Chapter Text
"Oh, wow," JiU exhaled, turning her palms up to examine as the circle dropped hands. She flexed her fingers, still feeling the aftershock of the energy that had flown through them crackling like static with the bend of her joints. Her cheeks were flushed; she was embarrassed to admit it was as much from exertion as it was from arousal, the flow of energy both entering and leaving her having first swelled to potency at the center of her being. She dared not ask if this was normal, though she did look curiously about at the others. What she asked instead was, "Did it work?"
"Let's hope so," Dami replied, also appearing flushed, but her poker face, as usual, hid the exact reason why. She eyed Yoohyeon with an inspector's attention, so openly that JiU caught her staring, remembered the discussion prior to the casting circle, and promptly did the same. Yoohyeon was smiling to herself, chest rising and falling with the exhilaration of the cast. She met Dami's gaze and winked, then aimed an impish smile JiU's way.
"Something worked, anyway," Yoohyeon murmured with a suggestive bite of her bottom lip, grin deepening as JiU's cheeks blazed cherry red.
Sparing JiU from gathering the wherewithal to respond, Handong spoke. They each discovered as their attention diverted to her that her eyes were closed. She appeared to be sleep-talking. "We feel you where we are. Me. Gahyeon. Siyeon. Whatever that was, whatever you did -- we're here. We're here. Oh, but how to get to you? Don't stop looking. We're right beside you." Just as suddenly as Handong had started talking she stopped, returning to deep breaths of restfulness. The three still conscious exchanged looks of verification for what they had each witnessed. JiU glanced at Gahyeon hopefully, expectantly, wanting to hear the same sentiment echo from her sister, but Gahyeon's drowsiness was not full-on sleep. Her slightly-pouting lips remained firmly shut, eyes drifting in and out of focus, more sedate than usual. Drained, perhaps. It was starting to hit JiU, too, now that the tension in her body was dissipating.
"She said Siyeon," Dami stated grimly, worrying a hand through her hair before covering the frown on her lips with the drape of her fingers. "We were too late. SuA was too late . . ."
"No . . ." JiU lamented, sagging with the realization. "No, but we-- we did it, didn't we? Whatever we did. What did we do?" Dami shrugged, dejection dimming her features as she began an inward retreat. It kick-started in JiU an urgent need to generate a light. "She didn't say SuA, though. Or--" JiU's eyes darted in Yoohyeon's direction, catching herself in the nick of time, "Or that anyone was in danger. And for Siyeon to be connected to all of us in that moment, she must have been touching SuA, right? Right?" JiU clasped Dami's shoulder in emphasis, grounding her in what they could feel, had felt. Dami raised her head with a blink and a slight nod. "We're already so much closer to them than we have been. That was magic, right? We just did magic?" Dami nodded deeper. She hadn't suspected any less, but JiU was wonderstruck all the same by Dami's confirmation.
"Powerful magic," Dami elaborated. "I didn't think such synergy could be achieved without a pact binding us."
"Pact?"
"A blood pact. Like I share with Siyeon and SuA. It's how I knew she was in need."
"So you . . . what? Siphoned our strength to her?"
"Mm," Dami hummed in the affirmative.
"And do you feel her now? Do you know if she's okay?" Dami looked down at the ground.
"All I feel now is desensitized. Fried." JiU nodded solemnly. She felt the same; a dull ache settling into the fissure singed through her by a dazzling bolt of screaming electricity, prickling loudly against the few nerves that hadn't been blown out entirely.
"And if we were bound?" Dami looked up, needing to read JiU's eyes now, needing to know if JiU understood the implications of what she seemed so casually to suggest. There was no naïveté in JiU's gaze, no price she wasn't willing to pay if it meant one thing in particular. "What would we be capable of then?"
Yoohyeon's silent observation had been consistently oppressive, but no more intensely for Dami than in this exact moment. Dami could not help the tell of her hesitation as her eyes flitted between the two inquisitive, anticipatory stares. Fortunately, there was an answer she could give that was both truthful and dodging. "It is beyond my knowing."
Knowing not what else to say, silence befell the foyer, each of their minds churning with anxiety, possibilities, or both as they tried in vain not to feel the time drag slower and heavier with every passing second SuA had yet to return.
Two figures emerged from the forest, hand in hand. It was Yoohyeon to notice them first, glimpsing them through the gaping doorway. They had left it open, pending, as if to shut it was to close the door on the possibility of SuA returning. Now they hurried to crowd the entryway as Yoohyeon pointed with a, "Look."
It was unmistakably Siyeon and Sua, even from a distance. Joker's lavender fur was a pale, pastel beacon from where he dangled from Siyeon's limp-armed grip, and though their return saw them cloaked and hooded in the black and goldenrod garb they had come to associate with their enemies, their light nightgowns, bare shins and white socks peeked out from beneath, undermining the threat. Resting in the crook of SuA's arm was the tome, its chains glinting through the setting fog periodically as the quick-moving storm clouds migrated across the risen moon. As they came closer, it became apparent the blotches on their gowns were blood and dirt. But they continued walking unhampered, unhurried, seemingly unhurt. It wasn't until they passed the gate and stepped into the light spilling out from the front door that the girls could make out that SuA had been crying, dirty cheeks streaked with tracks and smudges where she had stubbornly tried to rub them away. They needed only look to the neutral expression on Siyeon's face, not even wincing for her swollen nose or twitching for the uncomfortable crust of blood cracking across her lips to piece together what exactly SuA had been mourning.
