when we feast, O glory

by ohHOLYmoves

Summary:

Caught between the fork and the fire, those born with magical abilities must find a way to survive war that wants them dead on either side. Either by fire or worst, they must escape by any means necessary.

Chapter 1: South I: Burn the Witch

 

“Look here! A returning customer. Look boys, it’s the witch that said she’d burn our temple to the ground when she escaped the first time.”

“You know, a Temple and a Prison are two very different things. Temple,” She scoffs and glares up at the Templar in his gleaming onyx armor and at the long thin razor of the blade he holds pointed down at her, “makes it seem like you are trying to be devout and just and good Creators-loving folk which we all know you are not. You don’t follow Them, you follow a Him and He commands you to burn people alive. Not very Temple-Worthy, if you ask me. Then again, that could just be me being bitter about you ripping me out of my bed, putting me in shackles, and promising to kill me for doing absolutely nothing wrong.”

His sword flicks up to press against the ugly hand-shaped scar that covers half her face, just beneath her one augmented eye, “Nothing wrong?”

To the left of her vision, standing in the mud she is currently on her back in, is a short man with a cap wrung between his two gnarly hands. Beside him is a similarly average looking woman wearing a nasty grimace and shooting mean looks at her shackled and prone self. They must have better hearing than they do decency because the woman emits a dramatic wail and throws up a hand with her index finger extended towards her.

“Demon-Kin! She turned all our water to blood, she salted our fruits, she—“

“Killed your baby? Oh! Maybe the cat? Did I eat the cat?” She drawls, dryly and maybe a little agitated. Keeping to her tragic, traumatized character, the woman shrieks and clings to her husband.

“Now she’s threatening us! You heard her!”

The man speaks next. He croaks a bit like a bullfrog which Blackbird thinks suits him, “Knight-Commander, she used her Soul-Sworn devilry to force her way into our Inn. We never would allow a Marked Witch stay beneath our roof, Good King forgive us.”

Blackbird rolls her eyes and laments the 20 gold she had slid into his hand sundown the night prior for a 3 silver room and his silence. She can’t be angry (even though she’s roiling in her rage) because she should have known better than to trust his big promises of comfort and safety for a price and his wife who brought extra blankets and a cup of tea before bed. No one that is nice ‘for a price’ or, worst, ‘for no price’ can ever be trusted.

The Knight-Commander and his suited flock make the symbol for the Creators with their hands over their stomachs—for Peace—and then lift them above their throats—for Justice. The traitorous inn-keepers nearly fall over in their arm-flapping, flustered hurry to repeat the gesture.

“The Good King knows the plight of his people in war times so he knows how easy it is to be taken advantage of. He is also forgiving.”

The inn-keep bows and then—Blackbird almost smiles because it’s word-for-word what she would expect a worm like him to say—he lifts his palms out and says, so sadly, “Knight-Commander, we have been struggling already because of the embargo the North placed on us and now that the Marked has ruined almost all our produce, we have little we can do to make a profit…”

And, predictably, there is a wave of displeased chatter and curses about her and her cruelty and all of magic kind but especially those that bare the mark of an infernal pact. All things she has heard before, all horrible but predicable. It use to bother her as a girl when she was shunned or worst but now she just wishes they had an ounce of creativity amongst themselves to come up with new material. She’s possessed by pure evil and nothing in her is capable of good are just so dramatic when they could simply call her a bitch. At least then it would be true for once.

The Knight-Commander flags down one of the priests of his company, this one dripping in silver silk depicting the holy fire of their Good King and the black chains of the Creator of Justice. They preform an intense ritual of exchanging pleasantries and apologies and prayers before the priest removes one of his many holy chains—made of pure silver—to gift to the poor inn-keepers.

“I am sorry we cannot give more.” The Knight-Commander says in his saddest, most Knight-commander-ly voice.

“We are very grateful sir—“

“Knight-Commander! We found another!”

The husband looks shocked but the wife looks regretful in the way a mouse might right before the trap is slammed shut overtop it. Blackbird laughs, loud and mean and it feels so good that she hardly minds the swift kick to the side of her head as a Templar runs past. They swarm the inn in a shiny tide of silver and black, clanking and cursing as they go. The Knight-Commander and the priest, however, do not budge and the goodness and kindness the couple were banking on has vanished.

The Knight-Commander plants the tip of his blade in the mud and folds his plated hands overtop the pommel in a calm but serious threat. Blackbird wishes the chains weren’t so restricting so she could sit up to get a better view.

“I thought the Marked was your only guest? Isn’t that what you said?”

“She was—I said our only—she was.” The husband cuts a glance at his wife that he probably thinks is discrete but absolutely is not.

The air grows thin and charged the way it does before a storm. Lightening strikes the side of the house, erupting from inside rather than the sky that roils and begins to grey in response. When a whole wall is shattered into rubble within the mud, Blackbird feels a stinging inside her lungs. Magic is not an abnormality for her as she is one of the few witches still alive in the Southern edge of their world, but never had she felt magic so strong.

All that was left of divinity after the Last Meal are in the few drops of their blood left in the mortals that stole it for the power it awarded them. Lesser, watered down magicians that are descendants of them usually could not do more than light a few candles with a snap.

The Knight-Commander realizes this nearly at the same time as Blackbird, she can see, because his beady eyes widen in the slits of his helm and he lugs his sword over his shoulder for a fight. Blackbird smiles cruelly at the couple.

 “How much did you charge that one?” The wife’s dirt colored eyes are full of disparity and regret so they do not mind Blackbird, do not even spare her a passing glance. She wonders if they had made this same mistake before or if it is the first time their greed has betrayed them. She thrives knowing this will be the last time.

A woman in a pristine white dress appears through the new hole in the side of the home hand-in-hand with a young girl. When the sleepy rays of the morning sun hit the pair, they cast rainbow reflections in a circle around them on the ground and two shimmering halos appear above their heads. The white of their hair turns opalescent underneath their divine crowns.

The clearing falls unpleasantly silent. The guards forget pursuit just at the edge of the radiance the two are ringed by, the Knight-Commander slowly takes his helmet off in a sort of awe that comes from a place of unhappy surprise. The couple make symbols of Justice and Forgiveness with their hands likely because they will know one without the other very soon. Blackbird pours over with righteous laughter, down in the mud where the doomed couple have put her.

Likely she will be burned at the stake for being a witch but the traitorous innkeepers will burn with her for hiding sorcerers: children born of the Creators, not made by them.

“All hands! Rally to me!” The Knight-Commander bellows, his sword raised as he races towards the woman and the youth. There is a chorus of cries and clanking from all directions all proud to convene on two of the most literal of innocent souls and Blackbird is content to watch.

At least the ride to the Temple will not be a lonely one.

 

The temple had been built brand-new by order of King Hugo of the Southern continent so that it could be ‘a beacon of Justice’ in just under a year. The Justice he promised later showed itself to be a massive ‘cleansing’ of human made witches, pact made warlocks, and—rarest of them all—divinely born sorcerers. ‘Magic is a curse man had no right to steal, something we should have left to wither and rot with the bodies of our creators.’ Many of the fear mongering propaganda King Hugo has plastered throughout the South and against the gates boast similar if not the exact thing again and again.

 A remarkable feat for such a massive monument of stone sequestered into the hills of the ironically named Fernedad Flats, built as such that it utilizes the rock of the mountainside to protect it. Banners billow from its high walls, off the slotted archery towers, and even from the center spire that reaches high enough that it touches clouds.

Blackbird rolls her eyes as they pass beneath them into the fortress proper. Inquisition members—Templars of Justice and Order, Creator Serving men—always were the loudest people, flying their colors from anything they could stick a pole to. Even themselves. Often times Blackbird believed that the men and women who joined the forces of King Hugo did so not out of a loyalty to their King and his cause but because they were all narcissistic children cloying for attention.

They stop in the courtyard beneath a string of women ranging in size and, presumably age, hanging from hastily constructed gallows above them. The display is meant to terrify those brought in so they can see what awaits them and, for the two sorcerers caged with her, it works but Blackbird is indifferent. She has seen the King’s grotesque garland before and knows it to be a warning for what is to come.

 

There is a peace to be found in the unknown space left between when someone is born and when they die. The never knowing is what makes the mortal man wake with an eagerness to live their day to the fullest, hoping that this will be another day lived should this become their last. When death is presented to a person they begin to fear, to deny, to beg and scream and cry from the finality of inevitability. There is nothing left for man to do but crumble inward when they are given the absolute certainty of their mortality in the deliverance of death, of the fateful end.

It happens in stages and she sees each one pass across their gaunt faces, through swollen eyes, hears it in anguished cries and grating screams. Panic, dread, denial, rage, acceptance. The broken many who have been served the one thing men fear; that promised end with no escape or bargaining to be done. Most of them are innocent women and children who have been pulled from the streets of their villages, born into covens of righteous faith and the purest intentions. They will die for nothing. Others haven’t a drop of magic in their blood, picked from the crowds by raging Knights of the New Age Inquisition, simply because they were too similar to witches. Healers who used the same types of herbs witches do, false soothsayers, New Age philosophers not under the rule of the king, midwives following Old Age practices. They will die for less than nothing. All of them, dragged in by the spiked chains of an Inquisition bred for the single purpose of killing witches, will die the rebels death without ever having broken the King’s law.

To begin, the rebels had done little more than refuse to pay the King extra taxes on their land. The general exhaustion over being choked by the King reached a tipping point and they formed their groups, just to complain at first, but later they would rise into physical altercations. Their ideas were just to take back land that was rightfully theirs but then, after some time, what they felt they deserved. Foot soldiers were sent in to push the rebellion back and, when that failed, the Inquisition was born along with rampant paranoia. The early method of preferred slaughter was burning witches on great pyres at the center of city squares or along the highways. Then the Inquisition was formed and fires couldn’t be built fast enough to accommodate the influx. The cured wood was needed for winters and green wood took too long to set alight so they transitioned to a quicker, cheaper form of execution. Hangings. They would all hang by the morning.

Most men when confronted with death will do one of two things: cower and submit to the inevitability come too soon or fight the path at every step until a new one has been forged. 

She has been running from death her entire life. Running from the things that dog her, nipping at her heels but never quite catching her. All her life she had been alone to fight death off and the need of others, in any capacity, had fallen to the very bottom of her list. When she was taken by the Inquisition, her very first thoughts were of escape and vengeance long before the horrible wagon ride had reached the fortress. How unfortunate that the only plan for escape that would work involved tethering her soul with another.

They are opposite sides of the same coin. Rather, they are opposite coins from separate sides of the world that had no business existing in the same place. The mere chance that they should have been taken by the same knights in the same town which led to their encounter was mind boggling. They shouldn’t have the chance to preform an ancient ritual of bonding but, really, she has no other options. The others are afraid of her and—due to the influx of captives lending to each cell being full to max—they were chained together.

The woman has a kind soul, that is obvious in her every move. There are sunbeams caught in the cracks of her teeth that flash with every little smile though that smile is rare in the dark of this dungeon and gifted only to squealing witches who need some form of encouragement, none for her. She’s gentle in voice and manner, round and soft like every part of her was made to be held and marveled at. In fact, she is more like a statue the likes of which the sculptor couldn’t bare to sell  because they had fallen in love with the perfection of their own creation. Everything flows from the long silken waves of her snowy hair to the blood crusted, dirt stained rags that once was a beautiful dress. Her eyes have a faint glowing ring around the velvet coloring that matches the halo hovering above her head. She is pure light unfettered by the darkness of the world around her. There is miles of love to be found in her eyes, endless enthusiasm and selflessness. If there was ever a soul less deserving of a hanging in this cold place, it would be this woman.

Convincing her is difficult because she is her dark mirror. This creature radiates warmth and compassion, oozing the blessings of celestial heritage that makes the soiled ugliness of her curse boil and hiss. Becoming what she is was never her intention nor was it even a choice she was allowed to make but she is feared and scorned for it regardless. There is shadow in the color of her hair save for a lone curl of white and there is darkness in the scrape of her voice. All her features are hard and taught from years of fighting and running. There is nothing soft about her. She is distrusting and calculating, quiet and a boiling pot of rage always too close to the edge. If she is quiet, is it only because she is often too clever for words. There is miles of anguish to be found in her eyes, endless trauma and ruin. If ever there was a soul less willing to be killed in this place, it is most certainly her.

She is branded by a mother’s choice. A hand print encompasses the left side of her face. The bridge of the palm seared into the high ridge of her sharp cheek bone, the palm covered the eye into the brow, and the long fingers splayed from the bottom of her ear to the center of her forehead. It’s a horrid demon red. It looks like someone had dipped their hand in paint and pressed it to her face then never washed it off. The white of the eye it covers had turned an inky black to match the pupil leaving only a sliver of light inside a void. Just the fraction of a pupil if the pupil were the pinprick of angry moonlight peeking through an endless night. The right eye remained normal as it was the day she was born, a common white with hazel colored iris. It is a seal of a pact struck many years ago but not one she struck herself.

Not many witches do this but some can reach into the darker edges of the worlds and make pacts with entities not unlike the soul-bonding of this world. Only, in those rare cases, the witch that makes the pact must also pay the price of the branding. That was not what had happened to her and so, while her mother lives with power and peace somewhere, she is the one branded with constant misfortune and suffering for nothing. This brand’s price is simply bad luck. It is the mark that makes everyone fear her and it is the mark that makes the light so afraid of the dark. No matter that she is trying to save them both by striking this deal.

“Please, I do not wish to be rude but,” The silver in her eyes flash the slightest bit when they, inevitably, return to the brand, “I do not know you and what you are asking is…everything.”

“So you’d rather die?”

Silver flashes and the runes that boarder her brand in fine black lines burn the slightest bit. Like an itchy rash.

“I’m not certain I’d survive bonding with you and your,” Silver flashes, focusing on the augmented eye that’s all void with its thin window of light, “, demon.”

The brand itches and she can’t ignore it but she tries. Snarling, she turns her face into her shoulder and rubs her cheek against the rough material. Her chain-mate finally looks away.

“I’m not possessed.”

“But you did the forbidden. It’s…well I don’t mean to be rude but it’s quite literally on your face.”

When she was younger she would speak herself hoarse trying to convince people of the truth about her brand but she quickly learned that people didn’t care about the truth or her. There were better things to put her energy behind like surviving. As she would have to do now.

“What’s your name?” She tries this time to ask kinder, trying to smooth the barbs from her tone.

“Zika.” There is hesitation in the extension of Zika’s hand and she tries to ignore how it bothers her that Zika flinches when their skin touches.

“Zika, nice to meet you,” The pleasantries grate against her as much as the flinch had, “Zika do you—what?”

Zika looks soaked in displeasure, reminding her of a cat that has been rained on. Her mouth twists into a purse that, because of her angelic beauty, holds very little in its ability to convey darker emotion.

“Generally, when someone introduces themself it is customary for the other person to then do the same,” When she continues to remain silent, Zika continues with less sugar in her tone, “Tell me your name.”

An age old irritation bubbles up inside her for how many times she’s gone through this routine before and for how inane it is to do it again.

“I don’t have a name.”

Zika makes an unhappy sound to accompany her dull glare. Her lips part but she holds up her hand to stop Zika before words can slip free.

“Before you try to argue, no I’m not lying and no I didn’t have a name that I have forgotten. I just don’t have one. Yes, I realize this is asinine and no, I won’t make one up in the moment to convenience you. My mother just simply never gave me a name, alright?”

The silver in Zika’s eyes pulse and she wonders if it’s irritation or contemplation that makes them do that. They trail over her figure, straying long enough on the brand to make it itch again, over the scars on her throat to the half cape draped over her shoulder. Mainly, they squint at the murder of crows sewn into the fabric.

“Blackbird.” Her head tilts, sending a river of white satin hair splashing over a shoulder and the sun shines in her smile. The halo brightens above her head, casting a shimmer across her hair that makes it look like a clear stream caught in a beam of light. It makes the brand pulse with a dull ache deep in the socket of her eye.

“That’s—sure, if it makes you happy, you can call me whatever.” She turns away, pressing the heel of her palm over the eye to suppress the burgeoning migraine. On occasion the brand would start to itch around certain people but it had never caused her pain before. This presents a new difficulty to her plan but not a large enough one to deter her. Not when death is her only other option.

“Zika, when you were taken,” She lowers her tone, flattens it into something small and easy to swallow, “were you alone?”

The way the Zika goes ridged is all the answer she needs.

“Why are you asking me that?”

“I ask,” And now is the sinker for her plan, the carefully conceived emotional manipulation she was relying on, “only because tomorrow the Knights will be hanging all of us. Each one of us.”

Zika’s arms circle around her torso and her shoulders drop, body curling on itself under the weight of her thoughts. The halo above her head dims to the point that it is hardly visible.

