Limbo
That was my first encounter with death.
It would not be my last.
It didn’t feel real. Sometimes it still doesn’t. It happened so fast that I barely had a moment to register it, and even when it finally did hit me, I didn’t have any time to process it. We had to stay on the move. We couldn’t lose a second to the Death Eaters. I knew firsthand now what they were capable of, what they were willing to do to those who defied them. Karen Blair... she had been my teacher. I had always hated her, but even I would have never thought her capable of murder. Yet right before my eyes, she had used the darkest curse of all on a girl barely out of elementary school. She did it without a hint of remorse. She murdered a child. Why? Why were they doing this? I didn’t understand. My mind was lost.
We regrouped with Liam and the little kids a few blocks away from Summerroot School. Liam had two boys with him, one of whom was bleeding badly from the leg. The other boy carried him with a concerned look on his face. The younger children followed dutifully from behind with terrified expressions.
“What happened?” Peter asked, gesturing to the bleeding boy.
“Don’t know,” said the boy carrying him, a former classmate of mine I recognized as Kyle Berens. “One of the Death Eaters hit him while he was running, and he started bleeding badly.”
“I’ll live,” said the other boy, Eric McCarthy, but I could tell that he was barely breathing. The pain looked unbearable, but at least he was conscious.
“We can’t stay here,” Liam said with a panicked tone. “They’ll spread out through the neighborhood and find us. We need to get the kids out of Salem.”
“Where’s Emma?” Silas asked suddenly, looking at me.
I felt a knot in my stomach. I saw Emma falling again, her blonde hair like a shooting star burning through the night, before vanishing. When Silas read my expression, his eyes widened, and he shook his head.
“No... is she...?”
I nodded. I felt sick.
Liam and Silas exchanged glances. I couldn’t tell what they were thinking, perhaps because my own thoughts were too loud. Emma... I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I thought of the words we shared before the battle. I thought of my newly awoken Patronus. I faintly registered Peter putting a comforting hand on my shoulder, but I barely felt his touch.
Out of all of us, Silas seemed to be the one with the most level head on his shoulders. “Liam is right. We have to get the kids out of the valley as fast as we can.”
“But Summerroot is surrounded by mountains,” I pointed out.
“Then we go over them. The Eustice Carrey Trail. It leads up Mount Johnson. We can take shelter in the woods until the battle ends, or if that doesn’t happen... maybe we can find other adult wizards, and disapparate to somewhere safe?”
It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but we had few other options. Liam nodded at Silas, then turned back and informed the kids of where we were going. With that, we started along the road northeast leading to the Eustice Carrey Trail. It wasn’t far away, but the hike felt like miles. Every step of the way, the battle from earlier flashed through my mind. I still couldn’t comprehend that Emma wasn’t with us. A part of me wanted to run back there, despite the danger, just to find her and prove that she was really alive after all. She wouldn’t be safe there with the Death Eaters. I had to save her. I had to...
“Alan?”
I looked over at Peter. Through his thick glasses, he gave me a worried look. I don’t know why, but that was when it finally settled in. Emma was dead. There was no saving her. Blair had murdered her. She and the Death Eaters would murder all of us, if given the chance. We had to keep moving.
The trail wasn’t the same as it used to be, when we had gone on nature hikes here with Sam. I faintly recalled where pretty flowers and flowing creeks were supposed to be, but our surroundings were almost completely enshrouded in white fog. The closer we got to Mount Johnson, the thicker the fog got. I glanced upward at the rumbling, silver-gold clouds above us. Thunder echoed across the valley. What were those clouds, exactly? They clearly weren’t natural, but I couldn’t tell exactly why they were there. There was no lightning striking the ground, no intense winds. It wasn’t a hurricane. What purpose did it serve? Or was it simply the personification of all of this evil?
The broad trail eventually left the pine forests of the valley floor, and turned into a winding dirt path leading up the side of Mount Johnson. There were no trees around here, only the grassy face of the mountain as we ascended high up over the Salem Valley. The little kids were obviously struggling to keep up, and we began carrying the smaller ones to ensure we weren’t slowing down. I held a seven-year-old girl with shoulder-length red hair and glasses, who pressed her face into my shoulder and closed her eyes tightly.
“I want Mama,” she said in my ear.
I didn’t know what to say. I patted her gently on the back, but I knew I couldn’t give her false reassurance. I didn’t know if her Mama was even still alive.
