It takes months to grasp the basic mechanics of divining lentils with tweezers and years to attain mastery of the intuition required. In the beginning, Fabian had setbacks.

Within the first moon of his divining duties, after the starting bell tolled, Fabian studied the lentils piled invitingly on the left-hand side of his desk. An impulse of inquisitiveness tugged at his nape and he stooped, his nose hanging over the pile. He detected no scent. Stricken by naivety, he sniffed hard. A single lentil shot up his left nostril and before he could take corrective action he sneezed. A cacophonous waah-shoop reverberated through the Great Hall, accusatory echoes ricocheting back. Fabian shuddered as the clamour startled and stupefied his fellows, disrupting their divining duties.

Clenching his eyelids, Fabian prayed the Witch and the Warlock hadn’t heard. He sucked in air and held it, counting his heartbeats, one-two, three-four, five-six, seven-eight. But they did not emerge and he let the air whoosh past his quivering lips. Had the Witch and the Warlock been disturbed, Fabian would have been permanently displaced. But Fabian’s overseer Freyja was as merciful as she was comely and chose to scold him instead.

‘Thank you, Freyja. Thank you.” Fabian could not look at her for fear he would collapse into an unsightly emotion. ‘I owe you everything.’

“No, Fabian. That’s not necessary.’

Fabian heard it as you’re not necessary and his mouth went dry and his knees felt fit to collapse under him.

“Continue, Fabian. Everyone. Continue. Divine.” Freyja waved with grace that Fabian regained his composure.

Upon completion of the shift, when the finishing bell tolled, before the Witch and Warlock emerged, Fabian’s fellows gathered in a tight arc around him, humming their nasal admonishments and prodding his ribs with half-bent narking fingers. Two milk-robed portent folk brought forth the sizzling elixir. Fabian’s kidneys twisted at the sight of the wheeled cauldron. Freyja nodded to Fabian, who knelt and positioned his trembling arms. Freyja’s chestnut eyes bestowed such kindness as she ladled the viscous fluid onto Fabian’s forearms. The skin peeled like dehydrated maize husks in a firestorm and Fabian gagged at the stench.

Fabian took it well, everyone suggested later, remaining on his knees and uttering plentiful peeps and gasps but no primal screams. The portent folk shepherded him to the refuge and dressed the wounds with strips of nectar-soaked flax. They were tender and methodical, though the scars endured.

It took months of diligent lentil divination for Fabian to regain the faith of the overseers and the bailiffs above them. And, after a decade of exemplary dedication, he was chosen to offer his guidance, insight and inspiration to the latest batch and to impart The Rules of Divining Lentils with Tweezers.

Fabian beamed from the rostrum as the apprentices settled. Satisfied, he began.

“Rule One: never sniff lentils.” The words wafted above the recruits like steam from a kettle of simmering bone broth. “To divine lentils with tweezers, you must first comprehend the process. This is far from simple, but it is as simple as it will get.” He wallowed in the thick fog of apprehension and remembered his induction eleven years earlier, the first time he had felt his kidneys twist.

“Ostensibly, the goal is simple. The diviner must relocate lentils from the desk pile to one of the two pots.” He took his time, observing the trepidation and rejoicing that he would never again have to live with such incomprehension. “The relocation is undertaken one lentil at a time using the pair of stainless steel tweezers provided. Your tweezers shall become an extension of you. They shall never blemish, and neither should you.”

Someone’s chair legs squeaked against the floor. Fabian glared at the culprit, a buck-jawed stripling whose shoulders were too square for his curiously ovoid torso. The lad shrunk into himself and Fabian left it at that, though he feared for that apprentice’s divining future.

“One pot is marked ‘Witch’, the other ‘Warlock,’” Fabian continued. “For each lentil, the diviner must discern… divine… whether it better suits the Witch or the Warlock and place it in the corresponding pot.”

“Sir?” A straight-haired, straight-faced apprentice raised a hand. “May I ask something please, Sir?” His voice glooped out of his plump lips, viscous like treacle, each word clinging to the last.

“You may. That is, you may ask another. Mr…?”

“Bottomley, Sir. How do you decide which pot is, well, better?”

