Chapter 12: Chapter Eleven

We just sit there giggling for a long time, muzzy and warm and together.

"So… what do I do with these other two bolts?" I ask, flexing my fingers. "Like… my spell was for three bolts."

"Oh," Mero says, eyes glittering, "I have a lot more I want to see you annihilate than two dusty old relics." I don't think Merovingia is even slightly evil, but if she was, this would definitely be the start of a very rapid corruption arc that ends in world domination. I don't think I'm ever going to be good at saying no to her.

For now? It's just nice to have her cling to my arm and jump excitedly while I blow up two more statues. And after that, we start digging into all the other spells I can cast.

I find out pretty fast what the pattern is: the more I've thought about a spell in the past, imagined what it would really be like to cast it, the stronger I am with it. I'm no good at scrying things because spying on people never seemed like a nice thing to do. I'm an okay flyer, but I tend to have a lot of trouble with the landing part of that. Fortunately, my girlfriend has wings.

I'm a phenomenal healer, which I learn the same day I learn that Mero's knives are supernaturally sharp and, um… snip the tip of my right pointer-finger off while I'm playing with one. My weather control is worthy of--yeah, you know what? I'll say it. A goddess. Call the wind? I was way underselling myself with that! I can call maelstroms that pour black blood and red lightning right down into the middle of Mero's hall.

I don't try summoning the dead or opening portals yet. Mero and I agree I should practice more first. I have unholy amounts of magic at my command, but the setup time for my spells could be a problem if I need to act fast. I doubt most ghosts are going to cause problems when they see they're dealing with me and Mero at the same time, but better safe than sorry. And as for portals--I dunno, I just got here. Trying to go somewhere else seems a little premature. I want to get my bearings, learn the rules of this world first.

And… this is it. This is my life now. I wake up each morning with Mero. I spend each day with Mero. I cuddle up with Mero each night and fall asleep in her arms. There's no pressure. I don't have to worry about a career. I'm not trying to escape from anything. Losing my sense of drive does make me depressed for about two weeks early on. But after that I learn to relax, like the rhythms of life with my succubus girlfriend, and it's just… good.

It turns out I don't need Earth or Earth's humans to feel fulfilled. I don't need the press of time or the fear of death to remind me to enjoy each day. Actually, with all that stuff taken off--I mention aging to Mero once, she offers me a serum of eternal youth, and I drink it without a second thought--I find focusing on my witchcraft is easier.

It's just easier and more natural for me to sink into every new spell and study without worrying about how it fits my schedule, what I need to do tomorrow, whether I should be focusing on something more productive.

I knew it would be this way already, though. I don't blame anyone back on Earth for not wanting to believe it. It sucks, and in a perfect world we just wouldn't do it, but it probably is easier dealing with how much fear and pain and exhaustion there is from living a mortal life in a world without magic if they keep telling themselves that, hey, at least it's forcing them to get more out of the time they have.

That does remind me of one thing. It leads into a few months of research and trying little experiments with each other's dreams. Not to mention, one very strange moment that sticks with me for reasons I may never truly know how I know.

"Mero," I ask, lying on my belly with a little plushy of her that I asked her to conjure for me, while the intro to Neon Genesis Evangelion plays on our weird-cool crystal TV,  "so… we're both pretty powerful. But there've been people more powerful than us, right? Witches and succubi both? Is it possible any of them are still alive, and can touch Earth, somehow?"

That's what we've been trying to do. Figure out how to make ourselves known in the world. We're pretty sure the dream theory is solid--now that I'm in a place where my magic works, I can lucid dream on command, step into Mero's dreams easy as breathing. What we don't know is whether it'll still work on Earth's side of the world-lines.

Merovingia's eyes narrow in that special, pinpoint way that means I touched on something she wants to tell me, but has to be really careful about.

"I believe I know of one," she says at last, "who still has some power over causality--in the sense of warping what contemporary humans would call luck, or coincidence. The same force, taking the place of the non-arcane forces involved in simple cause-and-effect, which was called fate in the ancient days. Days when it flowed far more strongly."

"Well, yeah, that makes sense," I say. "There are so many random variables involved that you can't really break causality down to all mundane or all magic. It's everything blended together, by definition." I'm not sure yet why that feels important--why it makes sense that the only magic left on Earth would be almost impossible to tell apart from mundane forces.

"Right," Mero agrees, folding her hands in her lap. "But, as to this being… I have not dared approach her. Her aura is alien, even to me. It sings of things no being should know. Whispers, little promises of god-mocking revelation. What terrifies me most is how clearly she whispers the price." Mero pauses.

"What's that?" I ask.

