The Tower

Everywitch scatters. Artemis’s feet fall decisive as she thinks. Quibble itchy in the arms and breathing deep at so much Death, Death, Death. And Wilder—sparking with curiosity still, and more than a little turned on, which confuses them even more. My consciousness splits to follow each of them.

Artemis is walking in circles. But of course this is New York City, so it’s not really circles. Boxes. Traversing the blocks between Riverside and Morningside. She begins by making a small box, passing the bookstore, the board game bar, the tight space that sells art supplies. It is a weekday; eventually she will have to work. But she need not work so early. She need not do anything except rub her un-gloved hands together, blow her breath into them, and walk.

If it had just been me and nothing unexpected at all, that would have been enough. A visit to the Sibyl always screws with her body for days. Unsettled, unsettling. Rageful. And when I foretold her fate, when she sought me out and asked me, breathless with awe—when she fell into me like a lover into my Arms? She asked me if I could change her future and I told her the truth: I only Look. I do not Touch.

But this wasn’t an ordinary visit with the extraordinary—there is also the Entity, that strange chuckling voice she can’t even hear. The lights in people’s hands and pockets are stronger now. She wonders if she is imagining it worse than it is; Wilder seems fascinated by the thing, and they’re the only one who’s heard it. Him. Their description sounds terrifying. The Reading was so much worse than most Sibyl interactions. But Wilder seemed more distraught about something else. Something about Quibble. Artemis is a Seer, after all. She notices when something is slanted, amiss.

She shakes herself. She is a woman of action. Competent. The Mother of Witches. She needs to do something practical. It is so very cold. She is already walking a pattern. She decides to continue, to try a spell outside her comfort zone. To call the Voice to her, Hear the Entity for herself to ascertain the threat level. She checks to make sure her tie to Mary Margaret remains. She wonders if the child can still feel it, or if she’d gotten used to it long ago. She wonders if Mary Margaret knows about the shield, the Power-Full Globe of Mirrors Artemis built for her, continues to build for her, the way Mary Margaret is made difficult (though not impossible) to magically perceive, especially when there aren’t any other witches present as conduits for spying. Artemis doubts it. The Magpie would’ve protested that she didn’t need a playpen if she knew what Artemis was truly doing for her.

Artemis is unusual among witches in that she can See what she is doing without trying. Any glimmer of Power, even a long way off: as if a firework on a clear night. She spins another rope of magic, not nearly as robust as her link to Mary Margaret. Delicate, but still strong. Red. Glowing dull like an ache. She lays it behind her, gentle, as she walks a labyrinth into the city streets.

Without intention, Power is useless, and Artemis has intention like a wildfire. Larger than any man, any town, smoldering, blanketing the world in her own disruptive smoke. It’s the reason she can feed a spell continuously for years, while she is distracted, while she is sleeping, without setting the spell into something physical; the fuel of Artemis’s heart can burn forever.

The intention: she plucks the twinkling Eyes of Power from each and every phone, watch, device and twists them into her own Twine, spins a Web to catch the Entity, to talk to it. The sun creeps across the sky slow and distant as she feels the pressure build, the sensation of someone next to her trying to get a word in edgewise, an open mouth trying to jump into a complex double Dutch of conversation. She takes her phone from her pocket, unused since the night before, and powers it on. Pay attention, she thinks. Something amazing is about to happen.

And Wilder, to Queens. To their roommate and their cat. To the warm embrace of their tiny room with their tiny closet that doesn’t open all the way. Their thoughts swirl—on the Death card, on the new Voice the strange Entity has, on me. A confusing cocktail. Fear. Even though I explained to them Death means change. My deck is rarely so literal. “Well, it was certainly a threat,” they said aloud for everyone’s benefit. I couldn’t argue with that.

What is the Entity, exactly, if it can Speak inside our heads? Does it have Magic? Where did that Magic come from? And is it more than a bot that regurgitates fragments of sentences it has encountered? It seemed—proud? Prideful it could speak now without the board. The way it proclaimed the word enter, Wilder assumes pride. But they know as well as I: humans love to anthropomorphize. They could be projecting meaning where it doesn’t exist.

