The Curse of the Blessed

Chapter Thirty-Two

*Trigger warning for consideration of suicide*

Breakfast slipped away far too quickly. I tried to enjoy my food—to chew as slowly as humanly possible, thoroughly tasting every single bite of it—but I just couldn't. Finally I gave up and scarfed down the rest of it as quickly as I could.

Then we began to plan.

To say we had no ideas at all would be a lie. We certainly had ideas—plenty of them, all full of cracks and holes. At the first prod, they crumbled to pieces.

So we made new ones. And these ones were worse than the first ones, barely even formed at all, abstract ideas like: "What if we collapsed the tunnels?" (which was a bad idea because we didn't want Reed to die), "Could Lark hypnotize the Magician with her music?" (which was a bad idea because Lark had never tried it before and might accidentally mess up), and, "Why don't we sneak into the tunnels and ambush him as he comes around a corner?" (which was simply a bad idea).

By lunchtime, we had no ideas left. I think I can safely say that none of us enjoyed a single bite of our food. We were too busy mining our minds for the last bits of ideas, trying to find something—anything—that would allow us to rescue Reed, undo the curse on our town, and get out of the Magician's cave unscathed.

After lunch, we dove right back in again.

"Do we have anything we can threaten him with?" Lark asked.

I shook my head.

Bran said, "What if we somehow get a nearby village to join us?"

"Too risky," wrote Lark. "There could be casualties."

"What if we just kill the Magician?" I asked.

Lark stared at me in horror.

Bran shook his head at me. "We couldn't be sure that it would work. Even if we managed to overpower him and... kill him, Reed might remain stone. The curse on our town might not lift."

"It's also wrong," Lark wrote. "I don't want to kill anyone."

"Me either," I said, "but we might not have a choice."

Lark huffed in annoyance. "Who would do it?"

Bran and I looked at each other nervously.

"Well?" she asked. "Because I wouldn't. I don't think I could. Bran?"

"I couldn't."

"Fyra?"

I hesitated. "Maybe?"

Lark looked at me sadly. "Even if I believed you, I wouldn't want to hinge a plan on a maybe."

"Fair enough. But what if it's the only plan we've got?"

"We have other plans," Bran said.

"Do we? Can you name one other plan that has any chance of working?"

"We just haven't thought of one yet."

"Maybe we're not going to think of one at all." Bran frowned at me; I felt a twinge of shame, but I could do nothing but continue. "Maybe there is no other plan. Maybe there is no plan at all. Maybe, just maybe, it's impossible to beat the Magician, and we should all focus on living our lives rather than wasting them trying to do something that we simply cannot do."

"What about Reed?" Lark wrote.

"We can't just leave him there," said Bran.

"I know!" I shouted. "I know. But you don't really think he'd want us to kill ourselves trying to rescue him, do you? He said we should rank our safety above everything else. He said, if it was too dangerous to do so, we shouldn't try to come back for him at all. I think we should honor that. His sacrifice is worthless if we destroy ourselves trying to get him back."