33

Marith’s mind had more or less been floating in an emotionless void, just simply registering facts, but not really engaging, since Samuel had pinned her to the ice, but seeing Vanessa lifeless on the brown carpet jumpstarted something inexplicable within her.

In a haze she pushed Brad and one of the other Mages away and dropped to the floor, landing right next to Vanessa.

The Runners weren’t there, but Marith couldn’t be bothered with their whereabouts at that moment.

It was as if she remembered how she had saved Jonathan, and later the deer, even though at those moments she had just been improvising.

She pushed the rapid and stressed conversations the other Pupils were having to the background. Her mind was racing while she did what came natural to her. She grabbed Vanessa’s wrists.

Jonathan had seen flowers, right? When she had saved him? Well, she could show Vanessa the place where they grew and go from there.

A nauseating sensation, as if she had leaned back too far on the two back legs of one of those cheap chairs in high school and was now grasping for the desk in a reflex, flashed through her body. Her stomach was jerked in a different direction than her mind, while her hands searched for Vanessa’s soul. Her feet left through her ears and together they tumbled through blackness for a while, merging together like the arms of a galaxy, before Marith managed to take control of the situation.

On a gamble Marith took Vanessa to the place she knew best, the world she had helped design. She knew she had more power there than anywhere else.

The Kid appeared before Etienne with a fair skin, but burned, ragged clothes. He yanked the tiny human brutally out of the furniture and went on his merry way. The little cunt was nothing but a means to an end, after all.

Putting a blanket over a supernatural creature to hide it from the First Runner was as smart as celebrating the Holidays together with the whole family during a global pandemic.

The child oozed magic, especially when he was fearing for his life. To Samuel it was as if Etienne was wearing forest-cameo in the snow. Finding him was insultingly easy. Where these morons questioning his intellect?

Oh, thank God! Marith almost screamed, upon seeing Vanessa, before awkwardly hugging the perplexed Mage.

I am making an educated guess here, nothing more, she immediately shared, apologetically, gesturing at the world Nate had imagined a long time ago.

Marith had accidentally, or maybe automatically, steered towards the castle, her own, slanting structure. It was still light out, but they stood in the shade of the arcade and both gazed around, while their eyes adjusted to the shadows around them.

Are these Nate’s gardens? The ones Etienne mentioned? Vanessa wondered, peering through the openings the arches allowed.

Yes, Nate made the gardens, I built the castle. He showed me how and I drew from that, she explained, nodding.

Imagine and repeat. Imagine and repeat until it becomes a reality.

Weave it like the warp and the weft of fabric, Marith reminded herself, as she started to realize she had to come up with a plan right about then.

Jonathan saw this… w-when you? Vanessa put a hand over her mouth, as if she just realized how bad the situation was.

Yes, but I never took him all the way here. It wasn’t necessary… Marith’s mental voice died away as soon as she thought the thoughts she was thinking.

Vanessa nodded at her, her hand still over her mouth and her brown eyes as big as saucers. Because he wasn’t dead, she whispered.

Marith’s stomach tied itself into a painful knot. This was her time to shine, her moment to prove herself, but other than bringing Vanessa down there, or up there – who knew? – she had no plan.

The architect of the castle peered around. Mostly at the stone walls. She ignored the gardens for a few moments. Sure, Nate and herself had jumped of the Horsetail Fall and a balcony, but they had never been dead. Their physical bodies had been waiting for them in their dimension of origins, with beating hearts. Vanessa’s heart hadn’t been beating when Marith had catapulted herself into the hallway of the Bellevue.

She was wrecking her mind for any useful clues in this world and the advice she had collected from Oracle, Anica, Pavan and Nate in the previous months. Nothing came to mind. Instead she was plagued by an obnoxious sound that just seemed to be hanging the air. It wasn’t the insects or the birds humming and twittering in the sea of flowers outside. It came to her with intervals.

Was there water dripping somewhere? No, the sound wasn’t wet enough.

