After a few paces, the darkness swallowed them. Alexandra just said, "I can't see." She knew she should have asked David to help her retrieve her wands, but somehow it hadn't seemed important.
Sees-From-Laurel snapped his fingers and a little ball of light appeared, glowing a cool white. Alexandra eyed it suspiciously, but it appeared to be nothing more than light conjured with elf magic, not one of the treacherous will-o-wisps that moved with minds of their own and tried to lead her to her death.
Having provided illumination, Sees-From-Laurel led Alexandra almost faster than she could follow. The elf hopped nimbly up and down rocky slopes and slides and between narrow cracks that even for Alexandra were a tight fit. She wished she were still in the shape she'd been in after the previous summer spent hiking and mountain climbing, but she didn't complain or ask the elf to slow down. She had no choice but to trust him completely. If he wanted to lead her off a precipice or into a pit, there was little she could do about it.
She had been this deep inside the mountain twice before. Once on her Solemn Quest, and once when she returned to face an underwater panther and open the World Away.
She could feel the magic—so much magic!—getting closer. Sees-From-Laurel did seem to know shortcuts that turned what would have been hours or days of spelunking into a rapid crawl through cracks riven through the mountain like spiderwebs.
"You did much damage," the elf commented, as he was forced to pause while Alexandra lay down and forced herself through a narrow opening between a flat slab of rock and an overhanging stone protrusion that looked as if it could collapse and squash her at any moment. "It is fortunate we are still able to follow this path. And fortunate you are so slight."
Alexandra, who by now was scraped up from many such tight squeezes, just exhaled as she rose wearily to her feet. "How much further?"
"Can you not sense it?" asked the elf.
Alexandra could. She thought maybe she could even Apparate there now, if she wanted to. But Sees-From-Laurel kept walking, so she followed.
"Your friend David Washington was not wrong," Sees-From-Laurel said.
"About what?" Alexandra asked.
"You came here to die. I watched you all but put your neck beneath a dwarven axe. Such foolishness!"
"I suppose I'm supposed to be grateful that you called in the cavalry."
"If you valued your life you would be, foolish girl. I only understood after I listened to you and David Washington conversing. You lost a friend and so you want to die. How selfish you are."
"Thanks for your opinion. Don't pretend you give a damn about me. You were only worried I'd die before freeing you."
"You are not wrong. For this reason I worry that you might do something else self-destructive before opening the World Away. It would be most unfortunate, for my kind and for yours."
"David was being dramatic. I wasn't trying to commit suicide."
"You thought the diggers would merely give you a thrashing, perhaps?"
"Shut up." Alexandra really couldn't explain the emptiness that had made her stop caring about what happened next. David's accusations had stung, and suddenly there had seemed no point in trying to make anyone else happy. Obviously she knew what the dwarves would likely do to her, but she had never consciously wanted to die.
I just want to stop hurting. I want to stop missing Anna. I want to stop losing friends.
Sees-From-Laurel did shut up, until they reached a black chasm whose entrance was familiar. Alexandra shivered at the cold air blowing past her, and felt what she had only felt once before.
"You sense it, do you not?" Sees-From-Laurel asked. "As before. The entrance to the World Away. The oldest entrance. Some of our folk believe it is from here that we first came to this side."
Alexandra sensed it. She saw it, through her eyelids and through the rock, the flaring, shimmering crack in the world that was not blue or green or any other color she could describe and yet brilliantly, colorfully radiant. The great crack in the world and the magic of the Ozarkers' Unworkings pooled together into a magical presence that energized and unnerved her. She felt it almost at the tips of her fingers and yet it seemed too vast and distant for her to touch.
"Will you go back to the other side?" she asked. "With the others?"
"I? No. Whether or not we once came from the World Away, my home is now here, and freed from this pile of rocks and digger tunnels, I and my kin will once more be wild and free. If your house-elves prefer instead to flee with the Ozarkers and the dwarves, let them be happy on the other side."
"Okay. Whatever." Alexandra stepped into the darkness. Sees-From-Laurel's light vanished, but she no longer needed it. Standing before all this magic, she could see everything.
