The Boi of Feather and Steel

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  The seam between worlds had come unravelled.

  Sixty-Seven

  THE HEALER

  They were standing on a river of black ice. The river flowed past the outskirts of town, past The Sun, past trees heavy with rich green leaves, their bark dark and glossy as iron.

  This was the place where they had first stared into Eli’s yellow eyes and felt that kick of desire, that afterbite of guilt, that grassy taste of curiosity.

  This was the place they had made their own door, had let the enchanted succulents coax an opening between the City of Ghosts and the City of Eyes. Here the Heart and the boi had broken the laws of physics.

  Of course it would take them back here.

  Here, to the moment that haunted their dreams.

  Just like in the dream, the black sky was slashed with silver and white. The river had frozen over and reflected the sky and the sliver of the moon bearing silent witness. It was night in the City of Ghosts.

  There was no logical reason for the ice, but the magic had hardened and turned an August river into a winter nightmare. It was getting easier for Tav to accept these things that defied reason, that broke the rules they had been born into.

  In this mirror world it was hard to tell where the City of Ghosts ended and the City of Eyes began. The worlds were coming together at last, a collision more beautiful and destructive than the dying stars who, watching, flickered once, thousands of years away, and went out forever.

  Here was the Witch Lord, hiding in the Vortex, in the in-between. Waiting to pick apart a broken boi like an owl with a mouse. The Witch Lord hung suspended between worlds, in a body once more, her essence darting wildly across her finger bones, bluegreen hair spilling out around her head like a halo.

  The armies had been scattered like snowflakes: they were stranded on stone and ice, trapped by gravity in the human world, or else watching from the shattered war room as it if were an observatory. Their glimmer and shine made them look like someone had upended a jewelry box onto a length of dark fabric.

  The eyes of witches and children and plants and ghosts and objects and humans and assassins glittered like stars, like thousands of fireflies in the night, and Tav couldn’t tell ally from enemy. Tav was beginning to suspect that, in the end, there weren’t sides, and never had been. Only hope and hurt and longing, and bodies trying to survive in unkind worlds.

  Silence, fragile as the mist that wound its way around their feet, pulsed gently in this moment before the end.

  There might not be sides, but there was always change; and sometimes there had to be winners and losers; although winning could look an awful lot like losing. Tav knew that. The Witch Lord, raised in the crypt of her own self-importance, taught to treat life like it didn’t matter, had tried to make a universe as brutal as her heart and as razor-sharp as her teeth. She did not know that simple truth, had never learned to recognize failure as beauty and power as self-harm. In many ways, she was like a child herself, still waiting for knowledge to deepen into understanding.

  Tav stared up at the alien who was also a star who was also family. They knew what they needed to do.

  Feeling small, and sad, and human, Tav walked to meet her.

  THE HEIR

  Kite found herself on a strange shore, the stone rough and quiet under her feet. She looked out over a frozen river that reflected the shattered galaxy overhead, stars like drops of blood on the ice.

  There was her mother, the Witch Lord, descending from the heavens like a goddess of vengeance. The moored witches around Kite sighed at her beauty and shrank away from her in fear. They adored and hated her, worshipped and obeyed her. So had Kite, for a long time. But not anymore.

  Her eyes slid from the bright star mass that was her mother to the smaller figure on the ice, with torn jeans and messy hair.

  Tav.

  Kite wasn’t the only watcher on the rocky shoreline who saw in the cut of Tav’s cheekbones and the fire in their eyes that the human-witch hybrid was just as bright and fierce as the Witch Lord.

  Sixty-Eight

  THE HEALER

  They ran their thumb over the tip of the obsidian dagger. The assassin. Secret death. The black glass that could cut through magic and drain a witch’s essence.

  Why would a witch give a witch-killer to her made-daughter? Tav hadn’t seen any other obsidian weapons in the hands of the daughters in Clytemnestra’s makeshift army.

