by Dawn Metcalf
Joy hooked her thumb under the gold chain and lifted the Third Eye pendant.
Recoiling, Aniseed screamed.
She lunged for Joy through the sudden rain of bullets. There was a mad scramble as Joy and Monica backpedaled to the farthest side of the circle as the rest of them closed in. Ink leaped forward, straight razor flashing, as Inq sheared her blurred hand, gouging a great buzzing gash in the segulah’s side. Sludge gushed from the wound, but it only made the dryad seethe, eyes rolling, as she continued to charge.
Sol Leander stood transfixed, caught between his leader and his human charge. Avery spun, a whirl of feather and blades, slicing through her upper arm, bisecting Briarhook’s mark. The wild rose brand wept amber blood. The front line, Antony and Raina, concentrated their fire on Aniseed’s face, a rictus of bloodlust and fury. Her ear snapped off. A bullet pierced her cheek. Shrieking, her hand shot forward, spearing Raina through her torso and slamming her bodily into Antony and Tuan. Joy screamed, grabbing Monica, and wrenched them back from the line of shimmering fire. The ward pulsed and repulsed, a warning shiver not to cross. Joy and her best friend huddled together, shielding their eyes from the horror of death.
Kurt unsheathed his blades, glaring up at the dryad who was tearing weapons from arms and arms from sockets amidst screams. Avery danced aside, snapping his left wing like a matador’s cape. Ink dived into her blind side, shearing a sharp line, cracking ribs. Her madness turned to laughter and then tears as Aniseed twisted, corkscrew-tight within the ward.
Joy scootched back. The ouroboros was shrinking, swallowing its tail, as per the plan.
“Out!” shouted Inq, tapping her sternum.
An answering pulse flashed on the lehman’s chests. Antony grabbed fistfuls of Raina’s and Tuan’s shirts, yanking them through the ward. It let them pass. Ilhami gave a rebel yell, covering their escape, scooping up Tuan’s weapon and shooting both barrels at everything above head height. Nikolai bodily tackled him as Aniseed hissed, spinning, splashing the contents of whatever vial she’d had hidden under her stole. Her fringe of fox fur smoked black and the earth around them sizzled. Both Nik and Ilhami writhed like wounded animals, their skin bubbling and bursting, their limbs contorting into broken shapes.
“Out!” Inq shouted.
Another flash. Both men struggled to obey their mistress, rolling and crawling desperately, clawing their fingers in the dirt. Nikolai screamed as he dragged his belly through the burning ward, agonizingly slow. Ilhami, half-blinded, face melted, flailed in the grass. Joy moved to help him. His hand shot out, warning her off.
“No! Joy! Get back!”
Monica yanked her behind Sol Leander.
Flopping, heaving, Ilhami panted, straining forward, face pressed into the green, as Aniseed’s giant fist hit his skull with a sickening crack.
“NO!” Joy screamed. Monica’s fingernails dug into her arms, holding her back.
“Joy! Don’t!”
Inq howled. A burst of atomized sap exploded from Aniseed’s chest. Kurt landed a solid kick followed by a punch of steel. Avery vanished in a sweep of feathers, appearing moments later beneath the witch’s chin, slicing sideways as Inq buried her arm into Aniseed’s gut. The dryad screamed, choking, and clawed at her middle, catching nothing but air. Another ripple, Inq appeared and Ilhami was thrown outside the ward.
“I’m done playing,” Inq said. “Just watch me—”
“Down!”
Graus Claude jumped, extending his impossibly long legs, crossing two of his weapons before him, simultaneously throwing the halberd and squeezing the rifle’s trigger, catching the recoil against his chest. Aniseed staggered. Her wrist snapped. Sharpened claws flew like arrows, catching the armored amphibian in the stomach, chest, arm and throat. He hit the ground behind them like a wet sack.
