The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  “This is your world,” they said.

  Eli leaned back against the black stone and watched the slivers in her own body light up in loving recognition. She shook her head. “Neither world is mine. Shadow assassins move between worlds. We don’t belong in any one place.”

  Tav’s earrings glittered in the silverwhite glow. “I know what it’s like,” they said, “to not belong.”

  Eli watched the light play across their face, dancing with shadows across their eyebrows and nose and lips.

  “Can I?” The light and dark showed the question clearly on their face. Desire. Fear. Hope.

  “Sure.” Eli swallowed, pulse thrumming.

  Tav’s fingertip traced the thin silver line on Eli’s left knee. The touch was gentle, tentative, unsure. It sent sparks of electricity up and down Eli’s body.

  “I thought it would feel like magic,” Tav confessed. “Like, it would bite me or something.”

  “If that’s what you want, just ask,” Eli teased, feeling bold.

  Tav laughed. They continued tracing the lines of light as if they were following a map.

  Impulsively, Eli caught their hand. A large spark popped loudly and flashed brightly. Tav pulled their hand back.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Okay …”

  The awkward quiet settled around on elbows and ankles like a winter frost.

  “Sorry about your bike,” said Eli suddenly.

  “It’s cool, we found it.” Tav’s face was falling deeper into shadow. “Cam still hasn’t stopped making fun of me for letting you get the keys.”

  “You really love it.” The question hid itself in her words, but Tav heard it.

  They looked at Eli, and all of their earrings caught the light at once. Crescent moons in the night sky. “It’s freedom.”

  Freedom. Leather and gasoline. The wind in her hair. Eli closed her eyes and let herself imagine a freedom that wasn’t pieced together with scraps and stolen moments. It had been so long since she had let herself daydream.

  “Look.” Tav’s voice broke her reverie.

  Eli opened her eyes. She felt like she was waking up. She followed the elegant line of Tav’s arm through the dark and leaned back, looking up into the sky.

  The face of the moon glittered silver with gold bruises.

  “It’s the same moon?”

  “It’s the same moon.”

  “I don’t know why, but it’s kind of comforting.” Tav rose and gracefully climbed onto the rock. “I loved star-gazing as a kid.”

  Eli stared at them. The stone, her kin, had wounded Cam and pushed him away, but it welcomed Tav as one of its own. Eli had the overwhelming sense that Tav, too, belonged here.

  She hesitated and then joined them. A wave of déjà vu made her light-headed and dizzy, so she lay down on the rock. Tav lay back, too.

  The obsidian blade scraped against its sheath. She could feel its ice on her thigh, could tell that it wanted something. She reached down instinctively to draw the blade when Tav’s shoulder brushed hers.

  Eli couldn’t think of anything except their closeness. Her heart thundered in her chest. She turned to look at them — at the gentle curve of their chest rising and falling with each breath, at the glimmer of their eyes catching the light, at the shape of their mouth.

  “Who are you?” Eli whispered. A boi who could see ghosts and wasn’t afraid of Eli’s strangeness, didn’t run from the yellow eyes. Who could, with one touch, make Eli’s bones sing and her hands tremble.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that.” Tav sounded amused, or maybe exasperated.

  Twenty

  Tav had been born in the wrong place at the wrong time and had spent their life trying to make it right. It hadn’t been easy — cops that follow you like shadows because of your skin colour, teachers and friends refusing to use your pronouns. Shitty part-time jobs and beer bottles smashed over your bike.

  To Eli, all humans were the same. Soft, weak, clumsy. Sure, they were different from one another — but not really. When Tav spoke, Eli saw the way humans could turn on one another, could take a difference and craft it into a weapon. They were cruel. They were violent. They were deceitful.

  A small part of Eli’s mind thought, They are like witches, hiding behind secrets and walls. She saw the white men that Tav described, who were threatened by a Black queer boi, saw the tension in wire-sharp shoulder blades. She heard the threat in the exhaled breath that had curled around Tav’s wrists like manacles. Tav spoke about chains, about ancestors and wounds that bled into the soil and became encoded into DNA.

