1-2 R

The bread went into the center of the diamond.

“Hear us, all that will. We call for recognition, for acknowledgement, for renewal.”

My hands twitched as the store-bought baguette snapped in half down the middle, the spray of crumbs fading from sight before touching the ground.

“We offer gifts, humble though they may be. Bread for those who hunger, milk for those who thirst.”

The cups of milk at our sides shifted before we could reach for them, scooting over the chalk and into the circle directly touching our trapezoids. Not a drop spilled, but the level shrank as the bread divided itself into fourths. The white clouded, colors I couldn’t quite name swirling inside it.

“Let the circle be solid, the walls stand firm. Let this ground be sanctuary where all that enter are free.”

The air began to shimmer above the chalk. The gentle breeze still whispered through the skeletal trees, but it ceased to touch us.

“We call on the spirits of all who hear, large and small or not-at-all. We seek the sights that hide from Man, to pierce the veil our eyes have drawn.” God this language was archaic. I stumbled over the last bit of the phrase as I repeated it.

“First came Earth, the solidness of stone. The soil and silt that blend into bone.”

The chip of jade across from me shuddered upright in the ash, rolling end-over-end across the chalk and then sinking halfway into the ground. As it did it started pulsing with a viridian light in time with my heartbeat. Both sped up while I watched.

“Second was Water, the timeless flow of seas. The lifeblood to a heartbeat that may never cease.”

The bowl didn’t move. The water did, a rippling sphere shooting out and splattering into an opaque mirror etched within the chalk of its circle. The surface flickered, not with a reflection of the dark sky, but with vague shapes of waves crashing into rock.

“Third came Air, the bearer of sound. The draping blanket in which we are bound.”

My chest tightened. A strangled gasp left me the moment before my lungs forcibly emptied themselves. A cloud of amber light spilt forth into the circle before me and whirling inside, never once shifting the ash beneath it. A weight on my chest kept me from inhaling.

The world began dimming as the viridian light across from me slowly faded.

Streams of water, tipped with crests of pearlescent foam, began to creep out along the lines along the diagram. They left behind stagnant, reflective onyx. They reached the two filled circles simultaneously. The circle of my breath ceased to glow, whipped into a thundercloud that echoed with muted claps. Across from it the chip of jade settled into a deepening emeraldine glow. Shoots of grass began to creep in from the edge of the circle, all bending toward the stone.

When the first blade made contact, the pressure vanished. Tammy and I both sucked in desperate, heaving breaths. With hoarse voices, we picked up with the next lines.

“Fourth came Fire, the first spark of light. The devouring blaze that lights up the night.”

The candle was outside the circle, unlit and hidden in the growing shadows that had crept over everything around us. Then, between blinks, it was inside the chalk and blazing as if it had been lit for hours. Flames reached impossibly high as the water converged on both sides of the diagram and burst into steam. Color strobed across the remaining water. Flashing red, budding green, shining blue. Flickering too fast to focus on.

“Fire’s heat gave birth to Blood, the first stirrings of life. The hands that in time would forge this knife.”

The cold metal in my hand grew warm, a silver glow leaking through the coating of ground-up plants.

“A tool of ritual and of strife, anointed in birth, in death, in life.”

The tip sank into my left palm and withdrew. I barely felt a thing. My words and actions synced with Tammy’s, no longer echoing a beat behind.

“One for the Earth.”

My hands moved of their own accord as a scarlet drop welled forth. It clung to the tip of the blade, which flicked forward. It hung in the sky for long seconds as a burning, scarlet jewel before splattering onto the jade. The grass bloomed into flowers while the chip turned black and stopped pulsing.

“One for the Sea.”

Another flick, another arc. The mirror turned red, showing my face wearing a too-wide smile, dark streaks running from my mouth.

“One for the Sky.”

Into the cloud, vanishing with a bright flash.

“One for the Blaze.”

The candle flared. Its flame burned crimson, edged with gold.

“One for the Past.”

Over my left shoulder, onto the edge of my diagram.

“One for the Present.”

Over the right, soaking into the chalk.

