Chapter Text
Luz yawned and stretched. Her bed was slightly too small for her these days, so her feet pushed against the bottom frame, giving her a nice brace for a good, spine-popping stretch. She sat up in a single motion and finished by lifting her interlaced fingers to the ceiling, feeling the delicious ease in her shoulders after sleeping in one position all night.
“Good morning, world!”
Sunlight filtered through her blinds. It was the work of a moment to jump out of bed and pull on the line that opened them. Blue skies stretched above, dotted with cotton wool clouds and the occasional pigeon. Since her bedroom faced the street, she was privy to her neighbours fetching in milk and newspapers off their doorsteps. Mr Prendergast had not tied his robe again, giving her far too big an eyeful of what looked like cottage cheese in a string vest covered in cat hair. Luz turned away from the window with a shudder.
“Okay, nightmare fuel quotient for the day fulfilled before breakfast. Ugh.”
She padded to the bathroom and proceeded with her morning ablutions. Downstairs, she could hear the slurp of the percolator and her mother clattering about in the kitchen. Presently, the smell of breakfast wafted up the stairs. Luz double-timed her shower-clothes-hairbrush combo and thundered down so fast she missed the last step. She managed to turn it into a passable jump and landed only heavily enough to spill a little soil from the potted aspidistra in the downstairs hall.
“Luz? Mija, is that you?”
“No, mom, it’s a horde of goblins.”
“Don’t joke about things like that. It could be true.”
Luz made a face. Okay, so maybe teasing about that sort of thing was not the wisest way to put her mother’s mind at ease. She slipped into her place at the kitchen table, where a glass of orange juice already waited alongside two brightly coloured pills on a saucer. The saucer had a smiley face painted on it.
“I put your afternoon dose in the smallest Tupperware container I had,” Camilla said from the stove. “And I made Locrio de Pollo for your lunch.” She flashed a strained smile over her shoulder. “With extra Arepitas de Maiz for your friends.”
Luz’s smile was much brighter. “Thanks, Mom. The guys had never tasted anything like it before. Gus practically inhaled his last time.”
“Well, it is nice to have someone who appreciates my cooking. You should invite them over for dinner sometime.”
Gus would have apoplexy at such an invitation. Luz’s smile widened. “I think they’d like that.”
Camilla lifted the frying pan off the stovetop and delicately transferred the blend of eggs, flour and vegetables onto two plates. She dumped the pan into the sink, briefly splashed water over its hissing surface and then carried the plates to the table. Luz hastily downed her ADHD meds with a swig of juice and picked up her knife and fork.
“Oh my gosh, you have no idea how much I missed your cooking, Mamá.”
Camilla’s smile softened. She kissed the top of her daughter’s damp hair. “Te amo, niña.”
“Te amo más, Mamá.”
She ruffled Luz’s hair, which did not dislodge the mass of badly brushed curls much to be honest. “Toma tu desayuno rápido. Eat up. You’ll be late for school.”
Luz eagerly complied.
Camilla took her seat and stirred creamer into her coffee with very careful, precise movements. Her spine was ramrod. Her mug also bore a smiley face on it. “What, ah … classes do you have today?”
Luz paused. Her mother was trying. She still didn’t wholly approve but she was trying. It made a warm feeling blossom in her chest. She swallowed her mouthful so she wouldn’t answer this olive branch with half-chewed debris. “Double potions class first; we’re learning how to make a brew that cures headaches today. Then double horticulture studies. Willow promised to be my partner for that after the, ah, woedodendrons incident – which, in my defence, was totally not my fault because Dr Pollen should have labelled the growth formulas better. And I finish the day with a single period of history.”
Camilla’s smile pressed her lips so tightly together that they were bloodless. She peeled them apart to say with forced cheer: “History sounds nice and safe.”
Luz resisted the urge to wrinkle her nose. The history curriculum was currently undergoing a lot of overhauls, since the school textbooks were desperately out of date and still waxed lyrical about how awesome Emperor Belos had been. It struck her as ironic that education was starved of proper funding no matter which realm she was in and kids were the ones who ultimately suffered because schools could not afford to upgrade resource materials to something not completely inaccurate and filled with borderline imperialist propaganda. Her hand ached at the memory of all the lines she had been forced to write in fifth grade after arguing with her teacher that ‘Cowboys and Injuns: How the West Was Won’ was a racist title for a history textbook.
