Hard Pass – 22.a | Pale

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Eight Years Ago

“With this, we bind you.”

She was excited.  She stood on tiptoes to have a slightly better vantage point of the magic circle they were drawing around her.

Calipers reached out and cold points touched her leg.  Not wanting to disturb them, she kept herself stretched tall, balanced on toes in a way she only could because of ballet classes she’d taken.

They wore shrouds, and cloaks, and hoods.  All were damp, they’d washed in clean water before entering, passing through a waterfall to these deep chambers.  Each space was hollowed out by Others, then put together by members of the family.  The wood was dark, dense, and interlocked closely.  Candles had been brought in and lit, and they were the only illumination, not even bright enough to reach the ceiling of this space, fifteen feet by fifteen feet by fifteen feet.

She wore only a night shift, hair slightly greasy, even after rinsing herself regularly in the clear river water.  She hadn’t cut it in over a year, and it was down to her waist, which she thought was cool.  She’d spent a lot of time in the dark, running her fingers through it.

Chalk scratched, putting down the specific measurements.

“With this, we secure the space around you, with forces you could not hope to move, forces that would destroy you, and forces that would rebuke you.  Let Death hold her scythe to your throat.  Artery carotid.”

She raised her chin slightly.

“Let War hold her sword to your arm.  Artery brachial, sinister, close to the heart.”

She raised her left arm.  It wasn’t necessary, but nobody told her not to.  Calipers took advantage of that, taking another measurement.

“Let Fate hold her spindle and shears to your wrist.  Artery radial, dexter.”

She stretched up her right arm.

“Let Nature put fangs to your thigh.  Artery femoral, sinister.”

She planted one foot, other one cocked up, knee bent.

“Let the shards of Time’s hourglass cut your heel.  Artery dorsalis pedis, dexter.”

She planted her other foot.

“Child, for one year, you have been awake, bound to the Seal and your word.  For one year, you have fasted, for increasing periods of time.  You have been washed in clear waters, kept innocent.”

She remained as she was.

“Our specialists bind you in the strongest ways we know, to secure you in body.  They bind you in as many ways as they know, to secure you in spirit, from spirits.  And they bind you in secret ways, known only to us, drawn from powers we keep hidden from others, to secure your thoughts, to control you in totality.  In this, you become nothing.  None but us know you, none but us mourn you, and none but us could save you.”

The moment felt heavy.

She lowered her arms, and shifted her feet, eyes on the chalk circle around her.

Her grandfather’s voice was a creak.  “I swear, I will not save you, my granddaughter.  I condemn you here to this place, knowing that of the last nine grandchildren, nine suffered this very fate and suffer still.”

“Thank you, grandfather.”

He blew out his candle, and took it with him as he left.

“I swear I will not save you, niece.  I condemn you to a thirsty and hungry darkness where it may take you decades to die.”

Her uncle blew out the candle.

“Thank you, uncle.”

“I swear I will not save you, my cousin.  I built this tomb for you and I expect it to keep you.  If any force or spirit finds you here, it is because I did not set wood close enough to wood, leaving gaps for them to reach through, and that is my failure.”

“Thank you, cousin.”

“I give my word I will not take any action to better your chances or rescue you, my child.  Every part of my Self has given something to you.  You were pulled from the root of me, you grew in the center of me, you ate of the fires of me, you drew the blood from the heart of me, you learned from the breath of me, you were witnessed by the brow of me, and you were conceived of by the crown of me.”

She nodded.

“I could have walked your path and I didn’t.  We don’t have many children that survive.  I chose to bear you, I chose not to practice so I could, sacrificing much of my heritage.  I chose you, my sweet, as I chose to bear your younger siblings and I here choose to sentence you to a terrible fate.”

“Thank you, mother.”

Candle blown out.

She could see a tear on her mother’s face as her mother turned toward the door, leaving.

Leaving only her father.

“I swear I won’t save you.”

She nodded.  A silence followed from his words that made her wonder if that was all she got.

He’d never been especially attached to her.  She couldn’t really blame him.

Nine before her had been condemned to this same fate in this same way and they had never been seen again.

She smiled.

“There are people who choose to take on a terrible burden, having a great evil or horrific darkness locked away inside of them.  They are bound thoroughly, and they are locked away in places much like this.  This is a tradition we uphold, for the most part.  In many cases, we uphold it with more seriousness than some of those groups and families.  Some of that is because they are often rushed.  Evil and darkness does not wait.  Measures must be improvised.  It is hard to prepare a space and sufficient bindings. But that’s only some of it, and there is one key difference between them and us.”

She nodded again.

“There is no evil.  There is no greater darkness.  There is only the darkness of being behind a waterfall, inside of a mountain, in a jackhammered-out tunnel, in a cell your cousin crafted, that no light or sound should enter or exit from, so long as it remains intact.  Some people may come past the waterfall, and inside this mountain, but they will not walk down this tunnel.  Those that come will not heed you or seek you.  We bind you for the sake of binding you, and the only evil is the evil of what we do to you.”

She swallowed, but she did not stop smiling.

“I wonder if we should stop,” he said, voice soft.  “It doesn’t get easier.  Losing you all.”

He sounded so broken, so unlike her father, that it felt wrong.  She was caught off guard, and as he stopped being her dad, it felt like she was the one who needed to take care of him, all of a sudden.

“I’m confident,” she said.

“Why would you say that?” he asked, viciousness in his voice.  “Stupid.  Have you not been paying any attention?”

The smile dropped off her face.  She wasn’t sure what to say, now.

“It doesn’t matter.  So many of you are,” he said, still angry, still with that note of viciousness.  “Your siblings were.  Too many of your older siblings were.”

The smile fell from her face.  She hadn’t known about them.  Her parents carefully avoided talking about them.

“On the assumption you fail, we’ll let them all think a little more highly of you in their mourning, ignorant of your stupidity.  I’ll say nothing of it unless forced.”

“Yes, sir, thank you.”

“Eyes down or away.  Do not watch me leave.”

She dropped her eyes to the floor.

She could see the magic circles that filled the fifteen feet.  She could see the walls, and the ceiling.  Intricately covered, self-referencing, and more.  The planks were so finely worked that she couldn’t see the seams between them.  There was no visible grain.

The last candle was blown out.  Her father trudged out.

The door slid closed.  It was built so it did not open once shut.

She felt herself go cold.  Her heartbeat stumbled and then resumed a new pace, dictated by the room.  All the pillars of humanity and then some were denied to her.  There would be some leakage, there had to be, but depending on the construction, things like thirst and death would have to trickle in, and would find her at a small fraction of the original pace.

A person normally took three days to die without water.  Depending on whether her cousin had made a mistake, she might take three hundred, three thousand, or thirty thousand.

The afterimage of the white chalk on dark red-brown wood stood out in her vision, wavering, distorting, and lying to her.

Moving a hand-

She winced.

The diagram was there in the dark, and with the door closed, the lines of various diagrams had all come into alignment.  Moving her hand felt like a blade had pierced her wrist and run down the veins toward her heart, stopping just short of piercing it when she’d stopped moving.

Her quick inhalations felt like something was in the air- with her mouth open, it felt like there was a finger inside her mouth, dark, knobby, with a ragged and dirty fingernail.  Not making contact, but viscerally there.

With her exhalations, the air was dragged out of her in a way that didn’t let her use it.  No words.

The silence rang like a fine, intricate bell from a temple.  It buzzed with the various diagrams all around her, like electrical wires on power poles that buzzed at a frequency just beyond the limits of human hearing.

She couldn’t sit.  Couldn’t pace.  She couldn’t speak.

No air moved in the space.  No sound reached her.  No light came through the cracks.

Here, she was doomed to remain for those three hundred, three thousand, or thirty thousand days, or any number of days between or beyond that.

She moved her hand.  Again, she felt that blade -no, that spindle– race its way down her veins, toward her heart.  What would happen if the blade reached that point?  It wouldn’t kill her, but it could give her symptoms like a heart attack.  She would pass out.

As a consequence, she would never leave this place.

She moved her hand, grimacing and gasping in little breaths- shadow things kept reaching through the air.  When her teeth were grit, it was in the form of needles, slid between teeth, ready to impale her teeth in thirty ways.  When her mouth was open, it was a finger, or something else.  When her weight shifted, she felt the fangs at her leg, the deathly cold scythe at her throat.  The buzzing she couldn’t hear got louder, ominous, until it was a noiseless roar.

Fingers of her left hand worked at her shift, moving carefully, feeling War’s sword crunch its way past bone, sawing through muscle.  She clawed at cloth as much as she could, using fingertips and fingernails, until it rode up enough.

Her hand reached for the waistband of the shorts beneath her shift.  The spike of the spindle approached her heart.  She moved her hip, and in doing so, put weight on her right foot, and she felt like she stood in a river, or on the beach of a retreating tide, neither with water, and her skin was shredded and all the strength and courage was pulled out of her.