Which suits her perfectly but she pushes her fingers into the wound, for good measure, “By any luck, whoever it was is an elder.”

Zika turns eyes on her, big wet ones that do nothing to hide her anguish. “Why?” She whispers.

“Elders have brittle bones. When they drop—“

“Yes, I understand now. Speak no more of it,” Zika draws her knees to her chest and drops her chin into the dip between her kneecaps, “what…what about children?”

This was the perfect draw to play directly into her hand.

“Worst, usually. They are too little and their necks don’t break. So they—“

“Enough. Please,” There is an auditable tremble in her voice, “Just make your point.”

“If you agree to the binding ritual with me, I can get us out of this cell and I will do everything I can to get you and the child out.”

Zika taps her knuckles against the collar biting into her throat, just like the one around Blackbird’s. It’s thick and made of a dark metal that burns as much as it chokes.

“How do you intend to preform the ritual while we wear these?” Zika shakes her head at her but it is sad for them both, “You haven’t even thought this through, Blackbird. We can’t get out. There is no saving ourselves or anyone else. Just give up.”

The words sound too much like the snakes that whisper at the back of her mind. Just give up, they hissed when she was a starving child in the street. It would be easier if you were dead, they soothed when she was crying herself to sleep. There is no way to change this, they mocked when she was driven from towns just as the sight of her brand.  As it always has, the whispers insight a rage that burns like a wildfire through her and make her dig her heels in. She has never given in and she never will.

“Like I said,” She grits between clenched teeth, “I can get us out.”

“How, Blackbird?”

“Agree to the ritual and I will tell you.”

Zika remains silent a long while, staring at the darkness between the bars while stroking through her long hair. In the distance there is a thud followed by a scream that pitches up in volume until it becomes wet and silent. Laughter follows. Zika tips her head down until her chin touches her chest.

“You must swear that your demon-mark is…controlled. My soul is of divine design. I don’t know what,” Zika lifts her eyes to the brand and, Gods, does it itch, “that infernal darkness would do to me.”

The whispers rise in sound, writhing and hissing and snapping from every corner of her mind. Blackbird digs her palm into her eye, gritting her teeth. The mark has always been a curse and the only thing her mother gave her. She fought it purely out of spite.

“It’s under control.”

Zika nods but there are tears in her eyes, “Very well. I agree. It is…an agony that I must do this. I hope you understand. I wanted to save this for my future spouse. For…the one I love. But…I cannot allow my little sister to die here. I will try, to say I fought a bit. At least if it fails and we hang, I’ll have that small peace.”

Relief washes through her. Once again death nipped her heels and she beat it back. Rising onto her knees, she lifts her hands as close to the small window as her chains allow and claps. In the wind, after some time, there is the sound of jingling. Beside her Zika rises to her knees to peer out the window, “What is that?”  

“My familiar.” She claps once more and waits. A moment later, a black and white magpie lands on the seal of the window, ruffled from the wind and holding a ring of keys between its black beak. Zika gasps in delight and jerks forward to pet the bird but, seems to forget the chains, and gets pulled back onto her ass.

“You have a familiar,” Zika’s eyes are wide, “and he’s beautiful. She? What’s her name? I always wanted a familiar.”

Blackbird frowns deeply, “Calm down. It’s just a bird.” She clicks her tongue against her teeth and the magpie mimics the sound before dropping the keys through the bars. Then, carefully, she wedges herself into the cell and drops onto the floor to take the keys back into her beak.

“You are not just a bird, you are beautiful. Can I have those, darling?” Zika holds her hand towards the magpie, palm up, fingers wiggling playfully. The magpie tilts her head to inspect them, hopping over as she does. Blackbird slaps the hand down in irritation—her familiar doesn’t answer to anyone but her!—and holds her hand out. The magpie imitates the clicking sound again.

“Thank you, sweetie.” Blackbird whispers softly, petting the bird’s neck plumage.

“Her name is sweetie?”

“No.”

Zika reaches cautiously, wiggling her fingers again, and beams when the magpie nips at them.

“You have a thing about names.”

“You have a thing for my bird.”

The magpie hops onto her curled finger while imitating a cats deep purr that turns to kissy sounds when Zika kisses the air by her beak.

“Oh, you’re a smart one.” Zika praises.

“Smart one!” The magpie echos in perfect pitch.

“You are darling. I’m going to call you-“

“She has a name! She,” Blackbird clears her throat, irritated at herself for losing her cool, “has a name. It’s The Hag.”

“The Hag? That’s a terrible name.”

“It’s ironic.”

“It’s terrible,” Zika strokes her head, both of them making kissing noises at one another, “I’m going to call you Haggie.”

She fumes while she works the key into the lock to free herself. The Hag is her familiar who she named when she was younger. At the time it had been a very amusing name to her. What does Zika know, anyway. She doesn’t even have a familiar.

 

The things she has read about the ritual do not do justice to how painful it is. Most are waxed in flowery poetry meant to inspire the lovers in all of them while others share understated facts about the process. The time it takes, immense patience, and a true willingness. None mention how horrible it is to cut into your flesh with an obsidian blade until you’re shaking from the pain and have to stop for fear of making an error. Nor do they mention how much it hurts once you clasp bloody palms and the marks come to life, burning trails up their wrists to their shoulder. After, Zika tells her that it only hurt because they were strangers. Had they been lovers or family, it would have been a pleasant process. She doesn’t have the patience to hear it. Her nerves are flayed from the agony of skin being split open from wrist to shoulder then each split burning itself shut after it colors. Zika’s marks are blue and silver, aesthetically pleasing in their swirling patterns around flowers, crashing waves, and flying birds. Blackbird’s are black and red, lines of runes that frame bones sprouting fungus, horned snakes, and a pentagram on the back of her hand.

With their arms dripping blood, palms still pressed together, they stare at one another and wait. There is suppose to be an all encompassing understanding that passes between souls that would bond them for life. After this, Blackbird would never be able to hide again and it terrifies her but death scares her more. So she waits and waits but nothing changes. Frowning, she lifts her head to meet Zika’s gaze.

“Did it not work?”

Zika hums and her eyes flash—

 

“Mama! Your eyes are so pretty! Will mine glow too?” Tiny, dirty hands reach for cheeks that look to be carved from a dark marble. Earthen eyes ringed in silver gleam down at her and the little hands reach for them in wonder.

“I’m certain they will, my darling. For you are mine,” Larger hands reach too, brushing back snowy hair from a tiny head and kissing the newly exposed forehead, “my Zika. You are going to be something special.”

 

—then widen in shock. Their hands pull away like they’ve been stung. A memory—Zika’s—that they both saw as if it were happening before them.

“What was that? What did you do?”

Blackbird shakes her head, feeling anxiety well within her and, with it, the pit of snakes in her head stir and start hissing. Zika suddenly clasps her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut. The Hag chirps at her, pecking at her knee in distress.

“What is that sound? It’s like a thousand voices. Creators, it’s so loud.”

The whispers snicker and pass her ear to warn her that she has made an oversight. Another tells her that she has no idea what she’s doing. Another, warning her to give up and accept the rope.

Zika’s eyes flare, as does the halo, and she grits her teeth as they narrow to a knife’s edge. The whispers, for the first time in her life, go blessedly silent.

“This is your bloody demon pact, isn’t it? Are those voices—“

 

Blackbird is just a hatchling, hiding in the shrubs as she watches her mother in the garden. The moon hangs in the sky but she’s thirsty and too little to get water herself so she went to find her caretaker. Chances of receiving help are slim as mother tends to find Blackbird’s needs to be a harassment but maybe she will get lucky. There, past the roses, is her hunched figure at the feet of an enormous blackness.

The void speaks, “For power, there is always a price.”

“I can’t live here anymore. He is killing me and I am helpless to fight it. I’m not strong enough to fight him back. I just want to get away. I can’t…” Sobs rip through the words, rendering her mother to a rocking ball. The darkness is unmoved.

“You accept the price?”

When her mother speaks, it is a snarl that scares Blackbird, “Haven’t I paid enough!? Don’t I deserve some fucking peace as a reward for surviving this long!?”

The darkness is unmoved.

“Power has its price.”

Blackbird feels sad that her mother is crying so she comes from her hiding place, approaching on tottering legs. Her mother whips her head over to her with bared teeth and tears running down her face. There is anger and confusion, fear, and then absolution. Her hand grabs Blackbird’s wrist and pulls her in front of the darkness.

“My daughter will pay the price.”

Blackbird is confused and thirsty. She tries to reach for her mother but she is pushed away.

“The child for power?”

“Yes.”

The darkness swirls to an even larger degree.

“We accept.”

From the darkness, a single hand dripping inky viscous reaches with its boney fingers towards Blackbird. She screams and tries to fly but mother holds her down and she cries.

“Forgive me,” She begs, she sobs, “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

The hand brushes her skin and Blackbird jerks away but it presses further, flattening over her left eye. There is no pain but there is an acrid smell of burning flesh that makes her eyes water. The hand withdraws and the darkness disappears. Her mother sobs, clutches her, and begs, “Forgive me.”

 

Zika has tears running down her cheeks, mingling with the blood clinging to the hand pressed over her mouth. Blackbird curls into the shadows in the corner, shaking and choking on the sobs she keeps caged low in her chest.

“Your mother—“

“Don’t. Just…fucking don’t.” The whispers begin coiling again, preparing to strike. Zika winces.

“What are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why can I hear them?” Blackbird shakes her head. This isn’t how binding is suppose to happen. It shouldn’t have gone this way. It is a simple swapping of souls, an exchange of fragments for deeper power. An insight into the window of ones person. Not a forfeit of everything they are right down to memories and thoughts. She starts digging the bridge of her palm into her temple and rocking. This is wrong. This is wrong. It’s not what she planned.

“Blackbird.” The hush is also the gentle rocking of a curious wave lapping at a shore of soft sand. Hands that are too hot touch her at random points, never straying places they are unwelcome but also not staying in one place long. She realizes her hair is being caressed as is her spine that is curled into a painful bow.

“It’s alright.”

Where the snakes would normally hiss their hundred-and-one reasons for why it will not be alright, there is silence. Just the gentle hum of Zika’s voice.

Slowly she lifts her head to squint at her newly bonded, “What did you do?”

“I’m helping.”

“How?”

Silver glitters in her eyes, it shines around them so brightly Blackbird winces. One of those warm hands touches briefly against the part of her hair where the brand reaches into the hairline. They both shudder and flinch from the resounding pulse of something angry and chilling.

“I am just…being here. That’s all.”

Blackbird has always just been alone. Alone with her misery and the sounds of her own snarling mind that loops on itself to bite its own tail. Was it truly so simple as escape to just invite another inside?

She pushes Zika away with a frown, glaring at the floor as she steps around her, “Come on. We need to get out before the next shift of guards make their rounds.”

 

“We have to help them!”

“We have to help ourselves!”

“I won’t leave them to die, Blackbird!”

She grabs at Zika in irritation to pull her along but Zika swiftly shakes her off. Panic zips through her when it becomes apparent that this is going to be a battle that is going to slow their escape. The only reason Blackbird has survived as long as she has relies solely on the fact that she’s clever and sticks to her plans. Altering them to include hundreds of variables in the form of half-dead prisoners was the quickest route to failure.

Gritting her teeth, Blackbird flings her arms out to gesture at the cells lining the hall they are in and, behind them, the number of witches lying in chains. Just beside them, a greying woman reaches a gnarled hand towards Blackbird but her aim is towards the sound rather than the body. Metal bars have been graphed into the skin of her cheeks and forehead where they were laid over her eyes while hot, blinding her and branding her for life as a seer who will see no more. The skin around it has started the fester with rot and the smell of it is rank and stomach turning. Her hand flails for Blackbird who watches it with a sneer.

“They can’t even help themselves. Most of them are half dead already,” Blackbird swats the old woman’s hand away, “the others are starved and broken from months in this place. The young ones are lucky. They get killed right away because they are usually the healthiest. If we try to bring these people with us, they are going to drag us under with them.”

The halo above Zika’s head grows in brightness until Blackbird’s eyes begin to water and she has to look away. Light reflects off the pools of piss and blood in the grooves cut into the stone of the floor, cascading the cells in a grizzly array of dancing lights.

When Zika speaks, there is a boom in her voice that echos off the walls like a clap of thunder, “Then we will drown with them.”

Blackbird grinds her teeth together, flexing her hands into fists by her hips. This is ruining her entire plan and when her plans get ruined it chafes against her nerves until they are raw. She stomps into the groove—ignores Zika’s wince when it splashes across her calves—and grabs Zika’s wrist.

“Maybe you want to throw your life away but I don’t! Why can’t you—“

 

“If one of us suffers, we all suffer.” The woman’s voice is a drizzle of honey in a warm cup of tea. Her eyes are the same as Zika’s that stare up at her from her hip, both silver ringed and glowing faintly. They stand at the edge of a shallow grave yet to be filled in, revealing a body wrapped tightly in ornate bandages.

“What could we have done better, my Zika?”

Zika looks to her feet with a quivering lip and wet eyes but long bronzed fingers tilt her chin back up, forcing her to look. Zika swallows audibly and tears roll down her cheeks.

“I dunno Mama. Mama,” Zika tightens her grip on her mother’s hand, “I don’t wanna look. It’s awful.”

“It is, darling. That’s why we must look. You and I,” The women drops to her knees in the dirt to take Zika’s face into her hands, “we are burdened with a great task. Our ancestors saw that there was darkness in the world that was too vast for humanity to fight off so they tethered themselves to a line of mortals to make the shields to fight this. We are children of righteousness, my darling, and it is our born duty to fight darkness at every turn. As hard as it may be, we must always look darkness right in the face and fight.”

Zika wipes her nose on her mother’s sleeve who only smiles fondly.

“So, if ever you see someone like our departed fellow, what do you do Zika?”

The little girl stiffens her lip and tilts her chin up, “I look at the darkness and I say—“

 

“—no, Blackbird.” Her head swims from the memory that still lingers. Zika stands in the present with blazing eyes that belay the steel in her spine and the grit of her soul. The halo flares again forcing Blackbird to submit, turning her eyes down and trying to back away. Zika stops her, grabbing at her shirt and pulling her close enough that when she speaks, Blackbird hears her teeth click together. The brand pulses as if she had just been burnt. “You…you are a part of me now and I don’t know what to think about that yet but even for what you are, I will fight you if I must. If one of us suffers, we all suffer.”

Fire rises inside her that slips into her veins, searing the roof of her mouth until she can’t keep it shut a second longer. “I suffer, Zika! I’ve always fucking suffered and no one gave a fuck about me so why should I give a fuck about them! And I don’t want to fucking die in this hole because you fancy yourself some kind of gift to mankind that needs to save every poor sap in here! I don’t care who you are, I’ll leave your ass here faster than you can blink.”

The halo flares and Blackbird squeaks, trying to get away from the sting that pulses through her head. Zika doesn’t budge an inch even though Blackbird can see her squinting as if she too now possesses a terrible migraine. And, with a start, Blackbird understands that she likely does as a result of their strange bond.

“I will not allow any part of myself to be a servant to darkness.”

“I’m not a servant to anyone!”

“Yes you are! By leaving these people-“

“I’m trying to survive,” There is a tug on her soul that demands honesty towards this stranger who is half of her now, “I’m trying to keep you alive! Why can’t you see that!?”

“Don’t be a coward, Blackbird, and don’t lie to me. You’re only trying to save yourself.” Zika’s eyes flare then widen—

 

“Please,” Blackbird, who is barely old enough to be left along by parents yet, claws at the ankles of the feet kicking her, “please don’t! I’m your friend!”

“Fuck you!” The boy can’t shake Blackbird’s grabbing hands so he bends over to bring his fist down on her temple. Her head bounces off the stone beneath it.

“I was just trying to help! I swear to all the Gods, I was just trying to keep you safe!”

“You’re a witch! You told me that your mother made the deal and that’s why you’re branded—“

“It is!”

“—and then you used magic on me!”

“To save you! I swear, Bennet, I was just trying to save you from the guards!”

“You’re a lying bitch! What did you do to me!?”

 

Zika reels back, chest heaving from her gasp, “No, Blackbird, that’s not what I’m doing! I’m not that person! I don’t want to hurt you—“

 

“We won’t hurt you, pretty bird.” The voice is enticing and sweet, dripping in a motherly kind of love that she has craved all her life. It coaxes her from the box she had been living inside, hugging a hatchling magpie to her chest. Instantly, she realizes her mistake when hands grab her and a burlap sack is drawn over her head. Hours pass into days into stretches of lost grips on reality that the pain leeches from her. They torture her at first and the one with a mother’s tone—like a real mother, in the end—promises her that it’s for science. Later they begin cutting, poking, and bleeding her and Mother swears that it will help. They want to understand the brand and Mother says she will take it away. Once they start cutting into her throat and the brand, she no longer has the ability to discern what is a lie or who is even talking. Something happens and the place they kept her is full of smoke and she hears Mother’s voice from a distance swear, “There has been a…hiccup, pretty bird, but I promise I will come back for you!”