She closed her eyes and breathed it in. Magic was all around her now, and though it made no sound she thought she could feel a thrumming or a pulsing or waves rolling through her. These words were as inadequate to describe the feeling as colors were inadequate to describe what she saw with her Witch's Sight.
Everything her father had taught her, all her practice, everything she knew, was poised on this moment. Her instinct was to rip the world open, crack the earth and split the sky and revel in the power she felt within reach.
She forced that thought away, and concentrated instead.
The mountain itself was almost empty except for the elves, who unlike last time, had not gathered around her to watch. She took a quick look down to where underwater rivers ran far below her feet, and saw that Geegowl the bugbear was still in his skull-strewn lair. Wait—were there two bugbears now?
Alexandra was curious where Geegowl's companion had come from. Were they… a couple? She laughed at the realization that she could still be curious about such irrelevant things. She felt as if she were coming back to life… just a little. And she had things to do.
She turned her attention to the outside, and was stunned by how many people were now filing into the little valley. Ozarkers who had traveled by Apparition, on foot, and by flying mule. A few of the wealthier Ozarkers had broken out the large enchantments they probably didn't dare show off normally, and arrived in magical horseless carriages. One family was even flying into the valley on a magic carpet, definitely a "foreign" magical item. They landed on the other side of the tree line and furtively rolled up the carpet.
With the Exodus upon them, Alexandra wasn't surprised that some families were bringing along things that Ozarkers would normally shun or hide. She wondered how many of them had really been avoiding foreigners and foreign works all this time.
Never mind that. She wasn't here to judge the Ozarkers. Let them sort each other out. They were flowing into the valley from all Five Hollers like a flood of refugees, reversing the flood she had caused when she drove the hill dwarves out. Couples, families, a few loners, so many people. Word must have been sent quickly, and however unready they might have been, however fearful or reluctant they were, they came. Most of them anyway. Alexandra supposed those who remained "steadfast" to the end would either flee the Hollers or bunker down and hope the Confederation's Regiments would pass them by.
From Furthest, many Ozarkers were arriving with house-elves. There were hundreds of house-elves now, as many as there were dwarves.
Alexandra touched the magic of the Unworkings, and felt instantly ready to fly to the ends of the Ozarks, to Apparate all the way to Larkin Mills, to open up the sky, to summon Thunderbirds…
She grinned humorlessly at Sees-From-Laurel. She knew her grin made him nervous. The elf watched her intently and did his best not to cringe.
She opened the crack in the world, and watched water and steam boil out of it. She held out her hand as if she were trying to focus the scene in a crystal ball. 667 worlds, her father had said, or maybe infinity. She had seen only a few, but the Ozarkers had invested their magic with a purpose, so Alexandra pushed the crack open further, deeper into both the World Away and this one. It spread from her feet through the solid rock of the mountain beneath her and split the mountain itself as she extended it outwards. When she peered into it she saw one landscape after another, the hellish lava plains and endless black oceans she'd seen before, and a glowing blue and green jungle with alien plants and butterflies, then a verdant, immense forest that looked like she imagined the world might have looked before any people at all were around. There was a world of pastoral plains beneath majestic snow-capped mountains, and another with endless fields of amber grain stretching from horizon to horizon. In each case, Alexandra knew she could only see one small portion of the world, and indeed, she couldn't say for certain that she wasn't just looking at the same world from many different vantage points. The World Away was like that. She was looking for something that felt right.
She found a place that looked gentle, bucolic, pastoral, and empty. It was as close to what the Ozarkers might consider ideal as she could imagine. There were mountains in the distance, and forests, so if anyone wanted to go traveling, it wasn't as if farming were the only thing available to them. She couldn't say there weren't dragons there, or worse. Maybe the winters turned the place into icy hell. How could she know?
"It will have to be good enough," she said. She released Charlie, allowing the raven to pass through her shirt like mist, a bit of magic she had never learned but which was effortless now. Charlie cawed and spread black wings until for a moment the raven looked like an eagle, feeling what she felt, the magic of the Ozarkers and the World Away. Charlie was connected to her and connected to the magic.
Alexandra tapped Charlie on the beak, filling the raven with enough magic to make it a real stormcrow.
The crack in the world had reached the outside, and Alexandra walked through it to step out with Charlie into the night before the assembled Ozarkers, dwarves, and elves. They all backed away as the crack she'd opened kept spreading, glowing with a beautiful red-gold light.
