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Gorgug is dead. The reception is being held in Aguefort’s gym. Gorgug had been a teacher here. Had died here (again) in the cafeteria. The whole story of what happened had been recounted at the ceremony, along with how many people he’d saved, and how they’re naming a building after him, about how he’s a hero. None of that matters, though, because all that matters is that Gorgug is dead.
The five of them left behind sit in plastic chairs at a plastic table at the back of their high school gym. The table is draped in a red plastic tablecloth, one of those awful cheap ones that you can rip through with the barest effort.
(It’s clear that the Donovan-Thistlesprings had not expected half of Elmville to show up to the reception. The tables at the front, near the stage, have black cloth tablecloths and metal folding chairs with floor-length covers. They have beautifully printed name cards. The tables at the back, near the bathrooms, have little folded pieces of paper on them assigning them to current Aguefort students and other general categories of people who weren’t particularly close to the departed. Fabian had snatched the label off the table their group had claimed, crumpled it into a little ball, and threw it at the trashcan by the door to the men’s bathrooms. He’d missed, and it’s still sitting on the floor next to the can. The table next to the stage with their names on it is empty, and will be left pristine all night. It’s set for five.)
The music pumping through the gym’s old speakers is a hair away from unbearably loud. It’s a mix of Sig Figs songs, Gorgug’s songs with his dad’s band, and classic metal hits. The floors squeak as people mill about, trying to navigate a balance between celebration of life and reverence of death. Huge blocks of orange light shine through the square windows near the ceiling as the sun sets. It’s almost like being in a cathedral, with the way motes of dust float in the beams, and the way the parts of the floor that the light lands on are too bright to look at.
Kristen and Riz are hard to look at, too. The last time Adaine had seen them, or any of the others, for that matter, was almost ten years ago. They have lines on their faces—an even mix of wrinkles and scars—and they share looks of understanding about things unspoken that Adaine finds she can’t decipher. Kristen is mad at her. That much she can tell. It’s probably not good to have a saint mad at you, Adaine thinks, as Kristen yells either at or to her over the music about how she’s been avoiding the rest of them for ten years. But Adaine hasn’t been avoiding them, has she?
“I’m so sorry,” Adaine says, “It’s just it’s my job to see the future, it gets so hard to stay grounded in the present. Even when I’m not working I’m always getting visions—“
As if the universe was trying to prove her point, Adaine’s eyes suddenly flare a gentle white, neither warm nor cold. The ghost of a third, arcane eye opens in the center of her forehead. At first, the light of her three eyes flickers like an old projector, her brow furrowed in an effort to fight it off, but then she gives in. Her face goes slack and the light evens out. It isn’t long before the glow fades. Adaine looks confused for a breath, before the ringing in her ears and sticky plastic bunched in her fists reminds her where she is. Her hands itch to pull out her notebook and record her vision. Riz notices her fidgeting.
“Go on, it’s fine,” he says. He’s pissed at her, he really is, he tells himself this over and over and over. He wants to yell at her with Kristen. He wants to tell her how much he misses her. He does neither. He wishes there was something he could shoot.
“Thanks,” Adaine says, already putting her hair up. With ease that annoys Kristen, Adaine zones out of the conversation, scratching her personal shorthand into a little leather book. Every few minutes, as if on cue, she scrunches up her nose to adjust her glasses.
“We should try to meet up once a year,” Fig says, as she does every other time they were together. No one says anything. All their other get-togethers had been planned by Gorgug, and, in a way, so was this one.
When Adaine closes her notebook she’s alone at the table. The plastic tablecloth had got all scrunched up and weirdly damp under her hands as she’d worked. She wipes her palms on her thighs and scans the gym. There are lots of people here she knows, and lots that she doesn’t. There are lots of current Aguefort students who are visibly overwhelmed by the presence of a rock star, a saint, and the oracle in their high school gym. Aguefort himself is not present, which doesn’t even surprise the students. If he’d been here, Adaine suspects she wouldn’t be the only one at his throat. This school has a shit security system.
Fig is the easiest to find. She’s on stage fronting a Sig Figs B-side with Gorgug’s eldest daughter on drums. She makes eye contact with Fig for what she hopes is long enough to be a show of support and not long enough to be construed as a cry for help. Kristen, Tracker and their kids are dancing with Fabian. Ayda and Riz are at the edge of the bar, keeping cautious distance from Zelda and her side of the family, who’ve been nothing but furiously vocal about their grief. Adaine weaves her way through the crowd towards the bar. She orders a drink, downs almost all of it in one swig, and takes a seat next to Ayda. The quiet heat of her wings and hair has always been comforting.
