by Kim Smejkal
Celia shrieked and pushed Anya off, rolling away into the grass beside the road. With her hair in her eyes and the mud streaking her skin, she clambered back to her feet, holding her shaking hands in front of her toward this version of Anya.
As real as she felt, as true as her words were, Celia knew it wasn’t the real Anya. Still, she hesitated before unraveling the illusion. The pain in Celia’s gut clenched with want, immediately aching for her friend-that-wasn’t-her-friend. Maybe she didn’t want Angry Anya to go away. Maybe Angry Anya was better than no Anya.
Was it to be her fate, to have to let go of Anya over and over again?
The hairs on the back of Celia’s neck rose as Angry Anya flanked her, a vicious glint in her eye. Celia’s hesitation cost her, and she didn’t even have the chance to lift her arms in protection before Anya attacked.
A hand slapped over Celia’s mouth, cutting off another emerging scream. She was on the ground on her back, flashes of light brown hair in the space above her, a lithe body holding her down. The more she struggled, the more fiery the pain: her eye, swollen from a blow, bites and scratches on her arms, bruises on her legs. Everywhere hurt.
Chest heaving, pain raging, Angry Anya gone, Celia had returned to the room. Lyric had pinned her down, but with Celia’s return to the normal world, Lyric slid off her.
Celia gasped out ragged breaths as she inspected her wounds. Aside from some scratches, likely self-inflicted, there were none. Her eye wasn’t swollen, her arms and legs were fine. The scent of her own blood was the last thing to fade. As her breathing slowed, Lyric sat back on their heels. “Whatever you were fighting, I think they won.”
Propping herself up on her elbows, Celia frowned, her heart still thumping hard and out of control. “Dead best friend,” she muttered, pressing her hand to the wood planks beneath her, noting that she was no longer covered in mud and leaves, that there was no blood. Next time Halcyon summoned an illusion trying to bait her, she wouldn’t hesitate in unraveling it.
Xinto flew down from the corner of the room and landed on Lyric’s head as Celia looked around for Halcyon—child killer, curse maker, ink stealer, master of death—but the room was empty except for her, Lyric, and Xinto.
Celia scrambled up and tried the door.
It opened.
She and Lyric stared at each other a beat, clearly neither of them expecting the door to be unlocked and openable.
They peeked out, but Halcyon wasn’t in the hallway.
Celia had the good sense to know that he wasn’t done with them, but she wasn’t going to wait around if there was an opportunity to flee. She and Lyric jogged down the main hallway toward the front door, Xinto trailing behind. The doors to every room hung open, beckoning her to look in.
“He’s buying time,” Celia said. “Zuni and Griffin did something he had to take care of.” The thought made her excited and nervous all at once. Maybe they’d found the chest.
“Wait, Celia!” Lyric lurched to a stop, grabbing a fistful of Celia’s shirt in the process and choking her with it. They tried to pull her into one of the rooms—a light inside casting a pale blue light into the hallway, glowing and icelike.
Celia averted her eyes and tugged back. “If he wants us to look, that means we shouldn’t do it!”
“Griffin’s in there. Everyone’s in there.”
Celia yanked harder. She wanted to look in the room, but she focused on Lyric’s face instead, illuminated by the pale blue shine. “No, they definitely aren’t.”
Lyric considered a split second more and then nodded. They raced off again.
But they ran for far too long, the hallway stretching forever. Celia tried another passage, continuing to ignore all the open doors even after they started screaming at her that perhaps they were another exit. Try me, no me . . .
They passed the door with the faint blue light more than once, and each time, Lyric looked inside and hesitated before continuing on at Celia’s insistence. Lyric’s pauses became longer and longer, and Celia’s resolve got weaker and weaker.
“Celia, it’s really them,” Lyric said the next time they reared to a stop, panting and holding their knees. “I know Halcyon’s illusions. This can’t be one of them.”
Or maybe he’s dipping into an arsenal he never needed before, Celia thought. But she couldn’t say it out loud; her lungs were on fire.
