Hand to her hips. As her fingers fell across pearl and stone and thorn, the blades vanished one by one, until she was completely alone in a prison of glass.
Forty-Six
THE HEALER
“She’s still asleep,” said Tav. “Try again.”
“It was boring,” whined Clytemnestra. “You do it.”
“I don’t know how to!”
Red liquid pooled under the ghostly girl. Panic pounded in their head. Tav reached forward, ready to break the rules, to twist the Heart and make it give Eli back —
“It will kill you faster.” Clytemnestra waved her hand and a gust of wind knocked Tav back. “Stupid boi. Besides, the blood isn’t hers. She must be reliving that time she killed a human by mistake — oopsie!”
“So what do we do?”
“Oh, let’s let her take care of it. She’s getting used to playing in the mud with the rest of us.”
“‘Her’?”
They smelled her before they saw her: salt and brine. Body moving like an electric eel.
“You.” A hand on obsidian.
“Me,” Kite agreed, playing with the ends of her hair. “You brought her back. That was dangerous.” It sounded like a compliment.
“She’s dying.” Tav drew the blade and watched the blue witch warily.
A tremor of light flickered through Kite, and her eyes glowed with intensity. “We won’t let that happen.”
A single word can be a key, can open a door in a wall you didn’t know existed. It can draw two people together; can shift space and time and meaning. Enemies can become allies. Rivals can become friends.
Tav saw the conviction in her face, heard it in the deep ocean timbre of her voice.
We.
Their grip loosened on the hilt. “No, we won’t.”
Kite flowed over to Eli and circled the body of light and bone and raw power. She sighed, breath like bubbles spilling from a brook. “If she doesn’t wake soon, she will become the Heart.”
“So? Who cares?” Clytemnestra was kneeling on the ground, half a dozen spinning tops twirling around her. She pulled another one out of a pocket and spun it, but her finger slipped and the top skidded across stone and stopped beside Tav. Clytemnestra scrabbled over on all fours. Tav placed their shoe over the spinning top, pressing it into the earth.
“Say please.”
Clytemnestra peered up at them through spidery eyelashes. “Cruel,” she said admiringly.
Tav clenched their jaw and moved away. Clytemnestra picked up the top in her mouth and crawled back to her play area.
“She’s just a child,” said Kite gently. “The oldest child in the world. Let her play.”
Tav ran their hands through their hair and tugged on the short spikes. “I don’t like feeling useless.”
“Oh, we will use you,” Kite reassured them. “But not yet.”
She leaned closer to Eli’s face and stared at her eyelids before the girl vanished again. Carefully, she reached out and stroked the air around where her forehead should have been.
“Oh, baby,” she whispered, salt crystals forming in the corners of her eyes. “What have you gotten yourself into?”
THE HEART
“Where am I?”
The sand stretched out, red as blood against a black sea. Sheet lightning like camera flashes lit up the empty expanse of the sky.
“You’re here.” Kite smiled, and Eli felt a new shoot grow from her rib cage. She looked away.
“There are no stars.”
“You’re angry with me.” Kite said this calmly, as if observing a scientific experiment.
Eli tried to swallow but the words caught in her throat. She spat on the sand: a black feather, a dead honeybee, and a single withered petal.
Both girls stared at the earth for a long moment. And then Kite moved with the deadly grace of the tide, sweeping the sand and sky and world with her, swallowing everything in a single step. Eli closed her eyes. She had forgotten what it felt like to watch Kite walk toward her, as if Eli were the centre of the world.
The made-girl smiled, hand resting lightly on her chest, on the Heart of the world. She started laughing. Her eyes opened, the lids sending sparks sputtering over the sand; they caught the edge of the petal and burned it to white ash.
Kite stopped. She was an ice sculpture, beautiful and untouchable.
Eli kept laughing. There was something repressively funny about being this beacon of light, of power, even as it was killing her. The laugh turned to a hacking cough. This time she spat up blood and phlegm. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and then faced Kite.
“Looking for this?” The Heart glowed, making visible the delicate arches of bone and glass underneath her skin.
“Not yet,” said Kite. “Soon — but not yet.” She started walking again, but the spell was broken, and she was only a girl getting dirt on the hem of her skirt.
“When?” Eli let her hand fall to her side; the glow dimmed.
A flash of lightning made Kite’s face appear ghostly white. Maybe they were both ghosts. “You’ll know.”
“I’ll die, you mean.”
“Maybe.”
Kite stopped a hand’s width away from her friend, lover, sister, enemy. Where the black surf touched the land, salt crystals formed intricate designs. A wave brushed across Eli’s feet, salt stinging the sores on her skin. She winced.
“It hurts you,” said Kite quietly.
“Salt cleanses the wound. You taught me that.”
“You had many wounds.” Her eyes were glassy and wet with the dampness of the sea that she always carried — or were they tears? Eli had no way of knowing. Such a human thought, she reprimanded herself. Witches didn’t cry. Witches didn’t grieve.
Tav grieves.
Kite knelt down and carefully gathered the bee, ash, feather. She rose and offered them to Eli.
“Don’t give these away.” A smile slipped across her lips like an arpeggio.
So many times, Eli had opened her mouth and swallowed for Kite. Blood, berries, sea urchins, flower stems. Now she stared at the sickly greenwhite hand and its offerings.
Kite’s eyes filled with pearls and wept, the tears clattering like hail over the sand. “Don’t give them away. Eli.”
The black feather. The vision of