She kept the image of the magic circle in mind as she fought, moving by hairs, now.  The binding diagram put her in a metaphysical iron maiden, a box with spikes pointing inward from every direction.  Custom made, to fit her Self, the spikes anchored to things fundamental.  Every movement within that binding was like being in that iron maiden, testing the surface tension of her skin against sharpened blades.

Bent now, she used the fingernail of her index finger and the pad of her middle finger to catch hold of the first of the things she’d secreted in here.

A stick, much like a chopstick, lacquered black.

She withdrew it with glacial care, every muscle in her body tense.  If it slipped, or fell, she might never recover it.  She couldn’t even reach it with her thumb, because that required too much movement of her hand.

She moved to her limits.  At times, four different forces were ready to slay her.  Death’s chill, Fate’s spindle or shears, Nature’s poison, Time’s knell.  Then she’d move by small millimeters, shifting her weight, and Nature’s poison would recede toward the points of pain on her thigh, and War’s sword would press in, insistent and terrible.

Moving that black stick, she rotated its position in her hand, until it sat against the backs of both index and ring finger, her middle finger on top.

A bar, a block.  A line in the dirt.

Barring one force.  Fate ceased to hold her at shear-point.

With thumb and pinky finger, she pulled another free.  Careful movements, her wrist hurting from the fine adjustments of her fingers, she put it into place, braced against two fingers, another over top of it.

The elastic of her waistband was pulled away too far, and sticks it had been pressing to the side of her hip fell into the darkness.

Not just the sticks, either.

Everything.

A small sob escaped her throat and the sound of it was stolen away by one of the circles.

Moving carefully, three sticks in hand, she blocked the bindings that limited the movement of her left leg, and brought it up, knee cocked, foot off the ground.  Then she switched.  Blocking right leg and throat.  She had to keep the right wrist blocked, or her hand would be frozen.

All of her weight on the one leg she could move, balancing precariously, aware that any fall could see her fall, the hand with the sticks striking ground, or her left leg with nature’s fangs ready at the thigh moving as it collided with floorboard… she dropped down.  She sat on her heel.

She groped in darkness, wobbling.

Finding one stick.

As she dragged it closer, it hit something, and she heard the wobble.

Careful to keep the blocks intact, she dragged the tool that had wobbled closer.

Then she traced the ground with the tip of one stick, searching.  Searching, heart in her throat, hoping that the stick that had hit the ground hadn’t bounced away to some far corner of the room.

All in pitch darkness.  Utter silence.

There.  The faint scrape.

She brought it close, the points of two sticks dragging it across the floor, and she didn’t dare be relieved when she got it close enough to touch.

This was a dance, as intricate as any ballet she’d been taught.  It was everything she’d learned about practice.  Her muscles were sore, and she had no idea if it had been minutes or hours.  A part of her still held the mental image of the diagrams in mind.

Every movement had to be surgical, and the surgery was done in the dark.

Kneeling, she used a stick that had been blocking Nature from holding fangs to her leg and placed it on the diagram.  She felt the hum, she remembered the angle she’d been standing, and how she’d moved every step of the way, in here.

How confident was she now?

She left the stick where it was, blocking a key part of the diagram.  At the same time, the stick she laid down paralyzed a part of her, putting it back in that iron maiden, freeing the primary binding diagram to trap her again.  It was the same for the second, then the third.  The left arm was easiest to give up, but once the legs were paralyzed, she couldn’t move to face another direction.  Once her throat was paralyzed, she couldn’t move her head or bend down.

Sticks laid out, one stick in hand, as she picked up the tool that had wobbled as she’d found it.

Surgery in the dark, going by memory of what she’d seen.  She knew the diagrams and had studied them, but memories were fluent liars.

This was another trick, and another catch.  She hadn’t been allowed to practice this, because everything she did here had to be secret from spirits.  It was for the same reason the people in attendance couldn’t entertain the possibility she’d succeed.

Chisel pressed down on stick.  If she placed it on the wrong side, it could send that stick flying off to the corner of the room.  Too far the other way, same thing, different corner.  Too much pressure, same problem.  If she dropped anything, she was probably stuck.

The chisel split the first stick.  Her hand slid down the chisel as part of the motion, catching the sticks before they could fly off to either side, clapping them down against the diagram.

With that hand, she separated the two halves, moving them along the diagram.  Unseen, it would be distorting, segments of the chalk on the floor being crammed and pushed together.

In that same motion, her arm split and subdivided.

Second stick.  Same thing.  She reached for it with an arm that was unpinned from reality, now.

Once bound in every conceivable way, now unbound by those same ways, moving in the opposite direction.

Another part of her.  Another split from the chisel, dividing the stick lengthwise.  She moved the two halves along the diagram she couldn’t see.

Third, then fourth.  The more of her there was, the more she could hold things steady or explore and center herself with her many hands, her many parts of herself.

Last stick, held in ten ways by ten hands- she held it in front of her heart and she drove the chisel straight down into the tip of it, subdividing it.

Subdividing herself, unbinding the last parts of her that were ordinary and stable.

She filled the room, she strained against its bounds, she fought the door, and she wiped away the diagram with the unfolding, unending, unbound parts of herself.

Every limitation forced on her was now a pendulum swing the other way, freedoms, exercises and movements she could make that broke reality around her like it had no more substance than a sandcastle.  The bindings tore at her, and fought, and that iron maiden collapsed in, sword and fang and spindle and glass and scythe cutting at her, trying to limit her in scope.

She tore herself free of all of it, she beat it, and she triumphed, and she screamed, making a sound that might even reach the other cells.

Letting them know that where they had failed and condemned themselves to their decades or century-long prison stays, someone who’d come after them had succeeded.

Diagram and bindings conquered, she swept up the sticks with a series of hands, and gathered them together, bringing the broken together into something that could be mistaken for being whole again.

Standing, drenched in sweat, bleeding, weeping, she staggered to the door that she’d damaged in the throes of being everything, and she began to tear at it.  When it resisted her, she separated the sticks and she grabbed at chunks, tearing…

But she was careful not to let the spirits see her secret.

She walked down the tunnel, past the dark recesses that were other jackhammered-out and older, pickaxe-dug tunnelways, each with cells at the end of them.

It was daylight outside, and the sun shone through the waterfall.  She let it rinse her as she walked across, treading down the stone path, making her way down the mountain, barefoot and barehanded, clutching that fistful of black sticks, inscribed with key points of the Self.

The family estate was at the foot of the mountain.  Staff guarding the walled estate stood by and let her walk through.  She passed gardeners and housekeeping staff hanging out the linens, and walked up to the main house, where a long table had been set outside on the porch, an umbrella tilted sharply to block the morning sun.  Thirty individuals were sitting.

The way the table was set, her grandfather sat at the head.  From there, it went roughly down by age, her uncle to her grandfather’s right, her father to his left, another, more distant uncle beside her father.  Spouses, eldest cousins, younger cousins… down to roughly the age of four, where servants stood by to guide the children and keep them quiet, with older siblings helping.

But from there, it went up again.  Ages rose, and toward the tail end, there were others.  They dressed differently, almost like dolls instead of people, with darker colors, and they were quiet, but they were family, in a way.  In little ways, they looked artificial.  They didn’t sweat much, and they didn’t look like they were waking up, early in the morning, as they ate breakfast.  One for her aunt.  One, even, for her eldest uncle, a mirror opposite, with slightly shorter hair and no facial hair.

She saw her mother recognize her, touching her father’s arm to get his attention.

By the time she’d trudged her way across the lawn and the stone-tiled porch, some Other servants had brought out an additional chair and set out her breakfast.  She smiled at them, then sat.

Her grandfather was talking, barely glancing at her.  “…The Tempe family is asking for someone to go, be their safeguard.  Work with a Pomme on that level is unprecedented, snapback is likely.  Five figures, five days.  Details to come.”

“I’m available,” her cousin said.

She jumped a little at a touch- her mother, stroking her faintly damp hair.  Smiling.

“Good.  Draw whatever you think you need from the family accounts.  Tell Daphne this is grade B work.  It’s good to have our name attached to a project like this.”

Daphne looked after the magic items for the family.

Her grandfather, having handled the current point of business, turned to her.  “And?”

“I’m here.”

“Then you can have a name.  Do you have one in mind?”

“Helen,” she said.  From a movie series she liked.

He dipped his head in a nod.  “Let me see?”

She had the black sticks clenched in her hand.  She put that hand on the table.

Her grandfather’s eyes narrowed.

Her heart thumped.

Her dad wasn’t making eye contact, his gaze on the distance.

Each stick that she’d divided with the chisel was intact now, lacquered on all sides.  But that wasn’t the problem.