Lyric began walking toward the open the door, and Celia barely had enough time to yank them back before they stepped over the threshold. “Devil’s hell, Lyric, stop it!” she shouted, exasperated. “It’s an illusion!” But as she shouted and wrestled with Lyric in the doorway, she got a peek into the room she so desperately didn’t want to see.
Lyric was right. Everyone was there.
At the far side of the expansive room, small cells lined up in a row and stacked on top of one another as in a beehive, each with a door and a hatch. In each cell was someone they knew, and many more were filled with people Celia didn’t know. Lupita was in one of the bottom cells at the front, gripping the bars with her wrinkled hands, facing whoever was in the cell beside her. Kitty Kay was talking to Milloni. Marco was curled up in a ball, and Lilac was reaching a hand through the bars, trying to console him.
“Celia!” Griffin was in one of the top cells, up so high she could barely tell who it was. He grabbed the bars and shouted down to her. “Get out of here! Go!”
Celia had to prove that this was an illusion, and the only way to do that was to take it away.
Without thinking about it, she imagined all the ink in the room coming to her. As she’d trained, she’d wiped away hundreds of poor attempts and started over.
She didn’t even stop to consider that it wouldn’t work.
Her skin quivered. From head to foot, tiny ripples erupted, the sensation so all-encompassing and strange, she quivered from the quivers.
It didn’t feel right.
Because it wasn’t her ink. To date, she’d only added to or altered Halcyon’s grand illusion. She’d tethered her illusions to something that was already there; even Xinto was tied to the scents on the breeze.
Everything she’d put out into the world could ultimately come back to her. But this was taking back what Halcyon had put out into the world.
It was the equivalent of trying to control another inkling’s ink. It should have been impossible, but she felt it responding to her anyway.
“Lyric, stop!” she called out again, hoping it was enough to slow them down. They were almost at the rows upon rows of cells.
A few of the caged people began screaming—at Lyric, at nothing. That, more than Celia’s shout, was what made Lyric slow down. Since Celia didn’t know how this illusion had been cast, or what, if any of it, was real, she grabbed at everything she could—the people, the cell bars, the ground, the ceiling—searching for a way to unravel it all.
“Holy shit,” Lyric said.
Celia had closed her eyes, trying to block out all the visual stimulus in order to search the darkness where the ink might try hiding from her, but Lyric’s panicked words made them snap open.
Lyric had lurched to a stop and turned around so quickly, they almost lost their footing, and they were running back to the doorway where Celia stood with a new jolt of energy.
The cells were melting. Like candles, they liquified from top to bottom, dripping into vast puddles and stretching toward them.
It reminded Celia of her first attempt with the ink: the exploded bee on the wall of Halcyon’s studio, the way it had oozed toward her as if sensing new blood. She’d ducked against the explosion, but the ink had disappeared. Halcyon must have taken it into himself—what she was trying to do now.
But that wasn’t what Lyric had reacted to. The people were also melting. Their faces washed away first, all color in their skin, hair, and clothing gone as they were reduced to inky black blobs. But still they moved, the ink dripping from their forms, writhing like snakes. And those snakes, dismissed from holding the illusion, fe
lt the warmth of bodies nearby and wanted them.
“Okay, you were right,” Lyric said, grabbing Celia’s arm. “It’s a trap.”
Celia planted her feet firmly and refocused. She couldn’t leave the ink there like that—free and wild. If it wasn’t contained, Celia had no doubt it would keep going, searching for a host, spreading.
Whatever she’d done to unravel the illusion had created a hungry monster. She needed to calm it down.
“What are you doing?” Lyric said, their eyes wide. “Let’s go!”
Celia shook her head. “You have to figure out what he’s doing. Find Griffin and Zuni! Get the chest.” She yanked her arm away and turned back toward the room. Almost everything had fully melted, only stubs of figures still standing. “Go!” she shouted, and pushed Lyric toward the door.
