by S. M. Beiko
So. 1997. The year of the second greatest flood this city had ever seen, and the autumn before that was marked by my parents’ deaths. The flood waters came, wrathful as I could imagine, destroying lives and showing no mercy. And it was because of my parents.
“Are you all right?” Sil asked. Her muzzle brushed my nose, and I opened my spirit eye. She was a Fox again. That was something I could handle.
“Define all right.” I managed to roll into an upright position, feeling my sinews realigning.
“You can talk, that’s better than nothing.” She shook herself, glossy coat ruffled. “You did well for your first time. It can be overwhelming, but you made it out alive.”
I blanched. “There was a chance I wouldn’t?”
Sil looked away. “Slim chance.”
To be expected, I guess, out of so much unexpected. Words like Ancient, Veil, and Zabor raced through my head until it hurt. I touched my amber spirit eye. “Okay. So I was marked to be fed to Zabor to stop the flood from happening this year. But she didn’t get me. You saw to that.”
Sil was alert again. “Because your mother had found a way to stop Zabor, and stop the Families from paying the price with their flesh and blood. Even though Ravenna did not succeed, I think you can carry out her plan.”
“Oh,” I sighed. I felt like roadkill, but I realized this would be the least amount of pain I’d probably have to deal with.
“What?” Sil tipped her head, sporting that foxy grin. “You thought you could escape Death without having to work for it?”
“Something like that.” I cracked my neck, feeling a bit better. “So, what’s the big plan, then?”
“Simple.” Sil picked up the garnet blade with her mouth and brought it to me. It was heavy, which seemed all-too symbolic. “You must unite the powers of the Five Families, defeat Zabor before her wrath consumes the entire city, and do it before the coming spring. And survive the endeavour.”
My eyes rolled deep into my skull. “Simple.”
She ignored me and went on, voice sharp with prophecy: “Beneath the river ice, Zabor is waiting. And when she realizes her toll has not been paid, she will send her hunters for you. From now on, you will be prepared. You must expect death every day and be ready for it.”
I snicked the blade to my fingertip, wincing as the blood oozed up. My mother’s blood, and my grandmother’s, too. The blood of the Fox. And it’d been there all along, beneath my skin.
My heart was thrumming with an exhilaration I couldn’t understand. Certain death, zero help from anyone, and a mission I’d have to hide from every person I knew. And what was in it for me?
The truth, an unbidden voice murmured. And that was enough. I felt warmer already.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m in.”
Part II
Spark
The Council of the Owls
Barton sits in his wheelchair at the edge of his bed, rubbing his legs. Or what’s left of them, since there are none from midthigh down. But he can feel all his legs, always could, even though he came into the world without them. He sometimes wakes in the middle of the night, flexing his phantom toes, stretching the invisible tendons in his ghostly knees. He swears that if he swung himself bodily from the bed, he could stand and walk himself to the bathroom, could rise from his chair and push his way through the plodding crowds in the high school’s congested hallways. It always seems possible, especially in the middle of the night, fresh from dreams where he ran and ran for miles through endless woods, never tiring, blood pumping from his feet to his brain and back.
Every morning he is flush with disappointment. He’ll never stride down to the breakfast table on the legs he coveted. He’ll never see the exhaustion vanish from his parents’ faces, replaced only with relief and delight that they no longer face the enormous handi-transit bills, could stop worrying that he gets picked on (though not that much anymore), or that his life will be fraught with challenges until it ends. Putting his parents out of their misery (and his) would’ve been the easy route. But Barton is no stranger to fighting, and he chooses to dream of his legs. In the dreams, he is free.
