Chapter 2: Chapter Two: Through the Gate

“No,” Jonathan finally said. And then, deadpan, “can’t say I’m familiar.” Charlie stared at him for a minute, blinking like she was processing what he’d just said. He could tell she was trying to figure out if he’d simply answered or if it had been a pun. Thanks to his parents, he’d learned over the years to cloak his humour in an air of plausible deniability. They didn’t really go in for comedy, and so he wasn’t allowed either. He obviously hadn’t been allowed backtalk either. The power of unacknowledged wordplay, delivered with a perfectly blank face had been his way of rebelling. Sure, it got him stern looks from his mother, and he knew his father would sometimes reduce his evening meal portions for it, but he wasn’t explicitly punished because there was no proof he’d mocked them. 

Finally, Charlie’s face split into a wide grin, which he hadn’t expected. “Well,” she said with a little singsong tone in her voice, “you will be.” Then she hesitated and looked up. “For legal reasons, that was a joke.” 

“I’m confused,” Jonathan said. Charlie shrugged to let him know that that was pretty much expected. She’d been throwing a lot of information at him and he himself was surprised at how much of it had stuck, all things considered. 

“Walk with me,” Charlie said, and got up from the table in the middle of the road. Jonathan had almost forgotten where they were, a truck frozen in time just a few feet away. His apparent death or perhaps lack thereof no less threatening just because it wasn’t moving. Charlie saw him look at the vehicle. “Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere. And, I’m really sorry I have to reiterate, neither are you, unless you decide to go with me.”

“That feels like blackmail,” Jonathan said darkly as he got up. Charlie walked down the street, people still in place. Someone had spilled some coffee on a terrace table and the droplets hung in the air like tiny brown gemstones. 

“It’s the opposite, really. I know it seems cruel, but try to think of this as a second chance. You would have died, and not because of us,” she said, clearly trying to reassure him. While, of course, Jonathan enjoyed a healthy distrust of any adults, as was normal for sixteen-year-olds, he did get the feeling that she felt guilty about all of this somehow. But he also knew that adults didn’t like being pressed and that she’d deny it if he brought it up. “Just… try to trust me. I’m offering you a chance at a life, with friends and something like a family.” She rounded a corner and Jonathan saw her take one of the sweets out of the bag and pop it into her mouth, nervously chewing on it. 

“So what was that about witches and familiars?” Jonathan asked. It was easy for him to keep up with her. Even at his age, he was a little taller than her, he realized now, and he’d long disliked how gangly puberty had made him. He looked like someone had tried to fill up a shirt with coat hangers, with more knees and elbows than was to be reasonably expected. Charlie swallowed her sweet and then looked up again.

“Well, the world is, as you can probably imagine by now, not what you thought it was,” she finally said as they came to a crossing. She didn’t look both ways, Jonathan noticed, and he wondered if she always moved through the world with time frozen the way it was. Besides, crossing the road without looking wasn’t exactly a glass house he had any right to throw stones in. “But let’s just say that there’s a lot of danger in it. And we need people who can defend it in ways that… well, for lack of a better word, normal people can’t.”

“You don’t have a word for non-magical people,” Jonathan mused.

“Of course not. Magical kids already feel alienated enough from the world they grew up in, the last thing they need is a slur for people who don’t have a privilege they were born with,” Charlie said with a sigh. “But yeah, it’s our job to find children with magical potential and help them achieve it.”

“Like me,” Jonathan nodded. He saw Charlie look over to him, and realized that she might be wondering why he wasn’t more stunned or excited by all of this. He flashed her an apologetic smile. 

“No,” Charlie said, and Jonathan felt his cynicism vindicated. “And yes.” Oh. He frowned. “Like I said, we can’t really unlock your potential anymore.” She hesitated, then shrugged. “Because of the whole dead thing.”

“Right,” Jonathan said, as if he’d already forgotten about that part. 

“But you can become what’s known as a Familiar.” She paused for dramatic effect, and while Jonathan appreciated a little bit of drama, he did very much like to get a little bit more of an inkling of what he might be saying yes to. “Witches, Warlocks, Wizards; they’re all people with tremendous magical potential. But with a Familiar by their side, they can tap into a sort of shared pool of magic. It makes them more powerful, but only if the relationship is equal, reciprocal.” Another pause. “That word might be a bit long,” she started.

“I know what reciprocate means,” Jonathan said quietly. He’d picked it up out of a book his parents had made him study. It’d had gears and a handshake on the cover. “I can kind of take it from there.”

“Ah,” Charlie said, “anyway, as a Familiar, you’d become a mage’s… assistant, sort of. And together you’d be stronger!” she finished cheerfully. 

“Like, for life?” Jonathan asked suspiciously. Charlie chewed on her tongue for a moment, and then looked at him with a look he couldn’t quite identify.

“No,” she said, finally. “The older magical people get, the more their ability to use magic drops off. Although in almost all cases, Familiars and their Mages stick together. It’s a pretty powerful bond.” Jonathan nodded, even though he got the feeling there was something she wasn’t quite telling him. 

“So what’s the catch?” he finally asked. “There has to be something. Or am I going to be a glorified spare-battery-secretary?” He grimaced at the thought of his life being essentially the same as it had been, being kept around.

“We-ell,” Charlie said, cocking her head, “Familiars are… animals.”

