Issue #254 • June 21, 2018

“The Sweetness of Honey and Rot,” by A. Merc Rustad

“Three Dandelion Stars,” by Jordan Kurella

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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THE SWEETNESS OF HONEY AND ROT

by A. Merc Rustad

         It’s the last day of autumn, and Jiteh’s twin brother is dead.

         He sits on the edge of his cot, thorns popping like seedlings from between his knuckles and poking through his sweaty scalp in a blood-slicked crown. “I’m scared,” he whispers.

         Jiteh bites the tip of her tongue hard enough to feel her heartbeat between her teeth. It makes her focus on the pain and keeps her from opening her mouth. She isn’t allowed to speak to the dead.

         She yanks open the reed curtain and lets in the dawn. She can’t tell him she heard his death in her sleep: the crunch of tree branches winding through his bones, the smell of sweet rot as his skin softened and let the thorns through. It woke her before it woke him. She can’t tell him her heart almost stopped, clogged with rage.

         “Jie?”

         She pulls on her long wool shirt and belts it with his leather cord. All his possessions will belong to her by tonight, and she doesn’t want her mothers to bury them to forget.

         He starts shaking. The thorns glisten in the chill morning light. “Jie, please. Don’t leave me.”

         When the Life Tree chooses its tithe, it sends tendrils through the earth. The thorns spread from the center of the village and the sacred branch, tunneling up beneath the floor of the chosen’s hut. The thorns wind through the soles of the feet, course through veins, and emerge from skin like newborns wetted with membrane and blood. The roots break off once threaded into flesh so the Treekeepers can carry the tithe to the House of Delight.

         It is an honor. When one becomes a tithe, one will be reborn as a leaf in the Life Tree, watching over the valley and all who come after.

         She looks at her brother—his veins still warm, his eyes bright with wasted tears, his breath ragged. She says, just to herself, “I won’t forget who my brother is.”

* * *

         The Treekeepers come for her brother after her mothers see he’s been chosen. The Treekeepers wear heavy bark masks painted in expressions of joy; red and green pigments sweeping in gaudy patterns that circle inwards from a white center. Their robes are made from sloth fur, unadorned, and they carry sacred branches strapped across their shoulders like bony wings.

         “Blessed are thorns that grow from fertile soil,” the younger Treekeeper chants. Her voice is one Jiteh remembers. It belongs to her oldest sister, who is no longer kin now that she has taken the robes. “Praise to the Life Tree.”

         “Praise,” her mothers respond.

         Jiteh grits her teeth. If she loses her temper, she’ll be punished and her mothers will lose both their children.

         “House of Masaud,” the elder Treekeeper says. He’s the oldest person in the village. Jiteh’s grandmother spoke of him as unchanged even in her youth. “You have been honored to give a tithe for the winter.”

         Jiteh’s brother huddles between the Treekeepers. He can’t run.

         “We serve the Tree,” Kersah, her first mother, says tonelessly. Deswu, her second mother, inclines her head, her hands clenched behind her back. Her thick fists bulge; only Jiteh sees the brick, one pried from the hearth, and she knows her mother won’t use it.

         No one except her dead brother cries. Jiteh sits on their front step, the wide smooth sandstone carved with her family names along the edges. She pulls the thin stone rod from its box and chips away at her brother’s name. It need not be done until tomorrow, but she can’t stand the reminder she’ll never speak of him again.

         The Treekeepers gently hoist her brother by the elbows and carry him towards the village center and the House of Delight.

         Jiteh scrapes her nails ragged against the sandstone as she finishes her task. There’s only a gouge, now, above her unknown father’s name. “I’m going to tend the bees,” she tells her mothers, who stand arm in arm on the path. “I’ll return for evening prayer.”

         Her mothers, heavy-boned women with worn sun-burned skin, nod in dismissal. Neither looks at her.

         Jiteh pounds her sandals against the cobbled path that loops behind their family hut to the bee hives stacked in tiers. Fog sweeps in thick damp breaths across her village as if the ancient mountains far beyond the forest have sweated off layers of mist.

         The bees are slow, readying for the winter. She walks the hives, brushing her fingertips against the wooden slats. “I wish I was a bee,” she tells them. “I’d fly from here, far beyond the Boundary. I’d find flowers no one has ever seen and make the sweetest honey and give none of it to the Tree.”

         The bees don’t answer her in words, but she feels their sluggish sympathy. Ever since she was little, barely upright on her feet, she has loved the hives. She’d sit amidst the swarms, stick her chubby hands into the honeycomb without being stung. The Treekeepers blessed her skill and named her one of the tenders of the hives.

         She loves the bees, even though they can’t help her. No one can save her brother.

         Jiteh presses her palms against her mouth and screams.

* * *

         On the fifteenth day of winter, the village gathers for the exchange of the tithe.

         Jiteh shivers. She’s bare-armed, as tradition demands, and the harsh breeze from the forest smells of old growth and mulch. Her skin is painted with her name, her family house, her duties—Jiteh of Masaud, keeper of bees.

         Her kin and neighbors crowd the brick-paved square planted at the front of the village on the path to the forest. Treekeepers hold the bright-lamps—alchemy without fire—aloft to light the circle; the clouds obscure the moon tonight.

         The Trough of Life stands cold at the epicenter of the square. Carried on a cot draped in the finest barkcloth is her once-brother.

         The thorns have been plucked from his skin and the wounds packed with savory spices. His eyes and mouth are sewn shut and painted with sweet jelly. Salt and honey glaze his naked flesh, and his chest rises and falls in slow, sedated breaths. He’s been fed nothing but cream and honey for the fifteen days since he was chosen as tithe, and his body is gloriously plump and ripe.

         Jiteh bites her tongue. This time it is she who holds a brick behind her back. She’s always had a strong arm. One throw and she might crack her brother’s skull and spoil the tithe. The Tree would grow angry. Her fingers weaken, sweat chill on her skin, and she lets the brick fall. She chose not to stand near her mothers, but their arms are painted with their house name, too.

         No one has ever defied the Tree. Not the families of the tithes, nor foreigners who pass the Boundary, a misted veil that shields the valley and its old forest. She’s as helpless as she’s always been. Like when Ahuat, her friend, was chosen last autumn. Like when her mentor for the bees, Oliet, had to give her a larger share of duties when her son Bishteh was picked in the spring.

         The Tree’s holy sloths appear in the darkness, shuffling in single-file along the road from the forest. Tension tingles at Jiteh’s skin like the dance of bees directing each other to pollen.

         The sloths are great man-sized beasts walking upright, covered in mossy fur, eyes like small moons aglow in the bright-lamps. They move in silence. A dozen of them, huge front claws dragging against the ground.

         “Praise to the Life Tree, sustainer, watcher, and protector of all,” the elder Treekeeper says. “We offer this body in honor of all the Tree has given. We give with humbleness and gratitude. Praise to the Life Tree.”

         “Praise to the Life Tree,” everyone says.

         Jiteh doesn’t let herself flinch or look away as four sloths pick up the cot with the tithe and shuffle back towards the forest.

         It’s traditional for the village to make the journey to the Tree itself in high summer, when the tithe is greater, and give worship. She remembers since she was six how the sloths lay the tithed bodies at the roots of the towering Life Tree. How the thinner roots unwound and penetrated the soft, succulent flesh of the tithes. The Tree feasted; the holy sloths, hanging like huge rotted fruits from the branches, bit through bark to taste the sap that sustained them. The tithe bones were swallowed into the ground at the roots and would regrow as white leaves amidst the Tree’s bloody foliage.

         When these sloths have disappeared into the night, the village families let out a collective breath. Relief that this season they will be safe and prosperous. That this season, it was not one of theirs who was chosen.

         Jiteh creeps back to her beehives after the ceremony. Forehead pressed against the slats, she digs her fingernails into the boards until wood splinters prick her skin.

         “One day,” she tells the bees, “I will destroy that Tree.”

* * *

         A year passes. At her puberty crossing, when she’s sprinkled with watered sap from the Tree in the House of Delight, she is given a carved brick from the Holy Kiln. It’s heavy, bigger than both her fists, with an image of the Tree inscribed on all sides. It will be the foundation of her new house when she marries. Her mothers smile, the first time they’ve shown happiness since the autumn tithe. Jiteh doesn’t smile back. Her brother is not beside her.

* * *

         The first day of the following spring, Jiteh wakes early and finds a small barkpaper bag at the foot of her cot. It was pushed through the reed curtain—two of the stalks are bent in the middle.

         Her stomach squirms like minnow spawn, churning up nervousness. No one has snuck her a courtship gift before. She’s fourteen, her hair brushing her right shoulder while the left side is smooth like a bee stripe. She’s noticed several other girls and quite a few of the boys eyeing her, the grim-jawed beekeeper who rarely speaks.

         She has had little to say since her brother died. There are no thorns in her knuckles or her scalp. The Tree has never chosen two in the same family without three years between. She sings with the bees, however, when she’s alone by the hives. They hear her fury and grief the way no one in the village will.

         Jiteh opens the gift and finds a pinecone. It’s the size of her fist, dried and peeled open. She breathes deep. Pines only grow by the Boundary or on the mountain range, which is too far beyond the forest for anyone to travel to and from. There’s a note folded into minuscule corners between two of the pinecone’s nubs.

         Jie,

         I’ve thought about you each morning and evening since we danced together at Leaf Fall. The cold winds have not chased away the image of your hands and face. I would like to court you, if you feel the same.

         Will you favor me with an afternoon? I’d like to see you soon. As soon as you can. Please? I’m where the pinecones fall.

         —Mateu

         Jiteh reads the note several more times. Mateu is the stone mason’s son. He and her brother and she used to collect rocks and build small temples for the ants and beetles, or steal carrots from House Louteh’s gardens to bait traps for groundsquirrels. Each squirrel pelt was worth a drop of bright-lamp fluid from the alchemist.

         She thought the two of them were simply friends. Mateu often confided in her—when his mother was chosen on his tenth summer, he cried into her shoulder half the night. She thought he’d lost interest in her, favored others with his attention, as they both grew older.

         That he might fancy her makes her throat flutter with excitement. For the first time in years, she feels more than fury. She isn’t in love. But she has admired his body, thick and muscled, and enjoyed his wit and laughter in communal meals. He is always the first to compliment her on the honey.

         She’s only hiked to the borderlands twice. Once with her brother, when they were ten and the weaver’s daughter dared them, and once when their older sister became a Treekeeper. She knows the way.

* * *

         The pines sway like tall ghosts in crisp green gowns, needles still dewy as the fog ebbs. Broken cones shift and crunch under her boots.

         “Jie?” Mateu leans out from behind a scrappy pine. His face is drawn; he grows his hair in a long strip down the center of his scalp, knotted with needles. “Thank the Tree.”

         She folds her arms, slowing. This isn’t the greeting she expected. “What’s wrong?”

