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.

“If you don’t get Mabel to hush it right now, so help me. . .” Jessie throws a glance to the back seat. The hen hasn’t stopped squawking since Mary Frances plucked her from the chicken coop behind the cottage.

“She’s scared, Aunt Jessie.”

“Her brain’s the size of a walnut. Only emotions she has are eat, lay eggs, poop, repeat.”

Mabel squawks. The hen’s body twitches like a live wire under Mary Frances’ hands. “Actually, chickens have complex emotions and can predict future events.”

Jessie twists around sharply in the front passenger seat. The twitch in her right eye is so bad, Mary Frances thinks it might pop out of its socket. “Discussing the inner lives of chickens is the last thing I want to do right now.” She turns back around, presses her fingers to her eyes. “If the people in this town only knew what we go through to keep them safe.”

“Maybe not everyone deserves to be safe,” Mary Frances mutters. Jessie is too busy poking around her fanny pack to hear this, but Mary Frances catches Aunt Fab’s glance in the rearview mirror. Mary Frances ducks her head, sings softly to Mabel, as she runs her gloved fingers along one of the bird’s wings. The hen begins to purr and her plump body stills.

“It’s going to be alright, Jessie.” Fab pulls over to let a police car, siren yowling, fly down Main Street. Mary Frances shifts forward on the back seat until her head is next to Aunt Fab’s. Fab gives Mary Frances a sideways smile, runs her fingers down the black and white feathers on Mabel’s chest. The hen trills. “It’s going to be alright,” Fab says. She puts the pick-up into drive and merges back onto the street.

“What happened to the Sayre boy at their place last night. . .God knows he’s no angel, but no one deserves that.” Jessie gnaws on her thumbnail.

“We don’t know for sure it was the creature.” Fab makes a right turn towards the back entrance to the old shopping mall.

“That’s what you said when the Sayre’s dog got shredded to bits. And what you said about the bloodbath at their goat dairy. What else could it be?”

“Well, it’s strange it’s going back to the same place over and over again. The creature feeds more randomly than that.”

“I never should’ve listened to you, Fab. We should’ve cast the darn thing back the day county health said the chicken pox outbreak was over.” Jessie’s gaze flicks to the rearview mirror. “Mary Frances, what on earth are you smiling at?”

“Nothing.”

Jessie’s head whips around. She stares at Mary Frances. “Something’s gotten into you lately and I don’t like it. I thought your personality would improve once we started teaching you, but you’re weirder than ever. No wonder you don’t have any friends.”

“Jessie,” Aunt Fab says. The word is short and sharp as a rifle shot. “Your Aunt Jessie’s stressed out about the creature, but she shouldn’t take it out on you. We’re glad you’re helping us. Isn’t that right, Jessie?” Fab’s tone brooks no contradiction.

“Yeah,” Jessie mutters. She returns to gnawing on her fingernail. Mary Frances looks out the side window while Mabel clucks and nips at her gloved fingers.

Daisies are as dumb as dirt, according to the aunts. This makes the strip of land behind the abandoned Kmart and between the surrounding woods the perfect place for the ritual.

“Sweet baby Jesus. Could it be any colder out here?” Jessie covers her head with the hood of a navy “Women’s March Charlotte 2017” sweatshirt and tucks errant strands of her rainy-day colored hair behind her ears. She, Fab, and Mary Frances stand on the strip of land, just beyond the last sodium light in the Kmart parking lot. The once well-tended grass is mostly bald and brown now, what green areas remain taken over by tufts of wild daisies.

Fab tugs a green wool hat over her short dark hair and wraps her arms around herself. Mary Frances shifts back and forth on her feet, Mabel tucked into the front of her bomber jacket. The hen’s purring warms Mary Frances’ chest but her body still shivers in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

Jessie looks up from her fanny pack, gives a defeated sigh. “Fab, do you have the knife? I thought I put it in here before we left the cottage, but now I can’t find the darn thing. . .”

Fab pulls a brown leather scabbard from her coat pocket, along with a scrap of chamois. She murmurs as she removes the knife from the scabbard and wipes the five-inch blade, down one side, then up the other. When Fab stuffs the chamois back in her coat pocket, the blade gleams as if it’s caught the light from a moonbeam, even though the moon is hours away from rising. She beckons to Mary Frances. “It’s time. Hold Mabel to the ground. Let’s do this quick.”

Mary Frances’ stomach tightens when the hen’s distressed squawks cease as Fab slices the knife across Mabel’s neck. Hot blood spurts from the hen’s neck onto Mary Frances’ gloved hands and the dumb daisies, the dead grasses. Jessie dips her fingers in the fresh blood, makes a wide circle on the ground, and draws the creature’s symbol inside.

