The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  “You can’t trust the swallows,” she insisted.

  “She came for me?” Eli interrupted. “She wasn’t sent?”

  Kite cocked her head like a curious bird. Eli wondered if she was the swallow. “I don’t know why she came.”

  When Circinae burned Kite’s essence, Kite knew that she could die in a way that witches never died. She could taste mortality the way a star remembers the taste of its birth, the lingering violence of creation.

  She grabbed Circinae.

  They both screamed.

  (Eli, trapped, had heard nothing.)

  Kite had never fought anyone before. She had never expected to be fighting a witch. She was the Heir, a sacred part of the Coven’s future, untouchable. But Circinae had touched her.

  Circinae was more experienced with the messiness of violence. Kite was thrown forcibly out of the Vortex and pushed back into her skin. This didn’t hurt so much as was incredibly unpleasant.

  “Like climbing into a nest that is not empty,” she said, hair dancing around her face.

  She had been unconscious for years (or so it had felt like). She woke on the island. Crustaceans had nibbled away the dead skin and magic while she slept and combed her hair with their tiny legs.

  She also woke to a summons.

  She fled.

  Not to the Children’s Lair but to a place she had been only once, playing hide and seek as a newborn in the Labyrinth. She hid in the walls. She made herself a prisoner, surrendering to the earth in exchange for its protection.

  Kite had fallen in and out of consciousness, haunted by visions of succulents and scorching winds and a girl who was like a blade. And then she woke to find that the girl was alive and here — and in more danger than she could possibly know.

  Kite leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Eli’s. “And here you are,” she breathed.

  “So are you.”

  A prick on Eli’s chest. A drop of blood welled up and stained her shirt.

  Eli looked down. A slender knife, no bigger than a sliver, had slipped between her ribs.

  “I’m sorry.” A black pearl slipped down Kite’s face. “You shouldn’t have freed me.”

  Thirty-Two

  Eli was in shock.

  She watched as a few beads of redblack bled through the fabric of her shirt. She felt a small sting, like the prick of a needle. She slowly went down on one knee and prepared for her unmaking.

  For pain.

  Forgetting.

  Obliteration.

  She dropped her hands to her hips and stroked her blades one last time. You’ve been so good, she told them in her mind. She waited.

  Nothing happened.

  She was still alive.

  Tav’s hands fumbling at her shirt — she pushed them away. “No,” she said clearly. She could hear the quickening pulse beside her — someone else’s — and tried to block it out. Focus on yourself, she thought.

  “You missed,” she said dully, eyes blinking rapidly. Relief settled in like a fog, blurring her vision and thoughts. “I’m still whole.” Hand to her chest, wrist, throat, checking for proof of her pulse. Inhale. Exhale. She was still breathing.

  “Are you okay? Eli, say something! You can’t keep dying on me!”

  “At least this time it wouldn’t be your fault,” said Eli, Tav’s face coming back into focus. Their eyes were shiny.

  Eli stood, Cam beside her.

  “I’m good,” Eli breathed, and then louder, “Let me see her.” Tav and Cam moved away and let her pass to where Kite had collapsed onto the ground, sobbing. Black pearls and seashells rained over her tattered skirts.

  She leaned over, the blade of volcanic glass in her hand. The assassin. Living death. Carefully, deliberately, she reached out and pricked Kite’s essence.

  Kite shrieked and curled up, her knees pulled into her chest. Eli stepped back and saw that the blade was glowing whiteblue, a drop of witch blood on its tip.

  “Trust you to fuck up an assassination,” said Eli, placing her hand on her chest. “My heart is here.”

  “I didn’t want to do it,” said Kite. “My love —”

  “Don’t call me that.” Eli pressed a hand against her shirt. It came away sticky and sugary — sap was leaking from the puncture, mixing with blood that spilled from a torn vein. Something inhuman in her body had been pierced by the dagger. She took a breath and winced.

  Kite pushed herself up onto her knees, closer to Eli.

