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"Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you, and I will hold on to you."
-New Year's Day, Taylor Swift
If I had graduated in a normal way, my bitterness would probably consider the gate spell one last big fuck you from the school to us, something on the lines of oh, so you’re out now? Guess what, the first thing you’ll do with your freedom is throwing up.
Which was exactly what I did as soon as I landed back in Wales. I regretted my big breakfast in the Scholomance as it all came back in acidic waves up my throat. Small, plump arms were soon around my ribcage and my mother said “there, there.”
My mother’s presence made all of the confusing - and equally terrible - feelings inside me boil up and all the vomit was followed by uncontrollable sobs. Mum awkwardly led me the few meters to the yurt; I don’t know how she did it, because I had already been a lot taller than her at fourteen, and now I positively dwarfed her. Maybe she used magic, I was too distracted to notice.
You’d think being inside the yurt would make me sob harder, after all, it was supposed to be home. I, however, had no feelings about the place besides a bit of nostalgia. Mum was my home, the yurt had little to do with it.
She deposited me on my childhood bed, which was much too small for me now, and went on to brew me something, either tea or calming potion, while I drenched my pillow with snot and tears. Mum didn’t ask me what was wrong, she hadn’t since I was seven, when she had decided I had been old enough to choose when to share my feelings unprompted, which would have been a great approach to a normal child, but for me, it meant I only shared my feelings when they were anger or annoyance.
After about ten minutes she came to me holding a cup of chamomile tea, she whispered her get well soon spell that was more about dealing with whatever ails you and accepting it will end eventually than any kind of physical healing. It did make me feel a bit better, not enough to feel anywhere close to good, but enough that I got over my own shock and misery and started wanting to do something about it.
Which was not much better when I actually thought about it, because I could not see one way I could help.
Not alone.
I sat up fast, making my vision go dark and enraging Precious, who was still carefully packed in her cup, I let her out - which made Mum give a double-take - and went for my other precious, the Golden Stone sutras.
I took it out of the book chest and got the bookmark inside, where all my friends had written their numbers so I could reach them outside. If I was in my right mind, I would never have treated the sutras so carelessly as I did, just leaving it on the bed while I went for the door.
“El, wait, where are you going?” Mum asked, following me.
“I need the phone, I need to call New York,” my voice was hoarse from all the vomiting and crying, plus all the singing and screaming I had done all the way through graduation, the tea had done little to soothe my throat. She eyed sadly the power sharer - that was as good as dead, because the mana pool was inside the school - still on my wrist, and now that I thought of it, it wasn’t the first time.
I should have stopped and explained that the reason I was ruining our reunion wasn’t that I needed to get to my newly acquired enclave spot, but I couldn’t, because it meant talking about Orion, and I couldn’t talk about him until I was making plans to save him from being lost to the void along with a billion mals.
“I need to use the phone,” I insisted, still making my way to the public phone in the commune center.
“El, we - I - have a phone now,” she said, still confused and hurt by my dismissal, which I still did nothing to remedy as I demanded that she show it to me.
It was an old Chinese model, it had already been obsolete when I went into the Scholomance, which meant that she had gotten it second or even third-hand, but it would make a call, which was all I needed it to do.
I dialed Chloe’s number and hoped that she would already be reunited with her phone, while it rang, I was vaguely aware of Mum telling me she had gotten it to talk to me no matter where I went, so I wouldn’t have to call the commune to talk to her. It was a clever plan, because if I was going away to join an enclave, asking Philipa Wax to talk to my mother was definitely going to keep my calls to a minimum.
However, that was an idea that belonged to another world, a world that still had Orion in it.
“El?” Chloe said after what felt like the thousandth ring. I would have wondered how she knew it was me, but the Wales area code was a dead giveaway.
“Chloe, listen to me,” I said urgently. “I need to talk to Orion’s mum right now .”
“El, what’s going on? Is Orion with you?” She asked, alarmed. It was such a stupid question that I didn’t even deign to respond to it.
“Chloe, this is important, put Magistra Rhys-Lake on the phone!” My desperation seeped into every syllable, which made her finally listen to me. But as Chloe was, she didn’t quite grasp the intensity of said desperation and kept trying to make small talk while she supposedly looked for Orion’s mother.
“She’s actually Domina Rhys-Lake now…” was the only part I processed, because it was actually important for me. It would be easier to get what I wanted if the person who held the power wanted to rescue Orion as much as I did.
