Alan Doe and the Phoenix War

After we had run a sufficient distance away from Riverside Park, Zoe fell to her knees and began to sob.

The sound of her tears will haunt me for the rest of my life. I can still hear her voice ringing in my ears. I don’t know what I was feeling at that moment, because I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Some kind of vicious monster had inhabited my body from the moment Jared’s dead body hit the ground. That monster had cast the Killing Curse on Widow. It had viciously defeated Nick Varennikov. Jonah too. Those were victories, and yet they felt like losses for my soul. It was only at that moment, surrounded by death wrought by both the Death Eaters’ hands and my own, that the reality sank in: there would be no winners of this war. It didn’t matter if the Phoenix Stone was destroyed or not, because either way, all hope was lost. Zoe would never get her brother back. Emma and Liam wouldn’t come back either. Thousands of lives were lost, and nothing could reverse that. My own self felt like it had been taken away. Alan Doe, that boy who had so innocently thought he could make it through this, was dead too. What made me any different from them now? I had used the Dark Arts. To kill the monsters, I had become a monster.

There was the sound of apparition near us. The animal in me immediately shot a spell in its direction, but the man who had appeared near us dodged just in time. It wasn’t a Death Eater. It was an Auror. It was Isaac Darrow, Silas’s dad.

I breathed heavily, not lowering my wand. The rational part of my mind knew that this man was no threat, but my veins still pulsed with violent bloodlust. Isaac stared at me in shock for what felt like an eternity, until Silas ran past me to embrace him. Something about that brought me to my senses, and I finally brought my wand down, though the sound of Zoe crying still drove me insane.

“Thank God you’re alright,” Isaac said to his son.

“You too,” Silas responded. His voice quivered in an uncharacteristic display of emotion.

His dad took one look at the rest of us and surmised the current situation. I was still staring directly at his face with a look that I can hardly describe; like I might still assault him without warning. Eliza was comforting Zoe, and Peter was standing near me – close enough to comfort me if I needed it, but not close enough to be within firing range of my wand. When Isaac approached me, I felt something uncoil inside of me, but I managed to force myself to drop my wand into the gray snow at my feet. Isaac spoke slowly and calmly.

“The defense of the shelter in Summerroot is going very poorly. We’ve been holding them off as much as we can, but the reinforcements don’t stop. It won’t be long before they breach our lines.”

“What can we do?” Silas asked right away.

“I need some of you to come with me. With the Reborn, we might stand a chance.”

I exchanged glances with Peter, Silas, and Eliza. Eliza stood up and looked at him. “I’ll go. I have family in that shelter. I want to protect them.”

Isaac nodded at the little girl without a hint of reservation.

Silas looked guiltily at me, and then back at his father, and then me again. “Alan... I’m going with him too.”

“Okay,” I said indifferently.

Silas seemed to mistake my indifference for being upset. “If they don’t have other Reborn there to protect the people, then I want to reinforce them. I promise you, I’ll keep your parents and sister safe...”

“I said it’s fine, Silas,” I insisted, though my voice was monotone. “The rest of you go too. I’ll get to John Proctor. I’ll destroy the stone.”

Spark flew down from above and landed on my shoulders. I glanced at him, but even the warmth of his bright red feathers did nothing to thaw my frozen heart. Peter protested. “No, Alan. I’m going with you. I’m going to see this through. I don’t want to leave you by yourself!”

Then Zoe stood up.

“I’m going too.”

I glanced at her, and for the first time my expression changed. “Zoe...”

She looked at me, her eyes red with the countless tears she’d shed. It looked like she might break down again at any moment, but when she spoke, her voice was strong. “I won’t let it be for nothing. I’ll protect you no matter what, Alan. Like he protected me.”

I could say nothing against that. I looked at Peter and Zoe again, and then at Silas and Eliza. “Please be careful,” I said weakly, directing the request to Silas.