  “Get away from me,” Eli spat.

  “It was a compulsion,” said Kite, trembling. She had stopped crying. “You don’t understand. You cannot disobey the Coven. I thought if I hid here, you would be safe.”

  “You can fight a compulsion,” said Eli angrily. “I would have, for you.”

  Kite combed her hair with long, spidery fingers and studied Eli like she was a puzzle. “The paper birds never brought me an answer,” she said. “I asked them. But even the library is forgetting. I could not fight it. It was not my will, Eli. It was the Witch Lord’s.”

  “You’re the Heir!” snapped Eli. “There’s no difference.”

  Kite kept combing, kept staring. “You are right and wrong,” she said, and her voice was a song. The melody soothed Eli’s tension, relaxed the muscles in her neck and back — and that only made her angrier.

  “What do we do with her?” asked Tav, watching Eli warily.

  “We bring her with us,” said Cam. “Unless you know how to put someone back in a wall?”

  “Not so much.” Tav looked around the cavern. “Should we tie her up?”

  “No,” said Eli hoarsely. “She’ll behave. Won’t you?” Kite bowed her head, pearls slipping down her face again. “I swear it.”

  “Just so you know,” Tav said to Kite, “I don’t trust you.”

  Eli bit her lip so hard it bled. “I don’t trust her, either.”

  Once they had been children together. Once the Labyrinth had kept them safe, like fledglings in a nest. Once they had played together, turning shadows into gifts.

  “It’s a wolf!”

  “My bunny will eat it!”

  “Do a spider, do a spider!”

  The young girl looked up at the stars and saw the glittering lights of the City of Ghosts. She knew it was haunted. She knew it was slippery and not to be trusted, dangerous, not like the safety of moss and stone and Kite’s head on her stomach. But sometimes she couldn’t help loving the human world, and she brought back trinkets for Kite from her other life: a plastic comb studded with fake gems, a baseball, the human children’s trick of making animals out of hands and light and shadow.

  Kite loved this last one especially.

  “It’s like magic.” She giggled, as their shadow spiders danced across the stone. “I wish it was real.” Kite closed her eyes and then breathed.

  And everything stuttered.

  Eli could see Kite’s breath, like cold mist on a winter’s morning.

  Hanging.

  Only it was never cold here.

  And then one of the shadow spiders kicked up its legs and skittered away.

  “How did you do that?”

  “I didn’t do anything.” Kite turned her head to look at Eli. “You’re imagining things.”

  They continued walking in the subterranean passages, following the wind, seeking a way out of the under-labyrinth. Glowing mushrooms replaced the torches and cast everything in a faint silverwhite light. They were no closer to the Coven, and now they had a rogue Heir to deal with. Eli sighed heavily. Everything had gotten so complicated. She was used to the pleasure of the hunt, the ease of the kill, the smooth motion as the blade dragged the ghost out of its empty host body and destroyed it. She shook her head, waiting for something that made sense to settle. To give her purpose.

  “It’s very romantic, really. You fell in love with a wall. It’s like a fairytale.” Tav was back to teasing Cam. They walked in front, followed by Kite. Eli, obsidian and pearl blades in hand, walked at the back. Wat
ching.

  “The wall fell in love with me,” he corrected.

  “Just don’t break this one’s heart, dude. I think it will do worse than key my bike.”

  “He seemed like a nice guy!”

  “He wore camo pants!”

  Eli listened to their familiar banter and realized with a pang that she had grown used to it, that she was starting to like background chatter, the clumsy sounds of footsteps and the forced laughter they conjured to keep away fear. And she understood, for a moment, just how brave these humans really were.

  “Anything else you want to tell us about the hipster mermaid?” Cam turned his head and called to Eli, as if Kite wasn’t right there.

  “No.”

  “We’re childhood friends,” Kite offered.

  “What was Eli like as a child?” he asked.

  Kite’s hair rippled like a river down her back as she thought. “She was an assassin,” she said finally. “She was Eli.”