  Tav wondered if they should have given Circinae more credit. She really wanted her daughter to survive.

  “I challenge you to a duel,” said Tav. The words felt right. The only way to dethrone a king was to challenge her in front of her court.

  “I accept,” said the Witch Lord. She drifted down, landing gently on the ice. Where her feet touched the frosted river, molten gold flowed like cracks, hot and bubbling, and then hardening into thick, shining metallic lines.

  Tav felt an itchiness in their shoulder blades. The river was still smooth and clear, but maybe the dream had mixed things up. Maybe the dream offered a shape and missed the details. Time always passed differently in their dreams.

  And Eli was gone. Maybe that part of their dream had died with her.

  Taking the obsidian blade, Tav reached up and cut two sharp lines in their own shoulder blades.

  The pain rocked their body, but it was healing, and felt right. It was the pain of new growth. The pain of necessity. The pain of leaving a childhood friend behind or losing a favourite pair of jeans. It was part of life. It was life.

  Two great feathered wings burst from Tav’s back. They were black with the oily shine of purple and gold and green. Looking down, Tav saw their reflection in the mirrored surface. Eyes gold and brown with deep shadows underneath. Silver earrings shimmering in the starlight. A mouth set in defiance or grief. Winged like a fallen angel, their feathers catching nightmares and spinning them into strength.

  Reaching into their own plumage, Tav plucked a single feather. Its core was steel, and its point sharp as a blade. Dressed in black feathers and buttons shaped like the phases of the moon, holding two knives, Tav faced the Witch Lord.

  “What are you?” the Witch Lord asked again, her pupil-less pale eyes shining in the moonlight like lighthouse beacons.

  “I don’t know,” said Tav. But the words felt hollow, like an oak tree sundered by lightning. They were starting to piece together their history and their body and what it all meant.

  They had always known they were descended from fighters. Their ancestors had struggled against their captors when they had been forced across a sea of blood and onto a land forged from death, had fought back against the violence they faced in Nova Scotia after slavery was allegedly abolished, had protested the police in Ontario. Tav had been born into struggle, had learned how to resist and survive alongside geometry and the five-part essay. This story was true, and Tav had been telling it their whole life.

  The purpleblack smoke that now curled from their nostrils told another story. The story of a witch fleeing the tyranny of the Coven. A witch who fell in love or at least lust with a human. Passion and intimacy breathing dandelion seeds of magic into bile and cartilage.

  But that story still didn’t explain the wings that now extended from their back. The way doors opened and closed so easily for them, without the kind of sacrifice a witch needed to do her magic.

  Tav thought about the ghost who had followed them around, who had treated them as kin.

  How had the ghosts come to Earth from the moon?

  If any of the moon people had survived, where would they have fled to?

  The words rang in Tav’s head. What are you?

  They were histories of forced migration, of leaving homes and making new ones. Of transformation and resilience. They were the harbringers of change.

  “No one has ever challenged me before,” said the Witch Lord. Curiosity stained her voice. Tav wondered if she got bored in her catacombs of secrecy and surveillance, if a dragon curled up around its hoard of go
ld ever missed the touch of another creature.

  But Tav didn’t need answers. They had no more words.

  The Witch Lord lunged, drawing Tav into another deadly dance. Tav stepped back, playing defence, avoiding talons and teeth.

  The Witch Lord’s essence split into a hundred thousand essences, like paint spilling over the ground. It poured from her nostrils and ears and eyes and mouth, gold and silver and copper rivers that reached for Tav, trying to ensnare them in a net of stolen power.

  One tendril curled around their ankle and the pain seared like fire. Tav gasped, choking on the panic that took hold of their body. Their wings beat rapidly, pushing back against the Witch Lord. A creature of magic and bone and moonlight struggling against the snares of a predator.

