They are well on the road and Artemis’s eyes are milky with Sight and entirely focused when the realization of something she forgot comes upon her like bricks dropped from the sky. “Fuck!” she shouts, and the whole car jumps.
Mary Margaret’s hands twitch on the wheel, and she steadies them back into the lane with an equally violent twitch. The witches’ hearts leap into their mouths. “What?” Mary Margaret doesn’t shout it, but she asks very loudly. “What? What happened?”
Artemis’s eyes are back to normal, or at least the disguised normal. They can’t see it, but I can: she is crying underneath her projection. Not sobs, nothing so dramatic. A simple, quiet flow of tears, instantly present. Normally she would build a dam, hold it back, continue burning forth, but she figures no one will notice. “Rico,” she says, her voice steady but laden with sorrow so plain it shocks even her. “I didn’t tell Rico. That we were leaving.”
The witches all picture it—tomorrow, or rather today. It is Saturday and it is Rico’s birthday. He will perform the Lucille Ball(s) act (a cross between I Love Lucy and Victor/Victoria) and he will walk under the window—and even though he is taking space, he will look up. The first time he does it, he will assume she’s not home, that no one is. But then he will perform on Thursday. Maybe an odd Wednesday, a story hour even though that’s become dangerous, and every time he passes by the window, the apartment will be dark. Eventually, space be damned, he will yell up to her fire escape. He will wait in her alleyway. And Artemis will not come out. He will do this, over and over again until one of her downstairs neighbors will say she’s not shown up. Later still, they will say she’s been evicted, all her things sold.
The witches wonder what he will think. But I know. Once again, even without future Sight, because I have Watched him. I know him. He will oscillate wildly between two possibilities. Either that she is dead or that she loathes him so much that she disappeared herself and her kid and her friends. He will lie awake in his bed, his jaw clenched as he grinds his teeth on the question: which is it? One is so much worse than the other—he could live with her hatred as long as she was alive. But the possibility that he might have done something, something he doesn’t know, haunts him, too. He kicks himself, punches himself, berates himself all while never moving a muscle. He tears himself down until he sleeps, exhausted from the work of self-flagellation and no one around him ever knows or notices.
It occurs to me that I cannot See this or anything because I do not, cannot know whether Artemis lives or dies. That perhaps this is why my Sight extends only to the cutting-edge present; whether these people will continue to exist, as they are now, is a coin flip.
“I can try to get him,” says Wilder from the back seat. “I can try to talk to him from here. I can do the thing, the inside-talking thing.”
When Artemis is painfully silent, Quibble answers, “They—the Sibyl—can do it from far away, farther than anyone I know of, but only sometimes. When the wind or the Wind is right.”
“Loving the vote of confidence,” Wilder says, their voice dry. “I can at least try. It seems like I can do a lot of stuff I don’t know about yet.”
Artemis considers. “Thank you,” she says, truly grateful. “Yes, please. Try.”
Wilder sinks their Hands into their own Power and Sees the waves their Voice makes. They wonder if it would be better to speak aloud, or to say it inside, or if there’s a difference at all? They don’t want to wound Artemis further, so they say it wordlessly. Rico? they say. Rico, it’s Wilder, the new guy. Hi. I’m with Artemis. We’re safe. We’re just—And they realize they don’t know how much he knows. They have no clue and it feels too fraught to ask. So they settle on We’re just having an emergency. And we’ll be back as soon as we can. Artemis—They glance at the back of her head, which doesn’t look like her at all. Wilder can see her weird-face in the rearview mirror; her eyes go the same strange white as before. She continues to guide them. “Miles left yet,” she murmurs, as though they had not had the conversation they’d just had. And yet. Wilder can hear the pressing down of feeling, siloing, compartmentalizing. The swell of mourning that will come later. Artemis loves you.
They Feel it as best they can—they pay attention to the waves, which rollick a jagged, loud broadcast message, though none of these particular witches are tuned into the right station, a station made only for one. But the farther from themself they Listen for it, Feel it, the waves gentle, slumping into ripples. Farther out still, even those gentle until there is nothing but calm. A Smooth Lake. They shout again and still. It fades so quickly. They’d be able to hit the car behind them. Maybe even the last town they saw an exit for. But not New York City. Perhaps if they knew Rico better, they could make like dialing a phone. They could find him that way, Speak directly into his Ears. They wonder for a brief flash what his Space must be like—feathers. It must be like feathers—before the weight of their inadequacy settles onto their shoulders. They know they have failed.
“We’ll see if it gets to him,” Wilder lies.
I consider for a moment taking the waves and scooping them up with my Hands and dropping them on Rico like a bucket of water—it wouldn’t be so different than sending Artemis a dream. But he doesn’t know Awakened Power like this, not really. He will assume he is going crazy. And I cannot have that future on my Hands.