Lili Crow - Wayfarer

Her heart labored, and she had a sudden image of her veins as a roadmap, a collection of dusty highways winding through a desert, heading nowhere. Just a thin trickle of red dust where once there had been precious liquid. The Waste around New Haven was deep forest, but there were old dry glass negatives of desert-Waste to the west, sand and cactuses torqued into weird shapes, their begging fingers reaching to snare the unwary and herds of minotaur-shaped cattle roaming. Out west the cities had permeable borders, and curfews, and the Night Watch rode the streets between dusk and dawn to hunt down anything that straggled in from the dangerous wilderness outside.

Maybe Ellie could even run that far, one day.

But everything inside her was dry as dust. Her throat was slick sunbaked glass, and the shuddering jolting of the limousine drew away, as if down a long tunnel. Diamond lightning flashed, and her eyelids fluttered.

Laurissa’s on the poppy. I wonder if she’s firing it with charged sylph-ether.

It didn’t matter.

Cold little kisses all over her body. Ellie stirred, flinched as a dead-white glaring flash speared her brain. The grass underneath her was slick and crushed, and there was a familiar trellis overhead. Frilled roses closed themselves tightly against the lashing rain, and Ellie blinked as she realized she was almost naked, icy beads melting from her clinging dress. Her feet were bare, and there was moss wrapped around her right hand, where she had been clutching a shoe.

Thunder roared, and she sat bolt upright. It took two tries for her to get to her feet, and as she edged under the trellis and onto the crushed-shell path she had to move gingerly. Not only were the shells sharp and her soles tender, but the rose vines stretched too, their thorns long and wicked. One striped across her upper arm, and Ellie cried out thinly, icy water threading down her back.

Vapor lifted from her skin in tiny traceries, fueled by her shivering warmth, and she sucked in sharp breaths as she tried to step lightly. After a little while she could move aside onto the lawn instead, but she still had to pick her way carefully.

Another shutterflash lit the garden, and the rain intensified into a silver curtain. She raised her head, blinking, and for a moment it looked like Auntie’s trim house was steaming and melting too, bricks scorched and pitted, the quartzlike front step runneling, its chimney sagging.

Was something happening to Auntie?

No! Please, no! She picked up the pace, and the steps were sticky. Her feet stung, leaving dark prints on the softening mass.

The warped, rotting door swung wide. “Auntie?” Her voice sounded very small. “Auntie, please be okay . . .”

If she’s not okay, it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have left. You messed everything up. Of course you did. Ellie Sinder, the charity case. Poison. Eating everything up, just like Laurissa.

She heard Mother Heloise’s voice from a long time ago, on some other interminable chapel morning. For Mithrus said, lo, thou becometh what is despised. Cami’s welcome warmth next to her, and choco-beechgum scent from Ruby on her other side.

All that was gone. She had probably fucked them up royally too. Just like everything else.

The walls sagged, and from the kitchen came a rustling, dry cornhusks and straw. Ellie grabbed at the wall, her heart suddenly a dry throbbing chunk of gristle in her throat. “Auntie?” The cherry parlor was a dark cave full of skewed shapes. The whisper made the entire hall ripple, as if her very presence was disturbing the knotted, snarled tangle of energy that lay below everyday reality.

It probably is. God knows you’re a disruption everywhere else, Ell.

The rustling filled her head with the image of cornfields, and a blue velvet jacket. She almost saw the scarecrow jerking and twisting, something inside its stuffed-heavy body flopping and twisting desperately.

“Little Columba.”

The world thudded back into place, and Ellie let out a half-sob. The last beads spilled away; the dress was a cobweb, clinging to steaming, living skin.

Auntie stood on the stairs, a smear of gray and black. Thunder rattled again, shaking the roof, and Ellie let go of the wall. The cottage looked just as it had for the past months, solid and real, the stairs straight and square, the walls creamy white, a gleam from the cinnamon kitchen down the hall. The cherry parlor exhaled a breath of sweetness, its fussy overstuffed furniture grinning. The rustling faded, like a train whistle vanishing into the Waste.

She’s fine. Everything’s going to be okay.

“Auntie!” She tacked away from the wall, grabbed the licorice banister. It was warm and comforting under her palm; it had helped her up the stairs so many times before. “I’m sorry, the dress—Auntie, I thought you were . . .”

The old woman smiled. Her hair was a river of ink; her white, white teeth gleamed. “Little singed dove, come back to the nest with her fiery self.” Little speckles of foxfire revolved around her head. “A good apprentice for Auntie.”

Wait. She’s beautiful . Ellie blinked several times, squeezing hot water out of her eyes. “I had to. Auntie, she’s . . . everything’s wrong , everything’s messed up—”

“Shhhhh.” She beckoned, and her eyes were black from lid to lid. There on the stairs, she was suddenly taller. Instead of a violently colored housedress, soft black motheaten velvet fell in heavy folds. Tiny holes pricked in the folds of night showed white skin, and Ellie’s heart gave another galvanic leap.

She’s younger. She was old before, now she’s not.

“Come to Auntie, sweetheart.” She held out her arms, and the pain was a river. It shook Ellie from top to toe and filled up her nose with snot, slicked her cheeks with wet heat and pulled every tight-strung nerve in her tired, drained body.

It shouldn’t hurt this much to live . But really, what did she have to live for?

Thunder again, shaking the cottage. For a bare moment, Auntie recoiled, her teeth showing. Long, curved needle-teeth flashed like the lightning, so, so white. Then she recovered and held out her long arms again, not bony anymore but smoothly muscled and young. “Come,” she whispered, and her face ran like clay under moving water.

The sobs came continuously now, shaking Ellie back and forth like a small animal in a terrier’s teeth.

Because the face that surfaced from that running-clay formlessness was terribly, softly familiar. The ring on Ellie’s right hand woke with a cascade of blue sparks.

“Sweetheart, little girl.” Her mother smiled with razor teeth, standing on the stairs. “Come upstairs. Let me hold you. Nothing will ever trouble my little dove again, no. Come. There is a room prepared, with a door to lock. It is soft and pleasant here, is it not?”

More thunder, and a sound Ellie couldn’t identify. She stared, her neck cramping as she moved forward, dreamlike, the bruise high up on the left side of her chest flowering with sweet insistent pain. A rhythmic thudding, interspersed with crackles.

“Mommy?” It was a child’s voice, small and questioning. The ring seized her finger in an iron grip, but the thing that wore her mother’s face hissed, baleful sparks lighting in her black eyes, and the circle of charmed silver loosened, sliding free. Laurissa had eyed it hungrily, and now it fell from Ellie’s finger without struggle or qualm. It chimed as it hit the floor, and she put one bare, bleeding foot on the first stair.

“That’s right,” Auntie-no-more cooed softly. “Come to me, little Columba. Little apprentice. Come to me, let me take away the pain.”