  “We grew up together,” said Eli. “And now she’s trying to kill me.”

  “I didn’t want to kill you,” said Kite.

  They walked for a few minutes in a thick, scratchy silence.

  “Well,” said Tav finally, “I can see where your trust issues come from.”

  “It was a compulsion.” Kite sighed, the sound of a zephyr caressing the shore.

  Eli opened her mouth to argue but stopped. The path before them was blocked by a giant creature with eight spindly legs and eight glittering eyes.

  The shadow spider had grown.

  “Baby!” cried Kite.

  “Holy fuck,” said Cam.

  The shadow stretched down either side of the passageway. The rocks vibrated in terror, shaking and chattering. Cam’s body took up the cry, rocks clicking and clattering together. Cam closed his eyes and stepped forward.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Eli glared at him.

  “It can’t hurt me.” He swallowed. “I think.”

  A spiky leg reached for them and fell across Cam’s body. The shadow touched, tickled, shifted across his stony chest. His breathing quickened.

  Kite was frowning. “Baby?” She stepped back, unsure now. The creature’s eyes moved to her, the light burning like little flames. “Baby’s just playing,” Kite whispered to them, eyes fixed on the shadow spider. “She doesn’t understand.”

  Eli didn’t either. She tried to feel for the threads, to pull them into another part of the world, to open a door to the Coven, but her hands were shaking and she couldn’t concentrate. The creature lunged for Kite, who watched it sadly and made no effort to move. Cam threw himself in front of her and the shadow skipped harmlessly across rock.

  Then it turned around and jumped again.

  This time Eli was ready. She drew the obsidian blade and stabbed at the cluster of eyes.

  “No!” screamed Kite.

  The spider fell back, one eye closing, darkness replacing the light.

  “Please stop!”

  Eli stepped forward, blade raised.

  “Please. She’s not a monster.”

  “She looks like one,” said Cam.

  “So do you,” murmured Eli. Kite was sobbing uncontrollably now, spilling shells and sea glass over her skirts as the spider hesitated, then turned back, preparing for another assault.

  Eli grabbed Tav’s elbow. “Can you open a door?”

  “What?”

  “A door, can you open a door? I can feel them if they already exist, but I can’t make them. You made one before — you can make one again. I know you can! You saw the magic, and you used it or changed it or something. You can take us somewhere else. Please.”

  “Can’t you just kill it?”

  The spider was preparing to lunge.

  “Please, Tav. I don’t want to.”

  “It’s going to kill us!”

  “Not everything that’s dangerous deserves to die!” Eli didn’t know where the words came from, but she remembered being there when the creature was born, and she couldn’t block out Kite’s wails, and she was coming to understand her own monstrosity and the different kinds of monstrosity that made humans and witches kill.

  “It’s not just a thing,” she said urgently.

  The spider was coming for them again, and a sticky web was gathering behind its body. Eli kept her eyes fixed on Tav. “Please.”

  The spider leaped from the wall and materialized into a thing of smoke and darkness, beautiful and terrifying, like the children or the junkyard or Eli’s own strange and wonderful body.

  Eli raised her arm, the shadow’s blood already wet on her blade. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want this.

  The creature and the knife.

  Kite’s cries piercing the silence.

  The spider and the walls vanished. Eli’s blade fell through empty space.

  Tav had done it. They had opened a door.

  Thirty-Three

  Eli threw her arms around Tav, tears coming to her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Uh — you’re welcome.” Tav sounded stunned and awkwardly patted Eli on the back. Flushing, Eli drew back.

  Kite flowed forward, her hair a halo of bluegreen light. She looked like an angel. She plucked out a long strand of damp, silken hair and offered it to Tav. “Thank you,” she said gravely.

  “It’s an offering,” explained Eli. “Take it.”

  “Uh — okay.” Tav wound it around their wrist.

  Eli looked around. Purple smoke twined its way through the spindly branches of dead trees. The land was dark and wet, swallowing the sounds of their footsteps. “Where did you bring us?”

