There was her mother, the Witch Lord, descending from the heavens like a goddess of vengeance. The moored witches around Kite sighed at her beauty and shrank away from her in fear. They adored and hated her, worshipped and obeyed her. So had Kite, for a long time. But not anymore.
Her eyes slid from the bright star mass that was her mother to the smaller figure on the ice, with torn jeans and messy hair.
Tav.
Kite wasn’t the only watcher on the rocky shoreline who saw in the cut of Tav’s cheekbones and the fire in their eyes that the human-witch hybrid was just as bright and fierce as the Witch Lord.
Sixty-Eight
THE HEALER
They ran their thumb over the tip of the obsidian dagger. The assassin. Secret death. The black glass that could cut through magic and drain a witch’s essence.
Why would a witch give a witch-killer to her made-daughter? Tav hadn’t seen any other obsidian weapons in the hands of the daughters in Clytemnestra’s makeshift army.
Tav wondered if they should have given Circinae more credit. She really wanted her daughter to survive.
“I challenge you to a duel,” said Tav. The words felt right. The only way to dethrone a king was to challenge her in front of her court.
“I accept,” said the Witch Lord. She drifted down, landing gently on the ice. Where her feet touched the frosted river, molten gold flowed like cracks, hot and bubbling, and then hardening into thick, shining metallic lines.
Tav felt an itchiness in their shoulder blades. The river was still smooth and clear, but maybe the dream had mixed things up. Maybe the dream offered a shape and missed the details. Time always passed differently in their dreams.
And Eli was gone. Maybe that part of their dream had died with her.
Taking the obsidian blade, Tav reached up and cut two sharp lines in their own shoulder blades.
The pain rocked their body, but it was healing, and felt right. It was the pain of new growth. The pain of necessity. The pain of leaving a childhood friend behind or losing a favourite pair of jeans. It was part of life. It was life.
Two great feathered wings burst from Tav’s back. They were black with the oily shine of purple and gold and green. Looking down, Tav saw their reflection in the mirrored surface. Eyes gold and brown with deep shadows underneath. Silver earrings shimmering in the starlight. A mouth set in defiance or grief. Winged like a fallen angel, their feathers catching nightmares and spinning them into strength.
Reaching into their own plumage, Tav plucked a single feather. Its core was steel, and its point sharp as a blade. Dressed in black feathers and buttons shaped like the phases of the moon, holding two knives, Tav faced the Witch Lord.
“What are you?” the Witch Lord asked again, her pupil-less pale eyes shining in the moonlight like lighthouse beacons.
“I don’t know,” said Tav. But the words felt hollow, like an oak tree sundered by lightning. They were starting to piece together their history and their body and what it all meant.
They had always known they were descended from fighters. Their ancestors had struggled against their captors when they had been forced across a sea of blood and onto a land forged from death, had fought back against the violence they faced in Nova Scotia after slavery was allegedly abolished, had protested the police in Ontario. Tav had been born into struggle, had learned how to resist and survive alongside geometry and the five-part essay. This story was true, and Tav had been telling it their whole life.
The purpleblack smoke that now curled from their nostrils told another story. The story of a witch fleeing the tyranny of the Coven. A witch who fell in love or at least lust with a human. Passion and intimacy breathing dandelion seeds of magic into bile and cartilage.
But that story still didn’t explain the wings that now extended from their back. The way doors opened and closed so easily for them, without the kind of sacrifice a witch needed to do her magic.
Tav thought about the ghost who had followed them around, who had treated them as kin.
How had the ghosts come to Earth from the moon?
If any of the moon people had survived, where would they have fled to?
The words rang in Tav’s head. What are you?
They were histories of forced migration, of leaving homes and making new ones. Of transformation and resilience. They were the harbringers of change.
“No one has ever challenged me before,” said the Witch Lord. Curiosity stained her voice. Tav wondered if she got bored in her catacombs of secrecy and surveillance, if a dragon curled up around its hoard of gold ever missed the touch of another creature.
But Tav didn’t need answers. They had no more words.
The Witch Lord lunged, drawing Tav into another deadly dance. Tav stepped back, playing defence, avoiding talons and teeth.
The Witch Lord’s essence split into a hundred thousand essences, like paint spilling over the ground. It poured from her nostrils and ears and eyes and mouth, gold and silver and copper rivers that reached for Tav, trying to ensnare them in a net of stolen power.
One tendril curled around their ankle and the pain seared like fire. Tav gasped, choking on the panic that took hold of their body. Their wings beat rapidly, pushing back against the Witch Lord. A creature of magic and bone and moonlight struggling against the snares of a predator.
The blades — Tav lashed out at the netting, cutting strips of magic with obsidian and feathered steel. When the net lay scattered in writhing pieces on the ice, Tav turned to the creature before them. Sweat dripped down their face and stained the tattered pieces of their shirt. The tattoos of peonies and roses and chrysanthemums that marked their arm started to move, waving leaves and stamens and petals.
It was