Was Vanessa hearing it? Marith faced the three doors in the distance, on the opposite end of the hallway. The ones that wouldn’t open before. The ones that would lead to the river behind the castle.

She remembered how an optical illusion had taken her Prophet and herself by surprise before. The way to the doors had been exactly the amount of steps her eyes had informed her about, but the way back, from the doors to where the Pre-Raphaelite paintings were mounted to the wall, had taken them significantly longer. It seemed unwise to enter that segment of the arcade again.

The greyish, empty wall on the left of the hallway, leading to the doors in the back, was still there, existing in exactly the same fashion as before. It was still long, greenish-grey and empty.

She quickly glanced over her shoulder to ask if the other Mage was hearing the sound as well.

Clicking, it was definitely a clicking sound now. Or was it ticking?

Vanessa was patiently inspecting the artworks in the arcade. Marith briefly wondered if she was so peaceful, because she realized she was dead and peace came with death, or if she was just allowing her fellow Pupil some space to figure out how to be saved.

All your issues will become weightless in the end, Anica and Oracle had told her.

That’s right, Marith thought. Weightless seemed to be the keyword here. Every interdimensional trip she had made, and she had been through quite a few lately, had started and ended with either a Push or a jump. Except for the times Nate had taken her there. In every instance an out-of-control sensation of falling, plummeting into nothingness, had washed over her and every time she had landed somewhere safe, somewhere she had wanted to be, even though she hadn’t meant to be there.

This time she had brought herself and someone else to their world. She realized rather proudly that she had never travelled there by herself, let alone with somebody other than Nate.

Time. Time was another concept that just intruded her mind.

It was a funny word, time. It sounded like an herb, something to be used in the kitchen, Marith thought amused, even though there was literally no time to be amused. In contrast to the herb she couldn’t smell time or touch time or taste time. She could only feel it pass by and occasionally she could see it, when she looked at her father or when she noticed rust on a car. Just like every other human being she experienced time passively.

Except the Prophets, of course. They were humans and they weren’t simply staring at the fourth dimension thundering on. For them time was a lake they could fish information from.

Some guidance from a Prophet would be handy right about now, she thought to herself. Would she be able to summon Nate there to advise them? Probably not, otherwise she could have been meeting him there all the time without even so much as calling or texting each other beforehand to discuss the time.

Why was her mind racing like that?

Was the sound getting faster, more regular?

Vanessa still stared at the artworks attached to the stone wall behind Marith and frowned. She cocked her head and inhaled to comment on the Virgin of Consolation by Bouguereau when the big, wooden, double doors – the only access into the castle from the gardens, besides the openings in the arcade - flew open.

Marith’s head jerked to the row of doors on the other side of the hallway. They remained shut. Good, Marith thought. Stay shut. Those doors were no good.

The wind that blasted into the stronghold swelled to a storm in mere seconds. Just a few ticks and their loose hair slapped in their faces and cut into their soft skin like cables.

Time. Those ticks were the sound of time.

Weightless, time, doors. The answers had been pelted at her, since they had landed in Nate’s world.

Vanessa weltered towards Marith and they locked hands. The Mages looked each other in the eye and agreed it was time to go.

The winds formed a draught, a stream of energy, that sucked them towards the doors at the end of the hallway.

No, Marith thought as resolutely as she’d ever been. This wasn’t happening.

They were blasted past the opening that led them to the dining room and past the opening that gave way to the stairway that spiralled up into one of the turrets.

We have to assume that the Well is on our side, Oracle had said, during their meeting in the storage hall of Pine Industries.

There was a reason for all that was happening. Marith had to assume the Web was behind this strange force, even though that same strange force was attempting to rip her clothes off her body.

Vanessa had attempted to grasp the rocky surface of the wall on their left to get some grip and to slow them down, but she was left with skinned fingertips.

They were now in the tricky part of the arcade, where Nate and Marith had experienced difficulty to escape even without being yanked back by unnaturally strong winds.

