Four years later…
Elena is twelve.
She swiftly avoided an invitation to go to Jessica’s house- “Parents need help calling the electrician,” she lied so terribly. “It’s really important.”- and trudged along to the river.
She sat down.
It really wasn’t safe, for her to be wandering alone to the river like this, but she never felt like she was in danger at the river. The opposite, actually- she felt the safest over there then she did anywhere else.
Elena remembered when she used to talk to the river every day, when she first came to London. She smiled at the thought. She’s stopped talking to the river aloud, since it was kind of embarrassing, but occasionally she’d spark up some conversation that she really needed to work out outside her own head.
Like now.
Starting off in English, and then changing mid-sentence to Spanish, and finishing with her rusty Latin, she stated, “I think I’m going crazy.”
And that was all that needed to be said.
She hugged her knees to her chest. She put her chin in the little crook between her knees and held her breath.
One one thousand.
Two one thousand.
She exhaled all at once, relaxing her shoulders and looking down at her feet.
The river seemed to sigh with her.
Her body slowly drifted itself to the right. She fell slowly at first, and then with a plop as gravity tugged her to the concrete, and she lay there, next to the river on the dirty sidewalk, smelling the stench of the ground, watching the water shine steel-colored curves.
And she stayed there for a while, waiting for an interruption that would motivate her to get off the ground.
And- wow- did that interruption come.
“Stupid, smelly!” a voice yelled exasperatedly. Footsteps barreled into the ground immediately next to her and disappeared as quickly as they came. Elena’s eyes shot open and stood up only to be absolutely smashed into the river.
The impact of the water felt like Elena was smacked with a mattress made out of bendy plastic Tupperware: not life-threatening, but painful beyond words. It was so painful that by the time her mind cleared the stars in her eyes, she’d almost sank to the bottom of the river. It took her just a moment, but she remembered- she was actually in a polluted river. She was in a polluted river and didn’t really know how to swim.
A river with boats. Boats that could run her over.
And she couldn’t breathe.
A miracle presented itself- rush of water lifted her to the surface. Just as Elena was about to thank her body for being 70% water and giving her some pretty amazing buoyancy, she was whipped aside by a wave, hurtling with an impossible amount of speed to one side of the river. Looking back, it was some fantastic luck she had- without that wave, she would’ve been smattered by one of the passing boats. Elena didn’t have much time to think on that, though, with her coughing and spluttering, and someone must have helped her up because she felt hands bring her up to a stairwell on the side. She climbed, choking out trashy water before collapsing.
She never really got the chance to thank the person who helped her- what were they doing in the river, anyways?- because she noticed the cause of her little tumble into the water:
A boy.
Causing as much mayhem as he possibly can with a crane car.
A crane car.
Like the ones people use in construction.
As in the ones that even the average man isn’t qualified enough to drive, let alone a little boy.
Maybe if that wasn’t as dangerous as dangerous could be, Elena might have ignored it.
Maybe if Elena hadn’t been thrown into a river, she could have ignored it.
Maybe if Elena hadn’t absolutely and completely reeked from the stench of a thousand soggy landfills, she could’ve gritted her teeth and gone about her day.
But as all of these things had and did happen, it was tough luck for this annoying little boy.
And so she broke out into a run.
***
The crane was weird.
It was off.
It was different.
And Elena had the same tingle in her stomach that she felt so many times before when weird things like this happened.
It seemed clear enough- it was a crane car. And a boy was behind the wheel. He needed to be stopped.
But if she noticed and looked closer, the car was blurred around the edges. It only focused at points she focused on, instead of as a whole. The rest wavered and bent the more uncertain she got. She remembered back to an odd conversation she had a couple of years ago, where she thought she saw one thing and really it wasn’t what she saw at all…
If that made any sense. Ag. She didn’t even know what she was thinking anymore.
And she suddenly wasn’t sure if she wanted to get involved in all of this. Her pace slowed, slightly. What was she thinking, she’d just waltz right in and “talk to the boy” and somehow stop a massive crane car in its tracks? Hello?
