The Boi of Feather and Steel

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  Every step she took now was another betrayal she couldn’t take back. The steps of the Coven turned to fragments of stone and dust. The remaking of the assassins.

  She had attacked her mother. Stolen from her.

  And now she knew, finally, the terrible fate that awaited all witches who disobeyed or disappointed the Witch Lord — having their essences stolen. Their life-force sucked from their bodies. Their powers absorbed by the tyrant or used to animate dead things. Not just killed, but lost, forever, twisted and used until not a single remnant remained of who they had once been. Kite knew that the Witch Lord wouldn’t hesitate to take her essence if she discovered the depth of her daughter’s treachery. She could always make a new Heir.

  But Kite had some of that power now, too. It sang in her blood and cast flashes of light before her eyes, colours running together and bursting and changing like a human child’s kaleidoscope.

  Would she use it? Would she dare? If Clytemnestra went back on her promise, and tore the Heart from Eli’s body, sacrificing her for the revolution … Kite pushed the thought away. She had made a promise, and a witch’s promise was unbreakable.

  But it could be bent, by clever tongues and minds.

  As the power to steal essences reared up under her skull, Kite felt the forgotten blade responding to it. The surge of power in both girl and sword (both weapons, in their own ways, wielded by others) cast the acrid scent of burning hair into the chamber. Magic testing magic.

  The Beast rubbed his head against Kite and she petted him, humming to soothe his trembling body. Her profane power settled, like silt in water, and the sword, too, let its guard down.

  All she had to do was feed the sword her sacred blood, and it would imprint on her. Then, once she freed it from the enchantments Clytemnestra had used to make it docile, it should lead her to the junkyard. It should take her to its adopted home.

  Not all things want to be found. The sword desperately wanted to return to exile. She could feel it in the energy radiating out from the alien metal, could see it in the flakes of rust and blood on its edge. Of course it didn’t want to be here: there was no space for grief in the Children’s Lair, and the sword had been grieving the loss of its home for a very long time.

  “Okay, precious, we need to work together, okay?” Kite pressed her forehead against the Beast’s face. “I need you to bite me.”

  The Beast whined again.

  “No, no, I’ll be okay. You have to do this for us, all right?”

  The Beast licked her face. Sighing, Kite stuck her hand into its massive jaw, and scraped her skin against a sharp canine. A single drop of bluegreen blood beaded on the back of her hand.

  “Good boy,” she told him.

  Kite extended her hand over the blade, turning it so the palm was face up, and waited as the drop of blood dripped over the blade. For a moment the black metal had a blue sheen from the wet drop. Then the blood vanished, absorbed by the sword. Linking their bodies together. Blood magic: forbidden magic.

  Another law broken. Another step away from the throne, from the promises made by her DNA.

  Another step toward chaos, wonder, and freedom.

  Licking the wound clean, Kite then reached out with both hands and tore at Clytemnestra’s enchantments, clawing the blade free from the suffocating magic. The sword twisted, the metal gears turning, spikes writhing and roiling like snakes, and then it stabbed the air and tore through the fabric of time and space. Kite, her hair moving as wildly as the metal arms of the strange blade, grabbed hold of the hilt. The Heir and the Beast stepped through the tear …

  And onto a frozen ocean of black. The sky swirled with purplegrey clouds, and flakes of snow fluttered down like moths to settle on her neck and shoulders.

  A small figure huddled on the ice, shivering. Arms wrapped around their torso. As Kite walked forward, clutching the sword, the figure came into sharp focus. Dark hair tousled with wind and pomade. A T-shirt torn in several places. Black skinny jeans.

  Kite nearly dropped the sword in astonishment.

  “Cam?”

  Twenty-Nine

  THE HEALER

  They were lying naked in a field of purple, petals crushed in their hair. The sweet and acidic scent of a girl made of thorns was fading. The outline of Eli’s body was still pressed into the flowers, but she was gone again, and Cam was gone, and time was running out.

