“I’m fine,” I tell them. “Re­ally.” My face is an easy smile, I think. Does it sat­isfy them? They be­lieve me, I think. They smile back.

“We should hang out, yeah?” says Rachel. “Per­haps the week­end?”

We could see a movie or some­thing. It would be fun. It should be fun. I can do it. I can’t. “Yeah,” I say. It won’t hap­pen. She knows, does­n’t she?

“See you?” asks Rachel.

‘Could you stay?’ I ask, ‘For a bit?’ Only, I don’t say it. It’s not the kind of thing you say. They would­n’t want to hear it. They want to leave.

‘The week­end,’ I agree, but I don’t. I could­n’t. I’d weigh them down.

“I— Yeah,” I say, fi­nally. I can’t look at her, but I need her, but I don’t—

“You okay?” asks Rachel.

‘No,’ I say. But I can’t. I can’t be weak.

‘I don’t know,’ I try, but I can’t get it out. I can’t be that weight.

‘Help me!’ But the scream does not leave my lips. Not in front of Dan.

“Yeah, yeah, just— it’s a tir­ing day, you know?” I say. She’ll ac­cept it. Every­one does. Every day is tir­ing for every­one. Just go, go—

“C’­mon, Dan,” said Rachel. “See you, Emily!”

They walk away. I hear their foot­steps for min­utes.

They’re good friends. They can’t be good friends. I don’t let them be good friends. They’ll re­al­ize even­tu­ally. They’ll know me. They’ll see me. I can’t see me. I can’t. The pu­tres­cence makes me flinch away in shame, hid­ing my face from no one, alone and heavy on the bench.

I sink into wa­ter.

Un­less they harm oth­ers, the Great Pro­tec­tor Lee had pro­claimed, they must be pro­tected.

But El­lie, Rose, and Lau­ren had harmed no­body.

Tim­o­thy

“No,” Tim­o­thy had told her. (he should know.) (should­n’t he?) (he told him­self so.)

He could boast many years of ex­pe­ri­ence, but not that many, but more than peo­ple thought. He could claim a good knowl­edge of him­self, but still he ap­proved more on good days than bad— but then, that had been a good day.

Most women dreamed of be­ing Pro­tec­tors—of watch­ing over the Pro­tec­torate and all who dwelled within its Great Pro­tec­tions, whether they have great Power or small; of Pro­tect­ing them from out­siders who would at­tack them; of Pro­tect­ing them from each other.

But few had suf­fi­cient Power to be a Pro­tec­tor. For every ten women who trained to be a Pro­tec­tor, rarely more than one would make the cut. (it was­n’t that boys could­n’t be Pro­tec­tors, tim­o­thy him­self—but that was dif­fer­ent and it mat­tered less in re­cent years any­way.)

It was Tim­o­th­y’s job to eval­u­ate the stu­dents, and to de­cide who made the cut. The rest would go home and pro­vide for their fam­i­lies—they were, in a way, lucky. Their train­ing would let them find pres­ti­gious oc­cu­pa­tions: from Power con­struc­tion to pre­shap­ing to spe­cial re­search, they could do most any­thing they de­sired. The boys would flock to them.

“No,” Tim­o­thy had told El­lie. She did not make the cut. She had spo­ken freely with him. She even let slip some of what she could do. She cer­tainly had Power. But she could never be a Pro­tec­tor.

“No,” he had told her, and she had seemed to wilt. Tim­o­thy was ac­cus­tomed to it.

Tim­o­thy had heard that El­lie was close to Esor and Lau­ren, and cer­tainly Lau­ren and even Esor could wield Power ef­fec­tively enough. Tim­o­thy still sus­pected that Lau­ren had been re­spon­si­ble for the ex­plo­sion two years back. (per­haps El­lie had helped.) But even with Lau­ren’s guid­ance, El­lie would never be what she needed to be. Not that El­lie did not have other qual­i­ties.

He looked out his win­dows—shaped from Power rather than glass (it had taken a lot from him.) Be­low stretched the Pro­tec­torate. The sun, mid-morn­ing, shone off the dewy leaves of the green vines scal­ing the an­cient struc­tures reach­ing for the sky. It was Bold. Beau­ti­ful. Safe.

“A Sink if I ever saw one,” Tim­o­thy had told Dorel, a hazy af­ter­noon a few weeks back (just hours af­ter he had re­jected her.) (just hours be­fore she died.)

Tim­o­thy was amazed to call Dorel a friend: Dorel was one of the two Great Pro­tec­tors. He even hon­ored Tim­o­thy with his pres­ence twice weekly for tea (when he was­n’t too busy.)

Tim­o­thy did­n’t know pre­cisely what a Sink was. Few did. But they’d all heard the sto­ries, and he was rea­son­ably cer­tain El­lie was one.

Dorel’s eyes had gleamed (tim­o­th­y’s heart had warmed.)

Tim­o­thy was­n’t sure El­lie had meant to let it slip; she had been des­per­ate for him to change his mind and al­low her to be­come a Pro­tec­tor. She had­n’t wanted any­one but her friends to know. They’d use her, she had thought. But Dorel would­n’t use her (tim­o­thy knew Dorel). He was The Keeper. He cared for peo­ple. Al­ways warm. Al­ways wel­com­ing. Al­ways there. (al­ways.)

Dorel was never far, even when he was. Out the win­dows Tim­o­thy could al­ways see him, tow­er­ing over the Pro­tec­torate, faith­fully stand­ing tall with his sis­ter Lee, The Met­tle (the other Great Pro­tec­tor.) Tim­o­thy could al­ways feel his un­fail­ing Power rooted in the stone fig­ures—per­haps the fig­ures weren’t even stone, but Power it­self—watch­ing over the Pro­tec­torate with a warm, lov­ing ca­ress.

Dorel had missed a few teas (but tim­o­thy had been fine.) Things had been busy (al­ways busy.) But to­day, he had come. That was enough. (enough.)

“Only left her arm?” Tim­o­thy had asked. Dorel had sim­ply nod­ded. “She was the Huntress’s first, then?”

“A mo­ment of chaos,” Dorel had agreed, “and then she was gone, El­lie’s re­mains with her. Only her arm left be­hind. Her right one, I be­lieve.”

Dorel had glanced at Tim­o­thy, his face un­read­able. (sad?) (not con­cerned.)

Had Lau­ren been there in the West­ern Hall with El­lie, or even had Esor, things would’ve been dif­fer­ent. The Huntress would not have taken her. Tim­o­thy was cer­tain. In­stead, El­lie had been alone in the west­ern hall. (she had to have been.) (tim­o­thy was cer­tain.) (tim­o­thy did­n’t ask.)

This ‘Huntress’ had at­tacked her, one who would never have seen it com­ing.

Tim­o­thy thought he had been sav­ing her. She would not have lasted a day as a Pro­tec­tor. Not with­out sight. Not with­out the abil­ity to use Power to re­place it.

Lau­ren and Esor would’ve made bet­ter part­ners, any­way; they’d cer­tainly be bet­ter to­gether than Lau­ren and El­lie (tim­o­thy had heard the ru­mors about the two.) (he did not ap­prove.) But Tim­o­thy had judged El­lie upon her own mer­its.

El­lie would have been bet­ter off back home with her fa­ther (she’d have been missed, surely.) She’d have been able to use her Power to help her fa­ther around the house. And one day, any man would’ve been happy to be hers, in spite of her im­ped­i­ment. It was a pity she would­n’t have been able to work. But, while not tra­di­tional, she could be the one to stay at home.

Even had Tim­o­thy said “Yes,” El­lie would have been alone (she would have.) She would’ve still been in that hall (alone.) The Huntress still would have taken her (the Huntress was strong.)

“Twelve in twelve days?” Tim­o­thy had asked. Dorel had only nod­ded. Af­ter El­lie, the Huntress had ram­paged, killing Pro­tec­tor af­ter Pro­tec­tor. She had left be­hind only head­less bod­ies, their right arms torn off, aban­doned alone in wrecked build­ings. It should­n’t be pos­si­ble. (the Pro­tec­torate was safe.)

Tim­o­thy turned from the win­dows. Per­haps an­other cup of tea? He picked up Dorel’s (half-empty.) Dorel had left in a hurry. Things were busy (busy.) He had gone, come back five sec­onds later for one last good bye, then gone again with a fi­nal long­ing look farewell.

Per­haps if Tim­o­thy carved out some of the Pro­tec­tions around his home, Dorel could shave a few min­utes over fly­ing: he could just fade in and out. Tim­o­thy would have to keep the area clear; would­n’t do for Dorel to fade into a stray tree branch— not that Dorel’s Power would­n’t be able to shove a tree branch away, of course. Tim­o­thy was sure he could do it. Not many had the Power to al­ter the Great Pro­tec­tions (even in such mi­nus­cule ways), but a good grasp of the­ory could of­ten equal great Power. (it had got­ten Tim­o­thy this far.)

But even if Tim­o­thy al­tered the pro­tec­tions, busy would still be busy. (Dorel would still be Dorel.)

Tim­o­thy sat upon his couch (Dorel had been there, lean­ing against him), a fresh cup in his hands, the warm steam fil­ter­ing through his nose… He could al­most imag—

Bang!

Wooden spears, wall gone Crash! Teacup, floor, steamy liq­uid seep­ing into tile—

Dust, Rub­ble

It cleared and (she was a ru­mor.) (noth­ing mor

The Huntress stood.

(She was­n’t The Huntress.) (the Huntress was tall and mena

She stepped for­wards. The floor shook with each step.

Tim­o­thy ran Down the hall To­wards the bed­room (he was just pow­er­ful enough for a wand but he should­n’t need one in his own hom

Smash! Bed­room door gone In­stead her, stand­ing Big­ger

he scram­bled away To the front

Bang! Shards of table (the pain was tim­o­th­y’s imag­i­nat

Crash! his counter

Crunch! (The Pro­tec­tions would keep him sa

The Huntress raised her sword. It was al­most as large as she (was­n’t she smaller?)

tim­o­thy raised his hand. Breathe; let it ebb, flow fee­bly

into wisps of Power

(the Power would save him.) (barely power.)

eas­ily bat­ted away with blunt swings, be­com­ing

Power,

slam­ming into lungs air­land­cough (had­n’t he been in the livi

She stepped through what re­mained of his liv­ing room. With each step she grew. Her tie blew be­hind her with her long blonde hair. Her face—fa­mil­iar—was cal­cu­lated rage.

She took a small step back to coun­ter­bal­ance her­self as she stopped be­fore him.

Her hand His throat (his toes no longer on the groun

“For every lie you tell,” she growled, “I will cut off a fin­ger.”

fly­air­grass­breathe (he could run, hide in the fores

She ap­proached him again, her feet tread­ing softly through the grass.

“For every truth,” she whis­pered, her voice lyri­cal and sweet, “I’ll cut off a toe.”

“The Pro­tec­tions—” he gasped

Her hand grabbed his. She pulled it into the air, him along with it (he was so heavy.)

Her sword tore (so slowly.)

Bloody fin­ger on ground Screams and—

“Who did you tell?” she com­manded.

“i don’t un­der­stand!” he ex­claimed (he did­n’t he did­n’t he did

She tilted her head. Stared into him.

“No, no please—”

His hand was in the air again. She pulled it to­wards her. Tugged at his pinky. Then his pointer. Fi­nally, she se­lected his thumb.

Her sword pulled (again so slow

Tim­o­thy looked into her eyes: Pain and

“You’re— you’re him!” he re­al­ized.

Rage Sword clat­tered on floor Hands around his wrist Twist­ing

Bone splat­tered across Tim­o­th­y’s face (the pain hit a mo­ment late

“You— you said Fin­gers,” he gasped.

Her face calm again, her sword flew to her hand. Tim­o­thy felt the world shift.

His hair was touch­ing the ground. A bloody mess was inches from his eyes (was it his hand?)

his shoe hit the ground

his toe next

(he had told the truth.)

(she had said fin­gers for lies.) (not hands.)

Her face swung into view. A small smile danced upon her lips, twisted del­i­cately around thoughts she daren’t think (Tim­o­thy did not know the feel­ing) (but tim­o­thy could see it in her)

“Who did you tell?”

(tim­o­thy daren’t think of it.)

El­lie and Lau­ren

Lau­ren was sure El­lie would make the cut. But they would­n’t re­ally know un­til their eval­u­a­tions, and those were still a year off. What­ever the case, El­lie was not go­ing back. She’d leave the Pro­tec­torate first.

“It won’t come to that,” Lau­ren in­sisted.

“Stop mov­ing,” said El­lie. She’d take any ex­cuse to touch Lau­ren—not that she needed any—but trac­ing was one of her fa­vorites. El­lie could al­most see the Power as she stroked it gen­tly into in­tri­cate de­signs upon Lau­ren’s back. Rose had taught her, and had gifted her the pen, and it suited her per­fectly.

“I’d man­age, out there,” El­lie said.

El­lie only de­tected the slight­est bit of doubt as Lau­ren hes­i­tated. “I know,” said Lau­ren, “but you won’t have to. We’ll be—“

“Stay still!”

“Even if they did­n’t ac­cept you, which is ridicu­lous, you’re cer­tainly Pow­er­ful enough to— even if they don’t,” Lau­ren said. “We will be with you. Rose and I.”

El­lie put the pen down on the bed, a few inches to her right, its tip still hum­ming.

“Yes but what if they take you and Rose but not me? I can’t ex­actly tag along to the Pro­tec­to­rum if I’m not a Pro­tec­tor, can I?” asked El­lie. “I’m just say­ing, I could—“

“In what world would they take me and not you?” asked Lau­ren.

El­lie flicked her hand, and heard the pen re­turn to its spot on the desk.

“Here,” she said, pat­ting on the bed be­side her. She felt her­self sink and tilt as Lau­ren sat.

“We’d go with you, El­lie,” said Lau­ren. “If they did­n’t ac­cept you—which they will—and you could­n’t come with us—which would­n’t hap­pen—then, we’d go with you, El­lie.”

El­lie felt Lau­ren’s arm wrap be­hind her, and leaned into it, rest­ing her head on Lau­ren’s shoul­der.

“You won’t be alone,” said Lau­ren.

“Alone’s bet­ter than go­ing back.”

“You won’t.”

“I won’t.”

“You won’t be alone,” said Lau­ren.

El­lie felt Lau­ren’s arm pull her close. She put her own arm around Lau­ren, and gripped her tightly.

“I won’t.”

Rose

They called her ‘Esor,’ and they called her ‘him.’ She called her­self ‘Rose.’ It was con­ve­nient. She was­n’t the tallest, her blonde hair was very short, and she looked rather— but she did­n’t like to think about it.

“He went that way,” she heard from around the way. They must have heard her. She hur­ried her pace.

She had planned to give them a rose. It was­n’t a ro­man­tic flower—not a daisy, cer­tainly, even if she had wanted to. It was only a rose. She had sculpted it from Power. It had co­a­lesced gen­tly into form, wrap­ping del­i­cately around it­self. In the evenings it would shine gen­tly. It was as beau­ti­ful of a rose as Rose could man­age, but Rose was­n’t all that good.

Rose had seen them there by the wa­ter. She did­n’t mean to stare. She walked that way of­ten, and they were of­ten there. Some­times they’d be talk­ing, just sit­ting in the grass; some­times, they’d be walk­ing by the wa­ter, feet tread­ing through the sand; other times, Rose would see them prac­tic­ing their lanc­ing, shoot­ing blue, red, and yel­low jets of Power at rocks and boul­ders, eas­ily smash­ing them apart.

The shorter one was Lau­ren. She was­n’t re­ally that short; rather, her friend El­lie re­ally was that tall. Rose rather liked their heights. She also liked their hair. Lau­ren’s was long and black, and would bounce and shim­mer in the sun as she moved. El­lie’s was red, just brush­ing her shoul­ders, and was al­ways neat.

Lau­ren would al­ways try to make El­lie laugh. And oc­ca­sion­ally, El­lie would, and the sound of it would tickle the lap­ping waves.

Rose had found them beau­ti­ful, and had re­al­ized she wanted to tell them so. She knew what they were. Too many did. They were to­gether. But it did­n’t mat­ter, Rose did­n’t think, so long as to­gether they were happy. Rose wished she had some­one to be happy with, too. And, while Rose did­n’t want to ad­mit it, Rose wished she was happy with El­lie and Lau­ren.

So, Rose had made them the rose, and Rose had ap­proached them. But as Rose neared, she saw them sit­ting in the muddy grass, watch­ing the waves, talk­ing about var­i­ous the­o­ries of Power—Rose did­n’t know much the­ory, she had al­ways ig­nored it, she had al­ways pos­sessed enough Power with­out such rig­or­ous study, and—

And Rose rec­og­nized: they were al­ready happy. To­gether.

So, Rose turned away, rose still in her hand. A rose would not have been wanted.

They must have seen or heard her.

“Wait,” called Lau­ren.

“Lau­ren, if you’re go­ing to pull me along, watch where you’re go­ing!” ad­mon­ished the El­lie.

“Oh,” said Lau­ren. “Sorry, I for­got— I mean… Oh, there you are.”

As Rose let her­self come to a stop, she felt hear heart rise, and she felt her heart fall. That fan­tas­ti­cal part of her was scream­ing out—they no­ticed her!—but the darker part was cow­er­ing, pound­ing at her chest, des­per­ately scream­ing at her to run.

“She thought you were in­ter­est­ing,” said El­lie.

“El­lie, it was­n’t like that—“

“I be­lieve it was to do with the way you, you know,” said El­lie, wav­ing her hand around. “In our classes, I mean. She may have de­vel­oped a crush. You must par­don her.”

A crush? For a split-sec­ond, she wanted to smile, but— They weren’t se­ri­ous. Peo­ple of­ten weren’t, with Rose.

They would­n’t truly think ‘Es­or’ ca­pa­ble of wield­ing a wand, barely into ‘his’ first year study­ing to be a Pro­tec­tor. El­lie and Lau­ren, like the rest of Rose’s class­mates, like all her teach­ers, would only see ‘him’ reach­ing for some­thing she could never be.

Rose was­n’t cer­tain they were wrong, no mat­ter how dearly she dreamed they were. In her dreams, she’d sum­mon her Power, she’d send it ca­reen­ing away—not into her teach­ers and class­mates, she would­n’t hurt them; they had done much to her, but not any­thing like that.

In those dreams, Rose would make some show of it; she’d show she was strong, she’d prove that she was more than—

“You use a wand, right?” asked Lau­ren.

“If I don’t have enough Power for a wand,” Rose said, tersely, “That is my con­cern.”

“That’s not—“ Lau­ren be­gan, but her eyes shifted to the left. Rose’s eyes fol­lowed.

There be­side her was the rose she had brought for them. It hov­ered, now the size of a full staff. It glowed and hummed. Power begged to es­cape it.

Rose’s eyes shifted back to the pair. Some­thing lit up in Lau­ren’s eyes. El­lie took a small breath.

Rose’s arms had not left her sides. She was­n’t sure she could move them if she tried. She was­n’t sure what she was do­ing, ex­cept she knew she should­n’t have been do­ing it.

But she could­n’t stop her­self. That itch to prove her­self could not this time be sti­fled. She had wanted more from El­lie and Lau­ren. they had been mocked by stu­dent and teacher, just as Rose had, for what they were, and for El­lie’s blind­ness. Rose was more than they thought, she was—

A crack­ling white beam of Power es­caped the thorny staff. It leaped out across the wa­ter, cleared straight through the Great Pro­tec­tions, to the rub­ble-laden is­land a mile away—

White— it blinds! Lau­ren shielded her eyes, it was­n’t enough—

“Cover your ears,” Lau­ren called to El­lie, and cov­ered her own.

Lau­ren waited— five… four… three… two…

Bang! Lungs, air es­caped, and Lau­ren stum­bled—

“El­lie!” she yelled, her voice lost in the wave. Wa­ter crashed upon them, and a big­ger wave was com­ing…

When it had cleared, Rose had gone.

In her dreams, she had shown them, for what­ever that had meant. But her dreams had never told her what would fol­low: would they fear her? Would they tell oth­ers? Who would they tell?

Rose had to leave. But El­lie and Lau­ren would be found. And it would­n’t mat­ter what they told to who, be­cause no­body would be­lieve, not that ‘Es­or’ had—

But Lau­ren and El­lie would be fine, would­n’t they? They were ex­pected to be Pow­er­ful, in spite of their re­la­tion­ship, they were still women on their way to be­ing Pro­tec­tors… But they were only in their first year, just like Rose, and first year stu­dents should­n’t be able to do that.

Lau­ren and El­lie would be found, and they would be blamed. They would be feared, or worse. But they’d de­serve it, would­n’t they? They were just like the rest. But like the rest, they only be­lieved what they be­lieved be­cause that’s what they al­ways knew; it was hardly their fault—

Rose had to go back.

“Come with me,” she told them. “Quickly.”

Al­ready Rose could hear oth­ers ap­proach­ing. They were al­most cer­tainly Pro­tec­tors—the Pro­tec­tions would have screamed at them as the beam of Power blasted through, and even if they did­n’t, the Pro­tec­tors would surely have no­ticed as the ex­plo­sion shook the whole Pro­tec­torate. Blow­ing up the is­land had prob­a­bly bro­ken sev­eral rules.

A lance of Power leaped to­wards them, but El­lie bat­ted it away. Rose’s eye­brows rose: not many could feel Power well enough to know where it was (El­lie, of course, could not see it).

“Run, Esor,” said El­lie. “We’ll tell them it was us, that Lau­ren and I did it to­gether—“

Rose felt that darker, cow­er­ing part of her­self fall away. Hear heart rose, and be­fore it could re­turn—

“Call me Rose,” she said. “And I think you both are beau­ti­ful.”

She grabbed their arms.

Bang!

They were gone.

Emily

“Emily! I’m just say­ing— Emily!” yelled Al­ice.

Emily kept walk­ing.

Emi­ly’s mother had used a wand. It had been care­fully carved from wood har­vested from out­side the Pro­tec­torate. Very ex­pen­sive. Wands had been rar­i­ties.

Now, any­one with enough Power to use one could make their own any time they wanted. In­stead of wood, they were made from Power it­self. They were there when needed. They were gone when not.

Emily wanted a wand. A real wand. Wood, del­i­cately carved into gen­tle curves wrapped around a smile, ready to ac­cept as Emi­ly’s Power en­tered it.

She knew it was silly. Point­less. Wands of Power worked more ef­fi­ciently than wands of wood, any­way. But she wanted one any­way, no mat­ter what Al­ice said.

Would her mother have parted with her wand? Emily could hardly re­mem­ber her with­out it. Even in death, it had been with her, shoved through her eye socket by her mur­derer (who Emily would one day see to the death of).

Her fa­ther had­n’t had much Power. Her mother had loved him any­way. She had been a Pro­tec­tor, and had brought home enough for them all. She’d give him al­ready-shaped Power, and her wand, and he could wield it, al­most be­liev­ing it was his own.

He had tried, in her ab­sence, but had­n’t lasted long. He had­n’t even had enough Power to lift. He had al­most enough to send mes­sages through the chan­nels, but was not quick enough to tran­scribe and record.

“I’m… I know I’m not…” He had tried to tell Emily he was sorry. He had thought maybe this time, things would be dif­fer­ent. He had just in­ter­viewed with Dorel, the Keeper. Per­haps, he had thought, if Dorel could­n’t of­fer a job, he could still help? He was the Keeper. He cared for all.

But for all his car­ing, he could not help Emi­ly’s fa­ther.

“I love you, Emily,” her fa­ther had told her. “And… You’ll be al­right, okay? Dorel said… Well. I love you, honey. Please, be… Be good.”

He left that evening. Walked out of the Pro­tec­torate. Out of the Pro­tec­tions. He was al­most cer­tainly dead. If he had­n’t been killed by out­siders, the free Power out­side the Great Pro­tec­tions would have bro­ken him: his own Power would not be strong enough to keep him to­gether for long.

Dorel had taken Emily in.

If they had just given her fa­ther a chance… A cheap wand, some pre­shaped Power—they weren’t that ex­pen­sive. If she had just been a cou­ple of years older… She would have worked, even just a bit, just enough to get her fa­ther the wand, the Power. Emily knew he could have man­aged. Been pro­duc­tive. Use­ful. He would have pro­vided for them both.

Emily found her­self in Al­ice’s room. The walls were cov­ered with posters and paint­ings. Emily had made many of them. Al­ice had in­sisted upon hang­ing them, as if they were de­cent, real art.

She was an­gry, and she was ashamed, and she hated Al­ice, and she hated her­self.

It should­n’t bother her. But she wanted Al­ice to un­der­stand. They were friends. Nearly in­sep­a­ra­ble.

Emily had her own room down the hall. But was it re­ally her room, when she was never there? She wanted to run to some­where, any­where, some­place just hers…

A knock on the door shook her.

It was Al­ice.

“May I come in?” she asked.

Emily stepped aside.

“I’m sorry,” said Al­ice. “I did­n’t un­der­stand… I still don’t un­der­stand why it’s im­por­tant to you. But I want to! And ei­ther way, I can tell…”

She held out a wooden box. About a foot long, an­gu­lar and dark, bold but strong.

Emily took it. It was heavy.

She sat upon the bed.

Opened the box.

In­side was a wand. It was wood, wo­ven about it­self— Was it carved from mul­ti­ple pieces?

“It… I thought it seemed like you,” said Al­ice. She must have spent a for­tune—prob­a­bly all she had.

Emily lifted it from the box, her hands cradling it with rev­er­ence. It hummed in her grasp, curves around a smile; it begged her Power to en­ter, to leap from it, into beauty or into death— what­ever she willed.

“Is… is it? Do you like it?”

Emily looked up at Al­ice—her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. Im­pure thoughts crossed her mind. She shoved them away. She was­n’t like that.

She pulled her eyes from Al­ice. It was all she could do to nod.

She stiff­ened as Al­ice wrapped arms around her.

“Th— Thanks,” she said. She let her­self re­lax into Al­ice’s arms.

She was­n’t like that. And she knew Al­ice was­n’t.

But friends could still hug.

Lau­ren and Rose

“What if you wrapped some­thing solid around the Power, to keep it from un­rav­el­ing un­til im­pact?” asked Lau­ren.

They hun­dreds of miles out­side the Pro­tec­tions. Rose could hardly prac­tice close by. It was­n’t safe, but Lau­ren could hardly let Rose do it alone.

“I don’t know if I feel com­fort­able mak­ing some­thing like that so close to us,” said Rose.

“What if you let it form fur­ther away? Can you con­trol it at a dis­tance?”

“With that much, it would have to be feet away, maybe inches, un­less…”

Rose’s lip twitched up­wards. “Watch this,” she said.

The air be­fore her shook. A bunch of Power, crack­ling white, or­bited around a tiny point, shrink­ing and dis­ap­pear­ing into it.

Rose mo­tioned her head west. In the dis­tance, Lau­ren could see a light. But it had to be a hun­dred miles away or more. And it was grow­ing brighter.

“Just a bit more, then…” mut­tered Rose. “Oh. Uh…”

“Uh?” asked Lau­ren. “What do you mean, ‘Uh?’ Do you mean ‘Uh, I just made a hole from here to there, and shoved a ridicu­lous amount of Power through it, and only now I re­al­ize, oh, hey, I should have asked Lau­ren first! She’d tell me how it might be tricky to close the hole while si­mul­ta­ne­ously con­trol­ling Power on the other side of it, and also—“

“Yes, yes,” said Rose. “Look, I think I can do it, but you might want to—“

“As I was say­ing ear­lier, if you wrap some­thing around the Power, it could hold it to­gether for a bit. Per­haps long enough to close the hole?”