"I'm Alexandra Quick," she said to the masses of people packed as far as she could see now, back to the woods. "But you can call me Troublesome. Just in case anyone doesn't know me."
"Troublesome!" said Charlie. Electricity crackled from the raven's feathers.
A hush fell over the throng. Even with thousands of people in an area larger than a village, the silence became nearly absolute, but for the birds and crickets and other creatures who remained unimpressed by Alexandra's appearance.
"This crack in the world will lead you to the World Away," she said. "I can hold it open only so long. I'm using your magic to do it. I'm going to open it wide now. Are you ready? If you're not, too bad, because this is all the time you get."
She opened the crack until it was a highway, a river, a glowing portal nearly as wide as the mountain itself. It was also a great shining beacon of magical activity. The Confederation couldn't fail to notice this.
The Ozarkers hesitated, and then one of the first families to arrive, a husband and wife and three sons and two daughters, with pots and pans and sacks and baskets slung over their shoulders, looked around as if realizing they had somehow wound up at the head of the line. The man squared his shoulders, took his wife's hand, who took the hand of her oldest daughter, as the three boys held the hands of the youngest girl. They walked into the crack in the world. One of the girls said, "It's so beautiful!"
Barely had they disappeared from sight than a mob of dwarves ran into the crack, carrying metal picks and spades and buckets full of something heavy. They said nothing, but also disappeared.
And just like that, the hesitancy was gone. Ozarkers and dwarves began filing through, one by one then two by two then entire families, with mules and other livestock, with wagons, pulling magical sleds loaded with whatever they'd been able to throw on it before leaving their homes. Most didn't look at Alexandra as they passed by her. They looked into the great glowing portal to the World Away with awe and wonder, anticipation for some, fear for others. There were tears, and shouts, and many backwards glances. There were some who balked, even who had to be pulled, urged on by family members.
Elves also began joining the column of exodus, in twos and threes and little bands. They did look at Alexandra, and some even waved and said, "Good-bye, Troublesome! Good-bye, daughter of Thorn! Good-bye, Alexandra Quick!"
Alexandra felt the magic being drawn by her from inside the mountain and through her to the World Away, but holding open the portal required little concentration now. She was wired and bursting with energy and capable of so much more than this, and a will to do more, but she just stood there watching the Ozarkers and dwarves pass by her, flowing like a river.
Far across the Ozarks, dragons were in the air. Alexandra could see them from here. They could surely see this gleaming rip in the world. They weren't flying this way… yet. Alexandra couldn't do the mental calculations in her head to figure out how long it would take all these people to pass through the gate, but she didn't think they would all be gone in time if the Confederation Air Force came this way right now.
I have enough magic left over, she thought. She began conjuring thunderclouds. She called a storm.
With her Witch's Sight expanded as far as she wanted thanks to the magic she was harnessing, her gaze swept the Ozarks. All those homes abandoned. There were Regimental Officers in all five Hollers now, burning the Ozarkers' villages and farms and homesteads.
Alexandra looked for her great-great-grandmother, and almost didn't see her. Granny Grimm was trying to make herself unseen. Still in a lonely trailer park by the side of a highway, but the geographical location had shifted. Alexandra would certainly not have been able to find her again except that having so much magic flowing through her made seeing through Granny Grimm's obfuscating glamours as simple as rubbing her eyes. Maybe her charms would keep the Confederation away, maybe not. Alexandra frowned at all the trapped souls sharing the trailer park with the old witch.
I can do something about that, she thought, though the thought didn't immediately lead to action because she could do so much right now that deciding what exactly to do filled her head while Ozarkers and dwarves and elves continued to march past her.
She snapped out of it when she remembered the most important thing, the people she cared about most right now. David and Sonja and the Pritchards.
There they were, surrounded by other folks from Furthest. The Pritchards had left their house and almost everything in it behind. The entire extended clan was together. Able was with his wife and their children, and the eldest Pritchard daughters, Prudence and Faithful, were with their husbands, and all the in-laws and neighbors made a large procession that was just one thread in the immense tide of Ozarkers making their way up the slope toward the crack in the world.