We took a brief break when we reached a turn on the path. I put down the girl and walked over to the side of the path, where a steep slope led back down into the mist-shrouded maze of the Summerroot neighborhood. I could see everything from here, all the way across the city. I saw the university campus in the distance on the other side of the Lewis River, and the spot far away on the rural west side of the valley where my house probably was. To the south was the location of John Proctor Middle School, and beyond that, a stretch of trees and winding farmland separating Salem from Lynnville. We were at least twelve miles away, much too far to tell the status of the other wizard and muggle families. I hoped that Mom, Dad, and Clea were safe and sound in the shelter with everyone else. The storm surrounded the whole valley in a gargantuan dome. The closest edge was nearby, only a few hundred meters above us on the mountainside. It formed an almost vertical wall of shimmering golden clouds.
It was cold. I shivered, tugging my blue hoodie closer to my body. It wasn’t much insulation, but it was better than nothing. I wasn’t bleeding anywhere, but there was an inexplicable red stain on the edge of my sleeves. My pants were covered in dirt, and one of the knees was torn open. The others didn’t look much better. Silas, Liam, and Peter were doing okay, but the remaining kids were exhausted. The injured Eric was tended to by a girl named Sophie Litz, who healed his wounds one by one with her magic. He yelled in pain, but covered his mouth to try not to frighten the little kids too much.
Peter approached me. “Are you... okay?”
I shrugged. Perhaps I was still in the stage of denial, but I was feeling pretty numb. “You?”
Peter looked down at the city. “I’m worried about my mom and dad.”
It wasn’t characteristic of Peter to worry about anything, and to hear him express his fears only cemented the severity of our circumstances. “I’m sure they’re okay,” I forced myself to say. “My dad was with them, and he took them straight to Lynnville.”
“How do we know Lynnville is okay, though?”
I didn’t have an answer to that. I gazed south again, but still saw nothing.
Peter shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be... I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Peter.”
Another chilly gust of wind ran past, much colder than before. I felt as though it was early winter, even though just hours ago the sun had been shining, and Salem was basking in ninety-degree July weather. It only added to the surreality of our experiences.
“Guys,” I heard Silas say behind us. “Do you feel something?”
We turned around and looked at him. At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about. But a second later, I noticed it too. Something was... off. I was feeling sick, but it wasn’t the sickness I felt when I saw Emma die. It was like there was something creeping into my mind, a dark and insidious thing taking over my thoughts. My blood felt like it had been injected with some ice-cold substance. It drained the hope and light from my body, what little happiness I had left bleeding out of me as if it was being sucked away.
Our surroundings began to change. Frost appeared on the tips of the tall grass. The air turned blue, and the temperature dropped rapidly, like we were passing through a huge cold pocket. The fog rose up over the mountainside, and the Salem Valley vanished below us. We couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of us. We raised our wands warily. I heard a low moaning sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once, like dozens of somethings were approaching us through the fog.
“What’s going on?” a kid asked fearfully.
“Silas?” said Liam, eyes wide.
Silas shook his head slowly in disbelief. “No. It can’t be. It’s...”
And then, from every direction, the Dementors appeared.
I didn’t know what they were at first. They were creatures spoken of only in legend, described in the adventurous chronicles of Harry Potter’s memoirs. To see them in person was an experience nothing could have prepared me for. The wraiths encircled us on all sides, their long cloaks flowing in the wind, streaks of black against the pure white mist. There were holes in their cloaks where their mouths should have been, revealing only horrific, fleshy holes. Corpse-like hands reached out from beneath as they advanced weightlessly through the air.
“Dementors...” said Silas, his voice weak. “But it’s impossible. The Aurors banished them. They can’t be...”
But impossible or not, they were here. The Dementors drew closer. The kids were too scared to even scream. The emotion I’d felt moments ago intensified tenfold. Their presence drained me of everything, like there was no meaning in living. There was only blind fear, the mounting existential dread of knowing I was about to die at only twelve years old.
“Expecto Patronum!” Liam yelled, pointing his wand at what appeared to be the closest Dementor. All that emerged from his wand was a faint point of white light. It did nothing.
The Dementors advanced closer. The other kids raised their wands and tried in vain to cast their Patronuses, but clearly none of them had ever been successful, and even if they had, the circumstances made the spell impossible to cast.
I pulled out my wand with a trembling hand and pointed it at the Dementors. “Expecto Patronum!”
Nothing happened. Not even a spark. The radiant doe Patronus that I had cast at Summerroot School was nowhere to be seen. I suddenly understood the real reason why the Patronus Charm was so difficult to cast. Even if you mastered the incredibly challenging execution of the spell, summoning happy thoughts in the presence of these monsters was nigh impossible. All I could think about was Emma’s corpse, and the thought that I would soon be joining her. I would die having failed to protect these kids, or my friends, or my family. Salem would be destroyed, and it was all my fault. Everything was pointless. It was over.
“EXPECTO PATRONUM!”
