Wings of Ebony

by J. Elle

  I don’t even understand them. How you just met but you in love? Bri ain’t even social like that. But Luke came checking for her, showering her with attention, and of course she didn’t know how to act. So now I guess we’re a posse of three.

  “How were classes?” Aasim asks and I catch sight of the disappointment in his face.

  “Fine.” I take another bite of meat, watching food trays whisk through the air to self-sudsing cleaning stations.

  “That’s it?” He folds his arms, sitting back. “Which class is your favorite?”

  I don’t understand what he wants from me. He’s never once apologized for not being there. Not like I wanted him to. But, just saying, he never even acknowledged it. He acts like this fifteen minutes of face-to-face time each week can make it like he was there. He wasn’t.

  I chew.

  He waits.

  I chew some more. (I probably could have swallowed a while ago.)

  “History.”

  “Oh yeah?” He perks up, intrigued. “I liked History too. Found it… eye-opening.”

  I just made that up. I haven’t been to my actual History class in months. But I do find the history books at Totsi’s Texts interesting. Ms. Totsi’s a real nice Zruki lady. She lives a few streets over from Bri actually.

  When she wasn’t working at the mines, Ms. Totsi apparently developed her magic to be able to transcribe spoken words to text. Like she could just say words and they’d appear written on the page. The Chancellor was impressed, so he took her out the mines and put her in charge of all Ghizon’s historical texts.

  But, I’m not telling Aasim all that. I pick at a scab on my skin until it hurts. He ain’t even come back when Moms needed him most. Mr. Magic’s Third in Command, but when yo baby momma have bullets flying at her head where was your magic then? Ugh. Is lunch over yet?

  Six minutes left.

  “Rue, I know you—”

  Say we don’t have to do this. Say this is the last instance of this torture.

  “I know this isn’t your favorite thing. But I wanna get to know you. You’re my…”

  Don’t say it.

  “… daughter.”

  I dig my nails into the underside of the table.

  “I don’t even know, like… what kind of music do you like? Trap? R&V?”

  He knows about that? We usually just sit here talking about my classes or some stupid Ghizon thing. “It’s R&B and y-you’ve never asked that.…” Or anything about my life before here. About me.

  “I’m all ears. I want to know.”

  He won’t know any of the artists even if I name them. I have some on my old phone I could let him hear if… “You really want to know about music?”

  “I do. Your mom was into music. Figured you might be too.”

  She was. Moms used to have tunes blasting every time she cleaned. Said it calmed her nerves. What was she like with him, I wonder?

  I sit up. “I like a lot of types, but mainly I—”

  “Aasim,” the General joins our tableside, his lips in a permanent scowl like they’re glued on his face that way. “The Chancellor wants to see you. Now.”

  Aasim sighs. He’s gotta go, of course. It was stupid anyway.

  “I really wanna hear this, Rue. But I need to—”

  The scar under the General’s eye twitches. “You hear me, boy?”

  Boy? Oh shit, nah! Aasim doesn’t even flinch. I push my tray aside. Not hungry anymore. “I was about to leave anyway.”

  Aasim says something as I leave but I don’t hear it. Across the cafeteria, Bri’s tray is pretty much still full. She’s too busy keke-ing with Luke. (Or Lateef, I should say. He hates when I call him by his real name. He prefers the western variation he made up.)

  “You gon’ eat that?” I ask, sticking my finger in her leez before she can respond. Luke snorts and we do a handshake thing I taught him. He’s slow on the uptake, but I don’t drag him for it.

  “Uhh, not anymore,” Bri says, pretending to be annoyed.

  “How’s the watch coming, by the way?”

  “It’s coming. Haven’t had time to work on it in a bit.” She blushes and I know what that means.

  I muss her hair. “Just don’t forget. One year is coming up soon.”

  “I know, I know. I try to work at night, but someone talks in their sleep.” She smirks.

  Here she go with that again. She says I wake up asking about some little boy. I know the dream she’s talking about, but I don’t talk in my sleep. “Not true, Bri. I don’t even snore.”