“That’s half what it should be.”

“I would have done more but the magic circles disintegrat-”

“There was no problem with the circles, Helen.  I drew the key circles.”

She nodded.

“Do you think my hand is shaky?  Do you think my mind is going?”

“No, grandfather.”

“She said she was confident,” her father said.

“Before the ritual?”

“Moments before.”

“And spirits heard,” her grandfather said, looking disgusted.  Disappointed.  “What use is it to bind yourself so, if you’re going to tell the spirits there’s a way out?  You’ve made yourself lesser.”

She swallowed hard.

“Marcus?” her grandfather asked, turning to her cousin.  “Take the cell apart.  We can use that tunnel again.  Carry the wood out and burn it.  With that, your task is done.  Helen takes over as the youngest.  The streak of nine failures is broken, even if it’s a disappointing break.”

“Yes, Grandfather,” Marcus said.

“The limbs can assist.  Good work, Marcus, I have no reason to suspect the disappointment here is yours.”

“Thank you, grandfather,” Marcus said.  “Should I go see to that now?”

“No, no, eat.  The next child is a year away from the trial.”

Helen looked across the table at a boy who’d secretly whispered to her that he wanted the name Desmond.  He was six months younger.  They didn’t get names until they went through the trial.  It meant that there was less attachment, less heartbreak when they failed.

Her grandfather was looking at her, she realized.  The gaze from other adults was pointed.

“A success is a success, even if it’s not quite what we hoped for,” Helen’s mother said.

“Your pregnancy weighs heavily on you, my dear,” Helen’s grandfather said.  “Perhaps you should retire to your room to rest?”

Helen’s mother looked like she wanted to say something else.  Then she nodded, taking her napkin from her lap and setting it beside her plate.  Servants moved her chair.

“Helen,” her grandfather said.

“Yes, grandfather?”

“She’s not wrong.  A half-failure is better than another outright failure.  But we cannot let this become a pattern.  The family has invested in you, you must repay us.”

“Yes, grandfather.”

“To begin with…”  He put out a hand.

Hesitating, she reached out, and passed him the sticks.  He motioned to his familiar, who came to the table.  As servants removed plates and things, his familiar set down a board with heraldric diagrams and motifs for the Self.

He set down the sticks in careful arrangement.  Helen could feel her very being in suspension.  One misplaced stick and she could explode into something horrific, upending the table.

But her grandfather was too deft for that.

“In private alone will you be anything but a young practitioner of the Kim family,” her grandfather said.

Only in private, in prepared rooms like that cell, will I be a horror.  It is this secret fact, kept even from common spirits, that keep me from facing the consequences of practice gone wrong.  I cannot be made into what I already am.  Should a practice of mine or a colleague turn on me, I can retreat to such a place and elude the consequences, though someone will have to pay the price.

“This must be secured with binding.  A task for after we’ve all eaten.  Rather than undergo ritual once that’s done, let’s set one aside… sever a limb.”

He removed one stick from the collection, sliding it across the diagram, rotating it in specific alignments as he did.  She could feel that removal.

The black lacquered stick squirmed, then broke, then bulged.

Her grandfather’s narrow, stiff old hand grabbed it, holding it firm.

And she felt the pain of having an arm lopped off.  She felt the bone break.  She felt the existential horror she’d read about in books, of not being whole anymore.  A common source of depression in amputees.

Her severed arm rested on that board in front of her grandfather at the head of the table.  She clutched both hands in her lap, shaking a bit.

Maybe he’d have been more gentle if he wasn’t angry at her.

The familiar brought a cloth, and her grandfather swaddled the arm like a baby.  It bulged, and bent in ways an arm shouldn’t.

It was passed to her.  She cradled the hand portion as she would a baby’s head.

“Start immediately on feeding it the milk of your spleen, raise it, shape it, bind it into human form.  You’ll help advance family interests in Canada.  It’ll be good to have a piece of you here.”

She looked down the table at the limbs in their chairs and their pretty clothes.  Then she looked down at the tap, same as the tap that would be used for a tree, that her grandfather’s familiar had set in front of her.

“Yes, grandfather.”

“William,” her grandfather said, talking to her father.  “We should make decisions about the limb.  Is it better to use the birth certificate and information for one of the nine who failed?  She’d be the youngest in her cohort.  Or should we anticipate that one of the ones who come will fail and let her be more mature than her peers?”

“I do think you’ve answered the question already, framing it that way.”

“Ah, but it’s the gamble for the slight advantage, or the sure thing with a slight detriment.  Don’t focus so much on surface details.”

An old joke.  They laughed lightly, and the younger children laughed as their parents did, and the limbs laughed last and in the most genuine of manners.

Camilla Kim, though not acknowledged by the family and perhaps not a Kim, was in the company of Lenard Lily and Seth Belanger.

Griffin and Seth had been working at the outer perimeter of the Blue Heron.  They’d been huddled together, Seth’s eyes analyzing the defenses, while Griffin’s deft hand dismantled them.  Either were good on their own, but both together were devastating.

Outside the school, the carcass of a cat with what looked like an axe wound in its forehead, eye inset into the axe wound, walked awkwardly across the top of the snow.  It might’ve been roadkill, body exploded, then wrapped in a plaid colored sack to keep the guts in.  Bells were attached to the ends of the ears, and it smiled wide.  It looked dark, even to Camilla’s eyes, which lacked Sight on their own.

“Helen?” Seth asked.

She turned her head.

“That’s Nicolette’s.  It’s a curse thing, I’d bet.”

She smirked at him.  “It’s a curse moppet.  Did you learn nothing at this school?”

“I was focused on other things.  Be careful about touching it.  They’re ambulatory curses.”

Camilla smiled, stretched-

Helen, sitting back at her room in Kennet, tipped back a drink with her left hand, right hand holding the sticks.  She changed the arrangement, aligning it to her connection with Camilla.  That undid some of the binding that maintained her human shape.  Camilla’s arm split open, reached out, exploding into multiple limbs, skin tearing and stretching.  Teeth sprouted from the ragged wounds, tongues reached out to bind the limbs together into something more singular.

She swatted the moppet.  Like using a sledgehammer to swat a fly.

She felt the curse get its fangs in her.  The bells on the cat’s ear jangled, and the curse jangled with it, reaching through flesh.

So she extended that flesh, forking it, forcing the curse to work its way upstream.

The moment it faltered, losing ground, she cut it off.  Flesh streamed out, bubbled, boiled, and splattered into bloodstains a dozen feet across.

Sticks adjusted.

Her hand returned to normal, closing as a human-sized fist that compacted a ton of fleshy matter.

She looked at Seth and rolled her eyes.

His eyes flashed green-blue.  “I see the curse in you. There’s three, maybe four or more.  They’re subtle.”

“It’s fine,” she said.

“Whatever,” he said.  “Should I not warn you?”

“It’s cute when you think I’m weak,” she said.  “Can I approach?”

“Don’t,” Griffin said, his eyes focused on his work, dismantling the diagram.

“Is this a don’t like Seth’s ‘don’t touch the widdle curse moppet’, or is it-”

“Don’t,” Griffin said.  “Maybe you’d be okay for a minute, but Seth and I wouldn’t.”

Camilla shifted her stance.  Then she swayed slightly.

“What’s wrong?” Seth asked.

“It’s fine.”

“You look like you’re ready to fall over.”

“When you get drunk, we get tipsy,” Margot told her.

“She’s drinking again?” Desmond asked.

Five thousand, seven hundred kilometers away from Margot and Desmond, and about five hundred kilometers from Camilla, Seth, Griffin, and the others, Helen put down her drink and rolled her eyes.

“I’m fine,” she told Seth and Griffin.

“She’s rolling her eyes,” Margot noted, for Desmond’s sake.

“You try fitting in with the locals here.  It’s cold and it’s dark and all they do is smoke and drink.  They get so excited about people coming to ski on their ski hills.”

“We went skiing,” Margot said, tactlessly.  “Desmond and I.”

Margot was her first limb, a young teenager now.  Helen had farmed out four before leaving for the Blue Heron.  The family appeared large but part of that was illusion.  Very few made it, but the ones who did were elite.  Even Helen, with her stupid little mistake at the ritual.

Camilla, by comparison, was her youngest.  She’d made it a month ago, but it was only just getting to be old enough to pass as Helen herself.  Winter clothes helped cover up the details.  She’d drained herself and borrowed power from Maricica to foster her growth.

On the upside, it was a way to be in multiple places at once.  Each limb with its own set of eyes, limbs.  Margot and Camilla were her, in the same sense her left hand and liver were her.  There was a bit of a disconnect with Margot, especially, not helped by her being recently forsworn.  Helen picked her way through drinks, giving them shakes to see how much liquid was in each container.  She sensed Margot’s vague disapproval.  Her limbs had been cut off and so far, only two re-transplants had taken.  It felt alien.