"Agony," Mero says simply. "An agony of knowing things that reveal every nightmare I've lived with all my life, and had some succor from only because I did not know how to find the truths at their core. She is blue oblivion creeping on the borders of my loneliest and most abyssal dreams. I have met a few spirits now and then that bear her touch, her…" she licks her fangs, "corruption."

"Like… a legit Lovecraftian horror?" I ask.

"Indeed," Mero says. "One who has grown more and more adamant in our chance encounters over the centuries that she is a demon, too." She folds her hands. "As to those spirits, they…" she shudders. "When I meet them, I flee as swiftly as I can. I catch but a glimpse. Still, no matter how brief each was, I cannot escape the glimpses I have seen. They wear the shapes of other succubi. They have the horns and the tails and the fire of all Hell's ardor in their eyes."

"You should talk to them!" I say. "Maybe they only seem scary because you don't know them. That happens with humans all the time. Why not demons too?"

"I will not risk it," Mero says, shaking her head. "You… you will understand when, as I fear we must, we encounter them on our dreamwalks together." She shivers--shivers with visceral horror that cuts me way deeper because it's the horror of a demon at things even she doesn't understand. "It's ghoulish, Carrie," she whispers. "That's the only word for it. Like they're puppeteering the corpses of all the sisters I've lost to the ages. Smiling while the skin sloughs off their cheeks, and black rot flows over their gums."

I decide never to ask her about this ever again. If we need to deal with it, we'll do it when we know that we have to. Until then, it just doesn't sound worth the risk.

Mero and I decide to make our play on the most cliché night of all: Halloween, a few months after I disappear.

"Well," I say, kissing her cheek, "Let's hope this works."

"It will," she says, kissing mine back. "You're a wonderful witch, Carrie."

"And you, Merovingia," I say as I nuzzle her nose, "are the very best Succ."

No matter what happens, I'll get to hear all the cute noises she makes when I tell her that. I'll make my heaven in hellfire and the shine in a love-drunk demon's eye. As for everything else… hey, I'm not greedy. One perfect eternity is more than enough for me.

Mero's domain falls away. The weightlessness comes to me: first of sleep, then of walking in dreams. I already know not to fixate on any one thing I remember about Hannah. The whole idea of her, whatever random things come to mind, that's what I need to drift us towards. I already did the work of knowing her the last time we met. Now I just need to hope I did it well enough, and let the ripples of that meeting guide us to a new one.

When we arrive, it's jarring as can be. Screams. Gunfire. Awful high-pitched shrieking sounds followed by ear-splitting explosions that leave everything else feeling silent when their thundercrash echoes pass… oh, yeah. Hannah did say she reads a lot of war history. We're in a trench.

 I mean, c'mon, I know what a trench is.

It's dusty. The air hangs heavy with smoke and embers from the explosions whose tops I can see even from down here, and hundreds of soldiers are gathering near the ladders at the front lip of the trench. I'm wearing my full witch's attire.

Mero looks a little more understated. We don't know how well Hannah is going to handle meeting an actual demon. I want to stay positive, but she didn't seem like much of a believer before, so it's hard to say whether she'll like succubi when she finds out they're real. Not everyone takes well to finding out there are actual people behind the idols they've built in their heads. So, for now, Mero looks like she's just a black-haired, olive-skinned human woman with curves that are just a little too good to be true. Somehow, her simple V-cut black gown makes her look even more out of place than I do--veiled and occult as I am.

As for the soldiers all around us, I don't need to ask whose army this is because an officer starts talking immediately. I know he's an officer. Like, c'mon… look at that big elaborate hat that's silly and cool at the same time. He seems pretty grim. I guess Hannah takes this dream seriously, so all the figments of her imagination take it seriously too.

"Soldaten dem Deutsches Kaiserreichs!" the German officer barks. He keeps talking, but I pretty much know what a pre-battle speech sounds like and I'm not going to be fighting in this one, so it's not like I need to listen to the specific words.

"Mero, does this look familiar?" I ask. "I mean… if you walk in dreams a lot, you've probably seen whatever battle this is in someone's PTSD, right?" I don't have words for all the grey uniforms and mostly-wooden guns I see, but the helmets look uncomfortably familiar.

"Er, ja," Merovingia says, squinting. "I'm not certain about which battle, but considering all the Stahlhelms, I assume this is late in the First World War. Or, molded after it." She looks to me and shrugs. "It's a dream, Carrie. There's no guarantee it's a real historical battle. It probably just reflects something that Hannah strongly believes about herself, or fears, or is working through. Or not working through."

"Oh, right," I say. "I know about World War One. That's the one where the Germans weren't Nazis, and didn't commit a ton of war atrocities."

