Is this how symbiosis worked? Is this how worlds kept one another alive?
Tav had done it. Tav, with the “bad attitude” and straight As that would never pay for college, a part-time job at the gas station and fistfights in dive bars.
The euphoria faded and Tav looked away from the door and back down to the dirt: round silver glasses in a pool of blood. Eli.
Cam was already there, stones trembling, hands fluttering over Eli’s body. “I can’t find the wound,” he said. “I can’t see it. But there’s blood everywhere. So much blood. She doesn’t have a pulse.”
“Maybe that’s normal now,” said Tav. “She’s not human.”
“She’s part human! There has to be a way to stop the bleeding.”
Tav wasn’t so sure. Tav had started to think that Eli was invincible. They had never seen the assassin fail. And now, Eli was not only made of hawthorn and red blood cells, but memories and planets and the magical essence of a world. But they had been wrong. Worlds can die.
Everything dies.
Fuck that.
Tav unsheathed the obsidian blade and pressed it against Eli’s forehead. This is you, I’m holding you, and you can’t die while I’m holding you.
“Give me the shield,” said Tav, and Cam handed the stone knife over. Now Tav held two knives, two parts of a person. Tav could see the different magics that kept Eli alive sparking and flickering like a dying flame. With one motion, Tav stabbed both blades into the magic, the essence, the dark.
Heal.
The blood vanished. Eli started breathing with little wet gasps. Tav dropped the knives and pulled Eli into their arms.
“You’re okay,” they murmured. “You’re going to be okay. You have to be okay.”
“They’ll send others,” said Eli, struggling to get the words out. “Leave. We need to leave.”
“Soon.”
Tav noticed a curious design painted on the asphalt. Dark and wet. It hadn’t vanished with the rest of the blood. Their heart sank. Eli was resorting to using her blood. Why? What was happening to her? They were sick of Eli’s secrets. How do you get close to someone who can’t tell the difference between a lie and a truth?
How do you hold someone who is always disappearing? Already Eli was flickering in and out of existence again. There was no one in the universe like her. Sometimes Tav loved that about her, and other times — like now — they hated it.
Eli coughed out a word. “Thorns.”
“I have it.” Cam stepped forward, holding out the blade. Eli recoiled.
“Keep it. I mean, for now. Later. I’ll take it later.”
Tav helped her stand. “Cam — you take the car; I’ll take her on the bike.”
Cam nodded. “If something happens —”
“We’ll see you soon.” Tav cut him off and turned back to Eli, leading her to the bike. Cam watched for a few long seconds, something like hurt flashing in the corner of his eyes, and then quietly did as he was told.
“You healed me,” said Eli. “With door magic. How?”
“Who cares? You’re alive, aren’t you?”
“Because of you. Magic boi. The Healer.”
“Fuck that!” cried Tav. “That’s a terrible nickname. I don’t ever want to hear that again.”
They revved the engine and the motorbike took off down the street, leaving behind only a few black feathers, a handful of salt, and a prayer written in blood.
The nickname stuck.
Ten
THE HEIR
Kite couldn’t remember a time before the library. The smell of ink and sour lemon, the tall bookcases that stretched into the air. She remembered climbing up and up and up, until the gold thread on the spines of ancient fortune volumes were obscured by clouds. Once, she had pulled a book from a shelf, somewhere near the top, and it had fallen apart into a pile of loose pages that had drifted down, strewn across the shelves on the floor.
She was still piecing that book together. Recently, she had found the first page lodged behind a trunk full of ghost stories. The trunk was usually invisible, which made it difficult to find. Fortunately, Kite had been looking for a bobby pin that a paper crane had snatched away while she was reading, and she stumbled over it. She hadn’t found the bobby pin — now, as a strand of hair slipped into her eyes, she wished she had — but she had come across page one.
Kite wondered if she would ever get to finish restoring the volume. It was her favourite project, and she had spent so many days carefully smoothing out the lost pages that the paper now smelled of sea salt and rotting fish.
She turned the page. Her candle had burned itself out, spluttering and dying in a puddle of white wax. Smoke curled up through the dark as Kite breathed in the familiar and comforting smell of home.
“This one is from before the moon,” she said.
She thought about lighting more candles, but decided against it. The last thing she needed was to be caught back in the Coven, after her dramatic exit. The thrill of breaking the rules washed over her like seafoam.
A glowing ball of light hovered nearby, bobbing near a bookshelf that was painted red and gold, with pages spilling out of its open mouth like flames.
“If you come over here I can read better,” said Kite. Clytemnestra’s essence ignored her.
Kite had never reached the top of the bookshelves, and besides, the library was always rearranging itself; sometimes a forest of books; sometimes an underground den, with pages buried in earth. She had used a chisel and hammer to break partial histories out of rock; had smoothed the covers with a fine brush, used her breath to clear the fine particles of dust; had caught paper birds in flight and unfolded their pages feather by feather, stitching them together painstakingly as the bird squawked in panic.
Kite was always going to be unusual, even for a witch. She was the only daughter of the Witch
