The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  Then she saw it — a patch of land that was smooth and red like an open wound.

  “What is that?” asked Tav. Their voice was hoarse, worn raw by sand and screaming.

  “I don’t know.” Eli frowned. She couldn’t see or feel any magic in that spot. “It’s dead.”

  “Let’s go around it,” said Cam. “I prefer the deadly plants you seem familiar with. The devil you know, right?”

  Eli shook her head. “We have to keep going.”

  “Why?” Cam rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. He looked tired and a little afraid. His moustache wax had worn off, and the ’stache hung limply on his face.

  “So there is a reason you’ve been taking us in a straight line,” said Tav. “At first I thought it was some superstition thing.”

  Eli rolled her eyes, then switched to her magic set and rolled those, too, a glint of light on shiny black.

  “That’s a bit unsettling,” Cam told her.

  “There’s a children’s song about the wastelands,” said Eli. “The only way to escape is to walk straight in any direction for one hundred thousand steps.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” said Cam.

  “What step are we on?” asked Tav.

  “Lost count. But that dead spot is in our path and we’re going to walk through it. If we get separated, just keep moving forward. Don’t worry.” She turned to Cam. “I have my knives if anything attacks us.”

  “That’s not comforting.”

  Eli shrugged. “I told you this was a bad idea.”

  “Let’s just do it,” said Tav.

  “Oh, so now you trust the assassin?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who let her crash on our couch.”

  “It’s a kid’s nursery rhyme. They probably sang it skipping rope. It shouldn’t make a difference if we walk around it or not!”

  “You’re still thinking like a human.” Eli swiftly moved in front of him. “This world isn’t logical. If you try to force logic on to it, it will kill you. And we didn’t sing songs jumping rope,” Eli said, her voice dripping with scorn. “We sang it while gutting animals for celebration.”

  Footsteps interrupted their exchange, and they both turned just in time to see Tav step into the dead patch and disappear.

  “Oh my god! It just swallowed them whole!” Cam dropped his bag, eyes bulging. “What do we do?!”

  Gritting her teeth and silently cursing the bravery of humans, Eli shouldered the bag before grabbing Cam and forcefully dragging him after Tav.

  A sizzle.

  The smell of burning hair.

  A cold, fishy touch.

  Eli shuddered as they passed through the barrier and entered a very large, overflowing junkyard. Old truck tires spilled into a collection of plastic Fisher-Price kiddie cars; costume jewelry cascaded around dead leaves and pieces of charcoal, slate, and limestone.

  Tav was nowhere to be seen.

  Eli dropped Cam’s arm and moved forward, looking around. Shells, scales, and fingernails crunched under her feet. Now that she was inside, the magic was back, pulsing redpurple like a poisoned star.

  “Tav!” Cam scrambled forward. Eli clamped a hand on his shoulder.

  “Wait, and stay quiet,” she instructed. “We don’t know who’s here and we don’t want to piss them off.”

  “We lost Tav.”

  “We’ll find them. Just keep walking forward. That’s what they would do. They’re smart — they’ll be okay.”

  Cam nodded. Eli tried to unlock her tense muscles but couldn’t quite manage it. She was worried. No children’s wisdom said anything about a massive junkyard in the middle of nowhere. The entire wastelands were a junkyard, a dumping ground for the obsolete.

  They walked in silence, their path skirting the largest mountains of diamonds and dental floss. Strange tools and gears stuck up like weapons from piles of stained and threadbare cloth. Eli found herself lost in her own thoughts, wondering if the witches knew about this place and how it came to be. Wondering if she could make a life here, with the glowing rock that had chosen not to harm her.

  Would it really be so bad to be forgotten?

  The noise of metal on rock woke her from her reverie, and she turned to see Cam wrestling with a steel contraption, trying to pry it out of a pile of loose stones. “What are you doing?” She couldn’t keep the annoyance out of her voice. She didn’t have time to babysit a tourist.

  “You have your knives,” said Cam. “It’s not like my Swiss Army knife will do any good out here.”