"Siyeon's the last that they take of us. I saw to that."
The questions occurring to them were so rampantly abundant and the reception of SuA and Siyeon's return so tragically bittersweet that JiU insisted they digest it over tea, promptly putting a kibosh on even her own wild curiosity until she had successfully herded them all into the kitchen. No one had the strength or mind to protest. Through preparing first a basin for SuA and Siyeon to wash in, then a kettle to put on the fire which Dami helped her start, JiU was also able to systematically move through the accordion-crunch of events that had piled on top of one another too simultaneously and suddenly to have been unpacked any sooner than now.
"You heard us?"
"Yes. And no. I didn't hear you so much as I perceived you. It was like, for a moment, we overlapped. I was there in the forest with Siyeon, and somehow you all were too, stacked right on top of me, near enough to sense, but too far to reach out and touch, separated only by the thinness of a dimension shaved from a mile into a centimeter. And yet I could feel you all flow into me as if our hands were joined. And Siyeon--" SuA carefully drew away the rag with which she had been dabbing under Siyeon's nose as she felt her hand tremble. She dipped it back into the basin and let the crust dissolve in a swirl of brownish-red as she finished her sentence, "I felt Siyeon flowing into me, too, even though she was practically unconscious in my lap. It's like she felt you all and answered somehow, despite-- despite being wherever she is. Gahyeon and Handong did, too. Didn't they? I felt them, also. Fainter, but there."
JiU made her first rotation around the table, placing cups upon saucers for the seven of them. As she did, her mind returned to dog-eared details, and with a calmness she could not otherwise achieve empty-handed, asked, "How did you see to them? The one's hunting us?"
Almost pointedly, SuA resumed her delicate work of wiping Siyeon's face clean, her own still utterly ruddy with grime. Her hand was as steady as it had been plunging into the earth earlier. She hesitated in answering only for the sudden sound of pattering as the clouds above broke and the wind tossed the falling deluge like a thousand tiny pebbles against the window. No evidence of a fire had yet risen past the tree tops. Now none would. "I burned them like the witches they were."
The last cup clattered against its saucer as it dropped the remaining millimeters from JiU's fingers. "Alive?" SuA wrung out the wet rag, rotated it in her hand to a clean corner and began to swab down Siyeon's neck. "How? Did-did we--?"
"Don't worry, princess. You didn't kill anyone. With the energy lent to me, I was able to bound and gag them. It wasn't magic but pure physics that set the fire they smoldered in. It was my decision and my decision alone to make and I made it. I would make it again." JiU stood stagnant with this information, processing it, turning it over and over in her mind. After a beat, she walked to the counter, picked up a tin of loose leaf tea and began a new rotation, dolloping a spoonful into each cup. SuA stopped and turned to face Dami, feeling the younger girl's eyes heavy at the back of her head.
"Would you have done differently?" SuA asked plainly, eyes dull with disinterest one way or the other. Dami sat back in her seat, draping an arm over the backrest.
"I would have kept a survivor to tell us how we might undo what's been done."
"Ah," SuA deposited the rag into the basin and flicked her hands dry before reaching down to heft the tome laid in her lap. She let it drop to the table with a thud, making the cups clink on their saucers and JiU temporarily pull back the kettle she had very nearly begun pouring. Yoohyeon turned her gaze from thanking JiU over her shoulder immediately to the tome, studying the gray-ivied design of its otherwise black cover with a fond nostalgia, as if it were a title that had positively-shaped her in her formative years. This went unnoticed as everyone else's gaze drew instead to the foreboding chain clasp at the cover's center; a crowned skull among a bed of roses, cast in the same iron as the chains wrapping from top to bottom, side to side and around the entire thickness of the tome. With a prod of her finger, SuA indented the upraised skull with a click and drew away the chain where it had released. "A snake left alive, even captive, can still bite. And who's to say they would have helped us, anyway? With any luck, this book will tell us everything we need to know. Whatever they did to Siyeon, they did it through these pages. Gahyeon and Handong, too. Look."
SuA leafed through to the middle, turning the pages rapidly until coming to Siyeon's "Chapter Three", explaining how she had watched as the ink settled from red to its current black right before her eyes; how the coven, as she deemed them, had taken her blood with the intention to inscribe her into the very next chapter, which she then pointed out was outlined but otherwise blank. So were the next three chapters, but the pages past those? Entirely empty. SuA then, realizing in that precise moment that she had come to trust the others enough to expose Siyeon in such a way, revealed her theory of where exactly Siyeon, Gahyeon and Handong were being contained; the storybook pictures were representations of personalized prisons in which their consciousnesses were locked behind the bars of a perpetual nightmare.
"Gahyeon's afraid of a lot of things she doesn't admit to, but falling?" JiU wasn't so much skeptical as she was moving through her consideration, combing through her memories of all the things to ever frighten her baby sister. How to choose one above the rest? Gahyeon had never been particularly fond of heights, true. Not since that one time she had climbed up a tree after JiU, only to lose her footing and spill off the bough. Had JiU not been there to catch her arm in that crucial second, she would have hit the ground and likely broken something. JiU remembered Gahyeon cried for a good half-hour after the fact, despite avoiding disaster. It wasn't until JiU's patience snapped (after all, she had been up the tree in the first place for a moment's reprieve from her tween sister) and her short outburst galvanized Gahyeon's fright into anger that the true reason behind her tears was blurted out.
