On their fourth escape attempt, he asks her:
“Do you remember dying?”
She points between her eyes. That’s where that human captain shot her last time. Her first. Then him. An example for the rest of the Magi. It’s the hellhunds that get them this time, as they break out of the shadow of the station and sprint down the gently sloping hills.
***
Too many people are crammed onto the platform of this station. Yet no one moves. No one even speaks. Only a boy pushes to the front of the crowd, fiercely scanning the strip of sky above them. A thin line of smoke streaks across the blue. His name is Gil Merta. This morning he was in calculus. Human soldiers burst in, dragging him out like some kind of animal. Magi separatists! They screamed. Magi separatists blew up parliament! He doesn’t know what that’s got to do with him. He was given two hours to pack for the rest of his life. He’s sixteen. His parents are somewhere behind him. He doesn’t know where. He wants to see the airship first. He knows it won’t do him any good. But still, he wants to see the airship that’ll take them Urd knows where first.
Out of the corner of his eye, a girl tilts her head back too, squinting at the top of the Wall. A hand on her straw hat to prevent it from blowing away. Like everyone else on the platform, she wears an armband emblazoned with the crest of the former Magi Empire—five branches of the Tree of Life, representing the five Old Magi families. Her dress flutters around her like a cloud. Their eyes meet.
He drops his suitcase, his most prized possessions—his math books and best shoes suddenly forgotten. In a few bounds, he reaches her and grabs her hand instead. He drags her for the first steps, then she’s running too.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m—”
Two shots answer his question instead.
***
They’re marched from their homes, led along the massive shadow of the Wall. A sea of bricks, enchanted impossibly high, that looms around the entire Magi Quarter. After the Five Families War, the humans forced the surviving Magi to build it. Part of the armistice between the ruins of the Magi Empire and the Kingdom of Man. Inward-facing protection spells spells cement each brick of the barrier. Magic flows through the veins of Magi, you see. Their very thoughts conduct it, subconsciously twisting the landscape around them. Already this crowd’s fear warped the dogs snarling at their heels into man-eating beasts. Hellhunds, the humans call them.
Sometimes their army men spirit Magi outside of the Wall and induce their fear just to produce these creatures. The size of calves, they strain at their leashes. The disgust on their handlers’ faces is clear as day.
“See what the Magi did to these mutts? I heard the stronger ones can even materialize monsters out of thin air…”
“Thank the Gods we have the Wall.”
“Thank the Gods we’re finally deporting them!”
“Two suitcases!” their captain starts shouting as the station comes into sight. “Only two suitcases per family!” Of course, they didn’t tell any of the Magi that beforehand.
They tear away artifacts passed down through generations, imbued jewelry—ignorant of the spells painstakingly woven inside of them—chucking it all into a pile of luggage as high as a drakken’s horde. This was their plan all along, Gil realizes, a sick twist in his stomach. Have the Magi hand-deliver their valuables, and save the humans the trouble of ransacking their houses themselves. The scrolls they burn, along with identity documents, the albums full of treasured photos. In the middle of the shouting and smoke, a girl stops beside him. She hasn’t brought a thing with her. Only yellow flowers light up her hair.
“I’m Gil,” he tells her.
He doesn’t say his family name. Everyone in the Magi Quarter knows his parents. They run an agency. They fix things with their spells. Find things. They’re happy, even if their son’s a total failure who has yet to manifest his True Magic at the age of sixteen. Worse, he doesn’t even care. He wants to be an engineer.
“You!” a human soldier barks at him. “What’ve you got there?”
“You want it so bad? Take it!”
Gil swings his suitcase into the soldier’s chest. Then he grabs her hand and they run. They try to disappear into the crowd outside the station.
The first shot deafens him.
He doesn’t feel the second.
***
“I remember you,” he tells her next loop. “You’re in my calc class. You’re the quiet girl.”
“I’m the quiet girl,” she echoes. “I always sit in the back.”
“Your name is—Irma, right?”
“Irma.”
