Talk of the Kalunga Line had fallen out of fashion in Orikimeri since in that land of magic, crossing the Line was a fact of life. You went from the land of the living to that of the dead, bisimbi accompanying your soul the entire way. Those were some of the only things Dwayne Smith remembered from when he was half dozing back in school. It was only when he was lying in the dirt and covered in his own blood, his trip home interrupted, that a few more tidbits came back to him.

     Bisimbi were temperamental, never approach them alone, and—

You cannot be sure what they look like, so be careful near the water, especially at night.

###

 Dwayne had left home before dawn that morning, trying to avoid the tourist crowds the Conception Festival was already drawing. Chrysallis, his hometown, was the largest town in the northern flats, and the only one with enough children to warrant making a big deal out of the day. For Dwayne, that meant spending the day in his family’s forge making meaningless trinkets.

     They had an established production line. His father blew glass, his mother took a day off from making useful things like glade traps and protection talismans to making metal display stands and earring hooks and necklace clasps. Dwayne put the finishing touch on their wares: a fire spell that kept a flame going in a tiny glass enclosure for upwards of a year. They did not make the earrings and pendants and desk adornments beforehand; stockpiling was inappropriate for a festival meant to celebrate the first sparks of life having been able to grow into a flame. What good were they to anyone if they’d been sitting on a shelf for a year?

     Dwayne didn’t believe that, however. There was no reason he had to do the fire spell on the spot, not when so many people came to the forge just to buy gifts no one would ever wear. The fire spells he’d been playing with since he was a child were just that—something to play with. And he’d grown sick of just playing.

     And then he came to in the Chrysallis hospital, never having found the spellbook archives he left town to find. He’d run across mentions of the archive in rarely used on making enchanted weapons. Few came to the forge looking for those, and his mother was picky about who she made them for. Dwayne was far less discretionary and if the archive had been real, he would have even known how to make something as intriguing as a scythe. Maybe he wouldn’t sell anything quite that drastic, but it was better than lame things like an axe that always came back after you threw it.

Hours he’d spent wandering in the forest, finding the landmarks on his map—the signpost with the unidentifiable skulls hanging from it, the dried up well that was boarded up after a witch disappeared in it, the blood colored rocks strewn along the main trail. All of those things he found with ease but he ran across nothing that might be hiding spellbooks. No wooden doors hidden on the forest floor, no hidden switches to open the trunk of a tree—by sunset, he would have even settled for finding a single carving.

But there was nothing. And with that nothing, the inevitability of being stuck working in his family’s forge began to fully sink in. Was it not for his father that might not have been such a bad fate.

###

“You ain’t so slick you can’t stand another greasin’,” was quite possibly Dwayne’s least favorite phrase. He loathed the condescension in the words, loathed the idea that he was perpetually one misstep away from landing into the sort of mess only a more experienced witch could help him out of. Had he ever heard it from his mother, he could admit that maybe he did need to slow down. Perhaps hurling around magic with the bare minimum of finesse required to practice magic in the town confines wasn’t the best way to go about witchcraft. But coming from his father, a man who wasn’t half the witch Dwayne was?

Sure, his father could start a fire, conjure a few drops of rain, whisk air around, crack a rock in a pinch. But he was so slow at casting spells, even slower than Dwayne had been as a child and it was embarrassing. Dwayne had never said as much but the older he got, the less his father did magic in public. Or perhaps it was just Dwayne he didn’t do magic in front of. But despite all that, Dwayne knew the man would have never found himself attacked by a simbi.

Out of habit, Dwayne gave the Kala Creek a wide berth on his way to the forest, only going close to cross the bridge. He hated traveling on foot, but it couldn’t be helped when he wasn’t sure where exactly to set the portal coordinates. A few degrees off, and he would be falling through a void for hours with no telling where he might land. And as he made the trek home, he found the simbi perched on the Kala Bridge, unassuming.

“Are you waiting for someone?”—Dwayne knew he’d asked that. It seemed only polite to ask; with any luck, the walk back home wouldn’t be so lonely. But he got no answer, not even a glance in his direction.

At the time, he hadn’t questioned it since even in the fading afternoon light, he knew he looked awful. He gave up plucking the leaves out of his hair, opting to let the reds and oranges clash with the silver of his braids until he made it home. Everything else was covered in dust, twigs sticking to the rips in his worn pants and new holes had sprung up in the flannel shirt, brown skin peeking through them. At least the clothes were from his father’s yet-to-be rags pile that he could just toss later. A sorry sight he was, even to a weary traveler like the one the simbi had appeared to be.