  “I took that out of your bag before we left,” Eli informed him. “You try to bring a weapon across worlds and the world might see you as a threat. I didn’t want to risk it. And that thing you’re holding is not going to be any help against enchantment either.”

  “You don’t know that,” said Cam resolutely. “You don’t know what it is.” With a final yank, he pulled the thing out and fell backward onto the ground.

  “Graceful,” observed Eli.

  “I’m a modern-day King Arthur,” said Cam. “Look at this!”

  It was a long rod that on first glance appeared to be steel but, on closer inspection, was made from an alloy that Eli wasn’t familiar with. It was studded with curved and spiky arms and the occasional toothy gear.

  “It looks like something a steampunk cosplayer would make,” she said flatly.

  “I think it’s an enchanted weapon,” said Cam.

  “More likely a decoration of some kind. It looks like a piece of railing from a dead witch’s house.”

  “It looks sharp,” said Cam, tapping a finger against one of the spikes. He winced and pulled his finger away as a single drop of blood was quickly absorbed into the metal. For a moment, the bloodied spot appeared rusted, before fading back to greyblack. “What was that?” Cam leaned closer to inspect the patch that had taken his blood.

  “I have no idea,” said Eli. “But it has your blood now, so you’d better bring it with us. You don’t want someone else to take it.”

  “Works for me.” Using the rod as a walking stick, he hauled himself up to his feet. “Let us go, fair Guinevere.”

  “Good to see you’ve got your sense of humour back,” said Eli grimly, looking up. “We’ll need it.” The sky had turned blood red.

  Eli smelled death.

  Twenty-Three

  Eli had been small enough to fit in corners, small enough to be overlooked. In the forest she could pass unseen beneath the great boughs.

  The wind had risen, hot and hungry for flesh.

  “Trust the trees,” Kite had whispered, taking Eli’s hand in her own. The roar of the air. The sky red as an open wound. The silver and gold leaves under their feet tainted with the stain of death. A hiss, a sharp intake of breath — Kite was in pain. Kite, the Heir, the witch, unbreakable. Burning.

  “This wind has teeth.” Kite laughed and tossed her hair.

  They had hidden between the roots of a great oak tree, pressing their bodies into the earth. Kite had sung epics and sea shanties as the bloodthirsty winds whipped around their hiding spot, daring the world to take them.

  They had been spared, that time.

  Only a single red freckle on Kite’s back — the only scar she carried — reminded them of how close they had come to disappearing.

  How close Eli had come to losing her.

  “We have to hide,” said Eli frantically. A crimson shadow fell across her body. “Now!”

  Cam didn’t ask any questions, just looked at her with eyes that were as red as the sky. He clutched the rod and nodded.

  They couldn’t stray from the path or they would be lost forever, and Tav would die here. Tav. The idea of Tav taken by the red wind was too terrible to bear.

  Eli ran, stumbling over old tires and skulls. Already she could feel the seductive pull of the wind, whispering in her ear, trailing red dust along her arms in elaborate patterns. Eli brushed the dust off and kept moving. A hiss of pain. Kite was burning. Eli blinked. That wa
s then, she told herself. And you both survived.

  Eli spotted a rusted truck and cried out in triumph. She ran faster, pushing her body to its limits. She threw open the front door and climbed in. The dust swirled angrily outside the truck, licking at the window. “You will find easier prey than me,” she muttered, remembering Circinae’s teaching. Magic always took the easiest death.

  Cam. Cam was the easiest death. Taking a deep breath, Eli opened the door again and threw herself back into the storm. Every part of her body screamed in protest, as self-preservation urged her to hide, to wait, to sacrifice the human.

  She ignored it. The wind was howling now, a deafening sound but strangely compelling — like a siren’s song. Through the dust, she could see Cam. He was still standing, still moving. He still had a chance.

  Eli couldn’t go back. But she could wait for him. She waved her arms wildly, hoping he could see her. The light glinted off her blades and she hoped that would make her a beacon in the storm. She switched to her magic eyes, and through the red, she could see another glow, some other kind of magic swirling around Cam, protecting him. Guiding him.