"Don't you get it? I'm always falling! Whether I'm falling behind, or on my face, or square on my ass! I can't take a step without messing up! I'm crying 'cuz . . . 'cuz the first thought I had when I lost my balance was, "JiU, help," and you did. You always do. I'm crying 'cuz what happens when you're not there to catch me, huh?! What do I do, then? You should've let me hit the ground; at least then I'd know what to expect. Maybe then it wouldn't be so scary."
JiU hadn't thought about that day in years, and yet now, recalling it, she could swear she was remembering it verbatim. She hadn't heard Gahyeon at the time, not properly; she remembered dismissing her with something along the lines of, "Yeah, right, me being able to go anywhere without you tagging along. Imagine," and then celebrating Gahyeon storming off as a victory . . . until her shadow of a sister stomped back into the picture five minutes later.
JiU tucked the memory away, not back in its dusty corner but on a shelf in her heart, wishing she had valued the words when they had been spoken rather than appraising them too little too late. JiU faltered, too. She wished Gahyeon knew that; not in the fatal, comatose way she knew it now, but earlier, when it might have done some good. In a way that would've stripped JiU of the superhero crest Gahyeon inexplicably saw on her chest at all times, making her feel like she couldn't amount to anything more than the incapable sidekick beside. It was her fault Gahyeon wasn't equipped with confidence or experience or the kind of support that could one day be phased out without notice, like training wheels or scaffolding. Gahyeon wasn't so much afraid of falling as she was the one-two sucker punch of dependency and abandonment. Of all the things Gahyeon was afraid of, JiU still managed to dictate her sister's greatest fear.
JiU! JiU, I'm scared! I'm-- And Gahyeon's last waking moments had seen to it her endless nightmare began all the sooner.
"Handong always said what she hated most about moving to Korea was the way people looked at her when she misspoke or didn't understand something," Yoohyeon mentioned thoughtfully, having watched with a salivating absorption the emotions playing out in JiU's distant eyes. Most people avoided their nightmares at all cost; JiU seemed to prefer nursing hers like a prized pig, tending to it as a surrogate for all the thing she felt she failed to take care of. She noted how the sound of her voice drew JiU out of her head. Experimentally, she reached out to blanket a hand atop JiU's and was fascinated by how swiftly, how fiercely JiU clung to her as if she were the only life preserver in a torrential sea. Inside her own mind, she felt the sudden onset of a hammering headache, and knew that the Yoohyeon whose memories and relationship she was trying on was rioting against such deceitful make-believe.
Dami tore her eyes away from the hands intertwined atop the table, twisting her own in her lap just out of sight to prevent her from reaching across and rending JiU and Yoohyeon apart. It was difficult speaking freely suspecting an impostor among them; Dami found herself walking a delicate balance of illuminating the way for her sisters while keeping the one that looked like Yoohyeon in the dark. There was no telling what she did and did not know without knowing who she was.
"The dream catcher in Gagnier's room . . ." Dami looked to SuA as if to say, "Remember?", but instead used the beat of their tethered gazes to scream her suspicion of Yoohyeon. SuA sensed the distress but not the whyfor, and Dami, seeing Yoohyeon's focus shift to her in her periphery, dropped the SOS immediately to inconspicuously meet Yoohyeon's gaze. "That's right, I haven't had a chance to tell you. We found one. And after the discovery we made about its origin, I don't think it's coincidence. A totem for catching bad dreams, and now this . . . nightmare book. As if Gagnier was trying to inoculate herself from the fate picking off her pupils. May I?" Dami asked SuA as she reached for the tome, orienting it to herself with SuA's permission.
"Speaking of pupils, I'd bet ten thousand wons that the number of chapters previous to ours align with the size of each class prior," SuA voiced as she watched Dami leaf past them, lingering on each one just long enough to make sense of images just as frightful and unnerving as the nightmares their own sisters were sealed in; swarms of insects; deep, cavernous holes with no apparent bottom; massive, swallowing bodies of water overtaking helplessly flailing arms; lips sewn together. The theory checked out with every new page and Dami silently concurred; wherever the other students were physically, consciously they were trapped deeper inside.
Preceding the nightmare chapters, the very beginning pages of the tome were far less uniform and ornate. They were scrawled upon like a notation journal, referential pictures free-handed among flowing cursive that changed size and press and ink shade from one passage to the next. Among these free-handed images were approximate blueprints of the chateau, numbered asterisks placed in rooms and foot-noted below; there was the passageway joining the second-story bathroom to the first-story kitchen; apparently, too, there was a cellar that ran subterranean beneath the south wing and part of the west. Dami, however, honed in on the fact that individual glyphs had been assigned to a number of rooms, including each of the servant's quarters, each of the upstairs boarding rooms and the attic. The attic symbol was familiar to her, but just to be sure, she went through the motions of tracing it, feeling it to be the exact symbol she found carved into the frame of the attic mirror.
