Chapter Text
“Come on…. come on! We’re not gonna make it!”
“We’re gonna make it!”
There, up ahead—they can see the crater in the ground where the Owl House used to be. Where the Owl House is supposed to be.
They’re really racing against the clock now: the conjuring moon is almost ready to set and they can feel its power seeping out of the house tile by tile. But they’re only a few yards away now. Closer…. closer—
“STOP!”
At Willow’s command they yank the house to a stop right at the edge of the crater, teeter-tottering. “We have to put it down gently!” As if they’re not lugging around a house. But they do their best anyway, steering the house step by step back inside the crater, holding their collective breath when the motion of the house’s legs crossing sends the house surging down, but the house is only sitting back down, settling into place, its great mysterious legs hunkering back to whatever hidden crevice they spawned from, and little by little the piece of ground that’s been carrying the house through this entire ordeal is lowering itself down, its edges shifting to close the gaps between the house and the bedrock….
Everything shivers to a stop.
None of them dares to say anything for a moment. Tense. They’re all pressed so tightly together that they can almost feel each other’s heartbeats. Stuttery. Spent.
Finally it’s King who takes the first cautious look around. “Did…. did we do it?”
“H-hey, what’s everyone all upside-down for, ha ha….”
They jump, but it’s only Hooty—blessedly irritating Hooty. He’s the one who’s upside-down, no longer glowing but with a quesingly exhausted look scrunching up his features instead. His voice comes out woozy. “Is the room spinning or is it just me, hoot….”
They breathe a sigh of relief in unison, their postures sinking by about a foot each. It’s over. “Sorry about all that, Hooty,” says Gus, his smile apologetic.
“That’s okay, I’m just glad I was included!” It’s as much enthusiasm as Hooty can muster before he passes out. Snoring little hoots indicate he’s going to be down for a while.
“He’ll be fine.” King’s pulling the front door open. “We should get inside.”
After the night it’s had, it really shouldn’t be a surprise that the house is an absolute mess on the inside. Almost everything that wasn’t nailed down is a jumbled disaster on the floor, and King winces to see a spot of broken glass where some jars tipped over, their contents spilling across the floorboards. And this is just on the first floor.
“Huuh…. okay.” King runs a hand through his hair absently. He’s tired. “Okay. We still have time to clean this up before Eda gets back!” He whirls to face Willow and Gus, who look almost guilty as they glance around at the mess they inadvertently made. “You two get the first floor and I’ll get the upstairs—”
“Hold it right there, mister!”
He freezes. Ohhhh no no no noooo—
Because Eda has suddenly appeared in the doorway, fumbling herself off her staff. She looks awful, scuffed up and feathery like she just got back from her own life-threatening adventure, and coming up right behind her is Luz, her fur ruffled. The two of them come to stand just inside the doorway, eyes trained directly on King, demanding explanation. King wants to sink into the floor.
“You held a moonlight conjuring.” Eda’s voice is chillingly stoic.
King gulps. “I—”
“And you animated my house. My house!” She’s glancing around at the fallen knick-knacks cluttering the living room, the askew sofa.
“I—we—” King fights to stumble through the panic, feeling guilty. But the first thing he manages to spit out is, “W-we didn’t mean to do the house!”
Eda glares.
“We didn’t mean to do the house, but—but Willow and Gus really wanted to do the conjuring and you woulda said no!”
Behind him, Willow and Gus share a wincing look, cringing back in sudden shame. They don’t know why—King’s the one who neglected to tell them the truth.
“Don’t—don’t get mad at them. Get mad at me.” Eda’s eyes on him feel like cinder blocks and King’s casting his own gaze down to the floor, hands clenched at his sides. “I….” The rest comes out in a rush, wanting to be done with so he can go hide forever: “I lied. To everybody.”
Eda’s still glaring. She takes in a breath—
“I’m sorry, too.”
Surprised, everybody turns to look, and Luz is looking up at all of them with eyes brimming. She turns to King. To Eda.
“I knew King was having the conjuring the whole time,” and at the confession Eda blinks her shock, wanting to respond, but: “I didn’t tell you because I knew how much this meant to him, and to Gus and Willow. And none of us could have known about the house.”
It stuns King to see Luz coming to stand by his side, her head held high as she faces her shame with dignity. “So if you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at me.”
“And at us!”
