by Tali Inlow
Summer hums lightly beneath her breath. “Other worlds. Can I have a for instance? Of one of these... other worlds, that is.”
The woman swallows hard before continuing. “A world of magic, she told me, once. Me and my little brother... A world where magic comes and goes as it pleases, where magic lets people like me, and him, and even my grandmother touch it, take it in, from time to time.” She laughs a self-deprecating laugh that Summer finds to be the weakest thing about the woman so far. “That’s just one world I remember her telling us about. But I think, if you could dream it, it exists. If you could think it, someone must’ve thought it before—and with good reason.”
“A world of magic, hmm?” Summer’s eyes cut from the woman down to the little girl, her head staying perfectly still. And she can see an excitement, a hunger, in the child’s eyes. “That sounds absurd, doesn’t it?” She smiles. “Charming and fantastic, too.”
Summer’s smile widens as she steps to the side, clearing the sidewalk more fully for the small family to pass her by.
“Glad you could gather this evening. Have a pleasant night.”
The man and the woman provide their own farewells and head off down the street, their daughter between them, each with one of her hands in theirs. And just before they round the corner, the little girl twists her body, looking back over her shoulder and beyond her parents’ firm grips for one last look at the inimitable Sheriff.
Summer, angled slightly down the sidewalk towards the departing family, grins up the street at the girl, her teeth oddly bright, the shadows casting wicked hints at a certain sharpness around her edges that hadn’t been there a moment before.
And then Summer waves, curling her fingers down into a snap—the result of which is a bright blue flame, cradled in the middle of her palm.
The little girl’s jaw drops. Then her parents round the corner and her awestruck face disappears from sight.
With a chuckle, Summer closes her fist, effectively smothering the flame.
“A funny trick, that—to play on a child.”
Whereas Blake’s return earlier in her walk had caused her no surprise whatsoever, these words uttered in her direction from the shadows leave Summer completely taken aback.
With a gasp, she turns. And there, standing before Summer like a light in the dark, is Arke Whitmore.
“Fucking hell, Whitmore,” Summer says, her eyes already glistening at the sight of her friend. “You can’t sneak up on a girl like that.”
They meet in a tight embrace, their bodies thudding forcefully together. In mere moments, their bodies shift, melding to one another like they’ve done for so many years. Since that first trip up the mountainside to the Whitmore grounds, in the infancy of their friendship. Roommates in that lifetime and this one. Over twenty years of knowing every hope and desire, every secret, every trauma and tragedy.
“Whitmore Girls aren’t supposed to get caught off guard, Norwood, don’t you know that?”
Summer laughs, pulling back far enough to look Arke full in the face. She brings her hand up to cover her mouth, aware of their proximity, the quiet night, and the window-lined street on either side of them.
“Come,” she says, dropping her hand to Arke’s wrist and pulling her into an alleyway.
Their eyes adjust quickly to the darkness. Summer presses her palm to the side of Arke’s face. She can see the weariness on Arke’s countenance, how it suffuses the other woman from head to toe. These weeks without Arke have been especially hard on Summer, because Arke is the anchor in her life. Zosia is a highly skilled enforcer and professional interrogator, Blake is an internationally renowned assassin. But even in their life Before, Summer had required grounding. The End of the world hadn’t changed that. And while Arke is Summer’s anchor, Summer is something of a particular necessity for Arke, as well—besides Arke’s twin, Summer might be the only person on earth who can recharge Arke, can bring her back to the land of the living when the going gets tough.
“You’ve returned to me, safe and whole.” Summer presses close to Arke, and Arke opens up to her, grasping both of Summer’s elbows in her hands.
“Safe,” Arke confirms, “but not whole. Not for a long time now, you know...”
Ahh. Speaking of the twin...
Allegiances had been of the utmost importance since their earliest days at the Whitmore School for Girls. But despite all the divisions and boundaries—both institutional and social in nature—there was one bond that everyone understood, one bond that was sacred and untouchable: that between the twins, Arke and Iris Whitmore.
That bond, even now, has not been severed. Summer fully expects to hear about Iris’s whereabouts in the world. But their sibling connection, that twin thing between them, it had changed over the years and the distance. Stretched, warped, become entangled with other threads and people and relationships. Worn nearly threadbare to the breaking point—and mended again. Always mended.
That ability—to heal, to forgive unconditionally—Summer envies it.
Not all the time. But sometimes, sometimes...
“I know, I know,” Summer responds, her voice a delicate near-shushing sound in the quiet between them. Her hands grip Arke’s upper arms firmly. “I’m always your second choice.” She’s trying for playful, edging towards kind. Somehow, she fails on both counts, the moment always too heavy between herself and the Whitmore who chose to follow Summer all those years ago.
But Arke responds in that quiet way of hers that leaves Summer gutted, whatever the other woman’s intent.
“I miss her,” she says.
A weighted moment passes. And Summer realizes that this isn’t about her, not at all. Nor is it about Arke’s twin, Iris.
It’s about Nora, because of course it is. Arke is thinking of her lost love now, and always.
Sweet, gentle Nora, who would never have hurt a goddamn person in the entirety of the galaxy. Nora, who had utterly bewitched Arke, stolen her heart between one moment and the next—back after their Whitmore days but before the world Ended. The quiet girl from the countryside who reveled in nature and books and Arke most of all. But she was one of the rare ones taken by the Sickness in the early days... And Arke, forever contemplative and stoic, had become doubly and even triply so, after losing the great love of her life.
