A delicate thread of bluegreen algae inched toward Tav over the ice, hesitating near her feet. Kite was waiting, probably wondering if Tav would flinch away from an essence that had done so much damage. But it felt right that she was here to see this end. Tav pushed her own purpleblack flames toward the algae, and when their essences touched, nothing burned. No one was struck by lightning. There was no pain — only pleasure. Tav wondered if Kite was having the same thoughts they were — if she, too, felt the energy that passed between them. If she, too, longed to feel their bodies pressed together.
The stones began singing, and the Labyrinth joined them. Slowly, Cam drew a circle around them in the ice, etched with a sharp piece of granite. It seemed like he had done it before.
Rituals have power.
Kite joined the song, her voice wavering like a sea wind teasing a sail. She followed the line he had cut in the surface with her sword, a metal monster with elegant curlicues and geometric shapes and gears.
Eli traced the circle with the bone blade.
Now it was their turn. Tav took the obsidian blade in one hand, and a feather in the other. They carved the line deeper with the black glass, and they brushed the soft feather along the smooth cut.
Four bodies stood in the centre of a magical circle.
They were human, witch, moon, animal, and stone. They were made of blood, sediment, glass, sea salt, steel. They were smoke and feathers, hawthorn and ocean, they were hundreds of pasts and even more futures. A small light glowed under the ice, and Tav recognized it as the fire dancing in their eyes.
Hope.
This time, there was no pain. There were no mechanical monsters animated by mutilated witches trying to tear them apart. Tav reached up into the darkness and let their mind and magic touch the ruined edges of the rift, soothing the fever and infection with each touch. A sound joined their chorus, and it came from all around them.
The stars were singing.
As they watched, and whispered to the wound, and drew on the shared power of the circle, the rift began to close. The edges brightened, the frayed tips stretching into tapestries of dark and light, asteroids and comets, and the idea of planets that had not yet been born.
Standing on a river of ice in an August heat wave, ringed by the people they trusted most in the world, Tav healed the wound between worlds. And they didn’t just close it; they made it a door that would open both ways, but only when it was asked nicely. Silver and purple glitter fell from the sky like rain, magic dust from another world. Sharing light and heat and enchantment with the blue-and-white planet.
It fell over Tav’s upturned face, kissing their cheeks and forehead. It fell over Eli’s blades and sparkled along their sharp edges. It fell over Kite and her sword, making them shine like diamonds. It fell over Cam like a hand stroking his hair and shoulders and lower back.
(It fell over the bodies of the two boys kissing on a rooftop, and there would be glitter in their clothes for weeks after, evidence of the perfect night they spent together. It fell over the woman on the deck putting out a cigarette on the plastic siding of the house. She made her hands into cups and reached up to catch the silver as it fell. It fell over the child spinning in dizzying circles, wearing their mother’s silk slip as a cape.)
The dust rained down over the world, and for a moment, everything was beautiful.
Seventy-Two
KITE
Morning sunlight poured from a single, steady star. The river had thawed, and its glassy silverblue water skipped and jumped over driftwood and rusted bicycle frames.
Kite stood on one of the flat rocks by the river and marvelled at the way the sun-warmed stone felt under her bare feet. It was a different kind of magic than the island, but it still felt like magic.
She had escaped.
As children, Kite and Eli had made many plans to escape. They had talked about running away to the City of Ghosts — Grace, Tav had called the human town, although the name didn’t fit.
They had planned a life of running and hiding from the Coven.
But now the Coven was destroyed, reclaimed by the twisting maze of ancient rock, its knowledge partially destroyed and the rest freed. The Heart was free. The daughters and discarded objects had come home.
The Witch Lord was dead, and Kite was alive.
She searched through her encyclopaedia of knowledge and history for something that would describe how she was feeling. And there it was, slipped between the pages of a vegan cookbook and a list of fears that had been set adrift in the sea on a paper boat.
Miracle.
It was a miracle.
ELI
The August heat pressed down on Eli and sweat beaded on her forehead and gathered under her breasts. She watched Kite watch the water. The smell of saltwater brushed against her senses and she was taken back to her childhood, to their time on the island together, to the taste of salty blood in her mouth.
Tav and Cam had gone looking for coffee and pastries.
“We’re going to have to find a new café,” Cam had lamented, after they had told him about the Hedge-Witch.
Kite looked happier than Eli had ever seen her.
Eli’s mind flashed to an image of Kite on a throne made of half-rotted fish and wire nets. She flinched and looked away, trying to blot out the memory with something, anything, else. When she turned back, Kite was still standing there, hair and arms limp. She had turned away from the river and was watching Eli.
Eli suddenly wished she could disappear.
But her body couldn’t do that anymore.
“I won’t touch you,” said Kite softly, her voice distorted slightly, vocal cords still swimming in water.
She’s more water than flesh,
