“I guess I am good for something after all,” gasped Cam. “I thought the witch was going to kill me.” He shuddered.
Tav was staring at their palm, an indecipherable expression on their face. The girl could hear their rapid heartbeat and felt the heat rising in their body. From fear or excitement?
“You opened a door in her body,” said the girl. “You tore her essence apart. Thank you for killing her.”
Tav looked up, curling their hand into a fist. “I didn’t mean to. I just saw the magic inside her, and I reached out and … and made her stop.” The fist dropped to their side. “I’ve never killed anyone before.”
“You get used to it.”
“Do I want to get used to it?” Their eyes were bright as two suns.
“If you want to survive.” She met their gaze, but Tav turned way.
“What was the witch doing here, anyway?” Tav asked Kite, whose tears had dried up.
Kite shook her head, hair lying limp and flat. “Nothing good.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they were using the life force from the tree for some kind of magic. Big magic. Forbidden magic.”
They all turned to the tree. Already the bark was beginning to regenerate, the dead skin falling to the earth. The sap veins underneath pulsed with golden light. In the distance, another tree lit up with a golden light. And then another.
“It wants us to follow,” said Kite.
The girl let the blackness slowly fill her eyes and found that the glittering black thread of her own magic lead in the same direction as the golden glowing trees.
“They’re helping,” she said.
They followed the golden trees until they came to a great oak tree, its roots shaping a small cavern.
“I’ve been here before.” Her hand remembered the texture of its bark, the smell of lemon zest and iron.
“It sheltered us once, when we needed it.” Kite rubbed her face against the trunk. “When we were hiding from the red wind. It protects its own.”
“You say that like I belong here,” said the girl.
Kite turned her jellyfish eyes on the assassin. “You belong everywhere.”
Inside the cavern, wound tightly by roots and blanketed by leaves, were seven blades. At the girl’s touch, the tree released them.
“I need to do this on my own. It’s personal.”
“Call us if you need anything,” said Tav, worry in their eyes.
She nodded. They respected her privacy. They left the nameless one alone with her past.
She stared at the knives, the tools of an assassin. Something in her body called out to them, welcomed them, needed them. She ran one finger along glass and felt soothed deep in her bones.
She bent over, hesitated, and then licked the blade. It tasted of dirt and salt and bitter cranberry. It tasted of her. A spark twitched her tongue and with it came a name, although not her own — Circinae. Mother. Maker. Tyrant. A house with a door of charcoal and ash. Cinnamon sticks and sugar cubes. A hand, pushing her into the darkness. Making her fly. The glass blade brought the home that was also a prison into sharp relief. She wondered if she should mourn the lost mother who, in her own way, had tried to save her. But she could not.
She drew back, and the words and images and feelings stopped. There was a tiny cut on the tip of her tongue, although the flat of the blade had been dull. She understood then that some of these memories would hurt. Did she really want them back?
Bracing herself, she picked up a different blade, the frost blade, and licked it. It was cold as ice and burned to the touch. This blade held Kite: desire, loss, sorrow. Blood and bones and revelry. The feelings she had for the Children’s Lair — of grudging respect, of wariness — became illuminated in these memories. She understood that not all memories were needful, but she took them back into her body just the same. She drank the memories from the blade.
Pearl: the taste of fresh coffee and the glow of fluorescent lights. The abandoned stones and hair barrettes in the junkyard that spoke of a damaged bond between human and magic worlds. Great winged beasts and shadows that came to life. The essence of the world that was physical and intangible, feeling and body all at once.
Thorn: every ghost she had ever killed returned to her, and the memories, once bright with satisfaction, were now dull with guilt over the death of the human and the threat to Tav. And behind each ghost was now the knowledge of their own pasts — lost souls from the moon, a people who had lost their home and their lives to the witches’ hunger. Wandering mouths, thirsty for revenge or home, who had found their way to Earth.
Stone: the lingering touch of the forest that saw itself as a protector even as its embrace could harm. The days and nights she spent trapped underground, or in the tallest tree, learning to survive. The feeling of safety on the island or in the Labyrinth. Shelter.
Obsidian: hunger, death, power. A blade that could kill even witches. How had they trusted her with it? Because she had been their tool, and never a threat. Until now. She found herself back in the chamber of the Coven with the floating heads and the painful whiteness of the walls. She found herself full of rage — at herself, at her mother, at the world that made her and used her and discarded her. She was angry, and that anger was life-giving. It was powerful. She could use it. She remembered that feeling of belief, of knowing she had a place. She remembered it, and she rejected it. She had changed, and the blade had changed with her. It understood.
She saved the bone blade for last. She had drunk most of her memories now. If any were missing, had spilled from the blade and her mind, then they were gone, and there would be no retrieving them. That didn’t bother her. She had enough.
She placed the last blade to her tongue and tasted smoke. She knew immediately that this knife contained her name. (The bone blade, the tracker, remembered many names, but its own more than anything.)
Names held power.
She had not chosen her own name.
Once she took this final memory into her body, that name would be re-given to her, relearned, imprinted on her body.
And now she knew who had named her, who had made her, had claimed ownership over her. But she also knew she had grown into the name, had made a home in it, had made it her own. This time, she would choose the name. She would choose the pain of having a mother, the fear of living under the Coven’s gaze. The willfulness of turning away from a future of obedience and toward something unknown and dangerous.
It was, in the end, her name, and no one else’s. She drank the final memories.
Eli sheathed the knives and stood.
She had work to do.
But first — Eli raised the bone blade and cut a handful of hair. Then she carefully wove it around the gnarled roots of the oak.
Thirty-Nine
They were waiting for her in a grove of cedars nearby. She followed their scents. Kite was humming to herself, hair and skirts fluttering around her body. Cam was rubbing a piece of limestone on his neck. Tav’s hands were in their jean pockets, their face grim.
Eli met Tav’s gaze and felt a flush of shame. She remembered standing over their body. That moment when she thought it might be easier if she forgot everything she had learned since meeting them, if she pretended Tav was a ghost. If she let herself be a tool.
How could they welcome her back, after what she had almost done?