by Sara Wolf
“Obligated? Has one of us made a promise with you already? Name them.”
Promise. Making a promise. People making promises with them.
Fairy.
Fuck no. Absolutely fucking not. It can’t be.
I inch away from their white-gloved hand reaching slowly for mine - the outline of the nails underneath sharp and deadly-long.
“Nobody puts me under their gas. I usually do it to other people. It’s a friendly dominance thing, you know? There was this one time where I hid under a trampoline at a birthday party to escape a creepy uncle, and the seven-year-olds on top had all eaten copious amounts of cheese whiz -”
The cosplayer looks taken aback as they pull away. Finally. The fart jokes did something useful for once.
“You jest.”
“Yeah. It’s sort of my thing.”
“You have many ‘things’.”
“Not as many as I’d like, considering we’re smack-dab in the middle of late stage capitalism,” I say. “Whatever. Do you know how to get out of here?”
“Yes,” They say. Looking at them straight on, I realize they’re a little taller than me, which, props. Their lacy clothes are haphazard, crooked and a little off but beautiful, like they got dressed in the dark from a closet of the world’s finest offerings. Strips of animal fur - the real stuff, you can tell by the oilshine - peek from corners of their body, wrapped around their torso and draped across their shoulders. It’s like no anime character I’ve ever seen. It seems like bizarre art. Like a high fashion spread Ciel would pose in.
There’s just one tiny problem. The jam stains. Or maybe they made a metric shit-ton of chicken nuggets and spilled the honey mustard walking back to the table. I can relate. Whatever it’s made of, it’s dark yellow. More importantly, it glitters like real gold. It glitters like that one girl’s body spray in the P.E locker rooms. It glitters like my injury glitters - the rich spillage turning the fluttering lace of their outfit into a many-layered apron of ominous.
It glitters like the gold I saw oozing out of Von Arx’s window. Like the gold liquid oozing from the security monitor. But that doesn’t make any sense. Most of the glitter is right where their stomach would be. I can’t tell if they’re a girl or a boy but honestly - who cares? I’m stuck with them in a room in blue oblivion-hell and we’re both maybe-dead. I’ve got a lot of smaller things to worry about.
“Soooo…” I lead. “How do we blow this joint?”
“We will leave. You cannot,” They say. “They will come for you, soon.”
“Knew it.” I grunt and valiantly try to pry apart a branch-weave with my bare hands, but it doesn’t budge. “Always knew they would. That’s why I’ve kept all those tinfoil hats under my bed.”
“You must tell no one you have seen us,” The cosplayer says. I turn to start yelling exasperatedly when I spot the deer horns on their head again. They’ve turned their whole neck upside down in that weird way, and their sheet of pale blonde hair is falling and the horns - I can see where the horns begin. In their skull. Not on a headband, but fused to the scalp, coming out of the scalp like they’ve been…
“Growing,” I whisper. “What the fuck -”
“You must tell no one,” The cosplayer comes closer. I jolt away, dodging behind a branch-woven table. “We have not been here.”
“Yes you have!” I shrill. “You’re right here, right now! And you’re basically Bambi with more style!”
Dressed in white. Deer antlers.
There’s no way -
“We were worried,” they insist, long fingers oozing over the table. “Last eve we saw many things fluctuating, moving sideways and back again. There were three of you, all blooming from the soil of Silvere - a forest rose, a starlight rose, and a rainwater rose. Future, present, and past. So strong. Equally strong. We had to see you with our own eyes to make certain of which He chose.”
“He? Who is he? He chose what?” They try to step in but I thrust my hand out. “Whoa there Sailor Moon! Personal space!”
“Him,” They say, gold-stained-lace chest straining against my palm. No heat. “You know him.”
“I know a few hims, yeah!”
“You know Him by name. You have said His true name once, not long ago, and He heard you. We all heard the echoes in the soil and the wind and the shadows. You gave them life. They became real, and came for you.”
