Chapter 5 of the Novel That Has Yet to Exist

I have found myself in a particularly fascinating creative rut this past month. Perhaps it's the weather. I have been feeling down these days. I have been trying to create, but I have not, so I have been consuming. I'm rereading Fledging by Octavia Butler, and I can't help but feel rage at God for letting her die before writing a sequel for a work that so desperately deserved one.  

And then it got me thinking of another favorite book of mine, Stardust. Gaiman famously describes it as a sequel to a novel that he will likely never write. It brings into question, for me, this idea of linearity. I have been dancing myself into a corner going feral at this idea of success, this endless ratrace that has been ingrained into our bones. Why must something be finished to be shared? It makes me ponder deeper Kafka's philosophy of a metamorphism, of change, how ugly and uncomfortable it can be. Did you know that he asked for bugs to not be on the cover of The Metamorphosis? But with the death of the author comes a spur of new creative output, and of course bugs are synonymous with the novel.

In Toni Morrison's Sula, she writes in regards to her character of the same name that: "In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous," (p. 121). And, to my own dismay, I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing with her. 

Capitalism wants my creativity, but it does not deserve it.

But where does that put me?

I have been working on a fantasy novel for many, many years, and I have found myself in quite the stale spot. I worked on it everyday for months for years, and then I hit a point I could not conquer, a character I could not understand, and I have yet to pick it up, despite thinking of it everyday. And its made me angry. So, for myself, and for you, dear reader, I have decide to share a largely unedited product from when I cared a little less about linearity, to remind myself how good it is, and to give you guys a little taste of my novel that has yet to fully take form. 

The story of the Weaver of Fate is as old as the hybrids. As old as the Immortals

The Immortals exist in what you carry in your pocket–that trauma that’s unhealed. The Immortals represent human want. Will. Achievement. The Immortals are everything the humans at that time wanted to preserve and represent and everything else and so much more. The Immortals have cages like armor that may be shed; if you’re lucky. If you’re brave. The Immortals are like fractals. The Immortals are massive. The Immortals are orange

The Immortals need to be thoughts and from the thoughts do they become something to respect. Something to worship. Because they are human. Because they are divine. The Immortals first start when one falls full heartedly in love. In love. In love. In love. In love. In love with what? With something enough to preserve it. Preserve. Consume. In love. You want to be near the Immortals. It’s like a hook lodged in your abdomen and jerking you forwards.

They are lights. They are orange. The Immortals are very important. They are hard to not cry in front of. It’s a beautiful thing; to observe love in its final state; consumable. Respectable. Divine. Immortal. It is bittersweet. The time after finite when only the Immortals exist and in them can they share humanity’s ties to passion. Love. Heart. But to fear and to the void. Be wary when you look in their eyes. If you follow them back through the eyes, you find humanity.

The Weaver of Fate is necessary, and like much of the history the hybrids hold dear, it starts in the heart of Sonder; in the center, where the Immortals were born.

All roads in the Underlining will lead to Sonder, if you walk far enough. Sonder used to look better, Nate learned in his Scout meetings. He had never seen Sonder when it was thriving. Even so, standing outside and leaning over the ledge, it was still breathtaking. The bridge under his feet was a large, long one that twisted over a raging river. 20 large statues were erected along the bridge, made of the same ancient material that much of Sonder was. Each statue shines under the grime of a bad era, and each are tall, magnificent, regal. An enormous, old, whispering tree grew beyond, the branches extending and stretching towards and over the sun. At the base of the tree was a large, marble building; the Capitol building. It had so much glass, and arching panels and columns all about. The huge building had a tall, twisted circle that reached into the tree. It had lines spiraling up, and between each line had different, unique panned windows that shone and spun like a carousel. The moss grew up along it. It’s funny, despite the building being so massive, and so stunning, it was consumed into the tree. It looked so tiny. A waterfall snaked from behind the tree and the building from somewhere he couldn’t see, and spilled into the river. Orbs of all colors floated around.

And that was only the head of Sonder. Sonder in its fall. Sonder taking a seat at the Final Supper.

Sonder is only as strong as the Weaver of Fate is. The last Weaver died on April 1st, 2001. Nate was a toddler, and long from discovering his own Immortal ancestry, but he had heard tales of the last fiery Weaver who found her visions of the future in mirrors and glass who had sputtered off her own inordinate Prophecy. The Prophecy that still haunts all folk in the Underlining.