         He hunches his shoulders, his hands clasped against his belly. “I didn’t know who else I could tell. I’m scared.”

         Her spine prickles. Her dead brother’s voice lingers in her memory. Jie, I’m scared.

         Jiteh breathes in deep. A trick, then. He doesn’t want to kiss her. “Did something happen, Mateu?” He couldn’t have killed anyone, or the sloths would have come. A pregnancy is a celebration, not a shame. Did he steal from the Treekeepers?

         Mateu holds out his palms, trembling, and tiny blue flames ignite against his skin.

         Jiteh flinches.

         Fire is a forbidden element: the Life Tree banned flame since before the village was born. Only heat-stones and alchemical bright-lamps are sanctioned. She’s seen fire once, when a foreigner came down from the borderlands, through the Boundary, with a lantern. The sloths took the foreigner away and snuffed out the flame, but she recognizes it here.

         He edges forward, arms extended.

         “Rot,” she curses under her breath. She steps back. “Stay away from me.”

         Mateu clenches his hands, and smoke curls between his fingers. “I thought...” His throat bobs. “I thought it was an accident, like when Bishteh broke a heatstone because he tried to carry too many at once.” She hadn’t been there, but she’d heard the story from her brother: how the stones had clacked together and sparks glittered in the air. “But it keeps seeping out. It burns inside, it hurts, and—” He presses his fists against his forehead. “What do I do, Jie?”

         “I don’t know,” she says. “I need to go.”

         “Don’t—”

         She glares at him, her face flushed with shame. “You lied to make me come here!”

         “I’m sorry.” He snatches at his tears, nails scraping his cheeks. “Jie, I didn’t think—I didn’t know who else to tell. And it’s not a lie!” He gulps down breaths like water. “I do like you. But—you had to know this first, and—”

         “Stop.” Disappointment gnaws against her stomach, devouring the excited flutters. She retreats, step-by-step, back down the path. “I speak to bees. I can’t help you.”

         He slumps down to the dead needles, shaking harder. “If the Treekeepers find out... I didn’t do this deliberately, Jie, I swear. You’re the only one I can trust not to tell.”

         She hesitates. Tithes are chosen, the Treekeepers preach, because of their virtue. It is an honor to serve the village. But those who defy the Life Tree and disobey, those who resist the Way of Life, those ones are ripped to pieces by the sloths. They receive no ritual blessing to ensure they will be regrown from the soil as the grass, as fruit or lesser trees.

         Mateu is not dead. She can still help him.

         And, if he has fire, perhaps he can help her.

         “Go home,” she tells him. “I’ll think of something.” She doesn’t know what to do, but she doesn’t want him to panic again.

         Mateu trudges down the path, glancing back every few steps until he’s out of sight.

         Jiteh presses through pine branches and dry undergrowth. As the pines thin and give way to grassland, she feels the tingle of the Boundary.

         It shimmers like endless mist against the ground, stretching up the sky; it wraps the valley on all sides, even into the mountains. It’s opaque, a sheet of fog that climbs into the clouds. She imagines the other side like a tapestry: lush hills, opulent berry bushes, great expanses of meadow filled with bright flowers that would make the sweetest honey. Beyond the grayness is another world, she knows, one she yearns to see. The Life Tree sustains the Boundary; very few foreigners find their way through it, and no one she has ever known has stepped beyond it. Her bees cannot pass either.

         Her grandmother whispered of this other world to her and her brother when they were small.

         “We aren’t to speak of it,” Grandmother said. It was the night before she was found drowned; she had slipped on a mossy stone while bathing by the river and struck her head in the fall. “So you mustn’t ever tell. But once there were many villages in the valley and beyond. There were many more people, and the Boundary was thin, easy to pass between. That is how my mother came here.”

         “Did all the villages tithe?” Jiteh’s brother asked.

         Grandmother shook her head. “Not all. The Tree grew jealous and closed away the valley so we would not run away like other villages did. And so it has been.”

         “Can we go beyond the Boundary?” Jiteh asked.

         Grandmother sighed. “No, child. Not any longer.”

         “Why not?” Jiteh insisted. “Won’t the Tree let us?”

         Her mothers overheard and hushed Grandmother. “Don’t plant treason in their heads,” Kersah said.

         “They should know, daughter,” Grandmother said.

         Deswu looked away. “Mother-of-my-wife, please. Do not poison our children. It’s enough that her first husband...” But she did not finish.

         Grandmother patted Deswu and Kersah’s clasped hands. “Do not forget. We were not always in debt to the Tree.”

         Jiteh lets her hand hover a breath away from the Boundary. Somewhere beyond, there are people who do not watch their brothers and devoured by the Life Tree. There are people who do not praise.

         She clenches her fist and turns back towards her village. Brilliant red petals tipped in blue-black fuzz catch her eye. She crouches. She’s never seen these flowers anywhere near the village; they are barely the size of her fingertips, dark stems curled like tiny thorns. She plucks several and weaves them into her hair for safekeeping.

         She’s begun to master the direction of her bees, sending groups to specific flowers, fruits, and trees to bring back pollen. If these are a new flower, she’s curious how sweet a honey they will make.

* * *

         She finds Mateu by her beehives. He jumps when she approaches and clamps his hands together behind his back.

         “How much...” She teases the word fire against her lips, but gives it no weight or breath. “Can you hold in your palms?”

         He shifts from foot to foot. “A lot, I think. Why? I just want it to go away.”

         She beckons him close, curls an arm around his neck and pulls his mouth against hers. His kiss is awkward, as is hers, but she finds his tongue and he leans closer. After a moment, she draws back. He blinks fast, his breath short as if he’s just ran two laps around the village. Jiteh’s lips tingle and her heartbeat echoes up her throat in excitement.

         “You could set the Tree alight,” she whispers, fierce, and kisses him again. His lips are hot and so are hers. She holds him against her and whispers the rest of her plan into his ear. “You could burn it all.”

         He wrenches back, wide-eyed. “Are you mad?”

         She shrugs. “Your mother was a tithe. So was my brother. Don’t you want something better than wondering who else you love will be chosen?”

         “But it’s an honor,” he says. “It’s why we have happiness, it’s why we’re safe. Without it, we’d have no crops and no protection from beyond the Boundary. Don’t you hear what the Treekeepers say?”

         “I hear everything,” she says.

         And she remembers Grandmother’s stories.

         Mateu shakes his head. “The Tree is Life, Jie, how can you want to destroy that?”

         She meets his eyes, searching for the fury that has kept her focused since her brother’s death. Mateu has only fear in his heart. She wonders if the fire, however, is in more than just his hands. Is it in his blood as well? Can his children inherit it?

         Jiteh sighs. “I don’t know how to take away the...” She cups her palms, mimicking what he showed her. “Your secret. But I won’t share it.”

         His breath quivers in relief. “What do we do, then?”

         She rubs her cheek. It’s a wild idea, like seeds carried on the wind. “Have a child with me,” she says, “and let’s build a house.”

         He blinks. “What?”

         “If we’re together,” she says, “we can hide your secret. We can wait and find a different solution. Besides.” She leans against him, nudging her hip against his. “You said you fancy me. What if you take a husband or wife and they don’t understand? What if the secret slips out? I will never betray you.”

         He swallows hard. She feels his excitement hardening between his legs and watches as his fear fades into exhilaration and joy.

         “I accept, Jie.”

* * *

         She leaves Mateu to inform his family that he and Jiteh wish to bond and trudges through the village to see her older sister.

         If she cannot convince Mateu to use his fire, then perhaps their future child will have his gift. She also wants a baby to extend her own grace—new parents are not chosen for the tithe until their offspring are at least three seasons old.

         The Treekeepers’ hut is as big as ten houses, stone rooms built in a square around an interior courtyard open to the sky that holds a sacred branch from the Life Tree. It grows from the earth like a severed limb.

         Jiteh removes her boots, dabs her fingertips in the bowl of holy soil at the supplicants’ entrance, and smears her forehead before she enters. The flagstones are chill against her feet. The room is high, the walls painted with the Litany of the Tree—the creation of the village, the first tithe, the rejoicing as the Treekeepers were christened from the very sap of the Tree itself.

         Jiteh wonders again why there is no blood depicted in the tithing.

         There are only two other women here today: Lilur, a cloth-maker, and Isket, an old huntress with a shaved head. They nod to Jiteh, kneeling in silence on the bark mats before the mural.

         Jiteh bows her head in return, then pads to the front of the room and presses her fingertips against the heatstone altar. The warmth burns into her chilled skin and recognizes that she is of age to speak in the supplicants’ hall. “I wish to see the Treekeeper,” she says aloud, “for I seek blessings on the founding of a new House.”

         Isket smiles and gives Jiteh a congratulatory wave.

         Jiteh smiles back. It has, oddly, become easier today. She feels no joy, but her face does not creak like old wood. She waits on the bark mat beside Isket until the younger Treekeeper, her once-sister, shuffles out through the bead curtains and beckons her.

         Treekeeper Viteh wears no mask. Her face is painted in serene greens and yellows for the coming spring season. As Jiteh approaches, the Treekeeper hisses between clenched teeth. She seizes Jiteh’s elbow and yanks her without ceremony into the private blessing chamber.

         “Speaker—”

         Viteh cuts her short by swiping the flowers from her hair. “What are you doing, girl?”

         The red-petaled flowers tumble to the floor. Viteh stomps them into the stone, then draws her foot back, shuddering.

         “Do you know what those are?”

         Jiteh stares at the smear that looks too much like blood.

         “That’s traitor’s kiss,” Viteh hisses. She grabs Jiteh’s chin and glares at her. “It’s poisonous to the Life Tree and all of us! Where did you find it?”

         Jiteh’s breath comes quicker. “There were just those blossoms,” she lies. “By my beehives. I thought them pretty. Birds must have dropped the seeds last autumn.”

         “You are certain there are no more?” Treekeeper’s eyes are fearful. “Swear to me, Jie.”

         It’s the first time in years her sister has spoken to her like family. It twists the prickles of loss deeper in Jiteh’s chest.

         “I swear,” Jiteh says, remembering the wide patch that stretched along the Boundary. “There are no more.”

* * *

         Jiteh and Mateu are bonded after the spring tithe is finished. Her mothers and Mateu’s father paint their faces with the design for their new House as the Treekeepers recite the Litany of the Tree. Jiteh holds her husband’s hand, gripping the heat in his skin, and watches the dawn rise above the mountains. It looks like fire.

* * *

         “When was my father chosen?” Jiteh asks her mothers one evening when the three of them sew a blanket of blessings to encourage her belly to take with Mateu’s seed and grow a child.

         Kersah’s needle pricks her thumb, and a droplet of blood smudges the stone-smoothed fabric. Her jaw clenches. “It doesn’t matter.”

         Deswu glanced sidelong at her wife. “Keke...”

         Kersah shakes her head vehemently. “Don’t ask questions, Jie. That was his problem, too.”

