Magisterium

though there were none of the usual sounds to confirm it. Part of Glenn ached to go out and see him. It’s what she always did when something was upsetting her, but she knew she couldn’t. Not this time. What would she say? What could she say?

Glenn dropped into bed and wrapped the blanket around her.

Hopkins abandoned his post and curled up next to her. Glenn ran her hand along his side until he turned over and she scratched at the white patch on his throat.

Glenn’s tablet pulsed blue. She scrambled for it in case it was Dr.

Kapoor but found Kevin’s smiling picture hovering in the corner of the screen instead. Glenn touched the image and declined the call, then lay back on the bed. She strained to hear a whisper of Dad working out in the shop, but it was as silent as could be. Did he know that she had gone to Dr. Kapoor? Surely it was impossible, but she couldn’t shake the belief that he knew his own daughter had just betrayed him.

Glenn tried to bury herself in homework, tried to sleep, but it was no use. Even her stars brought her no comfort. Hopkins sniffed around her, curious. Glenn rubbed him under his chin.

“We’ll get this fixed,” Glenn said, pressing her forehead against his. “And then we’ll go. Just you and me. We’ll go and we’ll never come back.”

Hopkins slipped his forehead out from under hers and looked deeply into her eyes. Glenn stroked his forehead, then ran her thumb along the side of his face, down the length of his muzzle and over the prominent cheekbones that gave him a wise, ancient look. He eventually lay down beside her and slept, but Glenn couldn’t.

The vestiges of that half-forgotten dream had been hammering at her ever since she left Dr. Kapoor’s office. And now, as she lay exhausted and sleepless in the dark, the voices were sharper than ever, taunting her, insisting that if she would drop her years of resistance, if she would only remember, they would snap together and tell her …

what?

Finally the pressure was too much and she was too tired to fight any longer. Glenn could almost hear the crack as some wall within her fractured and that old dream emerged, fully formed, from the shadows.

“Meera doe branagh, Glennora Morgan.”

Those words still rang in six-year-old Glenn’s mind when she woke up hours after her mother had left. It was late. The house was silent. Hopkins was gone.

Glenn slid out of bed, stepped into a pair of slippers, and pulled a robe over her pink and white pajamas. Still heavy with sleep, she shuffled out of her room into the dark hallway. She stopped when she hit the top of the stairs. Below her, the front door was hanging open, spilling the warmth and light of the house onto the leaf-covered yard.

“Hopkins?”

Glenn descended the stairs and stood in the open doorway. The yard spread out before her, plains of black and silvery blue in the moonlight. At the far end, near the edge of the forest, a woman in a long white nightgown stood with her back to Glenn.

“Mom?”

The woman took a step forward and disappeared into the trees.

Glenn knew she should go get her father, but if she did her mother might be long gone by the time they got back. What if she got lost and they couldn’t find her? Glenn set off across the yard and into the forest.

Her mother moved like a ghost through the trees, a flash of white that appeared and disappeared. Glenn struggled to keep up. She called out to her again and again but her mother didn’t stop, didn’t look back.

Finally, Glenn saw the bloody glow of the red border lights. Glenn paused at the concrete towers that supported the lights. She had never set foot on the other side of the border. She knew it was forbidden, but what if her mother was in trouble? Glenn crossed over, finally coming to a choked section of the woods where trees and hedgerows covered in thorns surrounded her.

6

Her mother was a few feet away, the back of her white gown slicked with the border lights’ red glow.

“Mom?”

That’s when Glenn heard the voices. At first she thought it was the wind, but as she drew closer it sounded more like whispers. They grew louder until it was a steady stream without pause or inflection.

There was something else out there too, something huge and dark, looming in the trees in front of her mother.

“Mommy?” Glenn asked. “What are you doing?”

The whispering stopped.

Her mother slowly turned. Her pale skin glowed. Her eyes had turned a rimless black and were enormous, unnatural, and as thoughtless and feral as some monstrous bird. There wasn’t the slightest hint of recognition in them.

Glenn turned and ran for the border, but she stumbled when her foot caught on a root and she went tumbling into the leaves, falling on her back. Somehow her mother split the distance between them,

moving thirty feet in what seemed like seconds. She was reaching out to Glenn, her black eyes huge. Icy fingers fell on her shoulder as something inhuman roared in the night.

After that, everything went black.

Glenn sat up, her heart hammering against her chest. She twisted the blanket in her fist until her knuckles went white. It was a dream, she told herself. To believe anything else was the first step into madness.

But Glenn could still feel the cold of the forest floor beneath her feet and hear the voices as if they were at her shoulder.

But if it wasn’t a dream, what was it?

There was a crash outside, and a thin shadow rose up onto the roof and approached her window. Her heart seized. She pushed herself against the wall, drawing the covers over her. The shape took form, long thin arms and spindly legs. It reached her window and crouched down. Its head turned one way and then the other, and then it raised one fist and pounded at the glass. Hopkins leapt to the edge of the bed, hissing with his teeth bared. Too scared to run, Glenn peered out and tried to make sense of the shape, but all she could see was an outline of legs, arms, and … a Mohawk.

“What’s your problem, Kevin?!” Glenn shouted, tearing off the bed. “So help me, I will kill you!” She threw the window open, letting in a blast of frigid air. “What are you doing?”

“You have to pack your things,” he announced as he shoved past Glenn into her room. “You and your dad.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kevin took her by the arm. “You have to run,” he insisted. “Now!

They’re coming for you!”

“Run? What are you talking about? Who’s coming?”

“Good, you’re dressed. Get your shoes.” Kevin snatched Glenn’s jacket off the bed and pushed it at her. Hopkins howled and swiped at his arm. “Ow. Hopkins!”

“Kevin!”

“Let’s go! They’ll be here any second!”

“Who?”

Kevin grabbed Glenn’s shoes as he herded her out into the hall.

“Is your dad in his workshop?”

“I don’t know.”

Kevin drove her on ahead of him, down the stairs and outside.

There was a yowl from behind them as Hopkins followed.

“No, Hopkins, stay there.”