The Boi of Feather and Steel

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  “I made a promise.” Clytemnestra quickly crossed her heart.

  “Then you can’t stop me.”

  Clytemnestra rolled her eyes. “It’s too late now, sleeping beauty. If all goes well, my sisters and brothers will soon be flooding the Coven. If it goes badly, I’m sure we can get you a memento of your dead lovers.” Gone was the attempt at appeasement, the offering of scraps of war. The witch was bored of this game. Her patience had run out.

  So had Eli’s.

  The pearl blade clutched in one fist, the divider, that would tear the witch’s essence from her body. Eli drew another dagger — the ensnarer, a tangle of rose thorns. An offensive pairing, and a brutal one.

  Long yellow teeth spilled from a thin mouth.

  She pointed the pearl blade at Clytemnestra.

  “I haven’t had a challenger in decades,” said Clytemnestra, delighted. “We never thought you had it in you.”

  “I don’t work for you. We work together, or not at all. And I’m getting out of this cell one way or another. I’m no one’s prisoner.”

  Clytemnestra narrowed her eyes. “You have always been free to go, but the Heart stays here with me.”

  Eli felt a twinge of pain from a recently healed wound. But Tav’s magic was strong, and it would hold.

  “If you want to pull apart my body, you’ll need to come closer,” she said softly, keeping her stance light, her grip firm on the blades.

  “After all these years, my pretty little assassin, I thought you would know.” Clytemnestra vanished and then reappeared behind her. “I’m faster than you.” Claws raked Eli’s back.

  Again, she disappeared, and then reappeared in front of Eli’s face, knocking the thorn dagger from her hand. “I’m stronger than you. And I’m —”

  Eli pressed her forehead against Clytemnestra’s, the Heart of the world flaring up under her skin. Clytemnestra shrieked and pulled away, a burn mark spreading across her face. A whisper of a smile flitted across Eli’s face and then faded.

  Slowly, deliberately, Eli unbuckled her belt of daggers and let it fall to the ground. Her eyes swirled with smoke and light. She took a single step toward Clytemnestra, letting her body flicker in and out of existence.

  “I’m still here,” she said, her body fading except for her head, disembodied and grotesque. “But you can’t hurt me.”

  A hand rematerialized, gripping Clytemnestra’s curly blond hair. The little witch was thrown against the wall, cracking her head against its unforgiving surface. A thin trickle of white liquid flowed down her neck like milk.

  Clytemnestra vanished, sliding into invisibility. Eli only laughed. “Cute trick, but you can’t hide from me.”

  A scream of rage, and then both bodies fully rematerialized, Eli’s teeth embedded in Clytemnestra’s leg. Eli tossed the tiny body aside like a rag doll and fell to all fours.

  “Let me go, and I won’t have to kill you.”

  A pause, a silence heavy with the weight of a thousand eyes watching and waiting. Then a single, high-pitched giggle. Clytemnestra started laughing, kicking her arms and legs in the air like a toddler having a tantrum. Then she sat up, brushing her golden hair out of her unnaturally blue eyes.

  “Oh, you are fun.” She floated up, up into the sky, staring down at the pile of blood and bone and pearl and death crouched on the earth. She burst into flames, the white fire encasing her entire body. “Let’s play.”

  Fifty-Three

  THE HEIR

  Take me to the library.

  The thought pulsed outward from Kite’s body like a tsunami, and the wall before her ripped open, scattering stones and clumps of dirt and shattered eggshells. A blue robin’s egg fragment caught in her hair. She stepped back in surprise at the violence with which the passageway had opened up before her.

  Always, before, the stones had slid coyly to make room for her body, or had simply melted away, had reformed around an elegant passageway leading to the archives. The walls had even offered phosphorescent moss and flowers to light her path. It had welcomed the witch with the touch like soapstone and the eyes like lotus blossoms. The Coven loved the girl who had made a nest out of scraps of poetry and old letters.