Vanessa held onto Marith’s hand for dear life. Both their hands were clammy, but Marith wasn’t going to let go.

I sense we shouldn’t go through any of those doors, she curtly shared with Vanessa.

Her fellow Mage responded with a mental affirmation, too disturbed to communicate in full sentences.

Speaking of doors, they could use some right about then.

Thad had to be it, the solution. Why else was the empty wall there?

The two were jump-walking in the direction the winds were taking them, afraid that turning around and trying to run back would knock them over, only for them both to be instantly swept towards the three ominous doors at the end of the passage.

Marith was running out of empty wall space to miracle some doors into existence with at a ghastly tempo.

What if the row of doors at the end of this corridor would open? Would they both be gone? Would they both be dead?

Marith closed her eyes and repeated the bits and pieces of advice that had turned into her mantra. She repeated them religiously and violently in her head.

Imagine and repeat.

Weave it like the warp and the weft of fabric.

Everything you can create, becomes a reality.

All your issues will become weightless in the end.

As if she was still in possession of her Earthly, physical body a surge of energy cumulated within her. She managed to create a Flow and the massive and elongated castle wall finally found a purpose.

The bleeding fingers of Vanessa’s trailing hand found a doorknob. Somehow, in their movement towards the other end of the hallway, she managed twist it around.

The door flew open. With a dull smack the two Mages were slapped against the cold wall next to the opened door. The stone had looked harsh, being blown past it, but meeting it in person was much less pleasant than they had expected.

Marith wasn’t sure her skull or maybe her right cheekbone was cracked, but she couldn’t allow herself the time to feel the pain or to investigate her face.

Don’t let go! Marith thought-yelled at Vanessa.

As sudden as the storm had started to rage, it stopped. And the ticking sound returned. It was faster and more present now.

Okay, go, Marith instructed.

Through this door? Vanessa wondered, suddenly struck by doubt now that the winds that had silenced them had disappeared.

Yes, what other option is there?

Good point, Vanessa murmured, reluctantly stepping through the doorframe and turning around to face Marith.

There is blood on your face.

Ja, I know, Marith answered. It’s fine. If this all works out we’ll be unscathed when we’re back.

If?

It will, okay?

You think this will work?

Definitely, Marith lied. See you on the other side, she said with an insecure smile, before she started to close the door.

Vanessa, wait! Marith blurted out, before the door closed completely, as if Vanessa would go anywhere by herself. She had stuck her foot between the door and the frame to prevent it from falling shut, peeking through the opening at her tall, beautiful friend standing in the shadows of the tiny, dark room.

Can you imagine me saving your life?

Vanessa looked at her with bright brown eyes and nodded, slowly but resolutely.

Good, Marith whispered, nodding back at her. I can imagine it too.

She closed the door and twisted the knob, until the lock clicked.

She preferred the hatch in Watchmakers little office over the run-up and jump Nate had made her do before. This was her world too, her imagination mattered here, so she opted for the element of surprise.

Marith closed her eyes and breathed in for a few seconds and then out for a few seconds. She was still standing in the hallway, praying to every God she had ever heard about and then shifting her attention to the Well. She fully understood now what Oracle had meant when she had stated that they had to assume that the Well was on their side.

Sometimes there is no control, there are no reigns, no tools to take charge anymore. Just faith.

She accepted her blindness in this matter and she told herself she had to accept any outcome, even though she knew that she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she would wake up next to a lifeless Vanessa.

She just had to believe. There was no other option at that point in time.

Time. A bell tolled somewhere in the sky outside the castle. The sound rolled through her head and kept repeating itself inside her ears.

Her eyes flew open and she was looking at the raw, empty wall, made out of irregular green and grey stones, again. The door had disappeared. She had somehow expected this to happen. She knew she had to take a different road home.

She wiped some blood from her right eye. What did the tolling bell mean? Was her time up? She refused to believe that.

The last time she had visited this world she had fainted, before returning. Nate had picked her up and supposedly he had jumped off the balcony with her. Apparently, bringing somebody back from the death required solo travel.

