“Wanna go somewhere?”
Maeve folds her arms tight. “On that thing?”
“This thing,” she says, patting the tank fondly, “is my beloved child. I have a spare helmet, gimme a sec —”
Something sticks Maeve’s tongue to the roof of her mouth. She wants nothing more than to say no, to turn the other way and walk until dawn. Back to a flat full of stoners who stay up too late, to dirty dishes that have been piling up for weeks. To a black apron hung optimistically by the door.
To never see this girl again.
The thought doesn’t bring her as much comfort as she thinks it ought to.
So when Abigail hands her a bright blue helmet, she hesitates for only a breath before taking it. It’s loose, and she can’t figure out the stupid strap.
Abigail reaches up and gently takes her hands away.
Maeve stands very still.
Abigail’s fingers are warm against the soft, exposed part of her throat. If she feels it — the gentle thrum of Maeve’s pulse straining against her skin — she doesn’t say anything.
She pats the seat behind her, and Maeve licks her lips. She’s never been on a motorcycle before. They’re supposed to be kind of dangerous.
But she’s been fired, and the sky is clear, and if the ciggies are killing her slowly anyway, why not go out screaming? A blaze of fucking fire down an embankment.
Abigail clunks out the metal pillion pegs. “Right, on you get.”
“I, uh…”
“We’re not going to tip over.” She grins, hands resting on the tank. “Not unless I want us to.”
It’s not too late to refuse, but Maeve wouldn’t be able to figure out how to undo the fucking helmet. So, she slings a leg awkwardly over the seat. Bracing herself, waiting for the whole thing to tumble over, she locks her Docs onto the pegs and heaves herself up. The motorcycle lurches, and Maeve flings her arms around Abigail’s waist.
“Easy there, goth girl.”
“Fuck you.”
Abigail wriggles with delight. “Just hold on!”
The engine thunders to life, the vibrations ricocheting up her bones, through her sternum, knocking something loose in her chest. They take off, and Maeve grips Abigail’s waist tighter, their helmets knocking together with a plastic clunk. Her breath is loud, the visor fogging up, and her knees are pressed against Abigail’s warm thighs.
Maeve doesn’t see the road drip by, the streetlights blurring and streaking like a Van Gogh. There’s only Abigail’s yellow helmet, and the pink curl of hair at the base of her neck. She’s oblivious to the asphalt slipping away, wildflowers springing through the cracks, vines erupting from the footpath, the concrete splitting like fresh-baked bread. She doesn’t notice the tyres leave the road, because she’s too aware of how soft Abigail is between her arms. How it feels like the witch girl is pulling her little aimless boat of a life into the riptide.
Maeve squeezes her eyes shut, her heart a resonant drum in her throat.
When they stop, Maeve’s knees are locked up. Abigail waits patiently, one foot holding up the bike, the other brushing through the blossoms.
It’s bright. Not middle-of-summer, sprinkler going and hot-hot-hot sand bright — it’s bright like the moon is, a cold sort of bright. Maeve looks up and swallows a gasp that tastes like cigarettes.
She’s seen pictures of the Northern Lights before, of course. But here it is, an aurora stretched out and shimmering like glistening green tassels dripping from a string. It clings to a violet sky speckled with stars like pinholes in a scratchy woollen blanket.
Maeve eases herself down. Brushes her fingertips across the lupins and foxglove. She turns to ask Abigail just what the fuck is going on, when the girl tips up Maeve’s chin, still in the helmet. Her mouth is dry as a hangover as those soft fingers deftly unclip her, draw the helmet from her head.
Maeve’s heart carries away her tongue. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere.” Abigail tucks the helmet under her arm. “In between.”
It’s strange. All her life, Maeve has been hunted by that phrase. In between. In between jobs, in between partners, in between the shock of rock-bottom and the gleaming promise of something better.
In between isn’t supposed to feel this comfortable.
Abigail soaks up the moonlight, like she’s in the right place now. The right frequency.
“How?” Maeve asks, plucking a foxglove bloom. It feels real enough, the lilac petals delicate in her pinched fingers.
