Magic City

by Paula Guran

  He watches her as she eats rice and meat with her bare hands, looking for someone beneath her skin. Ani—the name comes back to her, weighing heavy in the air between them.

  “Tell me about her,” the fox-girl says.

  Yuki looks up, startled. His eyes are the color of good, clear tea, shining in the sunlight falling through the window. For a moment Ani wants to taste them. She imagines Yuki’s tears would be just like that hot, strong drink. She imagines they could wash away even the taste of shadows and oil and blood.

  Ani sees the question of how she knew to ask about a girl die on Yuki’s tongue. He shakes his head and turns away, looking out the window at the glittering tower rising above the waking city.

  “Her name was Ani,” he says, which she already knew.

  The fox-girl looks at the tower, reflected in Yuki’s gaze. The thousand glass eyes that make up its infinite sides are formed of all the things that people have lost, left behind, and given up by going inside.

  “She worked in the tower. When they ordered food, she was always the one who met me at the door to take the delivery. She smiled at me, every time. Sometimes, when she gave me my tip, I think she put in a little extra, even if her co-workers were cheap, so it would seem like more. It’s stupid, but I thought I was in love with her.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know.” Yuki sighs. “She called me . . . the last time she called, she sounded scared. She didn’t order any food. She couldn’t catch her breath, and it sounded like she was crying. I think her hands were shaking, because the phone kept moving away from her lips and back, her voice going in and out like the wind.

  “Then she was gone. The people in the tower stopped ordering food. I called every number in their directory and asked about her, but every person I talked to told me they’d never heard of her. I’m afraid she might be dead.”

  Ani can’t bear to tell him that the name of the girl he thought he loved tasted like ghosts when he first spoke it aloud. She sets aside the empty bowl and picks up the plastic chip marked by her teeth and stained with her blood. She traces the frozen quicksilver patterns.

  A memory shivers across her skin, fleeting and quick. In a moment of stillness, she might even catch it.

  “If I could get you inside the tower to look for her, would you go?” she asks.

  “Yes.” Yuki looks like he might cry, spilling good, hot tea down his cheeks. “But how could you get me inside?”

  Ani grins. “I’m a fox-girl.”

  Ani sits on Yuki’s pallet, while he sleeps on the floor. Her knees are drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, her mind seeking after the fragment of memory buried under her skin.

  Yuki’s dreaming helps. He is dreaming his Ani, dreams strong enough to conjure her into the room. Fox-Ani remembers the girl, remembers where she has seen her before. She looks at the rising spire of glass through Yuki’s window, and remembers being inside.

  She remembers.

  The city’s nighttime glow falls through a thousand panes of glass. It patterns the floor so she walks through pieces of light, like fallen leaves. Her bare feet pad, silent as paws. The hallways are empty; all the humans have gone home for the night. They are so confident, or so few, that they don’t even bother to leave guards behind.

  The fox-girl winds along the hall until she find a door leading deeper into the tower’s insides. She drops four paws onto the ground for a moment before rising on her hind legs and bracing her front feet against the door. She puts her muzzle to the lock, licks it once to bind it to her, and calls a high, sharp yip into the keyhole. Crow Lords may know the secret name of the winds, but fox-girls know the way to make any door open.

  She changes again, two feet on the ground, and twists the knob. She steps into one of the few rooms inside the tower without windows. The room is lit by the glow of machinery, the salvaged scraps of humanity’s one-time glory. Some screens shed an eerie luminescence. Others are cracked, broken, long fallen into disuse and disrepair. Outside, the tower is beautiful. At its heart, it is rotten and sad.

  A shadowed form moves, illuminated by the half-light. It is a woman with long, black hair. The fox-girl has stayed so quiet that the woman doesn’t hear her, doesn’t turn.

  From the set of the woman’s shoulders, hunched protectively forward, the fox-girl recognizes a kindred spirit. This woman is a thief, too, creeping through the shadows after dark, snooping where she shouldn’t. The fox-girl slips up behind her, places her teeth next to the woman’s throat, and breathes hot against her skin. Even in girl form she could tear through this soft, human throat before the woman could scream.