The cold fog was set alight by a powerful silver glow. When I turned to look at it, I was nearly blinded by the brilliant light as a massive horned owl spread its elegant wings. The Dementors recoiled in the air, holding up their withered arms to shield themselves from the Patronus. Silas kept his wand pointed directly upward, his brown hair whipping in the air, a determined look on his face. He didn’t let up. The Patronus sent bursts of energy coursing out like great waves on a stormy sea, and they washed away the Dementors. Soon they vanished into the white fog, and the fog itself lifted. Salem reappeared below us, still forlorn and grim, but in that moment it was the most relieving sight I’d seen all day.
The silver owl slowly faded away. Silas lowered his wand and smiled proudly at me. “Learned that one from you, Alan. Thanks.”
I stared at him. For some reason, perhaps as a result of the Patronus, I was feeling exhilarated. I smiled for the first time in a half hour. “How did you do it?”
Silas sheathed his wand and nodded in the vague direction of Lynnville in the distance. “When this is all over... I’m going to tell my dad what I did here today. I’m going to tell him how we protected the kids at Summerroot from the Death Eaters. He’ll be proud of me. We’ll have dinner together.”
He looked at me, and grinned. “That’s what I thought, anyway. So that’s why it happened.”
Liam came up from behind and gabbed Silas by the shoulders, shaking him excitedly. “That was amazing, Silas! You just beat a whole swarm of Dementors!”
Peter nodded encouragingly. “Yeah, man. You really saved us there. Thanks.”
Silas smiled modestly, but clearly was still filled with pride. “It was nothing. That’s what Aurors do.”
“A shame you’ll never get to be one,” said an unknown voice.
All of us jumped, and immediately looked up the mountain to where the sound had come from.
A boy stood there on a rocky outcropping above us. He was wearing a long flowing robe, but it was different from the ones worn by the other Death Eaters. It was decorated with spirals and arches of gold, and the black fabric seemed to shimmer a silvery color. The tall boy reached up and stroked back his blond hair, his model-like face smiling menacingly.
It was Nick Varennikov.
“You?!” I exclaimed.
Nick smiled at me. “Hello, Alan. Fancy meeting you here.”
Silas pointed his wand at Nick. “Are you one of them?”
“He is,” Peter said hurriedly. “Alan and I knew him at John Proctor. He’s a huge Trackwell nut.”
“I’ve been given a most valuable mission by our great Lord Darkanoss,” Nick boasted. “He has honored me with the esteemed title of Master Reborn. I have been tasked with eliminating all resistance to the glorious regime of the New Dark Lord... and right now, that means killing you.”
I clenched my fist, my other hand pointing my wand at Nick’s smug face. “Jonah mentioned you. You’re in charge of the Reborn Death Eaters, is that it?”
“Indeed,” Nick said mockingly, his cold blue eyes meeting mine. “I heard about what you and your little girlfriend did to Jonah. He’d dead... not that it matters. But we can’t have traitors like you killing our Reborn. It’s a good thing Ms. Blair put that girl down like the worthless dog she was.”
A sudden, violent rage flared up out of nowhere inside of me. I fired a spell directly at Nick’s chest, but he blocked it effortlessly with his long wand. A second later, two other forms apparated to either side of him. I recognized the cloaked adolescents as Rodney Vosburgh and Miles Argo, Nick’s posse members from when he still attended John Proctor. Nick’s evil grin widened.
“You can’t escape, you know. Salem belongs to the Death Eaters. The adult wizards and witches... we’ve defeated them all. You’re the only ones left.”
“Defeated them?!” I remarked in shock. “All of them?!”
Miles pointed his wand at me. “We have them imprisoned at the Asian market on Marble Road. The Dementors will see to it that every last one of them receives the Kiss.”
“Enough, Miles,” Nick interrupted angrily, as though Miles had said too much. “There’s no point talking to them. They’ve already lost. Let us carry out the New Dark Lord’s will, and finish them off.”
Nick pointed his wand at the ground between us. “Reducto!”
The ground exploded. Rocks flew in every direction, and the whole mountainside began to collapse into one giant landslide. The little children screamed, everyone falling backwards at once. I saw Sophie grab one of them and shelter him in her arms as she toppled backwards. Her head slammed hard against a boulder. The rest of us slid down to the trail crisscrossing just below us. My head was spinning.
When I regained my senses, I saw that the battle had already begun. Peter, Silas, and Liam were blocking spells that rained down from the wands of Nick, Miles, and Rodney. Even though we outnumbered them, the three young Reborn were incredibly powerful. They were orders of magnitude more dangerous than the adult Death Eaters we had been dueling at Summerroot. Nick was especially formidable. His spells were practically unblockable, and it took everything we had just to dodge out of their way and keep the younger kids from getting hit. We were sitting ducks.