  “I told him to go fuck himself, because no one else would ever want to,” said Tav, tossing their hair. They were pride and steel, but Eli could smell the hurt and anger behind their words. She wondered if all bodies carried the weight of feelings and memories like this. She thought maybe they did.

  Bodies remembered.

  As Tav continued speaking, the words pouring out of them like a river full of springtime thaw, Eli wondered what would happen to the men with beer bottles and shiny cars when Tav returned. She had a vision of Tav standing on a frozen river, with feathered wings burning black and red, their eyes dark with power.

  She blinked, and the vision was gone.

  “The first time I saw a ghost was two years ago,” said Tav, coming to the part in the story they wanted to tell. Their voice strengthened, and their wrist bones aligned. Eli could hear them snapping into place with her magic-enhanced senses. “I was standing in a bus shelter downtown, and he looked more lost than anyone I’d ever seen.”

  Tav went over to the ghost and offered him a quarter, thinking maybe he was homeless. He stared at the shiny coin in their hand for a long time.

  “He was looking at his reflection,” they explained. “He didn’t recognize it.”

  In the coin, Tav saw through the body of the man and into something else. At the time, they thought it was a soul. Now they knew differently.

  “I saw what he really was,” they said. “It was sadness and revenge, and I recognized myself in it. And in that moment, he recognized something in me, too.”

  They stood with the ghost for a long time, waiting for the bus, or maybe for the sun to rise. A couple of teenagers wandered over, stoned and talking shit. Young, scared, and showing off for each other. Here, Tav’s voice faltered for a moment.

  Maybe the teenagers said something to Tav or maybe they didn’t. Eli wondered. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe it mattered too much. Maybe that laceration was still healing, and Tav didn’t want to rip off the scab. Eli was certain that something had been exchanged — looks, words, knuckles.

  “The ghost ate them,” Tav said calmly. “Not like an animal eating its prey; it was more like … the stuff inside, that I thought was a soul, came out of the body and drank them. At the end, they were just dried leaves on the pavement. And the ghost was stronger; I could see its light through the skin, without looking at a reflection. He looked back at me, smiled, and vanished. He wasn’t a monster,” they added. “Although he did monstrous things.”

  “He was a monster,” said Eli quietly. “You can’t forget that. The next one could eat you.” But the ghost wasn’t the only monster in the story, and Eli understood that Tav saw monstrosity in the humans around them, and they needed Eli to see that, too.

  Eli had always known that she was a monster. A monster to hunt monsters. Tav’s story explained why Tav hadn’t been afraid of her.

  “The ghost you met at The Sun — that was him. He started following me around after that, and when I met the Hedge-Witch, he came with me. She said no one had ever recruited a ghost before. I was the first.” Pride shimmered in their voice.

  After meeting the ghost, Tav started looking for magic, and after months of dead ends and sleepless nights, they found it: the glittering thread leading to The Sun and the Hedge-Witch.

  The Hedge-Witch. Tav spoke of her with admiration and love. The one person who b
elieved in Tav, who had offered them not only magic but revolution.

  “She understood,” Tav told Eli. “She saw what was happening to the city — the threats, the angry young men blaming their problems on us, on queer people, people of colour, immigrants. She could taste the fear and hate. She made The Sun a safe haven for us, a place where we could rise up. Stop being afraid. We could use magic to fight back.”

  “That’s why you moved out,” said Eli. “Your parents couldn’t understand.”

  “They tried. They understood how bad it was getting, with the hate marches and rallies.” A shadow snagged on their throat, and Eli watched as they turned away from the part of the story they didn’t like. Eli felt a surge of fury at the humans who had wanted to deny Tav their humanity.

  “They wanted me to keep my head down, stay safe, be careful. And I couldn’t explain to them the Hedge-Witch’s power — how it could make us strong.”

  Eli placed a hand on Tav’s forearm. A current of electricity thrummed through her fingertips. They didn’t shrug it off.