Rose nod­ded. The light in the dis­tance—bright, even in the day­light—blinked away.

“Ready?” asked Rose.

Lau­ren nod­ded.

“I… I love you,” said Rose.

She closed the hole.

“It’ll prob­a­bly hold for about two—“

Every­thing turned white.

Lau­ren got Power wrapped around the both of them just in time. Still, they felt them­selves flung through the air as dirt and trees and plants were ripped from the ground.

“Don’t tell El­lie,” said Lau­ren.

Rose laid be­neath Lau­ren, wrapped in her arms. It was al­most ro­man­tic, even cov­ered in dirt at the edges of waste­land.

“She’d want me to use it on the Pro­tec­torate,” said Rose.

“She might. But she’d never ask it,” said Lau­ren.

Rose let her head fall to the side, but Lau­ren lifted it back up. “That,” she ges­tured her head to­wards the newly-cre­ated waste­land, “is not why she loves you. It’s not why ei­ther of us love you.”

She dipped her head closer to Rose’s. Their lips were al­most touch­ing.

“I love you, Rose.”

Dorel

Dorel of­ten knew what he wanted, and Dorel al­ways knew what he had to do to get it. But Dorel did­n’t al­ways like it.

It was barely a room, up on the twen­ti­eth floor of one of the old build­ings, but of course Lily had in­vited him into her home—any­body would: he was Dorel the Keeper, one of the two Great Pro­tec­tors.

Lily was due to have a child in a few weeks, she told him. Per­haps it was the child Dorel was there for. Or, per­haps, it was Lily her­self. He did not know. He only knew what he had to do.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Lily tilted her head, un­sure what he was sorry for. “It will be worth it, in the end, for every­one. I promise…”

He glanced to­wards what passed for a kitchen. Lily was a Pro­tec­tor. Surely she could af­ford more? But on the counter there was a knife. It was all Dorel needed.

The knife flew to his hand. Lily’s eyes widened. She put it to­gether much faster than Dorel had ex­pected.

She be­gan send­ing lance af­ter lance of Power at him, the air quiv­er­ing dan­ger­ously with each one. But as they raced to­wards him, they each dis­si­pated.

Lily backed her­self against the win­dow. Power swelled be­fore her, a bub­ble of crack­ling pur­ple light, be­fore, with a loud bang, it shat­tered. The shock­wave passed smoothly through both her and Dorel.

Dorel sup­posed she thought it would trig­ger the Pro­tec­tions. Nor­mally, she would be right. The Pro­tec­tions should leap to her aid, and sum­mon Pro­tec­tors to help her. But Dorel had helped cre­ate the Pro­tec­tions. They would not pro­tect her tonight.

She looked down at him. Her arm snapped out. Her hand cir­cled Dorel’s throat, and squeezed…

But Dorel’s Power lashed out. It shat­tered the bones in her arm. Her skin ripped and shred­ded as her arm rup­tured, the pieces falling to the ground in a messy splat­ter.

A small sound es­caped her, barely a grunt. Her eyes darted left and right, search­ing for some­thing, any­thing. She knew there was nowhere left to—

Crack! She smashed her head against the win­dow— but the win­dow was not made from glass. It was made from Power. The back­lash ig­nored her and leapt straight for Dorel.

With a blink, the Power evap­o­rated. But by then, Lily was al­ready top­pling, back­wards, out…

His Power caught her mid-top­ple. She hung pre­car­i­ously out the win­dow. Her Power banged against his des­per­ately. If he would just let go, she could fly away—she had enough Power to fly, cer­tainly. But Dorel was nearly as strong as his sis­ter, Lee, the other Great Pro­tec­tor. His Power re­mained un­shaken.

He opened his hand. The knife left it. It flew over to Lily. She tried to move her head away. Still, it rested it­self upon her neck.

Dorel took a breath.

It would be worth it, he told him­self. Some­day, Lee would fall, and there would be no­body to take her place. Not “Lily.” Not her child. Not any of those be­fore them. Not Dorel him­self.

The knife sliced slowly through Lily’s neck.

It should have been quick.

It was her Power that slowed it, he was sure.

It must be re­sist­ing him.

Her blood poured down her neck. It clung to her. As it kept flow­ing, it could­n’t stay. The stream of red fell, glint­ing gen­tly in the yel­low lights of the Pro­tec­torate, down to the street so many sto­ries down.

As the last of her blood dripped from her, he felt her Power go, and some­thing threat­ened to steal his lungs away.

He let her body fall. The wind rus­tled her cloth­ing. Her hair rose, hid­ing her blank face from him.

She would not be the last, he was sure. There had to be one or two more, still.

Be­cause Dorel had taken in chil­dren, over the years. And Dorel knew they would be next. He had thought, if he could make them happy enough, it would be okay. He had al­ways known what he would have to do, but it al­ways had seemed such a long way off.

He did­n’t know how it would hap­pen. But he knew it would have to. And he knew it would be soon.

“A Sink if I ever saw one,” Tim­o­thy said. Dorel could see the un­cer­tainty on Tim­o­th­y’s face. The se­cret had not been his to tell, but he had told it any­way.

Dorel care­fully raised his eye­brows, and a smile cov­ered the guilt on Tim­o­th­y’s face.

But Dorel’s heart fell. The chain of events un­folded be­fore him and he knew ex­actly how it would all hap­pen, and ex­actly what he would have to do.

Every­thing hinged upon El­lie.

Dorel had no­ticed El­lie. He had been sure he’d get that lit­tle nudge, that lit­tle in­stinct to take her in, away from her fa­ther. And if not that, surely she should’ve had to die. Any­one that strong had to be ei­ther dead or his.

When she lost her sight, he had thought per­haps that was why he had never felt in­clined to take ac­tion. Per­haps the loss of vi­sion would so weaken her that she’d never be able to as­cend. But it quickly be­came ap­par­ent to Dorel that the lack of sight did lit­tle to limit her.

And her friends—Lau­ren and Rose—were eas­ily as strong as she. Dorel had never felt any in­cli­na­tion to take ei­ther in: Lau­ren’s par­ents were de­cent, and Rose’s tried to be. But nor had he felt any in­cli­na­tion to take ei­ther out.

Now Dorel knew why. The pieces fell to­gether.

This was the last time they’d all be to­gether. He wanted to draw it out. His chil­dren were all grown, now. All Pro­tec­tors, or about to be. Half sat on the mar­ble floors. The rest packed them­selves onto the fluffy couches.

“They’re all over each other,” said Emily. “Esor calls him­self ‘Rose,’ and, I mean, es­pe­cially if they be­come Pro­tec­tors— if peo­ple see them, and think that’s right…“

Emily glanced at Al­ice, scrunched in be­side her, then away. Al­ice con­tin­ued star­ing at her feet. The two had grown up to­gether, al­most like sis­ters, but never quite. If they had been brought up dif­fer­ently—had Dorel not raised them the way he had—per­haps they would let them­selves…

“Well, yes, I— yes, agree, some­thing ought def­i­nitely be done about them, but— But, it’s worse than that, I think,” he said. The words tum­bled out much more awk­wardly than he had re­hearsed. “I have learned…”

He paused for them to an­tic­i­pate what he was about to re­veal. Was he try­ing too hard? Should he just tell them straight out? What would they be­lieve? “I have learned: ‘El­lie,’ the blind one… It ap­pears she is a Sink.”

The room fell silent.

Sinks were myth, of course. El­lie was most cer­tainly not one. Dorel should know: Sinks were a myth of his own de­sign, in­vented for his bed­time sto­ries: Sinks would come in the night, he would tell his chil­dren, and steal away your Power. They’d leave you empty, help­less, un­hole, and alone…

He had told his chil­dren sto­ries of Sinks every night. He had never re­al­ized why. He had taught them many things never re­al­iz­ing why. But now, all the pieces fell into place. All of it had cen­tered around El­lie, and her two friends. It did not mat­ter if El­lie was a Sink. It only mat­tered that she be­lieved she was, and that her friends be­lieved, and Tim­o­thy, and now, Dorel’s chil­dren. His chil­dren would not hes­i­tate when their time came.

He had wanted to teach them com­pas­sion, and he had. As the Keeper, em­pa­thy was his re­spon­si­bil­ity. He had passed that on. But there were al­ways ways around em­pa­thy. Per­haps his chil­dren would apol­o­gize be­fore they struck, shak­ing their heads sadly. Maybe they’d tell them­selves they had to do it, for the good of all; that in the end, it would be worth it.

“No­body can do any­thing,” said Al­ice. “The Pro­tec­tions would find them, maybe even stop them, un­less…”

Dorel made him­self smile softly, with just the right amount of sad­ness. “Un­less the Pro­tec­tions ex­pe­ri­enced some… ‘in­ter­rup­tions?’ Per­haps in the West­ern Hall at, say… ten past nine, to­mor­row evening?”

His chil­dren glanced at each other, but Dorel cleared his throat. “Please take care. I…”

His voice caught as the vi­sions of what would oc­cur flashed through his mind. His eyes held on Al­ice for a mo­ment: she would be the first to die, there, in that hall.

“I hate to lose you.”

Dorel had­n’t thought he was truly close to any­one—not even his chil­dren. Yet he had gone to them all, and watched as the Huntress took their fin­gers, their toes, their arms, their heads. He had wanted to pro­tect them, but…

He had even vis­ited Tim­o­thy for one last tea.

Now, Dorel sat alone in his quar­ters. The many couches would be for­ever empty.

Every­thing was al­most ex­actly as planned.

He was go­ing to die.

And when Lee tried to avenge him, so would she, and so would Lau­ren, and so would Rose. With his chil­dren gone, there would be al­most no­body who could re­place her.

Al­most.

Bang! Glass shards Knives against his face and ar—

She stood in the wall, where once there had been glass. Ce­ment and metal twisted about her. The wind strove to pull her out, down to the ground thou­sands of feet be­low.

She re­mained steady.

The Huntress.

She was here for him.

It was just ac­cord­ing to plan.

But El­lie was sup­posed to die.

Rose and El­lie

“But El­lie, if they knew,” in­sisted Rose.

“It’s just, if Power was be­ing lobbed at you—“

“I can take care of my­self,” said Rose. She set down her pen and brushed fif­teen min­utes of trac­ing off El­lie’s back.

“You’ve got to let the pen flow with the Power, like you’re only guid­ing it,” said El­lie. Rose had taught her—it was just a thing she had re­al­ized she could do, and she had re­al­ized El­lie prob­a­bly could, too, and soon, El­lie had eclipsed Rose.

At first, it had been only an art: beau­ti­ful and pure, an es­cape to some­thing fun­da­men­tal. But as they learned to lay their first Pro­tec­tions, El­lie re­al­ized those Pro­tec­tions could be wo­ven into the trac­ing as well.

“You’re telling me,” Rose grum­bled. But she rested the pen against El­lie’s back again, and tried again.

“If they knew,” said Rose, “they would­n’t let you stay. They would­n’t want to let you live.”

“Then I would leave,” said El­lie. “Or I’d fight them all. I could take them…” She could hear Rose’s toes grip the sheets ir­ri­ta­bly.

“You know we’d go with—“

“Don’t,” said El­lie.

Rose could see El­lie’s breath catch a bit. She let her hand gen­tly brush El­lie’s back.

“That’s what you’ve been do­ing, is­n’t it?” asked El­lie.

“What?”

“Prepar­ing. You and Lau­ren. Go­ing. Com­ing back cov­ered in dirt, all ‘Don’t ask.’ They’re not go­ing to ac­cept me, are they? You’re go­ing to—“

“We’ve not been— I’ve not been prac­tic­ing be­cause of you,” said Rose. The pen creaked in her hand as she gripped it. “If they knew the Power… Or even just how I make holes from here to there…”

“They would­n’t let you stay,” said El­lie, softly. “They would­n’t want to let you live.”

“I know I’ll have to go, some­day,” said Rose. “I just… I thought, maybe, if I’m strong enough, I could make some­where else, and maybe you and Lau­ren would want to…”

“You know we’d go with—“

“You can’t promise that,” said Rose. “I know you can’t. You and Lau­ren have only known me— what, a bit over a year?”

“Closer to two,” said El­lie.

She felt Rose rise from the bed. The pen made a small clat­ter as she placed it on the night­stand.

El­lie lifted her­self up. She closed the dis­tance be­tween them, and when she found Rose’s arms, she gripped them tightly.

“Do not tell us what we can promise,” El­lie said.

Rose pulled against El­lie’s grip, and then, fell into it, slid­ing into El­lie’s arms.

“Let’s go,” said El­lie. “Let’s go find Lau­ren and leave, right now.”

Rose found her­self laugh­ing, if it was laugh­ing, it could just as eas­ily have been cry­ing. El­lie held her tightly.

“We need to be­come Pro­tec­tors. Learn to raise more Pro­tec­tions,” said Rose, fi­nally. El­lie did­n’t dis­agree. “And Lau­ren still thinks we can change things. Make things bet­ter. For every­one.”

“I know,” said El­lie.

A gen­tle breeze en­tered through the win­dow. El­lie had been study­ing it when she ac­ci­den­tally stole its Power. She’d fig­ure out how to recre­ate it, even­tu­ally—hope­fully be­fore next rain­fall.

“What do you think is up with Emily?” asked Rose.

“Emily?”

“Yeah,” said Rose. “Brash voice in our Ebb and Flow stud­ies? Think she hates you? Or think she’s into you?”

A soft laugh es­caped El­lie’s best at­tempts at keep­ing it in. “Oh that Emily!” she said. “Def­i­nite­ly hates me.”

“Is that why she looks at you when she thinks no­body’s watch­ing?” asked Rose, her nose tick­ling El­lie’s.

“Well, I’m taken,” said El­lie, pulling on Rose’s lips with her own. “Twice over.” She kissed Rose again. Their tongues twisted gen­tly to­gether, as El­lie pulled Rose back down onto the bed.

“She’s def­i­nite­ly into Al­ice, though,” said El­lie, later.

Rose chuck­led. “Def­i­nitely.”

Their arms were still mess­ily tan­gled around each oth­ers’ bod­ies, wrapped up in the sheets and blan­kets.

“Take me,” said El­lie. “When you prac­tice. We should all do that to­gether.”

“I—“

“I’m not say­ing you have to take me with you any­time you do any­thing with Lau­ren. I know I need my own time with her, just like I need it with you, but— but we should all be prepar­ing. To­gether.”

“I— Yeah. We will,” said Rose. “We just… We did­n’t want…”

“I know,” said El­lie. “I love you, too.”

Lau­ren

They’d never change it all, Lau­ren knew. But that would­n’t stop her from dream­ing of the day they did.

They’d have that house atop the cliff. Beau­ti­ful. Peace­ful. Maybe not that house. Maybe dif­fer­ent. But it would still beau­ti­ful.

The wind would breeze from the day to the night, drift­ing and sur­round­ing them in the Pro­tec­torate’s warm em­brace. The em­brace would be warm: as Pro­tec­tors, they would make it so. And if they could­n’t? “Fuck them all,” they’d say, and they would leave and build some­thing new of their own.

They’d have a house, and El­lie would know just where to find every­thing. The couch three feet from the counter; the cof­fee table two feet from the couch; her cof­fee al­ways promptly wait­ing for her in the cor­ner, if she did­n’t in­sist on mak­ing it her­self. Lau­ren would see to it, or Rose would—they could take turns, or do it to­gether, or what­ever El­lie wanted.

By then, Lau­ren was cer­tain, they’d be able to lace it all with Power: the table, the cof­fee cup, even the floor–and El­lie would be able to see it all.

“Calm breath­ing,” said Jimmy, their in­struc­tor. “Try to re­main fo­cused.”

Lau­ren tried to clear her mind. It was, as al­ways, im­pos­si­ble. If she had Rose or El­lie’s Power, she would­n’t need to bother.

One day, they’d out­grow her, she knew— but that’s a mark.

Lau­ren sighed, opened her eyes, and pulled out her note­book.

“Miss Lau­ren?” asked Jimmy. He did not re­ally hope for a re­sponse. It was­n’t that he did­n’t care. It was just that Lau­ren… was Lau­ren.

“Sorry,” she mut­tered, her cheeks heat­ing. But she flipped to the right page, and added to the tally.

She closed the note­book. Put it away. Closed her eyes once more.

Her in­struc­tor found her odd, she knew. Oth­ers did, too, if not for her be­hav­ior, then for her re­la­tion­ships. It was fine. She was fine. Some­times, though, with Rose and El­lie, she thought she might not be so wrong. Maybe…

“Feel it ebb and flow with your breath­ing, like the sea, ris­ing, falling…”

Maybe one day, they’d live by the sea. El­lie could weave Pro­tec­tions just for them. Rose could go for food, and when she came back, sculpt beau­ti­ful pieces that she’d set free into the world, or sketch in­tri­cate de­signs. Lau­ren would keep the gar­den and the house, and maybe even help El­lie dress Rose—Rose would al­ways protest with a shy smile she could­n’t hide.

But change was hap­pen­ing in the Pro­tec­torate. The Great Pro­tec­tor Lee her­self had said that All should be pro­tected, re­gard­less of any odd­i­ties about them, un­less they harm oth­ers. And while that was­n’t di­rect, it was close, and Lau­ren had felt her­self smile.

“Per­fect, Miss Lau­ren,” her in­struc­tor said.

Per­fect? If only her eval­u­a­tor would feel the same. But she could­n’t see how he would. She had just twenty min­utes left un­til her fu­ture was de­cided, and she had heard the de­cider would be Tim­o­thy him­self, the very dis­cov­erer of the The­ory of Ebb and Flow. He even had fre­quent teas with the Great Pro­tec­tor Dorel the Keeper. She doubted he’d se­lect her to be a Pro­tec­tor with El­lie and Rose. But she could dream.

El­lie had mas­tered the tech­nique be­fore she had known what it was. And Rose should never have been ca­pa­ble, not with Power like hers, but she too had per­fected it. Even Lee was said to strug­gle with it, though she could be for­given: Lau­ren as­sumed Lee had even more Power than Rose. Lee had more Power than any­one.

It had been enough! Tim­o­thy had said yes!

Later, when Lau­ren ran into Rose rather lit­er­ally, Lau­ren did­n’t want to let go. When they ran into El­lie in the West­ern Hall, rather more fig­u­ra­tively, she could barely re­sist grab­bing her in an em­brace.

When El­lie told them that Tim­o­thy had re­jected her, Lau­ren could not hold her­self back. It was­n’t sup­posed to be like this. Rose and El­lie were meant to be Pro­tec­tors to­gether, and Lau­ren with them. How could—

“You had a mark to­day,” said Rose, look­ing over the note­book. She wanted to dis­tract Lau­ren, and cer­tainly wanted to dis­tract El­lie.

Lau­ren looked down. She knew she should­n’t feel shame, but that only made it worse.

“Shh…” said Rose. The hall was clear. El­lie moved her hand to Lau­ren’s face.

“We love you,” said El­lie. “You are good, okay?” She smiled gen­tly, and it warmed Lau­ren’s heart. “And we’ll fig­ure this out. I can stay with you any­way, right? We’ll be fine.” She was ask­ing as much as telling, Lau­ren knew. But she cer­tainly was­n’t go­ing back to her fa­ther. Rose and Lau­ren would see to that.

Rose wrapped her arms around the both of them, and snug­gled her head against Lau­ren’s.

They ex­tri­cated them­selves from each other as some­one ran up to them.

It was Al­ice.

She kept look­ing be­hind her. She tried to keep her cool, but her face be­lied her de­sire to turn away.

“They’re—“ She looked back…

“Al­ice?”

“They’re go­ing to—“

Al­ice’s body ex­ploded.

Her bones shat­tered, ripped through her mus­cles, tore her apart.

What re­mained of her fell to the ground. Be­hind her, wand out­stretched, frozen, was Emily.

Her out­stretched arm dropped to her side. Her wand fell from her hand.

It smashed against the tiles, too hard. Shat­tered.

Rose reached for El­lie and Lau­ren.

She did not see the lance rac­ing to­wards their backs.

Lau­ren felt El­lie jerk her­self away.

She turned, just in time to see it all.

El­lie did not scream as the pur­ple lance of Power ripped her arm away. She only fell.

Her head banged against the tiles, too hard.

Lau­ren had seen the pur­ple lance. It would have ended her and Rose.

She had seen El­lie jump in its way.

This was­n’t sup­posed to hap­pen. They were all sup­posed to be­come Pro­tec­tors. They were sup­posed to change it all.

Lau­ren threw her wand, and with it, a wave of Power that flung their at­tack­ers down the hall.

An­other shove sent her own lance, black twist­ing around green.

It hit the one who had stolen El­lie’s arm.

It ripped her apart, dress­ing the hall­way in her flesh and bone.

Be­fore Lau­ren could hit the rest, Rose grabbed her.

And then, the three of them were atop the hill, there with the lit­tle house. Every­thing was so quiet and peace­ful in the late af­ter­noon.

Rose felt El­lie stir. “Lau­ren,” Rose said, softly. “Could you… She’s los­ing— It’s burn­ing through…”

In­tri­cate pat­terns traced upon El­lie’s back were glow­ing brightly in pur­ple, burn­ing through the cloth cov­er­ing her, and burn­ing into her skin. The lance should have torn her apart ut­terly. In­stead, she was…

Lau­ren shook her­self. Forced a calm breath. Let the Power flow from her. Cra­dled El­lie. Lifted her.

“Out,” said Rose, her deep com­mand­ing voice car­ry­ing into the house. She let her Power flame, only a lit­tle. “Now.”

An older cou­ple ran out, leav­ing the door open be­hind them.

Rose stepped in. Lau­ren fol­lowed, with El­lie.

The door shut.

Lee

Power had been un­leashed upon the world, and there had been noth­ing to pro­tect the peo­ple from the Power and from them­selves. And, as it quickly be­came ap­par­ent that some held more Power than oth­ers, there had been lit­tle to pro­tect the peo­ple from each other, ex­cept for Power it­self, in the hands of those who meant well.

Lee and Dorel had meant well.

Where they had built the Pro­tec­torate, there had once been a city, but all that had re­mained of that city had been rub­ble and a hand­ful of build­ings, some very tall, most with holes smashed through them. Be­ings of great Power must have fought in a grand bat­tle, us­ing the build­ings as clubs in their at­tempts to de­stroy each other. Per­haps these be­ings had per­ished in their bat­tle. Or, per­haps, they had both lived, and had put aside their sib­ling ri­valry to build some­thing new from the city’s re­mains.

Peo­ple would band to­gether, for safety, re­sources, or ego. But no group had wanted Lee and Dorel—or rather, no group had wanted Dorel.

The Pro­tec­torate’s first Pro­tec­tions were laid af­ter the first at­tack. It had been a large band, per­haps fifty strong, all greatly Pow­ered, with a leader as strong as them all to­gether.

Lee and Dorel had been hav­ing a lunch, such that it had been; they had en­joyed eat­ing, and per­haps had not yet re­al­ized they did not re­quire it. They had for­aged from a nearby field, and sat upon chairs at a table they had found in­side their fa­vorite room in their fa­vorite de­serted build­ing—one they would one day call their Pro­tec­to­rum, over­look­ing what would one day be their Pro­tec­torate.

They would fly up—a hun­dred flights of stairs was a hun­dred too many—and watch over the land, un­sure what to do with it, eat­ing, some­times talk­ing, some­times play­ing with Power.

When the band jumped up, Dorel stood, alarmed. Lee took no no­tice. She con­tin­ued eat­ing her ap­ple, el­e­gantly with fork and knife.

“Sit,” Lee told him. “They are of no con­cern.”

The band called them­selves The Fire, and the name was apt: they were known for burn­ing the build­ings they came upon af­ter seiz­ing all they could find in­side. If they found peo­ple, they’d slowly burn them, too, tak­ing hours—for the fun of it or to spread fear, or both, Lee was never sure.

A rocket of flame blew out the re­main­ing glass.

The del­i­cate plates rat­tled. Lee ig­nored it, con­tin­u­ing to eat. “Sit,” she re­it­er­ated.

Dorel al­ways liked to worry.

“You know what is go­ing to hap­pen,” she re­minded him. “They are of no con­cern.”

They both al­ways knew what would hap­pen, but only Dorel knew. He could pre­dict it all, likely and un­likely, if he tried. Lee did not share his gift, but it did not mat­ter. She also knew, be­cause she would make it hap­pen.

The Fire en­tered from all the en­trances, foot­steps of flame trail­ing be­hind them.

To­gether, a hand­ful of them—per­haps the ex­pend­able ones—sent jets of flame at Dorel and Lee—Dorel still had­n’t sat.

Lee did what she al­ways did: ex­tin­guish the Power leap­ing at her, and twist the necks of all re­spon­si­ble.

But the sec­ond wave of Power came in, all of it di­rected to­wards Dorel, all ugly and wretched in its de­sire not to kill, but sim­ply cre­ate pain.

Dorel had known, of course, and had known what Lee would do in re­turn.

Lee stood, and gripped all the Power. She shoved it vi­o­lently back at those who had sent it, mul­ti­ply­ing it ten­fold. She twisted into it her own Power, forc­ing them to be still, no mat­ter their pain, si­lenc­ing their screams of agony.

Their bod­ies were the first Pro­tec­tions: ever­liv­ing pil­lars of pain, sur­round­ing what would be­come the Pro­tec­torate, a warn­ing few tested.

Lee won­dered if Dorel thought the cre­ation of The Pro­tec­torate had been worth the pain that she had in­flicted upon their at­tack­ers. She had tried many times to ask him, and he would never an­swer, but his non-an­swer was never as good as a “no.”

It had taken a decade be­fore he had con­vinced her to let them pass on, to snap their necks and be done with them—and even then, she had left stat­ues in their wake, still watch­ing, still warn­ing.

Per­haps, she thought, the bat­tle be­tween them had never truly ended. She still wanted to get from him a—

The Pro­tec­to­rum shook. It was the din­ing area—just where that first at­tack oc­curred.

She heard loud crashes, and hur­ried her pace. The doors opened be­fore her; the walls she had once lay­ered with Power now bent them­selves apart be­fore her, crunch­ing and moan­ing. Then, she saw:

Lee had never thought The Huntress a con­cern. She would wear her­self out, or at­tack the wrong Pro­tec­tor.

Dorel was cer­tainly the wrong Pro­tec­tor to at­tack.

But The Huntress should­n’t have been able to punch through the Pro­tec­tions. Should­n’t have been able to ap­pear in­side their Power-laden wall and blast it apart. Should­n’t have—

Dorel was not fair­ing well. He was stronger than this, he—

Spears of Power formed around Lee, dan­ger­ous and itch­ing to maim, and shot at The Huntress. A swing of The Huntress’s sword sent the spears ca­reen­ing back at Lee, all strength­ened ten­fold with The Huntress’s own Power.

Lee knew she should have sim­ply moved out of the way, but she re­fused. In­stead, she sent all the Power back once more, again mul­ti­plied ten­fold—two could play at that, and Lee’s Power was Great. The spears all crack­led bright white,

Dorel would be fine, if per­haps coated in blood.

The spears hit The Huntress with a loud clang. But when the light cleared, she was still there.

The Huntress stepped in­side, out of what re­mained of the wall. She grew with every fall of her feet.