"The glyphs were destination markers," Dami realized aloud, causing those present at the table to lean in closer to better hear and see. "That's how they were able to determine which mirror they would access. There's . . . dozens of them. All through the house. In our bedrooms, too." SuA stood immediately, rounded the table and practically perched on Dami's shoulder to look over it.
"No. But we searched those mirrors! They were clean!"
"Apparently not." Dami read on, eyes skipping to a glyph independent of a corresponding location in the floor plan. It was labeled simply, "dreamscape". "This one's different than the others. This one, if its name is anything to go by, doesn't access a mirror . . .but another plane entirely." The four of them exchanged looks of hesitant optimism, embracing the implausibility with all the faith and uncertainty of a child hugging a stranger at the behest of their parent.
"Do you think . . . that's where they are? That we could go there and pull them out?" How would that even work? How--how does any of this work? JiU thought. But with Yoohyeon's hand still in hers, she closed her eyes and remembered the impossibility she herself had performed doing just this, squeezing someone else's palm. She knew logic could no longer be her guide.
"One way to find out. Can you cast it?" SuA asked, tone level but eyes prying in their search for Dami's confidence.
"With practice. We all could. The path exists. We just have to memorize the way." SuA sprung up off Dami's shoulder, jabbing the air in a quick burst of reenergized hope.
"See? Who needs those vultures? We know where our sisters are. We know how to get to them. And now there's no one at our heels. We're home free-"
"Girls?" Four pairs of wide eyes turned to the unanticipated sound of Madame Gagnier as she stepped in from the west wing entrance looking disheveled and disoriented. "It's nighttime! How long was I asleep?" She blinked and rubbed her eyes and noted each of the girls unchanged from breakfast, stopping to ogle at the state of SuA's front, then at the murky basin of pink water among an otherwise pleasant tea. "What on earth have you gotten yourselves into?"
"No!" SuA shouted, stomping her foot petulantly. "Not you! Not now! Just leave us alone, won't you?!" In an instant, the aghast look on Madame Gagnier's face slackened into neutrality. Obediently, she stepped back out into the west wing and shut the door between them. JiU, Yoohyeon and Dami's heads swiveled from the peculiar sight to SuA, who could only gawk right back at them in response.
"What did you--"
"I don't know!"
"You did do it, though?"
"I-- think so?"
"How?"
"I don't know."
"The cloak," Yoohyeon interjected, drawing all eyes off SuA to congregate instead on her. Yoohyeon gestured to the black shroud with its goldenrod filigree, reminding SuA she was wearing it in the first place as she plucked at the fabric and examined it with new interest. "I think it was the cloak that did it. I finished reading Gagnier's journal, and in it she mentioned a group called the Placare Aranea. I think these cloaks are their vestments. And I think Gagnier is bound to obey anyone wearing it."
"Yeah? And you were going to get around to telling us that little gem when?" SuA's gape couldn't get much wider, saying aloud a sentiment that JiU and Dami's expressions echoed loudly. Their disbelief wasn't reserved only for her, though, and SuA quickly shifted gears to testing if Yoohyeon's vague supposition had a leg to stand on. They couldn't possibly be this fortunate, could they? "Gagnier!" SuA shouted, then again, louder, until Madame Gagnier stepped back into the room. She seemed confused to be summoned, taking in the state of the girls and the kitchen anew until SuA addressed her once more. "Hop on one foot." At once, Gagnier's bafflement melted away into an expression of neutrality. She complied without protest, to the tee, cocking one leg up and hopping with the other. She hopped only once, until SuA specified, "Keep hopping," after which Madame Gagnier resumed. The sight, absent implications, was comical, but JiU's burst of laughter was more shock than anything. She felt instantly shameful and quickly muffled it with a palm. SuA on the other hand smiled broadly, entertained. She watched a few seconds longer before testing the theory further. "Someone tell her to stop."
"Madame Gagnier, stop!" JiU said with a hint of earnestness. It proved wasted on Madame Gagnier. Dami tried in turn, giving the same command, but Madame Gagnier proceeded as if deaf to them both. It wasn't until SuA gave the command that Madame Gagnier obeyed.
"It is the cloak!"
"That means . . ." Dami was examining Madame Gagnier now with commiseration she had never been able to muster for the woman. "She's a victim in this, too. Another puppet."
"What?" SuA pulled a face of contempt. "No! She's made our lives a living hell! Siyeon, Siyeon, clap your hands." Nothing. "Gahyeon, snap your fingers." Nothing. "Handong, whistle!" Nothing. SuA gestured to the sea of no responses. "The cloak doesn't work on them; Gagnier and our sisters are not the same!"
"They don't have to have the same ailment to have suffered the same abuser!"
"She's the abuser! Dami! Dami, where were the cloaks telling her to call you Emma? Where were the cloaks telling her to belittle us at every turn, silencing us when we dared converse to each other in Korean, judging us when we wanted seconds or thirds at the dinner table? No one told her to drone on and on an on about this stupid chateau, or to single out Handong just because she's Chinese. She's a racist narcissist who is so mind-numbingly uninteresting she has to nag just to have something to say!" Saying all her grievances aloud acted like the letting of a relief valve, the built-up pressure of SuA's conviction rushing out, regulating the outrage inside her back down to a manageable level. With a level head and cool tone, she turned to Madame Gagnier and said, "apologize".