  “Every time the Hedge-Witch teaches us a spell or lets us taste magic, it feels like coming home,” Tav explained. “Cam doesn’t like it. He thinks it’s becoming an obsession.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.”

  They both laughed. Eli bravely pressed her shoulder against Tav’s, the monster-lover who craved magic like life force, whose passion or maybe obsession had led them to cross worlds. A survivor and warrior in a war that Eli had never seen.

  Understanding suddenly crystallized in her mind.

  “Cam came here for you,” she said.

  “Yes.” Tav’s voice lowered, the undiluted joy now mixing with guilt and worry. “I tried to talk him out of it, but he’s stubborn. He worries about me.”

  A comet streaked across the sky, burning another question into Eli’s body. “Are you going back?”

  Tav propped themselves up on one elbow and looked down at Eli. Their face was lit up by the moonlight. Eli’s breath caught in her chest.

  “Yes. I’m not a witch. I don’t know what I am, or why I can see magic, but I’m human. And I’m proud of being human, even if humanity sucks sometimes. The human city made me who I am, so it’s mine, and it’s broken, and I’m going to fix it.” They spoke passionately, fiercely, and Eli could see a sliver of tooth like a portent.

  Again, that image — Tav on a river of black ice, winged like a fallen angel. Stars raged overhead. The ice cracked —

  “Eli?”

  “What?” The afterimage of fire lingered on the inside of her eyelids.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Eli tried to bring back the vision of flame and ice, but it was lost.

  “You want to fix the city or break it?” she challenged.

  “Sometimes they’re the same thing.”

  “I think so, too.”

  After a moment, Tav lay back down. Together, they stared into the galaxy and somewhere in it a human city that held their past and future.

  Twenty-One

  “Go into the forest,” Circinae said. “Go into the forest and bring me four leaves from the quietest tree.”

  The night was dark, stars piercing the sky like shrapnel. The forest was silent, watching the girl. Waiting.

  One misstep, a single mistake. A root that moved like a snake. A pit opened and Eli fell into the earth.

  Dirt in her mouth. In her ears. In her eyes.

  She couldn’t breathe.

  Roots wound themselves around her body.

  Where was Tav?

  Who’s Tav? Eli wondered, and then she remembered.

  Wake up, she told herself. You have to wake up!

  The roots wound tighter around her rib cage. She closed her eyes, swallowed dirt, and grasped the dream with both hands.

  The dream fell apart like wet tissue, pieces of it peeling away at her touch.

  Eli opened her eyes. She was back in the wastelands.

  She was partially buried in sand, grit in her ears and eyes and hair. Her lungs were tight. Three crimson suns blazed overhead. Eli wondered what part of the galaxy they were moving through now. She knew they would come back to the City of Ghosts soon, and the silver moon that she had grown up watching from both the human and the witch worlds. They always did. Eli hauled herself up, sand pouring off her body like water. She spat out a mouthful. Her tongue felt raw and sore. The wastelands stretched before her like an ocean. They looked impossible to cross.

  Silverblack fear bled into her body, and those feelings could only belong to one person — Tav.

  Eli spun around, drawing two blades: stone for defence and pearl for attack. She was ready to fight.

  There was nothing. Only Eli and a rock and miles of empty space. With a burst of energy, she understood — her companions had been swallowed by the land.

  By her dream.

  Eli dropped to her knees and started digging with her blades. Her throat tightened, choking off her breath. Her eyelids twitched like the legs of dead spiders.

  How had she let herself dream? What was wrong with her?

  Eli’s eyes teared and burned under the angry light of the three suns. Her hands became battered and bloodied by rock. The sand under her fingernails bit into the fleshy nail bed and she gritted her teeth in pain.

  But she was getting closer.

  Don’t die, she thought desperately. Please don’t die.

  That would be a mistake she couldn’t fix.

  Images flashed in her head, memories dredged up by panic and set free by a world that thrived on powerful feelings. Memories sharpened by fear. Waking nightmares.

