by Dahlia Adler
“What did they do to you?”
“They tried to drown me and failed. I was found by a nobleman who took me to his prince as a gift. A fool for his court. A misshapen girl who wouldn’t hear his secrets. A body for his courtiers, when I was old enough. It was…” She glanced at the hills around us, as if the world itself would tell her what age we lived in. “A long time ago. When courts ruled the land. Do they still?”
I didn’t know. “I only know of money and the rules of my masters and the road.”
“Then there is so much world you haven’t discovered yet, for ill and for good.” She shook her head. “No matter. I tried to drown myself and failed too. It was to be my last jest. Then one of them found me, ill-wanted as I was. They brought me between worlds, where I found others like us.” Her fingers curled around her cane. “Others like us, who live without fear. Can you imagine?”
“Why did you ever leave?” All I thought then was if I found such a place, I would stay there for the rest of my days.
She took a step toward me again, but she felt more distant than she had previously. More closed off.
“Because someone found me and saved me. I owe it to you to do the same thing. The world is too cruel to leave it be. Speaking of which”—she nodded at the den behind us, where the boisterousness had died down hours ago—“what do you wish to do?”
Because vengeance was addictive, but she didn’t say that yet. And I didn’t care. I really didn’t. “Before the night’s over, I want to make them sing.”
“How?”
I pulled the rope taut. The den itself was all that remained of an old barn. A single-story building, with its few windows shuttered to keep any light from filtering out. A low thatched roof. One set of doors.
“Do you know how to make fire in your world between worlds?”
I crawled over to the doors, because my legs were still painful and protesting. Treacherously slowly, I began to thread the rope through the door handles with the same knots my master had taught me when he first ordered me to secure his wagons. I remembered every single one of them, because he took the rope and hit me with it until the knots were seared into my flesh.
“I do have fire,” Jester said. “If you are certain that is the way to do this. Not for them, but for you. There are other ways to take revenge. Destroy their wares, their reputation. Take their money and run—I’ll help you. Cruelty is not for everyone.”
I still smelled of alcohol from the last time I touched their coin. I kept threading the rope until it was bound so tight, no flames could undo the knots. They kept me in a cellar like this, once. Bound and locked in. Quarantined. It was in the midst of a cholera outbreak, and I was ill. And so they did not want anything to do with me. They did not tend to me or comfort me. They didn’t clean me when I soiled myself or care for me when I ailed. They left it in the hands of fate to decide whether I lived or died. But, as my master was fond of reminding me, they didn’t abandon me either. They provided me with water and shelter. They believed they were merciful.
I would not be merciful now.
“They’ll find another one. They’ll do the same thing all over again.” In truth, that was only an excuse.
Jester smacked her lips. She stepped through the tears in the night and returned with a torch. She held it out to me. “Revenge then. Make them pay.”
Without a second thought, I held the flame to the thatched roof, which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flame. Jester held my hand as I walked around it, lighting the thatch on all sides. Soon, it blazed fiercely.
I smiled. “Sing for me.”
And all we had to do was wait, until we heard them wake up, until the roar of the fire overtook their shouts. Until I stumbled back from the inferno and sat down on the cold, hard ground, my arms around my knees.
Jester sat down next to me, our knees touching, her back toward the flames. “Does that feel better?”
The fire burned to a bright yellow, and it lit up the entire night sky. I didn’t feel lighter but I did feel freer. “Yes.”
“I know.”
Not entirely sure what to do, I leaned against her and marveled at touch without anger or hatred, while we watched the fire spread and smolder. It kept burning until dawn first peeked at the horizon and turned the sky to a pale blue. From the tears Jester had created sounded cheerful birdsong. “What did you do?”
She rested her shoulder against my shoulder. “I took revenge too.”
“Tell me about it until the sun rises.”
“We lured the prince into the woods. My fae and I. We lured him into the woods in the middle of the night, bound him and undressed him, like he had done to— We bled him, just enough for the scent of blood to mark him. It is said there were wild pigs and wolves in that forest. I wouldn’t know. I never went hunting.” She trembled. “I didn’t watch, in case you’re wondering. I just left him. I didn’t want anything more to do with him.”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. Can you blame me?”