  “Hello,” the fox-girl whispers.

  The woman doesn’t scream, but she goes tense, her body rigid against the fox-girl’s naked flesh.

  “Who are you?” The woman’s voice is almost steady. There is only the faintest tremor, matched by the faintest whiff of fear sweat prickling her skin. The woman’s fingers tense on the keyboard in front of her, skritching softly. Now that she has been caught out, the fox-girl wonders, will the woman fight or flee?

  “I have no name, not anymore. I came here to steal what you stole from the Crow Lords,” the fox-girl says. She sees no harm in honesty; there is nothing the woman can do to stop her.

  The woman surprises her with a sound like laughter. The fox-girl can only see part of the woman’s face, a half-moon, tinted blue in the monitor-light.

  “If I turn around, will you bite me?”

  The fox-girl steps back, and lets the woman turn. The woman looks at her, takes in the fox-girl’s nakedness, and the corners of her lips lift in a bemused smile. She shakes her head, as if at a wayward child. The fox-girl suddenly feels young, foolish, and she bares her teeth. But she holds her ground, waiting for the human woman to speak.

  “Do you really think we could steal from the Crow Lords?” the woman asks. “Think about it, and look at this place. We’re just starting to rebuild, re-learn everything we’ve lost. How could we take anything from them? We have no magic of our own. That’s why we built all this.” She waves her hand at the machines around them. “And look where it got us.”

  War. The fox-girl nods, but says nothing aloud. The tower, beautiful on the outside, isn’t a stronghold. It’s only the gathering place where the shattered remnants of humanity have come to try to put back together what their greed tore apart.

  The fox-girl sees now what she should have seen the moment she walked into the Crow Lord’s tower. The Crow Lords, tricksters still, are playing a long game, setting humanity and the fox-girls against each other in the hopes they will wipe each other out. They didn’t send her here to steal; they sent her hoping she would be captured, tortured, broken, the secrets of fox-girl magic ripped from her skin. They sent her here to make her less, and make the humans more, tipping the balance just enough to start another war.

  “What were you doing here?” The fox-girl points at the monitors behind the woman, speaking to hide her shame.

  “Trying to wipe out the old programs before our people can unravel them. These machines did us no good the first time. I don’t want to see she same mistakes made again.”

  The fox-girl grins, sudden and quick in the half-light.

  “I think I can help you. Can you get me the chip out of one of those?”

  The woman looks at her askance, but after a moment she turns and opens a panel beneath the desk. As the woman digs within the machine, nimble fingers working, the fox-girl wonders if her trust is bravery or stupidity. She decides on bravery, holding on to the image of the woman as a kindred spirit, a fellow thief.

  “What’s your name?” the fox-girl asks. She doesn’t think humans earn their names the way fox-girls do, but she would still like to know.

  “Ani.”

  The woman straightens and holds up the thing she has dug out from the heart of the machine. Blue radiance slides across a pattern of frozen quicksilver printed on a small square of plastic. She holds it
out to the fox-girl, but the fox-girl shakes her head.

  “I want you to cut me open and stitch it up inside my skin.”

  Yuki turns, snorting in his sleep before moving on to another dream. The fox-girl remembers the chafe of leather against her wrists, the prick of the needle going into her skin. She remembers the look of fear and doubt in Ani’s eyes, the salt-tang scent of fox blood, a moment of hot pain, then drifting into the dark.

  She glances down at the chip in her hand, flecked with rust-colored flakes. She remembers everything now. She meant to change the programming, re-write it with her being, imprint her memory on its quick-silver patterns and give it back to Ani: a fox-girl virus, thief quick, spreading throughout the human machines and bringing the tower crashing down.

  She meant to infect the humans themselves, instilling them with defiance against the Crow Lords, starting a war of her own. She turns the chip, studying it in the light. But now, she is different. The fox-girl she was, all cocky anger and defiance, lives only in the chip. The self that came out of the tower has changed, gentled by eyes like tea, illuminated by a human thief in a tower, and darkened by a crow shadow that tastes like oil on her tongue.