The way the apprentice’s head tilted right and left reminded Fabian of the balance toy he’d inherited as a child, a tarnished iron gnome-like monstrosity that could never find equilibrium. Fabian and the others rejoiced when such relics were renounced.

“Good question, Bottomley.” Fabian stood taller. “I should clarify something. Neither pot is better. Rather, each lentil is better suited to one of the pots. More precisely, each lentil only suits either the Witch or the Warlock.”

“But how can one tell?” Bottomley’s mouth opened and stayed open, his tongue protruding over his bottom lip.

Fabian glanced around. The other faces remained blank. He noted some cheek muscles twitch and eyes that looked like they were being kept deliberately wide.

“Ah, Bottomley.” Fabian wagged a finger in the same way his imparter of the Rules had all those years ago. “Therein lies the wondrous mystery.”

A troubling number of hands sprang up.

“You shall learn, in time. With practice. When you hear the agreeable tinkle of the first lentil of the shift.”

“Sir, may I?” A female, one of the younger apprentices, spoke before Fabian had acknowledged her intervention.

Her sharp nose, narrow grey eyes and taut, cinnabar lips triggered something. Fabian recognised that combination of features. Ah yes. “Shawcross, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, Sir. You knew my—”

“Oh, but your question, Shawcross?” Fabian did not want to go there, not in front of the new batch. Not in front of anyone.

“Sorry, yes. It’s just…” Her hand remained aloft.

Fabian motioned for her to lower it.

“Oh, yes. Well, Sir. What… who are the Witch and the Warlock?”

Lo-fi murmurs thrummed around the box-like room.

“They are our… patrons.” Fabian sought another questioner but Shawcross persisted.

“Have you met them?” Her hand floated back up as she spoke but stopped halfway and moved back to her lap.

“My dear novice, poor young simple apprentice, eager seeker of wisdom. It is admirable but I must be unequivocal.” His fingertips tingled and he dug them into his moist palms. “We do not meet them. No, no. That simply would not do.”

“But how do we know we’ve made the right decisions?” She shuffled in her seat, which was situated within one of the red boxes, none of the legs touching the lines. The other apprentices sat still, gazing at the polished wooden floor.

Last night I think I heard a lion.

The bright sun shines down from a clear blue sky onto a sea of green grass dotted with ancient oaks where deer graze and watch nervously. They must have heard it, too.

My name is Jacob Talis, and I grew up here in the High Weald of Sussex. Of the house where I lived, no trace remains, nor of the towns and villages that once sprawled across the Low Weald. During my childhood it was very different here. At the foot of the hill an ancient flint wall marked the boundary between the grounds and the estate farm. but by the time I left home the farm’s patchwork of woods and fields was gone, replaced by a maze of winding streets and small houses. Beyond, the clay of the Low Weald had been covered by acres of solar panels and a broad sea of identical gene-spliced dwarf trees cropped for biomass. The crest of the South Downs on the horizon was punctuated with a line of giant wind turbines.

I bought an overlander to make my escape. The first time my bratty pre-teen sister, Catherine, saw it, she pouted and sulked. “Why do you have to go away?” She demanded. “You’re leaving me to deal with Dad all by myself.”

“He’s never here anyway,” I told her. “He just works all the time.”

It took me some weeks to prepare, fitting out the van, stowing my gear, and Catherine was always underfoot. I took her to a wildlife park one day to quiet her. Wire fences ringed a compound where a pair of tigers sprawled on a decaying wooden platform. “They look sad,” she said.

“Yes.”

“It’s not like in those old documentaries you’re always watching, when they used to live free.” She looked up at me. I guess she must have seen in my face how I felt because she took my hand. “Let’s go home.”

“I want to see what’s left,” I told her as the car drove us back, “before it’s all gone. I know there’s no lions or tigers or elephants in the wild, but I want to see what I can.”

Soon enough the day came when I was ready to leave. She hugged me, sniffling into my chest. “I wish I could come with you,” she said.

I travelled for years, often alone, though sometimes I would find a companion who would travel with me for a time. Some grew tired of my restlessness, others proved more restless even than me. In my journeys I crossed equatorial deserts paved with solar farms and boreal forests of genetically engineered firs. Where rainforests once ringed the globe I found plantations that grew the oils and chemicals that fed our industries. Only the most desolate, inhospitable, useless places held any semblance of wilderness. Lichens, mosses, insects, crows and pigeons, the occasional rodent, were what remained of Earth’s wildlife.

