I agreed half-heartedly. It was a beautiful dream. I wished I could fully believe in it. A few months later, Amelia took the first step towards it. She trusted her mother with it, the woman who made her believe in it. Not long after that, she was gone forever. I stopped hoping to see her again years ago. Decades. But . . . something has changed.

  “Hey Char Char!” Ryanna greets, forcing my eyes to slowly open. “You awake yet?” I groan as the blur of the younger woman comes into focus. I’d been with Amelia again. I didn’t want to wake up yet. “Leo found another one! Come see!” This wakes me up the rest of the way.

  “Really? We weren’t even travelling. How did he find someone?” I ask and she shrugs.

  “I guess they just sort of stumbled into the clearing and started to heal,” she answers and I furrow my brow. That’s odd. We have caught up to a few people already while following them. Our numbers have increased to seven, or eight now. This is the first person to literally come to us.

  “Aren’t they all heading in the same direction? Why would someone come back this way?” I ask.

  “Beats me. Maybe this time they’ll remember why they were going that way in the first place,” she answers. I suppose she is right, the best way to get answers is to ask our new friend. Part of me wonders if we will finally find someone who is simply injured, or sick, like Lillith said we should. So far everyone we have found has, well, shared our struggle. Back in Potestia I’d had to actively search for allies in this fight. Now, every single person we find and save is one of us. To the point that it is growing suspicious. The Houses of Penance were full and with few people like me. All of them end up in the Radiant Woods eventually. There must be a reason we are finding only people like us here.

  At the same time, I can’t help but hope. What if? What if this time, we find Amelia? What if there is hope after all? My heart speeds up again as I follow Ryanna. Vance waits by the fire, content to wait for us to return as our newest members continue to sleep. Maybe, this time. This time it will be Amelia. We catch up to Leo who wears a wide grin. Something I am gradually becoming more familiar with. This is who he was born to be. Out here, with scraps for clothes and scraping for food. A fate that would leave most miserable. A fate I tried to save him from. But he is so, so alive. At his feet sits another ‘monster’. Another victim. This one is finished transforming and Leo has already given them his blanket.

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  “Well, this is new,” our new member greets. No fear. No relief. Just curiosity. I am obviously entering in the middle of a conversation, but this person’s unbothered demeanor still feels odd. One thing is clear. This is not Amelia. Part of me is disappointed. Part of me accepts it immediately, almost with a sense of relief. I deserve the disappointment. And Amelia deserves better than me.

  “Right? It takes some getting used to, but it feels . . .” Leo responds, trailing off at the end.

  “Amazing,” I finish under my breath. Leo nods enthusiastically. Not out of pride, well not exactly. He is definitely proud to help people like this. But his joy is so much more pure than that. The joy of community. Of acceptance. Of change that no cruel god can deny. Leo bathes in the reality he has freed and he overflows with the joy of genuine kindness. Every day it becomes more pronounced. Every day it tries to infect me. But I don’t deserve it. He earned this joy despite me, not because of me. So I deny the tug at the corners of my mouth.

  “Right, amazing! This is my mom, by the way. Her name is Charlotte. Mom, this is Frey! Frey is like us too, but not quite. How did you describe it, Frey?” Leo asks, addressing the person still sitting on the ground.

  “Oh I’m not like anyone but me,” Frey says. Ironically, the phrase immediately reminds me of another friend I had once. A friend I’d lost, not to the Radiant Woods but to regular, everyday cruelty. Again my traitorous lips try to flick into a gentle smile. I distract myself with my worries instead of responding right away. I look around the clearing we stand in. It’s similar to everywhere we have been. What the world looked like here before the Radiant Woods grew over it. Healing, like us. Slowly. The oppressive reality dominating it has been removed. The radius seems to be growing as well. Leo is getting stronger. This only inspires fear for him. He is so happy. But we know so little.

  I am happy for him. For myself, even, whether I deserve it or not. But what I have done is done. And we still don’t know how things worked out back in Potestia. I should have fought with Lillith. I should have given everything I had, I know that now. But that doesn’t mean I was wrong that it was hopeless. Just that I was wrong not to fight anyway. Everyone he loves, except for me, is probably dead. This is only more likely because of my mistakes. And what will Leo’s newfound joy look like when he returns and finds no one left? What about when the remaining mages of Potestia come after the rest of us? The more he has, the more it will hurt to lose. Above all else, that is what terrifies me. Before he was miserable, and I hated that I couldn’t help him. Now he is overjoyed, and I’m terrified of the whiplash when he loses all of that at once.

  “Mom, you alright?” Leo asks and I focus back on his face. On his sparkling smile. It makes me want to believe the world can never come crashing down around him. But it can. And I can’t protect him. The last time I tried . . . I will never overcome the shame of trying to protect him. So I can only watch.

  “I’m alright,” I lie. Frey is standing now, and I realize I have been tuning out their conversation. “Just . . . Frey, I’m told you came toward us, do you remember why?” I ask. I have little hope that they do. No one has remembered much so far. But . . . they went the wrong way this time. Maybe, just maybe this time will be different.

  Frey shrugs. “What do you mean?” they ask.

  “Apparently, most of us were heading in the same direction this whole time. You’re the first to come towards us instead of us catching up to them,” Ryanna answers. Frey tilts their head.

  “Oh, I remember,” they say. “The nexus wanted me to go the other way real fuckin’ bad. Kept telling me they’d turn me back to the way I was. Let me go back home.” They chuckle and let a sharp breath out their nose. “But you know what? Fuck the nexus. I didn’t want to go back anywhere. And if it wanted me to do something, I was going to do the opposite.” This only makes Leo grin more, and his infectious joy paints the same on Ryanna’s face. I remain concerned.

  “Wait, you remember, before you got here?” I ask again, almost disbelieving.

  “Yep, I remember every forsaken day in that shit.”

  ???

  I tap my foot impatiently. Sarafyna refuses to let that girl be dead. That is going to be a problem. She could be so powerful without the dead weight. Enough to kill the rest of the sages on her own. It would be better if she were the one to kill each as well. Alone, she is the exact sage I’ve been looking for, for centuries. This world has grown stale, and I have grown weary of it. But the other sages are persistent. They have learned such tricks for avoiding my little collector. They are so careful now. I haven’t gotten a new one of any quality in so long. It needs to eat all of them. And Sarafyna is how I make that happen.

  Just as soon as the corpse she brought here with her is dealt with. She is spending so much of her energy keeping that woman alive. I need to arrange for their separation again, and this time I’ll have to handle the obstacle myself. So thoroughly there is no body left to force life back into. Sarafyna may be powerful, even more so than me at the moment, but even she lacks the power to create an entirely new body for her girlfriend’s soul to inhabit. Only one person will ever have that power, and that is me, when all is said and done.

  Then there is the damn negative mage. He’ll need to be dealt with, once he is done with his current task. He could cause some serious hiccups in the plan. But I can work with all of these moving pieces. I can use the negative mage to draw Sarafyna back. Once they are separated, I will destroy that walking corpse, and Sarafyna’s rage will handle the rest of the sages for me. Her rage and her newfound power when she’s not spending so much of it defying death itself.

  All the moving pieces give me a headache, but I grin anyway. Victory is so close I can taste it. It runs down my chin like drool. Just a few more weeks. A few more weeks and it will all finally be over. I will finally, finally, transcend this hellhole.