Her hand shot out. Grabbed Dorel by the hair. She glanced at Lee, then her sword flashed up be­fore Lee could even—

The Huntress kicked Dorel’s body as it fell, fling­ing it at Lee, into her arms. Lee thought she could feel the Power leav­ing him—she never told him, but it was nearly as great as her own. She wanted to take it, save it, keep it, but it slipped from her…

Lee felt the shock­wave of Power pass through her as The Huntress van­ished, Dorel’s head with her.

She gen­tly laid Dorel’s head­less body on the blood-stained mar­ble floor.

This should not have hap­pened. Dorel should have seen it. And it should­n’t have mat­tered what he saw, Lee should have been able to stop it.

The trail of Power The Huntress had left be­hind had not yet faded.

Lee adopted her calm coun­te­nance, but it was be­lied by the ten­sion in her every mus­cle, and the flex­ing of her fin­gers, reach­ing for some­thing to tear and break.

Lee knew what was go­ing to hap­pen.

She would make it so.

El­lie, Rose, and Lau­ren

“That’s… fright­en­ing,” El­lie said. She made her­self breathe, un­curled her toes, and un­clenched her hands. Was it ex­cite­ment or fear twist­ing her stom­ach around?

Even she could see the crater in front of them: the Power was bright as day, still re­ver­ber­at­ing in the ground, still ra­di­at­ing into the sky. Would it ever die? Even now, it threat­ened to break them, if not for their own con­sid­er­able Power keep­ing them to­gether.

Lau­ren smiled in pride. “We think she can make it a bit stronger if she—“

“On a bad day,” El­lie in­ter­rupted, “I would love to un­leash this to the Pro­tec­torate.”

She could hear Lau­ren look at Rose.

It would all be gone. Just… gone. In an in­stant it would van­ish.

There had not been a day so bad, yet. But El­lie could feel it com­ing.

Lau­ren still had hope. When they be­came Pro­tec­tors, she said, they could change things. But El­lie was never as op­ti­mistic. If there was change, it was too slow.

“I might. But you would­n’t, Rose. Not even af­ter every­thing,” said El­lie. “And Lau­ren, you def­i­nitely would­n’t.”

“But Rose is so strong—“

Rose touched El­lie’s arm gen­tly. “You’re right, though,” she said.

“No, no,” El­lie said. “I don’t mean— I’m just cu­ri­ous what you’re plan­ning, that’s all.”

She did­n’t want to barge into Rose’s and Lau­ren’s prac­tic­ing and tell them what they should be do­ing. Why had she made them take her? She fought to keep her small smile on her face, fought not to curl in­wards. Her own in­se­cu­ri­ties weren’t theirs—

She felt Rose’s arm wrap around her, then Lau­ren’s.

“Ac­tu­ally, El­lie,” said Lau­ren. “We could use some help with that. But it can wait un­til to­mor­row. Rose? Take us home?”

With a bang, they were gone.

El­lie

El­lie did not scream as the pur­ple lance of Power ripped her arm away. She only fell. Her head banged against the tiles, and the sounds be­came faded.

She heard a yell. Felt a wave of Power. Thuds sounded across the room. She felt vi­bra­tions in the floor.

The air shook as it was pierced by a tremen­dous lance of Power. A brief scream, a hor­ri­ble rip­ping sound, a splat­ter— and then, a warm, salty, metal­lic mist.

Rose’s hand gripped her arm.

A loud bang, and it was all quiet. The air was crisp and clean. A soft breeze brushed across her. She could hear the leaves rus­tle, but it was dis­tant, and slowly be­com­ing moreso…

“Lau­ren,” Rose said, her voice far away, “Could you… She’s los­ing…”

A warm em­brace sur­rounded her, and she let her­self go.

El­lie stirred. She felt Lau­ren’s hand brush through her hair.

She tried to say some­thing, but Lau­ren shushed her. She tried to reach for Lau­ren, but her arm did not an­swer. She was­n’t in her own bed. The sounds were all wrong. Every­thing was—

“It’ll be okay, it’ll all be okay,” whis­pered Lau­ren. “There’ll be a way, Rose will find a way.“

A door creaked open, and heavy foot­steps en­tered, soft­en­ing as they ap­proached.

Some­thing thud­ded mess­ily onto a table.

El­lie felt Lau­ren squeeze her hand. “Him?” she asked, her voice not quite be­liev­ing.

Rose shuf­fled. Did she nod?

“Put him by the rest,” Lau­ren com­manded. “Wait, Rose— Let me take the—”

Rose handed Lau­ren some­thing. It must have been a sword, for it was then sheathed, and placed some­where next to the bed.

What­ever had been set upon the table was lifted off it.

“Was it only Dorel, or also Lee?” Lau­ren asked.

“I don’t…” El­lie said. It was so much harder than usual. “What—“

“Shh,” in­sisted Lau­ren. “You’ll be okay, we’ll get—“

El­lie felt her face twitch in frus­tra­tion. A flash of Power flowed through her, and she forced her­self to speak. “Lau­ren. What hap­pened?”

Lau­ren took a breath in, but could­n’t bring her­self to say it—

“Now, Lau­ren.”

“We were at­tacked,” she said. “Three weeks ago. You were… hurt.”

El­lie could feel Lau­ren’s Power brush­ing over her right shoul­der, and could feel her own Power do the same— but there was noth­ing there.

She felt her breath leave her.

“Shh, El­lie, we’ll fig­ure it out, we’ll find a—“

“You and Rose?” she asked. She could­n’t think about her­self. The never-would-bes would swal­low her whole, they had when she was younger, she re­mem­bered, it was all the same, it was all gone—

Rose. Lau­ren.

They were still here.

She could hear Rose across the room, near the warmth—a fire­place?—ar­rang­ing things upon the mantle­piece.

“We’re fine, El­lie,” said Lau­ren. “We’re find­ing the ones who did this. They will—“

“They will meet the sword,” Rose in­ter­rupted, her voice harder than El­lie had ever heard it. “Af­ter they talk.”

“Good,” said El­lie. She heard a hard edge in her voice, mir­ror­ing Rose’s. “Who have you…” El­lie trailed off as some­thing fa­mil­iar echoed in the back of her mind, mem­o­ries just out of reach.

“Who have you found?” she heard her­self ask.

Rose’s hand gripped El­lie’s. “We found who you asked us to,” she said, softly.

She re­mem­bered some­thing, but could­n’t re­call what it was. Why could­n’t she—

“El­lie, you’ll be okay, it’ll just be tem­po­rary, we’ll—“

“Who have you fond?” com­manded El­lie. She could­n’t think about how she could­n’t think, but it was com­ing to­gether, it was just there—

The crack­ling of the fire nearly masked the al­most im­per­cep­ti­ble wind that brushed over her.

“My brother,” said a new voice, oddly fa­mil­iar, oddly cold. “His head now adorns your mantle­piece. A tro­phy from your Huntress.”

Lee. The Great Pro­tec­tor. The Met­tle.

El­lie felt Rose’s hand grow in her own, from small and soft to large and heavy—still soft—be­fore it dis­en­tan­gled it­self.

The sword flew from its scab­bard, the scab­bard clat­ter­ing to the ground. It sliced through the air, and its hilt hit Rose’s hand.

“Huntress,” said Lee.

A shock­wave slammed into El­lie, rock­ing the bed. But there was no sound of im­pact.

Three more shock­waves hit in quick suc­ces­sion, and again, no im­pact.

El­lie tried to pool her own Power, but it would­n’t leave her shoul­der, scream­ing for her, try­ing to reach her hand. She could hear it, yelling out for her—

The sword swung through the air, im­pact­ing with an ugly crunch. Rose roared as she banged away at Lee again and again, each hit only warp­ing the sword.

The sword clat­tered to the ground.

And Rose’s fu­ri­ous Power fell away.

Was Rose—?

El­lie let out a breath as she felt Rose’s Power again, lanc­ing through the air, joined by Lau­ren’s, crash­ing against Lee’s from both sides.

The clang al­most deaf­ened her, but over it, she felt a pulse of Power shove Rose and Lau­ren through the air…

But while they flew, they sent their own spikes of Power back.

One clanged against Power.

The other squelched through some­thing fleshy.

A wave of fu­ri­ous heat as­saulted El­lie as she heard Lau­ren and Rose right them­selves.

She heard Rose take a heavy step for­ward, and Lau­ren be­gin to charge, only for them both to stop sud­denly, frozen, ut­terly silent.

Lau­ren’s own Power fee­bly bat­ted at the Power twist­ing around her—El­lie could al­most see it. But the Power would­n’t budge. It held Lau­ren still, even her lungs, and was slowly reach­ing for her heart.

Rose’s Power, though, en­tan­gled it­self with the Power sur­round­ing her, and pulled. Lee’s Power pulled back. Rose’s Power tried to loosen Lee’s grip on Lau­ren, but it could­n’t quite make it. Lau­ren strug­gled for breath, as did Lee, as did Rose…

El­lie jerked her­self up, and her right shoul­der for­wards. Waves of pain hit her, but the Power flew out, and she forced it around Lee’s and Rose’s, and as she fell back, it jerked harshly.

Lee stum­bled, her Power with­draw­ing. Lau­ren fell to the floor.

Rose stepped for­ward. The sword flew to her hand.

A lance of Power es­caped Lee.

El­lie tried to catch it. Her Power did not an­swer.

Rose fell.

El­lie could hear the blood flow.

Lau­ren gasped and scram­bled for Rose, her own Power crack­ling chaotic around her.

A lance of Power; a pierc­ing sound; a thud against the wall…

Power washed over El­lie as Lee turned to face her.

El­lie forced her own Power through her body, and made her­self stand.

She reached out her hand.

Lee’s met it, warm, bloody, a hole through it from where Rose’s Power had pierced it.

El­lie felt up the arm, up to Lee’s face.

“It had to be,” said Lee.

El­lie felt Lee’s cheek­bones, her nose, her mouth…

She gasped, mo­men­tar­ily with­draw­ing her hand, as she felt Rose’s and Lau­ren’s Power be­gin to drift away.

Her own Power tried to shove it back into their bod­ies, tried to keep it there, but there was so much, and it would­n’t stay—

And she felt Lee’s Power, al­most as great as Rose’s had been, and…

El­lie grabbed it all, and tore it away. Rose and Lau­ren’s Power wove into her own, fill­ing her with all that was left of them.

Lee’s Power she tore to shreds, be­fore con­sum­ing it all, from the small con­ve­niences in Lee’s home to The Great Pro­tec­tions them­selves. And with them Lee fell, emit­ting a soft gasp, to her knees.

El­lie reached for Lee’s head. Grabbed. Twisted.

She held Lee’s head there for a mo­ment, feel­ing her weight. When she let go, Lee dropped away, land­ing with only a small thump.

El­lie crawled to where Lau­ren and Rose had fallen. They were still warm, but their skin was too still.

She thought, maybe if she co­erced some Power into them, she could fix them, but noth­ing took, noth­ing held. They may as well have been wood or glass or stone.

Her hand gripped Lau­ren’s, but Lau­ren did­n’t grip back. She pulled on Rose’s nose, but no cute lit­tle laugh an­swered.

She em­braced them both, but no arms cir­cled around her own.

“Please,” she begged. “Please?”

Only the gen­tle evening breeze an­swered, qui­etly cool­ing the wet­ness upon her cheeks.

As the evening breeze turned to dawn, she tore her­self away.

Opened the door. Stepped out­side. Reached the cliff.

Sat.

The Pro­tec­torate be­low drifted up to her ears, no longer Pro­tected. Would the peo­ple at­tack each other; would they be at­tacked by out­siders? Would the free Power eat at them, dis­turb their bod­ies un­til they per­ished?

Enough Power coursed through El­lie to raise Pro­tec­tions far greater than had ever cov­ered the Pro­tec­torate. The peo­ple could be safe. She could pro­tect them.

And enough Power coursed through El­lie to de­stroy it all, in fire or wa­ter or in noth­ing­ness it­self. It would all be gone. Just… gone.

She sat on the cliff.

There with their Power. There, wrapped in what re­mained of them.

There, with them, yet still,

There,

Alone.

I wake up on my bed.

I wake up on my bed just as I have done ten thou­sand times be­fore. I wake up on my bed, in this box, alone but for the ants, alone in my box, a large box, fifty feet to a side, twenty to the other, if my feet are a foot long.

This box is of­ten warm but rarely stuffy, which as time passes only flum­moxes me more and more, as in all my years here I have yet to lo­cate any ap­par­ent open­ings through which even air could travel, much less food, and yet I still breathe, and I still wake up on my bed to find meals laid out for me, the del­i­cate metal trays rest­ing upon the deep rose­wood of the desk.

Shiny bolts keep the desk on the floor, shiny as the rings dan­gling upon the bed­posts, rings used only in my fan­tasies. I’m looked upon by the still life, its block of choco­late, jar of honey, and glass of blood red wine brushed in strokes slightly too me­chan­i­cal, wrapped in a rather too or­nate frame, still much too small for the mas­sive far wall. It lies be­tween the walls of screens I can­not break, in which live, when I’m good, ever-chang­ing im­ages of a world I can­not reach; the screens yield only to the mir­rors I can­not shat­ter, over in the cor­ner where the wood turns to mar­ble, and in the mir­rors lives a tall girl who never smiles. I’d find her long black hair beau­ti­ful on any­one else.

A mar­ble basin and shiny metal spouts make a sink, next to the toi­let, which sits, noth­ing to speak of, be­side where the wa­ter falls from the ceil­ing, warm to some­one else’s taste, all with the el­e­gant grav­ity of some­one else’s de­sign.

Their de­sign is that I am here, in this box, and so I have been, ever since I first woke up on this bed, ever since a day I some­times half re­mem­ber with flashes of gold and a sweet taste I’ve not felt since.

I could­n’t go a day with­out choco­late, but if I tasted that taste again, per­haps I could. The com­fort­ing warmth of each meal’s hot co­coa is too cold, the calm­ing rush of each din­ner’s smooth choco­late bars and truf­fles too harsh, but they’re what I have. I drink the co­coa, and it does enough. I eat the choco­lates, if I need to quiet the empti­ness, or if they’re the kind I want at the time, but if they aren’t, it’s okay, I stash them away in the desk or in the night­stand, and they’ll be the kind I want or need later.

Al­ways I leave a lit­tle bit on a plate in the cor­ner for the ants. They seem to like it. They seem to like me. I would like them back, I think, if only they kept to their own busi­ness and their own plate in­stead of crawl­ing all over my things and some­times even onto the bed.

I’m sure I’ve gone mad in here more than once, and per­haps I’m mad now. Spread across the screens on the walls is an im­age eerily sim­i­lar to what lies be­fore me right now: pen, pa­per, and choco­late cheese­cake, sit­ting upon a heavy wooden desk. Only, in­stead of me at my desk, the news re­ports on the screens show a man, and where my cheese­cake’s dec­o­ra­tive spears of dark choco­late pierce the sur­face of the cake, his spears of white choco­late pierce the roof of his mouth, ex­it­ing through his eyes, blood drip­ping from their tips, down onto his fore­head.

“Cheese­cake Killer,” the re­porters re­peat, or else “Death by Cheese­cake,” their words even more re­dun­dant given the head­lines right be­low their faces.

I eat the cheese­cake any­way. I must be imag­in­ing things, but if I am imag­in­ing choco­late cheese­cake, who am I to com­plain? But I still think that, good or bad, if I were to imag­ine some­thing, this would not be it.

It’s hard to keep my thoughts to­gether, so I write, and write, and write. There’s not much else to do but browse the web, when they let me. I’ve writ­ten reams. Of­ten merely scrib­ble. Com­monly words. Some­times sen­tences. Oc­ca­sion­ally thoughts. There is a si­mul­ta­ne­ous per­ma­nence and im­per­ma­nence to it. Some­times the pa­per dis­ap­pears. Some­times, what I wrote ends up on the screens, per­haps if they think it was good, per­haps to en­cour­age me to write when not part of as­sign­ments, or per­haps to dis­cour­age it, some­times it’s hard to tell.

I don’t know why I’m writ­ing this. Noth­ing hap­pens in this box and I’ll only re­hash the same frus­tra­tions over and over. It won’t be in­ter­est­ing. It won’t need to ex­ist. No­body will ever want to read it, and no­body will ever get to, no mat­ter how much I crave to be heard.

I long to leave a mark on the world, but I can­not, lost as I am some­where within it. The sole as­pect that would make me re­mark­able is the as­pect I dream to es­cape, for liv­ing in this box de­stroys me.

In my dreams, I am sur­rounded by glass over­look­ing moun­tains. In my re­al­ity, I’m sur­rounded by walls. Some­times, I’ll spend all day putting pic­tures of moun­tains up onto the screens, and some­times, I’ll spend all week, and some­times, I’ll spend long enough that I’ll wake up on my bed and the com­puter will be gone and I’m left with­out the pic­tures, but with my thoughts, alone, starv­ing for some­thing nei­ther my overly deca­dent meals nor all the choco­late in the would could ever pro­vide.

My thoughts can­not es­cape this box, so why do I write them?

To­day, I woke up al­ready drained, a metal­lic taste in my mouth. It hap­pens, some­times. But, as if in trade, this jour­nal ap­peared. Sturdy, wrapped in brown leather, and just about the nicest one I’ve ever re­ceived. I’m writ­ing in it, here, from my box, with choco­late. To­mor­row, it may dis­ap­pear. It is what it is.

— Emily

I woke up to an ob­nox­ious alarm, sound­ing ob­nox­iously early, which hap­pens from time to time, of­ten when I’ve done poorly on as­sign­ments, but some­times it’s hard to tell. It is what it is.

The stains upon the walls are changed. There’s a new paint­ing, re­plac­ing the pre­vi­ous still life. It’s quite a bit larger: the moun­tain seems to fill the wall, al­most spilling over the edges of the can­vas, and I want to fall into it and sit in the cor­ner with the lit­tle man, hands to the fire, star­ing up…

But the view is noth­ing next to that of the screens on the walls: a floor-to-ceil­ing view look­ing down a moun­tain­side, dark green trees flow­ing down to the stream be­low. I can al­most make my­self be­lieve it’s real, that be­hind the un­break­able glass of the wall is not elec­tronic equip­ment pro­ject­ing this scene for me, but an en­tire world, stretch­ing out be­low me…

I could look at it all day, I thought, but in­stead I looked at the desk, upon which was a chess set, half the blown glass pieces clear and yel­low, the other clear and brown. Lit­tle num­bers were etched down the side of the board, and lit­tle let­ters down the other. Upon the knights were horns, un­ex­pect­edly sharp, glint­ing with un­ex­pected threat in the light of the screens.

What am I sup­posed to do with it? Leave it be? Play against my­self? Per­haps I should just play and see what hap­pens? I moved a yel­low pawn just in case. It prob­a­bly won’t mat­ter. Per­haps the alarm will be even ear­lier to­mor­row. Per­haps the set will be al­to­gether gone. It would be a shame, though: while not my taste in de­sign, its pres­ence does brighten the room.

I would have pre­ferred the stuffed bear back. While wak­ing up to find it lay­ing in bed with me can be un­set­tling, it is nice to hug, as ju­ve­nile as it may seem for a twenty-three year old. It was never enough, though.

Next to the chess set was a lovely eggs Bene­dict over smoked salmon, over as­para­gus and spinach and ba­con and pota­toes. I’m afraid I’ve smudged the pa­per a bit with the sauce. It’s a de­cent break­fast, but in­stead of my usual choco­late crois­sant or mac­a­roon, there’s a rasp­berry pas­try.

Even if I miss the choco­late, and even if I find its ab­sence rather strange, I find the break­fast al­to­gether fan­tas­tic, as I usu­ally do. It’s just choco­late, right? Just be­cause I’ve had it every day for the past decade or two does­n’t mean I have to have it to­day. It’s just a kind of food.

“Bad girls don’t get choco­late?” I won­der aloud, but the screens show no ad­mo­ni­tions, and I don’t know what I might’ve done that would’ve been bad.

If the stuffed bear were here, I’d call her “Amelia,” and hug her tight, and lie sweetly to her. It’ll be al­right, I’d tell her. I’m here with you. You’re okay. You’re fine. You’re good. We’ll go to sleep, and when we wake up, there’ll be choco­late. I’d wrap the cov­ers tight around us both, and try to feel her hug­ging back. I’d let out my tears as only she lets me: I made my­self out­grow cry­ing, only to re­al­ize I needed it more as an adult than I ever did as a child.

The bed in­vites me. I want to tan­gle my­self within it and scream into my pil­low, but once I start, I am un­sure of my abil­ity to stop, so if I do so, I must do it later: the wak­ing pe­riod is too young to wear my­self to sleep.

I do not need Amelia, though. I need some­thing more.

I am yours, I want to hear, and I don’t want to hear it from the bear. I want to hear it from some­one I trust, some­one I love, and some­one who trusts and loves me back. She’d hug me, and I’d hug her, and I would tell her that she is good and that every­thing would be okay and make her be­lieve me and make me be­lieve me and… I would kiss her… and she would kiss me.

And per­haps she would play chess with me, and per­haps, with every piece she lost, she could lose some­thing else as well…

And now, the bed tempts me in a dif­fer­ent way. Like the chess set, I have re­ceived many things, from this jour­nal to pen­cils and pa­per to a poster of an ac­tress I had been ob­sess­ing over, and on oc­ca­sion, I’ve re­ceived items of a more in­ti­mately en­joy­able na­ture… And even if these in­ti­mate items weren’t ex­actly the kind of items I re­ally want—per­haps what I re­ally want is thought to be too dan­ger­ous—they would still do the job.

But I re­sist the bed’s call. I long to feel pro­duc­tive, even if I lack any­thing I want to pro­duce. There is­n’t much to do, but what­ever there is, I should do it, even if it’s math or writ­ing as­sign­ments, for it could be bet­ter than noth­ing, and might be bet­ter than plea­sur­ing, and would def­i­nitely be bet­ter than screams that no one will hear and at­tempts at tears that will never come.

— Emily

In my twenty years at this fine es­tab­lish­ment I’ve al­ways had choco­late with every meal, and no amount of writ­ing can dis­tract me from its ab­sence.

Three meals now I’ve woken up to no choco­late. The high­light of my wak­ing pe­riod is gone, no ex­pla­na­tion, just gone.

It’s just choco­late. But it was al­ways there. Now it’s not. I guess it is what it is.

I tried not to think about it. It did­n’t work. Now I’m writ­ing about it.

I’m not sure it’s work­ing. I’m not sure what else to write.

Even last night’s left­over choco­late is gone.

So are the ants. They were only around for the choco­late.

— Emily

I’m up­set I can be made to feel this way. I don’t know what to do.

— Emily

Two weeks have passed, or so the com­puter claims. I don’t re­mem­ber when I last slept that long.

I still wish I had choco­late.

— Emily

There’s a scratch­ing sound in the wall.

There’s never been any sort of sound in the walls.

I can just barely hear it, and I’m still rather cu­ri­ous if I might be imag­in­ing it, I’ve imag­ined stranger, but it’s hard to tell if I’m imag­in­ing it while I’m imag­in­ing it.

The walls look the same as they did when they last changed. Still the same stains—that dark spot four inches from the toi­let, that light spot right off the bed, the spot that looks like… Any­way, it’s all the same even if I try not to no­tice. Still the same paint­ing of the moun­tain, with the man, and the fire.

I tried knock­ing against the wall, but the noise did not abate. What could it be?

Some­times, it sounds like lit­tle scratches, and some­times, like abrupt crunches, and some­times the tempo is even and some­times it has a pat­tern and some­times it’s just ragged and rough and with­out de­sign.

And it’s get­ting louder.

I’ve moved to my bed. I can’t here it from here. I think.

I try to breathe more slowly.

I def­i­nitely just heard some­thing. A crack? And I just head it again.

Is there a crack in the wall? I can’t make my­self look—

A chunk of ce­ment def­i­nitely just popped out. I’m go­ing to keep on writ­ing. Write, write any­thing, any­thing that pops into my head, not car­ing, just keep go­ing, kind of like those writ­ing ex­er­cises that are use­ful be­cause they just let me dump every­thing out like all the fear and ag­i­ta­tion and later I can sort through it when every­thing makes sense and there is­n’t this over­whelm­ing feel­ing of—

I looked.

Chunks of ce­ment have popped out of the wall. There is a layer of dust and de­bris on the ground next to where the scratch­ing sound em­anates.

There’s just been a loud clank­ing, like metal on ce­ment. What­ever has been bang­ing away must have made it through…

I can’t look. I can’t.

I see a spoon. The tip of a spoon.

The noises have stopped.

Do I hear some­thing?

Is some­one sob­bing?

I think I’m go­ing to take a look.

— Emily

“Hi,” I said. It was hard to see through the hole in the wall. I failed to see much at all. But the cry­ing abruptly stopped. “Are you… are you…?” I tried to ask.

“He-hello?” you asked me.

“Hi,” I re­peated.

“Hi?” you an­swered.

“Are you real?” I asked. It’s a rather silly ques­tion to ask and I feel rather em­bar­rassed. There was an­other per­son! It would be such a wel­come change! What does it mat­ter if she’s real? And if she was­n’t, why would she tell me any­way?

“I don’t know,” you said. “Are you?”

“I think,” I said, “so I must ex­ist. Right? But what does ex­is­tence even mean, re­ally—“ I was bab­bling.

You sighed. Qui­eter, I hear you say, “There’s a girl on the other end who thinks she’s a teenage philoso­pher.”

“Who are you talk­ing to?” I asked. I tried again to see through the hole. It was dark and eas­ily a foot long but at the end I saw one of your brown eyes star­ing back at me.

“I’m Rachel,” you said.

“I’m Emily.”

I woke up on my bed.

I sighed. It was the same room. Same walls, at least. Every­thing more or less how I left it: pa­pers on the table, com­puter still open, chess set still with that one yel­low pawn moved.

Ex­cept, now, there was also a ball on the desk. A small, bouncy ball. Not an item par­tic­u­larly high on my wish list, but it dis­tracted me enough to give it a bounce, and in­deed it bounced.

I looked to the cor­ner, and to what I was sure would be a plain wall. I’ve dreamt many a time be­fore of the wall open­ing up, of find­ing oth­ers, of find­ing es­cape.

But the hole was still there. Un­changed.

If it still ex­isted, I had thought, then you must ex­ist, too, right? What was your name?

“Rachel!” I called. “Rachel?”

I knelt down by the hole and looked through it. I saw hard­wood floor a bit like mine, but a lighter shade. Per­haps some mar­ble wall in the far end—or was it just tile? It’s quite far, and hard to be sure. A desk, awk­wardly small, in the mid­dle of the room, blocked my view of all but the feet of your bed. “Rachel!” I called again. I grabbed a spoon, left over from the ce­real and mil that com­prised my last meal—even my fa­vorite had­n’t cheered me from the miss­ing choco­late—and I be­gan to scrape vi­o­lently at the wall. It was slow work, but I could­n’t let up. “Rachel!” I called.

I kept scrap­ing, and the hole grew, and I thought maybe I could fit an arm through, but then—

I woke up on my bed. I rushed to the wall. Grabbed the spoon—

My hand stopped short of the hole, and the spoon dropped from my hand. Every­thing was rush­ing around me, I could feel the blood flow­ing through my veins and ar­ter­ies, and it all flowed into my head, and—

I woke up on my bed. I rushed to the wall. The spoon was gone.

“Rachel!” I called. “Rachel, please…”

I threw the ball at you, or to­wards your bed, I did­n’t even re­al­ize it had been in my hand, and I heard it bounce around…

I col­lapsed. “Rachel… Please be real… Please?”

