Andrea Höst: The Towers, the Moon

"Just don’t try to jump the river," Milo said, and then repeated himself in Latin for Ned and Eleri.

"Do people really try?" Griff asked, eyeing the wide gap to the far bank.

"Tourists," Milo said, shrugging, then gave in to Josette’s insistence that he help toss her into the air.

After a while, they switched to a race across the park, and then a game a bit like crack the whip, where they all joined hands and, using Milo as the anchor, ran around him, trying to keep their momentum up until the person at the end of the string spun dizzily away – and usually the rest of them tumbled over as well.

When it was his turn to be flung, only the embankment railing saved Griff from a dip in the river, and he clung to it laughing, and then caught an unexpected noise nearby, and held his breath to hear it better. Sniffling.

He looked down, and saw the embankment split into a lower walkway, narrower and closer to the water. There were fewer lamp posts down there, and it wasn’t easy to spot the source of the sound, but eventually he made out a hunched figure by one of the chain-linked posts meant to keep people from falling in.

Grinning for what it would look like to Ned and Eleri, he immediately jumped over the railing to the walkway below. The sniffler looked up, and he saw it was a girl, maybe a little younger than him.

"Are you hurt?" he asked. "Do you need help?"

He could see that something was definitely wrong, for the dim light reflected off a slickness at the back of her dress. But she shook her head sharply and muttered something Griff couldn’t work out.

The tone said go away , though. There were times when Griff wanted people to just leave him alone, particularly if he was on a train and his stomach had turned into a knot. But he could say that knowing Ned and Eleri would stay within earshot, while no-one seemed to be around for this girl.

"What are you doing?" Ned asked crossly from above.

"There’s someone hurt down here."

"Ah?" Ned looked about, spotted the girl, and gestured to the others behind her before lifting herself effortlessly over the railing and wafting down. She walked right up to the girl and knelt beside her, keeping it simple by saying: "Je m’appelle Eluned. Et vous?"

"Comment vous appelez-vous?" Griff added helpfully. Ned’s accent was terrible .

The girl shook her head, and in a thick whisper told them to go away. By then, the others had arrived, so Griff explained again, and was surprised when Josette, after a sharp look, simply said: "Chrysalide."

Griff knew the word – even Ned would know the word – though he’d never understood why the French used it, because it was not as if the girl was wrapped in a cocoon. But, just as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, she was growing wings.

Milo had joined them down on the lower walkway, and took the girl’s hands, saying: "Come up. There is no clear thinking in the dark."

The girl obviously didn’t want to budge, but Milo slowly backed away, and she came with him rather than fight. They followed a ramp up, and stopped at a bench under a lamppost.

The girl’s face was like a marrow, but that was because she’d been crying for so long her eyes had swollen up and her skin had gone blotchy. Griff would cry too, if his back was like hers, with two thumb-sized lumps jutting beneath the skin, like boils grown beyond any reasonable size. There were scratch marks all around the top of her shoulders, and she’d torn her dress a little at the back. One of the things had wept a lot of blood and clear liquid, and some of the cloth was stuck to her skin.

Josette leaned forward, peering not at the girl’s back, but at her face. "Aimée Bouchard’s little sister," she said. "I am right, am I not? Nathalie?"

The girl’s flinch was answer enough, and she turned her face away as if that would undo recognition. Milo and Josette exchanged a glance, and then they both looked at the sky. Josette murmured something low, before turning and bouncing away.

The expression on Milo’s face suggested that Josette going off on her own was an unwanted complication. Eleri must have seen that too, because she bounded off in pursuit, not so elegantly, but just as fast. Ned had produced a handkerchief and offered it to the girl.

"Vous…fai…" she began, then grimaced and said in Prytennian: "Ask her if she thinks it would help if we pulled away more of her dress."

The reaction to Griff’s translation was not positive, but Milo promised they would be careful, and eventually Nathalie nodded and bent forward. This allowed Griff to see a sharp, bony tip emerging from the leaking right lump. The left was still swollen to drum-tightness, and he could just imagine how sore and itchy it would be, all at the same time.

Ned and Milo worked carefully together, peeling and tearing, and the girl bit her hand and shuddered, but didn’t make any noise until they were done, and then she curled down even further, so her face was in her knees, and her voice was all muffled when she spoke.

"How far?"

"The left isn’t out yet," Milo said bluntly, though he looked very sorry for the girl. "But soon, I think."

He added something in Latin to Ned, which Griff couldn’t follow so easily, though he got the general idea because he’d already heard how this worked: if both bits of bone poked through before the Towers faded, the girl would vanish as well, returning with the Cour de Lune to their Otherworld. Because she would have become part of the Court, unable to stay in this world during the day.

"Josette has gone for your family," Milo said next, back in French.

"They won’t come. They hate me now. Everyone hates everyone now, and won’t stop shouting and arguing, because of what I am, because of what that shows." She curled even tighter. "Une bâtard."

Griff leaned away from the girl, murmuring to Milo: "What’s a bâtard?"

Milo pulled a wry sort of face, then said to the girl: "None of that is your fault. Your family is still your family, and even if they argue and fight, they would want to be here."

The girl shook her head, and murmured: "Bâtard," again, then added, "I am not Papa’s any more."

Ned, to Griff’s surprise, said softly in Prytennian. "It means a person whose parents didn’t marry."

"Like the children of the Suleviae?" The rulers of Prytennia weren’t allowed to marry, so all their children would be this. But Griff realised his mistake. Nathalie meant that her mother, despite being married to someone else, had had a child to one of the Cour de Lune.

Griff could hardly imagine what it would be like, to be where this girl was. To not only find out his father wasn’t his father, but to be becoming…not himself. Not just taller and hairier, and thinking that perhaps kissing wouldn’t necessarily be like two slugs wrestling, but someone with things coming out of his back. And the children of the Cour de Lune left – became not a proper part of the world – when their wings started. Like all the rest of the Court, they would fade with the night, but they wouldn’t return until their wings finished growing. That could take years and years, so long for some that everyone they knew would be gone before they came back.

It would be like dying before you were dead.

Gingerly, because he didn’t want to disturb her back, Griff touched the girl on her elbow to get her to look up.

"Who taught you to tie your shoelaces?" he asked. "And threw you into the air, and carried you on his shoulders, and clapped the loudest when you came first in a race? Those are the bits that matter. That’s what makes someone your da, not anything else. Nothing changes that."

Nathalie’s swollen eyes filled with tears, and she began to cry again, in floods. Ned somehow got herself in the way, so the girl could clutch her around the waist, though there didn’t look to be any non-painful way for Ned to hug her in return. The sobbing finally caused the left lump to burst, and unpleasant liquid gooshed down the girl’s back.