 

Zika shakes her head, “Blackbird, you are half of me. You know in your soul that I wouldn’t hurt you. I am on your side—“

 

“I am on your side, sir,” The guard circles her with a smile that wakes the primal part of her telling her to run, “We both want the same things. A safe town to live in free of all the…corruption evil can bring. I just want peace, please! I told you what I know.”

Blood flows from the seem of her swollen lips when she speaks and the guard jumps back to avoid the trail. Anger flashes in his eyes and she flinches with a pathetic moan.

“And I told you I don’t tolerate liars, demon!” Behind him the guard wearing metal knuckles steps in again, adjusting them to sit better. They are still shiny from her blood.

 

After this memory, Zika doesn’t try to speak right away. Her arms lift to hug herself and her halo has gone so dim it is barely visible. They can’t meet each other’s eyes but they can feel the swirl of conflicting emotions coming from both of them and blending into a potent cocktail.

“Everyone you have ever known has hurt you and betrayed you.”

Blackbird shrugs as if this softly spoken truth does not gut her and shifts her eyes down,”Nearly all.”

“Why did you do this with me? If you are so afraid,” Blackbird flinches, awash with dread at having her truths known, “then why, Blackbird?”

She’s shaking and she’s angry but Zika’s horror and anguish are overpowering even her rage.

“I’m—“

“More afraid of dying than you are of relying on someone.” Zika finishes without needing to be told which she hates so much that she grits her teeth and balls her hands into fists. Zika approaches her like she’s a wild animal that could attack at any given moment, hands outstretched and expectant. Somewhere inside her she has the knowledge that Zika will not accept a rude rebuffing so, with a huff of annoyance, Blackbird drops her fists into Zika’s outstretched palms and glares.

“I’ll take this,” Her fingers curl around the fists and hold them awkwardly, both of them stilted from the knowledge that they are strangers but desperate and full of feelings due to their new bond, “Listen, I always—“

“I am not going to do big…emotions. Right now of all times,” Blackbird peers down at the blind seer still fumbling and croaking—Blackbird realizes she’s missing her tongue, too—for the voices she can hear, “but I understand what you’re trying to say. You wanted to save your bond for a lover, you are a noble self sacrificing hero, you won’t leave unless we save these sad fuckers, blah blah. You get that—“

“This infuriates you and that it is because you’re afraid of this escape failing and what that means.”

Blackbird swallows and turns her eyes away. Zika gives her fists a reassuring squeeze.

“I’m a guardian, Blackbird, and a good one. We can do this. Please, trust me.”

“And if we can’t? If this turns south?”

A wave of despair overwhelms Blackbird which nearly uproots her, “Then we leave them.”

“Deal.”

Zika blinks, confused and seemingly startled at having won the argument. Blackbird pulls away with a sniff and flicks her narrow gaze at the seer. “I’ll get your sister. They keep the children in different cells on the upper floor. We’ll meet in the courtyard,” A pull at her soul knocks the breath from her—separation hurts, it hurts so deeply that a part of her feels like it’s dying—that stops her from turning away, “Zika….what is this?”

Zika’s hand reaches out then stops, fingers curling in to hide under her thumb, “I…don’t know. None of this is like what was explained to me. I think…something went wrong.”

“Just…be careful,” She turns away and there is a painful yearning that twists her stomach into knots, “we’ll discuss this once we get out of here.”

 

This isn’t the first time the Inquisition has taken Blackbird into their forts. The first fort she was sent to was the one in the northern kingdoms boarder, built on a cape to make escape impossible. The sea below was constantly churning against the jagged rocks that poked from white caps like gnarled teeth. The only bit of land to escape across was heavily guarded by three separate gates each of which were manned with a small militia. She had spent a month in one of their torture cells, branded as one of the disabled who served their purposes better by rotting rather than hanging. Of course, The Hag had stolen her a key within the first week and she spent the rest of her time sneaking out to learn all that she could about their operation and the function of the forts.

It is why, even though that fort was in the north and this one is part of the southern kingdoms, she knows her way around. Each fort was built to be nearly identical for the functionality of officers. What doesn’t make sense to her, is the lack of guard presence. The fort she had been in before was bursting with Inquisition knights to the point they were starving due to overcrowding. Here, she carefully moves around corners with The Hag scouting ahead and receives no sounds from her familiar to alert her to enemies. It’s desolate. The only sound she hears is The Hag’s wings flapping as she flies ahead. Growing suspicious, Blackbird slows to a stop and clicks her fingers to signal The Hag to return to her. Following this hall should take her across a banister that overlooks the dinning hall, a floor below, then further down to the cells the children are kept in. From her position, she should be able to hear the ruckus of the knights convening in the hall. There is nothing. And then, suddenly, a horn bellows from the deep that resonates through the entire fort. Her chest tightens from the heavy weight of dread that suddenly drops when she realizes where everyone is. Zika. Her heroic attempts must have gone poorly and now they have been caught. Part of her—the part that has been cultivated from years of trauma and the stubborn resilience of a survivor—wants to cut her losses and run while the knights are distracted. It is who she is. But the newly forged part of her that is deeply interwoven with another creature’s soul balks at the notion. It rises with a vengeance inside her that eclipses her survival instincts and forces her mind into a new state: protectiveness. Adrenaline thrums through her at the barest hint of it, offering her the power she needs to sprint back to Zika. Except, the moment she turns around, she’s no longer in the hallway.

She’s being held tight against a Knight’s chest while he breaths heavily into her ear and holds a dagger against her bare throat. His arm twitches, hinting that he’s about to pull the blade through flesh and the muscle beneath. Instinct takes over so quickly that it feels like, for a moment, time slows to the decisions made within each frozen second. Her fingers rub together near her hip—he has her arms pinned to her sides—to create an arcane spark that ignites the hurried words leaving her mouth. His arm starts to move and the blade bites into the skin of her throat. The spell completes and seeps onto her body in waves of tingles that fills her until it overflows and soaks into his body pressed to hers. Time starts again and the dagger is dragged quickly across her throat with enough pressure to sever the tough tissue of her windpipe. There is no pain. There is, instead, the sensation of a hot cup of tea being spilled over the back of her neck and the garble of a man choking. The spell—a clever thing meant to reflect any damage dealt back to the attacker—fizzles out after the man effectively cuts his own throat and stumbles away from her clutching at himself. She turns to assuage the damage but finds herself back in the hallway once again, alone save for The Hag perched on her shoulder.

Confused, she reaches to touch the back her neck that should be wet with gore and pulls away with dry fingers.

What just happened? The thought pricks at her and, with a start, she realizes it’s Zika’s. It had all been Zika’s. Her newly found connection had inspired a wave of new emotions that urged her to Zika’s aid because it knew she was in danger and it had them switch places. Only that, they had not swapped physical forms in a physical space rather the spiritual form in a physical space. For a moment, Blackbird had been Zika long enough to save her life and then Blackbird had been herself again.

This connection was stronger than anything Blackbird had heard of. Not only was it more than she was expecting but it was exhibiting features that simply didn’t exist in any documented bonds from any era.  So far they had shared emotions, memories, thoughts, and now an ability to spirituality coexist within the same physical body or at the very least swap.

While she worries about what that could mean, she feels fingers touch her neck even though there is no one there. It feels like it’s probing, checking for a wound that isn’t there. The panic swirling in her subsides rapidly and soothing understanding and acceptance replaces it.

Thank you, Blackbird.

She ignores the thanks and continues down the hall, abandoning stealth as she does. They know there has been an escape and now she knows at least one Knight has been killed. The only way out has to be quick enough to avoid a fight. If the Knights came together, they wouldn’t stand a chance especially now that Zika wanted to play the hero and drag the hobbled around with her.

She flies across the narrow banister overlooking the empty dinning hall to the long hall that leads to the children’s cells. It is narrow in this hall with far less cells than the main hold, only four along the west wall and none in the East. From a distance, she can make out the shape of Knights standing guard. Two with pikes that narrowly brush the ceiling and a larger one between them with a shield and spiked flail. His gruff laughter is almost lost in the sounds of his banging his shield against the bars and the frightful shouts of a young girl.

“Tricky.” Only years of experience slinking through shadows keeps Blackbird from jumping at the sudden sound of Zika’s voice in her ear. Slowly, she looks over her shoulder to find silver-ringed eyes more purple now that the glowing has subsided, watching the guards ahead.

“How did you get here so quickly?”

Zika’s nose twists up, lips pursing, “I’m fairly certain I’m not actually here.”

 “Ah,” This again, “alright. I don’t like that, by the by.” She turns all attention back to the Knights who take up the entire width of the hallway when they clump together. The two with pikes would present the most danger in this narrow hallway.

With no room to maneuver around their length and the shield at front, they’d form a spiked wall that she’d be impaled on no matter the direction she took. A hand presses between her shoulder blades and she does jump this time, turning to glare at Zika. But the woman isn’t looking and the hand is meant to steady as her as stoops to touch the stone floor. The silver begins to glow and bloom until the entirety of her eyes are twin moons framed by ash colored lashes. From her fingers ice begins to creep, thick and smooth, along the floor until it builds a clear patch beneath the feet of the Knights. Instantly their bodies begin swaying, feet slipping quicker than the points on their sabatons can stop them. Shouting rises up, echoing off the walls and mixing with the clinking of them running into one another. One of the pikemen drops his weapon that rolls until it clinks against the bars of the cell.

Zika pats the space between Blackbird’s shoulders, and straightens, “That should help.”

 The largest one uses his shield to stabilize himself long enough to remove his helmet and cast a long look around. Dark beady eyes catch her and narrow to flinty slits above snarling teeth.

“Witch!”

The two pikemen jerk their heads toward her and, attempt, to form the two man wall she had known was coming but one slips and slams into the wall and the other can’t reach his pike. A tickle of excitement touches her nerves, sending them aflutter.

She lifts three fingers in a vaguely threatening claw shape towards the stumbling pikeman and says in a hallow tone echoing with power, “Sick.”

Both of his eyes rapidly turn bloodshot and, with a yelp, the capillaries burst turning the sclera an ominous red and sending tears of blood rolling over his cheeks. There is no time for a pained shout as he clutches his stomach and drops to his knees to vomit all over the ice. The second pikeman shrieks in horror, falling back onto his ass and scooting across the ice until his back hits the bars.

“Fucking whore,” The shield bearer growls, inching past the one on his knees retching until it becomes dry expulsions of sound, “When I get my hands on you I’m going to break each one of your fingers.”

Rapidly she casts two spells. The first of which is a charm on herself that spreads across her skin like a chilled wind and feeds the second when she lifts her middle finger and, with a straight face, bends it backwards until it snaps. The man halts mid step with a howl of pain, lifting his hand to his chest to cuddle the newly mangled middle finger. Blackbird smiles and knows it has likely gone feral from the adrenaline spiking through her and the dull throb of pain from her broken finger. The first spell turns the pain into power that thrums through her twitching fingers while she utters a third spell aimed at the untouched pikeman cowering against the cell.

“Bleed.” She commands in a voice that is echoed by an unseen many, finger sketching the mark in air that burns into his forehead. From the mark fissures begin spreading through his skin, bloating the flesh from irritation and leaking crimson in thick curtains until his body becomes so swollen it explodes in a shower of gore. Startled, she blinks down at the river of blood flowing across the ice like a barrel of molasses that has been tipped over. Normally, even with the boost the pain charm gives her, that spell is never powerful enough to actually kill the target and certainly not turn them into a flesh bomb.  

That was vile, Blackbird. She hears Zika’s whisper tickle her mind.

“Did you help me do that?” She asks and hears Zika make an unhappy sound.

Certainly not.

She was under the impression that making magic more powerful through the bond required active forethought from both persons and permission for the requisitioned power. She had not even meant to make the spell super charged outside of using the pain charm. Perhaps this was yet another outlier to their strange bond. Frowning down at the blood that has now reached her feet, she thinks about how she will have to be more careful in the future.

“What kind of demon are you?” The man with the shield hisses, eyes gone wide in abject horror. The blood at her feet begins to glitter with arcane energy as she bids the life force still inside the warm essence to heal her broken finger. His remains bent and bruised, cradled to his chest while he stares at her with horror stricken eyes and cheeks wet from tears and blood.

Blackbird huffs, mildly annoyed that a demon was credited for her skill as it always has been due to the mark. She flicks her fingers at the man dry heaving and commands, “Sleep.” His eyes roll back and his body topples over into the pink slime of his own bile. 

The last man standing glances at his fallen comrades before bravely lifting his flail and taking a defensive stance.

“I won’t let you leave this place, demon.”

Originally, her magic had been a softer kind that was elemental in nature. Water had been her favorite element and, with it, she taught herself how to be an excellent healer which she used to make coin as an urchin abandoned to the streets. She offered unto the world an open hand despite the one burned into her face and for it she was beaten down. A person can only be mistreated for so long before something in them snaps and all the goodness is turned into a righteous fury. Instead of making, she took to the trade of breaking. Men spat on her and abused her and women deceived her and broke her so she learned how to use their own darkness against them. The contempt of every man is kindling to her rage. Gritting her teeth, she swallows the insult of ‘demon’ for the uncounted time and feels heat flare through her veins.

He charges with no concern for the ice, his arm flicking out to swing the flail at her head until his foot catches on the ropey intestines of his fallen friend and he begins to fall. The flared head makes solid impact with her ribs—she makes no move to avoid the initial attack less she slip—and lets the pain of what surely can only be broken ribs turn into hot prickling power that slides like magma down her spine. Still, she stumbles back into the bars from the force of the blow and emits a ragged sound of misery.

Zika’s mind tickles her own, Blackbird! I just felt immense pain! Are you alright?

“I’m fine,” She hisses quietly, wrapping an arm around herself to press her palm into the hot spot pulsing with pain, “Mind your own business.”

“Who are you speaking to, filth? The demon inside your head?” He spits from where he’s sprawled out on the ice, trying and failing to pick himself up. The ice has only become more slick now that it’s dressed in gore.

The rage flares and she growls out the words for a cruel spell, hands lifting over his body and acting as anchors for the blood she draws at to form a deeper pool beneath him. The pool darkens to the color of wine and begins to burble and writhe with the birth of gore crusted hands reaching from the Beyond to grab at him. He shrieks and wriggles in a futile attempt to escape and it only allows for more hands to grow and take hold of him and tug with a strength that tears limbs from torso, sinking back beneath the puddle with pieces of him until only the flail is left behind.

Exhaustion washes over her as the puddle returns to its liquid state and the spell ends but it only lasts a moment before she feels a rush of something foreign in it’s cool clarity. Zika’s power, supplying her with what she needs until hers can return after some rest.

“Thank you.” She says into the quiet of the hallway, knowing that somewhere else in the fort Zika can hear her. A weight presses over her chest akin to that of a hand pressing to flesh and, after a moment, she realizes its Zika’s way of showing gratitude for the thanks.

A scratching pierces the quiet from behind her and she starts, jerking away from it with a spell already on her lips. Against the bars is a small face that has been beaten badly, lip split and her hook nose bent and swollen at the bridge where it is most certainly broke. Her head has been shaved and a fresh brand is still swollen and weeping from behind her ear. Large glassy eyes stare ahead at the far wall though her hand reaches between the bars in Blackbird’s direction. A tug in her stomach tempers the fires inside her for just a moment, long enough for her to kneel before the bars and take the girl’s hand. She’s always had a soft spot for mistreated children.

“Hello,” The girl is missing two fingers, “Are you Zika’s sister?”

 Her face scrunches into a contemplative frown and still her eyes do not meet Blackbird yet she slips her hobbled hand free to touch Blackbird’s chin.

“You’re Zika but you’re not.”

Her throat tightens when understanding washes over her, “They blinded you.”

The girl stiffens her lip, tilting her head up and squaring off slim shoulders in a way that conveys pride, “I’ve never seen.”

 

“Mama, what’s wrong with her eyes?” A young Zika asks over the wriggling bundle of blankets that show filmy silver eyes and tuffs of white hair.

“She’s blind, darling,” That honey voice of Zika’s mother drips through her ears and makes the sad news sting less, “and because of this, her life is going to be different than ours but no less wonderful, by hope. Her magic, too, will be different.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s going to be powerful, like you my sweet, but it’s going to manifest differently. Which might make the world a little less safe for her because the darkness will seek to use her.”

Zika, gap toothed and scabbed over on the chin, summons her mightiest look and swears to her mother that she will always be her sister’s guardian.

