Invisible

by Dawn Metcalf

  Cold!

  The shock of it hit her as she skidded in the snow. The sunshine baked her skin, reflected blindingly off unspoiled snowdrifts. Kestrel snorted and tugged through the thigh-deep wasteland, undaunted by the mountainside, impatient in pursuit. Joy shivered. The hot, wet patch on her arm turned icy. Filly tipped her head back and laughed.

  “Hoy,” she said, catching flakes on her tongue. “Tastes like home!”

  The Red Knight stood in the overturned path, steam pouring off the crimson axe against a pale sky. He was hunched over a patch of red snow. He had escaped through the pines to nurse his wounds and clearly hadn’t expected pursuit.

  Joy flashed the scalpel in the blinding sun. The sharp wind whipped her hair against her cheeks. She was hunting him now.

  The Red Knight lifted his axe and spun it in a whirling disk of flame, all too bright against the colorless snow.

  “Bad fighting terrain,” the warrior observed. “We need to relocate. Watch this!” Filly said and heaved a deep breath, tipped back her head and screamed. Her face turned reddish-purple as her voice shattered and cracked; the world thundered with the reverberations, leaving everything shocked white and still. Joy gaped at Filly, her left ear ringing. The Red Knight buckled in the soft snow.

  A section of the soft ice-cream puff near the very top of the mountain ridge broke with a slow-motion snap, giant sheets of whiteness separating, sliding, powder-edged shards of snow tumbling down.

  Toward them.

  “Now run,” Filly urged hoarsely, although they were already running, the Red Knight leading the charge away from the avalanche that filled the sky with noise.

  “I hate this plan!” Joy shouted as she pushed numb legs to run.

  The Red Knight headed for the snow-laden evergreens. Sensing escape, Kestrel plunged forward, a greyhound in pursuit. Joy stumbled after them. Filly slid off her back and found her feet.

  The sound of the avalanche was a living thing that tunneled through Joy’s brain, pouring into her head with an awful cottony thickness that smothered her thoughts, filled her lungs, made her gasp for breath while she still could...

  “Move!” Filly pushed her and they dived past sharp branches and torrents of snow, falling forward...

  ...into another forest.

  It was muggy and dank. There was a flash of red and Joy was being pulled again, splashing. Through another tree. The smell of pine. Another. And another. And a third/fourth/fifth. Filly wrapped her good hand in the leash and wrenched back. Kestrel yelped. Filly loosed something over their heads. It hit the Red Knight in the helmet, shoving him off balance, short of the next copse of trees beyond a hedge.

  Joy stabbed her scalpel through her belt loop and pocket, grabbing the few seeds left in her hand.

  “Hold him!” she cried.

  She heard the axe slice through the tree beside the knight before her eyes registered it. The trunk split like butter cut with a knife. Smoke curled from the break as the giant tree fell. Joy had the worst feeling of déjà vu.

  She closed her fist and ran. The sudden slack on the leash surprised Kestrel and she tugged it, slick with blood, out of Filly’s hand. Joy didn’t notice until the wet strip slapped her leg. She glanced back.

  “Filly!”

  The tree was falling, about to cut them off. The horsewoman looked up.

  She shook her head and shouted, “Go!”

  The Red Knight moved. Kestrel moved. Joy moved. Filly stayed.

  Coolness. Light.

  Joy never heard the tree fall.

  She was in another wood, with wider trees and higher branches that filtered the sunlight into a dappled fawn’s hide of spots. The Red Knight was waiting and swung the axe through the tree they’d just come through, missing Joy’s head by inches. She dropped the seeds out of fright. They landed at his armored feet, pinging sharply off the metal and springing up like angry vipers from the fertile ground.

  Joy leaped out of the way, twisting in the loam, smearing her body in mud and moss. She tumbled and came up in a crouch. The Red Knight stood skewered in a bramble of thorns wicked and sharp. He fought against briars, trying to bend his elbow and bring the axe down. The blade lit with its crimson flame, but the knight was trapped, one arm half-raised, the other snarled in the thicket. Kestrel wound around the back of the wounded tree trunk, her yellow eyes wild.