“I should go,” Desmond said.

“Send me what you have on Oni?” Helen asked, through Margot.

“I have to get away from the estate, first.  The family monitors the internet.”

“And Lost?”

“I looked at the family library, I didn’t see anything except references and anecdotes.  A servant asked me what I was doing, I said it was idle interest.  I’m not sure they believed me.”

“From a servant’s ears to uncle’s ears.”

“My father’s ears,” Desmond replied.  “You know the bar you’ve set for yourself, don’t you, Helen?  Keeping your reappearance secret from the family?”

“I know, I know,” she said.  She found a can with some left in the bottom, then tossed it back.  It tasted bad, like it had been out for a few days.  “If I give the family a big enough prize, I can clear that bar.  They’ll forgive me.”

“Uncle was asked if his practitioners were responsible for the horrification of the two Belangers.  Apparently augurs in Canada?”

Funny, when Camilla was dealing with them.  Or standing outside, waiting to deal with them.  Helen, Camilla, and Margot smiled.  “Yes.”

“And of Whitt Others.”

“Mm hmm.”

“He said no, we had no involvement.  It wasn’t our practices.  If I’d been in that room when they asked, I would have had to give you away.”

“Love you too, little cousin.”

“I’m barely younger than you.”

“Give me access to what there is on Lost.  Even side references.”

“I will.  Should I use my access to get the information, pass it to Margot?”

“Yes,” she replied, with Margot’s mouth.  “Under the guise of idle research.  Say it’s because of the founding in Kennet.  A big, reckless ritual that happened to go well.  What if others emulate it?”

“Wonderkand is.”

She let out a rueful chuckle.  “Weren’t they already founding places?”

“Different capacity.  Different mentality.  I was talking to Milton, and they want to talk to someone, you’d know who she is.  One of your opponents, I think.”

“Avery Kelly.  She’s gone, Desmond.”

“Gone?”

Margot nodded.

“Damn.  Okay.”

“If you’re talking to Milton and Wonderkand that much, that’s a good excuse to get research.  Tell uncle you should know what you’re dealing with before we work with them.”

“He’ll say the principles of the argumentative are sound enough, if you know the principles and fundamentals well enough, it shouldn’t matter where you’re taking them, not for how we brace ourselves against them, blah blah blah.  Nah.  He wouldn’t say yes, I don’t think.  I think he just doesn’t want to spend family money that he could invest elsewhere.”

“Or even to ask Milton for some texts?”

Desmond chuckled.  “There’s still fire in you.  You want this.”

“Even when I was forsworn,” she replied, voice quieter, “there was fire.”

“It’s good,” Desmond said.  “I wish you weren’t drinking while you were trying to hurdle this high bar you’ve set, picking fights with established families Milton asks about.”

“Consider it a good thing.  In a few decades, when the last generation has died off, you can be family head, I’m no threat to that, and I can be the drunken lush known for demolishing problems.  The one who gave the Kims a chunk of Canada.”

Desmond made a small amused sound.  Then he stepped closer, and placed a long kiss on Margot’s cheek, his hand at her other cheek.  Three seconds passed and he didn’t stop.  He drew in a deep breath.

It wasn’t sexual.  There were some families like that and theirs wasn’t one of them.  But there was a loneliness to being what they were.  It was a loneliness that wouldn’t be soothed by marriage, or by familiars.  A loneliness borne forth in a dark and silent room, deep and soul-warping to begin with, as they were comprehensively bound, and made worse when those bindings were twisted into the opposite of what they’d been and they were freed.

It started when they were children, not even named, because their chances were so abysmal.  When parents wouldn’t even extend their hearts to them, for that same reason.  When Desmond would wet his bed and she’d hear him softly sobbing and quietly panicking, and she’d cross to where he slept, and lie in the wet with him, her hands gripping his hands so tight it probably hurt, whispering meaningless reassurances that would become doubly meaningless if he didn’t make it through that trial they’d been told about since day one.

She reached Margot’s hand for Desmond’s butt cheek, and Desmond backed away.

“Sometimes I’m baffled I missed you, Helen,” Desmond said.

She and Margot smiled, with the exact same inflection and angles.

“I liked Margot alone, too.”

Margot smiled, and said, “Thank you.”

And Helen had no part of that.  It wasn’t her smile or her words, that time.

Shit needed reconciling.  Helen swept up another too-old drink, her tongue touching the faint layer of dust from how long it had sat out, and tossed it back.  It was sour, but it was alcohol, still.  Fuck, she needed to get a handle on her shit.  Fuck.

She gathered up her notes, sweeping some cans into a trash bag.  One had cigarette ashes in it, and scattered, spilling along the outside of the bag.

So much of what she was doing was based on memory.  More was based on what Desmond had been able to pass on to Margot.  There was a bit of a class system in the Kim households, where the family members who had passed the trial were the key figures.  Limbs were extensions of those family members, individuals but not individuals, capable of handling things that would be too private for a servant.  Familiars tended to sit roughly at the same tier of power as a Limb.

Then the young family members and family members who’d taken on other roles.  Daphne with the magic items.  The women who bore the children for most of their lives, usually while taking on other jobs like research.

The servants.  Others and humans mixed, depending on what capabilities they needed, and if polite company was incoming.  Servants could be handsomely rewarded, because it was most effective to have servants who had children who became servants, keeping secrets and details close to the family.

Then, always, she had to keep in mind that there were locations like the mountain, riddled with tunnels and holes, and wooden cells where the failures dwelt, bound and waiting to die.  In other places, the servants who’d gotten greedy enough to steal or share family secrets to outsiders were horrified and kept locked away.  Here and there, they could be brought out, used as soldiers and weapons.

It felt like a permanent shadow cast over the family, from the mountain by the main estate, and more shadows under their feet, in the basements where those servants were kept.

She felt it, even now.

They’d taken books from the Whitts, and she pored through them, bookmarking passages that referred to certain frameworks and misfires.  What others ran from and safeguarded against, she was intent on pursuing.

Her eyes fell on a crimson ring a wine glass had left on a cover.  Shitty book, with a cheap cover that was more like plywood than anything nice.  What was she doing, soiling books?  Even shitty ones?

Desmond was right.  She wasn’t making enough progress.

In the Kim household, Margot was picking up some paperwork from the library.  She approached another one of her limbs, who was walking down the hall.  Elisa.  Two years younger.

Yeah.  She had to take steps.

Margot shifted her grip on the pile of paper, and put a hand on Elisa’s shoulder, stopping her.  Elisa resembled Helen, but her hair was a different color, her face shape slightly different.  She met Margot’s eyes.

“Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing?” Helen asked, through Margot.

“What?”

“Look.”

Elisa paused, searching, and found that connection.

To be what she was meant breaking rules.  Space, bindings, the forces that kept one thing in one realm at a time.  With work, care, treatment, and a little aesthetic adjustment, one of her hundred-plus hands could be removed, and act independently.  It could be given shape based on its ‘parent’.

Elisa reconnected with Helen, needing only the reminder.  Like taking mental note that you could control your own breathing, instead of letting it happen automatically.

It would be easier to get some reading done, now.  To expand her knowledge.  Two versions of herself at the estate.

She’d wait.  If things happened too close together, Desmond asking questions, Margot and Elisa changing attitudes, people would wonder.

Wards lit up.  When she raised her head, she could see out her window, where Lis was on a rooftop outside, wearing her private school uniform.

“Come in,” Helen invited her.

Lis, too, wasn’t bounded in by space or rules.  She walked off the rooftop and into the room.  “We’re losing the children.”

“Including Harri.”

Helen shifted position, sitting back.  She propped up a foot on the coffee table, and the cans still there rattled.

Lis tapped her box of cigarettes, shaking one loose, and offered it.

They weren’t supposed to smoke in here, but whatever.  That rule had been violated a hundred times now.  Helen took it, and lit it.

Lis stood there on the far side of the coffee table, body facing Helen, head turned to the window, arms folded.  Her eyes caught the light of windows and traffic that weren’t just outside the shitty little apartment.

“You’re nervous.”

“They’re after me.  Shutting off power to areas.  Interfering with traffic.  Poisoning communication lines.  If Freeman was here…”

That felt accusatory.

“Freeman was gone before he was physically absent.”

“Maybe,” Lis agreed.  “Charles and the Aurum have to maintain some scant appearance of uninvolvement and neutrality.”

I know about thin appearances, Helen thought.

Through Camilla’s mouth, she asked Seth, “Can we do what they’re doing in Kennet?  Shut off power?  Kill communication?  Like in a thriller movie.  The bad guys always do that first.”

“They have backup systems,” Seth said.

“Can we kill the backups?”

“Possibly.  Some of it runs off internal reserves.”

