The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass

by Adan Jerreat-Poole

  There was something about Tav that was different from the other humans — she could taste it on her tongue. Something that made her blades tremble. And Tav had opened a door in the world. They had used magic.

  “Does the Hedge-Witch know you can use magic?” she asked.

  “No. At least she never said anything to me.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want you to know.”

  “I trust her, Eli.”

  Eli sighed, feeling the tension creeping back into her joints. “I said I would take you to the Coven, and I’m going to. I can’t promise anything else.”

  “I’ll take what I can get.” Eli could hear Tav’s smile through the darkness.

  They lay side by side, hearts beating wildly, fingers intertwined.

  Should she let Tav take the Heart? Could she stop them?

  She pulled her hand away from Tav’s. “I need to see Clytemnestra.”

  “Now?” Irritation gravelled Tav’s voice.

  “Yeah, now.”

  “I’ll come.”

  “No! No — you need to stay with Cam.”

  “Okay …”

  “I won’t be long.”

  Eli checked her knives, stood, and retrieved her jacket from across the room. She pressed her hand against one of the walls and it melted away, as if it recognized her touch. She stepped through into another identical room, and for a moment, her breathing stuttered as she gulped air. As a child, she had often enjoyed trapping creatures in a maze in the wall. But before Eli could panic, a wooden door grew out of the wall, vines and twigs stabbing and twisting together to form a perfect gate. The gate opened, and Clytemnestra skipped inside.

  “We redecorated,” said Clytemnestra, gesturing to the brambles, some of which had sprouted large blue flowers that gave off a sickly sweet smell. Carnivorous. “Do you like it? You have to go now.”

  Eli nodded. They had stayed too long. She hesitated and then asked the question she had been holding on to. “Do you know what we’re doing? Why the humans are here?”

  “Why would I care what you’re doing?” Clytemnestra was playing with a handful of bones. “Humans are boring.”

  “These ones aren’t.”

  “No, they’re interesting. Bring them back to play.”

  “Okay. And thank you for helping us. Good hunting.” Eli hesitated. “Why did you give me a key?” Her hand went to the pendant that rested against her clavicle, the piece of china that matched Clytemnestra’s tea set.

  “Oh, the Warlord thought you might be useful.” Clytemnestra sounded bored. “And you’re so much fun — I’ve missed you.”

  “Of course.” Eli let her hand drop to her side. She should have known better than to expect straight answers from the little witch.

  “Don’t you want me to tell your fortune?” Clytemnestra cupped her hands over the bones and rattled them vigorously. The sound echoed through the chamber.

  “That only works if you believe.”

  “And you smell like superstition. You smell like human. Please, it’ll be so much fun!”

  “Fine,” said Eli, then quickly changed her answer to “No. Wait.”

  “Too late!” Bones scattered across the floor like a constellation.

  “There you go — your fortune. Happy hunting.” Clytemnestra vanished. The witch child had never intended to do any true fortune-telling. But she liked to break things.

  Eli stared down at the mess of animal bones. This is what I am, she thought. Then she smiled and went after the other two animals of flesh and bone that had been flung across the City of Eyes, lost between worlds.

  The thing about bones — when they break, they cut.

  Twenty-Eight

  Clytemnestra left them in the Labyrinth. Magic wind rushed about their ankles, playing with their hair, tugging on their sleeves. The walls here were perfectly smooth, as if carved from a giant slab of marble.

  The most powerful witches in the world wore dark clothing that burned like an eclipse against white stone and petrified wood. But here in the Labyrinth everyone wore pale clothing and used ground bone powder to conceal themselves from prying eyes. As a child, Eli had thought the Labyrinth was a great playground that only she had discovered. It wasn’t until she was older that she learned to see the different shades of slate and pearl that moved like strange shadows through the narrow passageways, learned the rank smell of bodies that overpowered the sweetness of wet calcified walls.

  “Come on,” said Eli. “This way.” She turned a corner and then another.

  “So, you know the way out?” Tav asked.