Noah and Burton were leading the family's mules. Whimsy led a winged goat by a leash. Apparently they had decided they couldn't bring all the other farm animals—those they had set free.
And David was there, and so were Benjamin and Mordecai Rash. Constance and Forbearance were, oddly, standing apart from the other Pritchards. David's fists were balled and he and the Rashes both had their wands raised. An entire host of elves surrounded them, but none of them were intervening in the confrontation unfolding before them.
Alexandra appeared in front of them with a flash and a boom. She could have Apparated silently. She thought maybe she could have even Apparated invisibly, though that was supposed to be impossible, even with this much magic in her. But it had the desired effect, of startling everyone and making David and the Rashes turn away from each other and towards her.
"Did I interrupt a duel?" she asked. "'Cause right now I could care less about the Code Duello."
"Not yet," David said.
"I'll oblige," said Benjamin Rash.
"Really?" Alexandra said. "Don't you idiots have better things to be doing right now?"
"Ah knew!" Benjamin said. "I knowed for years you was sweet on Constance, and she felt some sorta way 'bout you."
Alexandra looked over at Constance, who was huddled beneath a shawl that hid her right arm, with Forbearance's arm around her. Behind them, their parents were showing a mixture of shock, grief, and concern. Clearly there was more going on here, but Alexandra focused on the immediate problem.
"Constance," she said, "is this what you want? For them to fight over you?"
Constance shook her head almost violently.
Alexandra pointed her finger. Without a wand it wasn't very threatening, until she unleashed a bolt of lightning without even saying a word. It crackled in the air between David and the Rashes with a boom that made some of the nearby Ozarkers and the elves scream. Yards away, a tree burst into flames where the lightning struck it. Everyone looked at Alexandra in shock.
"No dueling," Alexandra said. "Put your wands away or I swear to God I'll turn you into bugs, and right now I totally can."
David and the Rashes all gulped, and sheathed their wands.
Alexandra looked at the boys disdainfully, then turned her back on them and walked over to Constance and Forbearance. They regarded her with wide, red-rimmed eyes. Behind them, Mrs. Pritchard had her hand on Forbearance's shoulder, Whimsy and Done were both crying, and Mr. Pritchard looked grimmer than usual.
"I can't let you go without saying good-bye," Alexandra said. It was hard to get the words out. She thought she had stopped being able to feel like this, but she hadn't.
Constance and Forbearance looked at each other, and back at Alexandra.
"That's… oh, Alexandra, this is so hard," Constance said.
"I know," Alexandra said.
"No, you don't, Alex," Forbearance said. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "We'uns hain't goin'."
Alexandra frowned, looked at the other Pritchards, and back at Constance and Forbearance. "You mean you're all going to stay Steadfasters after all? But—"
"Not all of us," Forbearance said. Behind her, her mother began to weep.
Constance regarded Alexandra with red-rimmed eyes. "Forbearance and I are stayin'."
Behind her, Alexandra heard David and the Rashes approaching. Charlie was on her shoulder and didn't cry an alarm, so she assumed the Rashes weren't trying to hex her from behind. All around this little tableau, Ozarkers continued flowing past. Alexandra felt the crack in the world still gaping wide for them, but it wouldn't last forever.
"Constance, Forbearance, I love you both so much," she said. "I don't want to lose you, but you have to know—this is a one-time deal. I will never be able to do this again. And I don't know if anyone will ever be able to return here from the World Away."
"We'uns know, Alex, we know," said Constance.
"We'uns did not make this decision lightly," said Forbearance.
"Constance?" David stepped carefully towards her, keeping his hands at his sides. "Listen—I'd carry you away from here, take you anywhere you wanna go, if I was sure that's what you wanted. You—you know how I feel about you." He clenched his fists.
Alexandra glanced at the Rashes, who looked angry but kept their own fists clenched and empty as well.
"But I can't ask you to do this," David continued. "We don't know what the future's gonna be like, and this is forever. I would never ask you to walk away from your people, your whole family, give up everything like this, for me."
Constance smiled. She stepped towards David, and put a hand on his cheek. "Oh David," she said softly. "I do know how you feel."
"Constance!" Benjamin shouted.
Alexandra pointed a finger at him and made thunder rumble in the skies. "One more word," she said.