“We can use that,” Griffin said, not taking his eyes off his work.  “But time it for when I’ve made more headway.”

“They’re preparing against us.  Something bigger than curse moppets,” Seth said.

Camilla smiled.

Helen smiled.

“I don’t pry,” Lis told Helen.

“Why the hell not?” Helen asked.  “Prying is essential to getting good information.”

“I don’t pry with you.  If Charles and Maricica aren’t setting me up to fail-”

“Oh, no,” Helen interrupted, shaking her head.  “Lis, no.”

“I can’t tell if you think I should trust them more or if you think I’m an idiot for trusting them in the first place,” Lis said.  She couldn’t take on traits of Helen like she could with humans and the Others most similar to being human, but she’d found a way to age up a bit, still wearing the uniform.  Smoke came out of the end of Lis’s cigarette like exhaust from a car’s tailpipe, pumped out even when her mouth wasn’t close to it.

“It’s the doubt and weakness,” Helen said.  “Don’t worry.  Don’t be overconfident-”

She thought of her mistake, eight years ago.

“-don’t exist in that paradigm.  Be.”

“When I have my school, I want people like you teaching at it.  Ruthless.  There are families that would be glad to send their children somewhere ruthless, that imparts and teaches power in a way others are scared to.  And if Charles has what he wants, then we’d be more untouchable than the Blue Heron.”

Helen smiled.

Camilla shifted her weight.  For Camilla, it was two in the morning and they were in the midst of their late night raid.

Elisa was stopping in at the kitchen to pick up a serving tray of cookies and tea as a sort of breakfast for one of the older family members.  She got some for herself while she was at it.  She’d drop off her own things on her way to dropping off the rest, then retire to her room, partaking while getting ready for the day, then see to the daily chores and things.

Margot was taking notes as they were dictated, as their cousin read through the paperwork that had been delivered.  Notes from overnight.

All were slightly drunk, feeling the warm buzz of the cigarette smoke, but hid it well.

And Helen, sitting on the couch, smoking, talking with Lis, did the mental calculus, trying to figure out what moves to make and when.  There were drawbacks to this.  If she wanted to practice through her various limbs, that stretched out to hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, the connection between them and her hard to make out, then she’d be mostly limited to either having all of them do the same things at once, or only one at a time.

“Harri called Seth, before she was cornered by the two Kennet witches.  I think she looks up to him.”

Helen scoffed lightly.

“He said that you were out there.  I overheard.  Then the call was cut short.  Montague.”

“Makes sense.”

“I won’t pry about how that’s possible.”

“Good.”

Especially when we take extra pains for the particulars to not be disseminated among spirits.

“Rook is approaching.”

Helen frowned a bit.  “Let her in?”

The back door popped open and swung open.

It took a few seconds before Rook appeared in the doorway, violet skin, white mask at her lower face, wearing black.

Helen motioned.

Rook shut the door behind her.

“I didn’t think you were here,” Rook said.

“I don’t trust you enough to tell you anything like how I do things,” Helen replied.

There was something happening at the Blue Heron.  More moppets, which suggested they had a source for things.  A wellspring ritual, maybe.

“Think you can take all those?” Seth asked.

“Hmmm.  I think I could, but some would slip through to you, and how would that look?  We need you to be the one who walks through the threshold and claims the building, if that’s where this ends up.”

“Yeah.  That’s one way to put it.”  Seth started drawing a protective circle.  Helen reached through Camilla, so Camilla could put a practitioner’s emphasis on part of the diagram as she joined Seth in drawing out the protection.  She pushed Sight through the extended, severed limb that was Camilla, and looked at Griffin’s work.  Nearly done.

“Charles is recharging, Maricica’s focus is elsewhere, the other Mentors are mostly occupied, taking the Blue Heron.  They picked a good moment,” Rook said.

“Are you subtly handing them coup, saying that?” Helen asked.

“I may be.  It’s not my intention here.”

“What is your intention?”

“I’m still getting a sense of how things are going to work, here.  I was curious to see who Lis turned to in a time of stress, when she’s under attack.”

“It’s not you.  I don’t think she fully trusts you either.”

“That’s fine.  I don’t need it.  I’ll teach your students, with no deception or traps intended.  I’ll steer what I can, for my own interests, which are closer to yours than they are to the other side.”

Helen snorted.

“We are at the stage of war where we must compromise.  I have no love for any of you, for Charles, or Maricica.  I have my skepticisms.  But between those who would fight and subvert the likes of Musser, such as yourselves, and those who would fight and subvert the likes of Musser, and bind my old friend to do it?”

“Your old friend?” Helen asked.

“Miss.  The founder.  Lost,” Rook replied.  “The founding is a binding.  She has been placed in a box and tied to it.  The fact it’s a very large box with its cozy things inside doesn’t change the reality.”

“You’ve taken a middle of the road approach with us so far, no?”

“I wouldn’t say that.  I navigate the road as needed.  In this case, you’re better off if you take my help.”

Helen could tell Lis was considering it.

“So, practitioner hating Oni teaches students some little things, accepts them to council meetings while the three witches of Kennet are away.  Now she offers help to the city spirit under siege, betraying an ‘old friend’?” Helen asked.  “At a time others are distracted?  I’d call that a joke, but the punchline is so telegraphed, it’s more of a parable.”

“I can leave.”

“Stay for now,” Lis said.

“The boy cries wolf, a wolf finally arrives.  A scorpion stings a frog, both drown.  A notoriously double-crossing Oni offers help…” Helen suggested, her cigarette not leaving her lips.  She crossed the rented apartment to get to the fridge, getting another beer.

“It’s not about hating practitioners,” Rook said.  “It’s about bigger, more fundamental things.  It’s about earth being salted, that cannot be unsalted.  It’s about the changes made, that bind us for generations.  Miss and I used to sit together and talk about it at length.  That was a conversation about parables.  The difference between her and me is that I’ve seen this play out again and again.  She’s fresh to it.  I would say she’d turn out like me, but… there she sits.  In a pretty little box, done up like a town.”

There was emotion in that last line.

“Still don’t trust you,” Helen said.  “And I don’t see why you’d trust us.”

“You practitioners are appendages of something else,” Rook said, leveling a stare at Helen.  She paused for effect.  “I think we’re close to breaking that ‘something else’.  And it will be ugly, and it will break families and cause so much damage over so many generations, humanity will notice.  It won’t be pretty, and that’s where we lose them, and wound them.”

“But you’re onboard?”

“I am.  There’s an existence on the other side where Lis has her school, Charles has his lasting change, Maricica has cemented a place for herself.  The students are empowered, but they are not establishment.  It’s a sharp move toward something better than what we’re dealing with.”

“And me?” Helen asked.

“I won’t ask for your trust, and I won’t extend my trust to you.  I’ve heard what you did, with the dryad of the hanging tree.  I know what you did so easily to the Belangers.  I’ve long made it my mission to track what’s going on, who is where.  I suspect I know more about you and what you’re doing than most.”

Helen took her cigarette out of her mouth so she could drink.

“I expect no trust.  But I can tell you the moves to make, here.  No deceit, trap, or sabotage intended.  I can hand you victory.”

Helen bent down and grabbed her coat, putting her drink down so she could pull it on.  “I can hand myself victory.”

Camilla was finishing the diagram with Seth.

Two muscular figures, so generic in appearance that they had to be clay creations, were carrying heavy goblin weapons.  Braxton Hart’s work.  There were more moppets, and one Moppe, large size, filtering out through doors, and even climbing out a window, in one case.  Others were waiting to exit.  The big dumb clay things weren’t good at obeying social graces and leaving the way clear.

“They brought out magic weapons and tools,” Seth said.  “I remember some of those.”

“So do I,” Camilla said.

“They’re calling on the deals made with that Moot,” Seth said.  “Protecting the building.  How the fuck do we-”

“We ask,” Griffin said.

Camilla nodded.

“We’re in our rights to know what the terms are.  If they have a protection, there has to be a loophole.  Especially if it’s a passive protection.  Requiring a duel or something.”

“Let me?” Helen asked, through Camilla.

“Yeah?”

It’s a binding, and what we did, in those dark rooms, was we became things that are very good at avoiding being bound.

“You’re still cursed,” Seth noted.

“Buy me time,” she said, looking over to the shed.  “Call Joel.  I have means.  I just need some darkness and privacy, I’ll get ready… I’ll meet them face to face.”

“Sure,” Seth said.  “It looks like they aren’t rushing us.  They’re taking a defensive stance.”

“Have to,” Camilla murmured.  “This place protects them, but the politics of it… it can’t be a staging point for a war to be launched against others.  Even people like us, standing at the edges of the property.”

Helen glanced at Rook, who was staring at her, studying her.  Helen finished pulling on her boots.  “What?”

“You’re distracted.”