  She had meant to ask nicely, to make a wish and offer hope to the sentient structure that stretched across so much of the world. (How much? No one knew. The Labyrinth had never been mapped. It was alive, and kept growing, moving, and changing.)

  But the command had been regurgitated from her body automatically. The sweetness of overripe bananas filled her mouth — the alchemical creation of a ruthless Witch Lord. Stolen magic. The essences of dead witches. The walls did not know their touch the way they knew hers, and crumbled before the threats of the Witch Lord.

  Sorrow flooded Kite’s limbs, making her hair lie flat against her back. She did not want to be the Witch Lord’s arm. She did not want to use fear and force to move through the world.

  She needed to end this, and soon. The hallway was dark, but Kite didn’t need sight to find her way home.

  Kite entered the Coven for the last time.

  An army of children and daughters and discarded things followed close behind.

  Fifty-Four

  THE HEART

  Eli felt the coiled fury in her body start to unwind, sending tremors down her limbs. Her teeth ached from the vibrations that rocked her body like a heavy bass, a pulse that sounded like life.

  She had been built to be a tool, a weapon, a machine. She had spent her life in cages made of blood and fear and promises. But she had broken free from the Coven, free from her mother, and she wasn’t going to leave one form of bondage for another.

  “You can’t stop me,” she told the Warlord, and the humming in her bones grew stronger.

  Clytemnestra sharpened one fingernail on a glittering canine and then winked. “Didn’t your mother teach you it’s bad manners to tell lies?”

  Eli was on her like a cat on a bird, her bloody mouth on the hem of Clytemnestra’s skirts, dragging her down, down, down. Sheet-lightning pain burned electric and hot against her skull, and fingernails like razor blades carved patterns into her skin. The skin there was so weak, so fragile, and the blood dripped into Eli’s eyes, obscuring her vision. But her magic eyes saw through the blood, through the pain, to the scared, trembling essence of her enemy, and before Clytemnestra could complete her victory, Eli tore a piece of fabric from her dress and swallowed it.

  “You’ve ruined my dress.” The little witch pouted. “I hate you! I hate you!” The temper tantrum made her essence boil and steam, and the scent of sulfur and kerosene filled the room.

  “It was delicious,” said Eli.

  She tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ear, getting blood on her hands. It was rust orange and dried immediately on her palms, rough as sandpaper. Eli rubbed her hands together, sending flakes spitting like sparks. She noticed that Clytemnestra flinched when one landed on her ankle.

  “Hate you,” Clytemnestra whispered, her Cupid’s bow lips barely moving.

  And then the little girl exploded.

  A piece of cerebellum landed on Eli’s face, still animated by the girl’s essence. Eli realized in horror that it was sucking at her eyes, at her magic sight, trying to devour her ability to see her attacker. Desperately, Eli wrenched at the dark-grey mass, trying to ignore the feeling of wet intestines as they wound their way up her ankles.

  No one used magic like this. It was forbidden.

  There was a reason Clytemnestra was the Warlord, a reason she had lived so long as a child, a reason the Coven had never repurposed her.

  She was hard to catch, and harder to kill.

  Panicking, hands slippery with blood and meaty flesh, Eli stuck out her reptilian tongue and licked Clytemnestra’s brain matter. With a shriek, the cerebellum released and fell to the floor, where Eli stomped on it ferociously (not that it mattered to the magic essence inside, but it felt really good, anyway). Then Eli set about chewing through the intestines that we
re ensnaring her body, using her crocodile teeth to tear and bite.

  At her feet, two eyeballs lay on the ground. They looked like they were made of porcelain, with painted irises and pupils. A doll’s eyes.

  “Maybe I’ll wear you as a pendant,” Eli told the left eyeball, as she tossed a piece of intestine to one side. “I seem to have misplaced the last one you gave me.”

  The eyeball rolled away quickly.

  “You know why this is forbidden, don’t you?” Eli asked, recalling Kite’s lullabies as they fell asleep together on the island, the legends and myths Kite recited from memory. The stories she brought with her from the library, from the Coven’s archives of history and knowledge. “A witch is weaker when her essence is torn.”