I just—

It was all go­ing to be so dif­fer­ent.

I…

The ball just bumped into my arm!

— Emily

“How long have you been here?” I asked, my eyes wait­ing for your lips to move.

“A long time,” you said, your voice smoothly dis­tant, your eyes dis­sect­ing my own.

“Same here,” I told you, the words tum­bling out. I can’t re­mem­ber what I said, some­thing about not re­mem­ber­ing how I got here, about that sweet taste—your eye­brow rose so del­i­cately—but then I told you as sweet as it was it was­n’t as sweet as meet­ing you.

And you blinked, and turned your head away, and so did I, my eyes fix­ing on the bouncy ball, lay­ing there on the floor be­side me, and I felt my fin­gers wrap around it.

“What’s your fa­vorite color?” I asked.

“What does it mat­ter?” you said. I felt my fin­gers squeeze the ball, and my eyes move back to the hole in the wall.

“I like them all equally,” you said.

My eyes glanced from the ball to the hole. I felt my hand al­most move—I could just slide the ball through, through the ragged chunks of con­crete, just over to you—

“Ex­cept for or­ange. Or­ange sucks.”

“What about the fruit?”

You turned your head back to­ward mine, and once more your eyes bored into mine.

“They should all be de­stroyed.”

“That bad?” I asked.

“With my teeth.” I won­der how you’d eat an or­ange. Would you peel it first? I al­most asked you, but—

“What’s your fa­vorite?” you asked me.

“Fa­vorite what?”

“Fa­vorite what­ever,” you said.

“Choco­late.” I did­n’t need to hes­i­tate. Your brow fur­rowed just slightly, and your eyes shifted down from mine.

“Never had the plea­sure,” you said.

“Not with your din­ners?” I asked.

“Bad girls don’t get desserts.”

I wanted to look into your eyes, but in­stead I looked away.

“Or any­thing else, I sup­pose,” I said. Just your empty room, with no knick­knacks or toys or pleas­antries, just the desk, awk­wardly in the mid­dle.

I looked at the ball. My hand be­gan to move… And the ball rolled, slowly, through the hole, its yel­low sur­face glint­ing in the dim light re­flect­ing into the hole.

Gen­tly, your hand came up to meet it. And you held it.

“Yel­low is nice,” you mused. “The color, I mean.”

You did­n’t smile, but your eyes looked dif­fer­ent, and your lip twitched, and that was enough.

— Emily

You can’t stay still and still rant, so you cir­cle your desk—your legs must be so strong by now. Your words and pace change lit­tle evening to evening, barely shift­ing even when, upon oc­ca­sion, you take a wrong step into your opened desk drawer—you never close it.

The first time it had hap­pened I had per­haps over­re­acted, but now I wait for it, it hap­pens at least once each evening, and I could swear, each evening, af­ter that loud clunk, you glance my way for a brief sec­ond.

“Okay?” I asked, and you made a soft snort, your pace un­bro­ken, your rant barely in­ter­rupted, con­tin­u­ing, this evening, with your ques­tion­ing of why you and I were thrown to­gether. I don’t know if we were. I don’t see what it mat­ters. At least you’ve given up on con­vinc­ing me that writ­ing is “stu­pid” and “point­less.”

“Hey,” I called. “Rachel?” My heart be­gan to beat harder.

“It’s rude to in­ter­rupt,” you said.

“Would you like some cheese­cake?” I asked.

“Bad girls don’t get desserts.”

“How can you be bad for not march­ing to the beat of a drum you’ve never agreed to march to?” I asked, the prac­ticed words flow­ing out of my mouth per­haps not as smoothly as I had planned, but smooth enough.

My voice hard­ened, and I veered sud­denly off-script. “March to this, Rachel: Come. Sit. Eat.”

My un­com­pro­mis­ing words were some­what un­der­mined when, my turn to be the klutz, I dropped the plate, and shards of cake and ce­ramic shot every­where.

I was­n’t de­terred, even af­ter I dropped the fork two more times.

You ate the cake, what bits of it I could grab. I think you liked it. You licked the last bits from my fin­gers. It was nice.

Who needs forks?

— Emily

I tossed the ball through the hole. I don’t know if I was toss­ing it at you, whether I was do­ing it out of ir­ri­ta­tion or just bore­dom. But I tossed it.

Your in­ces­sant chat­ter­ing did not abate. Ran­dom words, to­day. “Pur­ple. Starfish. Clown­fish. Green fish. Yel­low. Honey. Arugula. Food. Thoughts. Weird. Nope. Nop­ing out.”

I sighed. And so I sat and be­gan to read, it was some story or an­other, not all that good, but there was­n’t much bet­ter to do, ex­cept per­haps move a piece on the chess­board—as­sum­ing I could per­suade you to play, to­day, and that I could con­vince you that the knights do not, in fact, au­to­mat­i­cally win by stab­bing all the other pieces through the hearts upon their vi­cious-look­ing horns. So, read­ing it was.

But then you rolled the ball back through, ever so gen­tly and smoothly, your yam­mer­ing not drop­ping a beat (“Stones. Kid­neys. Liv­ers. Sheep.”)

I tried to read for a few more min­utes, but soon enough I found my arm reach­ing through the hold again, ball in hand, and away it flew.

The steamy ro­mance on the screen did­n’t seem to make sense. I felt… strange; a weird bub­bling, not quite from my stom­ach, not quite a heart fluc­tu­a­tion, al­most just lit­tle jit­ters in my breath­ing… My eye kept dart­ing to­wards the hole.

And then you rolled it back through again. (“Cats. Char­treuse. Cats. Uh… Cats. Yel­low. Kid­neys. Honey. Watches. Learns. Choco­late.”)

I was­n’t sure what to do. Play it cool? Just send it back through? And it was­n’t like we could do it all day. Was it?

And yet I tossed it back through.

And I just tossed it back through again. You fell silent hours ago. Did I break you? Did you break me?

It’ll be din­ner time soon.

— Emily

I al­ways thought you were pretty but I was­n’t sure if it was be­cause of your brown eyes, which in­evitably re­minded me of choco­late, or some­thing about your skin, or maybe even the lit­tle snorts you make some­times at the end of your sen­tences, when you form full sen­tences. Per­haps it was just that you’re the only girl I’ve ever seen.

But now I think you’re not just pretty but also re­ally cool and I mean you can some­times be an­noy­ing but I know I can be too and your end­less talk­ing is just like my end­less writ­ing, just a thing to do, just as much as chas­ing balls or play­ing chess or ar­gu­ing over whether the knights can stab nearby pieces upon their horns.

But now I think you’re re­ally pretty, like in that way I’m hav­ing dif­fi­culty al­low­ing my­self to write down, and I’m not sure how to tell you, be­cause if you don’t like that I like you like that, what will hap­pen then?

I don’t know.

But I like when you fetch balls for me.

— Emily

I woke to a loud crash. Then I heard your screams.

“Rachel?” I called, but you only an­swered with more an­gry yells and more crashes as you threw what lit­tle you could get your hands on. Through the hole, I could see sev­eral draw­ers from your desk smashed to pieces upon the ground.

Then, as you reached for the last drawer, you fell, as if you just sud­denly stopped, and it was my turn to scream.

“Rachel!” I called, “Rachel! Wake up! Please, are you okay, please be okay, Rachel, please…”

Your arm twitched, and then, you sat up. You eyed the in­tact desk drawer.

“Rachel?” I asked.

You grabbed the drawer, and threw it against the wall as hard as you could, and it shat­tered, and the pieces bounced from the wall and some hit you and I could see blood…

“Rachel, what’re you… what’s…” I did­n’t know what to ask.

“I can’t,” you said. “I just can’t. I can’t do this. There’s noth­ing. Noth­ing. Each time I think there is there is­n’t and there has to be some­thing. There has to be—“

“What does there have to be?”

“I don’t know,” you said. “Some­thing. If I just… some­thing.”

“It is what it is,” I said.

You hes­i­tated, then let it loose with a bit­ter laugh: “Yes, Emily, every­thing is what it is, I should have re­al­ized it ear­lier, life sucks and then you die, it’s all out of my con­trol, noth­ing I can do, ridicu­lous to even try, ridicu­lous to even do any­thing… Ridicu­lous to even… even dig holes in walls…”

I know you skip meals. You know that if you don’t eat for too long, you’ll wake up on your bed with a sore throat and a full stom­ach, but still, from time to time, you leave the food. I never knew why.

“There’s more…” you whis­pered, shak­ily. “For us. There has to be more.”

And then I messed up, be­cause I did­n’t know what to say, and so I said noth­ing, and you were quiet, so I thought it was fine, and then I heard you be­gin to cry, and then I heard you try­ing not to.

“I’m sorry,” you said. “I’m sorry I said… I said… I can’t be­lieve I said, you did­n’t de­serve, not like that…” You fell quiet.

“Rachel?” I called.

“Don’t… Please, don’t… I can’t…” I could hear you hold your breath, as if that could hold your tears at bay, just as I could see you try to hide your face…

“Shh… Rachel…” I said, qui­etly. “It’ll be al­right. I’m here with you. You’re okay… You’re fine… You’re good…”

You scooted to­wards the hole, still not look­ing at me, but reached out a hand and held mine any­way.

You’re okay, Rachel.

— Emily

“I feel like a dog,” you said, “Fetch­ing.”

My heart jumped half a beat and I al­most smiled. “Shall I call you pet?”

I could­n’t be­lieve I let that slip out. You fell silent, and I did­n’t know what to think, and I be­gan to panic, and my mind raced for ways to fix it.

But then you rolled the ball back through the hole.

“I’d like that,” you said.

And I can’t be­lieve it be­cause now we’re of­fi­cially dat­ing and I call you pet and you call me “My Lady,” and al­though there’s a bit of a wall be­tween us, we do our best, and we’re happy! Re­ally happy!

We wish the hole was big enough to stick our heads through, but we make do with our arms.

— Emily

“Some­day, pet,” I lied to you, “it won’t be like it is. We’ll get out of here, and we’ll find the moun­tains.”

“And some­day, m’lady,” you lied back, “you’ll find a moun­tain for us. And you’ll build a house. And there’ll be glass all around.”

“Yes, lot’s of glass… And choco­late. Lots of choco­late, too,” I said.

“What’s choco­late like?” you asked.

I re­mained silent. Three… Two…

“M’lady! What’s choco­late like, m’lady?” The cor­ner of my mouth lifted slightly.

“Like choco­late,” I said. “It’s sweet, and harsh, and smooth, and there’s this rush… I al­ways felt I could­n’t go a day with­out it… And I could­n’t. Un­til I met you. It was a good trade, no?”

“It’s… It’s my fault?”

“No, pet! No—“

“You used to have it, you loved it, and then I started dig­ging and you did­n’t get it any­more—“

“Shh, pet, shh… Rachel, it’s okay, you’re okay, you’re…”

I reached through the hole and grasped your hand, and you squeezed it back, tight. “Rachel… If I’m ever an­gry at you—ac­tu­ally an­gry—what will I do?”

“You’ll tell me.”

“And if I don’t?” I asked.

“You’re be­ing a stu­pid id­i­otic mo­ron.”

“And when I do tell you, what will we do?”

“We’ll dis­cuss it like adults, no big deal, it hap­pens all the time, and we will de­cide to­gether what we want to do,” you said, your voice a lit­tle mo­not­o­nous, but no longer shaky.

“And if I’m ‘an­gry’ with you?”

“We’ll han­dle it like adults. Ex­cept, like, re­ally ‘adult’ adults. Like, per­haps you could make me—“

I blew you a rasp­berry. I hate it when you start to panic. You’re al­ways afraid you’ve loos­ened your grip upon your­self too far, that you’ve al­lowed your­self to do or say some­thing ter­ri­ble…

“But se­ri­ously, never had choco­late, even once?” I asked. “What if you’re al­ler­gic?”

“I don’t think so,” you said. “Are you al­ler­gic to honey? I used to have honey with tea. Clos­est I ever got to dessert, I guess. Once I started mak­ing the tun­nel, it went away. I thought they did­n’t like me dig­ging.”

“I’ve never had honey,” I said. “Not that I can re­mem­ber. I’d like to try it, though.”

“It’s pretty good.” You squeezed my hand. “It re­minds me of you.”

“If you found choco­late,” I asked, “would you eat it?”

“I think so.”

It is what it is, I guess. Nei­ther of us have any honey or choco­late.

— Emily

I lied.

I told you to be care­ful!

I thought it would be okay, I did­n’t think—

I did have choco­late. In my night­stand. Just a bit. They did­n’t find it all.

You have to be there. You have to. But I keep call­ing your name. You don’t an­swer. I don’t know what to do.

I can’t think.

There’s food on the desk, on those del­i­cate lit­tle trays, and I see the cal­lig­ra­phy on the menu, spelling it out: “Choco­late.” It slams into me, and I can’t breathe, but some­how I’m still alive, and I hate it.

Now I’m sit­ting in the cor­ner with the shower—should I turn it on? That’s what they do in the movies, but why am I think­ing about movies right now, you just—

You just—

I thought it would be okay.

I sneaked the choco­late to you.

And then I heard you burp, and you said, “Well, this is weird.”

I saw some­thing brown move across the floor, and then—

I woke up on my bed.

The hole in the wall was still there.

You were not.

Just an empty room.

No desk.

No bed.

A smudge of brown on the floor.

Ants pok­ing at it.

I don’t know what to do.

Are you alive?

You have to be alive.

Please, Rachel… Please?

— Emily

No amount of early alarms will make me do any­thing. What is there to do that mat­ters?

They can take what­ever they want: my com­puter, my food, or this very jour­nal.

It does­n’t mat­ter, any­more.

— Emily

I woke up on my bed un­able to move, with her look­ing down into me. Her blood red dress flowed over me and the bed, and her hand rested on the stuffed bear I once had.

“They would kill us, you know, Emily. I’ve seen what they do to peo­ple like us. I’ve lived it. I pray you never need learn what they did to me. I can’t let them hurt us, Emily. I can’t let them kill you… And you would­n’t want them to kill Rachel, would you? You’d do every­thing to pro­tect her, would­n’t you?”

Her hands, wrapped in their long white gloves, their fluid move­ment un­nat­ural, moved to my neck, and I tried to get away, I tried…

“I know you must­n’t like this, Emily, but I could have used my teeth,” she said, as she pulled the nee­dle from my neck, full of blood, be­fore she licked it, pushed the plunger, and im­bibed every last drop.

Her hand brushed along my neck gen­tly, rub­bing over where the nee­dle had been.

She stood, and stepped to the foot of the bed, at which knelt a woman. And while I could only see the tip of the wom­an’s head over the bed­posts, I could see her face mir­rored a dozen times over upon the mon­i­tors lin­ing the walls.

The thick brown col­lar around her neck was chained to the large ring upon the study bed­post with a chain that was much too short. For a mo­ment, I imag­ined you there, in her place, and some­thing pleas­ant stirred, only to van­ish as I saw within her face the tears that she re­fused to shed.

The woman in red picked up a jar from the floor, a thick yel­low­ish brown­ish sub­stance in­side—honey?—and she took a spoon­ful, and held it up to the chained woman, who fought and fought…

The honey leput from the spoon, and spread over the wom­an’s face.

“She wanted to hurt us, Emily,” said the lady in red. “All of them do, out there.”

The chained woman could­n’t breathe through the honey over her mouth. The tears she held in flowed in­vol­un­tar­ily, down her face, down onto her fa­tigues, down onto the floor…

And then, the tears stopped.

The woman in red sat down by me again. She looked over at the food on the desk, and grabbed a bar of choco­late.

“You are safe here, Emily,” she said, and she broke off a square of choco­late, and it melted into a dozen tiny ants, and they started crawl­ing all over me, up to my face. If I could have, I would have screamed.

“I will pro­tect you,” she said. “Whether I use your blood to make honey pro­tect us from this woman, or Rachel’s to piece the roof of a politi­cian’s mouth with spears of white choco­late…”

She held up a fin­ger, and the tip opened and blood be­gan to flow, and as it trick­led from her fin­gers it too tum­bled into ants, and then the ants of choco­late and the ants of blood be­gan to twist to­gether, be­com­ing the ants I’ve al­ways seen, I’d know them any­where, the ants that liked choco­late, and…

I tried to keep my mouth shut, I did, but I felt a small rush of some­thing, and my mouth opened, and the ants be­gan to crawl in­side, and I could taste them, and I could taste the metal­lic taste of blood, slid­ing over my gums and tongue and into me and I could­n’t… I could­n’t stop it…

“I’m sorry you can’t see Rachel, any­more, Emily. I thought it would work. Your tastes seemed like they’d align nicely… But you crossed a line. Bad girls don’t get friends, Emily.”

She picked up the stuffed bear and tucked it into bed next to me, and my hair be­hind my ear. “I will keep you safe, Emily,” she said, and then she leaned in, and her lips met mine, and…

I woke up on my bed, feel­ing al­ready drained, with that metal­lic taste in my mouth.

I don’t know what to feel.

The bound­aries be­tween my night­mares and my re­al­ity are nonex­is­tent; my re­al­ity is a night­mare.

Were my feel­ings for you real? Was it me who moved my arm to toss that ball? Was it the woman in red?

Was it you who tossed the ball back? Or was it her?

I can feel her still in me, flow­ing be­neath my skin, in­escapable. I want to get her out, but there’s noth­ing, I keep try­ing, but she’s still there, her whis­pers are still in my ears, her lips still on mine—

I am sur­rounded by pieces of stuffed bear, but I feel as if the stuff­ing is in­side me, in my lungs, every breath a heavy chore.

I can’t bring my­self to eat. It makes no dif­fer­ence. I wake up with my throat raw.

Does she force-feed me? Does she just make the food ram it­self right down my throat?

“You would­n’t want them to kill Rachel,” she said. “You’d do every­thing to pro­tect her, would­n’t you?”

You are alive.

— E

I have to find you. I have to.

But this is a box. No doors. No win­dows. Just a box.

Food comes and goes. But when it hap­pens, I fall asleep. I wake up on my bed.

I used to try to keep my­self awake. I’d prop my­self up so I’d fall onto the ground, or top­ple into the toi­let, but some­how, when I woke, I would be on my bed, not even a bruise to show for it.

What would the woman in red do if I fig­ured it out? If I found out how she did it? If I could stop it? Would she let me go? Would she fight me? Would she hurt me?

What if I wrote my notes as scrib­bles from un­der my cov­ers, on this bit of pa­per I hid away from her, hid on my body, hid some­where I def­i­nitely hope she would­n’t check? I fig­ure that, if I fig­ure it out, if she looks for the pa­per, if she finds it, she’d prob­a­bly al­ready know of my at­tempts, any­way.

What if I make sure I’m far away from any ants? I’ve taken joy in squish­ing them, and they’ve been more re­luc­tant to come by. They aren’t re­ally ants, any­way.

— E

I tried to stay awake. I fo­cused as hard as I could. I felt noth­ing.

— E

I tried again to fo­cus on what it felt like. Was there a whis­per? A tiny shake in­side me, re­ver­ber­at­ing through my body?

— E

I fo­cused on that whis­per of a feel­ing, that rush of some­thing through my veins, the same as I felt that night when she opened my mouth…

— E

I thought maybe wa­ter could flush some­thing out, could let me feel some­thing more, so I drank as much as I could, but still, that rush­ing feel­ing through my veins car­ried me into noth­ing­ness.

— E

I hung my head off the side of the bed. For a mo­ment, just be­fore the noth­ing­ness hit, I felt dizzy; that rush of some­thing did­n’t quite rush the same.

If she put her own blood into me, what could I pos­si­bly do to stop it? If she can do that, if she can con­trol honey, and choco­late, and blood, and who knows what else, if she can par­a­lyze me, open my mouth, move me, with­out even touch­ing me… I can’t re­ally com­pare, can I?

— E

I imag­ined my blood was honey, thickly flow­ing through me. It was re­ally dif­fi­cult, be­cause my blood is ac­tu­ally blood, but I tried any­way, while also hang­ing my head off the side of the bed, and then I was dizzy, and I started dream­ing, but in that half-dream­ing way where you kind of know you’re dream­ing and you kind of know you’re awake and you’re not sure what is even real…

And the room shook, and while I felt your ca­ress, while I looked into your eyes, I also per­ceived some­one, a man, climb­ing down a lad­der, and plac­ing food onto the desk.

I’m al­most there.

I’m go­ing to find you.

— E

I dreamt of you. It was a night­mare. Your throat sliced open. Blood every­where.

It was­n’t your blood. It was the blood of the man. The one who fed me. I did­n’t mean to kill. But you would have for­given me if I had.

That must have been what woke me. He was on the floor. His blood was every­where.

I could­n’t stop. I climbed the lad­der. On top there was a nar­row walk­way. Part of a large grid of walk­ways. They over­looked hun­dreds of rooms. The rooms all had their roofs lifted off of them.

Next to me was a cart. It had trays of food. A pa­per with a table of names and foods.

“Emily. Honey.” “James. Broc­coli.” “Rachel. Choco­late.”

There was a bas­ket of choco­late in the cart. It had a blood red bow. It had a card, la­belled “Emily.” I was clever. I grabbed it. Then I dashed down the row to the room where you slept.

“I’m here, Rachel,” I whis­pered into your ear. “I thought for a mo­ment, there was blood every­where, it was like a dream, and it was you, and your neck was…”

I held a piece of choco­late to your lips. You stirred. “I love you, Rachel,” I whis­pered.

Your eyes slowly opened. Your lips curled into a smile. Then, you reached for me, and kissed me!

“Quick, eat the choco­late,” I said. “Eat it, and try to… I don’t know. Do some­thing!”

You weren’t about to refuse. You scarfed it down. You nearly col­lapsed with each bite, as some­thing ran through you, and felt good.

“What am I sup­posed to do?” you asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I guess I did­n’t know how it worked any more than you did.

“Let’s go, m’lady,“ you said. But then I heard her foot­steps.

The lady in red.

She was there. In the room with us. And she her­self was snap­ping off a piece of choco­late, and eat­ing it.

“Let me show you, Rachel, what you are sup­posed to do,” she said. From her mouth came a vine of choco­late. It lashed out like a whip. It grabbed you by the throat, and slammed you against the bed­post, hard. Your vi­sion swam as it mor­phed into a col­lar. It held you there.

She glanced at me, and I took a step back, and I knelt, un­nat­u­rally still.

“I’m sorry, Emily,” said the woman. “I can­not al­low this to con­tinue.”

She dipped her fin­ger to the floor, and a trail of ants crawled to it, and they climbed into her white-gloved hand, shift­ing into a knife.

She brought the knife down to­wards your neck.

Some­how, I dove.

The blade sliced through my throat.

You could­n’t scream. You could­n’t think.

The woman in red dropped her knife and she fell to the ground by me. “Emily… No, Emily, why…” She tried to grab the blood with her power, to stuff it back in me, but the blood was thick and heavy and un­co­op­er­a­tive. The light was al­ready dim­ming in my eyes…

My blood flowed down from where it had landed upon your face, and all along the floor, and you felt sick. It could­n’t ac­tu­ally be… I could­n’t… I could­n’t be gone…

You felt the con­tents of your stom­ach lurch up, and they came up at the feet of the woman in red, a mess of undi­gested choco­late.

The woman tore her eyes away from what she had done to me, and turned to you. She lifted the knife, stared at it, then at you, and then—

She lurched.

Through her chin, through her brain, up through the tip of her skull, was the horn of a choco­late uni­corn, half formed, burst­ing as if from a hole in the ground, from where your re­gur­gi­tated choco­late had been.

Her white gloves stained red, and fell to the floor, leav­ing be­hind hands made of blood, blood that was slowly drip­ping away. The bloody ap­pendages dan­gled awk­wardly from her up­per arms. The arms were jaggedly cut. Shat­tered bone stuck out from them.

Then her dress fell, shat­ter­ing into a mil­lion drops of blood. It left in its wake her torso, or half of it. It was as if every­thing be­low her breasts had been mess­ily bro­ken off. What was there in­stead was al­most hu­man. A body made of blood, kept alive only by her brain; with that im­paled, it was melt­ing away.

And then she fell back­wards.

Your choco­late col­lar and chains melted away, and you crawled to me…

But I was gone.

You found my jour­nal. You know, now, how much I loved you. And you know you love me, too. I was your every­thing. How are you sup­posed to go on with­out me? You miss me so much… You wish I was there to tell you “I miss you, too.”

I’d hug you tight, and I would lie sweetly to you. It’ll be al­right, I’d tell you. Y­ou’re okay, I’d say. I’m here with you. You’re okay. You’re fine.

I’d look you in the eyes, and tell you, Y­ou’re fine, Rachel, You’re good, pet. We’ll go to sleep, I’d say, and when we wake up, I’ll still be here, here with you…

But no amount of shak­ing can wake me, and no amount of hold­ing me close and whis­per­ing those sweet lies can heal my wounds.

You write these last en­tries. How could you not? You need to let it out. Per­haps even more than I used to.

You need to process.

You need to say good­bye.

You don’t want to stop writ­ing, writ­ing in this voice, in my voice, as if I was­n’t gone, as if I were still here, never end­ing my sen­tences, just go­ing on and on, al­most blab­ber­ing, if you just keep go­ing it will all be fine, I’ll still be here, it will all be…

But there’s not much else to write.

I’m gone.

Good­bye, Emily. I found the moun­tains. I hope you did, too.

I am yours, for­ever,

Rachel

Your red cloak trails through the snow be­hind you, its hood cov­er­ing your hat and ob­scur­ing your closely-trimmed beard, its long sleeves hid­ing your bare hands. Not the norm for a Santa. You sup­pose they don’t call you Santa, any­more. It’s “Mother” nowa­days. But when you look into the mir­ror, Santa is still all you see.

Like the rest, should you not be name­less? Sim­ply “Santa,” anony­mous if not for your po­si­tions? You’d be sim­ply the North and the South: they’d only call you one, and you’d only claim the other. You had ac­qui­esced to the ban­ning of names for San­tas. It was for the chil­dren, as it all had once been, lest the idyl­lic il­lu­sion, long faded if ever it was, be bro­ken.

“Mother,” Gaius had in­sisted they call you, and again, you had ac­qui­esced. He had claimed it was what you were to him; were you, then, a bad one?

The snow swirling around you con­stricts at the thought of him, but you slow your breath, and the snow re­sumes its gen­tle swirl. You gave the other three a day, and the day will soon end, and with it, Gaius’s time as South­east and head of SANTA. The other three—North­east, North­west, and South­west—ought soon have se­lected a re­place­ment.

The si­lence is bro­ken by loud crunches of boots—heavy and loud, not what they used to be. Your sur­prise es­ca­lates as you’re sur­rounded: Black boots. White beards. Red coats.

Ra­zor-sharp tips of long candy-cane staves force your chin up. The snow swirling about you set­tles to the ground. The quiet be­comes op­pres­sive.

One of them be­gins to speak. You don’t wait to see what the hell they’re think­ing. What­ever id­iocy they’re at­tempt­ing, you know who’s re­spon­si­ble.

Snow smashes against brick some­where in the east. You did­n’t twitch a sin­gle mus­cle, but don’t be pride­ful. Be­sides, you’ve had cen­turies of prac­tice.

They should know bet­ter than to look away: never look away from the one who con­trols the snow. But it’s your lucky day.

By the time they look back at you, the snow has al­ready moved. It only takes a pulse of snowy wind and a sin­gle swing.