Much like the chequered history of the US, the Boiling Isles was slow to alter its opinions on its own history. Ever since the rapid health decline and death of its first and last emperor sixteen years ago, things had come out about his rule that painted him in quite a different light than he would have allowed, had he still been alive. For some reason he had never named a successor, as if he never actually expected to need one, and he had no family to inherit his position so the Coven Heads had taken the opportunity to establish a democratic council to rule in his stead. That had led to the messy business of uncovering and either fixing or re-covering-up of some of the more unsavoury things their erstwhile monarch had done. It was a long and tedious process, punctuated by investigative reporters publicising things they were trying to bury.
Gus’s dad had broken more than a few of those stories in his career, which Gus proudly boasted of whenever he got the chance. Whenever she heard those stories, Luz was just glad she had found her way to the Boiling Isles long after Emperor Belos was dead and gone.
Luz busied herself slicing her breakfast into pieces to cool. “Well, it’s just sitting around reading textbooks and doing worksheets, mostly, Mamá.”
“Even better.” Camilla’s expression wavered. “Ach, lo siento, mi niña preciosa. I do not mean to be such a downer. I know this exchange programme has made you so much happier. I just wish for you to be safe.”
“I understand,” Luz said truthfully. She had not told her mother even half of her escapades with her friends during the time she had faked being at summer camp. “It’s a big adjustment. I’m just glad you forgave me enough to let me try this.”
Camilla had been loath to forgive the deception and only Principal Bump and Eda’s combined persuasiveness had convinced her to allow Luz the chance to test out the new official cultural exchange programme between the Human and Demon Realms. It had involved a lot of paperwork and meetings with school boards on both sides of the divide but, as long as she catalogued her studies, Luz had been granted permission to swap her place in regular school for a place at Hexside. From what she understood, the witch girl who had taken her place in regular school was enjoying herself too. There weren’t many witches born with faulty bile sacs that rendered them magic-less but the idea of studying a curriculum designed for a life without powers appealed to the portion of the population who grew up muted in that way. If things went well, next year the cultural exchange programme would expand so that each participating school in the Boiling Isles had one or two human kids on roll. Luz got a little thrill of pleasure at the idea that her stumbling after Owlbert one August morning had resulted in so much good stuff for herself and others.
She raised her eyes to her mother’s face. “Did I mention how sorry I am for worrying you? Because I totally am. Sorry, I mean. Extra sorry. Ultimate sorry. Lo lamentaré para siempre.”
Camilla’s painfully stretched lips showed a hint of genuine sincerity. “Sorry forever? That is a long time to keep saying it.”
“But I am! And I will be! I never meant to hurt you!”
Camilla sighed. “Luz, we’ve been over this. I’m not … angry anymore.”
“But you’re still disappointed with me.”
Camilla took a swig of coffee to buy herself time. Luz recognised the move from when she was small and asked questions about when her father was coming home. “I … can’t say I’m not still disappointed that you lied to me and wilfully put yourself in danger while I thought you were safe at summer camp. And I can’t say that it doesn’t still hurt when I think about it.”
Luz’s stomach doused her breakfast with acid.
“But,” Camilla went on, “I also can’t say I’m upset that you finally managed to find some real friends for the first time. Or that you seem to have found your way to your path in life. That was all I ever really wanted for you, mija.”
Luz swallowed another bite past the lump in her throat. “Mamá …”
“And if sometime you wanted to invite your girlfriend you think I don’t know about to dinner, well, that would go a long way to helping me get over your past indiscretions.” Camilla eyeballed her over the rim of her mug.
Luz’s breakfast flipped over. She stood up reflexively, voice climbing in pitch. “Oh wow, look at the time! I’d better get going or I’m going to be late! See you later, Mamá, love you loads, byeeeee!”
Camilla sipped her coffee as Luz hustled out the door. Calmly, she cut and forked breakfast into her mouth until the front door opened again.
“Forgot my backpack! Love you even more than before! Byeeee!”
The door closed again.
No matter what happened, Luz was still Luz. Camilla smiled.
Gus hopped on one foot, tugging his boot onto the other.
“Hey there, little man.”
His father’s voice, so booming and so close, startled him. With a squawk, Gus toppled onto his backside. His boot flew into the air, performed a pretty impressive backflip and landed on the roof of the fish tank they kept to impress guests. Unfortunately, it hit with enough force to dislodge the roof and plopped into the water beneath, where it was summarily devoured by pie-ranas. The lattice-shaped pastry-fish chomped happily on the leather, leaving little behind.
Gus stared, aghast. “My boot!”
“Whoops.” Perry Porter scrubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. “Sorry about that.”
