The Boi of Feather and Steel

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  “Heir.” The shadow bowed low, a mark of respect.

  Kite reached out and touched the shadow’s face. “Rise,” she commanded. “And witness this day: for when I return, you will have two Witch Lords.”

  Murmurs flowed down the hallway. Shadows flittered across stone. A full vanguard stood at attention.

  Kite walked slowly, carefully, her bare feet leaving damp prints. She turned to each shadow and met their eyes. As she walked, she shed pieces of clothing like strands of hair. The bruises and scars that marked her skin would be heralded as portents of change. She had earned this moment with her flesh and blood, with bone and magic and essence.

  Whispers danced across her naked shoulders as she left her past behind, bringing only herself into the angry light of a hungry and desperate world. Her world. A world that was ending.

  When I return, you will have two Witch Lords.

  The Coven itself heard these words, and felt their power, as if carved into the foundation.

  A thousand eyes watched as Kite summoned the Vortex, the pathway between worlds. Assassins who were made from human and magic and frost and stone could move easily between worlds, but witches were pure magic. Their essences were vulnerable in the cold nothingness of the void, and were often rejected by the portal, refused entry into a world so alien to their nature. That was why crossing the threshold was the rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. Many witches died in the Vortex.

  Kite closed her eyes and felt for the seam between worlds, the one that had been used so many times that it almost opened on its own; some nights, if you stood on the roof of the Coven to stargaze, you could see a small tear in time and space, and through that hole, the glittering lights of the human city.

  The seam opened easily, and Kite stepped inside.

  It was dry. This was always the strangest, most unnatural sensation for Kite. The lack of water ached in every part of her body, and she found herself gasping for breath like a dying fish. Like the fish she coaxed out of the river to sacrifice themselves for her nourishment. She felt small.

  Her skin was stripped away, like tearing the bark off an old tree. Her fragile essence was exposed to the darkness, to the empty nothingness.

  The only thing you brought into the Vortex was yourself.

  It was so easy for Eli, who was overflowing with life, who was a patchwork of lives. Kite had only ever been one lonely thing. And the Vortex knew it.

  Kite concentrated on the connections that drew her to the human world: Eli’s hair in her mouth, saliva sinking into her bloodstream when Eli bit her too hard.

  There. The City of Ghosts appeared in her vision, and all Kite had to do was hold on for a few more moments.

  Instead, she threw herself recklessly out of the Vortex.

  She fell for days.

  When she emerged, flame extinguished in the gentle wetness of her own body, she was comforted by the smooth stone under her palms.

  “Took you long enough,” said Clytemnestra, sitting on a new throne made of daisy chains and bicycle spokes. She was alone. She inclined her head slightly, the closest to respect that the outlaw leader of the children would grant.

  Adopting a dilettante drawl, Clytemnestra continued. “I have a task for you, after all.” She lowered her chin bashfully and pulled out three eyelashes. “You’re going to build me an army.”

  Seven

  TAV

  Eli’s body was shaking, her eyes rolling wildly. Tav flinched toward her, but caught themselves and drew back.

  “Do something!” Cam was trembling, the stones on his arms and torso ringing out as they brushed against one another.

  “Not yet.”

  Above them the sky had been torn open, and through the gaping hole in the world they could see flashes of colour, glittering geometric shapes, and glimpses of faraway galaxies. A storm, dark and crackling with electricity, circled the emptiness.

  “If we leave it open too long —”

  “I said not yet.”

  The moans died and left behind a void of silence. The rip in the sky was widening, like the mouth of a monster.

  No one moved.

  Not yet.

  The Heart flared bright with righteous fury.

  Now. Tav exhaled.

  “She’s glowing,” whispered Cam, the sound of the stones dissonant and out of tune. “Something’s wrong.”

  “And we’re going to make it right.” Tav turned to their friend. “If anyone tries to stop us —”

  “I can handle it. Go do your magic zipper thing.” He smiled. It wavered on his face and then collapsed.