“One for the Future.”

My hand went over the nearly empty cup of milk. A single bead of blood dripped in and the liquid began to swirl.

“We give of ourselves to the world that was, is, and will be. We seek to See and be Seen. To Hear and be Heard. To Feel and be Felt. Let whatever may hear take of our offerings and grant us this gift. No debts and no strings, no boundaries or trivial mortal things. Show us magic.”

The last word echoed out, the air around us trembling. Then the shadows rushed in and everything condensed. The fire bent and curved before going out. The jade and the watery mirror vanished while the fog faded away. The faint sounds of the Roads died away as the air went still. I couldn’t feel Tammy at my back, or the ash beneath me. All that was left was the encompassing darkness, warm and soft, lit by the faintly glowing cup.

Then I felt...something. Dust covered wings and patchy fur wrapping around me. Old and broken things, of ash and dust and long-ago pain. All-consuming and bottomless sorrow that saturated me, overflowing until that my throat sealed and tears dripped into the void. Tingles shot down my arms like I was grabbing a live wire and every muscle I could still feel tensed up. If the darkness faded, if the distant entity left now, I still wouldn’t be able to walk.

For an eternity I cried this ancient thing’s tears, voicelessly screamed its sorrow. Lost myself in glimpses of things I didn’t understand, of brown seas and obsidian skies, fuchsia wings and burning rings. My entire existence shrank to little more than the emptiness it had felt for longer than I could imagine, engulfed in not just shadows but the warm and fuzzy embrace of something that had never been and never would be human. Clung to like the last floating board of a sinking ship. Smothered and losing myself, drowning as it tried to pull itself up.

It was too much.

I found my voice before I sank too far, each word tearing free and extinguished before it could be heard. “I…I can’t fix this. What happened is unforgiveable. But you can’t let it define you. I don’t know how to even try to help you, but you can’t dwell on a tragedy forever.”

The presence shifted, as if focusing. It drew back slightly, the pressure lifting. It wasn’t dragging us both deeper anymore

The words came easier, now. They fell flat, but at least they fell. “It doesn’t compare, it doesn’t even come close, but I’ve lost things too. My grandad, this summer. He was old, yeah, but he was healthy. We never expected him to die of a heart attack. He was there one week, and the next he was cold in his armchair.”

“With all this magic stuff, I’m not sure if it really was a heart attack. But I spent every summer with him growing up. He raised us after Mom died. And he left a gaping hole in my life when he died. It hurt, so so much. But…then I found about this. Magic. A last gift he left behind, telling me and my sister how to find his secret library. He’s still gone, and he’s never coming back, but that doesn’t mean I have to dwell on his absence.”

“Even with him missing, there’s still reminders everywhere. This place, that ritual? His instructions. I live in his house, the place he spent decades maintaining and making a home. I remember planting the trees in the yard with him when I was seven, and how Tam lost a tooth when she ran into the doorframe when we were nine. If I can’t move on, all that hurts. I want to draw into myself, to not look around or think about it. But that’s no way to live, is it?”

“It took months, and I didn’t really accept it until I started learning magic. I can think of him and smile, instead of feeling like my heart got ripped out. The house is still his, but that’s not a bad thing anymore. It’s… I don’t know what you lost, what could possibly hurt this badly, but I think it was old, wasn’t it? It’s time for you to move on, to take what you can, what’s still good, and make something new.”

The presence didn’t really change. No sense of approval or disgust, just the same crippling loss it had been for an eternity. I didn’t even know if it was alive as I’d define life. Or if it understood me at all. But after I finished talking, the glowing cup in front of me slowly went dark as the liquid inside drained. The darkness was total, at first. Then it started to lighten, as the presence drew further and further away. After one last pulse of warmth and the sensation of beating wings, the diffuse grey light of the Roads leached back in.

My hands were shaking and a thin layer of ash had coated me. Tracks ran down my cheeks and my chest, where tears had dripped and washed it away. The chalk and salt around us had stained to a splotchy grey, fading even as I watched into ash. The water and air circles were empty, the candle was a puddle of melted wax, and the chip of jade was a black lump surrounded by wilted flowers. There was only dust where the bread had been, and the cup was dry as if it had never been filled. All that was left was that aching pain deep in my chest, the fading feelings of something I doubted I’d ever understand.

