Scion of the Fox

by S. M. Beiko

  The voices of my friends became one. “We stand before you with willing hearts and spirits. We command our power to be united.”

  Golden chains shot from the edges of the broken targe, and I pressed the last piece in the centre of Zabor’s head. The chains cut into her flesh as the ice hadn’t, binding the thrashing demon’s arms to her torso, and closing around her squealing throat. The world seemed to be shifting apart, and the water that Zabor had been trying to unleash swirled around her in a maelstrom that only grew as the storm above spun parallel.

  The great black wheel of the sky crackled, and above and below a terrifying column of red light opened. We were no longer standing on the bank of the legislature grounds. We were no longer separate. The small space inside me became more crowded, filled with thoughts and fears and desires that weren’t mine. The rings bound us together, and everything that made us unique fed into the targe and gave it power.

  The world split, just as Eli said it would. The howling of the elements shut off all perception, kept us from our bodies. We were one spirit in that moment, unable to untangle, unwilling to let go. But we knew we were going too far, that the power was enough to send us through the gateway we had made. We needed to detach or else perish.

  A great, terrible light enveloped the world.

  Then, darkness.

  The Dragon Opal

  Phae thinks of her parents. She regrets not introducing them to Barton. She knows he and her father would have gotten along, maybe.

  Natti reaches out a tired tendril of her soul into the world, and realizes, with relief, that her missing mother is still out there, somewhere. And that someday, she will find her.

  Barton is running on carbon-fibre blades. His son is cheering from the sidelines of the running track.

  Eli revels in silence. He wonders if it will last, and if he will someday share it with someone else.

  Roan sees her mother. No, her grandmother. No, someone else entirely. Someone who is older than both of her matriarchs, older than time, but so familiar. The first mother of all. And the last.

  The woman puts two hands on Roan’s face and smiles. Her triangular moth wings flex.

  “Not yet,” she says.

  *

  Eli wakes first. The ground beneath him is wet but not drowned. He sits up, bones stiff enough to make him feel as though he’s been torn apart and very hastily put back together.

  The sun has broken, only just, through the scattered clouds. Buildings are down, bridges ruined, the grounds of Manitoba’s grand parliamentary building rent asunder. Statues have toppled or else are ripped of their moorings. A giant trench is stained with sizzling black muck, but whatever occupied it has gone.

  The river is calm, flowing as a river does, powerful and pushing the debris that now fills it but doesn’t stop it. It has receded to where it should be. It is quiet once more.

  Eli catches movement on the deserted battlefield. The Denizens that had fought alongside them stare in disbelief at the destruction, taking the moment to accept exhausted paralysis.

  Nearby, Barton, the root-armed Rabbit, stirs. He is held tight in the arms of the Deer. Eli recalls something from a dream he heard, about Phae’s parents, and . . . he clutches his head. They must have occupied the same mind, for a moment. And it had been painful, intrusive, too much. For a moment, he’d felt close to death. All of them had. But someone pulled them away . . .

  Natti is the only one sitting up, her brother lying next to her, calm and unconscious as he seemingly naps off the stress of the fight. She has one hand on his round head. The wind stirs the Seal’s soaked, black hair. She is staring at the river, and the figure on the bank.

  Roan seems so much smaller since Eli saw her last. Then, her soul had been eclipsed by the power of the Paramount, a creature that walked the world as the avatar for the First Fox. A warrior. A connection from this world to the next.

  But now she is merely a girl, awkward shoulders hunched, hair mussed and clinging to her fragile skull.

  She cradles the fox in her arms, the body small and delicate. Roan’s tattered clothes shift in the breeze, and when her eyes meet Eli’s, she erupts into a clutch of sparks.

  And she is gone.

  *

  I was walking in a dream. Had to be. I’d only just come back into my abandoned body, but now it was in a million pieces, each a separate match-light in the dark. I was gathering them close again as I wove through the shadows.

  Another light, separate from mine, guided me. “I’m coming,” I said in my mind, the little candle lights fusing into me like droplets of bright mercury. “I’m coming.”

  Then we were falling, slowly. We passed through a membrane in the bottom of the darkness, and I crumpled to the floor of the summoning chamber, hands still clasped protectively over the light I’d been chasing in my dream.

  “There you are,” said a sad voice. I opened my eyes, and a figure swam before me. Then it was two figures.

  Aunty. And Cecelia.

  “I brought her back,” I whispered, eyes heavy like I’d been staring into a bonfire for hours. “I had to.”

  “Good girl,” Aunty said, and I sat up. Everything hurt. I don’t think I’d ever nail the spirit-to-body landing.

  I unclasped my stiff fingers. A tiny, blue flame beat in the centre, like a heart.

  It floated free of my palm like a flake of ash. I hadn’t the strength to try to get it back. I knew that I couldn’t keep it alive for long.

  The flame slipped into Cecelia’s chest. Aunty slid back out from under her head and let it come to rest on the obsidian floor. She scooted out from the pulsing, golden circles, shut her eyes, and hummed.

  Cecelia lit up like a funeral pyre, and in the heart of the flames she rose to her feet, levitating inches above the ground. The circles began to revolve, catching her fire and burning low. The flames hummed along with Aunty.