  “You doooooo.” She turns to Luke. “She does, right?

  “Hey, I slept over one time. Don’t get me in the middle of that.…”

  “Wrong answer.”

  “I mean, of course, babe,” he says. “Rue, you talk in your sleep.”

  “This is an attack and I don’t appreciate it,” I say, a laugh tickling my throat.

  “No, but really,” Bri says. “I’m tracking the timeline. I got this, trust me. Ride or death. The watch will be ready.”

  “Die, Bri. Ride or die.”

  She my girl, that was her point. We do our handshake thing that’s three steps more complicated than me and Luke’s.

  “By the way, what was all that about?” Luke asks, nodding at where the General just was.

  “Ugh,” I say. “I don’t see how you work for him.”

  Luke’s been interning with the General, trying to get promoted to Patrol. That would take him out of mine work and get his family a bit bigger unit. Luke has no siblings or anything. He’s just not ’bout that soot-covered, long hours, manual labor, mine-worker life.

  “Guy’s a jerk,” he says. “But hey, if it gets me a better gig, I’ll do what I have to do.”

  “I mean, I get what you saying. Hustle mentality for life. But that dude… nah. Just, nah.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  “Let’s just say I don’t like his vocabulary.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THE SCENTS OF GHIZON hit me before the sights do. Iron striking stone clatters as my feet touch the ground. Bri’s coordinates put me on Market Street. The street runs through the Commercial District of Ghizon, which is basically their version of an outside shopping mall, and empties into Bri’s neighborhood.

  Close storefronts stuck together like narrow townhouses line the street ahead, some towering, some in odd topsy-turvy shapes, others short and squat. Like the Central District, large screens hang outside the windows of storefronts; Benevolence, Duty, Fidelity appear and disappear on them.

  In, around, and between the stores, crowds hustle from one place to the next, yapping to their friends, carrying bunches of bags. Dwegini. Only they’d have the time (and money) to spend a leisurely day out and about. Zrukis work sun up to sun down.

  Careful to keep my head down, I rush past Peekey’s, a store in the shape of a giant O, like a donut—or lekerae, as they call it here. You can tell what’s inside the store by how the outside is done up. The screen on their shop window flashes images of icing drizzling on knotted pieces of dough, on repeat. Sugary sweetness fills the air as I hurry past, when the screen changes to an image of the Chancellor waving and smiling. The General is behind him and the wafting cinnamon smell turns to sulfur. I keep moving.

  I have to stop him.

  “And how do you do today, mais?”

  My heart jumps at the voice as the doors to a gadget shop swish open. I exhale. It’s only a spell. I rush past, ignoring the talking doors trying to lure me back with a two-for-one sale.

  “Oh, excuse me,” someone says, but I don’t look up. I hurry, faster. Not so fast that I look suspicious, but much faster than a normal stroll. The center of the street opens up and I hang a left at Befuddled, an herb shop with elixirs and remedies that’s basically a giant tree with floors upon floors of shopping built into its branches. I hop over a protruding root eating into the cobbled street as I spot the entrance to Bri’s neighborhood, a dot in the distance. Almost there. Onc
e I pass a few pet stores, a jewelry shop, Muses and Mixes, a spot to buy music and even take lessons, and countless odds and end boutiques, Bri’s block is easier to see.

  Suddenly, an elder man with a cane stops mid-street and stares at me. I pull my hoodie on tighter and try to get lost in the chattering crowd. It’s only then I notice the screens lining the stores up and down Market Street have changed.

  Images of the Chancellor’s mug have been replaced—with mine.

  SHIT.

  The screens are silent, but words run along the bottom of the screen.

  IF SPOTTED, INFORM PATROL IMMEDIATELY.

  CONSIDERED DANGEROUS AND UNPREDICTABLE.

  REWARD.

  I break into a run as more onlookers stare from me to the screen and back to me.

