"Why are we here?" Tiff doesn't frown at what's in front of her— chain link fence, endless, wrapped in vines and moss— but she kind of wants to. "Couldn't we talk at the motel?"
Esther unbuckles herself and rests her hands on the wheel, uncomfortable, visibly trying to pick the right words. "It's important. I want you to see where all of it started."
"So we're at the old high school?"
Nodding, she parks in a spot at the edge of the lot, just outside the chain link fence surrounding the property. Beyond it, there are the walls of the high school Tiff was supposed to go to. It closed down before she got the chance, while Matt and Adrianna were still attending. It was the end of the tradition. How funny it is, that Tiff was the first to break it. How interesting, that this is the place where so many things began.
Her parents moved their children to Orlando shortly after that so Tiff could go to high school there and they didn't have to turn to other means of education. They never let her forget that she uprooted their lives. (As if she could.)
Aunt Esther leans forward against the chain link fence. "I wish we could get in there. It would be more fitting to go back in there, to the parking spot where it began, and complete the circle."
"The narrative is circular," Tiff muses, still near the car. "We shouldn't be so afraid of trespassing. It's like jaywalking. It barely counts as a crime."
"Strong words for someone who tried to shoot a fed."
"I know what crimes are! I'll climb that fence! Just say the word, I'll climb the fence."
"No, honey. I don't want you to climb the fence. You're wobbling. We're close enough, anyway."
"I'm only wobbling because I didn't sleep. Because I was at the church. Because—" Tiff cuts herself off.
Her aunt knows what she means. "Right. And that's why we're here."
She pats the hood of the car and gestures for Tiff to take a seat. Esther pushes herself onto the metal and takes out the breakfast sandwich from their long drive to that convenience store near Bithlo and back again. They didn't really talk in the car. Tiff tried her hardest to fall asleep in the passenger's seat, but couldn't. There was too much going on there, too much to think about. Anger and anxiety both feel the same and both have a nasty habit of keeping her awake.
Tiff doesn't sit. She leans against the side of the car, knowing that she's going to need to be able to move around. Just as her aunt needs something to do with her hands, Tiff knows she's going to need to be able to wander. It's like a phone call.
"What do you know about what happened here?" her aunt asks, not looking at her.
"I only know what I've been told. I have strings; I don't have pins. The sword, the one you keep in your closet or in the trunk, is linked to it."
"Correct."
"Almiel, that friend of yours, the angel— His appearance around you reminds me a little of— of something similar. Guardian angels and things."
"I didn't get one. A guardian angel, I mean."
Tiff looks over at her aunt. She isn't sure how old the woman is— somewhere around forty, she thinks, like Mr. Mathew, but she isn't sure. There's something about her, something tough— like she's remembering being barely seventeen, like she's back in that parking lot.
"I rejected my destiny from the first. I wasn't even sure what it was. I just knew I didn't want it.
"I suppose that's par for the course. The hero must refuse the call just as much as she must cross the threshold."
"Don't compare me to literary devices."
"Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. It was Almiel who told me I was chosen. He was all I got. I wasn't supposed to have him past the message. He was the one who showed me the sword and made me retrieve it from the pond behind the house." She sighs, looks up to the sky. "He was the one who tested me."
"Tested you?"
"Trials, Tiff. I don't know. I didn't want it. I never wanted it. Every failed attempt and project was just another tally on the side of the chart proving that I was right to reject it. Vengeance, or whatever I was supposed to do."
"And you never fulfilled it?"
"Not all the way. One way or another, your destiny will come for you— but I have been good enough at hiding from it that it has only glimpsed me in passing." She messes with the wrapper of the sandwich, but doesn't eat it. "Not yours. You don't really have one. He told me that."
"When? I've never met him."
"Gatlinburg." There's something else. It takes her a moment to say it. "I died there."
Tiff isn't sure what to say to that. She doesn't say anything.
"It wasn't the first time. Something about being back here is bringing it back, I suppose. I can feel it— like a burning ball in the pit of my stomach, like too much soup and too much anger. And I suppose I should take my own advice and start at the beginning."
Tiff sets her notebook on the hood of the car, less for jotting down notes and more as a show of good faith. She knows she doesn't need one. She gives it anyway.