Benjamin glowered at her hatefully, and for a moment she thought he might throw himself at her or at David regardless.
"But I hain't stayin' for you," Constance said, ignoring Benjamin's outburst. "Leastwise, not just for you." She smiled as David took her hand, and didn't pull away.
"I s'ppose what Ma and Pa feared was true," she said. "Once we'uns went away to Charmbridge an' saw how much o' the world there was, we'uns wanted to see more. We'uns knowed for a long time now that we'uns'd never truly be satisfied returnin' to the Ozarks forever, even if'n we miss it dear when we're away." Constance looked at Benjamin. "I am sorry, Benjamin. You hain't a wholly awful person and someday you might be a halfway decent person, but I hain't never gonna marry you nohow. I s'ppose I oughter've worked the courage up to just say so long ago. But honestly, I think you knowed perfectly well. We'uns all should've just admitted this was an awful match and couldn't never be."
"Forbearance?" said Mordecai. His voice was hesitant. His expression was so forlorn that for a moment, Alexandra almost felt sorry for him.
Forbearance turned from her mother, wiped her eyes, and walked over to stand next to Constance.
"It was me," she said. "It was my idee. I want to see more of the world! I want to see Australia an' Egypt an' China! I want to visit Muggle astro-observatories and ride rollin' coasters and see the bottom o' the ocean from a submarine, an' also meet Centaurs an' Silkies an' learn how they'uns make wands in the Old World, an' so many other things!"
"Forbearance, I… we could do those things!" Mordecai said.
Forbearance blinked at him, and shook her head. "Are you proposin' to stay behind also, Mordecai Rash? Don't be silly."
"Forbearance, I… I really do feel some kinda way 'bout you," Mordecai said. He stepped closer to her. "I know I hain't couth or worldly an' I don't know 'bout all those Muggle things an' maybe I hain't curious enough, but I would be a good husband to you, I swear! I'd never lift a hand 'gainst you or—"
"Mordecai, shush," Forbearance said gently. She put her hand over his mouth. "I know you have tried. You hain't a terrible person neither. You might be a good husband… to someone else."
Alexandra was simultaneously filled with relief that she wouldn't lose her friends, and sorrow for what they were giving up and what their family was leaving behind. "Constance, Forbearance, are you one-hundred percent sure about this? I meant what I said—if you regret your decision later, even if I can open the World Away again, I can't promise I'll be able to take you to your family."
"We are," Forbearance said.
"We'uns din't just inkle this last night," Constance said.
"We'uns been talkin' 'bout it for months," Forbearance said.
Constance turned to her parents and brothers and sisters. "You'uns din't really take us serious when we'uns first said we wouldn't go. But we'uns… none of us truly featured the time'd come, an' so soon, did we?"
Alexandra bowed her head as the Pritchards said their final good-byes, embracing and weeping. She couldn't imagine what it was like for the Pritchards to say good-bye to two more daughters after having just lost Innocence.
Feeling uncomfortable standing there in silence, she looked away, and caught a couple standing apart from the others, watching silently. They were close together, yet they weren't holding hands or touching each other. Alexandra couldn't tell if it was propriety or tension.
She walked over to Sonja and Burton.
"You can't really mean to do this," she said.
Sonja smiled tearfully, and without a word, she threw her arms around Alexandra. Charlie fluttered off her shoulder and flew up into the trees, cawing, "Good-bye, good-bye!"
"Seriously," Alexandra said. "Don't tell me this was all foretold. You're making a choice here."
"I am," Sonja said. "And I've made it. Please don't argue with me or scold me or make me feel worse. It's very hard."
Alexandra sighed, and returned Sonja's hug. "What I said to Constance and Forbearance goes for you too. This is a one-way trip."
"I know," Sonja said.
Alexandra swallowed. "I'll miss you."
"I'll miss you too, Alexandra. You try so hard to be a good friend. You're much more reckless than you are good, but your heart is very big and very brave."
Burton was watching both of them with a solemn expression. Alexandra locked gazes with him. "You'd better be worthy. You'd better not let me down. You'd better do right by her."
"Yes'm," Burton said. He tipped his hat. "Reckon I'll say good-bye to Connie 'n Bear." He walked over to the rest of his family.