There was a faint conversation through the phone, and then a stern voice said: “Domina Rhys-Lake speaking.”
“Orion is in danger,” I said, not bothering with niceties. “If we want any chance of saving him, we need to act right now. ”
Which was of course not enough to convince the leader of the most important enclave in the world to drop everything in the middle of a crisis - like the destruction of the only wizard school ever - and come to my door. I tried to argue with her without giving too many details, because if I did, it would be painfully clear that what I wanted to do was next to impossible.
When I started to lose my temper, Mum carefully extracted the phone from my hand, which seemed to be stuck in the shape of a claw, and started talking to the Domina herself.
I should have been grateful for Mum’s intervention, because her people skills were a lot better than mine, but when she said that the enclave was going to meet us in London in about an hour - which was how much time it took to get the permit to cross the transatlantic door to the London enclave - I wanted to scream that we didn’t have an hour.
We also couldn’t just take a door to London, it would take at least five hours of over-the-speed-limit driving to get there, and Mum didn’t drive, and obviously neither did I, which I was about to remind her when she said: “I’ll fold us there.”
Folding was an extremely useful spell, it consisted of literally folding the fabric of space-time so you could jump through it, it was also very mana-expensive, so few people even bothered to learn it, a trip to London would cost us at least a dozen of Mum’s crystals, even if she could manage to fold such a big distance.
Turned out that she had enough mana to fold us all the way to London, Mum had thirteen filled crystals along with the half-full one around her neck, I guess not having a tasty snack inside your home helps you save mana, but she couldn’t fold us there just in one go.
I had never folded before, and I had no idea what to expect. Mum hugged me and told me to hold on to her with all my might. It turned out folding was better than a yanker spell, but not by much.
We ended up in a small town that I presumed was somewhere between the commune and London, and Mum told me in a strained voice that she would need a few minutes before she could take us the rest of the way, so we set on walking in the general direction of London so she could prepare to fold again.
Mum didn’t question me in what I was doing, didn’t demand to know why we were spending all her mana supply to go see the New York enclave. I didn’t want to talk about it, but I also didn’t want to walk in silence because it gave me too much time to think, and thinking was the worst thing I could do.
If I stopped to think I would relive graduation, I would remember standing there on the edge of the gates and watching Patience come at us. I would remember Orion and how fucking stupid he was, I would remember the look on his face while he said he loved me and then made the choice to never see me again, because I was nothing compared to a building full of maleficaria.
All that thinking would make me angry at him, and deep down I knew I shouldn’t. Being angry at Orion for forsaking a life outside, a life with me, to spend however many days he thought he could have while floating in the void with a schoolful of maleficaria felt like being angry at an addict. You could hate the drug and the addiction, but you couldn’t hate the addict because they were sick.
And Orion was sick, I felt so guilty for having underestimated the magnitude of his addiction when he had told me about it. I had thought he was just a painfully awkward boy who had been raised by selfish enclave people, so he hadn’t known how to do anything besides practice his affinity.
Back inside the school, laying with him in the gym - which felt like a lifetime ago and not just yesterday - I had chosen to keep blaming his parents and the rest of the enclave, who had been part of it not only by enabling him but also encouraging the madness.
Now I knew it was so much more than that; Orion needed to kill mals like he needed food or air, and I should have realized that when he had talked about it, but also when I had seen first hand how cranky and desperate he had been during the entirety of the senior year because of the lack of mals, and not because the lack of mana like I had stupidly assumed. And thinking back on the mana deficiency, I could not remember seeing Orion build mana in any way other than killing mals for theirs, which planted a little seed of doubt that maybe he couldn’t; and if he was a being who required mana, but could not build it himself…
I shook my head. In the end, I could keep blaming New York or Orion or even myself and coming up with ludicrous theories about why he was the way he was, but nothing would do me any good; what was done was done and all I could do was try to undo it, which was already an apparently insurmountable task.
The only way of doing that would be going to the physical Scholomance entrance - I trusted the enclaves to have the exact location of it - opening it, which would be akin to opening a gate to hell, given how much maleficaria was inside, including Patience, and getting Orion out against his will. It would already be a lot even if there wasn’t a chance that the school would be so far gone into the void that we would never be able to find it.
So yeah, all that thinking was bad.
“Orion is still there,” I said, both because I felt like I owed it to my mother, and to break the silence that enabled the excruciating path my mind was taking. “We destroyed the school, and Orion is still there.”