“No!” Joy dropped to her knees and crawled beside him. “No no no no—!” Monica crouched next to her, the letter opener quivering in her fist. Inq spun around quickly, her buzzing hands swift as scythes. A gash exploded across Aniseed’s face, dragging from clavicle to breast.
“Graus Claude!” Joy said desperately, pressing her hands against one of the bubbling wounds. “Bailiwick!” The four-inch wooden talons were buried deep. Blood gushed absolutely everywhere and his flesh was spongy and slack. Monica pressed hard around the stake in the Bailiwick’s belly. He sputtered, a strangled sound. Joy’s hands slipped off the bloody armor as she fumbled with the ties. If she removed Aniseed’s thorns, there was no doubt he’d die before she cut the wounds closed, but if she didn’t do something, he’d certainly die in her hands.
Unlike Aniseed, who refused to ever die.
This can’t be happening! I can stop it! I can make it untrue!
Graus Claude wheezed thinly, his sharp eyes beginning to fade.
“They will come,” he panted through bloody lips. “They will come.”
Joy’s hands flailed, her brain screaming, Graus Claude! No! Stef!
There was another bloodcurdling scream as Aniseed lunged, but Sol Leander stepped between them with a burst of negative light, erecting a ward like the corona of an eclipse in reverse.
“Stay down!” he commanded.
Joy screamed, “Can’t you stop her?”
Sol Leander pushed back grimly on the force of his spell. “I can hold her at bay for a short while,” he said, glancing down at the skewered body. “But I do not have the Bailiwick’s power.”
Joy squinted, shielding her eyes. The Bailiwick was powerful, both as Graus Claude and as the door between worlds. Joy needed that power to save him, and her brother and everyone else, right now! Her Sight caught the faintest blue light—a tiny signatura of a flowering lotus in the heart of the ox bone blade.
Joy grabbed Monica’s hand and yanked her closer. “We have to get him up!” she shouted. “We have to get him standing!”
“Are you crazy?” Monica shouted, pressing bloody hands down. “That’ll kill him!”
“No!” Joy said. “It’s the only way to save him!”
Another assault battered the black hole shield. There was the shing and clatter and roar of battle just beyond Sol Leander’s spell.
“Use the knife! This knife! Command him! Here!” Joy shook her friend’s hand. “Order him to stand up! You can make him! Do it! Try!”
“What do you mean I can make him?” Monica asked.
Joy hissed a low whisper; afraid of being overheard, afraid it was already too late. “You can control him. With this. It’s got his blood on it! It’s magic! Do it! Tell him! Command it! Now!”
“That’s what you did with this thing? You made him into a puppet? And you knew?” Joy’s best friend looked very much like she wanted to slap her and storm off. “Do you have any idea how WRONG that is?”
“Yes, I do,” Joy said. “Just use it!”
“No!” Monica shouted. “No, I won’t, Joy. I can’t!” She stared down at the dying frog. “It’s not right!”
This wasn’t the time for an ethical debate—Graus Claude was dying by degrees.
“Monica—!”
Her friend shook her head. “Is that what’s been going on—the house? The pearls? The surveillance? For this?”
“YES!”
“NO!” Monica shouted. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me! You made him a slave and gave me the whip?” Joy was terrified, speechless. Monica, for her part, seethed. “I can’t do that! I can’t make him do something against his will!”
Joy shook her sticky fists, helpless, furious. Monica didn’t understand; she couldn’t—wouldn’t—use magic, but Joy could and would and did.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Give it to me.”
Monica glared daggers at her. “No.”
“Bequeath me the knife!” Joy said. “I can use it to save him! To save us!”
“No,” Monica said flatly. “You can’t hold power like that over someone—that’s slavery! That’s...” She struggled for the right word. “Inhuman!”
Joy choked back tears, recoiling. “But he’ll die!”
Monica was beyond angry, her blotchy face matching Joy’s flush. “It’s not your life! It’s not your choice! And it’s not mine, either—” She grabbed one of the Bailiwick’s loose hands, claws and all, and slapped the ox bone blade into his palm. “It’s his!”