“You should head into town soon; they say the simbi will get you,” he’d said, not serious in the slightest.

The features of what he mistook for a person were obscured when it turned towards him. In fact, he could not say its limbs were in fact limbs; its feet could have been a fish tail, and maybe those were gills along its neck. By the time he realized his mistake, his back had hit the side of the bridge, the wood creaking from the force. He registered the gash on side his before the fact that he was somehow face down on the dirt path on the other side of the bridge, the side going away from Chrysallis. He remembered nothing after that, only the glow emanating from the creature.

###

Dwayne lay still in his hospital bed, focusing on each breath he took. He couldn’t inhale properly yet. Perhaps by morning, the doctor had said.

     He’d only been half-lucid when the explanations came. They’d had to find a specialist to get him through a portal unscathed; stasis spells weren’t something he needed at the forge. Burns and cuts were easy enough to treat without needing to slow down time. That was overkill for anyone aside from a surgeon. But the gash that ran the length of his side was deep enough that there was no telling how much he’d have bled otherwise.

     None of that answered how he got to the hospital, however. The only question he’d been able to get out was, “Who?”

     It wasn’t either of his parents; they’d have been there when he woke. And the path he’d taken to the forest was sparsely traveled even during peak tourist seasons. There was a good chance he’d have died if no one was nearby.

     “Someone in town for the festival; didn’t leave a name,” was all the doctor had to say on the matter. “Who can come for you?”

     Dwayne was only just able to think through the pain, but he knew he was not welcome.  

“Someone’s already coming.” The words did not come easily to him. “I’ll be gone by morning.”

A curt nod later and Dwayne was alone, waiting for his father to arrive.

Both his parents knew of his predicament by now if the cracked beacon pendant on his bedside table was anything to go by. It took them months to forge mostly on account of his father’s lack of talent, but he acquiesced and kept it on his person whenever he left the town. He supposed they were right to ask, given his current state. Hopefully the replacement wouldn’t take so long to make.

But he’s going to come. It’s always him who comes. 

###

The sleep Dwayne fell into while he waited was not dreamless, but he could not see. He felt only rocking, smelled and tasted only death. For a moment, he thought the simbi had followed him even here, back into the safety of Chrysallis, determined to finish him off while he slept. Maybe he was not one they would be a benevolent force to; maybe he would be one who they felt needed to die.      Dwayne could not fight back in this state, where he couldn’t move for his wrists and ankles were bound, and spells felt so foreign on his lips.

Ice ran up his right arm where the simbi must have been touching him. It had no luster in this dream, no aura it gave off. He tried to pull away, blinking rapidly until on one blink, he could see again and the murky grey ceiling of the hospital greeted him, and his right arm was warm.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen to you. Not here.”

Ah. So that wasn’t the simbi. The dream was over and for a moment, he thought he might have preferred it.

Dwayne was no stranger to fists or blood but today his mother wasn’t around to give one of those monotonous lectures about not picking pointless fights while his father dressed his wounds in silence, not so much as passing judgment on his son. He missed the silence more than the monotony.

“Dad, I’m not dead.” The reassurance came out far more gently than he meant it to.

He tried to act the part and sat up on his own. The doctors work was solid, a cracked rib completely healed already but the bruising would take a few days, even with magic. Skin or bones, the doctors always said, never both at once. Breathing was still something of a chore, but Dwayne needed to quell his father’s tears sooner rather than later. He couldn’t do that lying down.

But he also had no idea where to begin, not when that face that looked so much like his own was contorted with inexplicable pain. The grey in his father’s beard seemed more pronounced as of late, his cheeks more hollow than usual. Not too long ago he could have counted the silver strands that had made their way into the old man’s locs; now, there was practically no black left at the roots.  

“Enough, dad,” he sighed. “You not some frail old man. I’m fine.”

“Fine?” his father whispered. “You call being pulled out the river half-dead fine?”

“I’m alive. Mom would have found me before I died. Where is she?” he tried to change the subject. He did not want to be in a place like this with his father, where there was nowhere to go and nothing to talk about. The room was bland, not even a copy of the pamphlet Chrysallis passed off as a newspaper lying around. Just a side table and a couple of chairs, one of which held his laundered but tattered clothes.

“What did the simbi show you?” his father pressed, completely ignoring Dwayne’s question. At least he’d stopped the sniveling.

“Nothing,” Dwayne frowned. “It just attacked me.”

“You’re sure it showed you nothing?”

“They just attack you if you get too close, which is what I did. That’s all it was.”

