The Boi of Feather and Steel

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  This was Kite’s home.

  A rustling spilled from above and cascaded down like the rush of a waterfall. The pages were moving; fluttering, shaking. It wasn’t a welcoming sound.

  Eli remembered this place. She had been a child, with cracks in her stone palms and scratches on her hawthorn knees, heart full of death and lungs full of fear. The place had smelled like witches, and something older and far more powerful. It smelled of empires built and fallen, of sadness sweet as honey and worlds bursting with colour and heat.

  This was why Kite left her. This was the place that stood between her and the witch-heir, this room, these living words whispering their secrets in a voice Eli could never understand.

  The ink had burned her witch-made body, and Eli had lashed out, thinking to protect herself, but really — she knew, now, and could admit the truth — to destroy the one thing Kite loved more than herself.

  Sometimes she still dreamed of paper cuts on her wrists, of the weight of tomes on her chest, and woke up, gasping, reaching for saltwater hair and seaweed-touched hands.

  “I remember you,” she told the library. The rustling grew louder, a storm of dust and patience turning into momentum and intention.

  The library remembered her, too.

  A single sparrow of paper spiralled downward toward her. Eli stretched a hand out to meet it, and the bird landed in her open palm. Its edges were singed, the print smudged beyond recognition. And suddenly she understood.

  The Coven itself was fighting the Witch Lord. The library was leaving the safe borders of this room, where it had sealed its secrets away from the ambitious and ravenous witch tyrants. Waiting for someone to unlock their magic with love and trust. Someone like Kite.

  A wing drooped, the scorch mark spreading like a stain. The rustling continued, a song of mourning and fury. More birds fell, some crumbling to white ash, others ripped and torn and bloody but still struggling to fly. The library was fighting, and the library was dying. For the world. For Kite. For the Heart. For Eli.

  Eli raised her other hand to her mouth and pressed a yellowed canine to the soft pad of her fingertip. It broke like the skin of an overripe peach and beaded with a substance that was neither wholly human nor witch nor tree, but all together; it was sticky as sap and smelled of lost cardigans and moonlight. Heartblood.

  Eli sprinkled the blood of the Heart over the paper sparrow. The bird glowed with an inner flame, and then darkness spread across the wings, wet and glossy, and individual feathers were etched onto its surface. It raised its head and chirped. A collective sigh echoed through the space. A drop of Heartblood returning home.

  “Thank you for protecting her,” said Eli, and she walked into the maelstrom of sharp paper edges and bloody beaks and claws of leather and papyrus and recycled newsprint.

  Someone was waiting for her.

  For a brief moment, Eli thought it was, impossibly, Kite. She thought somehow the Heartblood and smell of old ink had summoned her, or at least the memory of her, pulled from Eli’s mind and dressed in accordion scrolls and embroidery. But as she neared the figure standing in the eye of the paper hurricane, its shape came into the light and Eli recognized it for what it was.

  A made-thing.

  A daughter.

  Someone like Eli.

  The girl had eyes like tarnished steel, their surface dull and empty of emotion. She was holding two swords — one was crafted from broken bottles and Phillips-head screws. The glassy brown and green of the smashed bottles glittered dangerously in the soft lighting. The other sword was made from stingers and thousands of dragonfly and wasp wings, shimmering peacock blue and amber and cheery red, cut crystal with dark veins running through the blade like soldered metal framing mosaics of stained glass.

  The hunter from her dreams. The assassin who had stood over Eli under a ragged sky, her blade edge aimed at Eli’s throat.

  “I’ve been hunting you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Underneath the smell of old paper was the scent of coffee grounds and rust. Eli remembered, then, the deal she had struck with the Hedge-Witch. Three strands of hair and saliva. How had she built a daughter in the City of Ghosts? How long had it taken her to cobble together the materials and magic to make a body strong enough to survive the Vortex?