         Jiteh waits until her mother leaves to relieve herself before bed and looks at Deswu. “I need to know, Mother.” She folds the unfinished blanket into squares, clenching her fists out of sight in the fabric. “I don’t want Mateu...”

         Deswu studies her fingers and sighs. “He was a hunter. A month before you and your brother were born, he went into the forest to beg a favor of the Tree.”

         “He didn’t talk to the Treekeepers?”

         Her mother shrugs. “I don’t know his reasons. I was only recently courting Kersah. He said he wanted a promise from the Tree itself that none of his family would be chosen. When he came back, the week after, he became the tithe. He looked... relieved.”

         Jiteh massages the back of her neck, her mother’s words ringing in her ears. “What did he tell you?”

         “He said the Life Tree promised his family would be safe.”

         Jiteh spins to see Kersah in the doorway, her face grim.

         Jiteh understands her mother’s rage now, the way she clenched a brick in her hands the day Jiteh’s brother was chosen.

         The Tree had lied.

         “Go home, child,” her mother says.

* * *

         Upon the eve of summer solstice, Jiteh paints her arms and her swollen belly and walks with Mateu to the village square for the Consummation of Life.

         Seven holy sloths glide from the forest path: three in front and three behind the chosen offering. Its fur is dyed white with pollen and its eyes are glazed over with hardened sap—blinded yet unable to look away.

         “Blessed is the gift from the Life Tree,” the eldest Treekeeper says, his voice a wheeze. “We offer gratitude for this body, a testament to our worthiness to serve.”

         Everyone lifts their arms high. Jiteh remembers her first participation with her dead brother. They had pressed to the front of the villagers, eager to be within the sight of the holy sloths. She was such a fool.

         The white sloth steps into the square Trough, and the Treekeeper’s apprentices use wood and clay paddles to set heatstones underneath the grille. The summer sun leaves long shadows along the horizon.

         The Treekeeper resumes the Litany, reciting the story of the village’s birth: how the Life Tree sacrificed its softest branch in the middle of the land, and from it grew the bones of the Holy Kiln. From the heatstones, dug from the earth, the first villagers baked brick and gathered stone to build their houses.

         The six holy sloths move with precise coordination. They slit the white sloth’s throat. As fresh blood spills down, dying its fur pink like the dawn, they use their claws to skin the offering alive. The white sloth has no tongue.

         As the body sinks into the Trough, wetted with blood, the sloths fold the stripped hide and lay it at the eldest Treekeeper’s feet. It will become a new robe in the winter.

         The apprentices carry jugs of milk and honey and pour them over the dying sloth, covering the cooking flesh in sweet cream. The Trough heats rapidly, bubbling as meat and sinew melt from bone. The accompanying sloths bring forward a skin of sap from the Tree itself and pour it into the Trough. The sap will break down marrow and organs, liquefying the offering into a rich broth as sweet as summer clover.

         Jiteh rubs her belly. Her child will taste whatever she eats. And everyone will eat from the Trough when it is fully cooked—a cycle governed by the Life Tree. Tithes feed the Tree, and in turn, the Tree gives back blessings in its holy sloths.

         “We are one with the Tree,” the eldest Treekeeper says, and dips a spoon into the Trough. He blows on the creamy broth and swallows.

         One by one, each person steps forward to partake.

         Jiteh remembers, on her eighth year, when Gurteh, father of the spring’s tithe, broke down sobbing and refused to drink. The sloths skinned him as they had the offering and added his flesh to the broth. Each villager was then made to drink two spoonfuls.

         No one has refused since.

         Jiteh holds the broth in her mouth, mimes a swallow, and bows to the Treekeepers before she hurries away. The broth sits like bile on her tongue, burning, as saliva seeps from between her teeth. She’s afraid liquid will burst from her mouth, spill across her chin and betray her.

         The walk home is agony. Each step jostles the blood and spit. She presses her lips tighter together, her heartbeat a low roar in her ears.

         She is almost running by the time she sees her roof. She scurries around the hut, shoulders open the lavatory curtain, and bends over the hole. She spits, again and again, then scrapes her fingernails across her tongue until the pain stops her. She thrusts two fingers down her throat and vomits. It burns her tongue; she refuses to let even the flavor of the blood seep down into her belly.

         She spits again when her stomach settles. Her child will not have to know the Tree’s bitterness. Not yet.

* * *

         That night, Mateu huddles by the hearth, trembling. Jiteh kneels beside him with effort. He presses his hands against the heatstone, and his skin doesn’t burn. Flickers of blue fire dance along his nails.

         “What do I do?” His eyes gleam damp with panic. “I can’t make it stop.”

         Jiteh wants to scoop the fire into a jar, save it until it can find wood—but his fear makes her heart ache.

         “Close your eyes,” she tells him. She rubs his shoulders, not daring to touch his hands. “Imagine bees—my hives brimming with yellow bodies, like the goldstalk followers. Can you see them?”

         He presses his face against her belly. “Yes...”

         “Breathe slowly,” Jiteh says. “Imagine my bees, their feet rubbing pollen from the wild flowers. They dance to the hum of their wings. They fly into the blue sky, free like clouds. Can you see them? They’re painting our child’s face with music.”

         His breathing steadies. The flames draw back into his hands. “They’re beautiful, Jie.”

         She smiles, stroking his head as he listens to their child’s heartbeat. “If you feel your secret rising again, think of my bees.”

* * *

         When her daughter is born, Jiteh names the girl Soteh, after her dead brother.

         Mateu’s smile warms her heart better than the anger. Her mothers come to give their blessings and bring gifts: pigments to paint the newborn’s arms and a necklace of bark and clay beads for luck.

         “She’s beautiful,” he whispers, over and over like he has for days after the birth, cradling Soteh in his arms as Jiteh stirs honey into her tincture. She’s eaten more honey during her pregnancy than she has in all her life; she wants her daughter to grow strong.

         “Are you happy?” Jiteh asks. “You’ve been so worried before.”

         Mateu grins. “How could I be any happier, Jie? You’re alive, our daughter is healthy, we have this home.” He nods at the small hut they share, built from stone with only one window. It is constructed within sight of the beehives and close to her mothers’ home. “And you, Jie? Are you happy now?”

         At night, she hears the droning in her dreams. It keeps nightmares of thorns away.

* * *

         Sweat-slick and spent, she lies nestled against her husband’s naked chest. His large belly presses against hers, his arms thick and strong from his masonry work. He strokes her breasts with thumb and finger, casual caresses that make her smile.

         “Your secret has not come out in years,” she says.

         “I thank you for that,” Mateu says. “You keep us all safe and sweetened with the bees.”

         “Have you liked this summer’s honey?”

         He nods. “It has a spicier undertone. I don’t recognize it.”

         “I’ve directed the bees as far as I can.” Jiteh traces the line of his jaw and down to the bob in his throat. “Do you ever worry...” She hesitates. “When Soteh grows older. If she’ll be chosen?”

         Soteh, two years old now, sleeps in a sling stretched between the bed and the wall.

         He looks up at the thatched ceiling. “Yes. Doesn’t everyone?”

         “I heard Viteh speaking to the other Treekeepers when I went to the supplicant’s hall to ask for more fuel for our bright-lamps,” she says. “She said the Tree needs more nourishment. It’s getting sick, she thinks.”

         It is what she hoped for, yet she’s ashamed. She was trying to nurture her village and keep her family safe, but she’s only made things between her people and the Tree worse.

         She grimaces, tucking her chin against his bicep. Her husband can’t see her guilt. “There will be more tithes each season, not just in summer.” The Life Tree was supposed to take fewer tithes.

         “I heard Betro say the same.” Mateu’s voice creaks at the edges. “There will be an announcement tomorrow at the evening prayers.”

         “We could prevent that,” she whispers. “If you let your secret out.”

         Mateu sits up. “No. Don’t talk like that, Jie. The Life Tree will hear.”

         She rolls over and pulls up the thick woven quilt. Her father bargained and was betrayed. She thought her way, slow and subtle and sweet, would have fared better. Her old rage, dimmed now from childhood brightness, still simmers. She will not stop. Her family has tithed enough.

* * *

         “Mama, look!”

         Jiteh lifts the heavy veil she wears when harvesting the honeycomb and glances back at her daughter. Soteh sits amid the hives, bees dancing on her fingers and crowning her hair.

         “The buzzes are my friends!”

         Jiteh smiles, her stomach twisting like nettles. In a year, Soteh will be vulnerable—old enough to be chosen. Rarely does the tree pick children so young, but she’s seen it. Her friend Yetrah and her husband lost their firstborn the winter before. The hunters found Yetrah’s husband hanging by his own belt in the forest, halfway to the Life Tree, before spring.

         She waits until it’s dark, when Mateu is asleep and snoring, before she eases from her bed again. As she crosses the hearth to the door, Soteh sits up in her small cot and rubs her eyes.

         “Mama, where are you going? It’s sleep-time.”

         “Hush, beebee.”

         She hesitates, then gestures at the brick shelves by the door.

         “Get your boots and you can come with me.”

* * *

         “This is so far, Mama. I can’t see anything.”

         Jiteh shifts her daughter’s weight to her other hip. She brought no light, but she’s walked this path often enough that she has no need of it any longer. They pass the old pines, the sap odor sharp in the pre-dawn air. Fog curls about her feet and she sets Soteh down in the wet grass. “You must not move,” she says. “Or you’ll get lost.”

         “But why did we come here? Not even bees come here.”

         “Some bees do.”

         She leaves her daughter to watch the first edges of gray spill against the Boundary. She made bad time due to carrying Soteh; she won’t make it back to the village before the sun is high. Mateu will worry—not right away, for she often takes Soteh early to the river for baths and catching frogs. She needs to hurry.

         With a small stone knife, she shears the newly blossomed traitor’s breath with quick strokes. She fills the inside seams of her heavy skirt earned with motherhood. She’s lined the hidden pockets with pine needles to disguise any scent from the blood-red flowers.

         “What are those for, Mama?”

         “Making the honey the sweetest you’ve ever tasted, beebee.”

         Her daughter nods, satisfied, and starts braiding herself a crown of grass.

         Jiteh has harvested the flowers every spring since the year she found them, hiding them away to dry beneath her bee hives so she can crush the petals into fine powder she buries in stone jars deep inside the honeycomb. She needs more. Patience will not fell the Tree. It is time to make the honey red.

         When she has gathered all she can find, she scoops Soteh up and hurries back.

* * *

         The Treekeepers are at her hut when she returns. Jiteh’s legs feel heavy, slow with sudden cold. She sets Soteh down and pushes past the honorary hunters who accompany the Treekeepers.

         “What are you doing?”

         Isket holds out an arm to stop her. “Be joyful. Your husband has been chosen by the Tree.”

         Mateu stumbles out the door on thorn-pierced feet. A great crown juts from his scalp and twist in his fingers, binding his hands in fists. Blood drips down his cheeks like tears.