True name? What the hell is this person on? I scry my brain, pan it in a river looking for the ore of any fucking clue as to what they’re talking about. Whose ‘true’ name have I said out loud? What even is a true name? Like, a full name? Bianca. Real name. She said fairies can be attracted with their real names. But that’s - that’s not happening. I’m dead. Not in a fairytale. I’ve stuck to Silvere’s bizarre tradition of last names, mostly. I’ve said Alistair Strickland loads in my head, but I seriously doubt -
It hits me, an unstoppable train of bricks. Not Alistair Strickland. Julien. I said Julien Strickland’s whole name in Von Arx’s office out loud, and then, that was when…
“The statue,” I look up at their too-white face. “The deer statue that broke.”
The cosplayer says nothing, just stares at me, and I stare back at all the white of them, but black starts to creep in on the edges of my mind. The black deer statue. The Nightrose, Von Arx called it. The looming shadow, there in the woods, kneeling over the mangled white deer carcass. He flash of the red-eyed shadow I saw under the aurora. The red eyes - the statue’s ruby eyes, the man in the restaurant’s eyes. His open mouth and full chest about to sing. The song, and then, nothing. Then, I woke up here.
I said his name. And he came for me.
It makes sense like a dream makes sense - perfectly and impossibly and with no facts or reality behind it at all.
“Julien Strickland,” I swallow nails. “Were all those things…him?”
“Him.” The deer-person corrects me with slow, heavy importance. “Parts of Him. His echoes. You said his name, and called to them.”
I clutch the edge of the basket-woven table for support. It doesn’t make any sense. Julien’s gone. Missing for like, forty years. I thought he was kidnapped. But kidnapped people don’t turn into looming shadows that haunt woods, killing and eating deer. They don’t stalk teenage girls. They don’t have red eyes that glow like unholy embers. Julien is Von Arx’s son, not some specter in the woods who attacks people and drags them to Rivendell-hell.
“The ways are closed,” The cosplayer continues, and I freeze. This time, their voice sounds almost mournful. Regretful. “We saw human love and human greed shatter the Nightrose into three. We were worried. But we are relieved to see He has chosen correctly. He has plucked the correct rose from the soil of Silvere, and so we will thrive.”
“Wait,” I start. “Julien chose me? Why? For what? Is he even still alive?”
“You cannot leave.” The cosplayer moves fast again, all glass-bell sounds and swaying wisps of thread coming in too fast.
“Fuckin’ watch me!” I snatch off my shoe and hold it up. “You know how to get out of here - so tell me!”
Like I’m even threatening at all with a shoe in one hand and nothing in the other. But the cosplayer goes still, vivid blue eyes like glazed saucers. Unblinking.
“You cannot leave. The ways are closed.”
Suddenly, there’s the sound of flapping wings outside the window, like a flock of birds passing by. Dozens of them. And a harp. A real harp, not a melodic voice. But it’s off-tune, or sideways - I can’t decide. A not-right harp making music between the wingbeats, and a strange, shuddering drum accompaniment, and it’s getting closer at the same time the wings are, but that doesn’t make any sense, none of this makes any -
Cosplayer looks to the window, then to me. They look scared now, and if they’re scared I should be scared too, right? I’m high. I’ve never been high and I have no idea what it’s like but I have to be right now, because when they turn to me something slits open on their forehead, pushi
ng out of their bloodless white skin - a yellow eye. Sideways, like a giant fucked-up diamond pasted to their forehead. Thick, dark eyelashes, too big and luxurious to be human.
I really am dead.
Because the eye on the cosplayer’s forehead blinks, and focuses right on me. The black iris is sideways like a goat’s.
Like a deer’s.
The white deer in the woods, lying there in a pool of it’s own blood, dead. It’s big, glassy eyes staring sightlessly at me over the pine needles.
It’s the same eye.
“You must become the Nightrose,” They say. “You, with the eyes like rainwater, and no one else.”
“Who -” I swallow needles. “Who the fuck are you?”
They ignore me, pressing harder. “If you do not become the Nightrose, this world falls apart. You must. You are the only one, the only choice I have seen that does not lead to our utter destruction. You will be the Nightrose. You must be.”