His father sat back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling, the silence all encompassing. Always cryptic, never giving a straight answer besides when he taught Dwayne how to count—who could deal with a parent like that?

###

     Nattie Smith’s arrival to the Chrysallis hospital was a welcome one for Dwayne. His mother’s presence ate away his father’s silence, made the air in the room light enough to take in. She worked with her hands, something not many witches chose to do, and her hands were smoothed and calloused when she took a hold of Dwayne’s. She had less grey than his father, but more wrinkles. “Ain’t nothin’ funny about smithing. You’ll break a finger if you don’t focus,” she always said of the frown she often sported while working. 

Dwayne knew she was often asked to justify both her husband and son. Why would the best blacksmith in the northern flats bother getting involved with a witch with so little skill he had next to no use for her wares? And then to raise a talented witch that turned out like Dwayne? It was baffling at worst and simply ludicrous at best. Dwayne had heard talk on either end of that spectrum when no one thought he was listening.

     She held herself together under the questioning stares as she supported Dwayne on the walk to the hospital lobby, the one area that was cleared for portal use. The staff averted their gazes as the Smith family walked by, and Dwayne recognized them from the last few Conception Festivals. One nurse had come to the forge a few times to get the fire spell on a desk ornament refreshed, each time thanking Dwayne personally. Now, the nurse wouldn’t look at him.

On his own, Dwayne would have faltered long before they reached the exit. He didn’t know why the hospitals insisted on looking so lifeless and uninviting and grey. Unlike the rounded wicker furniture that was so commonplace in most of Chrysallis, everything was angular and uncomfortable. Even though most hospital stays were only a day or two, it didn’t have to be so…soulless.

They were so close to the exit, only needed to make it past the pharmacy.

     “What’s this?” Dwayne had been looking down, watching every step he took. His equilibrium had been thrown off, another of those things a quick spell couldn’t sort out.  

     Dwayne forced himself to stand on his own, ignoring how every breath still stung. He’d acted far too foolish in school to let Mr. Chase see him in this state, much less know what he’d done; it was in Mr. Chase’s class that he was taught about bisimbi. Dwayne was nineteen, but he fell back, letting his parents handle the empty pleasantries. They politely smiled and nodded when the teacher ran down a long list of medicines and spells he needed to take care of his kidney stones. He only hoped Mr. Chase hadn’t overheard any of the hospital gossip, of which Dwayne knew he was the topic of the evening.

     “And how are you, Dwayne?”

     Mr. Chase always peered at Dwayne over the top of his glasses, always having had some idea of his antics around the school grounds. He figured out before anyone else that Dwayne and his friends were responsible for the weather spell that had hovered over the school for weeks, even offered extra credit if they could undo it. None could, but only Dwayne pretended it was out of pure petulance. His mother made the trip to the school that time, one of the few times she was ever truly angry with him.

     And now here he was, hiding behind his parents after all those years of swearing he could own up to his own mistakes. And given Mr. Chase’s expression? The same smirk he’d given when he posited that perhaps Dwayne just didn’t know how to undo the weather spell? He knew about the encounter with the simbi.

     “It was nice to see you both again, though I do trust it’ll be under better circumstances next time. Mr. Smith. Mrs. Smith. Dwayne.” He didn’t need to say what he knew. But within the week, word would be across Chrysallis.

Dwayne had no choice but to rely on his father when they went through the portal home since his mother had to work the spell. It only took his mother a few minutes to plot the coordinates to the forge behind their house, and another to open the portal. He hated the weightlessness when they went through, the pitch black nothingness that surrounded them, the sinking feeling when they were nearly to the destination, and the sudden increase in gravity the moment their feet hit the ground.

Dwayne joined his father at the garbage bins near the forge’s entrance. He hadn’t eaten since the morning, and had relieved himself in the forest before his ill-fated trek home, so nothing but bile came up to sting his throat. He finished at the bins before his father, and made his way around to the spigot near the back door to the house to rinse his mouth. His mother sat on the back steps, waiting for them before she went inside. Dwayne sat next to her, already knowing what he would say when his father joined them.

“I should leave.”

“The simbi isn’t bothering the city,” his mother said. “I would have heard by now; the Kala hasn’t even raised any.”

“It’s not just that. When you came to the hospital,” he directed the question towards his father, “what were you so afraid of?”

“It’s not the sort of call any parent wants to be on the receiving end of, where I’m from.”

Always that, the vague “where I’m from”. Where was he from, besides some village in the boonies where nothing ever happened and they were afraid of strangers? That was why he never visited his father’s family, why he did not know his grandparents or either of the siblings his father mentioned on occasion.