“Am I a bad person?” she asks without preamble.
“Who isn’t?” Riz says.
“Gorgug was a very good person,” Ayda says. Riz and Adaine agree, and they all tap red solo cups and drink to the greatest wizard of their age.
Adaine wanders down Aguefort’s dark and empty hallways, unwilling to reenter the gym after a trip to the bathroom. She can’t remember where her own locker was, but she remembers where Gorgug’s was (right next to water fountain by the library; they’d used it as a meet-up point) and finds herself walking towards it out of habit. The music fades as she gets farther and farther from the gym, and she can hear her heels click unsatisfactorily on the thin linoleum. Gorgug had always liked it when she wore heels. It made them the same height. She thinks about turning the lights on, but she doesn’t need them to see anyway, and seeing this place in the light would probably be too much. Adaine O’Shaughnessy does not deal in the past.
There’s someone sitting on the floor under Gorgug’s locker, a bass guitar laying under a fresh dent in those on the opposite wall. Fig. She’s cast silence on herself and has her head between her knees. Her shoulders are shaking and, seeing her like this, Adaine is reminded of how small she is. She wonders if this is how Gorgug felt all the time. It’s dead silent, but Adaine can tell that Fig’s screaming into the floor.
As if she’s a feral cat, Adaine waits at a distance for Fig to notice her. When the silence fades, and with it the devil’s final cry, Fig looks up at Adaine with eyes bloodshot and desperate. For a moment they just look at each other, both unsure who’s the deer and who the headlights. Fig lets her head fall to her chest, lets her legs flatten out on the floor in front of her. Adaine takes the invitation. She sits close to Fig; doesn’t touch her. The floor beneath her is cold and the metal lockers at her back colder. Fig is burning with the fury of all nine hells.
“We have to do this three more times,” Fig says, hoarse. The soft red glow from the fire in her throat bleeds down the hall.
“I really am sorry,” Adaine says. She’d found Kristen with a sleeping toddler on the concrete steps outside the gym. A single line of light streaks out from the crack between the double doors, and the music, although quieter now, still thumps in their chests. Adaine’s ears flick from the sudden drop in temperature.
“I know,” Kristen sighs. She looks at the stars. “It’s different for you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not fair. You’re going to get to do so much more than Gorgug.” Than me, Kristen doesn’t say. The light from the door flashes in the tear racing down her cheek. Adaine doesn’t say anything, because she’s right. She wants to say something dramatic about how elves and orcs are both cursed by time, she wants to say something pathetic about how she can’t remember Gorgug’s voice, she wants to say something horrific about how it feels to see your friends age at lightning speed before your eyes. But she doesn’t say anything, because if she opened her mouth right now, words would not be what came out.
Kristen waits for a response, and when Adaine doesn’t give one, she shoots her a disappointed look, opens one of the double doors with her hip, and slips inside. A long time ago, Adaine was her sister.
Adaine doesn’t know how long she’s been crying on the steps outside the gym. Not long ago, Kristen was her sister.
Fabian drapes his old Owl Bears letterman over her shoulders and drops to the ground next to her, putting a drink in her hands. Adaine takes it gratefully, fishing an ice cube out and sucking on it. Fabian’s been quiet all night, which means he’s heartbroken.
“I can’t stop thinking about your weirdo grandfather,” Adaine says. She wipes her eyes with the back of her wrist.
“Jorguj,” Fabian says, after a few minutes. Adaine leans against his side, and he leans back, and together, for a while, they hold each other up.
“It feels like we’re abandoning them, somehow,” Kristen says. She’s passed her sleeping toddler to Riz, who’d become quite the accomplished babysitter in what little free time he had. The reception winds down around them. Fabian’s dancing again even though the music’s been turned off and the lights on, swirling a tablecloth around Zelda and Gorgug’s younger kids as they shriek in delight. Adaine’s been caught up in a strained conversation about politics with one of the only other high elves present, and Fig perks up from where she’s been brooding in a corner with Ayda to sweep in to save her.
“The chances that things didn’t end up this way are not large,” Riz says. And then, after a while, “Adaine and Fig haven’t changed at all.”
“Despite it all, I don’t envy them,” Kristen says.
“Nor do I,” Riz says.
“It’s weird, that I miss them even though they’re the same. I wish we could’ve all done this together,” Kristen says, and at Riz’s questioning look, “Grow up, grow old.”