Joy knelt closer, willing for there to be a miracle, wishing that he would heal himself, hoping that he could hold on. Her mentor’s breath rattled in his chest. He was deflating like a balloon. She shook her head, dripping tears. “Graus Claude,” she whispered into his eardrum. “I can save you, but you have to stand up! Please!”
But he barely moved. Even if she could take the ox bone blade and use it like the scalpel, she needed time. He needed time. And immortality did not mean No Return.
“Bailiwick!” Joy screamed.
Three arms pushed forward. His eyes were rolling as he coughed up blood. He wheezed through his teeth and dragged his feet through the dirt, squatting forward on his belly like a toad. His head nodded, quivering, eyes glazed, mouth dripping. It was enough.
“I demand entrance to the Bailiwick of the Twixt!”
At first Joy thought she was too late, but then his glassy eyes filmed over, his breathing slowed, his broken jaw clicked as his mouth grew wider, taller, stronger, stiffening as his body lurched into position—his head yawned open, mouth upraised, hands curled into familiar perches on his hips and knees. His tongue adhered to the top of his palette, exposing the stairwell down into darkness beyond.
Graus Claude, the Bailiwick, was safe as stone—an immortal thing, outside of time.
Joy collapsed in relief, her body’s tension cut in two.
“What the hell happened?!” Monica shouted.
“He’s the entrance to the Bailiwick,” Joy said. “The doorway to Faeland—I opened it. He’s safe, now.” She glanced down his throat, wondering if they could hear her. “But we can’t let Aniseed get through before the Imminent Return!”
Monica wiped her hands in the grass as the battle raged behind them in a shower of sparks and blood. “How long is that going to take?”
“I don’t know,” Joy said. “It’s supposed to be imminent.”
Monica stared at Joy. “Are you kidding me?” She grabbed Graus Claude’s discarded rifle and dragged it over by the butt. She propped the recoil pad against the statue’s knee and dug the stand into the grassy ground. Joy edged away from the weapon. She was far more scared of guns than magic.
“Do you know how to use that?” Sol Leander asked.
“No,” Monica said, trembling, adjusting the grip with shaking fingers. “But don’t tell them that!”
Sol Leander shifted his shield with a ghost of a smile. It looked like pride.
“You should go,” Joy said. “Get outside the ward. The Cabana Boys will protect you. You can ask for asylum from the Court of Earth.”
“Air!” Sol Leander snapped. “She is my charge!”
“She’s my friend!”
“She’s standing right here!” Monica pulled on the cartridge, leaning back until she found the safety, which surprised her by flipping with a sharp clack. She smiled uneasily, lips quivering. “And I’m staying,” she said. “Because if I’m staying, he’s staying and you need him to win this thing—you need both of us—so that’s that.” She shrugged. “Just call me Stupid.”
“Okay,” Joy said. “Okay. Thank you.”
“If she dies, I will kill you,” Sol Leander swore impotently at Joy’s back.
She barely glanced away from the battle. She muttered thickly, “Get in line.”
“You wish to save her?” Sol Leander said, grunting with the effort of holding off the death match. “Do you wish to save him? Yourself? Anyone? Then you need more—” He broke off, sternly apologetic, almost fatherly. “I am sorry, but you must be more than what you are.”
Joy understood. If she could not have a human heart, she was willing to sacrifice it to save two worlds. She would sacrifice the chance to be human to save her friends, to save Stef, to save Ink. She knew what had to happen next.
Monica said, “I’ve got your back.”
“You always do.” Joy smiled. “Just don’t shoot me in the head.”
Monica nodded but didn’t laugh. She knelt, hands shaking, next to the Bailiwick, prepared to defend him for her friend. There was an explosion of stars as Sol Leander’s ward collapsed. The first thing she saw was Ink, standing before Aniseed, his face splotched with black blood. His head turned away from the dryad’s, shrieking and writhing, catching Joy’s eye as the eclipse light winked out. He saw what would happen. He couldn’t stop it. He knew.