“Can you blame me?”
6.
1896
“No.” Harper shakes her head. “I don’t want revenge.” She stares at the grass where the boys still lie unconscious. They look innocent, the three of them. They are as bright as the spring flowers around them.
They would burn so easily.
Next to me, Jester sighs in relief. She would help, if Harper wanted to, but she has nightmares she can’t shake. She wants desperately to be the better person now, and our roles have reversed. I have long since given up on that. This pain is not for me. I carry too much pain with me already.
“I just want to be away from here,” Harper says. And that I understand too. “You’re right, there’s nothing left for me here. Not anymore. Not since Father…” She scrambles to her feet and brushes the dirt from her rags. She winces and spits on the ground again. “I’ll do anything you want me to do. I’ll work for my keep. I’m done with their kind of charity—I want to create a place to belong.”
“You don’t have to do—”
“Gather your possessions,” I interrupt Jester. “Gather what you want to keep. Trinkets. Jewelry. Anything you have stashed away or hidden. And then meet us back here.” Harper blinks, then nods. “I can do that. I won’t be long. I don’t have—I just have the necklace my father gave me. I’m afraid to travel with it, but I’d rather not leave it behind.”
“Good.”
Harper isn’t one of us, which is to say, not like Jester and me. She’ll settle in well at the unseelie court without needing to go back. She doesn’t need to pay her price in blood, she just needs to belong. Most who come to the fae are like that. It’s on us to keep them hidden. It’s on us to keep them safe.
When she’s out of sight, I turn to Jester. “Let’s clear the roads before we go. Get this scum to a better place.”
She tilts her head. “What do you mean by that?”
“I won’t kill them, if that’s what you mean. Not without Harper’s permission. I just want to scare them a little.”
“Details, please. Use your words.”
“The shed. We can tie them up and hide them there. Let them sweat a bit before they make their way back.”
Before Jester can even open her mouth, I shake my head. “Not literal sweat. Worry. Apprehension. A reminder that they shouldn’t do this again.”
That last comment is the easiest way to Jester’s heart. I know it. She knows that I know it.
“We’ll do it, but it means we’ll have to drag them.”
“Can’t you…” I wiggle my fingers and she gives me a look of utter disgust.
“Glamors. Travel. Some vengeance, but that’s it.”
“Then we’ll drag them.”
Getting the three bodies to the shed across the road would be a relatively easy task for most people, especially knowing that the boys will be asleep for a few hours longer, but it’s harder for the two of us. Still, we manage to do so. It’s a feat of will and stubbornne
ss. We drag them in, prop them up, and I use my ever-trusted rope to tie them together. Tightly. Uncomfortably so.
“They’ll regret this when they’re awake.”
From near the door, I consider the three of them one last time. They look even more alike when they’re all unconscious. Bright young monsters. It would be so easy. So easy to close the door behind me and accidentally start a spark.
Jester places a hand on my arm. “Not today, love.”
“Not today,” I reply through gritted teeth.
Today I leave the shed door unlocked.
7.
1896
Jester opened the door for me, a lifetime ago. When the sun rose over the blackened mess of the barn, she tore the air and helped me step through. She held the passage between worlds open like a curtain.
I do the same for Harper. She stares at me, at Jester, at the world beyond with wide eyes. The sun is bright on the other side too. The flowers are red as blood and black as charcoal. The grass seems to be made from shards of crystal and shards of ice.
“When you step through,” Jester told me, “you no longer belong to this world. You can attempt to return, if you’re foolish enough.” If vengeance drives you. “But for most, this is a one-way ticket.”
“I’ll disappear.” It’s not quite a question, not quite a statement.
“You won’t be seen again by anyone who knows you.”
Harper stares for a moment in the direction of the shed, and the town that exists somewhere along the same road. There is a loneliness in her eyes that hurts more than any vengeful death. “I have no one who will keep an eye out for me, anyway.”