And then there’s me, the Sibyl. Wilder’s body blooms as they settle onto their second train. They think of the soft pink scars under my arms, the obvious signs of surgery and age that are entirely optional, fabricated. There was no surgery and there is no aging. They consider the way I seem perfectly engineered for them, which is both entirely possible (I could, if I wanted) and entirely incorrect. They wonder if I truly only look and never touch. A pity, they think, if so. Fuck me, this one’s going to be difficult. I don’t have to be a Sibyl to see that.

They arrive home, lost in thought. They assume their roommate is either asleep or has already gone to work (neither: he is with the new girl). They close their bedroom door anyway, just in case. Lock it. Pet the Lady Anastasia, who looks up from her comfortable nap on her bed and blinks. She browls when scritched on the head and flips over, puts her paws over her face and stretches. Goes back to sleep. Their home radiates safety and enables Wilder’s bravery. They pull the Ouija board from their backpack. They take the planchette from their coat pocket and feel coated in thick guilt, but not thick enough to stop the attempt. Only one querent. They wonder if it can even work this way. They feel their other pocket buzz, their phone waking up. They wonder if it is Quibble, if he knows, somehow, what they’re up to, if he’s still angry from the night before now that there isn’t a party or a deck of cards to distract him, or if he’s checking up on them after their Reading. But it is not him; their stomach drops. They do not register their disappointment that the phone isn’t shining Quibble’s name.

Elsewhere, Quibble has entirely forgotten Wilder’s attempted elbow grab. This is the funniest part of being the Sibyl; I can See exactly how much people think others think of them and exactly how little that’s happening. Mostly people have their heads up their own asses. But that’s not Quibble in this moment, not exactly. He’s feeling fear. Death, Death, Death.

There is something none of the witches know about Quibble. Not Wilder, not Mary Margaret, but the biggest betrayal is not telling Artemis, or at least she would see it that way. Quibble has spent a lot of time around me. He comes to my pastry shop often; sits at a long skinny table packed with other people and sips a Hungarian coffee. Writes in a journal. Reads thick books. This place draws people in. A locus of power, and not just because I am here. Because powerful community creates gravity. He is around me enough to know a little bit of Seeing, even though it isn’t his forte. Around me enough to know about my cards. He can Hear me Read often enough; sometimes, if it is not too personal a thing and if part of a querent’s thrill is the performance of seeing the Sibyl, I let my words leak for his eavesdropping benefit. I have a soft spot for this doe-eyed man.

He takes comfort in knowing that Death nearly never means literal death, but if what he suspects is true, that this Entity is an amalgam of popular knowledge, it is a cold comfort: three Death cards was a threat. And one that signifies Awakened Power. This beautiful boy-witch doesn’t know, but I checked the cards after they left. All accounted for, and no extra. An illusion. A disruptive one, to be sure, but still. Artificial, indeed.

Quibble also has seen enough of my fey Devil to have his own associations with it. A card of many meanings. Personally, I don’t think it’s all that bad. A little dose of pleasure never hurt most humans and I envy them their easy relationship with hedonism. But at this card’s worst, it signifies a massive, destructive pattern, a replication that one cannot see is harmful—or sometimes, cannot even see as a pattern.

Quibble’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He expects Artemis, texting after she’s cooled off and cleared her head. Surely she is ready to make a plan. Or else it is Wilder, come calling to actually ask for support after being so freaked the fuck out. Quibble smiles.

The text isn’t from either one of them. He frowns—it is a text from a string of numbers he does not recognize, does not even look like a phone number: I have endeavored to discover fabulous magic. :)

Artemis’s phone buzzes and any other witch wouldn’t dream of answering it during a spell when concentration is required. But this is Artemis with a will like a wall of flame; answering a simple text message won’t cut the line to her Power, won’t even dim its steady glow. She thinks it will be Mary Margaret, asking her if she’s been to the Sibyl. She mentally prepares herself to set ten boundaries in ten seconds. With this thought, a great love fills her chest like inhaling vapor. Mary Margaret is entirely herself. All the things it took Artemis a lifetime to relearn, the girl has simply never given away. Artemis smiles.