"I'm sorry."
"No, apologize to . . . apologize to Dami. Do you even know who Dami is?" To her surprise, Madame Gagnier turned in Dami's direction.
"I am sorry, Dami." She had so absolutely written off the possibility of ever hearing her name acknowledged by Madame Gagnier that until she heard it, Dami did not realize it was something she even dared to put value to. Now, even though spoken on command, Dami swallowed hard the complicated, wet knot of emotion rising in her throat at the sound. It cost Madame Gagnier nothing to say; nothing, except her free will.
SuA turned her head away and hung it, muttering a soft, "Damn it," as she felt the ice-water splash of her resentment being doused by the fucked-upery of witnessing the impelled inveigling the innocent. "Solange," SuA addressed her experimentally, sighing heavily as the woman's eyes returned to her. "Go back to bed. We'll see you in the morning." Madame Gagnier left. SuA silently pulled the cloak from her shoulders, from Siyeon's shoulders as well, and began to walk Siyeon out of the kitchen before turning to inform the others, "I'm tired. Let's figure this out tomorrow. After all," she snorted mirthlessly, "who's gonna stop us?" She didn't stick around for their permission.
* * *
A bath would have benefited her immensely. Between the dirt beneath her fingernails, the slicks of mud down her knees and shins, and the rivulet of blood running through that from her thigh, it felt wrong to consider climbing into bed. But she just couldn't stomach the thought, even with the Placare Aranea burnt to a crisp in the heart of the forest, of sitting prone in a tub residing in a room she learned only earlier that day had always been adjacent to a secret passage. Nor was she ready to leave Siyeon alone, even for a minute. Instead, SuA made due with another basin, filling it from the pump in the bathroom (all the while staring down the "linen closet" door, daring it to swing open; it never did) and carrying it into her room. There, she stripped and dressed Siyeon in a clean nightgown before stripping down to underwear herself. She sat at the vanity with her feet in the basin and began the quiet, thorough work of scrubbing her legs clean.
The work required very little of her focus as she ran the cloth down her leg in long, straight sweeps, except around the wound which she avoided, not wanting to push dirt deeper into what was already proving to be a nasty little crater of infection. She kept her eye on Siyeon for the most part, but glimpses of her movements in the mirror soon brought her attention back to the discovery Dami had made about the glyphs. SuA visually combed every inch of the vanity available to her, finding nothing. It was only when she was folded over, swiping the cloth down her ankle and back into the water to rinse that she glanced over again and thought to search beneath the vanity. And there it was. Carved faintly into the wood and painted over so that the already-shallow trenches were barely debossed was an unmistakable glyph. Yet another discovery SuA made too late.
She was clean enough. Pulling her feet from the basin, SuA toweled down her legs and dressed, again avoiding the wound crying out for antiseptic. There was nothing stopping her now from returning to the kitchen and grinding together a paste that would leech the bacteria away and possibly even give her some relief, except that the wound looked on the outside how she felt on the inside; raw, festering, painful. Undeserving of care.
Standing, SuA took the chair from beneath her and moved it between the beds, prompting Siyeon to sit. She didn't need a mirror to run a brush through Siyeon's hair any more than she needed to look at herself cleaning up a mess that should never have happened under her watch in the first place. With Siyeon seated, she fell in behind her and began to run the brush from crown to ends, teasing knots out with infinite gentleness and coming in behind with a palm to smooth the stray strands that static coaxed loose. Siyeon began to hum as SuA worked through the ritual, and for a moment SuA froze, regretting her choice not to sit them in front of the mirror so that she might glimpse Siyeon's face. She listened intently, trying to pick out the muted tune, and recognized it as Arirang. Tears welled in her eyes instantly, and through a thick throat, SuA quietly sang in time to Siyeon's melody.
"Nareul beorigo gasineun nimeun
Sibrido mosgaseo balbyeongnanda.
Cheongcheonhaneuren janbyeoldo manko,
Urine gaseumen huimangdo manda.
Jeogi jeo sani Baekdusaniraji,
Dongji seotdaredo kkotman pinda."
A Korean folk song. A song of resistance. Persistence. "That's my girl . . ." SuA murmured, licking an errant tear from the corner of her lips. Maybe Siyeon wasn't aware what she was humming. Maybe the song was simply something engrained, as it was in all young Koreans from an early age. But what if Siyeon was aware. And if so, how much was she aware of, and had they just not tried hard enough to reach the others? SuA placed the brush aside and rounded the chair until she was standing before Siyeon. Without the sensation of the brush running through her hair, Siyeon had stopped humming. She looked up to meet SuA's eyes and smiled fondly, and for a moment SuA felt hopeful.
She once prided herself on being the most authentic witch she knew. Sure, others had come before her, writing the texts and refining the tools of which she would use to guide her way, but these were old witches, living in an earlier time when the earth and her elements were purer and thus magic undeniably present. Her generation, and even generations a stone's throw behind her, seemed less and less inclined to believe in their inheritance. But she did. Discovering magic for the first time had felt like coming upon a flightless bird fallen from the nest; she knew it could fly one day if she intervened, and suspected it would perish if she did nothing. Never before had she been faced with a choice of such consequence. The fate of something other than herself sat in the palm of her hand? It filled her with divine importance, and ever since, she had dedicated herself to rehabilitating the practice. She grew private, selective over the years of who she exposed her fragile charge to. She grew precious of it, motherly, and wanted always to have the right answer, the only answer, so that she might remain mother and it might remain child and it would never feel the urge to fly beyond her reach. It was this tight clutch that narrowed her mind somewhere along the way. But being forced to look up, noticing vultures wheeling upon black and goldenrod wings across the sky, opened it back up to realizing magic was so much bigger than her fledgling. Instead of feeling dwarfed, SuA took heart in the fact that she did not know everything; it meant solutions existed beyond her awareness.