         Jiteh screams and barrels past Isket, elbowing her hard in the chest. Isket seizes Mateu by his torn shirt—already thorns are budding from his nipples and down his ribs. They scrape her fingertips raw. She leaves bloodied prints on his clothes, but she can no longer tell which marks are her blood and which are his. “Mateu!”

         He stares and does not seem to see her.

         “No, it can’t have you!”

         “Child.” The new Treekeeper’s strong voice slices through her panic sharper than sloth claws. Her once-sister took the elder’s place in the winter when he died. “You may not speak to the dead.”

         Isket wrenches her back. Jiteh sees Soteh sitting in the street, sobbing and clutching her grass crown, and Jiteh’s body sags. Isket lets her fall.

         “Forgive me, Treekeeper,” Jiteh says, the words hollow. How does the Tree know of her treachery?

         She lands on her knees, shaking. Soteh crawls to her and buries her face in her skirt.

         The Treekeepers lead her dead husband away, and she can do nothing.

* * *

         “It is an honor,” Viteh says as she sits by Jiteh’s side later.

         Jiteh lies on her bed, an empty gap where Mateu should be yawning beside her. The Treekeeper sighs and takes off her mask. For a moment, she looks like the older sister Jiteh once knew.

         “I know it hurts, Jie. But he will bring us prosperity and safety.”

         “How many others?” Jiteh asks. She holds Soteh nestled at her side, asleep at last.

         “Four have been honored,” Viteh says. “Don’t fret. You’ll be safe. So will your girl.”

         The Tree lied to her father. She believes nothing the Treekeeper promises now.

         “We can’t sustain this.” Jiteh rubs her face, swollen from tears she’s kept back. “When will the Tree be well again?”

         “It is not sick,” Viteh says too quickly. “The seasons have been hard on the land.”

         Odd, for Jiteh has observed harvests flourishing; her bees produce more honey than ever before; children are born healthy and fewer elders fall sick. She says nothing.

         Viteh rubs Jiteh’s shoulder. “The Life Tree has come to me in dreams. This summer will see everything restored to health and happiness. I promise, Jie.”

         Jiteh decides, as she holds her daughter, that she will see that promise fulfilled.

* * *

         Jiteh asks Yetrah to watch her daughter, and Yetrah, hollow-eyed and thin, agrees without asking where she’s going.

         Jiteh puts on her dead husband’s trousers, one pocket filled with a handful of fresh traitor’s breath for protection, and slips past the ceremonial brick square and the Trough, into the forest. The village is quiet on the evening of the First Choosing of the season; she will be assumed to be tending the bees or walking to the river to bathe.

         Night sparrows and crickets hum in the foliage. Leaves whisper and click overhead as she follows the path she has walked for many summers to observe the tithe. A dozen bees hum behind her, concerned. They thread around her head.

         “Go back,” she tells them. She fingers the flowers in her pocket. Her hands tremble. “I’ll be fine.”

         The bees lag but do not entirely obey. She’s grateful. She’s never been to see the Tree alone, and she can’t swallow down the nervous drum of her heart. Even the numbed dread at her husband’s fate can’t dull the fear.

         The path ends at the edge of a great dip in the forest, squared off, half-decayed stone walls peeking through thick moss. In the middle of the indent towers the Life Tree. She squats by the edge of the square. The sloths hang lazily amid the branches, their heavy, ripened bodies patched with discolored moss. They sway as if in a slow wind.

         KEEPER OF BEES, says the Life Tree.

         Its speech is the vibration of branches and the groan of roots. Like all the villagers, Jiteh knows the language like her own tongue. It is passed through the rituals and learned at the Summer Tithes.

         “Giver of Life.” She can’t mimic the Tree’s speech, but the Tree understands words made with lips and teeth. “You must leave my people be.”

         OUR PEOPLE. WE ARE ALL ONE. BLOOD AND SAP, LEAF AND BONE. ALL WILL BE SAFE AND SATISFIED. THERE CAN BE NO GAP IN THE CYCLE OF LIFE.

         Jiteh grasps at her anger through grief and fear, uses it to steady her voice and harden her will. “We cannot sustain this much blood.” She clenches her hand inside her pocket, crushing the flowers into a sickly-sweet pulp. “How much more will you take?”

         AS MUCH AS IS REQUIRED. WOULD YOU SEE OUR LAND FALL TO DUST, CONSUMED BY THE ENCROACHING STORMS? WE ARE SAFE WITHIN THE BOUNDARY AND WILL REMAIN THUS FOREVER.

         The Tree cares nothing for the cost or the grief. “Neither would I see my daughter eaten.”

         ALL MUST GIVE SO ALL MAY LIVE.

         “My husband is not yours!” she screams. The anger floods her belly, fierce and hungry. The Tree lied to her father. It will always lie. Around her, she senses her bees: more and more, a wave of gold and ebony, their wings raising thunder in the air. She stands, trembling with fury. “You will stop the tithes.”

         THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE. ALL WOULD DIE.

         “Give us three years, then.” She inhales slowly. Tries to find the calm and patience she’s nurtured in her heart. “Let us become strong again.”

         Time to grow away from the Tree, time to reseed their population, time to live without fear.

         WHAT YOU ASK IS NOT POSSIBLE.

         The sloths stir on their branches.

         LEAVE NOW, KEEPER OF BEES. RETURN TO YOUR CHILD AND GIVE THANKS FOR THE HONOR YOUR HUSBAND HAS EARNED.

         She stares down the wide sloped stairs that lead down to the Tree’s white roots. Hundreds of thin strands writhe like worms. She pulls the traitor’s breath from her pocket; her fingers are stained red. “Not until you heed me.” She raises her hand over her head, ready to throw the remaining petals. “Tell your priests no more.”

         YOU WOULD THREATEN ALL LIFE?

         Thorny appendages whip up from the moss and bite into her leg. She gasps in pain as her feet are yanked from under her. Jiteh claws at the moss but finds no purchase for her nails. Thorns writhe in a curtain in front of the Tree’s exposed roots, ready to tear her apart for the tendrils to feast on.

         She shoves her reddened hand into the thorns, and they recoil free of her leg. The wound bleeds, and searing pain climbs to her thigh. Jiteh scrabbles backwards, her heartbeat a roar in her ears.

         The sloths drop from the Tree’s branches and lumber towards her, claws raised. Jiteh limps down the path, gasping. She must get out of the woods—

         One sloth catches up to her and clubs her in the side of the head. Her scalp splits, and she tumbles to her knees once more. The sloths’ pale eyes look like the sickly roots, glistening white and clammy.

         The bees, her bees, thunder forward in a wave of furious wings, swarming over the sloths before they touch her again.

         She screams for them to stop. They refuse to heed her. The bees swallow the sloths in stinging clouds. They give her time to run. The sloths writhe under the attacking bees and Jiteh runs, runs, runs and curses the Tree with every ragged breath.

         She feels her bees die, pinpricks of light going out one by one behind her eyes.

* * *

         Jiteh limps from the forest with a dozen bees humming about her—all that is left of the hives. She collapses against the side of her hut and sobs. The village is still quiet.

         She touches the side of her head, fingers sticky with crushed traitor’s breath and blood. She failed. And her bees are gone.

         “Mateu,” she whispers, rocking on her heels in the dark. “Mateu.”

         He is—no, he will be—dead, and she cannot save him. She expects the last of the sloths to storm into the village and kill her, but nothing follows from the woods.

         Before dawn, Yetrah finds her and helps her inside.

         “I know what it’s like,” Yetrah says. Her voice is soft; it barely rises above a whisper any longer, and each word bobs the scar across her neck. The hunters found her before she bled out from her slashed throat on the same morning her husband died.

         Jiteh nods, realizing the gash on her head, shallow, bloodied, and unthreatening, looks worse than it is and tells a story other than the truth. “I lost my brother and my father, and now my husband.”

         Yetrah cleans the wound and ties a cloth around Jiteh’s scalp. “I understand.” She peels off Jiteh’s ruined boot; the thorns gouged through wool and bark and leather alike. “But you still have a daughter. Don’t abandon her.”

* * *

         In the morning, five more people are chosen as tithes. Her husband’s father, her cousin, two of her friends who have young children of their own, and a girl Soteh’s age. Too young.

         Whispers of confusion and worry flood the village. The Treekeepers assure the people all is well. There are summers in the past, the Treekeepers say, that this has happened. It is a sign the winter will be hard, and the Tree is prepared to withstand the elements and protect them all.

         Jiteh does not remember any such summer.

         She holds her daughter close, her body dry of tears now. There is not even anger, which she yearns to find. Only shock and the horrible, unyielding pain of knowledge.

         All these tithes were chosen because of her. Mateu’s fate. All the others she can no longer name.

         She rocks back and forth on her heels before the hearth. Since she became the beekeeper, it has been her doing. Since she cultivated honey made from traces of traitor’s breath and fed it in small amounts to her people.

         The honey should have weakened the Tree slowly, withered it while keeping the villagers healthy. So the Tree would choose less. So it would decide that this generation was not worth its attention and control. So it would let them live.

         She added the crushed flowers in small amounts, careful that the children and elders would not fall ill. She had erred on the side of adding too little. Her defiance has cost too many lives.

         “Why are you so sad, Mama?”

         Jiteh hugs Soteh tight. She inhales the scent of her daughter’s hair. Soteh looks so much like Mateu her heart aches. “I was wrong, beebee. I wanted to give you a better future and I failed...”

         Her daughter hugs her back. “What’s a future, Mama?”

         Her voice chokes. She tries to find words nevertheless. “It’s what we call the promise of days to come.”

         Soteh nods. “Can I have one?”

         “Yes,” Jiteh whispers. “Yes, beebee. You will have a future.”

* * *

         Jiteh limps to the hall of supplicants when the sky is bright and asks to be allowed to feed the tithes.

         “You are not consecrated by the Life Tree,” Viteh says, uncertain.

         Jiteh does not lower her head. The bandage is speckled again with blood. “There is no law that forbids those bound to the tithe from giving them their honored honey and milk. Please. Let me do this. I have saved a special honey I wished to share on the anniversary of our bonding day but... now it will serve a greater purpose.”

         The Treekeeper nods at last. “I will let you do this, if you will tend to all the tithes equally.”

         “I will,” Jiteh says.

* * *

         For the fifteen days before the tithe is to be offered to the Life Tree, Jiteh mixes honey with goat’s milk and spoons it into the mouths of the chosen. The tithes lie in a warming hut, each resting on a cot above a heatstone. Each day the bodies are washed and massaged and oiled.

         She can scarce look at the five added to the initial four. Her eyes burn with tears when she feeds the small girl who might have been Soteh.

         No more after this season. She will not wait for the Tree to relent and show her people mercy.

         On the morning of the Offering, she kneels by her dead husband’s cot with his final meal. His eyes have been sewn shut, and only a tiny gap in his lips is left un-tied so she may feed him.

