The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  The sounds of Circinae keening in pain accompanied Eli’s chant.

  It was an aria of regret.

  More cuts, more blood on the knives. Eli fell to her knees, weak from blood loss, and in her final act of consciousness, she threw her blades into the galaxy.

  Maybe they would find their way to the wastelands and be buried forever.

  Maybe they would fall to Earth and mark her human grave.

  Maybe they would hang forever in the space in between.

  “Eli!” Circinae grabbed her the moment she collapsed. The last thought Eli had before she lost consciousness was that she hoped her friends had escaped.

  When the wings of the Coven arrived, Eli was awake, sitting on a platform in the sky, staring blankly at a dying world. Her hands were empty.

  “You will come with us,” said a voice magnified by power and history. It echoed through the universe and rattled her rib cage.

  She looked up at the figure who stood before her, one hand staunching the flow of blood from her arm. Under Eli’s skin, a thin vein of quartz glittered in the starlight.

  Dark red armour like dried blood. The wings of an albatross. The smell of newly dug graves in soft wet soil. Reflected in the armour, Eli could see the eyes of all the unfortunate souls he had collected.

  Beside the creature, a woman with bird talons for hands was weeping soundlessly, the black drops leaving watercolour streaks in the air.

  A note of sacred power was regurgitated from his throat as he laid claim to the girl in the sky. “Eli.”

  Names have power.

  Names ensnare us in a web of futures and pasts, in secrets and promises, in debts we spend our entire lives trying to pay.

  Names can free us, or they can break us.

  She cocked her head to one side and frowned, the blood warm and sticky on her hand.

  “Who’s Eli?”

  Thirty-Six

  Underneath her, a blue-and-white planet slowly bled to death, while all around her stars and planets and comets danced and fought and fell in love. The girl with no name stood. She felt the threat from the great wings and reached for her hips, her hand falling over a belt with many straps. What did her hands grasp for? They felt empty. A surge of fear lit up her body like a light switch turning on.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “She’s damaged,” said the wings. “The Coven will not be pleased.”

  “I can remake her. I can —”

  The wings extended to their full breadth. The girl could taste the sweetness of overripe magic like honey and rotting fruit. The woman stopped speaking and fell to her knees.

  “Forgive us,” she sobbed.

  Even the girl knew that this creature could not bring forgiveness.

  He opened his mouth, and bees poured out.

  They buzzed furiously toward the girl. The girl kept her eyes open, even when they started stinging. It was only pain. The discarded bodies of the insects hung in the air like a prayer to death.

  The woman, crouched on the ground in a pool of her own muddy tears, suddenly rose up, her desperation like a beacon in the dark. The girl’s eyes shuttered and changed somehow, and she could see the redorange magic blazing under the skin of the witch and somehow understood that the skin-and-bone body was not her true form.

  “There is only one way that bird mothers teach their daughters to fly,” she said, “and it’s your time to learn, little one.” She walked into the cloud of pain and pushed the girl off the platform.

  Air under her feet. Nothing to hold on to for years and years. Just empty space.

  She was falling, or maybe flying.

  Different strands of magic were already winding themselves around the woman who claimed to be her mother, until she was completely wrapped in the grip of the Coven. The girl watched as the magic hardened into the shell of a beehive, and then the woman was gone. As the girl floated away, the hive became smaller and smaller, until it was the size of a bee, and then disappeared entirely.

  She was floating in space.

  She turned her head to watch the bloody planet far away. Could she make it that far? Why was it dying?

  Was she dying?

  A rush of wings. The taste of graveyard dirt in her mouth.

  The wings were coming for her.

  She had nowhere to run, and no wings of her own to carry her. Her fingers were still twitching for a familiar weight. She opened her mouth and teeth spilled out, long and curved and thirsting for magic. The cuts on her arms had hardened into lines of granite. It would take the wings a long time to tear her body apart. The thought gave her grim satisfaction.

  The stars started to sing.

  Softly, gently, a lullaby of heat and light and hurt and love. A song of loneliness that cut the girl to the core. She understood loneliness. The music swelled in her body, brushing her clavicle. It sounded like home.

  A blue girl appeared before her, and the song intensified.

  I won’t let them take you, the thought poured itself into the nameless one’s mind.

  Who are you? she thought back, but no one answered.

  And then there were wings that cut through the fabric of time and space like a scalpel cuts through flesh, and the feathers were cutting into the blue girl.

  The blue girl held up a single daisy as an offering. The petals wilted, one by one falling into the universe. They looked like snowflakes in the dark.

  One stroke, one feather, and the severed head of the flower tumbled from the stalk. The blue girl shoved it in her mouth and chewed.

  The wings didn’t hesitate. They cut through the body of the blue girl. Her song of pain burst into life, and all the stars and planets brightened at her cry, as if they, too, were feeling her pain. Her body fell away like discarded wrapping paper. Her face was the last part of her to collapse, and the mouth spat out a gummy, saliva-covered, half-chewed flower.

  A sun blazed into life. Aquamarine fire. The wings reared back, as if burned by its presence.