  Tav sat up and brushed petals from their hair. A single bee landed on their forearm. They weren’t afraid of being stung. They reached out and gently touched a golden stripe. The bee danced on their arm for a few moments, buzzing fiercely, full of life and death and hope and fury. Then it flew away again, joining the swarm.

  Tav stared at the empty place next to them where Eli had been, and then buried their head in their hands. Eli had blades missing from her belt, and she was vanishing more and more often, becoming more Heart than girl. What if she stopped coming back? Could a body carry that much magic and survive?

  Tav dressed, and then waited for a few minutes. Eli didn’t rematerialize. Finally, Tav walked away from the field, the forest, the bees, the smell of clover honey and citrus. They climbed back on the bike and drove back to the apartment.

  The ride back was long and lonely.

  When they arrived at the apartment, Eli was waiting.

  “How?” said Tav wearily, dropping their keys noisily on the coffee table. There was no other question. It wasn’t Eli’s fault she kept disappearing … unless she was doing it on purpose? Tav pushed the thought away. Did it really matter, in the end? They had been left behind, abandoned, and that’s all that mattered.

  How do you love the Heart of a planet?

  “I don’t know.” Eli looked unhappy; what Tav could see of her face, anyway. The Heart was glowing, and the light obscured the delicate human features of the jar that held the light of a world.

  “Not a big cuddler?” Tav tried for a teasing tone but it came out flat.

  Eli shrugged with one shoulder.

  Tav wanted nothing more than a hot shower and a nap, but there wasn’t time for what they wanted. There never seemed to be, these days.

  Their voice came out low and quiet. “What if it happens again? When we’re making a door?”

  Eli looked away. “It won’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I don’t think it will.”

  “Oh, you don’t ‘think’? It happened last time! We needed you, Cam needed you, and —” Tav cut themselves off, the anger choking their throat.

  Cam had needed both of them. They had both let him down.

  “What do you want from me?” Eli moved suddenly, with the languid grace of a hunter, until she was behind Tav. Tav didn’t turn around. Eli’s breath was cold on her neck, like a winter chill. “You’re just angry that I left, aren’t you? It wasn’t on purpose!”

  Tav didn’t answer.

  Eli vanished and then appeared front of Tav. Tav flinched.

  Slowly, Eli stepped back. Tav couldn’t see her face through the blinding light that radiated from her torso. Her voice was quiet but steady. “Still afraid of me?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Then I guess we’re both liars.”

  Tav glared at the ball of light, eyes watering from the effort of staring down a sun.

  Eli moved away first, drifting back to the window, to the outside world, and away from Tav with the grass stains on their knees and the aorta that leaned to the left.

  She’s untouchable, thought Tav. Part of them was jealous, wishing that they, too, could sometimes disappear. Part of them was scared: Tav wanted to grab Eli and hold her in this world, keep her from turning into a tree of light. But not even the Healer had that power.

  “A message arrived while you were out,” said Eli, as if Tav had been out joyriding. They felt a flash of resentment at this brutal summary of the morning. Hadn’t it meant anything to her? It had meant everything to Tav.

  “And?”
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  One finger tapped the windowpane, then two.

  “Your friend wants to talk.”

  “My ‘friend’?” Tav’s stomach lurched.

  Three fingers playing a silent melody on the glass, something only Eli could hear. “The Hedge-Witch lost people in the attempt that failed. She wants her payment now.”

  All the blood rushed out of Tav’s head. Their hand scrabbled against the faded floral-print wallpaper for support. “Now? That wasn’t the deal.”

  “You made a deal with a witch,” said Eli. “Their concept of time is … flexible.”

  “When?” The flowers were starting to blur together, turning into the faces of ghouls and monsters. Tav blinked several times, trying to clear their vision.

  “Tonight.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Tav waited for the dizziness to pass. “We have time to strategize.”

