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It didn’t take Seth very long to realize that his epic and, if he was being honest, a little scary magic powers might have a small catch. Beyond the obvious, being that it came from dangerous dark powers and he wasn’t exactly a fan of creepy creatures trying to butter him up.
He hadn’t expected it to affect his daily life is all.
Kendra had cool magic powers and they didn’t really affect her life all that much, right?
The problem was with shadow walking. Gaining magic powers had been one of the coolest things to happen to him since he’d realized he was the only one who could see the darkness of the shadow plague. Cool and scary. But at least seeing invisible things didn’t turn out to be a pain in the butt in every day life.
Sure, it was seriously cool to be able to sneak around undetected! When he wanted to. It was even pretty funny the first few times he startled Kendra when she went back to their room and thought he wasn’t there.
It was not fun doing the same thing when it wasn’t his choice in the first place. And the Kendra thing was starting to get old, real fast. And what would mom and dad think when —
Mom and dad might never know he could turn invisible. He might never even see them again.
Seth glared at the ceiling, trying hard not to cry. His bottom lip wobbled uncontrollably and he turned his head so Kendra couldn’t see his face if she looked over. His parents were gone. Their parents were gone. Kidnapped. They might even be — No! He wasn’t going to finish that thought. No. No. No.
They were - they were probably safe. They had to be.
They had to be.
Seth took a deep, slow breath. He had to focus. Focus on stupid little things that weren’t his parents and how much he missed them. Stupid things like how shadow walking kind of sucked sometimes.
Like how Kendra had freaked out the other night, because she thought he had sneaked out of their room to go exploring or something stupid. She’s panicked and slapped him hard on the back, trying to see if he was actually there or not.
He had yelped, suddenly wide awake and she had only just barely contained a surprised shriek, because he had apparently “just appeared out of nowhere”.
… It hadn’t really been funny though. It had been one of the few nights this week that he’d been sleeping without any nightmares. He was annoyed she had woken him up. He couldn’t see her very well in the dark, since the curtains were closed, but there had been just enough moonlight to see the tears on her face.
He wasn’t sure if she’d been crying because she thought he had run away, or because she had a nightmare, but he’d apologized anyway.
They both had nightmares. Had them since that first Summer Solstice, though they had faded a bit in the year in-between. Then there had been the frog demon and the revenant. The dreams were only just fading when the shadow plague happened. Lena died. It had been a bad summer.
The nightmares were mostly gone by the time Kendra had —
No, it hadn’t been Kendra. When the stingbulb that looked like his sister had died and it had been his fault - his fault - his—
He forced himself to take slow breaths and hugged his pillow, choking out a sob as quietly as he could.
Not his fault. She - It would have died anyway. Kendra was alive. She was alive and she was here and she was right behind him, sleeping just as badly as they both did these days.
But all of that had destroyed any semblance of good sleep until she was back. He closed his eyes and went back to that night. How deeply he had slept, with her here. They’d pushed their beds together and fell asleep holding hands. The way they sometimes did when they were really young, back when they’d shared a room at home and Seth had a nightmare.
Did they even still have a home that wasn’t Fablehaven now?
Seth shook away the thought. Instead, his mind fell back into the same painful train of thought he’d been having on repeat since they’d returned. Things had picked up again, after learning Kendra was alive. Things had picked up again, Kendra had been sent off again and when she came back there was the, the ceremony with Graulas, then Wyrmroost, Gavin - Seth’s hands curled into fists - and Dougan and Warren…
His pillow was damp with tears. He had to blow his nose, but he didn’t want the sound to wake up Kendra.
It wasn’t fair!
He wanted to curl up on the couch with Mom and Dad and Kendra and be safe with all of them and - and - he wanted Warren to be here, not trapped with no escape and he wanted Dougan to be alive again and he wanted so, so much that he just couldn’t have and the pain hurt so much he wanted to scream until he couldn’t anymore. But he couldn’t scream either. He couldn’t cry loudly either.
He couldn’t do anything.
Instead he just sobbed quietly into his pillow.
When his eyes were dry and his head was already hurting, and he just felt empty again he tried going back to the problems with shadow walking. He had a short list, but he was sure it would get longer.
The first thing on the list was obviously Kendra not being able to see him sleeping.
Last night was fresh on his mind. But… this morning she’d asked him if he had a flashlight to spare.
He’d looked up from his puzzle, frowning at her and said “You’re not going to sneak away somewhere are you? Because that’s seriously unfair, to think that I would and then do it yourself.”
“As if.” Kendra had rolled her eyes at him, “No. I was going to use it to see you, before accidentally hitting you next time you go invisible. I don’t want to get up and turn on the lights each time.”
“Oh. Sure.”
He’d fetched his nice new emergency kit and pulled out the small flashlight he’d managed to convince dad to buy at the hardware store back in September. He almost didn’t want to hand it to Kendra, as though it still had a piece of dad in it. He’d managed to crush the feeling before Kendra noticed and gave it to her. “But give it back eventually, ok?”
So maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. He could sleep through a flashlight in his face, he was sure of that. Couldn’t be worse than the streetlight that was aligned just right with the gaps between his blinds back home.
As for the other problem he had with shadow walking... It wasn’t one he had ever expected either, to be honest.
Seth wasn’t big on napping. He was usually burning up with energy and raring to go do things. But since his sleep schedule got totally messed up during the Wyrmroost trip and he’d caught a bad cold after getting home, naps were now officially part of his life. At least for now.
He rarely had nightmares when he napped. It was usually when he was sleeping for a few hours. And then, of course, he would wake up and be too rattled to fall back asleep. Not scared to fall back asleep. He always faced those fears, didn’t let the nightmares take over, but try as he might the adrenaline just didn’t let him sleep again. So he took more naps and, well.
It was a horrible cycle of random naps every day.
He wasn’t allowed to take naps outside, because it was winter, even when he was hanging out with the satyrs. Which was fair, Seth admitted to himself. He liked hanging out with them, but they weren’t exactly responsible. If he was going to take a nap, he’d rather be around people he could trust to wake him up if he was in danger.
Not that he couldn’t trust them to do that… Just that they might see it all as a joke and then things really could go bad.
Urgh, he was starting to sound like Kendra.
He rolled over and one leg slipped off the edge of his bed. Whatever. He sighed. His head was killing him and he wasn’t even sleepy enough for his thoughts to even start getting fuzzy. He was as wide awake as he had been at lunchtime. At least he was starting to be able to breathe through his nose again.
Where was he even going with this train of thought?
Napping. Right. The incident last Tuesday.
Five days ago, completely exhausted from another night without sleep, he’d curled up on the couch downstairs and fallen asleep. It was four in the afternoon and the room had been brightly lit in warm golden, late afternoon light. The house had been quiet except for the ticking of the clock on the wall and the creaking of the hot water pipes coiled under the window behind him as they warmed the house.
Grandma had still been talking with Kendra in the kitchen over a card game after Seth had finished helping them do the dishes and peel potatoes for supper. It didn’t take long for Seth to fall into a deep, restful sleep.
The sun had just fallen behind the trees when Grandpa and Coulter had walked into the living room. They’d probably been talking about something important, though Seth didn’t hear a word of it, beyond indecipherable background noise.
Grandpa had gone to sit on his favourite chair and Coulter had gone to sit on what had appeared to be an empty couch. Coulter was not a particularly heavy man, but he was not light either and Seth yelped when the older man’s weight landed on his leg, twisting it uncomfortably.
Coulter had jumped, whirling around to face the potential threat, Seth had scrambled back to the opposite corner of the couch, rubbing his leg and Grandpa gave a shout of surprise.
It took only a few seconds for people to piece together what had happened, made only more chaotic by Kendra and Grandma rushing over to see if everything was alright.
Grandpa was furious. “Seth! Were you spying on us?!” He had asked, his voice hard with worry or anger or both. If Seth was being perfectly honest with himself, he wondered if some of that hadn’t also been actual fear of Seth.
He really didn’t like the idea of Grandpa Stan being scared of him.
“What? No! I was just sleeping!” Seth had replied, still totally confused. He hadn’t fully understood what had happened, though he had a sinking suspicion. “You’ve seen me do it plenty of times, it’s not like it’s something new.”
He shouldn’t have said that last part, but he was cranky and his leg hurt. Thankfully nobody brought it up.
“You were invisible,” Coulter had told him, diffusing the situation. “I would have sworn the couch was empty until you moved.” He looked thoughtful. “You don’t have my glove, though.”
Seth had just stared at Coulter, “But it’s daytime. I can’t shadow walk in full daylight. And I wasn’t even doing it on purpose! I was just sleeping.”
Seth had caught Kendra and his grandparents glancing outside the window, from the corner of his eye. He had as well and was surprised to see the light was much dimmer than it had been earlier. Coulter didn’t react.
The older man had simply held his gaze and said “You said it was a passive ability. That means it’s always active, so long as you aren’t making any sudden movements. The sun has gone down and the lights aren’t on everywhere yet. I suppose this is dim enough to hide you.”
Grandpa Stan had grimaced at that and sat down in his armchair. “I suppose we’ll just need to turn the lights on every time we want to sit down, unless we can see you.”
And that had been that.
But Seth had taken Grandpa’s words as an unspoken rule, “Don’t sleep on the couch or chairs without a light on.” He wasn’t stupid, he didn’t ignore or break all the rules. Just the ones he didn’t agree on.
He didn’t like the way Grandpa had put a hand to his heart when he’d been startled. He really didn’t like the way he’d scared all of them.
So he’d follow this rule. Even if nobody else knew it existed.
On that last thought, Seth finally drifted off to sleep. He dreamt of couches and blankets and the sound of the howling wind outside turned into a huge curling wave and he was falling, falling, falling until he landed on a couch and rode the wave on his couch-surfboard, his blanket snapping like a cape in the wind behind him. Then the wave crumbled into bright colours and shapes, meanings and sounds and he fell into a deep, deep, dreamless sleep.