He arrived on this cold airship platform, where not even dandelions can grow, expecting an ending. But each conversation with her blossoms a new beginning. He starts believing what his parents taught him—that even in the darkest shadow, there’s a spark. Like how in the worst taunts of his schoolmates—how Magi ruin crops, how their magic raises tumors and boils and plagues—there was a kernel of awe. The whispered legends that ancient Magi coaxed the evolution of drakkens out of salamanders, unicorns from wild horses, millennia ago.
“What’s your True Magic?” he asks.
She blushes. That’s the type of spell manifested by one’s soul—unique to each Magi. Magi only reveal True Magic to family, the most intimate of friends—or lovers. But dying together, doing it over and over again. In a way, they can’t get closer than that.
She grows flowers. Just like the ones in her hair. Her voice draws incandescence out of their blooms. A fitting magic, he thinks. They’re on their knees again, watching the captain push bullets into the chamber of his pistol. Bits of crystal that gleam like stars in the setting sun. Another condition of the armistice. In exchange for allowing the remains of their species to survive, the Magi taught humans how to construct the weaponry used by the Five Families during the war. These things trigger a chain reaction that bursts your veins, even as your magic instinctively condenses to block it. It feels like burning alive from the inside out. They would know. His fingers brush against hers, interlace.
“I wish we’d met some other way than this.”
***
“We’ve got a whole crowd of Magi here,” she says the two-hundredth and second time. “There’s no way they should be able to herd us.”
It’s as if she’s read his mind. On the way to the station, they spot a step ladder leaning against a roof. Gil gets on top of it while she holds it steady.
“Hey. Everybody. Let’s—”
A bullet goes through his head, a familiar feeling by now. Gil climbs up on the ladder next loop, vowing to get to the point this time.
“Let’s fight them,” Gil declares.
The Magi pool around the foot of the ladder but only stare.
“How?”
“With our magic!”
“Okay. I can paint portraits. What’s your True Magic, kid?”
Gil reddens. In the crowd somewhere, his parents must be looking anywhere but at him. He knows very well that the humans come through the Wall every year to draft the most powerful Magi. Teens who’ve just manifested their True Magic, precocious children, even. They use them as weapons in their spats with other islands, security against a Magi rebellion. Another condition of the armistice. They’re the leftovers, he realizes, as hellhunds surge through the crowd, toward him. The useless ones.
***
The three-hundred eighteenth time, they get on the airship. He can’t think of anything else. He’s just so damn tired. So tired of making plans, of failing, of dying, of trying. He lets himself be pushed up the ramp into the cabin, lets the soldiers shove people in after him until it’s packed, way too packed. There are no seats inside, only straw strewn across the floor. A ship for goods, not people. The humans don’t lock the doors behind them. After half a day of flight, an old man suffocates, and they figure out why. They shove open the hatch to toss out the body and see, beneath the ship’s webbed wings, seas of clouds streaming past. Little by little, they break apart in the wind, revealing chunks of rocks floating in the air. Some the size of boulders. Others carpeted with forests, the lights of cities gleaming among them. Sky islands. Ever since he was a kid, Gil’s parents told him they lived, not on islands in the water, but in the air. But this is the first time he’s seen it. The War’s aftermath. Battles between the five Old Magi families tore the planet to pieces, incinerating half of all life—and decimating the Magi population to less than a percent of its former size in the process. His ancestors did this.
That’s right. Gil clenches his fists. His ancestors, not him. There’s no reason he should be suffering for people he didn’t even know, who died centuries ago. And he didn’t blow up parliament either. So why is he being shipped off like this? If he was younger, he’d ask his parents, but now he’s old enough to know their answer. It’s another condition of the armistice. They all agreed to be collectively responsible for each other’s actions.