“Once you’re part of us, you’ll always have someone who will keep an eye out for you,” I promise fiercely.
Harper nods. She takes a deep breath and, without further hesitation, she steps through the tear. Inside, the shadows cling to her. Her night-blue eyes seem brighter, her ragged clothes take on a glamor. She bites her lip. “So what now?”
I link my fingers around Jester’s, and we both step through at the same time. Jester says the same thing she told me the very first time, and every time we’ve passed through the veil since.
“Now we take you home.”
The Oval Filter
Lamar Giles
inspired by “The Oval Portrait”
Tariq could’ve lived without the ice baths.
During his time rehabbing his ACL—strained, not torn, thank God; his life would’ve been over if his injury were that severe—there’d been outright pain during a few torturous PT sessions. Having grown accustomed to throwing himself full speed at other large, wickedly strong humans as part of Radcliffe Prep’s (nationally ranked, thank you very much) football team’s defensive line, Tariq had learned to accept pain. Discomfort, though … he could be a baby.
On the field, when helmets crunched like half a dozen fender benders on every play, most pain was sudden, bright, and minor. A memory before you really felt it. Even when he’d heard the pop in his knee during training camp, and his leg quit on him, the fear was worse than the pain. Fear that he’d be gone all of senior year. Fear that he’d fall off college scout radars and be gone forever.
That loose rolling, tugging ache where his thigh met his calf was secondary to a potential life of obscurity, working in one of the city’s popular and hopeless industries. Meat packing, or banging skulls at the local prison. He had to get out. Especially after all that happened. The entire town was pain for him now.
So a strain was good news. The stretching and weights, part of the job. Now that he was mobile without crutches, doing light workouts and building toward his comeback in two weeks, the coach and team trainers insisted on his least favorite part of bodily maintenance.
“It’s been a while, ’Riq,” Morris, the team manager, said, tapping the temperature gauge beside the aluminum tub with his loose-fitting State Championship ring (awarded for his dutiful service to the team, even though he never once suited up or ran a play). He dumped another scoop of ice into the crystalline water. “Coach says start you around sixty-four degrees. See how you do.”
“You already know how I’m gonna do. Freeze my nuts off.”
“Yes. That is correct. But they will thaw.”
That got a laugh from some guys in earshot, though not from Tariq.
Morris, an inch or two shy of tall, and many pounds shy of an admirable physique, was a senior, too, and team manager their entire high school career. Tariq never saw the appeal of the gig. Seemed like a lot of grunt work, including his personal deal breaker: washing fifty-plus funky jock straps as often as they needed washing.
Once, coming home on the team bus, McClane, their quarterback, had asked Morris why he did it—no scholarships or pro dreams involved. Everyone in the surrounding seats, Tariq included, got quiet … inquiring minds.
Not used to the spotlight, Morris blushed and stuttered his way through it. “I—I love football. And I love you guys. We’re a team. Where you go, I go.”
The game was a blowout win; everyone was in a good mood, so no one gave him shit for such an affectionate answer. Instead, McClane started a slow clap, and others joined in, giving similar professions of love for their team, their brothers.
Tariq was not feeling the love today as he stepped onto the platform that put him level with the aluminum tub’s rim and dipped a toe into water so cold, it made his entire foot feel coated in silver.
Morris said, “Doing it slow like that is only going to make it worse.”
“Back off. It’s been a while.”
“Come on, ’Riq. Once I get you settled in I got other stuff to do. It’s only ten minutes. Play Fruit Ninja or something.”
At that moment, Coach Nielsen poked his head into the training room. “’Riq the Freak, how’s that treatment coming?”
“Fine, Coach. Fine.”
“Better be. We need you back on that line pronto.”
“Yes, sir.”
Coach disappeared, on to other business, and Morris gave Tariq a “Well.…?” kind of look. “Take a deep breath. It’ll be fine. Ten minutes and you’re done.”
