Magisterium

15

Glenn woke before Kevin. It wasn’t long past dawn. Aamon had left at first light to scout the way ahead. She had almost told him about what happened the night before but couldn’t find the words for it, didn’t know how to let them out.

It was a cold morning, almost bitterly so. Glenn drew her knees up to her chest under the blanket and wrapped her arms around them, trying to create a pocket of warmth. Despite the night’s sleep, she was exhausted. Light-headed. Scraps of the night before — the lights, the voices, the pale woman with sharp teeth — echoed in her mind. Giddy laughter bubbled up inside her again, carrying along that tumbling out-of-control feeling. The world she knew was gone and a bigger and stranger one sat in its place. How could Glenn explain any of it to herself? How could she make room in her world for them? Or for that girl who stumbled through the dark, hand in hand with Kevin, laughing?

Who was she? In the cold morning light, she seemed like a stranger. A creeping shame overtook her. Who had she been pretending to be?

There was a whisper of movement behind her. Glenn glanced

over her shoulder and there was Kevin, curled in a ball under the blanket, his green hair draped on the roots of the tree behind him.

Glenn turned away, remembering the thump of his heart against her chest, the warmth of his breath mixing with hers.

“Hey.”

Kevin’s voice was a rough whisper, husky and tentative. Glenn knew if she turned back again, he would have lost his familiar smirk.

That bright little grin that he usually had would be gone, and he would be looking at her the same way he did when they sat on that train platform and on the banks of that shining lake, steady and serious, as if he was seeing deeper into her, as if everything had changed and there was no going back.

“Hey,” Glenn said, flat and simple, even as that nervous twist from the night before turned inside her and the memory of his hand, warm on her lower back, loomed.

The ground rustled underneath him as he sat up and slipped into his boots. “I thought maybe we’d run over to the lake before we go,” he said. “See what there is to see. Morgan?”

She tensed as his hand touched her shoulder. Everything went still.

“Aamon said to wait,” she said carefully. “He’ll be back soon.

We should be ready to go.”

Kevin took a long breath and let it out. Glenn imagined him looking away from her and off into the woods, swallowing a hundred things he wanted to say. Glenn cursed herself. She had no business acting like she had the night before. She knew how he felt.

There was a tug on the blanket, and then Kevin’s boots scraped against the ground. When Glenn looked back at him, he was pulling on his coat.

“What are you doing? We should get everything together.”

“We don’t have that many things. I’m sure you can handle it.”

“Where are you going?”

Kevin finished tying his laces. “For a walk.”

Glenn sat listening to the leaves crunching under his feet. She knew she should let him go, blow it off, but something forced her hands down to the ground beside her and she pushed herself up.

“Kevin, wait!” she called. “Kevin!”

She found him when the trees broke and they were on the path again. Kevin turned left, hands shoved in his pockets and his head down like a bull. Glenn rushed after him and when she finally managed to get ahold of his jacket, she tugged hard and spun him around. The first thing she saw was a patch of blood that stained his new clothes.

Their run the night before must have torn it open again.

“Your side — ”

Glenn reached for it but Kevin moved away from her.

“It’s fine,” he said, and then stood silently, waiting.

Glenn stared at the rocky path at her feet. “Maybe …” she began, shifting her feet in the dirt. “Look … I’m sure with Aamon I can get to where I need to go.”

Kevin didn’t move.

“So if you want to go …”

“If I want to go? That’s what you’re saying. If I want to go?”

“Kevin — ”

“That’s what you stopped me to say? Of all the things in the whole wide world there are to say, that’s it?”

“I don’t want you to get in any more trouble. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”

“Well, thanks.”

“Kevin, I’m serious.”

“Did that mean nothing to you last night?”

I don’t want to be having this conversation, Glenn thought, even as she knew it was inevitable, had always been inevitable. “I’m sorry, Kevin. Seriously. But I’ve told you before. I can’t — ”

“Please. Not us, Morgan. I know that didn’t mean anything to you. I’m talking about them. You stood there beside me and saw something I can’t explain. Something I can’t even … I can’t even make the words for. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen. It was magic. Actual, for-real, not-in-a-storybook magic! Did that mean nothing to you?”

“Of course! It was incredible. And I can’t explain it either, but unlike you, I’m not some weather vane that turns every time the wind blows. Just because something is beautiful, just because it’s amazing, it doesn’t change who I am. It doesn’t change the world!”

“Right, of course. You would say that.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you see everything that happened last night, and your first thought is to run away from it. Only you, Morgan. I swear, only you.”

“This isn’t a field trip, Kevin. You were almost killed.”

Kevin snapped to face Glenn. “Exactly,” he said, leaning in close to her. “I was almost killed and I don’t want to go back. That’s the difference between you and me. We’re led up to the edge of a whole new world, a world we’ve been told our whole lives doesn’t exist, can’t exist, a world with things like Aamon and the Miel Pan in it. And me? I want to see more. I want to know if there are even more amazing things out here. But you? You want to turn around and go home so you can get your homework done on time.”

Glenn wanted to explode, at his childishness, at his unbelievable arrogance, but she refused to give him the satisfaction.

“We should go,” she said. “Aamon is probably waiting for us.”

Glenn started down the dusty path, leaving Kevin behind.

“You want it too,” Kevin called out. “You want to know what’s out here as much as I do. You just won’t admit it.”

Glenn stopped.

“You’re a scientist, Glenn! Tell me you don’t want to see that again. Tell me you don’t want to understand it.”

Glenn saw the lake as it was the night before, wide and black as slate and then dancing with light and magic. Her chest swelled at the impossibility of it.

“I want to go home,” she said.

Kevin shook his head, deflated, then walked up the path without another word.

“Kevin, wait!” Glenn said, searching for the right words and not finding them. “We have to go!”

Kevin waved her away and kept going, eventually disappearing when the path turned around an outcropping of rock. Glenn found herself alone with the enormity of the forest around her. She looked back toward their camp. Aamon was likely waiting. They had no time for this. Glenn took off after Kevin.

When she came around the first turn, she was surprised to see that Kevin wasn’t heading down the path that led to the lake but had turned onto a different trail, one they hadn’t seen the night before.

What is he doing?

She jogged up to the path, calling to him, but he didn’t slow down. The trail was narrow and rough, clouded over with fallen leaves and exposed roots. The canopy of trees was heavier over it and layered

with a crisscrossing web of ivy and vines. It was darker there, and as Glenn looked down, goose bumps rose on her arms and the back of her neck.

Another one of the stone obelisks stood at the path’s head. It was old and weather-beaten. Time had worn away the detail, but Glenn could just make out the inscription. At first it looked like the circles they’d seen on the other obelisks, but once Glenn wiped some dirt off the plaque and got a better look, she saw it wasn’t a circle at all.

It was the body of a spider, with long, multi-jointed arms

reaching out from it. Beneath it lay its web.

Glenn shuddered and turned back to the darker path.

“Kevin!” she shouted.

But Kevin was gone.