“Enough,” Helen said.  “This is tiresome.  Lis?  Take me where I need to go.”

“It’s my experience that there are different kinds of victory,” Rook said.  “Victories where you win the battle, lose the war…”

“Uh huh.  Bit of a tired old cliche, isn’t that?” Helen asked.

“I wish we could be done with it.  It would be simpler.  Helen, you can leave with Lis and ignore me, that’s fine.  I’ll find a way forward.  I’ve been at this for centuries.  Or you can hear me out.  You don’t have to follow my plan, but I can tell you that if you do… you get what you want.”

“And what is it I want?”

Roughly two years ago

“Who’s with me?” Helen asked.  “Heading into town?”

“Seth’s already there.  Got his tongue down the throat of some townie that’s been forbidden from seeing him.”

“Gross,” Helen said.  “I don’t care much about Seth.  Fast food, convenience store, maybe even secret practitioner talks, incredible things you don’t want to miss out on?”

“How are you not fat?” Chase asked.

“I walk there, walk back.  Doesn’t walking burn calories?”

“Not the way you eat,” Chase said.

Helen pulled up her shirt, looking down at her bared stomach.  “I bet you get fat before I do, Chase.”

“How much?  And how much is an eating disorder?”

“Jesus Christ, Chase,” Liz said.

“Someone.  There’s only so much time between morning classes ending and afternoon classes starting.”

“You go every day,” Liz said.  “Why?  The staff make acceptable food.”

“Careful,” Zoe said.  “We’re supposed to be careful, right?”

“I appreciate you looking out, Zoe, but really, I know the ropes.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s the principle of it.”

“I don’t understand your principles,” Liz said.

There were a few exchanged glances, like that was a double entendre.  Something loaded.  Helen ignored it.

“Meri?  Xerxes, come on, Hadley?”

“I went with you yesterday,” Hadley said.

“Zoe?  Come on, we can bond.”

“I’ve got work with Judah and Ray.”

“Someone, gods and spirits, please, keep me company,” Helen begged, dropping to her knees.

Mr. Crowe stepped around the thickest part of the crowd.

“Not you.  Monkey’s paw in action, huh?”

“Can we talk?”

“I’m not going to get to go out to lunch, huh?”

“You can eat at the school when we’re done.  I’m sure the staff can accommodate.”

Helen groaned.

There was a distinct lack of murmuring and discussion between her schoolmates as she went with Mr. Crowe.

Across the ocean, Margot picked up speed, not running down the hall, but moving as fast as she could without running.  Helen’s detached limb reached a door and knocked.

Yeah, she knew.  She’d crossed a line.  Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You got the smallest office, huh?” she asked.

The door on the other side of the ocean opened.

“Helen is being called into the office.  Maurice Crowe,” Margot said.

Helen’s uncle rubbed at his chin.

Crowe talked, “Helen.  We discussed it, and we talked with some key people and regular, returning teachers.  We talked to your grandfather, and we’ve cleared Daniella to come back next week.  We came very close to expelling you, but you scraped through.”

“My family’s too key, right?  Alexander’s whole deal?  He likes working with practice.  He-”

“Helen.”

“Is it worth calling to interrupt?” her uncle asked.

“I don’t know,” Margot said.

“Come in.  Sit.  Keep me updated.”

She went on, talking over distant voices and words exchanged from distant lips to distant ears.  “-he wants what we give him.  A big part of what we do, is we enable people to do big risky practices and if it goes wrong we handle the damage.  Because we’re experts in that damage.”

“You’ve been playing with metaphorical fire, and I’m horribly afraid you’ll get burned,” Maurice said.

“We do that too.  Playing with metaphorical fire.  We’re very good at it.”

“That isn’t what I wanted to talk about.  I’ve talked about that with Alexander, but-”

“It’s important,” she said.  “Because whatever we’re doing here, I want to make it really clear, I know what my bargaining chips are, I know what I bring to the school, what I give to Alexander.  I helped Judah and maybe even saved his life.  I know the rules, I’m supposed to be protected.  Students can’t harm students.”

“You made a promise to Daniella, to protect something she cherished, something good she was doing.”

“It was a talking, walking tree a lot of people were hung from.”

“It was a life.  One she was healing and empowering.  You killed it and sold the pieces.  Now we’re in the awkward position where…”

“You don’t want to lose me.”

“Daniella has the right to attend.  Things get politically murky, it’s honestly a mess.”

“Is this a thing, where you’re going to say we should stay out of each other’s way?”

“I don’t know how possible that is.  But no.  No, I don’t think that’s possible, and I think when the full story is shared, the student body will be split along sharp lines.  It won’t be pleasant.”

She shifted uncomfortably.  Margot was reporting to her uncle, giving rough explanations.

“I called you in here to ask how you are.”

She shrugged.  “Am I going to get in trouble if I say I don’t feel bad?”

“Your family is fairly established, hungry for more traction with the wider community.  What you did?  It was very, very small.  It was a terrible thing to risk your word over.  It wasn’t like you.”

“I can be pretty terrible.”

“As can we all,” he said.  “Carrying that potential is part of being human.  That doesn’t mean it’s easy to carry.”

She wasn’t sure how human she was, past the surface layer.

“Did you do it on orders from your family?” Mr. Crowe asked.

The day her trial had finished, she’d gone to sit to breakfast, and her grandfather had made it clear.  She’d made a mistake.  She’d made herself half of what she could’ve been.

To borrow from Mr. Crowe, she’d made herself small, by being overly confident, saying the wrong words.  The power of the ritual was that they defied what, to spirits, seemed nigh-impossible, and by suggesting there was a clear possibility… she’d hamstrung herself.

And her grandfather had said she’d have to repay the family.

One dryad, chopped up, key pieces of power and influence given over to a family ally, buying them privilege, prestige, reach, and access.

She hadn’t told anyone except Desmond, Margot, and Elisa, but she was scared.  She was scared in the same way that Desmond had been scared, wetting the bed, sobbing after.  Except she was ten years older than he’d been, and she wasn’t so obvious in her fear.

Her eyes studied the grain on the coffee table as that fear and terror raced through her.

“If you need to share feelings, anything said in here can be said in confidence.”

“Nah,” she said, sitting back a bit.  “Thanks though.  You’re cool, Mr. Crowe.  Sucks they gave you the shitty office.”

“Ray’s is smaller.”

“Really?”

“He’s worked on it some, though,” Mr. Crowe said, smiling.  The smile fell.  “I wouldn’t make light of the situation you’re in.”

She studied the wood grain.

“Have you made arrangements, for if you’re forsworn?  If it comes to that?  Will your family take care of you?”

She thought about the mountain, and the rooms under the property, and she laughed a bit.

“I’m sorry.”

“Old news.  Nothing special about it.”

“We can’t offer you counsel for handling the forswearing, if it comes to that, because that would be taking a side.  But you could, and I’m saying this in the same way I’ll tell Daniella that she can do the same, you could find assistance from the student body.”

“I think if I put myself and my family in the position of owing a favor…”

“Of course.”

She stared at the coffee table.  Was the wood grain moving?  No.

Just a coffee table.  This wasn’t a demesne like Alexander’s study was.

“I know Daniella was a friend.  I know, also, that you don’t have many friends.”

“Using your toys and trinkets to map connections, track emotions?” she asked.

“I paid some attention.  That’s all.  Being put in a situation where you had to betray a friend or betray family… my heart goes out to you.”

“If you keep talking like that, I might cry.”

“Would that be so bad?”

She nodded.

“Okay.  Is there anyone you’d like to call?  I could give you privacy with the study, if you wished.  And I’d turn off the toys and trinkets, as you called them.”

Desmond.  She’d call Desmond.  Desmond knew her and understood her, and sympathized with her.  Desmond was family in the way family was meant to be.  Or more than.  Desmond.

Desmond was busy.  She knew through Margot.  Desmond was handling a job with a sensitive ritual.

She shook her head.

Mr. Crowe looked ready to say something or do something.  He remained where he was, thinking.

“Of all my sympathetic totems and charms, do any appeal?” he asked, indicating shelves.  Wards, arrangements of various materials, stuffed animals, carvings, and other things were all arranged around them.  “Some are occupied by spirits, others are inert.  If there’s one you feel a kinship to, maybe you’d like me to bring it to you?  Something to confide in.  It won’t record you, it won’t truly hear you.”

“You want me to talk to a stuffed owl?”

“The owl draws your attention?” he asked, smiling.  He stood, and he took it from a shelf.  “Take it.”

“I’m a little old for stuffed animals.”

“Take it anyway,” he said.  “Confide in it, use it as a punching bag, yell at it.  Whatever you want.  I don’t like the idea you’re alone in this.

She wasn’t alone.  So much of this was twisted, everything relating to the family.