Fine, goddammit. Deep breath. One, two …
Tariq dropped into the tub, bent his knees, and submerged everything below his pecs, a trillion pinpricks assaulting every nerve in his body. His heart paused and his lungs seized for just one frightening moment. He must’ve been away from it longer than he thought; he didn’t remember it ever feeling like that.
He thumped his chest, jump-starting his cardiovascular and respiratory systems. With chattering teeth, he said, “Give me my phone!”
Morris passed Tariq his cell. He didn’t play Fruit Ninja, but he did open Instagram to add a new selfie to his story. It was a high shot, him set among floating ice cubes, naked except for the black gym shorts he wore under the water. Caption: Guess Who’s Back: Frozen Nuts Edition.
He posted it, saw views and Likes pile up immediately.
Morris said, “I’m going to get the practice jerseys into the wash. There’s a timer set, make sure you’re not in here too long after it buzzes.”
“I ain’t forgot everything, man.”
“Good. Glad to have you back, ’Riq.”
Morris left Tariq in the burning phase of the ice bath. Those moments when it’s so cold, it feels like there’s blue fire beneath your skin. He distracted himself by scrolling through the various posts on IG. All the models he followed flaunting their sponsored short skirts, bikinis, and tummy-flattening teas. Only stopping to tap the heart icon beneath each photo out of habit. They did nothing for him lately.
Then he saw a pic that—
No. No fucking way.
It made zero sense. So he couldn’t bless it with a heart. Not anymore.
Courtney.
Her bright brown face and beaming smile inside a strange oval-shaped filter that seemed out of place in an app that favored square, portrait images. Though not as out of place as Courtney herself.
In a new post.
Despite being dead for more than a month.
The tub was suddenly too cold to bear.
* * *
“Hey,” Morris said, “what’s with all that splashing? Sounds like a tidal wave in here.”
Tariq was awkward exiting the tub, swishing chunky ice over the rim, creating a tendril of water that snaked toward the central floor drain.
“Yo, you see this?” He held his phone before him, clumsy on the tub’s platform.
“Be careful! You fall and reinjure yourself, that’s both our asses.”
“Just look!”
Morris took the phone, frowning. He had to understand how wrong it was seeing her face, there, like nothing had happened. At least that was what Tariq thought until Morris said, “She’s hot.”
“Wha—?” Tariq claimed his phone, flipped it, and saw the screen had refreshed. Now a bathing suit model from Brazil filled the screen. He scrolled, trying to find Courtney, but he followed too many people, and the refresh had filled his timeline with hundreds of new photos. So he tapped her name into the search field.
No users found.
Flustered, Tariq retyped it, double-checked for misspellings.
No users found.
Courtney’s mother had deleted all her social media after. Couldn’t handle the creeps or trolls. Maybe she couldn’t handle the outpouring of condolences, either. All those #RIPCourt, #HeavensGotANewAngel, and other bullshit. Tariq sure couldn’t.
Morris said, “Yo, you don’t look so good.”
“I—” What to say? What to do? “I gotta go.”
When Tariq sidestepped on course for his locker, Morris blocked his way, a dangerous move considering their eighty-pound weight difference. “Your treatment,” he said.
Tariq nudged him aside. “Tomorrow. I’ll do twenty minutes to make up for it.”
“That’s not the way it works.”
But Tariq couldn’t care less.
Nothing was as it should’ve been that evening.
* * *
Courtney Hedge hadn’t been girlfriend material, her words. She was a bad chick, also her words, for sure. Rihanna-esque and aware of the resemblance, she worked her looks and attitude. At parties, she was like the luscious blue light of a bug zapper. Everyone tried to get close even after seeing their friends go down sizzling. If you thought it was brutal in person, the online thirst was something to behold. Every Courtney post got Likes in the thousands. Every video, crazy views. She even had a couple of cats on those Freeform TV shows following her, and she blew those minor celebs up when they slid into her DMs, particularly if they only played a teen on TV but were really in their twenties, like most of them were.