Six heads thump to the ground. Then, six bod­ies.

Red blood shines in stark con­trast to the snow. It drips from your blade. You al­low it to dis­solve, blood­stained snowflakes wisp­ing away into the night.

You spare only a quick prayer for their souls, per­haps out of habit. They were do­ing as he told them, whether with or with­out the sanc­tion of the other three, and they would doubt­less obey. They may even be young enough to have been raised in the Acad­emy it­self. You don’t re­mem­ber when he de­creed it; it was os­ten­si­bly to pre­vent at­tach­ments to sib­lings and par­ents.

Were it de­creed ear­lier, per­haps Icarus would’ve bet­ter ac­cli­mated, would nev­er’ve been tempted, would nev­er’ve run. But if you’re hon­est with your­self, the rule would­n’tve made any dif­fer­ence.

“Would­n’tve made any dif­fer­ence for you,” you tell her. You don’t know if she an­swers. If she does, her an­swer can­not reach you.

Bet­ter keep your prayers short: you hear more boots ap­proach­ing.

Jump!

You land on the roof with barely a sound. Your boots are what they used to be. The few hun­dred orig­i­nal mod­els are still around, left­over af­ter the dead are burned, but with SAN­TA’s boom­ing size, they’re not nearly enough.

There’s enough raw ma­te­r­ial for any­thing, but the orig­i­nal de­signs and the skill to im­i­tate them are gone. The new ones are sor­row­ful im­i­ta­tions: still en­tirely in­de­struc­tible, the boots and hats still as ir­re­mov­able as your own, but lit­tle else.

Be­low you, a ver­i­ta­ble sea of red marches down Dasher Av­enue. You’re dis­ap­pointed in Gaius. Close-formed well-dis­ci­plined march­ing may tickle his ego, but sim­ply flood­ing the Ark is hardly an ef­fec­tive way to fight you.

Take a de­tour west: you doubt you’re alone on the roofs. Run­ning to­wards the Sanc­tum down the North Spoke of the Acad­emy proper prob­a­bly is­n’t the best idea.

You jump from your west­ern off­shoot en­tirely off the Acad­emy. The steep roof you land upon is harder to run across. They won’t fol­low eas­ily. Then again, if they’re up here with you, they prob­a­bly have the nice boots, too.

Snow slides from the roofs as you jump from house to house, but never reaches the ground. In­stead, it swings back up and swirls around you in whips of white, not hid­ing you, but ready to pro­tect you; you learned long ago it worked bet­ter as a shield than cam­ou­flage.

You have to give Gaius credit: the march­ing force is im­pres­sive, if im­prac­ti­cal. Their red coats gleam in the yel­low light of the street lamps; snow, kicked up by their boots, winks up at you.

You leap a mo­ment too late. A ten­dril of snow bats the lump of coal away, and the rest shields you, but still your jump turns to a tum­ble as its con­cus­sive shock­wave rams into you.

Wood, brick, and blood blend to­gether. Your cloak takes the brunt of it, not at all worse for the wear.

“Santa?” asks a voice. For a mo­ment, you think it’s a child. Per­haps you were re­mem­ber­ing how things used to be. But she must be twenty. Per­haps even twenty-five. Few sur­vive that long.

You scram­ble into her home, pulling her in with you. The roof creaks as your snow en­gulfs the house, pack­ing into walls of ice feet thick.

Coal ex­plodes against the bar­rier out­side. San­tas scream as shards of ice shoot back at them, crash­ing into their in­de­struc­tible coats.

You hear shuf­fling be­hind you. It’s not sur­pris­ing they’re in­side, too. They live with peo­ple, now. There’s just too many of them for the Acad­emy.

The woman sti­fles a scream as ice bursts through the win­dow and splat­ters the San­tas’ brains across the walls. You glance at their bod­ies piteously.

“S-santa?” asks the woman, the right of her face dot­ted with blood. “It was­n’t me! Please, no coal!”

Her voice is quiet, likely out of habit. You’re rea­son­ably sure a few dozen of her burns must have been ad­min­is­tered by the very San­tas whose blood now stains her face, per­haps up­set with hav­ing been dis­turbed. Gaius gives his mil­i­tary too much lib­erty with pun­ish­ments. You ought to have reigned him in long ago.

“I never dreamed he’d take it this far,” you de­fend, wip­ing off the wom­an’s face with your sleeve, man­ag­ing only to smear the blood. Her eyes are a mix of fear and ut­ter be­wil­der­ment. “He seemed a nat­ural fit.”

The room’s sole chair is off in the North cor­ner, empty as ever, as you sup­pose it is in every other house. You think the San­tas might some­times sit in it. They should­n’t. “And don’t say we did­n’t need a mil­i­tary!” you ad­mon­ish the chair’s owner. Some­times, you think she an­swers. “The God­less could have come. Could still come!”

You turn back to the woman—ought­n’t she be pan­ick­ing? Or is the con­fu­sion too much? You guide her over to a bench. Once, it would’ve been a couch. You guess there’s no room. Or per­haps, like the boots, no­body re­mem­bers how to make them.

“If Annabelle had­n’t—” you start. You glance at the chair. Her soul dis­sects yours from some­where un­reach­able.

You turn to the woman you’ve seated be­side you. “Icarus lacked the re­solve to re­move her temp­ta­tion,” you say. She does­n’t fol­low.

“The Run­ner,” you clar­ify. You call her Icarus. You al­ways felt she seemed more a girl. Per­haps you were just see­ing what you wanted to see.

The woman still does­n’t fol­low. You sup­pose Gaius kept it quiet.

She jumps as a clump of snow shoots from the win­dow into your wait­ing hand. You tap the ball of your hat to it, and it turns into a nice, big cookie. Is she sur­prised? She’s prob­a­bly only seen San­tas do that with coal. She does­n’t re­al­ize it’s all the same, in the end.

She ac­cepts it ea­gerly. You’re not sure if it’s the stress, or be­cause it’s a cookie. You re­mem­ber a time you’d al­ways sneak a few ex­tra. Glut­to­nous, per­haps. But you doubt she gets them of­ten. Prob­a­bly only monthly, to ward of any ill­ness. Per­haps only yearly. There’s not much ill­ness to catch any­more.

“What’s… what’s hap­pen­ing?” she asks.

More ex­plo­sions of coal crack the ice out­side. You pack in more snow. It’ll hold for a bit.

“Gaius,” you say. “The South­east Santa,” you clar­ify. “I don’t know if he wormed his words into the other three’s minds. I’dve thought at least North­east would’ve scoffed at him, much less North­west…”

And South­west? South­west was South­west. You only ever kept her around be­cause… Well, you’re not sure.

“Don’t flat­ter your­self,” you snap, but that does­n’t wipe the smug­ness off the chair.

“He was­n’t al­ways like this, you know,” you tell the woman. “Gaius. South­east. He was a teacher once. Adored me, I think. Prob­a­bly still hears my voice telling him what to do.”

You let some ice form into a glass, then shift some snow into milk. It takes some do­ing, but you man­age to make the glass warm, along with the milk in it. The woman takes it.

“I’m Elise,” she says.

Of course she has a name. She’s not a santa. You nod.

You can’t re­ally blame Gaius. You trained him to be­lieve you could turn on the Ark and all the peo­ple in it; you had pre­pared him for it; armed him. Pro­tect the Ark, you had taught him, from the God­less, and from you, should you in­evitably fall to the same cor­rup­tion that had taken your pre­de­ces­sor.

The chair glares at you de­ri­sively. You give her a with­er­ing look of your own.

You know Gaius is do­ing the right thing, whis­pers the voice that killed her. It’s qui­eter, lately, af­ter Annabelle and Icarus. Or other voices are louder. You’re not sure.

“They’ve noth­ing to do with it,” you in­sist. You would’ve seen what he’s be­come ei­ther way. How could you not?

“He was my best stu­dent,” you tell Elise. “A per­fect study. Al­most a clone of my­self. In­stincts per­fect. Ded­i­ca­tion bet­ter. I don’t know where I went wrong…”

“You… you went wrong?” asks Elsie.

“I did the best I could,” you say. “It seemed the right thing to do. I mean of course now it’s dif­fer­ent what with SANTA con­script­ing half the pop­u­la­tion and the run­away pun­ish­ments and tak­ing the chil­dren— but it had all seemed—“

Shards of brick slam into you. Your at­ten­tion must have wa­vered, you had­n’t re­al­ized—

Again, your coat took the brunt of it.

But Elsie did­n’t have a coat.

Her face is off. Her ar­m’s bent funny. A bloody chunk of brick’s em­bed­ded in the wall be­hind her; a gap­ing hole through her stom­ach lies in its wake.

You hear a small thump as she falls to her knees. A louder one as she col­lapses en­tirely.

The glass lays shat­tered upon the floor, the shards melt­ing into the milk, swirling in her blood.

Red-coated fig­ures march in through what had been a wall.

“You know this is the right thing, Mother,” says a voice, al­most a clone of your own. It booms through the Ark, echo­ing around the cor­ners, into what had once been a house. “You know so very well.”

A blade to the neck snaps every­thing back into fo­cus. You’re on the floor. They’re over you. Far too many. The snow far too dis­tant—

“The other three un­der­stood, too, Mother,” his voice sounds. “You know you should honor their choice. Do the right thing.”

It’s all you’ve ever wanted to do. You con­fessed. You asked for­give­ness. You tried to pay your penance. You sac­ri­ficed so much more than you ever had right to in the name of that whis­per­ing voice that had snaked its way around your heart and had called it­self your con­science. Had it been right all along? If the oth­ers felt so, who were you to fight them? Let it go… The peo­ple would be healthy, if not happy; liv­ing, yet still empty.

Could you have seen some­thing more within Elsie, had you looked? Was she, as the rest, a shell? Named and faced, and still as in­dis­tinct as the army of SANTA sur­round­ing you now?

The room is full of them. Dozens. You can feel each and every one. Can you de­lude your­self into feel­ing in them that spark you had not both­ered find in Elsie?

The death breaks over you: the two sleep­ing San­tas, who had not worn their coats as they slept; the four oth­ers in the room with them; two more in a closet—had they been at­tempt­ing to get what lit­tle out of life that they could? Had they not al­ready been dead?

“I’m sorry,” you say. You are. The army around you is no more alive than the rest. They’re au­toma­tions fol­low­ing or­ders, in­doc­tri­nated long ago into the very mil­i­tary that Gaius had in­vei­gled you into al­low­ing him to cre­ate.

You’re sorry. Sorry for what you’ve al­lowed. Sorry for what you’re about to do.

The ice pierces the wooden floor and the San­tas’ un­pierce­able boots in an in­stant. Rips through their bones. Rup­tures their skulls. Gifts them skele­tons of snow, antlers of ice, all now yours, all be­fore they even had a chance to scream.

Sur­rounded by stat­ues, the night around you is silent once again.

“Shut up,” you say, your eyes fixed upon Elsie. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!” What’s left of the chair in the cor­ner ex­plodes.

You did­n’t mean to. You want her back, her and Elsie—

You see your ice tear­ing off Gaius’s arms and legs, crush­ing his head, burst­ing his eyes, rup­turung his bones, rip­ping out his lungs—

The re­mains of the house shat­ter in an ex­plo­sion of ice. Splin­ters of brick and wood whirl around you, en­veloped in your snowy wind.

You dash into Don­ner Av­enue. Your mael­strom and the im­mense force of SANTA meet.

In whole and in part the army is swept into the storm, the brick and wood smash­ing into them, your ice im­pal­ing them. The red of coats and blood alike twists about you, lash­ing out in light­ning red and white, a rage now un­shack­led, a blind­ing wrath vy­ing for lethal vengeance.

A moun­tain of ice splits the sea of red be­fore you, be­fore it­self split­ting. They ac­cost it with coal and staff, only for their staves to be taken and shat­tered by the ice, and their coal to det­o­nate, rather than in fire, in flur­ries of snow.

You walk the chasm, along the Acad­e­my’s north­ern spoke. You rip apart its gates with nary a thought as you stride to­wards the Pole and the Sanc­tum sur­round­ing it, the hub from which the Acad­e­my’s six spokes emerge.

The ice seals the way be­hind you. Quiet set­tles but for the pound­ing of your feet, and with it, the pound­ing of the ice against the Sanc­tum’s heavy, foot-thick stone doors.

The doors slam open.

He stands in them, bran­dish­ing some­thing—

Your hands move to your stom­ach. Knees buckle.

Warm­ness flows through your fin­gers.

It stretches be­fore you, its white stripes splat­tered with red.

His lance. Your crafts­man­ship. Its never-melt­ing tip of ice freezes you from the in­side.

You think to melt it.

Is­n’t it eas­ier, frozen in­side?

The ground grows dis­tant. Your legs scrape against the snow. The strain against your arms should pain you.

He’s still there. In the door­way. Closer and closer.

The heavy doors shut be­hind you.

They drop you at his feet.

“Pro­tect the Ark, you’d have done the same,” you mut­ter, but your voice can’t find her. There’s only him, here. Your snow strains to reach you, snaking around the Sanc­tum and the Pole at its cen­ter. You hear the walls creak and crack as it squeezes with every faint thump of your rapidly beat­ing heart.

“I want to do the right thing,” he says. His voice echoes through your mind, just as it had done two cen­turies be­fore when he had said the same.

“I un­der­stand,” you had said those two cen­turies ago, “I had some­one close to me.” It had been only months af­ter the Ark had been sealed. Every­thing had been so fresh.

You had done the right thing. Made the right choice. You were sure you had to help Gaius make the right choice, too. Had­n’t you done so?

You feel your­self pulled to your feet. Hear your­self groan as the spear pulls at your stom­ach.

“You must re­move temp­ta­tion, Gaius,” you had said then, the voice that had killed her so bold, so strong, so in­fec­tious.

“How can I?” he asks you. Had he said some­thing sim­i­lar, those cen­turies ago? You can hear him blink away his tears, whether now or then you’re un­cer­tain. His hand lifts your chin, just as yours had lifted his; you can feel your sweat on his palms just as you had felt his on yours.

“It’s not dif­fi­cult, Gaius,” you had told him, as the heat from the coals be­low had bathed his face. He had re­fused to look up to the plat­form, to that per­son with whom he had been close. “Just a tug.”

“Why?” he im­plores you. His face swims into your vi­sion, his long beard sad, his eyes as cold as he can make them. There’s more wrin­kles on his face, now.

“You know it must end, Gaius,” you had said. He had known it as well; you had seen it upon his face, bathed in or­ange, buried be­neath his at­tempts at school­ing it. “You must pro­tect us all. You must pro­tect the Ark.”

You don’t re­mem­ber who it had been, up there on that plat­form. But they had tempted Gaius, just as Annabelle had tempted her Icarus, just as your own love had tempted you those two hun­dred six­teen years ago, now. You had un­der­stood.

“I know I must pro­tect the Ark,” he says. You thought he’d be filled with right­eous fury, an­tic­i­pat­ing the power he would take from you as he took your place. But in­stead, within him you feel only that fa­mil­iar pain. “Why from you, Mother?”

“Do the right thing, Gaius,” you had com­manded, those two cen­turies ago.

“Why, Mary?” he asks.

Your name pierces you for the first time in over two cen­turies. Even your mind had not dared whis­per it in decades. You had much rathered no names, so you would not hear yours, and Gaius had ac­qui­esced.

“Just pull,” you whis­per, the words strug­gling to leave you.

He re­fuses to look away. “I did,” he says.

“Icarus did­n’t,” you say. “The Run­ner.”

Gaius grips the spear, and rips it from you. “The San­ta known as The Run­ner,” he says, “Was led astray. He lacked the re­solve to re­move his temp­ta­tion.”

“So you did it for her,” you gasp, “Just pulled.”

“You’d have done the same.”

He’s wrong. Had Gaius failed, had he lacked that re­solve—if he had only had Icarus’s strength—you know you would have re­al­ized some­thing then, some­thing im­por­tant. You would have stopped it all. Would­n’t you have?

They pull you up the stairs, into the Pole. You can feel it pul­sate as your cold des­per­ately as­saults it, try­ing madly to reach you, as you wel­come the heat you can feel wait­ing for you be­low.

“You know this must end, Mary,” he says, his voice echo­ing from some­where be­hind you. You try to turn to look, but you can’t man­age it. Every move­ment aches. You won’t last long, but still, they push you for­ward, across the wooden bridge.

The floor shifts un­easily be­neath you. Be­hind you, a gate closes. You can feel the San­tas walk­ing away. The bridge is al­ready low­er­ing.

The hot red of the pit be­low dis­torts the air as smoke wafts up through a too-small hole in the ceil­ing above. It warms you, al­most pleas­ant.

“I would­nt’ve done the same, Amanda, I would­n’t have,” you mum­ble. “I did the right thing. You were wrong. You were temp­ta­tion, I could­n’tve—“

The red be­low stares up into you, and in it, you find her. You see her eyes liquify­ing. You smell the smoke leav­ing her mouth as her lungs turn to ash. You hear her screams as the fire con­sumes her.

“I’m sorry,” you whis­per, clutch­ing at the hole in your stom­ach, still bleed­ing, still burn­ing. The hot coals be­low con­tinue their stare. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s too late for con­fes­sions, Mother,” says Gaius from the plat­form be­low, the coals’ heat re­flect­ing off his face, the rope dan­gling be­fore him.

“Yes,” you say. “I would have done the same. Did do the same. And I was wrong, Gaius,” you say. “And I’m sorry. Be­cause it was all me, I know. I whis­pered into your ear for so long… It was me…”

He reaches for the rope. “I must do the right thing, Mother,” he says.

“I know,” you say.

He pulls the rope.

The plat­form be­neath your feet gives way.

You fall.

You reach for your snow.

It an­swers.

Clos­ing the heavy stone doors be­hind you had been wise. Your ice would’ve bro­ken in even­tu­ally, but be­tween that and the spear through your stom­ach, it would never have done so in time.

Bring­ing you into the coal cham­ber was de­cid­edly un­wise. The hole in the roof is too small to let in enough snow to heal you, much less aid you in es­cape or vengeance, but you have all the snow you need in­side. It’s just a bit solid. And on fire.

When you hit the coals, you burn. The fire sur­rounds you, a whirl­wind of heat. It sinks into you, melts away the hat and boots and coat, burns off the beard, fills your rup­tured stom­ach.

It drapes over you, an inky smoky dress, bil­low­ing be­hind you as you jump up to where Gaius stands.

Whips of smoke grasp him and pull him be­hind you as you as­cend the stairs. San­tas race af­ter you, stum­bling as the en­tire Acad­emy shakes, but a wall of fire blocks their way as you en­ter the room above.

Within, cir­cling the too-small hole in the floor, the con­sole waits. The smoke from be­low wafts up through the hole, in flux be­tween smoke and snow, fly­ing out as flur­ries through its sis­ter hole in the roof.

An un­used coat and hat hangs from a spear of ice jammed into the wall be­side the north­ern bal­cony doors. Be­neath them lay a pair of boots. Be­side those, the small pal­let where you sleep.

You grab her hat, and drape her coat around your­self loosely, over the dress now made of shim­mer­ing wa­ter and ice.

“I did the right thing, Mary,” in­sists Gaius, strug­gling against the smoke that holds him in place. It flashes briefly to fire; he screams as it burns him. “I did, I did as you said, it was the right thing—“

“I thought so, too,” you tell him, your voice warm with wist­ful re­gret.

“I was wrong,” you con­tinue, your voice no longer warm. The smoke re­strain­ing Gaius freezes. The ice snakes up his arms. He screams as it en­ters through his nose and mouth; shrieks as it pierces his brain. You try to be quick, for his sake and yours. You steady your­self as the Pole shakes; you doubt you have long be­fore it col­lapses around you.

You grasp Gaius’s arm. Just be­fore his brain dies, you let him in. He feels every­thing. The Ark. The snow. The San­tas. The peo­ple, sleep­ing and woke.

“You can’t take ‘North’ or ‘South’ from me,” you say. “It can only be shared. I was never North. That was Amanda. I was South. Her… Her part­ner, I sup­pose.” You should’ve been more.

You see his last thoughts spark­ing through his mind. Would you once have known what they were?

“She shared North with me. I… Now I share it with you.”

Your smoke pulls his hand to the ball of his hat. His hand and hat then move to the green but­ton, where your own hand waits, and in it, Aman­da’s hat.

It takes two San­tas to un­seal the Ark: one North, one South. You were both North and South, but you were still only one Santa. Now, you and Gaius both are North and South, and be­tween you, you can do what you now know was al­ways the right thing.

You push the green but­ton.

Feel every­thing change.

Hear the walls lower.

Every­thing be­comes, some­how, warmer.

The room shakes. The walls are falling apart.

The ice and smoke and fire con­sume Gaius. The floor be­neath him crum­bles, and he falls, down into the cham­ber, onto the coals—al­ready dead.

You step out onto what’s left of the bal­cony, her coat still draped over your shoul­ders, her hat still in your hands. You grip the handrail for steadi­ness as the Pole creaks and groans.

Be­low, the army stretches, be­fud­dled. The sun, peek­ing above the hori­zon, lights them peace­fully. When the God­less come, will they fight? They surely will. You would have. And you had taught Gaius in your im­age, and had com­manded he con­script a name­less army in his own.

“I’m sorry, Amanda. I never should have sealed the Ark. I never should have burned you. I should have re­leased you, re­leased us both, like you said… And…”

She had­n’t wanted to be a Santa at all. She had­n’t got­ten a choice. It had been taken from her, and you had only watched.

“I should have stopped him…” you say. “I’m sorry, Amanda. So very sorry… Whether you’d for­give me or not, I am sorry.”

You used to trust in God. That you were do­ing right by Him. Now you trust that, if He ex­ists, you were do­ing any­thing but.

“I am sorry, Amanda. And… I love you.”

Her hat slips from your hands, soar­ing away into the wind. You al­most fall af­ter it as the bal­cony tips side­ways, its sup­port dis­in­te­grat­ing.

You shed her coat and grasp the rail­ing. It’s a long way down, but you’ve got the snow.

Jump.

Close your eyes.

Smile.

​The war is over. We lost. The God­less are at­tack­ing the Ark. You have to save the chil­dren. You have to raise the walls. You have to ac­ti­vate the Pole.

You step over the bod­ies of your room­mates. There will be time to bury them later. You’ll be adding at least one more body, but you’ll need some­one’s help.

“Amanda!” you call. Good, she had­n’t got­ten far. You have to tell her—

You duck be­hind a brick wall as shots ring out. The bul­lets ric­o­chet off your red cloak, just miss­ing your face. God’s will must be with you.

“I know!” she calls back. You hear an ex­plo­sion, and a dis­mem­bered hand flies past you. It’s not hers: she pulls you out from be­hind the wall into a cover of swirling snow.

She gri­maces at the bod­ies of the God­less. She does­n’t like killing them, but you have no such qualms, Mary. They’re try­ing to end it all. They got what they de­served.

Amanda di­rects the snow to swirl around you both as you race down Dasher Av­enue. You need all the cover you can get in the broad street. The tech within her blood com­mu­ni­cates with the tech that makes up the snow. It’s prob­a­bly sec­ond na­ture to her, by now. Be­tween her com­mand of the Ark and a bit of di­vine pro­tec­tion, you can make it. You have to.

You know Ja­cob must have made it to the Pole al­ready, but as smart as he may be with ma­chin­ery, you still have time. At least a few min­utes.

You have to pro­tect the chil­dren, Mary. It’s why you’re here. It’s why you vol­un­teered.

2 Years & 2 Days Be­fore the Seal­ing

You weren’t ever fond of kids, but we all sac­ri­fice in war. Your sac­ri­fice is to care for them. As dis­taste­ful as you find chil­dren, you can­not bear the thought of them suf­fer­ing. You can­not stand the thought of the brain­wash­ing they’d be sure to face from the God­less. It’s nat­ural that you’d vol­un­teer to pro­tect and watch over them.

It’s time for your first dose. Of course you’d be ner­vous, Mary. It seems dras­tic, but you’re do­ing it for the right rea­sons. Never lose sight of that, Mary. The in­jec­tions will hurt, yes, but they won’t hurt you. They’re even safe for in­fants—not that we’d ever ad­min­is­ter them to in­fants but in the direst of cir­cum­stances, of course.

You’re do­ing a great ser­vice for your coun­try, re­mem­ber that. You’re guard­ing our fu­ture. A nee­dle is noth­ing next to that, Mary.

The dorms may be a bit drafty, ad­mit­tedly, but the heavy stone walls are se­cure. The win­dows aren’t large, but they’re sturdy. The beds are nonex­is­tent, but the pal­lets on the floor are com­fort­able, even warm. The heat from the re­ac­tor warms the city, in spite of the very snow it cre­ates. The heat per­me­ates the stone floors and walls of the en­tire Acad­emy, and in par­tic­u­lar, it heats the room where you’re lucky enough to stay. It will be an im­prove­ment for you, Mary, but you should­n’t com­pare.

It’s an honor, to be sure, to be cho­sen to live here, but don’t be pride­ful. You thought you’d be housed some­where in one of the Acad­e­my’s six spokes, per­haps along one of the big av­enues, if God willed it. In­stead, you live in the Sanc­tum. It’s where San­tas learn. It’s where they lead. You thought they’d train you here. You had­n’t thought they’d keep you around, and you cer­tainly had­n’t dreamed that you’d be one of the Six cho­sen to live in the Pole it­self. You ex­pected far worse, and you’d have made that sac­ri­fice for His for­give­ness.

You like your room­mates well enough. Shar­ing a room with men is rather un­ortho­dox, but gen­der will be be­hind you soon, any­way. Aman­da’s your part­ner, though you should­n’t call her by her name in front of the kids, of course. She’ll be like a sis­ter to you. Per­haps more like a brother, re­ally. She’s sac­ri­fic­ing every­thing, just like you. She had it all, and she threw it all away: she con­fessed her sins, and she re­pented. She did it all for the greater good, and for the good of the chil­dren.

Is the in­jec­tion too scary for you, Mary?

12 Min­utes Be­fore the Seal­ing

You dash through the snow, right at the in­trud­ers, and you jump. You land be­hind them, with barely a sound. It takes them a sec­ond, but they re­al­ize where you are, just in time for you to shove a lump of burn­ing coal into the mouth of the tough­est-look­ing one.

He screams as his body burns from the in­side out. His com­pan­ions look on in hor­ror. You take ad­van­tage of their dis­trac­tion: you kick one, hard, into the other, and they fly two blocks, col­lid­ing with a crunch into the walls of one of the houses.

You be­gin light­ing and toss­ing lumps of coal every­where. It gives you a mo­ment to think, as the in­trud­ers run for cover. You had thought Amanda would jump af­ter you—

“Santa?” asks a child. He’s peek­ing out from be­hind a door­way. Your heart leaps. You try to mo­tion the child in­side, away from the coal you had thrown, but be­fore you can, one of the in­trud­ers ex­plodes right in front of him, catch­ing the shrap­nel.

You catch your breath and hold a fin­ger to your lips. The child can’t hear you, but he knows what you whis­per and ducks in­side. He knows he should be asleep. But your whis­per had been a lie. Had you known he was awake, you would not have thrown the coal any­where near him. You had not been pay­ing at­ten­tion. You need to fix that, Mary.

Now, where did Amanda go? You jump up to the rooftops, where she waits for you. She holds out her hand, and you don’t hes­i­tate. But per­haps you ought to have, Mary.

1 Year & 301 Days Be­fore the Seal­ing

Come on, Mary. You can’t put it off for­ever.