She also knows her aunt has had a varied life. Half of it took place in Lake Wonder, but all of it was hers— and there's so much that Tiff doesn't know, just as she doesn't know all that much about her mother's past or about what Betty has been experiencing in the Fae Realm. You can never know what you haven't been told. She can sure as hell listen.
"Being seventeen and chosen was just as frightening as it was to be seventeen and pregnant. I didn't really want either. Whatever the case, Almiel gave me an assignment before I even knew about the second bit. I was never quite sure what I was supposed to do. I just knew I was the weapon of some higher power, whatever that means." She sighs. The breath comes out long, shaky. "I've never told anyone this. I was told to avenge someone. I never got a name. I was told to rid a house of ghosts— but I didn't do that, either. I did none of the things I was supposed to do. But fate finds you, and the narrative is circular, and... I don't know what to do about it. I don't know if I could do it, even if I wanted to. I'm not exactly in my physical prime these days."
Tiff opens her mouth to object.
Esther anticipates it. "No, I know. I'm very physically fit. That doesn't mean I'm not getting older. That I haven't gotten older. Fate's the game of a younger woman, I think. I don't think I could do it, Tiff."
"Then I'll do it."
She shakes her head too quickly, too desperately. "You can't."
"Why? Because that isn't how this works?"
"Because I don't want you to, Tiff. You're going to get hurt."
"I'm always going to get hurt. If I'm just acting as a proxy— if I'm just volunteering— then why not? Destiny is real, but it's also bullshit. We can expose its farcical nature. And why shouldn't we?" She pauses, unsure about what to say. "You said the narrative is circular."
"It's just a way of thinking about it. We all know what the Hero's Journey is. Luke Skywalker and all that. What I was, what I was supposed to be." (What you keep comparing me to, even though I told you not to.)
"No, I know— but— It sucks that this is true, but our lives have had such similar beats and moments. It's a part of growing up how we did, I think— First of all, fate is a force that can be manipulated as any other, right? Calculated and manipulated. As much as it manipulates us, we can manipulate it. So if our narrative is circular, so to speak— I know that isn't how it works, because we're real people. We're alive. This isn't a story and it's kind of silly to talk like it is—"
Thinking it over, she leaves the notebook on the hood of the car and wanders to the trunk. The narrative is circular, and so are their roles. Aunt Esther was once in the position Tiff is in now.
Meaning she had to learn about the witch-hunting at some point.
"How?" she asks, hands resting on red metal.
"How what?"
Right. Other people can't read her mind. "Our family. What they do. How did you find out?"
"Oh." She pauses, takes a moment and thinks over what she's going to say. "Matt told me. Our father— your peepaw— took him out on some trip, and he came back terrified. It wasn't like he could say no. So he told Ruth and I. Mostly me. Ruth thought he should have just bucked up and done what he was told."
Tiff isn't sure how to feel about the implication of that. The options here, as demonstrated by those who came before, are to accept the conditions as they come wholeheartedly, to put your head down and go along with it, or to get the hell out of there. She doesn't know about that. She would rather burn everything down.
She pops open the trunk.
It's the same as always, flooring with little spikes of something left behind by a spill Tiff wasn't even present for. There's a small cardboard box with jumper cables and a tire jack.
There's also a sword.
Tiff steps back from the trunk. She isn't touching that thing. That's the sword she saw on her first night here. That's the sword that changes in those dreams she's been having and intercepting. As cool as it is, she's a little too out-of-her-head to think about interacting with it without ruining things entirely.
"Hey. Hey, Aunt Etsher?"
She turns her head, cranes her neck around the car, sleep-mussed ponytail swinging around with her. "What's going on? Is something wrong?"
"Well, that's a complicated question with a complicated answer."
"And the answer is?"
"The answer is yes, kinda." She decides not to shut the trunk. This could be interesting. This could be useful. This could be good. There's no need to run away from it or what it could mean. This isn't some inherently bad thing. She is not the classic heroine of an early gothic horror pulp novel. She's the one who puts her hands where she shouldn't and makes horrible, bad decisions for no reason at all. That doesn't mean she needs to make this one. She leaves the sword alone.
With a sigh, her aunt swings herself off the hood of the car and, barefoot, walks across the gray asphalt. When she sees what Tiff is looking at, she just sighs. "Oh."
"Yeah. This is—"
"It's my sword."
"The sword you threatened Denny with?"
"Well, we had to get you out of the house somehow. You hadn't gone anywhere in months."