“Dad! That was my boot! I’m going to be late to school! And wearing only one boot!”
“You could make it a fashion statement?”
Gus glared. Perry let out a sigh.
“Yeah, it sounded bad even as I said it.”
“Maybe if I was Boscha or Skara, I could brazen it out as a fashion statement but I’m not them, I’m me!” And kids who got skipped ahead several grades because they were brainboxes who loved flags and illusions did not rate high enough on high school social strata to create fashion trends. Not even boasting that he was the son of Perry Porter, one of the Boiling Isles’ premiere investigative reporters, had been enough to up his social clout to more than ‘pond scum’.
Perry looked at his own boots but shook his head almost immediately. Their feet were not even close to the same size. “Do you have any other boots?”
Gus resisted the urge to grind his teeth. His father was often too busy to come to school events and things and even more often relied on PAs to do things like shopping and PTA meetings. The last time Gus had a growth spurt and outgrew his school jerkin, a peppy witch called Anya who went everywhere in a headset and thousand-gigawatt smile had dragged him to Demon Marcus because Perry was too busy interviewing Terra Snapdragon about the discovery of a pit of baby bones in the grounds of her summer mansion. It had been an important story that finally deposed the insane witch from her position as Head of the Plant Coven but Gus could not deny that it smarted. There was always some interview or breaking story or livestream Perry needed to do that came before his son.
“No, Dad,” Gus said with a heroic attempt at calmness. “I don’t have any other regulation school boots.”
“Could you … create an illusion of a school boot over a sneaker instead?”
“All day?”
“Why not? On your last report card, your teacher said your stamina is increasing.”
“Not to the point I can keep an illusion intact all day without any teacher noticing.”
“Hmm.” Perry stroked his chin. “How about until recess then? I can have Buffy drop off a new set of boots for you at the school office by then.”
Gus paused. “Buffy?”
“My PA.”
“What happened to Anya?”
“Who’s Anya?”
Perry looked so genuinely nonplussed that Gus decided to just give up. “It doesn’t matter. That sounds workable. Thanks, Dad.” Gus pulled a pair of sneakers from the shoe rack, slipped on one and drew a spell circle over it. It glowed briefly and then resembled his deceased boot.
“That’s perfect!” Perry enthused. “You’re getting so good, my boy!”
“Thanks.” Gus shouldered his backpack, picked up Emmiline and pulled open the front door. “See you tonight, Dad.”
“Tonight? Oh, no, no, no, I’m having dinner with Darius of the Abomination Coven and his husband tonight. Don’t you remember?”
Gus’s jaw clenched. “Why would I remember that, Dad? I’m not your PA.” He spiralled a hand at the wrist. “I guess I’ll see you … whenever then. Bye.”
“Have a good day –” Perry’s words were cut off by the slam of the front door.
Gus got on his staff and started flying the familiar route to school. He was glad his father’s career was going so well but sometimes, even if only in the furthest reaches of his back-brain where he kept all his worst thoughts locked in a box, he wished there were fewer politics available for him to cover. Perhaps if someone kept more of a stranglehold on all the leadership drama in the Isles, he would have more time to be a dad.
Amity straightened her collar and lifted her fist to her chest. She inhaled, pushed her fist outward and exhaled. Patiently, she performed the action twice more, then smiled at her reflection in the mirror.
“Titan, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” She nodded. “Today will be a good day.”
“Yo, Mittens!” Edric banged on her bathroom door. “Move it or lose it!”
Her serenity wobbled. “Ed, I’m in the bathroom!”
“I know. I’m talking to you through the bathroom door. Whatever my teachers say, I’m not a complete idiot.”
She pinched the spot between her eyes. “It’s not even time to leave yet. Why are you in such a rush?”
“Code Purple.”
Her hand dropped. Code Purple was usually reserved for Sunday nights following several bottles of wine. “So early?”
“Penstagram.”
Amity summoned her scroll and opened it, flicking through her feed. It wasn’t especially long. Willow had posted some photos of her new plants. Gus had some nice photos of Emmiline camouflaged against his human trinkets. Luz had posted a picture of her thumb with no text, which probably meant it was a mistake. She smiled. Luz preferred her phone to her scroll but was making a valiant attempt to use the latter to keep up with her witch friends on social media. Eda had posted a picture of Raine asleep on the couch with dozens of heart and star emojis around their head, then a picture of herself with a bucket of water and a devilish expression. And then there it was: the Code Purple.