The Prophecy calls for much (too much) but the line that keeps Nate tossing into the wee hours of the morning is about the Weaver. A Weaver Lost in the Lot. A Weaver. Lost. What on Earth could that mean? Is she here now? Is she under all of their noses? Is he not doing enough?

It was his job as a Scout to find her, the next Weaver of Fate. Well, his real job, like any Scout, is to serve and find hybrids unknown of their lives and welcome them here, ensure order in the streets; be the link, the ferryman, between the citizens and the Council. Everytime Nate asks the Council about her, the next Weaver, what he should be searching for, they all give him the same exhausted, overdone look. The one where they tilt their head to the side and their eyes drop and their lips become pursed. It’s only Councilwoman Stark who tells him anything, and even then it’s crumbs. Nate supposed, bitterly, that that’s all she knew, too. Crumbs. That’s all he’s ever working with. Crumbs.

In the Woods, humans are animals. They are savages. They fight for will, and for memories, and for might. They claw at their necks, leaving behind angry scarlet stripes. Their bellies roar from starving. Hansel and Gretel are children motivated by desire. They lead with their noses, their mouths clamping down with hunger. Their eyes can no longer see green. Gretel still remembers to throw the bread crumbs over her shoulder. They still lack the luxury to go backwards. We finite beings will all be driven by our senses in the abyss of the Woods.
“Relation to the earth is too immediate or too plundering to be linked with any preoccupation with identity,” Glissant writes. We are animals first. We are humans second. These ropes that wrap around our waist and cradle us to the Woods are perhaps too pressing and too far above our understanding. So we do not attempt.

Relation to the ground is too immediate for children in the Woods. Hansel curls his toes into the mud. It is constructive. Gretel eats half of the breadcrumbs. It is stupid. They’re both dizzy. Their identity has been replaced with yearning; they yearn to be home, to be full, to be loved. Instead, they are in the Woods, lacking. And how does one, who is lost in the Woods for so long, follow back the breadcrumbs to the root? What happens when that foundation can not be accessed due to societal deprivation?

“What did you dream of last night?” Hansel asks Gretel the next morning. It has become a habit of his. “I dreamt of food,” she answers. She is not quite lying. Gretel still throws bread crumbs over her shoulder. She sees the wrong, and yet still desires to go back. She is stupid

Gretel and Hansel move through the Woods, arm in arm, leg by leg. They have become one, continuing for the other’s sake. The other’s stories. They, like we, collect each other’s bread crumbs, on purpose or by accident, and suddenly they are intertwined together forever. The trauma makes the stories permanent.

When you are lost in the Woods, you move forward, your root moving between the hands clasped together with others. It changes. It evolves. It becomes something else entirely.

They were children, guided by desires, as we all are. 

But, as Ariel used to say, so Nate was told, the stubborn do not get buried.

“Is anybody home?” The children knock at the door and the Witch begins creaking down the stairs, preparing to greet her dinner.

Nate shakes his head, and groans. Crumbs. Crumbs crumbs crumbs. Kierra tells him he gets lost in his thoughts too much. He’ll lay his head in her lap and she’ll use her long nails to twist through his hair and whisper sweet things in his ear. He knows it’s her magic that relaxes him. He doesn’t care.

Can one read too much? Get too many impossible ideas?

Crumbs.

Anyway. It’s April 1st. The Underlining’s Weaver is turning 13 today. It seemed like it would be a nice April; March was rough, as it usually is, but April is already looking promising. Children of Deuma and the fae folk that dwell in Sonder performed Pilene’s Sanctum ritual the night before, and a good bit of people attended. A lot, actually. It always bodes well, the more people who participate and observe.

Traditionally, the fae folk would perform the music for the ritual. Now, that responsibility lies on the Scouts. The Council didn’t tell any of the Scouts that the ritual would be performed at the end of May and the beginning of April instead of the end of April and the beginning of June until the day before it was executed, when Councilman Chamberlain found half the Scouts hanging out in the ward, and his forehead and nose began to swell red. Nate should’ve known, he guessed, he guessed they all should have known, given the timing; but they didn’t. The Council is always so set on tradition, on how things have always been done, until it isn’t. Until it ‘makes sense.'