Willow’s hand on King’s shoulder: he looks up and sees her face set with something that’s both remorse and determination. Beside her Gus has one hand on Willow’s arm and the other on Luz’s shoulder, the four of them linked together. A chain of shared blame. “This is just as much our fault as theirs.” Willow bows her head. “We’re sorry.”
It’s not even that Eda’s angry anymore, really. Just…. stunned. Who are these kids? She runs her gaze over each of them in turn. They went behind her back and all but trashed her house, but then again….
….they managed to conjure an entire house.
“Well, you’re all guilty.” She shrugs back into the role of the responsible adult just for this bit, wanting to make herself clear. “So all of you will be cleaning my house, top to bottom.”
They accept the punishment, but with clear reluctance: their faces all droop in sync.
“But first—”
Curiosity: they look up at her with it, carefully.
“....you’re going to help me raid an annoying crook’s stall for my elixir.” She turns away before they can see her starting to smile, marching back towards the door (briefly taking note of Hooty’s current state with a bemused squint). “Any kids who can conjure a house like that can definitely hold their own against the Night Market.”
It’s not clear that she means it as a compliment at first, but once it sinks in the whole group of kids is looking around at each other in proud befuddlement, shy smiles quickly forming on their faces. They did it! They did a moonlight conjuring and lived to tell the tale! Nevermind the chaos they just narrowly escaped from. No one can take their accomplishment away from them.
“I am so joining you for next year’s conjuring!” Luz hops up to wrap as much of her arms as she can around Gus and Willow, squeeze them tight.
Willow and Gus laugh as they hug her back. “We’re sorry we didn’t ask you to come in the first place.”
From the door: “Yes, we’re all looking forward to raising my house again next year.” She wants it to sound sarcastic, but Eda’s smile is sincere, even as she rolls her eyes to keep up the illusion. “Let’s get a move on, everybody, market’s gonna close soon.”
“Coming, Eda!”
They’re filing out the door, first Willow then Gus then Luz, with King bringing up the rear. It’s as King is stepping over the threshold that Eda stops him, holding a hand out before him to block his way. He can’t help the way his heart skips a beat as he looks up at her, confused.
Low, so the others won’t hear, Eda says to him, “Look, I’m not mad at you, okay? You did it for your friends.” A smile. “I can respect that.”
Your friends. Something about having it verbalized like that feels wrong somehow.
(But it’s the truth, isn’t it?)
King looks away. Shrugs. “I think I just wanted to prove I could do it.” To his quiet surprise, he’s being honest with her.
Eda’s smile subtly dips into a knowing one. “I’d say you succeeded.” Straightening up now, she changes the subject before either of them can get too introspective: “You got some glyphs on you just in case?”
King rummages a hand through his pockets to make sure. Inside he’s grateful for the distraction. Sometimes talking to Eda feels a little too much like talking to himself. “Yeah, I think I can go get—”
Glyphs.
He pauses.
(Willow’s spell)
In the race to get the house back and everything that’s ensued since he’d almost forgotten—
(a flash of lines and circles, so brief that when King blinks it’s gone, and all he has time to think is)
Wait.
“I just remembered something!”
He darts back into the house, leaving Eda staring down at the empty space he was just inhabiting. She blinks her confusion. “Huh?” She sticks her head through the doorway. “What’s going on?”
What’s going on is that King is darting around the remains of the living room, scrounging up loose scraps of paper from the scatter. He makes a soft little “a-ha!” noise when he finds a half-broken pencil rolled under the coffee table.
Willow, Gus, and Luz are crowding back into the doorway behind Eda, just as perplexed. “Uh, King? What are you doing?” Luz calls out.
King is kneeling by the coffee table, shuffling his papers together and racing to explain himself at a pace that’s almost frantic. “Earlier, when we were trying to get away from the hunters….” He doesn’t see Eda and Luz jump at this statement: he’ll tell them the whole story later. “....I thought I saw….”
Everyone is back in the living room now, huddling around the coffee table to see what King is doing. One one bit of paper he’s concentrating on drawing out a circle, tongue stuck at the corner of his mouth. He’s wracking his brain, trying to remember exactly what he saw.
The circle is done. He hesitates to touch pencil to paper again, still unsure that he’s remembering correctly, but if he closes his eyes and thinks….
The scratch of pencil on paper. Eda, Willow, and Gus stare down at King’s drawing with no more emotion than simple confusion. Luz is the one who recognizes it for what it is, and her eyes widen with realization even before King looks up to ask her, “Luz, is this….”