         “I saw our daughter reach a hand into the hearth last evening,” she says. “She touched the heat stone and didn’t burn her fingers. I saw flame under her nails, and heard her laugh. I didn’t tell her to think of the bees.”

         Her husband’s chest rises and falls slowly.

         She presses her lips against his ear, tasting the scented oil and salt on his skin. “Mateu, I have slipped this poisoned honey into every villager’s meal, one drop at a time, until it is in our blood. All of us. We’re resistant to the poison, and the Tree is not.”

         She kisses his forehead and sits back. Only the tithes hear her words in the warming room.

         “Though you can’t see, the milk I fed you today was red. It’s strong with the crushed petals from the flower—all my stores, saved for years. When the Tree feeds on you from the inside, as it devours all nine tithes offered today, it will drink poison and rot as sweet as honey.”

* * *

         Only four sloths parade down the path to collect the tithe. None come for her, but she recognizes the swollen lumps of beestings on them all. The Treekeeper appoints strong men and women to help carry the cots to the Tree. Jiteh waits, silent, until the last bearers disappear into the forest. The ceremony is over, at least here.

         She cups Yetrah’s face, and her friend looks at her with unfocused eyes.

         “Will you come with me?” Jiteh whispers. “I have something I would share with you.”

         As if hearing the promise in her voice, Yetrah nods. She loops her arm through Jiteh’s, clinging tight. Supporting her in turn.

         Jiteh almost left a note tucked inside a pine cone for her mothers to find—a plea to meet her at the Boundary. But she tore the paper into pieces and buried the scraps inside the hives, under the husks of old bees. No word must reach the Treekeepers. If she is found, she does not want her mothers to suffer. She cannot risk saying goodbye.

         Jiteh takes her daughter’s hand and limps towards the pines. The last of her bees follow. She and Yetrah will wait with Soteh in the field where the red flowers grow until the Tree’s death brings the Boundary down and she sees what lies beyond.

Copyright © 2018 A. Merc Rustad

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A. Merc Rustad is a queer non-binary writer who lives in Minnesota and is a Nebula Awards finalist. Their stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Fireside, Apex, Uncanny, Shimmer, Nightmare, and several Year’s Best anthologies. You can find Merc on Twitter @Merc_Rustad or their website, amercrustad.com. Their debut short story collection, So You Want to Be a Robot, was published by Lethe Press (May 2017). Fun fact: Merc finds sloths both adorable and terrifying simultaneously, while bees are always awesome.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

THREE DANDELION STARS

by Jordan Kurella

         “What should I say?” Shai asked, the mud climbing inside her boots, seeping down between her toes.

         “It’s your wish,” Amarine said, moving the dandelion puff closer. “I picked this for you. So please, say it. And when you do, we’ll watch the seeds scatter into the swamp like stars.”

         And then the wish will come true was implied. Amarine was always more fantastical in the swamp, untethered from her daily duties and responsibilities in the Keep, while here Shai felt she could breathe freely before returning to town and its more practical worries. But with Amarine standing nearby, Shai’s concerns were only with the muck-soaked hem of her dress, and how soon it would be until Amarine’s father’s guards came to fetch her.

         Amarine leaned in, holding the dandelion puff to Shai’s lips, smiling as always. Her eyes searched Shai’s face, but she would not find the wish there before it was said aloud. Shai understood the nature of wishes, the gravity of them. She understood that you did not wish for something you could buy, or something that could be given. You wished for something you wanted. And what Shai wanted was something worth wishing for.

         “I wish,” Shai said, “I wish that we could be married.”

         And with that, the seeds blew away into the swamp like stars, just as Amarine had said they would, but they did not take Shai’s worries with them. It was her turn to search Amarine’s face, and it had changed. Her eyes were cold from shock and now distant. Her mouth trembled with hesitation, and her constant smile had vanished.

         Amarine, as the Lord’s daughter, stood to lose everything, and she knew that. Shai knew that. And the realization made Shai wanted to send all that knowing away, down into the black depths of the swamp pools where the dandelion seeds had gone. Send them away with the wish, which had vanished into the cold winter wind. So she took that trembling mouth of Amarine’s to hers, drawing it into a kiss.

         They fell into familiarity. Shai’s mud-soaked fingers ran through Amarine’s dark curls, pulling her hair down in soft tugs. Her cold hands warmed as they searched for skin and then dress and then skin again. Her lips kissed the hesitation away from Amarine’s mouth, the shock away from her eyes, and the winter away from her cheeks. She held Amarine close, feeling her bones through her dress, and then holding them against her own soft hips.

         This was what she wanted, forever and always. This was what she had wished for. She kissed Amarine until she forgot the cold, the guards, and everything. The world was only her and Amarine, together and absolute. Forever and always, happily ever after, until the sound of a horn tore them apart.

         “My father...” Amarine said, holding Shai’s hand.

         Shai was already fixing Amarine’s hair and fastening the buttons on her dress. There were no words that needed saying. Amarine’s home was in the Keep, with its stone walls and standing guards, while Shai had to hurry home to the thick dirt streets of town and its smells of iron and other people’s cooking. Amarine had to be found as alone as the guards had left her, to arouse no suspicion. She couldn’t be as alone as the two of them had been together, the rest of the world forgotten, making wishes and bestowing kisses—that would have to wait until an impossible day.

         So Shai hurried back to town, catching one last glimpse of Amarine standing sentinel in the winter swamp. Shai knew Amarine would send another letter soon, and they would be together again, one day.

         But this evening as Shai hurried back toward the border fences, she could not shake the feeling of being watched.

* * *

         It had been three days since the kiss in the swamp, and Shai had spent them practicing her reading and doing other people’s mending. When her brother Yann came home filthy from his long day of blacksmith work, she washed his clothes and put out clean ones for the next day. Each night they shared the meal Shai cooked for them like every other night, and afterward Yann left for the tavern and Shai would be alone. Each day was the same as each night, and Shai brought joy to them all with thoughts of Amarine and her pale green eyes, her long dark hair, and her thin, smooth fingers.

         On the third night, Yann returned home from the tavern, full of laughter with stories of his failed conquests before he fell fast asleep in his bed. But Shai lay awake, counting the stars. This time of year there were twelve she could see through the window, huddled close together like scared children. She counted them over and over to keep them safe as the clouds drifted over them, causing the room to go dark, and she waited, until it went darker still.

         Someone was crouching in the window well.

         Shai sat up, ready to call out, ready to scream. But she saw as the person approached that it wasn’t a person at all. As the clouds dispersed, Shai could see her swamp-weed wings, her slick sallow-green skin, her onyx black eyes. Her mother had told her stories about the swamp folk, about their tricks and promises, and how Shai must always act around them—polite and careful. She could hear her mother’s voice, “Remember, with the swamp fairies, you must only expect what you do not expect.”

         “I have come to grant your wish,” the swamp fairy said, her head moving snake-like on her shoulders. “But I require something in return.”

         Shai wanted nothing more than this. It was the only thing she had ever wanted since Amarine had first kissed her five happy years ago. There would be consequences, not only the swamp fairy’s, but within the town. But she and Amarine would be happy, Shai would see to that.

         “What are the conditions?” Shai asked.

         “The conditions are mine to consider,” the swamp fairy said. “The consequences yours. Do you accept?”

         “What will you need?”

         “Only three stars,” she said. “Three dandelion seeds fell into my pool, so I will take three stars from you.”

         “I don’t understand.” Shai looked at her brother’s bed, he was still sleeping soundly.

         “Shooting stars,” the swamp fairy said. “Your first three falling stars of spring. From the moment they fall, the night belongs to me.”

         The fairy held up three webbed fingers, but Shai was cautious. Her mother had told stories about shooting stars, about their power to change people, and also their power to transform them. Shai turned to her brother, his chest still rising and falling in sleep. He wouldn’t approve. Ever since their mother had run away, and their father died along with nineteen other men when trying to bring her to justice, Yann had hovered over Shai, curious about everything she did. So she shared nothing of her life. Nothing about how she missed their mother, nothing about Amarine, nothing about her walks in the woods. In recent years, Yann had stopped asking questions, and Shai enjoyed her freedom. She lived her life of secrets as he lived a life without them.

         But she couldn’t stay here with him. He would have her marry someone to make them rich; someone to elevate their standing. Amarine would be taken from her, only seen at town functions where Shai played the dutiful wife role to a man she didn’t care for; while the life she did care for stood within reach, but like most things too beautiful for this world, she would not be allowed to touch it.

         No, she was done with Yann and the life he wanted so much for both of them. Shai was her mother’s daughter. She was strong like her, proud like her, and would fight for her life like her. It was time for her to become her own woman.

         “I accept these terms,” Shai said. “Please grant my wish. It would do me honor.”

         “It is yours,” the swamp fairy said, touching the tip of her finger to Shai’s forehead. “Now sleep.”

         And she did.

* * *

         Shai remembered the ceremony as a dreamlike small, intimate affair. Just her and Amarine, with the priest from the village rushing through his words in a whisper that competed with the sounds of the dying winter wind. The story Amarine told of the ceremony had hundreds of monsters in attendance, the swamp lit by will-o-the-wisps, and her ring slipped on with cold fingers she could still feel. They claimed the abandoned cottage in the woods beyond the swamp as their new home. The floorboards were full of holes, the roof leaked, and it was rumored to be haunted, but Shai couldn’t be happier. It felt welcoming to her, more like home than home had felt in years.

         The morning after they were married, flowers had pushed themselves out of the mud to show off to whatever sunshine they could find. Spring was closing in, chasing winter out with its bright color.

         As the weeks passed and the world started to smell new again, Shai built rabbit snares as Amarine sat at the window, gazing out at the mists rising off the swamp, lifting whatever burden she carried from her shoulders with heavy sighs. With every day Shai spent setting her snares and gathering food like her mother had taught her, Amarine’s mood grew darker.

         “It’s too cold,” she complained in the mornings.

         “I am so hungry,” she would say after dinner was done.

         “The night is angry,” she said every night as the wind ripped through the rotten wood planks.

         Each of these times, Shai wrapped Amarine in her arms to soothe her. She knew Amarine was too delicate, used to the Keep with its heavy walls where nothing was ever damp or cold. And now she was out here with Shai in a cottage so rotten it sometimes smelled of death and so precarious, children told wild stories about it.

         So while she stroked Amarine’s dark hair, she told her stories about how the two of them befriended the ghosts, and the ghosts made the house warm for them, and into a home. And Shai did this every night, until Amarine’s grip eventually grew soft, and then slack, and then her breathing became heavy with sleep.

