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When Artie and Eli came over, I didn't realize that I would spend the entire day with my head in books. At one point, my mother came in and then she left. Dante woke up, stumbled around like a zombie, and finally showered. He and Eli ended up in the living room, quietly arguing over what series they should binge while waiting on Artie and me.
I started to go through the pages that Artie selected for me. There were mentions of the prophecy, that would lead to Artie's birth and his mentoring of me. There was more history on magic than I thought there could be. I wrote down what I thought was important in my own grimoire and Artie would point out a few select facts as well.
It seemed like the nonhumans were at war in the early days as much as the humans were. And I couldn't help but notice the fact that the human wars were sometimes covering the nonhuman wars. It was interesting and when I saw the pattern I looked at the Artie.
He nodded. "It was easier for people to find bodies that were mutilated horrifically and explain it away to the war than it would be to otherwise look into it. Sometimes, if you have a feral werewolf or a deranged vampire, it's best that you don't go looking for them. Especially if you're human and you don't know what you're coming up against."
I nodded. It made sense.
I dug in a little deeper and I noticed that there were mentions, throughout the books of springs drying up. At first, it was only one or two in a century but as we closed in on our present date, they were dwindling at a much faster rate.
I looked down at the notebook that I also had handy, the one with a puppy on the cover, and then looked up at Artie.
"Wait. Did I miss something? Am I miscounting?"
Artie looked at my notebook. "No, you're right."
I looked down at my notebook as well and felt a rising panic in my throat.
There were only five springs left in the world. In the beginning, there were five hundred.
"So I'm supposed to restore all of that?" I asked in my voice was a higher pitch than normal.
"You're supposed to do what you are meant to do. If you are supposed to restore all five hundred, then you will, in whatever way you are meant to. But if you are only supposed to restore half of that or even a fraction of that, then that's what you will do. Don't think of it in terms of numbers, think of it in terms of what you can do."
"I'm not sure what I can and can't do."
"Right now? What you can do is learn what you need to," Artie said and tapped the book in front of me.
"And tomorrow? What am I supposed to do about tomorrow? The investigations start tomorrow and –"
"And tomorrow, you will do what you have to do. You will do what you were meant to do,” Artie reassured him.
“But what does that mean? It doesn’t answer my question at all,” I pointed out.
Artie nodded like he knew my frustration and panic, but I knew he couldn't understand because this was where he belonged. I understood less than nothing at this point.
“Being able to wield magic means that you can weigh what the cost is. And if the cost is too much, the magic will fight you. You will feel that. But I have no doubt that your magic won’t fight you, because you know what is good and right. You just have to keep that in your mind," Artie said.
"You make it sound so easy," I said as I put my head down on the table and sighed. "Are you sure that you have the right guy?"
Artie laughed. "I'm sure."
I sat up and looked at him and he stared back at me. Finally, he sighed and said, "Look at it this way."
In between us, he created a circle, like the one I saw for the first time in the forest. This time, it was a vibrant green on half and a dark blue on the other half.
"Dante! Come look at this!" I said.
Artie rolled his eyes but didn't say anything about Dante coming in to see his demonstration. When Dante was seated next to me, Artie picked up his explanation.
"When you have a spellcaster or a magic user, one of the first things you learn, or what you can feel, is a balance. It's the balance of everything around us. Man and nature. The natural and unnatural. Magic and the conventional. And you learn how to balance that. It's the most natural thing in the world that you can do. You can feel it now, you just don't know it yet," Artie said.
Where the blue and green lines intersected, a small figurine of myself appeared. Dante gasped and leaned forward. When he tried to touch the representation of me, it swatted at him. Dante giggled.
“When you use magic to one degree or another, you learn to balance it out on one side. Like so," Artie said and lifted one finger to weigh down the dark blue side. As he did, the little me jumped up on the green side and weighted it down so that the circle was even again.
"For the most part, your magic will balance itself out. It’s self-correcting. But, if you were to sway to one side too much, the magic will correct you."
He let the circle go and the representation of me swung down so that it was holding onto the circle by his two hands. The circle flipped so that it was nearly vertical instead of horizontal and immediately, the green side glowed a vicious red and the smaller version of me let go. He shook his hands out like the circle had burned him.
"You never want your magic to fight you. If it starts to fight you, there is a conflict and that conflict can grow bigger. Think of it like cancer."
Once again the small representation of me jumped over to the green side and pulled it down so that it was vertical once more. The green glowed red but this time, I could see that there were black spots appearing in both the blue and green sides.
I watched as those black spots grew deeper and bigger until it was eating holes through the entire circle. A moment later the entire circle was black and it crumbled and fell away. The smaller version of me did the same.
"It rarely happens. I haven't even heard of a case this century," Artie said.