The pattern he’s drawn inside the circle is distinct, but the building blocks are unmistakable.
“....a glyph.” Luz whispers. Her throat strains to take in air.
Now King’s eyes are the ones that go wide with recognition. He whips back down to the little scrap of paper on the table with his own whisper. “Ooooh my Titan….”
Luz’s hands make to reach for the glyph—she stops, tucking them back into herself like she’s scared to touch anything. “Where….” She swallows to clear the tremble in her voice. “Where did you find this?”
“I…. Willow cast a spell, and….” King’s fingers graze the corner of the glyph. “....and I saw it.”
“I didn’t do anything differently.” Willow sounds unsure of herself, not knowing how she fits into this discovery. “At least, I don’t think I did?” Knuckles tapping against her chin. “Whatever you saw, it wasn’t done by me.”
Whatever I saw….
King presses his palm to the glyph.
A flower comes blooming up between his fingers in a flash of light. He yanks his hand back as if from an animal threatening to bite, clutches it against himself. His breath hitches.
Everyone leans back from the table in mixed amazement and fright. Eda’s hand gropes until it latches onto Luz’s shoulder, shakes it slightly. “Are you seeing this?”
Luz is too frozen to even nod her head. Another whisper, “I am.”
“Plant magic!” Gus leaps up to emphasize his pointing towards the flower growing out of the glyph. “King! You just did plant magic!”
“I…. I did?” He’s still staring in disbelief at the faintly glowing flower, its petal open to the ceiling. Behind it sits Willow, rapt, hands up to her mouth to hide the overjoyed smile now curving into it. He locks eyes with her.
Slowly, he’s beginning to smile.
“I did….”
The forest is quiet, except for the faint sounds of a struggle occurring in some distant clearing.
Tibbles wriggles against the chains those heathens left him trussed up in, more insulted than anything. They’re not hexed anymore but they’re still metal chains and he is a very small creature and the Owl Lady had the good sense to cut off access to his magic and he’s never felt so pathetic in his entire life.
Bested by a cursed criminal and her cat.
He grumbles all this to himself, so engrossed that he doesn’t notice the rustle of footsteps in the grass until they’re practically on top of him.
“I give you one job—”
He jumps— ”AH!” —as a shadow falls over him.
“—and this is how you deliver.”
Lilith Clawthorne stares down at Tibbles with cold stoicism, though the piercing gleam in her eyes quickly clues him in to her true emotions. She holds her staff at her side.
“H-Head Witch!” Tibbles fumbles for an explanation, an apology, something— acutely aware of how he must look to her. “I had the Owl Lady! I lured her somewhere isolated exactly like you said and I almost had her—”
“Almost.” Lilith’s staff touches the chains and they break with a sudden tinkling KA-CHUNG! Tibbles cringes against the scatter of metal. “Almost does not sate the Emperor’s will.”
Free, Tibbles quickly hops back to his feet. He’s shaking. “Give me another chance! I won’t underestimate her again!” He pleads as Lilith is walking away, not even giving him a second glance. “It was that pet of hers! She did this to me! If we can take that little beast out of the equation—”
“Leave the pests to the demon hunters.” The wings of Lilith’s staff unfold themselves and she mounts, tossing sheaves of dark hair over her shoulder. “....and leave the Owl Lady to the Emperor.”
“B-b-but—!” He stammers, too terrified to be furious. Does this mean I’m not getting paid?
Lilith flies off. She’s wasted enough time with this sham. Resources, too.
Speaking of resources: something’s buzzing in her skirt pocket. With an anticipatory sigh she reaches to pull out her compact mirror, flips it open. The buzzing quiets.
“Lilith.” The little red demon in the mirror greets her coldly. “Still outsourcing the Owl Lady’s capture, are we?” A faint smirk. “How did it go this time?”
Lilith grits her teeth to bite back her irritation. “Kikimora, I—”
“Save it for the budget meeting.” The demon’s image is already fading from the communicator. But Lilith doesn’t miss the way her eye narrows in contempt. “Just remember what Emperor Belos has promised you.”
CLAP. Lilith snaps the mirror shut and shoves it back into her pocket, only now allowing herself to spit out a curse. Her hands tighten their grip around her staff.
Expressionless, Lilith watches as the very last sliver of moon dips under the horizon for good. Making way for the dawn.
A whisper lost to the breeze:
“Your days are numbered, Edalyn…”