Juice Like Wounds

by Seanan McGuire

  There was much more she could have said, if she’d been asked, if Lundy had been willing to pay for her answers. She could have said that the pomegranate grove would be reclaimed in time, but that the cost to do so would be very high, for it was the home to a monster that had once been a girl named Zorah, who had fallen into the Market from Lundy’s own world, who had been sweet enough to attract a door, but filled with a heart of venom and cruelty that had left her unable to trade fairly with her fellows. When her cruelty had grown too much to contain and she had fled to the dark places, she had found herself clad not in feathers but in a hard striped shell of chitin and pain. Good children who made bad bargains became birds. Bad children who cheated and deceived became their destroyers.

  She could have said so much more, and that knowledge would haunt her in the days to come.

  “But where is it?” pressed Lundy.

  “To the west,” said the Archivist. “Now please, find another book to fall in fascination with, and do not go alone to the pomegranate grove. You are dear to me, and it would not give our friendship fair value.”

  “I promise,” said Lundy.

  * * *

  And indeed, she didn’t go alone, but finished her day’s reading, slowly, so as not to alert the Archivist, then went to the wood where her greatest treasures were kept concealed and belted the knife she had purchased for the scaling and gutting of fish to her waist, where it hung with all the reassuring weight of a weapon disguised as a tool and thus deemed somehow safe for children. Then she went looking for Mockery and Moon.

  They were in the berry patch near the stream, Moon glutting herself on blackberries that she ate almost faster than she could pick them, Mockery harvesting with deliberation and care, picking only the ripest, visibly sweetest berries and placing them gingerly into her basket, so they would not bruise. A full basket of hand-harvested blackberries could be traded for dinner, or for a new blanket, as the winter was approaching and soon it would be cold. None of them had apprenticed to a profession, as yet; they lacked the resources or guidance to make goods that could be traded for a full season’s shelter.

  One more reason to go hunting for monsters, one more reason to reclaim the pomegranate grove. That harvest would be enough to see them under strong roofs and protected by solid walls well before the snows came, and while the Market would never allow children to freeze, it also would not aid them if they didn’t show how much they wanted shelter. It was a strange system, and not always kind, but doing what it could to meet the needs of many without failing the few.

  “We go west,” said Lundy, and Mockery set her carefully collected basket of berries down, so that she could clasp her hands beneath her chin and look through her lashes at Lundy, framing her in black strands like spider’s webs.

  “What’s west?” asked Moon, and stuffed another handful of berries into her mouth, fingers stained purple with juice and sticky even to the eye.

  “The pomegranate grove,” said Lundy. She kept her gaze on Mockery. If they were going to do this, Mockery would have to agree. Moon would go along with anything she wanted, but if Mockery laughed and asked if she thought they were really hunting for monsters, then they would pick berries, and fish in the stream, and build up their saleable goods against the coming winter.

  “You have a knife,” said Mockery. “I have the spear I made for lake fishing last spring. Moon has her sling. If we can stop by the fruit traders so I can sell these berries, we can go now.”

  They weren’t going alone: None of them were. Lundy wasn’t breaking her promise to the Archivist. So Lundy smiled and said, “Of course we can stop.”

  * * *

  They shouldn’t have stopped.

  Barter was never particularly swift, and it became slower when either party showed even a hint of impatience, unless they were willing to accept any offer and stop the exchange at once. The fruit vendor behind the berry bales took her time sorting through the berries, finding three that had been squashed by the weight of the others, the girls waiting the whole time for her final verdict. Finally, she agreed to provide the secondhand blanket Mockery had been hoping for, as well as a basket of carrots and alliums that could be combined with the fish the girls netted for themselves to make a fine stew for dinner. All parties involved agreed that the trade was fair on both sides, and the girls left with their hard-earned gains as the sun was just beginning to sink in the corner of the sky.

  They could have gone back then, could have started their stew and set out again by daylight, but they were children in the clutches of a quest. That it was a quest they had chosen for themselves made it weigh no less. It had them now, and they felt compelled to complete it. So when they reached a large rock at the edge of the current Market grounds, they paused to hide their day’s trading where it would not be accidentally found, using a stick to scratch a circle, a book, and a laughing mouth into the dirt beside it—Moon, Lundy, and Mockery. No one in the Market would knowingly steal from a child, and nothing they were leaving was likely to attract wild animals. Their possessions would be safe until their return.

  They walked west, the three girls: Lundy with her knife, Mockery with her spear, and Moon with her sling. And when the trees loomed before them like the walls of heaven, they exchanged a look but not a word, ducked their heads, and stepped into the darkness.

  The wood swallowed them without a sound, and all was silence, save for the distant screaming of the owls, the calling of the crickets, and the wind.

  * * *

  The three girls walked a goodly distance into the darkness and silence of the wood. They had been living as wild things for some time, and they moved with calm assurance through the trees, their feet avoiding roots and gopher holes unseen, their heads bowing just before they would have met with branches. They walked and walked, until without warning, the trees fell away, and they had entered an open grove.

  The trees here were less densely packed, their branches spreading wide and open as the fronds of ferns. They bristled with twigs like thorns, drooping low under the weight of red round fruit that were nowhere so inviting as apples, being covered in leathery skin.

  The sky was more open here, moonlight pouring down through the open branches to paint the grass and the fruit already fallen there. It was an easy fortune, only waiting for someone to be clever enough to come along and claim it. Moon made a small sound of joy and dove for the nearest fruit, her hands outstretched.