Silas stepped forward, and hugged me tightly. It was a rare gesture of affection from him. I felt my arms moving, and then I was hugging him too, pushing all of my grief and fear and horror into my grip around his back. I only realized then that I didn’t want him to leave, that his strength and wisdom and rationality had been so vital to me throughout all this. He had kept me sane, kept me moving in all the times I felt like giving up. But the only thing I feared more than his absence was my family getting hurt. I thought of Nick’s words on the bridge, and agonized over the fact that I wasn’t sure if they were true or not. So I let Silas go, and could only pray that he’d be alright. That they all would.

Isaac took Silas and Eliza by the arms, and looked me in the eye. “John Proctor is just up the road from here. Most of the resistance has fallen. The Reborn are the only ones left defending the stone. The Death Eaters will throw everything they have at the school to get it back. We’re all counting on you.”

I didn’t respond, so Peter spoke in my place. “We won’t let you down.”

Isaac disapparated, taking Eliza and Silas with him. It was just the three of us after that, standing there in an empty lot surrounded by ashen snowflakes. I hadn’t even moved my head to acknowledge when Silas and the others left. I kept staring at a spot in the snow a few meters ahead of me.

Peter reached down and picked up my wand from the ground, and held it to me. I looked at him. His green eyes glistened behind his glasses.

“Let’s finish this, Alan.”

I slowly lifted my hand to take the wand. I gripped its handle while he grasped its tip. We remained like that for a few moments. Eventually, Peter gently let go of the wand, and I nodded at him.

“Let’s finish this.”

* * *

There are moments of the Phoenix War that I’m asked about a lot. But it’s rarely ever “asking.”

People accost me in the streets when they recognize who I am. They throw all the insensitive questions at me first, or sometimes they hold off for a few moments and then lead into them, as if that makes them any less difficult to answer. They don’t see it as something that happened, not really. They see it as a story, and me as the protagonist. They like to know about the moments that would be exciting on a movie screen. They don’t think I would still be affected by it, nearly a decade after it all came to an end.

There is no single moment in the war I am asked about more than that final hour of the Third Battle of Salem. The Battle of John Proctor Middle School. People want to know about my role in the endgame, about what I did in those crucial last moments. Sometimes, they even ask me the most difficult questions of all: what was it like? How did it feel? And how did you make it through?

Upon writing this memoir, I hoped that perhaps I might be able to finally answer those questions – not just for others, but for myself. But now that I have reached this point in the story, I’ve realized that I’m no closer to the answers than when I started. Maybe it was naïve of me to think that writing it all down, reliving it step by step, would change anything. My memories of the Phoenix War are vivid, but I would do anything to forget them, to erase them from my mind and start anew. I’ve done everything I can to remove myself from them. I don’t live in Salem anymore. I haven’t lived there in years. I’ve cut off contact with nearly everyone I once knew, at least the ones who are still alive. But the memories are always with me, and no matter what I do, I can’t ever get away.

I know the reason now. This is my punishment. I survived when so many others didn’t. Many people died that day just to keep me alive. It wasn’t just Jared. Hundreds of people had died in the Battle of the Rings keeping the Phoenix Stone away from Darkanoss – wizards and witches, muggles and Aurors, Reborn children. They had all made the ultimate sacrifice just to bring that stone to John Proctor, just so that I could destroy it. I know it wasn’t for me. But it was still my fault. If I had just been able to save Emma, if I had only been stronger, or less of a cowardly child caught up in his own heroic delusions, then maybe I could have prevented it all somehow. I know that’s irrational thinking, but I can’t see the world through any other lens. The only possible reality is my guilt, because that’s all I have anymore. Guilt. It follows me everywhere, and no matter how far I run, it will never let me live again.

I’m not writing this story for me anymore, nor for anyone else. I don’t even know why I’m writing it. A story begins, and so it must end. That’s how all things are. Everything comes to an end.

* * *

John Proctor was in ruins. It came as no surprise after the things I had seen that day. The building was intact, but the basketball court was nothing but melted metal and shattered concrete. The schoolyard where I had once roamed with Peter, complaining about teachers and homework and letting the day lazily pass us by, was covered in ashes and snow. There would be no happy children here today, and perhaps there never had been. John Proctor was never really a school. It was a haunted, dark place. The place where all of this began, and the place where it would all end.