Fab gently nudges Mary Frances with her shoulder. “I’m sorry about Mabel. I know she was your favorite.” Mary Frances shrugs, lets her gaze drift to the Kmart building. The trees sway and rustle with an odd insistence. A tall shadow emerges from the trees, moves toward Mary Frances and the aunts. As it passes under the closest sodium light’s cool flare, the shadow becomes the creature. The aunts’ inhales are sharp and simultaneous.

“It’s so tall,” Jessie says. Her body is rigid as a telephone pole. “It shouldn’t be this big.” There’s a dark unspoken thought in the glance the aunts exchange and they miss the small smile that flickers across Mary Frances’ face. There’s a heavy grinding sound as the creature makes its way towards the circle. The wet tang of clay, rainwater, and crushed pine needles fills the air. The closest sodium light flickers, then goes out.

The light change breaks Jessie’s stunned daze. She speaks, unleashing a flash flood of words, and the blood circle and symbol she made begin to glow. The creature emits a low, rumbling moan that makes the daisies quiver.

“Now!” Jessie stands, legs spread wide, fists on hips. Blood trickles from one nostril.

“Is it bound?” Fab says.

“Yes.” The creature moans again, louder. “Do it. Do it now! I can’t hold it forever, Fabia!”

“Take my hand, baby girl,” Fab says. “You remember the words?” Mary Frances nods, winces when her aunt clasps her gloved hand. The creature moans and cowers. The aunts link hands and speak in a rush of long, winding words which, at first, rise and fall on independent, discordant strands before cleaving together in one otherworldly voice. When Fab nods at her, Mary Frances joins in, her voice wrapping around her aunts’ words, strengthening the magic. The blood circle and symbol pulse and flare as if they’re made of collapsing stars.

Jessie presses a hand against the creature’s chest. The creature’s groans get louder, as if it’s resisting the weight of her hand. Jessie’s eyes widen and her mouth parts. The creature roars. There’s a sudden wave of uplifting pressure and Mary Frances and the aunts fall to the ground. Then footfalls, loud, inhuman, and moving surprisingly fast back to the woods. The sodium light flickers back on and Aunt Jessie scrambles to her feet.

“It has a different name stone.” Jessie’s voice punches up into the night sky with the urgency of an emergency flare. “Fab, how the fuck does it have a different name stone?”

Mary Frances gazes towards the woods, not bothering to hide the gleeful smile spread across her face.

Angela was dreaming of the Commander again when the Metispitched, flinging her from her bunk. Seconds later the klaxon barked and pulses of blue siren-light flooded the cabin. Dazed, she scrambled to her porthole to peer into the alien midnight, whose soft glow revealed the fizzing crests of a lethal current. They were accelerating, shuddering, out of control.

She braced with one hand and slapped at the intercom with the other. “Bridge, what’s going on?” There was no reply and no orders had been issued on the monitor, but Angela still hesitated before trying Rocha’s direct line. “Commander, are you there?” Had the woman really been in her dreams again? “Commander, this is Ashton, please respond.”

As if in answer, the hatch to her cabin shot open to reveal Rocha herself, shifting in and out of clarity with the sweep of the hazard lights, tall and poised despite the ship’s volatile motion. Angela experienced a bizarre urge to conceal the mess in her cabin even as the woman strode in and seized her by the shoulders.

“Listen carefully. I need your help.” Rocha paused for no more than a breath. “You got drunk and hooked up with the lead singer of Sola Nova when you were nineteen, and to this day you can’t listen to Fly To You without getting turned on.”

Angela’s cheeks burned and her hand went up in an ingrained response that had never once succeeded in disguising her shame. Rocha redoubled her grip, giving Angela a shake. “How do I know that?” The skin on the woman’s neck was taut and she didn’t blink. They were close enough to kiss.

“Commander, I don’t know. I never—”

“You told me to allow me to convince you that we’re in a fifty-four minute time loop that will keep going on and on forever unless you help me.”

Angela’s mouth fell open. The klaxon barked again, deafening her.

“Pay attention, Angela. You and I have been here before. I’ve convinced you before and you’ve helped me before. Fly To you is our ‘stitch in the loop’.”

“Commander, I—”

“Focus. I know you know what that means. You’ve read about it. Tell me what happened on board the Callista.”

“They… they got caught in a time loop in the Bayou Nebula. Marta Kullova was the only one aware of it. She… she—”

“Come on, Angela. She what?”