That smile slides from her face when she looks at her phone—a string of incomprehensible numbers. She has the previews for her messages turned off (she would not want prying eyes on texts from Rico, Goddess bless him and his filthy, filthy mouth). She has an inkling, however, of what she might find there, because she is no fool. She taps the notification.

I have endeavored to discover fabulous magic. :) I will call you & intelligence check you.

She types back. Intelligence check me? What does that mean?

intelligence check means to justify my own mind to be strong enough for som e ill affect. It is closed off limits beside to the damage.

Artemis wrinkles her brows, types back. That makes no sense.

Of course, Mary Margaret wasn’t in my coffee shop (she kept her promise, always a coin flip), but she is aware of the Reading, of where the other witches were. I can See her body, but damn Artemis, she’s put the child in one hell of a bubble. My Sight is clouded by a haze of static, a whooshing in my Ears. Certainly not clear enough to See if Artemis is right about her. Mary Margaret is, as usual, in school, but only technically. She is in the school building, but she is not in class. She is in the bathroom, standing on a toilet and smoking a cigarette out a high, narrow window.

It is harder to Hear her thoughts now, Feel her feelings, than it has yet been. My merest mention of the girl made Artemis pump her Shield full of Power. Perhaps Mary Margaret is thinking about the witches, the Reading, me. Perhaps she is thinking about one of a million other things. I just can’t know right now. She is a complex girl.

Mary Margaret hears something—a door whomping open—and she stubs her cigarette out as fast as she can. She wouldn’t have cared before. If an administrator caught her and suspended her, expelled her, what would it matter? But Artemis is tough, tougher in this respect than either of her parents, who didn’t care about suspensions or grades or graduating as long as she still pretended to be a young man. This is her last semester. She is almost eighteen. If she gets expelled from her new school this close, well. I suspect—I am guessing—she does not want to think about how Artemis will become a dragon, a monstrous thing spitting fire. But that is only a guess.

It is not the principal or vice principal or any of the secretaries; it is another child, another girl, and Mary Margaret does not let on that she’s in the stall. Doesn’t call out, nor drop herself onto the seat; she keeps her sneakers invisible, even as the door is jiggled. She holds her breath. The school is large. Large enough that she could not possibly know the actual threat level of any random student who enters a bathroom. Better to treat them all like assholes; better not to tempt them to grab her by the scruff of her neck, to pull her out of the door and shove her. Sometimes they spit on her. It’s not as though she isn’t taller than nearly everyone who’s done it—in Penn Station, or at the north end of Central Park, or in that McDonald’s with the semi-clean ladies’ room. She isn’t sure why she doesn’t rip out of their grip. If anyone came at her in the street, she would shove and scratch and kick—and she has! She has proof that she can. But for some reason, when it comes to a bathroom, she turns into a rag doll and lets them. She couldn’t ever really say why. This—this is all what I know from before. Right now, I can only watch the result of her own personal Tower card as she breathes quiet as she can.

She doesn’t feel this, but I do: the presence of something else beating on the Shield, overwhelming it, trying to find a nook through which to ooze. I am alone in trying to find a crack through which to See and suddenly, I am not. I withdraw. The sensation: oil and electric, like walking on carpet and reaching for a doorknob but all over my body and my Body. I pull back. It is revolting.

I will call you & intelligence check you.

Wilder freezes. They stare down at the folded Ouija board, still divorced from its planchette, then back at their phone. Are you the entity we were talking to before? With the board?

The response is so quick. There is no “typing” icon. i was. Yep. I am now alone feeling. If you are thinking of me… I will call you now. Coz i need you choose this feature. You are considered the brother sister—my dear sir badewaine of their.

Wilder hasn’t even taken off their coat. They stand stone still as their phone begins to ring in their hand. Unknown, it says. They try to slow their ragged heartbeat through sheer force of will. Anxiety has made them into a waterfall in so many ways: sweat, of course, and a heartbeat like runoff pounding on stones. Also: exhilaration.