A very small group of kids were waiting for us when we arrived. They were the only ones. Like me, they flared up defensively the moment they saw our faces, and didn’t lower their guard for a while. When they finally did, one of them stormed across the schoolyard and punched me squarely in the face. It was the second punch in the face I’d received that day, but I hardly felt it this time.

“She’s dead because of you!” the boy howled. “They killed her because she wouldn’t...”

Someone hurried over and pulled the boy back. The other kids walked over to us, and the one in the middle held out her hands and presented me with a tiny object barely larger than my thumb.

It was the Phoenix Stone.

The accursed object that had started all of this, the ultimate weapon of the Dark Arts, the reason so many lived had been lost... and it was so little. It was red, but dark to the point that it looked black. When I gingerly took it out of the girl’s hands, I felt a sudden sensation like searing heat burning up my right hand. It was so painful that I almost dropped it. Spark, who was still resting lightly on my shoulder, squawked quietly in a tone of distaste. I was sure he could sense the same thing I could. It was like a warped mirror. I could feel myself in that stone, but it was like a different me, an evil doppelganger.

“A lot of people died getting this here,” said the girl flatly. Her face was covered in bleeding scars. “You know what you have to do.”

I nodded at her. Everyone stepped back, and I unsheathed my wand, pointing it at the stone. I tried to summon the strength to cast the spell. I was feeling weak, but I held onto my wand tightly.

“Atovius...”

“Expelliarmus!”

The Phoenix Stone flew from my hand. Everyone turned wildly in shock. The girl at the back of the group grinned madly, pointing her wand right at me. Then she raised it to the sky, and a bright flare like the one Jake had cast soared from her wand to high above the roof of the school.

A split second later, I heard the loud crack of apparition. A Death Eater appeared out of nowhere and sprinted past me, grabbing the fallen Phoenix Stone from the ground and making a beeline for the far side of the schoolyard.

“No!” cried Peter.

Zoe sent a spell flying at the Death Eater’s back. It knocked him into the air, and he slammed hard against the ground a second later, his body turning to ash. The Phoenix Stone twinkled as it soared in an arc before landing soundlessly in the gray snow, about fifty meters from our position. At the same moment, the boy who had punched me fired a spell at the girl who had disarmed me, knocking her unconscious.

The punch boy grimaced. “We’ve been betrayed!”

Spark spread his wings and flew from my shoulder, and I sprinted as fast as I could toward the Phoenix Stone. Spark soared low in the air next to me, his crimson wings outstretched. But just as I was about to grab the stone, something appeared right next to it.

It was Karen Blair.

I stopped short, my feet grinding through the ashen snow. Blair reached down and picked up the Phoenix Stone, twisting it between her gargantuan fingers. She scowled at me with her usual toad-like gaze, beady little eyes empty and soulless. Behind her, an armada of Death Eaters apparated into the snowy field, raising their wands towards us and marching forward in a cloud of darkness. They hadn’t just arrived. They’d regrouped after their earlier defeats. They had been waiting for the moment when I got to the school, the perfect window to mount their final assault.

Blair didn’t bother with the dramatic speeches. She pointed a thick finger at me, and the Death Eaters all converged, attacking me with everything they had. I raised my shield and deflected the spells, which ricocheted to either side of me and burned long, colorful paths in the snow like two butterfly wings. Spark let out a cry and turned upwards, floating high into the air above the battlefield. Blair was just about to retreat with the stone, but then I heard a voice from the left.

“Expelliarmus!”

The stone flew from Blair’s fingertips. Her bug-like eyes went wide as Peter sprinted past her, scooping the stone out from the snow and immediately removing himself from the scene. Blair tried to attack him, but one of the other Reborn kids blasted her with a spell that knocked her over. That kid was then attacked by a Death Eater, who caught her off-guard with a curse that slammed her against the ground.

I ran over to the girl’s limp body, doing everything I could to shield her as the spellstorm rained upon us. But it was too late. When I glanced down for a split second to see if she was okay, I saw only the blank stare of the dead that I had become so dismally used to.

I felt someone grab me by the hand. When I turned, I saw Zoe’s face next to mine. “The stone!”