“She had Dr. Singh tell her a secret that nobody else knew so she could convince him about what was happening each time they reset. She called it their… oh my god.”

“She called it their stitch in the loop. Good. You’re with me.”

Angela shrugged out of the Commander’s grip, but the Metis rocked constantly in the current—without the support she stumbled and slumped onto her bunk. When the klaxon sounded again Rocha turned to tap a command into the monitor. The computer chimed and the pulsating blue light settled into a menacing glow. The roar of the waves pressed against Angela’s eardrums.

“I need your help,” said Rocha, kneeling in front of Angela, her voice raised above the din of ocean and stressed metal, but still clear and calm.

“We’ve really done this before?”

“A number of times. But we can escape this time, on this loop, if we work together. And no, it isn’t a drill or a prank. I promise.”

Angela gaped, the questions to those answers only just forming in her mind.

“And now you’ll say, ‘Why me? I’m just an engineer.’”

“Oh my god.“

Rocha put her hands on Angela’s knees. A shiver rippled up through her thighs and she stiffened involuntarily. Rocha either didn’t notice or pretended not to. “Listen, there’s a lot to explain. You may have noticed we’re caught in a whirlpool.”

Some uncontrolled exclamation rose towards Angela’s throat, but Rocha silenced her with a raised hand. “We can’t escape because the engines aren’t firing. I need you to fix them because that’s the only way we’re getting out of this loop.”

Through the porthole Angela saw darkness in motion, punctuated by frequent lashes of sea spray. The constant noise of it hammered her chest and made it difficult to think. “I don’t understand.” She found she had to raise her voice further to be heard. “We’re just doing surveys. How the hell did we get stuck in a whirlpool?“

“Because I ignored the warnings from Navigation and relieved the pilot for the night shift. The vortex came out of nowhere. As soon as the current grabbed us the time loop started and now we can’t break free.” Rocha nodded, as if to herself. “It’s my fault.”

“But why?”

“Look. You know we paid a hell of a fee for first access rights on this damn planet. I’m still not sure half the crew understand how much this could be worth.”

Angela had no idea how much it was worth. “But why the rush? We still have a month of early access.”

“The vultures are circling.” Rocha waggled a finger skywards. “All of our competitors have ships waiting in orbit. It’ll be a free for all the second the restrictions end. Our rigs have to be down here to claim the most valuable sites on day one, or it will all have been for nothing. That’s my responsibility.”

“And what? You thought by sailing us into a whirlpool you’d discover some magic mineral reserve or something?”

“It wasn’t intentional. I accept I should’ve been more careful, but I can’t un-do it. So let’s move on, okay?”

Angela stood, shoving the Commander away. “Move on? You’ve likely killed us all and you’re asking me to move on?”

The Commander’s chest rose and sank in a controlled exhale. Angela’s ex had breathed like that to calm herself down in the middle of a row.

“Something to say, Commander?”

Rocha seemed suddenly to diminish. The blue light limned deep tracks around her mouth and eyes that must have been there all along but now betrayed an intense sorrow. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

Angela became conscious that she was leaning over Rocha, breathing fast with balled fists, and felt ashamed.

It isn’t easy to kidnap a man, let alone do it without raising your heart rate – which would likely cause me to die on the spot. You might think I’m exaggerating. I wish I were. My affliction is called Grave’s disease, and it causes my thyroid to produce so much excess hormone that all sorts of things can go wrong. Irregular heartbeat is one. Seizures are another. Don’t forget tremors and muscle weakness. Plus the goiter in my neck makes breathing hard. If I were to break into a run and a heart attack didn’t get me, I’d probably asphyxiate all the same.

Yep, Grave’s Disease is a killer. But then again, as some of you might know, it’s really not, not in the first world anyway – since there are ways to manage it medically: beta-blockers and anti-thyroid medicines, radioiodine therapy too. Only a lunatic would choose to pass up treatment. So maybe I am. Grave’s disease is also linked to irritability and paranoia, but I’ll take that over whatever mental disorders have been inflicted on you.

My wife doesn’t like it when I talk this way. It gets on her nerves – me and my theories – and so I try to keep quiet around her. Brenda and I have grown so distant recently, though the process started long ago. She doesn’t approve of my interests or my friends, and she certainly wouldn’t approve of my kidnapping plot. No, she really would not.