The ritual is done in the Purple District. A handful of children of Deuma who perform it every year insist the ritual would have more lasting effect if it was completed in the Green or the forests, and every year the concerns get neglected. Every year, Pilene’s Sanctum is performed in the Purple District, as is in respect for Pilene herself. While no hybrid who has drawn attention to themselves has had any communication with Pilene for a century, Sonder sees the effects of the ritual. It brings in abundance for the summer. Nate doesn’t think there has ever been a year where it has not been performed. If there had been a year, that year was lost to the documents.

The ritual begins just after dusk, right on its heels. The Scouts come, two by two, two by two, then four by four, then two by two, then six by six, and so on and henceforth until they reach 20. One high horn shrills and ceases. There is a pause. All the Scouts look ahead. The air is sticky and hot. A lock is glued to Nate’s forehead and his throat is clogged, but he knows the rules. He can’t move. Two high horns shrill and then cease. There is a pause. Behind Nate, the drummers begin. Kierra is back there, but he can not watch her dull beat. They must stare ahead. They begin to march. Left foot first, right foot second. The drums can not change their pace. Nate counts 40 beats, before he begins playing his own trumpet. The trumpets must improvise a tune using the same beats. This is Nate’s favorite part; it begins to feel like jazz. It makes him want to dance. Nate counts 20 more beats before the clarinets begin their improvement over the drums droning on.

THE FLIGHT OF THE FLY.

Grimm 015: Hansel and Gretel. “Next to a great forest there lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and his two children,” so the Brothers Grimm preserved. The boy's name was Hansel and the girl's name was Gretel. It would be inaccurate to say they were happy, even with food in their bellies. The kids didn’t know it. To them, life was nice. What they don’t know is that children make romance a new beast, and the once happy couple are struggling to hide it. Behind each swing of his ax, behind each knead of her hands, they were cracking. Their edges were blurring.

The walk from the Gloom to the Catalyst Courtyard takes about half an hour, and the music can not pause. Each Scout, clad in either white or black, knows to look ahead and continues their assignment.

A great famine plagued them, so the Brothers Grimm preserved. The children’s blond hair was stripped of color, their eyes sunk in as their skin stretched tight over exposed bones. The father could no longer provide their daily bread. The mother could no longer see clearly. He hung his head low, low, low. She held her nose high, high, high. Every Time she saw her children, she thought of the promise her husband made all those years ago, on that one night: “almost all of this belongs to you,” the poetry escaped from his lips. Her heart swelled. She kissed him, deeply. He held her by the waist, tightly. She now understood what ‘almost’ meant. He promised her companionship, and peace. He promised her protection. He can no longer provide any. Why must she come second? Is it so selfish to want to be something to cherish, an object of desire? She used to hold all of him, and she is unsure of when she only began holding some.

The Courtyard is made how it should. How it always is, but on the last day of May instead of the last day of April. The fae folk and children of Deuma have made the scene something to behold. Councilwoman Hamblett, as the only member of Sonder’s Council that is of Deuma’s blood, sits on the ground, wearing a brillant, royal purple robe. Her siblings sit close to her and tighten around the large stone circle on the ground. The fae folk stand behind. Everyone else, all those not participating and observing, hold their breaths and think the same thing over and over: ABUNDANCE. ABUNDANCE. ABUNDANCE.

“almost all of this belongs to you,” the woodcutter had promised her, the poetry bouncing, pounding around her head. She couldn’t forget. She can’t forget. Does anything hurt more than a broken promise? When she sees her children, she no longer feels love. She does not feel a need to nurture. They have taken everything from her, and they will continue to do so. That’s what children are, she supposed; pieces of her that she is doomed to lose. As they grow, she will dwindle. That is the law of equivalent exchange. She angrily told her children to go upstairs. They did so wordlessly. “What is to become of us? How can we feed our children when we have nothing for ourselves?” The father asks the mother, as the Brothers Grimm preserve.

The Scouts make a large circle behind Deuma’s children and the fae and in front of those not performing and hold their instruments tightly. Now, they must be silent. Entirely so. They must think ABUNDANCE. ABUNDANCE. ABUNDANCE. And then, it is the time for the Firebringer to finish her odyssey from the Capitol building and become visible to Nate. Her body is obscured under a shapeless, melting purple cloak. The hook hides most of her face; Nate doesn’t know how she can see from under it. She is tiny, much tinier than those who she’s leading. The rest of the Council follows closely behind the Firebringer, each holding something to sacrifice. They are the only ones called to do so.