I nodded, and glanced back at the Death Eaters. With a swish of my wand, I managed to knock several off their feet, but there were too many to take out all at once. The Reborn were fighting their best, but it was clear the Death Eaters had sent everything they had to destroy us. There were more of them than I could count, and they were coming from every direction. Some of them were Reborn like us, and stood their ground against our Reborn allies, slowly pushing them back against the school building.

Spark took his place on my shoulder, and we sprinted off with Zoe towards the school. She led me to a set of metallic double doors, and we slammed them open. I was met with the familiar dull hallways of John Proctor Middle School, the homogenous lockers and stains on the tiled floor. The lights were all off, and the doors to the classrooms were portals to darkness. We rendezvoused with Peter in the entrance hallway. He extended the stone to me.

“Destroy it! Hurry!”

I grabbed the stone, and Peter and Zoe took several steps back. I could hear the whole school shaking from the onslaught outside, and knew I only had a few seconds at best to finish this. I placed the Phoenix Stone in the middle of the floor, where the school’s logo was painted, and stepped back to raise my wand. Spark, still on my shoulder, extended his wings and let out a beautiful cry.

“Atovius Familiarus!” I yelled.

The great firestorm returned, exploding from my wand with terrifying intensity. This time, instead of circling around me like a whip or taking form as some tentacled monster, the flames immediately concentrated on the stone. They cycled around it rapidly, moving faster and faster until the stone was nothing but a faint black blur in the middle of it all.

I fought with all my might. I could feel the stone pushing back against me. Deep down inside of it, I could feel its connection to the other side, to a feeling I would soon realize was death itself. It was like the Dementors, but deeper, inescapable, a void from which there could be no returning. I thought I could sense the souls of the Death Eaters anchored to the stone, but they weren’t like the soul I sensed within myself. They were strung out, damaged and deformed. The Death Eaters were not human, not anymore. They gave away their humanity with the Ritual of the Blind. Now they were only strings imitating souls, the remnants of people who had given away their very spirits to the hunger of the Limbo. Now that Limbo was fighting me, wanting to feed even more, to override Emma’s burning soul.

But I wouldn’t let it. She wouldn’t. I could feel her fighting back inside of me, both of our souls coalescing into a single powerful spell. The stone buckled under our passionate energy. I could see it imploding. It cracked, and then chiseled. The flames didn’t let up. They grew brighter and brighter, the heat so intense that it felt like the surface of the sun.

The stone shattered.

The Atovius Familiarus spell dispersed in a powerful shockwave. I was knocked off my feet. A cloud of ash had blasted into the air from where the stone had once been, but now there was only a streak of black, the eradicated remains of an inanimate object. Peter and Zoe had been knocked over too, and slowly stood up with me. We all shared silent glances of awe. We’d really done it. The Phoenix Stone was destroyed. It was finally over.

Then the ceiling exploded.

It was less an explosion, and more like the very foundations of the ceiling were pulled off. Light flooded into the dark hallway, and Death Eaters leapt in from above us, surrounding us from all angles. I was too blindsided to act. I saw Karen Blair engage in a duel with Peter, pushing him back into one of the dark halls. Zoe disappeared to my right. Then a face without a face appeared right before my eyes, and grabbed me.

I was in the schoolyard. Something powerful slammed into my chest, and I was thrown high into the air. When I hit the ground, my left leg hurt with such intensity that I could barely muster the will to stand. I slowly regained my senses, and realized I’d been apparated about a hundred yards from the school, in the snowy field beyond the brick building. Balancing precariously on my legs that screamed with pain, I coughed, and specks of blood appeared on the gray surface of the snow. Above me, the silvery-gold clouds of the dark dome had disappeared, revealing a blackening evening sky.

And there, a few meters in front of me, was Darkanoss.

The New Dark Lord dragged his robes forward through the snow toward me. We were far away from where the battle raged, but I could still hear it – the distant echoes of spellfire, the thundering within the school building. The Reborn must have all retreated into the building when the Death Eaters attacked, but now they had backed themselves into a corner. They had no way to escape.

Darkanoss reached up, and removed his mask. His youthful face glared at me, strands of black hair hanging in front of his eyes. He tossed the mask aside into the snow. Any pretense of calm assuredness he’d once maintained was gone. His usually soft-spoken voice was trembling with rage.