But she heard the boy screaming.
“Smelly!” “…Enough problems…!” “Stupid animals!”
Animals?
She stopped to a halt in front of a scene. Police cars were lined around the area, but nobody seemed to be making any effect or doing anything about this crazy mess. Some people shook their heads in disgust and said, “Crazy drunk driver.”
And went about their days.
What? Do they not see the boy? The crane?
Nothing?
She thought back to what she heard before. She heard footsteps.
Footsteps. Not car engines. Not wheels.
She heard running.
And something chasing behind afterwards.
Something that knocked her into the river.
Elena didn’t really want to believe it, she didn’t want to doubt, she didn’t want to get into this crazy stuff, but…
She wasn’t sure if she really had a choice anymore.
She needed to know the truth.
She looked up.
“I want to see what’s really going on.”
I want to see. I want to see. I want to see.
Show me.
And suddenly, it did.
A massive animal- some sort of green gold beast snaked around the boy. Literally, it snaked. The more Elena squinted, the more sure of herself she was- the thing was part serpent. It had forest-colored scales on its tail, a tail fit for a dragon, that whipped around and smashed into bridges. The police called for the driver to stop driving, and the serpent thing vandalized another bridge wall of property.
The waist, though- legs sprouted from there. And it stopped being scaly. There was a torso, as normal as a torso could be for an animal with four legs, with some golden fur tinted with olive green and speckled with these familiar black dots… Where has she seen that pattern before?
Was that a lion, or something?
Maybe a cheetah?
And a snake?
Mixed together?
Elena is embarrassed to say that she screamed. At that moment, the cheetah-cat-snake-monster-thingy whipped its neck around- a long, snakelike neck with a leopard’s face perched at the top- and spiraled towards her, checking out its prey.
Elena did the only thing she knew how to do.
She threw whatever she could.
Which, at the moment, was her backpack.
And she hit it! In the neck!
Which actually was the stupidest thing she could do!
“Oh, no,” Elena squeaked, realizing her mistake. The backpack had done no damage, had officially made the cat-snake-thing her enemy, and worst of all, it had all her homework in it.
The cheetah-snake snarled, and Elena jumped before somehow grasping onto an idea:
The River.
They were on a bridge.
She needed him to barrel himself over the bridge, somehow.
“Hey,” she squeaked softly, timidly. She cleared her throat and tried again, this time intense and stubborn. “Hey! Yeah, okay, try this!”
And she began zig-zagging across the bridge, through police, through stupid pedesetrians.
She didn’t even understand who she’d become.
Her legs immediately began to burn. She hurt in her chest. She was about to pass out in fear, which had started to catch up to her.
But she kept zig zagging.
Sure, the monster would crash into the sides of the bridge, but it never went fully overboard. It had more control than that.
She couldn’t think. She was breathing too hard, too overwhelmed, too racked with emotion. All she knew was that she had to keep moving.
And suddenly, she was up in the air.
The mortals around her took double takes, their fear slightly growing. They must’ve just realized something weird was going on.
A neck was slithering around her body, fastening. It was going to suffocate her.
She was going to be suffocated.
She was going to have the life literally squeezed out of her.
And the fear in that one second was the most pain she’d ever faced in her entire life, almost making her black out in anxiety.
But, thankfully, the snake made the mistake of trying to bite her.
And she punched it in the eyes.
It all happened very fast.
It loosened, and she fell, but some parts of her were still wrapped by the snake, and she dangled from the air about fifteen feet above ground by only one foot.
She threw up a little bit.
The snake’s skin seemed to be made of metals. She could feel the scales pinching into her skin, the solid pressure of it all, how unbreakable it felt. Her best bet would to try to loosen herself and fall fifteen feet below, breaking her ankles in the process. She forced down a scream.
And suddenly, the snake cheetah had wailed in agony and released her, and she was falling, falling-
And she was suddenly caught by her shirt, which had almost ripped. Her stomach was suddenly exposed, and as stupid as it sounded, she was embarrassed (even while fighting for her life against a shouldn’t-be-real monster), wanting to tug her shirt back down over her torso.