"I'm biting my tongue," Alexandra said, as she surveyed the remaining Ozarkers. Across the dark landscape, she saw dragons winging their way slowly but surely in the direction of the mountain.
"I know," Sonja said. She turned to watch Burton hugging his sisters. "He's not a bad man. He'll get better. I waited for him to decide, so he'd think he had a choice."
"Did you know?" Alexandra asked suddenly, fiercely. "About Innocence? And Anna?"
Sonja's eyes filled with tears. "Sometimes I see things," she said. "But it doesn't help. I told Anna she should stay off brooms and not join her father, but you can imagine how well she listened. The Inner Eye doesn't tell me how to prevent every bad thing I see, and I'm not even sure anything can be prevented. If you want to be angry at me, Alexandra, you may, if it will make you feel better. But I wish you wouldn't. Please, let's just say good-bye instead."
Alexandra closed her eyes, then hugged Sonja again. "Good-bye. Good luck."
"Good-bye, Alexandra. I won't need luck, but you will."
"Is that a prophecy or some other wisdom from your Inner Eye?" Even now, Alexandra had a hard time taking Sonja entirely seriously. So much of what she said was right, and so much of it was useless. It must have been hard living with that, but she couldn't stop thinking about how a simple, direct warning might have saved Anna.
If she had listened.
Sonja said, "You have to stop the storm."
Alexandra looked up at the gathering storm. Its heart was visible to her through the clouds, churning and splitting the sky. "Why? It's the only way to slow down the Deathies."
Sonja's eyes were distant, and she didn't smile. "Not this one."
"I don't suppose you can like, give me more details?"
Sonja shook her head sadly. "I really would if I could."
Alexandra watched as Sonja walked away to join her new family. Together, the Pritchards, the Rashes, and all the other families from Furthest brought up the rear of the procession, accompanied by hundreds of elves.
Alexandra felt how much magic was pouring through the crack in the world, how much she had spent holding it open like this, giving the Exodans a clear path all the way to the World Away—to their world away. Now they were almost through. The Five Families and all the others, nearly all the magical residents of the Five Hollers. The Grannies too had gone with their families. They wouldn't have much on the other side but what they'd carried with them, and their wands, but Alexandra was sure they'd make do. They and the dwarves and seven hundred free elves.
She turned her gaze outward again. The dragons were approaching. They were close enough now that the elves bringing up the rear saw them and began moving faster in a panic. Alexandra could even make out the riders on the backs of the beasts.
The dragons weren't alone, either. There were no hippogriffs—Alexandra thought those weren't nocturnal—but manticores followed the dragons like an evil host, held in check by whatever enchantments the Confederation Air Force used to keep the beasts reined to their commands.
"Oh no, oh no!" exclaimed Forbearance.
"Oh shit," David said. He was holding Constance. The twins were both sobbing as their families disappeared into the crack that was wider and brighter than any dragon's flaming maw, but Forbearance had turned away from the mountain and seen the dragons before David did.
"Don't worry," Alexandra said. "I've got this."
She reached for the magic of the Unworking. It was flowing rapidly away as the last of the elves and Ozarkers disappeared into the World Away.
It was flowing away, but it wasn't gone.
Her eyes flashed as she called lightning from the skies.
The first two dragons screamed as they were engulfed in a flash of blue-white light and exploded into flames. They tumbled out of the sky with their wings on fire and their riders in free fall next to them, trailing greasy black smoke.
Alexandra was aware that David and Constance and Forbearance were shouting, but she made sure only that no stray arcs of lightning went near them or Charlie, and then turned her attention to the next rank of dragons. There were half a dozen more which had banked away in consternation at the fate of the first two. Alexandra laughed and the sky laughed with her, thundering angrily. Black shapes as big as dragons swooped above the clouds.
The next dragon was caught in criss-crossing lightning bolts that reached from the sky to the forest below and transfixed the hapless beast and its rider in a glowing X bright enough to sear the retinas before the lightning disappeared, replaced with a boom that shook the Ozarks. As creatures for miles around stirred from the trees and screeched in alarm, charred flesh and scales rained from the sky. There was nothing left of the rider.