She fell into his eyes. They said No and I love you and Good-bye.
Joy stepped in front of the Bailiwick and placed her hands on the ground—the earth she knew better than any other rose to meet her, thick, rich, well-seeded and firm. She spread her fingers through the grass, letting her eyes unfocus, tuning out the tumult into a quiet blur. Shapes softened, becoming colors; swirls of black, blue and silver against green and orange and brown. Sounds dimmed to a hum and the world unfolded under her feet.
Salt. Minerals. Water. Earth. Blood. She felt herself touching everything—everything alive—because all life came from the oceans, the earth, the blood, the salt. It tasted of metal and glaciers, rock and sand, sea water, copper, iron, and old, old ice. It burned up her arms, lit up her hamstrings, fired her legs, her hips, filling her up from the core of her world, this world, and the one she’d inherited from her ancestors long ago in the Wild. She’d been fighting it, afraid of losing herself, but the truth was that she’d found herself, her True Name, her power. Her. Even if the Earth scared her, changed her, there were some things worth protecting. She let go, becoming what she was born to be—what she had always been—
No mistakes.
The ground broke upward and outward, fountaining dirt and mud and icy ore, enfolding her, embracing her, hardening, collapsing, trying to complete the transformation, the merging of two worlds into one body, the instrument of an entire people buried, hunted and forgotten, waiting to arise. Joy embraced Earth and called it home.
I AM THIS WORLD. I AM ITS MOTHER. I AM ITS ANCIENT DAUGHTER.
WE ARE LIFE, INVINCIBLE.
I AM WOKEN. I AM FREE.
Her body convulsed, half-buried, burning; her skin baked, merging, melting into rock, into steam. Plates of earth kept hardening into crystals that shattered, flaking away in shards, pieces rolling down the slopes of her massive legs and buried hips that disappeared into the ground. Incomplete, at the edge of things, it was still enough.
Aniseed’s roots tore through the surface, salting the ground with blood and gore. Joy’s buried fist drove up, bursting in a tidal wave of earth, great slabs of stone shooting up like a wall—a prison, a cage—pinning Aniseed, trapping her long enough for Ink to sever her leg with his blade. She screeched. The others swarmed upon her, those few
that were left. Sol Leander grabbed his aide by the feathered scruff and tossed him inelegantly through the shrinking ward.
Aniseed stared at the half-formed creature that was part-Elemental, the thing of Folk nightmares, the scourge of the Twixt. The gathered Folk howled in terror at the sight of their ancient enemy. Ink’s ward kept them locked out, at bay. Joy was distantly both grateful and grim. She had just been outed as the most dangerous creature in the world.
Aniseed laughed within her stony prison, even as she clutched her severed leg. “Ha ha ha! Look, stripling—” she gasped. “Do you see? See all those you meant to save? They will kill you! They hate you! They want to tear you apart and toss the pieces like flower petals at the feet of their King and Queen.” A growing light was crawling up the Bailiwick’s throat. “No matter what happens to me, I will know that I had my revenge!”
“As have I,” Joy managed through her clattering teeth, the ground slowly closing over her head. The clay helm kept breaking off and falling apart in crumbles, exposing hot chunks of her human face. Joy blinked away the chalky dust while staring at her foe.
“Oh no,” Aniseed chuckled. “I know the face of my death and it is not yours—my death was fated, foretold in the Dark Days—but I did not submit! I chose to make my own destiny! I am undying! I am triumphant!” She pointed at the crumpled mass to her left. “I have cheated death!”
Kurt was splayed on the ground, an inelegant smear. Everyone in the Twixt knew what Fate had held in store for him—it was well known the Bailiwick’s manservant had been spared the Black Plague and offered to Graus Claude in exchange for his life, having lived for one purpose: to bring about Aniseed’s death. It was both his Fate and his fondest wish.