  Tav nodded once, and then wrapped their arms around the tree, around Eli, around the pulsing, glowing, angry magic. The obsidian blade was held firmly in their hand. Gently, so gently, Tav pressed the knife against their palm.

  It shouldn’t have surprised them that it cut, but it did — not skin, but something else that lived in Tav’s body. Dark purple steam rose from the cut. Quickly, Tav did the same to the back of Eli’s hand.

  Tav pressed their wound over Eli’s. They closed their eyes. Open.

  Are you here? Eli was the wound, the tree, the pavement, the boi, the ghost, the human, the past, the present, the world. She was lost in all she was and how much hurt she carried.

  I’m here. Tav had opened a door between them — and now Tav, too, was the wound, the Heart, the tree.

  We don’t have time —

  I know —

  If I lose control, the storm will destroy everything it can —

  We won’t lose control —

  Tav was the tree, the Heart, the door — and more than that. The maker of doors. They had their own magic, and a strong sense of who they were. They would not lose themselves in this union. And they wouldn’t let Eli lose herself, either.

  Tav stretched out the obsidian blade and plunged it deep into the trunk.

  The tree bled tears.

  Tav stabbed again. (Cam, watching, saw how both bodies, intertwined with the tree, were glowing like a sun, painfully bright. He had to look away.)

  Tav stabbed again. The tears running down the trunk crystallized into pieces of salt.

  Breaking apart the old door was more exhausting than the pure physical action; every movement took magic and intention. Tav found themselves shaking with weakness. Then a hand gripped theirs, fingers threading through theirs.

  My turn.

  Eli lifted Tav’s hand holding the blade and directed it into the tree, peeling off great sheets of bark that crumbled to the ground and transformed into red petals.

  In her other hand, Eli raised the pearl blade that would tear the unnatural magic from the natural world. Both blades fought against the brutal witch-crafted magic that had torn open the galaxy.

  The leaves started to wither and fall from the trunk. The vines started to retreat, and some of the pain, the hurt, the poison, was leeched out with them.

  The wound was healing.

  Soon, Eli was holding a small clay pot filled with dirt, salt, and red petals.

  Tav let go of her and stumbled back, wiping sweat from their forehead. Wisps of purple smoke still curled from the cut on their palm. The storm was fading, leaving flecks of electricity like glitter in the sky.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” they gasped.

  “Good — that was the easy part,” said Eli, grasping their shoulder. Tav could see veins of stone under her face, could see spots of blood where thorn had grown through skin. This had been hard on her body, too.

  Eli took a deep breath, her fingers digging into Tav’s shoulder. “Ready?”

  “Or not.” Tav placed their hand over Eli’s, and the jolt of electricity that passed between them had nothing to do with magic, just skin on skin, the meeting of two bodies.

  THE HEART

  They feel like feathers, thought Eli, grateful that their minds were no longer merged.

  They had closed the wound. Now they needed to reopen it — but as a door that worked both ways, that al
lowed the two worlds to live in harmony. A symbiotic relationship, instead of the predatory assault the witches had been making for years on the soft blue planet. A door that would return the lifeforce to Earth. This part was just Tav, and Eli was the power source. Like a battery.

  “This is when they’ll come,” Eli told Cam. “The Coven will have felt what we did.” She gave him the stone blade, the defender.

  He wrapped his hand around the rough hilt and winked at her. “I’ll be careful — this is like, an arm for you, or something, right?”

  Eli smiled, making sure to show her set of crocodile teeth. “Would you rather borrow something else?”

  “Nope, this just great, thanks. Besides, you never know when you might need to chew your way out of something.”

  “They have been very useful,” she teased, smiling wider.

  “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

  “I do, but maybe later?” Tav was still shaky.

  Eli squeezed their hand. “Don’t die,” she told Cam.

  “Haven’t yet.”

  Eli could feel the sutures she and Tav had clumsily sewed between worlds, the magic they had used to heal the tear.

