by S. M. Beiko
“So that your ancestors may bear witness,” Heen explained, coming back down on all fours. “You come now to ask that this boy be returned to the fold you denied him.”
“With the shame of my crime weighing on my spirit, I ask this, Mother.” Arnas looked up at her now. Ready for her judgment, whatever it would be.
Heen weighed us all, Barton in particular. Then her voice echoed through the cavern of my heart. “A severing to save a life from a darkness long remembered. And your power stripped for it. How do you intend to restore the boy?”
The three peeled their hands back, then, six protective flowers over the bone.
“Another of my children parted from me.” Heen’s heavy words trickled down.
“My brother.” Arnas swallowed. “He died for my cowardice. I concede his power to the boy.”
Heen surveyed him over lidded, incalculable eyes. “You would give this to him, when the power could be yours again?”
“Yes.”
The Warren grew still as if holding its breath. Heen dipped her head down, touched her mouth to the bone. It shimmered until it melted away into the light of Barton’s hands and went inside of him.
Two blaring-white Rabbit spirits bounded forwards and made for Heen’s bowed head. Their teeth went to work felling the ancient roots that were her ears until a shower of tangled green and brown cascaded around Barton. Sil and Arnas stood up, and the spirits flashed away.
I suddenly felt as though the entire world was crushing me: I was the link keeping these two worlds open, and now my strength to keep it up was unravelling. I held my arms out and steadied my spirit. My hands quaked.
The Warren shook as the circle threatened to break. Barton still sat before Heen, gazing into her eyes until he cried out in agony. The roots she had offered writhed and wound around him, then all at once they lanced into his chest. His screams rocked us all, and the Warren began to dissolve.
“May the grace of the Rabbits shine in your spirit, little leveret. Put my gift to the use it was intended, for the Rabbit that bestows his power to you was a noble child of mine.” Her words were only whispers, so faint as to be only in our heads. The Veil faded, and all went black.
*
I was the first to wake up. Natti rushed to me, but I waved her off, pointing at the others. Sil had reverted to her tiny Fox form, and I crawled to her first, scooping her up in my aching arms. She was still warm.
“Barton? Barton?” Phae was taking tentative steps towards him, but there was still a bright light that kept the two apart.
“Phae, wait!” I choked, but she reached out and was thrown aside by the buffer. There was a loud ringing, and we all shielded our ears until the wall of light came down and all that was left was Barton.
Arnas came to then, hand to his skull. “What —”
Phae fell to her knees at Barton’s side, hands hovering just over him. He wasn’t injured, and he wasn’t dead. There was nothing she could do for him. But I knew she wanted to touch him.
He blinked awake, eyes bleary like he’d only overslept. “Hey, Phae. You all right?” He sat up suddenly, hands to her cheeks that seemed pale in the dark of the chamber. “Phae? What is it?”
We all stared. Barton’s legs hadn’t changed. But his arms and hands had.
Shimmering roots intertwined around his muscular forearms and throbbed there like new veins.
Phae looked numb. “It didn’t work.”
“I think it did,” Arnas murmured, legs crumpled under him. “Not even a Matriarch can . . .” He tightened his jaw. “But she gave you back the link.”
Barton looked up again to Phae, who broke out of being stunned and threw her arms around his neck. “You blessed idiot.”
Levering himself onto his hands, he pulled himself to Arnas, who jerked in surprise. The room went quiet.
Finally, Barton put a pulsing, rooty hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Mr. Harken. Really.”
Arnas still had that old look on his face, the spot-on impression of a scared Rabbit about to bolt. But the look faded. “I don’t think you can celebrate yet.”
Sil was still resting quietly in my arms, but her breathing had become regular. I got to my feet, careful not to jostle her. “Arnas is right.” I bit my tongue down on the for once that should’ve followed. “Barton’s got his power back, but he’ll need to learn how to use it. Plus, we need the power of the Five to use the targe, and we’re short an Owl, much as I’d like to keep it that way. So all that,” I sighed, “plus, we don’t have the targe to begin with.”
