Текст книги "Carry On"

Автор книги: Rainbow Rowell

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

85

PENELOPE

We sit there, together, I’m not sure how long. All of us past the point of sorrow and exhaustion and relief.

Then Simon takes off his suit jacket—it tears around the wings—and spreads it over the Mage’s torso. He starts crying again, and Baz pulls him into his arms. Simon lets him.

“It’s okay,” Baz says. “It’s all okay now.” One arm is tight around Simon’s back, and the other is smoothing his hair out of his face. “You did it, didn’t you?” Baz whispers. “You defeated the Humdrum. You saved the day, you courageous fuck. You absolute nightmare.”

“I gave him my magic, Baz. It’s all gone.”

“Who needs magic,” Baz says. “I’m going to turn you into a vampire and make you live with me forever.”

Simon’s shoulders are heaving.

Baz keeps talking. “Think about it, Simon. Super strength. X-ray vision.”

Simon lifts his head. “You don’t have X-ray vision.”

Baz raises an eyebrow. His hair is in his face, and his hands are bleeding.

“I killed him,” Simon says.

“It’s going to be okay.” Baz wraps both arms around him. “It’s all right, love.”

Everything is starting to make sense.

EPILOGUE

PENELOPE

I sent a little bird to my mum. There were a bunch of them around—they’d come in through the broken windows and were fluttering around the Mage’s body.

We were all pretty wrecked, Simon, Baz, and me. I fell asleep right there. Between two corpses, that’s how exhausted I was.

Simon tried to help Ebb, but she was cold. Gone. He didn’t cast any spells on her—not even to cover her up—and I thought he must just be as exhausted as Baz and I were, out of magic for once in his life. I didn’t understand until much later that his magic was gone for good.

Baz was exhausted and thirsty. All the blood everywhere—Ebb’s, I think—was making him mental. Finally he started feeding on the birds. Which was disturbing, but like, not half as disturbing as everything else that had happened, and neither Simon nor I tried to stop him.

Mum showed up after a while—with Premal, of all people; he’d been helping her look for me. We were asleep by then, so Mum and Premal thought we were all dead. When I sat up, Mum was pale as a Visitor. I think it was like she’d walked into her greatest fear for me.

Premal wept when he saw the Mage.

Mum took one look at the Mage, cast a spell to preserve his body for the investigation, then never looked at him again.

She called Dad and Dr. Wellbelove, and a few others from the Coven, then took Simon and Baz and me to their room in the tower. (Mum’s the reason I can get in; she broke the ward when Dad lived in Mummers House, and now all the female Bunces can enter.) Premal brought us tea and Hobnobs, and the three of us fell asleep again.

When I woke up, I told Mum about Agatha. I thought she might still be out there in the snow.

When Baz woke up, he called his parents.

When Simon woke up, he wouldn’t talk. Just drank all the tea we gave him and clung to Baz’s arm.

*   *   *

I’m not sure what history will say about us. Will they say that Simon killed the Mage? That I did?

I hope that Baz gets credit for ending the war.

The Old Families were still raring to go when Baz went home, even though the Mage was already dead and Simon was powerless—and nobody knew it yet, but the Humdrum was gone, too.

Mum thought the Grimms and Pitches might take the opportunity to seize control of everything.

But Baz went home, the Coven reconvened, there were new elections, and the war just never happened.

Mum’s the headmistress now. Officially. The Coven appointed her.

She tried to talk me into going back to Watford, to finish my diploma. And if Simon had wanted to go back, maybe I would have made the effort. But there were just too many bad memories there. Every time I try to cross the drawbridge, I get sick to my stomach. I don’t know how Baz manages it.

Agatha says she’s never going back. “Over my dead body,” she says. “Which is how I would have ended up if I’d stayed there.”

BAZ

Today’s my leaving ceremony. I’m top of our class—there was no competition after Bunce dropped out—so I have to give a speech.

I told Simon not to come. It’s a bit bleak, being surrounded by magicians all the time, when you can’t even feel magic.

I didn’t want him to come to Watford and think about all the things he isn’t anymore. Not the Mage’s Heir. Not a mage at all.

He’s still everything else he’s always been—brave, honest, inflammably handsome (even with that fucking tail)—but I don’t think he wants to hear all that.