  Cecelia opened her eyes, as bright and gold as her fox eyes had been. They smiled down at me. “Silly pup,” she said. Her voice was honeyed and warm.

  I couldn’t move. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

  Her eyes fell. She looked at her hands. “This body has nothing left. My spirit has been trapped inside and outside of it for too long. I’m sorry.”

  You promised, I wanted to scream, to pound my fist on the floor. A family, a family! You said!

  “Well.” I swallowed. Cecelia held out her hand. I clasped it and stood. The fire was cool to the touch, and her words were a diminishing heat. “You are my granddaughter. You are my blood.” Her eyes were suddenly hard. “Zabor may be silenced now. But something else is rising. It is something you must face.”

  I was suddenly angry, pulling away from her. “Stop! I can only do so much! I can’t. I just . . . don’t make me do this again. Don’t . . .” I lost my breath, shaking, weak. “Please don’t go,” I begged. “Please don’t leave me alone again.”

  Cecelia’s hands came back to mine, and her face was inches away. She planted a kiss on my forehead, full of all the love she had left. I felt a great warm gust — a final exhalation — envelop us.

  “Never,” she said, before the sound of wings took her, and I was alone with Aunty in the summoning chamber of my dead grandmother.

  Cecelia was gone, body and all consumed. The fire broke from the circles incised in the floor, and cut a zigzagging diagonal across the room. The black marble shook, the veins of it pulsing red as if something burned under the floor. In a rush, the fire came to rest in the great, empty hearth at the back of the chamber, the walls climbing with veins of flame.

  Then the fire went out, and the great black floor opened, revealing something glassy, sharp, and glowing. A geode wrenched free of its hiding place, the jet granite sliding back into place. The chamber was dark. The chamber was silent.

  The stone glittered with too many colours to name — a confla
gration of green kept inside glass. I knew this stone. It whispered and murmured, and I knew immediately that it was just like the stone Eli had. The stone that had nearly ruined him.

  It dropped heavily into my shaking hands from the air.

  “The Dragon Opal.” Aunty nodded. “It’s chosen you. It’s yours now.”

  I gazed up at her, as though I’d forgotten she was there. The voices were mounting, desperate. “Mine?”

  Aunty let her eyes fall. “I’m sorry.”

  I was outside of myself again. The stone was so warm. It reminded me of Cecelia. I wanted her back. I wanted her close. I was completely alone now. I was the last of my family, no one left. I was desperate. Angry. Afraid. The voices promised to make those feelings go away.

  I wanted them all back. My mother, my stepfather, my grandmother. I wanted to hear them. Whatever it took.

  I smashed the stone into my chest.

  Flight

  Eli stands at the back of the lawn, though he doesn’t deign to hide himself. He’s come for . . . support. He didn’t imagine he would, but he’s found himself here, outside the high school. All his studies were conducted in an unorthodox way, but observing this ritual won’t do him any harm.

  Grad caps fill the air like confetti. He looks up and catches one in his hands. A startled blond reclaims it from him, sheepish and grateful as she scurries off to join her friends.

  Eli had hoped that Roan . . .

  The Deer — Phae — sees him. He doesn’t bother probing her mind. She just shakes her head.

  *

  It takes Eli more time than usual to find her. It seems she has been trying to keep herself hidden. Annoyed, he banks low over Sargent Avenue.

  And there she is, weaving in and out of traffic on that blasted bike, body pressed low to the handlebars. Roan is heading for the airport, a small bag on her back. A short trip? He probes her mind cautiously, a cold finger. But he recoils, climbing higher as she whips her head around, searching for the pinprick she most definitely felt.

  Eli frowns, teeth grinding as he flies ahead and out of sight. She’s pushed him out of her mind. Something her grandmother taught her, no doubt.

  He’d have to do this the old-fashioned way.

  Out of her sight, he observes, curious. Roan parks her bike by a railing, but doesn’t lock it up. Her hand lingers over it until she adjusts her pack and strides purposefully to the pneumatic doors leading to the main terminal of James Armstrong Richardson Airport.

  He follows at a leisurely pace behind her, and for once, removes his invisibility. He wants her to see him, eventually, and also doesn’t want to come off as a mega creep, as she’d probably say.

  She doesn’t have a bag to check, so she moves swiftly through security. Eli goes around the officers checking carry-on, and no one notices him, because he wills them not to. He allows Roan her space to find her gate and settle in. She sits down and turns her face to the tarmac beyond the windows.

  It’s the first time Eli has seen her since . . . he closes his eyes, and there she is on the riverbank. A faded star. Her light is even more diminished now, but it glows beneath the surface of her uneven skin like sleepy coals. Her hair has grown, sweeping her shoulders in choppy lengths.

  There is something different about her. The weight in his chest grows heavy.

  Roan finally turns her head away from profile, and the moment is gone. Eli suddenly recognizes that he’s been clutching the blue plastic folder so tightly that the edge is cutting his palms. He relaxes. Why are you letting a yippy little thing like her get the better of you? he chides himself, striding out of anonymity and sitting directly behind her on the opposite bank of seats.