“???” Jonathan said.

“It’s because of the way magic works, you see,” Charlie said quickly as she crossed another street. As she explained, Jonathan looked around. He didn’t often go down these streets in town -- if he’d ever gotten lost, there would’ve been hell to pay -- and he was trying to figure out where they were now. “There’s an animal that connects the mage and the Familiar, and that’s the form the Familiar takes when they -- in this case, you, if you decide to say yes -- are close to their mage.”

“Huh,” Jonathan said, blinking in what could only be called stupefaction. “So if I say yes -- which, considering the alternative is truck, I feel like I should -- I’d become whatever animal fits between me and… whoever I end up with?”

“Yup!” 

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“And you don’t think that’s weird?” Jonathan asked. “Turning children into animals to make them best friends with another child to make them both stronger.”

“Well, yeah,” Charlie said, “but it’s better than the alternative.”

“Isn’t just going home an option for most kids?” Jonathan asked. “You’re already saving their life, right?” The streets were completely alien to him now. There had been a few landmarks he’d recognized from driving through time in the back of his parents’ car, but this was all new. Charlie shook her head.

“There’s a lot of stuff I can’t explain to you right now, but you’re going to have to take my word for it that that would be a bad idea,” Charlie explained. Jonathan hated feeling like ‘adults’ were keeping things from him, but in this particular case, at least, it didn’t feel like Charlie was doing it because she didn’t think him mature enough. She was hiding something, and that was also annoying, but in a different way. In a more cool ‘Classified Document’ kind of way. 

“So now what?” he asked. “And where are we going?”

“I figured taking a walk while I explain things would be a good idea,” Charlie said. “You like walking, as I understand it.” For the first time, Jonathan blushed. People didn’t really take an interest in him, and even earlier he’d gotten the feeling like the only reason Charlie had been here had been because of his potential. Knowing what he liked felt… personal. Like he was important enough to know things about. “We could’ve taken the car, but I like this view a lot more, anyway.”

She stopped in front of a little wrought iron gate between two buildings and pulled out a small key from a ring. Turning it gently in the lock, Charlie treated the key with care. The lock clicked, and Charlie pushed the gate open. The little alleyway on the other side seemed wholly unremarkable, housing mostly old, forgotten trash cans, a paper bag with what he hoped wasn’t something living in it, and a lot of very dubious-looking stains. 

“Are you… taking me to get robbed? Not that I’m not keen on new experiences,” Jonathan said, trying to make the sarcasm drip thick and heavy, “but I think saving me only to get mugged in a dirty alley seems--”

“Oh hush,” Charlie said with a smirk, “Give it a minute.” She stepped through the gate and nodded her head for Jonathan to follow as she stepped to the side. With his eyebrows raised, skeptical as ever, he stepped through. Other than the whole time-being-frozen thing, he still hadn’t been very open to the idea of magic. It all sounded silly, like something made up by a child. But as soon as he crossed the threshold, the two buildings on either side seemed to move away from him, and he got a strange sense of vertigo, like he was being lifted upwards by the scruff of his neck. The dirty trash cans moved off to the side, the stains slowly faded away, and the alleyway slowly became a boulevard. 

At the end of it was a house. An old Victorian building, with lots of little towers, it looked like it hadn’t been so much built as cobbled together by an over-eager architect who hadn’t ever been offered the opportunity to stop. It almost hurt the brain to look at, because there was always something else to be discovered. Jonathan stood slack-jawed in the middle of the street. 

“Cat got your tongue?” Charlie asked, and the smug satisfaction on her face was just enough to shake Jonathan out of his state of shock. 

“Whuh,” he managed, and pointed. 

“Yeah!” Charlie said, and took a step forward, urging him to follow. “I know, right?!”

“What… what is… how… what… where?”

“That,” Charlie said, a smile dancing on her lips like a spark in a fire, “is home.”

Jonathan blinked a few times and finally took some tentative steps forward again. What he’d just seen, the street stretching out, the house coming out of nowhere, in a place where there definitely hadn’t been enough room for a house, had been impossible. Either this was magic or he really had been hit by that truck. But now that he knew the impossible was possible…

“Charlie?” he said, softly as he slowly walked towards the house. He had to know. He had to see. Would his parents even miss him? He’d always been inconvenient. Maybe, here, he’d find purpose. Family.

“What’s up, buttercup?” she asked as she practically skipped down the street. Her energy was infectious. 

“I think I want to do it. Stay. Or go with you, I mean. I don’t want to go back.”

“Rad,” she said with a wide grin, then looked at the building again. “This is the Unfamiliar House. You’re going to love it.” He looked at the Unfamiliar House. He heard, coming from what he assumed was the yard, the sound of children playing. There were a few shapes in the windows. There was a girl sitting on a bench in the front yard, reading what appeared to be a storybook, her legs crossed, and she was clearly enjoying the sun. Charlie waved. The girl waved back.

“Who’s that?” Jonathan asked. 

“Th--” Charlie began, and then the road exploded. A shape, dull, grey and almost see-through, had burst through the pavement. Jonathan had been thrown back and could only look up at it. It looked like a human, but much, much too big, with too many mouths, too many teeth, too many eyes, too many arms. Its big, wet eyes swiveled in every direction, until they found Jonathan. It roared, and Jonathan screamed.