thereâs dozens of stories about some kid from our world falling into a different, magical one, being the chosen one or the close companion of the chosen one and saving the world, and then going home where theyâre delighted to see their family again and have a new appreciation of their own life. but what about someone who didnât miss it? what if you save the world and youâre given your medal and stripped of the magic you learned and put back in a world you never missed? and youâre furious.
maybe you gave up a few years of your life. you have callouses and muscles and a few scars and maybe a missing eye or something. you definitely have some blood on your hands. you might have PTSD you canât talk to anyone about. and suddenly youâre fifteen again, in a body thatâs too soft and too short and too complete. youâre always cold because thereâs no magic burning in your veins anymore, and even as you grow up the feeling of not fitting doesnât go away because when you look in the mirror at eighteen you look all wrong: this is not what youâre supposed to look like at eighteen. the sky clouds and you rub at the phantom ache of injuries this body never received. you wake up screaming sometimes remembering the sorcerer who burnt your hand to ashes, or the final battle you almost didnât make it through, or the moment you felt the magic in you go out.
but hereâs the thing: they took you and made you into a weapon that was determined enough and powerful enough to save a whole world. they can put you back where they found you but they canât undo everything. and thereâs this, too: the place between worlds clings to you. you canât tease fire out of the air but you can feel the pull of the doorways all the time, although none of them so far go to your world.
but you try to make it work for a decade, anyway. youâre dutiful. but one night you leave work late and for the thousandth time you catch yourself searching the sky for firebirds. and you break. of the three portals within five hundred miles, one is a howling, frozen wasteland and one is a deep violet void, but one opens into a misty forest that you step into and donât look back. itâs not your world, but if you keep going long enough, youâll get there.
(and maybe much, much later, hundreds of worlds later, you climb through a window, or a door of woven branches int he middle a field, or push aside a curtain, and as you set foot on new land you feel the fire in your veins and sparks at your fingertips and finally, finally, youâre home)