But the dreams have changed, lately. He runs and runs, and suddenly finds himself crouching on the ground. He passes a stream and catches his reflection — he’s a giant rabbit, erect ears twitching in the abrupt silence of forest noise, then birds screaming overhead as they race into hiding. He watches a herd of rabbits cascading out of the woods, fleeing something that reeks of blood and rage. It is a blade, large and horrible and alive. Barton sprints at light speed, but the blade somehow always finds him, and when it has taken all the other rabbits down it swings for him, and he feels his legs separating from his flanks as he dives out of the way, feels the blood as it drains and drowns him, even after he wakes up, sweating and pale.
“Do you need anything, honey?” his mother asks softly from the doorway.
Barton’s mother always does so much for him, and he knows he’ll never be able to really thank her. But her pity makes his chest burn. He’s devoted so much to honing his independence — he knows other paraplegics have done it — and he’s even started saving for those beautiful carbon-fibre running blades, the kind that help Olympians achieve gold. He knows they will never match his dream legs, but he could stand tall in them, maybe run marathons, and that’s all that matters. And dreaming of those things pushes him farther from the nightmare that his dreams have become.
“Barton?” she asks again. He swings back into focus, giving her an exhausted smile.
“I’m fine, Mom,” he says, doing a quarter turn in the chair, snapping his brakes in place, and pulling himself into his turned-down bed. His greatest mistake was telling her about the dreams. Now her concern seems sharper, more insistent. Maybe dangerous.
Even though he didn’t ask — and really doesn’t want her to — she helps tuck him in, as though he were six again. He doesn’t stop her. Her intentions are good, have always been. And he wants them to be close in this moment. Close enough that she will tell him what she’s hiding.
“How was that new English class you got bumped up into? More challenging, you think?”
Barton’s memory flicks back to the girl who had some kind of panic attack just before class started. He could’ve sworn she looked right at him, or directly inside him, before it happened. That maybe he was the trigger. He can’t say why he feels guilty about it, but he didn’t mind that the attention and whispers were directed at someone else for a change.
“It was pretty uneventful.” He shrugs, putting his glasses on the night table and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It’ll be good for applying to those sports scholarships and stuff, so it’s worth it for the extra homework.” It’s taken so much work to rise to captain of the school’s basketball team, even in a wheelchair, and Barton will do everything to make it all count.
His mother smiles, the pity taking second place to pride for a moment. She touches Barton’s face and goes to leave, but he stops her in the doorway.
“Mom — who came over today? I heard you and Dad talking about it.” Arguing, more like, but he doesn’t add that.
He can see his mother only in profile, but her face betrays her detachment for one second. The smile boomerangs back — much weaker this time, more plastered on. “No one important, love. Nothing to worry about.”
She’s out the door, her escape nearly complete, but his last words give her one more pause: “Was it Mr. Harken?”
Her hand is on the doorway, but her body is in the hall. She pulls the door closed behind her.
In the hallway, Rebecca Allen puts a hand over her mouth and closes her eyes. She has sacrificed too much to let it all slip now.
*
From my bed, I traced the faint, uneven lines of the ceiling’s paint job with my eyes. It was snowing again outside. It was weird to think I used to despise the snow and long for spring, but no
w it was a comfort, and it meant more precious time.
Sil was curled up on the floor beside my night table, face nestled into the bristles of her tail. I knew she was something from another world, but I kept forgetting she needed sleep and food, like a pet. She had put work into getting that body, she’d said, and she’d have to take care of it. Or, well, I would, anyway. It was up to me to take care of her and shield her from the world. Some first pet she turned out to be.
When we came up from the summoning chamber, I could hear Arnas pacing overhead, talking manically and hissing into his phone. We made it to my room undetected, and I went down to the kitchen to get Sil some smoked salmon and me a peanut butter sandwich. Since then I’d stayed holed up in my room, thinking about what I’d seen and the muddled things that Sil had told me. The more time passed, the more it seemed as though it had been a fever dream. Wishful thinking, though.
“You can’t be unchosen,” Sil had said to me as we ate, both of us trying to recover from the effects of pulling our spirits through the soup strainer that was the Veil.