Her father looked good. He had started working out and lost the belly fat that came from consuming too much Hex Mix late at night in his workshop. It was possible he had always planned to do that but she suspected it had more to do with the svelte Coven Head who had taken his photo from across a dining table with an abomination rose in a vase between them. Darius’s hand was the only part of him visible in the shot, clasped as it was with Alador’s in front of the vase.
Two years married to this hack. Ugh. Good thing I love him, eh? Happy Anniversary, A.
Code Purple indeed.
Amity unlocked the bathroom door and snagged Edric on her way past. Though her legs were shorter than his, her stride more than matched his own. He was forced to stagger along beside her to keep from falling over. In the hallway outside her bedroom, Emira awaited, concern creating a divot between her eyebrows.
“What level out of ten are we talking?” Amity asked briskly.
“At least an eight,” Emira replied. “Maybe a nine.”
“Very much time to go,” said Edric.
As if on cue, a screech echoed down the hallway. “I gave that man the best years of my life! And this is how he repays me?”
All three siblings adopted panicked expressions. Emira made a shoving motion with her hands.
“Hurry up, Mittens!”
“Wait, where’s Ghost?” Amity looked around for her palisman, clicking her tongue. “Ghost!”
“Leave her!” Edric looked in the direction of the voice, sweat beading his brow.
“As if.” Amity cupped her hands around her mouth and stage-whispered, “Ghost! Here girl. Time for school.”
A mewl heralded the little palisman ambling around the corner as if she had all the time in the world. Whether born of flesh or carved from palistrom, cats would always be cats. Amity ducked down, arms open to receive Ghost, who seemed utterly unbothered by the approaching shrieks.
“And what did I get for my troubles? Stretch marks and no thanks, that’s what! Oh, sure, I got the mansion in the divorce but can I enjoy it, knowing he’s off fraternising with … with that … that charlatan!?”
With a tiny ‘mrow’ Ghost deigned to hop into Amity’s embrace and clamber onto her shoulder. Amity hastily drew a spell circle, concentrating. The spell was a complex one but Darius had given her some tips the last time it was her dad’s weekend to have them. She concentrated on using the abomination goo in her pouch to create a concurrent spell circle around their feet. The pull on her magic was tough. Thankfully, Ghost sensed this and pushed a little more power her witch’s way. Amity exhaled as she, Emira, Edric and Ghost sank into the abomination portal. They just had time to spot a figure wearing a bathrobe, a nest of unbrushed green hair and a thunderous expression rounding the corner before they disappeared from sight.
“And another thing –”
The three teenagers plus one palisman re-emerged on the path outside Blight Manor. Amity staggered a little from the exertion but Emira caught and steadied her until she regained her feet.
“Wow, Mittens, you’re getting really good at that.”
“Thanks.” There was genuine warmth in Amity’s voice. It was easier to assume the best of her brother and sister since they stopped pranking her out of an assumption she thought she was better than them. She had Luz to thank for that. Ever since the library incident during the Wailing Star, Emira and Edric had been shamed into treating Amity like a real person instead of an annoyance tacked onto their lives.
Amity’s smile widened. She had Luz to thank for a lot of good things in her life.
A wordless scream echoed through an open window upstairs, followed by a crash of shattering pottery. Things had graduated to the throwing stage already.
“Cheese it!” Edric started running.
“Bet I can make it to school faster than you!” Emira overtook him, long strides eating up the ground.
Amity laughed softly at them and held out her hand. Ghost transmuted into her staff form. “I’m meeting Luz, Willow and Gus before school so I’ll see you there.”
“No worries. Thanks again for saving us from Mom, Mittens!”
Luz always felt a vague tingle when she passed through the portal door, like her blood was responding to the ambient magic in the air that was so lacking in the Human Realm. She inhaled the familiar scent of sulphur and burnt sugar, coughed on that sweet-but-also-kind-of-gross inhalation and braced her hands on her hips.
“Luz!”
She looked up. “Sweet Potato!”
Amity made a wide arc on her staff and came in for as graceful a landing as Luz had ever seen. Ghost dematerialised into her cat form, leaving Amity to run the last few feet between them. Luz held out her arms and caught her girlfriend, spinning her around. It should have been a picture-perfect scene but Amity’s foot clipped the edge of the portal door, setting Luz off balance, and they tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
Ghost watched them for a few moments, shrugged and began a thorough clean of her front paws and face. Her ears pricked when indignant tweeting pierced the two girls’ giggles.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, Flapjack!” Luz unzipped her backpack for the little red cardinal palisman to hop out. “I forgot you were napping in there!”