 

Blackbird blinks away the memory, swimming back to reality in a haze. The girl has moved her hand to the hallow of Blackbird’s throat, pressing to feel the racing pulse there. Her face twists and she sees the wince of pain bred from irritating the broken nose.

“Your bond is different than mother’s.”

Blackbird knows it’s different—nothing about it feels right—but she’s curious as to how a blind child can know that so she asks, “How do you mean?”

“Bonds look like sparks of bright against blackness and they bloom each time the bonded use their magic together. That’s the way I’ve always seen them.”

“You can see them?”

“Mhm,” She affirms, nodding acutely, “I can’t see what most people can, so I see what most can’t. Like the magic in things and true emotions and the truth behind lies.” Blackbird understands in an instant why this girl who can’t be older than eleven summers has been so brutally tortured and left alive when all other children are usually killed. It was not information they wanted but absolute submission so she could be turned into a tool that could find every witch alive and put them to the gallows.

“Then, what does mine look like?”

“Hundreds of threads converging between two outlines of bodies. Old threads that have always been there and just recently, finally, met.”

Coldness seeps into Blackbird’s bones, leaving her hollow and shaking at the possibility of what that could mean. In some books there are filthy lies about people who are meant to meet so they can fulfill some great need in each other. A blessing that destiny grants to broken people that have never known good. Others write about perfect compatibility creating the idea of soulmates, that symmetry of their souls lends to a seamless bonding. None of them had been proved and none had even been documented. They were all speculation. Yet, perhaps, there had never been a Zika and a nameless outcast for a blind child to see the very souls of before.

“It’s okay, don’t panic. It’s very beautiful and also confusing but beautifully confusing.”

“Confusing how?” She can’t help herself it seems.

“It’s impossible to tell where you begin and Zika ends. Bonds normally are two different colors—that’s what Zika said it is when the thing is different from the other thing—that meet and make a new one. Zika and you are exactly the same.”

Gritting her teeth, Blackbird pulls away though is mindful not to harm the fragile child, “That’s enough now.”

“I’m sorry, did I offend? Sister says I am sometimes too blunt and it startles people into offense.”

“You couldn’t offend me if you tried.”

The girl’s lips part slightly in wonder, “That was a truth. You meant that.”

Blackbird feels great unease knowing she, suddenly, has lost one of her greatest tools with this child. She casts about for the keys in muck while she stews about having to adjust to a reality where she can’t lie.

You’ll get use to it, Blackbird.

“Fuck off.” She thrusts the key robbed off one of the bodies into the lock and flings the cage open with more force than needed. The little girl reaches out with furrowed brows, fingers flexing to probe for touch of some kind, a guiding hand.

 Without hesitation Blackbird twists to offer her back to the child’s hands, squatting down and waiting, “hop on. I’ll carry you.”

“Okay,” She stumbles—her knee is mottled and swollen and certainly too battered to support her—and falls into Blackbird, “sorry. I can only see magic.”

“Don’t be. I’ve got you. Tighter—that’s better.” Blackbird adjusts her grip around her neck and stands, keeping her arms under the girl’s legs. She’s too thin already. How hard were the struggles of the sisters been before they were captured?

“Thank you…” She trails off and Blackbird waits for that usual flicker of irritation but, as is the case with children most times, it does not come. Silence falls as she makes her way deeper into the hall and around a long bend that curves down in broad brick steps, descending into the larder. She thinks on the child and how her hold on Blackbird continues to slip because she’s unable to grasp as tightly with her missing fingers. In most circumstances, Blackbird would have no pity for a broken person rather view them for what they are to her, a liability. She sniffles and then whines pitifully because it irritates her broken nose and Blackbird would normally grow annoyed at the sound.  

 Instead she offers words congenially to comfort her, “Your sister named me Blackbird.”

“I like birds.”

“Good,” She snaps for The Hag who comes down off the roost she made atop an unlit sconce, “that’s good.”

“My name is Zuri but Sister calls me Mouse.”

Blackbird snorts, “Because she’s obsessed with animals?”

Mouse titters beside her ears, “Yes.”   

It’s because she is small and cute, Zika’s insistence is hard edged even through the haze of their fresh mental connection.

Blackbird rolls her eyes.

The Hag settles on Zuri’s shoulder and nudges her scored ear with her beak, cooing softly and making Zuri giggle childishly. It’s a far happier sound than Blackbird imagines this fortress has any right to hear.

 

Escaping the fort becomes a larger complication than Blackbird planned for and she always plans for the absolute worst of any situation. The problems lies within Zika’s huge heart and inability to accept the fact that people don’t always deserve to be saved. Blackbird had been waiting far past the ramparts when she felt sudden pain pierce first her shoulder then again in her lower back near the hip.  Checking in on Zika through their connection was—seemingly—at the whim of the bond so she had hidden Zuri and hurried back inside the fort. Finding Zika was not difficult, she needed only to follow the smoke and the screams. The witches had been corralled into the courtyard against the portcullis with a wall of fire Zika had made between them and the Knights. Blackbird had heard one of them shouting that they needed to run, that they needed someone to hold them off, and then the others were beetles and Zika was left alone in the courtyard to fend off the hundred armed Knights. Things moved like debris through rushing water after a solid rain in that she had no power to stop any of it despite how hard she tried. Zika was caught in the rush of water and she had no other option but to jump in with her. It was haze but the spells she has cast still left a buzz under her skin and a burning in her lungs like she’d just finished a long run. Zika had called down lightning that shook the foundations of the fort and Blackbird had made a bloody mess. As she is want to do.

“Do you think they got to safety?” Blood burbles from between Zika’s lips with the words. A third crossbow bolt had struck her higher in the back, nicking a lung when they had squeezed under the portcullis to flee.

“They fucking abandoned you, dumb fuck,” Blackbird pushes the final bolt further through Zika until the head appears and cleanly snaps it off, sliding the shaft free and tossing it into the snow, “stop caring.”

“Someone had to stay behind, Blackbird.”

“They didn’t give you a choice. You risked your life to save them and then they left you to die. It was a stupid idea, a stupid risk, and you didn’t deserve—Zika, wake up!”

Zika’s chin bounces off her chest and comes back up to meet her with glazed eyes, “I’m awake.”

“Stay awake. Zuri and I passed a creek during our escape and I need the running water to heal you.”

Clarity swims to surface in Zika’s eyes, “I thought you used blood magic?”

“Not always.”

Despite Zuri being nearly two decades younger than Blackbird herself they are not too dissimilar in size due to the members of her family being abnormally tall. Zika, at her zenith, towers above Blackbird and, though she is quite lithe, is dense with deceptive musculature making her unwieldy for Blackbird’s slight build to carry. She has to hook her arms around Zika’s shoulders and drag her through the snow and Zika makes her displeasure known each time they pass over a rock or brush against the dense shrubbery of the moors. At the bank she goes blessedly quiet giving Blackbird the air to concentrate that she needs. The creek is narrow with tall grass weighed down by ice on the banks that crunches when she sets Zika down. The entire thing has frozen over though she can hear the water running beneath the ice which, hopefully, hints that it can’t be too thick. To test this she gingerly steps onto it and, when it doesn’t begin cracking immediately, drives her heel down into it repeatedly. Splinters begin to web out quicker and deeper until it gives a mighty crack and she sinks into chilly water clear to her knees. The water that rushes against her trousers is horribly chilly but it is rushing at a safe speed to preform the spell and not endanger Zika of being pulled beneath the ice.

“This will work,” She stomps from the water to the bank and hooks her arms back around Zika, “though it is cold.”

Zika says nothing though she begins to whimper when she is pulled into the water, hands clenching and fidgeting by her hips. Then the water crests her breasts and splashes against her collarbone and she becomes unhinged, thrashing to shake Blackbird off and screaming so loud it makes her ears ring. It startles Blackbird enough that she drops her, watching her slip below the surface and bob beneath before she rises with a thrash and a louder scream that sounds like it is being ripped from her very soul. Her hair clings to the side of her neck in a silver clump, water dripping from the point of her chin that she pathetically swipes at.

“Blackbird!” She sobs in a tone that is equal parts terror as it is betrayal. Guilt edges at the confusion and pushes the need to apologize to the top but it sticks on her throat.

Instead she says, “I told you it was cold!”  

Zika sniffles then coughs until blood burbles from between her lips to mix with the water dripping off her face. Her hand slips under water to steady herself and Blackbird watches it settle over a river stone covered in moss. Zika’s eyes flare bright as she rips her hand from the water with a choked scream.

“I can’t—Blackbird, get me out! I can’t! I’d rather die.” She jolts forward to crawl to the bank, flapping her arms wildly in the water each time her bare skin brushes against moss.

“Stop! Zika—you’re hurting yourself!” Blackbird drops into the river to grab Zika by the hips and pull with all her strength to draw her back into the water. Zika is much stronger than her so she has to dig her heels in past the weeds, deep into the sediment to prepare for the resistance she expects from Zika. Quite the opposite, Zika relaxes into the touch and—despite Blackbird being a near complete stranger—seeks more until her back is pressed to Blackbird from hip to shoulder.

“Better. Thank—better, Blackbird. This,” Zika rattles from a wet cough, her hands reaching down to grip Blackbird’s wrists and pulls them up to hug against her chest, her fingernails biting into Blackbird’s skin, “Gods, just do the spell so I can get out of this nightmare.”

Blackbird wiggles a hand free to hold against the rush of water and recites the only incantation she can remember from her childhood. Below them against the muck the weeds illuminate and the glow begins to spread to the surface, showering them in a glitter of blue hues. As the water rushes across Zika’s wounds it’s takes the blood downstream, the half-formed clots, the shards of wood from the broken bolt shafts, leaving the wounds pure and receptive to return to the flow of life. Blackbird cups water in her hand that she brings to each wound individually and holds It there until it hardens into ice and melts away as the wounds heal supernaturally fast. Zika exhales long and loud then draws in an easy breath free of pain and the blood that had been drowning her.

“Thank you, Blackbird.”

“You’re—“ Zika jerks forward to climb from the creek so quickly her elbow drives into Blackbird’s belly and knocks the wind from her. Irritation sparks under skin, threatening to set the dry tinder of her rage ablaze. She stomps from the creek and parts her lips to shout but pauses when Zika flicks her fingers and they both begin to warm so quickly their clothes start steaming. The drastic temperature change makes her realize her teeth had been clacking and her hands were starting to turn blue. The wide eyed frenzy Zika had displayed moments ago has already subsided and she hums cheerfully to herself while she starts separating her long hair into quadrants to braid. Zika’s own relief reaches through their bond to smother Blackbird’s anger.

Calmer and warmer, she asks, “So you have no issue throwing your life away for a group of selfish women but you absolutely lose your mind over this?”

Zika grows thoughtful and whatever memory the question dredges up, Blackbird feels herself suddenly thrust into.

 

Water drops cling to broad palm leaves on the cluster of coconut trees hanging over the mirror top of the lake. Zika watches from the short ledge made of dark black volcanic rock, admiring the clarity of it and the pretty black sand she can see at the bottom. Behind her are the steady thrum of tribal drums accompanied by high pitched whistles of wooden flutes and the clear voices of her people singing with merriment. Spits have been spread across two long beds of low burning coals and upon them are wild boars being slowly turned on a crank. The fat drippings land on trays of vegetables and breads steaming inside wet banana leaf wrappings. Upon a throne of bamboo stalks and wild flowers, sits a dark haired woman with dusky skin and mauve eyes and in her lap sits an infant with a similar complexion. A halo rings the top of the baby’s head of thick white curls. Zika waves at her mother and sister and feels her chest warm when her mother blows a kiss in answer. Turning back to the lake, she gazes over it with excitement that builds when she sees the last two people that had been swimming exit the lake. Now it was empty and just waiting for her.

“Ready to go back, Little Love?” A warm hand—warmer than the sun beaming down on them from above—settles on her shoulder.

Zika already comes up to this woman’s shoulders that are bared to the midday sun and smattered in freckles darker than her sun kissed skin. Tribal tattoos mark her flesh from fingertip to shoulder on both arms and glow a fire orange. A drop of water slips off a leaf above onto one of her markings and begins to sizzle and steam. Thick dark hair is split into twin pleats adorned with a wreath of colorful leaves atop the crown of her head that highlight the honey color of her eyes.

“Mari, can I do another flip?”

Mari lifts a brow with a split in it and juts her chin towards the party happening behind them, “The feast will start soon.”

Zika wriggles with excitement, bare feet slapping against the rock beneath her, “Then there is time for one more flip!”

“Hm.” Mari tilts her head back towards Zika’s mother on her throne and waits until she catches her attention to gesture at Zika then to the lake. Instantly her face melts in a low simmering smolder though her eyes crinkle from her besotted smile. Mari shakes her head with a soft chuckle.

“Your mother is useless.”

Zika, too young to understand or too impatient to care, grabs at Mari’s arm and gives it a tug.

“Is that a yes?”

“I suppose so.”

Mari crouches before Zika and knits her fingers, offering her palms out for Zika to set her foot in and brace her hands on Mari’s broad shoulders. Together they do a short countdown that, at the end of, Mari thrusts upwards with her hands and Zika jumps off them using the momentum to get extra height. Mid flight she tucks her legs in and twists in two full rotations before stretching out and letting herself flop into the water with a splash. She sinks into the cool water with a smile, letting herself drift down until she needs air and uses her strong legs to kick herself back to the surface. When she breaks above, Mari is clapping and beaming down at her with a look of pride that makes her chest warm the way her mother’s wink had.

“That was very nice, Little Love. Your best flip of the day! Now, swim back so we can dry you off before the pigs are done.”

“Coming!”

There is a silky voice that cuts through the air—easily recognizable as Zika’s mother— that makes Mari smile and turn to wave behind her, “She’s coming Okuri!” When Mari turns back to Zika the joy drains from her face, replaced with absolute horror filling her widening eyes. She drops to her knees on the rock and reaches a hand across the water towards Zika.

“Zika, come to me! Now!” Mari has never used such a forceful tone with Zika before and it frightens her. She pushes herself to pick up speed, cutting through the water with practiced grace, but stutters in her movements when she feels something cool and hard press against her leg. It feels like a rock covered in silky moss but also something that is supple and warm.

“No, don’t stop!”

The water around her grows black, the stillness of the glass top beginning to ripple from dark boney spines that cut through its surface. In a perfect circle around her all she can see are black shiny scales dressing a thick serpentine body enclosing around her. Something primal in her forces her eyes down to look through the water beneath her feet and there she sees a diamond shaped head broader across than she is tall. Luminous yellow eyes narrow to long slits when its mouth cracks open and bare milky white fangs.  All of her body locks up in fear save for her bladder that loosens and empties into the lake.  

“Zika, you’re so close,” Mari stretches her arm further out, voice cracking and pitching up onto a scream, “just take my hand!”

Tears cloud her vision but she still sees the shape of it below. Somehow she still makes her mind command the limbs locked with fear to reach out. Their fingers brush, Mari nearly falls in trying to secure a hold, and Zika feels a rush of water swirl against her bare legs. She knows what it means and sobs Mari’s name, flapping her arms wildly to get a stronger hold. Horrible pain blooms in star bursts throughout her body centered at her torso and the last thing she sees before she is dragged below are the tears spilling down Mari’s cheeks.

 

“Oh.” Is all Blackbird can say because the memory has faded but the ghost feeling of a mouth closing over half her body with such a force her sternum snaps lingers long after. Zika casts a look at the river, shakes her whole body, and turns to stomp off in the direction Blackbird had left Zuri.

“Now you understand.”

Blackbird nods though Zika can’t see it. Dregs of the memory remain, offering quick glances of how Zika survived the attack. A flash of fire as Mari dove in after her, the stream of blood that came from the beast when Mari’s sunk a speak past black scales to distract it enough that it dropped Zika, half the village taking it down. Years of recovery and magic to mend her mangled spine so that she could walk again and even then she still feels great pain in her body every single day. Some wounds can heal but the body can’t always be repaired, even with magic.

It takes Blackbird years back into her youth when she had joined as a sailor on a cargo ship that had worked the wide estuary that split Lerwick, the largest dwarven mining town in the world, straight up the middle. As someone who has never been good at expressing her own emotions, she lacks the proper skills to comfort another person. In the past, she turned into instincts on using personal stories to portray that she empathizes.

“You know, I’ve seen a serpent just like that in real life except it was the saltwater breed so it was thrice the size.”

Zika only response is a deep intake through clenched teeth so it hisses slightly.

Blackbird continues, “It was green. I was above deck when it started to swim past us. The fins along its back were such a size that they were at height with the railing of the ship. And it’s head—“

“Blackbird!” Zika snaps, halo flaring, and swivels her head towards Blackbird quick enough that her hair flicks over her shoulder, “just…stop. Please.”