Has anyone simply decided; not to die? It’s a construct, isn’t it? Death? Who is to say it is inevitable, if no one has tried to stay alive? And, if we can assume that the human brain is more powerful than the human body, then the body, if the brain wills it, will simply not die. There must always be a first, for humanity. That is simply fact. Who will be the first to, without adornment, will their body, to not die? And, if we can assume such, what can we, as a collective, assume a human would do, with so much time on their hands? The first few hundred years would be a renaissance, the body no longer scared of death because the horsemen are less powerful than thought, than remembrance.

The Firebringer’s bare feet twitch at the other side of the circle. Councilwoman Hamblett smiles kindly, and raises her hands to the Firebringer. She gets up, slowly, and walks over to the Firebringer, and everyone is thinking ABUNDANCE, ABUNDANCE, ABUNDANCE. Councilwoman Hamblett lifts a pointed nail and pulls the hood away from the Firebringer’s face. As the folds fall and the pink curls with the roots showing escape from their hiding place and frame the young girl’s face, she is no longer the Firebringer, but she is Maia Torres; Maia Torres, 14, high school freshman.

Poor girl. ABUNDANCE. ABUNDANCE. ABUNDANCE. Seriously.

The body would creep naked out of the Cave, shielding its eyes from all the light skewing. The light would be blinding! It would be overwhelming! And such seems to raise a more interesting question to the Mother: when can we assume that this revival would become a curse? Would any human eventually find curse in such a life, or would the human be full of it, and drive, and will?

Councilwoman Hamblett drags her palms along the ground and brings up the caked flesh to Maia’s cheeks and smears them down. Maia stares, her lips pressed together, and Nate knows she is trying not to laugh. This marks her fifth year of playing Firebringer, and this part always gets her. It’s fine if she laughs–at least, it is for the Ceremony to work. The Councilmembers always get into a stink when she does. The first year she had done it, when Nate himself was 15 and only an observer, they had not warned her about the mud, and the girl, only then a child, fell into a fit of giggles. The ceremony was full of everyone laughing until their sides split until morning. The following day, Councilwoman Stark had locked herself in a room with Maia and only left that night. Neither told anyone else what happened behind the closed door. Nate didn’t ask. The summer that followed that ceremony was one of the best he had seen in Sonder.

This year, her straight face only wavers. Councilwoman Hamblett walks backwards to where she started, and Maia holds her hands together. She stares into the middle of the stone circle. A small flicker of heat creeps from between Maia’s slender fingers, extending out until it’s a small, magical flame, and Maia silently feeds the fire life until it is large enough to sustain, and she shoots the fire into the middle of the circle. Maia stays still, staring into the fire. Everyone else creeps forward, thinking ABUNDANCE, ABUNDANCE, ABUNDANCE. Each member slowly begins putting their offerings into the fire, and each time they do, the fire changes color to correspond to each hybrid’s own color. Councilwoman Hamblett is the last to make a sacrifice, and the fire flashes green and then stays red. Everyone cheers. A mother behind Nate whispers congratulations! to the infant in her arms. The drawl of the ceremony is completed, and now the party begins.

All of those who participated or observed the ceremony must stay until the fire is dead. One could do or talk about anything their heart desired, but everytime one’s thoughts wandered, or they looked into the fire, they must think ABUNDANCE, ABUNDANCE, ABUNDANCE.

When they were allowed to go to bed, it was that time at night when the sky began to turn a brilliant blue, but the sun still had yet to rise. Kierra and Nate walked back to their rooms, and Kierra lingered in his doorway. Nate was ripping off the stupid white outfit he had to wear all night, but Kierra was still wearing the black suit that was required of her. The black was much more flattering on her, but everything looked good on her.

“What?” Nate asked tiredly, his back to her. She closed the door, and locked herself in. She sat gently on his bed and pressed her chest to his back. Her head was in the crook of his shoulder. One of her hands curved from under his arm and rested in the center of his chest. He grabbed her fingers tightly, and breathed in deep.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” She asked.

That night, he dreamed of guitars and clovers and snowy forests and he woke up to an odd feeling in his chest.