The person holding her by her shirt had tried to pull her up, but the fabric had started tearing, so he let go and grabbed her by the arm instead, a free fall which’d been another scariest moment of Elena’s life so far.
She tugged her shirt down over her stomach before dragging herself up and onto the wailing, bucking snake cheetah’s back, which is one of the most impossible things EVER ATTEMPTED, so if any of you folks are thinking of doing that stunt at home, she’d suggest NOT trying it.
The boy next to her, the one who managed to pull her up, was laughing, holding onto the iron-scale wriggling neck. Elena was forced to hold onto his shoulders. She didn’t know the boy’s name. She didn’t know his age. She didn’t even know what he looked like- it was all a big motion blur. The only thing she could see for sure is his curly brown mess of hair in the back.
Forgetting her life was at stake momentarily, Elena asked timidly, “What are you laughing at?”
The words tumbled out of her in Spanish and Latin. The boy took a moment to look back at Elena in complete bewilderment before laughing even harder. She could see his eyes now- green. A very pretty green. She’d like to wear that sort of yellow-gold-green in a dress someday. His nose was crooked.
“No habla Español!” He shouted back, in a very non-Spanish, non-British accent. It sounded hardened, almost. Maybe he was American.
“What are you laughing at?” Elena repeated, in English, smiling a little nervously at his back and his wild earthen curls. The cat snake roared, and they were both thrown off onto the floor. Elena knew her arm snapped the minute she landed on it, but when she looked at the boy next to her, he just groaned and got up and brushed himself off as though he’d simply fallen off a tricycle, not a fifteen-foot beast at full speed.
She was surprised to realize that he must be her age. 12, probably. Maybe 11.
She tried to get up and gasped in pain. Her arm. Her arm. She looked sideways, and the guy was writing something in the air- what?! Why?!- as the beast advanced towards him. Elena screamed in warning, but the boy simply spoke a few quiet nonsense syllables and something exploded in front of the serpent in a fire that caught onto the monster’s back and slid down his sides, licking his body in flames. You would think the poor thing has had enough and would be like, “Okay. I’m dead.” at this point.
Elena sure would have.
But the monster roared. He must’ve been thinking along the lines of, “I’m dying. Let’s bring down as much death as I can with me.”
And so he charged. At the boy. Towards the river.
Elena knew what was going to happen before it happened.
And she got up with all the strength and courage she could muster- inspired by the boy, inspired by the monster, inspired by the way she threw herself into battle- and tackled the guy, shooting even more flames of pain up her arm that made her scream, as the snake cheetah tripped over the duo and fell, wailing and wriggling, into the river.
Fire started leaping onto the boy from the areas the snake cat touched him, and Elena immediately hopped up, tears silently slipping from her eyes in her burned, broken-armed pain, and turned to the river in dread. The fire was probably put out by the water. The snake cat was probably going to come out of the river in seconds to terrorize the streets. She wasn’t sure how many more rounds she could take.
But in amazement, she saw the river swirl. She was it spin in a sort of washer-machine way, faster and faster, and she saw a drowning animal crying and splashing in the midst of it. Despite everything that happened, despite everything that she felt right now, despite the crushing amount of pain on her body, she couldn’t help but cry out for the animal. Maybe it hadn’t known any better. Maybe it was his job to kill humans, and he simply couldn’t help his job. Maybe it’d been simply scared into attacking like that.
And now he (she?) was gone.
Elena watched the water in disbelief, her throat wanting to choke. Stupid, she told herself. You are so stupid. It tried to kill you.
But her heart still felt a little achey.
She eventually whispered to the river, “Thank you.” in complete awe. Because River Thames really was her river. And this was actual proof. It saved her. Twice- once when she fell in, once by killing this monster. Elena wasn’t sure how much more weirdness she could take.
People were rushing over, demanding from far away to know what was going on. Elena looked over to the boy and panicked, thinking he was hurt- he must have been, with what he’d just gone through right now- and put her hand on his shoulder just as she felt a dissolving shudder through her body in waves.