“But it’s only February,” Natti argued. “You know how long winter here lasts. There’s still time.”
Phae shook her head, palms cupping her elbows as she calculated. “It’ll be March next week. And you’ve seen what it’s like outside. Unseasonably warm. And they’re calling for an early melt, even before the first day of spring.”
“Someone’s in a hurry for breakfast.” Barton clicked his tongue. “So that gives us three weeks, more or less, until the official first day of spring . . . if the weather forecast is right. Not like we’ve ever been able to rely on it.”
Arnas brow furrowed. “This happened before. In 1997. The melt was sudden, and then it rained for days. You can’t think of Zabor as just some brute monster. She’s a force of nature. She has influence over the river and the weather. And no one was prepared for the river to breach the Red Line. I have a feeling it’s going to be worse, this time.”
The Great Flood of ’97 raged through not only Winnipeg, but the towns around it. Houses were decimated. People drowned. The destruction was felt across the country for years. I always walked under the Osborne Bridge and stared down those lines, trying to picture the river being as high as the highest mark, the Red Line. The Say-Your-Prayers-And-Hold-On line.
I stepped forward. Fearless leader time. “Three weeks. We’ve come this far in four. I’m not turning around now.” I came up to Arnas, then, my impulse to smash his face ebbing away, but ready to come back should the need call for it. “You tell me right now: Whose side are you on?”
He looked petrified of me but swallowed. “The side I should’ve been on.”
I refused to smile or feel relief. I nodded, then I turned to face my friends. “So what’s the next step?”
“The targe . . .” Sil whispered from beneath my arms. Sil’s golden eyes were still dark, but they took me in completely. “You will need to go . . . through the Bloodgate.”
I forgot for a second that she was my all-knowing grandmother, Paramount of all Foxes, because in that moment she was once again a riddle-spewing forest dog I had no patience for. “Uh, okay. And who do you know who can open one?”
“Me,” Arnas volunteered, hand raised halfway until it dropped back to his side. “I mean. I know how to do it. But now . . .” He looked down at his open hands. Without my father’s bone and the power sealed inside of it, he had nothing.
“But you can teach me!” Barton smacked the ground. “Just tell me how and where, and I’ll do it.”
Arnas looked skeptical. “It’ll take more than some beefy arms and a good attitude. It’s one of the most treacherous things a Rabbit can ever learn, let alone survive long enough to keep the door open.”
“Hey,” Barton protested, pointing at me, “if Roan can bring the entire Veil thingy through to this plane in her grandma’s basement, I think I can manage opening the gateway to hell.”
My mouth twitched, but I didn’t mention that I had more experience than him, or the toll it took every time I did something witchy.
“And that’s another thing . . .” Arnas turned to me. “You’re supposed to be dead. So any ease you felt running around the city without consequences are gone. They’ll want to make sure you went where you were supposed to. The reason Rathgar turned me was for insurance. If you somehow survived, I was supposed to . . .”
&
nbsp; After all the excitement, I’d totally forgotten that the house we’d all called home was now partly incinerated and totally unlivable. And that my aunt had nearly died in the middle of it all. There’d be paramedics inside now, taking care of Cecelia and Deedee and getting them to safety as soon as possible. But after that, there’d be insurance claim adjusters. Press. Rubberneckers. And worse, police swarming the place as word spread of the domestic earthquake on Wellington Crescent.
And police meant Owls. Owls meant everyone had to lie low.
Arnas suddenly looked more ill than I’d seen him before, though, as he looked down at my aunt. “Deidre.”
It was then her part in this horror show dawned on me. “You were going to use Deedee as a bargaining chip against me. So I’d turn myself in to the Owls in exchange for her life.”
Arnas didn’t nod, just stared at his hands.
I did the only thing I felt I could. I got over myself. For the moment.
“It’ll be all right,” I lied.
The Bloodgate
It was early morning, and I still hadn’t slept — I was too wired from the events of the last twenty-four hours. If I could be on the edge of death, entrenched in visions, stop a fire god, and bring two planes together, I figured I could survive a few hours more.