  Something brushes against the window, a feathered wing. Ani opens the window and leans out. The sloped roof isn’t so far that she can’t catch hold as she turns her back to the tower and wiggles out into the cold night air. She pulls herself up, nails scrabbling on the tile, and then she stands on four paws on the roof. Eleven crows circle against the stars before dropping to join the shadow of a man whose eyes are no longer as hollow and hard as they used to be.

  The light in his gaze speaks of fear. He doesn’t belong with his brothers anymore, as she no longer belongs with her sisters.

  “You took something from me.” He echoes his words from the night before. “I want it back.”

  Ani cocks her head, ears alert, eyes bright.

  “Give it back!” He lunges for her. His voice breaks, becoming a crow’s call.

  She sidesteps, and eleven ragged birds rise into the air, maddened by pain. His shadow swarms, but doesn’t dive, doesn’t strike. His birds beat at her with their wings, and she feels the answering stir of shadow-slick feathers under her skin. She tastes oil at the back of her throat. She can read his mind now, a Crow Lord trick.

  He wants her to take away the pain, and he hates himself for wanting it. He wants to roll, like her sisters, whine and show his belly. He hates what he has become, but even more, he hates what he has been. He wants—he needs—to feel her teeth in his skin.

  Ani jumps, catching a shadowed bird. She holds it gently between her jaws, a precious thing. He doesn’t fight her. Above her, ten crows scream their confusion and speak their divided minds. She bites down, exquisite needle teeth piercing feathers, bone and skin. The shadow slides down her throat. She savors it—Crow Lord power running through her veins.

  A truth beats in time with her heart, one half-felt in the moment she tasted the first piece of his shadow, but fully realized now. She owns him. This Crow Lord is hers, and it doesn’t matter that she is on all fours on the ground; he can’t look down on her, not anymore.

  Ten birds coalesce beneath the man crouching on the red roof tile, holding himself against the pain. He looks up, and his eyes aren’t hollow, and they never will be again. They shine, heavy with tears.

  Ani pads forward, burnt-black paws hushing over the tile. The Crow Lord doesn’t move. He whines a little in the back of his throat; he raises his head, baring skin. It is not a crow gesture; it is a fox gesture—submission.

  She licks his throat, but doesn’t nip. He lowers his face. Her long tongue cleans his cheeks, tasting his tears. Salt mingles with the shadows and blood as she swallows them down. When he stops crying, she sits back on her haunches and looks up at him.

  “I’m going into the tower,” she says. “Tomorrow. Tonight, I’m going hunting.”

  She turns, tail blurring in the moonlight. She jumps, changing before she hits the ground. Two feet land, then four paws run over the broken asphalt. She glances back, grinning, tongue lolling, devouring the night air.

  “There’s blood on your mouth,” Yuki says, waking her.

  Ani looks up. Yuki stands over the pallet with a tray of plain rice and steamed vegetables. She sits up and the sheet slides away, revealing naked skin. She pushes a hand through her tangled hair, and then licks her lips clean. Blood flakes onto her tongue, cold and dry.

  Yuki looks at her sadly, but he doesn’t turn away anymore. She isn’t his Ani, and it breaks his heart.

  “I could be,” Ani says, reading his thoughts. “I could be her.” She rises, and takes the tray from him, setting it down. She takes his hand. His skin is cool, and she presses it to her breast, over her heart. Her nipple is hard beneath his palm.

  “There,” she whispers. “Can you feel it? She’s inside my skin.”

  Ani is hungry. The fox in her, the crow in her, she struggles to hold onto to them, because part of her knows she is still changing. Before Yuki can pull away, she digs her nails into his hand, holding it against her sleep-warm flesh. She catches his hair with her other hand, pulls him close. She tastes his mouth. Unlike the Crow Lord, he doesn’t respond. Like the Crow Lord, she tastes his tears. They taste just as she imagined.

  Ani lets go. Yuki’s eyes are infinitely sad.

  “What do you want from me?” Yuki’s voice is hoarse, heavy with salt.