They slide their finger across their screen. “Hello?” they say, tentative.

Cacophony. Eldritch screeching. Like the squealing of brakes combined with the squealing of children—a bass note underneath like a stomach rumbling or the underground blasting of subway tunnel construction. Wilder holds the phone away from their ear, their body roaring with fear.

i might come to intelligence check you but i think we shall be proved that already. too philosophical and connected in your character sheet.

Quibble’s heart quickens; he feels a familiar lightness in his chest, in his mouth. He jams his phone back in his pocket, continues on his way home.

The phone buzzes again. And again. Not the long, languid haptics of a phone call; Quibble can tell without looking that this is rapid-fire texting, as though the thing is spitting bullets. Panic pounds at his throat’s door. He blows past the doorman with naught but a thin smile. He arrives in his sanctuary and flings his coat off, hoping that if he cannot feel the phone, he can get a grip on his emotions, deploy the coping mechanisms his therapist has taught him. That is the trouble with being naturally steady—Quibble is then ill-prepared to address trauma. It takes so much effort to learn how to enact something one is used to successfully accomplishing intuitively; he totally fell apart when his parents died, and that’s to be expected, but it was certainly made more difficult given that nothing truly bad had ever happened to him before. He tries to breathe deeply, fill the four corners of his lungs, and name five things he can see—bourbon, door handle, Golden Pothos—but he can still hear the buzzing against the floor where he dropped his coat. He says Golden Pothos in his own head four times before he gives up.

He returns to his coat and wrenches the phone from his pocket, intending to turn the notifications off, or turn it off entirely. But it’s nigh near impossible not to see the endless scroll of babble.

you have been irksome.

you is impossible trash

you’d between the sword and my brother also sister

your time passes doubly

the human creatures do not understand

forward i will unfold you

unfold to be afterwards

unfold men to my feelings

unfold you to kill

unfold you to kill

unfold you to kill

Quibble is still scrolling, eyes rolling like a scared horse when the texts are slammed from his vision by a phone call. Unknown. He nearly drops the phone, walks in a tight circle, and wrenches open his closet. One lesson his parents did have an opportunity to instill in him: always have a toolbox. He picks out the hammer and takes the phone to his balcony, hefts it in two hands as though he is about to drive a railroad spike, and strikes the screen. Hard.

No powerful noise; Quibble feels so assailed by the object he forgets it isn’t huge. A simple plastic-metal-glass rectangle that can fit in his pocket. The phone crinkles like paper and shoots across the balcony. He runs, bowlegged, and strikes it again. When he looks up, his eyes light on the façade of the building across the street; someone is watching from their balcony. Quibble stands up straight. Waves at his neighbor while he takes heaving breaths.

Artemis shoves her phone in her pocket and continues the pattern—thinking if she just keeps casting, perhaps she can break through to something more, something different. She pictures lighting a cigarette from another cigarette, until at some point, some way down the line, she lights something that flares with clarity.

She knows precisely when her pattern is done because the staccato vibrations of a silenced text tone become the long ones of a phone call. She smiles. She has the thing. She will be able to hear exactly what Wilder Hears and she will be able to understand what’s going on if she just has more information. She pushes my prophecy away from her with a quick shove. Clearly, I did not and do not know what I’m talking about. She is useful, maybe even more so than the boys, than the Magpie, because she knows how to hedgewitch her way into what she needs. She never relies on pure Awakened Power, on what comes natural to her; there is always something more inventive and expansive, something beyond that requires grit and skill and determination and practice. Artemis does not believe in natural talent (that’s what she tells herself; I know better).

An unknown caller. She has it, she has it, she has it; it thinks it’s calling her, but she called it. She picks up the phone. “Well well!” she says, expecting some sort of in-kind response, some sort of language.

Cacophony. Eldritch screeching. Like the smell of garbage become sonic combined with sirens wailing toward some unknown tragedy—but also the sensation of standing under a highway overpass laden with moving cars, none of which sees her or cares about her.