And Summer, with her narcissistic tendencies, had made it, even for a moment, about herself. Unfair of her, with the woman she considers her best friend in the whole universe standing before her, exhausted from a bone-deep, soul-deep weariness.
Summer feels a heavy press on her chest from the inside out. She bites her lip and watches Arke as Arke watches her back. One of Summer’s hands glides upward, over Arke’s collarbone, her neck, her jaw. She brushes one of those dark tangles of hair back over the other woman’s ear, her thumb trailing behind and leaving a path along Arke’s skin that they’ll both feel for days to come. Each of them imagining other hands, other people entirely.
“You’re tired,” Summer begins before shaking her head. “We’re both tired. Let’s get home.”
She drops her eyes from Arke’s, down to the woman’s lips. Her skin is darker than Summer’s from a lifetime of running through the sun, freckles still scattered across the bridge of her nose and brushed perfectly across the apple swell of her cheeks as if by an artist at their peak.
With a thick swallow around the lump that’s formed unexpectedly in her throat, Summer turns to move back towards the road. But she’s stopped, this time Arke the one with her fingers looped around Summer’s deceptively delicate-appearing wrist.
“Summer, my love—what’s wrong?”
There’s something about Arke Whitmore that Summer has always found obnoxious and alluring at once—her ability to pull things from others. Secrets, money, emotions; intent and honesty, loyalty and love. Things that people often don’t even realize they have to give.
With her chin lowered to her chest, Summer sighs heavily. Her arm is still twisted slightly behind her in A
rke’s grasp, half-turned back towards the woman.
Summer hadn’t let Blake sneak up on her before, hadn’t revealed the threat to her either. But this is Arke—this is Summer’s oldest friend and closest confidante.
Reaching into her pocket, Summer pulls out the token—the folded card—that she’d placed there earlier. The rough old piece of a deck that had seen better days. The card that Summer has interpreted as a threat from Yuuko.
Without looking at Arke, Summer hands the tarot card to her. A blackened heart that, upon closer inspection, is the intertwined and twisted form of three ravens, beaks splayed wide and dripping blood. The three birds have been run through with three intersecting blades, each blade having a unique and intricately carved hilt.
The three of swords.
“Shit,” Arke breathes out. “Zosia’s getting you into this witchy shit again? I told Blake to help keep you clean. You remember what it was like when you went cold turkey before.”
Summer pivots, her smiling eyes meeting Arke’s. But Arke tears her eyes away from Summer’s and back down to the card where she’s holding it delicately between her fingertips.
“Where did this come from, Summer?”
“It just showed up.”
“When?”
“This morning,” she says, pushing her hand over the crown of her head, smoothing down non-existent flyaways. “It can only mean one thing, showing up like that in the middle of the night.”
Arke steps closer to Summer, one of her hands instinctively reaching out to grasp at Summer’s belt loop. “A threat?” she whispers.
Summer sighs. “A lot has happened since you left, Arke... The last Council meeting was a shit show. Power is shifting, and I can see that certain House Heads are more than a little unhappy with their slice of the pie. If Yuuko doesn’t make a grab for my head soon—”
“You think Yuuko is behind this?”
Arke’s voice comes as a hiss now, and Summer knows why: the other Heads of Houses are powerful in their respective rights, but Yuuko is dangerous in a way that the other men and women could only hope to be.
“Who else?”
Summer shrugs. “It could be anyone. I know nothing for certain yet.”
“Do Z and B know about this?”
A long pause, then, “No. Not yet.” Summer sounds almost sheepish in her admission. Almost.
Arke’s eyes flash—an uncommon enough occurrence when she’s looking at Summer that, at least for a moment, Summer wonders if Arke isn’t just going to kick her ass right here in this alleyway.
“But you were going to,” Arke says, voice low and intense. “Right?”
Summer takes a deep breath. “I was weighing my options,” she says, scuffing the toe of her boot in the dirt. “But of course I was going to tell them... Eventually.”
“Just waiting on a sign from the heavens, were you?”
Summer smirks at that wide-open door. “And here you are, aren’t you?”
“Dammit, Summer, we’ve got to get back. Now. And fill them in. However slow your gut may be, it wasn’t wrong—this is no idle threat.”
Arke is already taking off, her finger looped through Summer’s jeans, ready to drag her back to their primary dwelling near the center of Owl House if needed.
For the last time this night, Summer jerks Arke around. Using the other woman’s momentum, she swings Arke back towards her, their bodies meeting in another embrace. Summer wraps her arm around Arke and buries her head fully in the woman’s unwashed hair, feels that steady heartbeat up through Arke’s ribcage, relishes the fullness, the realness, the presentness of Arke in this moment.
“Fuck,” Summer sighs into Arke’s neck, “I’m really goddamned glad to have you back.”
Arke squeezes Summer tightly before pulling away. Eyes locked, she replies, “This, too, shall pass.”
And Summer would roll her eyes, or cry, or smack the other woman senseless if she thought it would change anything about her, or this strange friendship they’ve had all these years.
But it won’t. Nothing ever has.
And so they move through the night together, back towards home. Back to their Sisters.
Both are aware of the eyes that watch them as they go. But that is a problem for another night, another day.
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Also by Tali Inlow
The Sisterhood
The Sisterhood: Episode One (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Two (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Three (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Four (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Five (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Episode Six (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood (Seasons)
The Sisterhood: Season One (Coming Soon)
The Sisterhood: Season Two (Coming Soon)
Watch for more at Tali Inlow’s site.
About the Author
Tali Inlow is an up-and-coming author of queer speculative fiction.
Read more at Tali Inlow’s site.
