[Part of a much longer story based on this post; this first part is also a comic!)
Once upon a time (this is a game Brian plays with himself, on the bus, in the coffeehouse, at three in the morning when the sky is the indescribable color you only see in an overcast sky above a city. A game, except the fun went out of it long ago, and now it’s something crueler. Self-flagellation, maybe). Once up on a time there was a boy and a girl who tumbled into a fantasy world together. Once upon a time there was a boy who betrayed the world and a girl who saved it, and they were both sent home again. Once upon a time –
It’s been ten years.
Brian’s twenty-three now, for the second time, and Erin has just given up.
Once upon a time there was boy and a girl, and they were angry.
Erin was already there when Brian walked into the pub, slouched over the wood counter with her shoulder blades up like a shield. Before he could even say anything, she shoved a tumbler across the countertop. “I got you whiskey.”
Brian took a seat, and then the glass. Erin didn’t turn her head an inch. “I hate whiskey.”
“You tried to stab me through the heart,” she said. “Drink the fucking whiskey.”
“You tore off my arm and dragged me back to middle school. We’ve got to be about even.” Neither of them believed it when he said it, so he took a sip of the whiskey. It burned, but that seemed about right. This night, above all, it should hurt. Everything should hurt, and he deserved it.
Erin at least turned her head to look at him, now. Brian’s breath caught. He’d seen her face so often in his memories, in his nightmares, except that in those, one of her eyes is gold with righteous fury and witchcraft. The other is gone entirely, lost in a mass of burn tissue not entirely hidden by the sweep of her glossy black hair.
These days she has both eyes, and they’re a flat brown, and they’re tired.
“Still not sleeping? It’s been a decade now,” he said into the silence. His heart wouldn’t stop hammering. He tipped the glass side to side in his hands, feeling the cool weight of it – we aren’t at war any longer – and tried to breath slowly. Erin looked away again. He hadn’t though her shoulders could draw up any more than they had, but she was making an effort.
“The usual,” she muttered. “How are the panic attacks?”
Brian shrugged. “There’s not much they can do if I won’t actually talk it. I mean, if I say, ‘well, doc, it all began when I tripped into another world and lived there for ten years’…I mean, the undiagnosed PTSD is the least of my worries, at that point.”
Erin tilted her head to look at him through what had been her good eye, once. Old habits broke hard. Even with her hair chopped jagged and short now, he expected the shine of magic through her bangs. Brian tightened his hands around the glass and looked away. “I think I’d lose it, without you to tell me it all really happened.”
“I’m here to drink to the dead, not talk about our feelings.” And there’s the Erin he remembers. Even before…everything, even back in seventh grade English class, she was blunt to the point of injury. It’s almost comforting.
“Fine, then. Our yearly memorium.” Brian took a slug, let it burn, said, “Clever Jack.”
Erin echoed the movement. “Carry Wolfwalker.”
“The Blue Army.”
“The Swan Prince.”
On and on, matching each other name for name, until:
“Brian O’Sullivan,” Erin says. “Brian the Betrayer, Brian King of Spades, the Lost One, the Scourgecrow.”
Brian let that burn in his throat with the whiskey; felt the weight of the name, of a blade, of a mantle, heavy, heavy, pushing him down. He wondered if that’s what Erin saw when she looked at him, if that’s still the silhouette hanging in his blue shadow. He said, “Erin Sung, the Redhanded, the Queen’s Kestral, the Archimage of Flame. The hero.”
They touched glasses, the chime of glass on glass a small sweet thing in the air, and upended their drinks. Here’s to the dead.
Brian dropped the glass on the counter and stood sharply. “Well, that morbid little ritual is over with. Next year, same time, same place? Great. See you then.”
Urgent fingers dug into his sleeve as he stood, catching him in place. “I’m going back.”
Brian eased back into motion as if it was unfamiliar. “What do you mean, back? You can’t go back! You think I haven’t tried?” When the door to Caravalia had closed behind them, Erin had turned her back to it and straightened her shoulders. Brian had beat himself bloody against it. The look Erin gave him now was knowing, but Brian didn’t think she’d ever guess the lengths he’d gone to, trying to find a way back – the rituals he’d scratched out of ancient archives, the dark magic and prayer and desperation. He didn’t ever want her to know.
In the bar’s dim light, Erin looked razor-sharp and fragile. “I’m going through a door.”
“None of them go to our… to Caravalia.” Doors to other worlds sang to him in his bones since he’d come back; it was the only thing they’d left him after he’d been dragged home and crammed back into a middle schooler’s chubby body. But none went to Caravalia; not a single one in a thousand miles.
But that wasn’t the issue, he thought, looking again at Erin. Something had broken here.
“So I keep going,” she said. There was a harsh edge of something in her voice. Hope, maybe, unfamiliar and forbidden. “Better than staying here. This isn’t living, it’s just…it’s waiting. Tomorrow, three in the morning, the blue door behind the thrift shop that’s only there on full moons.”
“Erin…”
She bared her teeth at him. It wasn’t quite a smile. “I’ll wait an hour.”
At three twenty-eight in morning, Brian snarled to himself, grabbed the packed hiker’s backpack he’d kept beside his bed for ten years, and began running. He didn’t bother to lock the door to the apartment. It wasn’t like he’d be back.
When he arrived, Erin didn’t say anything, but something around her eyes softened. She nodded at him once, sharply, and wrenched open the door. Salt air wafted through, and tendrils of silver fog. Brian stepped through in time with Erin and shut the door behind them.