When my father died I was in my late thirties. I returned to the family home on the High Weald where Catherine still lived with her young son. We inherited father’s shares in Talis Aerospace but neither of us had the skills or the inclination to take over the running of the company. I sold the overlander but soon became restless again. So it was that a year later, I stood on the terrace at the back of the house with my hands in my pockets, recalling the view as it had been in my childhood.

The door behind me opened, Catherine leaned against the wooden door frame. She’d grown into a gregarious, vivacious, optimistic young woman, ten years younger than me back then, though to look at her you’d have thought twenty. Her perpetual smile had a tinge of sadness about it. “Can’t you find what you want here?” she said, bringing back a fond memory of the bratty child she had been.

“You know I’ve tried,” I said. “Everywhere in this world is desolation, or…” I turned again towards the industrial countryside at the foot of the hill. “… or it’s like this.”

“It’s so far, you’ll be away so long.”

“There’s life there, I have to see.”

“Henry will miss you.”

“He barely knows me, he’s what, four?”

“Nearly seven, and he idolises you.”

She came and put her arms around me and rested her head on my shoulder. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll be back.” I gave her a brief, awkward hug and walked through to the front of the house where the car waited on the gravel drive.

I asked Marlene to picture the day her ex broke her nose and waved the wash out wand across the base of her skull. Her light hair fanned out around her head on the pillow as the ultraviolet waves penetrated her Hippocampus, where external event memories were thought to be stored. Prone, she recalled images of Freud and his ladies from early psych textbooks. Or, perhaps darker, if she slipped from the pillow to hang off the edge, someone would have mistaken her for a modern day pictorial of Fuseli’s Nightmare.

I sat close enough to her that I smelled her lilac perfume. Noticed an undercurrent of sweat, like onions.

Some consultant–likely worth a cool million–had advised the Bureau for Tragedy Exchange to structure their offices like therapists’ rooms rather than a doctor’s office. But they hadn’t sprung for leather couches and personal library collections, so we were stuck with teal IKEA couches and shelves with cardboard backing that held empty books, the spindled feet set on synthetic hardwood. Every time Marlene shifted on the couch, it crinkled loudly. At least the walls were a gentle taupe instead of hospital white.

The look and feel supposedly made getting rid of trauma easier, but I wasn’t so sure. Especially not ones with physical associations like Marlene’s. She had to see her nose every day, how it healed around the break, and pulling out all tendrils of this particular incident was tough work. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure the Exchange was up for it, but she was in too deep now. Once the treatment began, she couldn’t receive cash compensation, so she was motivated to see it through to the end. Mostly so, maybe, one day she could sleep again.

Her eyelids twitched as I brought the bleach light over the right-hand side by her temple. Blue veins mapped an interstate across her thin skin. The wand gave off a faint buzz. I hummed along.

The monitor at my desk blinked with the image of Marlene’s cortex, zooming in as the wand did its work. I watched the memory particles, small floating amoebas, pop and burst like enemy ships on a video game. I hoped, as I did with all my patients, that she wasn’t letting her mind drift.

We’d destroyed precious things by accident before.

When we were done, she rested in corpse pose on the couch so she didn’t fall over as she rose. I booked her weekly appointment. Always Thursdays.

“You good?” I asked.

“Yup,” her voice was weak and small. Gently, I helped her up to stand and led her to the door before motioning to the exit. Cassandra leaned casually–too casually–against the wall across from my office, but I ignored her. Cassandra waiting outside for you when an appointment wasn’t fully closed was normally a problem.

I focused on Marlene instead. The muscles in her face had relaxed, showing the divots of her laugh lines and the crackle of wrinkles across her forehead. The bump at the bridge of her nose. Her pupils, the ones previously hidden by her pale lids, had an unfocused quality.

“Have you tried covering up the mirrors? At least until we get somewhere?” I said.

“Not a bad idea,” she said. Which meant she hadn’t listened to me last time.

“Remember, don’t drive for the next hour and I’ll see you next Thursday,” I said.

“Thanks, Yvonne,” she said and headed toward the exit.