From the corner of my eye I catch shadows outside the window - growing bigger, darker, closer to the surface of something, to the surface of the infinite sky outside our little room. The shape in the bed across the room groans and shifts at the twisted music, the blanket falling off them and revealing their sleeping face.
Ash-brown sheet of hair. Groomed eyebrows. Ballerina neck.
“Bianca,” I suck in air, cold water filling my heart. “Bianca!”
She doesn’t move. And then a hand - long-nailed, gloved seamlessly white, smelling of dried flowers. It blocks my view of her. It makes specific, dreamy motions right in front of my face, knuckles and fingertips curling in a blur like I don’t have my glasses on when I do, I absolutely do, and suddenly my eyelids feel like lead and the sound of the cosplayer’s voice follows me into a sleep I can’t even begin to fight.
“We apologize for what is about to occur. We apologize for not stopping it when we had the chance. This is our guilt. Our mistake. The others have suffered for it, and you will now join them.”
37
The Teeth (Or, How words are the claws of the mouth, and some people never bite)
Okay ref, time-out. Rewind. Red card. Whatever you have to do to put a pause on my life, do it now, because I need a breather or ten.
But life keeps moving, in that inexorable bullshit rhythm it’s always had, and I wake up with a lot of a resentment and just a wee bit of a splitting headache.
And this time, there are even more cosplayers.
And Bianca’s bed is empty.
Where did she go? She was right there. Did these new people take her? My blood goes hot then cold, magma and slush ice in rapid succession. Fear. You fear things without names. I should probably call them something else - they aren’t people. But there’s no other word for them - every inch of their shtick looks like an unbelievable costume, carefully contrived to impress and mindbend all at once. The haphazard magpie way it’s made, though, with silk and lace and bits of fur, is exactly the same as the first cosplayer.
They crowd around me on the bed (how did I get back in bed?), swimming amid their floaty fabrics in all colors of the rainbow, threaded with gold and glass and tin trinkets. Through my groggy haze, I see a cheap rhinestone wristwatch clinking above my head. My eyes focus - a bouquet of rusted Swiss army knives, a bottle of smelling salts, a long thread of detached keys from the back of old wind-up toys. Rows of regular-ass modern house keys are embroidered into one of the cosplayer’s high collar. Another wears earrings made of two columns of tiny gears from some unknown machine strung on gold wire. A third cosplayer wears has a full-size wine opener dangling from a curtain tassel around their neck. One of them has a silk scarf around their head, embroidered on every inch with tiny copper spoons for tea time. Dozens of pieces of pure junk have been woven and pasted and melded to their clothes like they were precious gems. They wear everyday junk in their ears and around their neck like it’s jewelry. Treasure.
Not all of them are white like the deer-person. Black, golden, brown - no matter the color of their skin, they all share that same bloodless look to them; their makeup matte and eerily caked on. No veins to be seen, no scars, no flush, no change at all. And their eyes are nuts; some deep blue, some pale green, some purple like pressed summer violets, some onyx-black with silver streaks, others dramatic shades of gleaming redwood-brown. The only common thread is all of them have that bright, technicolor-unreal ring around their irises. Their eyes don’t look real. That’s what really nails it home that I’m dead; eyes like crystals, like gemstones made deep in the earth and lit up from behind like captured stars. Eyes like fairytales. Eyes that aren’t possible on Earth.
Eyes like Von Arx.
And all of these cosplayers are beautiful - perfectly, eerily symmetrical in the face. Like cutting only one half of a paper snowflake, the other half coming out identical. Like math. Like computer simulations.
If I’m lucky, this is all a computer simulation, and someone will pull the plug.
None of them have deer eyes in their forehead. Yet. The white deer cosplayer’s gone from the room - no antlers anywhere. No white. Everyone wears all colors of the rainbow, but not white. Not gray. And not black.
I start with the important questions this time.
“Where’s my friend?” I croak. “Who the fuck are you people?”
“Unremarkable,” One of the cosplayers dressed in purple puts their chin in their gloved hands and leans on the bed, their voice high and thin like a flute.