  Eli abandons preamble. “So.”

  Roan leaps up, whirling to face the back of his head. Eli doesn’t turn, savouring the slight triumph.

  “Ugh,” she groans, slouching back to back in her seat. “I knew it.”

  He scratches the place under his eye where she’d given him a burn scar, carefully arranging his face. “Hail the conquering graduate, off to see the world.” He offers her the diploma over his shoulder.

  After a moment, Roan takes it. “Where’d you get this?” He hears her opening it and shutting it just as quickly. She puts it down on the seat next to her but doesn’t touch it again.

  “Your friends wanted you to have it. Or something.”

  “Thanks,” she says, ungrateful.

  Eli snorts. “Right.”

  A swift backhand connects to Eli’s head. He spins around, Roan’s eyes blazing as he meets them.

  “Who do you think you are, coming here? Can’t you see I want to be alone?” She barks this through rigid teeth, hair and hackles up.

  Eli doesn’t bother addressing her directly. “What are you doing here, anyway? Running off somewhere?” He suddenly forgets why he’s come here. She thinks it’s out of concern, but he needed to see her because something was —

  “Look, I’m . . .” Roan searches the floor. “I’m not in any state to be around anyone. It’s —”

  “Your grandmother. I know —”

  She slides from apology to aggravation in a beat. “Stop doing that!”

  Eli looks away and sits back down, body angled half towards her. “I’m sorry,” he’s surprised to admit. This apology is about Cecelia, since a word won’t umbrella all his misdeeds.

  She shrugs, eyes back on the tarmac. “Yeah. Well. Stuff and life and things, et cetera.”

  Another beat of silence pulses past them. Roan’s fingernail flicks the diploma open, tapping it. “Someone else’s life, that’s for sure,” she mutters to herself.

  The boarding call dings over the intercom. Eli’s looks up, and he reads the departure screen. Toronto: Pre-boarding.

  Toronto. Either that’s her final destination, or she’s transferring to an international route. It could be a trip to anywhere. But something hums again in his chest — he knows what it is, allows it access to his mind just this once — and it warns him that he shouldn’t probe her further for information. That her secrecy is as much to protect her as it is him.

  But Eli ignores the wisp. “Where will you go?”

  Roan is on her feet, backpack slung over both shoulders. Her eyes are for the advancing plane and nothing else. “Things have changed for me. I can’t . . .” Her voice drops, and she looks at him frankly. “It’s not safe for anyone to be around me anymore.”

  Whoever she means, she doesn’t elaborate. Eli just nods and stands, coming round closer to her. They both consider some point or another in the distance.

  “You’re an idiot,” Eli says.

  Her face doesn’t change. She shakes her head. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  The whisper behind his controlled mind prods again, this time more insistent.

  “What is it? What’s changed?” he asks.

  Her gaze is distant, unfocused. A baggage cart is leaving the docked plane, exchanged for another full one. The crew of the previous flight bleeds out of the aircraft, and Roan’s breath catches, like that spirit eye of hers is showing her something unspeakable.

  Then she touches her chest with her bitten-to-the-quick fingers. And Eli knows.

  He grabs her roughly, startling her out of her reverie. She yanks away from him.

  “You can’t —” He looks blatantly at the space over her sternum, pulls back from the rising heat there. “You have to get rid of it. It’ll ruin you.”

  At this she only smiles, faint and tired and utterly spent. But she doesn’t acknowledge his words. She knows, as he does, that you can’t simply get rid of the burdens they now share.

  “Thanks for seeing me off. Sorry for being a grouch. I guess I’m still sore from all those times you tried to kill me.”

  Her hand twitches as though it might reach for his. But it doesn’t. It stays at her side, then clutches
her backpack strap as people begin boarding.

  Suddenly her eyes are fierce. “Don’t you dare come after me. And tell Phae and Barton and Natti that . . . that it’s going to be fine.”

  Eli watches her go, rooted in place and only able to do as she’s asked him, which is nothing. He saw the same thing behind her eyes that continues to plague him, though the trace of it is faint for now. But it will only get worse. For whom was she taking this risk? Where was she going? Why? Why had she accepted the stone?

  Eli throws his mind into hers, but something pushes him back with as much force. He rebounds back to himself, the only fleeting image he is able to grasp being a crater of fire, and the world disappearing into it.

  He blinks, and Roan Harken is lost in the crowd. Her high school diploma remains abandoned on the waiting seats of Gate 5.

  Epilogue

  The Bloodlands echo with the screams and anguish of its inhabitants. They feel the reverberations of one of their great masters in the depths of the Darkling Hold. Her brothers are often silent, but she has always made the worst protests.

  She had tasted freedom. She had tasted Ancient blood. And now, that has been undone.

  But her noise is not for pain.

  The Gardener Urka cleaves its way through the hard-packed ash that is the ground, tunnelling until it slides into the hollow cavern, here, on the dark side of the universe.

  Zabor’s golden chains flash as she writhes, her tail bloodied but coiled tight around her, pulsing, throbbing, aching.

  “My mistress,” Urka heaves, unable to withstand her misery any longer.