If the in­jec­tion is too scary for you, Mary, start with the boots. Slide them on, there’s a good girl. They’re a bit of a tight fit, to be sure, but they’re sup­posed to be. Pull them up. Press the switch. Come on, now, Mary. Turn them on. Let them be­gin to work. There’ll be no go­ing back, but re­ally, there never was, for you.

You flip that switch, and you are not dis­ap­pointed. That promised pro­tec­tive em­brace around your feet hums to life. They be­gin to fuse into you. Soon, they will no longer be boots. They will be your feet, as much a part of you as if you were born with them. They’d even grow with you, if you were still grow­ing.

You want to stand up, don’t you? You want to try them out? See how fast they’ll let you run? How high they’ll let you jump? Sit back down, Mary. This is­n’t about that. This is­n’t about the things you get for do­ing His work. This is about the chil­dren. Think of the chil­dren, Mary.

You’re still putting off your dose. Come on, Mary! Just grab the nee­dle. Stab it into your leg!

What are you afraid of? The changes? You know what to ex­pect. They’ll make their way through you. They’ll heal you. Cleanse you. You will be born again through them.

You’re not the only one who has­n’t taken her dose. None of you have, yet. Aman­da’s hid­den hers away some­where, but she’ll take it. She’ll have to, be­fore long, lest she meet the same end as David. Ja­cob is giv­ing his the side-eye. Ja­son and Jessie can’t stop look­ing at each other long enough to take theirs. They should en­joy each oth­er’s com­pany while they can. Then again, they re­ally should­n’t. God would doubt­less dis­ap­prove of such dal­liances.

God would dis­ap­prove of cow­ardice, as well. You can’t hide from the nee­dle for­ever. You’ll have to use it even­tu­ally. You might as well use it now.

Grab that nee­dle, Mary. Bring it to your leg. Press the but­ton.

11 Min­utes Be­fore the Seal­ing

You know you should­n’t be feel­ing such things. The aber­rant thoughts ought to have been sup­pressed by the ma­chin­ery and chem­i­cals in your blood. Be­sides, now is not the time. Or per­haps you’re read­ing too much into it. You’re just hold­ing hands.

Your red coats and bags make you easy tar­gets as you run along the roof. The snow’s do­ing its best to hide you from your en­emy, but it also hides your en­emy from you. You don’t re­al­ize they’re there un­til the nan­otech whis­pers in your ear.

All you have is coal, but you won’t have it for long. Your bag is al­ready feel­ing light. You threw too much, ear­lier.

Well, there is one other thing you have. And you use it. It was a stu­pid idea, but you wanted to pre­serve the coal, so you let go of Aman­da’s hand and you dove at the in­truder, wield­ing the candy-cane of a ba­ton. She’s a tall sort. You’re hardly light. You’ve had a year of chem­i­cal mod­i­fi­ca­tion to en­sure that. But you’re hardly tall, ei­ther.

You bang her over the head, but it just makes her an­gry. She raises her gun, but your sec­ond swing knocks it out of her hand. You’re not sure, but you get the feel­ing she’s en­joy­ing it.

Her first punch hits your face. You can hear your nose crunch. Drops of red blood fall into the snow.

You can’t re­act be­fore her next punch. Luck­ily for you, she aimed lower. She gasps, and grasps her hand. You think you heard her knuck­les break upon your coat. The thought al­most makes you smile, but you should­n’t en­joy oth­ers’ pain, Mary.

You jump up onto her, bury­ing her face in your beard. You try to call that calm­ness up, but its dif­fi­cult. She does­n’t set­tle as much as you’d like. You’re not sure if you’re do­ing it wrong, or if the chem­i­cals from your beard just aren’t meant to sub­due an adult.

You have a trail of bod­ies be­hind you. What’s an­other death, Mary? Send her to meet the maker. You hes­i­tate, but you snap her neck. You tell your­self she was calm as she went. But it does­n’t mat­ter. She was in­ter­fer­ing with God’s plan. You did the right thing.

1 Year, 301 Days Be­fore the Seal­ing

Can you feel the chem­i­cals mak­ing their way through your body? Can you feel the mi­cro­scopic ma­chines re­leas­ing them? It’s prob­a­bly your imag­i­na­tion. These things take months to work. But they will work. You’ll put on some weight, and of course, you’ll get that white beard.

You thought you would­n’t make it, did­n’t you? That you’d chicken out?

But you were first, be­fore even Amanda. Aman­da’s dose is still hid­den away. Ja­cob is still star­ing at his con­tem­pla­tively. Ja­son and Jessie are still flirt­ing. You, The Six, are the first to have the op­por­tu­nity to take their dose.

And of those Six, you were first. It would not be glut­to­nous to have some milk, and even a cookie or two. But don’t be proud of your re­birth. Use this time to help oth­ers. Amanda could use some as­sis­tance, could­n’t she?

Be­sides, there’s one step left. One more thing to put on be­fore it’s fi­nal. It’s surely noth­ing com­pared to what you’ve al­ready done. A tiny step. One more item to be part of you un­til you die.

Put it on, and it’s done, Mary. It’s not dif­fi­cult. It’s just a hat. Put it on, Mary. Put it on and be­come part of the Ark.

9 Min­utes Be­fore the Seal­ing

You tug on her hat. You’re not sure why. Amanda felt the pull on her head—her hat’s as much a part of her as the boots are a part of you. She looks at you and half-smiles, and gives your hat a lit­tle tug back. Your heart light­ens.

You light an­other piece of coal with the ball of your hat, and toss it at an in­fil­tra­tor zip­ping through the air be­hind you. Amanda guides it with her snowy wind, and it smashes into him, blow­ing him away in a vi­o­lent spray of blood that splat­ters into the wind and into the snow upon the rooftops.

You think you only have one more piece of coal left, but you’re al­most at the gates of the Sanc­tum. You’re al­most to the Pole. You can make it.

468 Days Be­fore the Seal­ing

Aman­da’s just en­vi­ous, Mary. You know that. You beat her to it. You beat every­one to it. Now, every­one else’s beat her to it.

She’s still not taken the steps, but she needs to. The kids will start ar­riv­ing any day. She’ll be lucky if she can get any beard growth in time.

You think she’d have been made to leave by now, but you also ex­pected a re­place­ment for David months ago. In any case, it’s not your busi­ness. She’s your part­ner but you aren’t her mother. You know she’ll come around even­tu­ally. She knows she has to pro­tect the chil­dren. She knows she has to lead you all.

Every day it is clearer that this is not a war we can win, but you know it is a war we can pro­tect our chil­dren from. You know your duty grows heav­ier every day. You must help pro­tect this Ark we have made. It is our fi­nal hope. Pro­tect them un­til the world out­side is safe and just, un­der the pro­tec­tion of our Lord and Sav­ior.

The snow is pick­ing up. Soon, the Ark will be shrouded within it, to the bar­ri­ers of its walls—walls which re­main, for the mo­ment, low­ered; the chil­dren are yet to ar­rive. The snow will cam­ou­flage the Ark from satel­lites as much as peo­ple, but the snow is far stronger a se­cu­rity mea­sure than the ob­scu­rity it pro­vides. You know what it can do, if worst comes to worst.

You need to talk to Amanda. She may not want to talk with you, but that’s okay, Mary. You’ll be fine.

Go to her, Mary. You know where she’s at. You can feel her, sleep­ing a fit­ful nap. She’s where she’s al­ways at. She hides away in the room above, that only she and you may en­ter, but which you never en­ter to­gether—it is too dan­ger­ous in far too many ways. But this once, it is worth the risk.

Tell her it’s a big step, Mary. Tell her you know it’s scary. Tell her she’ll be al­right. Re­mind her of the chil­dren. Re­mind her they need to be safe. Re­mind her they need to be happy and joy­ous. Re­mind her that, with­out God, there can be no hap­pi­ness, there can be no joy.

The Ark is a dream for the chil­dren. You and her, you can make every­thing per­fect for them. She’d over­look the North, Mary, and you the South. In the evenings, you’d stand at the top of the Pole, the wind teas­ing your beards, your red cloaks bil­low­ing. You’d give merry “Ho-ho-ho”s as you sur­veyed the six spokes of The Acad­emy, and the lat­tice of houses be­tween them wherein the chil­dren live. In spite of the snow, it would be warm and happy. The sun would set over the rooftops. The snow would glow or­ange. You would­n’t be to­gether, but you’d be to­gether.

Ig­nore those feel­ings. You should not be feel­ing them. You’re well into your sec­ond dose. They should be a thing of the past by now. You’re just imag­in­ing things. They’ll set­tle down. That’s why you’re here, any­way. They’ll quiet, even­tu­ally. They did for Ja­son and Jessie.

Amanda tries to tempt you, but you know she’s just try­ing to tempt her­self. She did­n’t want to let you in, but you went in any­way. She avoided you, but then she came close up to you. Her face looks gen­tly down into yours. “What if,” she asks. “What if I don’t take it?”

You laugh, but she in­sists. What if she did­n’t? You know that’s not an op­tion. She can’t be around kids, not with her past. You tell her this.

You know she knows bet­ter than to tell you there’s noth­ing wrong with her. She might as well say we’re on the wrong side of this war. Such state­ments would be tan­ta­mount to trea­son.

You pray for her. You pray God will for­give her. You pray He will help her see the truth in His grace, just as you did. That He could give her an­other chance. She got this far. She con­fessed. She re­pented. She may have lain with an­other woman, but God for­gives. He for­gave you.

You dig the nee­dle out from where she hid it, and place it on the lit­tle box next to her pal­let. She can’t hide from it.

8 Min­utes Be­fore the Seal­ing

You’re sure that, for a mo­ment, she en­joyed what she was do­ing, con­trol­ling the snow and the wind. But as quickly as you saw the en­joy­ment on her face, it dis­ap­peared.

There’s no time to re­flect. You dive for cover as a gi­ant ar­tillery shell comes at you. You cover your­self with your red cloak. It’s near in­de­struc­tible, but you can still feel the heat from the burn­ing splin­ters of metal as they slam into it.

You look for Amanda, and she’s not as well off. She lost her cloak as she dove—she never fas­tens it right.

She’s bleed­ing, but it does­n’t look bad. She’ll be back to nor­mal soon. You try to help her up, but she re­fuses. You try to pull your cloak over you both, but she steps away from you.

You look away. It is­n’t the time to feel, but it’s hard not to. You need a dis­trac­tion. You find one. Be­fore you know it, your last piece of coal is in the air, and it hits home. You watch the ex­plo­sion for a sec­ond too long. You’re knocked off the roof.

Your land­ing is not gen­tle.

132 Days Be­fore the Seal­ing

She’s run out of time. She knows it. You know it. How can she lead you all if she is not one of you? You can’t al­low her to be left be­hind.

You know what you need to do. Why can’t you do it? She’d thank you for it even­tu­ally, you know. It needs to be done. It would be for her own good. She’d be hap­pier if she just took the plunge.

But you can’t do it.

You’re too weak, aren’t you, Mary? Un­able to do what’s needed. What’s hold­ing you back? Is it those feel­ings you still can’t shake? Is it lust?

She knows, you know. It’s prob­a­bly why she has­n’t done it. She knows what you want, and she wants it, too. It’s you that’s hold­ing her back, Mary. It’s your fault.

Pray to God, Mary. Beg Him for for­give­ness. Ask Him for guid­ance. He knows what to do, and He can guide you into the light, and her along with you.

You know what you need to do. But you can’t do it.

So some­one else does.

Ja­cob had gone so cold af­ter his first dose. Colder still af­ter his sec­ond.

“No!” she yells, as he pins her down. “I don’t want—“

Her des­per­ate eyes lock onto yours. “Mary!” she calls out to you. “Get him off! Please, Mary!”

You al­most moved, Mary. That look of be­trayal in her eyes called to you, just as it would any­one. You al­most went to her. You al­most pulled Ja­cob off her.

But you did the right thing, Mary.

She did­n’t fight as he pulled the nee­dle from her leg, and the boots up her feet. For some rea­son, you wanted to cry as you watched her, de­feated and bro­ken, lay there as Ja­cob pulled the fluffy red hat onto her head.

You know it was for the best. This was what you ought to have done long ago. You are her part­ner. It was your duty, and you re­neged.

But some­thing about it still broke your heart.

Ja­cob’s in­ter­ven­tion was just in time, as the first chil­dren ar­rived the next day.

7 Min­utes Be­fore the Seal­ing

You hear Amanda shout your name. You’re not sure where you are. Every­thing’s so bright and white.

There’s a flash of red, and then you see her.

“Be al­right,” she mut­ters, and you feel her hand, re­mark­ably warm, against your cheek.

You blink, and try to move. She helps you to your feet. You stag­ger slightly, but you’ll be al­right in a mo­ment.

“Just over here,” she tells you, pulling you in through the gates. You’ve made it.

She drags you across the ground. Snow flies up at all who try to stop you. It whirls around and smashes them into walls. You’d get dizzy watch­ing them, but you’re al­ready dizzy.

You find your­self climb­ing stairs—she must have pulled you in­doors—they’re steep, spi­ral­ing up the Pole, to the room at the very top.

The smoke wafts through the air, from the coals at the base of the Pole, heated by the re­ac­tor be­low. You can feel it in your lungs, halfway be­tween smoke and wa­ter, the tiny smoky ma­chines con­stantly in flux as they rise to be­come the flur­ries of snow above.

The door is al­ready open. Ja­cob is al­ready in­side.

1 Hour & 6 Min­utes Be­fore the Seal­ing

“I don’t want to be a Santa,” she says. But she’s not only a Santa. She’s also your leader. The North Santa to your South.

She was the one cho­sen. You don’t un­der­stand why. If who­ever chose were still around, per­haps they’d choose dif­fer­ently now. But no­body’s around. Things haven’t been go­ing well in the war.

Amanda still barely talks with you. She sits in the tower, or else se­cludes her­self in an empty house. She never sleeps in her pal­let. She only ap­pears to give com­mands: the chil­dren in the South­east Spoke are get­ting bored; fix the lit­tle train en­gine; check on Matthew in the North­west.

You pray for her, as your eyes fol­low her move­ments. You know you should­n’t watch her so closely. It’s un­be­com­ing. You pray for for­give­ness, but you won­der if God an­swers your prayers, or if he’s de­serted you, too.

“I’m sorry,” you’ve tried to tell her. You don’t know for what, but you think she might. Her weak smile, not re­ally a smile, breaks you.

It should­n’t. You know bet­ter, Mary. You should­n’t be feel­ing these feel­ings.

You should­n’t sit with with her alone, here in the empty house at the end of the North­ern Spoke. It does­n’t mat­ter if you don’t do any­thing, whether for lack of will­ing­ness or for piety.

You don’t know how long you’ve been sit­ting here. Per­haps the bet­ter part of an hour. You’ve been lax in your du­ties, you sup­pose. Amanda left a few min­utes ago. You’re not sure if she en­joys your com­pany. You don’t think she’s sure, ei­ther.

You step out­side. You want to find her. In­stead, you find Ja­son and Jessie. Their blood shines in stark con­trast to the white of the snow.

Ja­son’s al­ready dead. Jessie nearly so. She tells you what Ja­cob’s done.

The war is over. We lost. The God­less are at­tack­ing the Ark. You have to save the chil­dren. You have to raise the walls. You have to ac­ti­vate the Pole.

6 Min­utes Be­fore the Seal­ing

Ja­cob knows he won’t be able to fin­ish what he’s do­ing be­fore Amanda stops him. Amanda knows it. You know it.

He’s prob­a­bly al­ready tried to dis­arm the Pole. It did­n’t work for him, just as it would­n’t work for you, or even Amanda alone.

“I can’t be him, any­more,” he says. “I could never be him. Not for my par­ents, not for my class­mates, not for—“

Amanda kneels on the floor next to him, and takes his hand. He stops fid­dling with the wires un­der the con­sole.

“I un­der­stand,” she whis­pers to him, her voice warm, but col­ored with un­ease. “I do.”

Your eyes glance to the door. You’re not sure how much time you have.

“But your ac­tions caused the death of three chil­dren,” Amanda con­tin­ued. Her voice was no longer warm. You un­der­stand, now, why she was cho­sen. You see the fire within her icy stare.

“I’m sorry,” he begs. “I had to.”

“They’re still dead,” she said. She gripped his hand, and looked him dead in the eyes. You could­n’t be­lieve she would ac­tu­ally do it. You did­n’t know she could. But his skin be­gan to glow. She leaned in close to his ear. “And you hurt me,” she whis­pered.

His breath be­came smoke. He clutched at his eyes as they seemed to melt. You could feel the heat com­ing from his body. He seemed to col­lapse away slowly, dis­solv­ing into ash. The ash swirled up to the roof, and joined with the flur­ries tak­ing off through the small hole at the top.

All that re­mained was his boots, his cloak, and his hat.

“You did the right thing, Amanda,” you hear your­self say. “He put us all into dan­ger.”

“What if he was right?” Amanda asks.

“Amanda…”

“We lost, Mary.”

“That’s why we built the Ark!” you ex­claim. “To pro­tect the chil­dren from the God­less, un­til God’s grace is once again—“

“What if we’re wrong? What if we’ve been the ones brain­wash­ing our chil­dren—“

“Amanda…”

You want to put your arm around her. You wish she was right as much as she does.

“They don’t have a prob­lem with peo­ple like us, Mary,” she says.

“Their morals are warped, if they even have any,” you tell her.

“They pro­tected the kids. Did­n’t you see?”

You did. You had­n’t re­al­ized that child was awake. You threw that piece of coal at his doorstep. Had that in­fil­tra­tor not jumped in front of it…

“I don’t want to be a Santa,” she says. “You don’t ei­ther, Mary. They tell you that you do, but you don’t. Re­lease me, Mary.”

“I can’t,” you say.

“I can,” she says, “if you let me. I can re­lease us both.”

She grabs your hand. “We could be to­gether, Mary. They’d let us…”

You look at her. You’re think­ing too much to know what you’re think­ing. You want to be­lieve her—

She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, and sud­denly, you are aware. Not just of the chil­dren, and whether they slept or woke, but of every­one, every­thing. You feel the snow whis­per­ing out­side, and the im­prints of boots as they fall upon the ground.

“Mary,” she says. You for­got she was there. Your eyes slowly fo­cus upon her. “Mary, please…”

It takes two to lead the Ark. But they have to act as one. Equals, they can con­trol any­thing the other can, and more: they can put the ball of their hats si­mul­ta­ne­ously onto the green but­ton. The Ark would end. The ma­chines would shut down. It would all be over.

“Mary, re­lease us,” she says. Your eyes fo­cus slowly upon her. “Mary, please… We can be to­gether. We can fix all of this.”

You were still hold­ing her hand. You knew you could do it. Her hat was al­ready there, on the green but­ton. It would only take yours to end it all.

You want to be with her. You want to press that but­ton and let this all blow over, re­turn the chil­dren to their par­ents, for­get about God’s sup­posed will, about His al­leged Great­ness, about His rights and wrongs…

But you know you should­n’t, Mary. You need to do the right thing. You know you can. You have all the power she has, now. She saw to that…

She saw it in your eyes be­fore she felt it flow­ing through her. “No, Mary, please, please, please don’t do this, please Mary…”

You want to take it back. You want to change your mind. But you can’t. It’s done. You know it. She knows it.

That look of be­trayal rests in her eyes once more. You try to say you’re sorry, but the words are stuck some­where within you.

You deny the tears in your eyes as you pull her hand, and the ball of her hat, off the green but­ton, and push it onto the red. You hold the ball of your own hat over the red, and hes­i­tate, but not for long. She’s al­ready glow­ing.

You push the red but­ton.

All you can re­mem­ber is screams.

Her ter­ri­ble screams as she burns, as her eyes liquify, as her lungs turn to ash, and the smoke leaves her mouth.

The screams of the in­fil­tra­tors, as they breathe the snow and—not be­ing San­tas nor chil­dren—it turns to fire within them.

Your own screams, as you col­lapse to the floor.

Even from within the Pole, you can hear the walls raise.

They will not lower for any­thing. Not even for you. The snow will kill any who try to en­ter, whether you will it or not.

The Ark is sealed. It can­not be un­sealed. Not for any­thing. Not for longer than you can fathom. Not with­out both a North and a South… And the North San­ta’s ashes even now waft slowly up through the air, be­com­ing a flurry, join­ing the rest in the snowy night. All that re­mains are the hat, the boots, and the red cloak.

You prob­a­bly won’t be alive when the Ark un­seals. But Mary, you did­n’t do this for your­self. You did it for the chil­dren.

You did it, Mary. You pro­tected the Ark. You pro­tected the chil­dren. You did what He wanted you to do, and He will for­give you for your sins. You did the right thing.

You pull on the end of the fluffy red hat, but there’s noth­ing hold­ing it any­more. It swings freely from your hand. There’s noth­ing there.

You won’t cry for these feel­ings, Mary. The North Santa was a Santa. Noth­ing more.

You pull your­self to your feet, and onto the bal­cony. You sur­vey the Ark. The Sanc­tum cir­cling the Pole. The six spokes of the Acad­emy jut­ting out from it. Their web-like off­shoots, and the lat­tice of houses be­tween them all.

Your fin­gers dig into the hat. You won’t keep it. You’ll throw it away, into the wind. Let go, Mary…

You did the right thing.

She was born in Mis­souri. The day and month of her birth—June 8th—are widely known, but the ex­act year is shrouded in mys­tery. Re­searchers es­ti­mate she was born around thirty-six years ago. The few who have been brave enough to ask her have been tightlipped about the ex­change, only shiv­er­ing and say­ing “Cap­tain Jack can not be de­fined by any age.”

An artist at her core, she has worked with many ma­te­ri­als, from ti­ta­nium to mar­i­juana to com­puter code to glass, and even to the raw build­ing blocks of life it­self.

Ac­cord­ing to es­ti­mates, she cre­ated her first life­form forty years ago, sev­eral years be­fore she was even born. This feat is, of course, in­cred­i­ble, but also not overly sur­pris­ing from such a force as Jacque­line, who is pre­dicted to be the first cre­ator of a time ma­chine, some­time af­ter she gets bored with her work on world peace. She named her first liv­ing cre­ation “Sheila,” and re­ferred to her as a “child,” evok­ing im­agery from the com­puter sci­ence con­cept of a “tree”—in which, of course, any node has one par­ent, and zero or more chil­dren.

Oddly, she claims that this is not a di­rect match to the com­puter sci­ence con­cept: while there can be no doubt that she cre­ated life, she has main­tained that half the raw ma­te­r­ial was con­tributed by her then-part­ner.

Al­most fif­teen years later, she cre­ated her sec­ond “child” life­form, known as Al­li­son, who is now a young woman in soft­ware en­gi­neer­ing, which Jacque­line has been quoted as call­ing “un­ex­pected,” per­haps due to the cur­rent un­for­tu­nate rar­ity of women in the field. In an in­ter­view, Al­li­son ad­mits that she will al­ways live very much in her cre­ator’s shadow, but hopes she “can cut out a slice of life in which [she mat­ters] for [her­self].”

Two years af­ter cre­at­ing Al­li­son, Jacque­line cre­ated “Hay­den,” known to be one of her finest works (though it’s very dif­fi­cult to com­pare her liv­ing chil­dren). Hav­ing de­cided to study mu­sic, he is quickly be­com­ing an ex­pert in the field, a habit he likely picked up from his cre­ator.

Again, Jacque­line main­tains that for both Al­li­son and Hay­den there is an­other par­ent: her cur­rent part­ner, King Maui (com­monly known as “Fadel”, oc­ca­sion­ally as “Fa-do”, and an amaz­ing man in his own right). Not only did he pro­vide half of the raw ma­te­ri­als, he also helped in­tro­duce the chil­dren into the world, and quite pos­si­bly shares a large role in their suc­cess thus far.

Not sat­is­fied with cre­at­ing life, Jacque­line went on to cre­ate art in the form of mo­saics. Nat­u­rally, she quickly per­fected the skill, be­com­ing one of—and quite pos­si­bly the—best in the field, al­though if asked, she would ve­he­mently deny hav­ing any­thing above a mod­er­ate skill in the art—such are artists.

Jacque­line be­gan to want to be some­thing more than “just” the cre­ator of life and one of the great­est mo­saic artists in his­tory. Per­haps this was in part due to Al­lison’s leav­ing home, or per­haps she just felt it was time for some­thing new.

Amaz­ingly, and with per­fect tim­ing, her first life­form—Sheila—re­peated her moth­er’s feat and cre­ated life of her own. Sheila has had two chil­dren—pre­sumed male—and Jacque­line of course has been a big part of their lives, help­ing shape them just as she shaped her own chil­dren’s.

Not the ti­tles of “Mother,” nor “Grand­mother,” nor even “Artist” are enough for her. Now, she is reach­ing for “Chef”—though it is un­likely to be much of a reach.

“She could do bet­ter,” sniffed Al­li­son, on a day she ad­mit­ted to be­ing in a prissy mood. “Cook­ing? With her skill set? I would have thought she’d solve cold fu­sion first.” Af­ter a pause, Al­li­son con­ceded that her reser­va­tion was mostly due to dis­tance, and her re­sul­tant in­abil­ity to taste the amaz­ing things her mother would be­gin to cre­ate. “She al­ready makes amaz­ing food,” said Al­li­son. “Food’s ba­si­cally my fa­vorite thing. Well, glass, metal, wood and the Ox­ford comma are my fa­vorite things. But food is a close sec­ond.”

This ex­change hints at the con­flict with which the par­ent-child dy­namic is of­ten fraught. And yet, in spite of such con­flict, there has been no known in­stance in which one of her chil­dren has re­ferred to her as “Cap­tain Jack.” In fact, rarely have they called her any­thing so harsh as “Mother.” Have they truly never viewed her as an en­emy?

For that mat­ter, why is said name re­served for en­e­mies?

It is a gen­er­ally ac­cepted fact that the name “Cap­tain Jack” is, as the ex­perts say, “amaz­ing.” There have been many ex­am­ples through­out his­tory, in­clud­ing the famed Cap­tain Jack Spar­row, about whom not one, not two, not even three, but four movies have been made (so far). Per­haps even more iconic is Cap­tain Jack Hark­ness, leader of Torch­wood, and friend of The Doc­tor. Nei­ther of these, of course, was brave enough to sim­ply go by “Cap­tain Jack,” pre­sum­ably be­cause they knew that would not go over well with the one and true Cap­tain.

The lead­ing hy­poth­e­sis as to the name’s lim­i­ta­tion is that her friends sim­ply find “Jackie” eas­ier to say—it is, af­ter all, two syl­la­bles in­stead of three. There are flaws with this hy­poth­e­sis, how­ever: Jacque­line is also three syl­la­bles, and yet her friends have re­ferred to her as such.

Per­haps Jackie has asked her friends not to call her “Cap­tain Jack” be­cause she feels it does not em­body her par­tic­u­lar con­nec­tion with them—or, at least, not the most im­por­tant part of said con­nec­tion.

What if, how­ever, the so­lu­tion is much sim­pler: what if she sim­ply feels that her friends and fam­ily would be too in­tim­i­dated if they thought of her as she truly is? What if, to avoid such in­tim­i­da­tion, she has tried to limit how much of her they truly see? What if she lets her­self be iden­ti­fied as “Mom” by her chil­dren and “Jackie” by her friends, and “Yes dear” by her part­ner, for their own good?

What if she sac­ri­fices the pos­si­bil­ity of them know­ing all that is her?

