Amity, Skara and Boscha sat on a bench at the side of the road. None of them had had the strength to run after Luz after she had yelled at them. Finally the silence was broken by Boscha: "Well, you can't say that I didn't warn you"
Amity didn't say a word; his face was turned towards his shoes. She was using all her self-control not to start crying in front of her friends: she didn't want them to see her in that state. It was one thing to cry in front of her fairy godmother, it was another thing to cry in a public place. Even if Skara and Boscha had been understanding, someone else might have noticed her and spread the word, and she wouldn't have been able to live with that shame anymore, especially if her mother had known it. But being able to contain herself was becoming really difficult: if the night before she felt terribly guilty, now after Luz had said those things to her face she felt no different than a worm. Luz had never given up on her dream of becoming a real girl, yet now she had told her exactly what Amity had been trying to get her to say since day one... and almost ironically, now Amity would have much preferred that she had never done so.
Skara on the other hand wasn't even trying to hide her emotions. "I feel really bad" she whispered, wiping away some tears. "This time we really messed up, girls. We went too far"
Boscha was silent, then she let out a deep sigh. "Okay" she said, standing up. "I'm going to tell that puppet that I convinced you to do it"
Skara and Amity turned sharply towards her. "What?" they exclaimed in unison.
"I'll tell you that it was my idea and that I convinced you through devious means to follow me into this cruel action. It won't be difficult, I'll just need to inflate the truth a little" Boscha replied. "This way she will consider only me responsable for what happened and it will be on me that she will pour out her anger. And maybe not today, but tomorrow she will forgive you two"
Amity and Skara's eyes widened. Never in their lives had they expected Boscha to do such a thing. "Are you serious?"
Boscha rolled her eyes in disappointment. "I have a conscience too, you know? Personally I don't care about that puppet and I don't care if we hurt her, and I've never hidden this..." she said, even if she didn't seem entirely sincere. "... but you clearly care about her, and you're my friends, so I'll fix this now. She won't want to talk to me anymore, but I've always just considered her as a nuisance; and you'll get back together and be able to repair the relationship that we ruined. In a few days you will be together again in the corridors of Hexside having fun"
Amity and Skara looked at her unconvinced. "But... so you won't be able to stay with us anymore... she won't tolerate your presence"
Boscha shrugged. "I'll manage on my own. Just... show up every now and then, maybe outside of school, when she will be not there. You know I'm tough, I'm not scared of loneliness". She said so, but despite maintaining a stoic expression, both Amity and Skara very clearly noticed a tremor in her hands before she stuffed them into her pockets.
Boscha was already about to leave, when Skara stood up and grabbed her arm, and she brought her back to sit on the bench. "No" she said. "I appreciate your gesture, but I don't want this. It's not right"
"Skara is right. It's true, it was your idea, but we didn't refuse and all three of us made the mess. We all have to pay the price together" Amity added seriously. Even though she wanted to repair her relationship with Luz, she wasn't willing to sacrifice another friendship to do so.
Boscha was clearly about to protest, but just then there was a buzz and an angry voice said: "Good, it seems like you're listening to your conscience at least a little!"
The three girls looked around trying to figure out who had spoken, but they didn't see anyone; a second later however a small flying object crashed into Amity's chest and rolled down onto her body, and she instinctively grabbed it with her hands. Only then she realized that the flying object was actually a cricket and a spider. "Ugh... another wonderful landing" the spider muttered, then he looked at the three girls angrily. "We were looking for you three! You should know that you are really..."
"AAAAAAGH!" Skara's scream easily drowned out the spider's voice. "Amity, watch out! That's a tarantula! It's poisonous! Throw it away before it bites you!"
"Throw it on the ground, I'll crush it!" Boscha exclaimed as she took off her shoe with the clear intent of using it to kill the small arthropod.
All the bravado the spider had shown up until two seconds ago immediately vanished and he turned pale: "Hey hey hey, calm down! I'm not a tarantula and I'm not poisonous! I can barely paralyze a fly! I hunt using my illusionist techniques!"
Those words were enough for Amity and Boscha to raise an eyebrow, and even Skara, despite not losing her scared expression, showed confused eyes. "A spider... that act as an illusionist?"
"Exactly! So you don't have to be afraid of me biting you!" the spider assured them. "And by the way, tarantulas don't have a poisonous bite, what's dangerous is their stinging hairs! If I were a tarantula Amity would have been poisoned the instant she touched me!"
The three girls looked at each other confused, then they finally seemed to calm down. Amity looked closely at the two arthropods and then she exclaimed: "I know you! You were with Hunter at the library" she said pointing at the cricket, and then she stared at the spider. "And so were you... actually, now that I look better at you... you were the one who continued to jump on me during the Witch Duel!"