  She knew this to be true; she had felt it in the thinner, frailer magic that touched her body, as if Clytemnestra had been watered down with tears and rain. Another word rose to mind, like the drifting waves of Kite’s hair brushing across her stomach.

  Gestalt.

  Her belt of blades lay on the floor, stained with something dark and wet. The frost blade rang out — a single clear, high note. It was time to end this. The pieces of Clytemnestra hurried to join together, liver and tongue squelching over stone.

  Eli waited for the Warlord to put herself back together.

  Clytemnestra, mostly reconstructed but missing a few parts, lunged at Eli with teeth and nails. Lacerations etched themselves into Eli’s back and legs and shoulders — but wood and stone are strong, and the witch’s magic was weakened.

  Eli flickered in and out of existence as the adrenalin from pain merged with the excitement of the fight, the pleasure of giving in to a body that was strange and wonderful and monstrous.

  Catching hold of Clytemnestra’s hair, Eli pulled the little witch close to her. Eli’s body glowed with the power of the Heart. She was a girl lit up from the inside, like a glass jar humming with fireflies. She looked down at her body and could see through her skin to the thorns and granite and black pearl rustling and glittering and growing inside, illuminated by a power greater than any single being.

  The Heart didn’t need a blade. The lights crawling under Eli’s skin swarmed over Clytemnestra’s body, and then delicately, the way a lover plucks a flower, Eli reached out and tenderly tore the witch’s essence from her body.

  Clytemnestra’s screams would echo in the room for years to come.

  The tension broke like a storm breaks over the horizon, flooding the sky with darkness.

  The crumpled mess of hair and keratin stained the floor, while a ball of white light shivered in a corner, shuddering wildly.

  “I’ll give you privacy to dress,” Eli told the ball of light. “And don’t wait up — I’ll be back late.”

  She retrieved her blades from the floor and buckled them around her hips. A smile split across her face like stitches breaking over a wound, and then she was gone, running through the Labyrinth, looking for the door. She would find her way back into the Coven. She would be there to face the Witch Lord.

  After all, Tav needed her.

  Fifty-Five

  THE HEALER

  Tav revved the engine and laughed, feeling that familiar rush of power between their legs. No matter how far across the galaxy they travelled, this would always feel like home.

  “Time for our grand entrance, girl,” they told the bike. It seemed to whine in anticipation. Tav swore the mermaid winked at them.

  The door grew large enough to fit the human and their mount and Tav rode their faithful metal steed into the war chamber of the Coven, where beauty and deceit glittered like shards of ice.

  As Tav crossed over from the Children’s Lair and into the Coven, they could see the magic swirling in the space, an oppressive light thick as fog seeping into their nostrils and mouth, filling their pores with the smell of power.

  Tav careened through a ballroom of marble and black quartz tile made to look like a giant chessboard. Huge chandeliers made of pink crystal tinkled faintly overhead and cast a pinkish-red hue over the room. They felt themselves immediately drawn to the pulsing light that emanated from a throne on the opposite side of the grand chamber. The light was intoxicating and alluring, pulling them in like a spider wrapping insects in sweet-smelling web before eating them alive.

  They drove toward it, toward the Witch Lord, toward the trap made for a baby Warlord.

  A trap that would be sprung by a human who could use magic, a creature no one seemed to understand.

  Witches flittered out of the way of the gleaming monster as Tav raced through the chamber, leaving a trail of pretty destruction in their wake — spilled pearls and flawed diamonds, plates of food upended onto the shining marble floor. Tav slammed on the brakes and turned sharply before the raised dais where the throne stood, leaving tire tracks on the white marble. They patted their bike once and whispered, “Thank you,” before dismounting.

  A scandalized silence followed their entrance, as the court waited to see how the Witch Lord would deal with this disturbance.

  “You must be our honoured guest,” she said.

  The throne was so bright that Tav had to look away from the burning star that was the elaborate centrepiece of the game.