But what if it goes one step fur­ther? What if be­ing forced to live this way has caused her to hide her great­ness from her­self? What if even she her­self only knows a sin­gle slice of her­self that she al­lows her­self to see?

Per­haps—just per­haps—she has even re­ferred to her­self as Cap­tain Jack?

Sci­en­tists have been un­able to de­ter­mine a way to read her mind, so her true thoughts about her­self may never be known for cer­tain.

One thing is for cer­tain: all of her ac­tiv­i­ties, from cod­ing to cook­ing to art to the cre­ation of life it­self, have one thing in com­mon, and there is in­deed one la­bel by which she may be iden­ti­fied, one la­bel which is a su­per­set of all the oth­ers: “Cre­ator.”

But the one la­bel which she’d choose? Mother.

Happy Moth­er’s Day!

L’U­ni­corn, a staff writer for Stabby De­mon Horses, is a 26-year-old uni­corn just try­ing to make her way in the world. Un­for­tu­nately, peo­ple don’t seem to think uni­corns ex­ist. This has caused some dif­fi­culty.

I wake up on my bed.

I wake up on my bed, just as I have done be­fore ten thou­sand times over. I wake up on this bed, in this box, alone but for the ants, alone in my box, a large box, fifty feet to a side, twenty to the other, if my feet are a foot long.

It is of­ten warm but rarely stuffy, which as time passes only flum­moxes me more and more, as in all my years in this box I have yet to find any ap­par­ent open­ings through which even air could travel, much less the food which I wake up on my bed and find laid out upon the deep red rose wood of the desk.

Shiny bolts that bolt the desk and the bed to the floor match the large rings mounted upon them, use­less for want of rope, for which I’ve never dis­cerned a use, but have fan­ta­sized aplenty, and which like­wise match the shiny screws se­cur­ing this mon­th’s beau­ti­ful rug into the floor.

Over in the cor­ner where the wood turns to mar­ble, the walls are lined with mir­rors I can­not shat­ter. A mar­ble basin and shiny metal faucets on the floor make a sink, next to the toi­let, which sits, noth­ing to speak of, be­side where the wa­ter falls from the ceil­ing, warm to some­one else’s taste, all with the el­e­gant grav­ity of some­one else’s de­sign.

Their de­sign is that I am here, and here I am, and here I have been, ever since I first woke up on this bed, on a day which some­times, in dreams, I half-re­mem­ber with flashes of gold and a sweet taste I still chase but never find.

Choco­late is not the same, though every night I re­ceive some new choco­late con­coc­tion with a fancy hand-inked cal­li­graphic name pho­to­copied onto a sturdy pa­per menu with al­ready-cho­sen items.

Ex­cept tonight.

I wake up on my bed. I an­tic­i­pate that smell, whether it be a drink or cake, bar or pie, that smell of choco­late…

Upon the desk: fork on the left, knife on the right, fac­ing out, plate in the mid­dle: pro­sciutto lay­ered over as­para­gus with a bal­samic re­duc­tion; a filet of salmon; fried strands of onion; no choco­late.

I will not re­act. I will com­plete my lessons. I will prac­tice my writ­ing. I will be good. I will get choco­late again.

But which door was it, I won­der, which door made the sound that flew un­der the al­ready shut door of my room and tore my peace­ful slum­ber asun­der?

It’s the warmth of my bed that holds me tight within, soft warm sheets and cov­ers wherein: I toss and turn and sleep and then, I try to leave this homey den, but for thirst or din this is a home and den I can­not stop be­ing held within.

My eyes are drawn to the clos­est door, a door to a closet whose mess I cer­tainly would never ask for, but clean­ing it’s a chore and I can­not abide a bore, so it stays as it is, a ver­i­ta­ble store of all things one might find, lose, or ig­nore, and al­though my eyes are sore, they see that door, and open as it is, I can­not help but think some­thing more: I do not re­mem­ber open­ing that par­tic­u­lar door.

But I peer in­side and it is empty, at least as far as I can see, or at least no more full than it used to be: at least no ghosts or ghouls in that closet have it in for me.

Was it last night when this hap­pened last, or was it fur­ther in my past, or was it just tonight that this thing passed, when I got up to sit my ass upon the toi­let when the closed bath­room door stopped me fast.

I re­mem­ber some­thing more: I did not re­mem­ber clos­ing that par­tic­u­lar door.

I’d get up and check that door again if I could, but there’s noth­ing that could make me would, I would­n’t get up even if I should, even for the bath­room floor’s cold wood.

To hear the fan I strain my ear, it’s some­thing I for­get how to hear for I leave it on all year, warm or cold out I keep it chilly here, so I don’t over­heat and al­low my fear of sweat to rear, but in­stead tonight per­haps a dif­fer­ent fear will rear for no mat­ter how hard I strain my ear the fan is not some­thing I can hear.

A strange feel­ing wells up in­side, and so I must chide my­self for for­get­ting that this night—so or­di­nary—ought to be a bor­ing ride: I don’t un­der­stand why but I want to hide, but I’m not mov­ing an inch from my com­fort­able side of the bed, noth­ing can make me move un­til I have died.

Every­thing is or­di­nary re­peats in my head, why did I think about the word “dead,” and now that I think about thought I re­al­ize what I’ve said, and my head wants to be led to a train of thought not at all suited for lay­ing in bed.

What is so or­di­nary, I want to ask, but that is a dif­fi­cult task, for I can­not find a word that fits now ex­cept bask, so I’ll re­peat: ask, and now all I can say is cask, but even that can­not mask the fear that comes from be­ing un­able to (once again) ask:

Why? Why must it be or­di­nary? Why can’t I move? And why do I rhyme?

I can­not ask why, but I know I will un­til I die.

Good­bye.

Seven thou­sand four hun­dred eigh­teen pieces of pa­per. Stacks. Fold­ers. Boxes. Crates. She had­n’t thrown a sin­gle one away. Each, she thought, was bet­ter than the last.

Ding!

Saman­tha pulled the pa­per gen­tly from the sketch­pad, leav­ing a fine neat edge, and placed it on the May 2014 stack.

To­mor­row, she’d set the timer for ten min­utes once more, and start all over again.

Should she show it to Anne? Maybe she should draw a few more, just to be sure, just to get it per­fect.

She had first tried show­ing… what was his name? It was back in… what was the year? Back some­time when she could­n’t re­mem­ber; early grade school, per­haps. Def­i­nitely be­fore the whole high school dra­mas; that was an­other guy en­tirely. And his girl­friend. And her girl­friend.

No, this boy—Joshua? Or is Joshua just the first name that comes to mind? Any­way, he was the first.

“I want to show you some­thing,” she said. He seemed ea­ger enough, so she showed him, and he looked at the draw­ing, and made the best “oh, that’s nice” face a twelve year old could be ex­pected to make.

She watched his face as her own fell. “It’s… it’s just—“ “No, no, I like it!” he said.

So she called him that night, and the next, and the next, and then she did­n’t, and then he did­n’t call her, and he did­n’t call the next ei­ther. Or the one af­ter that. Or the one af­ter.

So she got out her sketch­pad. Prac­tice makes per­fect. She’d make her­self per­fect.

Aaron, she had thought, would get it. They were just friends; noth­ing too spe­cial about them. She took ad­van­tage of him a bit—he ac­tu­ally had a car, and her par­ents would­n’t let her drive—but he seemed happy to drive her around so she let him.

He was study­ing art, or would be study­ing it, when he went to col­lege—he wanted to take a year off first—so she showed it to him.

His head tilted strangely.

“It’s me,” Saman­tha pro­claimed. “The draw­ing is of me.”

Then the door squeaked open. And then si­lence.

Aaron looked at Elise. Elise looked at the draw­ing.

“Why are you in my house, Elise?” Aaron asked. “Honey?” he added, be­lat­edly.

“So you wanna do this on his—“ a voice cut off sud­denly. “Oh,” said Abby, pok­ing her head in from be­hind Elise.

Aaron’s face pinged back and forth be­tween them. “Wait… Are you two…” His eye­brow wagged. “Wanna make a sand­wich?”

“Leave,” com­manded Elise.

“It’s my hou—“ “Leave. You too, ass­hole!” she told Saman­tha. “And take your draw­ing with you.”

So Aaron drove her home.

And the next day when she needed a cof­fee run he drove her. And the day af­ter that. But the day af­ter he was busy. And the day af­ter that. And then he was al­ways busy. And he did­n’t call.

Next time, she promised her­self, next time she showed any­body, it would be per­fect. She would be per­fect.

Then there was Laura.

Saman­tha was twenty three, and every minute of the day was Laura. Did Laura want to have din­ner? Did Laura want to go to a movie? Did Laura want to help make a movie, or try writ­ing an app, or—

“It’s time for me to show you some­thing,” Saman­tha told her. “A part of my­self I hide from every­one, un­til they get to know me.”

“Is this about all the boxes?” asked Laura.

Saman­tha nod­ded, opened her newest box, lifted the top sheet from it, and handed it to Laura.

Lau­ra’s eye­brows rose. She glanced at Saman­tha, and made the same tilt of the head that Aaron had.

“So… they’re all draw­ings of…”

“Yep.”

“I… see…”

“It’s me. It’s who I am. What I am. The bit of me I keep hid­den.”

Laura looked up at Saman­tha and then… And then…

“I think we should step back our friend­ship.”

And then she left.

Saman­tha called. No an­swer. She texted. No re­ply. She emailed long mes­sages. Short mes­sages. An­gry mes­sages. Sad mes­sages.

Noth­ing.

Af­ter a week she stopped call­ing. Tex­ting. Email­ing. She did­n’t want to be an ass­hole.

Laura was years ago.

And now…

Anne.

“Why do you do this to your­self?” Anne asked.

“Be­cause it is who I am. I’ve per­fected it. It’s done.”

“I can’t be with some­body who is like this,” Anne said. “I can­not be with this part of you. And nei­ther can you.”

“But… But it’s per­fect!”

Page af­ter page burnt in the fire. Fi­nally, her hand came to rest on the last; the mas­ter­piece.

Then it, too, en­tered the blaze.

“I don’t want to be an ass­hole,” she whis­pered.

She grabbed her pen­cil, and be­gan to draw.

“Per­haps a flower in­stead?” she asked her­self.

“There are very few peo­ple whom I al­low to hand­cuff me,” she states. “But while I am here, I will an­swer all of your ques­tions.”

At last, the gov­ern­ment agent across from her looks up. “Yes,” she con­tin­ues, “I do have a se­cret ro­bot army, and no, I do not want to take over the coun­try.

“I want to take over the world.”

Sirens sound. Lights flicker. The room shakes. The gov­ern­ment agent stands, reach­ing for his gun, but it is much, much too late: he finds his own gun pointed at him, held by the same ro­bot guard that had only mo­ments ago been hold­ing Han­nah.

Han­nah does not stand. “Pur­ple,” she in­tones. The amethyst gem hang­ing upon her choker glows vi­o­let—

Clang! Her hand­cuffs hit the floor.

“I al­ways thought ‘Han­nah: Em­peror of the World’ had a nice ring to it.”

“Yes, Eliz­a­beth, The Em­per­or’s takeover—long may she be re­mem­bered—is in­deed pub­lic record,” says your in­ter­viewer as she digs through the pile of pens she brought in with her.

You can’t re­mem­ber her name. Per­haps it started with an S. “But that hardly means we should­n’t talk about it. Eliz­a­beth… I re­ally wish you’d open up.”

You re­ally wish she’d leave you be.

“I’m just do­ing my part in the world­wide gov­ern­ment y­ou de­signed in the wake of our glo­ri­ous Em­per­or’s—“

“A gov­ern­ment,” you re­mind her, do­ing your best to chan­nel Han­nah, “which I can un-de­sign.“ You wish Han­nah were here to res­cue you. She al­ways was bet­ter with peo­ple.

“Eliz­a­beth, please,” she begs. You pre­fer ‘Liz.’

Fine. “Han­nah was some­thing like ten,” you be­gin. She was eight and a half, but what­ever. “A wild uni­corn ap­peared. Al­most killed her.”

If your in­ter­viewer is at all sur­prised by the con­cept of a wild uni­corn, she does­n’t show it: she merely glances at the small sculp­ture upon the table be­side you of a young woman slit­ting a uni­corn’s throat mo­ments be­fore it buries its long sharp horn into her fa­ther.

Anna, your sleek, metal­lic, and rather mur­der­ous ro­botic friend, pours you an­other glass of wine. She of­fers one to your in­ter­viewer, but your in­ter­viewer de­clines. Maybe she’s afraid Anna may have poi­soned it. A year ago you’d have thought she’d poi­son you.

Her hand lin­ger­ing on your shoul­der for a mo­ment, Anna re­turns to sharp­en­ing her rather im­pres­sive col­lec­tion of knives.

“Then this id­iot in a cape ap­pears out of nowhere and, with his mag­ic, saves her. Not sure what he did with the uni­corn.” You know ex­act­ly what he did with the stabby de­mon horse. “Any­way, his fam­ily takes her in, they fall in love, you know how it goes.”

You think it might be too ob­nox­ious to sing ‘Han­nah-and-Pe­ter sit­ting in a tree.’ Han­nah would say it would­n’t fit with the part of your­self that you wish to pro­ject. Ah, Han­nah.

You might be a bit tipsy, but you’re not as tipsy as you let on. Best fix that. You take an­other big gulp of the Pinot Noir. Fuck sip­ping.

“Then he dumps her.” Only com­plete and ut­ter id­iots dump Han­nah. “Not-safe-to-be-with-me and all that. Said one day, he’d re­turn. Same time. Same bridge.”

“Bridge?”

“Yeah, they were on a bridge. Any­way, she must wait, wait for her hero to re­turn, and one day, they would be to­gether at last!”

You roll your eyes. You don’t much care for Pe­ter.

“I imag­ine this bridge must have been sig­nif­i­cant for the Em­peror—may her mem­ory live for­ever,” you hear your in­ter­viewer say.

You don’t re­ally get the hon­orifics. She was Em­peror for like, what? A day? You’re sure Anna must have brain­washed every­body. It would be her idea of a joke.

Your in­ter­viewer fid­gets with an or­ange pen, re­flect­ing light off a bit of metal that— “Is this the same bridge where you two met?”

They want to re­mem­ber Han­nah for­ever. “Long ago,” they’d say, “there was an Em­peror.”

“Long ago,” you say, “I ran.”

Duck! The pur­ple heat misses your left eye by inches. An­other mon­ster ig­nites be­fore you, its rag­ing pur­ple fire leap­ing and reach­ing and roar­ing, ten­drils of flame form­ing into wispy arms—

They’re every­where.

“You,” they say. “It,” they whis­per. “Thing,” they roar. “Mur­derer!” they ac­cuse. “An eye for an eye…” Their voice. Her voice. For a mo­ment, you’re con­vinced she’s still alive, still af­ter you—

You look over the rail­ing. The wa­ter is so far down… You look back—

Mon­strous pur­ple fire con­sumes the bridge. Heat blasts against your skin. You are sick­ened by the heavy scent of the wood burn­ing and crum­bling be­neath your feet.

All you’ve ever tried to do is sur­vive, but now there’s nowhere left to run, and no­body left to run with, and you are left alone with the demons.

Close your eyes. Pre­pare to jump—

“Come here of­ten?”

Your eyes snap open.

She hov­ers be­fore you on her pitch-black mo­tor­cy­cle, a slight smile upon her lips. Her eyes dart along the bridge, and worry crosses her face be­fore she schools it into the harsh scowl that you some­how think is her usual.

“Get on.” You stare. “You,” she com­mands, “Get on!”

You jump.

“That was long ago. Long be­fore she ever was Em­peror.”

Your in­ter­viewer nods ab­sently. She picks up one of her green pens, and bal­ances the clip upon her lip for a mo­ment as she pon­ders. “Is­beth…” she says, and the pen falls onto her lap. “Eliz­a­beth, I want to un­der­stand. I want to un­der­stand The Em­peror, and I want to un­der­stand yo—“

“Han­nah. Her name was Han­nah. She was a per­son. She made me happy. And she was mine.“

Every­thing is falling apart.

Your heart pounds. Han­nah cow­ers at your feet, beg­ging, plead­ing that she’ll be good, that she’ll do what­ever you say, her voice shak­ing, tears flow­ing freely from her eyes; any­thing, she says, any­thing—

What did you do? You wanted her to be happy. You must have pushed her, hurt her in a way she never wanted… An­na’s metal fin­gers hold a knife to your eye, but it is much, much too late. Why did­n’t Han­nah say some­thing? She’s sup­posed to say some­thing, say “red” or “black” or even “pur­ple,” use her choker, not let you—

Why did­n’t Anna do her job? Why did­n’t she stop you? Is it even Anna hold­ing the knife to your eye? Is it even a knife?

“An eye for an eye, Eliz­a­beth…” Your moth­er’s voice echoes in your mind. “Such an in­no­cent look­ing thing lit­tle Lizzie is… But we know bet­ter, Eliz­a­beth, do we not?”

You can see her face, il­lu­mi­nated by the lighter in her hand. She reaches for you, her burnt right eye ban­daged with the rough rag, her men­ac­ing left eye bor­ing into your own.

“Such a ter­ri­ble thing is Eliz­a­beth, to do such a thing to its mother… An eye for an eye, Eliz­a­beth…”

For a mo­ment, you feel the heat of her lighter in your left eye, and you’re sure she must have burnt it blind…

Some­thing pokes you in the side.

You gasp for breath.

It was all a dream. None of it hap­pened. None of it could have. Han­nah’s safe. You can feel her in bed next to you, and the sun­light upon your face…

“Han­nah,” you mum­ble. Your eye­lids are so heavy. You just want to lay here for­ever.

Ouch! You roll over. “No pok­ing,” you mut­ter, not open­ing your eyes. Ouch! “Bad Han­nah!” Ouch!

“Bad dream?” she asks. You wish she’d let the mem­ory fade into noth­ing­ness. “Her?” she presses.

Un­con­sciously, your hand reaches for your face. Han­nah’s beats you there.

Her own face is half-made: half the soft, sweet part of her­self she shares with you, and half the harsh, cold part of her­self she shares with the world.

She needs that cold part of her to­day.

The ro­bots that ap­ply her makeup wait for her re­turn, but she’s in no rush. She gen­tly traces the scars around your left eye. You hate those scars.

“I love my gi­gan­tic feet,” Han­nah blurts out. “I love them be­cause I am yours, so they are yours, and I’m not al­lowed to hate some­thing of yours.” She smiles guiltily. “You only had to tell me a thou­sand times.”

She kisses your scars, slowly, gen­tly, softly. “Some­times, Liz,” she whis­pers, “I wish you were mine in­stead of me yours, so I could be there for you like you are for me.”

Every­thing is per­fect.

You think her face—and the rest of her—turned out quite well for the day. It’s a bit hard to tell over the feed, but you think the gov­ern­ment agent is prop­erly in­tim­i­dated. He can barely look at her.

You wish you could be there with her, that you could help her, but this is her chal­lenge. In­stead, you sit in your home at the top of the tower she built, a thou­sand sto­ries above the city sprawl­ing be­low, await­ing her re­turn.

Again, it’s hard to tell over the feed, but you think she’s an­noyed. You’re pretty sure one way or an­other she’s not go­ing to miss tonight, but the only way out of this would be…

Holy shit. She’s ac­tu­ally go­ing to do it.

“There are very few peo­ple whom I al­low to hand­cuff me,” her voice echoes from the speaker. “But while I am here, I will an­swer all of your ques­tions. Yes, I do have a se­cret ro­bot army, and no, I do not want to take over the coun­try.”

You hold your breath. Will she ac­tu­ally— “I want to take over the world.”

She barely has time to take off her mo­tor­cy­cle hel­met be­fore you grab her hands and pin the newly-crowned Em­peror of the World against the wall.

She tugs against your grip, but you hold her hands fast above her head. “How does it feel,” you ask her, nose-to-nose, “Han­nah, Em­peror of the World, to lit­er­ally own every­thing?“

They all fell, from par­lia­ments to con­gresses to pres­i­den­cies to dic­ta­tor­ships. The very same ro­bots Han­nah sold the world now ruled it. You don’t think it took fif­teen min­utes for them to take com­mand of it all, and they barely had to fire a shot. As for the few coun­tries that had never bought any­thing from Han­nah, well… That’s what her se­cret ro­bot army’s for.

“How does it feel…” She tries to think of a ti­tle for you, but the two of you never re­ally set­tled on any, so she gives up. “How does it feel, Liz, to own The Em­peror of the World?“

You rest your fore­head against hers. “My Han­nah.”

You glance at the choker around her neck, and the amethyst gem hang­ing upon it. “Not ex­actly who I imag­ined that pro­tect­ing you from,” you men­tion.

She looks you right in the eyes. “I trust you,” she says. “Com­pletely.”

She smiles her cute smile. That smile. You don’t know how to de­scribe it. Sud­denly, her head darts for­ward and—

“Ah!” You laugh, wip­ing your nose on your sleeve. “No lick­ing!”

“Yes ma’am!”

You stare into her eyes again, but keep your dis­tance this time. “You fi­nally did it.”

“They would­n’t let me go in time.”

“I knew you would­n’t miss it,” you say. “Do you think Pe­ter—“

“I don’t care if he shows up,” she scowls. “Our an­niver­sary. Not his.”

Your grip on her hands loosens. You won­der if she’d lis­ten if you de­cided the two of you should re­main home, if it would be bet­ter for you, and if it would be bet­ter for her…

“Your su­pervil­lain lover’s not gonna steal you away from me, is he?” you half-laugh.

Her hands slip from yours. He’s never shown up be­fore, but—

Pe­ter showed up. Every­thing is falling apart.

Around you, the bridge col­lapses. Pur­ple flame wreathes and heaves and roars!

You want to yell. Scream! The fire rages around you, its heat beat­ing against your skin. Why does it chase you?

You want to let it burn you. You’re sure Han­nah must hate you af­ter what you made her do—

You don’t know what you said. Maybe she started it. Maybe the fire started first. Maybe it was all Pe­ter. Maybe he started the fight and the fire!

You and Han­nah were fine, then he showed up, and you were afraid: afraid of him; afraid for Han­nah; afraid of Han­nah; afraid of what she’d do; afraid of what y­ou’d do…

You don’t care how it started, not any­more. You’d take it all back if you could, you’d—

A thick rope of nearly molten metal crashes against the ground. Sparks and em­bers fly at you! There’s no way out. The fire is every­where. Once more, the rail­ing is to your back. Will Han­nah be there if you look, hov­er­ing on her mo­tor­cy­cle, ready to save you again?

The new bridge, all metal and glass, burns as easy as the old. Nei­ther Han­nah’s great­est ma­chines nor Pe­ter’s most pow­er­ful magic can douse the flames. Steam erupts as gi­ant spi­der ro­bots fire their jets of wa­ter on the blaze.

Han­nah’s choker lies on the ground, its amethyst gem glow­ing in the pur­ple light.

It was best for her. You de­cided. You and her had to end.

You or­dered. She obeyed. Placed the choker at your feet, her face a mess of tears, beg­ging, plead­ing, as fire en­croached from all sides—

You aren’t safe for her. Not with The Fire haunt­ing you. Cer­tainly not with the power she gives you over her­self. You don’t know what Pe­ter will do with her, but it has to be bet­ter than this.

Through the flames you can see her strug­gling against his grip, be­hind his ever-weak­en­ing shield, and you want to go to her. You want to save her from him.

But you want him to save her from the fire.

Over the roar of the flames, she screams: “Liz!”

Your knees buckle. Your vi­sion fades. She does­n’t hate you… She just…

You try not to look at her. Try not to let her know you care. Try not to hurt her any­more.

Then you hear it.

Clunk. Clunk. “Please, Liz!” Han­nah screams, but… Clunk. Clunk.

The fig­ure ap­proaches as much through the fire and steam as part of it. Spot­lights from Han­nah’s army above fol­low her ap­proach.

“I know you are here,” her whis­per car­ries through the blast­ing wind of the fire. Her left eye is wrapped in a rough rag. Her other glows in­fec­tious with a bright pur­ple flame.

Her heavy mag­i­cal steam­punk ar­mor shines in the pur­ple light. The canons upon her shoul­ders are ready to fire. With every step of her metal boots, the burn­ing bridge shakes, a trail of pur­ple flame left in her wake.

“In the land of the blind,” she whis­pers, “the one-eyed man is King…”

You know that voice.

Lights—the search­lights, the street­lamps, the very stars in the sky, even the blue light of Pe­ter’s shield and the pur­ple light of the fire—all be­gin to flicker…

“I am your King.” Her glow­ing pur­ple eye scans the bridge. Its light is all that re­mains, a search­light…

It’s her. How can it be her?

“An eye for an eye, Eliz­a­beth,” she whis­pers, her voice car­ry­ing across the bridge. Her eye finds Han­nah. Fo­cuses upon her. “Shall we take hers?”

Pur­ple flame flies from her shoul­der canon. It il­lu­mi­nates a gi­ant spi­der ro­bot rear­ing to at­tack, but—BANG! Just like that, the ro­bot ex­plodes.

“Liz’s mom is dead,” whis­pers Han­nah.

The King ap­proaches Han­nah, shak­ing her head. “No, My Han­nah… I am The Fire, I am The King. And Han­nah, you be­long to Me. My Han­nah.”

Then you re­al­ize. The pur­ple fire took your moth­er’s right eye. She in turn did her best to take your left.

The King misses her left.

There’s noth­ing you can do, be­cause this was al­ways go­ing to hap­pen.

It’s you. It’s all you. You are The King. You are The Fire. They are y­our mon­sters. They are y­our demons.

They are you.

You be­came up­set. Afraid. They an­swered, as they al­ways have. You brought them to hurt the one you love.

You tried so hard to pro­tect her from your­self, but you knew you were al­ways go­ing to hurt her.

By now you know she must have pieced it to­gether. You can’t look at her.

You scram­ble to your feet. You can hear her yelling be­hind you—

You run.

She gave her­self to you, and you knew…

You jump. The wa­ter ap­proaches—

You knew one day you would be­tray that trust.

You gasp for breath.

It was all a dream. None of it hap­pened. None of it could have. Han­nah’s safe. You can feel her in bed next to you…

“Han­nah,” you mum­ble. Your eye­lids are so heavy. You just want to lay here for­ever…

You won­der when she’ll ac­tu­ally get around to tak­ing over the world. Maybe she’ll give it to you for your birth­day. Not that you’d know what to do with the world. She’s al­ways been ter­ri­ble with gifts.

You smile. Open your eyes. Look at her…

Empty.

Some­thing be­hind your lungs lurches.

“It all fell apart.” You can’t think straight, even just re­mem­ber­ing it.

“Once upon a time,” you say, try­ing to will your­self to con­fess, to come clean, to own up to your shame. “Once upon a time, Pe­ter pushed Han­nah away to pro­tect her from the world. We al­ways said what a dick he was.”

Weakly, you laugh. “And then, once upon a time, I pushed her away to pro­tect her from my­self.

“Guess that makes me a dick too, hey?”

Your in­ter­viewer—is her name Sarah?—holds your hand. “Most mag­i­cal peo­ple never reach the age of six­teen,” she tells you. “Their out-of-con­trol magic…”

She looks into your eyes. “It feels ter­ri­ble to be like that. Out-of-con­trol.”

She clicks her pur­ple pen. Clicks it again. Again. Sets it down. Gazes off into space.