  “We can’t take the shadow door I’m used to, but they’re all over the world. We have to find the one that leads to the Coven.”

  Once she thought about it, the answer was obvious. How had Clytemnestra evaded the Coven for so long? How did the children grow strong on magic that wasn’t theirs? There was no better way to infiltrate the old powerful building than with the overlaid twisting reality that was the Labyrinth. The living walls were their protection. The walls had sworn no allegiance to the Coven. And the magic world lived on chaos, needed it, craved it. There would be no way to control the Labyrinth without killing the world.

  The Coven believed in fear and secrecy, the fury of wild magic, and the might of their own claws and teeth. The Coven hadn’t counted on the foolishness of teenagers, the power of desire, and the desperation of a girl who had been taught she had nothing to lose.

  “We just walk in? That seems too easy,” said Cam. “Especially now that we don’t have weapons.” He was taking the loss of his staff poorly.

  “It’s not easy,” said Eli, playing with her knives.

  “Can I have one?” asked Cam. “You have, like, seven. We should arm ourselves.”

  “No,” said Eli, thinking of the way the obsidian blade had bit Tav.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve seen you almost chop your finger off with a steak knife, that’s why,” Tav broke in.

  “That only happened twice!”

  They rounded another corner, and Eli could hear a quick intake of breath from Tav. Words were written in blood across the far side of the wall.

  I MISSED YOU

  Eli reached out and grabbed Tav’s hand, gave their palm a quick squeeze, and let go. “They’re just words,” she said.

  “Words have power here,” said Cam.

  “They have power everywhere.” Tav swallowed.

  “Here they have power only if you believe.”

  “A little help?” Cam’s voice sounded strained. Eli whipped around. He was frozen like a statue, with a giant scaled raven perched on his shoulder.

  “Is it real?” asked Eli.

  “Does it look real?” said Cam. Eli could see his pulse flickering wildly, like an animal caught in a trap.

  “Does it smell like a bird? Illusions don’t smell, usually.”

  “Can you get it off me?” Cam tensed in pain, and Eli could see a trickle of blood run down his arm.

  “Calm down,” said Eli, drawing the obsidian blade just in case.

  “Can’t you kill it?” whispered Tav.

  “I don’t know how to kill it until I know what it is.”

  Cam whimpered. The beast lowered its beak and pressed the sharp tip against his jugular.

  “You have to stop believing in it,” said Eli to Cam, crouching down, trying to make eye contact. “It’s not real.”

  “It hurts.” A trickle of red from his throat matched the river running down over his shoulder.

  “It’s killing him!” Tav snapped, eyes flashing. “If you won’t do anything, then I will.”

  “No, wait!”

  Tav grabbed the blade from Eli’s hand and launched themselves at the bird. The blade entered the skull cleanly, but when they pulled it out, the head rematerialized unscathed.

  “It’s for incorporeals!” yelled Eli in frustration.

  The bird launched itself off Cam, knocking Tav over and trapping them underneath. Cam coll
apsed on the ground, clutching his bloody throat, face pale.

  Eli’s nails scrabbled across the leather straps that hung around her waist, unsheathing the blade of truth.

  “Show yourself!” she yelled, throwing the knife at the monster.

  Frost pierced a wing, and the bird shrieked.

  It wasn’t an illusion.

  “Shit.” Eli opened her mouth and screamed as the pain of rotating teeth wracked her jaws. Crocodile teeth overflowed her human mouth, weighing her down, forcing her to the ground. She fell onto all fours and crawled forward.

  Mouth wide open, Eli threw herself on top of the bird, placed her jaws around its thick neck, and bit down. It was rubbery and tasted vile. Feathers caught in her throat and threatened to choke her. Eli kept biting, kept chewing, until finally the bird’s head fell from its body, the beak clacking loudly on the ground.

  She looked down past the body to Tav’s face, their eyes bright with horror and fear and something maybe close to excitement. Eli pushed the creature off Tav. Immediately, Tav jumped up and ran over to where Cam lay prone and trembling.