Patients never left the way they came in and often, unless you searched it out, you wouldn’t know a building was a Bureau for Trauma Exchange unless you requested an appointment. Of the two, I loved the disguised exit far more. It took folks through the back of the building and into a closed flower shop. As much as we liked to pretend it wasn’t the case, there was still stigma for seeking out the Bureau. It marked a person. The worst were people who sniffed at the work we did and called it ‘a hand out’ or worse, ‘woke welfare’. Not something the traumatized deserved for the horrors they’d endured.

“New intake for you,” Cassandra said. She had crossed the floor between us and leaned over my door jam, a brown file in hand

“Why can’t Becky take her?” I asked. “This is my only break today.”

“Not her specialty,” Cassandra said.

I rolled my eyes. “We both know that’s bullshit.” It wasn’t like we were the ear, nose, and throat guys.

“I think you’d find this one interesting. It’s a bit of a sensitive case,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Sensitive was in our contract. Sensitive was what we dealt in every day.

“They’re from Lockland Correctional.”

My jaw dropped. Cassandra smirked. I’d vaguely followed the bill on my morning political podcast that had recently classified intake and exchange as a necessary medical procedure and, with prisoners, you weren’t supposed to withhold needed healthcare. They were people, though I’d noticed society did everything they could to tell us otherwise.

“What they in for?” I asked.

Maybe Cassandra was right. This was interesting. Maybe too interesting. Especially to someone whose life was all picture books about talking rabbits for my daughter, Tallulah, and large iced coffee with almond milk, please to the same cute barista at Blue Bottle who never remembered my name. And true crime documentaries, so many true crime documentaries, especially the ones about Mormons, that kept me up at night.

“Just treatment. No talk therapy,” Cassandra said.

Always push treatment first before compensation, they’d told us. If someone hadn’t been around when the Bureaus were first established, they might have mistaken the thirty-second ads of readjusted people playing on water-sucking lawns for government propaganda about antidepressants.

You’re entitled to another shot at life after trauma. You deserve a life free of the memories holding you back, the very white people in the very white commercials said, even though, statistically, trauma disproportionately impacted minorities and those in lower socio-economic groups.

But clearly, that wasn’t an option.

The holding cell is well-used, but clean. Made for the native Tyulti population rather than the Earth-born, everything is wrong-sized for the group of human women that have arrived over the last few hours. Linda closes her eyes for a moment. Her stomach cramps again. The feeling subsides, and she checks out the cell. Most of the other five women are silent, but their sideways glances speak of suspicion and fear.

Linda guesses them to be a range of nationalities and languages. Two older German speakers occupy the lone, sheetless bunk bed and hold a rapid-fire conversation in low voices. Before she can reach any conclusions about the others, she feels tears welling up. She closes her eyes again and forces herself to think of something else. She calculates whether her worst student has any chance of passing her English class. Maybe. The tears subside.

Linda wishes she had stayed on Earth. She’d swap this cell for an Earth police station cell. Or even a hospital. At least then she’d know why she was here.

The dingy passageway is muted now. Earlier, a constant stream of Tyulti enforcers passed through on their way to other holding cells. The stream became a dribble, then a drip, then no one for a long time. Hours passed. How many? She replays the last few days from memory as she waits.

“Earth-born people play games to learn how to obey rules.” Linda pursed her lips, red pen wavering over the homework assignment she was grading but moved on. “Sokker is a good game for learning rules.” This time a circle. “Earth-born people learn when to bent rules,” at this Linda’s pen darted in to change the ‘t’ into a ‘d,’ “by the use of fowls.” Another mark.

A knock on her apartment door startled her. Who could it be so long after sunset? Sitting at her dining table grading essays on her students’ favorite Earth sports, the knock could have been a relief. It could have been her neighbor, or even the building manager, but it wasn’t.

The monitor attached to the door frame illuminated as she approached, and Linda sucked in a tense breath: three Tyulti in Enforcement garb. Near-human except for coats of fur that blended into the grey-black of their uniforms, two of them stood at relative ease with rifle-sized diasho cradled in their arms. The shortest one, still much taller than Linda, was empty-handed.

She considered ignoring the visitors. But Steve Masser had ignored a visit from the enforcers last year. Mr. Enio, the Tyulti who had recruited them all from Earth, had told the teachers that he’d been repatriated because of a family emergency. No one had ever heard from him again.