The Witch presses against the ground herself, and her face is inches away from Gretel’s. Her grin continues to widen, and widen until Gretel is sure that there is no way she can ever forget such a horrific face. She reached into the cage, and pushed Gretel’s hair against her head. “Who is nibbling at my house?” She asks, smiling.

Kierra was kissing the skin behind Nate’s ear and littering them down his neck and shoulders before he stirred and rolled over. His head was swimming, and he refused to get up, wondering if he had a cold, and where he could have got it from. He decided to not tell Kierra his worries. If she thought he was sick she would leave.

Gretel’s eyes roll to the ceiling of her cage. It is rusted. Her father used to warn her of rusty metal. He warned her of bears, and of men, unknowing she has little interest in them, and of weary travelers. He did not warn her of the dangers of too much. Too much candy. Too much kindness. Too much love in someone’s aching heart. Too much teeth in someone’s smile.

Kierra got up, and was tightening her bra, when she paused and glanced over her shoulder. “Hey,” she asked, timidly. “Do you feel…weird, right now?”

“The wind, the wind, the heavenly child,” Gretel recites, her eyes dull, her mouth only breaking briefly away from the metal, knowing that is what the Witch craves to hear. Satisfied, the Witch closes her mouth slowly, and pets Gretel’s baby hairs. She pulls herself off the ground, her back creaking, the wood under her screeching in overuse, and creaks up the stairs, humming.

“Yeah,” Nate sighed, and squeezed her hand across the sheets. “You think we’re sick?”

Gretel is stupid, but she has a decision to make.

Kierra turned away and began to put on her clothes from yesterday. “Maybe.” She paused. “Yeah, probably.”

Kierra has business with the Council today. Nate has today off. She left with a kiss and then Nate rode out the disgusting pressure in his throat and chest rolling around in his covers.
It’s April 1st. It’s sunny out. Happy 13th birthday, our Weaver. Nate hoped it was sunny wherever she was; children of Pesilos don’t do the best in non-sunny weather.

At half past nine he left his room in the Capitol building and began his journey down the large, spiral staircase. Lined with gold and black and cracked marble. The cracks were full of gold. The walls were tall, and the sound and the ceiling continued to stretch up and change and be full of color. A girl, with seaweed green skin and green hair that seemed to reject gravity, snaking up and down and twisting slowly in the air–a Nymph, one of the fae folk–was whispering to another with elm green skin and hair, pressed against the wall.

“You really think?” The seaweed colored girl whispered. Her entirely green eyes were large, and she was trying not to look at Nate as he crept into vision.

“Well, the last time I had felt this way was when Ariel died…,” the other whispered, and then trailed off.

Do these labels we assign children driven to the Woods like names represent a reflection of the person, or perhaps do they represent a reflection of our own morality? Are we scared?

Are you scared?

“How selfish do we get to be in the Woods?” Gretel whispers. Hansel knows she is not whispering to him.

He made it to the bridge outside the Capitol building, with the waterfall and the tree, when Nate got dizzy. He blinked heavily, shook his head, but it still persisted. He leaned against the first statue, where Siema stood with her chin raised, her hands extended in front of her stomach. Her bronze fingers were cracked under the surface with ice, that cold blue that he knew if he touched would make him feel hot.

She, like Pilene, has not been active for a good, long time. Some hybrids, some, blame Ariel for this. The Council, especially Councilman Vaughan, will not humor this “conspiracy talk.” Nate doesn’t have a very strong opinion on it, but sometimes the Scouts will get around and talk about what Ariel could have been like; what role she actually played in the Leader and the Princess being lost to time. Everytime they talk about it Nate sees people in his peripheral vision and must turn around to confirm the person he was convinced was there was a plant or some other nonsense.

He would be dismissed if the Council heard him. All of them would be.

“Bread crumbs,” Hansel shakes his head, thinking of his sister’s odd decision to leave a trail everywhere they went. How silly. Now that they both have beds in Ms. Leckermaul’s candy house, leaving bread crumbs seems… foolish, in a kind sense, stupid, in a harsh sense, to the lad, while at the time, it had seemed so important.

Nate was at the edge of town when he was convinced he was getting worse when a group of Red hybrids were fucking around and ceased when they saw him. Joaquín, a buddy Scout of his, pushed out of the group and made a face.