“Dad, we don’t live in the middle of nowhere like you did,” Dwayne said, not hiding his exasperation. “Getting hurt is not the end of the world. Why were you really upset?”

“That’s all it was.”

They were lying to him. Both of them. And, as usual, his father kissed his forehead and then his mother’s lips before going in the house. The door stood open, looking even more uninviting than ever.

     “Ma, you know I love you. I even love dad. But if he not gon’ talk, I can’t keep living here.”

     “Look, I’m not taking his side—”

     “You keep asking me to meet him halfway—when do he meet me halfway? I’m already nineteen. When’s it gon’ be? When I’m twenty? Thirty?”

     “…”

     “It’s in the air in the house, ma, whatever it is he’s not telling me. I won’t keep living with it.”

     “That’s not what he’s asking you to do, honey.”

     “Then he can tell me what he’s asking himself.”

     His mother held his arm, and he let her, not knowing when they would next sit under the stars, watching the smoke rise from the forge. 

The formerly waterfront town of Rogue was not the sort of place a witch with any ambition chose to live. Rotten piers were still scattered along the western edge of what used to be the Eprec Gulf, their jagged supports jutting from the cracked seabed. Wooden planks from the boardwalks lay half-buried in the sand, crude paths along the shore. Bored children scoured the sand and silt for trinkets that fell from the pockets of travelers, long before the bisimbi left nothing but a dried up beach in their wake. As the water receded the locals moved Rogue further inland, pivoting their efforts from fishing to farming. Throughout it all the lighthouse and its keepers remained, both watching as the nearest house got further and further away.

A house around an hour’s walk away from the lighthouse was where Dwayne first touched down in Rogue. He took in little of the landscape since he was immediately led into Riel’s laundry shed to vomit in the sink.

“We can go to the lighthouse tomorrow,” Riel passed Dwayne a clean towel. “Ain’t nobody clamoring for that job.”

“No.” He wet the towel and wiped his face down, already regretting this entire move. “I wanna go today,” he said.

“At least sit down for a minute.”

Dwayne shuffled over to the bench by the door and plopped down into it, noticing he could sit up and breathe with no pain for the first time since the attack. He didn’t mind taking a deep breath, taking in the scent of wild flowers that flowed through the room even though the air outside was still and all he saw outside were sparse patches of grass and sand.

“If she doesn’t give you the job, you can stay with me. There’s plenty of room.” Riel had set about hanging up laundry to dry, and forced Dwayne back onto the bench when he got up to help.

“No. The forge always has orders from around here. I could set up shop, split what I make with my folks, find a place.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be a blacksmith.”

“I don’t. But if I have to…” He would, he supposed. It’d be better than staying at home.

Riel moved about the room in silence, dropping another pile of laundry into a basin of soapy water and tapping the basin lip. The water began to churn, the soap frothing but never spilling.

“You ready?” Riel asked.

“No.”

“Then let’s get to it.”

He didn’t go into Riel’s house past the back door, and only to put his satchels of clothes inside. He wanted to move before he lost his nerve.

Few things grabbed his attention on the uphill trek to the lighthouse, and Dwayne wondered if he wanted to consign himself to possibly spending the rest of his life in Rogue. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t leave; the lighthouses weren’t actually used for anything. Maybe they might light the lantern for a festival, but that wouldn’t happen somewhere like Rogue. Every so often he and Riel passed a dilapidated shack, rusted hooks for drying fish still hanging, and boats sat falling apart, some so far gone even the weight of their ores had been too much.

In the distance, Dwayne saw another witch coming back up the road, the road that according to Riel, led only to the Rogue lighthouse.

“I thought you said wasn’t nobody else interested,” he whispered though there was no way the witch could have heard him.

“Only this one guy Tevar, but the Keeper won’t give him the job. He asked at least five times this year.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Don’t know. I never dug into it but everyone around here just say he got weird a few years ago.”

Riel was silent until they got closer to the witch and when Dwayne asked, “Is that Tevar?” she gave a, “Hm,” of affirmation, nothing more.

They passed each other on the road without incident, Tevar looking as nondescript as anyone else, his sandals worn and his cloak a bit tattered. Had Riel done more than given Tevar a brief nod, Dwayne might have asked how his inquiry with the Keeper had gone. Instead he followed his friend’s lead, offering up his own curt nod, and thinking nothing else of it.