  “Get her,” someone shouts, but I don’t look back. The street is a mosaic of color as I run past. Chilled air burns my throat but the thought of what could happen if I slow down threatens to choke me. I have to get to Bri’s. I have to get off this street. But with people watching now, is going to her place even smart? What if they follow me? Assume her family’s involved?

  A cold hand wraps around my wrist and everything goes black.

  * * *

  The inside of Totsi’s Texts is piled with books. Books stacked in corners, books on top of books lining shelves. Towers of books like pillars on either side of the door. I crouch in the shadowed hallway from the alley-access door Ms. Totsi used to bring me inside. The bell chimed the minute she brought me in.

  “Wait here, I’ll get rid of them,” she’d said before sauntering off in that way elderly people do even when it’s urgent.

  I met Ms. Totsi looking for Bri once and found reading books in her shop was way more interesting than actual History class. She gave me my own reading room and let me stay as long as I wanted. Eventually, I stopped most lessons altogether and just holed up here.

  She and the customer walk past looking for some specific text. I press back, deeper into the shadow. Their voices fade and after a few moments, the coins clink, changing hands, and her door chimes. He’s gone.

  “You can come out now dear,” she says. “Straight to the room you usually use.”

  We tuck inside the corner room in the back of her store and the familiar lumpy maroon couch I usually plop on is almost a comfort.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you, dear.” She presses thin frames to her nose. “People are vultures at the sound of a little change.”

  “Th-thank you.” I twist the end of my shirt. “I-I need to get to Bri’s house just down there on Moit Road.”

  “Well you can’t very well walk there. Not with your face all over the place. What were you thinking? He’s been playing your face on that screen over and over, night and day, child. No way you could’ve missed it. I’d assumed you were hiding out somewhere and good on you. Hide, because whatever that man wants”—she looks over her shoulder—“he takes.”

  “I didn’t know.” Actually, I forgot. Bri did mention it. “I-I haven’t been around, exactly.”

  “Well now’s not the time to start being around, you hear me?” Her eyes are as wide as orbs.

  I nod.

  She sits on the sofa next to me and exhales. “It hasn’t been good, dear. Not good at all since you’ve last been by.” Whispering a spell, she swivels one frail hand over another, her fingers calloused and stubby from years in the mines. A square pastry appears in her palm. “Your favorite, with the tem tem berries you like so much.”

  I take it and even though nothing inside me wants to eat right now, I bite. “Thank you, Ms. Totsi.”

  It’s somewhere between Ms. Leola’s pound cake and a cheesecake with a flaky crust and purple berries inside. And it’s everything I needed. A taste of happy. A mouthful of love.

  “Can you help me?” I ask.

  She stares a moment and there’s more behind her pondering expression than she lets on. Like the answer to my question is a weight heavier than she’s sure she can bear.

  “If we had the time, my dear, I’d tell you a story of how I founded this shop. And why.” She pats my hands. “But alas, time is very rarely on one’s side. Eighty years I’ve seen and time… no, it’s never on our side, is it?” She stares off like there’s more she wants to say.

  I wait.

  But she snaps out of it. “And yes, dear, I can help you get to Bri’s undetected. But you must promise me something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you ever find you’ve nowhere else to go, you come here to these books and find yourself.” She gestures around us. “I may be gone, but a friendly face will always greet you.”

  “O-okay.” I don’t know what that means, but I’m not in a position to say no.

  “Now,” she hops up and her voice trails down the hall. I’m on her heels trying to keep up when she pulls open a closet with a stack of ornate trunks piled one on top of the other. In the corner sits a burgundy one with fleur-shaped etchings and a cluster of locks. I tug on one of the gold fasteners and Ms. Totsi pulls my hand away.

  “No.” Her expression is as rigid as steel. “Not that one. Not yet.”

  I let go.

  “Now, where was I?” She’s all smiles again, pulling down a plum-colored box with a single gold belt around it. “Oh yes, we can’t magick you into the neighborhood because that’s, of course, prohibited. But you can magick yourself and slip past the lot of them.” She digs through the chest, folds of fabric flying in every direction. “Ah! This one’s perfect.” She tosses it to me.