Abigail shrugs. “It looked like you needed it.” She sets the helmet down and swings around her backpack, drawing out a bottle of wine and plaid blanket. “Want to have a picnic?”
Maeve laughs, and the sound surprises her. When was the last time she’d laughed? A true laugh, not a laugh dripping with sardonic sweetness. Mirth born from joy, not from some kind of stilted desperation to be liked.
But in this place, in this halfway world with a witch on a motorbike, and the grass beckoning her bare toes, laughter feels like harmony.
Instead of an answer, a tight fist of emotion works its way up her throat. “Let’s not go back,” Maeve says.
Abigail’s smile is soft. “We’ll need to, at some point.” She pulls out a package cradled in beeswax wrap. “Can’t conjure up food. Besides, I can think of plenty of good places back in the city for a date.”
Maeve’s pulse thuds to a stop. “A date? This is a date?”
The stars shine in Abigail’s eyes, and on her cheeks, and in the bubbles rising through the deep-ocean green of the bottle.
“I hope it is.”
Like the snapping of a flag in the breeze, Maeve is, all of a sudden, stretched out and blinding bright. Tethered, straining to be free, to drift out over the ocean at last. And for once, she doesn’t care if casting herself off that yawning precipice will lead her to the sea or to the clouds.
Or in between.
D. K. Marlowe writes young adult fantasy, centering queer protagonists and featuring hard magic systems, dry humour, and expansive worlds. When she isn’t sitting on chairs incorrectly to draft new stories, she enjoys sewing and drawing, plucking new novel ideas from thread and graphite. She lives in Aotearoa (New Zealand) with her plant children in varying states of living, and a robot vacuum named Yu-Gi-Oh. Twitter and Instagram: @DKMarloweWriter
Content notes can be found at the end of the book.
black is a flower
by R.J. Mustafa
A smile spreads on my face as darkness falls.
He is coming.
I circle inside the hut that I have been cleaning since dusk. Heavy wooden chests piled in a corner, sage wreaths, and cowrie shells on an ancient table.
The blankets piled upon my bed, infused with sandalwood.
He wouldn’t care about what’s inside anyway. Never would he step foot inside a building, no matter whose it was. He was born a son of the woods, of wild nettles and rotting moss.
I ball the blankets up and take them outside. Dead leaves crunch under my naked feet, and I spread them right there, on the ground. The woods behind my house are silent, a sweet wind not daring to disturb the ancient trees.
It will not last long.
Dusting my hands, I check my clothes again. White linen — nothing extraordinary. The tunic brushes against my ankle as I sit. The shadow of a beard covers my chin, the silver necklace he once gifted me dangling from my neck.
Blackthorn tattoos shimmer between my clavicles.
Thin. You’re too thin.
Shaking my head to chase those thoughts away, I look up to the trees. They are mango and neem, carrying an intrigued smell. They must wonder what the human is doing outside, sitting cross-legged with bottles of honey and fresh blood at his sides.
The forest flutters awake, night creatures heralding his arrival. Bats, spinning around the roof. Snakes slithering around the blankets, their black and emerald scales reflecting moonlight.
Wolves howl underneath the canopy, and the trunk
s part open.
My breath is shallow, beads of sweat trembling on my umber skin.
He’s here.
His feet are bare, and flowers sprout whenever they touch the ground. I see the mauve tint of lilacs. Hibiscus flowers, bleeding red.
Belladonna, like the ones I crushed hours earlier to invoke him.
He’s standing before me, antlers towering over my head. Drinking up the blood first, he sighs. My heart stops.
“Greetings, lover.”
Purple garments flowing, he thrusts the bottle aside. I raise my chin, and my brown eyes meet his, white as ivory. He fondles the honey as he drinks, letting strands of gold trickle from his lips. His gaze never leaves mine.
I kiss his hand, a single tear rolling down my cheek. “Greetings, lover. I have missed you.”