"I'm not sure how that might help me though."
"Think about what we've been talking about. You use your intent to guide your magic. But, your magic will not willingly go where it thinks there could be an imbalance. It creates a codependent relationship that one cannot exist without the other. It will not go where it cannot go and you cannot direct it unless it wants to go. It guides you as much as you guide it," Artie said.
It clicked. I looked up at him. "I cannot go where it will not guide me."
Artie nodded.
"But it has no direction where I don't guide it."
Artie clapped. "Exactly. Does that make sense?"
"Yes," I said, victorious.
Dante shook his head. I laughed and patted him on the back.
Then, with my hand still on Dante's shoulder, something struck me. "But wait."
Artie looked away and I knew that I had stumbled onto something that was probably too soon to ask.
But as the saying goes, curiosity killed the cat.
"If I were to force the imbalance, would that affect Dante?"
Artie hesitated and looked over his shoulder, where Eli was leaning against the fridge, his arms crossed. He stared back at his brother and Artie seemed to be looking for some kind of permission from him. Eli gave no indication of what he thought Artie should say and finally, he turned around and looked at us.
"Whatever one of you does, will always impact the other one. But now that you are both stronger and soaked in magic, it multiplies it, many times over. I can't find as much history on Powers and Virtues like yourself, but that much is clear in what I could find. If you create an imbalance, it creates the same imbalance in Dante. If he goes on a murderous rampage, that will spread a dark stain to you as well. Whatever happens to one, happens to the other."
I looked over to Dante, but he didn't seem the least bit concerned. When he caught me staring at him he looked concerned. "What? What's the matter?" He said.
"Doesn't that bother you?" I asked.
"No. I trust you."
I stared at him.
"Don't you trust me?" He asked, sounding a little hurt.
"Of course I do. But that's just..." I searched for the words. "Huge."
"I think you are thinking too big. I think you are thinking of saving the world. At least the magic side of it. Don't think of it like that. Think of it like you are saving just me. That's how I look at it. If I stay good, and so do you. Does that sound dumb?" Dante asked and looked over at Artie and Eli.
"No. It's how it's supposed to work. It's simple and easy. For the two of you, it should be anyway," Artie said.
For some reason, he seemed relieved. Then I realized that I hadn't asked anything harder than what would happen to the two of us.
I hadn't asked what would happen to the rest of them if we created imbalance.
"So, now I have to ask about what you were talking about with Azolata," I said and pushed aside the books. I put my forearms on the table and looked at Artie. Eli pulled up a chair beside his brother, perhaps to show support. Or maybe he was just looking to reassure Artie.
As I leaned forward, Artie leaned back and slid his hands underneath his legs. Now he looked his age. Now he looked like a 16-year-old kid who had been caught smoking under the bleachers.
"Be careful. Because if I tell you what we were talking about, it could taint whatever decision you make in the future," he said and looked away from me.
I thought about it. “I'm okay with that. But, I need to know what you were talking about. What kind of choice? And anchor me? What does that mean?"
Artie hesitated and reached over to my puppy dog notebook and pulled it towards himself. He grabbed a pencil decorated with dragons and flipped to a blank page. “In ordinary wolf packs, there are a couple of key players. First, is the alpha. She is our leader. She's always stronger than the rest of us and has the history of our line memorized."
He wrote down Celia's name and after that wrote Alpha.
I nodded.
"After the alpha comes her second-in-command. Her beta.”
Artie drew a line from Celia to Eli's name and after his name, wrote Beta.
“Back in the old days, there would be even more betas. They would all come after her second-in-command though."
From Eli’s name, he drew five lines and wrote beta underneath those lines, and I found it curious that he did not capitalize that word.
"That is a traditional wolf pack. However, with a Power and Virtue, new things come into play."
"Wait, where do you fit in?" Dante asked as he studied the paper. Artie paused with his dragon pencil in the air and looked down at his notebook.
"Not every pack comes with the Sentinel. But if they do they are equal to the Beta, the second-in-command."
Artie drew a line from Celia to his own name and then wrote Sentinel after it on the same line as Eli’s.
Dante seemed satisfied with that and nodded.
"Now, with a Power and Virtue, they would go somewhere here," Artie said and drew a line from Celia off to one side and wrote my name and did the same with Dante's name on the other side of the paper, next to his own. All four of us were lined up now, between Celia and the betas, one name after the other.
For some reason, this struck me as particularly critical, like we were turning a corner that we couldn't backtrack.
When I looked up at everyone else gathered around the table, I realized that it wasn't just me. Everyone else was staring down at the paper between us like they had all just realized something that I was still trying to understand.
"With a Power and Virtue, and a Beta, and a Sentinel, the five of us create something like a circle. Within that circle, the power flows through all five of us," Artie explained. He connected all five of our names and it felt like the tension in the room increased even further. It felt like we were waiting for something to click or something to happen.