"Yes, that's right. I'm Willow, and this is Gus" the cricket introduced herself. "We're Luz's best friends. We were always hiding in her pocket, but she asked us not to show ourselves because she wanted to fend for herself... but today we decided to ignore that request"
"So... that puppet's best friends are a cricket and a spider?" Boscha murmured, surprised by her own words, but immediately after she shrugged: "Well, it's certainly not the craziest thing we've seen her do"
"Good. Now that we've done the proper introductions and we all know each other... you three should really be ashamed!" Willow exclaimed, and the three girls jumped: they didn't expect such a small cricket to have such an intense and authoritative voice. "You were truly cruel, I don't even have epithets to define you! I hope that karma returns your perfidy to you a hundred more times, because you deserve it all!"
The three girls blushed in shame, but that didn't stop them from trying to argue back. "Hey! We already know we made a mistake!" Skara protested. "Why do you think we're trying to apologize?"
"Yeah. We don't need a cricket that acts like our conscience" Boscha said sourly.
But Willow didn't appear at all intimidated. "Considering that your conscience apparently doesn't know how to do its job, I allow myself to take its place! And calling what you did a 'mistake' clearly shows that you absolutely need this!" she said. "Yours wasn't a 'mistake', it was gratuitous malice! And are you surprised that now Luz doesn't want to listen to you? Be thankful that she's good, because if I were in her place I would have already used those wooden hands to change your connotations with the sound of my fists!"
"Don't try to talk to us like that!" Boscha exclaimed furiously. "I remind you that you are just a cricket, and that even if you were human you are alone and there are three of us!"
"Yeah, three like the devil's faces" Gus commented.
Boscha turned red. "You too now!?"
"Why not? What you did was horrible, anyone can tell you that, wheter it is a spider, a cricket, a human, a puppet, a fairy or any other creature that exists in this world" Gus replied. "And if this is how you react when someone throws this reality in your face, then you can't blame us if we think your conscience is truly a slacker!"
Skara, Boscha and Amity were clearly annoyed by those accusations, but they couldn't find words to respond. In fact, even if they were angry, they couldn't deny that they hadn't behaved in a very exemplary manner. In the end, Amity said: "Look, since you're Luz's friends, can you help us apologize to her?"
Willow gave her such a terrifying look that she felt like her heart would stop. "You have a lot of nerve, you know that?" the cricket said angrily. "You hurt our friend, made fun of her, and crushed the trust she had in you, and now you ask us to help you convince Luz to come back to you? Have you really no heart!?"
"I-I don't want Luz to come back to us! I know I can't demand that" Amity quickly explained. "I just want to be able to properly apologize to her. I just want her to listen to me and let me tell her..."
"What? That you're sorry? That you realize you've been a complete bitch?" Gus anticipated her. "It will never happen, girl. An 'I'm sorry' isn't enough to fix such things. Luz doesn't want to see you again, not after what you did to her, she made it clear"
Amity didn't believe it was possible to be ashamed of the words of a spider and a cricket, yet she felt as if the two arthropods were giants and she was terribly tiny and they could crush her at any moment, even though in reality she was the opposite. Every word they said seemed to make the weight she already had in her heart heavier. "Could you at least... tell us what we actually did to her? I mean... why did she have that reaction?" she asked. "I just want to understand, I... I want to know how much we hurt her"
"Actually, I'd like to know too" Skara intervened with a bit of hesitation. Boscha didn't say a word, but still looked at the spider and the cricket with interested eyes.
Willow and Gus exchanged a look. They weren't sure if Luz would like them spilling the beans on her life, but at that moment they really wanted the three girls to realize what they had done; so even though she felt a little selfish Willow answered: "You mean that you want to know why she almost had a seizure as soon as she entered the water? Oh, no big deal... she simply reacted like that because in the sea she lost her mother, her sister, her friends and pretty much every person she'd ever known. Nothing too serious, you know... she just saw them devoured in front of her eyes. We really can't understand why she overreacted so much as soon as she entered the water"
Amity, Skara, and Boscha's faces tightened so much they seemed to turn to stone. "W...What?" Amity stammered.
"Belos ate them in front of her" Gus explained. "She watched them disappear into his hideous mouth one by one"
"Belos? Wait... about a month ago Belos appeared near Bonesborough!" Boscha exclaimed as she remembered when she and practically the entire town had seen the giant monster rising in the horizon; it had been the scariest moment of her entire life, and there had been at least twenty kilometers between her and the creature. "Did Luz meet him up close?"