  “I must be,” Tav agreed, offering a short bow — making sure to show their neck, a sign of vulnerability that told the witches they were not afraid. Kite had coached them on these small, specific gestures.

  They waited.

  Out of the corner of one eye, Tav saw a single, flawless pearl roll across the floor.

  The court held its collective breath, a garden of stone and glass statues.

  The Witch Lord made them wait.

  The light began to ebb, bleeding out of the throne. Behind Tav, the murmured sounds of velvet brushing against skin filled the ballroom. Hushed voices whispered to one another; songbirds opened their shining beaks and sent clean, pure notes from pillar to pillar.

  “You may stand,” said the Witch Lord.

  Tav stood again and met the gaze of the only person in the worlds who frightened Clytemnestra.

  Their eyes widened and they fought to keep from stepping back and showing weakness. Struggled not to react to the confusion and horror that coursed through their entire being.

  Sitting on the throne, her hair writhing around her face like a curse, was Kite.

  Fifty-Six

  THE HEART

  Eli looked for the magic purpleblack signature she now recognized as Tav’s. The City of Eyes was full of magic threads that glittered and burned, filling the world with colour and light. She could see the silverwhite glow from Clytemnestra’s essence. It was angry, but it would take a while for the Warlord to stitch her body back together and regenerate the damaged cells.

  Eli could see a thousand threads stretching between bodies of water and bodies of land; between spongy flesh photosynthesizing and skeletal and muscular frames running on oxygen; between rock and bone and glass.

  Only three threads of light connected to Eli —

  Smoky purple with the sheen of midnight: Tav.

  Gold painted with aquamarine starlight: Kite.

  The third was mossy green and bronze and reminded Eli of fossils and music. Cam’s alive, she thought, relief flowering under her rib cage. He’s probably a lot safer than we are right now.

  These threads were pathways between Eli and the people she loved, the people she had chosen to tether herself to. These were not lines drawn in the sand, not fault lines dividing tectonic plates, not chains to enslave her. These threads were a string between two tin cans, the kind human children play with. These threads were a climber’s rope: something to hold on to.

  Eli reached out and strummed first the purple thread, and then the gold. The first note was low and rich, a major chord on a piano. The second was high and wailing, like a violin that’s been deliberately left out of tune. Then she strummed the third thread: silence, but gentle vibrations, as if the instrument was muffled by dirt. Eli didn’t know what th
at meant. But they were all alive, at least for now.

  She followed Tav. No one should have to face the Witch Lord alone.

  The thread wound through the mad labyrinthine dollhouse of the Children’s Lair, the signature fading and then flaring up again, sometimes disappearing entirely. But Eli’s body, fused with the Heart, could always find it.

  Eli followed the thread through rooms filled only with neon shoelaces and disposable cameras, through rooms that were giant pillow forts, soft blankets twisted into arches and portcullises. Through rooms that were bare stone with manacles in the wall, the rusted iron wrapped in flowering vines.

  Each step took her closer to Tav. Closer to the Witch Lord. Closer to war.

  The signature flared a fierce indigo, and Eli stopped in a room that was like a Barbie playhouse — if Barbie was both a princess and a dragon.

  A hot pink vinyl beanbag chair sat in one corner, covered in swaths of fabrics and costumes. Gold and silver buttons spilled from a tulle tutu and onto the stone flooring. The shredded remains of a jean jacket decorated the floor like petals thrown over a bridal procession. A great vanity of mahogany took up one entire wall. It was covered in windup toys and robotics.

  Eli had never been to Clytemnestra’s chamber, and she fought the urge to give in to curiosity and look around — to rifle through the piles of silk and velvet and Lycra, to run her hands over the glittering diamante bottles of perfume and bubble solution. To steal an oxidized copper button or shoe buckle.

  Eli moved closer to the vanity, to the great mirror that reflected back a girl with pure black eyes and knives that sparkled under the light of the lava lamp that perched on the edge of the armoire.

  Gasoline and lavender. Traces of Tav. Eli closed her eyes and breathed it in. They had been here. They had stared at their reflection in this mirror as they had dressed for battle.