  She hissed.

  Joy couldn’t feel her hand, tugged numb in the leather leash. She staggered back from the Red Knight’s briar cage, disbelieving her own eyes.

  I did it.

  Joy fumbled for her pocket, scratching the back of her glove on the scalpel’s edge. She grabbed Ladybird’s plastic-wrapped packet of silk and powder, held her breath and shook it loose over the knight’s head.

  The pillow smacked into the helmet over the eye slit and pluffed sadly off the edge, snagging the tip of a thorn. Joy backed away from the wisp of sunset orange that hung far too still in the air. The Red Knight struggled, forcing his axe arm free. As he grasped the handle, the axe blade flared. The fire threatened its roar. The Red Knight gave a howl of triumph.

  Which took a mighty inhale.

  The pink packet caught fire and the tiny silk pillow went poof!

  A giant cloud of grapefruit-colored smoke blossomed around the knight’s head. Lightning flashes simmered where the axe blade pierced its underbelly, its bloody flames sucked right into the bright coral haze. The Red Knight stopped struggling. Its helmet lolled back. The arms fell slack as the body loosened, leaning back against the thornbush like a beanbag couch. The axe slowly tipped sideways and hung forgotten in the bramble. Joy waited until the snap and crack of briars slowed under the settling weight.

  She pulled Kestrel back, worried about what would happen if the tracker got wind of the drug. Ladybird’s warning sang in her brain, One touch is all it takes. The knight was tranquilized, insensate—as listless and addled as the horned toker on the couch.

  The wind brushed the Sunset Dust aside in a gentle smear. The Red Knight didn’t move. Kestrel cooed and scratched the dirt.

  Steeling herself, Joy painfully unwound her hand from the long leather leash, fingers slipping on the end slick with blood. She tied the strap to a sapling as thick as Kestrel’s post, keeping her eyes on the knight and listening to his even breaths, which sounded like “ah ah ah.”

  Having brought down her prey, Kestrel busied herself in the underbrush, rooting for something that slithered away with a rattle of twigs and leaves.

  Holding her breath against any stray dust, Joy mounted the bramble, grabbing sharp branches with her gloved hands and clamping the scalpel in her teeth. It tasted like metal and blood and batteries and rain. She ignored the gently twitching hands and the axe that hung beyond its reach and perched herself above the Red Knight’s breastplate. His head moved, but only just. Taking the scalpel from her lips, she scraped its blade against the armor with the sound of nails on chalkboard. Joy swiftly drew the Red Knight’s signatura, its loops, its three inverted arrow-trees and the singular curl that defined this incarnation as the current Red Knight, the one that she had captured.

  Panting in panic, her arms scraped with thorns, Joy tried to finish quickly as her fingers shook with strain and fear, a whimper curdling like a bad taste in her throat. The Red Knight shuddered. Joy drew faster. She half-expected to feel the axe blade or an armored hand at her throat. He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back with her forearm, giving her room to work. The final lines began to glow. The helmet turned. He stared at her mutely. Joy ignored him. She could do this. She could ward the knight off. She could lock him to his Name. She could keep everybody safe.

  She cut through the last flake of rust.

  The signatura flared.

  The Red Knight vanished.

  Joy pitched forward, suddenly alone in the br
iar. She sank into the bramble, arms scored to the elbow, spearing herself in many places as she fell. Joy felt the rake of thorns on her face, through her shorts, into her shirt. She gasped.

  What happened?

  Joy slowly extricated herself from the tangle of thorns, wincing at all the little pains as she tried to pick her way out. The hollow inside the briar formed a sort of crushed nest and she was struggling inside it, trembling, weak as a baby bird.

  Stretching a leg backward at an improbable angle, she carefully touched a shoe to land. Her foot sank in the soft earth. There was a touch on her shoulder.

  “You okay?”

  Joy spun on her feet. Inq steadied her with a hand.

  “What—?” Joy said. She turned around, blinking. “What happened?” She wasn’t quite sure.

  “It’s over now,” Inq said gently. And when she let go, there was a new mark on Joy’s arm.