  “You’re okay, you’re going to be okay.” Tav staunched the bleeding with their hands. Eli could tell that they were superficial wounds and that he was suffering from shock rather than blood loss.

  She lumbered toward them.

  Cam moaned in terror as her shadow fell across his body.

  “Stop!” Tav’s voice was harsh as they whipped around, eyes falling on Eli. “Don’t come any closer.”

  Eli saw herself reflected in their eyes. A girl on all fours, with crocodile teeth spilling out of her mouth. Eyes like slits in her face.

  A monster.

  Suddenly, she understood — they were afraid of her.

  Her eyes fell to the discarded blade of black glass and then to Tav’s hand, which they were cradling against their chest.

  The blade had wounded them. Again.

  The taste of shame, perfumed and sickly sweet, coated her tongue.

  Eli tried to change back, but her magic was sticking, fear and worry and hurt twinging in her joints, slowing the transformation.

  How could they look at her like that?

  How dare they look at her like that?

  She had saved them.

  The anger that had kept her alive burned through her veins. Ungrateful. Selfish. Humans.

  Eli growled and showed her teeth.

  “Eli, calm down,” said Tav, pulling Cam to his feet and shoving him behind them. “We have to find the entrance to the Coven. You have to change back.”

  Eli took another step forward. She was hungry. Her blades were hungry.

  “I know you’re hungry,” said Tav. “But it’s not time. You have to wait.”

  Eli stopped. Tav had seen Eli’s feelings again. Tav was afraid of her, but they weren’t running away.

  Why was she always hurting the people she cared about?

  Kite hurt you first, she thought. So what if you hurt her back?

  Kite might be gone. The thought of a world without her was unbearable. All those mornings lying tangled in Kite’s arms, caressed by strands of seaweed hair. She wouldn’t give those up for anything.

  “It’s okay,” said Tav. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Tav was nothing like Kite — they were movement and anger where Kite was stillness and tranquility — but when they spoke, Eli felt that same sense of calm wash over her. Breathe. Remember to breathe.

  Slowly, painfully, her body re-formed, bones retreating to the size and shape of a human. Only her yellow eyes remained unchanged.

  She picked up the fallen blades and sheathed them.

  “How deep is it?” she asked, refusing to meet Tav’s eyes.

  “Shallow. He’ll be okay.”

  “I can speak for myself,” said Cam. “And ‘okay’ is definitely the wrong word.” But he managed a shaky smile. “Luckily for you, I’m very tough and manly.”

  “Very.” Tav grinned.

  Eli took a breath. “I’m going to look for the magic, to see if I can track it to the Coven.” She switched to her pure black eyes. Threads of magic criss-crossed one another in the hallway, strings of pure light that stretched between every single body and object and made-thing. Animate and inanimate, living and dead. The network of power that made up the world.

  Eli tried to sort through the kaleidoscope of colours and shapes that was a world made entirely of magic. A wave of nausea swept through her body.

  Tangles of hurt and anger buzzed furiously in the air, lighting up strands of light that flowed between Cam, Eli, and Tav. A few threads even connected them to the dead body of the monster that was still lying on the ground, looking like something that belonged in a curiosity shop. It looked fake now, like a giant puppet.

  She started coughing up ash and smoke and petals.

  “Eli?”

  She waved them away. “Too much magic,” she gasped. When the coughing fit subsided, she reached out with her hands, searching for the crease of a shadow door or the fold of the Children’s Lair. Seeking the invisible doors that connected the Labyrinth to the City of Eyes.

  Her hands came away empty. Frustrated, she drew the frost blade to enhance her truth sight. She tried to forget that Tav and Cam were watching her. In the City of Eyes, she was used to being watched — but this felt different. More intimate. Not the cold disinterest of walls or trees or witches. Eli exhaled and tried to clear her head. Hand tightening around the shard of ice, she looked again.

  One strand, a glittering gold, was brighter than the rest, clearly visible to her magic sight.

  Eli grabbed a hold of it. It was warm and soft and sturdy. She began to pull herself along as it wound through the Labyrinth.