Linda opened the door.

“Aaahhhhh,” said the tallest, best-groomed member of the group. “Hello, you speak Tyult?” He blinked. Linda also blinked politely, failing to read the situation.

“No, sorry. Can I help you?”

The official spoke in short, Tyult syllables to both of his junior staff, who answered in the negative with regretful head tilts.

“Passport? Passport? See?” the officer asked with a smile.

“Oh, sure”, Linda said, holding up her first finger. “Wait one minute, please.”

The officer nodded. “One minute, yes.”

Linda grabbed her Earth passport, bringing it back to the door.

After inspecting the document page by page, the officer asked, “Visa? University Visa?”

Linda frowned. “It’s in process; I don’t have it yet.”

The officer at the door asked again, with bared teeth—a Tyult frown.

Linda held up her finger again. She scrambled to grab her handheld, a thin plastic oblong that lit up as she lifted it from the tabletop. Returning to the door, she pulled up the contact details for Mr. Enio, the recruiter of all alien faculty.

“Ahh,” the Enforcer said with relief. With a sharp word, one of the younger males produced a smaller handheld. The young officer tapped it against Linda’s device, the diasho dangling in his other hand.

“Thank you, that is all,” the officer said, and the trio strode back to the apartment building’s elevator while Linda looked at their retreating forms, perplexed.

She closed the door and leaned against it, only then noticing the sweat rolling down her back. She texted Mr. Enio, “Hi. Enforcers came to my home asking about visa status, please advise?”

Wracking her brain, Linda tried to remember what Steve had said in his last appearances in the teacher’s room. Something about regulations? Interpretations of what’s true? As hard as she tried, she couldn’t quite remember. Steve complained a lot.

No reply from Mr. Enio. She sat back down to her students’ assignments but couldn’t focus. At midnight, she went to bed, spending the night with restless dreams.

Oh, for crying out loud. This is the guy who so desperately needs my help? Puh-lease.

Here—stand next to me. See where I’m pointing? He’s the one pondering a giant jar of bone broth protein. What the hell is that? I swear, you humans are going backward in your evolution.

Don’t get butt hurt. You are. The first step to healing is admitting your problem.

His shopping cart is already brimming with bull shit: sipping vinegar, ten bottles of supplements, ancient grain granola— Seriously? You people nourish your bodies with what you think is a hunter-gatherer’s diet while surrounded by concrete and steel and lights, which literally snuff out the heavens. You don’t even know what the night sky looks like.

Sorry, I’m ranting when I should be paying attention to this dumbass.

Peering in, listening to his thoughts, reading his memories—

Oh, don’t look at me like that. I know it seems invasive, but I’m allowed. Now be quiet, I’m trying to figure this guy out.

Holy fu—

Wow.

Okay… the tearful begging prayer makes sense now. Sheesh. Lots of work to do.

I see you’re sticking around to watch, you voyeuristic sicko. Well, here are the bullet points so you can follow along, cause if you’re going to stay, you’re damn well going to learn something. This here is Kirby Reid. He’s just shy of thirty years old, a pharmaceutical rep, and single, which is baffling, cause look at him. He’s muscular, tall, and symmetrical, his hair and beard oil-black and I believe those are called “bedroom eyes.” His short sleeves and tight pants beg the world to stare and boy does he love that.

So, of all the people who could use my help, why him? You’re all quite pitiful. In this grocery store alone there’s a love-addicted sexual abuse survivor, a woman whose son is a heroin addict, a heartbroken youth, a bulimic. So much loneliness, and with a simple root cause: you’ve surgically separated yourself from the life force you’re an integral part of and, thus, believe you’re alone in this universe.

But you’re wrong. As above, so below. Which means I feel the same despair and hopelessness. It’s hard not to feel—

Ahem… sorry. You don’t want to hear about that.

Anyway.

So, why Kirby? I haven’t the foggiest. Creatures like me—your folklore has named us a million times—we have a higher power, too, and as I understand it, I’m only sent to people who can help themselves. I haven’t been put to use in a long time, though. Long enough that I was beginning to wonder if there was any hope at all…

Well shit, there I go again.

Never mind me. I’ve been in a mood lately.