  She swiped at it angrily. Worse, she recognized it.

  “I didn’t—” Joy stammered. “I didn’t murder him!”

  “Didn’t you?” Inq said. “Well, technically, no, but there’s no category for erasing one of the Folk completely out of existence.” She shrugged. “It’s the closest thing I’ve got.”

  “I didn’t...” Joy said and stared at the scalpel and the trembling hand that held it as if it belonged to someone else. “You said...” Joy shook her head. Inq cocked her button chin, looking genuinely concerned.

  “Now, now,” Inq said. “You can always take it off.” Her eyes glinted a dangerous dare, a sidelong glance. “No one will know.”

  That wasn’t true, and they both knew it.

  “I would know,” Joy said and frowned. “You would know.”

  “Yes,” Inq purred. “That’s right. And I think it’s best if only the two of us knew what really happened here. Don’t you agree?” The Scribe brightened noticeably. “It’ll be our little secret,” she whispered. “Just between us girls.”

  Joy retreated from the briar bush, pushing more distance between herself and the empty nest of thorns. The hollow was shaped roughly like a man. Joy turned away. Inq followed. Joy wished she wouldn’t.

  “That was a very brave thing you did, luring the Red Knight away from Ink.”

  Joy twisted her fingers together, not looking back. “How did you know?”

  “I spoke to Filly,” Inq said. “She’s obstinate but very impressed.”

  Joy swallowed, covering her Grimson’s mark with her right hand. “How’s Ink?”

  “He’s fine,” Inq said. “You pulled it off without him.”

  “But...” Joy said. “Why didn’t he come for me?” The question hurt her more than she wanted to admit. He’d always come for her. He’d promised. And he could not lie. Even though she wanted to draw the knight away to keep him safe, she honestly expected him to show up before it was over. “And how did you find me?”

  Inq licked her thumb and smeared it against Joy’s jawline. She lifted her finger, which came away red.

  “Blood calls to blood,” she said. “You’ve touched our blood and we’ve touched yours—really, any good kiss ought to do it, and we’ve shared at least one.” She winked and licked her thumb clean. “Thicker than water, so they say.”

  Joy wiped her ear. “Then why isn’t he here?”

  Inq sobered and walked alongside her. “He was...disillusioned with the idea that you aren’t perfect, that humans are fallible in ways he cannot understand. He was afraid that you were courting death as a way to draw him out—a risk and a reasoning which he could not approve, although, obviously, that was not your intent.” Inq shrugged elaborately. “In any case, he sought solace with the Cabana Boys and I’m afraid their solution involved a great deal of alcohol, which Ink hasn’t learned to process any better than his emotions just yet. Regrettably, it was a poor combination.” She leaned conspiratorially sideways in her high-heeled boots. “He tried, though, bless him, but didn’t make it past the door. Pledged to protect you, tortured by your betrayal, yet unable to fulfill his pledge due to drink—he’s positively emo over it.”

  Joy inspected Inq’s face. “And you’re not?”

  Inq spread her hands, black-painted fingernails with diamond tips. “I got over it,” she said. “Remember, I understand humans a lot better than my brother does.”

  “But the Cabana Boys all shut me out.”

  “That was my doing,” Inq said. “For everyone’s safety, given the Bailiwick’s rant. But now, all is forgiven. Congratulations! You’re back in the fold.”

  Joy stumbled over a tree root. Kestrel gave a little squawk in the grass. “And the Red Knight...?”

  “Is undone,” Inq said. “Erased completely and forever. By you.”

  “But I was trying to...to ward him away,” Joy said. “Lock him to his Name so no more could come after me, keep him away so we...so I could be...safe.”

  Inq patted her arm gently, like soothing a child. “And now he will never harm anyone ever again.” She smiled a self-satisfied grin. “Isn’t that nice?”

  “No,” Joy said, which wasn’t true, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint why. Something buzzed like a cloud of gnats inside her head. She turned to Inq, frowning. “Did you know that this would happen?”

  “Me? No,” Inq said. “But I guessed.”

