“Took you long enough,” said Clytemnestra. “Did you really steal the Heart?” She seemed smaller than last time, almost toddler sized. Her exaggerated Cupid’s bow mouth was twisted into a sneer.
“Hi, baby demon,” said Tav, struggling for breath. They shoved their hands into their hair, trying to push the wilted spikes back into place.
The glow of the Heart had dulled, but Eli could still feel it in her blood. Everything was brighter, sharper, stranger. Even without her magical eyes, she could see magic everywhere. It was overwhelming.
Clytemnestra was eyeing her like she was dessert. “Tasty,” she said and licked her lips. Eli was too exhausted to respond.
“We need to get back to Earth,” said Tav. “Can you help us?”
“I can,” said Clytemnestra, rocking back and forth. “But that doesn’t mean I will.” She giggled.
Tav raised the black dagger.
“Threats already? Ooh, you are going to be fun!” Clytemnestra stretched onto her tiptoes and turned a pirouette. “But you can’t go yet. You’ll miss it.”
“Miss what?”
They were interrupted by the sound of a thousand trees screaming — not in pain but in anger. Under the roots were deep stones, the teeth of the world, and for a moment they all understood that the Labyrinth was the mouth of the world, and then the sound ended, and the understanding passed.
Clytemnestra bent over to touch her toes and then stared up at Tav as she hung there, head between her legs. “The war party, of course.” She skipped off, vanishing into thin air.
A doorway opened in the walls, and Cam, Eli, and Tav stumbled through it. The walls continued to change as they moved through space. Cam, who seemed to instinctively know where to go, led the way. He was guided by the stone walls that recognized him as part of them.
Eli trailed behind the others, keeping watch. She and the Children’s Lair were like two beasts greeting one another with grudging respect. She didn’t know what to expect from a war party — not sugar cookies this time.
Finally, they came to a large, open chamber. It was filled with little witches. Poisonous berries and spiky flowers that looked like weapons grew out of cracks in the floor. Blankets and broken toys had been pushed to the sides of the room. In one corner, a giant marionette danced with the grace of a prima ballerina. Eli looked up. Great ghostly branches stretched across a bleak sky — dark grey with one violent streak of orange. Clytemnestra floated like a star in the centre of the room. When she spoke, the sound echoed through the chamber.
“I am the voice of the children, the oldest and youngest of us, the Warlord who will lead us to victory.”
Shifting beside Cam, Eli frowned. Clytemnestra? The Warlord? What was going on?
“We have been children for generations. We have watched witches grow and forget about us, forget the pact we made with the dirt and the mud, forget how to speak to magic and instead only consume it. We have watched and revelled in their violence, but their violence is no longer chaotic and creative and life-giving. The Coven has become meticulous and measured. That is a death sentence to us, our way of life, and our world.
“The Labyrinth has been under attack for a long time, and its roots have weakened. We are no longer safe hiding here. It is time to come out of hiding and begin our open attack on the Coven. It is time for the children to claim our heritage!”
The children cheered, banging pots and pans together, scraping knives against stone. Someone was lighting foul-smelling fires that reached up toward the sky.
“We are mischief makers, and we make mischief for the Coven. We will be the troublemakers who play with the trees and dance on our parents’ bones!
“Today a victory was won — we have captured the Heart of the World.”
Now the children were quiet, curious, looking around and whispering. One bit into a piece of fruit and let the black juice dribble down his chin.
“The Heart has powers that even the Coven has never fully understood. And now that it is free, it will help us break the Coven!”
“Break! Break! Break!” chanted the children. The only thing more fun than building a castle was knocking it down.
“The assassin and her companions have also brought us an old weapon, from before the moon war, rescued from the wastelands.” Clytemnestra held up a strange instrument: a long metal rod studded with curved and spiky arms and the occasional toothy gear. The children oohed and aahed.
“My staff!” gasped Cam.
“She tricked us,” whispered Tav, admiration creeping into their voice.