The rest of the Confederation Air Force was in full retreat now. Alexandra clapped her hands and called more lightning, until the night was as bright as day, with brilliant white light casting stark shadows across the landscape. Anything in the air attracted it. Dragons, manticores, Regimental Officers on brooms—Alexandra directed the lightning indiscriminately at anything that moved, and the fireballs blossoming in the distance were beautiful and terrible to behold as men, manticores, and dragons fell like cinders from the sky.
Behind her, the last of the elves had disappeared into the World Away.
"Alexandra!" cried Forbearance. "Alexandra!"
Alexandra turned to her only remaining friends in the Ozarks.
Charlie screeched, "Alexandra!"
You too, of course, Charlie, Alexandra thought.
Thunder boomed from above, and Alexandra almost answered it. She wondered if the Thunderbirds approved of what she'd done, or were just enjoying the show.
David and the Pritchards looked horrified and more than a little terrified. Alexandra tried to smile, but that didn't seem to terrify them any less.
"It's okay, guys," she said. "Listen, the ROC is here. Not sure I have enough magic left to deal with them too."
"A-Alex," Constance stammered, "w-we'uns oughter flee…"
"Yes." Alexandra nodded. "You oughtta."
"Then let's go!" David said. He was as scared as the Pritchards and clearly uncertain how exactly they would all make their way out of the Ozarks past a Confederation Regiment, but he tried to sound confident. Alexandra smiled as he and Constance held hands as if their lives depended on never letting go.
"Don't worry," she said. "I've got this." She pointed a finger, and sent the three of them a thousand miles away.
The pop they made Disapparating was inaudible with all the thunder booming overhead. The sky was clear of everything but thunderclouds and lightning, and ominous shapes above the clouds. If any of the Confederation Air Force had survived, they had done so by grounding themselves.
Alexandra stopped trying to hold open the World Away. The brilliant gaping crack in the world shrank. The magic of the Unworkings was almost expended now. What little was left was still enough to do great things, more than Alexandra could do by herself, but not enough to destroy armies. The Confederation's troops were busily looking for any Steadfasters who might have stayed behind. Alexandra called down more lightning wherever she saw Regimental Officers. Across the Ozarks, a lightning storm that terrified Muggles would remember for a generation continued. It stayed alive and raging even as Alexandra's control over it faded.
Alexandra felt as if her own strength was being spent along with the Ozarkers' magic. Perhaps being Troublesome linked her in some way to the Unworking, and when it was gone, so too would she be? But no, she thought morbidly, it wouldn't be that easy or simple. She wasn't done yet.
Granny Grimm! Alexandra focused her attention once more on that hidden trailer park and its damned souls. Of course Granny Grimm had not joined the Exodus. She would stay here, alone and bitter to the last. Well, Alexandra thought, she was entitled to live alone if that was what she wanted, but she wasn't entitled to keep people—souls, shades, inferi, whatever they were—trapped with her.
Alexandra unleashed the last of the magic at her command onto Granny Grimm's trailer park, and in one bright flash of light, burned away everything that was holding people who should have moved on long ago to that awful place. That same bright flash of light lit up the Dementors lurking the grounds in a fiery blaze, and if Dementors could scream, they would have. Alexandra's last glimpse of the scene, before she could no longer see across miles at will, was of Granny Grimm sitting petrified in her trailer, perhaps wondering if a lightning bolt would strike her next. Alexandra smiled with righteous satisfaction. It wasn't exactly nice, what she'd done, but the old woman surely deserved it.
Then she was alone in the night, except for Charlie, and she was drained. It was more than fatigue that made her sway on her feet. Like the last time she had unleashed magic from the Unworking, she had briefly been mad and unstoppable, but this time she had unleashed so much more. She had done everything.
Not everything, she thought. Not everything. There was still so much more to do, but even with all the magic she had commanded, she couldn't do everything herself. And now she was spent. She sank to her knees, and shushed Charlie when the raven cawed and called her name. She was so tired. She supposed she should find someplace to rest.
She heard shouts and Apparition and boots crunching over the broken ground around her, and the only thing she could make herself care about, as the Deathies found her, was Charlie. She used the last bit of magic at her command to send Charlie far away, and made no attempt to stop the onslaught from the ROC's wands.