Particles of her swarmed inside and melted and bumped into each other, and she was aware of all these particles, she was every single one of these particles, and they were all separating in all different directions, her mind was split into a million ‘conciousness’es, and she couldn’t control anything or focus together on anything or do anything about it. When Elena finally got put together, particles clicking into place, she wanted to throw up. She groaned, holding her head in her hands. And the pain, the pain of her arm- it came back. And it was terrible.
“Oh-“ the boy cursed as he saw her, groaning back. “You weren’t supposed to come along.”
She could study his face more now. The angles became clearer. His nose was bent in the middle, just slightly, and the edges of his face were sharp until they reached the chin, where it rounded in a small baby curve. His eyes were small and green. His hair was brown and messy and straggly. His skin was pale, but almost sparkling.
“I’m sorry,” she said immediately, wincing at her arm. She gasped, and forced herself to sit down, tears welling in her eyes. She wanted to smack herself upside down the head. It was just a broken arm. Escaping something like that, she was lucky she didn’t come out with something worse. And yet the tears still came. She forced them back down, but the lump in her throat wouldn’t budge. Why was Elena so weak?
The boy glanced back in surprise. His eyes, disgruntled and focused before, were tinged with concern. “Oh, gods. Are you hurt?”
Gods? “Are you?” Elena responded immediately back. He should have been burned by the fire, but his skin seemed fine. What was wrong with him? Why did he never get hurt? Her own eyes trying to blink back her crying. Don’t be so weak, don’t be so weak, don’t be so weak-
A tear slipped out, and she kind of let go, and she was crying, but she set herself to work through the crying, and the crying wasn’t loud or sobb-y or sniffly or anything, but simply there- her eyes were very plainly just spilling some water. That was it. The rest of her face remained calm, except for the pain marks in her forehead, and her body didn’t shake or function abnormally or anything.
“You are hurt.” The boy decided.
“I am, but I don’t want to focus on that. It just makes it hurt more.” But it was hard to forget. Every twitch in her arm throbbed.
“Are you…” he hesitated. He hesitated for a while afterwards, internally struggling with himself in the quiet for about five minutes. In the mean time, Elena occupied herself by slowly forcing herself to stand up without completely shattering her pain tolerance.
“Are you a magician?” he finally blurted out, at the end. Elena stared at him.
“I don’t like magic.”
“But… like, can you?”
“Can I what?”
“Do magic?”
“I’m pretty bad at it. I don’t think I can.”
“But… like… you’re aware of it, and everything? You know its background?”
“I know some stories… We’ve had to read them in class… about Houdini and stuff, but other than that… Oh- I’m sorry! I just thought there must be first aid in your backpack-“
“You’re not a magician.” The boy leaned back, in wonder, snatching his little brown satchel away from Elena, who’d been trying to gather the first aid.
“I’m not. I told you that.”
“No Egpytian heritage?”
“Eh? I’m- No. Maybe quite far back into the future, but I’m from Spain, so-“
“No hieroglyphic dreams you get on occasion?”
“Hieroglyphic dreams? You get those?”
“No facing monsters like that on a street on an average day?”
“Definitely not.”
“No seeing hieroglyphics everywhere where they don’t belong?”
Here, she hesitated.
Because as much as she hated to admit it, she was seeing… maybe not hieroglyphics, but these weird signs more often. Just random runes and small quirks in the air and weird senses in general- graffiti that pops out to her that doesn’t pop out to anyone else, a funny sighting on the street that quivers a little bit (like the scene was made of wispy glass), a sudden feeling of danger (but when she looks around, everyone else seems to not notice)…
“Not… hieroglyphics…”
He looked at her with a weird emotion trapped in his face, like a butterfly, not sure how to rest. He got something out of his bag.
It was a something small, something that he could completely cup his hand over.
Elena wasn’t quite sure where this conversation was going. She had a kind of dreading feeling about this Egyptian talk, and she was nervous, like she was answering these questions wrong, somehow.