  Tav shrugged. “I don’t know. It was like last time — I just grabbed for the threads and twisted, somehow. I think I pulled the memory from you, like I did with the Children’s Lair. It’s a place you have a strong emotional connection with. Right?”

  Eli frowned. The tree branches were familiar, but she wasn’t sure. “I’ve been here before. But it’s different.”

  Kite pressed a cold fingertip against Eli’s arm and began tracing the scars from the red wind. “They used your memory as the door, Eli. They brought us to the island.”

  “Our island?”

  Kite nodded.

  A river wound its way through the reeds that stood upright like an army of bones. The water was black but clear, and the bottom was silty and red. They stood in the centre of the river, on an islet arched like a wave.

  Suddenly, Eli understood. She felt it. “I recognize it. But it’s changed.”

  “You’ve never brought anyone here but me,” said Kite, her voice a lullaby. “It doesn’t quite trust them.”

  The balloon creature spilling bluegreen blood. All those nights, looking up at the stars, Kite’s hair spread across Eli’s chest. The echoes of her name still hung piteously in the white branches, begging her to turn around. But she had walked away, and nothing could change that.

  “Maybe it doesn’t trust you anymore,” said Eli, bending down to touch the water, letting the red sand dance through her fingers.

  “Maybe you don’t know what to trust.”

  Eli turned to her companions. “Everyone okay?”

  Tav was bleeding heavily from a cut on their arm. Cam bandaged it as Eli watched.

  For the first time, she understood how easily they could die.

  When he finished, Cam sat down, scraping rock on rock, and sighed. “So we’re free from the under-labyrinth, but we’re no closer to the Coven.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Tav, lowering their head. “I opened the wrong door. I don’t know how we’ll get to the Coven now.”

  “Maybe it’s time to turn back,” said Eli, turning to stare into the dark waters. Something in her had broken when Kite plunged the needle into her chest. Something that had started to crack when she kissed Tav, a fracture that had widened with each step, with every smile. The witch’s world was full of malice and hate. It could force a loved one’s hand against you. It could take everyone and ever
ything you loved away from you.

  She had so much more to lose than her life.

  She was tired of having her heart broken.

  “What?” Cam’s head snapped up. “After all of this?”

  Tav ran a hand through their tangled purple hair. “You’re joking.”

  Kite watched Eli with luminescent eyes but said nothing.

  “Look, if we go into the Coven, at least one of us isn’t going to make it out alive. I’ve known that from the beginning.” And now she understood how painful it would be to lose them. How much it hurt to care about someone. She was better off on her own. She always had been. It was better this way.

  “You’re not the self-sacrificing type.” Tav leaned back and folded their arms.

  Eli met their gaze. “No, I’m not.”

  “You never thought we could do it.”

  It wasn’t a question. Eli let the truth hang around their shoulders like fog for a few moments. She stood. “We tried. We failed. Maybe it’s time you gave up your childhood fantasies of playing at being a knight and go back to your normal lives.”

  “Sure you’re talking about us?” asked Tav quietly.

  “What’s normal?” Cam’s foot scratched the dirt. “You want us to act like ghosts and witches aren’t real? To go home and pretend this never happened?”

  “You belong somewhere, and you have people who care about you. Maybe you shouldn’t be gambling that.” Eli felt a surge of anger tremor through her body.

  Tav’s eyes burned with a fierce light. “I’m not going back without it. I promised the Hedge-Witch.”

  “You can’t do this without me.”

  “Maybe I can.”

  A veil of leaves fell from the skeleton trees, spilling over Eli’s body as she stared down Tav.

  Dark eyes speckled with gold stared into yellow irises with black slits. Neither quite human. Eli broke eye contact first. She turned and walked away to the other side of the small island, staring off into the forest, looking for signs of movement, tasting the air for traces of magic. Keeping watch. Keeping them safe.

  “She’s afraid for you,” said Kite dreamily. “She doesn’t want you to die.”