  She reads his mind again. He is thinking about the old tales of fox-maidens seducing young men and stealing their souls. Like the fox-girls who roll over for the crows, Yuki is ready to roll over for her. He thinks he has lost everything that matters, and that there is nothing left to care about anymore. He tried to help her, and she threw it back in his face—taking the last thing that was his, the last thing that matters, his kind heart.

  “I’m sorry.” Fox-Ani means the words, and they surprise her. She is a fox, a thief. She bows to no one, not even the Crow Lords. She takes what she wants because she can, but looking at Yuki, all she wants to do is give.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll take you into the tower, if you still want me to. Then you’ll never have to see me again.” She smiles—a true smile. Strangely, she doesn’t feel weak, laying her words at his feet, showing her throat. She feels strong.

  “Put on some clothes,” Yuki says. “Let’s go.”

  Inside, darkness swallows the stairwell. A scent pulls her up, a thread of pain. Fox-Ani changes, shedding clothes like skin. Four paws hit the ground, and she sprints up the cold metal steps, her nails clicking as she runs. Yuki’s labored breath follows behind.

  She stops in front of a metal door, halfway up the tower, and presses her paws to either side of the lock. She speaks her fox-word, a high, eerie sound that echoes in the silence, then she changes again, standing to open the door with human hands. She hears Yuki coming up behind her, still breathing hard.

  They step into the hall. The glow of the city spills through the windows, dappling the floor in fallen-leaf patterns of silver and blue and neon-red. Ani walks through them, barefoot, and the light slides across her skin.

  “Here.” Yuki holds out the fallen robe she left behind in her sprint up the stairs. Ani slips it on, a skin over her skin, and belts it tight.

  “It’s this way.” Ani beckons him down the hall, memory and scent guiding her back to the room filled with half-broken computers.

  Outside, she pauses. She opens her mouth, about to tell Yuki to go back. She knows, without a doubt, what they will find inside. She can smell it—strength and pain. He shouldn’t have to see this.

  As though reading the words on her face, Yuki lifts his chin, defiant. Tea-colored eyes shine in the dark.

  “Open it.”

  Ani doesn’t bother to change. The door is unlocked and she pushes it open. The first Ani, the real Ani, is waiting inside for them.

  She rises stiffly from the bank of computers. Fox-Ani braces herself, but behind her, unprepared, Yuki gasp
s. Human-Ani’s left eye is swollen shut, the skin around it deepened with purple bruises, fading to sick yellow. She holds one arm against her side, wincing in pain as she steps forward. A hairline fracture in her rib, Fox-Ani thinks. She can smell sickness, infection, a wound improperly cleaned and struggling to heal.

  Still, the human Ani’s eyes are bright. They defy any offer of sympathy. She holds her chin high, and speaks through cracked lips, her voice almost without inflection.

  “They found out I helped you and tried to kill me. I escaped. I’ve been hiding out in the ventilation system and the basement. There’s so few of them in the tower now, they can’t cover enough ground. If I keep moving, they’ll never find me.”

  Ani takes a labored breath, and Fox-Ani winces.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to come back. Every night, I sneak up here and wait.”

  Fox-Ani nods and swallows hard around a sudden thickness in her throat. She reaches up and unknots the leather cord she has tied around her neck, carrying the silver-patterned chip. Ani’s eyes gleam, and she holds out her hand, but the fox-girl pulls back.

  “Don’t touch it, unless . . . unless . . . ” She takes a deep breath, and forces herself to look Ani in the eye. “You have a choice. I can destroy the computers, bring the whole system crashing down. But if you touch this chip, you’ll be infected with my memories, with the fox-girl I used to be. You can help me spread the disease, bring war to the Crow Lords one human at a time.”

  Behind her, Fox-Ani feels Yuki stiffen, understanding her betrayal. The real Ani’s bruised face doesn’t change, her eyes still shine and she lifts her chin a little higher.

  “No more war.”

  Fox-Ani nods. “Then you should leave now. I’ll come find you when it’s done.”

  She turns, unable to bear the human woman’s eyes any longer. If she saw anger there, she would understand, but there is only a kind of sadness, and the fox-girl feels young and foolish again. How is it that she, who walked the earth for ages before the first humans ever raised their heads to look up at the stars, could be so much less wise than them?