He gets off more dead than alive. Onto the dock of a barren sky island, overcast by the constant comings and goings of other airships. More Magi huddle on the shore, shivering. They must be from other sky islands, he thinks. Their collective dread, the terrors of all of them waiting on those ships, must’ve warped this place. The eyeless rats skirting the shadows. The gate twisted into an impossible grin above them. Through the endless, ashen rain, a man strides toward them. He wears a human uniform—save for the five-branched emblem, sewn onto his lapel. A military Magi. Some spit at the sight of him. Hope lights the faces of others. They grab him by the front of his jacket, literally shake him, begging.
“We’re your people. We’re Magi too. Save us, save us!”
He stares right through them, assessing. He says a word to the human soldiers flanking him, and they beat the Magi away with their rifles: some one way, some the other, snarling at families and lovers grasping for each other across the line, those whose magic is useful for work, and those not.
Gil doesn’t see his parents. He waits in his line for ages. A Magus who’s been here much longer than them carves a number into his arm, with a bit of fire on her fingertip. He glimpses Irma on the other side of the barbed wire and throws himself onto the fence. Feels a power like lightning coursing through him. Vows never to set foot in this place again.
***
He wakes up on the airship, the pain of some previous loop throbbing in his chest. He limps to the door. Braces against the frame. With his other hand, he clutches his armband, working his fingers under every single one of its seams. They’re sewn onto every piece of clothing he owns; he’s worn them for as long as he can remember. The emblem of the old Magi Empire—Urd, the Tree of Life. She used to wave on flags over the entire world. Now she marks them, mocks them. With one forceful motion, he tears the strip of cloth off.
“You can’t!” Irma gasps beside him. “Or—”
“Or what? The humans will kill us? We’re already dead! You saw that camp. If anyone sees us with these on, we’ll get sent there again. This is the only way we’ll survive!”
She looks away, her eyes downcast.
“They’ll be able to tell we’re Magi, anyway.”
“No, they won’t!”
He grabs her hand. With the other, tears hers off too.
“We look like them. Exactly like them!”
“But—”
But it’s too late. He lets their armbands go. The wind whisks them away, and he pulls her after. Through the clouds, they tumble, grabbing onto each other. Against all odds onto branches that break their fall, cushion them all the way down to the ground. They lie on top of each other in the long grass, watching the airship disappear into the fog above them. Shivering until the sky turns cold. Hand in hand, they walk until they reach a village. The only one on this small sky island. No airships dock here; the only means of travel or communication to other islands are drakken and dove. They live in a hut at the edge of the woods. The people call them demons that fell from the heavens, leave them offerings in hand-woven baskets but don’t dare venture near. Irma tends a garden with her magic, vegetables, and flowers that grow beyond their fence, which feeds them and more. Sometimes they talk about the loops.
“Do you remember the station?”
“I thought you were crazy grabbing my hand. He’s going to kill us both!”
“And I did.”
“But it doesn’t matter—because we got out, in the end. Because I love you.”
Over the years, news of Magi separatists, of Magi exterminators, quiets to a growl they can barely hear beyond the confines of their village. They have children.
“Esther. Mikhail.”
After his parents. They don’t make an effort to find out what happened to them or the others. If the humans succeeded in rounding them up and killing them all. If they’re the last Magi in the entire world or if there are others, hiding away. They don’t teach magic to their children. He dies watching the sunset, as his grandkids play with his beard.
He wakes up and he’s back in the airship station again.
***
“Why? Why am I back here? We escaped, didn’t we?”
He’s hunched on the platform, bent in two, his face buried in his palms. People step around him, not really looking. He’s not the only one curled up in a position like this. She finds him, crouching in front of him gently.
“Gil.”
“Why didn’t the loops end? Why? Why is this happening to me? I didn’t fight in the War. I didn’t destroy the world. I didn’t attack anybody. I can’t even cast spells. The humans don’t need to be afraid of me. They don’t need to hate me. Kill me.”
“Gil.”
She takes his hands away from his face.
“Surely you must’ve realized by now. You are a powerful Magus indeed.”
“You’re joking.”
“These loops. What we’re going through. How do you think that’s happening?”
His heart stops. Then starts pounding faster, gathering momentum.
