Since Magnus could only open portals to places he had been, he and Eva ended up back in the park, right next to the statue of Saint Brigid, the very spot where they first met. The park was busier in the early evening than it had been in the early morning, but Eva was shaky enough not to want to walk very far right away. Magnus, tired as he was, didn’t have much magic to spare, but he could still use the staff, and he used the primordial darkness of Kek to hide them from passersby.
“On the whole, not exactly the first impression I wanted to create,” said Magnus.
“You were incredibly brave,” said Eva. “That’s what I’ll remember.”
“‘Remember’ as in ‘remember after I’m gone’?” asked Magnus. His expression was as gloomy as the darkness that hid them.
“I can’t live the kind of life you need to live,” said Eva.
“I told you I was willing to give it all up. Once I conceal the staff and set up some basic protections for us, I can give up magic forever. If you want ordinary, I’m your man.”
“You’d have to give up being who you are, Magnus. At first, I thought that whole story about Taliesin was just another bluff—but it was true, wasn’t it?”
“That’s really Tal’s story, but I have all the memories from it—every single life, dating back thousands of years. The whole being-with-God-at-the-beginning part neither of us can remember, but otherwise, yeah. I was there at the fall of Troy, the birth of Jesus, blah, blah, blah. Remembering those things doesn’t mean I have to live at the center of history now. You’re all the history I need. You’re all the life I need.”
“That’s not really the recipe for a healthy relationship,” she said gently.
Magnus jumped up from the bench. His weary muscles made the movement awkward, but it was still sudden enough to make Eva jump.
“That’s just a polite excuse, isn’t it? It’s because of what Iahmesu said—that I’m the product of dark magic.
“You don’t have to answer. I can see it in your eyes. Yeah, in a desperate moment, Tal used dark magic to save someone, and I was the side-effect. And…and I used to be just as bad as that sounds. In my world, I kidnapped Tal and tried to take his place. But that’s not me anymore. I swear it isn’t. I can’t change how I was created, but over time I became more than just a reflection of Tal’s dark side. His goodness grew in me as well. I’ve done a lot in the last few years to make up for the evil I did at first.”
“I’ve seen you in action, remember? I know you’re a good person now. And I don’t care how you were created. You didn’t have any choice in that.
“But even if you could change your whole life to be with me, you don’t really love me. You don’t even know me. You look at me and see your Eva. And if I’m being honest, I look at you and see my Tal grown up. I deserve better than that—and so do you. Neither one of us will ever know whether the other one truly loves us.”
“I do love you,” said Magnus. His lip quivered.
“It took me a while to process some of what you said earlier. So much was going on. But you referred to how many times this has happened before. I’m not the first Eva you sought out, am I?”
Magnus nodded reluctantly. “I’ve been at this for a few months.”
“Do you understand how that proves my point? Get rejected by one Eva, go off and find another one—and another, and another. People aren’t interchangeable parts, even if they are counterparts in different universes.”
“This isn’t about making points,” said Magnus, his voice getting louder. “This isn’t about logic. It’s about what I feel.”
“And your feelings are real…but maybe a little misplaced,” said Eva. “You have real emotions for your Eva. All the rest of us you just think you love because we are similar. OK, very similar—but not identical, right?”
“The only difference is circumstance,” Magnus said. “You are all the same person, but you have differences because you’ve experienced different things. My Eva got separated from Tal because of the collapse that followed the initial awakening of his past-life memories. You never had that experience. Instead, you had to go through seeing Tal die. That’s probably why you can’t get him out of your mind.”
Eva frowned. “How do you know I saw him die?”
“The Tal in my world and I both have some mindreading ability. I didn’t mean to snoop, but I can sometimes pick up highly emotionally charged memories without meaning to.”
Eva leaned back against the bench, feeling dizzy. “Yet another reason you can’t just give up magic. It’s more a part of you than you’re conscious of. I could no more ask you to do that than I could ask you to chop off one of your arms.”
“But I’m willing—the magic, I mean, not the arm.” His pleading tone made Eva sadder.
“I don’t want to keep rehashing the arguments against this relationship. I just know it won’t work. I can’t put either of us through that.”
