I look out over the water again. I can no longer see Izzy, but a figure is rising from the center of the lake. I can see, even in silhouette, that it is the shape I have so longed to see. My mother stands on the surface of the lake. She begins to walk to me, her arms outstretched, and yet I am torn. I cannot let Izzy die! I shake my head and peer down into the water, trying to find her with my thoughts. My wand is broken. I no longer remember how to do the magic without it but I must try. I raise my arms out over the water, close my eyes and concentrate.
"What are you doing?" the voice inside me asks.
"You are right," I answer, as firmly as I can. "No one is coming. I am being the voice of good. I am choosing it myself…." I force the figure of my mother from my mind. I focus on finding Izzy.
"Don't be a fool!" The voice is becoming angry now. "Once before you thought you had changed the course of destiny, yet here you are now. You have only postponed the inevitable."
I cannot sense Izzy in the depths of the lake but something is hidden in the darkness. It has been a long time since I have moved anything without my wand but I discover that the power is still there; buried but not forgotten. I direct all my energy to the object below.
Something in the water begins to move—something large. As a result, the figure of my mother slowly begins to sink again.
"You are not the only one with powers at your disposal…." The voice seethes at me. "I am you and you are me. You cannot choose the light while I choose the dark!"
My left hand is suddenly icy cold. Frosty tendrils extend from it out onto the lake toward the sinking figure of my mother, forming a narrow sheet of white ice. She rises again to the surface and walks toward me on the icy bridge. My power is divided and weakened. I cannot maintain my hold on the large object in the water.
"Give in!" the voice commands. "Good is a myth! All that matters is power. Embrace your destiny or die fighting. You are not good. There is no such thing."
I look at the face of my mother. All I have to do is reach out and take her hand.
And suddenly I realize that I don't care.
"Good is only a myth if good people stop believing in it," I say out loud. "I may not be good but neither am I evil. Whichever direction I go is up to no one but me!" I feel warmth come over me. My hand is no longer cold. I close my eyes, concentrate and the object of my attention begins to rise once more toward the surface of the lake. I see the water mount up in a boil, slowly at first and then with a great surge. With a roar of falling water, the old gazebo lifts from the lake, resuming its original position at the end of the dock. It is waterlogged and draped with seaweed, but completely recognizable. And lying in the center of its rotten floor is Izzy.
I rush to her, kneel beside her, and push the wet hair back from her face. Her eyes are closed and she is not breathing.
"Izzy," I whisper close to her ear. "I did it! I made the right choice, Iz."
She does not move. I look at her pale face and touch her forehead.
"Please don't be dead, Izzy," I beg her. "Please…" I close my eyes and cast my mind into Izzy's small body. I feel warmth inside her soul but she doesn't respond. She has lost hope and is dwindling away. I cannot give up… I will not give up… I feel tears on my face and I try again.
"Come back, Izzy," I plead silently, speaking directly to that diminishing spark of her life. "Please come back."
There is no response. Izzy's eyes do not so much as flutter. I begin to panic. "Don't go Iz, I need you. You're all I have left. It shouldn't end this way. It can't end this way. Good will win out in the end. It has to…" I hold my sister in my arms and rock back and forth, searching for that spark. "No… No Iz… Don't be gone. Don't leave me alone…"
I open my eyes and look down at my sister's face…
Here, Petra's story stopped for a space of several lines. James looked at the blank space, but it wasn't entirely blank. Petra had begun to continue the story three more times, and then scribbled out the results, violently and completely, obliterating the shapes of her neat handwriting. The quill had leaked, leaving ragged black blots on the parchment. Finally, much more roughly, Petra's story continued.
Izzy lays in the darkness of the gazebo, cold and still, unmoving. The guttering spark of her life is gone. Izzy is dead. As dead as the gazebo. As dead as her dolls back in the bedroom of the farmhouse. Izzy is dead, and I am the one who has killed her.
"No," I insist. It can't end this way! I made the right choice! I fought the darkest desires of my soul, and overcame them, all by myself, with no outside intervention. I chose good. Good owes me!
"No…," I say again, raising my voice, "this isn't how it's supposed to turn out. You're supposed to be alive! This isn't how the story ends!" My voice is rising, both in pitch and volume. I stare down at the pathetic figure below me, refusing to believe what I see. Izzy's body lays in the center of the gazebo floor, soaked and limp, filthy on the rotten planks.
"No!" I scream now, scooping the small body into my arms. "NO!"
"Yes!" the voice in the backroom of my mind commands coldly. "You cannot fight your destiny. You tried to in the chamber of the pool, and you tried to tonight, and yet… fate prevails! You and I are one! Give in to your powers. Embrace the paths you have opened. It is too late to turn back now. All that is left is power, but that is not a bad thing. In time, you will come to accept what happened here tonight. In time, you will be glad of it, for it makes you who you are, who you were meant to be from the very beginning. Fight it no more. You are tired of fighting, aren't you? Now, at the end, you see that fighting was always futile. Fighting your destiny only destroys you, and all that you love. Embrace it now. Embrace it, and perhaps destiny will repay you. After all, the path of power has many, many benefits…"
I listen to the voice. I am helpless not to. For the first time, I listen, and I do not argue with it. The voice is right. There is no fighting my destiny. What had been meant to happen in the Chamber of Secrets had not been prevented, only postponed. I gained nothing by choosing good, succeeded only in raising the price that I must inevitably pay. Now, Izzy is dead, and good is annihilated. The voice is right. All that is left is the path of power.
I stand slowly, lifting the light body of my murdered sister. I will bury her, in the woods, beneath the cairn that represents her. And then I will leave. I don't know where I will go or what I will do, but I have a strong feeling that those decisions will mysteriously take care of themselves. Suddenly, it is almost as if I am merely a passenger in my own mind. My body seems to move of its own accord, carrying me back along the dock, my sister's cold body dripping lake water in my arms. I am glad to give in. It is too hard to fight, too hard to think. Destiny has claimed me, and I am happy now to relinquish control to it. What is left now to fight for anyway?