  “A costume?” It looks like a bodysuit in all black with gold thread sewn into the seams. Costumes are pricey here. It’s not like running through Walmart around Halloween and grabbing something on sale. Ghizonis pay solid gold for costumes, because they’re magic.

  Slipping into a costume is like slipping on a new layer of skin. They wear off after a while, but when you’re wearing it you literally look like something or someone else.

  “You ever try one?”

  “Once.” At a party with Bri. I don’t know how I let her talk me into going. Everyone still knew it was me with Bri. I was there all of five minutes before I’d had enough with the whispers and stares and insisted we leave.

  “Pays to know the best costume designers in all of Ghizon, my dear. Don’t let the caste fool you. Zrukis are brilliant. Go ahead, try it on.”

  I hustle open the legs of the costume. The bunched-up black fabric is tough to get into. I slip one leg inside and then the other and zip up the fabric. The gold cuff in my pocket digs into my side as the fabric cinches around me. The zipper clicks in place and the tingling starts to sting. I bite down, trying to ignore the fact that my entire body feels like it fell asleep.

  “Now walk a bit, go on,” she says.

  I pace. And with each step, the fabric melts into my skin, meshing to conceal my hoodie and jeans. I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror and I’m covered in an all-in-one bodysuit that looks like it’s made of black scales with tips dipped in gold. And my face is all made up, exotic looking, with smoky eye shadow and sculpted hair. Gold filigree is woven into a headpiece resting on my hair like a crown.

  “You look fearsome, dear,” she purrs. “And completely unrecognizable.”

  She’s right. The mirror agrees. You’d never know who’s under here. This costume is really dope. And probably super expensive.

  “I-I can’t take this. I don’t have the money to—”

  “Don’t be silly child. Helping you is… my civic duty.”

  “What does that—”

  “You best get going.” She shoos me toward the door. “You have everything you brought with you, dear?” She looks toward where my pocket should be.

  I pat and the cuff is still there. “Y-yes.” When did I mention the cuff? I didn’t.

  “Good luck,” she whispers as I slip out the door. Back on the street, the crowd has settled and I walk by another screen with my face big as day. And this time people pass without a
second glance my way.

  My watch vibrates.

  Bri: You almost here? Aasim is on his way. You okay?

  Me: Yeah

  I silently mourn Ms. Totsi’s with one more glance back. Outside of her bookstore, I didn’t have a place to just be in Ghizon.

  I didn’t have a place here, because I don’t have a people here.

  That’s what it boils down to. Now, I’m the unruly creature they don’t understand. The girl who won’t be confined by their rules about what I do, how I should act.

  Now, I’m a threat—more of an outsider than ever.

  Sprawling trees from the edge of Bri’s street peek at me from up ahead. My calves burn and my soles ache.

  I’m so close to Bri’s.

  So close to getting answers about how to fix my magic.

  So close to making a way out of no way.

  I pick up speed as the last words I heard the Chancellor say sludge through my memory. You shouldn’t have brought her here. She’s far more like them than us.

  He’s right.

  I’m not Ghizoni.

  This won’t ever be home to me.

  I’m here for magic and vengeance. Then I’m taking my Black ass home.

  CHAPTER 21

  BRI’S HOME IS AS quaint as it was the last time I was here, but the concrete walls never quite put me at ease. Where are the pictures? Doodles her little brothers make? Or prizes from school contests she won? Do they even do that here? There is one portrait on the wall in a gilded frame. The Chancellor’s face is on the wall of every building, every place I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if that’s a rule or the people just like it that way. Or both.

  I toss my costume in the corner of the room and make my way past Bri’s brothers in a full on fight over a wooden doll. Luke’s in the one chair so I settle on the floor. He is always around, I swear.

  “I’m so sorry, Rue,” Luke says.

  She called Luke to update him on everything? I mean, I know him, but I don’t know him, know him. “Thanks,” I say.

  Sunlight flitters through the single window in the main room of the house until Bri pins a dark cloth over it. “The sun’s a nuisance in here this time of day.” She winks.