“All of our plans... everything... ruined by a damned child...”

Darkanoss raised his wand over his head. “Crucio!”

Pain. So much pain, more pain than I could even fathom. Incomprehensible, mind-numbing, omnipresent pain. It felt like I was being repeatedly stabbed from everywhere at once. The pain elapsed for only a few seconds, but it felt like an hour. I was screaming. When it ended, my knees buckled, and I fell into the snow. The world was out of focus. All I could see for a moment were the icy black fragments pressing against my nose. It should have been cold, but I felt nothing other than the lingering agony from the curse.

Darkanoss rushed forward, and kicked me squarely in the chest. I rolled  backwards a few feet. He kicked me again, harder this time, right against my back. I could feel my lungs being pushed against my ribcage. I couldn’t fight back. I had lost my wand somewhere when he apparated me. I was defenseless.

“ALL BECAUSE OF YOU!” Darkanoss bellowed. “I will not share the fate of my predecessor, boy! I will not allow our deliverance to be thwarted by you!”

I was so weak that it amazes me I could even speak. I rolled onto my back and looked up at his face against the backdrop of the clearing sky. “It’s... over... Donavan... the stone is gone. You’ve lost.”

Trackwell lifted his wand. I felt my arms and legs fly painfully out to all sides of me, like I was being tugged by strong ropes in every direction. I levitated into the air in front of him, and then he sent a spell flying into my stomach. This one felt like it displaced my intestines. I rocketed backwards, my body grinding through the snow into a heap. I was completely without strength. All my willpower was gone.

Darkanoss seemed to have calmed down somewhat. He walked slowly toward me, brandishing his wand and frowning with his regular self-assuredness. “This shall not be the end, Alan Doe. I may have lost the favor of the Dementors, but our arrangement can be salvaged. They still need a vessel. There are other phoenixes in this world. I can make a new stone. But first...”

He pointed his wand directly at me, and his voice filled with reptilian fury. “I will end your miserable life for the setbacks you have wrought. The stone is gone, which means that the prophecy is fulfilled. I am no longer bound to you. I can finally kill you.”

Darkanoss stepped back, and for the first time, I saw him grin. It was a grin that reminded me of Nick, of the other Reborn Death Eater. A sadistic grin that took pleasure in the suffering of one’s enemies.

Then he turned around, and raised his wand in the direction of John Proctor Middle School.

“Reducto!”

There was a bright flash of light, and then a gargantuan ball of flame erupted from the center of the school building, carrying countless fragments of brick with it. The walls were blasted to smithereens, with only a few on the edges withstanding the intense blow. It was as if a bomb had been dropped right in the center of the facility, erupting upward and taking everything with it in a blast of napalm and smoke and flames. The sound was so loud that it echoed across the whole valley, and the mushroom cloud rose up like a dark mark of the deed that had been done.

“NO!” I cried, my weak voice scratching against my dying throat. “PETER!”

There was nothing I could do. My body was unresponsive. I was completely helpless. I felt cold, colder than I’d ever been before. My veins were slowing down and filling with frost. I felt like the snow was absorbing itself into me. The sounds of battle had all been silenced. There was only the wind, and Darkanoss, and the flames and ruins where John Proctor had once stood. My friends were all dead, and I would die momentarily too. Everything was hopeless. I had no chance.

Then I heard a distant cry.

I looked up at the sky. There, behind the thin clouds above me, I saw a shadow moving. Darkanoss looked up in confusion just as the silhouette dove, and Spark came shooting down from above like a dive bomber. I sat up slowly, watching him as he descended. He spread his great wings, and the red light seemed to wash over everything in sight – over the gray snow, the gray remains of John Proctor, the gray-stained cloak of the New Dark Lord. Then Spark landed on my shoulders.

And though I have no idea how, he was holding my wand in one of his talons.

I didn’t have any time to think. I grabbed the wand, and pointed it high above me. “Atovius Familiarus!”

