Chapter 30: A Giant Tale
Mr. Onimous had once told me that a "White Witch" was one of the most special endowments a person could have, but that didn't stop me from being envious of Charlie's endowment. Uncle Paton had once told me that he was the only picture traveler alive and that Charlie's endowment was one of the rarer ones along with Salem's. It allowed him to visit the most amazing places. He had met Skarpo the medieval wizard, he traveled into a wall painting inside of the Castle of Mirrors and had even gone inside of a tabloid magazine once to tell us what the celebrities were really like.
I wondered what stories he would have to tell about Badlock. Charlie wasn't bright, but he had a talent for storytelling and I knew that none of us would be disappointed, even if some of it was exaggerated. "How did you even get inside of the painting anyway?" Olivia inquired immediately.
"I don't know, it just happened." Charlie began. "I went down to look at the painting and before I unwrapped it, I could already hear inside of it. I could hear wind and the cracking of old trees. And then I was inside. I hardly traveled at all. It was as if someone reached out and pulled me right in. I've never felt anything like it before."
"What happened next?" I asked.
"I met a giant!" He said excitedly.
"A giant!?" Everyone gasped, including Maisie who was rummaging through the fridge to find something that would feed us all.
"Sort of a giant." Charlie backpedaled. "He was as big as a house, but he told me that he was the runt of his family. He saved me from trolls who saw me in the field. He let me into his tower and hid me from them. One of them, his name was Oddthumb. He looked exactly like that ugly stone troll statue on Aunt Venetia's porch!" Everyone else seemed to understand what Charlie was talking about, but I had never been to Aunt Venetia's house so I knew nothing of her ugly stone troll. "The Giant told me his name was Otus Yewbeam, he said that he was Amoret's wife and he had been captured by the Count, but his son had escaped with Petrello and Tolmeo." He went on to tell us more about the strange land of Badlock. He told us about a large fortress in the distance where the Enchanter lived. He talked about the troll army, describing them as disgusting warty things and the other strange creatures that inhabited the land. He called them squirras and blancavamps. "And then Runner arrived." He made it to the part of the story that Ben had been waiting for. "We had to wait until it was dark to go get him. When he came into the painting, he brought Claerwen with him. She was how I was able to get home. I had a hold of him when I began to travel, but it seemed as if something was holding him back and I returned to the cellar alone."
"They wanted to eat you, Charlie. Would they eat Runner too?" Benjamin wailed.
Before Charlie could answer, Maisie sat down a plate of sandwiches in the center of the table. "Eat, all of you." She said cheerfully. She didn't have to tell any of us twice. We all reached for sandwiches, but Benjamin didn't have an appetite. "Salem-" Maisie tried to stop Salem as he took a bite of a sandwich. His face screwed up in disgust. "Those ones have pickles on them." He hated pickles, especially sweet ones.
"From the sound of your adventure, it seems that the Enchanter is at work again." Uncle Paton said grimly.
"That can't be true. I thought that Charlie and the others got rid of him whenever they chanted that spell around the tree." I took a second sandwich from the tray. "It had to have done something, because everyone was disenchanted and dad woke up. And that horrible witch, Mrs. Tilpin, vanished."
"Nevertheless, is there still a shadow in the King's portrait?"
"Yes, it's still there." Charlie confessed.
"Then he still exists. He is still connected to our world, if somehow faintly."
"Like with that painting?" I asked. "Or is he still here because of the Mirror of Amoret?"
"The mirror was cracked." Charlie interjected. "It broke when Joshua stole it from me."
"They must be trying to find a way to fix it." Salem said solemnly. "I'm willing to bet that Mrs. Tilpin is in the academy somewhere, doing whatever it is that evil witches do."
The house was silent after all of Charlie's friends cleared out. Fidelio walked Olivia home and Benjamin had been pissed off enough at Charlie that he left not long after he recounted his tale. Grandma Bone was still sulking around and any time I had to see her, I found myself getting angrier and angrier that she put Charlie in that kind of danger. "Come on, Fin. Sitting in this house isn't doing you any good and you might do something we'll all regret." Salem begged me to leave the house. "Let's go for a drive or something."
"I think that might be a good idea." Maisie agreed. "Grizelda is just going to keep trying to provoke you until she has an excuse to punish you."
"Fine." I grumbled. Salem and I grabbed our coats and shoes and went out to the car. "Where are we going?"
"I just thought we would drive around a bit." He opened the passenger door for me. That was Salem, always a gentleman. "I have something I want to talk to you about, actually." He suddenly seemed tense and uncomfortable. That left me to leaf through my head anything that I could have possibly done wrong in the last few months that would have upset him. I couldn't come up with anything as we pulled away from the house and headed towards the Heights where the academy sat. Salem didn't turn on the radio or speak for a very long time. I could feel a nervous pain in my chest and my stomach was starting to get upset.
"Salem, please just tell me what it is before I throw up or something. You're making me anxious."
"My endowment isn't coming back, Fin." He blurted. I could see tears welling up in his blue eyes. "What little that I had, what was coming back, is going away. I can't even hear what you're thinking right now."
I leaned back against the seat and stared at the road in front of us. We were approaching the academy but I didn't know why he would want to go there. I didn't know what to say to Salem to make him feel better. Manfred hadn't taken that long to replace his old endowment with a new one. "It's okay." I said finally. "You don't need to be able to read minds for us to love you and need you."