And I find it hard to say, honestly.

It’s hard for us … to talk … sometimes. Lately. I don’t blame him. Life hasn’t exactly kept its promises to Simon Snow. Sometimes I think I should pick fights with him, just to restore his equilibrium.

Anyway. I don’t think he’d want to be here.

My mother gave the speech at her leavers day. It’s in the school archives—I found it, and I’m going to read from it today. It’s about magic, the gift of magic. And the responsibility.

And it’s about Watford. Why my mother loved it. She made this list of everything she’d miss. Like, the sour cherry scones and Elocution lessons, and the clover out on the Great Lawn.

I can’t say that I loved Watford like my mother did.

This was always the place that was taken from her. And the place where she was taken from me. It was like going to school in occupied territory.

Still—I knew I was coming back for my last term, even without Penny and Simon. I wasn’t going to be the first Pitch in recorded history to drop out of Watford.

*   *   *

The speeches are in the White Chapel. The stained glass has been repaired.

My aunt Fiona’s sitting in the front row. She whoops when I’m introduced, and I can see my father wince.

Fiona’s as cheerful lately as I’ve ever seen her. She didn’t know what to do with herself after the Mage died. I think she wanted to kill him again. (And again.) Then the Coven made her a vampire hunter, and everything turned around. She’s on some secret task force now and working undercover in Prague half the time. I’m moving into her flat when I leave school. My parents wanted me to go to Oxford with them—they’re living there, in our hunting lodge—but I couldn’t be that far from Simon. My father still isn’t ready to admit I have a boyfriend, and it would be too exhausting, living in a place where I have to pretend I’m not a vampire or hopelessly queer.

By the end of my speech, Fiona’s weeping and honking her nose into a handkerchief. My father isn’t crying, but he’s too choked up to properly speak to me after the ceremony. Just keeps clapping me on the back and saying, “Good man.”

“Come on, Basil,” Fiona says. “I’ll take you back to Chelsea and get you sozzled. Top shelf only.”

“I can’t,” I say. “Leavers ball tonight. I told the headmistress I’d be there.”

“Can’t pass up a chance to see yourself in a suit, can you.”

“I suppose not.”

“Ah, well. I’ll get you sozzled tomorrow, then. I’ll come back for you at teatime. Watch out for numpties.”

That’s Fiona’s standard farewell for me now. I hate it.

*   *   *

There are a few hours before the ball, so I take a quick walk in the hills behind the walls and gather a bouquet of yellow-eyed grass and irises, then head back across the drawbridge and into the now empty Chapel.

I make my way down into the Catacombs without bothering to light a torch. It’s been years since I’ve got lost down here.

I’m not in a hurry, so I stop to drain every rat I find on the way. This school is going to be infested when I leave.

My mother’s tomb is inside Le Tombeau des Enfants. It’s a stone doorway in a tunnel lined with skulls, marked by a bronze placard.

I would have been buried here with her, if I’d died that day. I mean, died properly.

I sit by the door—there’s no handle or lock, it’s a piece of stone wedged into the wall—and set down the flowers.

“Some of this will be familiar to you,” I say, getting out my speech. “But I’ve added a few flourishes of my own.”

A rat watches me from the corner. I decide to ignore it.

When I get to the end of the speech, my head falls back against the stone. “I know you can’t hear me,” I say after a minute or two. “I know you’re not here.…

“You came back, and I missed you. And then I did the thing you wanted me to do, so you probably won’t ever come back again.”

I close my eyes.

“But—I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to carry on. As I am.

“No matter how much I think about it, I don’t think there’s any scenario where you’d want me—where you’d allow me—to go on like this.

“But I think it’s what you would do in my circumstances. It seems like you never gave up. Ever.”

I exhale roughly and stand up.

Then I turn towards the door and bow my head. I speak softly, so that none of the other bones can hear:

“I know I usually come down here to tell you I’m sorry. But I think today I want to tell you that I’m going to be all right.

“Don’t let me be one of the things that keeps you from peace, Mother. I’m all right.”

I wait for a few moments, just … just in case. Then climb out of the Catacombs, brushing the dust from my trousers.