“Something’s wrong,” Joaquín said. He shook his head. “Don’t you think?”

“Yeah…,” Nate rubbed his neck, and then stared at the sky, changing from blue to a cool orange as he shifted districts. “I do.”

The Brothers Grimm do not preserve corpses, because the bodies survive. The brains willed the bodies to survive, and so the bodies move forward, and do not stop. Does that make sense? The Creator must admit that if this does or doesn’t make sense is irrelevant, because the facts still stand. That is what happened. If the Reader, or the Conservor, or the Victim, or the Human, or anyone else claims to lack the understanding of why this is true, the Creator nods in understanding. It doesn’t make sense.

It was only 11 when Nate had made it to Spice n’ Nice when his Covalent Centrifuge strapped to his wrist started buzzing. He flicked his hand out and saw–albeit, expectedly–the floating red holographic messages from Councilwoman Stark floating in the air. Report to the Atrium. and then, Immediately.

The answer as to why it does occur so goes above understanding; it is strange. It belongs in the time before existing, before one gains a conscience. It is foreign. But, the Reader, and the Conservor, and the Victim, and anyone else who is confused must admit that it is still true. The bodies survive to this day, hundreds of years after conserving, because the human brain is more powerful than the urge to decay.

Kierra had changed her outfit from when she had left Nate’s room this morning. She was wearing a flowy tie dye crop top and baggy jeans. Her leather wristband was strapped along her forearm, the shiny hilt of her dagger close to her palm. Her hands were up when she spoke, trying to ease Councilwoman Stark like she was a wild animal.

“Look, I know this is bad–,” Kierra tried to say to her sister, her voice oozing with charm. The other’s snarl grew uglier.

“You know this is bad?” Stark yelled. She looked over her shoulder, to Vaughan, who shook his head with his arms crossed. She turned back to Kierra, and got too close to her face. “You think this is bad? This is earth shattering, devastating news! This is–,”

“Excuse me,” Nate edged, putting a hand on Stark’s shoulder and cutting between the two of them. “What’s the problem?” He was trying to make his words as drippy as possible, dripping clarity and straightness, pouring his magic into her. His magic is shoddy at best on himself, but he’s gotten half decent at using it on others. It’s one of the main reasons he’s a Scout and not some other useless job.

That, among a few other important things.

Stark’s back was squared and she dragged her head to look Nate square in the face. Her forehead was creased and her eyes deranged.

“They found her.”

“Oh,” Nate breathed, and dropped his hand from Stark’s shoulder. He felt his face get hot out from his nose and his smile stretch over his face, but Stark stared at him with cool rage, Vaughan with remorse, and Kierra stood behind both of them with a warning look, chewing her lip. His smile faltered. “That’s…that’s good, right?”

Stark’s nostrils flared and she tilted her head back, and behind her Kierra was shaking her head vigorously and waving her hands in front of her face. Vaughan paused, turned to look at Kierra, and she stood rigid like she hadn’t moved at all.

Councilman Vaughan sighed deeply and slumped his shoulders, and then flashed Nate an exhausted look over his glasses.

“They have found her, Nathan.”

And then he understood.

He must have made a face–a stupid, gaping face–because Stark launched into hysterics again.

“You don’t believe us?” She yelled, then barked a cruel laugh at Vaughan. “He doesn’t believe us!

“Councilwoman,” he eased, pushing his words out that he knew was right because all the words that were coming to him were fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. “It’s just…how do you know?”
The vein in Councilwoman Stark’s forehead looked dangerously close to rapturing, and her mouth dropped open, but Vaughan was more relaxed and jumped in before she could. He flipped out his own Covalent Centrifuge and a grainy, black text that he had never seen before danced in the air.

A WEAVER LOST IN THE LOT 7532 7532 7532 7532

“Do you think our trail is still there?” Gretel asks her brother over a loaded breakfast. It’s the most food they have ever eaten at once, and they were consuming greedily.

“Enough with the breadcrumbs,” Hansel answers, breaking a cookie in half.

“Do you understand?” Stark asked, quietly. Nate tore his eyes from the message in text he had never seen before, and felt bile racing up his throat again.

“I…,” No, I don’t fucking understand. What are you talking about? “Yes, yes, I do.”

