Piece by piece the sky is raining down—not literally, but that’s how it feels. The magic runs free. It bellows and shakes the world. It twists around trees and tosses them aside. People are running: frantic, desperate. I stand still. Why run. The magic is all around us. They caged it, those fools, they thought only of the power, never of the consequences. Thought they could control it. Now it will destroy them. All of them. All of us.
Around me the shop windows shatter, glass spraying out like a shower of diamonds. I shield my face and duck to the ground, but my arms are sliced and my clothing torn. I stand back up. I am in the center of a thousand shards of glass. Around me people scream. The voice in my head tells me I stand still not from lack of fear, but because there would be no sense in running. Why run from the air? But, if I was afraid I would be screaming with them, wouldn’t I? I would be shrieking and cowering and flying like there’s fire on my heels.
The magic catchers have run into the square. Their boots crunch on the broken glass. They shout to each other, desperate, angry, and afraid. A butterfly flutters past my face, red-gold wings glinting like a flicker of flame. It does not know of the magic or the screams. It does not care. I feel the cold blow in, the butterfly is gone, spark stomped out. Perhaps I should run now, after all, I am not in control. But what would be the point? People are freezing, shivering, turning to ice. The cold blue creeps up the boots, devours their chests, stills the screams in their mouths. It makes them like ice sculptures, silent and cold. The people around me fall and shatter on the ground and I see my reflection in their pieces. Ice and glass.
The magic catchers could not stop it. It is a beast. It is wild. It will tear the world apart.
I laugh. To think they tried to cage a scream. I stand in the square, the magic spins around me, it lifts glass and ice and bone into the air. It tosses them around like a child playing with toys. The magic blows my hair, buffeting it around my face. I laugh and laugh and laugh. I laugh at the glass and the ice and the bone. To think they tried to cage magic. To think they tried to cage my laugh. I reach out and my fingers brush the glass and ice swirling around me, cold and colder. My laughter is whisked away and twisted around and bounced back at me, brightening and softening like a dance.
“You do not fear us,” says the ice and glass and magic. I hear laughter in its crackle, my laughter, its laughter.
“No!” I say, and spin in the hailstorm of shards. “No! I do not!”
“Why not?” it cackles.
“We’re dancing!”
I twirl and my skirt flares, spiraling with the cold and sharp and laughter.
Artwork by Xan