  Looking up through blue waves of light.

  Chlorine eating away at their mouth and lungs.

  Their eyes start to close.

  Eli dug faster, using the handle of a blade to break apart clumps of soil. She could almost taste the chlorine in her mouth, could almost feel its burn. There are many ways to drown, and Tav and Cam were caught between water and sand, dying again and again and again.

  Eli’s thumbnail caught on a stone and ripped, leaving it bloody and staining the sand red. Smoke spiralled from the wound. She pushed on, shoving her raw arms into the earth.

  She caught the scent of pine and vanilla. Suddenly, a new memory crowded her mind.

  Hands slamming against the metal door.

  The smell of urine and cigarettes and bleach.

  “Come out, faggot!”

  Cam. The memory was clear and strong, as pain clawed its way to the surface. Scars broke open. The past scratched its way into the present. Not all humans were haunted by magical ghosts, but all humans were haunted.

  She was getting closer.

  Eli screamed in frustration, dropped her knives, and scrabbled at the earth with ragged nails. Her heart was beating so loudly it felt like thunder was cracking in the sky around her head. Her body was electric, alive, fighting as hard as it could.

  A glint of silver.

  An earring.

  Eli lifted it to her face, fingers trembling. She was so close.

  She closed her eyes.

  Bring me to them, she commanded the wastelands. She focused her willpower on the sand. She would make it obey.

  She could hear the angry winds rising at her order, throwing hot dust into her face.

  Let them go! She released the full force of her energy at the earth and plunged her arm back into the silt.

  She felt hair. She grabbed and pulled, heaving with her whole body. As soon as the shape of a head emerged, Eli used both hands and stood, dragging the body out of the sand. Then she went back and dragged the other body out, too.

  They lay side by side like corpses. Eli watched over them and waited. The wind died down. The wastelands were eerily silent.

  And then, in unison, they gasped for breath. Tav curled over and began coughing up sand. Cam was still gulping for air, like a fish stranded on the shore.

  Eli exhaled deeply and felt the tight coil of her c
hest start to unwind.

  Tav was the first to stand. They managed a few steps before vomiting sand and bile.

  Cam was shaking, trying to wipe the filth from his body.

  “I remember —”

  “Don’t think about it,” said Eli. “Get up. Move.”

  “I was trapped inside for hours,” he whispered. “No one came to find me. They were just out there, waiting for me.”

  “I found you.” Eli dragged him to his feet. “You’re not trapped anymore. Breathe, Cam. Breathe, okay?”

  “I was drowning.” Tav’s eyes were wide. “I drowned.”

  “Not yet, you haven’t.” Eli put a hand on Tav’s shoulder. “Come on. We have to keep moving.”

  Guilt pressed at her diaphragm.

  She had let herself dream.

  Eli forced herself to walk ahead, fists clenched at her sides. She wouldn’t sleep again. She couldn’t risk making another mistake. She was losing control.

  The stain of truth was growing, spreading through every synapse and skin cell.

  She was a broken tool.

  Twenty-Two

  Neither Cam nor Tav spoke again about being buried alive, but Eli caught glimpses of their memories while they slept. Crawl spaces and car crashes, bones ground into dust, a pressure against their skulls so strong that it felt like their eyes would pop out of their head.

  Eli watched over them, holding the obsidian blade, ready to kill any nightmare that tried to come out. She didn’t know what human dreams could do in the City of Eyes, but she wanted to be ready. A couple of times she woke them, terrified that the sand would re-form in their lungs and they would drown in their sleep.

  But their dreams, like their world, were safe. Only Eli was a threat.

  After the nightmares, they walked in silence, like sleepwalkers. Eli kept them on course, looked for physical injuries (there were none), and waited.

  The heavy shrub was thinning again, turning back into naked desert. Eli had no idea what the change of landscape meant. Even the rocks were crumbling into pebbles, and Eli had seen nothing but a few oxidized buttons for the last hundred steps.