The pur­ple of the pen re­flects on the glass table as it tilts back and forth, back and forth… “The pur­ple fire would come when I was up­set. Re­ally, prop­erly up­set. It would make every­thing worse. It would come and I would get more up­set and every­thing would, it would just—“

You squeeze the pur­ple pen. Click it. Try to shove the fire from your mind.

Click. Click-Click. Click. Click.

Empty.

Wall to wall. Floor to ceil­ing. Your home is noth­ing but glass, and you. You weren’t even left a bed.

You’re start­ing to cry again, but you know cry­ing will just make it come back.

The tear falls. Splash. Hiss. A spark of pur­ple.

Fuck it. You don’t care. You let go and scream!

A wave of pur­ple flame ex­plodes from you. It hits the win­dows, swirls around you, a whirl­wind of pur­ple heat. And yet…

The Fire, birthed from your emo­tions as it may be, can­not prop­erly ex­press them.

You are a com­plete and ut­ter id­iot.

You col­lapse to the floor.

Knock-Knock.

Click-Click.

“I had a choice. Who did I want to be­come?”

Click.

“Han­nah made that choice once. She founded U­ni­corn Killer. Built this tower. The hov­er­boards. The fly­ing mo­tor­cy­cles. The ro­bot army. All of it. She pro­tected her­self from the world by clos­ing her­self off from it. It could­n’t hurt her. She made that choice.”

Knock-Knock.

You hear the doors slide open. You don’t bother look­ing up.

“Go­ing to keep me locked up here for­ever?” you ask.

An­na’s metal feet clink against the wooden floor as she ap­proaches. She steps over you. “Go­ing to keep your­self locked up here for­ever?” she asks.

“You’re sup­posed to kill me.” It’s what you made her for, any­way.

She lays down in front of you. Holds your hand. Her pur­ple eyes look into your own.

“I pulled you from the wa­ter.” You don’t un­der­stand why she would do such a thing. She should hate you. Y­ou hate you, and you aren’t even pro­grammed to.

“Where’s Han­nah?” you ask.

Click-Click.

“Han­nah made that choice. I spent all my time help­ing her un-make it.”

You want to be with her again. You want to be happy. You want her to be happy. Would she be hap­pier with­out you?

You force your­self to think about her. You need to do what’s right, but what is right?

You don’t know what you’d say if you saw her again. You don’t know how you’d say it. You don’t know if she’d even want to hear it.

You don’t know where Pe­ter took her. Does she need res­cu­ing? Or is she go­ing to fly out of nowhere and res­cue you? You look out the win­dow, wish­ing to see her on her mo­tor­cy­cle, ready to save the day… But there’s noth­ing ex­cept the city a thou­sand floors be­low.

If she’s not there to res­cue you…

“Fuck it,” you say. Anna smiles. “I’m find­ing Han­nah.”

Click-Click. Click. Click-Click.

“I can nei­ther con­firm nor deny the ru­mors of gi­ant ro­bot spi­ders lay­ing siege to the coun­try­side.”

You stand be­fore an old house in the coun­try­side, sur­rounded by fields, Han­nah’s army, and lit­tle else.

Half the ro­bot army stands be­hind you. The other half hov­ers over­head. You tell your­self you’re ready. Be­tween the ro­bot army and your own heavy ar­mor, you must be ready.

You steady your­self. Pre­pare to knock—

“Come here of­ten?”

She ap­proaches on her gleam­ing white uni­corn, a slight smile upon her lips. You can’t help but smile back. It’s her! You can’t be­lieve it; are you dream­ing again?

She pats the uni­corn. “Pe­ter had poor Bri­anna locked away,” she says.

“I thought he’d have y­ou locked away.”

“Well, you would know,” she smiles imp­ishly. “I’m a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult to keep locked up.”

Her smile drops into a cold glare, and your stom­ach drops with it. “Even with­out the gem on my col—“

BANG! A ro­bot spi­der ex­plodes!

Im­me­di­ately, the ro­bots re­spond. Their green beams of en­ergy fly in all di­rec­tions, fight­ing against spears of magic that seem to come from every­where. Does Pe­ter have an army of his own? Some kind of army you can’t even see?

Grains of some­thing fall from the sky. Is it… sand?

“Han­nah is Mine,” booms his voice. You try to find her; she was right next to you—

A blast of you-don’t-even-know flies your way, so­lid­i­fy­ing into blades of blue magic. Your own pur­ple fire re­acts upon its own, stop­ping them just be­fore they can slice through your neck.

He grabs an­other hand­ful of dirt from the ground and tosses it into the air. Its blue en­ergy swirls around you. The ro­bots chip away at it with their beams, but they don’t want to hit you. You try to fight back. You want to grab ahold of your fire, but you’re afraid, you know you’ll lose con­trol again—

You push!

Your fire goes every-which-way; its heat ig­nites the lit­tle house and the tall grass fields all around.

Ten thirty-foot high spi­ders be­gin fir­ing upon Pe­ter, and it’s all he can do to shield. He tries to raise the ground be­fore him into a mon­ster of his own—a gi­ant dragon?—but the spi­ders mow it down.

They be­gin to ad­vance on Pe­ter, and for a mo­ment, you think you can ac­tu­ally win… But your pur­ple fire rages stronger and stronger, and en­cir­cles you both. You can’t con­trol it at all; it roars and swirls and pushes the ro­bots back.

And now, as your fire en­croaches from all around, as its power over­whelms you, you can see it over­whelms Pe­ter, too. You can feel him tug­ging at it, pulling, try­ing to bring it un­der his con­trol.

“Mine…” he mut­ters, “Mine…” he tries to con­vince him­self. But no mat­ter what he says or does, it will never be his. It could never be his, just as Han­nah could never be his, just as she could never be yours but by her own de­ter­mi­na­tion to be so.

Clip-clop.

Pe­ter turns. Han­nah looks straight through the fire, and straight at you. You see her, and think of all the things you still want to say. “Sorry” does­n’t re­ally cut it, and you’re not sure you’d be able to say it any­way, but you know you have to. You can feel the heat, again. It be­gins to swirl around you, its bright pur­ple flame pul­sat­ing with your heart­beat.

It lifts you into the air, twist­ing, turn­ing, swirling, a mon­strous whirl­wind of fire—

“Liz!” you hear Han­nah scream. “Han­nah!” you yell.

The uni­corn rears. Pe­ter jumps in front. Han­nah stabs him through the heart—

Charge!

Han­nah’s com­ing right for you. She’s com­ing right for the fire. She’s go­ing to burn— You panic—

“Let go,” whis­pers the fire in your ear. You can feel the in­ferno wait­ing to melt your skin if you just let it. If you just let go, it’ll burn you, Han­nah, every­thing.

Han­nah is go­ing to die. You are go­ing to die. You don’t want to go on with­out her, and you don’t want go on with your­self.

The Fire whis­pers in your ear… “Just let go…”

Fuck the Fire. The Fire is fuck­ing yours, and so is fuck­ing Han­nah.

“AH­H­HHH!” You grab the fire, from the burn­ing fields to the mael­strom around you, and you pull!

BANG!

White.

Noth­ing.

“Thank you for shar­ing this with me,” says Sarah, your in­ter­viewer. She col­lects her pens. She reaches for the pur­ple one still clutched tightly in your hand, but thinks bet­ter of it.

“I did­n’t think I had much of a choice.”

“You could have un-de­signed the gov­ern­ment.”

“I’m sur­prised you’re not try­ing to get me ar­rested,” you say.

“Why ever would I do that?” She seems le­git­i­mately puz­zled.

“I killed your oh-so-won­der­ful ‘Em­per­or’,” you re­mind her. “I killed Han­nah.“

“Liz… The Em­peror is not pre­cious to the world by virtue of be­ing Em­peror for a Day, or even for bring­ing world peace,” she tells you.

She reaches for your hand. “The Em­peror is pre­cious to us all be­cause we know what she meant to you.

“We know that for you, The Em­peror—may her mem­ory live on for­ever and ever, un­til all Hu­mankind shall per­ish—we know that she was the most im­por­tant thing in the world to you. And if she was that im­por­tant to you, she is that im­por­tant to us all.”

She closes her note­book. “I know this is re­ally old, com­mon ad­vice, but… have you tried writ­ing about it? You don’t have to pub­lish it! Just writ­ing helps.

“Though, if you wanted to pub­lish… I know we all—the whole world—would love to read it. ‘Liz and Her Em­peror…’”

She stands.

“Thank you. Same time next week okay with you?”

Anna shows her out. You re­tire to the bed­room, ready to col­lapse.

“How was ther­apy?” she asks.

She shakes you awake.

“‘anna?”

“It’s me! It’s Han­nah!”

Your eyes snap open. You’re on the ground. The ashes of the field, the house, every­thing are all around you. Pe­ter’s body is a ways away. The uni­corn looks to be con­sid­er­ing its virtue as a meal.

And Han­nah is right above you.

As the ro­bots sift over the bat­tle­field, you col­lapse into Han­nah’s arms, and cry.

Some­times, you wish you were hers, so you could be there for her like she is for you.

“See this?” she says, fas­ten­ing the metal­lic band of the choker around her neck. “See? I’m putting it on. It says I’m your Han­nah. It says your Han­nah knows you won’t hurt her. It says she is yours. It says that.”

She points at the pur­ple gem. “It says your Han­nah charged into your fire for you, be­cause she knew you needed her, and she knew you would­n’t hurt her.”

She pushes you onto the bed. Crawls on top of you.

She gen­tly touches your hand, and you re­al­ize the pur­ple pen is still there. She touches it briefly, and looks up at you ques­tion­ingly. You’re not sure what she’s ask­ing per­mis­sion for, but you nod. She takes it, clicks it, and writes care­fully upon her shoul­der: “Liz’s Han­nah.”

“See?” she asks. “Yours. Don’t make me tell you again, you hear? Don’t. Make. Me. Tell. You. Again.”

You don’t re­ally think you can say much of any­thing at the mo­ment. Every­thing feels so light and happy and right.

You let your fire swirl around you both, blan­ket­ing the bed, ca­ress­ing Han­nah with your warm flames. Your Han­nah. Your Em­peror.

She tried to give the world to you, but you know it will al­ways be hers, no mat­ter how dead she pre­tends to be. It will al­ways be hers… But she will al­ways be yours.

“Now,” she says, “Be­ing all ‘in con­trol’ like this is­n’t re­ally my thing, so… Your turn. Go on. Get to it!”

You grin. Pull on the fire. Your wispy arms grasp her hands and feet, lift her into the air, and…

You won’t make her tell you again.

But now, you must bide your time.

You know he will not be able to hear you over the din of his own thoughts.

He hurt you, and badly, but you can­not say a word.

You say no words.

Not to him.

You pre­fer not to think of him. You pre­fer not to think of the pain he has caused you.

Yet your thoughts keep drift­ing to him any­way.

He’s not ready to hear you say your piece. He’s not ready to un­der­stand. He is un­will­ing to lis­ten, and not in­clined to com­pre­hend.

He is trapped in an em­bank­ment of his own emo­tions, and can­not see out through the fog. Your words are not fog lights he wants to see; he’d pre­fer to see any­thing but.

If you said a word now, you’d only re­ceive pain.

He wants you to go to him and say a word. He wants you to sim­ply for­get your hurt.

He wants it all to be for­got­ten and ig­nored.

But it’s one time too many.

It’s all a game, to him. A power game. He wants you to come to him, be­cause to him, he thinks that means he wins.

He loves his power games.

You hate power games.

You know they only lead to more pain.

So you don’t go to him.

You wait.

He’ll have to come to you.

You don’t like this ei­ther.

You’re play­ing the same power game. You don’t want to. But whether you go to him or not, you’re stuck play­ing it.

Be­fore, you al­ways went to him.

Al­ways the same re­sult: pain.

His turn.

You don’t want to cause him pain.

But if he un­der­stands your feel­ings, he will feel it.

If he ever comes to you.

If not…

So be it.

You wait.

You hate wait­ing.

The longer the wait, the more his name be­comes syn­ony­mous with in­vec­tives.

The longer the wait, the more you won­der why you want him to come to you.

The longer the wait, the less you care.

The longer the wait, the less you want him to come to you at all.

You are no longer wait­ing.

You are The De­tec­tive now.

You don’t worry your­self with him or his games any­more.

The doc­tors thought I was a “him,” but doc­tors have thought many things through­out his­tory. There was a time when doc­tors thought that the body was made of four “hu­mors”: black bile, yel­low bile, phlegm, and blood. Their en­tire be­lief sys­tem was wrong; it was a pretty ma­jor rev­e­la­tion.

That I’m a “her” rather than a “him” seems rather a mi­nor rev­e­la­tion in con­trast. But no! It’s so Earth-shat­ter­ing that every­one gets in an up­roar, from doc­tors to par­ents to gov­ern­ment: oh no! All those pa­pers we filled out with your sex. Oh no! All of the blue things we gave you as a baby! Oh no! What hap­pened to our first born son! Oh no! Bath­rooms! Oh no!

I blame pe­nis. Every­one thinks about pe­nis too much. You no­tice how much pe­nis there is around around? Look at any tall build­ing. Even not so tall ones, I sup­pose—let’s not judge.

Half the pop­u­la­tion has pe­nis. The other half is un­lucky. Why? Be­cause we love us some pe­nis.

If you don’t have it, there must be some­thing wrong with you. Want to be pres­i­dent? Do you have pe­nis? No? Not hap­pen­ing. Want to be a CEO of a large com­pany? We’d re­ally like it if you had pe­nis. Don’t have pe­nis? Well, you should find some­one else’s pe­nis and take care of it. It’s your job.

If you don’t want pe­nis? Well of course, that’s ridicu­lous. Who in the world would refuse pe­nis? If you don’t have pe­nis, you have to want it! Why, you’re pos­i­tively ask­ing for it! Every­thing you do, how you dress, how you talk, all of it, it’s clear to all that you just want pe­nis! Does­n’t mat­ter if you are 10 or 50. And if you do have pe­nis… why, of course, you must love it. It is your pride and joy. Any­thing else would be ridicu­lous.

So when our ba­bies are born, of course we go “It’s a pe­nis!” It’s def­i­nitely some­thing to be cel­e­brated: it’s a real per­son!

It’s kind of rude, though. I mean, what if a baby wanted to keep their pri­vate parts, well, pri­vate? Too bad. It’s a pe­nis!

I’m a “her.” I’ve al­ways been one. Still am. I’ve been this way from the day I was born. Pe­nis be damned.

He could re­main in his house. It is a nice house. More of a cot­tage, re­ally, but at least it is warm, with a fire and every­thing (in fact three fires, one in the bed­room, one in the liv­ing room, and one he ac­ci­den­tally started in the kitchen while try­ing to bake his fa­vorite cook­ies; he knows he should leave the bak­ing to oth­ers by now, but he still tries).

But every win­ter, his friend the cold calls him, out in the three feet of snow (it pours in when he opens the door, but he opens it any­way).

“Why do you call for me still?” he asks, his large old wrin­kled hands pulling on the rope, ty­ing it into place. He should have worn his gloves, he muses. His fin­gers could catch frost­bite.

It’s get­ting hard for him to re­mem­ber every­one, now. He’s seen so many faces, heard so many names. He’s not as fit and trim as he used to be (to say the least), and he does­n’t know how much longer he’ll be able to an­swer the cold’s call.

But if he does not an­swer the call… who will? He shakes his head and laughs heartily.

He dons his coat. Finds his gloves and hat. Grabs the bag.

Flies away.

“I know.” You take a sip of your wine. You’re not sure pre­cisely what she wants with the world, but to each their own.

“It just an­noys me too much,” she claims. You’re not sure you fully be­lieve her.

You know Anna would lead the army in a heart­beat. You glance over at the mur­der­ous ro­bot, dressed in her pink apron, sharp­en­ing her knives. As soon as Han­nah said the word, Anna would make it hap­pen…

For that mat­ter, Anna might even do it if y­ou asked, and she hates you. In­deed, she might just go do it on her own some­day if Han­nah does­n’t pull the trig­ger.

You gaze out the win­dow and into the sky.

“Liz…” she whines, “May I…” She looks long­ingly at what lit­tle wine re­mains in your glass.

You look her right in the eyes as you swal­low the rest.

“Pour me an­other,” you say, “and if you’re good, I might let you have some.”

“I will take over the world,” she says, again.

“I’m sure.”

“I will. I just haven’t found the right time.”

“I be­lieve I asked you to re­fill my drink?”

“They’ll call me Han­nah, Em­peror of the World.” She climbs atop you, and waits. You don’t oblige.

“Well, in the mean­time, Em­peror Han­nah—“

“Han­nah, Em­peror. Of. The. World.” She punc­tu­ates it with hard pokes to your chest. It does­n’t have her in­tended ef­fect, you think. You don’t re­act. You don’t “get an­gry,” take con­trol, or even so much as tell her off.

On the one hand, you love her, and want to give her what she wants. On the other, she can wait a bit. Be­sides, at­ti­tude like that can­not be re­warded.

“Yes, that,” you say. “But un­til then… Do I need to ask you a­gain?”

You re­ally do need a drink to get into it prop­erly, any­way. She knows it, too.

“Re­fill it with some­thing in­ter­est­ing this time,” you call af­ter her. She just laughs.

You pon­der what re­sponse she would best en­joy.

He kicks out at her and she falls silent for a mo­ment, but she can­not hold still for long.

Tap tap ta-ta-ta-tap tap…

He coughs out a long, be­lea­guered sigh. “Sarah,” he wheezes, “if you must tap your foot, use a song from this cen­tury.”

“It was from this cen­tury an hour ago,” Sarah points out, fid­dling with her glasses and twid­dling a ring on her fin­ger.

“Use a song from your na­tive cen­tury.”

“We spent enough time in 1983 that it got stuck in my head.”

“It was y­ou who in­sisted.” He throws the smart­phone he was fid­dling with down onto the table. “Use­less.”

“How else were we sup­posed to clean up that mess? We could barely even find it as it was, and then you had to go and read that doc­u­ment—“

“I can’t re­mem­ber that and you know it, and I will not ac­cept blame for some­thing I, as of now, never did.” He’s quite firm on this.

She be­gins to speak. He coughs. She tries again. Cough.

She speaks louder. “Well, you never did it now, but I re­mem­ber when you did, and you’re still the same you. So I do blame you, and it does­n’t mat­ter whether or not you ac­cept blame.”

“Y­ou are the one who’s sup­posed to be Lady Time. You should have known I was go­ing to do it be­fore I did it!”

“If I had stopped it you’d never have learned, and then who knows what could have hap­pened?”

“I can’t re­mem­ber it now, so I still won’t learn!”

“This ar­gu­ment taught you well enough. Had we not done this, you’d have done it again on next Tues­day.”

“Just for that, I will do it again next Tues­day!”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“…”

“What was it I did ex­actly?”

In a way, the bath­room cap­tures the es­sense of my ex­pe­ri­ence be­ing a trans woman: I don’t fit with my group, and my body is wrong.

Last week, I saw S­tar Trek Into Dark­ness with some friends.

Even be­fore the movie, I had to use the bath­room. I did­n’t. I Hate Bath­rooms.

By the end, I re­ally had to go. I don’t think I could even talk straight.

I found the bath­room. As al­ways, I was con­fronted with two choices. I knew the one I must choose.

Say­ing my men­tal “fuck you,” I tore my eyes away from the “Men” sign and en­tered.

There was a line. Men were go­ing at the uri­nals, and—af­ter lift­ing the seat—in the stalls, as well.

Fi­nally, my turn.

And, I re­al­ized, as I sat down (I’ve never done the whole stand­ing thing)—

I was out of place.

I was­n’t sup­posed to be there.

The door said “Men.”

This is wrong.

With so many men in one place, I re­al­ized just how out-of-place I was.

I wished I could have made a dif­fer­ent choice.

Not pre­sent­ing as fe­male, I would not have felt com­fort­able in the wom­en’s re­stroom (and I doubt those in the re­stroom would have felt com­fort­able with me). But, even pre­sent­ing as male, I was far from com­fort­able in the men’s.

The choice would­n’t have mat­tered any­way. No mat­ter the choice, in­evitably, I would have to look down.

And look down I did.

I saw what has been there for all my life. Usu­ally, that very fact—that it has been with me for all this time—is enough to al­low me to ig­nore its ex­is­tence.

That night, I could­n’t ig­nore it.

I ut­tered my sec­ond “fuck you.” I’m not sure if it was for the bath­room, or for my body.

It’s not so bad in my own bath­room. In my bath­room, I don’t have to think at all. I know where every­thing is. I could do it with my eyes closed—and, in­deed, that’s in ef­fect what I do at night when it’s dark.

I can get out my phone, and dis­tract my­self. It works very well. In my own bath­room, I’m al­most fine.

It’s the only bath­room I feel com­fort­able in.

Other than my own, I don’t feel com­fort­able in any bath­room. In some bath­rooms, how­ever, I feel less com­fort­able than in oth­ers. Smaller bath­rooms, smaller stalls, smaller seats… I have to think more; I have to avoid the walls, avoid the large toi­let pa­per rollers. It be­comes im­pos­si­ble to avoid me.

And that’s why bath­rooms are aw­ful.

It’s bad enough that they make me feel apart from my group.

They then add in­jury to that in­sult: they re­mind me about my body.

Fuck you, bath­rooms.

The world which you break apart,

Un­til you are ready,

To cre­ate a new world.

To cre­ate us.

It seems su­per­hu­man:

How do you take these parts

and make us whole?

You can’t be hu­man,

You’re Mom.

But what do hu­mans do?

They take bits and pieces,

They cre­ate wholes.

Be­ing Mom is be­ing Hu­man.

But be­ing You is be­ing Great.

Al­though we can of­ten for­get,

You are not just Mom,

You are a per­son.

Not mine.

Not my broth­er’s.

Not my sis­ter’s.

Not my fa­ther’s.

Not my nephew’s.

Yours.

Every­one has a birth­day,

You gave us ours,

and so much more.

And to­day I think…

I can do so many things,

For you taught me,

How­ever much I fought it.

I can cre­ate amaz­ing things,

For you en­cour­aged me,

How­ever of­ten I failed.

I can weather my tri­als,

For your sup­port pro­tects me

How­ever far away you may be.

And to­day I think…

You de­serve more than a birth­day.

You de­serve

A day for you

To know

What you mean

To me.

A day for you

To know

You are loved.

I love you Mom.

Your daugh­ter,

Alex

Some­one was fired—fired!—for mak­ing a dirty joke!

And, to read the out­rage, Adria Richards per­son­ally fired the joke­ster.

Spoiler: she did­n’t. His em­ployer fired him. Not Richards. His em­ployer.

She merely posted a pic­ture on Twit­ter and wrote a blog post. She’s but a side note in the tale of this de­vel­op­er’s fir­ing.

Yet, who re­ceives the out­rage? Who bears the brunt of the vi­o­lent—and, iron­i­cally, it­self overly sex­ist—back­lash? Richards.

The story is not sex­ism. The story is the re­ac­tion to sex­ism.

It’s not sur­pris­ing. It is easy to fo­cus on re­ac­tions. When you fo­cus on re­ac­tions to prob­lems, you don’t have to face the prob­lems them­selves. You can just keep on go­ing about your life with­out wor­ry­ing. Every­thing goes back to nor­mal. The sta­tus quo is pre­served.

It’s easy: Just find a flaw in the ar­gu­ment. Find some rea­son why this or that is­n’t sex­ist. Point out why it’s not a big deal. De­scribe why this is not the time to deal with it. In­form her that it was “just a joke.” Tell her how she’s com­pletely over­re­act­ing.

Main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo feels good when the sta­tus quo does not neg­a­tively im­pact you.

Of course it is easy for the tech in­dus­try to fo­cus on the re­ac­tions to sex­ism rather than the sex­ism it­self: the tech in­dus­try is dom­i­nated by men, and for the men, the sta­tus quo is fine.

For the women, the sta­tus quo is not fine.

At this point, whether any in­di­vid­ual re­ac­tion is an over­re­ac­tion is unim­por­tant, as, at this point, there is nowhere near e­nough re­ac­tion.

At this point, any­thing that could be sex­ist is sex­ist. At this point, every­thing’s a big deal. At this point, it is al­ways the time to deal with it. At this point, noth­ing is a joke.

At this point, it is rather hard to over­re­act to sex­ism.

It is quite easy, how­ever, to over­re­act to re­ac­tions to sex­ism.

It is eas­ier to fight a straw man than a real one, and over­re­ac­tions to sex­ism are just that: a prob­lem that barely ex­ists; a prob­lem that, com­pared to what we have to­day, would be a good prob­lem to have.

Sex­ism in the tech in­dus­try is cer­tainly the scarier en­emy to fight. It takes every­one to stop it: every­one to speak up when they see it, and even more chal­leng­ingly, every­one to stop them­selves when they are about to do it.

It’s so much eas­ier to com­plain about “Po­lit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness.” It’s so much eas­ier to whine about how “fem­i­nists can’t take a joke.”

In those rare times that some­one is brave enough to speak up, it is so much eas­ier to at­tack them. They’re prob­a­bly women, af­ter all, and it’s not like there’s enough of them in the in­dus­try to fight back.

It’s not like you hear dozens of jokes like it every day. Not like those jokes are aimed at you. Not like they’re aimed at the group you are a part of. Not like they’re aimed at a group that bears the brunt of such jokes not just once, not just twice, but con­stantly, hour af­ter hour, day af­ter day.

Not like any of the jokes per­pet­u­ate stereo­types about you and your group. Not like they ex­clude you in some way. Not like they tell you that you aren’t one of us. Not like they tell you that you’re not re­ally sup­posed to be here.

Not like your group is of­ten at­tacked with more than just jokes. Not like any of those jokes ever stray too close to those at­tacks for com­fort.

No, no, no. The joke was just that: a one-off joke. Noth­ing to fuss over.

Why are you so an­gry?

You’re not go­ing to win any points like that.

Go back to the kitchen.

— Sin­cerely, The In­ter­net

I no longer have to hide.

My gen­der iden­tity is fe­male.

It is a bit of a has­sle. Well, quite a lot of a has­sle. You see, my gen­der iden­tity does not match the gen­der I was as­signed at birth. “It’s a boy!” they said.

I re­ally wish they could have con­sulted me first: from my per­spec­tive, the prac­tice of as­sign­ing gen­der at birth can at times seem rather ar­bi­trary… but it does, in­deed, work for the vast ma­jor­ity of peo­ple.

It just sucks for peo­ple like me.

Over the course of the next few years, I will be go­ing through a tran­si­tion, so that I may change my gen­der pre­sen­ta­tion from male to fe­male. It will be a long process. I won’t be ready to ac­tu­ally switch my gen­der pre­sen­ta­tion for awhile yet—prob­a­bly not for an­other year or two.

The process, how­ever, should be­gin within the next cou­ple of months.

I’m still me. I al­ways have been, and al­ways will be, me. My gen­der is one as­pect of me, one which has al­ways been there, but it is just that: one as­pect.

I am still a soft­ware en­gi­neer.
I am still a writer.
I am still a fem­i­nist.
I am still a huge fan of Up, Harry Pot­ter, Doc­tor Who, and I am be­com­ing a fan of Bat­tlestar Galac­tica.

I love my fam­ily—my dad, my mom, my sis­ter, my brother, my nephew, my cousins, my aunts & un­cles. I love my friends, and I love my team.

Thank you.

If you have any ques­tions—whether about gen­der & gen­der iden­tity, or about my opin­ions on the moral­ity of Al­bus Dum­b­le­dore—please ask.