I won’t lie — that was the chief thought banging around my brain and giving me an emotional concussion. There had to be a loophole, a way to get out of this, even though I’d said yes. (What an idiot.) Whether I found said loophole before it was too late was another problem.
Now, on my bed, staring at the ceiling and remembering how it felt to be plastered against it by Death’s personal army, I sat up, horribly aware that I was going to be a target until this all ended. You must expect death every day, and be ready for it. I pulled the purple garnet dagger out from under my pillow, laying it over my palms. Would this weird weapon be enough? Would I be able to draw it against whatever was coming for me and win? This wasn’t an RPG, but I felt as though I needed to level up before ever leaving my bedroom again.
My concentration was broken by the boop boop of Deedee locking her car. Sil cracked a gleaming eye, ear flicking around like a satellite dish as I stuffed the dagger back in its (painfully obvious) hiding spot. Usually, I’d sweep my hair over one shoulder and twist it if I was worried about owning up to something, but there was nothing there from my throat down, and ironically, it was the lack of hair that had me worried. Just another thing I couldn’t hide from her. Or anyone.
It wasn’t Deedee’s voice raised in greeting that made me slip out of my room, hiding around the corner from the stairs. I stopped at her sharp what are you doing? punctuated by the slamming of every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen.
“Arnas?” Deedee asked again, dropping her keys and purse on the kitchen island. My uncle rushed from the kitchen to the phone table at the bottom of the stairs, and I jerked back, heart in my throat. When I looked down, Sil was at my feet, her body rigid as the scene below unfolded.
Deedee stood agape behind her husband, putting a tentative hand on his back as he frantically dug through the table’s contents. He shrugged her off explosively.
“What’s the matter with you? Did something happen? Arnas, answer me!” Her normal steadiness had cracked, and that was scariest part.
“I’m . . . I’m looking for a p-picture,” he stammered, ripping the drawer out and dropping it and its contents onto the floor. Deedee dove to help him pack everything back in, and even from the shadows of the stairs I could see him shaking. She stopped him and took his hands and, though he seemed to briefly take solace in her grasp, he pulled them back.
“Sweetheart, whatever’s going on, you can tell me,” she assured.
He got up, off balance, digging the heel of his hand into his forehead.
“What kind of picture are you looking for? I can help you if you just calm down.”
“It’s, um —” He paused before tearing open more cupboards. “A picture of Roan, I just need a picture of her. A recent one.”
I felt icy fingertips skitter up my spine, and the mantle of fur at Sil’s shoulders rippled.
“Why, Arnas? Just tell me why and I’ll help you. Please —”
“I just need it,” he bellowed. I had never heard him raise his voice before, but it was shrill and frightened and more commanding than I’d have guessed it could be. Deedee’s eyes were wide.
Arnas softened in the wake of his outburst. I thought he would come to and give up the ghost, but no. “M-maybe it’d be in the boxes from the move, downstairs? I-I can check there . . .” He left the room, presumably to give the rest of the house that same post-burglary style.
Deedee put a hand to her mouth and sighed. Stiffening, she disappeared for a second, and I could hear her rifling through her purse in the kitchen. No, I hissed internally, don’t.
“Arnas,” she said, his name a stone in her mouth. The rummaging continued. “Arnas!” she barked again. This time, the noise stopped. Deedee was standing at the front door, waiting for him like a wary sentinel. He approached, and she held out her phone.
“Here’s one of her from Christmas, okay? Is that what you wanted?”
Arnas seemed locked on the picture, and he took the phone from Deedee as if hypnotized by its digital glow.
“Yes,” he mumbled. “Yes, that’s . . .”
But Deedee stood firm, arms folded and blocking his escape. “Arnas, please. Just tell me what this is about. Why in god’s name did you need to see this so badly? You ripped apart half the kitchen for a picture?” Even from where I stood, I could see her eyes glistening — they’d fought a lot over the last several months, but I’d never seen it this bad. “Arnas?”