  When he was within arm’s reach, Eli grabbed him and pulled him close. Blood was dripping from his nose.

  Kite licked the blood from her face. “The wind will have to fight me for you,” she whispered and stroked Eli’s hair.

  She half led, half dragged him into the truck. He climbed wearily inside, pulling the rod with him. Eli followed.

  It was only once they were safely inside that Eli noticed there was no dust on the metal rod. It gleamed silver, as if newly polished. Cam was shivering uncontrollably, and Eli knew if she didn’t calm him down, he could go into shock and die.

  She gripped his arm and squeezed. “Tell me how you found the Hedge-Witch. Tell me why you’re here. Tell me everything.”

  His eyes found hers. They were red as blood and he smelled of desperation.

  “Cam. Tell me. Tell me why you’re here.” She kept her voice calm and even, her eyes trained on his. Her thumb pressed against his wrist and she felt the moment the panic in his body started to subside.

  Twenty-Four

  Cam’s father was born in Vietnam and his mother was born in Canada. When the white people in his suburb asked, “Where are you from?” Cam liked to say, “A galaxy far, far away.” As a kid he had dreamed about other worlds, read every science fiction book in the school library, and worshipped NASA astronauts. But his research didn’t bring him to the Coven. A boy did.

  A witch boy.

  A boy with blueblack hair and silver eyes. He had come to the world to steal a name, but instead he stole Cam. Cam willingly became one of the human spies the Coven used to keep tabs on renegade witches and assassins. He did it for love.

  “He didn’t glamour or enchant me; I wanted to help,” he told Eli as they waited out the storm. He could tell she was suspicious. “How often do you get offered a chance to be a part of something so fantastical?”

  “What was he like?”

  Cam ran a hand through his hair. “He was … strange. Quiet. Kept to himself. But magnetic somehow. You knew he had secrets, and if he told one to you, it meant you were special. He made me feel special. He wrote me —”

  Cam cut himself off and shook his head.

  “Cam?”

  “It just sounds so stupid now that he’s gone. He wrote me love notes with fireflies at dusk. With falling leaves. He used to get excited about the most ridiculous things — like listening to my heartbeat or cutting my hair. Everything that was human about me was so new to him.” He tried an easy smile. It almost worked. “Once he asked if he could shave my moustache off. I said no. I said, ‘Love, I will do anything for you — but two things about me will never change: my sexy moustache and my even sexier jazz collection.’ He got on board with it. Eventually.”

  “What happened?” asked Eli.

  “I don’t know.” Cam chewed his lip. “He either joined the Coven or died. I don’t know which. One day he left. I never heard from him again.” The words shimmered with pain.

  Eli imagined Cam watching the fireflies at night, waiting for a sign. Staring up at falling leaves and snowflakes trying to read his name.

  Her heart ached for him.

  A few months after the boy had left him, the Coven had tasked Cam with investigating a runaway witch who had come to the world for a name and stayed. It was rumoured that she was stealing all kinds of earthly things and sharing none of that knowledge and power with the Coven.

  Cam discovered that they were right, but he was won over by the calm healing magic of The Sun, the Hedge-Witch’s passionate speeches about peace and harmony, and the other humans who truly believed. Cam wanted to be a part of that. Heartbroken and lonely, Cam found family in the group that claimed freedom from the Coven’s tyranny.

  “They never came after you?”

  Cam shrugged. “The Coven doesn’t really care about the humans it uses. We die easily. They forget us. It’s not like anyone would believe me if I told them about ghosts and witches — and even if they did, so what? The Coven isn’t scared of the human world.”

  “And your parents?”

  He shrugged. “They think I’m an Uber driver. Not too happy about it, to be honest. They really thought I was going to be an astronaut.” He tapped on the window and laughed, a little wildly. “I never made it to the moon, but this is pretty cool, too, right? A galaxy far, far away …”

  “We’re in the same galaxy,” said Eli.