But there was nothing.
"If it were just the three of us like it's always been," Artie said and tapped his name, Eli's, and Celia's. "Then it would be the same as it's always been."
"But Lou and I, we've opened up the lines further, right?” Dante asked.
Artie nodded. "The two of you access more power and more magic than any pack has in a thousand years. That would make Celia, Eli, and me practically unstoppable."
I looked up across the table and meant Eli's eyes. "But Eli almost died the other day. That sounds like he is still pretty stoppable to me."
Artie sighed and stared down at the paper. He tapped the eraser against the notebook nervously and then put it down. Once more, he leaned back in his chair and met my eyes. This time, when I looked up at him, Celia was standing right behind him, in the doorway. Dante and I both jerked back a little bit, startled by her presence. Eli and Artie seemed to already be aware of her. She leaned against the fridge and crossed her arms across her chest. She shouldn't have looked so threatening in her wide-leg beige trousers and white blouse. She was even wearing glasses. She must've gotten off early from work or was on her lunch break.
"Go ahead. It's okay," she said to Artie.
Artie looked over his shoulder at her and she gave him a small smile.
He turned back to us. And picked up the pencil once more. "The three of us are a pack, bound together by blood. Even if we hated each other, we would always be a pack. Blood calls to blood, like it's always been since anyone can remember."
Artie drew a line, much darker this time from Celia to Eli to himself and then back up to Celia.
The lines that connected all five of us were much lighter, I noted.
"Right now, what we would commonly call you is Wanderers. You don't have a pack, and you are essentially orphans. You would have to ask Celia to join the pack if you wanted to. And I cannot stress that enough. The desire to be in our pack has to be prominent in your mind, otherwise, it could create conflict within all five of us that would eventually tear us all apart."
The words were heavy in the air as Artie paused.
"Right now, you are on our land. You are innocent. So the three of us are bound to protect you. Your magic recognizes us and there is a connection there, but it is threadbare. It's like a spider's web whereas the connection between the three of us is a steel chain."
I stared down at our names. I didn't know where to start or even what questions I should ask.
Eli leaned forward and took the pencil from Artie. “From what I understand, the magic inside you, Lou, and the strength inside you, Dante, is overflowing. That’s why it keeps overwhelming you, but if you were in our pack, that power would no longer overflow and take you over. Instead, it would be distributed among the pack. That’s what it means to be anchored.”
That seemed to be the only logical part of this entire conversation.
"As long as you remain on our land, we can protect you. But, if you were to leave right now and leave Glenwood Lock, our protection could not stretch that far," Celia said. “That’s the right of everyone on this land, that they are under our care.”
“And if we joined you? What would happen then?" Dante asked.
"The connection that the three of us have would be stretched to the two of you. And that would mean that even if you were on the other side of the world, nobody could touch you because you belonged to us," Artie said quietly.
"There is a catch," Eli said and looks behind him and Celia.
"Of course there is," I said.
"The Ascendancy put a cap on how large packs can be. Two parents, two kids. Packs no larger than four, at all costs. And it goes without saying you are a two-for-one deal, believe me, we know that," Eli said.
I could feel myself growing irritated at the mere mention of the Ascendancy. "Why?"
"Because, the more members of a pack, means that the alpha is more powerful. There are stories of a pack that grew so large in Mexico that their alpha was practically immortal. It created a war that lasted decades and the Ascendancy finally killed all of his family, all of his betas, and then him," Eli said quietly.
"Almost all of his family," Celia corrected quietly.
I looked between the three of them and understood they were the remains of that immortal pack.
"After that, when they heard of packs growing too large in number, they would send people to put members of that pack, or the entire pack, down."
It was yet another snag and yet one more reason to hate the Ascendancy.
"But there are only five of us. That wouldn’t make you immortal, or even close to it,” Dante said and he looked so concerned I couldn't help but put my hand on his forearm and give him a reassuring squeeze.
"He's right. We can’t put you guys in even more harm than your already in," I said.
"It wouldn't take a thousand or even five thousand betas to make Celia that unstoppable. It would only take you two," Eli said.
Somehow, the thought seemed even more unfathomable. Now, if we did choose to join them, then that meant that we can offer them the protection that they had never had before. For someone like me, an only child adored by two parents and practically handed everything on a silver platter, the responsibility was terrifying.
"So do we decide now?" Dante asked and looked over at me.
"No. This isn’t a decision you make lightly. Take your time. You know where to find us," Artie said.
With that, our meeting seemed to be over. Eli and Artie stood and the three of them left.
I looked over to Dante who looked just as stunned as I did.
"What do we do?" Dante asked.
It seemed like the question that had haunted me for the past four days.