“It’s . . .” Again he let the thought fall, but that was because he was already onto the next move, running from the foyer, grabbing his jacket, and snatching Deedee’s car keys in the pass. He held up the cell. “Can I borrow this?”
“What?” her eyes narrowed — so she hadn’t meant to let him keep it. “No! I get work emails on that. Arnas, come on —”
He swung out of her way like a scarecrow midtango, ripping the door open and sending a sharp gust into the house and up the stairs. “I’ll-I’ll bring it right back, I swear!”
“Arnas! Wait!” Deedee stood on the front step as the sound of her car roaring to life and half grunting, half fishtailing, echoed through the house. Deedee stood in the cold too long, then finally came back inside and began cleaning up damage her suddenly possessed husband had left behind.
Way too engrossed in the drama below, I hadn’t been keeping myself in check, and Deedee spotted me at the top of the stairs.
“Roan?”
I didn’t try to escape. She was obviously shaken. I came into the light, self-consciously smoothing what was left of my hair. I watched every tightened muscle in her face fall.
She let out an empty laugh that faded into a sigh. “Nice. Nice.”
I wanted to explain myself, but I tried to take a casual approach. “I thought that maybe if university didn’t pan out, I could go in as a hairstylist, whatcha think?” I fluffed out the jagged edges with an airy hand, pretending not to be shaken, too.
“Ohhh, Roan,” she groaned, reaching out to touch it. “Don’t tell me you did this yourself. I mean, it definitely looks like a hack job, but maybe that’s trendy now.”
I shrugged, my brain immediately rushing to the dagger under my pillow. Hack job indeed.
“You’re lucky that I’m way too exhausted to care right now. And also that I’m partial to short hair,” she tugged a bit on her bob, but there was still a tsk at the back of her throat.
“This is the part where the ‘mother figure’ tells you that she’s getting really concerned about you.”
“About me?” I said. “I think you’ve got bigger fish to fry. I mean, what was that all about?” I gestured towards the door, taking an exaggerated survey of the aftermath of Arnas’s mini-rampage.
Deedee seemed to deflate as she moved around the kitchen, momentarily distracted from my hair loss as she tidied and shoved everything back in pl
ace. “Your guess is as good as mine, kid.” She stopped, arms spread over the sink, and looked out the window. “Is there something going on between you and Arnas that I should know about?”
I tried to sidestep the implication. “Deedee, Arnas ignores me at the best of times. I don’t know what he’d want a picture of me for. Honestly, it’s like you said, your guess is as good as mine.”
“Honest, huh?” she repeated as she turned to face me, tongue making a pass over her teeth as it often did when confronting my bullshit. “Well, if you’re not going to bring it up, missy, then I guess it’s up to me.” She crossed her arms. We were caught in a deadlock, and for a second I really hoped she wasn’t referring to the spirit-and-fire hopping I’d been doing with my vulpine sidekick in the secret basement. I waited for the axe to fall for the second time today.
“Your principal called me at work —” the relief I felt was a rush “— and said you had some kind of ‘episode’ in class. And when your teacher tried to track you down, you’d left school property?”
I rubbed the back of my neck and broke eye contact. My gaze wandered up the stairs to Sil, still hidden by the corner wall. I was hoping for some support from her, but grimaced as she bounded away, a reproachful flash of her tail the last thing I saw. So much for my spirit guide.
“Listen,” I started, not sure where I’d take this, “I know this might be a bit of a non sequitur, or a cop-out — or, well, as the psychs would say, very telling indeed — but . . . I’ve been thinking a lot about my parents lately.” Deedee’s lips were pursed, but she was nodding; she was always willing to hear my side of things, even though this topic was the hardest for us both. “And, um, about their deaths.”
She stopped nodding and came away from the sink and took a seat at the island on one of the stools. She patted the one next to her, and I accepted the invitation.