Something Magic This Way Comes by Sarah A. Hoyt Page A

depression that suddenly tries to rise up from my stomach and take hold of me.
    “Where are you going?” I ask. I try to sound casual but I know I don’t succeed.
    “To see the galaxy.”
    I stare. I don’t know the correct response to this.
    Do I laugh? Do I nod thoughtfully and ask her to send me a postcard?
    “I talked to my angel about it. She agreed it would be a good experience. In fact, she wondered why no one else had asked yet. She said I might start a trend.”
    The depression climbs higher, bolstered by impending loneliness. I hear myself protest as if someone else is talking. “You’ll die! You can’t breathe in a vacuum.”
    “That’s old thinking, Dana, and you know it. All I have to do is wish it and I can survive in the heart of a volcano if I want.” She pauses. “I think it might be good for you too. My Angel—”
    “They’re not angels, Erin. They’re . . . God, I don’t know what they are.”
    “Yes, you do. You just won’t let yourself accept it.”
    Accept what? I think. The truth? Their truth? That they are magical beings from another dimension that decided to help us eradicate disease and poverty, war and hatred, and then guide us through the Change that would follow? To watch over us and say no when we would be hurt, yes when we wouldn’t?
    Well, great. But why the hell couldn’t they have come a week earlier?
    * * *
    I wake as dusk takes hold of the stifling heat of day and turns it into something gentler, the pleasing balminess of a summer’s night, rich with the sweet smells of the jacarandas blossoming in the balcony garden.
    I stare at the empty spot beside me, reach out to stroke it gently.
    I’ll be alone again soon. Alone in our apartment, doing work I don’t have to do and allowed to do so only because people feel enough sympathy to let me and others like me continue as before.
    Is it time to let go?
    I don’t know anymore. I used to think it wasn’t fair for me to be like the others, to have my life run happily, free from grief and worry. It felt too much like a betrayal. Now . . . now I’m just not sure of anything . . .
    * * *
    I remember Alex dying.
    There is nothing— nothing —more painful in life than watching the person you love wither away before you with each passing day, so doped up on drugs that he barely recognizes who you are. That feeling of incredible pain and sadness, of utter helplessness , as an almost physical part of you is torn away, and there is absolutely nothing at all you can do about it. When you can’t cry anymore and you try not to sleep and feel guilty when you do, just so you can spend every last remaining second with them. As if you can somehow concentrate what could have been into those last pain-filled moments.
    He refused the drugs, at the end.
    Some part of him must have known it was close.
    Maybe he could feel the cancer eating him away inside.
    Maybe he knew the end was coming.
    We lay on the bed together—he had asked to come home from the hospital—and wept in each other’s arms, him telling me over and over, until the pain finally stole his words, that he loved me.
    When he died, I sat for hours staring at him. I couldn’t believe he was gone. I stared at features no longer ravaged by pain, looking desperately for a twitch of an eyelid, a flicker of a muscle, something that would tell me he was still here. When I finally managed to leave the room, I came running back halfexpecting him to be sitting up in bed, smiling at me and telling me what a funny joke he had played.
    I watched the setting sun bathe his face in gold.
    He died a week before the Changeover.
    * * *
    I stand on the balcony and inhale deeply, letting the scent of summer wash some of the pain away.
    If only it had come a week earlier. Or he had been able to hold on that little bit longer. How much would be different now?
    I lean over and look down the street to the right, where a once-busy road travels toward the city center.
    A trickle of people move