Then she took a deep breath and ran toward the inky mess. The ink sensed her coming, changing direction so that it was pointed at her. She knew it wouldn’t kill her. It wanted to obey. She’d always thought of the ink as parasitic, voracious in its need for a host, but it was more like a desperate servant, needing to please. And right then it was just a confused mess, trying to find answers.
She stopped to meet it, and the snakes of ink slithered over her body. Up her legs, her torso, her arms, around her neck and face.
For many moments she was entirely covered. The inky snakes pushed into her nose and mouth; they covered her eyes and tried to worm their way into her mouth, making her gag. But the ink seeped into her body too slowly, there was too much of it, and for a ridiculous minute she thought she would die, anticlimactically, by suffocation before doing anything of value at all.
But as the last drops of ink fused into her, disappearing and dispersing into her bloodstream, she felt its happiness.
It felt like a sigh. A release.
Celia had Halcyon’s ink inside her now.
A lot of it.
She could do more than bring the Chest Majestic full of ink back to the dead. Now she could bring all of Wisteria as well.
Chapter 30
When Celia and Lyric emerged from the trap-room after having sprung it, the house was as it had always been. The hallways didn’t stretch forever, the doors weren’t hanging open, it was quiet.
That quiet felt more ominous to Celia than if she’d seen Halcyon and his dark, swirling demon eyes. He’d wanted a head start to do something.
“He’s either torturing them or killing them,” Lyric whispered, being incredibly unhelpful.
Walking faster, Celia approached the cherry-red front door. “You were supposed to find them and warn them!” She knew that a few minutes head start wouldn’t have mattered, as they didn’t even know where Griffin and Zuni were. She punched Lyric on the arm, hoping they’d know what she meant.
“But would he, actually?” Celia said. Halcyon didn’t like getting his hands dirty—he hated dirt. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Let’s trust they have the chest.”
Morning sun crested the horizon in the courtyard, and Celia blinked against it. Robins and larks piped cheerful morning songs, and she smelled the bakery a few streets away where the bakers were already hard at work preparing the day’s bread and sweets.
“Morning, Celia. Lyric,” Garuld said, waving at them in greeting as they entered the town after leaving the courtyard, wisteria tunnel, and gate behind.
“It’s not enough to take the chest of ink,” Celia said. “I’m going to take it all.”
The chest, the town, even Halcyon himself.
“Are you mad?” Lyric hissed.
It was ambitious, but Martina herself had said that Halcyon would never stop. He might lose his chest, but he would find a way to get more. Not only had he discovered enough secrets of the ink to bring it from the afterlife, he now had the wisdom of ages on his side.
Celia didn’t have the skill or the stamina or the time to draw in all the ink at once. What she’d done dissolving the cells in Halcyon’s home had been desperate and ill-planned. The ink had devolved into its base with her scrambled efforts, and the last thing she wanted was for everything to melt down into uncontrollable puddles and seek out the closest new host: Zuni, Griffin, or Lyric.
Celia needed to be in control at every moment—calling every drop of it back as if she’d been the one to cast it out all along—to make sure the ink came only to her.
Closing her eyes, she reached out with her mind for the ink around her.
Halcyon’s illusions were layered and deep. She couldn’t break down an illusion unless she knew where it was, and each piece was connected to another piece to another piece and on again. So Celia felt the edges of each one of Halcyon’s illusions. She started with the cobblestones because that was an intuitive pattern that extended through the whole of Wisteria. She tugged at one of the strands and felt the ink respond. The ground rippled.
Just as with all the tattoos she’d ever done, she saw how the cobblestones under her feet were drawn in her mind’s eye, how they had gone from Halcyon’s imagination and become real-ish, and once she had the shape, texture, and scent, she held on tight. Enough, Celia told the ink. You don’t belong here.
And like all those tattoos she’d partially sent into the world with Anya, secret messaging before they even knew what it meant, she called the ink back. She might not have been the one to originally cast it, but now she knew that it would recognize her summons as if she had.
Before, she could only add on to Halcyon’s creations with her own ink. With the proper instruction, any other inkling could have done it.