*   *   *

It’s an especially grim leavers ball. The few friends I have left at Watford are here with dates—or avoiding me. Dev and Niall haven’t quite forgiven me for befriending Simon. Dev said I wasted their entire childhood plotting against him.

“Oh, what else were you going to do with your childhood?” I asked.

Dev didn’t bother answering.

I end up standing next to the punchbowl, talking to Headmistress Bunce about Latin prefixes. It’s a fascinating subject, but I don’t feel like I needed to put on a black tie for it.

I think Professor Bunce is sad that Penelope’s not here. I consider consoling her with the fact that Penelope probably would’ve skipped the ball even if she’d stayed in school, but the headmistress is already wandering off to the other side of the courtyard to check her e-mail.

“I was hoping there’d be sandwiches,” someone mumbles.

I ignore him because I’m not at Watford to make friends or small talk, especially on my way out.

“Or at least cake.”

I turn around and see Simon Snow standing on the other side of the punch table. Wearing a suit and tie, with his hair properly parted and slicked to one side.

He shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on me like that, but he smells different these days—like something sweet and brown. No more green fire and brimstone.

“How’s the party?” he asks.

“Funereal,” I say. “How’d you get here?”

“Flew.”

My jaw drops, and he laughs.

“No,” he says. “Penny drove me. She let me off at the gates.”

“Where’re your wings?”

“Still there. Just invisible. Someone’s already tripped over my tail.”

“I’ve told you to tuck it in.”

“It makes my trousers fit funny.”

I laugh.

“Don’t laugh at me,” he says.

“When will I ever laugh, then?”

Snow rolls his eyes, then cuts them nervously to the side. Towards the White Chapel.

“You don’t have to be here,” I say.

“No,” he says quickly. “I do.” He clears his throat. “I don’t want you to leave without me.”

*   *   *

Simon Snow can’t dance.

The tail isn’t helping. I take the end in my left hand and wrap it around my wrist, holding it against his lower back.

“We don’t have to do this,” I’d said when we walked out to the stone patio where people were dancing. “No one has to know.”

“Know what?” Snow asked softly. “That I’m obsessed with you? That horse left the barn a long time ago.”

I press my left hand, still holding his tail, into his back and take his hand with my right. He lifts his left hand in the air, then drops it like he doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Put it on my shoulder,” I say. He does. I raise an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t Wellbelove ever teach you to dance?”

“She tried,” he says. “She said I was hopeless.”

“From the mouths of babes,” I say.

At least the song isn’t hopeless. It’s Nick Cave. “Into My Arms.” One of Fiona’s favourites. It’s so slow, we barely have to move.

Snow’s wearing an expensive suit. Black trousers, black waistcoat and tie, and a rich velvet jacket—deep blue with black lapels. It must be Dr. Wellbelove’s. It’s snug at the shoulders, but I can’t see where Snow’s wings are hidden. Someone has spelled him neat and tidy.

I stand with my own shoulders squared. Everyone is looking at us—

Everyone dancing. Everyone standing around the courtyard, drinking punch. Coach Mac and the Minotaur and Miss Possibelf, all standing with their punch glasses stalled on the way to their lips.

“They’ll know,” I say. “They’ll talk about it.”

“What?” He’s a million miles away. He’s always a million miles away lately.

“They’ll know that we’re gay.”

“There go my job prospects,” Simon says flatly. “What will my family say?”

I’m not sure where the joke is.

He looks at my face and huffs, exasperated. “Baz, you’re actually, literally the only thing I have to lose. So as long as doing gay stuff in public doesn’t make you hate me, I don’t really care.”

“We’re just dancing,” I say. “That’s hardly gay stuff.”

“Dancing’s well gay,” he says. “Even when it isn’t two blokes.”

I frown at him. “You have Bunce.”

“To dance with?”

“No. You have Bunce to lose.”

His face falls.

I tug him closer. “No. I meant, you have more than just me. You have Bunce, too.”

“She’ll move to America.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe not. And, anyway, not immediately. And beyond that—America’s not amnesia. She’ll still be your friend. Bunce only has two and a half friends; I don’t think she’ll drop you.”

Snow starts to say something, then shakes his head once and looks down at his feet. A few curls escape onto his forehead.