  The assassin had haunted her dreams, had once cornered her in the City of Ghosts. Had followed her across worlds, hidden in the army of daughters in the Labyrinth, and had finally found what she was looking for. Eli should have been impressed at the assassin’s ingenuity and tenacity, but instead something closer to pity spilled from the tension in her shoulders.

  “You are a good hunter,” Eli continued, keeping her voice flat. “That is what you were made for.”

  “You were hard to track.”

  “I changed.”

  “I know.”

  They stared at each other — the Heart and the hunter. The girl with the empty sheath where a glass dagger once slept, and the brand-new weapon whose sharp edge had not yet tasted death.

  Eli tried to imagine herself through the hunter’s eyes. A girl with light glowing in her veins and confusion in her eyes. The girl who had no mother, no maker, no one to answer to. The girl who had defied the Coven. What did she look like to this creature — broken, defective, lost?

  “You are magnificent,” said Eli sadly, letting her eyes trace the black lines of the wingblade, falling to the shadows the screwheads cast over the books lying open between them.

  “I am,” said the hunter. She took a step forward and her metal eyes caught the glow of the Heart. Eli did not step back, but continued watching the girl’s shadow for movement, for the hint of intention. She had not come this far to be killed now. Not like this.

  Around them, paper birds tore themselves into confetti and swirled in gusts of knowledge sharp as handfuls of glass. In the eye of the storm, the made-daughters remained untouched.

  “She’s coming for you,” said the hunter. Surprise burst across Eli’s eyelids, and spots of light crowded her vision.

  “She —?”

  “The Witch Lord. She’s coming for you. Don’t you feel it?” A lizard tongue snaked out of the girl’s mouth and smelled the air. “I can smell her.”

  “The library smells of the Heir,” said Eli.

  “The one coming smells of revenge as well as the sea.”

  “How close?”

  “Soon.”

  “Why are you telling me this? Are you afraid she’s going to come and steal your quarry from you?”

  “Yes.” The girl smiled. “And no.” She turned her face to the sky for a moment, inhaling tiny pieces of paper, and then turned back to Eli. “I am magnificent, and I’m not going to be used by a witch master. Thank you for slaying my maker. The daughters will be free. The Witch Lord is hunting you, but I am the superior hunter. I came here to watch over you. To fight the Witch Lord if she comes before you finish your task.”

  Eli swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. She grasped at words to thank the hunter, her sister, and failed. There was nothing. Instead, Eli closed the space between them and pressed a kiss against the wingblade. The girl allowed it. Eli stepped back.

  Calm settled over her body like August dusk.

  It was time for the Heart to come home.

  Sixty-Five

  THE HEALER

  The engine squealed as the bike careened through water, but the magic kept it running. Tav let go of their hold on logic and orienteering (they spent one summer as a preteen at a camp where they learned how to use a map and a compass, but that wouldn’t do any good here). They let their intuition guide them. They let the Coven show them the way.

  Tav had never realized before how much like the Labyrinth it was — winding passages that changed, walls that lived and breathed and watched. It was part of the Labyrinth — or it had been, once, before the Witch Lord had taken a piece of it for herself and kept the rest of the world out with enchantments and violence. Now it was
returning to its natural state, the new-built walls of alabaster, bone, and bleach collapsing and leaving smooth earth studded with tiny pink flowers; some passages seemed to be made purely of soapstone etched with drawings made by children long dead, others a tangle of acid-green moss.

  The goldpink glow of the Witch Lord’s essence wafted through the space. It was easy to follow. Where was she going? What if she got to Eli first? Tav leaned hard on the accelerator and the bike tried to go faster — but even a Kawasaki Vulcan 900 with a drop of witch in it has limits, and bodies can slow us down.

  The smell of rotting figs grew stronger.

  They were getting closer.

  THE HEART

  Eli stepped out of the eye and into the storm, her vision immediately obscured by falling paper. The sound of wings flooded her ears. As Eli watched, a few injured paper birds tore at the walls, pecking out the invisible eyes the witches had used to watch them. The eyes had been covered over in papier-mâché, but now they were being torn out by the optic nerves.