This was more.
This was hers.
In showing her how to build it bigger, how to understand and tend to every corner like a precious rose garden, Halcyon had also shown her how to tear it down.
The cobblestones disappeared, and Lyric jumped at the fresh dirt under their feet.
Wet, loamy, real Illinian soil.
“Wait!” Lyric gasped. They looked back at Garuld, who was donning a sun hat and gardening gloves before heading into his carrot garden. He must have noticed that his footsteps sounded strange, because he stopped and looked down, frowning at the mud on his shoe.
Then he shrugged and kept going.
“The time to consider their feelings is long past,” Celia said with urgency. “They might not be evil, but they exist in a world that doesn’t belong to them.”
Frantic, Lyric looked around. They’d wanted to escape, not to eliminate the only town they’d ever known. “What about Xinto?”
Xinto had been following them at a distance, as he always did, but when he heard his name, he landed on the ground and walked toward them, his head hung low, as if he didn’t understand what he’d done wrong or why he was in trouble.
Lyric’s mentioning him was a low blow. Xinto would have to be unraveled too. “We don’t have time to argue about this—” Celia choked. “This is how it has to be.”
Celia looked down at Xinto, who’d arrived at her feet and crawled on top of her boot, staring up at her with big black eyes. “You’re such a good bee,” she whispered. He cocked his head, listening.
Dia, maybe she couldn’t do this. Celia scooped Xinto up, soft, fuzzy, and adorable, handed him to Lyric.
“I have to lure Halcyon through the door,” Celia said. “Just like herding river lobsters . . .” she mumbled to herself. Maybe a part of Griffin had known it would have to end like this.
The noise Lyric made was something garbled and confused, as if Celia’s insanity had just been confirmed.
“I’ll start with the town, and when there’s enough panic—” Celia looked at carrot-growing Garuld for a moment. Would the townspeople even react when their town began disappearing? She shook her head and focused. “If there’s enough chaos, Halcyon will run toward the familiar, the place he came from. I can feel it inside me, how much the ink wants to go back.”
Lyric shook their head and backed away.
“The town won’t melt or anything,” Celia said. I don�
�t think . . . “Not like what you saw before.” Hopefully . . .
“This is far too much improvisation for me. I hate it,” Lyric said.
Celia tried to smile. “Welcome to theater?”
Far from convinced, Lyric snuggled Xinto under their chin and stared Celia down.
“The good thing about winging it is that you never make it to the end of your plan,” Celia said.
“Not reassuring,” Lyric mumbled. But they nodded, tucked Xinto between their shoulder and neck, and hooked their arm around Celia’s. “Let’s see what you can do, Inkling.”
A shudder ran down Celia’s spine at the hated title Inkling, but she was grateful for Lyric’s touch. It grounded her. Reassured her that she wouldn’t float away.
And, closing her eyes, she began unwinding Wisteria, piece by piece.
She lost her sense of time again.
She imagined that she was walking from Halcyon’s front gate down every road in town, tugging at everything—doors, windows, rocks, the scent of wisteria, the sun on her skin—and wiping away anything she felt responding. She didn’t need to tug too hard, and she didn’t need to move. The ink wanted to go home. It answered her call without hesitating. Everything was part of Halcyon’s sweater, and now that she’d tugged it loose, it unraveled easily, small creeks becoming streams becoming rivers, and all leading to her.
“Are you okay?”
A distant question, far away. Celia was in another place and couldn’t grasp it, except that it was repeated and repeated and repeated, a persistent echo. “Are you okay?”
She almost laughed. It wasn’t like mixing one and one to make two, it was one and one becoming other.
It felt terrible.
And perfect.
Interlude
The plague doctor ran with Zuni, chest in hand, but they made it only as far as the aviary. With every step, the house had heaved under their feet, pulsing like Obi’s giant heartbeat within the walls. And it screamed warnings and threats in a voice similar to Halcyon’s, but deeper and louder, booming like thunder.