  Go through the door.

  The half-eaten flower punctured a hole in space, and through the gap, the girl could see the naked arms of trees.

  I have to kill it.

  The voice sounded remorseful, but the girl with no name felt no regret. Should she trust this strange creature, this little sun? The voice was familiar, and it soothed her soul. She felt its warmth and somehow that was enough. She reached for the doorway.

  As she passed through, she could feel the heat of a sun that would incinerate anything that came too close. She looked back over her shoulder. The bluegreen essence was already regrowing a body, and the last thing the nameless one saw before she passed through the doorway was the pretty face of a blue girl eating the creature’s head.

  Thirty-Seven

  Rock pressing against her spine. The necks of trees turning so the invisible eyes of the forest could watch her. The nameless one extended her lizard tongue to taste the air. It was heavy with salt. Her vision was blurry until she switched eyes, and then she could see strange auras around everything. It gave her a headache, so she switched back.

  Someone brought her a pair of badly scratched glasses, and her vision improved. “Are you hurt?” A man with a drooping moustache and worry in his eyes reached for her. She hissed and showed her teeth. He drew back, eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”

  She was on all fours, crawling like the animal she was. He smelled like fear, and she wondered if he was her intended prey. She felt an overwhelming urge to kill.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” His voice wavered. “Eli?”

  “Why is she taking so fucking long?”

  The girl’s attention was drawn to another person standing in shadow. They wore dark jeans and a leather jacket, and their hair was a shocking violet. Their arms were outstretched and their eyes were narrowed, facing the puncture in matter. Sweat dripped down their nose. The girl suddenly understood: they were keeping the doorway open.

  A moment later, the blue girl
fell through the tear and collapsed onto the island, her hair writhing like worms about to be stuck on a hook. “Close it,” she gasped and then coughed up a handful of albatross feathers.

  Purple Hair dropped their arms and the wound healed itself. They wiped the sweat from their face. “Jesus Christ, you took your damn time. What happened?”

  “He would have told the Coven,” said the blue girl, rising to her knees. She began to comb her hair with very long, very thin fingers.

  “So he’s dead?”

  A secret smile. A voice like a secret. “He was delicious.”

  The nameless one lunged. Blue’s essence flared up and knocked her down. “Bad girl,” she chided.

  “What’s wrong with her?” said the man. “She looks like she’s going to bite me.”

  “Oh, that,” replied Blue, her hair mesmerizing in undulating waves. “She’s lost her memory.”

  “What?!”

  “Oh, don’t worry, what’s lost can be found again.”

  The nameless one listened to this exchange with interest as she stared up at the constellations overhead. She had been up there just moments ago, and this blue creature had saved her. That was something. Not enough for trust, but a start. Her eyes fell on the purple-haired human.

  “You were using magic,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Humans can’t use magic.”

  “Well, I can.”

  Pause.

  “You seem useful.”

  “Thanks.”

  Something flickered under her rib cage. The girl with no name couldn’t stop staring. There was something about them.

  Who was this person to her? Did she want to find out? She stood up and stepped toward them. They flinched. She turned away, trying to ignore the warmth she felt from the proximity of their body. She looked out into the darkness, trying to read her past in the twisted branches and falling leaves. She found nothing.

  “How do we get her memory back?” Purple Hair asked. “Kite, you must know something.”

  Kite. The name fit. A blue girl who could fly. She made a note of that.

  Already, her mind was turning to revenge. Dreaming of feathers and blood and the drone of an army of sacrificial bees. “Who sent the wings?” she asked Kite. “That’s who I want to kill.”

  “She hasn’t changed that much, I see.” The man tugged on his moustache and tried a floppy version of a smile.

  “I don’t know who you are, but if you want to live, you’ll do what I tell you,” she said. “I was built to survive, but I don’t think you were.”

  “The Coven sent them,” said Kite.

  “Your people,” Purple said pointedly.

  Kite starting chewing on her hair. “Our people,” said Kite.

  “I’m missing something,” said the girl, panic rising in her lungs. “My blades. We find them, then we kill the Coven.”

  “We have time,” said Kite.

  “We don’t have time,” said Purple.

  She liked the feeling of dirt under her feet. She craved the taste of salt. She missed the weight of her blades around her hips. The bee stings were starting to itch.

  “Can I peel my skin off like you did?” she asked Kite.

  “Sorry, baby, no, you can’t.”

  Kite had fought the wings and won. Purple Hair had opened a door. “What’s he good for?” She nodded at the boy.

  “Rude,” he said.

  “Making playlists,” said Purple.

  “True,” he said. “But still rude.”

  “I don’t know, love, but you brought them here,” said Kite.

  She wanted to ask why he was covered in stones, but she didn’t. Asking too many questions was dangerous. Revealing yourself was dangerous. And she was going to use these creatures, somehow, to survive.

  She took a moment to inspect her body — the cracks on her surface had all been filled by stone, and while she was covered in blood, she was no longer bleeding.

  She started walking. She walked with such grace and care that she barely disturbed the water as she passed through it. Silent as a killer.