  “What are you doing?” asked Eli, as soil and rock tumbled down from above. “It will kill you.”

  The birds rubbed their paper wings together, making a sound like waves moving against the shoreline.

  “Stop! I can help you!”

  More soil fell, sprinkling Eli’s face with dirt. She was sweaty and filthy and her heart was racing in her chest. She had never felt more human.

  But her body was still glowing with gold light. Eli drew the pearl blade across her palm, splitting flesh from magic. Golden blood oozed across her hand, and she smeared it roughly across the wall. The blood shimmered for a moment and lit up like a vein of ore before the alabaster and dirt absorbed its power. But the library was still collapsing, even though Eli could see the magic pulsing under the skin.

  She turned back to the army of birds. “Take me to the tree,” she begged. “I will give the Heart back. The tree can have me. I don’t want the Coven to die.”

  The frost blade trembled at her hip. She had known — had always known — that when the Heart merged with her body that its former host and prison had died.

  The tree had never been the Heart’s true home. It had never been meant to be trapped in a single body, used as a weapon or a tool.

  A small bird landed on her shoulder, folded into the shape of a swallow. Its edges were gold leaf, and it smelled of smoke. It had survived for a very long time. The swallow rubbed its wing against her cheek and then flew to the wall, stabbing at the dirt until its beak was bent and crooked. As the excavation continued, Eli could see flashes of white being exposed to the light.

  Under the soil was the spine of the world — the same walls that made up the Labyrinth and the under-labyrinth, the maze of chaos and magic that was alive. It had not been made by the witches, and it did not answer to their rule.

  Eli’s breath caught in her throat. The birds weren’t destroying the Coven, sacrificing their home in order to defeat the Witch Lord — they were taking it back from the witches. They were saving it.

  Pearl in one hand, bone in the other. Eli joined them, stabbing at invisible eyes and tearing through spells and enchantments that had made this dark palace a place of power. Setting free the natural magic of the world.

  A blur of colour in her peripheral vision, and then the wall shook as another blade pierced the witches’ magic. The hunter had joined her, broken bottles and insect wings cutting through malevolent enchantments and cursed thorns.

  As more earth was stripped away, pages and letters that had been buried pulled themselves free and joined their kin.

  When they were done, the library had been transformed — skeletal and stark, filled with light and colour. It tasted of dead fish and calcified plant life. The magic was not sweet or cloying like the witches’ enchantment. It was fresh and alive, deadly and beautiful, pulsing with life and death, love and sorrow.

  But the birds were still dying. As Eli watched, a hummingbird trembled midflight and fell to the floor, ink seeping out of its spent body. A hairline crack in the wall was creeping upward. What would happen if the spine itself was destroyed? If the natural magic failed?

  Eli was frightened, and this time, she couldn’t fight her way out. There was no rush of adrenalin or the power of self-preservation, nothing she could stab or claw or devour with wickedly sharp teeth. She didn’t even know how to do it. She felt like a child again, lost in the Labyrinth, not sure what she was running to. Only knowing what she had to leave behind.

  A single feather made from the thinnest of sheets of paper, so fine it was translucent, hovered at eye level. Eli held up a hand and it landed on her sticky, bloody palm. A few words were visible, scrawled across the page.

  I miss her.

  Tears blurred her vision.

  The handwriting was Kite’s.

  Gently, Eli set the feather on the ground, and then knelt down. She pressed her palms against the root of the world and closed her eyes.

  She felt the gaze of the hunter on her back. The made-girl was watching over her.

  Go home, she told the Heart. This is where you belong.

  This is where we belong.

  We are not a body.

  We are many bodies.

  We are everywhere.

  We are everything.