  The blades — Tav lashed out at the netting, cutting strips of magic with obsidian and feathered steel. When the net lay scattered in writhing pieces on the ice, Tav turned to the creature before them. Sweat dripped down their face and stained the tattered pieces of their shirt. The tattoos of peonies and roses and chrysanthemums that marked their arm started to move, waving leaves and stamens and petals.

  It was time for the game to end.

  Another tendril of power wrapped around Tav’s waist, and they let it. They breathed through the pain and let the magic drag them closer to the Witch Lord.

  “I know what you are,” said the Witch Lord, saliva dripping down her chin. “You are nothing.”

  A small prick. The razor edge of a glossy feather biting into the greenblue essence at the core of the witch. Not the stolen power, not the hues of gold and silver and pink that she had wrenched from other witches. Her own. The essence that matched Kite’s.

  A look of surprise crossed the Witch Lord’s face. They were so unused to pain, to fear, and could not express it. Tav, the greenblue essence pinned in place with a steel feather, raised the obsidian needle and plunged it into the Witch Lord.

  A small gasp, like a baby’s breath. Kite’s eyes stared into Tav’s. Tav kept their arms wrapped around the Witch Lord as if in an intimate embrace.

  “You smell like peaches,” she whispered, eyes bright like moons.

  And then the brightness went out.

  Sixty-Nine

  THE HEIR

  Kite watched herself die without emotion, as if she were watching a black-and-white silent film on a screen. She watched as if she were light years away. She watched as if she were already dead.

  She was sorry she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to Eli.

  The stolen essences in her body shuddered and died, the dead remnants transforming into bits of music. It sounded faintly like Bach. Eli had once brought her a music box that played Minuet in G when she turned the handle.

  Kite, glad that the dead witches had found peace, felt relief at their absence. Glad that she was free of them. In the end, she would die as herself.

  Kite waited for her essence to turn into seashells and sand dollars.

  After all, she was only an extra body. Only a part of her mother.

  Just a useless clone.

  THE HEALER

  The Witch Lord’s body started to break, a thousand hairline cracks snaking across her body. The china pieces shattered in Tav’s arms and turned into dried rosehips, bottle caps, gold dust, and seagull feathers. Her eyes were the last to shatter, the dark orbs smashing on the ice and transforming into a dozen sand bubbler crabs scuttling across the river. Death and life. Endings and beginnings.

  Tav hadn’t expected to feel this heavy. They picked up a tiny sliver of china that had gotten caught in their hair and contemplated keeping it. Instead, they threw it across the river as if trying to skip a stone.

  What happened now?

  The constellation of witches and daughters and found things started singing. It was a song of mourning, a way of respecting the dead. But it was also a song of celebration, of newness.

  THE HEIR

  Kite was alive.

  She thought she would die, but she hadn’t. Why not? Was it the name she had accepted from a part-human child many years ago? Was it her love for another creature? Was her body truly her own?

  The Beast appeared beside her, having chosen to cross the open door to find her. He started licking her face.

  “We’re free,” she told him, wonderingly. She was alive. Her mother was dead. She was no longer the Heir. Joy swam through her bones. When she shook her head in delight, her hair sent pearls and semi-precious gemstones scattering over the rock.

  She looked back to the river, where Tav stood over the remains of the Witch Lord. They seemed lost and confused. The children were singing their victory. The victor is rewarded.

  Kite and the Beast skipped over the ice to where Tav was waiting.

  “You’re alive,” they said, as Kite approached. Relief and surprise grappling for mastery in their voice. “I thought I killed you.”

  “She was wrong,” said Kite. “I am a person.”

  “You always were,” said Tav. “No one is nothing.”

  “You won the duel,” said Kite, bowing to Tav. The Beast bowed, as well. “I like your wings.”

  “Thanks.” Tav fiddled with the steel-spined feather. “So, what now?” They stared up at the rift in the sky. “What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know.” Kite spun in a circle, leaving seaweed flakes in her wake. “But you might want to greet your people.”

  “My people?” Tav looked confused. “Which ones?” Kite laughed.

