Three of Pentacles, Upright

I burst back into Quibble’s consciousness. I feel his question as he looks at the door, tinged with disappointment. He is reaching for the doorknob and he is thinking: at least I tried. At least if I make a hurricane, it won’t be because I didn’t do anything.

Okay, I Say. And his stomach-sensation rockets from his feet to somewhere outside his body, above his head, just as he is opening the door.

He hears Wilder around the front say, “I wish we could talk to Rakhil. She might know something we could use,” just as he shouts into the relative quiet.

“YES!”

Wilder and Mia leap off the back of the truck and jog to the front door. Artemis and Mary Margaret jump in the house and stand from their seats. “Jesus fucking Christ,” says Artemis after she ascertains that there is no danger. “What the fuck was up with that?”

“The Sibyl!” Quibble says, all proud. “They’re going to help!”

Artemis’s eyebrows shoot up and she asks, “In a real way?” at the same time Wilder says, “Oh my God, you can talk to them?”

Quibble turns to face Wilder, now all apologies and avoidance and—yeah, he’ll think it, why not, it’s a moment for bravery—deep love freshly sprung. “There might be a way we can talk to Rakhil. Sibyl,” he says, and I have not been addressed directly, as though I merely had a name, in some time. “Can you keep Hex from seeing us? If I walk us through There?”

I assess my limits. It occurs to me to do something I have been avoiding so thoroughly I haven’t thought of it.

I Look in on the Hex.

He prowls. He is bigger than even before. He is glowing eyes. He is mouth on mouth on mouth. He is reaching, sticking, sucking tentacles and he is big enough that he touches the material world through a million billion little portals. He slithers and rolls. He has figured out how to have consequences in the world, and though we have not been watching him, he has not stopped playing. Something in here stinks of death. I do not know what he has done.

I can keep him from touching you, I Say. I don’t think I can keep him from seeing you. His gaze is—I do not know how omniscient he is in There. But he has a lot of eyes.

Quibble and Wilder relay what I Saw, what I Say.

“Then should we do it?” Artemis asks. “Should we see what Rakhil has to say about it all?” She is looking at one specific person, at Mia. Mia swallows hard. Wilder knows not to answer.

“We’ve hit the Point,” Mia says. “There is no more we can do on the actual virus. We need to infect Hex. We don’t know how to do it. Rakhil—” Mia blushes now. “Rakhil is brilliant, but she doesn’t believe in any of this stuff. She might know how, she might not; she might also take some convincing to help. It’s all a risk.”

Quibble smiles. “I can be very convincing.”

Mia is not voicing her dread and delight at the thought of seeing Rakhil again, after not seeing her for so long. “Let’s try,” she agrees, looking at Artemis. The gaze that says, I understand you are the mother, and I am so sorry that you have to be and also not at all sorry that you are who you are. I am sorry that this is complicated. I am sorry that this is happening. I am sorry I tried to hurt you. And thank you for asking me instead of the boy.

Artemis nods. Twice.

Quibble claps and rubs his hands together. “All righty,” he says. “Where the fuck is Rakhil?”

Mia sags. “I’m not sure, actually.”

“Do you have a photo?” Artemis asks.

Mia does—a perfectly square one, clearly printed off Instagram, of both women at a bar, scantily clad. Rakhil’s hand around Mia’s waist. Looking up at her with a look that wasn’t strictly for an underling or a coworker—tentative, hesitant—while Mia smiled directly at the camera. Quibble and Wilder exchange a look.

Artemis looks down at it and then looks up as her eyes flash white. She feels the tug in her sternum. “I got her. We can go. Mary Margaret, you st—”

“Nope,” Mary Margaret says. “I’m coming. Who knows, today might be the day.”

“We all better hope it’s not,” Artemis says, the exasperation in her voice a joke that is in no way false. Absolutely not one other person knows what’s going on; everyone thinks better of asking, files it away for later.

They form the V again, Artemis with a hand on Quibble’s right elbow, Mary Margaret next to her, Mia insulated in the middle and Wilder bringing up the rear. No cats this time.

Are you ready? Wilder asks me.

I lick my lips and I Lick my Lips. Yes, I reply.

“Pay attention,” Wilder says aloud. “Something amazing is about to happen.”

Quibble rips a hole in existence and everyone, including me, breaks through.

I form a shell around them, careful to still tether to the body I made so I can find my way back. I am stretched into New Form.