“Tonight we dance.” Clytemnestra gave a wolfish smile. “And tomorrow we fight!”
More squeals and screams of delight. A broken record player spontaneously blasted a rock anthem. Someone picked up a fiddle. Suddenly everyone was dancing, swirling in complicated patterns, laughing and falling over each other. Eli was caught up in the whirlwind of bodies that grabbed at her hair and arms and legs. But she wasn’t a child anymore, and the dance only made her dizzy. She felt the hairline fracture in her arm split and gritted her teeth in pain. The Children’s revels were dangerous, and Kite was no longer around to heal her.
Cam pulled her out of the sea of children. “Let’s go.”
She nodded and let him lead her and Tav away from the revel. Before stepping through the wall, she turned back, looking for laburnum and lace, for a valentine mouth and vampire smile.
But Clytemnestra was nowhere to be seen.
Forty-Five
“We need to heal the wounds between worlds,” said Tav. “I think with my magic and Eli’s new Heart we can. We have to try.” The passion had returned to their voice, their words scarlet and indigo and copper.
“The Coven will be coming for us,” said Cam, polishing a chip of sandstone on his forearm.
“Let them come.” Eli’s hand twitched toward her knives, her thumb brushing gently over the empty sheath. They would pay for that.
“What about Kite? She’s with the Coven now.” Cam glanced sideways at Eli.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if she’s working with them or not.” Eli frowned, remembering her words at the end. The Heart is hungry. Had she known what would happen if Eli touched the Heart?
“So we forget about her for now,” said Tav. “It doesn’t matter.”
It mattered to Eli, but she knew they didn’t have time to unravel the mystery of her closest and least trusted friend.
“We stay here tonight,” said Eli, “and tomorrow we go back to the City of Ghosts. We fix this.”
They agreed.
Long after Cam had fallen asleep, Eli was still awake, picking at scabs of worry.
“What are you thinking?” The gold in Tav’s eyes seemed to brighten when they were looking at Eli. Or maybe it was the Heart they were looking at.
“Are you going to hand me over to the Hedge-Witch?” said Eli.
“She wants to use it for good.”
“She wants to use me. I’m not an it. And not everyone thinks it’s good, what you want to do. You’ve seen how dangerous magic can be. Is that really what you want for your city?”
Tav’s eyes slid down Eli’s body for a moment, at the made-thing that was also the Heart. Eli imagined them thirsting for the magic and power in her cartilage and shifted away.
“I don’t know. If it was used by the right person —”
“You can’t know who will use it.”
Silence.
“She would use me. You would use me,” Eli pushed.
“Maybe.” Tav’s eyes fell to their lap. “Yes. Eli — we could use your magic to help people.”
“The Heart belongs in this world.”
“Maybe it doesn’t. You don’t know that for sure.”
Eli let the silence grow, building walls between them. She wanted to reach out and touch them, but she held back. She needed to know. “So what are you going to do when we get back?”
Tav ran their thumb along the flat of the obsidian blade. They sigh
ed. Raised their head. “I’m going to do what I said. Help save Earth. After that … well, we’ll see.”
“Yes,” Eli agreed sadly, “we’ll see.”
She didn’t sleep. She was still afraid of what she might dream. She couldn’t wait to get back to the City of Ghosts. She was so tired.
Once Tav was asleep, Eli stood. The wall melted before her, welcoming her deeper into the Children’s Lair. Eli walked through it.
Clytemnestra was waiting.
“I’d say thank you,” Eli said, “but you used me. You knew what we were doing. You wanted us to steal the Heart. You wanted us to work for you all along.”
“You want to leave, leave. Let the world die.” Clytemnestra shrugged.
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Do I?” Clytemnestra chewed on her thumbnail. “The old Eli would have.”
Eli said nothing to that. “I don’t owe you anything anymore. You saved my life, and I stole the Heart. Damaged your enemies.”
“And you’ll keep helping us.”
