Meagan Spooner - Shadowlark

A flicker of city magic, twisted and unnatural, touches my senses. Pixies.

“Come on, Tansy—we have to find the list of names for the harvest.”

I start rummaging through Dorian’s kitchen. My heart has risen into my throat, choking me, making my mouth taste like bile. Even though it will change nothing if I find the list, I have to know . Either my name is on it or it isn’t, but at least I can find out if all of this has been worth it—if this time, finally, I’ll be where I belong.

The discordant clang of city magic rises all at once, and something metallic and heavy bangs against the shutters. I slam shut the cupboard I’m searching and back away, scanning the room for a place to hide.

Tansy leaps forward before I can stop her. “Enough,” she cries, breaking her uncharacteristically long silence. “We have to fight.”

She throws open the shutters.

I gather my own magic, ready to smash the pixies into oblivion—but it’s not the city’s spies. It’s Nix, and it makes straight toward me, wearing its favorite bee form.

“They’re coming for you.” Its voice is urgent, clipped. “We have to go, now.”

Who’s coming? The other students in the tunnels? The city’s pixies? Gloriette and her machines? The Iron Wood scouts? The shadows? It doesn’t even matter. “I need to see that list,” I hiss.

As I drop to my knees to search under Dorian’s bed, Tansy heads for the door. “I’ll just go keep watch.”

Nix, hovering behind me, watches her go. “Is that wise?”

The space under the bed is empty. I sit up, turning to look at the pixie. “Is what wise?”

“Letting her out of your sight. What makes you think you can trust her?”

My stomach twists sickeningly. The pixie drops down to perch on Dorian’s dresser amidst the curios—on top of a leather folder. Somehow I’d missed it when I first scanned the room.

“Nix,” I breathe. “That’s it.”

I scramble to my feet. My hands are shaking as they reach for the folder, the one that will contain the list of names for this year’s harvest. Finally I can know whether I’ll be safe. Whether I can stop running.

From the doorway, a flash of light drags my eyes away from the desk. It’s Tansy, glowing with magic—and yet she’s not Tansy anymore. She’s a figure in white, light shining from every pore, pinprick pupils almost lost in white irises. Follow the birds, she says, and I look back down at the folder in my hands.

I pry it open. It’s empty, save for a single object—my brother’s bird, folded out of old, yellowing paper. As I watch, the edges begin to turn black, as if burned by invisible fire. The scorch marks race inward until the entire bird is consumed. It flaps its wings once, its song more a scream than music. I reach out to try to take it, save it, and it gives way to my touch.

In seconds the bird crumbles away to nothing—nothing except the shadow staining my fingertips.

I jerked awake, a ragged sound tearing out of my throat. The world was dark and white, and for a moment I was back in the sewer tunnel, watching the mortar hiss into the dank water below. Then I blinked, and reality reasserted itself. Snow was falling all around me, frigid ice water rolling down my neck as the flakes melted against my cheeks.

“Are you all right?”

Nix. It hovered a few feet away, the whirring of its clockwork mechanisms sluggish and sleepy.

“What?” My voice was hoarse, like I’d been screaming. “No. Yes, I’m fine.”

“You were dreaming.”

I grabbed for my blanket to scrub away the water on my face. “So? What do you know about dreams?” It was barely predawn, only the faintest hint of light to the east to tell of morning’s approach. What had woken me? The dream? Or something else?

Nix dropped down onto the end of the blanket by my feet. “She’s out scouting the city.”

“Who is?”

“That other one.”

I glanced across the embers of the fire at the empty tangle of snow-covered blankets there. Closing my eyes, I tried to make my mind work through the cold and the exhaustion and the remnants of my dream.

The snow had begun a week after I left the Iron Wood, and Tansy had caught up with me only a few days after that. I’d sensed something out there following me, but only sporadically. The fact that her magic only worked in the rain and humidity meant that here, in this dry, frigid air, most of it was buried deep.

I thought I knew who—or what—was following me. I’d stopped and waited, knowing that if it was him, he’d catch up to me. Better to meet him on my terms, find out if he was human or shadow—if he was the boy who’d kissed me or the animal who would’ve tried to kill me but for the bars of his cage.

I wasn’t ready for the stab of disappointment that jolted through me when I saw Tansy’s face emerging from the gloom.

“The truth,” she’d said, “is that I couldn’t stop thinking what trouble you could get into. No magic, no weapons. Alone except for that thing.” She jerked her chin at Nix, who crouched sullenly on the opposite side of the fire, watching Tansy in unblinking, frosty silence.

She had followed me at a distance, respecting my desire to travel alone, but after the snow started she was worried I didn’t know how to handle myself in the cold, and came in to check on me.

I knew she was worried about him. I wasn’t the only one certain I’d be followed as I headed north, away from the safety of the Iron Wood. “He would’ve fooled anyone,” she said, mistaking my silence for shame when she brought it up. “And you didn’t know that They turn human when exposed to magic. It’s not your fault. If he ever shows his face again, he’ll pay.”

I thought of the boy in the threadbare shirt, whose pale blue eyes could be so fierce and so soft. I thought of him swimming in the summer lake, and the utter contentment on his face after he’d finished eating dinner in the clearing with the bees. I thought of that last piercing look before we parted, and I held my tongue.

We kept following the ruins of the highway marked on the map in Dorian’s house, and we came upon a ridge overlooking the city the next day. A once-vast city that now lay entirely in ruins.

Tansy wanted to head into the remnants of the city immediately, but I decided we’d make camp on the ridge and wait. If there was anyone living there, we’d be able to see the signs of it—smoke rising from chimneys, people moving around the streets. I was sick of flying headlong into situations I knew nothing about. We agreed to stay a couple of days—which, I realized, sleep-muddled mind slow to comprehend, had passed. Unless Tansy had found anything, we’d be heading down into the city today.

I shivered, though I could not be sure if it was because I was cold or because I was frightened. I shoved a hand deep into my pocket until my fingers found the blunt, creased contours of my brother’s bird.

I disentangled myself from my blanket and shoved on my boots. Wrapping my heavy coat around my shoulders, I stepped out past our muddy campsite in the shelter of a ruined restaurant and into the freshly fallen snow. I could see the remnants of Tansy’s tracks, half-covered, leading away toward the city. She was always going off on her own, impatient—old habits died hard, she said, and she was used to scouting.

I took a deep breath, trying to shake the uneasiness that lingered in the wake of my dream. There was no reason not to trust Tansy’s motives for following me. It was only my subconscious reacting to one too many betrayals, looking for the next blow before it landed.