  Eli felt the energy draining from her body, seeping into the walls, the earth, the ink stains. Dissipating into the air. Touching the clouds. Brightening the sky.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw the leaves of the forest turning bronze and green, shining with new growth. She saw the stones in the wastelands burning with black fire, the rivers spitting sparks and ice onto a desert blooming with sandflowers. The forgotten pit that had been the junkyard was beginning to heal, feeling the rush of remembrance, the nectar of magic, as it, too, was reconnected to the rest of the world.

  She saw a glittering, tangled web of connections between everything, saw the lines that had been severed by the witches now begin to be repaired. Everything had a place in the world. Everything belonged.

  The Heart tasted the acidic soil of the burned forests and the dry sweetness of sand, felt the pincers of little sea creatures and saw through the eyes of thousands of stones like stars. A sense of rightness filled the Heart as she was finally freed from her cage.

  Eli felt the moment her human heart stopped. She heard the silence, the rhythm of breath and blood coming to an end like an orchestra directed to stillness.

  She heard the wings of the hunter’s blade rubbing against each other, making a rustling sound and then a keening whistle. Her sister was mourning her. Eli wished she had thanked her. She wished a lot of things.

  Then there was nothing.

  Feathers drifted over her body until Eli was completely buried in a paper tomb.

  Sixty-Six

  THE HEALER

  The walls trembled.

  Snail shells and stray magic fell over Tav and Ariel. Tav wiped sawdust from their face and shook off a scorpion made of glass and aluminum that had fallen on the back of their hand. When they brushed dead leaves off of Ariel, the plants dissolved into sugar and cinnamon.

  A thousand insects poured from earth and stone and started waving their antennae and hundred thousand silk-thin legs.

  Something had changed.

  The goldpink light of the Witch Lord disappeared, overtaken by a kaleidoscope of colours and sensations that flooded Tav’s body, the Coven, and maybe the world.

  A sense of rightness flared up in every cell. A feeling like being dipped in warm honey coated Tav’s body.

  Ariel stopped, as if in awe or perhaps in homage to what was happening. The drop of witch essence was glowing like a sun. Tav was bright, too, violet lights dancing along their knuckles and collarbone and the back of their eyelids. They were part of the world. They belonged here. They were home.

  A surge of panic flickered through the sticky sweet sensation of connection and belonging.

  If the Heart had come home, where was the eggshel
l of a girl that had kept it safe, had carried it between worlds, and set it free?

  What had happened to Eli?

  Tav inhaled sharply and turned their intention to Ariel. “We have to find her. Or what’s left of her.” Their voice shook. “Turn on, damn it. We don’t have time.”

  But Ariel was frozen in place, rapturous and dreamy. Tav jumped off the bike and tried to look through the dancing lights for evidence of Eli — the girl whose ribs they had kissed, whose crocodile teeth they had licked. Eli, with her knives and fists and anger like a beehive.

  And then the sky cracked.

  Tav stared up into a fractured galaxy. Oxygen stopped. Frost curled over the edges of a cut that had been reopened a thousand times, and now split easily. The fabric of the galaxy had grown thin and fragile.

  The transplant of a heart back into its body is no easy thing.

  It sent shockwaves across the planet, through its very core, shaking every leaf and stream and gust of air. The power of the Heart infusing the world sent new life into the trees and earthworms and magic creatures hiding under the walls. It pulled on threads that had been left ragged, it made new growth, and sent brush fires racing through the undergrowth of the forests.

  It reopened wounds that were still trying to heal.

  Tav was pulled into the Vortex, swept away from Ariel, from Eli, from a home they had only just found.

  Back to the beginning.

  THE HEIR

  Kite, one hand wrapped around the neck of a first-ring witch, his lantern-like head flashing like a siren, felt the galaxy crack. The sword trembled of its own accord.

  She arched her swanlike neck back, tipping her head to watch the sky open up.

  There was no ceiling, no stone, no trees, no clouds. Only empty space, and a few glittering lights — stars or forest fires or birthday candles or the fluorescent lights of a planet that never slept.

  Kite let go of the witch. His head floated up, up, up, like a helium balloon, and then vanished, sucked into the vacuum between time and space.