Finally, she spoke. Her voice was hoarse. “I don’t have a choice, now. I have to live with the possibility, at least.”

“You never did.” Her teddy bear was harsh and cold. “I didn’t change that.”

She shook her head. “Nuh-uh, mister. Our contract didn’t change that. There are two people in this equation.” Then she sighed. “But I suppose you’re right. I’m just more…aware of that? For whatever it’ll end up meaning.”

Bentley nodded. “The purpose of magic,” he growled, “is to make you more aware of yourself. Sometimes people say that it makes you more yourself, but any fool can see this is hogwash. You always were yourself. This just…” He made a strange snuffling noise. “It makes it hurt more. Knowing. I think so, anyway.”

She stood silently at a crosswalk, several blocks from the disaster. They were taking the long route home tonight, she guessed. “Did you know what was going to happen to her?”

He shook his head. “I had not been aware until just as it was happening.”

Charlie bit her lip, regarding him curiously. “But she just happened to die in front of us.”

“Yes. Maybe something her guardian wanted to show you, or some greater machination. I’m not,” he said with a slightly petulant and hurt air, “the only person in the world who can do things, you know.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Death weighed heavily on her, bending her neck forward into a slump. Her heart lay heavy and cold, between her ribs. The world was becoming more real and serious with every second. She no longer wanted boys and lipstick. She wanted mint tea, and maybe, if she knew what to say, to talk about it.

It was all a question of what she wanted to talk about first. She lanced it, like a boil. “For about the last year,” she said. She cleared her throat. “I’ve been having night terrors. It took me until you woke me up to identify the feeling, exactly. There’s someone in my dreams. Someone else, with me. Someone…” She threw a dart and picked a word. “Dark. Evil. Powerful. I don’t like them, and they don’t much like me.”

He thrummed softly.

“I thought you woke me up to protect me from them, maybe. But I was in Carcosa, and I’d been there before. With…mom, maybe? It’s difficult to even say it aloud. It sounds improbable.”

“Well,” he said, stroking his chin. “It is. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

She shook her head. “With mom?” It was inconceivable. Her mother, despite being a Secret Agent (or something), was as boring as it got. In that way, anyway. Old books and cardigan-clad cuddles meant little, where Carcosa was concerned.

Bentley said nothing.

“I feel like. Like I’m remembering something which is…unwise to remember.” The last three words were pell-mell, silverware falling down a staircase.

“Well,” he said. “You are. In a manner of speaking. Every girl fears the discovery of her own potential.”

She blinked. “That can’t be all it is. I can’t be that–”

He held up a paw, pressing it to her lips. “That powerful? That fearsome? How would you know, Charlie? You haven’t even begun to grow.”

There was a tightness in her throat. “I beat up three people. I’m not going back to school this fall, am I?”

He shook his head. “If I knew, I wouldn't say. So that’s it, though. You think there’s something to fear, inside of you.”

She sniffled. “I fuckin’ know there is. And now you tell me I can remake the world, and that I’m going to – I’m going to turn into road pizza like that Annabel girl! And that’s going to be it, and how many people am I going to hurt just…” She took a ragged breath. “Trying!”

“Annelise,” he grumbled. “The logs are not kept so that you can be cavalier.”

“I’m try–” She put a hand over her mouth.

“Stop that,” he said. “You see what good it does.”

She glared at him. “But what if I bend my whole life around a wish that…I don’t know, maybe I hate tan M&Ms with an unholy passion. Maybe I want them gone. Or maybe a person, or. Jesus, Bentley, nothing seems real anymore, and I’m confiding in a teddy bear about that!”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

He nodded. “Many such cases. You are not the first.”

Of course not. As if growing up wasn’t bad enough. Feeling adrenaline rush down her spine, she breathed shallowly, letting her eyes flutter closed. “Bentley,” she said. “Just trying isn’t good enough, with this power. Obviously, I know that. But it’s all I’ve got. I can’t square it away, in my mind. It doesn’t feel real, like I said.”

He just listened. For a moment she thought he’d chosen to flop over and go quiet again, but that was just her own worry talking.

“The only thing that makes it feel real is that a talking teddy bear keeps saying it’s real. Please, Bentley. Say something.”

“I’m here,” he said. “You are not the end of the world. You are not a disaster. We would not have contracted with you if we thought so.”

Another time she’d ask him who “We” was. What they wanted, where they were from. This was the least important question, right now. “But Bentley. What if I do something awful? What if I paint history with a selfish color? What if I make a choice that can’t be taken back?”

He shrugged. “Like what?”

“Well, not to be gauche. What if Hitler had been a magical girl?”

“I assure you, he was not.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s just a hypothetical. What if someone could just wish an entire group out of existence?”

“Well, someone can. Someone could have wished for no more Jews, or no more Neanderthals. Maybe someone did. Maybe there are whole histories and peoples lost to time because a girl woke up on the wrong side of the bed and then met us. Don’t wish for such things, unless you want them.” His voice was cold.