“What?” I say, squeezing his hand. I’ve become very familiar with his hands. Dating Simon Snow hasn’t been the erotic gropefest I’d always imagined—so far, it’s a lot of sitting in silence and thousand-yard stares—but we do hold hands almost all the time. Snow’s like a child who’s afraid of getting lost in the market.

He squeezes my hand back, but doesn’t lift his head.

I decide not to push him. He’s here. Against all odds. Wearing a tie, dancing. That’s all something.

I start to let my head rest against his—and he jerks his head up, just missing my nose. I pull my torso back. “Crowley, Snow!”

His face is red. “It’s just—” He presses on my shoulder.

“It’s just what?”

“You guys don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?”

He squints and grits his teeth. The fairy lights strung across the courtyard catch in his hair. “Just—you—it’s not—”

“Use your words, Simon.”

“You don’t have to do this, you and Penny. I’m not. I’m not like you. I was never—I’m a hoax.”

“That’s not true.”

“Baz. I’m not a mage.”

“You lost your power,” I argue. “You sacrificed it.”

His tail whips out of my hand. It tends to slash around when he’s upset. “I don’t think it was ever mine,” he says. “I don’t know how the Mage did it, but you and Penny were right all along—magicians don’t give up their children. I’m a Normal.”

“Snow.”

“I was bad at magic because I wasn’t supposed to have any! The gates wouldn’t even open for me tonight. Penny had to let me in.”

A couple is drifting closer to us, clearly listening—Keris and her damnable pixie. I sneer, and they drift away.

Snow’s crushing my hand and shoulder. I let him, even though I’m much stronger than he is. “Simon. Stop. You’re talking nonsense.”

“Am I? You and Penny care more about magic than anyone in the World of Mages. That’s what you saw in me—power—and it’s gone. It was never me.”

“It was!” I say. “You were the most powerful mage who’s ever walked. That was real.”

“I was a sorry excuse for a mage, how many times did you tell me so?”

“I said that because I was jealous!”

“Well, there’s nothing to be jealous of now!”

I let go of him. “Why are you saying all this?”

Simon clenches his fists, hunching in on himself, like a bull. “Because I’m tired of waiting.”

“For what?”

“For all of you to stop feeling sorry for me!”

“I’ll never stop feeling sorry for you!” It’s true. He lost his magic. It will never stop breaking my heart.

“But I don’t want that either!” he says through his teeth. “I don’t belong with you anymore.”

“Wrong,” I say. I take his hand again and put my arm back around him. “The Crucible drew us together.”

“The Crucible?”

“I was eleven years old, and I’d lost my mother, and my soul, and the Crucible gave me you.”

“It made us roommates,” he says.

I shake my head. “We were always more.”

“We were enemies.”

“You were the centre of my universe,” I say. “Everything else spun around you.”

“Because of what I was, Baz. Because of my magic.”

“No.” I’m nearly as frustrated as he is. “Yes. I mean, Crowley, Snow—yes, that was part of it. Looking at you was like looking directly into the sun.”

“I’ll never be that again.”

“No. And thank magic.” I sigh forcefully. “The way you were before … Simon Snow, there wasn’t a day when I believed we’d both live through it.”

“Through what?”

“Life. You were the sun, and I was crashing into you. I’d wake up every morning and think, ‘This will end in flames.’”

“I did set your forest on fire—”

“But that wasn’t the end.”

“Baz.” His face crumples, in sorrow now—not anger. “I can’t keep up with you. I’m a Normal.”

“Simon. You have a tail.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Look.” I bring our hands between us and knock up his chin. “Look at me. I don’t want to have to say this all the time. It’s the sort of thing that’s supposed to go poetically unsaid.…” He meets my eyes. “You’re still Simon Snow. You’re still the hero of this story—”

“This isn’t a story!”

“Everything is a story. And you are the hero. You sacrificed everything for me.”

He looks abashed, ashamed. “I didn’t do it for you, exactly—”

“Fine. For me and the rest of the magickal world.”

“I was just cleaning up my own mess, Baz. Like, no one would call you a hero for cleaning up your own vomit.”

“It was brave. It was brave and selfless and clever. That’s who you are, Simon. And I’m not going to get bored with you.”