She threw one last, dirty look at the three doors at the end, then sprinted back through the hallway to the first opening on her right. It took her unreasonable long, but she didn’t let that stop her. How many more times would the bell toll?

She finally sped up the winding stairs, into the closest tower, the one that was filled with historical objects and the history of her nation.

She didn’t give the antique contents any attention, because she immediately busted through the doors on the opposite end of the round chamber. She ran outside, stumbling and tripping over the uneven castle wall and past an explosively colourful sunset. She entered the bedroom and ran around the bed Nate had envisioned there for her.

Nate. She really missed him. She could have used his company. That day she hadn’t even been able to remember what their fight had really been about.

She brusquely shoved the curtains aside over the rods, opened the glass doors that led to the balcony behind them and walked backwards to the bed.

She wanted to be in that bed with him so much right then. To hug him, to feel the warmth of his body, the soft movements of his chest as he was falling asleep.

Another bell was rung. Closer and louder this time. It instantly snapped her out of her fantasy of being with Nate.

The bell wasn’t the only sound she could hear in their bedroom. The ticking prevailed. It was a pendulum, she realized, swaying from one side of her brain to the other, knocking against the inside of her skull after each sway, like a wrecking ball trying to break through.

There was still time, but not a lot, she intuitively knew. Her heart was beating in her throat, her chest was heaving and her mind was hijacked by the sensation that her opportunity to return would be taken away at the third toll.

Dammit. She had to really leave now.

When she felt the blankets, hanging over the bed-frame, brush against her calves through her jeans she started the sprint.

Like ripping off a band-aid or swallowing a big pill this was best be done without giving it too much thought. She now remembered why she never visited that world alone. Apart from being there alone, she also had to leave alone, and that was the difficult part.

With the speed and agility of a hunted mouse she crossed the balcony, jumped onto the stone balustrade with her left foot and hurtled herself over it with an unathletic nosedive.

Their respective consciousness’s travelled reluctantly back to their bodies, as if they were plummeting from space through the ozone layer - and other layers they had forgotten the names of - back to Earth. Well, to the floors of the murky Bellevue complex in Sweet Lake, to be more precise.

Slowly they re-entered their lifeless hulls and nestled back into their brains. Their central nervous systems were rebooted.

Marith had inadvertently rolled onto her back as well, but she was still holding Vanessa’s left wrist with her right hand. Next to her a startled heart had started pumping again. Her own had never stopped.

Was this what cardiologists called atrial fibrillation? First the beating felt like a drilling machine, but it soon became more powerful and regular, as she attempted to stabilize it.

It took a while before Vanessa woke up. Then it took another while before they realised where they were, what had happened and what they were supposed to be doing at that point on the space-time continuum.

The others had gathered around them. Every Mage, every Runner and every Prophet - that wasn’t Nate or Lisa - was there, hovering over Marith and Vanessa with big, expecting eyes.

Both Mages stared back, speechless. They weren’t ready to jump up yet.

The air was filled with a dark tension that no-one could escape.

“Took you long enough,” James finally murmured, to her left.

If Marith didn’t know any better she would have thought he had been worried for them.

He was sitting on the carpet next to her. After opening her eyes and rotating her head towards him she smirked at him and squeezed his arm. Brad was situated by Vanessa’s side, gently pinching her shoulder to encourage her to stay awake and join the Chain again.

The rest sat squatting or kneeling around them in a semi-circle on the landing that lead to the elevators.

After the commotion had started Marith had hidden Etienne in the couch, by shoving him between the pillows and tossing a quilt over him.

Within seconds it would become painfully clear that this didn’t suffice, but Marith wouldn’t find that out until she returned from Nate’s gardens with Vanessa.

In the hallway two Runners had ran towards her, without her even noticing them, to switch positions guarding Etienne, but as soon as they arrived the child had been gone. Another Runner had entered the apartment before them.