I have an idea for Kirby already. Pretty boy is rather fond of this guy Ryan, a kind-hearted sort-of friend, who’s so calm and forgiving normally that when he gets angry, the impact is like a nuclear bomb. I need to set Ryan off, so someone he loves will have to die—

Alright, alright, no need to be so dramatic and accusatory. You wouldn’t be protesting if you needed help. You’d want me to do whatever I could. So zip it, hypocrite. Also, promise me something: whatever happens next, remember that Kirby asked for this. He also wasn’t specific. Just this morning, he begged and begged, please make me healthy, even though not a damn thing is wrong with him.

Poor fool doesn’t understand what he’s asked for and that’s not my fault.

Hang tight for now. I’ll be in touch when the show starts to get interesting.

So, you’ve come back for more, huh?

I’ve been thinking—I’m a little worried you’re going to hate Kirby, so I’ve decided to let you in his head. Supervised, of course, to make sure you behave yourself. You can’t root around his subconscious, no matter how riveting it is in there. Understood?

Good, let’s get you up to speed.

A week has passed and things have happened, but I’d like to keep you in delicious suspense. Kirby is back in the grocery store, heading to checkout.

You ready? It’ll be weird, listening to someone else’s thoughts.

Enjoy.

Our stepmother cursed my siblings while I slept one night.

I woke to desperate, strange sounds coming from the courtyard.

There was a note pushed under my door.

I hope this is enough. Aliandra’s writing, accented by a single gold feather folded into the paper.

Father stood in the doorway leading to the courtyard, transfixed.

The sounds came from the four swans in the courtyard. My siblings, for once in a form they couldn’t shed.

Aliandra cursed them, then flew away.

For days I hoped she’d contact me. Explain. How did she do this, and was there a catch? Would it fade?

I don’t think she predicted it would be me who got caught.

The curse didn’t fade.

When Father got over his shock he built them a fine glass aviary, determined not even this would diminish our family’s reputation.

But when a deal went badly, or a competitor got ahead of him, I saw him watch them, resentful at losing their talents.

He watched me like this was my fault. His anger wasn’t a thing of violence, or volume. It was silence, and a lack of attention.

He and I spoke only of work. As the only one of his children without a beak he gave me more responsibility, including errands that took me out of the office and sometimes even out of the city. Even though the latter meant the constant accompaniment of a Fabric Guild watcher, to ensure I maintained the necessary secrecy, I was grateful to see new places.

I never went near the aviary. For a time, I thought I was free of them.

Yet one morning, after a return home delayed by muddy roads, I slept later than usual.

I woke to swans at my window.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Their beaks against the glass, summoning me.

It was easy to tell myself I was happy for them to be cursed, but I still moved toward the window.

The sound intensified.

I paused.

I was the only one of us who couldn’t transform myself into animals. Instead I had the thread magic. Fabric and dye and mordant spoke to me, and I could work them to my will.

My siblings liked to shift so they were faster than me, so they could chase me and corner me and remind me of what I couldn’t do. They would snap and snarl, but never bite. They knew my fear was more powerful than my pain.

Now they were at my window, again demanding my obedience.

The window glass cracked, spiderwebbing in the lower right corner. They changed their angles to work the weakness.

“Stop.” I raised the window. They flew in.

They’d gotten their way again.

They encircled me. One lunged. I cried out, stepping back only to be wrapped in wings. There was nowhere to go. Everything was feathers, and the touch of hard beaks to my forehead, a headache blooming in response.

At their touch I saw what they meant me to see, nearly drowning in their wings and wants.

I saw a pale, purple-silver plant, blooming in shadows. I saw, as they forced me to see, the thread that could be drawn from such a plant, and the power it would hold. Like the thread mages of legend, who could sew disguises impenetrable by all but the fiercest magics.

The wings were ready to break me if I resisted.

I saw the reversal they wished for, which only my hands could bring them.

The wall of towering hedges marking the maze’s end drips with smoking streaks of my blood as I stagger into the clearing’s light—clean light, a false sun, under a sky bluer than I’ve seen in years. Fibers from my torn tunic burn deep in my wounds, and I throw my sword to the ground as the hissing metal continues to melt, no match for the final guardian’s acidic maw. I wipe my brow with a shaking hand. It’s almost over.