He’s still looking in my eyes. Staring me down like he did that dragon, chin tilted and locked. “I’m not the Chosen One,” he says.

I meet his gaze and sneer. My arm is a steel band around his waist. “I choose you,” I say. “Simon Snow, I choose you.”

Snow doesn’t flinch or soften. For a moment, I think he’s going to take a swing at me—or bash his rock-hard head against mine. Instead he shoves his face into mine and kisses me. It’s still a challenge.

I shove back. I let go of his hand to hold his neck. He smashes into me, and I take it. I don’t give an inch. (It’s a mess, honestly, and if he cuts his lip on my teeth, it could be a disaster.)

When we break, he’s panting. I press my forehead to his, and feel the tension leave his neck and back.

“You can change your mind,” he says.

“I won’t.” I shake my head against his forehead.

“I’ll always be less than you,” he whispers.

“I know; it’s a dream come true.”

That makes him laugh a bit, pathetically. “Still,” he says. “You can always change your mind.”

“We both can,” I say. “But I won’t.”

I should have known that this is what it would be like to dance with Simon Snow. Fighting in place. Mutual surrender.

He puts both arms around my neck and slumps against me. He’s either forgotten that everyone’s watching, or doesn’t care. “Baz?” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Are you still friends with Cook Pritchard?”

“I assume.”

“It’s just—I really hoped there’d be sandwiches.”

AGATHA

The sun shines every day in California.

I’ve got a flat I share with two other girls from school. There’s a little veranda, and I sit out there with Lucy when I get home from class, and we soak in it. The sun.

Lucy’s my Cavalier King Charles spaniel. I found her in the snow outside Watford. I thought she might be dead, but I didn’t want to stop and sort it out. I just scooped her up and kept running.

I know that Penny will never forgive me for running away that day, but I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t. I’ve never felt more sure of how to stay alive.

I had to run.

*   *   *

Technically, the farthest you can get from Watford is just east of New Zealand, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But California feels farther.

I left all my old clothes at home.

I wear sundresses now, and strappy sandals that tie around my ankles.

I left my wand at home, too; my mother would faint if she knew. She keeps asking if I’ve met any magicians. California is very popular with the magickal set, she says. There’s even a club in Palm Springs.

I don’t care. I live in San Diego. My friends work in restaurants and strip mall office buildings, and I date boys who wear dark stocking caps, even on warm days. On weeknights, I study, and on weekends, we go the beach. I spend the money my parents give me on tuition and tacos.

It’s. All. So. Normal.

The only magician I still talk to, other than my parents and Helen, is Penelope. She texts. I tried not texting back, but that doesn’t work with her.

She tells me how Simon is doing. She told me about the trials—I thought I might have to go back to testify, but the Coven let me do it in writing.

That’s the closest I’ve come to talking to anyone about what happened.

About what I saw.

About Ebb.

I never knew Ebb. She was Simon’s friend. I always thought she was barmy—living in that shack, spending her days with goats.

But I know more about her now.

She was a powerful magician, but she didn’t do what powerful magicians do. She didn’t want to be in charge. She didn’t want to control people. Or fight. She just wanted to live at Watford and take care of goats.

And they wouldn’t let her.

Like, they couldn’t just let her be. She died in a war she had nothing to do with. There’s no opting out of the World of Mages. There’s no “no, thank you.”

I don’t know why she came back to save my life. I’d hardly even spoken to her.

Penny says I should honour Ebb’s memory by helping to build a better World of Mages.…

But maybe I’ll honour her memory by fucking right off, the way she tried to.

She told me to run.

*   *   *

I still have the picture of the Mage and Lucy. I stuck it in the mirror on my bedroom door. And I think about her sometimes when I’m getting dressed.

She’s the one who got away.

I wonder if she’s still here, in California. If she’s got a family now. Maybe I’ll run into her at Trader Joe’s. (I won’t tell her that I named my dog after her.)

I think I’m going to send the photo to Simon someday.

I’m not ready to talk to Simon yet, and I’m not sure he’s ready to get a photo of the Mage in the mail.…

But I think Simon might be the only person who really loved the Mage. I know he killed him, but he’s probably the person who was saddest to see him go.