Mero grins in pure agony. "That first part is true."

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That really makes me want a distraction. That turns out to be good, because it means I'm looking around lots and I spot a shorter figure getting ready near the ladders. Hannah is grimmer than any of the male soldiers around her: knuckles white on her rifle, checking the lever-thingy on the side, working the bayonet to make sure it's not loose.

"Uh, Herr Oberst?" I call.

"Ich bin Major Gunther von Strelitz," the officer says, saluting. "Was braucht unsere Hexensunternehmensabteilung? Es tut mir leid, Frau Überkampfshexen, aber, wir haben noch nur ein Paar Sekunden bis unseren Angriff ist an zu gefangen."

God, he talks so fast. I think I understood, like, four words of that.

"That is not a real detachment, and there certainly were not any witches in the Imperial German Army," Mero whispers. "Hannah made it up for our benefit just now."

"Okay," I say, putting together the rest based on that. "Uh… tell him we're taking Hannah for some special secret witch-mission? It's basically not even a lie."

"Guten tag, Herr Major!" Merovingia says. "Wir mussen uns auch entschuldigung. Wir muss dieser Soldat," she points to Hannah, "für ein heimliches Unternehmen genommen. Gleich danach werden wir sie zu ihrer Einheit zurücksenden."

"Ah!" Major von Strelitz salutes again. "Verstanden, Frau Überkampfshexen!" He turns neatly on his heel to face Hannah. "Gefreiter Schumacher! Jetzt folgieren sie die Befehle des Überkampfshexens!"

Hannah glances to us, licks her lips, then snaps to attention and salutes. "Verstanden, Herr Major." She drops her arm, marches to us, and opens her mouth to talk. Then she stops. Cocks her head. I realize the explosions on the other side of the trench have stopped.

The Major puts a long, silvery tube-whistle in his mouth and blows.

Like wound-up springs, all the dreamscape soldiers rush to the ladders and over the top. Hannah, Merovingia and I stand there while they scream the tops of their heads off. For a few seconds it's all roaring and thundering feet and the rattle of gear.

Then the last man steps off the top of the ladder and begins his sprint into slaughter. The three of us are alone in the phantasmal trench. Just three girls and the sounds of machineguns and explosions in the distance.

"Uh, hi," I say. "This isn't about me leaving the planet, is it?"

Hannah brightens. "Holy shit, it's actually you! That's such a you thing to say!" She hurls herself into me. "I knew it! I knew you made it, I knew you weren't dead!" I hug her back while she sways us back and forth. "That tomb totally opened after I left, didn't it?"

"It wasn't a tomb, but yeah," I say, sighing with relief. "I was just really worried because, y'know… Mero said this probably reflects on what's going on in your head, and this is kinda grim. Literally fighting a war in here, and all."

"Oh, that's just standard trans girl stuff," Hannah says. An explosion goes off just above the trench and showers us all with dirt. Little specks rattle on her helmet. "Well, that and some really complicated feelings about my German-American heritage."

"Liebchen," Merovingia laughs, "wait until you hear about being just plain German."

Hannah looks at Mero. Her eyes widen. "Oh my fuck," she whispers. "You're Carrie's succubus, aren't you?"

Mero exchanges a look with me. "What the fuck?" she complains, checking behind her. "Is my tail out? Did I give something away? Carrie, did I give something away?"

"No, no," Hannah laughs. "Just, like… the two of you both seem really okay with walking around in my dreams, and I figured if Carrie made it, she'd totally hook up with a succubus, so as soon as I realized it was actually you and not just some dream-world hallucinations from me feeling guilty over leaving Carrie behind that night… you know."

"Yeah," I say, "yeah, I totally do! So, um…" I flop my hand. "Hannah, for real, though, what happened?"

"Well," Hannah says, doffing her helmet and plopping down on a trench-bench, "obviously no one back here on Earth believes you found a magic portal and just didn't want to come back. They sure do have some ego problems about how nobody would ever want to leave a world where your two choices are selling out to a shitty job, or dying of depression and burnout somewhere in your fifties."

"Or they're afraid to believe," I say, shrugging. "Or both. But, continue."

"Yeah, well… not going to sugarcoat this…" Hannah blows out a breath. "Moonsilver kind of freaked out and tried to pin everything on me. I think she, um… she doesn't really think of me as a woman. So, she was pushing the idea that since I was the last one seen with you, and, gee, it's not like two outsiders would naturally have looked to each other for comfort, right?... so, yeah. She kept saying stuff that didn't overtly blame me, but also made it sound like she didn't believe there was anyone else who could be to blame, and she didn't overtly say I wasn't a woman but she never mentioned me any of the handful of times that talks about 'risks young women always take at that age' came up, so… basically?"