"I don't think you completely understand the severity of this. I can't protect you anymore. And I can't protect myself. I was told things that could get us all killed, and I was only told because we thought no one would be able to hypnotize me or read my mind. If Manfred ever regains his hypnotism, I'll be vulnerable. If- No, when Harken comes back, I'll be vulnerable to him as well. If they're planning something, which I'm almost positive they are, I won't be able to figure it out and keep us all safe. For the first time in our lives, Manfred is stronger than me and I'm not going to be able to keep him or anyone else under control. This is bigger than all of us, Fin. They have more allies than we do. They haven't all showed themselves but they are out there. There are so many endowed adults living in this city. This is going to get dangerous. People are going to lose their lives and I'm not going to be able to stop it."
"Why does that burden have to be on your shoulders alone?" I asked. He gripped the wheel tighter and pulled over into the academy parking lot. There were no lights and the sun was going down. No one would be able to see that we were there soon enough. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel and his body began to heave with sobs. I was frozen. I had never seen him this upset before. While Salem had a bigger heart than the other Bloors, he was still a Bloor. He was used to being entirely in control and being powerful. He had already been stripped of his wealth and his status, and now he was stripped of his power. He didn't have an advantage anymore.
"Since the moment I met you, I've been trying my hardest to protect you. And even when I had my fucking powers I didn't do that good of a job." He was yelling now, shaking harder. His teeth were gritted and he was gripping the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles were turning white and the veins in his forearms were bulging. "Honestly, if you weren't what you are, you would have been dead a long time ago. Because I wasn't even able to protect you then. I'm completely fucking useless to you, Infinity."
"You are not." Salem was a ticking time bomb ready to explode. I didn't know what to say or do to calm him down. "I never loved you for what you could do or for what you had. I love you for who you are. I would be absolutely lost without you."
"I don't deserve someone like you. You would be better off having never met me. If I could go back in time, I wouldn't have let anyone find out that you were endowed. You deserved a normal life."
"Don't ever say that." I said sharply. "I was miserable before I came here. I felt alone, like no one cared about me. My dad was gone all the time and my mother treated me like shit. Now I have a family that loves me, the most interesting little brother in the world, I have friends and I have you. All of this is worth it to me. No matter how much I complain about being endowed, this is the life that I want. This is the life that I am proud of." I reached forward and pried one of his hands off of the steering wheel so I could hold it. He turned his head slightly to look at me. I couldn't see him all that well anymore. The sun had gone all the way down and the dim light that had filled the car just minutes before had gone away.
He pulled me in and he kissed me. His kiss was desperate and sad. It made my heart heavy and my own eyes well with tears. I just wanted him to be happy again. I wanted him to feel as loved as he was. His hands tangled into my hair and he held me closer and kissed me harder. My heart was beating heavy in my chest and I began to feel nervous. It was then that his hands began to wander. "Salem." I murmured, unsure if this is how I wanted it to be.
"If you want me to stop, I'll stop." He froze, his breath was warm on my neck.
I didn't know what I wanted. "Have you done this before?" I asked. This wasn't the right time to be asking this question, but I never really cared before now.
"…Yes." He awkwardly admitted. While most girls would be upset, this actually made me feel more comfortable. I wasn't a jealous person. "Though not in a car." He was starting to lighten up a little bit.
"I think I'll be okay." I tried to give him my most confident look (not that he could really see it in the dark).
"You can tell me to stop at any time." He reassured me as he leaned towards me.
The car ride back to town was awkward and silent. I was sore and wanted to just jump in the shower and lay in my bed, but I was afraid that if Maisie even looked at my face for more than a second, she would know what happened. "Are you okay?" He asked me as he placed his hand on my knee. His touch gave me goose bumps. "Does it still hurt?"
"I don't want to talk about it." I put my hands over my face and groaned. I still felt nervous and my stomach was upset. Salem parked in his spot next to the house and turned the car off. "I think I'm just going to go to bed."
"You're not upset with me, are you?" His cheeks started to flush red. He thought that I was upset with him, but I didn't have the energy to explain to him that this was something that was major to me and I needed time to process everything alone.
"No, you're fine. I just need time to relax and be by myself for a little bit." I adjusted my clothes and tied my hair up into a ponytail. "All of this on top of Charlie getting sucked into a painting is a little too much for me to handle in one day. If Maisie asks, just tell her I wasn't able to calm down so I just went to bed to avoid yelling at Grandma Bone."
Salem sighed loudly and shook his head. "Good night, Infinity." He gave me a peck on the lips and we went into the house. I could hear talking in the kitchen but I walked away from it and headed to my room. Salem, on the other hand, still felt like socializing and ducked into the kitchen.
Once I got upstairs, I locked myself in my bathroom and took a long, hot shower. I felt bad for being so distant to Salem after something so important happened, but I hadn't anticipated feeling this emotionally and physically drained afterwards. I didn't regret what we did, but I felt like it could have waited. Salem probably felt worse than he did before. I couldn't even imagine what he was going through, but he was still trying to help us with our problems as well.
I dressed myself, picked up the clothing and towels from my bathroom floor and tossed them in the hamper. Once I reached my bed, I flopped down and reached over towards my end table where a picture of Salem and I sat. He was laughing in it. I couldn't even remember who took it, probably Charlie. It was an old one from the beginning of the school year, we were only friends then. We had just been out walking around on a sunny yet lazy day. He had just completely butchered a joke he was trying to tell me, but ultimately made it even funnier. "You were wrong. It's me that doesn't deserve you." I whispered to his photograph.