Hurt burns deep, down into her pride, and she curls inward with a frown. She storms past Zika with a promise to herself to never try being vulnerable with anyone again. This nagging fresh bond is changing her, pressing new feelings and thoughts into places she never had them before. Like guilt and concern.

Zika snags her wrist before she can move ahead and holds her in place, waiting until their eyes meet to give her a sad smile, “That came out harsh, I’m sorry. I’m still a little shaken up. It…wasn’t a great way about it but you were trying to comfort me and the thought is very appreciated.”  

Blackbird says nothing and walks away.

 

Escaping the fort into the moors during the tail end of winter comes with many different challenges. Most of which was the weather that hardly lets up for the first week of their journey, mixing between heavy snowfall and light rain that soaks them. Zika’s ability to tame flame and regulate body heat becomes pivotal for their survival but often she has to wrap her arms around them both and has to tap into the reserve of Blackbird’s power through their bond to maintain it. The Hag plays a pivotal role in scouting ahead and warning them off of patrolling Knights, navigating them away from any standing water where creeks overrun, and helping Blackbird catch birds and voles to eat. The nights are harder with no high ground to sleep on and no walls or trees for them to take shelter against. Some nights they find large boulders that offer an alcove to lay beneath and it’s difficult to leave those for the dry, somewhat warm sleep they offer. So when they finally reach a village with actual civilization they jump at the chance to indulge in it. Zika insists that they use the coin Blackbird (and The Hag, per her instruction) have been looting off the corpses of the Knights they have no choice but to confront to pay for a room and meals. In her usual mood, Blackbird would decline and even ignore the request, but she has been sleeping in the snow and eating vermin for weeks so she agrees without thinking it over.

It’s a dilapidated excuse for a village that only survives because it sits on a crossroad at the end of the moors and gates the roads that lead further inland to the coast. Squat ramshackle serf homes line the road in a cluster, moss coated roofs sagging inward and shutters falling off. At the center of the cluster is a single well with a line of filthy, mud covered peasants lined up to have their turn. Chickens squawk as they cross the road, melding with the sounds of hogs squealing and men yelling to one another through their windows. Blackbird’s desperation for comfort fades when her instincts revive themselves, noticing how easy it was to stroll into town that has no gates and no guards. She looks past the ugliness to the little markers that always signal trouble starting first with its people. At a quick glance, aside from their filth, they appear fine and in good spirits even when they pass a game of cards being played outside a home. The worrying thing is that all of them are men, even the children that run pass pushing a hoop with a stick. Eyes burn into her from each direction—beady grey ones through a window before it slams shut, ugly leering ones from a drunk pissing in the street, confused ones from the boy with his hoop—and follow them for their entire trip to what is marked as the local inn. Glancing behind them confirms her suspicion that they are being followed. Anxiety claws up her throat but she keeps herself outwardly calm.

“Zika, we need to leave.” She says in a flat, quiet tone. Zika purses her lips, eyebrows hunkering over the dull glow of her eyes.

“Why in all the Creators names would we do that, Blackbird? This is the only village we’ve seen and who knows how long it will be before we see another!”

The men behind them break off toward the well but, when their eyes meet, they smile at Blackbird the way she had seen many killers do before taking a life. Then the smile flickers like a weak candle flame having caught sight of Zuri huddled against her sister’s side, attracted to the brand behind her ear. Their eyes turn on each other, mouths moving as they speak and even from the distance Blackbird can clearly read what they say; she’s one of them. Unbridled rage sweeps through her veins like a surge of magma, burning through to her fingertips that itch with the desire to cast a hex. Zika flinches from the feeling, immediately digging her own nails into her palms to scratch an itch that isn’t her own. Turning from the men, Blackbird’s takes Zika’s hand to stay the frantic itching and pulls on it to tug her back down the street.

“Blackbird! What is going on with you?”

“We aren’t safe here.”

Zika rips her hand free and stops dead in the middle of the street with a stomp and a pout, “This is you being an ugly pessimist who sees the world as an cruel thing. Not every single person you meet is evil and out to destroy you!”

The two men behind them have disappeared into the crowd at the well, mixing in with the rowdy townsfolk grumbling and shoving one another. Most the eyes have turned away at the first sound of Zika’s voice raising.

“We are staying,” Zika lifts her hand to stay Blackbird’s immediate argument, “I don’t want to hear it. We are staying and you are gonna see that there are good people in the world.”

The rage swirls inside her, twisting her stomach into a painful knot that bushes bile to the edge of her throat. Once more the ability to control her own life is ripped from her and she hates the shaky ground it leaves her on. With a forced smile that bleeds her irritation, she gestures to the inn for Zika to go first. For a fraction of a moment she sees a look of discomfort pass across Zika, one that must come from understanding Blackbird’s feelings, but stubbornness washes it away and she lifts her chin up.

“Thank you.”

“Hey,” Blackbird catches Zuri and tugs the girl against her hip, hand dropping on her head that is begun to sprout white fuzz, “you don’t wander off, yeah?”

“Sister said it’s fine.”

“Well I don’t. And I’m part of Sister, aren’t I? Don’t you trust me too?”

Zuri does not answer but her face twists into a contemplative frown like she’s caught a foul stench on the wind.

Inside the inn there are few patrons—all men—sitting at the long tables spread like a fan near the fire in the north side of the building. Their merriment comes to a halt the moment they enter until the only sound to be heard is the crackle of the flame and the click of Zika’s boots as she strides to the desk with a purpose. It grates against Blackbird’s nerves, washing her in anxiety fueled adrenaline. Her mind conjures images of a gathering of wolves hunkered low in the grass to watch a fat cow walk past. The nearest man Zika passes twists to watch her after she has gone by, eyes fixed on the sway of her wide hips and the taper of her lean legs that peak out from where her dress has ripped during their travel. Blackbird, subtly, elbows his ribs when she passes with Zuri and smiles when he wheezes, doubling over the table.  

Zuri tilts her head towards the sound and whispers conspiratorially, “Did you hit that man?”

“Might have done.” Blackbird presses a rope knife she swiped from his belt into the sleeve of her shirt.

Two men go back to their meals though they keep eyes on the trio that Blackbird feels like hot irons. The man behind the desk is short even for a human with a corse patchy beard turning grey behind the ears. The parlor of his skin is ashy as a ghost, drawing across his bones like wet paper. His smile is sans many teeth and brown clear to his beat red gums.

“Hello there miss,” He speaks with an accent that belies him as a transplant further south where there is a large human settlement, “s’ nice seeing new faces. Especially ones as pretty as yours.”

Blackbird rolls her eyes and mutters, “Simpleton.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” Zika cuts in smoothly, fluttering her long lashes prettily though Blackbird knows she doesn’t do it to intentionally be flirty, “ignore her, she’s as delightful as a canker sore. We are looking for a room for the night and a hot meal, if you have it.”

“Aye, the meal we got,” He sniffs in Blackbird’s direction, sizing her up from boot tip to nose tip, “a room to share?”

She lifts a challenging brow Zika doesn’t see and he sneers.

“Yes, please, that will suit us nicely.”

“I’ll get the key then. Have a seat and sup will be brought out.”

“Thanks so much!” Zika turns when he disappears in the back rooms and beams at a glowering  Blackbird. The look seems to amuse Zika who snorts and taps the point of Blackbird’s chin.

“It’s okay to be wrong.”

“Just because he didn’t stab you while you were negotiating doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” This time when they move back around the tables with the men leering at them, she sets a hand on Zika’s lower back and guides her to walk to the outside of her, “He didn’t even ask for payment. Odd, that.”

“Mayhap you’re such a bitter old bird that you didn’t think he simply could have forgotten.”

“You’re more naïve than I thought if you believe a proprietor of his ilk forgets about anything to do with coin.”

Zika blows a sigh through grit teeth, “If you are going to sulk, would you do it somewhere else?”

“That suits me fine. I don’t have much of an appetite anyhow,” She flicks her cape over her shoulder in a huff knowing it will flick Zika’s in the face and turns her back on the woman to bend down at Zuri’s level, “Don’t go anywhere and don’t talk to anyone.”

Zika makes a sound of irritation, flings a hand up to indicate her ire, and turns to warm herself by the fire. Two men scoot closer in a fashion that is undetected to an oblivious Zika but is painfully obvious to Blackbird. There is a hunger in their gaze that unsettles her stomach.

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because despite what your sister thinks of me I know this world is full of very evil people that will hurt you for fun. I’ve been hurt by them many times so I recognize them when I see them and this village is full of it. Trust me.”

Zuri wilts but gives a slow nod which relieves some of the anxiety weighing on Blackbird. Glancing around to ensure they aren’t being watched, she slips the knife from her sleeve into Zuri’s.

“If anyone—and I mean anyone—touches you or harasses you for any reason whatsoever, don’t ask questions and don’t hesitate. Just stick them with this.”

“I will.”

“Good girl,” She stands and pets the top of Zuri’s head, “look after your sister. I’ll be back shortly.”

She turns but is stopped by a hand touching the outside of her thigh and feels a tug on her heart at the concern in Zuri’s voice and the earnestness when she says, “Be safe.”

It sits with her when she exits the inn and heads for the north end of town, along the road that leads to the coast. The last time someone genuinely showed concern for her had been her first and only mistake in regards to love. Zuri’s sweetness slipped under her walls with far too much ease and a large part of her blames Zika. They share the same sharp features and unrestrained sweetness that Zika has made a part of Blackbird through their bond coupled with Zika’s love for her sister becoming Blackbird’s own. It endears her to them and that’s infuriating.

Pigs squeal from their mud slick pin as she passes them, butting at one another in a race towards her only to smash against the sturdy wood gate. There is no one around to see her so she steps onto the railing and leans over the pin to peer into the trough and see what’s being fed to them. Tubers, rinds, and something covered in a film of fat beneath a pink-grey liquid. Curiously, she presses her fingers into it to fish around and feels along the length of something smooth and hard.

“Hm.” She lifts it free, sliding her hand along it to slick away the muck, and finds herself holding a large femur with gnashes in the bone. Both ends have been sawed off and the marrow has been cleanly scooped out. There are a number of animals she has encountered capable of such a vile act and more monsters that were native to the region. Though she wonders why—if this had been an attack— there were remains to be found at all.  Curious, she uses the femur to dig through the slop in search of more bones and unearths a skull split open like an egg. She turns it around to catch light at different angles for inspection, stopping when the light shines into the sockets. There are scrape marks inside that—after she presses a thumb inside one to feel around—are smooth and uniform. An animal couldn’t have done this. It’s interesting in that it proves her right but she finds no enjoyment in the victory. She drops the bones back into the trough for the pigs and remains perched on the fence, using the height to peer around for something else of interest. Further up the road, tucked against a house, there is a small stone well with a simple bar across the top for a bucket to be tied off to.

“Curious.” It was not wholly uncommon for wells to dry up and the need to drill a new one would arise but, in most cases, the old one was at least covered. She drops down from the fence to journey to the well, keeping a mindful eye around her for spies. There is still a rope—a well maintained one—tied off so she takes it between both hands and takes the time to draw it up. The weight is telling. There is a bucket on the end of the rope and it comes up full of clear, cool water. She dips a finger in and gives the water collected on the end of it a small lick.

“Hm. If you are a functioning well with clean water then what is the purpose of the second well.”

Around the bend of the gate, she hears voices and quickly casts a spell to turn herself invisible just as two men come into view.  

One of them is a squat man with liver spots atop his bald spot, skin sagging from the crown to his jowls so that his whole face looks like a melted candle. Like the rest of the town, he looks unhealthy in parlor and crusted in filth. He scampers after a skinny tower of a man with the dewy skin that’s covered in flakey rashes along his bared arms. The tweed vest he wears is the cleanest thing in the entire town even though it’s stained with something dark and crusted at the edges. There is an ugly floppy hat he rips off and hands off to the man behind him, running his hands through red greasy hair.

“—running low on supplies, mayor. I know you don’t like it but we may have to send the boys out on a hunt.” The balding liver spotted man squeaks in a nasally voice. They move as a duo towards the well, forcing her to move away until she nearly trips over a pile of wood.

 “Last time they came back with two old crones and a child. A male child, Dreg. The boys are useless.”

“Then we will send someone else! Mayor, we are starving.”

“We aren’t starving yet and we will last if we tighten the rations.” Mayor—name or title, she doesn’t know—bypasses the well entirely and strides towards where she stands and for a heart stopping moment she believes he can see her. But then she steps to the side so he can assume her previous space and crouch down by the wood pile.

Double curious, she thinks as she watches him chuck wood aside until a cellar door is revealed.

What is? Zika’s thoughts brush against her own and as always they feel like a cool rain when she’s overheated which is infuriating because Blackbird doesn’t even like her.

Fuck off.

“Not yet, Mayor, but if we tighten rations any further people are going to get…angry.” He whispers the last word like it’s a filthy secret. The doors are flung open for the two men to enter and she decides on a whim to follow. The Mayor enters first and she slips in during the time Dreg pauses to look around for prying eyes.

The stairs are made of packed earth and bedrock she has to be mindful of in her boots with their wooden heels. Ominous clicking coming from between them may inspire a search party she does not want. Luckily they aren’t very long and, at the bottom, lead to a large hollowed out space in the earth. She side steps quickly to avoid Dreg stumbling down the steps to catch up with Mayor.

The smell hits her before anything else can, stinging her eyes until they begin to water. Salt and smoke, mingling together with an underlying current of rot and bile. Trenches have been cut into the dirt floor to channel liquid from a center pedestal in the room. She’s certain that’s where the fouler stench is coming from. In each corner, cut into the walls, are sturdy yellow wooden doors. Smoke clouds the glass window in one of the doors. Cut into the roof is a perfect circle lined with stones that natural light pours down from.

“They will live.”

“Mayor, it’s just that our stores are getting empty and people are—“

Mayor clicks his tongue against his teeth and Dreg falls silent, “Dreg, I am doing the best I can with what I have. With winter there are fewer travelers which mean less guests coming through town.”

“But a hunt—“

“A hunt would be frivolous, Dreg. Half this town is full of idiots and the rest are worst. We will do as we have always done and make due.”

Dreg swallows so loud Blackbird can hear it across the room. His beady eyes glance to the doors.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we may have to turn to the alternative.”

“But Mayor, people will notice. It’s not the same.”

“They won’t—“ Mayor pauses mid speech as a bucket on a rope descends from the hole of the roof. It settles in the center of the platform below it. At once Blackbird understands the purpose of the first well at the center of the town. Sighing, Mayor snaps his fingers at Dreg and gestures at the bucket. Blackbird follows along the edge of the wall, mindful not to step in the trough—it’s full of blood left so long it’s clotted and turned to a sludge composed half of dried dust that has been wetted by new stuff—until she’s within sight to see Dreg open one of the doors. The first thing visible is a human rib cage suspended on a hook that’s been rubbed down with corse flakey salt that also covers the floor. Shelves line the inside of room with jars full of organs, strips of flesh in various shades, and boxes brimmed with salt. He disappears into the room and reappears holding a jar the size of his torso that contains amber liquid and a woman’s severed head. Blackbird’s stomach lurches, burning until she can taste a bit of vomit at the back of her tongue. All the hungry stares they had received upon arrival had not been sexual as she has first assumed but genuine hunger. The reason there are only men in town is because they eat the women.

“No, Dreg, what did I just say? We need to conserve. Give it here.”

Bile rises in her throat but she doesn’t look away when he takes the head from the jar and places it on the table. Whoever this woman had been, she looked barely older than Zuri. He stoops to retrieve a long curved blade stashed below and, using the blunt edge, taps along the crown until she hears a wet crack.

“We need to conserve,” Mayor reaches through the bone, picking away pieces like it’s an egg shell, to pull the brain free and onto the table, “we all need to conserve.” He bring the blade down in a swift arc and severs the brain down the middle, grabbing a half and tossing it into the bucket. Two tugs are given to the rope. It begins to lift and Blackbird feels her heart drop to her feet.

“Yes sir, of course.”

The sound of hurried footsteps thunders from the staircase behind her and a man comes rushing down. One of the two Blackbird had caught staring when they first arrived.

“Mayor! There are guests at the inn.”

“Women!?”

“Yes! Three of them and all witches. Two of which are God-Born. They have halos. But one of them is burned with the mark of the fort which means they are likely being chased. Our time is limited.” Mayor sends Dreg a pleased look.

“This is great news! Send—“

Blackbird already begins moving back towards the exit before they can finish their conversation. They need to leave this place as quickly as possible and she will take no grief from Zika this time. Once she escapes the cellar unnoticed, she drops the invisibility and sprints back to the inn.

The inn has completely cleared out including the grubby man that had been at the counter which sends a jolt of anxiety through her system.