Looking into Siyeon's eyes, SuA recalled Gahyeon's naïve notion of magic. Fairy tale magic. Fictional magic, she once thought. But was it? Or did Sleeping Beauty's slumber persist only because no one deigned to try? SuA lifted Siyeon's chin to receive her kiss as she leaned down to administer it, closing her eyes to Siyeon's blank stare. Her lips lingered and trembled against Siyeon's as the breath in her chest hitched and the tears she had resolved to cry to drought earlier refreshed and sprung anew. "Please," she whispered against Siyeon's lips, pawing at her cheek, her throat, the nape of her neck, trying to brush life into her. To no effect. Her hand fell away limply. Then, just as her lips joined in the retreat, Siyeon chased after them with the slightest lean inward. SuA's eyes shot open as she froze, needing to see it to believe what she so desperately wanted to feel. She resumed the firm press of her lips against Siyeon's, heart fluttering as she felt Siyeon's lips work against hers in turn. SuA indulged for a blissful second longer, then quickly pulled away, wide eyes searching Siyeon's intently. They were dull still, no brighter or cognizant than earlier, and SuA watched in dismay as Siyeon's puckered lips slowly reset into a neutral line. The kiss had been nothing more than a stimulated response.
SuA swiped a hand hard and slow down her own mouth, clasping her jaw and holding it between tensed fingers until the urge to scream died inside of her. After, she put Siyeon to bed, tucked Joker in beside her and then crawled into her own bed, where she faced the wall and stared at it numbly until she passed out.
* * *
Dami had waited the entire rest of the evening for a chance to get JiU alone; it only presented itself when Yoohyeon seemed to knowingly give it, departing from Gahyeon and Handong's room ahead of JiU of her own accord, winking for only to Dami to see as she passed through the door. The hairs at the back of Dami's neck had bristled at the hubristic power move; it was hard to believe the privacy mattered when it was so superciliously granted, but Dami took the opportunity anyway, more certain than ever JiU was walking headlong into danger.
"I don't think you should be alone with Yoohyeon tonight."
"What? Dami, is this about earlier? So she . . . put me in my place. Maybe it was harsh, but she wasn't wrong." Dami eyes widened in alarm, a hundred protests piling up behind her tightly-sealed lips. "What else makes you think she's not herself?" From the pile, she took her time in selecting the most sound argument, one that could stand up on more than intuition, as it seemed JiU's was entirely compromised.
"I found her in the north wing, JiU. Staring off into space. There was a jar smashed at her feet, and when I asked why she was there in the first place, she never answered me." JiU frowned.
"Which room?"
"The very last."
"The spider . . ." JiU muttered to herself, frown reaching high into the furrow of her brow as she reached behind herself to feel for Gahyeon's mattress. She sank to sitting when she found it. "But she was so afraid of it."
"Spider?" Dami repeated. JiU looked up distractedly and nodded. "What spider?"
"The one in the jar?" Dami continued to stare blankly back at her. "It wasn't among the glass? It must have gotten away. I guess it really got under Yoohyeon's skin . . ."
"JiU, what spider?" Dami asked again, and in doing so JiU finally took the meaning Dami had been driving at.
"I caught a spider in a mason jar back when we had our picnic. I thought it might be rare. Display-quality rare. I don't know, it was just something I did on a whim and I wanted to keep it a secret until I could see if I actually had anything. I showed Yoohyeon, though. She . . . really doesn't like bugs. If Yoohyeon was acting strangely when you came upon her, she was likely skeeved about where the spider might've gotten to. She wouldn't have been the one to let it loose only to stick around. She couldn't get away from it soon enough last time we were down here."
Dami internalized this new knowledge, setting it beside the odds and ends that were the dream catcher, the nightmare book, the Spider Woman that Yoohyeon's odd tip had led her to discover. The same Spider Woman Yoohyeon, known pragmatist, had accepted without batting an eye. She felt a fool for taking so long to look full on at what she had glimpsed repeatedly in her periphery; Yoohyeon had been maneuvering like a person a step ahead of the pack. And now that head start seemed to yawn into cavernous miles. There was no questioning she and her sisters were the flies in this tangled web; Dami only wondered whether Yoohyeon could be counted among them and if not . . . where the spider responsible for this tangled web they found themselves in was lurking. She very much doubted it was the Placare Aranea. Witches were not gods. Cultists rendered unto a higher power. And Asibikaashi had clearly been invoked under this roof. But how to convince JiU of any of it when she would not so much as face what was directly in front of her?
"There's something off about her, JiU. I can't understand how you're unable to see that. Is it . . . because you need her to be okay? I know you've lost so much already, but wanting things to be okay doesn't make them so."