“Not a spot of glamor to her,” Another in volcanic crimson sighs, smoothing their sleek black hair with gloved fingers. They all wear gloves. All of them. And all their fingers are sharp-nailed. Long like witches’. Tipped like blades.
No, some deep part of my brain whispers. Like claws.
“Let us hope her blood has some other redeeming features, then,” One in spring-green says.
“It must have,” The purple one lilts. “Or why else would He choose someone as plain as her?”
Some of their voices are low, others high, all of them melodious, and I start to get the feeling they don’t give a shit about what they sound like. Or look like. About being boys or girls. The way they carry themselves, graceful and even and confident…they give off this air like they could be anything they wanted to be. They could be half-deer like the white one was, if they wanted. That’s when it really hits me. It was floating on the surface before, but now it’s finally sunken down into the bedrock of my mind. These aren’t cosplayers at all.
These people aren’t humans.
Best case scenario - angels. Worst-case scenario - demons.
Either way I get the feeling I am - how does one say - mega-fucked.
I sit up slowly, wary of my back-wounds. “If you don’t tell me where Bianca is right now -”
The angel-demon heads snap to me instantly, follow my every movement like a flock of crows locked on a shiny thing, some of their necks twisting in that unnatural way as a dozen jewel-colored eyes rivet on my face. Holy fuckin’ shit. Whatever they are, they’re terrifying.
Breathe, Lili.
“Bianca. My friend.” I gulp, the fear pounding so hard I can barely think. “Where is she?”
“Ah,” The purple one’s smile splits their green-painted lips, showing pure white teeth with too-sharp incisors. “It speaks of the new traitor.”
Musical echoes of ‘traitor’ flutter around the crowd, whispered and passed along like drinkable venom.
“Do not concern yourself with traitors,” The purple one continues. “You are not one of them. You have been chosen - you have been brought to us by Him.”
I swallow. “Real flattered. Lyft costs must’ve been wild. But me and Bianca need to go home. Dinner’s getting cold and there’s a lotta very important people worried about us.”
“Humans do tend to worry,” The one in purple agrees with me, tossing their unreal-looking mane of perfect bronze curls over their shoulders.
“Exactly.” I point at them. “So. We should be gett
ing home.”
“The Nightrose chose a persistent one,” The one in crimson cocks their head, onyx-eyes gleaming hard. “Who seems to love Earth excessively.”
“Oh yeah,” I blurt. “Big fan. Can’t get enough of her. I huff her dirt constantly, give her these huge massages. And messages.” I cup my hands around my mouth and shout down. “Heyyyy! Miss ya, you hot, climate-changing bitch!”
None of the demons move, or blink. I make a shaky laugh. Of course I’m fucking shaking. Still don’t know if I’m dead or not. Still don’t know if this is all a dream, if Bianca really is here and in trouble. Like I am. Like I could be, if this is real.
“I just…” I lower my voice. “I just want to go home.”
“We would oblige this,” The crimson one says (so much crimson it’s hard to look at). “But the ways are closed. The traitor was brought here by the shards of their own broken promise. But the Nightrose brought you. He is the only one with permission to shepherd untraitorous humans here and back again.”
“The cycle begins again,” The demon in green smiles with all their teeth.
“What cycle? Why would Julien -”
Every single demon around my bed shrinks back, a tide before a tidal wave, the faint sound of hissing echoing around the room.
“We do not say His name,” The one in purple glares stunning redwood daggers into me.
“You are human, so you are unknowing,” the crimson one says, reaching a red-gloved hand out to stroke my frozen chin with their long nails. The color’s bad, the dagger-nails are worse. “Ken well; names are precious in Valen, to be given to trusted ones only. They are not to be used unthinkingly. This is why We take other names. His name is Nightrose, as our name is Bloodbucket.”
I’m too scared to even smirk at how stupid it sounds. Like a kid making up a superhero name. The atavistic survivalist part of me is painfully aware they could shove their nails right through my eye socket any second now. Bloodbucket pulls their hand away from my chin, finally, and I breathe for what feels like the first time. The purple-robed demon makes a weird bow, holding their fingers up to shield their face like a slotted mask.