By the time Vanessa uttered the phrase “I can’t remember being… death.” Samuel had long shaken the Runners off, dragging a kicking and screaming soon-to-be Watchmaker along.

“Because you are not supposed to be able to retell,” Marith replied.

“Can you? Remember?” She asked, rubbing her whole face, as if she’d slept all day.

“Yes.”

Vanessa frowned and opened her mouth as if to ask ‘Why?’ or ‘How?’ but nothing came out of her.

“I think this is my talent,” Marith clarified.

“But how can anyone bring a whole person back from the death without medical equipment?”

“Because I thought I could. I healed Jonathan before, you know.”

“Helping someone heal is different than bringing someone back from the death.”

“I did it for the deer,” Marith reminded her.

“That’s true,” Vanessa whispered, leaning back again.

Brad prevented her from laying down entirely.

Marith spend all of her adolescent life trying to forget about her childhood, failing miserably at that, only to feel small and insignificant once more. Now she discovered she had the greatest gift of all buried deep inside her. The gift to grant someone a second chance, the gift of life.

“Guys, we really don’t have time,” Anton informed, more alarmed than Marith had ever heard him.

She just stared at him with a question mark hovering over her head. Vanessa did the same.

“Etienne went missing.”

“Fuck.”

“We lost any track of the Kid.”

“When?”

“While you guys were, you know,” he made vague gestures at the sky as to indicate they had flown to heaven.

“What’s the plan?”

“Have we heard from Oracle or Watchmaker yet?”

The Prophets shook their heads.

“We can’t just split and venture out into the mountains. He could be anywhere right now,” Joshua brought in.

“Who is this guy?” Theresa asked.

“Yeah, what does he look like?” Amber wondered.

“You guys still can’t see him?” James asked with a frown.

“No.”

“That’s not good.”

Marith shook her head, trying to remember something specific to properly describe him by. “He’s kind off a wallflower, actually. Not too long, not too short. Unhealthily pale, slender, blond. Like most people in the area really.”

“And his age?”

“Our age, I guess?” Marith answered with much uncertainty in her voice.

“An unassuming white male as the bad guy,” James started.

“I’m pretty sure he’s straight too,” Marith added softly, remembering the disgusting look on his face as she was squirming on the ice, at his feet.

“Isn’t this getting a little old?” James wondered. “I mean,” he droned on, mostly to himself, “this has been done plenty of times before. Why can it not be an elderly Asian lesbian woman in a wheelchair for once?”

“Could you please shut your posh pie hole for one second?” Brad inquired.

“Just wondering,” James whispered with a shrug. “What? Aren’t you guys?”

“Not really,” Meriyem stated.

“I am just saying he makes us all look bad,” James defended himself.

“So, the minds of the Pupils can measure and affect things regular human minds cannot, but they cannot measure the Kid?” William wondered, ignoring James like the rest of the group.

“Hey, Will,” Marith greeted him with a lame hand gesture. She was still sitting on the carpet, next to Vanessa. The rest had stood up already, so the two Mages were mostly staring at trousers and boots.

“Hi,” he answered, with an equally lame smile.

“The Kid is shrouding him. I can’t see,” Brad informed with his eyes closed, shaking his head in frustration.

“Etienne has my old clockwork,” Marith brought out with renewed vigour behind her voice.

“What do you mean?”

“Watchmaker can localize him! I bet Samuel doesn’t even know he has it on him.”

“He’s on the cliff,” a voice creaking with old age and experience uttered behind them.

Marith peered through the small forest of legs in front of her. She didn’t see much, but what she did see was the massive, great grey owl sitting on top of a familiar looking walker. Miss Parker was behind the bird.

“Why didn’t he just leave town with Etienne?” Jonathan asked his great-great-grandmother after giving her a quick hug.

“This Watchmaker is too young. He can’t serve the Kid right now. He could, at best, give him power over the Web in a decade from now, but he doesn’t have that much time,” the Elder wisely informed the Pupils.