  A hot knot in Joy’s chest broke and she burst into tears. She shook her head and rubbed her scratches and turned in tight circles, knowing that she had no idea where she was in the world and she was lost—so lost—and it had nothing to do with direction. She rubbed her gloves into her eyes, soaking the padding with tears. A little voice in her head whispered, I probably should be bottling these for Mr. Vinh.

  Joy cried harder.

  “They’ll kill me,” she muttered through her fingers. “The Council. The Tide. They were right—they were right about me! I could...” The scalpel sank point-first into the ground. “I shouldn’t be able to do that, to unmake someone, it’s... Ink told me...” She closed her eyes; her tears stung. “His job, your job, is to protect the Folk from harm—from human harm! Harm like this. Like me.” Joy shook her head. “Ink will never, ever forgive me. Never! He’ll...I don’t know what he’ll do,” she confessed. “I’ve screwed up everything. I’ve destroyed everything! I made it all true!” The horror of the moment sank its teeth in and tore. It filled her blood with ice and smoky dread. “This guy, Sol Leander, the leader of the Tide? He warned the Council that I was the most dangerous human in the world.”

  Inq picked up the scalpel and gently blew on it like Ink. She pursed her lips and winked at Joy.

  “That’s right,” she said. “You are. You, Joy Malone, are the most dangerous human in the world.” Inq seemed to taste the words on her tongue. “But that’s not the whole story, is it?” She offered the scalpel back to Joy, handle-first. Joy hesitated, took it, stuck the blade quickly into her backpack and zipped it closed. She sat on the forest floor, oddly comforted by the solid feel of earth and loam and pine. Kestrel snuffled somewhere on the edge of her vision. Inq patted Joy on the back.

  “Don’t worry about it. You’re one of us now,” she said. “And there’s nothing anyone can do to take that away from you.”

  Joy glanced up, eyes swimming. Murder made her one of them? It was a horrible thought. She wiped the blood off her ear. “I don’t understand.”

  “You will, in time,” Inq said, smiling, and lifted Joy up by the shoulders. Kestrel, swallowing something long and slithery, cawed. “But right now, let’s go get your Nordic friend. I think I left her bleeding under a tree.”

  SEVENTEEN

  JOY PICKED UP the last file and dropped it in the box. Everything else in Dover Mill had been packed up and cleared out. Soon the place would look like it had never been. Joy ran a finger over the sleek shelves and the tiny track lights, but she avoided
touching the empty slate wall. Some things, like some memories, were best left alone.

  Had she done anything good here? It felt like she had, but she still squirmed inside thinking about how part of her had always known it was wrong. Anything she kept from people who loved her, any secret that could harm one of them, was wrong by definition and there wasn’t much that could justify it. She knew she couldn’t tell her parents about things like Ink or the Twixt because those weren’t just her secrets—they belonged to other people who had rights and feelings and would share the consequences. Stef had tried to warn her, Graus Claude, too, but now she got it—she couldn’t have everything. She had to choose. And every choice had a good and bad; every freedom had its price.

  A knock on the cache wall made her look up. Summer sun poured down from the entrance, backlighting the figure at the top of the stairs. The light filtered through the short beaded cape and gleamed off shiny vambraces. Joy smiled.

  “We’re closed,” Joy said as Filly marched down the stairs.

  “So I heard,” Filly said. “But I came to see for myself.” She set her hands on her hips and surveyed the empty cache. Minus the furnishings and paperwork, it looked bare as Stef’s room back at U Penn. “The Halls are full of rumor thick as porridge and twice as tough to swallow.” Filly poked through the folder tabs in the box. “Old hags are all as curious as cats, but don’t like to stray far from their hearths.” Joy picked up the box and fit its lid. Filly flashed a smile that stretched her tattoo. “Ach, well, they’re not like me.”

  “No one’s quite like you,” Joy said, placing the box behind her to block it from further prying. “But as the former sole practitioner of this establishment, I can verify that we are well and truly out of business, starting now.”

  “Hmm,” Filly said, crossing her arms and inspecting the walls. “So what are you going to do now that ‘now’ is over?”