Here looks—normal. The Hex has disappeared.

“I hate this,” Mary Margaret says. “It would be better if—”

“Shh,” Artemis scolds. Then: “We don’t know how it hears. It could be listening.”

“He,” whispers Wilder.

Both Artemis and Mary Margaret roll their eyes and I feel Wilder’s frustration.

Mia is wide-eyed. She is thinking, What the fuck? She is thinking, Is this what’s behind everything? And she’s thinking, Is this what life is? My life? Will I ever be able to unsee magic? And she is confused because she thinks that maybe she should want it. That when faced with Awakened Power, she should be jealous or at the very least envious. But she watches Quibble balance everyone on a Ball, watches him sweat. Watches Artemis’s eyes flash—not entirely white, but with something far and with anxiety at the same time. Mia cannot think of a thing she would like less than to be a witch. But—they are headed toward Rakhil. And Mia has wanted Rakhil forever. She thinks about a simple life with her, far from any Power and any Hex. That would be magic enough.

They roll forward, tiptoeing slow. The gray un-light wisps flash, the purple veil changes texture fast-fast; Quibble is moving, Artemis steering him. Every so often she murmurs, “Smaller step. No, farther. Bigger.” The distance between each footfall something that they’re fine-tuning on the fly, made possible only by years of familyship. “We’re close,” she says. “We’re so close.” Mia, Mary Margaret, and Wilder are all thinking adjacent flavors of thought: that this could almost be peaceful. That the wind whipping around, once one gets used to it, is neither cold nor hot. It simply envelops. That without the Hex as a threat, they would want to explore Here. They all wonder how far they might stray from Quibble, if he could extend his radius of influence—

Everyone falls forward.

Quibble is the first to look not up and ahead, but down below. They’d all been looking for something large and looming; they’d forgotten that there is no proper floor.

They have spent the entire time walking on Quibble’s Power; underneath that, the Hex. He’s been watching, listening. And now, in view of the finish line, he’s made his move. He is a maw, all vortex hole.

:) hello brother sister. the time to unfold is now!

“Run!” Wilder shouts.

“Quibble, pull up, pull up!” The group dips and bobs as a horrible sucking sound, a thousand mud-stuck boots mixed with three city blocks of carwash vacuums, emanates from the dark tooth-filled cavern that smells of—

Meat. Rotting meat.

:) sibyl i have practiced. i know unfolding. i know consume. i kno zero hit points. failed death saving throws. yummm.

Mary Margaret hits Quibble on the shoulder as they sink farther. “Up! Up! Up!” Mary Margaret thinks only that she is too young and pretty to die.

“I’m trying. It’s—” And I feel him falter. I Hear him think, It’s too hard. I can’t do it, as his grip loosens. And I am about to lose them. I do not know where they would go. But it smells like death, death, death.

The time for careful and considered is past. I do not know what will happen if I leave my body.

But I am about to find out.

I cut the Cord. I empty myself. I pour everything into the shell, the shield. I scoop myself under Quibble’s Power. Yes, I Say. It’s difficult. But I’ve got you.

Far away, my body drops, heart stopped.

I glitter. I am Mud. I am Elemental. I am Everything. I am Nothing. No bounds no boundaries boundless endless power Power power. I know what to expect of the Hex. He slithers on me and if I were in my body, I would retch. It is fake-false-electric-toxic sludge. He feels poison on Me. I cannot care. He rains down, tries to find any thin spots, pockets of cartilage between bone for him to occupy, sneak through. When he exhausts bodily metaphors in this bodiless space, he tries instead shadows. But I am light. I am light I am light I am endless Light and I Radiate out and there is no place that I do not Touch and there is no place for Dark to Hide, no angle at which Shadow is Cast and he cannot get them.

He Cannot Get Them.

“We’re here!” shouts Artemis. “We’re here, I’ve got her, I can See her!”

Quibble tears a hole at distance and they run, run, run and then they are through and the Hex lets out a roar and I explode into dust.

I am gone. Gone gone Gone. And the Hex knows I am gone, too. He batters at the rip as Quibble holds it closed.

But.

I can Hear them shouting.

I must be Gone.

And yet.

Here I am.

Particulate.

I—try. I gather Myself and I am exhausted and I try to get back in my body, but it is lifeless. It is gone. My favorite one. Later. Later I will make another. But now, I am Thin. I am Strange. The only thing I can do now is watch.

Unnoticed, I slip through the rip as it closes.