I sent Phae, Barton, and Natti home so they could get some rest. I told them I had some family business to take care of. It was the first time in my life I felt I had a family I was responsible for.
I stood in the doorway of Deedee’s hospital room, but I didn’t go any farther. Arnas sat beside her, not touching her. In these few moments before she woke, he was still innocent, didn’t have to ask forgiveness just yet. The heart rate monitor beeped its senseless staccato. Her injuries were only moderate, and she was stable.
I couldn’t go in.
I ducked away from Deedee’s room and paced down the hall, hiding my face in my hood. I zipped my jacket up higher.
For once I wished I was an Owl, wished I could hide myself from prying eyes by just imagining myself invisible. Sil was tucked against me, inside my jacket, growing warmer as I walked. I knew it meant Cecelia was close.
I was relying on Sil, tucked in my jacket, to locate her body; I didn’t dare ask a nurse or even look anyone in the eye. It’d been all over the news, apparently, that I’d caused a scene and then leapt to my death. And now my name was being mixed up with the murders of all those girls found on the riverbanks. Probably the doing of that super-psychopath Eli who’d thrown me overboard for the greater good. The story was picking up now with the juicy twist of my grandma’s ruined home, probably in connection with my crimes. My high school career was over for the foreseeable future. And I was so close, too . . .
“There,” Sil said. I backtracked to the room we’d just passed. And, sure enough, there she was.
By some stroke of insane luck (or excellent health insurance), Cecelia had the room to herself. I made sure no one was passing by, and closed the door.
Unzipping my coat, I was careful to keep a hand under Sil’s body so she didn’t tumble out. I held her under her front legs and lowered her on the end of the bed. She could only keep standing for a few seconds before her paws crumpled underneath her. Cecelia’s body didn’t move or even register the disturbance — but then again, it wouldn’t. Cecelia’s body was Sil’s. Sil wasn’t her guardian after all. They were one and the same.
Sil closed her eyes, but she seemed to be relaxed rather than in pain. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Finally, my legs buckled and I thunked into a plastic chair by the bed. “It’s . . . Well. No, it’s not okay. At all. But there’s not much I can do about it, is there?”
Sil — Cecelia? — sighed. “I couldn’t tell you. Not until you bested me. Those are the tenets I’m bound by. But I knew you’d come through eventually. You’re my granddaughter, after all.”
“Oh don’t start that,” I snapped. “I’m your granddaughter now, when you need me. But all this time I’ve just been an ungrateful pup.” I was exhausted and cranky, but my hackles were raised, and I was fully awake now. “You spent my entire life keeping me at more than arm’s length. Then you turn up again to make me watch you die? Are you going to explain any of that?”
She still hadn’t opened her eyes, but her lips were peeling back from her teeth. “I had hoped I could. In time. I didn’t plan —”
“Well who did?!” I got to my feet and came around to the back of the chair. I needed something between us. I tried to swallow my words, tried for reason. “Look. I know you saved my life. I know there’s a lot more to being a Denizen of Ancient, or whatever, than just getting fed a line, that I’ve got to earn it and do it myself. I get that. I’m grateful. I am full of grate. But you’re my family.” I choked on the word and cursed myself for tearing up. “You’re all I had. And you couldn’t be bothered to spend time with me because of duty, because of some dumbass rules? You pretend that you loved Ravenna so much, but you —”
“Ravenna was everything to me!” Sil barked, loud enough to make me nearly topple the visitor chair. At least being closer to her human body was reviving her, but maybe not to my benefit.
She came down from her anger quick, but there was still a bitter snarl on her lips. “I loved my daughter. I loved her enough to stay away.” Her eyes were open, but I could see it was a struggle to go on. “She wasn’t born with power like mine, but she could do wondrous things. And I liked having control over everything in my life, including her. She wanted a different path than the one I imagined. So she married a Rabbit, went against me to do it. And I hated her for it. I’d been cursed to be Paramount for years, and there was always some enemy I needed to fight, some plot I needed to uncover — never a chance to stop and live. So I threw myself into what needed to be done. And she could be free to live her life, even though I didn’t agree with her.”