Councilwoman Stark took that as her cue, Nate guessed, because she began shrieking. Stark doesn’t often shriek. She yelled, and flung things, and screamed, and threw the off tantrum, but she doesn’t often shriek. Nate darted his eyes from Stark hurling off to Vaughan going into his own rant to Stark. Kierra came to his side and rested a hand on the small of his back, before dropping it.

“How did they get access to our channels?” Stark shrieked, her hand on her face, her eyes looking anywhere but someone’s face. “How long have they had access to our channels? Oh, my Immortals, could the Court have people here, right under our noses?”

“Sister, no,” Kierra eased, and Nate began to feel nauseous not with his suffocating sickness but with the sweet, heavy smell Kierra’s magic always had. He could have laughed, if doing so didn’t mean consequences.

“Please,” Nate swallowed, extending his palms. “Let’s be rational for a second.”

“And will you both stop interrupting me?” Stark hissed, and then looked resigned suddenly, almost ashamed by what she needed to ask. “Do you have any…hunch, if we have a spy in our ranks?”

Kierra pointed her chin up, and Nate shivered.

AN ACT OF SURVIVAL.

Stark had struck a nerve in Kierra. Nate didn’t like when Kierra got angry. He always thinks about this time a fellow Scout had sprinted past him, and he was wondering where he was off to, when Kierra strolled leisurely by with her hands in her pockets. She paused to smile at him before continuing to walk after the other.

Horrifying.

“I know you are upset and scared,” Kierra said, her voice flat, “but it is best not to accuse those who are closest to you.”

Stark paused, and then dismissed it. “This is unbelievable! What could the Court possibly want with her?”

“I expect the same thing we do,” Kierra said, grimly.

The wall behind Councilwoman Stark began shimmering. Nate blinked at it, and then ignored it. Walls don’t shimmer. Not in the Atrium, anyway; but the wall twisted and flexed for a good few beats, much longer than any of his normal delusions last.

Gretel’s stomach turns.

And then, a boy with a wet stained, wide gaze and white sticky hair phased through the wall.

Nate’s mouth dropped. The boy was dripping water, a puddle forming at his feet, and his mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, like a fish ripped out of water. Neither of the Councilmembers noticed him yet; they were both still screaming.

“Um,” Nate said, chewing his lip, not looking away from the boy, “Councilwoman Stark…” The boy’s face was bathed in reds, and then, just then, to either side of him, two other girls appeared through the wall, and the wall stopped twisting.

“What could possibly be so important that you insist on keeping‒?” Stark turned behind her, her mouth cruel and her eyes bulging, but her voice stuck to the back of her throat and died there.

Kierra did laugh then; or rather, she giggled, and wiped her hand over her lips so they wouldn’t notice. Councilman Vaughan stood up straight. He usually slouches, making him look less impressive, and when he stands up to his full height he really is a terrifying sight. Nate can see his fear floating around his body, though. Fear is usually a noxious, orange cloud. He glanced at Stark, whose face was turning a sickly yellow. Anxiety. He looked to Kierra, who was no particular color, although pink spots kept blooming all over her arms. He squinted at her. She was…excited? That’s funny.

“How did you get here?” Vaughan demanded, staring at the key in the boy’s hands.

“I–I don’t know!” The boy shook his head, using one hand to rake through handfuls of his hair, and the other was fiddling with the black key in his hands. Nate stalled, and watched him carefully. A back key…

Stark pushed forward and plucked the key from his hands and held it up with her fingernails. She gasped, putting a hand over her heart.

“A Court key? Bringing you here?” She pulled the key close to her eyes, and then held her palm over the gem and sucked in the breath against her teeth. The tips of her fingers steamed turned black and she jerked her hand away. The black creeped away, and she shook her head, slowly, and she waved the key dramatically in the boy’s face.

“How did you use this?” Councilwoman Stark demanded from the boy, who shook his head stupidly, raindrops flinging off his face. The girl next to him, the blonde one, grabbed the other girl’s hand and jerked her behind her. She did not look as nervous as the boy did. Her eyes were narrowed and her expression unreadable, and she scanned all of them carefully.

“Please,” the boy kept shaking his head, and his words were spilling on top of each other and shooting out fast, “my sister got‒God I don’t even know what‒taken? Cursed? I just,” the boy continued ranting, something about his sister, and something about his friend, and then something else about his other friend and her eyes turning green and making plants grow, and then something about his other other friend, and school, and then the boy realized that none of them were moving, watching him as he spoke, and he concluded his rant mid sentence, his steam sizzling out.

