Still, her magic was alive now, its own threads snapping and weaving through the air. Futures shone along them, mostly dark and deadly. Kiseko, infected by the ancient earth spirit, eyes blazing and hands becoming stretched branches like the green’s. Robert falling under that attack. Suzy running, Suzy fighting, Suzy dying: she cast away a thousand futures, searching for one where they won. Time might refuse to listen, but the future was hers to choose. She held onto the thought, leaning hard against the earth magic’s hunger. It would have everything, it said, because it was the endless turn and tide of seasons, of life. It was the rising green, and would never die.
But Suzy’s power was green and rising too.
She pushed, pushed as hard as she knew how, using just her mind. Pushed them toward the rare and faltering futures where they survived. Only a handful among hundreds, but she wouldn’t let her friends die. If the green wanted a conduit, it could try her, daughter of gods.
It hesitated like a living thing, tempted by her strength. Tempted by the ancient blood inside her, by that tie to something not of the world. Then its hesitation ended and it came for her. Suzy opened her arms and drew it in, tasting the most ancient scraps of earth that tied her to her demi-god father and the wild thing that was her grandfather. Herne was of this earth, as Suzy was, but Cernunnos came from far beyond, and there was something in the rising green that was as old and foreign as Cernunnos. It howled triumph as Suzy called it to herself, and it crashed into her, taking up lodging in her mind. Safe, certain, a part of her: it belonged, in a dark and frightening way.
Darkness. Utter and complete, overwhelming, and beyond the darkness, silence. Wind and breaking branches had howled and snapped a minute earlier, though Suzy hadn’t heard them until they were gone. Light returned in a painful rush. The pentagram was losing cohesion, its color fading and power failing, but there was nothing left inside.
Kiseko, squealing, caught Suzy before she fell. “OMG, you banished it! OMG, how did you do that?!”
“There was a…a future where we won. I just…shoved us that way.” Suzy sat down, her head in her hands. “It worked, but it…it got dark.”
“No it didn’t!” Kiseko bounced around Suzy, barely able to contain her delight. “You were awesome! You kicked ass! Did you see that thing, it went fwssht! and zooft! and—”
“No, it…” The green—except it wasn’t green anymore, it was just the dark—it felt like it was behind her eyes now, or even deeper into her head than that. It didn’t hurt, but it weighed a lot, and it throbbed in time with her heart. A trickle of it fell down from her brain to her stomach, making her want to throw up.
Kiseko, oblivious to Suzy’s half-muttered protests, only ceased her praise when the ceiling creaked. All three of them froze, Suzy peeking upward and seeing Rob and Kiso doing the same thing. “Shit,” Kiso whispered. “My parents. If they find a boy here—!”
Rob pressed a finger to his lips, then darted across the basement in a few long steps. He cranked a daylight window open, then glanced back, checking the room like he was making sure everything was okay. Kiseko flapped a frantic hand at him and he gave her and Suzy a quick, concerned smile before scrambling up to and through the window. A heartbeat later, he was gone, eaten by a suburban Seattle yard.
Suzy trembled. The wood creature would’ve eaten him for real, all of them. Inside her head, the darkness flared like it thought that sounded good. She clenched her hands against her temples, trying to squeeze its presence away. Green power, she told herself. Rising green, like the wood spirit had been rising green, but this was her own strength, her own magic. She didn’t want a dark seed at its heart. She imagined her grandfather’s vast power in her own hands, crushing the darkness away.
In an agonizing instant, it winked out. Suzy whimpered.
Kiseko was there all of a sudden, wrapping her arms around Suzy’s shoulders. She was warm and sturdy, not cold and shaking like Suzy was. “You’re okay, Suze. I’m here. You okay? That was crazy,” she said more softly. “That was really brave, Suzy. I didn’t know you had it in you. I’m sorry for messing with magic, all right? I won’t do it again. I don’t want to mess my best friend up. Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Suzy croaked the word. “I think so.”
“Good.” Kiseko sat back on her heels just enough to grin lopsidedly at Suzy. “Because we’re going to have to come up with some kind of totally awesome story to explain why you’re here in the middle of this mess. And then we’re gonna have to convince your aunt that since you’re here you might as well stay for the whole weekend, right? And—” She bounced up, bright and cheerful as always, but Suzy caught a glimpse of deeper worry as Kiseko offered a hand. The performance was all for Suzy’s sake, Kiseko’s way of making sure everything seemed normal.
Suzy let Kiso pull her up, then hugged her and did her best to sound light-hearted and frivolous, too. “Localized windstorm. You left the window open and look what happened!”
“That’s a terrible cover story, Suze.”
“Your parents believed the zombie movie thing, didn’t they?”
“Mmrgh.” Kiseko rolled her eyes. “I guess so. And so what, did the windstorm blow you in too?”
“That’d be an awfully big storm. Uh—”
“Suzy! Your aunt called!” Kiseko’s parents, wearing robes and slippers, came down the stairs together and stopped, expressions comically confused at the mess spread around the basement. “She said you were coming up as a surprise for Kiseko’s birthday, but we didn’t expect you so soon…what happened down here?”
Suzy gave Kiseko a wide-eyed look, then smiled at her parents. “I, um, got in way earlier tonight but I was, um, trying to surprise Kiseko so I snuck in and then we, uh, fell asleep? And then the window let in the storm and we were all like ‘Oh god we have to clean this up before Mr and Mrs Anderson see,’ and—but you woke up. Early. Uh. Hi!”
“It must have been the wind that woke us,” Kiso’s mom said to her dad, who frowned at Kiseko. “How many times have I told you to be sure the windows are closed at night?”
“I’m totally sorry, Dad. We’ll get it cleaned up, okay?”
Mr Anderson nodded, appeased, and his wife smiled. “I’m glad nothing was destroyed. It’s good to see you again, Suzy. I’ll make you girls some strawberry waffles in the morning, but we’re going back to bed now.”
Kiso’s parents waved and went back upstairs, leaving the two girls to blink uncertainly at each other. Kiseko finally whispered, “Your aunt called?”
Suzy shook her head. “No way. It’s the magic, or the effect of magic. Making sense of things that don’t make sense. I hope it worked on Aunt Mae, too, or I’ll be grounded until I leave for college.”
“Are you still gonna go to UDub?” Kiseko became light and chipper again as she looked over the wreck of the basement. “Think Mom and Dad will mind if we don’t clean up until morning?”
Suzy gave her a look and Kiso giggled. “Yeah, I thought so. Okay. I’ll get some towels for the water and I’ll scrub up the chalk marks if you can get the branches and things.” She ran off to the bathroom without waiting for an answer, and Suzy picked up the nearest branches. The window was still open, so she pushed the branches through and peered into the darkness, trying to see if Robert had escaped safely.
There was no sign of him, anyway. Instead there were stormclouds on the horizon, colored yellow by Seattle’s lights. They had a dark heart, as dark as the seed she’d burst in her mine. Suzy shuddered. She knew there were other colors out there too, like Detective Walker’s gunmetal silver and blue, but she couldn’t see them, not even when she looked through the other gaze, the one that showed her the possible futures. She should be able to see them. She’d always been able to before. But there was nothing there now, just the seed of darkness.