But as Dwayne and Riel moved further into the Keeper’s domain, hostility weighed down the air. For a moment Dwayne thought the lighthouse looked further away than it had been just a few minutes before, yet the trees behind him seemed closer. If he didn’t focus the road looked distorted, the path veering off into the sand or into the brush from one moment to the next, only occasionally looking like it led to the lighthouse.

The illusion was easy enough to break. As children, he and Riel spent hours playing around with these kinds of misdirection spells, leading their classmates in circles around the seminary. Anyone who wasn’t paying close attention would find themselves right back at the seminary entrance, confused. So Dwayne stopped walking, knowing he’d most likely end up further away from the lighthouse if he kept moving.

Before he could ask Riel what she knew of the Keeper, whether or not breaking the spell would constitute a faux pas in Rogue, he thought he saw a bridge. Then the muffled sound of water, as though he were on a boat. Again. And then the chains clanking.

Finding the words to break the spell was an unexpectedly sloppy affair and the second time he tried, Riel joined in. When they were done, the lighthouse looked as though it was torn apart at the seams for a moment, sand and dust stirring as the illusion lost its hold. Dwayne didn’t look away until all the dust and distortion had settled, and found that he and Riel were right at the lighthouse steps.

“…I was gon’ say we should prolly just push through with no magic. Mighta been a test,” Riel said, not mentioning his earlier mistake.

“Well. You helped so if she mad, she gon’ be mad at both of us.”

“But I’m not the one tryna get a job from her…”

Riel wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t have time to sift through illusions the proper, polite way, to let his mind be toyed with to prove a point. Not two weeks ago he learned what all could be accomplished in a split second of indecision. In his case, it ended in a hospital trip wherein both his parents seemed to spiral afterwards. And maybe the Lighthouse Keeper wasn’t trying to kill him like the simbi had been. But that was not a chance he wanted to take. Once he’d heard the chains clanking, he couldn’t.

“What are you doing?” Riel asked as he went up the lighthouse steps.
At the fourth step, he paused. Before going any further he surveyed the lighthouse.

He’d read about the old oceans in Eprec and the reverence people still carried for them, and that reverence extended to the lighthouses. It looked pristine almost, as though it had not changed since the water receded so far back the Rogue docks were unusable. Great effort was made to keep the stone steps smooth, the patch jobs seamless aside from the slightly darker stones. Sparse patches of grass littered the cliff, same as everywhere else, but there were also desert plants he knew weren’t native to Eprec.

When towns began to move inland, the Lighthouse Keeper was always the last to leave, and often only did so when they were near death. Two years at most, though the books never explained how they always seemed to know.

Dwayne went further up the stairs, the pulse he felt radiating through the lighthouse stronger with every step. He didn’t have to knock on the door; the Keeper opened it, a frown etched onto her face. She addressed Riel first.

“You work in the morgue but you,” the Keeper pointed at Dwayne, her bony finger nearly to his chest. “Why are you here?”

“I came for the job.”

Dwayne knew the keeper was not to be trifled with, and thought it best to speak plainly. The illusion spell had been difficult to break; he didn’t want to be caught in one if he had to turn tail.

“And why should I give it to you? Because you asked?”

Any other time, Dwayne would have just answered, “Yes.” She was the one looking for a replacement; why not at least give him a chance? Not like she lost anything if she didn’t like him and said no.

“No,” is what he actually said. “What do you need to see?”

“Come this way,” she went to the staircase that went around the side of the lighthouse. “You’re welcome to join us, undertaker.”

“That’s alright,” Riel declined politely. “I’ll see you back at my place in a bit.” She didn’t look back as she set back down the road, leaving Dwayne to his own devices with the keeper.

Dwayne followed the Keeper up to the lantern gallery, the late afternoon sun not providing enough warmth, yet the Keeper was unfazed. She was barefoot, in only a simple dress. How was she not cold? His confusion and suspicion only grew when he saw the key. Why on earth was she unlocking the lantern gallery with a key? Only children bothered with keys, and only until they could seal things off with magic.

“You’re going to protect this place. Not the walls, not this door. You.”

She finally cracked something like a smile when she saw how taken aback Dwayne was. It was uncouth in Orikimeri to poke around people’s thoughts, even at the very surface level like the Keeper had done. At least he hadn’t been thinking of the attack, or his father, or the clanking chains…

“Don’t worry. I doubt I’ll bother looking in there again.”

The insult aside, she waved Dwayne into the gallery. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but a fire pit surrounded by glass was not it. It was too…simple.

“You’re a blacksmith, no? Fire should be no issue.”

“How-”

“Word travels, even to me. Now light it.” She crossed her arms, waiting.