  Eli laughed, and it turned into a cough. She turned around and spat out a single bee. “It’s already night.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Eli tapped the glass in an insistent rhythm. Tav reluctantly walked over and looked out into the sky that was already turning a deep indigo.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The world is dying,” said Eli. “Already the stars are coming out. The witches’ world is infecting this one. Time is sliding out of alignment.”

  Panic raced through Tav’s entire body like an electrical shock. They leaned against the glass, fingers splayed like wings. They could see the faint brush of constellations appearing on what should be a bright afternoon sky. Fuck.

  “There’s only one thing to do.” They glanced at Eli, wondering how much they could tell, calculating how much they could get away with. “We have to give her what she wants.”

  Thirty

  THE HEIR

  Cam turned around. His eyes were red. The skin on his knuckles was dry and flaky.

  “Kite?” Cam’s voice wavered. He took a step toward her, and then hesitated. “You’re not with the Coven, are you? Did she ask you to find me?”

  Kite’s eyes roamed over his body. He was agate. Graphite. Quartz. Shale.

  And underneath him, a continent of obsidian. The voices of the dead called to Kite from beneath the black glass, and she suddenly understood where she was.

  The Witch-Killing Fields.

  Her eyes blazed. Had they sent him to harvest the stone?

  Is one blade not enough for you, Eli?

  “Kite?”

  His voice broke the silence like a pebble in water. But it was a small sound, an insignificant ripple, lost in the vast darkness of the ocean.

  She met his eyes. Greybrown. Long, artful lashes, like the feathered legs of a millipede. The whites of his eyes stained pinkred from the killing wind. He had come to this world and survived. He had come to this world and been transformed. He had evolved. He had negotiated with the sentient stone that made up the Labyrinth and under-labyrinth, the living wall of the world. He had escaped the Coven. He had found his way here, to the fields of sorrow.

  He was dangerous.

  She had underestimated Cam. Maybe he did belong here, with the stone that stretched endlessly into the sky. It was Kite who didn’t belong. It was her essence that would be torn apart by black glass.

  Panic swirled through her body like a riptide pulling her out to sea. She clutched the Beast’s tail and he whined in protest.

  She had never faced true death before, although she had slept next to Eli and her blades since she was small.

  She never truly believed that Eli would kill her.

  Did she not understand my message? Does she truly think I betrayed her?

  Hurt cut through the fear and woke her from her reverie.

  “Did she send you to kill me?” Her voice sang across the space between them. Kite stared at the boy and contemplated the engineer of her death. He was strange, and mostly human, but she was learning the worth of human bones and spirits.

  “What?” Confusion swirled in his eyes, and he raised a hand to push back the tangles of his hair.

  “Did she give you the blade? She must care deeply for you.” Kite could understand Eli’s attraction — the sharp chips of breccia, the crust of lime. He was magnificent.

  His eyes widened. “Oh, fuck. I still have it! What if she needs it?” He held up the knife.

  Kite flinched, but she had no lids to shield her eyes from the cruel edge of the assassin, the obsidian needle.

  Only it wasn’t the assassin. It wasn’t a blade aimed at Kite’s essence. Cam held out the shield — the stone blade. A blade that could protect as well as harm — but not a witch’s essence. Not a magic soul. She was safe — for now.

  Kite’s seaweed hair relaxed over her shoulders, a few strands stroking her skin. She had self-soothed this way ever since she was born.

  “She didn’t send you for me,” said Kite wonderingly. “She didn’t send you here at all.”

  “What? No, of course not. What are you talking about?” Cam’s arm dropped to his side. “Make sense.”

  Kite ignored his question and walked forward, dragging the heavy sword behind her, its point scraping on the glass and casting a haunting wail into the atmosphere. But Kite wasn’t afraid of the music of the dead.

  She was afraid of the dead themselves.

  “Are you a discarded thing that needs to be found? I will collect you,” she promised. “And we will make a home in the ruins of the city for your beauty.”