  Eli’s part in this was done; she had formed a connection between herself and Tav. They could now draw on Eli’s power without touching. They were tied together with blood. Together they had mended the wound. Now it was up to Tav to turn that scab into a door, to resuscitate the human world. To give it new life.

  Eli had many powers, but not this one.

  This one gift had been granted to a human. A boi with eyes like embers and neon purple hair.

  Eli could still feel the warmth from Tav’s arms around her. The weight of their body, the rhythm of their human heartbeat, their breath on Eli’s neck —

  “Okay, let’s do this,” she interrupted her own thoughts, afraid of where they might lead.

  “Thanks for your permission.” Tav was breathing heavily, their delicate body made of cartilage and keratin struggling under the weight of so much alien power. They were still clutching the obsidian blade, which was and would always be a part of Eli. And now they had shared blood. There was no telling what that would mean.

  Tav became a little less human every day. Eli had noticed it in flickers and glances, in the way Tav’s shadow sometimes lagged or their reflection trembled and stuttered in glass windows. Eli wondered if Tav knew. They hadn’t said anything. For better or for worse, there was no going back to their old life.

  Tav was glowing with the same light that flowed through Eli. The power of the Heart.

  Tav returned the blade to the strap on their left arm. Now was not the time for cutting out the rot. It was time to open a door between worlds, a door that let magic and light and love and hurt flow between celestial bodies.

  They closed their eyes and raised their arms. The wind whipped up, ruffling their hair. They didn’t move, even when a strong gust pushed Cam and Eli backward.

  Tav entered a trance.

  That’s when Eli heard the first cries.

  “Vultures,” she said to Cam.

  “Birds?”

  “Scavengers.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.”

  She grabbed the thorn blade and stabbed it into concrete. She drew a jagged, uneven circle around Tav for protection. Then Eli knelt down and pressed her still-bloody palm against the scar in the pavement. The circle darkened to the colour of dirty blood for a moment and then vanished.

  “I hope that holds.” She didn’t say, I wasn’t trained to protect, to heal, to help. I was trained to kill. She no longer needed to switch eyes to see the magic she had used. The spell she had cast was clumsy, like the gaping stitches in a beginner’s embroidery. But it was all she had. Hopefully, when something crossed the threshold that didn’t share her blood, the thorns would strike.

  The stones on Cam’s body fell silent.

  The vultures were here.

  Eli looked up in time to see three great winged beasts bear down on them. She jumped back, drawing pearl and bone.

  The first one, scaled and taloned, with a face like an arrow, crashed into the protective barrier and was immediately ensnared by vicious briars. An unearthly wail pierced her ears. She smiled grimly. The barrier had held.

  “Cover me!” Eli leapt with superhuman grace and speed onto the back of the wounded vulture. A dozen invisible spines pierced her skin — but her bones were made of granite, and she would not break.

  She stabbed the bone blade into the soft spot on the back of the creature’s neck, in between metal spikes and scaled armour. Clear, sticky blood oozed from the wound, smelling of lilac and decomposing leaves. The blood covered her fingers and burned them, leaving her hands covered in boils. Fuck.

  Behind her, she heard the scraping sound of metal on rock, and knew that Cam was shielding her from the other two. She hoped the stone blade would work for him. It had been willingly given, but her knives had minds of their own. They were, after all, alive.

  But Cam was part stone now, too.

  Eli threw herself off the dying creature and spun around. Her hands ached. Vaulting over Cam, she let out a challenging scream and threw her bone blade at one of the remaining vultures. The vulture reared up, extending its wings to their full length — seven or eight feet — casting shadows over all of them. The blade glanced off the metal scales on its belly.

  Eli wasn’t done. Without stopping, she flung herself on the outstretched wing, opening her mouth wide and letting crocodile teeth overflow her human jaw. Biting down, she began tearing through the wing. The vulture crowed in rage and pain, and tried to stab her with its face. The arrow-face pierced her shoulder and went clean through, impaling the vulture’s own wing. Furious, the vulture tried to shake her off, but Eli’s teeth were deeply embedded in its wing.