He knelt in front of the fire pit, unsure of what to do next. The perpetual fires he put in the glass bulbs were minuscule in comparison. All the confidence he’d mustered was gone.

“This isn’t like anything I’ve had to do before,” he said quietly. And before he could think of how to phrase what he’d say next, she asked, “Are you asking for help?”

Dwayne wanted so badly to do as he’d always done, to say, “No.” But he had not the time to hole up in his mother’s library to find the spell he needed, and come back when he was somewhat certain he could control it. No, he had to act now.

“I am,” is what he managed to get out.

“Must you sound so anguished…?” the Keeper sighed as she knelt next to him. “Like this.”

She walked him through the spell, the cadence and rhythm seemingly the opposite of what he was used to in Chrysallis. Four times he tried and failed to light the lantern, each attempt after the first not even yielding a brief spark.

“Give it one mo’ ‘gain.”

On the fifth try, it worked. He hadn’t suddenly understood her instructions any better; he had them memorized by the second try. The way she phrased it-“one mo’ ‘gain”. He’d heard it before, and only ever within the confines of the Smith house.

He didn’t move, nor did he look away from the flames. They gave off no heat; if he touched them, he wouldn’t burn.

“I’m not here by accident, am I?” he asked, knowing she wouldn’t give him a straight answer. No one over the age of twenty-five seemed to be able to give a straight answer, in his experience. Or maybe he’d just spent too much time at home.

“No one comes to Rogue on a whim.”

The Keeper stood, brushing the dirt off her dress before offering a hand to Dwayne. She was lithe, but far stronger than she looked.

“Go rest.”

“Do I have the job?” he asked, his voice hardly carrying. He didn’t want her to say no. Not now. But he had to ask.

“Come back tomorrow evening.” She tapped the edge of the lantern and what was left of the late afternoon sun reclaimed the room.

Spring in Rogue reminded Dwayne of the Chrysallis summer, where he and Riel would sleep in hammocks on the tailor shop’s roof, talking about what odd spells they ran across for hours before finally drifting off. The summer before Riel left Chrysallis, their chats turned towards how they would handle the impending Provenance.

“I’m pretty sure I can pass Provenance next year,” she’d said after a long stretch of silence that, while comfortable, was too still.

“We could have tried this year. You’d pass.”

“No…besides, if I didn’t pass, you know what Tavena would say.”

“Mm.” She did have a point. Ever since Riel had decisively one-upped Tavena during a demonstration on how to conceal one’s presence, she knew the other witch was waiting for the first sign of failure.

“Next year,” Riel said again. “I want to leave Chrysallis.”

“And go where?”

“I’ll know by next summer.”

Not wanting to risk being stuck at the seminary for another year, Dwayne spent long hours practicing and studying with Riel. Their spells went from simple mischief like making exam papers turn into piles of feathers to more sophisticated, like making rain that wasn’t wet. He found that he was no longer barred from the Smith forge, as he had been after accidentally making a crucible filled with molten iron explode when he tried to keep it hot enough to pour into a knife mold. He’d had to settle for only sharpening the knife he gave to his grandfather that year.

The other students in their year stopped regarding them with such extreme caution, though they were never welcoming. Not all of their teachers responded in kind. Those ones who’d been responsible for cleaning up their messes were skeptical, and Riel did a better job of brushing it off than Dwayne did. But always they stayed the course. Then the chance to take the Provence came in mid-summer.

Riel’s test went well, and so did Dwayne’s, much to the shock of their peers and chagrin of their skeptics though by the time his exam came, he couldn’t blame anyone for being wary. Like most every other year a solid half of the prospects didn’t pass, their ambitions far outweighing their skills. Dwayne used to think the extra year failed prospects had to spend at the seminary was excessive until he’d felt at least three earthquakes, the exam room had to be changed due to flooding, and there was a solid hour where no sound at all could be heard around the seminary.

At the end of the day, Dwayne was tired, wishing he’d decided against turning day to night for his final exhibition. It was a complicated illusion to pull off in the summer but he’d done so flawlessly even after multiple rounds of breaking curses that left him disoriented and fending off attacks of increasing complexity and intensity, sometimes even having to get himself down from a ceiling while avoiding falling rocks and water spouts. Riel’s exhibition was in the same realm of ostentatious, where she’d conjured up a rendition of the old Eprec coast, before the drought, complete with a merchant ship and the scent of the ocean that covered the entire exam room.