Kyle hurried over to Sophie’s limp body, prying the child out of it and shielding her from Nick’s attacks. I brought up a shield between us and glanced back at him as he checked Sophie’s pulse. “Is she okay?”
Kyle looked at me, his eyes trembling. “I... I have to protect her. The rest of you go. I’ll hold them off!”
“No!”
Liam glanced over. “Kyle, no! We’re not leaving you...”
“Shut up!” Kyle screamed. “Do you really think this is a time to argue?! You need to get the other kids out of here. Run past the clouds and get across the mountain. I’ll distract them!”
“Kyle, we can’t leave you!” Silas insisted. “Not on your own!”
Eric limped over and crouched down next to Sophie’s body. “I’ll stay with him. The two of us can draw their fire. Go, Liam. Go now.”
Liam looked like he wanted to protest. But Kyle and Eric were right: we were running out of time. Nick and his subordinates were growing closer, and if we waited any longer, the little kids would die. I no longer underestimated what the Death Eaters were capable of, especially not the Reborn. Nick would slaughter these defenseless kids just for sport. I glanced at the seven-year-old girl I had carried up the hill. She was wearing a little pink shirt that was stained with someone else’s blood.
The agreement was made without a word. Liam reluctantly nodded. “Let’s go!”
One of the kids cast the same spell from earlier, the one which made a huge white cloud appear between us and our assailants. The rest of us ceased fire, and Eric and Kyle began blasting a flurry of spells in the vague direction where Nick and the others were. We didn’t wait for even a second. Leading the kids as fast as we could, we ran down the trail to the left, then cut across it upward across the almost vertical plane of grass towards the top of the mountain. I could see the spot where the clouds touched down, forming the edge of the dome encompassing the valley. Without a moment to lose, we sprinted headlong into the golden mist.
The world turned upside-down.
Down was no longer down. Up was no longer up. We found ourselves dangling helplessly by the tips of our hands, the grassy ground above our heads, and the infinite void of clouds below our feet. Reality had completely inverted, and gravity was now pulling us aggressively away from the earth, toward the unfathomable depths of the sky which now lay below us. I clutched the ground as tightly as I could, but it felt like was barely holding on by the thread of my hand. My stomach fell into my feet.
Limbo Mist. That was what the cloud was made of. It was a magical incantation that caused the world to turn upside-down, or at least be perceived as such to those who walked through it. I had been taught about it during one of my magic lessons a few months ago. It suddenly made perfect sense why the Death Eaters had summoned the clouds to surround Salem. It was so that no one would be able to escape. Anyone attempting to flee the valley would be caught in this mist. Muggle vehicles like cars and airplanes would be helpless against it. Illusion or not, it was completely impenetrable. Limbo Mist was supposed to be difficult to conjure, and even then it only worked in small quantities. To summon an entire storm of it, surrounding the entirety of Salem... what sort of unfathomable magical power did Darkanoss possess?
I felt my fingers slipping. I concentrated as hard as I could. I tried to remember what I had been taught about Limbo Mist. Think, think. I wracked my brain to recall the spell. It was an anticharm. The Limbo Mist anticharm... what was it? Come on, Alan, think!
Then it hit me. Without missing a beat, and without reaching for my wand, I yelled out: “Inversio!”
The world righted itself again. Gravity returned to its proper direction, and my body collapsed on the grassy ground. I breathed heavily, my head spinning from the rapid change in world-directions. When I sat up, I spotted Peter getting up a few feet away from me, and Silas just behind him.
“You guys okay?” I asked.
Peter rubbed his head with a pained expression, but nodded. “That was... less than fun.”
“You can say that again,” I agreed.
Silas stood up slowly, and took in our surroundings. His eyes widened. “Uh, guys? Where are the others?”
Peter and I turned and looked with him. That was when I realized we were no longer on the mountainside from before. We were sitting in a broad, flat field on the northwestern side of the Salem Valley, miles away from Summerroot. I could still see Mount Johnson in the distance, but it was little more than a faint lump behind the cityscape, enshrouded by white clouds. The dome of Limbo Mist arched over to an area just a few meters north of us. It was as if we had been sucked in by the clouds, and spat out in a different part of the valley. But we hadn’t made it out. We were still trapped.
Liam and the other kids were nowhere to be seen.
“Alan,” I heard Peter say quietly. “Look.”
He pointed out toward the city, in the direction southeast of us across the rolling hills and fields. There, at the end of a long road in an area surrounded by buildings, was a swarm of what looked like ravens circling one another. But when I looked closer, I realized they weren’t ravens – they were Dementors. Hundreds of them. They spiraled above a single spot like scavengers encircling a fresh carcass, just waiting for the right moment to dive down and consume its remains.