“He has been dying since we killed the anchor,” Marith confirmed.

“Then why would he bring the child there and not leave with him?” Amber wondered.

“Think,” Kyle encouraged his classmate.

Horror filled their minds and faces as they let the answer sink in.

“But… If he wants to kill the child why doesn’t he just rip it apart?”

“He probably doesn’t want dirty hands. That’s why he used the Birdman for all these things before,” Jonathan brought in.

“Must have been why he snapped my neck,” Vanessa groaned, rolling her head from one shoulder to the other to regain some flexibility.

“There might be another reason he is still in town,” Marith said.

“What?”

“Do share.”

“Didn’t Kyle explain before he might want to use the Watchmaker for leverage?”

Kyle nodded.

“Given the age of the child, I think that could totally be his strategy,” Meriyem went along with that train of thought.

“He wants what he can’t have. From what we’ve been told that’s the way he’s always been.” A stroke of brilliance struck Marith and she shared her plan with the others.

Marith and Lieke had learned how to please their narcissistic mother very early in life in order to survive. This had altered Marith’s mind into a flexible machine that could come up with fast and thorough solutions and even credible lies if she had to. She wasn’t born the manipulative type, but she had adapted to the environment she had grown up in.

Marith and Vanessa were helped back onto their feet. After countering a lot of are-you-sures, are-you-up-to-its and what-if-he-won’ts miss Parker shut the discussion down and gave the plan her blessing. The group said their goodbyes to the Elder and rushed outside, to the cars that had been parked in disarray.

They torpedoed themselves into various vehicles. Only the perforated ambulance stayed where it was.

“Kyle, we take your dork-mobile,” James instructed curtly, sounding like himself again.

The Runner would naturally be driving, because he possessed the superior reflexes. Kyle took a seat next to him and Marith pushed Vanessa through the opened sliding door, before following after her.

“Vanessa,” Marith started, grasping for something to hold onto, while the convoy slipped and skidded off the parking lot. She had to do it now, before she lost the faith in discussing something this preposterous.

“Yeah,” the Mage answered, still rubbing sleep out of her dark eyes.

“Those trees,” Marith stammered, “that you saw…”

“What about them?” Vanessa asked, with more focus now.

“They... walked off?”

“What?!” This came from James.

“They morphed into... some sort of witches and trotted off, before I came to find you.”

“What is it?” Vanessa demanded from James, who sat stiffly in the driver’s seat.

“The night before the drownings,” he started, what was about to be quite an elaborate story.

Brad had taken the lead this round. The others followed closely. They practically raced towards the cliff bumper to bumper. The darkness and the headlights of the truck made that the road around town morphed into a tunnel.

The story James told the three passengers managed to surprise only two of them and was so absurd it made Marith forget about all the traffic violations they were committing and the distance they were bridging in very little time.

Marith got out of the car at the base of the construction site. A dome of bright stars shone down on her. She was welcomed by a cold and clear winter’s night. Immediately shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat she stomped towards the plateau of the cliff. Marith was angry at the darkness, she was angry at the Kid, but mostly she was angry with herself for not bringing gloves.

The moment she stepped away from the greenery that enclosed the massive rock she noticed Samuel standing at the other end of the cliff. He was a chameleon. The only reason she saw him was because he wanted her to see him.

His face was hard, cold and uncompromising. He was holding Etienne upside down by his left leg over the deep, dark depth. The child was hoarse from screaming and crying, but she could still discern the kind of sobs that rattled her bones and curdled her blood. She had almost forgotten how punchable his face really was, until she walked up to him and he held the Watchmaker closer to the abyss.

Marith halted halfway across the chunk of rock they were standing on, as not to motivate the Kid to let go of Etienne. An icy breeze played with their hair and clothes.

They looked like two cowboys in a Western, before reaching for their guns to find out who would be fastest.

“Finally,” he stated. “What took you so long?”

“You killed Vanessa.”

“And not just that. I had great fun doing so,” he shared with an insufferable smile.