“What now?” Dwayne sat next to Riel on the front steps of the seminary, clutching the pendant that signified he was now a proper witch. It was made of wood taken from a branch of the red mulberry tree in the seminary’s courtyard. There were no intricate carvings or paintings on it; only Dwayne’s initials and the “192n” that was used to identify Chrysallis on naval maps were burned into the wood so lightly Dwayne couldn’t feel where any of the letters began. It would give him access to places only proper witches could be, spellbook caches most couldn’t just walk into. Chrysallis had few of those places but Dwayne figured there were enough to satiate his curiosities for a year or two.

“I’m going to Rogue,” Riel said without looking at him.

A knot began to form in Dwayne’s gut. She really did want to leave Chrysallis; it wasn’t some idle notion like he’d had over the years, where a few weeks of thinking gave him time to poke holes in the plan. Riel had spent a year poking and prodding and hadn’t wavered.

“That dust bowl?” is what he ended up asking.

“There’s an opening at the morgue. I’m gonna take it.” She kept looking straight ahead,

“When did you go there?”

“Last month.”

Looking back, he couldn’t see where she had the time to slip away long enough to secure a job. But she had. She never acted on a whim, this he knew, but suddenly leaving to work at a morgue across the country?

“You’re sure?” is all he ended up asking.

“I am,” Riel nodded her ascent. She spoke nothing of why and Dwayne did not push, not once admitting to himself he feared what she might say.

###

The next month passed much in the same way time had always passed between them, though now they could go over the spells they’d been denied access to for so long. Most were banal and underwhelming, the sort of magic only thieves and charlatans bothered with like manipulation and binding. One afternoon in the basement of the Chrysallis library, Riel let out a long sigh as she slouched into a chair.

“All that work for…this?” Riel didn’t bother trying to hide her disappointment. They’d even had to bother one of the librarians to take them down to the basement. They popped in and out of the room with an ease Dwayne had never seen up close; few had enough stamina to actually master teleportation.

Once they were alone again and Dwayne felt more at ease, he flipped through a book of binding spells where one was supposed to use a line of brick dust as a barrier.

“Look at this,” he showed the pages to Riel. “Like it just sound fake.”

“Sounds? Prolly is…”

He flipped through the book a while longer before giving up and going to put it back on the shelf. How was he supposed to send off his friend with such boring spells? They’d found more interesting things when they “borrowed” lesson plans at the seminary.

“May I?” He stiffened when he realized the voice was coming from right beside him. He couldn’t keep track of any of the librarians no matter how hard he’d focused. He put the book in the witch’s hand but did a double-take when he saw the witch’s face.

He was darker skinned, and kept his hair cut shorter than most, and came nearly eye-to-eye with Dwayne. He wore the robes of a librarian, so long they scraped the floor yet were never tattered around the hems and their deep purple hue signified he was the head librarian.

“…you used work in the library at the seminary,” Dwayne said.

“It’s been a few years, but yes. Have we met?”

Of course Dwayne remembered; that was the first time he’d ever been afraid of another witch, when he’d first run across someone he couldn’t read. His parents were easy enough to predict, and Riel was his other half. But this witch?

Dwayne’s growth spurts had been quick, and he spent most of his early adolescence readjusting to his own skin. He slept little, aches keeping him awake at night, with too much pride to ask either of his parents to do something. On one of his less coordinated days, where he tripped over his own feet several times on the short walk to the seminary, he’d bumped into the librarian. He’d apologized, and the librarian accepted, but the fear he’d felt from that brief brush with him had never fully left.

“What are we supposed to do with any of this?” Riel asked and Dwayne was just glad the librarian’s attention was off of him.

“If you feel there’s nothing here for you, then there’s nothing here,” he shrugged. “That’s how this place works.”

“I guess that’s why there’s nothing here about morgues…everyone here is cremated within a week…” Riel sighed.

“Maybe. And you?”

“I suppose I’ll come back,” Dwayne said carefully. It wasn’t as though he’d have any plans once Riel left.

“Before then,” the librarian ran his hands across the spines of a few books before sifting through the books on Dwayne and Riel’s table. He settled on a rather large one that only seemed to contain woefully out-of-date maps; they all still had water in the Eprec Ocean. “Try something out of here.”

Then he left, and Dwayne began flipping through the book once again. He started from the back this time, where all the actual spells apparently were. He wondered where the library had obtained it; he could scarcely make out the scrawl in the margins. But what he could read seemed to inane ramblings—something about a ship that would just appear suddenly that no one ever seemed to be able to board.

“Should we actually try one?” he asked Riel. “You know the librarians just be saying shit sometime.”

“I mean, it can’t hurt,” she shrugged. “Nothing else in here was useful.”