         But still as the meadow came to life, Shai caught Amarine looking out the window, her cheek in her hand, staring at nothing. It was where Shai would find her when she came in with the day’s food, when she was cooking, doing the mending, tidying up. Amarine was a sad princess that would need rescuing in the fairy stories, but this was a different story entirely. Gone was the clever light from Amarine’s eyes, where she had always been thinking, imagining, and telling stories. Gone was the warmth from her cheeks and her hands, as the cottage had stolen it from her. Gone was the mirth from her voice and gestures. Melancholy had overtaken Amarine, and it threatened to overtake them both, if Shai could not beat it back.

         Shai had to rescue Amarine, as she had to rescue herself.

         She imagined herself on a white horse, decked in armor. She imagined herself riding up to the cottage, sword in her hand, and calling the melancholy out to battle. The battle was fierce and furious. Some days she won, and she could help Amarine. Some days the melancholy beat her back, and Shai was then beaten. But she knew she had to be the knight in this story and every story, like all the ones Amarine told. And she was. As whenever she took Amarine’s hand, she smiled sweetly. When they kissed the world exploded with wildflowers. Yet in all the times between, there was Amarine, with her heavy lidded eyes and deep sighs, filling Shai’s heart with despair.

         Perhaps she had made the wrong wish, or asked for the wrong thing. This was not what she had wanted, not at all.

* * *

         Shai’s mother had taught her well, but some things could not be gathered from the land. They needed simple provisions: bowls, spoons, cloth for clothes and blankets. Fearing retaliation from Yann or any of the Keep guards, Shai traveled to town only at dusk, when the shops were closing down, thinking the shopkeepers would be distracted. She disguised herself in Amarine’s cloak, which had a hood to hide her face, and a pair of her gloves. Neither of them fit. The cloak was too long, and the gloves too tight. Still, they did the job, as after three trips, Shai had still not been discovered.

         This time Amarine wanted a teapot, and Shai would do anything to make her wife smile, so she made for town as darkness fell. But the sound of screams and clashing swords stopped her before she reached the border fences and with it, fear. Amarine’s father would have prevented anyone from attacking the town, so if this was happening, what had happened at the Keep?

         She rushed forward, climbing the fences in her skirts and cloak, and darted out into the road. Heavy mists covered everything, obscuring the sounds of battle and cries of pain in a kind of dreamlike helplessness. Shai needed to know. In times of trouble, people gathered in the tavern for sanctuary; now would be no different. It would be dangerous, but she had no choice.

         She took two steps forward when a figure burst out from the mists in front of her. Their body swayed, snake-like, and their dark, mud-cloaked armor faded into the waning light. Shai remained still. She did not speak; not wanting to provoke the stranger, whose sword still dripped with the blood of their last kill. Before she could look away, the stranger’s eyes met hers. They were onyx black, and the cheeks behind the dirt and bloodstains were a slick sallow green. Shai stepped back, raising her arms to protect her face, but the stranger only smiled with a mouth full of needle-thin teeth. And then as quickly as they arrived, they were gone.

         Shai fell to her knees. She was alive, and suddenly aware of the silence from town.

* * *

         “Lord’s dead,” the town’s tailor said. He was taking up two barstools in familiar posture with the bartender. “Slain precise like, by those strange swordsmen.”

         “Precise?” the bartender said, his voice and eyes level to keep the peace. “How d’you know.”

         “Son’s a guardsman,” the tailor said. “He survived. Said they skipped him by. Them bastards were only attacking specific people on a path, ignoring everyone else. Let everyone else live, including the Lord’s youngest son.”

         “That sickly little thing?” the bartender said. “They kill his alchemist?”

         “Aye,” the tailor said. “Shame. Damn shame.”

         Shai leaned forward, straining to hear the conversation from her table at the rear of the room. The tavern wasn’t crowded, but she needed to be in shadow, so here she sat. But as patrons filed in, the conversation became more and more difficult to make out.

         “...boy won’t survive the year now, don’t know what we’ll do.”

         “There’s always Amarine,” the bartender said. “She’ll do what’s good for us.”

         “Can’t do nothing as long as that witch has her,” the tailor said. He leaned in close, but increased his volume; he wanted to be heard. “That girl was just like her mother, like I always said. Her father couldn’t control her, her brother neither. Now look what happened.”

         “You blaming this attack on Shai?” The bartender’s voice was just as loud. “She’s not that kind of girl.”

         “Just cause you’re sweet on that thing...”

         A darker shadow jumped over Shai’s table, breaking her concentration. She fell back, ready to defend herself with the dull skinning knife in her pocket, but the shadow remained, looming, waiting.

         “Drink, stranger?” the shadow asked. It was only the barmaid, looking unfriendly.

         “Wine,” Shai said, as the conversation at the bar continued.

         “Mug or a glass?” The barmaid was smiling at her, all teeth, no mirth. Did she recognize her?

         “Mug,” she said, tossing payment on the table.

         “Good.” The barmaid’s smile remained loveless as she made her way to other patrons.

         The conversation between the tailor and bartender was drowned out by other story pieces. “They came in from nowhere.” “Snuck in quiet as ghosts.” “Blades cut like magic.” The talking was unlike the conversation at the bar; it was afraid and urgent, and in want of action.

         Before her drink was done, she was joined at her table by a girl her age and her twin young brothers. Shai recognized the girl as the miller’s daughter, Baelin. She knew Baelin from town meetings, festivals, and solstice celebrations at the Keep. They’d had conversations, played games, and their mothers had been friendly once, before everything had gone wrong. Baelin still blamed Shai for it.

         Baelin could recognize Shai, and her disguise would be forfeit. The punishment for witchcraft was death. All Baelin had to do was look up, and Shai would lose everything. It was too dangerous to stay. So she stood up from her seat just as the tavern erupted into applause.

         A man had stepped onto a table in front of her. His back was to her as he took a bow, but there was something familiar about him. The dark cast to his blond hair. The black grime around his fingernails that would never scrub away, and how his grey shirt was still stubbornly white, due to nightly washings. Yann raised his arms, and the cheers fell silent. Shai could not leave now.

         “Our Lord is dead,” Yann said. “All his eligible heirs with him.”

         “Your sister stole off with one,” a woman called out. “She learned too much from your mother.”

         “That she did,” Yann said. “And I’m here to end that. We’re going to take back Amarine by killing that witch.”

         The crowd fell into whispers. The murmur moved across them while Yann stood, firm and solid on the table, resolute. It was some time before someone spoke up. “You would kill your own sister?”

         “That thing is no longer a sister of mine.”

         “The King should know about this,” the bartender said.

         “So he can appoint that sickly child in the Keep?” Yann said. “No, we need action now. Once we rescue Amarine, I will marry her, and I will become Lord.” The murmurs rose up again, this time with greater volume.

         It was Baelin who started the applause first, slowly to get others to follow. And follow they did, with cheers, whistles, and then by converging on Yann. The patrons at the tables drank happily, looking around, pulling friends and lovers close. The evening’s previous slaughter was misdirected into vengeance. Blood for blood, they would take what they believed was theirs.

         She turned to go, she had to go. With the distraction surrounding Yann, now was the perfect time to leave. Her heart was lunging against her chest, urging her out into the night, where she could be free.

         “It’s not safe to leave yet, stranger,” Baelin said. “Those were fairy raiders. I’ve read the stories. Someone must have drawn their anger.”

         “Might be the witch,” one of the brothers said. “Maybe she wants to be Lord.”

         “My home is close,” Shai said. Her voice was hoarse from the dryness of her throat.

         “Is it?” Baelin asked. “Then why do you hide your face if you are so familiar here?” Shai could feel Baelin’s judgmental stare. Suspicion had been roused, and Yann was too close to this table, making the rounds. She couldn’t let him see her face, hear her voice.

         Without a word to Baelin, Shai sifted through the drunks to the tavern door. On the street, the corpses of the fallen were covered in bloodied sheets, ready for the wagon to collect them in the morning. She walked quickly, exiting through the town gates as a visitor or local farmer would. She took care to see she wasn’t followed.

         In the clarity of fear, she noticed the apple blossoms in full bloom, and the crops in the fields peeking up above the black dirt. Spring had come, and with it so must have the fairy’s first falling star. Shai walked faster. Was the fairy raiders’ attack, because of her? Was Yann’s betrayal because of her? Was Amarine’s father dead, because of her? The fairy wanted this, for a reason only it knew; like her mother had always said, “There is no happily ever after, there is always a price.”

         And in all this, Shai had forgotten about Amarine, home alone in the rotting cottage at the edge of the swamp. Against all warnings not to, Shai cut through a farmer’s yard, climbed the border fence, and ran through the woods, through the swamp, and arrived at home breathless, her mind racing with worry, only to hear singing coming from inside.

         “I am so glad you’re here, my love,” Amarine said, resting her hand on Shai’s cheek. “You were gone for so long, I had started to worry.”

         Her cloak was soaked with swamp muck and her gloves slick with sweat, but Amarine, usually fussy about these things, hung up the cloak and gloves without comment and helped Shai to her seat, which was set with flowers and candles, better than Shai had ever done. She wore a contented smile on her face, one that Shai had never seen before. She had always seen smiles borne from joy or happiness, the ones Amarine wore in the swamps, but this was different. It was so comfortable there.

         “I thought you may be angry at me, so I went and checked your traps and made us dinner,” Amarine said.

         “How did you learn to make rabbit stew?” Shai asked when their bowls were full.

         “I’ve been paying attention,” Amarine said. “Father always said I was a quick study.”

         Shai said nothing. With Amarine’s mention of her father, her appetite was gone.

         “Why were you gone so long?” Amarine asked.

         “The town was attacked,” Shai said. “I took shelter in the tavern with the others. Many were killed. The streets are littered with corpses.”

         “Oh?” Amarine’s eyes were calm, collected. She was unmoved.

         “Amarine,” Shai said, touching her wife’s hand. “Your father and brothers are dead.”

         Amarine only nodded. “We are alive, Shai. You and me. That is all that matters.” She did not blink. “Eat, don’t let it get cold.”

         “But...”

         “My father did not want us to be happy, I want us to be happy,” Amarine said, meeting Shai’s eyes. “Are you happy?”

         “I am,” Shai said. “Are you?”

         “I am,” Amarine said. “My father’s hold over me is over. Let us celebrate that. Let us be happy together.”

         It was sudden behavior. Strange, but perfect. Shai was relieved and overwhelmed with Amarine’s change of heart. She refused to believe that it could be fairy magic. It was true love. The love her wife proclaimed for her on their wedding day, and the love Shai had which grew for her wife with each passing breath. She knew this was true, she had proof. Each time they kissed, it mended Amarine’s tears; each time they clasped hands, it made Amarine smile. Shai had been able to dispel Amarine’s melancholy with her adoration before, and now it was truly gone. What could be more magical than that?

         It was all she ever wanted, all they both ever wanted. And now they had it.

         She knew Amarine loved her. These past few months must have just been homesickness. Now Amarine knew her home was with her, in the cottage, because they were here together, forever. The stories of the ghosts had warmed her heart, the hand holding, the gentle caresses, all of it had brought Amarine to her. Shai sealed shut her own doubts, watching only the light in Amarine’s eyes become bright with hope.