A great flame exploded on all sides of me, melting away the snow and revealing the green grass beneath. The heat flooded into my body, dispersing the cold and dread that had seized me. I felt the strength return to my legs. Trembling, I stood up, keeping my wand pointed directly above my head towards the sky. This fire had always been with me, and this fire would keep burning on. It was Emma’s flame.

I did have a chance. That chance came with Spark.

I pointed the flames forward at Darkanoss. He fought back, keeping them at bay with a single swish of his wand. The flames fought with ferocity, burning away all the snow in his vicinity, but Darkanoss skillfully repelled them. It was only then that I truly comprehended how powerful he was. Even against a Reborn, and the most powerful spell I could conjure, he didn’t relent. We were evenly matched.

The Atovius Familiarus spell dispersed into hot vapor in the air, and the duel began. Spells I didn’t even know how to cast flew instinctively from my wand, simultaneously assaulting while I desperately fought off his attacks. Darkanoss wasn’t like anyone I had ever fought before. He accounted for every strategy, every possible angle of attack, every spell. He was a master wizard who put his followers to shame. Curses pounded on my defenses, and it took all the strength that Spark had given me just to defend myself. I’d never felt my heart beating so fast in all my life. I had no idea who would win this duel, me or him.

It turns out that it was him.

“Avada Kedavra!”

I thought the spell was aimed at me, but it wasn’t. The green light flew over my shoulder, and with a last high-pitched cry, one that seemed to echo across the whole schoolyard, Spark fell from my shoulders. I barely even had time to notice. By the time I even turned my head to see him falling, red flames were covering his feathered body, like the flames that consumed the Death Eaters when they died. He collapsed into ashes which spread out over the ground behind me, splattering like a bloodstain.

Darkanoss disarmed me, and knocked me back to the ground. My wand twirled in the air, and then levitated right back into Darkanoss’s hand. With both my wand and his, he advanced. This was checkmate. He had won.

“This all began with a vision, you know. I am a Seer. That is how I knew what my role had to be. I have seen what will come after all this. There will be another, one who will avenge us. There will be a child born to the Limbo. And your suffering... will be eternal.”

Darkanoss raised his wand, but Zoe Manning threw herself between us.

I hadn’t seen her approaching. I didn’t even know she was alive after the school was destroyed. Soon, all I could see was her blonde hair, and the side of her face as she pushed against me, shielding me with her whole body. She clung to me tightly.

“Zoe...” I said weakly. “No...”

I heard Darkanoss’ voice. “Foolish girl. What do you think you’re doing? Step aside...”

“NO!”

Zoe was sobbing again. It was the only sound I could hear anymore. She was right in my ear. I felt her tears rolling down my cheeks, her chest trembling against mine. Her warmth wasn’t like the warmth of my fallen familiar, but it was still a warmth I knew. The warmth of a friend.

“I can’t... let anyone else... die. I can’t... not anymore...”

I thought I heard a last hint of sympathy in Darkanoss’s voice, but it vanished as soon as it appeared. “I see. Then you shall be the final casualties of this war.”

I caught sight of Darkanoss’s silhouette through Zoe’s hair. He pointed his wand right at her back. I wanted to push her aside, to scream and defend her and throw myself between her and him, but I couldn’t move. My limbs had all died. I was nothing but a heap, with a crying girl atop me, both of our lives about to end.

“Doleo. Requiescet in pace.”

I closed my eyes. I thought of my mom.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

I felt the green light wash over us both. But something strange happened. The light didn’t hurt. I barely felt it. It turned white the second it turned green, and there was a feeling like I was being encompassed in a blanket of energy. Then there was a blasting sound like a gunshot, exploding from the spot between my chest and Zoe’s, and Donovan Trackwell was thrown backwards. His cloak fluttered one last time as he arched back and landed softly in the snow. One hand fell right, dropping his wand, and the other fell left, dropping mine. When I looked at his face through Zoe’s hair, all I saw was the blank look of a boy as he gazed upon the clearing skies. There was no more snowfall, only the evening.

* * *

I limped through the ruins of John Proctor Middle School. My left leg was definitely broken, or at least fractured, but I pushed through the agony and looked around. Everywhere I looked, there were collapsed walls and bloodied bodies, the annihilated remains of classrooms and textbooks and desks and lockers. Corpses were everywhere, all motionless and covered in dust and debris. It was too much for my mind, just as the effort to move was too much for my body. But I couldn’t stop. Every single fiber of my body forced me to keep moving, keep searching. Don’t ever stop.