  Cam laughed. “I’ll loan you my DVDs sometime.”

  Cam fell silent then, turning away from Eli. He traced a few lines in the dirt on the window. Outside, the storm was quieting, and in the new silence, his words seemed to hang in the air. “You think Tav found a place to hide?”

  “I’m sure they did,” Eli lied.

  “How did you fail?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either.” Eli chewed on the inside of her cheek. She wanted to tell someone, and maybe Cam would understand. He had worked for the witches. His heart had been broken by one, just like hers.

  “The last ghost I killed …” Eli tapped on the broken steering wheel. “It was supposed to be a ghost. It’s always a ghost. But it was a human.” When she spoke the next words, the frost blade rang out, and she knew it was the truth. “The Coven sent me to kill a human.”

  Once she started confessing, she couldn’t stop. “I splattered his brains on the bathroom floor and left him lying there in his own blood. He was scared, in the end. I can still see the look in his eye when I took the knife —”

  “Stop.” Cam’s voice had a strangled quality to it. “Please, just stop.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  There was a long silence.

  “And you think the next mark is also a human?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Why are they killing humans?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to tell Tav?” he asked softly.

  She should have said yes. Tav deserved to know they were travelling with a murderer. But what if they looked at her differently? Eli looked away, staring at her smudged and blurry reflection in the window. Is that what the man with the Clark Kent glasses saw in the end? The lost eyes of a lonely girl desperate to please? Desperate enough to kill without question?

  Anger filled her veins and blackened her vision. Cam didn’t say anything after that. He left her to her dark thoughts.

  The storm raged for hours as they huddled fearfully in a metal shell. Cam’s eyes would never get rid of their redness, and the dust patterns on Eli’s body would become permanent scars.

  But they would live.

  Twenty-Five

  A few hours after the storm abated, they reached the centre of the junkyard. Eli could tell this was the core from the strands of magic that ran together here and touched, like they were standing at the centre of a spiderweb.

  It was also the biggest mountain of needles
s things she had seen.

  “Let me guess,” Cam sighed. “We have to climb this monster.”

  “Or tunnel through,” said Eli. “I don’t think this thing is coming down anytime soon. It’s the junction of lost magic.”

  “I’ll take my chances going up. Not much for small dark spaces,” said Cam.

  “Sure, fine.” Eli had seen his nightmares.

  They climbed for a while, stumbling over forgotten and unwanted objects, sweat beading on their necks. There was only one sun now. The star was indigo and its rays danced over their faces. It created the impression that they were moving underwater.

  “Look!” Cam pointed with his stick. There was a figure in the distance. With a burst of energy, they ran the last few hundred metres, scrambling, using their hands to pull themselves up.

  “Tav!” Eli threw her arms around them and then hurriedly jumped back. Cam hugged them, too.

  “I’ve been here all day!” Tav sat down on an armoire. “What took you so long?”

  “We came seconds after you,” protested Cam. “We didn’t see footprints or anything.”

  “A time pocket!” Eli’s voice rose and broke against her own excitement. “I’ve heard of these! We used to go looking for them when we were kids.”

  “In between gutting animals and training to kill people?” Cam poked at the ground with his walking stick.

  “Ghosts, not people.” Eli glared at him, fear alighting in her stomach. “And yeah, something like that.” She and Kite had spent days chasing down the mysterious time gaps that dotted the City of Eyes. “We must have entered a different time than Tav; that explains why we didn’t see each other sooner. But everything syncs up here in the centre.”

  “I’m going to pretend I understood that,” said Cam.

  “Did you ever find any time pockets when you were little?” asked Tav.

  “Just one,” said Eli. “It threw us into yesterday and we had to go through the same routine pretending everyone was the same.”

  “Sounds boring,” said Cam.

  “No, it was fun. I spent most of the day finishing people’s sentences and playing pranks. Looking back, it was really lucky we weren’t thrown into the future. That would have been a lot harder to explain. The time gaps between Earth and here aren’t usually that dramatic, but time gaps in the witch’s world? Those could take you to any time.”