         As they lay in bed that night, Amarine’s kisses banished the fairy raiders from Shai’s mind. They banished thoughts of Yann, the swamp folk, and falling stars. The night was only Amarine.

         And Shai was finally happy and content

* * *

         The following morning the draft that passed through the walls whispered with the scent of spring, and the rain falling through the roof was fresh and warm. Shai spent the morning with Amarine collecting food and herbs, teaching her which plants in the forest were edible, as her own mother had taught her years ago. In the afternoon, they cooked together, told stories together, and held hands on their walk through the swamp. Shai listened to every word as Amarine’s voice swelled with joy as she talked about how they would keep warm by the fire as old women in the cottage, ignoring the town, ignoring everyone, because they only had to answer to each other alone.

         Shai couldn’t tell Amarine about Yann’s plan. She couldn’t tell her about the town’s opinion of her, or their want to steal Amarine away. She wanted to stay in the woods forever, to live off the land, to go without the town’s resources, but she couldn’t. Their skinning knife had broken.

         That evening, in town at the tannery, Shai heard a familiar voice. Baelin was nearby, talking to an older woman Shai’s mother would have known.

         “Yann will make a good Lord,” the older woman said.

         “You think Amarine will marry him?” Baelin asked. “She’s always been a strange one.”

         “She will have no choice,” the older woman said. “It’s for the good of the town. She’ll do it, I’m certain.”

         “I suppose,” Baelin said.

         “You should have your husband join in the hunt,” the older woman said. “Yann is having trouble gathering the men he needs.”

         “After what happened to his father, I am not surprised. This town needs their men, and they are worried. Dispatching witches has a sour history here.” Baelin shifted her weight, turning to face Shai, who pulled the hood tight around her face. But there was something about Baelin’s eyes that held Shai in place, even though she wanted to run.

         “Aye,” the old woman said. “Damn shame his sister turned out the way she did.”

         When Shai was able to leave, she went out through the gates, her fear of Baelin and Yann boiling in her head. She did not check if she was being followed, not from the tannery, not from the town gates, not from the dirt path by the farmers’ fields. There was no other sound but her own footsteps, her own heavy breathing, and a fox screaming in the fog.

         But yet, she was unsurprised when someone grabbed her arm as she turned to leave the road.

         “Stranger.” It was Baelin’s voice. “Are you spying on me?”

         Shai kept her head bowed low. “It was you who sat at my table that night, not me at yours.”

         “But now I find you listening in on my conversations, my plans,” Baelin said.

         Only then did Shai tear her arm away. “No. You do that to yourself. Now let me be.”

         “I know who you are, Shai Ironsmith, and I know where you are hiding. Soon Yann will too, and so will his men, and their hounds.”

         “How do you know where we are hiding?”

         But Baelin only smiled. “I will spare Amarine, for your sake,” she said. “But you will not be so lucky.”

         And she shoved Shai away like garbage, sending her stumbling through the grass before she could catch her footing; all the while Baelin’s stare fixed her, tracking her. That feeling washed away all the happiness Shai had before arriving in town. It bored a hole through the day, sending all the good memories tumbling out.

         But there was still the swamp fairy’s promise. Another star could fall and change Shai’s life forever, both Shai’s and Amarine’s. Baelin could turn into a tree in the middle of the road; Yann could drown in his soup; the town could welcome them with open arms; somehow, someway, it could still be the happiness she had wished for.

         The feeling of Baelin’s stare was gone, Shai was too deep in the swamp now. She pounded off her worries through the swamp muck—there were too many things she wanted, that she would die for: Amarine’s smile as the first and last thing of every day, the taste of her breath on her tongue, the feel of her tiny fingers against her own skin. Shai’s breath became quicker the closer she got to home, and with each inhale, she made herself believe she was happy.

         Amarine wanted to plant a garden, and she was wild with her plans. Shai watched her wife’s lips as she went on and on about which vegetables would winter well. Amarine had chipped a tooth yesterday while chopping wood, and it gave her beauty a feral quality. Now she looked dangerous, and Shai liked catching glimpses of it while she talked. Shai had too much she couldn’t say, so she left Amarine to hold her in her sway.

         In bed that night, Amarine ran her hands over Shai’s body, but Shai pushed them away. “Not tonight,” she said. “I’m filthy from traveling.”

         “I don’t mind,” Amarine said. “I’m filthy, too.”

         “Please,” Shai said. “In the morning.”

         Reluctantly, Amarine kissed Shai on the temple. “Get some rest, then. You’ll need it for the morning.”

         The night was black when the knock came at the door. It was loud, authoritative, but small. Amarine woke, staring, her green eyes looking like swamp-pools in the dark. Shai stood, grabbing the skinning knife. She’d have preferred the axe, carelessly left outside, but the knife would have to do. Baelin’s warning rang fresh in her ears.

         “Who’s there?” Amarine asked, her hands clutched at her chest. “Announce yourself.”

         A third knock came as a question. Shai opened the door with caution, and found only a young boy—not more than five—standing outside.

         “Are you lost?” Shai asked.

         No answer.

         “Where’s your mother?” Shai had always been suspicious of strangers.

         The boy shook his head, pointing out into the dark toward the swamp.

         Amarine had joined them at the door. “Oh let the poor thing in, he’ll catch cold out there in the damp.”

         Shai started a fire while Amarine bundled the boy up in a blanket. She held him on her lap, rocking him back and forth until he stopped shivering. The stew was warming and the fire was throwing shadows across the room as Shai stood alone and growing lonely. Something disturbed her about the boy. He kept his mouth closed when he smiled, and his hair was too thin for how tall he was. It was off-putting, he looked wrong, he acted wrong, and she felt wrong around him, but she kept herself to herself. To this boy she would be only a woman alone with her friend Amarine, not a witch at all.

         He lost himself in the blankets and wrapped his arms around Amarine while she told him stories. All Shai’s favorites about gallant knights and their battles to save fair maidens. She told other stories as well, about men who were in love with princesses, but how those princesses were in love with other men—ones who could turn into dragons. She told stories of girls who thought they could do no wrong and the magical punishments that befell them. The boy never once looked at Shai, his dark eyes were locked on Amarine as her stories moved to those about the swamp folk.

         “Their gifts are grand but always given with a price,” she said. “So always be kind to them, and never ever be rude.”

         The boy ate his stew slowly, allowing all of Amarine’s stories to unfold, more and more of them that Shai had never heard, each more unbelievable than the last. Between tiny bites, he laid his head on Amarine’s chest and asked for details between details, and Amarine gave them. The two of them became more beautiful than any tapestry Shai had ever seen: Amarine wove out the beauty of the swamp folk kingdom, and the nuances of dragon magic; the shine of the sun on a knight’s sword, and the spray of blood from a fallen foe; and how to tell whether a fairy was being polite or cunning.

         As the stories wove tighter, they cocooned Amarine and the boy up in their fantastical kingdoms and heroes and villains, and Shai was pushed away. She was alone in the shadows cast by the firelight and the smell of stew and damp and the feeling in the cottage that she was never alone. Amarine and the boy became the center of the worlds they were creating around themselves, and when Shai had had enough and felt like she couldn’t reach either of them anymore and they were worlds apart and she would die of heartbreak, she heard birdsong.

         Dawn had broken.

         Light crept through the cottage, as if afraid to interrupt, and when it reached Amarine’s toes, she caught her breath as if waking up from a nightmare. The boy unwound himself from her arms and the blanket and stood. In the light, Shai could see his slick sallow-green skin, his webbed fingers, his onyx black eyes. She felt hollow when she glanced at Amarine, whose own eyes only held affection for the boy.

         “I feel better now,” he said.

         “You never told us your name,” Amarine said.

         “Pic,” the boy said.

         “That’s a funny name for a boy,” Amarine said.

         “Is it?” Pic asked in an older, more familiar voice. Then he smiled. His mouth was full of needle-thin teeth.

         Shai went silent as Amarine helped Pic to bed by the hearth, tucking him into the blankets, ensuring he was comfortable and warm. She seemed unbothered by Pic’s unusual nature, so Shai told herself the boy was no threat to them. Afterward, as they lay curled together in their bed, Shai was restless. The events of the long night had left her feeling full of dread. And as she listened to the wet, soft sounds of Pic’s breathing, that feeling only tightened its grip.

* * *

         The fits started the next morning. Shai first found Amarine at the woodpile, standing still, axe held in her hand. Her eyes looking off to nothing, her grip on the axe firm, her feet planted into the ground. Shai shook her, kissed her, held her, whispered in her ear. She yelled at her, she pushed her, she slapped her across the face. But for an hour Amarine stood still as a carved wooden statue, taking time only to breathe and blink, and when she came back to herself, she did not believe an hour had passed.

         Amarine did not know where she had gone, or that she had gone anywhere. “I was right here,” she said. “Chopping wood for the fire.”

         “No, you had disappeared,” Shai said. “Your body was here, but you were gone.”

         “Don’t be silly. I have nowhere to go.”

         The fits continued. Amarine would be gone for ten minutes, or three hours. The day passed like this, and Shai did not feel she could leave her wife’s side for a moment. As what would happen if Amarine disappeared while she was building a fire? Or taking a bath? This left Amarine perplexed and amused, asking what she did to deserve such close and loving attention. But each time Amarine had a fit, Shai was right there, to make sure she was the first thing she saw upon coming back.

         Pic was to blame, of course, but only after blaming herself. He must have come from the second star; he must have been sent by the fairy. Shai was a fool to have thought that her wish would work out in her favor and everything would go her way. Amarine’s story came back to her—Shai had thought she could do no wrong, and now she was paying the price.

         Her mother had always said how the events of one evening laid out consequences for weeks and years, how what people did in life was never confined to a single moment. She had made that bargain with the fairy not considering anything at all, she only thought about what she wanted, and now she reaped the punishment. Amarine was being taken from her by minutes and hours, all because of a silly dandelion seed.

         She crept out of bed that night and walked out past the freshly tilled soil of Amarine’s new garden. The frog song covered up all sound, and the forest canopy was so thick it was dark and black as far as the eye could see, as it was every night. But tonight there was a light, twenty paces out. A lantern. Someone had found them.

         “You there,” Shai said. “Who goes there?”

         “I told you I knew where you were hiding,” Baelin said. She stepped out, her face illuminated. “Your mother died here. Our fathers died here. Now you will, too.”

         “I did not know,” Shai said. She took a step back toward the log pile, toward the axe.

         “You were too young. But Yann knows, he remembers, of course he remembers.”

         “So you’ve come to kill me now?” She took another step back, she would only need a few more to reach the axe. “Kill me before you take Amarine. I cannot bear to see you take her away from me.” But Baelin wasn’t following Shai back toward the log pile. Moving further was too risky, it would leave the front door exposed, and then... and then Amarine would be gone forever. No, Shai would have to do this another way— She would have to play Baelin’s game.