"Yes. She was the only survivor... besides the two of us, of course" Gus replied. "Why do you think she came to live here in Bonesborough, and she lives with Eda? She literally has no one to take her back except that fairy"
The three girls felt the air running out of their lungs. Just meeting Belos from their perspective was the scariest thing possible, but had Luz also seen all the people she cared about die at the hands of the monster? Suddenly they felt as if clawed hands were tearing at their chest. "So…" Skara murmured. "... when Luz fell into the water... did she...?"
"She relived that moment in her head" Willow replied. "I'm sure it was a truly pleasant experience... I wonder why she doesn't want to talk to you anymore after you gave her such an amusement"
Amity was keeping her eyes so wide it looked like her eyelids had twisted together. Skara for her part was scratching her head guiltily, and Boscha, while trying to maintain a stoic façade, had turned away; after all, she was the one who threw the book into the water...
"Oh, but that's not all yet" Gus said again. "In fact, you should know that Luz blames herself for what happened to her mother and everyone else. It's not her fault, but for her it's as if it were. That's why she tries so hard to be a good girl, because she knows that this is what her mother would have wanted for her. This is why she wanted so much to go to school, to behave like a good, studious and diligent student. And you convinced her to give up these vouchers offered in exchange for nothing"
"Yeah. Oh, and then there's also the matter that this is not the first time Luz has been tricked by someone" Willow added. "Before you three there had been two other people who pretended to be her friends and whom she trusted a lot, and who repaid so much trust and love by robbing her and hurting her terribly. So... basically you made her repeat the story. We have again people who she trusted so much and who she thought were her friends, and who have done nothing but hurt her and deprive her of something that she cared about very much"
"And finally, just to conclude…" and Gus' tone got much angrier than before, "… becoming a real girl is of the utmost importance to Luz. I think you have no idea what it means for her not to be able to be one. She doesn't have many gifts that you take for granted, first of all that of being able to grow up and live like a real person. She wants to be a real girl for herself and for all the people she has lost... and you with a lot of kindness took her dream and shattered it in front of her eyes. It must have felt good to tell her that she can't be anything more than what she is now, right?"
"So, to recap..." Willow concluded, glaring at the three girls. "... thank you so much for making her relive practically every trauma of her life, for betraying the trust she placed in you, for stealing something she cared about, and above all for trampling on her dream and her reason for living in front of her eyes. Ok, now we're really done"
Amity, Skara, and Boscha looked so devastated it looked like they had just discovered that a relative of theirs had died. Gus and Willow didn't even have to make the slightest effort to see the guilt in their eyes. "Wow… I really feel like shit now" Skara murmured in a feeble voice.
"Well... we didn't know" Boscha tried to say, though clearly she didn't consider that an excuse either. "So... now what do we do?"
Amity remained still for a moment, with her mouth slightly open and her eyes almost popping out of their sockets; then suddenly she stood up and threw Willow and Gus into Boscha's hands. "Take them!" she exclaimed, and then she ran away.
"Hey, wait! What am I supposed to do with a spider and a cricket!?" Boscha called her back, but Amity didn't even turn around for an instant, leaving her and Skara and the two arthropods without an explanation.
Silence reigned for a few moments, then Willow murmured: "Do you think... is she going to Luz?"
"Well... maybe" Boscha replied.
The cricket's face immediately became determined. "What are you waiting for? Go after her now!"
Skara and Boscha weren't sure what to do, so they looked at Gus, who for once didn't seem to agree with the cricket. "Um... I personally think we should give them some privacy... after all if Amity wanted our presence she would have brought us with her..."
"I don't care! I absolutely want to know what will happen, I need it! Follow them secretly, so we can see everything without interference!" Willow exclaimed rubbing her wings excitedly.
"But... aren't you the one who until recently reproached us for our actions that were not morally acceptable?" Skara asked her.
In response, Willow shouted: "To hell with morality! Go after her, now!"
Faced with such a direct order, Boscha stood up and followed by Skara headed in the direction where Amity was headed, carrying Gus and Willow in her hands.
Sooner or later Amity and the others had to discover the existence of Willow and Gus, and even if they were a little selfish in blurting out Luz's problems without her permission, it was necessary for Amity to truly understand the gravity of her actions. And yes, the title of this chapter is basically a copying of "Understanding Willow", the episode 15 of the first season.
Remember, tonight at 12:00 pm of Rome time the chapter that will put an end to this misadventure will be published, which I am sure you are all waiting with trepidation. It's my Christmas present to you. From tomorrow, publication will resume with just one chapter per day as before. I could wish you a happy birthday now... but given the situation, I will wait to publish the next chapter, so that you can be beautiful and joyful while I'll do that