"Dami," JiU warned with a calm reminiscent of before a storm. She closed her eyes and sagged beneath the weight of ten worlds, trying to breathe deep but only managing a shallow sigh. Dami wished she could let her be. She truly did. But she wasn't prepared to gamble the cost of doing so.
"I'm staying with Gahyeon and Handong. There's no reason not to anymore with Ga-- with Solange no longer a concern. You and Yoohyeon should sleep here, too." JiU hiccupped a humorless laugh.
"Where? On the floor?"
"Take one of the beds. Gahyeon and Handong won't mind sharing the other. I'll sleep on the floor. That way none of us are divided."
"What about SuA and Siyeon?"
"SuA needs time . . . I'll ask her to do the same tomorrow. But tonight I'm asking you."
"You heard what SuA did. Those, those poachers are dead or dying. We're not in danger anymore, not imminently, anyhow."
"You simply won't hear it, will you? That's what I'm trying to tell you! I think we are! And I think if you insist on being alone with Yoohyeon, you'll be the next one hurt! Please see it, JiU. Yoohyeon's not herself. I don't know what's wrong with her, but can't you of all people feel it? Holding her hand earlier, it was like . . . like holding the embodiment of the sun. The energy coming off of her was nearly unbearable. You couldn't feel that?" JiU stood, then, tall and defiant, and Dami knew she had soured her plea.
"How am I to know how it was supposed to feel? I felt a lot. Sensations I've never experienced before. Magnitudes I've only known fractions of. You all poured into me like water, all together, all at once; I would no sooner be able to separate whose energy was whose than I would to differentiate individual droplets rushing into a reservoir." Raised voices like theirs had escalated to would have agitated Gahyeon to shouting back in the past, if for no other reason than to hear herself above the din. Both JiU and Dami noted now the oblivious serenity still intact for Gahyeon and Handong, who more and more were becoming forgotten backdrops to the calamity happening all around them; props to be transferred from set to set and little else. JiU's pain was palpable as she looked at her sister for as long as she could bear before turning not just her eyes, but her head in the opposite direction. When she spoke again, her voice was dampened. "If something is wrong with Yoohyeon, it is my responsibility to discover what. Give me the night with her. Let me . . . let me try to see for myself what you're so certain of. You're giving SuA her night to mourn. I think, if you're right, I deserve the same."
"JiU . . ."
"I know where you are if I need you."
* * *
Yoohyeon was waiting for her when she pushed open the cracked bedroom door, not in JiU's bed, but her own. JiU stepped into the room and turned to face the door, breathing deep to reset from the conversation she had just left. Why isn't she in our bed? The door clicked shut. JiU allowed herself a second to linger, then turned to face Yoohyeon, smiling despite her trepidation.
"Dami thinks we should all sleep in the same room. I told her not tonight. I wanted you to myself tonight." JiU circumvented her bed to sit at the edge of Yoohyeon's, pulling her legs up to cross in her lap as she turned inward to face Yoohyeon. It was imperative she sit straight and look Yoohyeon in the eye, even though all she wanted was to nestle beneath the overhang of Yoohyeon's chin as she buried her head against her chest, feeling arms wrap tight around her to contain her from the rest of the outside world. She was so weary. Overstimulated. Dreadful. Could this not wait until the morning? Yoohyeon's imperturbable body language seemed to suggest it could. In fact, Yoohyeon had been relatively unbothered for the greater part of the evening, which was not at all the state they had last parted in. Yoohyeon's anxious eyes had roamed her every feature as if it might be her last chance to do so. It had taken many attempts to finally disengage from arms and hands reluctant to let her go. Now, Yoohyeon was perfectly content waiting for JiU to say or do something worth responding to. "The first night we arrived, I wouldn't have said no to it, despite how cramped we had been getting here. I actually think I kind of got used to it. It's strange, right? Sleeping in a room by yourself? I wouldn't know; I've always shared a room with Gahyeon. I suppose I'll never have to, now that I have you."
"It's not so bad," Yoohyeon said, noticing the way JiU's body periodically leaned forward only to settle back, a subconscious vie for physical contact being consciously reigned in, as if she were a magnet being forcibly held apart inside Yoohyeon's field of attraction. Her words certainly dampened the pull as JiU sat a little more rigidly for the unanticipated spur to her side. "Once you're asleep, you don't know the difference."
"Yoohyeon-- Earlier . . . about not trusting you to watch Gahyeon, well, it's only because-- well, we didn't get the chance to talk about it, did we? About what happened." JiU's hand twitched atop the comforter, halfway between them. She pulled it into her lap and held it there, lest it be tempted to reach out again. "Why were you downstairs? We had a plan. You said you'd be in the attic."
"You know, it wasn't kind of you to keep that spider around. You knew how much it bothered me. You witnessed it bring me to tears and you still insisted on keeping it around. For what? The sliver of a chance at a scientific discovery that would have never been credited to you anyway? How naive can you be? How selfish?"
JiU felt the sudden heat rash of stricken shame blossom in her chest and rise up to her throat, tingling uncomfortably even after the heat subsided. She gripped and twisted her fingers, giving her something else to focus on as she strived to keep the evidence of the sting from her expression. "So . . . so you were getting rid of the spider, then?"