“We’ll keep fighting the Coven.”
Clytemnestra inclined her head. “Close enough.” She grinned. Her lips stretched gruesomely, showing off every tooth. They had been filed to razor-sharp edges. It really was true then — the children were going to war. “You no longer owe me for saving your life. It’s a fair trade.”
Eli shifted from one foot to the other. “We’re not staying. We have to heal the rifts.”
“Oh, I know.” Clytemnestra tossed her hair. “You won’t be able to come back without a token. Want another present?” Clytemnestra pulled a long golden hair from her head and offered it to Eli with a sly smile.
Eli shook her head. “No more tricks. No more debts.”
Clytemnestra floated forward and patted Eli on the head. “There are always more tricks. But don’t worry, we’ll see you again. When we storm the Coven, there will be no need for the children to hide in the Labyrinth.”
Eli nodded, wondering what the City of Eyes would look like when Clytemnestra had razed the Coven to the ground.
Clytemnestra pinched the loose skin around Eli’s elbow. A sensation like warm honey spread up Eli’s arm as it healed.
“I help you and you help me.” The baby witch giggled. “That’s what friends do!”
“I already paid for the healing. You owed it to me.” Eli’s smile was more like a snarl.
“What?” Clytemnestra frowned.
Eli reached into the pocket of Clytemnestra’s pinafore and pulled out a silver earring. “Last time we met, I gave you this gift. Don’t you remember?”
Still smiling, she backed away from the witch, never letting Clytemnestra out of her line of sight. Even tiny Warlords were dangerous.
Eli spent the next few hours watching over her companions. Now that the Coven had released their nightmares, she was worried their dreams would no longer be safe. But neither of them dreamed at all. Eli wondered what that meant. Had the witches damaged their ability to dream?
Finally, the night ended, and a new day began somewhere in the City of Ghosts.
Here the sky was greypink, pale and sticky. Eli wondered when she would see these skies again. She wasn’t in a hurry to come back.
Clytemnestra cast glamours on Eli and Cam to hide their strangeness in the human world. “Heal the wounds,” the Warlord said, “and your debt to me will be paid.”
“If we manage that, you will owe us a thousand glamours,” said Eli.
“When, not if,” said Tav.
The Warlord burst into tears and fumbled in her pinafore until she found a stained handkerchief. “I hate goodbyes!” she sobbed.
They had decided to reopen Clytemnestra’s stitch, the one the impish witch used to sneak between worlds without the Coven’s knowledge. Eli was itching to see Tav make their own pathway between worlds instead of manipulating witch magic, but she didn’t want to push them. Not yet. In the battles to come, Tav’s newfound abilities would be pressed to their limits.
As Eli waited to cross, she felt a twinge of cold along the healed fracture of her arm. It was weakened and would rebreak more easily now. Eli would have to be careful.
“God, I can’t wait for coffee,” groaned Cam. “I’ve been in caffeine withdrawal since we left.”
Eli smiled at him. At least in the struggles ahead, there would be coffee.
“You kids ready to be impressed?” Tav had talked Clytemnestra into fixing their hair — the purple strands stuck up in spikes again.
“Always,” said Eli.
“Sure, Sonic.”
Tav reached into the air and unraveled the seam. Storm clouds whipped around their elbow and the temperature dropped.
“Deadly assassins first,” they said to Eli, bowing.
She stepped through the door.
Forty-Six
Eli popped an extra-strength Advil and downed it with a mouthful of espresso. The weight of a granite spine was hell on a human body, even one that was infused with the Heart of another world. But she would never be turned back into the parts the witch had used to make her — a girl stitched together out of pearl and glass, obsidian and blood laced with control.
Eli was in control now. She looked down at her bare arm, admiring the pathways of veins, waterways that flowed across stone and wood and earth and flesh. For a moment, her veins lit up with a golden glow, a constellation dancing across her skin, a reminder of the magic that was now a part of her body.