  Cam twisted the hilt of the blade, but didn’t move away. Humans spooked easy. Kite knew this. When she was close enough to feel the heat of his part-human body, she stopped. The Beast did not, and ran right up to Cam, tail wagging. Cam stiffened, and then extended a hand and let the Beast smell him. The Beast tried to bite a piece of quartz, and then withdrew, whimpering.

  “Serves you right for trying to bite me,” said Cam.

  “He just wanted to taste you,” said Kite. “How else do you get to know someone?”

  Cam’s eyes fell to the sword in her hand, the gears now turning, the iron spokes writhing madly.

  “My staff!”

  Almost as if it had a mind of its own, his hand reached out for the blade that had awoken when it tasted his blood. The blade that had shielded him from the red wind. The blade that had been traded away for shelter, stolen by the Warlord in the Labyrinth.

  Skin touched alloy. Sizzling, then a shriek.

  He drew his hand back to his chest.

  “It bit me!” A burn mark in the shape of a circle was pressed into his palm.

  “You found it,” Kite said slowly, understanding dawning.

  “Bad stick.” Cam glared at the sword. “I didn’t miss you, either.”

  “It follows you,” she continued dreamily, “and it can never be lost as long as it is tied to you.”

  “Tied to me?” Cam made a face. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  Kite noticed that his moustache was drooping and was longer than usual. She flicked away the urge to reach out and stroke it back into shape.

  “Oh, it’s just an immortal bond between creatures.” Kite waved her hand dismissively. “Nothing to worry about. It was supposed to be the compass, it was supposed to lead me there. But instead it brought me to you. Not willingly, I don’t think. It seems to hold a grudge. What did you do to it?”

  “Nothing! I mean, I rescued it from the junkyard. And then Clytemnestra took it. I —”

  “It didn’t want to be found,” she said, “and perhaps it resents being traded like currency. This sword is a noble creature and should be treated with respect. When we return to the junkyard, it will have a choice to make.”

  “The junkyard? Why are you going back there?” His eyes narrowed. “We? The last time I saw you, you betrayed us to the Coven. And if Eli didn’t send you to rescue me, I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Betrayed you?” Kite tilted her head. “Precious, I saved you. I saved her.”

  “She doesn’t think so.”<
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  “She is scared to trust a witch.”

  “She should be.”

  “Yes,” Kite agreed sadly. “But I will keep saving her. And I will save you, too, for her.” A single strand of hair stretched toward Cam, and the stones on his chest began humming, a melody that sounded like a homecoming. She smiled. “The stones recognize me.”

  “I guess the stones don’t understand that you’re a traitor,” he said, but his words lacked venom.

  “Or maybe they know something the boy doesn’t.”

  Kite walked past him, staring curiously at the smooth glass underfoot. Then she knelt down and stared at her reflection in the dark pane. All at once, a flash of lightning from underneath the stone shattered her image, and Kite felt a scream rising up in her body. She stumbled back, heart racing.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Cam. “You’re acting stranger than usual.”

  “I can’t stay here,” she said, hair covering her face like a mask. “This is where the obsidian blades are forged. These are the Witch-Killing Fields. And we have disturbed their slumber. They are awake.”

  “Who?”

  Kite stared into the glass, mesmerized, as her reflection was eaten by ghostly jaws and skeletal hands.

  “The broken ones, of course.”

  His fear cracked. She could smell the moment the adrenalin cast a haze of murky brownred over his body. And then the blade was against her throat, in a split second when his fear decided she was the enemy. But the true threat lay dormant underneath them. Waiting.

  Kite let her words dissipate into air, like a small gasp of breath. “That won’t kill me,” she whispered. Her hair hung limp on her back, wary and waiting.

  “But it can make a blade that will. I can chip out a bit of obsidian and end you.”

  “You could,” she agreed. The Beast nuzzled her ankles. She hushed him with her mind. She tipped her head back, throat still pressed against stone, and admired the great fields of the universe flowering with life and death. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  Cam said nothing but swallowed audibly. She suspected he had never killed anyone before.