I was watching the start of a swordfight, I realized. Or, no—a knife fight. Their blades were short and blunt, made of a glittering metal. They moved lazily, feinting and jabbing, the rest of their party laughing and applauding impressive dodges.
If I look away, something terrible will happen.
The thought struck me out of nowhere and slid away. I kept watching, but something terrible happened anyway. While the people on the ground drank and talked and clapped, the aviatrix charged forward with a sudden vicious leap, stabbing the man in the neck. Before he could fall, she hopped back and sliced across his chest twice, marking a dark X on his shirtfront.
She stood over him, chin up and eyes down. The clapping began in earnest as the man moved weakly on the ground. Dying then dead.
Finch. The tidal horror of what I’d seen done to him came crashing back in, threatening to suck me under. The moan that rose out of me was for him.
The aviatrix looked up from cleaning her blade.
“Who’s that?” she said, standing.
How had I thought her beautiful, a minute ago? Her eyes were pupil-less and perfectly round, and when she licked her lips her tongue looked sick.
“Who are you?” she asked again. “Come out where I can see you.”
I stepped out from the bushes. “I’m nobody. I’m a visitor.”
“From what side?”
“I … from Earth.”
“Come closer,” the aviatrix said, “so we can take a look at you.”
Closer wasn’t good. Closer meant I could see her face more clearly. The flat shine of her eyes and the sticky red of her mouth. The man on the ground looked less human up close.
“My, what big eyes you have,” the woman said, grinning.
I blinked. Was she making a joke?
“I’m looking for the Hazel Wood.” I devoutly ignored the corpse on the ground. “Do you know which way I should go?” If I pretended everything was normal, maybe it would be. Classic monster-under-the-bed logic.
“You’ve made it as far as the Halfway Wood. You’ll find your way from here. Or perhaps you won’t.”
Her voice was soothing. But not so soothing that I felt good about the way her followers were surrounding me. The pregnant woman closed the circle, rubbing her stomach like she’d just eaten something big.
“I’m leaving now,” I said.
“Leaving? Where would you go?” asked a man with slicked blond hair, wearing a workman’s coat.
“I’m … my name is Alice Proserpine.” Hansa knew who I was—maybe they would, too. Maybe being Althea’s granddaughter meant something here.
They didn’t seem to hear me. Their faces were less human every second. They looked like wild animals walking on hind legs.
A sudden pain in my thigh made me gasp. I jammed my hand into my pocket and pulled out the thing stabbing at my skin.
It was the bone. As I gaped at it, it grew to the size of a sword, throbbing whitely in the moonlight.
Maybe it was a sword—was I supposed to fight with it? I gripped the thing clumsily, praying that wasn’t what this tale needed me to do.
Then the bone began to sing.
My love he wooed me
My love he slew me
My love he buried my bones
His love he married
His love I buried
My love now wanders alone
Its voice was distinctly female, filled with such terrible sweetness I thought my heart would crack. I heard a mournful sound from far overhead, and looked up to see a wave of grief pass over the face of the moon.
The bone sang its song again, louder, and the circle of creatures around me fell back. The pregnant one scampered into the trees on all fours, the rest following behind. The aviatrix looked at me with hatred in her eyes, falling to her knees when the bone sang its song a third time.
Everyone had retreated into the woods but the aviatrix, collapsed at my feet. When the song faded, her eyes ticked to mine, brightening. Her hand went to her knife.
The bone twitched restlessly in my hand; its job wasn’t done. I perched on the brink for an endless moment, then lifted it over my head. The woods shifted around me; the moon watched from her nest of clouds. I saw myself as she did, a distant girl who was a stranger. That girl knew how to fight her way out of a fairy tale. That girl brought the bone down into the aviatrix’s chest.
Then I was myself again, feeling the jar of it in my hands as it went through her like a shovel through dirt, gritty. There was no blood, just her sigh, and silence. My stomach lurched, and the back of my throat tasted like a broken battery. Something hard pattered to the ground between the dead woman and my feet. It lay glittering there, carrying the smell of ozone. The moon’s tears. I felt too dirty to touch them.
The bone shrank so quickly I almost dropped it, till it was the size of my littlest finger. I laid it carefully on the dead woman’s chest. She already looked less than a woman. She was a golem, crumbling back into dry earth. Did that make what I’d done easier to live with? I couldn’t decide.
Nobody waited for me in the trees. The aviatrix’s friends had slunk off like cowards. I looked back at the hill to orient myself, then pointed my step toward the Hazel Wood.
The woods grew darker, and the air began to lighten. Around the time I realized it was getting close to dawn, I broke free into an orchard. The trees were low, planted at intervals. They reminded me of the two months Ella and I had spent living and working at an All U Can Pick apple farm.
I had a semi-suburbanite’s understanding of trees—maple, birch, crabapple, oak; willow and pine are easy—but I’d stopped caring to identify what I’d walked around and under and been whipped, tugged, and scratched by hours before.
These trees were different. Their branches were made of something soft and glimmering. When I got close, I could see each trunk, branch, and leaf was cast in a thin, flexible metal.
Silver trees. They looked like Etsy jewelry on steroids. I walked slowly under their branches, glad the sun hadn’t come up yet. When it did, the grove would be blinding. The silver trees gave way to gold, followed by copper, with blood-colored leaves that clattered together with a sound like bones. And I remembered the rhyme.
Look until the leaves turn red
Sew the worlds up with thread
If your journey’s left undone
Fear the rising of the sun.
In the east, if this was still a world where the sun rose in the east, a wedding band of white-gold light inched over the horizon. I started to run. The trees rustled their branches as I passed, flinging down metal leaves to tangle in my hair. I felt the cheap canvas of my sneakers rubbing my heels bloody.
I ran so fast I almost pinwheeled over the edge of the ravine when I reached it. Below my feet, a fall so endless I saw clouds. Ahead, green iron gates, a hazel tree picked out across them. I caught my breath, held it.
Between me and the gates was a stretch of thin air. The sun was edging upward, the sky gathering color. My hip burned hot where the feather nestled in my pocket. I pulled it out and held it before my eyes.
It was gold edged with green, speckled haphazardly with eyes. It shivered to attention in my palm and sent its tickling fibers coursing up my left arm. I squicked out at the sensation, itchy and warm and intimate, like someone sewing a sweater onto my body at the speed of sound. The tickle skated across my back and down my right arm. Before the sun was halfway risen, I had wings as wide as I was tall. They unfurled without my asking them to, lifting me a few inches off the ground. When I panicked, they dropped me on my ass.