“You what ?” She asked, dumbfounded. So it turns out the only thing I had to do to shock my zen mother was to destroy the Scholomance. I gave her as brief an account as I could, explaining how the school wanted to do better, and the only way we had found to help it was the insane honeypot plan. Then I told her Orion had been left behind trying to keep the mals from escaping.
I didn’t say anything about my own involvement with him, but I had a strong feeling she knew, if only by the strain in my voice when I said his name. I waited for her to bring up the note and tell me that if I had listened to her, I wouldn’t be in this position; but of course, that was what I would do in her shoes, and Mum wasn’t petty like me, so she just listened with her face contorted into something that was equal parts worry and sadness.
Not long after I had finished my disturbing tale, she told me she was ready to fold again.
The inside of the London enclave was even more luxurious than I had imagined, it was like a 5-star hotel had gone for a Buckingham Palace theme, and I couldn’t even concentrate on it enough to be mad.
We were welcomed - if you can call a sour look of distrust a welcome - by Domina McIntosh herself, who led us to a sitting room where Alfie and Sarah were waiting, and I was sure they were there exclusively to recognize me and corroborate or deny what I said. Alfie gave me a weak smile and started to say something, but one look from the Domina silenced him. Sarah only looked green.
From what I had gathered from both Domina Rhys-Lake and Domina McIntosh, the enclaves weren’t very happy with the destruction of the school, and it would probably take them a very long time to stop being bitter for being left out of the decision.
Every now and again, someone came to talk to the Domina, whispering nervously, and from the little I heard, I gathered the parents weren’t taking well both their children’s early return and the cancellation of induction. The first category might be more easily placated, because their children would have been able to explain our plan and how it changed their chances outside, but the parents of the would-be inductees would take a lot more time.
I knew it didn’t matter what they thought, the school was gone and they could not do anything about it.
After about ten minutes of awkward silence - in which I had to do my best to concentrate on the comings and goings of the enclave people to avoid letting my mind wander again - the New York enclave arrived.
Domina Rhys-Lake was the first one through the door, and I recognized Orion’s beaky nose, which she carried like a designer accessory. Behind her were two men and…
“El!” Chloe squeaked, coming around the grown-ups to hug me - awkwardly, I was still sitting - which caused one of the men to purse his lips disapprovingly.
I already knew I liked Chloe, against my better judgment, I just hadn’t realized how much until I had her arms around me and it actually improved my very poor mental state. While we were having our little reunion, the Dominas were saying a proper greeting.
Chloe sat beside me on the little sofa, and between her and my mother, I felt like I could face Ophelia Rhys-Lake.
“Now, Galadriel,” she started, not bothering with introductions. “Care to explain what happened to my son?”
The way she said “son” sent a shiver up my spine in the worst way possible. She said it like someone inquiring about a very expensive car someone else had dared to drive and ended up damaging. Like he was a thing, a very valuable one, but a thing nonetheless.
I tried to begin from our plan, but the man who had not liked Chloe hugging me interrupted my explanation to say the enclave kids had already told them about it, so I began again from when I had cast the destruction spell.
“It worked, the school was severed from the gates.” I took a deep breath to stabilize my voice before moving on to the next part. “It sent the mals into a frenzy to escape, Orion was taking care of them before they could jump and try for the gate, but then… Patience came at us, only it was not just Patience, it had eaten Fortitude, or maybe the opposite, but it was the biggest maw-mouth I have ever seen.”
Mum put her arm around me when it started to look too much like I was about to lose it. And I was. I hated maw-mouths with all my being, they had taken everything from me: my father, a good chunk of my mental stability when I entered them, and now Orion.
“It was coming for the gate too and it was so big that the chasm between the school and the gate would be like a crack on the sidewalk, it would come out. Orion sent me back through the gates so he could kill it, but there were less than thirty seconds left on the timer…”
I didn’t say anything about how Orion had looked at it, how he probably wouldn’t have come out even if the gates had stayed wide open.
“Then the boy is dead, and you are just wasting our time,” the obnoxious man said.
“Hold on, Quayle, we don’t know that! Orion is a skilled hunter, he…” The other man started, and there was something about the way he moved and spoke that convinced me he was Orion’s father.
“It’s a maw-mouth, for god’s sake! No seventeen-year-old would be able to kill one!” Quayle, who I belatedly realized was Todd’s father, insisted.
“Well, I did,” I blurted, “twice.”
For a moment all of the adults, including my mother, looked at me like I was a bit delusional.