  Eli ripped the wing from the vulture.

  Screaming, the vulture stumbled back and collapsed, the life bleeding out of it. Eli had slain it.

  “Finish it!” she yelled at Cam, who had been keeping the third vulture at bay using both his body and the dagger as shields.

  Blood poured from Eli’s shoulder, and her hands were on fire. As her teeth retreated into her mouth, jaw aching from the strain, she reached for the thorn blade, the ensnarer. She would tear all the vultures apart. Fingers fumbled for the hilt.

  It was like holding a live ember.

  Eli dropped it. As it clattered to the ground, the blade glowed white-hot for a moment, and then was a tangle of thorns again. Eli stared at it in horror.

  Eli stood, frozen in shock, the magical glow seeping out of her body. She swayed slightly, her head growing foggy. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the half-dead vulture rise again, powered by hatred and desperation. Cam had not killed it.

  She felt weakness sweep through her body. She sank to her knees and looked up. The sky was like a mirror, glittering with light and colour. For a moment she could see her own reflection in the sky, and then something shifted, and it went dark. Through the darkness she could see the greygreen clouds of an alien world. She could smell salt and cinnamon. Why was she still alive? Even granite can be ground into sediment.

  Then she understood: Tav had opened a door.

  Tav had sent the vultures back across worlds.

  Tav had saved them.

  Could the Heart die? Eli watched her blood make patterns on the pavement. With her last fragment of will-power, she stretched out a ruined hand and drew a design in the blood, trying to tether her physical body to the world.

  Darkness. A void.

  Nothing.

  Eight

  THE HEIR

  Kite felt an unfamiliar buzz of excitement when she heard Clytemnestra’s plans.

  “You can move between the Coven and the Labyrinth,” mused Clytemnestra. “We’ll use that to our advantage. The Witch Lord will never suspect her own daughter.” She blew Kite a kiss.

  “And if I’m caught?”

  “I
’ll mourn your death with a funeral worthy of a child,” said Clytemnestra solemnly. “A seven-layered cake and arson.”

  “I’m honoured.”

  Clytemnestra crawled closer to Kite, giggling. The Beast growled softly. “How soon can you do it? Can we do it now? I’m bored!”

  “No.”

  “What about now?” she whined.

  “I need to time to prepare, sweetie. The spell I’m thinking of is old — I don’t want to make any mistakes.”

  “What about now?”

  Kite felt the newfound power slither through her body, ready to reach out and snatch a piece of the child’s essence. It would be so easy to silence the brat, to grow strong on stolen magic. The feeling of power in her veins was intoxicating.

  Kite drew back. “We’ll do it soon,” she promised.

  She didn’t tell Clytemnestra about the Witch Lord’s secret, how she had grown so powerful by devouring her own. Stealing another witch’s essence was a travesty, taboo — sacrilege. She had no way of knowing if Clytemnestra would trust her if she knew what Kite was now capable of.

  Children love to keep secrets.

  Clytemnestra started doing somersaults on the stone floor, singing half rhymes to herself. Kite watched her.

  Clytemnestra led the children in games of jump rope and ritual murder. She taught them to play and she taught them to listen.

  She told us we could be something else, something other than what the Coven wanted.

  Clytemnestra had been to Earth, had stolen many things, little things, little broken hearts. She had seen the damage in the City of Ghosts and the City of Eyes. Had felt it. Children see things differently than adults. The children lived for wildness and loved one another until it hurt. The children didn’t want the worlds to die. The children didn’t want to live in the Labyrinth forever or submit to the will of the Coven. And Clytemnestra had showed them that they didn’t have to submit.

  “When this is over, you won’t be the Witch Lord,” Clytemnestra said suddenly. “We won’t bow to you.”

  “I have never wanted to be the Witch Lord,” said Kite honestly. “And you know that isn’t why I was created. It was never what I was meant for.”