And so they went to one of the practice rooms right outside of the library. They were deceptively small, looking no bigger than a small shack but went hundreds of feet in every direction on the inside. They were lined will all sorts of fail-safe spells, all to protect the witches inside and keep the library from suffering any damage.

They flipped through the handful of spells in the atlas for a good while, before deciding on a harmless bit of divination. Fool’s magic, hence why it was locked up in the basement and not to be trifled with by the impressionable.

The spell called for a drop of blood each and for a long while, their two drops of blood did nothing but hover over the atlas, going in circles, occasionally bumping into each other before separating again. Then the two drops moved in separate directions, with the one nearest Dwayne stopping in a forest not far outside Chrysallis, where Riel’s went over to Rogue.

Dwayne let out an ugly laugh. “Isn’t this what we’d already decided to do?”

Riel had been silent then, setting the two drops of blood ablaze and picking up the atlas. “Let’s go home,” she said. To whose home they were going, she didn’t say.

###

The night before Riel left, they were in the tailor shop’s hammocks, staring up at the twin moons. They offered safe travels for the three days they were visible, and Riel had spent two of the three trying on and having clothes altered, and negotiating with her parents which spellbooks of theirs she could take, tasks that Dwayne had not needed to be involved in. At dusk the next day, she would open a portal to Rogue.

Dwayne’s outstretched arm only just reached Riel’s, their first two fingers interlocking on occasion. He’d brought the sweet cornbread she liked, the kind he’d only ever had at home. After they’d eaten, it was time to wait for the twin moons to rise. They did little magic or talking. What was there to say, Dwayne wondered.

Just before the moons reached their zenith, Riel got out of her hammock and dragged Dwayne with her. There were only a few clouds in the sky that evening, and Riel waited until they weren’t obscuring the moons before she spoke.

“I’ll come back before next time,” she said quietly.

“That sounds like you don’t want me to come visit.”

“Not until I…” she trailed off. When Dwayne was sure she wouldn’t add to that, he pulled her in for a hug. He rested his chin on her shoulder, not wanting her to see any of the tears. There weren’t many, but they were his. She didn’t need to carry them with her.

###

But now they were both in Rogue, and the walk back to Riel’s house had not been nearly as slow or plodding as Dwayne hoped and he didn’t want to go inside. Her house had the only fence that stood straight, the only roof that had no holes, and was the only place besides the lighthouse that Dwayne had felt any life since he got to Rogue. His friend’s presence had been easy to navigate during the Conception festival when they were both busy all the way until she’d left him at the lighthouse. But there were no further distractions in the pseudo-desert that was Rogue, not when the town proper was another hour from Riel’s house and there was no chance they could go there and be back inside before dark.

He sat on the back porch for a long while, wishing the air wasn’t so still. There was nothing to see besides a few succulents that lined the porch, the stones that formed a swirling path through the red dirt, and the laundry shed he’d first arrived in. By the time he was done counting all 247 stones in the swirl, the last few streaks of purple were about to fade from the sky.

Riel would know he was back, as she always did, so he didn’t announce himself when he went inside. No lights came on when he walked further into the kitchen which was odd but he didn’t question it as he sat at the table. He reached for the fruit bowl that sat in the center. She had his two favorites in there; oranges and ocean kiwis. The latter were hard to come by in Chrysallis given they were so far from the ocean where they could just be plucked from bunches of kelp, and it was probably even more difficult to find them in Rogue.

By the time Riel came down to the kitchen, he’d eaten two each of the oranges and kiwis, glad his stomach seemed to have settled down from his mid afternoon trip. The switch she hit on the wall as she came in caused a light that was far too bright to appear on the ceiling, and Dwayne covered his eyes for a few moments.

“The old undertaker used to live here,” she said as she sat across from Dwayne at the table. “Couldn’t see too well. Don’t know what he had done to the place to make a switch work a spell.”

“And you never dimmed it?”

“I usually never turn it on,” she smiled but it faded quickly.

She took an orange from the fruit bowl and took her time peeling it, neatly stacking the peels next to Dwayne’s. She went to wash her hands, even used a towel to dry them instead of quickly air-drying them.

“I couldn’t tell you why I was leaving.” Her back was still to Dwayne.

“You didn’t want to be stuck at your folk’s shop anymore than I wanted to be stuck at mines,” he said, the same refrain he used to convince himself to leave her be on those days when he was especially lonely. “I got that.”

“But that’s not why I left. I was called here,” she said.

“By who?”

She turned to face him now but came no closer, her hands gripping the edge of the counter.

“Not who. What.”