“I see.” They were home, and she opened the door, looking back and forth twice to make sure Mom hadn’t left the car in the garage after she got home. There was a feeling of being watched, an anxiousness, something deep and clawing. “So do you not care? Do you not have standards for what you will and won’t grant?”

Bentley shrugged. “It’s not ours to control. We literally are not able to. And anyway, a wish’s potency comes from the strength of spirit held by the girl who did the wishing. I hardly think that many in your situation are willing to cultivate their spirits enough to cause…that.”

“That’s not enough comfort. It’s still too much, Bentley. All it takes is one evil girl and we’re screwed. Have there been evil girls?”

“There have,” Bentley whuffled. “I said that you find your own enemies, your own novelty. I meant it. Many girls have made a glorious career of fighting other evil girls.”

“I’m just worried, I guess.” She remembered her bullies, blood streaming from broken noses. She could do far worse than that to them, or to anyone. She could dedicate her life to doing the wrong things…all for the right reasons! “What if I mean well, and go too far?”

“What about being a magical girl makes this a new problem? If you live a good life, bad things will hopefully not happen to people because of you. What’s different?”

A strangled almost-scream. “You dumb – the sheer scale of it! Is there nothing but fluff up there?!”

An almost impish tone. “Yes.”

“Oh for crying out loud. The scale of it. How can I live with bad things I did because a talking bear let them happen? How can I live with not being around to pay for what I did wrong? How can I –” she was a broken record now. “How can I?”

“If I thought you actually wanted to talk, I’d tell you that it takes great courage for a teddy bear to speak and move aloud. But I have a feeling, right now, that if I did that, you’d start tearing me apart and looking for the mechanism in which my courage is stored.”

“A bottle, I’ll bet,” she said hotly.

“I prefer bearbon, actually.”

“I. Will. Kill. You.” She bounced his fluffy plush self off the wall and caught him, for good measure.

He looked at her, perplexed but unhurt. “Are you quite finished?”

“I guess.”

“There is a shadow to your every waking deed that an ordinary girl does not possess. The terror that you feel about growing into your own is very real, and if it must have a name it is the Dweller on the Threshold. This is not a rare phenomenon in the growth of a puella, but neither is it truly common. We see it in girls of the greatest spiritual strength, Charlie.” He regarded her very seriously.

“You’re just buttering me up,” she said, but it wasn’t true and she knew it. He was just agreeing with her.

Bentley shook his head. “At Hiroshima the light only lasted for a few seconds – the shadows remain. I dearly hope that what you’re experiencing is just teenage angst.”

“Why? Why would that be better?”

“You haven’t learned to see other girls’ shadows yet.”

She spluttered, spitting out her ice water. “What does that mean?”

“The dead ones, Charlie. Light cannot cast shadow until it’s shone. We live in a world haunted by the dark echoes of every girl who’s ever come before. What she should have been. What she could have been. What her mother and high school boyfriend wanted her to be. Regrets, maybe. Or grief, which is a word for people’s regrets that we didn’t stay around in their stories.” Bentley growled softly, again. “Or in some cases, shadows of her world, but corrupted. What it might, or should have been, could have –”

She looked at him. “Lost for words? You?”

“Yes. It’s hard to explain. It’s like they’re someone’s imagined world. Not necessarily the girl’s. We don’t fully understand it yet ourselves. A world that could have resulted from her actions, mixed with other people’s wishes for her, often with an unsavory twist to it. Something went wrong with her wishes, to create this hypothetical world. It’s laid over ours, but it’s real, and girls can learn to see it and interact with it. Maybe even vice versa. That’s not clear yet. But the images, once seen, resemble the shadows I mentioned, at Hiroshima.”

Charlie shivered. “Do they harm people? Are they like spirits?” She’d have believed anything. Her mind was frighteningly malleable, right now. But it was beginning to appear that she had been right to worry. She was capable of incredible harm, even if she won.

“They can be seen. Usually they’re not harmful unless you start a fight with them. There are entire groups of girls who do start fights with them, though. Trying to clean them up. Those girls have their reasons, even if we don’t agree.”

“That’s just wild, all right. Ghost hunting girls.” She glanced around the room, almost certain that she’d be able to see one right now. What did Annelise’s ghosts look like?

Bentley nodded. “It’s not supposed to happen until after you’ve gone on. But I worry that this presence you’re feeling is your own shadow, manifesting during your lifetime. Highly anomalous. Highly unusual.”

“You can’t tell?”

“No. I’ll have to cook up a way to test for it. Please tell me when you feel something unusual. Night terrors, like I woke you up from. Bursts of anger. Unease. Emotional tension.”

“Those are just…”

“Normal, for you?” He cocked his head, not unlike a dog.

She nodded. “Afraid so, Bentley. I’m a mess. A hormonal blitzkrieg of nastiness, when i’m not being myself. Or maybe that is myself. You see the trouble?”

“I do. Charlie,” he said. “We’ll work on it. I’m sorry I’m not better help right now.”

“Aw. Thank you, bear.” She squeezed his hand. Was it just her, or was there a warmth to his paws? “I just don’t want to be such a Charlie Foxtrot all the time.”

“Well, “ Bentley said. Was he smiling? “What else are you to be?”