I’ve got sympathy for her, though I’m aware she hasn’t got much left for me. She didn’t bargain for this, an invalid husband. When she married me, I was a healthy man, my disease well controlled. We were doing all right, had good jobs, a bright future, plans to start a family. I remember clearly those days when Brenda was first pregnant: her lying on the examining table during her prenatal hospital visits, with ads for Briars ice cream and Heinz pickles playing on the screen overhead. That was how it all started, if you recall, those innocent ads.

Some of us might have missed the legislation behind them – I know I didn’t pay much attention back then – healthcare prices were soaring and the system was on the verge of collapse when advertisers stepped in to save it. And if there were a few protests about the ethics of it all, those voices shut up pretty fast when premiums went down by half. Honestly, it all seemed innocuous enough. Brenda and I used to sing along to the jingles as a distraction while awaiting the results of a test.

By the time we neared the delivery, I knew all the songs and slogans for Pampers and Gerber, plus a dozen more. I recall playing a game, in the hours I waited: I’d wander the halls and try to guess patients’ ailments according to what ads played beside them: weight loss and health club ads for cardiac patients, extravagant getaway packages for the terminally ill.

Did any of these suffering souls mind these displays? Maybe they lacked dignity, but so does the whole experience of being a patient. Who especially noticed or cared, while being stuck with needles and strapped into machines, what images floated on in the background? Now and again, the ads even offered useful ideas. Brenda was a huge fan of that pregnancy meal-delivery service – back then she hated cooking – and frankly, we’d felt grateful for the trouble it saved us, and even more grateful when Proctor and Gamble picked up our hospital tab.

---

The worst of it really started two months ago when our little girl, Lilly, got sick. It was an ordinary evening: I came home to find Brenda as I often find her when I return from work – I’m still able to work, though I’ve been moved from salesman to manager at the shop, so I can just sit over papers at my desk. Brenda was cooking in the kitchen, though the space was already filled with dishes she’d been preparing throughout the day. They were stacked on the table alongside the home-furnishing catalogues. We’d fought over these things so often I’d learned to say nothing, just like she’d learned to say nothing – most of the time – about the state of my declining health, or my meetings with Gary and the other members of my group.

I came up behind her and kissed her on the neck. She stiffened and turned. She was upset.

“Lilly’s sick.”

“Oh I’m sorry. Like a cold?”

“Worse than a cold, I think. She’s had a headache and chills all day. I’ll bring her to the doctor tomorrow.”

There was an air of defiance in the way Brenda said this, as if she was expecting me to object. I didn’t, though she wasn’t wrong about the thoughts running through my head. I didn’t want those doctors messing with my little girl.

“Is she in her room?”

“She’s sleeping,” Brenda said, clearly not wanting me to get near our daughter, frightened of what I might say. Often in my own home, I’m made to feel like a threat. It’s easy to forget Brenda and I were ever happy, but we were. Before Brenda gave birth, we were very happy.

It was a hard delivery, though, and Brenda was bedridden for a while and overwhelmed by postpartum depression. The doctors became concerned she wouldn’t be able to care for the baby, so they prescribed Brenda a special anti-depressant – newly innovated, they claimed, to stimulate a nesting response.

Five years later, Brenda is still shopping for ways to improve our home. She is powerless to stop, despite my sitting her down a hundred times to look over credit card bills or point out how many bassinettes, then blankets, and potholders, and throw-pillows, we already have stacked in the closets and in the storage units I’ve been obliged to rent simply to keep pace with her compulsion to feather our little abode. Before the drug was administered, Brenda had planned on returning to her work as a public defender, but afterward, the only occupation that interested her was scouring catalogues from West Elm, and Wayfair, and Bed Bath and Beyond.

I pushed the catalogues aside to make room to set the table. Of course Brenda stopped me from helping. She needs to do such things, can accept no household assistance, so I left her and tiptoed upstairs to Lilly’s bedroom.

Inside the room, Lilly was in bed watching something on her screen. I’ve tried to insist on screen-time rules, to limit her exposure to ads, but Brenda does nothing to enforce them and it’s a losing battle.

In the light of the screen, Lilly looked like a shiny doll. I stroked her hair.

“Mommy says you’re not feeling so hot.”

“I’m not,” she said in her small voice, even smaller that night. “My throat hurts. And my head.”

“Your body’s strong. You’ll fight it off, Tiger.”

“Mommy’s taking me to the doctor. For medicine.”

I tried not to reveal my concern. Brenda and I have made an effort not to dispute each other’s point of view in front of Lilly. “Well, it’s good she’s taking you, and we’ll see if it’s necessary, the medicine, I mean.”

“Mommy says you don’t trust medicine, that’s why you don’t use it.”

I kissed her on the forehead. “You should sleep. The best medicine is rest.”