“Anything else you want to tell us about the hipster mermaid?” Cam turned his head and called to Eli, as if Kite wasn’t right there.
“No.”
“We’re childhood friends,” Kite offered.
“What was Eli like as a child?” he asked.
Kite’s hair rippled like a river down her back as she thought. “She was an assassin,” she said finally. “She was Eli.”
“We grew up together,” said Eli. “And now she’s trying to kill me.”
“I didn’t want to kill you,” said Kite.
They walked for a few minutes in a thick, scratchy silence.
“Well,” said Tav finally, “I can see where your trust issues come from.”
“It was a compulsion.” Kite sighed, the sound of a zephyr caressing the shore.
Eli opened her mouth to argue but stopped. The path before them was blocked by a giant creature with eight spindly legs and eight glittering eyes.
The shadow spider had grown.
“Baby!” cried Kite.
“Holy fuck,” said Cam.
The shadow stretched down either side of the passageway. The rocks vibrated in terror, shaking and chattering. Cam’s body took up the cry, rocks clicking and clattering together. Cam closed his eyes and stepped forward.
“What the hell are you doing?” Eli glared at him.
“It can’t hurt me.” He swallowed. “I think.”
A spiky leg reached for them and fell across Cam’s body. The shadow touched, tickled, shifted across his stony chest. His breathing quickened.
Kite was frowning. “Baby?” She stepped back, unsure now. The creature’s eyes moved to her, the light burning like little flames. “Baby’s just playing,” Kite whispered to them, eyes fixed on the shadow spider. “She doesn’t understand.”
Eli didn’t either. She tried to feel for the threads, to pull them into another part of the world, to open a door to the Coven, but her hands were shaking and she couldn’t concentrate. The creature lunged for Kite, who watched it sadly and made no effort to move. Cam threw himself in front of her and the shadow skipped harmlessly across rock.
Then it turned around and jumped again.
This time Eli was ready. She drew the obsidian blade and stabbed at the cluster of eyes.
“No!” screamed Kite.
The spider fell back, one eye closing, darkness replacing the light.
“Please stop!”
Eli stepped forward, blade raised.
“Please. She’s not a monster.”
“She looks like one,” said Cam.
“So do you,” murmured Eli. Kite was sobbing uncontrollably now, spilling shells and sea glass over her skirts as the spider hesitated, then turned back, preparing for another assault.
Eli grabbed Tav’s elbow. “Can you open a door?”
“What?”
“A door, can you open a door? I can feel them if they already exist, but I can’t make them. You made one before — you can make one again. I know you can! You saw the magic, and you used it or changed it or something. You can take us somewhere else. Please.”
“Can’t you just kill it?”
The spider was preparing to lunge.
“Please, Tav. I don’t want to.”
“It’s going to kill us!”
“Not everything that’s dangerous deserves to die!” Eli didn’t know where the words came from, but she remembered being there when the creature was born, and she couldn’t block out Kite’s wails, and she was coming to understand her own monstrosity and the different kinds of monstrosity that made humans and witches kill.
“It’s not just a thing,” she said urgently.
The spider was coming for them again, and a sticky web was gathering behind its body. Eli kept her eyes fixed on Tav. “Please.”
The spider leaped from the wall and materialized into a thing of smoke and darkness, beautiful and terrifying, like the children or the junkyard or Eli’s own strange and wonderful body.
Eli raised her arm, the shadow’s blood already wet on her blade. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want this.
The creature and the knife.
Kite’s cries piercing the silence.
The spider and the walls vanished. Eli’s blade fell through empty space.
Tav had done it. They had opened a door.
Thirty-Three
Eli threw her arms around Tav, tears coming to her eyes. “Thank you.”
“Uh — you’re welcome.” Tav sounded stunned and awkwardly patted Eli on the back. Flushing, Eli drew back.
Kite flowed forward, her hair a halo of bluegreen light. She looked like an angel. She plucked out a long strand of damp, silken hair and offered it to Tav. “Thank you,” she said gravely.
“It’s an offering,” explained Eli. “Take it.”
“Uh — okay.” Tav wound it around their wrist.
Eli looked around. Purple smoke twined its way through the spindly branches of dead trees. The land was dark and wet, swallowing the sounds of their footsteps. “Where did you bring us?”
Tav shrugged. “I don’t know. It was like last time — I just grabbed for the threads and twisted, somehow. I think I pulled the memory from you, like I did with the Children’s Lair. It’s a place you have a strong emotional connection with. Right?”
Eli frowned. The tree branches were familiar, but she wasn’t sure. “I’ve been here before. But it’s different.”
Kite pressed a cold fingertip against Eli’s arm and began tracing the scars from the red wind. “They used your memory as the door, Eli. They brought us to the island.”
“Our island?”
Kite nodded.
A river wound its way through the reeds that stood upright like an army of bones. The water was black but clear, and the bottom was silty and red. They stood in the centre of the river, on an islet arched like a wave.
Suddenly, Eli understood. She felt it. “I recognize it. But it’s changed.”
“You’ve never brought anyone here but me,” said Kite, her voice a lullaby. “It doesn’t quite trust them.”
The balloon creature spilling bluegreen blood. All those nights, looking up at the stars, Kite’s hair spread across Eli’s chest. The echoes of her name still hung piteously in the white branches, begging her to turn around. But she had walked away, and nothing could change that.
“Maybe it doesn’t trust you anymore,” said Eli, bending down to touch the water, letting the red sand dance through her fingers.
“Maybe you don’t know what to trust.”
Eli turned to her companions. “Everyone okay?”
Tav was bleeding heavily from a cut on their arm. Cam bandaged it as Eli watched.
For the first time, she understood how easily they could die.
When he finished, Cam sat down, scraping rock on rock, and sighed. “So we’re free from the under-labyrinth, but we’re no closer to the Coven.”
“I’m sorry,” said Tav, lowering their head. “I opened the wrong door. I don’t know how we’ll get to the Coven now.”
“Maybe it’s time to turn back,” said Eli, turning to stare into the dark waters. Something in her had broken when Kite plunged the needle into her chest. Something that had started to crack when she kissed Tav, a fracture that had widened with each step, with every smile. The witch’s world was full of malice and hate. It could force a loved one’s hand against you. It could take everyone and everything you loved away from you.