Names can free us, or they can break us.
She cocked her head to one side and frowned, the blood warm and sticky on her hand.
“Who’s Eli?”
Thirty-Six
Underneath her, a blue-and-white planet slowly bled to death, while all around her stars and planets and comets danced and fought and fell in love. The girl with no name stood. She felt the threat from the great wings and reached for her hips, her hand falling over a belt with many straps. What did her hands grasp for? They felt empty. A surge of fear lit up her body like a light switch turning on.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“She’s damaged,” said the wings. “The Coven will not be pleased.”
“I can remake her. I can —”
The wings extended to their full breadth. The girl could taste the sweetness of overripe magic like honey and rotting fruit. The woman stopped speaking and fell to her knees.
“Forgive us,” she sobbed.
Even the girl knew that this creature could not bring forgiveness.
He opened his mouth, and bees poured out.
They buzzed furiously toward the girl. The girl kept her eyes open, even when they started stinging. It was only pain. The discarded bodies of the insects hung in the air like a prayer to death.
The woman, crouched on the ground in a pool of her own muddy tears, suddenly rose up, her desperation like a beacon in the dark. The girl’s eyes shuttered and changed somehow, and she could see the redorange magic blazing under the skin of the witch and somehow understood that the skin-and-bone body was not her true form.
“There is only one way that bird mothers teach their daughters to fly,” she said, “and it’s your time to learn, little one.” She walked into the cloud of pain and pushed the girl off the platform.
Air under her feet. Nothing to hold on to for years and years. Just empty space.
She was falling, or maybe flying.
Different strands of magic were already winding themselves around the woman who claimed to be her mother, until she was completely wrapped in the grip of the Coven. The girl watched as the magic hardened into the shell of a beehive, and then the woman was gone. As the girl floated away, the hive became smaller and smaller, until it was the size of a bee, and then disappeared entirely.
She was floating in space.
She turned her head to watch the bloody planet far away. Could she make it that far? Why was it dying?
Was she dying?
A rush of wings. The taste of graveyard dirt in her mouth.
The wings were coming for her.
She had nowhere to run, and no wings of her own to carry her. Her fingers were still twitching for a familiar weight. She opened her mouth and teeth spilled out, long and curved and thirsting for magic. The cuts on her arms had hardened into lines of granite. It would take the wings a long time to tear her body apart. The thought gave her grim satisfaction.
The stars started to sing.
Softly, gently, a lullaby of heat and light and hurt and love. A song of loneliness that cut the girl to the core. She understood loneliness. The music swelled in her body, brushing her clavicle. It sounded like home.
A blue girl appeared before her, and the song intensified.
I won’t let them take you, the thought poured itself into the nameless one’s mind.
Who are you? she thought back, but no one answered.
And then there were wings that cut through the fabric of time and space like a scalpel cuts through flesh, and the feathers were cutting into the blue girl.
The blue girl held up a single daisy as an offering. The petals wilted, one by one falling into the universe. They looked like snowflakes in the dark.
One stroke, one feather, and the severed head of the flower tumbled from the stalk. The blue girl shoved it in her mouth and chewed.
The wings didn’t hesitate. They cut through the body of the blue girl. Her song of pain burst into life, and all the stars and planets brightened at her cry, as if they, too, were feeling her pain. Her body fell away like discarded wrapping paper. Her face was the last part of her to collapse, and the mouth spat out a gummy, saliva-covered, half-chewed flower.
A sun blazed into life. Aquamarine fire. The wings reared back, as if burned by its presence.
Go through the door.
The half-eaten flower punctured a hole in space, and through the gap, the girl could see the naked arms of trees.
I have to kill it.
The voice sounded remorseful, but the girl with no name felt no regret. Should she trust this strange creature, this little sun? The voice was familiar, and it soothed her soul. She felt its warmth and somehow that was enough. She reached for the doorway.
As she passed through, she could feel the heat of a sun that would incinerate anything that came too close. She looked back over her shoulder. The bluegreen essence was already regrowing a body, and the last thing the nameless one saw before she passed through the doorway was the pretty face of a blue girl eating the creature’s head.
Thirty-Seven
Rock pressing against her spine. The necks of trees turning so the invisible eyes of the forest could watch her. The nameless one extended her lizard tongue to taste the air. It was heavy with salt. Her vision was blurry until she switched eyes, and then she could see strange auras around everything. It gave her a headache, so she switched back.
Someone brought her a pair of badly scratched glasses, and her vision improved. “Are you hurt?” A man with a drooping moustache and worry in his eyes reached for her. She hissed and showed her teeth. He drew back, eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”
She was on all fours, crawling like the animal she was. He smelled like fear, and she wondered if he was her intended prey. She felt an overwhelming urge to kill.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” His voice wavered. “Eli?”
“Why is she taking so fucking long?”
The girl’s attention was drawn to another person standing in shadow. They wore dark jeans and a leather jacket, and their hair was a shocking violet. Their arms were outstretched and their eyes were narrowed, facing the puncture in matter. Sweat dripped down their nose. The girl suddenly understood: they were keeping the doorway open.
A moment later, the blue girl fell through the tear and collapsed onto the island, her hair writhing like worms about to be stuck on a hook. “Close it,” she gasped and then coughed up a handful of albatross feathers.
Purple Hair dropped their arms and the wound healed itself. They wiped the sweat from their face. “Jesus Christ, you took your damn time. What happened?”
“He would have told the Coven,” said the blue girl, rising to her knees. She began to comb her hair with very long, very thin fingers.
“So he’s dead?”
A secret smile. A voice like a secret. “He was delicious.”
The nameless one lunged. Blue’s essence flared up and knocked her down. “Bad girl,” she chided.
“What’s wrong with her?” said the man. “She looks like she’s going to bite me.”
“Oh, that,” replied Blue, her hair mesmerizing in undulating waves. “She’s lost her memory.”
“What?!”
“Oh, don’t worry, what’s lost can be found again.”
The nameless one listened to this exchange with interest as she stared up at the constellations overhead. She had been up there just moments ago, and this blue creature had saved her. That was something. Not enough for trust, but a start. Her eyes fell on the purple-haired human.