His gaze grows soft, and he pulls me into an embrace. My chin on his shoulder, I close my eyes, inhaling the scent of earth, unholy flowers, and blood.
“It has been but a year,” he chuckles, his deep voice raging over my body. As he pulls away, a gentle smile rests on his lips.
Taking my shaking hands between his, he leads me to the sheets. I steal another hug from him, his clawed hand behind my neck.
“Any moment without you by my side feels like eternity,” I quiver.
He laughs, a flicker of mischief in his pupils. There’s still the faintest scent of blood in his breath, minuscule droplets between his fangs. “Darling, eternity is nothing you could fathom. It spreads like an infinite canvas, one where you would be nothing but a dot.”
A frown spreads across my face, contrasting with the smile on my lips. “It has been too long, still.”
His brethren frolic between the tree trunks, growls and laughter filling the air. I have never met them, but I know they are not normal creatures. They are men with goat hooves, women with snakes on their heads and wings on their back. They are magnificent beings made of shadow and water — cold firelights and howling spirits.
Like their Master, they are from the Otherworld.
“Have you missed me?” I whisper, a hand caressing his locs. They’re shining black, so long they meet his ankles. Moths flee and scorpions scatter as I part the dark coils.
“Yes, Driss. I have.”
I moan, blood rushing through my body. His touch sparkles the flints of magic slumbering in my cells, ones that are long dead. I am a witch without power, only able to brew philters and invoke beings of the Otherworld.
My fingers brush the thorns adorning his brow. What I wouldn’t do to kiss his lips, to taste sin on his forked tongue. He is a beautiful demon. He is mine, and I will be his.
Soon.
We lie down, and my head rests on his chest. His touch is lighter than a feather as he caresses my curls, plays with the strings of my tunic.
Closing my eyes, I listen to his undying heartbeat as he shows me stars and constellations. Names my mother whispered to me when I was a little boy, of the Hunter and the Pretentious. All companions of Mother Moon — legionaries of Her parade.
Everything he says I already know, but I let him speak. His gravelly voice is warming my bones, and the muscles under his obsidian skin are blocks of ice under my touch.
As the moment comes, he hums. From the back of his throat, a song older than time flows. In a tongue never spoken by mankind, but one I know the meaning of.
For seven years now, we have met. Ever since I stood before my mother’s corpse, taken away by the plague. Ever since the teenager I was drew symbols with her blood, his blood, his tears. Calling for a soul to comfort him, now that he was alone in this world.
The darkness had listened to his wails, and the Lord of the Forest had answered his call.
Every year, when Mother Moon splits in half, I call him. I slaughter a lamb, dripping its heart in a syrupy mix of honey and blood, then entrust it to the wolf waiting on my doorstep.
He comes at night, and I ask him the same question. For him to own my body, making me into one of his night creatures.
Tonight, he accepts. He sings his everlasting love for me, pools of white pinned on my eyes. He stops, cupping my cheeks.
“It has been seven years, my love.”
Thunder shatters the night sky as Mother Moon blooms. His voice ripples with worry, and he kisses my brow softly, as if I was about to break. My body shakes, an orphaned leaf battered by tides of celestial power, and I lock my arms around him as we rise.
“Do you want it, still?” he asks.
“Yes, my love. It is time.”
My voice quivers and dies as a clawed finger raises my chin. His full lips are one touch away, black poison I embrace.
They are soft, and I never want to let him go. Even as poison runs through my body, slowly extinguishing my life flame, we make love. He is gentle and patient, and my body echoes his. We dance under the moonlight, my body burning as he worships it. It is pain, and it is bliss.
Everything is on fire, everything is heaven.
As he falls, I draw my last breath.
I awake hours later, and I am reborn. I touch the sides of my head, where curved horns spiral. A crown of lilacs lies between them, and I taste sap and venom on my lips.
It is cold, and it is alive. He smiles as he watches me, his heart beating against mine.
He is mine, and I am his.
We rise once again, and my muscles burn under my dead skin. My eyes see everything. The glimmer of obsidian hidden deep inside his white eyes. His subjects, staring at me as they wait at the wood edge.