The damning tree stands peacefully, its roots thick and creeping over the mossy mound it crowns. Splayed out around it, skeletal remains circle beneath the branches, half buried as though fused down. The bones are bare and palest gray, preternaturally aged and stripped by the cruel magic of this place. But I steady myself as I move in—every moment, the curse worms its way that much nearer our shrouded haven. The farmlands lie already reduced to swaths of fiery horror, and irate heavens pour poison on the few survivors who endure. I will succeed here where these conquered souls succumbed.

I will scorch the willow’s heartwood to cold, lifeless ash.

As I hobble forward, I am not careless in my passion. I heed the warnings, keep my eyes trained low. Even so, the closer I get, the larger a strange longing blooms in my chest. A musical hum plays around the edges of my hearing. I focus on the ground: my booted feet meet the farthest sprawl of roots, then the first bones, a delicate skull. Another. The green and yellow and teal patchwork of moss blanketing the enemy’s soil seems to breathe beneath me. I stand six paces from the trunk’s villainous bark when numbness creeps up my fingers, consumes my lips—only the dying wails of my compatriots falling to the monsters in the labyrinth lend me the clarity to fumble for my hatchet.

I exhale a confounded breath. When I take another step, the hum pulsing around me deepens precipitously. I must have crossed some threshold—the sound buzzes through my ribs like heartbreak, and I can feel my body and will weakening with each moment spent so close. I begin to sweat. The air grows thicker, an invisible sludge, and the force of its resistance tightens back my skin as I press on—

I’m panting when I reach the screen of foliage nearest the tree’s body. The willow’s turquoise braids sway in a gentle breeze around its branches, and in madness, I think I may dodge through them. But I’m too slow now—the leaves brush the filth of my shaven head, and as they swab over me, the touch sings with such delicate warmth that my vision swims. My throat constricts, heaves of emotion scraping it raw. Shaking, I grip my weapon in both deadened hands, just a step away from the glorious, the sublime, the benevolent enemy—

I break.

As my knees hit the earth, the willow’s heart speaks to me. Not in words, but in inner sight, in understanding—in doom. I double over in dazed delirium as I listen. The calamity cannot be ended by such unworthy hands as mine. My hatchet falls—no, is thrown—far behind me. How could I ever have dreamed to slay something so beautiful, so pure? Surrender oozes through my skin. The air I breathe, too graciously enriched to gaseous nectar I don’t deserve to taste, indebts me by itself to whatever is asked.

And the requests come: Won’t I fertilize these grounds, in owed atonement? Won’t I shed my flesh in necessary apology, feed the well of ruin for my fiendish kind’s demise? My children’s faces fight to the fore of my mind, the thought of my bloodline beyond them that will never be, my youngest’s rattling cough and frailty ever worsening as the smoke intensifies. But then the images slip, and all I feel before my blameless deity is shame, disgraced by the threat I’d so very nearly posed.

Of course, I am granted mercy. The urgent hum connecting flesh to wood vibrates down to my bones, soothing my guilt, leeching the tension from my tired muscles, and my eyes glaze to a compliant serenity I never knew I craved. Remorse may have eaten me alive, yet here, in the home of holiness itself, is true forgiveness.

I inch out a hand. An attempt to touch divinity would be selfish, an unseemly act of vulgarity, but just the once—I have to try. I’m not sure I can reach it in time, before my body gives out completely. But in a last push of will, the tip of one finger…it scrapes the bark.

Ecstasy shoots through my veins like opium. I cry my unworthiness, profess my devotion, shout my vilest apostasies in eternal self-loathing gratitude—

I fall to my back.

The mangled wails in the fields beyond fill my ears, but with the heavenly roots below me, the sound is sweet: a cosmic lullaby for my resting place. The flames licking the earth raw, the smoke painting the true sun a pitted red, the dark orange haze of the curse permeating the toxic air outside my perfect mossy bed—what is this beauty I am so privileged to witness in my twilight moments? What could I ever have done to deserve such a blessing?

And then my skin peels away to feed my blood into the hallowed ground.

Lex Chamberlin (they/she) is a nonbinary and autistic writer of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. They hold a master’s degree in book publishing and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, and they reside in the Pacific Northwest with their husband and quadrupedal heirs. Find them online at lexchamberlin.com.