“Your True Magic is—”
Yes, he thinks, and a ray of sun breaks through the clouds. Time loops. Time manipulation. A legendary kind of magic that hasn’t been seen since ancient times. He’s special. He knew it. He could be powerful, one of the most powerful Magi in history. The right way. He could find it. They could escape. They just have to keep trying. He’ll save her, his parents, everybody. With his True Magic—
“—the creation of temporary universes.”
“Huh?”
“You materialize your innermost thoughts and desires to form these places.”
What’s she talking about? Materialization? That’s the branch of magic used to turn mental images into physical objects. No matter how powerful the materialization, they always disappear in the end. No. It can’t be. He knows it isn’t. This is reality he’s altering. He’s changing time with each loop! He is! She raises her hand. He watches in horror, the very air warping around it. And at the same time, he realizes it’s gone silent around him. He turns, and the people are frozen in place, like tin soldiers, their faces smooth and featureless. Somewhere beyond them, two twisted figures he doesn’t wish to see.
“Like bubbles blooming up on the surface of a pond,” she muses. “You made hundreds of these worlds in the milliseconds you have left. Thousands. Such realistic worlds, Gil. You can even materialize people within them. People with entire personalities. Entire lives.”
“So you’re? But you’re—!”
“I’m Irma.”
Her face, so clear, warps suddenly. It’s been so many loops since he saw her, really saw her. Wasn’t her hair maybe a little bit lighter? Her eyes further apart. But beautiful, still. For some reason, it’s important to him that she’s beautiful.
“I’m Yelena.”
She props her chin on her hand. It twists again.
“I’m Marie.”
Again, her face contorts.
“Which name do you like best?”
Confused memories vie for space in his head. Maybe he saw her in the courtyard, not in the back of his class. Maybe she never went to his school at all; she just looked like a girl he saw there. He’s not even sure if the dress she was wearing was white.
“You never knew anything about me.”
Her face changes again, faster and faster until it’s nothing but a blur. She steps off the platform, and he lunges to catch her but knocks his breath out on the ground instead. She stands on thin air. A complete upheaval of physics. The station crumples around her in realization. Yet, beneath it all, the whirlwind of flesh that used to be her face, she still smiles. A small smile. A world-shattering smile.
“But that didn’t stop you from making up whatever you wanted about me, right? You had some fantasy that you were going to rescue me. That I was going to fall in love with you.”
“I didn’t. I didn’t mean to—!”
“You killed me. All for some fairy tale you made up in your head.”
He looks up at her, his eyes crazy.
“But you wanted to go, didn’t you?”
He grabs her, only catching her waist. She keeps floating upward, dragging him with her. The ruins of the station turn tiny beneath them, the Wall, the city, and the islands fade into blue.
“You wanted to get out of that place,” he goes on, “even if it meant getting shot! That was better than being shoved into that airship, like cattle!”
“What if I didn’t want to go with you? What if I wanted to try to survive in that camp?”
“There’s no way we could have survived in there. Either of us.”
“There’s no way you could imagine. But that doesn’t mean it’s true.”
He scrabbles, grabbing at her clothes, finally wrapping his arms around her shoulders.
“I’m not wrong for trying to save you. To save us, for trying to escape from that. It’s always better to do something than to let yourself be killed. If it’d worked, we wouldn’t even be talking about it. Even if it didn’t. I’m not wrong! I’m not!”
She cradles his face.
“Maybe. But was it so wrong to ask me what I thought? I could’ve decided to go with you. I could’ve decided not.”
Two shots ring out.
***
Blue sky. An overcrowded airship station. Just enough breeze to stir his heart. He sees a girl peeking over the platform. Feels the shock of the ground as he leaps down and surges toward her. The warmth of her hand.
An airship horn. Shouts in a harsh language. Sun glinted off the barrel of a rifle.
They shot her in the back. Him in the chest as he turned.
The cold of her hand.
As their blood pooled around them, he wanted to dream of a brief future.
He wanted.
What did she?