Flapjack puffed up his feathers, making his displeasure with his witch very clear. Luz gently scooped him up and brought him to her face so she could rub her cheek against his chest. He turned his face away, beak pointed in the air. Luz kept going, murmuring gently.
“Pequeño amigo, por favor no estés enojado.”
Amity squinted thoughtfully at them. “Little friend … don’t be a chilli pepper?”
Luz chuckled. “We have got to get you more than just Spanish cookbooks to study. I asked him not to be angry with me.”
Flapjack twittered crossly, though he leaned against her cheek. Understanding him was a combination of intuition and the spiritual connection shared by all bonded witches and palismans. Flapjack did not use words in the traditional sense but his meaning arrived in her head regardless, leaving her to apply language to it. Right now, he was telling her that he forgave her so long as she had remembered to pack some seed cake for him.
“Of course I remembered seed cake.”
Luz grubbed about in her backpack and brought out a plastic sandwich baggie of suet, peanuts and sunflower hearts. Flapjack instantly brightened, hopping up and down her arm in delight. She broke off a piece, waited for him to reach her shoulder and passed it up for him to pin with one claw and peck at. Her palisman suitably mollified, she replaced the baggie in her bag, zipped it up and got to her feet. She offered a hand to Amity, pulling her up too.
“You’re early today,” Amity remarked.
Luz blushed. “I totally wasn’t escaping an awkward conversation with my mom about my love life, I swear!” she gabbled.
“And I totally wasn’t running from one of my mom’s tantrums about my dad being happier than her even though she got everything in the divorce. Want to walk to school together or fly?”
Luz laced their fingers. Her skin tingled as much as it had from the portal door where it touched Amity’s. “I choose walk. That way I get to spend more time with you before school.”
Amity blushed right to her ear tips.
Willow looked in her dresser mirror, turning her head this way and that. She leaned forward, leaned back, examining each angle with the attention to detail she usually reserved for scrutinising the potted aspidistra Luz had given her for blackspot and scream-flies. She loved her first Human Realm plant and was determined to prove one could survive in the Boiling Isles so more would be allowed to cross the divide.
She was not sure if she loved what she was seeing now. Well, there was no turning back now; not without an expensive potion or two. Or three. Or more.
Nerves coiled in her belly.
“It’ll be fine,” she told her reflection. “It. Will. Be. Fine. And if it’s not and Boscha says something awful, well then … screw her!”
Affirmation done, she nodded with more confidence than she actually felt and marched out of her bedroom.
She hesitated only slightly on the last step of the staircase. Papa and Dad were in the kitchen, their voices echoing but too quiet for her to make out the actual words. More audible was the radio that was always turned to a station that played nothing but old hits from their teen years. Papa started singing along and then yelped good-naturedly, indicating Dad had thrown a tea towel at him. It was all very normal for a weekday morning in their household.
Willow did not feel normal. She did not have the vocabulary to describe the oddness squirming around inside her but she knew it was not normal. Sucking in a steadying breath, she hopped off the final stair and entered the kitchen.
“Morning, dumpling,” said Dad. “I’m almost done with your breakf-” He stopped, cutting himself off so abruptly that Papa turned in his chair at the table to look.
Willow twisted her fingers together in front of her, elbows locked. “Um … g’mornin’,” she mumbled.
For a moment no-one said anything else. Then Dad cleared his throat.
“Willow … your hair …”
She felt her cheeks heat up. “I, uh … felt like a change.” It sounded lame even to her own ears. “Do … do you like it?”
Her fathers exchanged a hesitant look.
“It’s very … different,” Papa said eventually.
“Yes. Different.” Dad still had the spatula he used to make breakfast every morning in his hand. It dripped grease onto the floor. He did not seem to notice. “Very … different.”
Willow ducked her head. In the old days, before Luz came into her life, it was easy to have her loose hair slide over her face to hide from the world. That stopped when she started tying it up into pigtails and braids, more confident about facing the world instead of hiding away from it. Now she had removed even the option of hiding. She felt suddenly exposed and small. Her belly squirmed even more.
She squared her shoulders, meeting first Dad’s gaze, then Papa’s. “Well, I’m different than I used to be.” She was a little impressed that her voice didn’t crack. “I thought my look should reflect that I’m not Half-a-Witch-Willow anymore.”
That wasn’t all of it but it was the part they would understand.
Dad smiled first. Papa still looked troubled but after a quick poke in the shoulder from his husband, he gave a watery curvature of the lips too.
