It’s finals week and the only thing I can fit into my poor banged up little brain is the information I need in order to survive the next week. Do you know how many boring dates I have to memorize? Like I don’t want to remember the date of the first officially recorded sighting of a rift, or the witch wars in the 1600s when the Palefish families — they call themselves Councilors — and the new American covens were essentially feuding over land.

The only thing I want to think about right now is how they managed to open the rifts, and here’s the thing: we figured it out.

I mean ok I might be jumping the gun a little bit, like I certainly don’t understand the intricacies of the alchemy they used to do this work.

But last night, after the midnight scream — it’s a Palefish tradition, like at so many other colleges, to open your windows and scream at midnight during finals week — Andie said, almost out of the blue, and with an air of frustration that makes me think that they’ve been thinking about this for weeks, “someone else must be studying the rifts, right? Professor Sorely wouldn’t have given up right?”

I didn’t have an answer for them.

“I just…” They were clearly agitated, pushing their fingers into their eyes. We should have been sleeping, we’d both been studying for hours. “I think I could do the alchemy. I mean, they got it to work, the sigils and the ritual are all there.”

WHICH WAS QUITE THE BOMBSHELL TO DROP ON ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT DURING FINALS WEEK, ANDIE JESUS CHRIST

“The only problem is that Bird keeps referencing prerequisites, some precursor to their alchemy, and he doesn’t write down what they were! That’s the key — whatever those prerequisites were, that’s the missing piece.” Andie was frustrated, but my heart was racing.

Because I knew what Andie meant — Bird did talk about these mysterious events in the journal. And not in his complicated academic notes either, but in his more thoughtful entries. He talked about how Katharine was lucky because her “prerequisites” were already done. She’s impatient with our dread and dragging feet, but she doesn’t understand what it’s like to be facing it intentionally — her prerequisite is already done, and by accident.

I didn’t know what he meant — but there were lots of things I didn’t fully understand in the journal. Which is exactly what I was expecting!!! He was writing for himself, not for an audience, I wasn’t expecting to understand every opaque reference. Plus, the way he talks about his friend group like… I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like a sorta ominous esoteric reverence and devotion. When he talks about them it’s like he’s talking about magic, I just can’t quite understand.

So when Andie said that’s the key all those mystifying passages in Bird’s journal evaporated.

I sat bolt right up in bed.

“Life, death, from within, from without,” I said. Andie sat up, too, twisted to look at me. My heart was absolutely roaring. “Do you remember what Adrian asked us that night? If any of us had killed anyone? If we had any kids?”

“He commented on Bass’ witchcraft too, and Marina’s wizardry,” they breathed. “From within, from without.”

I had absolute goosebumps. I’d made that connection before, weeks ago, during Jasper’s lecture, I just didn’t dare believe I might be onto something lmao.

“You think those are the requirements?” I asked. “Magic from within, magic from without —” and then I stopped because the next two were scarier.

“Giving life,” Andie said, continuing my thought. “And…” They stuttered. “And taking it.”

We stared at each other.

“Did they have the magic they’d need to make it work?” I asked.

“Yeah, I mean…” Andie flipped through the journal and then looked up at me again, wide-eyed. “They must have.”

Yeah. Because it did work.

I thought back to when their families were on the island for the memorial. Were there children? Was there a baby? I think there was.

I think we know how they did it.

I am supposed to be memorizing the defining characteristics of the nine major united states covens for Protsman’s final tomorrow, but instead I’m just thinking about what it would have been like if we’d been able to open a portal for that enormous snake last year, that huge snake that was living under the earth. If we could have opened a portal and sent that lonely creature home instead of leaving it entombed underground the way we had to.