Nothing felt physically different. The air still thrummed, pressing in on my ears. My eyes burned from crying, and my palm stung even though the puncture had already scabbed over. I thought maybe, maybe my hands seemed a bit more shimmery, like light was shining out through my skin. It was probably just from looking at nothingness for so long.

Then I looked up. The grey sky shimmered with bands of flowing color, rainbow streams glittering through the dark clouds and flashing in silent lightning down towards the distant trees. Smaller, more subdued streams wormed their way across the stagnant water and the ash. A flow of nameless colors scurried down my arm as a prismatic tornado swirled above my palm. The color stayed on my skin even after I released my grip on the magic, slowly seeping down into the flesh it had been called from.

The monotone landscape was alive with magic now. It always had been, but now we could See. It was amazing. It was disorienting. It was…nauseating. My vision swam, lost in the colors, and bile burned at the back of my throat. Too much, too bright. The trees were moving…

I froze as cool fingers touched my shoulder. “Teresa, you ok?”

I closed my eyes and tried to focus. Deep breaths, the feel of her hand and the ground. Don’t think about them, don’t focus on the gap I could feel inside me or the foreign depression I’d been drowning in.

Eventually the colors stopped dancing behind my eyelids. With them open, it was still there. Muted, but clearly visible if I thought of it. Manageable. A few more breaths passed before I nodded and tilted my head back. A filthy, and very much topless, Tam was grinning at me with eyes that shone with an amber inner light.

“For the love of God, put a shirt on!” I nearly toppled over as I turned back and covered my chest in one rapid motion. My legs, I just now realized, were completely numb and not, in fact, giving my upper body much support.

A relieved laugh sounded out, then crunching footsteps and rustling fabric. “Yeah, you’re definitely ok. You were out of it for a lot longer than me. You didn’t even move the last few times I shook you, I was getting worried.”

“If you’ve been up so long then why aren’t you dressed?”

“I, uh, got distracted. The clouds are so pretty, and I was looking at how everything flowed as I used it. Trying to make different shapes and patterns with it, seeing what changed for different spells…”

“You didn’t even try to wake me up, did you?”

“Uh…”

“You’re a terrible sister. Can you toss me my stuff, at least? I don’t care about the ash at this point, I just want to get home.”

My once-folded clothes dropped onto my head, the shoes bouncing down next to me and barely avoiding my legs. They were starting to get feeling back, that cold rush of sensation as circulation started working, thankfully without the pins and needles. The crunching continued. Her muttering was barely louder than, and just as unintelligible as, the wind scraping through the branches of the dead trees across the creek.

I managed to get up and shimmy into the only slightly ashen pants without falling over. At least I had a bit of dignity, even if each movement sent puffs of silver and black powder off my skin. But once I had them on, there were three things missing. Of course, she started messing with me after we finished the magic.

“Will you stop pacing around and give me my stupid bra and socks so we can get out of here?”

“I tossed everything you had piled by the bag you brought!”

“Liar!”

“I’m not! Look, I put my shirt on and I’m just splitting the books between our bags for the trip!”

Definitely not believing a word of that statement, I shrugged on my shirt and the shoes, sans socks, before turning. I didn’t want to get more of this stuff between my toes than I had to.

The thing was…she wasn’t lying. My bra and socks were nowhere to be seen, and she was squatting by the two bags, her arms flung out in her gesture that screamed ‘see? I’m innocent!’. But the crunching and the murmuring didn’t stop. A few warnings about the Roads came to mind. Or rather, as my eyes went to the trees surrounding the path, about the Wood.

She frowned as I walked over to her. A raised finger shushed her unspoken question as I got closer and tried to make out the whispers that couldn’t be wind. She might not have even heard me when I murmured, “Listen.”

It took a few minutes of silently gathering up our stuff and shouldering our bags, but then they got clearer. Louder, maybe. Closer?