“You are beautiful,” he says, and I return his smile.
He takes my hand, where black feathers have spread. A thousand whispers swell against my ear when his fingers brush the corner of my eye. I hear their questions, hear his amused tone as he silences them with a thought. “They are our subjects now. We will rule the Otherworld together.
“Are you with me, lover?”
Without thinking, I steal a glance at my old home. The human life, lifeless without him. Nothing is holding me back, and that thought alone sparks black flames licking at my fingertips. I blow, and fire devours the hut.
There is nothing, and now there is everything.
I look back at him. Soul of my soul and heart of my heart. My hand slides on his waist and I kiss his lips. They are poison and honey — but now I have poison too.
“Yes, Inaan. I always will be.”
We drown in the woods, and the darkness embraces us both.
This story was originally self-published by the author in 2020.
R.J. Mustafa is a dreamer, a medical student and fantasy writer, focused on exploring old — and new — myths of Black and African culture. He is devoted to creating stories portraying Black people under all their colors — soft, magical, just themselves. When he’s not writing or reading, he can usually be found binging animated shows or Asian BL dramas.
Content notes can be found at the end of the book.
Sphexa, Start Dinosaur
by Nibedita Sen
Asha — Ash to friends — wedges the maintenance door open wide enough to slip into the darkened interior of the abandoned ride. Inside smells like rust and stale water and plastic fused with metal.
“Sphexa,” he says. “Light.”
The small robot bobbing behind him clicks, casting a circle of illumination on the concrete floor. He made Sphexa in shop class at school, patching together an old Echo, a frame salvaged from a drone, a rolling toy robot, and a few other things, because if you’re going to be that stereotype of the Indian kid good at engineering, you might as well lean all the way in.
“Reminder,” Sphexa says as they make their way down the narrow walkway lining the tunnel. “Event upcoming in two hours: Pick Mei up for prom.”
“I’m working on it, Sphexa.”
“Would you like a list of car rental agencies in the area that take last-minute bookings?” Disapproval is not something he programmed into the bot, but it’s definitely pulling some attitude right now.
<
br /> “I’m good, Sphexa, thanks.”
They’re walking alongside a long, low channel that still holds a few inches of scummy water. The flat-bottomed boats that used to rock and splosh slowly along the artificial river are long gone, of course. Journey Through the Jurassic was shut down a year ago, eclipsed by other, showier rides in the park.
It was his and Mei’s favourite, before that. They rode it every hot, sticky summer, multiple times if they could, huddled together in the boats with their backpacks full of issues of National Geographic and Meccano dinosaurs they’d built together. Over the years, they went from staring awestruck at the animatronic saurians craning over them, to playing spot-the-anatomical-inaccuracies. Ash still remembers, though, that first time, when they were younger — though they’d ridden it so many times already by then — when they rounded the corner where the T-Rex lifted its metal head and roared in the low reddish light, and Mei grabbed his hand, their smaller, warmer fingers tightening in his.
Mei. His heart jolts, as it always does, at the thought of their heart-shaped face. The way their hair is always falling into their eyes when they get excited about something, and how they dash it away impatiently with the backs of their hands as they keep talking, their voice going high and jumpy with their infectious joy.
They had their first kiss on this ride too, in the back of a boat in middle school, somewhere just past the T-rex but before the raptors.
Ash clambers through a thicket of fake Jurassic ferns and a nest of baby Maiasaura, led by Sphexa’s overhead beam. It’s hot in here. His rented tux is a little too small for him, uncomfortably tight against his chest, over the binder.
The corsage he got for Mei sits carefully in an inner pocket. He figured he should keep at least one thing traditional if he was going to flip double middle fingers at all the rest.
He’s almost all the way to the mouth of the exit when the irregular silhouette of a Stegosaurus rises ahead out of the gloom. Ash grins. Bingo. Stegosaurus, Mei’s second-favourite dinosaur (their first is Psittacosaurus, but Journey Through the Jurassic doesn’t have one).
It Gets Even Better Page 11