I remembered the letters, then. So many unopened missives to me that ended abruptly when my parents died. Cecelia had admitted on those lines that she’d regretted not being there when I was born, that she couldn’t abide Ravenna’s marriage to my father. But most of all, I remember, she was relieved to find out —
“Wait. My father was a Rabbit. And my mother was a Fox. What does that mean for me?”
Sil looked at me sideways, seemingly irritated that I was making her spell it out. “Aaron raised you. But he was not your father. He couldn’t have been. If two separate Families come together and have children, they make humans. Not Denizens.” Her voice was sad. “And you are a Fox, through and through.”
I definitely didn’t need this right now. I shook my head hard. “It’s too much.” I stifled a half sob, gripping the plastic chair so hard I was afraid I’d melt it. “It’s too much for one person. I just can’t.” Not my real father. Another part of me I thought I was on the way to reclaiming fell away. I felt even further from knowing who I was or could be than ever before.
“I know it is.” Sil tried to crawl towards me, a gesture of comfort, but she hadn’t the strength to leave the bed. “I know. I tried to see you when I could, even though Ravenna and I always ended up arguing . . . and suddenly she was gone. And there was only you.” Her ears flattened back, teeth glistening again in a scowl. “And they marked you when you were three years old. It sent Ravenna over the edge, and I knew the tenets I’d come to rely on needed undoing. I had to stop it from happening.”
I jerked my head up. “What do you mean? I hadn’t seen you in fourteen years. You just —”
“Fell off the face of the Earth? Yes, that’s exactly where I ended up. I left this world so I could get this body. Because the Paramount is never allowed to intervene with the Moth Queen. But the Paramount’s right here” — she pointed her chin at her comatose, shrivelled body on the bed — “and a fox is free to go where she likes. Especially if she knows the way.”
I sat down again, too tired to
keep up the rage and disappointment. My own body was having a hard time keeping my blood pumping to my brain as I absorbed her words. “It took you fourteen years to trade up bodies?”
Sil didn’t look at me, just kept her eyes on her human form. “I had to go deep to a place few have been able to in the history of the Families. I did not know that much time had passed. All I knew was that I had to keep going. I couldn’t let you slip away from me, like Ravenna. I told her her quest was foolish, selfish. That it wasn’t our problem. That she was risking the lives of thousands for one. But I was the foolish one. I should have been at her side.”
Her eyes met mine, and the look inside them made my stomach twist hard. “But what I saw down there in the depths of the universe bodes ill for us all. Denizens. Humans. Everyone. Everything. That’s why we need to succeed. That’s why you must stay alive. Because you need to be the next Fox Paramount. And maybe the last.”
As yet another bombshell steamrolled me into silence, Sil’s head fell heavy between her paws, and she said no more.
*
Sil rested after that. But I felt, for once, like I’d heard enough. I drew my knees up to my mouth and just cried for a while. When I said it was too much, I’d meant it. I’d gone years without really knowing my parents, thinking about them mostly in wild hypotheticals beside what few memories I retained. Deedee filled the role of mentor and mother well enough. Arnas was distant, and now I knew why, but at least he’d been there. My grandmother was an enigma, and while I entertained fantasies of her taking me away on her grand adventures, those wild notions didn’t last into my teens.
I could’ve been okay. I could’ve moved on with my life despite it all. I mean, aside from the marked for death thing. I’d like to think that now I could’ve gotten myself out of it, beaten Death back and not asked any questions. Gotten on with things.
But now my story had split off into a high-fantasy redux with lots of horror and enough drama to topple me. There were things I didn’t have time to reconcile, or really the brain space to do so. More responsibility. More expectations. More big revelations I couldn’t do a damn thing about. More people relying on me not to fuck it up, because their deaths would be on my hands.