Eli wasn’t just a teenage girl with fingerprints on her glasses and freckles on her shoulders. Eli was a refugee from another world, a warrior, friend, and lover. A girl who loved reading romance novels and hated dust mites, who moved with grace and strength, and who was still healing from the wounds of her childhood.
She was a person.
“Can you taste the pineapple?” asked Cam. The apartment smelled like coffee grounds and old books, and Eli already loved it more than the cottage she had grown up in.
“No.” She let her arm drop to her side. The blades chimed softly at her hips: frost, bone, thorn, stone, and pearl. The blades were a part of her.
Two were missing.
One broken, forever lost to her.
The other entrusted to someone Eli couldn’t stop thinking about.
“We need to work on your palate.” Cam pushed another espresso mug toward her. “Try again. And sip it this time — it’s not a shot.”
“It’s called a shot,” she pointed out.
“Who’s being shot?” A sleepy tenor wound its way through the apartment.
Eli tried not to stare. Tav was wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and an oversized white tee. Their short hair flopped over to one side of their face, and silver earrings ran the length of both ears. A slender dagger of black glass was strapped to one forearm, obscuring a tattoo that Eli wanted to ask about.
Eli swallowed. “Um. Hey.”
“That for me?” Tav took the espresso shot and tipped it back. The obsidian blade chimed in answer to its sisters.
“That’s not how you’re supposed to drink it.” Cam sighed.
Tav shrugged, setting the mug back on the counter, fingers inches from Eli’s elbow. Eli felt her heart race, and then —
Something happened.
Tav’s eyes widened. “Eli?”
“What?” Eli tilted her head to one side and smiled. Her elbow slid over the countertop and brushed Tav’s fingertips. She tucked her other arm behind her back.
Tav frowned. “It’s just … it’s like you were here, and then you weren’t. Just for, like, a nanosecond. Like, you flickered. I could almost see through you —”
Eli laughed nervously. “You need to get more sleep.”
“Always. Did you sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“You both slept forever,” complained Cam. “And I’m hungry. It’s your turn to make breakfast.”
Tav watched Eli for a few moments and then nodded slowly. They turned to Cam. “Move over — I’d hate for yo
u to get gravel in the batter. Pancakes? Waffles?”
“Pancakes.”
Eli turned her back to her friends and opened her hand. Her palm was still transparent.
Pure light.
This new body would take some getting used to.
As Cam and Tav bickered playfully over the flour and vanilla, Eli wandered over to the window. She looked out at the human city haunted by the ghosts of a dead moon. She thought about the way trauma bleeds over edges, across bodies and stars and planets. She thought about the dying Earth and her dead mother and the two hearts that burned in her alien body. She thought about how much would have to change for the violence to end and wondered if three small bodies could really mend a broken world.
Tomorrow, she told herself, turning away from the city and toward Cam and Tav. People who cared for her, needed her, believed in her. They weren’t running from the fight, and neither was she. We start tomorrow.
Wounds could heal. That much she knew.
What the Humans Left Behind
Somewhere outside the city was a picturesque cottage with a thatched roof, round windows, and a jaunty hand-painted sign that read The Sun.
Inside, potted plants waved their magic tentacles while the Hedge-Witch paced back and forth. “They’ve been gone too long,” she said. “Something’s gone wrong.”
“We should send someone after them.”
The Hedge-Witch ignored the suggestion. Only Tav could carry humans across worlds. She had felt their magic the first time they met, the silver glow of witching essence pulsing under their eyelids.
She stopped to soothe an agitated succulent, lightly running her fingers along its skin. “It’s okay, baby,” she whispered. “I’ll protect you.”
The humans watched her, waiting.
She could see the colours of feeling burning under the skin of each human. Fear. Worry. Anger. In their eyes, she had failed. Whispers swirled around the room — although whether they were words spoken with crooked human tongues or simply thoughts fluttering free from the confines of a leaking mind, she did not know.
What if they’re dead?
We need that magic.
The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass Page 20