Margot hadn’t relayed anything to her grandfather in a minute.  Too sensitive, and it made her look weak.

She took the stuffed owl.

“Would you like to eat lunch together?  We could continue talking, about this, or about other things?”

She was already shaking her head.

“You know where my office is.  Come if you need to talk.”

She’d been excited for lunch, and now it was all so much, ringing in her head, looming.  There wasn’t just the shadow of the mountain and the rooms below the property where Margot was, but another shadow approaching from the front.

She felt like a wind-up doll now, broken.  She walked down the hall to her room.  She was a senior student, earning her keep by working with Ray and Alexander, and with the students in the workshops, so she had a room to herself.

She kept the owl with her, opening the door to her room, nicely furnished, trash can overflowing with the fast food stuff.

She got paper and scribbled down instructions.  She left it on the desk, and she closed the door, hugging the owl.

Glad that everyone had gone elsewhere for lunch.  No eyes on her, except maybe Alexander’s, keeping tabs on everything.

I know Daniella was a friend.  I know, also, that you don’t have many friends.

She squeezed the owl harder.  Then she turned, opening the door.

The window was blocked, and the furniture was gone.  The room seemed smaller, and it seemed that way because a layer of interlocking metal panels had been placed along the walls, floor, and ceiling, riveted in, rivets ground down to nothing.  Nothing for a fingernail to catch on.

When she shut the door, the room went dark.  When she closed the sliding door she’d asked for, it clicked into place, everything interlocking.  Even the scant light that came in around the edges was blocked.

She withdrew the sticks from her side pocket, and then moved her fingers through them, splaying them out, blocking out the bindings that kept her shape human.

Within the lightless, soundproofed cell, she exploded out into her full size and shape, limbs fanning out, unfolding, crumpling under her own weight.  Back arching and straining the metal at the ceiling, hands beneath her, legs all on the floor, she tore that owl in half, then tore at the halves, and tore at the shreds.

Daniella was a friend.

When there was nothing left to shred, she found pieces and pounded them with fists.

She screamed and the sound didn’t leave the room the brownies had prepared.

She screamed out of fear, because there was no avoiding what was to come.  She screamed out of frustration, because there’d been no other way.  She screamed out of shame, and self-hatred.

Her fists punched at the pieces of the toy until there were only blood spatters, knuckles broken against ground, the bits of owl mixed into them.

She was a monster.  The room was a place to restore her shape, put the monstrousness away, and put curses and wounds and the horrifying backlashes of practice aside while she did it.  Out of the sight and hearing of spirits, who would otherwise figure out more of her secret form and find ways to let the consequences stick.

Here, she could lie, be the lie.

Here, she could reveal and admit the monster she was, and there’d be no dishonesty in that.

Months ago

The crowd of people walked this way and that down the street.

Being around people was hard.  Everyone looked down at her.  Kind people became unkind.  Cruel people found her easily.

Here, at least, there were chances to find food.  Always with something wrong with it.  Her teeth hurt from having bitten into a staple earlier.  A piece of meat she’d eaten had had an abscess the size of her eyeball in it, filled with stinking pus.

It beat starving when death wouldn’t acknowledge her to see that starvation through to its end phases.

In the setting sun, the shadows of people swept past her.

She closed her eyes, and she imagined that all those days ago, she’d entered that room and she’d been bound, and she’d never left.  A different kind of horrible.  One she’d accepted since she was small.

Some kind of insect had found its way under her eyelid and into her ear.  Whenever she tried to sleep or rest, one of them nipped her.  It was one of many things, alongside aching teeth, fractured bones, sores, and sickness, that dogged her and destroyed her.  Her eyes were forced open with a violent, pained twitch.  Her fingers dug fruitlessly under her eyelid, and the parasite, whatever it was, Other or ordinary, evaded her.

A shadow had fallen across her, and it looked like a bloodstain.  It wasn’t dark.  It was red.

“Do your worst,” she rasped.  She held up a finger, wagging awkwardly.  “Be sure to leave me alive.”

“You sought out the Alabaster, the Aurum, and the other Carmine.”

“Other?” she asked.  She tried to focus her eyes on him.  The sun behind him made it hard.  Her eyes had snot in them she couldn’t ever quite get free.  She was pretty sure she was going blind as a result.  Or just blind enough.

“I normally require that people come to me.  There has to be that level of grit and tenacity,” he said.  “But you tried, you were turned away.”

She smiled as best as she could.

“There are no obligations,” he told her.  “Some have come to me already, I helped them.  They decided to stay with me.  If you wanted to go, I’d wish the gods and spirits to guide you.”

“I’ve had a headache for the last long…”  She tried to take in the possible length of time that might’ve passed.  Her voice broke a little.  “Long time.  I’m not thinking well.  I don’t understand.”

“Ask, and I’ll undo the forswearing.  Then you can stay with me or go.”

“I have conditions,” she told him.

“You’re setting conditions on your own rescue?” he asked.

“Put me back the way I was.  I need the sticks.  I need to… to be the shell, wrapped around… like with the ritual.”

“Alright.”

“Not done,” she said.  Was this a dream?  A nasty prank played by fate?  “You gotta decide.  It’s not about me deciding to join you or not.  I’ve got nowhere I want to go.”

“Not home?  Even for revenge?”

“Not home.  When I go back, it’s going to be because I’ve changed things up.”

“I like that mentality.”

“You have to decide if you want me, Carmine,” she told him, rasping.  “Because I’m really fucked up.  I wasn’t great before, but this whole thing?” she asked.  She moved her most functional arm to indicate herself in totality.  “Sure hasn’t helped.”

“I was forsworn once too.”

She let out a huff of a laugh.

“No lie,” he told her.

“There’s such a thing as an attack dog.  Some savage fuck you keep on a leash,” she said.  “I think I’m way worse than that, if someone pushes me.  Everything good in me- every damn kindness, filial piety, every friendship, they ended up being something I regretted.  I’m way more dangerous than an attack dog.  So if you’re keeping me around-”

“Happy to.”

“-I’m not planning on holding back.  So if you’re not stepping in to say stop, I’m probably just going to keep going.  I dunno about you, but if our positions were switched, and I had to deal with me?  I’d say fuck it, fuck off.  Rot.”

“I have to say, this might be a first.  Someone giving reasons they should stay forsworn.”

“I’m someone who flips systems.  I’m a rule breaker.  Someone who ignores convention.  I’m a mess.  I’m a monster.”

“That’s the best sales pitch I’ve had yet,” he replied.  “Ask.  Appeal the forswearing.”

It was like ballet.  The sticks moved in Helen’s hand, clicking and clacking against one another.  Each end of a stick a representation of a limb, or a core part of the body.  As they tapped and clicked, or formed arrangements, she drew abstract sets of lines that mimed the shapes that currently were and the shapes she needed.

Maricica, monstrous in size, so covered in blood that it looked like she had no eyes, nose, or anything- just a sheet of the blood.  She pressed in, against the barrier, weakening what Griffin had dismantled.

Camilla went on the offensive.  At the same time, Josef, on the far side of the Blue Heron, got the signal, and killed the power.  It was vulnerable where Bristow had been building his new construction, near the blasting site.

One thing after another, that weakened defenses, or put the augurs on the back foot.

Maricica crushed the barrier just a little bit more.

“And there,” Griffin said.  “There’s a backdoor so Durocher can call in other gods.  I can use that, it’s not full access, but…”

Maricica broke through.  She slithered into the building like something more serpentine than humanoid.

Helen could see windows light up all down the front face of the building, as they put up barriers and acted to slow down a savage, Abyssal goddess.

Soldiers flooded in through various entrances.  More wards lit up, a bright white that was more stark than any fluorescent bulb.

A bit of chaos, a bit of disarray.  Curses grabbed at her, nipped, bit, drove in improvised weapons that the moppets were made to carry, screwdrivers and knives laced with deleterious workings.

Sticks clicked and clacked.  They were heavy with the latent horrification she hadn’t yet spent, and looking for a place to go to ground.  She chose the clay men, fashioned of clay of life, carrying goblin weapons.  Distorting them, then making them knot and collide into one another.

She formed her own limb out of the tangle of limbs that resulted, picking up a weapon, and activating it in the midst of that crowd by the easternmost door.

“Gods and spirits,” Seth whispered.

She spent everything she was capable of spending.  Camilla had hands emerge to draw out shapes in the snow, and they activated, suppressing practice nearby with a kind of metaphysical gravity.  Seth winced in pain.

She’d warned him to get lost.  He’d recover.

Other hands were protecting her, making the vulnerable parts of her small in the midst of an unfolding whole.

The irony being that Camilla wasn’t her equivalent of fighting with a hand tied behind her back.  Camilla was the equivalent of the hand being free, the rest of her tied up and relocated five hundred kilometers away.  Camilla was a fraction of herself, cut away, then fed on black bile and yellow humors, leaking out from cuts she’d put deep into her own flesh.