  “Where are you going?!” he called after her, pebbles grinding against one another.

  “The forest, of course.”

  The skeleton trees shook their limbs in warning as she passed.

  Thirty-Eight

  “Go into the forest,” Circinae had said.

  Her daughter, small for her age and disobedient for a made-thing, had watched her with unblinking black eyes.

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

  Circinae had turned back to her knitting. When she looked up again, the girl was gone. Circinae hadn’t heard a footstep. A slow smile unzipped itself from her mouth.

  This was the one. She could tell.

  Eli had gone barefoot into the forest, listening for the quietest tree. She was learning how to listen with her whole body. She still bore a scar on the sole of her left foot from stepping on a tree root that had turned out to be the shell of an invisible viper.

  She had walked for hours, moving carefully through the deadly forest. She had found the tallest tree, the angriest tree, and the loneliest tree (she sat beside it for a while, just to keep it company), but she still hadn’t managed to find the quietest tree. She was tired and hungry. “So many excuses,” she could hear Circinae saying, “like a human child.” That word, human, haunted her. Eli could not be human. She had to be better than human. She was witch-made.

  Frustrated, Eli pressed a tight fist against the closest trunk, as if knocking gently. The roots underneath her feet began shifting like a writhing pile of snakes, and a pit opened up. Eli fell into the earth.

  Dirt in her mouth. In her ears. In her eyes. Roots tangling themselves around her ankles.

  It was so dark.

  She couldn’t breathe. You don’t always need to breathe, she reminded herself. But the pain in her lungs still hurt, and there was no sun to touch her skin, nothing. The whisper of fear curled around her rib cage.

  Mother will come, she thought. She can always find you.

  (Once that had been a comfort.)

  The roots tightened around her limbs and curled around her throat. Silt in her nostrils; the smell of mouldy leaves and dead worms.

  Time passed.

  Circinae didn’t come.

  Deep underground, Eli learned to make friends with her fear. To live in its thorns and smoothness, in its sharp pulse. She took that fear and made it into a weapon.

  She gave it to the tree.

  She pushed that trembling fear out of her body and into the roots.

  The tree screamed.

  As if in pain, it pulled its roots out of the earth. Eli clung to one and was dragged above ground. Kneeling on the ground, she coughed and coughed. She rolled over onto her back and looked up. The sky had never been so beautiful.

  Then she dusted herself off and kept going.

  Much later, she returned home, a dirty scrap of a girl clutching a few precious leaves. Fear hung like a murky halo around her body — not quite an enemy, not quite a friend.

  Circinae said nothing about the fear or the filthy body. She put down her knitting, took the leaves from Eli, and breathed on them. They shimmered like glass. Then, with one talon, she scratched a few lines into the surface and chuckled to herself.

  “Now,” said Circinae, “you will learn to read.”

  She had forgotten who she was and who she loved, and hated, and why.

  She hadn’t forgotten the world.

  Some memories go too deep to be removed.

  “How do you know they’re not in the junkyard?” the man asked.

  Kite’s sing-song voice cut across the space between them. “She buried herself. This is where things go to hide. The junkyard collects the lost, abandoned, and unwanted. Things forgotten through neglect or harm. If her blades are unbroken, they will be in the forest.”

  “And if they’re broken?” Purple had caught up to
them.

  “Then they’re broken,” said Kite.

  “Then I’ll get revenge with my teeth,” said the girl. “And I will choose a new name.”

  The sky had turned an anemic red, and the forest glowed pink under the pale light. Trees like goddesses towered over the four small bodies, their branches strung with glistening vines and fragrant moss as if adorned by jewels. All of the trees were one tree; all of the roots that wound through the soil and wrapped around stones and witches and lost assassins were one root. The forest was a single living, breathing ancient, with thousands of eyes and trunks and branches.

  The magic was so thick that it crowded the girl’s lungs and made her head swim. With her magic eyes, the girl could see the kaleidoscopic dance of magic and tenderness that existed between every leaf and branch. Even Kite was affected by the forest’s fierce life force: her glow was stronger, blotting out her features, as if her essence was trying to escape the body she had chosen.

  Head spinning, the nameless girl looked for the magic that was hers, the thread of shadow and light that tethered her blades to her body, the pathway that she could follow to regain her memories. She let the colours dance around her field of vision until she found it: the thread was black and glittered like morning dew, like the dying planet. She felt a twinge of panic when she thought about the world she had witnessed slowly being executed. She told herself it didn’t matter. What mattered was survival, strength, and power. What mattered was getting her blades back, and then taking revenge.

  She followed the thread.

  Her companions spoke in hushed voices, and she learned their names. She wondered again who these people were to her. Why they seemed to care about her. Assassins worked best alone.

  Leaves fell in their wake, marking a path in gold and red. Archways of moss studded with offerings of rosehips and rusted bicycle wheels hung overhead. Kite paused every few steps to wind strands of hair around branches. Tav paused before an altar of tangled roots and pearlescent fungi. They took out one of their silver earrings and set it under a glowing mushroom.