“…enhancement, do you think?”

“Nae, they’ve little need.”

“There are two of them and one of these. Status, maybe?”

“The quiet one missed it, though. The blue one led the ritual.”

Those words ebbed away into an indecipherable murmur, but more replaced it as Tam met my eyes, face tightening in realization.

“…was out for awhile.”

“Aye, ‘twas watching, same as you. Boring is what it was.”

“Ignorant. The mortals don’t Pass that long, not when touching the Weave.”

“Something else? The…”

Another swap. Closer still. Like the things talking were circling around us.

“…supposed to be interesting!”

“Patience. The ritual must set in.”

“It finished! They should See.”

“Just because they can doesn’t mean they do. They made the offerings, we can’t…”

“Do you twits even have eyes? They have been standing there listening to everything you say.” A loud voice boomed out, snapping like a gale as it cuts across cloth. Ice, cutting down to my bones and freezing me in place.

One by one, seven figures resolved themselves, circling in a shrinking ring around us. Silver silk and blackened leather, ash-grey hair that whipped in non-existent wind. Pale flesh that shone with a grey light and was blindingly brilliant with magic. Faces that were almost human, but too perfect. The Fae.

“So, now they See us, they Hear.”

“Yes, they do. Look at them, see the fear?”

The voices bounced around the circle.

“Perhaps they can tell us the purpose?”

My face colored. One of the Fae was holding my bra.

“Perhaps they can explain their trespass.”

“Or why they reek of the Corpse Flower.”

“The Grower’s deal was for an heir.”

“Quiet.”

The original speaker’s words silenced the otherworldly beings, anchoring them in place and forcing my mouth to snap shut. I couldn’t open it when I tried, as if my lips had fused together.

“I am the Lady of Sighing Boughs.” Her words echoed with the sound of wood scraping on wood, and for the first time the ash stirred itself in an actual strong wind, in the shape of four ghostly wings behind her. “You have trespassed against the Ashen Court, bearing no offerings, seeking no deals, and drawn on power greater than your own.”

“What have you to say for yourselves?” The words cracked with the force of breaking trees.

Our lips unsealed and I elbowed Tammy before she could start to answer. I didn’t trust her running mouth with other people, much less with eldritch beings that legends said would gamble with human souls. I probably couldn’t do much better, but I at least knew to watch my words. And that, if it suited them, they would be extremely literal.

The way they were looking at us, I didn’t think that being quiet was going to end well. “Uh…Your Radiance, we…”

The wind howled and took my voice away. My mouth moved, but no sound came out. “We are no vain Summer fools. Flattery is as empty as the shell that birthed you.”

Across the circle, the one holding my bra cut in as she finished, drawing an icy stare but no interruption. “You are incomplete. Empty.”

“You bear the mark of the Grower, and of his Flower. Hollow. Mockeries.”

“Our hands are bound by oath and pact, with the Grower’s passing. But he bargained for his heir. Singular.”

I could see the way we’d entered. Just a few steps away, rippling in the air like a sheet of twisted glass. Maybe we could…

“Your eyes are as subtle as those fools in Spring. Obstruct the Court, and the oath is as meaningless as mortal lives.”

“Which of you is the heir to the Corpse Grower, Seedlings?”

The Lady of Sighing Boughs, who hadn’t said a word since being interrupted, ever so slightly frowned as the most recent speaker brandished a spear of twisted charcoal tipped with gleaming silver.

I still couldn’t talk. Tammy apparently could.

“We just…” The spear shifted and she gulped. “I’m…”

All but the Lady grinned, mouths with too many teeth opening as six pairs of luminescent eyes locked onto me.

“The heir will not be touched. The quiet one has been offered, and so boon will be given.”

A trinket of burnt and twisted wood appeared in the ash in front of Tammy. A spear appeared in front of me, severed hair drifting down to my shoulder from where it’d been tucked above my ear. Shaking, I leapt toward the shimmering hole in reality. Everything shifted and my stomach lurched. The world went dark.