  “I guess we should follow her?” Cam’s voice seemed to come from a long way away.

  “She’s tracking the magic. Touching it, holding it in her hand,” said Tav. “I never thought to try.”

  “You can see it?” asked Cam.

  “You can’t?”

  Walls seemed to switch and grow and shrink around the gentle golden glow. They followed the thread through the shifting maze of the Labyrinth. Soon, they came to a place where the thread ended — or rather where it emerged from one place to another. It disappeared down into nothingness. Kneeling down, Eli felt the familiar rough edges of a shadow door, and she was willing to bet anything that it led straight into the Coven. When her fingers brushed the door, it lit up, as if illuminated by a thousand fireflies. She exhaled, and that breath nudged the door open. Through the hole in the ground, there was only darkness, and the smell of power.

  This was where she would find answers.

  Eli’s hand slipped into the cool darkness that lay beyond the door.

  “Here,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  “I see it,” said Tav. Guiding Cam, they stepped forward.

  The ground opened up and they fell through bedrock, fossil, everything.

  Twenty-Nine

  When Eli felt a cool hard floor under her feet, she opened her eyes again — one magic black eye, one reptilian yellow.

  Her heart sank. “We’re not in the Coven.”

  “It’s like the Labyrinth, but not,” said Tav, brushing a piece of mica from their hair.

  They were right. Eli looked around the dimly lit chamber. Torches burned faintly on the walls. Eli closed her eyes. When her eyelids fell shut, guillotining off the fireworks of pain and purpose that formed the network of bodies and fantasies Eli sometimes called home, something sparked in her body.

  The labyrinth underneath the Labyrinth.

  I thought it was a myth.

  Eli laughed once, a sharp sound that rang out as if the password had finally been uttered after a thousand wrong attempts.

  “Well, we’re definitely somewhere. I think we’re getting closer.”

  She opened her eyes again and could make out the gold thread, drawing them deeper into the under-labyrinth.

  “Where’s Cam?” asked Ta
v.

  “Here.” His voice was strangled and heavy with frustration. “I don’t think the door wanted me to pass through it.”

  Peering through the shadows, Eli realized that Cam was not huddled against the wall but firmly embedded inside it. From the shoulders down, he was entirely in the stone.

  “How did you do that?” asked Eli. “That’s impressive.”

  “Hey, not all of us are as compatible with magic as you are.”

  “Well, at least you aren’t bleeding anymore.” This was the closest Eli could get to an apology.

  “I’ll take that as your version of ‘Oh Cam, I was so worried. I’m glad you’re alive.’”

  “Oh Cam, I was so worried. I’m glad you’re alive,” she repeated in a monotone.

  “Very funny. Are you going to get me out of here, or what? You can, can’t you?” His voice was strained.

  “We’ll get you out,” said Tav, raising an eyebrow at Eli. “Right?”

  “I have no idea.” Eli stared admiringly at the way stone flowed easily into flesh. “You look good like this.”

  “I always look good, and I’m ready for you to do your magic-girl thing anytime.”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. There aren’t rules, just agreements. Sometimes those agreements are based on force — you can make a lion jump through a hoop if you scare and hurt him enough. You can do the same thing here. Other agreements are based on mutual respect, and those tend to be more powerful. But they take longer.”

  “You want me to make an agreement with the wall?”

  “I can’t negotiate on your behalf. Look, I’ll turn around and give you privacy.”

  “Umm … thanks?”

  Eli moved away a few steps and crossed her arms. Tav was still staring openly. Eli grabbed their elbow and pulled them to the side. “It’s rude to stare at the wall,” said Eli. “Let them talk.”

  “Um … if you say so.”

  “Eli?! Eli!”

  “What?” She didn’t turn around.

  “It’s not working! Now my neck is covered in stone, too. It’s getting harder to breathe.”

  “That’s because you’re panicking.” Eli knew that saying this wasn’t helpful, but she didn’t have a lot of experience with people panicking. Unless she was about to kill them. And there was only one way she solved that problem.