Overall, Elena was kind of afraid of the information she might have to find out.
The boy faltered before handing the thing in his hand over to her. When he held her hand, he dropped it very reluctantly.
It was a small pyramid.
He waited, fixated on the object in Elena’s palm. Elena was focused there, too, although she was also a little flustered by a boy holding her hand. She wasn’t quite sure if she liked the feeling or not.
Nothing happened.
He kind of let their hands together fall to the floor in discouragement. He looked at her in disappointment, confusion, and some amazement. “You’re just a regular person.”
Elena tried to ignore the throbbing in her arm beside her. How was the boy not even hurt?
She couldn’t keep the pain out of her voice (from her arm and the hurtful comment) when she said, “Thanks.”
“No,” the boy realized. He also seemed to realize he was still holding her hand, and he let go abruptly. His eyes blinked a couple times, the gold in them catching light. He looked a bit like a cat. “I meant… I can’t tell you what I meant. But that was… I can’t believe you did that. Back there. With the serpopard.”
Elena didn’t say anything, her mind whirling around the pain in her arm, the words she didn’t understand, the compliment…
“I mean, it was pretty amazing. But for someone not like me, it was pretty stupid of you. You should probably avoid doing that again.” He added. He stood, and started packing the pyramid in his bag.
Like he was about to go.
The pain seemed to fade, just for a second. She narrowed her eyes just slightly.
“For someone not like you.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, yes. Of course. I forgot. You’re a magician.”
“I- oh gods, you’re not supposed to know that-“
“And gods curse,” Elena said, almost kindly, “The foolish person that believes non-magicians aren’t as good as magician magicians. Silly me.”
“I…” he stopped packing, turning around to look at her. His hair really was terribly messy. “I didn’t say that.”
“Well, of course not. You were just going to leave me instead.”
“I...” he folded his arms against his chest. “I’m done here. The monster was my mission. And now that’s finished. So I have to kind of go back.”
“And gods forbid you tell me what actually happened back there, or anything.”
His mouth was slightly hanging open in shock, like that never occurred to him. His eyebrows furrowed, like he just now understood how crazy that would’ve seemed to somebody who hadn’t even known what the monster’s name was, let alone how to fight it.
His expression turned softer. He glanced down and notice her arm, and realized yet another thing- “Right. You’re hurt.” Before rummaging through his little green-brown sack, closing his fingers around something, and dancing a little “Yes!” happy dance.
He leaned down over Elena, and a toasted marshmallow smell washed over her. He handed her a small vial.
“Drink it up,” he looked excited. “Normally I don’t carry that around, and you’re super lucky I did- it’s medicine that works best for non-magicians, but can weakly help me with something small, like an annoying headache, or something- anyways. Drink that. I have to go, and I can’t tell you anything, and I’m really sorry about that, but trust me- it’ll be easier for you if you don’t know anything. But… okay, might as well tell you what happened today, at least- that thing was called a serpopard, and it was hunting me, and you saved my life, and I’m really grateful. Super grateful. But that’s all I can tell you. Sorry. And sorry to leave you like this, but I really do have to go, now, uh-“
He wavered again. He was about to say her name, but didn’t know it.
“Elena,” she provided. He winced. He did not say his own name.
He looked at her, his pale skin shining with a sort of gold sparkle undertone, his hair ragged across his forehead, his green eyes gleaming like a cat’s.
“Maybe another time…” he said, “Another place. Maybe. But now…”
He shook his head, to himself, softly, once.
Elena really, really, didn’t understand this boy. She was kind of infuriated and touched all at once.
“I did save your life, huh?” she remembered, starting to drink the vial. It tasted like a mixture of salad spices.
“You… that was amazing,” he said quietly, to himself. She wasn’t sure she’d even heard it, it was so quiet. And then he disappeared, leaving Elena on the side of an abandoned London street she’d never been to, a healing arm, a feeling of suppressed fury, and something funny in her head and chest.
She really was going crazy.

Notes

yayyy this chapter took so long to wriiiiiite thanks for the wait guys