         “What do you want, Baelin?”

         “Retribution for my father’s death,” Baelin said. “And I will have it.” She turned around and opened her hand, blowing across it to scatter some dust behind her that got carried away on the breeze until it eventually escaped the light. “That was your scent, which I stole it from your cloak last night. Now Yann’s hounds can track you across the water. I will bring him to you, just as I promised.”

         “Your mother taught you well,” Shai said.

         “And yours taught you nothing.” Baelin lift the lantern higher, looking over Shai’s shoulder. “Pity for you they always pick the wrong women.”

         “When will my brother come?” Shai asked. “You can tell me that much.”

         But Baelin shrugged and then everything went dark. Shai lunged forward at the spot where Baelin had stood, but there was nothing left. The only light left came from the dwindling hearth inside the cottage; there was no splash of footsteps, no clamor of horse hooves. Baelin had disappeared as quietly as she had come, and now she’d left a trail for the hounds to follow. Yann would be coming soon; the danger was too near. She and Amarine had to leave.

         Shai hurried inside to pack provisions. They would flee the cottage tonight.

* * *

         Shai was gathering food and water when the door behind her flew open. She whipped around, catching sight of Amarine and Pic rushing out of the cottage, laughing and holding hands. Shai followed them, leaving everything behind, the food, the water, the cottage. She rushed out to the edge of the swamp to see them disappear into the dark. She could only hear their footsteps playing in the water, then sludging through the muck, then leaping over tree branches.

         She would kill Pic for this, fairy or not. She wrenched their axe from the wood block and ran off after them into the swamp. When her feet hit the cold water, she didn’t stop. Amarine’s laughter pulled her forward through the dark. She ran as she had run to Amarine every time they met secretly in the swamp. She ran as she had run to the cottage fearing Yann’s retribution, Baelin’s warning, the town’s fury. She ran with both fear and worry driving her forward to the sound of Amarine’s footsteps. As love had driven before, love drove her forward again.

         Amarine and Pic were running so fast, so easily, while Shai struggled for every step she took. The axe’s weight was heavy but she refused to let go. She had to climb over tree branches, fighting the weight of her soaked boots and skirts. She often fell into deeper water, and every time would pick herself up, hearing their footsteps even further away, their laughter too distant not to be a memory. Her breath was wet in her chest and her heartbeat was loud in her ears.

         Soon, too soon, the swamp sounds drowned out Amarine’s laughter, her footsteps, Shai’s hope. She heard Pic’s laughter crescendo before she caught sight of a will-o-the-wisp. Shai called out to it, “Stop! Please!” And then it was gone, and she was alone.

         The swamp fairy had promised that she and Amarine would be married; that was all Shai had wished for. Now, Amarine had been stolen from her, and Shai had nothing. She sunk to her knees in the water, drawing the axe across her lap; all her hope had gone.

         If I stay here, I can become part of the swamp, she thought. As much of it has become part of me. Two nights before her mother had run off, she had kissed Shai on the forehead and said, “You will always be my special star.” It was the last good memory Shai had of her. She searched her memories for the last one of Amarine, but she couldn’t find one. She was empty. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t move.

         For years Amarine had loved her. They met secretly, but Shai had wanted more. She had ruined it, she had been selfish, she hadn’t considered anyone else’s wants but her own. Now Amarine was gone, lost, and Shai was lost. Sinking into the swamps to be swallowed by them forever.

         Too soon.

         Hounds bayed in the distance, and with it came the sound of splashing feet. The mob had come for her, and they would find her here—a broken shell of a thing, an empty piece of what she once was. No, she wouldn’t let them have that.

         Off in the distance there was a light of a will-o-the-wisp. There. There she would make her last stand. Shai was her mother’s daughter, and she would die as she imagined her mother had, fighting to her last breath. She started running, and the dogs picked up pace. Their howling was getting louder, and the footsteps were coming closer. They had her scent; they would take her down.

         She sped up, fighting against the weight of everything that tried to hold her back. She ran for her mother, she ran for her father, she ran for Amarine, and she ran for herself. She ran until her breathing choked her, until she fell more times than she stepped forward. She ran until she was crawling, until she was coughing, until she was shaking. She would die before she reached that light, but at least she would die knowing she hadn’t given up. She would die with pride still in her.

         When her muscles seized and her throat was lit with fire, she stopped moving, hearing the crash of footsteps closing in. As she lowered herself into the water, she felt lighter. She forgave herself for not saving her mother, for not stopping her father. She allowed herself to love her brother and his want to protect the town, to protect her. She forgave herself for her wish, and her want to love Amarine. And she allowed herself to believe that Amarine was safe, safer than she would be with Yann, safer than she would be with her or anyone now. She let go of her regret, her self-doubt, her hate, and when it was all gone, she knew she could die.

         At peace with herself, she closed her eyes to sink deep into the cold when someone lifted her up from the mud.

         “Be still,” the swamp fairy said.

         The fairy’s fingers closed like a vice on Shai’s shoulders, her black eyes fathomless. Shai tried to pull away, but there was nothing of her left.

         “Shh,” the swamp fairy said, setting her down. In her hand, she held a single dandelion puff. “Make a wish, but choose carefully.”

         With one wish Shai had lost everything she had and everything she wanted, so what would the cost of another be? As the swamp fairy cradled Shai’s head and neck in her webbed fingers, Shai thought of something she hadn’t considered: why. Why grant her wish? Why turn Yann against her? Why take Amarine away?

         But Shai was too weak, so all she could say was: “Why?”

         Yann’s voice in the distance called for everyone to close ranks, and there was torchlight shining off the water. The hounds were so close that their pursuit had become the padding of soft dog-steps. Through all this, the swamp fairy held Shai, her skin shimmering, her onyx black eyes reflecting the torchlight.

         “Hurry,” she said. “We do not have much time.”

         What did Shai want? She wanted Amarine back. She wanted the mob gone. She wanted to be in love as she had been these past few weeks but before as well. She wanted her brother gone. She wanted Amarine’s family alive. She wanted so much. Too much.

         She could hear Yann clearly now. “Torches high,” he said. “Weapons at the ready.”

         Shai closed her own hand around the swamp fairy’s and looked into her black eyes.

         “I wish,” she said. “I wish I had the power to undo all that has been done to me.”

         And she blew the seeds away like stars, and fell into darkness.

* * *

         “Is it her?” Yann asked.

         “No,” Baelin said. “It isn’t. Don’t touch it.”

         Shai opened her eyes and stood, and the men fell back, holding their weapons higher. Their torches were stuck fast in the mud. When Shai took a step forward, she felt unsteady, her arms and legs loosely connected, her body reacting in a swerving, drunken way. Her mind was agile and crisp. She assessed the threat: thirty men, no, fifty, all with swords, axes, or pitchforks, and she was unarmed and free of fear.

         She looked down at her sallow-green slick hands, shining in the torchlight. She saw her naked legs, her bare feet. With the fairy’s third star, Shai had been transformed. Her body knew what to do without her; her wings extended, sending several men to their knees, but Yann and Baelin stood firm.

         “Stand down, fairy,” Yann said. “Tell us where the witch went.”

         He did not want the answers he would get, and he was not asking the right way. So she took a clumsy, snake-like step toward him. Yann raised his sword higher, Baelin moved forward. The poor fools, they were only making this worse for themselves.

         “Tell us,” Yann said. “Or die.”

         Shai smiled her response. She did not have to answer Yann’s question, for the first time in years. She did not have to tell him anything. She had her family with her now, and they were close, closer than he’d ever been with her. They were behind her, around her, rallying with her. As she reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, he swung his sword, but her movements were quick, darting. She closed her fingers around his throat.

         “Yann, there’s more,” Baelin said. “Three more... no four. Five... six. We’re surrounded.”

         She stumbled back and was snatched high up by the shoulders.

         “I’ve come for Amarine,” Yann said. “I only want to take her home.”

         “But brother,” Shai said. “She is home. She is with me, and we are home.”

         And she extinguished the torches, plunging them all into the black swamp night.

* * *

         The mouths and lungs of twenty men filled with water that night. They drowned in a melee of fists and wings; of screeches and cries. The dogs remained placid, silent, eventually making their own way home. Yann was among the twenty, buried in the muck like Shai’s father, who had come for her mother so many years ago. Baelin, too, was lost—she had never been as clever as her own mother. The thirty that remained hurried home when dawn broke, when the rooftops of town were silhouetted against the sky.

         As the sun filtered through the trees and shone off the swamp pools, Shai and Amarine claimed one as their own. They dipped down beneath the water together and saw a world made of starlight and wishes, of potential and emotion. A world where love was so real, it was singing. Shai took Amarine’s hand in hers, their webbed fingers winding together, their onyx black eyes fixed on the wonder before them.

         While they stood, their wings at rest, Shai felt Amarine’s heartbeat in harmony with her own while the scene played out before them in flashes of light and color, both familiar and overwhelming. Like when her mother and father would laugh in the kitchen while she and her brother fought at the table. The house then smelled of warm fires and her mother’s cooking, and there was nothing ever but happiness there.

         Like when Amarine first kissed Shai on the long road by the Keep. Her eyes were so bright green and curious, and her lips were as pale as her skin; she looked as perfect as a drawing. And Shai reached out with her own soft hand and stroked Amarine’s hair for what she wanted to be forever.

         Shai held Amarine’s hand tightly in hers as she stepped forward—this was what she’d always wanted, for her, for Amarine, for the both of them. She was surrounded by mothers and brothers, by fathers and sisters, by lovers and paramours, by all the magic in the world, and love. Love to give, love to receive, love to offer to the world freely, and Shai could feel it welcoming her and Amarine in.

         This was where they belonged. She touched Amarine’s forked tongue with hers, ran her needle-thin teeth along Amarine’s lips, and it was like this that they tumbled down through the waves of magic, through the starlight, until they arrived finally home.

Copyright © 2018 Jordan Kurella

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Jordan Kurella is a disabled and bisexual writer living in Ohio. She grew up all over the world, including Moscow and Manhattan, and in her past lives was a radio DJ, barista, and social worker. In her current life, she writes, reads, and spends time with her husband and service dog. Her fiction has been published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, On The Premises, and Turn To Ash. Her personal essays have appeared on Salon.com and NPR’s CarTalk.com. Her story “The Captain’s Folly” is part of the English curriculum at Iowa State University.

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COVER ART

“Mace Landscape,” by Mihály Nagy

Mihály Nagy is a Hungarian 2D artist who has worked as a concept artist and illustrator for many years in the video game industry. He loves everything that is creative or unique, so he tries always to do something cool and new. His favourite subjects are science-fiction or fantasy environments and creature design, but he enjoys sample photo-manipulations too and working in different art styles. View more of his work at his gallery on deviantArt, misi006.deviantart.com.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Compilation Copyright © 2018 Firkin Press

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