  The movement came from the other side of the grove, too fast to be avoided, and Mockery lunged after Moon, her body slamming the other girl to the ground before the charging creature could strike her. The two rolled onto their backs, staring. Lundy drew her knife and clutched it close, eyes bulging from her head.

  The creature that dove for them out of the trees was a great wasp, easily as large as Lundy herself, with glossy diaphanous wings that beat and churned the air, holding the creature away from the ground. Its body was covered in a layer of metallic blue armor, bright and beautiful as sapphires, that darkened into purple as it moved along the great wasp’s abdomen, ending in a blue-black stinger the length of Lundy’s arm. The wasp twitched its antennae, eyes on Lundy.

  “So the old bitch sends children to kill me, after what she did, after what she did to me?” demanded the wasp, and its words were the most terrible thing of all, for they were bright and clear and sweet, the voice of a girl of eleven or twelve, and not the voice of a monster at all.

  “No one sent us,” said Lundy, and her own voice shook with fear. “We came on our own, because you’re not giving fair value! You’re not using all this fruit, and we need it!”

  “You’re a child,” countered the wasp. “You shouldn’t be working to earn anything. Your needs should be met. Even fair bargains are unfair when enforced against someone who has no choice in the matter. Even kind cruelties are still cruel. No. This place is mine. Call it fair value for what she took from me, and go. I am the wasp queen, I am the monster she made of me, and I won’t negotia
te with you.”

  She cried out then, as a hard sphere struck the base of her right wing and sent it bending inward, nearly knocking her from the air, and when she spun around, she saw that Moon was sitting up, sling in her hand, having used it to throw a pomegranate with more force than her arms could ever have managed. The wasp queen shrieked then, anger and betrayal and some small measure of sorrow, and dove for Moon.

  And we may leave them there, if you like. You know what happens; you know that three came and two left, and that the one who did not leave would never leave, not with her friends and not on her own. You know this story. You can go. You do not have to stay and see.

  But while we have the luxury of leaving, they did not; they were trapped by the cage of their own choices, prisoned by the moment they had made. The wasp queen dove like a striking snake, and there was barely time for Mockery to shove away from the ground and brace her spear in the soil at her feet, tip pointed upward, before the blow landed.

  The wasp queen screamed, hollow and shrill and agonized, as the spear punched through the chitin covering her torso. Mockery did not scream. Nor did she loosen her grasp on the spear, only sighed, small and sad and somehow resigned, and looked down at the stinger piercing her abdomen. The wasp queen screamed again, body pulsing as she drove more venom through herself and into the girl who held her impaled. Moon scrambled backward, unsure what else she could do.

  And Lundy, knife in her hand, dashed forward and cut the wasp queen’s head clean from her body. It rolled some feet away and stopped in the loam, still beautiful, even now that it was dead.

  The wasp queen’s form shook, collapsing as its wings stilled, and the weight of it drove Mockery to the ground, stinger still piercing her belly, just below her navel. There was no blood as yet; the seal it formed against her flesh was too tight and strong.

  “Mockery!” Moon finally cried, and tried to roll the body away.

  “No!” cried Lundy, but it was too late.

  The stingers of bees are barbed, and will pull the bee to pieces when removed. The stingers of wasps are smooth, and this one slid out of Mockery’s body as easily as a needle slides out of leather. Blood followed, a great blackened gout of it, and Mockery, who had not made a sound since she was stung, began to shake and spasm, her eyes rolling up into her head. Lundy dropped to her knees and gathered Mockery in her arms, uncaring of the blood.

  “Mockery? Mockery, wake up. Mockery, say something.”

  Mockery wheezed and tried to move her lips, but no sound came out, only a trickle of blood as thick and slow as pomegranate molasses.

  “Lundy, Mockery’s hurt!”

  “I can see that,” Lundy snapped, and pulled her shirt off, wrapping it as tightly as she could around Mockery’s bleeding stomach. The fabric grew wet and dark, and the shaking and spasming continued, until finally the blood slowed and stopped, and Mockery stopped as well, and Lundy held a cooling object where once her friend had been.

  Moon, who had been in the Market longer than any of them, rose and began gathering pomegranates from the ground, pausing only a moment before she added the wasp queen’s head to her haul. When Lundy looked at her with dull, disbelieving eyes, she said, “To barter for Mockery’s funeral. We have to pay to bury her, or they’ll leave her for the carrion birds.”

  “She can’t go to the vultures,” said Lundy. “She always said she was going to be a swan.”

  “You carry her, and I’ll carry the fruit,” said Moon.

  Lundy nodded, rising, not sure what else to say. She lifted Mockery, who seemed lighter now, lesser now, as if something essential and heavy had gone.

  Together, the two girls and the broken doll that had been their friend walked back into the wood, returning the way they had come. They did not speak. Their tongues were leaden in their mouths, all chatter stolen away with the girl who had loved it enough to take it for her name.

  * * *

  The Archivist was horrified if not as surprised as she wanted to be when two bloodied children carrying the body of a third staggered down the path toward her home, their hands red with juice like wounds, their eyes red with weeping. She went to them, and she did what she could to console them, and she held Lundy tightly as the child cried, grieving with all the force of one who had never realized hurt could come so very close to home.

  Mockery was buried by the river that night, silver-white feathers still tangled in her hair.

  Lundy was gone the next morning, slipping back through her door without a word said, and of the four rivers three girls had made between them, all that remained was the trickling stream that was Moon, alone.

  * * *