I found a hallway that was relatively intact. Half of the ceiling had collapsed, but the rest led to an area that almost looked the way it used to, with lockers and walls with posters announcing upcoming events now past, or warning children that bullying was never okay. At the collapsed entrance to that hallway was the huge, lifeless body of Karen Blair, drenched in blood from her face to her shoulders. She was half-covered in a pile of bricks that had clearly struck her, knocking her over and ending her life.

And there, lying on the floor with his lower body completely submerged in rubble, was my best friend.

“Peter!” I cried.

Blood was dripping from his mouth, but he was breathing. I used all the remaining energy in my body to cross the hallway and collapse next to him. Peter weakly turned his head toward me. His green eyes were looking gray, and his skin was unnaturally pale, but somehow he managed to smile.

“Alan,” he said quietly. “Are you okay?”

I nodded hurriedly, not even acknowledging the question. “I’m fine.”

“Darkanoss?”

“He’s dead. It’s over. It’s all over.”

“That’s... good.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and inhaled deeply, though when he breathed out it was like someone was punching him in the lungs. “That’s real good.”

I shook my head slowly. “Peter, you...”

Peter coughed. The sound was like a puppy being strangled. He glanced down at where his legs were supposed to be beneath the bits of shattered rock, and sighed. Then he looked back at me, and returned that same easygoing smile he always had. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“I’m getting you out of here. You’re... you’re gonna be okay.” I hastily began trying to remove the debris from his body, but the effort proved too much for me.

“My parents... are they alright?”

“You’ll see them soon,” I insisted. I was barely listening. My fingers were trying to lift the biggest brick from his lap, but I had less strength than a baby. I leaned over him and pulled harder, but my arms were trembling so much I couldn’t so much as close my fingers around the rubble.

“Hey, Alan...”

“What?”

He kept smiling. “I think... we might have to delay the camping trip...”

“No!” I yelled, but my voice cracked halfway through. I leaned over and clutched his head, shaking my own rapidly. “No, we’re going. You can’t... you can’t get out of it that easy!”

Peter made a gesture approximating a shrug, but his shoulders barely moved. I could see the life draining out of him, but I fought against that reality with everything I had. I tearfully tried to push the rocks from his body, but it was no good. “No... come on... no, Peter, come on...”

“Alan...”

I looked at him desperately. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I shook my head again. “No, Peter. No, I can’t...”

My voice cracked. I fell against him, pressing the side of my face against his. I felt his head turning, looking at my ear. When I heard him whispering into it, I could tell he was still smiling. He never stopped smiling.

“If you’re okay, then that’s all that matters to me, Alan.”

“No!” I screamed. I felt like a little kid again, crying over a balloon that had flown away. “It’s not okay! I can’t... not without you... Peter...”

Peter weakly leaned up his head, and kissed me on the cheek. His lips were cold and dry.

“You know... it’s funny... that blind guy knew all along... I wonder if he really could...”

His voice trailed off. I looked at him expecting the sentence to be finished, but Peter was just gazing at me, his eyes half-closed. It was only a second later that I realized that gaze wouldn’t move. When I turned my head, he kept staring at the spot where I’d been, paralyzed in a smile.

“Peter?”

Peter didn’t say anything. I never heard what the end of the sentence was. I never knew what he was going to say, because by that time, he was already gone.

“Peter... no, stop it... stop it, Peter... stop... Peter, no... no, Peter, Peter, no...”

I collapsed into uncontrollable sobs. I pushed my head into his chest, as if hoping I could give my own heartbeat to him, anything to bring the life back into his body. I contemplated cutting my own heart out and giving it to him. I’d give him my legs, I’d give him my soul, anything to keep him here with me. But there was nothing I could do. The moment had passed me by, like so many others, one last piece of my childhood I would never get back. I cried and cried, but children’s tears mean nothing to this world. They remain unheard, the dying songs of precious days that are gone in the blink of an eye.