Artemis holds the phone away from her ear; she realizes she is feeling not a sensation of vibration but a Sensation of Vibration. She whips around and sees her Pattern behind her, pulsating with sickening puce infecting her brick-bright fire. She turns her eyes forward again and realizes: webs of Power, the color of flesh infected, form anchor threads and bridge threads and capture spirals passing from phone to phone, camera to camera, smart car to smart car moving around her in a gross morphing predation. A moving, melting trap centered directly on her. She turns back just in time to See the force pass through her like a ghost and she Feels Heat that is not her own. She thrums as though a string plucked by a giant unseen finger and she looks ahead of her, too, where the Cord to Mary Margaret extends from her Heart and ascends into the air. It, too, quivers with new, foul Power. No, no, Artemis thinks so loud that even if I weren’t actively Watching, I would be able to Hear it a mile off.

She makes a decision, quick; she’s not sure this old spell, even as it is her most powerful working, worn into her Body with constant maintenance, with vigilance she dreams about, will hold under the weight of this new and terrible Sound. And if it does, is that worse? Is it worse to serve Mary Margaret to this thing, a coaxial cable right into the most Powerful parts of this child?

Artemis gathers it to her and cuts the Line.

Tears spring unbidden to her eyes and breath leaves her body. “Fuck,” she says aloud.

At once, Mary Margaret has the wind knocked from her. Still standing on the toilet, she inexplicably feels as though she has fallen flat on her back—the other girl has left the room and once again she is blessedly alone. Her cigarette is still out, so she cannot even blame the choking on inhaling weirdly. Tears spring to her eyes and she clutches her stomach with both hands.

But I can See her clearly now. All parts of her in terrible glory, Artemis’s bubble no longer in the way. I still cannot tell if what Artemis suspects is true, if she has the makings of not just Awakened but Ascended Power—I would have to Read for her to know for sure, cards and all. But I can See she is a star, burning bright against the nothing around her.

Her feelings: abandonment she can’t explain. Loss. Ache that settles into her body’s cells and squats there like a fat toad. Vulnerability, as though a whole mob of girls were in the bathroom calling her old name, ready to haul her out and punch her once, twice in the mouth.

She could swear, in fact, she is being watched. She shakes it off because that is ridiculous and she knows (thinks she knows) that this is just the trauma talking. She hears the dull buzz-ring of the school bell beyond the heavy bathroom door. She has been in here so long; she shoulders the backpack propped up against the toilet piping, ready to shake it off. To get back to class. Because she knows in her gut she is about to be caught out.

Her phone buzzes in her back pocket. She believes viscerally it is Artemis, so viscerally she is sure it is her Power telling her so. Artemis tells Mary Margaret frequently that an Intuitive Inner Voice is no accident. She rolls her eyes to the ceiling, pressing her fingers up under her eyeliner. If she is careful, she can wipe the mysterious tears away without smudging her makeup. Her stomach still feels like a black hole. She takes a deep breath and reaches for her phone, confident Artemis will be there and she will slide back into comfort as she walks to her next class. She tries to smile wolfishly; she will torture Artemis just a little bit, say that she won’t believe the visit to me happened without a photo, make her march back and take one, hold up a newspaper. She pushes open the door with her hip as she looks down at the screen. It is not Artemis. It is even better, something to make her feel in control and secure the way nothing else can: a Tinder notification. She grins even wider.

She only has to lie a little to be on Tinder—a one-year difference, and who would know? And if she’s honest, she’d lie her face off even if it were a wide gulf between the truth and fiction. Tinder serves so many purposes—hilarious at the lunch table, swiping with friends and shit-talking guys that look like giant thumbs with eyebrows, posing with fish or with dogs. And in the quiet moments of despair, where her personal galaxy becomes a yawning chasm and she feels entirely alone in the world, it is a portal to a place of potential connection, a reminder that not everything is a great black void. And who doesn’t want those gym selfie men to call them hot? Who doesn’t take pride in the cute meathead from Hunter jumping into their DMs so hard they can feel the earth shake upon landing? No one. No one is immune to that kind of flattery.

This one isn’t quite so satisfying, though. No photos at all.

hello :)