Councilman Vaughan turned to Stark, who said what they were all thinking. “There’s two of them? Pesilos never…” then looked at the boy, and then looked at the blonde girl.

The silence that followed was suffocating. The excited spots on Kierra were starting to look like a rash.

“This is unprecedented! This ruins everything!” Stark shrieked, grabbing her face. Nate and Kierra exchanged a wary glance.

The blonde girl turned and whispered something into the boy’s ear, and he nudged her in the side.

Kierra smiled at the boy. The boy’s shoulders rose to his ears and then slowly dropped. She was good at smiling. Probably because of her ancestry.

“Is it your birthday today?”

The boy looked as though he had licked an ashtray. The younger girl, with brown hair peered at everyone with nervous eyes, but the blonde girl did not waver. She was the one…whose eyes turned green and she could use plant magic…the boy had said so…

Nate tried to recite the Prophecy in his head, but it was getting hard to think. The three of these kids, or perhaps one of them, with particularly strong magic, stenched of power. Their magic was shoving itself up his nose, sticking to his nostrils. That, combined with the horrible feeling they had all had all day, was making him want to clock out and take a nap. If it was this girl…

A Scarecrow Crafted from Her Spine…

Was she the Scarecrow? He always thought the Scarecrow would look…

The boy slowly nodded. “Um, yeah, it is.”

Stark and Vaughan looked like they were gonna jump in, but Kierra was in her groove.

“Whoa! Your 13th?”

The boy was raking his hands through his kinky hair and stuttering.

“Twins?” Stark accused to no one in particular, stomping her foot. “The Weaver of Fate has a twin and Pesilos didn’t think to tell us?”

“Councilmembers,” Kierra offered, floating away and resting a hand on Stark’s shoulder. “Please, they’ve obviously been through much. You can smell it on them.”

Stark held her hands up, vertical to each other, and the key slowly floated up, up, up, before it grew stagnant in between her palms. The three kids ogled. “Even so, Kierra…,” she started, and Kierra tossed her curls around, smiling easily.

“Sister, please,” Kierra purred. “Be kind. They just got here.”

Stark sighed, and then set her jaw. “Take care of this,” she said to Vaughan, and then turned away, leaving the room. Her dress flailed behind her to make the most perfect, dramatic exit possible.

“You know, that’s not even the craziest thing I’ve seen today,” the blonde girl said. It made the boy smile.

Vaughan tried to hide his obvious offense at being tasked with this lesser job, and he crossed an arm along his stomach and balanced his elbow on the crook. He looked at Kierra and Nate, scanning them for what to do, but when they offered nothing, he turned squarely to the three intruders.

“He really did only say there was one of you,” Councilman Vaughan sighed, saying to the boy.

“Please,” the boy begged, grasping at air. “I just want to know where my sister is.” When no one jumped to answer, he added, “And then we can leave! We won’t tell anyone about what we saw. Promise!”

Nate thought about when he got Scouted himself. He remembered the pit that formed in his stomach and he felt like his entire body was sucking in on itself around the pit. It felt like his limbs were slinking in and becoming useless. He had asked to leave, too, and everyone looked at him like he was crazy.

“And you’re…,” Vaughan continued, ignoring what the boy said, and looked to the girl with the blonde hair, “our Scarecrow?”

“Excuse me?” The girl snorted, offended.

He seemed to consider this, albeit briefly, then he asked, “You had a take over and you’re not passed out?” as if she hadn’t said anything.

“What are you talking about!” She insisted.

“Councilman Vaughan,” Nate said calmly, “please don’t monologue in indistinct terms.”

“In fact,” Kierra said, smiling, her entire body a rose pink, now, “how about you go and worry yourself with something more important? This is our job, after all.”

Nate watched her excitement literally pool around her big hair like a crown and he swallowed.

He wasn’t sure what she was planning, but he did desperately want to get rid of the Councilmembers. They always make these matters so complicated.

“Fine,” Councilman Vaughan set his jaw. “Fine,” he said again, for no particular reason. He gave the blonde girl one last once over, before he left the room.

And then Kierra and Nate turned to meet the Horseman, from four to three.