Hannah pulls back the little lever thing on her rifle and takes the bullets out. "She was trying to make everyone believe the evil trans girl invader raped and murdered you, then hid your body somewhere in the woods. Or, if she wasn't trying to get that across, she sure didn't speak up to stop other people from speculating on it."

I wince. "Sorry, Hannah." I do have look from her to me and back again. "Also, okay. I have, like, at least four inches on you, and I don't work out a ton, but I definitely have more muscle than you. I'm kind of fucking offended that Moonsilver acted like you could just overpower me and…" I trail off. "Sorry, sorry. We're not talking about me right now."

"It's okay," she says, smiling. "I just thought about what we talked about that night, and that helped me get a lot of perspective so I could keep calm. Anyway, my Mom is the base commander and she's in good with some high-level army brass, so I just kind of hid behind her while she ate Moonsilver for breakfast." She rubs her arm. "I feel a little bad about that, you know. Using American imperialist power systems to shield me."

"No, hey, absolutely not," I say. "Moonsilver crossed a line this time, like… fuck. Before she was just preachy, but what you're talking about is evil." I swipe a hand through the air. "The system is against you so, so often, Hannah. Good on you for using it to protect you the one time it was actually doing that. 'cuz, you know, it should be all the time."

"Maybe," Hannah says. "Anyway, she failed, the accusations backfired, UM completely dissolved her coven-club-thing, and she's a total social disgrace. Morrigu threw her away the day after the verdict. Her own mother had Moonsilver's name stricken from that horrid product line they were working on… which is still going to market, just under a different name. I don't know. This is supposed to be the part in the end credits of the movie where the upbeat music plays and we talk about how this is real change at last, but…"

She sighs. "I know the morally-upright trans girl thing is to be like, 'Yes, another closeted TERF outs herself, and this time we finally get to see her destroyed! Justice for my sisters!' But that's just not the vibe I get from Moonsilver. I think she panicked and made some incredibly stupid choices, and yeah, she definitely had some transphobia she wasn't dealing with, but last I heard she… actually is, now? I care a lot less about anyone getting destroyed than I do about people just choosing to do better. We've already talked about that."

She pulls the bayonet off her rifle and puts it in its sheathe on her uniform. "And in case you're wondering, no. Nobody's forgiving her, and I don't know how to get in touch to tell her I do. I'm not saying she doesn't deserve the consequences of her own actions. But it feels like, to me, nothing's changed. Moonsilver's downfall isn't going to make any ripples outside the people who knew her, or actually lead to systemic change. She's not the enemy. She's another woman deceived, baited, and used by the system until she stopped being useful. Her power's gone. She can't hurt anyone. But they're still piling on her."

Hannah sets the rifle down, unbuckles her ammunition bandoliers, and stands up to stretch while she keeps talking. "You and me are the people she hurt, but nobody's actually trying to figure out what either of us would've wanted. They're just projecting the things they associate with women like us into choosing what they're going to push out of the things they already want, whether it has anything to do with us or not. The Republicans are holding you up as a martyr for good Christian girls taken advantage of by liberal elites--"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," I groan, burying my face in Mero's boobs. "That's some next-level Monkey's Paw bullshit. I got my wish, but I sold out my legacy to do it."

"Yep," Hannah agrees. "Meanwhile, I'm still alive, but all the liberal reporters who've talked to me have only given me time to answer the canned questions they had. There are, like, five different fundraisers with names like 'Justice for Hannah Schumacher', and like… it kind of feels like they need to invent new layers of crimes against me to be enraged about so there's always more justice to yell for. So they don't have to stop and think, so they can ignore that, firstly, the U.S. Air Force already got justice for me, and on a related note, the U.S. Air Force did more to protect an isolated trans girl from a toxic clique than they did."

Hannah pauses. "Thank fuck for my Mom and Dad. Like, we've argued over stuff, especially politically, but when the chips are down, they always look after me."

"Parents are cool, sometimes?" I suggest.

"I'm glad ours are, at least," Hannah says. "We deserve whatever we can get." She scrubs her hair with grimy fingers. "But even with all their support, I feel like I've been martyred while I'm still fucking alive. And all I can think of is that now Moonsilver is in exactly the same place you must've been after you got away from all your shitty friends. Her whole worldview has been smashed to pieces and she's in total flux. If one person gave her a chance, I bet she'd rise to the occasion."

"But here we are," I say, "getting pushed out of the way so Earth can do what it does best."

"Yeah," she says.

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