“Zika!” She shouts, loud as her low timber can manage. There is a crash followed by a scream as a man is blown from the balcony to the first floor, hitting a table that splits and buckles beneath his weight, just a foot from where she is standing. There is a rope knife stuck in his thigh.

“Blackbird!” Zika’s voice sounds nasally, tinted with pain. It ignites Blackbird’s anger that tingles to her fingertips, twitching with a flurry of spells. She grits her teeth and rushes for the man dying on the broken table to collect the knife from his flesh.

“I’m coming!”

Ice coats the stairs at the top where it has creeped into the hallway, spiderwebbing across the walls to the ceiling and curling into the sconces on the doorframe. There is a body burnt black from the hips above crumbled against the railing of the stairs across from a room missing its door.

“Fuck you!”

“Mouse! Don’t use that word! Where did you hear—ow!” There is another crash inside the room followed by strained whimpers of pain that come from Zika. A surge of emotion, dark and sharp, pricks against her tender insides that doesn’t feel like her own but fills her with worry and fear for her other half. Blackbird rushes in without hesitation.

Inside, Zika is sprawled across the floor with a man atop her, his hand twisted in her hair to keep her snapping teeth away from his arm already sporting a bloody bite. Half of Zika’s face is dressed in blood stemming from the nasty gash in her disfigured nose. Closer to her, Zuri is huddled beneath a short legged table into a tight ball to avoid the reach of the man kneeling in front of it and pawing through the narrow gap to grab at her. Twisting the knife around in her hand, Blackbird grabs his wrist, lifts it so the is palm flat on the table top, and drives the blade through the back of his hand to the hilt. The blade peeks through the table on the underside, dribbling blood. He howls in agony and it draws the attention of the man atop Zika, leaving just the right amount of hesitation for Blackbird to lift her leg and kick her heel into his cheek. His teeth click together from the force, head lifting up, and Zika used that momentum to punch his throat and throw him off her. Their eyes meet and something in Blackbird settles that she hadn’t realized was ruffled until that moment. Zika is safe.

“This doesn’t mean you’re right!”

And she’s still the most obnoxious woman Blackbird has ever known.

“Your nose is going to heal crooked and you’re going to be ugly.” She snaps, irritation on a constant churning boil low in her gut.

“That was uncalled for and not true. Scars don’t make us ugly,” Zika kicks the man’s knee with enough strength Blackbird can hear the snap of the bone then picks his head up and bounces it off the floor, “they make us beautiful.”

Blood and drool spill from his lips that hang open, eyes slipping shut. Blackbird blinks at the scene. She knew Zika was strong but she didn’t have reason to believe she was that strong. Her chest heaves from exertion with a spill of mused silver hair draped over a shoulder that shimmers from the glow of her halo. The blood on her face has begun to crust and as it dries it changes from the mortal red to a metallic gold. The sleeve of her dress has been ripped off to reveal her arm marked by their bond and beneath it the muscle is coiled tight, chiseled to such a perfection it looks like a statue. For a moment it strikes Blackbird that her bond-mate is quite fascinating as she is elegant and rough, sweet but brutal, beautiful and awful. Blackbird hates her for being interesting.

“We need to go.” She grumbles, turning her back on the sight to pull Zuri from under the table.

“I expected you to be more smug.”

“Oh, I will be, but only after we are safely away from the cannibal town that eats women.”

Zika makes a sound similar to a teapot left on boil, “Pardon!?”

 

Another town does not come for quite a long time. They move through the moors until they grow into coastal wild land. Tall grasses that boarder roads turn to sand and rock and trees with massive root clusters and itchy weeds. Salt can be tasted on the air and it invites such a homely feeling in Blackbird she finds herself smiling while they walk. After the events in the cannibal town, Zika had been quiet. Complacent to allow Blackbird to lead them, quiet when Blackbird would argue a point and altogether absent when Blackbird would seek her opinion. It bothers her. She hates Zika but she does not want her to be quiet. Zuri, on the other hand, becomes a fount of conversation. She tells colorful stories of youth, of catching stray wild things and being chastised by Zika, of braiding hair and swimming and eating all kinds of food. Zuri is a child of war who has suffered immense tragedy after tragedy but she is still a child. Each laugh and shriek of delight and babbling story is a new dawn that radiates hope. Hope that the children of a war torn country can survive with some semblance of an inner self.

A week becomes another until it becomes a month and then a year. Zika tries to run but not as often as Blackbird does. Nothing comes of it. Initially Blackbird had been deeply set against traveling that far a distance with them as her original plan had entailed that she only needed Zika long enough to escape. Unfortunately, as Blackbird discovered, the strange bond with Zika would not let them be apart. The first time she left, she had gotten a nose bleed that turned into a migraine so fierce whites spots began to cloud her vision. The second time, she had taken off at a full sprint and as quickly as she ran, it was like she was moving through molasses that had turned her around mid flight until she ran—quite literally—into Zika.

They agreed that it is better if they just stay together. Zika becomes a little more lively after that and even tells Blackbird stories like the ones Zuri enjoys sharing.

They still get on each other’s nerves constantly.

“I cannot believe you, Blackbird!”

“Oh and I should let us freeze!? Let us starve!? Some of us are not so precious to have scruples, you self righteous—“

Zika’s eyes are solar flares of silver light. She stomps into Blackbirds’s space to growl near her nose, “Finish that sentence. I dare you.”

“Bitch.”

Zika lifts her hands not to harm Blackbird—she knows that like she knows Zika hates the water—but to shake some of the rage out of her body. Just to ball her hands into fists and be furious.

“I hate you. I hate you with my entire heart, Blackbird.”

It stings and the fact that it stings makes it sting twice more. She grits her teeth, sucks in a breath to shout the words back, but they wither where they bloom. Instead she throws up her hands in frustration and hisses, “They weren’t using them!”

“You stole from a company of our brethren!”

“Whose brethren!? Because they sure as fuck weren’t mine!”

“They were witches who are struggling just as much as we are to get somewhere safe! I do not want blankets they need, food they need. I don’t want it stolen.”

“Oh, you don’t want it stolen, darling? Sweet, lovely princess? Is it too lowly for you? Too dirty? Too much like the part of you that you hate,” Blackbird blazes, burns in her eyes and her voice and in her glare, in the hand she thumps against her heart and when she spits the word hate, “wake up! This world is cruel! It is not a place that gives a fuck about your morals! Do you know what those will get you!? Your sister starving because there is no food. Dying of thirst because the water here is too salty and we don’t have the means to purify it. Freezing at night on the cold hard ground. If you hate me, that is fine. I don’t care. Hate me tonight when Zuri is sleeping with a full belly in a bedroll.”  

“Do you think that means a thing when she sleeps in the grave you dug for others? When her bones are only hearty and healthy because theirs lay in the snow after you stripped them of life?”

Blackbird’s laugh is hollow and cruel, “If you think I care about anyone’s bones but my own, then you do not know me.”

“I do and that is why I hate you. And why I will always hate you.”

Blackbird storms away. Back into the shallow cave they found in the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean miles below. Zuri is nestled in the bedroll Blackbird stole from a traveling caravan of witches trundling down the lazy coast road. She is eating from a stick of meats and veggies that Zika had begrudgingly cooked with a spark of flame from her fingertips. Sticky juices make her fingertips shine when she tears away bits of the meat for The Hag. Gingerly the bird takes them, holds them in her beak for a moment after hopping away, then discreetly puts them back on Zuri’s plate by her knee. Once every few moments, she watches Zuri look delighted when she feels that she still has food on her plate and happily nibble the bits.

If I am hated, this is worth all the hatred in the world. Blackbird is not a good person. Not loved or even liked except by the maladjusted and misinformed. She does evil and is cruel. But she does care about bones outside of her own body, close to her heart where people cannot find this truth.  

Zuri looks up towards the wall in front of her, ear turned toward the mouth of the cave, “Blackbird?”

“Can you tell me by my footsteps, Mouse?”

“Yes. You stomp.”

“Mm. Enjoying supper?” Blackbird moves along the edge of the cave wall to the darkest corner far from the very small fire that burns through aged driftwood. She draws her cape around her shoulders after she sinks to the ground and leans herself against the rock. The Hag perks up and makes soft kissing sounds at Blackbird.

Zuri’s shoulders sink a bit. She feels across the rock floor for her plate so she can set the stick on it. The slightest frown tugs at her mouth.

“I’m sorry.”

Blackbird crosses her legs at the ankles, yawning against her shoulder and gazes tiredly at the child, “Why? Did you do something wrong?”

“I’m the reason you and sister were fighting.” 

She hugs her empty stomach that twists itself into knots.

“Could you hear us?”

“No. But I could tell sister was not happy and I could guess that is why she asked you to speak with her outside.”

“Hm. Don’t be sorry Mouse,” Blackbird leans her head against the rock, flicking her eyes down to The Hag who hops over to perch on her thigh, “you are not the reason we fought. We fought because we are different people. We cannot get along and that is fine. Sometimes adults are fickle in that way. Soon, we will find a place to break this bond safely and we can go our separate ways. Then, no more fighting will happen and you will not be sorry for these silly, fickle adults.”

Zuri’s small shoulders sink in, “I don’t want you to go. I love sister and I love The Hag and I love you.”

Blackbird bites into the meat of her lip and says nothing. Her heart wrenches itself into pieces inside the cage of her ribs.

At the mouth of the cave, Zika enters in a huff, storming toward the fire beside Zuri. Her face takes on an odd shape when she looks to the far corner where Blackbird is. Scowling, Blackbird draws her cape tighter around herself and continues to say nothing.

“Mouse, have you finished?”

Zuri perks up, “Yes! I saved you—oh. I think…I’m sorry, I tried to save you some.”

The gentlest of smiles graces Zika’s face and Blackbird tries to hate it. She does, to an extent. She hates that it makes her stomach hurt.

“That’s alright. I’m not hungry.”

“Oh. Are you sure?”

Zika throws a violent glare toward Blackbird’s corner, “I’m sure.”

“Alright. Can we do stories? Before bed?”

Zika settles primly on the bedroll like it is the cushiest and fanciest of beds. Her arms are held out in welcome to the young girl who crawls into them. From her corner, Blackbird listens to a story of a little dragon made of grass that sang to a dewdrop and learned by the end he was singing to himself all along. The glorious chords of Zika’s truly divine voice echo off rock, sweeter than honey wine. It has the faintest harmony that is also Zika’s voice almost like every memory of this song that has been sung by her remembers all at once and wants to accompany. Angelic does not begin to describe the sound. Nothing ever could. Blackbird does not possess a diction to put purpose into making poetry of the massive feelings Zika’s lullaby inspires in her. What a funny thing that something of such extravagant and otherworldly beauty had just been used to condemn her with hatred only moments ago.

Zuri falls asleep quickly after the second story about a fish and an opal. Dutifully Zika draws back the blanket of the bedroll to lay her sister down. Then, she seems conflicted. Her eyes go to the second bedroll that Blackbird had stolen for her, lingering for a long while, and lift toward Blackbird.

“Are you going to sulk in the corner all night?”

Blackbird says nothing.

Zika seems thrown off by this. Her fists clench by her hips but her face seems almost sad. Her lip quivers a bit.

“If this is your way of guilting me into apologizing, it won’t work.”

Blackbird says nothing.

“I know you aren’t asleep. I can feel you in my lungs like your breath is my own. My heart does not beat unless it knows yours does first.”

Blackbird says nothing.

Zika fumes by the fire. Her hands unclench just as her jaw does. She turns her back on Blackbird, “Fine. Sulk.”

Zika tugs on one of their packs to lay her head on and grumbles to herself for a long few minutes afterward. Her legs draw up to her chest to trap body heat where the organs need it most. From her corner, Blackbird can hear the stubborn chatter of her teeth.

“Blackbird?”

She says nothing.

“Please come sit by the fire. I know you’re angry and I am still angry too but it’s cold and I don’t want you to suffer.”

Blackbird pets the plumage on her beloved Hag, across her proud chest and the soft wings that are folded up. She taps the bird very gently on the spine to direct her to follow Zika’s request. The Hag makes kissing sounds to convey the command as being received then hops away to roost on their pack that is underneath Zika’s head. Her black feathers shine in the dull light cast out, stark against the spill of Zika’s white hair. Zika kicks aside the stolen bedroll from where she is laying down on the hard rock that will become unbearably cold once the fire goes out. Her back stays toward Blackbird.

Once she has fallen asleep, The Hag makes a little chirp that alerts Blackbird. Quietly she stands on stiff legs to collect the abandoned bedroll. She unclips it and leaves the majority of it still together, only reaching inside to draw out a thin blanket. This, she unfurls with a flick of her hands and lets it rain down over Zika’s body. It settles snuggly over her and the moment it does, the furrow in her sleeping brow smoothes out.

“Keep watch on them. I’ll be outside.”

The Hag mimics her deep, drawling accent, “Only fire.” Which is how the Hag conveys, in her limited vocabulary that is stolen words, that only fire can stop her from completing this task.

Blackbird nods her gratitude, “If I see dangers, I’ll click twice and you are to wake them.”

The Hag clicks twice to convey she understands then makes kissy sounds for a goodbye.

The snow is letting up but it still clings onto the last ends of the winter months. It is falling gently when she steps outside of the cave and settles herself down for the night. Like a dog left by a careless master, she takes her place as the watchmen in the night and never closes her eyes except to blink.

In the morning, Zuri makes a funny face at her when she comes into the cave wet from snow and dour. Without eyes, she cannot see this but she cants her head and the pucker of her short, round nose says she can smell it perhaps. Zika is leaned against the wall of the cave, going through their packs to catalogue the supplies they have and making a note of each. Her eyes flick up to Blackbird, horribly guilty and dull. The silver is almost a nonexistent band of metal being eaten by the lavender.

“Did you get up early?” There seems to be some vague hope in her tone. Perhaps she seeks this as an alternative to the truth. Why that it is, Blackbird cannot fathom. Zika had make herself abundantly clear about how she feels toward her bond-mate and any care portrayed thereafter is a theatric display for social niceties. Blackbird cannot be bothered.  

Silently, she sets the bundle of wet driftwood and reeds she found while on her walkabout this morning. Along with a small string of fish she caught out of a nearby brackish river.

“I found you some bugs, Miss Hag,” Blackbird reaches into her pocket for a bunching of worms and wood beetles she picked out of the driftwood, “felt only fair I brought you breakfast too.”

“So sweet!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Zuri feels her way across the cave floor to Blackbird’s forearm and traces the path down to the fish. She shrieks the moment her fingers brush against wet scales.

Blackbird smirks, “Don’t worry, they aren’t alive.”

“It just startled me is all,” Zuri sits herself against Blackbird’s side while she goes about getting the fire going with a stick of flint and some tinder, “did you catch these?”

The fire won’t light. It is too wet. She sighs in frustration but continues trying anyway.

“Yes.”

“Whoa, how?” Zuri asks at the same time Zika sharply asks, “When?”

“With a few tricks I have learned.” She frowns when Zika flicks her wrist and the water inside the wood rises and turns to steam that hovers in the air above their heads. Her eyes meet Zika’s.

“Earlier this morning.”

“How early?”

“Does it matter? I brought food. I didn’t steal it. And I didn’t use any of the things I stole to do it. Now you won’t starve yourself in some fit of nobility,” She sighs and stows the flint back in her pocket as she rises back to her feet, “Hag, when you’re done, meet with me outside.”

Zika rises instantly to catch her wrist before she can take a step outside. They hover near each other and it is odd but Blackbird feels chastised. For having done nothing wrong, she still wants to dip her head in submission and apologize.

She realizes the feeling is not hers.

Zika bites her lip, eyes flickering down to the small flame taking root in the tinder, “Blackbird, I…did you put that blanket over me?”

“No.” She lies crisply. By her ankles, Zuri makes a terrible little sound that draws the attention of both adults. She is smacking her lips and pulling a face that resembles having smelled something rotten.

Zika nods sharply, “You can be honest, Blackbird.”

She dislodges her wrist from Zika’s hand more gently than she feels like being, “Now why would I do that? I’d hate to change your opinion of me.”

To further confuse her, Zika flinches from the words.

“Blackbird—“

“I will be outside when you’re both done with your breakfast.”

Zuri turns her head toward the sound of Blackbird’s voice, snowy brows pinched together with concern, “Aren’t you hungry?”

“I already ate.”

Again, Zuri grimaces and curls her tongue across her teeth, tasting the lie in a bitter, sour flavor no doubt. Her shoulders hunch up to her ears, “We can share…”

Hurt spikes her through the chest and she cannot be certain if it is her own or Zika’s. When did she become shackled to beings that care and who also do not care. The juxtaposition is going to drive her mad. She stoops to cards her fingers through the short strands of Zuri’s slowly growing hair and gives her a very soft pat on the top of her head.