She spent everything she had for the second time.  Then she again drew on a charm provided by Maricica, with divine power stored inside.  Replenishing herself- to a point that was greater than one hundred percent.  She could taste blood in her mouth and other power was leaking out around her.  It only seemed to excite the soldiers who had finally caught up with them.  Maybe the augurs had introduced delays on some level.  But they couldn’t stand up against a relentless assault like this.  Augurs deflected, predicted, they deferred, but in the face of an outright attack?

Sticks clicked.

The augurs would break.

“There are rules!” a man shouted.  “I bind you…”

I reject the binding, Helen thought.  Sticks clicked, and she formed a barrier with them.  Camilla’s unfolding limbs formed a circle in front of her, a barrier of arms and other parts.  I am a rejection of bindings, of constraints.

He faltered.

Still, it wasn’t the smoothest sailing.  The building was protected.

Camilla trudged closer, slowing as she got nearer.  It made the fight harder.

“They’re leaving out the back, through the door of Alexander’s old office,” Seth said.  “We could try and cut them off.”

“Or we can take the prize,” she said.  As people evacuated, she could feel the strength of the barrier practice waning.  “What’s more devastating?  To kill a handful, or to leave them with more people that are homeless, helpless, needing resources more than they have them?”

“I think the answer depends on the anti-augury practice I set up in the parking lot.”

“How is it?”

“Gone.”

“All the more reason to stop,” Camilla said.

She fought her way through more of the defenders, Abyssal soldiers flanking her.  Broken and destroyed limbs trailing fifteen feet behind her, she trudged her way to the doors, pushed them open, and went inside.  The body parts behind her held the doors open.

“Maybe give it a minute then,” Seth said.  “They set up bombs.”

“Can you defuse them?” Griffin asked.

“Yeah,” Seth replied.

“I’ll be in-” Helen started.  Seth reached out and grabbed her arm.  She tensed.

“Bomb,” he said.

“Tell me a room I can go into.”

“They anticipated you asking, anticipated my looking, it goes a few layers deep.”

She waited.

“Seven doors down, right side.”

She moved on.  Seven doors down.  Right side.  She gave the brownies the same instructions as before.

Soundless, silent, spiritproof.

To let the entirety of Camilla explode into being.  To then repackage it, resort it.  Dress it up in the shell that looked so much like Helen.

It took a bit, but when she was done, she emerged.

Belangers ousted.  They’d left a lot behind.  And in the main study classroom, Seth Belanger had put a chair on the stage, and he sat there, illuminated in the blue light from the windows.  Like some king of fools.

The sticks didn’t stop moving.  Helen carried the momentum forward, hands moving through the practiced sequences and shapes.  Margot was reading, and Elisa was talking to Desmond.

What was it, if it wasn’t a trap, a lie, a way of slowing her down?  What was Rook doing, in giving her this course of action?  She didn’t trust the woman at all, but if it wasn’t any of those things, and if there had to be some catch, then what was it?

Helen knew she could ignore it, but if she did, she was suspicious she’d be playing into the tactician Oni’s hand.  The woman could say this course of action wasn’t a trap, then manipulate Helen to do the opposite thing… which could navigate her neatly into the actual trap.  No lie from the Oni.

This course of action?

She stopped in front of a house.  Lis was with her, and she could see buildings in the distance moving faintly like boats on water, mist creeping across the town at this late hour.  Rook would be watching.

Others watched too.

Sticks clicked and clacked, like spinning pencils around her fingers, but many at a time, the percussion and collisions as important as the fluidity of any of it.  Like some mangled spider of black-lacquered wood flailing in her hand.

She brought Camilla to her.  She was useless near Seth.  Seth would take the school, claim it as a triumph for the Carmine, they’d be happy, they’d have more books and magic items.

“You guys promised,” Lucy Ellingson called out.

A man stepped outside, and Verona Hayward, who’d also come, hinted he should go back in.

Avery Kelly’s father.

“Yiyun Jen promised,” Helen said.

“On behalf of your group.  Something you all agreed should be possible.  It’s allowed.  You’re not allowed to hurt our families,” Lucy said.

“Don’t they say that rules are meant to be broken?”

Lucy drew a pen from her pocket and flicked it out into a broken spear.

“What do I do?” the man on the porch asked.

“Protect the kids.  Stay inside?” Lucy asked.

Verona was pacing.  Something deceptive.  Did she have a trick up her sleeve?

Like Rook had said.

Helen paused for effect, then murmured, “As arranged.”

“What does that mean?” Lucy asked, voice raised.

The town rippled and changed, street bending, buildings moving.

Lucy and Verona broke into a run, but they were blocked.

They went over, but everything fought them now.  The town was no longer theirs.  Technically, it hadn’t been since the end of summer.  The founding was… deceptive.  Or something allowed to them, because Charles hadn’t yet extinguished the last kindnesses he was capable of.

Click, clack.  Sticks moved.

Unnecessarily.  Camilla was moving to where she needed to be.  Lucy Ellingson’s house.

Birds and rats and urchins in hiding places saw her.  They whispered the names of the two witches.  Camilla approached the property and found it warded.

Wards could be circumvented.  Whatever Ellingson was capable of, it was nothing in comparison to the Blue Heron, and they’d conquered the Blue Heron tonight.

The witches flew toward the house, ready to protect it.  Which worked just fine, because that was distraction.  By secret ways, new roads invented for the moment, Helen moved to another destination.

Not a family member, but a friend.

Not someone they were bound from hurting, but someone that was vulnerable.

Melissa Oakham, waking by some trick of Awareness, peered out the window to see Helen on the front lawn.

Helen held up the sticks.  Click, clack-

Oakham dropped out of sight.

Clever girl.  Good instincts.

But it left her completely unaware as Helen adjusted the sticks again.  Clack.  Click.

Undoing the binding in a limited way.  To the spirits, it was only a messy horrific practice that was best understood by non-spirit forces, so they let it be.

In the same way she’d had Camilla squash the curse moppet, she tore away a good portion of the ground floor of Oakham’s house, while Oakham, her parents, and her older brother were on the top floor.

She motioned to Lis, moving on before any lights of neighboring houses could turn on.

Lis could have her magic school.  Helen would play her part.  Perhaps her entire life had been leading up to this.  Charles could change his chunk of the world, and she’d be his liaison, working with a family of rule breakers and risk takers.  Her family would adore her for the in, that she was finally giving them Canada, or a meaningful chunk of it, they would forgive her everything, Charles would be happy, she could work with Lis.  Have a town.

Lis helped her move quickly to another location, before the witches could pivot, react, and move to her.

Helen was power, unrestrained, unbounded, and monstrous.  Lis gave her the fluidity, took obstacles out of her way.  Maricica provided the power.

The house at the tail end of Kennet.  Where the refugees from Kennet below had settled, and where many still lived now.

She pulled down a pole with a transformer on it, dragging it down onto the roof.

Fire erupted as the transformer sparked in the wreckage of that partially caved-in roof.

They weren’t equipped to stop her.  Rook was right.

If they went after the kids?

Lis was making another path clear.

Up the ski hill.  Helen took the course offered, covering a ridiculous amount of ground in moments.  One of Sootsleeves’ birds spotted her, but in the time it took for that bird to get to someone that mattered and relay instructions, she would be done.

She stopped by a vacant house.  The occupants had fled town after the three girls had disappeared.  They hadn’t come back when two had returned, but they were out there, on the fringes.

Matthew Moss and Louise Bayer lived here.

In the darkness, no cars on the road, no illumination around her, she was free to do what she wanted.  The house was small, and there was a truck in the driveway.  Presumably Matthew Moss and Louise Bayer were sharing one.

She picked it up, struggling under the strain, forking limbs working together, or supporting one another, or planting themselves on the gravel driveway.

She put the truck upside-down through the house.  The old vehicle went through old siding and insulation, glass broke in truck and the front face of the building both.  Porch partially collapsed, things inside were scattered and broken.

Lis stepped out to stand beside Helen, taking it in from their high vantage point.  The fire was spreading at the one location.

They walked together, over and around.  Nobody was coming after them- they were on defense.  Rescuing, mitigating damage.

She’d started inside a mountain, in darkness and silence.

Now she stood on the closest equivalent to a mountain around here.  Not inside, but on top.  Not in darkness, but surrounded by the fires and the lights of the ski hills.  Not in silence, but in the clamor of sirens and honking horns, and people reacting to different commotions.

If you want to play eye for an eye, girls… she was aware of the different sets of eyes belonging to herself, Margot, Elisa, and Camilla.  She was aware of the horror that slithered beneath her skin, with its many eyes and many limbs.  I have so many more to spare than you do.

“Let’s keep going, before they get their footing.”

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