“Nova can you just?—”
“No! No, I cannotjust,” she replied, each word as sharp as a knife. “There is nojustin this situation, Wren.”
I sighed, which only seemed to infuriate her more. I turned to look out the window.
“I know what you’re doing,” Nova said, after a tense but silent minute. “You’re waiting for me to calm down because you think I’m being hysterical, but the truth is that you should be hysterical, Wren! You should be freaking out right now!”
“Yes, because freaking out always solves things,” I muttered.
“When it is a proportional response, it sure does!” Nova shouted, and then pressed her lips together, taking a sharp inhalation through her nose, and then blowing it out through her mouth. “First of all, I’m not sure if I believed a single word that came out of that woman’s mouth. I mean, seriously? Gateways? Duru…whatever the hell she called them? It all sounds like bullshit.”
I turned to look at her, amused despite my simmering aggravation. “Seriously, Nova? We live in a town populated by witches, and this is the hill you want to die on? That her magical community isn’t believable?”
Nova rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It sounds fake.”
“Well, so does our entire existence to anyone who doesn’t live here, so maybe let’s just assume that she’s telling the truth.”
“Why though? Why should we assume that?”
“Well, in the first place, we watched her re-enter her own purportedly dead body and come back to life, and somehow I think that’s probably more than just some party trick or illusion. She’s got magic of some kind, even if we don’t fully understand it.”
“Well—”
“And secondly, Asteria found her. She spoke to her, specifically. Everyone in this town has been drilling it into my head from day one that our covens are sacred, that our history is important, that our traditions are who we are. Hell, less than twelve hours ago, we were all standing around the Shadow Tree to honor exactly all of those things. And I’m sorry, but Idon’t believe that Asteria would just lead a fox into the henhouse and tell us to trust her. Do you?”
Nova chewed the inside of her cheek, but said nothing.
“No, of course you don’t. In fact, I think you do believe what Jess told us. I think you believed every word that came out of her mouth, until the moment she started talking about the one thing that scares the shit out of you, and that’s the Source.”
“I’m not scared of the Source,” Nova retorted.
“Yes, you are,” I said. “We all are, aren’t we? We don’t understand it. We can’t control it. And yet, somehow we have to protect it from the Darkness. It’s okay to admit we’re afraid of it. Of its power. Of what it can do. How it could tempt us.”
“That’s beside the?—”
“And furthermore,” I shouted right over her, so that she snapped her mouth shut again and glared at me. “It’s okay to admit that that temptation has happened before. It’s okay to admit that that makes us feel vulnerable, because it should.”
“I don’t do vulnerable,” Nova muttered under her breath, as she stared icily out the window.
“Yes, you do. You just hide it better than most of us,” I said. “Fear and vulnerability can be a good thing, you know. It keeps us alert and on our toes. It forces us to self-reflect and probe our own motivations.”
“It’s turned my mother into a monster,” Nova said quietly.
“Not quite a monster,” I said. “But yeah, there is such a thing as letting the fear spiral out of control. Your mom is probably guilty of that.”
“My mom isdefinitelyguilty of that.”
“And she’s not the only one. Look at my mom, fleeing this town and never looking back. The point is that the adults in Sedgwick Cove have let fear be in charge for a long time now. They let it take over. And I don’t think this is any way to live, just holding our breath and being thankful for another day of not facing what we know is out there.”
I sat in silence, and watched Nova’s face as she processed everything we’d just said. She was less angry at least; the red was fading from hercheeks, and her jaw wasn’t clenched. Finally, her whole body seemed to sag.
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, you’re right. I’m scared about the Source. But that doesn’t change anything. I don’t think we should mess with it.”
“Neither do I. No one is talking about messing with it, we’re talking about identifying it. But if Jess is right and the Source is one of those… those Gate-whatevers… then we might actually understand the deep magic for the first time since the First and Second Daughters set foot in the Cove. Don’t you think it’s better to have more information than less? Don’t you think we should arm ourselves with whatever knowledge we can find, even if it comes from an unexpected source? And Jess said that the Durupinen are protectors of the Gateways. She might actually be able to help us keep the Darkness from it!”