“I will be hungry come lunchtime,” She says to avoid telling a lie because she will be hungry by then, “I will sort out food by then, okay? I couldn’t catch that many and they aren’t too big. I am use to living like this, you two aren’t. It will be fine.”

Placated, Zuri gives a despondent nod, “Alright.”

Zika is not so easily swayed. She follows Blackbird outside of the cave, stopping to squint at the spot on the ground that has no snow because she had been sitting there all night.

“Why are you doing this? To punish me? To make a point?”

Blackbird scoffs, “That would be redundant. You’d need to care about me for that to work.”

“Oh, you think so? How does starving yourself and making a big show of all these little things you do not add up? I know you’re trying to guilt me. It won’t work.”

This time, Blackbird smiles and she does speak, “It would seem my callus, jaded heart is infecting you. How cruel you have already become to see the worst in people. It’s good, really. It’s going to keep you safe.”

Zika reels back with nothing to say to that. She feels the swirl of heartbreak and confusion that choke the words from her throat. She opens her mouth then shakes her head and goes back onto the cave.

Through their bond, she hears Zika’s thoughts that she knows are not meant for her to hear. They still cannot control the complexity of the massive thing binding them together even after a year of being burdened with it.

I wish it hadn’t been her.

She tries to not let her heart break because she understands. Blackbird would not wish herself on anyone least of all Zika. It is not fair. But needs must and now here they are.

 

In the shadow of mountain there lays a hamlet that sleeps most days but on this one, the day of their arrival, it is bustling. A festival of high spirits celebrating the end of winter is ongoing, deep into its third night. Drunks lay sprawled over heaps of hay and over barrels and on top of other drunks. When Blackbird points out that this is a good marker for a truly merry party, Zika sneers and calls her a wretch. Whatever the center of this festival is, there seems to be a story being told that started on a Sunday night and will end on a Sunday night. Woman in red dresses and white veils dance in circles around a set of six fires. Rhythmically they stomp along to the beat of a wall of drums encircling them and to the howling cries of the crowd gathered. A larger part of the attendants seem to know they can join in the circles at certain parts of the song and the ones they replace come out for drinks or kisses from spectators. One of them approaches Blackbird with a great big smile, notices the mark on her face, and turns away frowning to hurry off for another. Another catches Zika by surprise as noted by the high squeak in her nose she makes when she is suddenly grasped firmly by the jaw and kissed. When the woman draws away, a laurel of wheat and roses are placed on her head.

“A pleasant evening to you, my one night love.”  She whispers saccharine and with a devilish wink. Before Zika can even recover, a willowy man with hair longer than Zika’s and a rusty colored beard turns her head the other way and kisses her again. This time Zika goes red to her ears when a second laurel is placed on her lovely head.

“A pleasant—“

“Yes, yes, we get it,” Blackbird waves her hands at them like they are pesky raccoons who have gotten into her storage bins, “shoo.”

Zuri tugs at Blackbird’s puffy sleeve, “What’s happening?”  

“Your sister is giving away her best assets for free.”

Zika swallows hard and tries to glare at Blackbird but fails, “That is not true.”

“Hm. I suppose it was a barter but could you keep it to yourself long enough for us to find some information? Or perhaps go kiss a few more and see what they say? Maybe you’ll taste it on their breath.”

Remarkably, Zika grows to an even darker shade of blush, “Shut up, you miserable shrew. You’re bitter because no one wants to kiss you.”

“That—hey!” Blackbird slaps the side of a woman’s head who leans near Zuri with a laurel in hand, “She’s a child, go fuck yourself.”

“Blackbird!”

She pushes her mouth to one side and glares at Zika who comes beside her, sandwiching Zuri between them, “Oh, apologies, princess. So terribly sorry to offend the stranger. Zuri, this woman wants to kiss you, don’t be rude.”

“Oh.” Zuri says soft and mostly flat. There is an inquisitiveness in the sound that is born from a scholarly interest, she thinks, rather than a physical one.

“No, no! Not—“ The woman’s eyes get all dewy and full of stars the moment Zika speaks. She leans around Zuri to kiss the corner of Zika’s mouth. The third leaf crown slips a little to the side and nearly falls off. In a huff, Blackbird flicks at it to send it the rest of the way gone and steps on it. A strange smile flits across that woman’s face that makes her uneasy only because it seems flirtatious. When she tries to lean over and kiss Blackbird, she plants a firm hand on the woman’s face and pushes her back.

The woman gives a gracious bow that is it erupted by her own drunkenness, sending her sprawling across a pile of drunks laying in the street nearby.

“Come. I do not want to tarry here. Everyone is acting like a fool of whom run the risk of me murdering them.”

Zika looks over her shoulder at the collective three who had gifted her crowns and titles for a night, “I am having fun.”

That sits sour on her tongue for no good reason.

Further in, the festival is no different. There are those dressed in red that seek out some form of affection from those around them. From watching there seems to be a pattern of the kisses being gifted to anyone wearing white or already wearing a crown. Zuri is given blue and yellow and black flowers from teenagers and some adults and some elders. The colors are important factors for whatever story is being told. When they stop outside of a new gathering, just as the cusp of it, Zika tucks some of the awarded flowers behind the Zuri’s ear.

In this space, food is being handed out to anyone with a plate or a voice loud enough to shout for some. No coin seems to change hands for any of the food or drink so begrudgingly Blackbird decides they can stay. Free food in times of war is a rare thing and even if it is part of some asinine backwater event that everyone takes a communal role in, that is still a fair price.

She guides Zuri with a hand on her shoulder to the line and keeps eyes on the hands dishing up the food. There is a number of three cooks behind him who cut and slice and stir but the space is open with no walls and low tables. Everyone moves slow and only reach for the same four bowls of spice or the jar of honey being drizzled over bread.

Zuri leans closer against her side, “The food smells very good.”

“Don’t try any until after I’ve made sure it’s alright.”

“For the love of all, Blackbird. They wouldn’t be poisoning their entire town.”

She barely refrains from turning to glare at her bond mate, “I was more of the mind to make sure we won’t be eating humans.”

Zika makes a sound against the back of her teeth but says nothing. Each of them receive a heaping portion of some form of meat pie that has a crispy golden crust leaking a dark brown broth, flaky chunks of steaming bread smothered in honey along with a mug full of some dark liquid. Bits of dried flower and seasoning cloud the top of the liquid.

“A pleasant evening to you,” The portly man with mutton chops and a charming smile that is missing a front tooth, “after supper, there’ll be dancing and Slap Knives game’ll start.”

Zuri perks up, “I would like to play Slap Knives please.”

Zuri hisses between clenched teeth, “No.”

“Sister, you don’t even know what Slap Knives is.”

“It has the word knives, Mouse. I need not know a single thing more. If you lose any more fingers, mother will kill me.”

Zuri tucks her hand behind her back and sasses, “Sore spot.”

“Sorry then.”

Blackbird taps between Zuri’s shoulder blades, “You can play.”

“Yes!”

“No! Blackbird, stay out of this!”

She looks at Zika and grins, sharp-edged and vacant any real kindness, “No.”

The food is a blessing after months of travel wherein they have had to scavenge their meals. Frequently this has meant stealing from anyone they come across or, worst, taking it off animals that have been shot for fun and left to rot. Real food with proper spices and the time to cook it melts against her tongue and relaxes her spine. The mulled wine tricks her into a false sense of security. Her head tips back with a soft sound and her eyes slide shut.

When she opens them again, smiling small but sure, Zika is watching her. There is a strange look in her eyes that instantly raises her hackles.

“What?”

“Nothing,” She lifts the clay mug to swallow down half of it one go and rises from the table they are sat at, “I’m going to go dance.”

Blackbird sinks into her seat with a glower, “We aren’t staying here tonight so don’t pick someone to bed with.”

“Blackbird!”

From Blackbird’s elbow, Zuri laughs and tilts her head toward Blackbird, “Sister isn’t going to have sex with a stranger, Blackbird. She is too prissy.”

“Zuri! Do not—I am going to tell mother you are talking like that when we get home. Where did you even…?”

“I do not care.”

In response, Zika just huffs and stomps off. There is a tickle of amusement when Zuri feels across the table the second Zika turns away and secures the mug of the wine Zika left.

“Slap Knives is a dice game, Mouse. I don’t know if you’ll enjoy it. There is sometimes a card variant that invokes a knife fight if the loser wishes to challenger the winner for their earnings. I doubt they play that way though. Kind of old fashioned. In the cities, they play with cards and the dice are called something. Bulwark or shields, something like that. It’s an old game so the way it plays depends on the region.”

“That is boring. Wine is also boring,” She smacks her lips that turn into a flat scowl and she sighs, “what do I do now?”

“Dance?”

“People step on my toes and touch my hips. No thank you.”

Blackbird snorts into her cup, “We are of a similar mind.”

“Does sister look like she is having fun at least?”

A short man glittering from some sort of cosmetic smeared across his bare chest, back, and shoulders has swept Zika into a lively dance. Laughter flies from her with remarkable ease as they go round and round, stomping their feet into the dirt and sending up joyous clouds of dust and flower petals. His hands slide along her triceps, smile soft to show his teeth that hover closer and closer to her. When she smiles in a way that outshines the stars, he closes the gap for a kiss. When he attempts to deepens the kiss by sliding a hand into her hair, she catches his wrist to stop the progression before even a fingertip touches a single silver strand. Still, her smile is pure sugar and her eyes are full of hungry fire. She moves his hand to the small of her back.

Contempt swells in Blackbird’s chest.

Nice show you’re giving everyone.

Go choke, you miserable brat. I’ll not let you ruin my wonderful time because you’re hateful and no one likes you.

She sneers into her wine cup that she finds the bottom of far too quickly.

“She’s having fun.”

“Good,” Zuri draws in a long breath and relaxes as it is blown out, “we haven’t had much fun since we got here. The mainlands are…not what I expected.”

Blackbird waits in silence while Zuri ponders her words. Zika is passed into the arms of a dark skinned man who kisses her hand and gallantly sweeps her away. The flowers braided into his beard make Zika’s chest warm with feverish attraction. She can feel it through their bond. That and her immense joy for the strength in his hands and the skill he displays with his dancing. It makes her flick the spoon from the table onto the dirty ground.

“What were you expecting, Mouse?”

“Warm smells. A hot sun that bites differently than our sun and soft grass. New languages that curl in my ears and songs in throats that I can marvel at because no one sings like that at home. New textures in clothes and wood and…and it has been like that, a bit. Except no one sings. I’ve heard so many screams and the sun is too scared to shine here. It will light up the genocide of a people if it does and that’s cruel, it says. These Knights do not deserve it’s giving light, it says. Everything hurts to my bones.”  

She looks down at the girl’s sunken shoulders and miserable half smile. Gently Blackbird tugs on her earlobe.

“I am sorry your grand delusions were shattered so quickly, little mouse. This place is awful in every way you could possibly fathom and I’ll bet, that shiny island you sorcerers came from, is nothing like this.”

“I wish it weren’t so.”

“Yes. So do I. So do many of those who do not profit from a place like this, under the carcass of a decaying leadership. There is a boot on us, Mouse, one that pushes us into the mud day by day and the boot only cares for what it can squeeze out. Mm, I wish it weren’t so,” Blackbird watches Zika tilt her head back with a graceful elegance and the man with his beard of flowers kisses the swan arch of her throat, “but we must not think of the boot or all we can do is be squeezed. I will not let the boot keep me down and pressure me into a constant misery. And neither should you. So, what can we do instead?”

Zuri’s snowy brows pinch as she considers this and gives a small nod, “Play Slap Knives and dance.”

She chuckles like the wisp of campfire smoke, “Yes. Come on, I’ll show you the few dances I know. Dancing with me is a good way to avoid getting your toes stepped on.” 

“Really?”

“Oh, sure. I had to learn waltzes and prances and jigs before I could leave the house without a retainer. I won’t even smother you in rancid affections like Zika’s partners are doing.”

Zuri huffs out a laugh and takes Blackbird’s hand, “I would prefer not. Although, I’m not a child. You were wrong back there.”

“Is that so?”

“I’m a whole thirteen, you know.”

“My, what a shining example of adulthood you are then. Forgive my impertinence, your highness.”

“Yes! Address me correctly, you silly peasant!” Her giggle is childish and leaves splinters of joy stuck between her teeth.

“Ah! Just like your sister,” Blackbird stops Zuri at the edge of the dance circle and taps the outside of her boots to show her the position for her feet, “okay then, if you want to go around kissing folks, I shall not stop you. Just stick to ones closer in your age range perhaps.”

An intense look of concentration sweeps across Zuri’s features when they begin to hop and swing in circles, “Was she old?”

“Older than me.”

“So ancient then.”

“Oh! Mouse, you scoundrel!” They share a laugh that somehow gathers Zika’s attention past the man lavishing her with affections and the music swelling in the air. Something in her eyes grows pointed and intense.

“Blackbird, you stepped on my toe!”

She jerks her attention back down to their feet, positive she had not felt a foot beneath her foot but her throat gets tight with guilt regardless. She is terribly out of practice.

“Damn, I’m so sor—“

In a flash, Zuri hooks her ankle behind Blackbird’s and sweeps it forward to pull her leg from under her. Before her back even hits the ground, she is laughing half in surprise for being tricked. Zuri gives a sharp nod of approval.

“Dancing is fun. Thank you, Blackbird. I’m going to go learn how to play Slap Knives now.”

She props her elbow on her knee with a grin, “Sure. Take The Hag, she’ll help you.”

Zuri pats her shoulder for the bird to fly to and rubs a finger across the white feathers of the magpies chest after she lands. Both of them meander slowly towards a series of tables being pushed together where that jovial cook is shouting for contestants to come join.

“Need help up?”

She jerks her focus back to her surroundings and blinks up at a woman holding down a hand. Slowly she takes it and allows herself to be dragged to her feet. The woman is mousy and heavyset in a way that her pretty dress clings to creating appealing curves. Her brown hair is lopped off at her shoulders and braided around the middle where it is tethered together with a small bell. Her hands are soft for someone who has clearly struggled so she can hazard a guess to what this woman’s profession is.

“Thank you. A pleasant…what is it you lot say?”

Her smile is wide, “I thought you seemed unfamiliar. Where did you come from?”

“That depends on who you ask. Some might say hell, others might say the divine Providence of some backwater shit filled hamlet.”

“Hell seems a bit drastic,” She plucks a bit of straw from Blackbird’s hair and winks, “you are far too charming for a devil.”

Blackbird’s skin tingles from the slightest touch of skin against her face. People do not touch her gently. The last time she can remember being so close to a perosn who did not intend to hurt her. Just the prospect of a hot feeling and whispers and gentleness makes her breath come quick.

“I’ve heard devils are the most charming.”

“Devil’s do not hold the kind of appeal you do.”

“Oh, are you after a kiss? My, what rotten taste you have.”

You’re a rotten flirt, is what the problem is.

Her eyes flick to Zika over the woman’s shoulder. She has stepped away from her dance partner to collect a new drink, shimmering in a white dress at the edge of the circle. The silver rings in her eyes seem to be blazing where they are locked on her.

“Not at all,” Her fingers caress the arch of Blackbird’s eyebrow and down across her lips, “I happen to be a very good judge of character. Usually, the ones wearing white tell the crowds they are looking for a lover in this way but I saw you and thought perhaps I could not live without you. So I wondered if I could ask in the traditional way. Could I have a kiss?”

That tart.

“You may.”

You have no shame.

Says the one who was just letting a man kiss across your neck like he’s mapping the stars.

There is a faint taste of cinnamon and mulberries on the woman’s tongue that she finds quite delightful.

I thought we operated under the intention to not draw attention to ourselves?

Go fuck a horse, Zika.

I utterly despise you.

Good.

Zika stalks the edge of the dance circle like a wolf with its hackles up. The silver in her eyes blazes even from far away as two luminous coins ever stuck on Blackbird.

Tell her to get her whore fingers out of your hair.

Why?

Because I said so.

I like her whore fingers right where they are.

Don’t be a prat! It is insulting!

To who? Because I’m perfectly content.

To me, you awful creature!

“Are you alright? Your eyes went a little…vacant.”

Blackbird draws the woman’s hand to her mouth to kiss the knuckles, “Just fine. Perhaps you’d like to have a drink with me?”

“I would.”

We aren’t staying the night so don’t get too friendly.

I said that first.

As they go to leave the dance circle, Blackbird leans into the woman to kiss her cheek and grins when she grips a fistful of Blackbird’s dark hair. With the handful of her hair, she draws her back in for another searing kiss. Absolute fury sweeps through her from Zika’s end of their bond.