"I was— Auntie Esther, I was under house arrest."
"I know, I know." They've talked about this before. She takes in a long, deep breath. "That's the sword."
"That's the sword I've been seeing in the Dream World."
"I'm sorry, what? Roll that one back, please."
"Oh, I've been such a shit little hypocrite. So— I never told you about the Dream World, have I?"
"No, you have," Esther says, as she recalls it. "Back in March, when we were unpacking the groceries and you told me..."
"You can say it." Tiff finds herself surprised by how cold and measured her own voice is. "You can say it. I killed him, and I told you I killed him."
"And it was justified." Aunt Esther reminds her, just as she has a thousand times since the truth came out as a rambling confession stumbled into and knocked to the kitchen floor. "He was trying to kill you and the Anderson boy."
"I'm guilty. I'm allowed to be guilty. I can deal with the blood on my hands." Tiff shakes her head, trying to convince herself of it. "That's not important. It— that happened in the Dream World, which is how I also did that thing back in November, with the Black Robes Division. It's a separate plane of existence wherein dreaming occurs, like in pockets or something— I don't know, I don't get it as much as I think I do— Anyway, I tried entering it here. I don't know if it was because of the distance or the things that have happened here or some outside force interfering, but— I saw that sword. In someones's dream."
"And I get the feeling it was probably mine?"
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to enter your dream. I was trying to uh— Oh, this is going to sound insane."
"From the girl who's always talking about Bigfoot and learning their language?"
Sheepishly, Tiff admits, "I was trying to connect with her psychically. With Priscilla Cain, I mean. I didn't mean to get into your head. I'm sorry."
"Hey, it's not like I'm embarrassed about it or anything. I've been having that vision for decades. I'm glad that someone else other than Almiel knows about it. I just wish it weren't because of this."
"I think it was symbolic. I took your place and the sword changed."
"To what?"
"The same sword, but different. More... green. Lily pads. Less thorny. I spoke to something at the end of the hall— but I'm pretty sure it wasn't what was actually there. If that's representative of what you were called to do, then I spoke to something else. Something from my subconscious mind, maybe— something a little more unrelated. But the sword— can I touch it?"
"Can you touch the sword?"
"You offered it to me before, when the Halloween man ate that dog. And you tried to help me learn how to wield one."
"Yeah," she says, somewhere between pleasantly surprised and concerned. "I suppose I did."
"May I touch it?" she asks, keeping tempted and curious hands clasped behind her back.
The answer comes after a moment of consideration. "You may."
"Thank you." Tiff reaches for it.
Esther holds out a hand to make her pause. "Just— be careful, will you?"
"Auntie, you're right there. You'll be right there if anything goes wrong." You always are.
She takes the sword from the trunk. It doesn't change in her hands. The blade stays barbed; the blade stays gray. She turns it over in her hand to examine it, tip toward the trunk.
"I'll do it," she blurts.
"You'll do what?"
"The, uh— the destiny thing. The thing you were supposed to do here. I'll do it. I know you can't— it's like being paralyzed, right? It's like forgetting a cue and freezing. Or laying on the ground knowing you should do your homework, but you can't bring yourself to do anything. But I've done light work before, and I'll do this."
"Tiff, it's— it's a lot of responsibility."
"But it's not forever. Not for me. Everyone's always saying it, that the only duties I really have are the ones I impose on myself. Unlike you or Drake or Mr. Mathew, I had a choice. I have a choice. So I'm choosing to do this." She nods. "It'll be fine."
"Are you sure? I'll do my job if you're—"
"I'm sure. What if we—" Tiff laughs, restarts, "What if we switched places? I go out and do your thing, and you go into some archives or a lab and do mine?"
"I'm not welcome in most labs, Tiffy."
"Because of the PPE or because you won't stop eating the chemicals?" Serious, Tiff continues, "I'm sure that I'm going to do this."
"And you're not just saying this because you didn't sleep? Because you're delirious from revelation?" There's a degree of terrified skepticism to her voice, like all of this is too good to be true.
"I'm one hundred percent sure. I'm going to do this. You— You know destiny is bullshit. What does it matter who does the job, as long as it gets done?"
Near tears, Aunt Esther wraps an arm around Tiff, away from the sword, and pulls her in. Softly, she calls Tiff her darling girl once more.