Then I landed, and the portal was gone. So was the twisted reflection of the stream. There was no cobblestone road stretching off into the distance, no ritual circle. No Tammy. Unfamiliar husks of trees stretched out around me, a boulder-strewn cliff plummeting down to my left. Beyond it, the diffuse light glinted off what may have been water free of ash.

Arrayed in a semicircle atop that cliff, between me and the one route down, were six of the Fae, still wearing those twisted grins, bows and spears held loosely, as if it didn’t matter what I did.

It probably didn’t.

“Now, Seedling…” Their leader, lacking the more effeminate qualities the Lady had borne, raised his spear. “Run.”

~-~-~-~

It took maybe fifteen heartbeats for everything to happen. I tried to answer. The Fae reacted. A brooch, some burnt and twisted rendition of a moth, landed on my foot. A spear sank a foot into the ground where my twin was standing. Then she jumped, and in the blink of an eye everyone was gone.

“You should never have come here, child.”

My chest was cold, my hands tingling. The words drew my eye to a single, silver-clad figure. Resting on a scorched stump next to the creek, where it started to curve in a way the one we’d tread didn’t, was the leader of the Fae. The Lady of Sighing Boughs.

“You were not prepared. You were stupid. You had no watcher, no protector. You practiced magic in the Wood, without an offering to the Fae.” Her hands held a knife. As she spoke, she gouged slivers from a lump of wood held in her hands.

“What do you…”

“Do not speak, child. Your words have done enough harm.” A patch of ash in front of me cleared itself. “Sit, listen. The Grower obviously failed to teach you.”

Trembling, I all but collapsed onto the ground. My sister was gone. I’d talked her into coming here. Said it would be ok. I’d said I’m. I am. To a question. The Fae had taken it as an answer. And now she was gone. She…

“Calm. Guilt will not, cannot, undo what foolhardiness wrought. You tried to stall the Fae, but your thoughts shone through. You spoke what you believed to be truth; that you were the better. That surely your ‘grandsire’ had not meant for you both to learn, that the books had been yours to read. You found the path to what you call magic, you led the ritual. You were the heir. And in oaths like those the Grower earned, belief is solid where truth is mutable.”

The flakes of wood piled up. Her movements were hypnotizing, a human shape materializing as she worked.

“Two heirs, with equal claims. Untouchable. But shift the balance? One discredits the other with utmost conviction behind it. The claim remains, but the binding is weak. We may not harm, but we may chase. Manipulate.”

The body was there. A woman sprawled on the ground. The head still unformed.

“The pact was for a year and a day from his death. Nine months remain. To a Fae in the heart of their Court? Paltry. To twist time, to twist space? Even those children will have no issue.”

Flicks of the glittering blade separated the hair. Pale strands, blonde wood splayed out in a wide halo.

“Learn, child. Nine months. She may be out of your reach, but not forever. Your foolish offenses demand recompense. Find a master, make a contract. Buy back the debt, before it becomes too late. Offer something worth her life, worth her soul.”

She started on the face and my stomach sank. Her eyes never left mine even as the knife blurred.

“Selfishness breeds suffering. Learn, if you will. Or embrace the darkness like so many humans do. With a terrible thing you have bought the favor of lesser Fae.” She sighed, setting down the tool. Her hand still covered the face. “Perhaps I am wrong about you. Still, your line has yet been true. You have seen your choice, such as it is. The rest is entirely on your shoulders, child.”

In the blink of an eye, she disappeared. The figurine sat on the stump in her stead. A body splayed out as if fallen, clothes torn and ankle twisted. Facing away, staring deeper into the woods. I crawled over, terrified that my unspoken guess was correct.

A gust of wind stirred the distant branches into a sighing chorus, one that carried with it one word that echoed through the empty world as I turned the statuette. The wood was hot, the flesh that touched it sizzling from the heat of a long-dead fire and burning deep into my flesh when I couldn’t let go.

The word howled into my ears with a twister of ash and carbon. “Betrayer.”

The face carved from the wood, stained with sooty streaks of tears, was mine.

Was hers.

Teresa’s.

It was screaming.