  “You defeated the Witch Lord. The throne is yours.”

  Seventy

  THE WITCH LORD

  “What?” Tav’s eyes widened.

  They turned around and looked at the shoreline dotted with glass and gold and metal and spikes and rust and skin and hair and fur. The remnants of the Witch Lord’s court were kneeling, their foreheads pressed to the dirt. Even the floating heads of the first ring of the Coven were bowing to them.

  Tav had challenged the Witch Lord and won. The Coven accepted Tav’s victory. The only witches not prostrating themselves were the children, who continued to sing and dance.

  “I don’t want it,” they said. “I don’t want the throne.”

  Two figures were walking onto the ice.

  “The witches call you their lord,” said Clytemnestra.

  “We won’t answer to you,” said the unnamed girl with coyote ears and an eye like a planet.

  “I don’t want you to,” said Tav.

  “They would rally around you as a witch king,” said Clytemnestra. “They would have you fill the vacuum of power in the City of Eyes. They would have you take control of our world.”

  Tav turned to address the witches gathered on the shore and raised their voice, wings outstretched to their full length. “The Coven is disbanded. Witches will have to learn to live in the world as equals, not masters. All creatures — made or born — will live free.”

  Murmurs rose from the shoreline tinged with disbelief and confusion. The children started cheering, and a couple of kids started playing jump rope with the chain of a spiked flail.

  A few members of the lower rings rose first, shedding their loyalty to the throne like dead skin. The Witch Lord had not been kind to her own.

  Then the upper rings, their numbers diminished from the battle, stood as well. They had been defeated.

  “Where will you go?” asked Clytemnestra.

  “I’ll stay here,” said Tav.

  “This world is dying,” said the unnamed. “You would do better to hide in the forests or open a door to the moon.”

  “I’m staying here,” repeated Tav.

  “So am I,” said Kite.

  “You are no longer the Heir,” said the unnamed. “You could return.”

  Kite reached down and petted the Beast.

  “I understand,” said the unnamed.

  Now that the battle was over, and some had lost, and some had won, and the Heart had been returned, the witches were starting to return to the City of Eyes. In two
s and threes, they trickled across the rift like meteorites flashing through the night sky. The unnamed nodded once to Tav, and then left, leading her people back to their home, and to freedom.

  “The Children’s Lair will be such a mess,” said Clytemnestra. “Do you know how hard it is to get tooth marks out of an ivory comb?”

  Soon, the sea of glitter and light faded until only Kite and Tav and the Beast remained. Overhead the cracked sky glittered with stars and souls and wishes.

  “A Witch Lord in exile.” Kite smiled, and brushed a finger along one feather. Tav shivered at her touch. “It suits you.”

  “Something’s missing,” they said.

  Kite’s smile faded. “Eli.” She sighed. “I loved her, too.”

  “Yes. No. Yes.” Tav stared up at the rift. “We haven’t saved the Earth.”

  “Not yet,” corrected Kite.

  “I dreamed —” They cut themselves off, feeling stupid.

  “You dreamed?”

  “Someone was under the ice.”

  “Let’s look, then.”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “Is it?” Kite tilted her head, her eyes like two moons. But there was softness in them, and they belonged to only one person. They always had. Kite didn’t wait for an answer. She and the Beast started wandering the frozen river, peering through the black glass, looking for any sign of movement.

  After a moment, Tav joined them. Something felt unfinished. Something important.

  KITE

  Kite sensed the wall before she felt it, its soft ridges curving up under the ice.

  “What’s a piece of the Labyrinth doing in the City of Ghosts?” she asked the Beast, who grew a vestigial wing and started chewing on it.

  She called Tav over. “Look,” she said, but what she really meant was feel.

  Tav understood and pressed a hand against the ice. After a moment, Kite placed her palm on top of Tav’s and their joint purple-and-green flames lapped at the ice, melting it, making space for the stone and dirt underneath.