“Pardon me for interrupting,” Zika sweeps into the middle of them, tall and gleaming in the firelight, and exuding regal disposition, “I would like to bother you for my partner. She has yet to give me a dance.”

“Oh! Apologies, no. Yes! Of course. Yes,” Brown eyes the color of freshly upturned earth shy away, “thank you for the kiss. Goodnight.” 

After she hurries away, Blackbird considers punching Zika in the ribs, “Fuck you.”

“Don’t be sour.”

“I didn’t interrupt you kissing half the people here.”

“That is a dramatic exaggeration if I’ve ever heard one,” Somehow Zika sweeps them into the mix of dancers without needing to do more than touch the small of Blackbird’s back, “beside that, what I did was different.”

The grace within Zika surprises Blackbird where it should not. There are memories that swim at the surface of Zika’s mind that speak of training not just to dance and move like a woman of her standing but of sword play. Long violent things that have small curves at the end and of which weigh a tremendous amount for such a skinny blade. To train with, Mari says in the memory, so your muscles are greater than the real blade requires. She can see Zika dancing across poles in water while she swings the blade at ten armed persons attacking her. It has made her as agile as a rushing stream through rocks.

“How was it different?”

“I was honoring the customs of their culture. You intended to bed that woman.” Zika catches her around the waist and lifts her off her feet for a spin.

“Actually, I think she intended to bed me.”

“Filthy cad.”

For some reason, that insult digs past her thick skin to nip at her heart.

“What is so wrong with that? Am I not worthy of any form of love? Just because you don’t like me—no, I suppose you’re right. No one ever does, hm?”

They separate to move around a couple and come back together again, hands together so their fingertips touch and form peaks between them. Zika cocks her head, itching with surprise.

“I never said that.”

“Then why does it matter?”

“You said we aren’t sleeping here.”

“Since when do you actually listen to anything I say? When did you start caring?”

This time when they spin around, Blackbird takes the lead. She guides Zika into a half swing by the small of her back and shadows her every step smoothly. When they meet again, she dips her partner and steps around her to swing her up into half loops that change direction on the beat. At the end of a crescendo, she grips Zika’s hips to aid in her lifting off her feet with all the other women and drifts into lazily spinning circles when her feet touch again. Little puffs of breathless excitement slip between Zika’s parted lips. Her eyes are wide and full of wonder.

“I—where did you learn to dance?”

That puts a stutter in her rhythm and flusters her further when Zika catches her in a smooth transition of who is leading and spins them around. She looks up at Zika’s earnest face and frowns.

“I…my father was an elven dignitary in Lerwick. He held a reputable office and was on the dwarf lords counsel. Is, I suppose. I haven’t been back to check on his affairs in a long while.”

“You’re…talented.” The truth in that seems to irk Zika. Beneath the comment is a truth that brushes against Blackbird’s mind, one that says she has been a better partner to Zika than the man with flowers in his beard. Zika enjoys dancing with her and that simple kernel of knowledge is something she despises.

Blackbird draws away avoiding her eyes, “I’m going to go find a place to get drunk.”

Zika catches her by the sleeve, “Are we staying or not?”

“Do you want to?”

Zika casts a wary glance over at the curvy woman who had kissed Blackbird, “Not if your motivation is sex.”

“My motivation is rarely sex,” An odd sensation overcomes her that loosens her tongue, “It just felt nice to be wanted.”

That startles Zika so much she releases Blackbird and jerks her hand back.

“So, if you’d like to go find your pretty man, I won’t stop you. Zuri is over there. I’ll secure a place to sleep and then I’m entering a drinking contest. I bet I can win us a couple silver. Not that money is my motivation either, I simply do not want to be sober. In fact, I’d like to get so drunk I forget this entire day. Maybe I’ll find a nice hay bale to spend my night with.”

A warm presence stays at her elbow as she moves away from the dancing circle. She flicks her eyes up to the laurels on Zika’s snowy head and the silver ringing her wide eyes.

“Why are you following me?”

“I am thirsty too.”

She does not hide her contempt, “You want to enter a contest?”

“No but I’d like an ale, I think. That wine was too sweet.”

“Why are you really following me? Don’t try to lie again.”

The strangest sensation tickles her chest as it seizes Zika, “I want to make sure you don’t get into trouble.”

“That is insulting. I’m not some fucking child that needs your surveillance. Just go fuck your pretty man and leave me alone.”

Zika’s shoulders hunch up, “Can you just—I want to drink with you. Is that alright with you?”

“Just don’t get in my way.”

Zika can drink without flinching, she learns, and it is an unnerving thing to sit next to. A small crowd collects around them when word spreads of the woman who can down a cup of Reynard’s Shine with just a smack of the lips. After the fourth cup, Blackbird is swaying in her seat humming the lullaby about the grass dragon and the dew drop. Zika starts to hum along after the fifth cup.

“Birdy,” Zika whispers a little too loudly, eyelids drooping and smile easy, “I’m drunk.”

Blackbird snickers, “First time, your majesty?”

“Yes,” Zika teeters on the chair so hard she has to grab onto Blackbird to stay in her seat, “I’m not allowed to drink like this at home. It would be bad to let the people see me ah…wobble. Blackbird, I think I’m having fun.”

In her drunken state, the comment takes time to fester into the realization that Zika is surprised that she is having fun while with Blackbird. Not simply having fun for the sake of it but that they are having fun together.

She pushes away the next tin cup, “C’mon, let’s go check on Zuri.”

“No, we’ve almost won,” Zika points to a man sleeping in a pool of his own vomit, a handful that have fallen from their chairs, and the last standing ones slowly sipping from mugs, “just a few more.”

“Ah, just you now. I accidentally forfeited.”

Zika sways into her shoulder, “I’ll win for both of us then. Team ah…Blackbird, do we have a surname?”

The question nearly startles her into sobriety.

“Say again?” She asks and not only because Zika’s usual distinct diction is horribly slurred from the drink.

“In my culture, a pairing takes the surname of the one who asked for the bond. So, by traditional law, because you asked and I agreed, I have your surname now. If…if you have one.”

That sounds like a marriage. She knows in many cultures, predominantly cultures that elevate magic users, bond marks are revered as great pacts. Some view them as eternal oaths since the bond requires sharing pieces of ones soul with another. Due to the intensity of it, this is frequently shared between lovers and it is generally considered taboo to share bonds with strangers. Even with this knowledge, she had not considered that some cultures would view a bond mark as an official marriage.  

Her jaw twists to the side and she sinks a bit under the understanding.

“My father’s surname is Caigwyn so I suppose mine is too. My mother’s was Fallow. I hate them both so, choose which you’d like.”

“Hm.” Is all she says right before tipping back her seventh cup.

Interest piqued, she tries, “What is yours? Was yours.”

“I can’t say it. It will make me…glow. Dawnswhisper would be what it is in common tongue.”

“Zika, you may remain the Dawn’s Whisper if you would like.”

A finger is thrust into her face quite suddenly and wagged side-to-side in the fashion of a disappointed mother, “I do not break tradition. It is taboo.”

“Was does tradition say about breaking a bond?”

Zika’s face pinches, “There is not a hard rule against it. It just does not happen often. I’m not an oath breaker.”

“Hm.” Is all she says.

“I am not feeling well, Birdy.”

Despite herself, the faintest touch of fondness brushes against her tongue when she says, “Let’s stop then. I don’t want you sick.”

“Only two more cups! I can—mm, no. I can’t. Let’s visit Zuri. Yes, I want to see Mouse.”

“Alright.”

When they stand, Blackbird teeters to the side after a single step forward and Zika flings her arms out to catch her. The drunkenness means her aim is off and she ends up backhanding Blackbird in the mouth. The shock more than the numb idea of pain is what frightens her reflexes and sends her stumbling sideways into a bush of oleander.

“Zika!”

“I’m sorry!” The same hand that struck her down pulls her free from the flowery prison and cradles her jaw.

“I split your lip.” A miserable apology is hidden in those words.

Blackbird sways in the spot and tries to glare but she is amused so all that comes out is a spritely laugh.

“You can really throw a punch.”

“I didn’t mean to! Let’s—oh!” Zika sways too far backward and begins to tumble downward. In a fruitless attempt at chivalry, Blackbird tries to catch her but she may as well open her hands to catch a comet falling from the sky. Her arms are not made for much else except to carry books or climb over fences. They certainly cannot hold up Zika and her muscle mass. The soft sound Zika makes when she lands on top of her is something between a surprised laugh and a hiss of pain.

“You’re so boney.”

Blackbird blows a forelock of her choppy black hair mixed with the white from her eyes, “I’m stunted from starving for most my life.”

Zika’s face grows considerate, “Is that why you’re the size of a thimble?”

“Eat shit.”

Footsteps against the dirt path draws both their focus to Zuri who now stands overtop them. A smatter of vivid red has been splashed across the underside of her chin and across one of her soft cheeks. A slow bit of it that has not yet dried is collecting at the point fo her chin and plinking down onto the front of her shirt. Despite the blood, she is smiling.

“You were wrong Blackbird. They are hosting a traditional style of play for Slap Knives.”

“Did you win?”

By way of responding, Zuri holds up that trusty rope knife now coated in a sheen of fresh blood. In her other hand she holds up a small purse that appears heavy with coin. The lower half of the bag is seeped through with some dark wetness that drips slowly onto the tip of Zuri’s boot. The mixed reception of Blackbird’s quiet approval and Zika’s bright outrage seems to amuse Zuri. After Zika finishes dressing the young teen down, she tilts her head, “I only understood some of that. Are you drunk, Sister?”

“Definitely not!” Zika lies plainly. Zuri makes a very dainty choking noise and turns her face into the crook of her elbow to cough as a cover for her laugh.

After she recovers, she makes a gesture to indicate they should start walking, “We can leave now.”

“We’re staying. One of the locals said we could sleep in his barn.”

On the journey to their bed for the night, a handful more people stop them to acquire Zika’s affection. Each one of them are rebuffed with less than words as all she needs to do is hold up a hand and they fly away. Part of Blackbird is pleased to see their disappointment and that part is summarily pushed deep down.

The hay is soft where it is piled in the loft of their resting place. Made softer by the liquor sloshing hot in her belly and clouding her head. She flops down on it with a huff and promptly falls into an immediate and deep sleep. Come morning, when the drink makes her ache and roll like a rocking ship, she takes note of the warmth. Not from a rising sun but from the sisters curled close to her. Mouse is pressed against her back in a tight ball, arms secured around the magpie that rests against her beating heart. Beside her, Zika is turned away from her and has her head pillowed on Blackbird’s thigh with a blanket drawn over most of her body. Just long wavy lengths of her silver hair poke out, fanned across her knees and Zuri’s calves.

This moment is perhaps the first in an age that she has been so close to people that were not chained to her.

 

Something happens she did not plan for so that, more than the actual act, is what annoys her.

There is a small hillock in the south that only a select number people know about. Set in this hillock is a small, easy-to-miss door left unpainted but treated to weather any storm. This door is not easy to open without knowing where to find a key but Blackbird has one tattooed on her palm. Behind this door is a long dark tunnel that will carry people deep into the underground wherein an outlaw town is hidden. Coming to Skull Meadow is not Blackbird’s first choice but Zuri is sick and there is no place she feels she can acquire medicine without being caught. The Inquisition is on a rampage, marching through every town in shinning droves and killing anyone who has so much as a sprig of rosemary in their house. Even if she was willing to venture into a town to find medicine, the chances of actually finding any would be nearly zero.

“This place…it’s bad, Blackbird.” Zika firms her jaw, head dipped down to protect her neck from the cutting looks she is getting.

“Zuri will die without help. Don’t fucking start with me.”

Zika hefts her sister in her arms rather than say a word. The fury rolling off Zika is tangible even without their mortal essence being tethered. Whatever good graces she won with Zika during the festival was lost a few days later when Zuri started lagging. A few more days passed before the teen revealed that she had been cut during her knife fight and the wound had become horribly infected. The skin around it feels like the iron in a hot fire and the fluid that seeps from it stinks worst than corpses. Zika had seen it and gone so still her breathing was hard to even notice. She had looked at Blackbird with malice and hissed, “This is your fault.”

She had nothing in her that could argue and despite the danger she knows is lurking in Skull Meadow, she brings them.

I’ll fix it. She’s going to be okay. I’ll fix it.

A mean tilt to Zika’s mouth makes her doubt herself but she pushes that down. She needs to believe she can fix this or she will fail Zuri. Blackbird cannot live with failing Zuri.

“Hey! You looking for work?” A sleepy looking woman with a nasty looking rash crawling up her neck calls from the porch of a rundown saloon.

“Ignore her.” Blackbird grips Zika’s sleeve to tug her along the path she is blazing for them.

“Hungry…please, miss. I’ll take anything.” A man missing most of his teeth and one of his eyes extends a dented bowl up toward Zika.

“No, we don’t have time.”

“Fuck you,” Zika rips her hand away from Blackbird so quickly the fabric of her shirt burns her fingers, “you’re such a selfish monster, Blackbird.”

Zuri’s eyes roll under her eyelids when she is gently set down on the road paved with dark iron bricks. The man waits patiently, almost confused, while Zika rummages through their pack to find a small packet of water crackers wrapped in stained linen.

“Here sir. I’m sorry it isn’t more.”

The man takes the bundle not like a starving beggar being given food but like a man being handed a bucket of raw emeralds. His toothy smile is so sincere when he looks up.

“Your kindness outshines the sun, miss.”

Zika uncaps her canteen and pours the last of her clean drinking water into his bowl. Again, the man looks at her like she has given him a fortune.

“Please be well sir.”

“I’ll never forget your kindness.”

Zika touches the man, very softly, under his missing eye and gives him a look that is overflowing with love, “It is okay if you do or don’t. I’m sorry you have not been given more kindness and that you flinch from it when it is given because of that.”

The man cannot speak for the ardent honesty and purity in Zika. He turns his face away in shame. Just under one eye is the smallest speck of glow in his skin, shaped like a small bursting sun. The unfortunate angle allows the man to make eye contact with her that burns into her soul for what she sees. Misfortune knows misfortune. His eyes say no one has ever been this kind to me, no one stops, no one cares. Hers, defeated and hurt, say no one has stopped for me, no one cares, and even she who would stop for you would let me bleed in the ditch to get away from me.

Both of them rip their eyes away from the other for the pity they feel for her.

“Are you done stroking your ego?” The bitterness stings against the roof of her mouth and makes her too cowardly to look Zika in the eye. She still feels the burn of that gaze on her.

“How can you keep so much hatred in your body?”

“Practice.” Curtains in a second story window are drawn open so a skinny looking man can lean on the sill. He looks familiar, unfortunately. Another window opens across the street and this time it is a burly man with a face scarred in a way that makes him look like he is frowning. That is very recognizable to her since she is the one who gave him the perpetual frown. As they move further down the street, more doors and windows begin opening. A board outside of the ugly dilapidated chantry has a posting depicting her face and a wanted listing underneath it.

She stops walking in the middle of the street.

“What are you—“

Take Zuri and keep walking past me. Pretend you don’t know me.

Why?

Just do as I say.

Blackbird pivots away from the path she was taking toward the stained white building at the end of this lane and goes toward the chantry. Behind her, footsteps move further away, toward the fork in the road that will take her to the second end of Skull Meadow. The wrong way but, more importantly, the safer way. That is all that matters.

Thank you for trusting me Zika.

Will you tell me why?

Find the white building. The man who runs it is going to proposition you, sex for medicine. That will be the cheapest option but if you don’t want to pay it, you’ll have to figure something out. You may have to get your hands dirty. I’m sorry. I was going to do it for you. You’ll figure it out, I’m sure.

Across the street, from the side of her vision, she sees Zika stop at the edge of the corner. Even from far away, the silver rings around her eyes gleam.

Blackbird, you’re frightening me. Why are you speaking like that? What is happening?

“Phainopepla,” A voice calls from the open door of the chantry, “I am ever so glad to see you’ve returned to the order.”

Goodbye Zika. Tell Zuri I’m sorry. You were right, it is my fault and I cannot be more sorry. And…and I hope someday you can forgive me for everything.

You’re scaring me, please stop! Just explain the situation and let me strong enough to fix it for us!

“A real marked? Those are so rare these days,” Someone leans out the window with a gun hanging from their fingertip, eyes hungry, “you’d fetch a good price.”

“Back off Hershal! She is ours. We have a standing debt that needs paid.”

Go before it gets bad.

An arrow flies from the shadow between two buildings and scrapes across the front of her neck. Instant fire and blood in an overwhelming tide she cannot escape.

Run!

Something explodes at her feet that sends a shower of blue dust across the ground and into the air. When the cloud swallows her, there is little she can do to fight the magic that wants her to sleep. Zika’s anxiety mounts but it too is swallowed by the blue cloud.