Magnus’s face twisted with rage, but Eva wasn’t frightened by the sudden change. She’d seen enough of him to know he wouldn’t hurt her. That made it all the more alarming when he turned and smashed his bare fist into the statue of Saint Brigid.
“Why can’t anything ever work out?” he whispered, shaking his injured hand. “Why?”
Eva got up and touched his shoulders from behind. He shuddered at the contact.
“I’ve asked myself the same question sometimes. You’re bleeding. Let me—”
“I’ve got it,” he said, healing himself with a couple waves of the staff. “I’ve…” His voice faded away as it got shaky.
“You’re not going to want to hear this, but I have a suggestion,” said Eva.
“What is it?” His voice sounded as if he was about to cry, and he didn’t turn in her direction, but she pressed on, anyway.
“Go to a place where nobody knows you, establish a life, and see what happens. You’re a good-looking guy, and more importantly, you’re a good person. Women will respond to you better than they would respond to someone trying to fill another guy’s space in their hearts.”
Magnus turned in her direction. He looked as if he were trying so hard not to cry that he would give himself a fit. “Yeah, go to a place far away from you. Got it.”
“That’s not what—”
“I…I’m sorry,” said Magnus, his voice dropping back to a whisper. This isn’t how I want you to remember me. It’s just…so hard sometimes.”
She took him gently in her arms. He did cry then, and so did she.
Feeling his body in her arms, trembling with emotional overload, she almost wanted to give a relationship a try.
Almost.
When they pulled reluctantly apart, Magnus was calmer. “I do love you, whether you believe it or not. But I accept your decision.”
He gestured in the air, wincing as he drew from his nearly exhausted magic rather than from the staff’s. Into his hand fell a pair of twin flowers, pink with a slight whitening at the edge of the petals.
“If I’ve done this right, these will never wither. Remember me when you look at them.”
“I will.” She would have said more, but she knew she couldn’t keep her voice steady.
Magnus leaned close enough to kiss her. His lips were warm and gentle against hers as they made one last, mute appeal. Her heart beat faster, but her resolve stayed firm.
Magnus raised the staff. Unlike the gentle silver swirl of a portal, he conjured up a more violent magic, tearing a hole from this world to another.
Through the newly-made gap, Eva could see another park very much like the one in which they were standing. Magnus dispelled the darkness that had protected them from prying eyes, strapped on his backpack, and walked through.
Her eyes stayed riveted to the rip in reality. Magnus looked back once, just as she thought he might. He smiled, but the pain in his eyes cut through her like a knife. He raised the staff again, and the hole sealed as if it had never been there.
It took a few minutes with her trembling hands, but Eva managed to fasten the twin flowers securely in her hair with a bobby pin. She sat back down for a few minutes to give herself a chance to calm down before meeting her parents for dinner.
The park no longer looked the same to her. It was alive with possibilities, as if some wild and wonderful adventure waited for her behind every tree trunk. She doubted she’d ever have one quite like today’s again, but just knowing how much more there was to the world than she imagined was enough for now.
There were worlds where Tal was alive. There were even some where he was happy. There was at least one in which he and her counterpart were together. It wasn’t like having him back, but it softened the memory of his death.
For years, the image of the light fading from his eyes had haunted her. Now she couldn’t recall the details of that scene even though she was trying to. What glowed in her mind instead were all the little moments that one instant of pain had obscured. Their first date, their first kiss, and so much more, even though their time together had been so brief. Those she wouldn’t forget, and they no longer brought her pain.
The breeze that had so recently seemed to whisper about what might have been was now just a gentle sound rustling in the leaves, calming and without subtext.
She reached up to touch the twin flowers. Though the air was cool, they felt warm to the touch. Had Magnus put some spell upon them to take away her pain? It didn’t seem to her that his drained magic could have accomplished so much.
She glanced up at Saint Brigid, who was watching over that little corner of the park. That feeling of being watched over lingered as she walked back to her parents’ house.
If you found this story interesting, you might like the books in the Spell Weaver series. These books will let you see the early story of Tal and Eva’s relationship, the accidental creation of Magnus, and much more. Do Magnus and this Eva ever see each other again? Yes. If you want to know more, the later books in the series hold the answers. Visit here for more information.