“Chloe?” Todd’s father prompted.
“It was the maw-mouth Todd saw, she was a wreck the next day, so we really think she did it,” Chloe answered in a small voice.
“Yet you didn’t see it,” he said, smug.
“I saw it,” Alfie came to my defense, I had almost forgotten he and Sarah were there, along with their silent, but observant Domina. “Not the first one, but she did kill one in the graduation hall, she saved a guy from Salta. It looked like she already knew how to do it, so I believe her about Todd’s too.”
“How did you do it?” Domina Rhys-Lake asked, it was the first time she had really looked at me like I had something important to say.
“La Main de la Mort, a few dozen times,” I replied, trying to keep my head high. This was the time when the adult enclavers would really see who - or rather what - they were dealing with. “It kills the people inside, and then the maw-mouth itself.”
I managed to neither cry nor vomit while talking about it, so that was always a plus, what I did instead was focus on my anger because they did not seem to grasp the urgency of our situation, every second that we spent discussing pointless things increased the chance that Orion would be lost forever.
“Orion can survive a maw-mouth,” I insisted, trying to convince myself as much as them. “But he can’t survive being lost to the void, so we need to go get him now. If you don’t think you can do it, well, I can, I just need the mana. So if you give it to me, along with the directions to the gates, I’ll be on my way.”
“No,” Ophelia said, which made half the people - me, Mum, Chloe, Alfie, and Orion’s dad - look at her like she had killed an entire litter of puppies right in front of our eyes.
“What?” I snapped.
“No,” she repeated, in the same emotionless voice, “it’s too costly and too dangerous, even if the school hasn’t been lost to the void yet. What is done is done, you destroyed the Scholomance and Orion with it.”
And once again I wanted to burn everything to the ground, to kill every single one of them, but this time I felt like I could actually do it. It wouldn’t matter that I didn't have the power myself, there was so much power just in this room, safely tucked inside all of them, and I could use it to save someone that actually deserved to live. Maybe this was it, maybe this was what my great-grandmother had seen, maybe she had known that between all of these people and Orion, there was only ever one choice. I didn’t even care that such a big gulp of malia would rot me from the inside, I cared about Orion, which they did not.
Not even his father, who was still looking resentfully at the Domina, but did not say anything to contradict her.
My murderous intent must have been so clear that everyone, even my friends, leaned away instinctively. Only Mum didn’t, she only tugged me close to her, trying to counter all the violence boiling inside of me with love.
Oh, Mum.
It would break her, if I grabbed at the enclavers, leaving them mere husks. It would be more merciful to grab at her too, so she wouldn’t have to see that I had, in fact, turned out to be a monster. It was so appalling for me to even think about killing Mum that I instantly deflated.
“That's why he never loved any of you,” I said, instead of killing them, “because deep down he always knew that he was nothing more than a tool, and now that it's too expensive to get back, you're just going to leave him there to rot.”
His father had the decency to look ashamed, but the Domina didn’t even flinch.
“Don’t confuse being sensible with being heartless, Galadriel,” she said coldly, “if I believed we could get my son back, I would help you. Orion is dead, or as good as it, and what you’re asking me to do is to waste the resources I can use to protect the children who actually need it, since you have robbed them of the Scholomance…”
Chloe started to speak, probably to deflect the blame from me, but Domina Rhys-Lake shut her up with a glance.
“... just so you can see for yourself that he is beyond saving.”
I did not think it was possible for me to hate her even more, but that little speech did it for me. Not because she was blaming me for what had been a group decision and effort, I didn’t give a single fuck about that, I knew we had made the right choice and that was enough for me. What made the anger go back to murder territory was that, deep down, I knew she was right.
If I had been at the physical gates five minutes after he had shoved me through the spelled ones, with all the New York mana behind me, maybe I could have saved him - both from Patience and himself - but saving him now seemed as likely as he just walking through the doors and saying “what’s up?”
And I didn’t want to listen to her being right, I didn’t want to give up, because if I did, if tried to move on with my life, I’d need to accept that Orion was dead, maybe not today, maybe not even in a week - which is how much time a wizard can live on mana alone -, but soon; and he would die without ever hearing me say that I love him too, which was worse for me than for him, because I was sure he would be so far gone into the killing frenzy by the time a mal finally got him, that he wouldn’t even remember my name. And I refused to let that happen, I refused to let it go, so I would hold on to whatever string of hope I could get, I would hold on to him.
And I would get him out even if nobody else believed I could.