"Is that all you have to say?" Coolly. So coolly. And here JiU was trying her damnedest not to burst into tears. She felt the heat of them camping in her cheeks, waiting to spring the second the grip on her composure slipped.
"No, of course not. Yoohyeon, I'm sorry, I'm just trying to understand."
"Me too. I'm trying to understand how you could be so unobservant. I don't appreciate you blaming me for what happened to Gahyeon."
"Yoohyeon! I didn--"
"--Let me finish, won't you?" JiU clammed right up, swallowing hard.
"You did, though. Earlier today by suggesting I should have been watching her, and before that, for this whole thing being an issue in the first place. You wanted to believe that because you were so worried about me Gahyeon slipped through the cracks. Well, you didn't do a very good job taking care of me, either, so what is it really, JiU? That I distracted you, or that you're just not very good at looking out for anyone but yourself?"
JiU couldn't stand it anymore. She had cracked every knuckle in her hands wringing them together and was about to fissure new cracks entirely with the force she twisted them now if she didn't disengage soon. She lunged for Yoohyeon's hand, only an arm's reach and yet miles away laying starkly still at her side, and grasped it, desperately trying to bridge the distance Yoohyeon's accusations were cleaving. Unbalanced for the effort, JiU teetered on her knees as she pressed her lips to the back of Yoohyeon's hand again and again, kissing every inch, every knuckle, turning it out to administer the same urgent peppering against her palm.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Yoohyeon! I--I didn't know--I didn't mean to--" With utmost sangfroid, Yoohyeon closed her palm to JiU and pulled her arm free, never using any more force than to counter JiU's protest until finally JiU released her, Yoohyeon's consent unequivocally withdrawn. JiU's empty hands clasped to her mouth instead, muffling a shuddering sob. Yoohyeon kept on, even as JiU disintegrated into tears before her.
"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you. Neither would Gahyeon. She shouldn't have even been eligible for the program; if she wasn't your sister, if you hadn't been accepted, she'd be home safe in Korea right now. I wonder what my life would have been like had I never met you. You cast a long shadow, you know? I don't know how. But you do. And everyone caught in it seems to wither while you grow taller in the light. I wish I hadn't followed you. This past summer should have been our last. But then, it could still prove to be. For all of us now, thanks to you."
"Yoohyeon . . ." In lieu of the woman she would normally cling to, JiU hugged herself tightly, white-knuckle grip skeletal against ballooned skin as she sat back on her haunches, everything about Yoohyeon's body language disinterested in even the notion of her proximity. "Please, Yoohyeon." She wasn't certain what she was beseeching. A look; a touch; a curse, even; irritation; anger; an iota of something that wasn't utter indifference.
This can't be my Yoohyeon . . . JiU thought in the throes of her anguish, among a hundred other thoughts whispering, shouting, hissing, jeering, bargaining, convincing; she's right, though; how else could she know you this well?; you needed her to be herself when you thought she would comfort you, now you need her to be someone else to be comforted; it's all your fault; you failed them; she doesn't love you anymore, how could she?; it'd feel better to be like the others; would it be so bad to no longer be you?; what nightmare could be worse than this?; if she hates you, what does any of it matter?;she doesn't even hate you, though, does she?;she's over you.
"I'm tired, JiU," Yoohyeon said, attempting to pull the comforter more fully up her torso as her gaze indicated where JiU's knees kept her effort stymied. JiU followed her gaze, felt as smartly as the first strike one last lash of ineptitude, and puddled off the side of the bed, somehow managing to keep herself standing long enough to stagger back into her own. Yoohyeon drew up the covers, plumped the pillow beneath her shoulders and sank further down the mattress to rest her head upon it. Knowing full well JiU had yet to look away from her, Yoohyeon closed her eyes.
"What can I do?" JiU's small whisper broke her sniveling silence some five minutes later. She hadn't moved an inch, either toward Yoohyeon or to resign herself to her own bed. Just remained sat where her knees had collapsed from under her, staring and staring and staring at Yoohyeon until she was certain Yoohyeon meant to and was absolutely capable of letting this conversation lie as it was. "Please. I'll do anything to make it right. Yoohyeon, please, just--"
"Go to bed, JiU. That's what you can do. There's nothing more for us until the morning."
It was impossible, what Yoohyeon asked. How she asked it. Sleeping beside her not beside her was worse than sleeping alone. JiU thought she might be able to do what Yoohyeon asked of her if she tucked tail and trudged back into Handong and Gahyeon's room. She wondered if she was wounded enough to let Dami see her bleed, and proceeded to fantasized how attentive, patient Dami would take one look at her and know and not berate her with "I told you so"'s, but instead hold her the way she wished Yoohyeon was holding her now. She craved it. Then hated herself for craving it. Ultimately, she decided she didn't deserve it. And what if Yoohyeon woke in the middle of the night to see she had fled? What chance did she have then of making anything right? Numbly, JiU coaxed her heavy limbs under the covers of her own bed and turned on her side to watch Yoohyeon. The agitation of long-since-spent tears eventually made her eyelids too heavy to keep open. In her last drifting wisps of consciousness, the fantasy of opening up to Dami altered into Dami coming to her, stealing inside the room to check on her in spite of how soundly JiU had shut her down. It was the warm pressure of Dami melding to her backside as her arm came around JiU's waist to pull her in tighter that calmed JiU enough to finally sleep.