“As long as you’re happy, dumpling, we’re happy,” Dad said.
“Um, yeah.” Papa coughed into his moustache. “Your happiness is most important. After all, it’s your hair, not ours.” He patted the top of his head. “If I still had all mine, I’d be trying out lots of new styles.”
“Aww, but then what would I do with all the polish you use on your shiny spot?” Dad kissed aforementioned shiny spot, provoking a blush in Papa’s cheeks that made him look twenty years younger.
Willow smiled. Normalcy seeped back into the world, at least for a little while.
Gus swept to a stop outside Willow’s house and hopped off his staff. Emmiline reverted to her chameleon form and latched onto his shoulder, idly flicking out her tongue to catch a scream-fly. Gus smiled.
“Eat up, girl. Willow hates those things so the more you eat, the better.”
Emmiline chirruped, climbed onto his head and set about consuming as many as she could reach.
The front door opened faster than Gus expected. “Hi Will- oh!”
Willow stopped with her hand on the doorknob, staring at him like a gigged frog. She had exchanged her usual dark-rimmed glasses for gold-rimmed alternatives. He presumed this was because gold took enchantments better than the alloy used to make her previous pair, which had been chosen by her dads for toughness and how well they could withstand the everyday wear and tear of childhood – especially for a bully magnet witchling. Willow had been talking for a while about how she wished she had glasses able to take eyesight-improving enchantments better and which did not have so many cracks, bends, repaired breaks and other memories of bullies destroying them. Yet it was not these new frames that held Gus’s attention.
Willow’s hair was gone. Instead of the thick braids he was used to, shorn locks framed her round face and jutted all over her scalp. None of them were longer than a few inches. She had run mossy green dye through them, giving her appearance a chaotic but creative look. Without pigtails to cover it, her neck looked longer than usual. If he had not known her for so long and literally seen her exiting her house, he might have assumed she was someone else.
“Hi, Gus,” Willow croaked.
Gus shook himself. “Wow, new look!” He made a show of stroking his chin and squinting discerningly. “I like it. It’s very you.”
Atop his head, Emmiline squeaked her agreement. Clover buzzed through the doorway behind Willow and settled into her new nest of hair spikes, ostensibly quite comfortable there.
Willow reached up to absently stroke Clover’s ruff. “You think so? You’re not just saying that?”
“Trust me, I wouldn’t mess with you.”
Her smile could power the fey-lanterns in a whole house for a week. She closed the door behind her and hopped down to walk beside Gus. “That’s a relief.”
He fell into step beside her. “Didn’t it go over well with your parents?”
She held out her flat hand, palm down, and wiggled it from side to side. “Ish. I didn’t, uh, tell them I was going to do it until it was already done. I didn’t know I was going to do it either, to be honest.”
They paused to make sure no traffic was going to squash, eat or run them over before crossing the street. “I’m glad you said that, otherwise I would’ve asked why you didn’t let me in on the plan.”
“There was no plan. I just woke up really early this morning and … wanted to cut off all my hair.” She shrugged, like that was a perfectly reasonable thing to say.
“Uh-huh.” Gus gave her a sidelong look. “The hair you always cried over Boscha putting gum in. The hair you were so happy Amity started braiding again. The hair you always brushed with a hundred strokes a night with a special hairbrush made of unicorn tail bristles you saved up for months to buy, and which cost more than every haircare product I own put together.”
She shrugged, her shoulders going much higher this time. She refused to look him in the eye. “Yeah.”
“Willow.”
“What, Augustus?” She never used his full name anymore unless she was peeved, stressed or upset.
Gus stopped walking. “Will. Seriously. Talk to me.”
She took a few extra steps before stopping also. Her chest bounced when she gave a gusty sigh. Gus pretended not to notice. He was growing into his teenage hormones but he knew his personal boundaries included not ogling his best friend.
Gus waited.
“I … had a dream. The dream. I had it again.”
He frowned. “The one with –”
“Yeah. That one.”
“And that made you want to cut your hair?”
“Yes. No. Something like that.” Willow pursed her lips. “It’s hard to explain. I … didn’t want to look like I do in that dream anymore. It was messing with my head. So, when I woke up so early and realised I had time …” Another shrug. “That’s … that’s the best answer I can give you.”
Gus paused but it did not seem like she was about to say more. “Okay then.” He started walking again.
Willow blinked at him. “That’s it?”
“Sure. I trust you to know your own mind, Willow. You’re, like, the strongest, most wilful person I know – and that includes Luz. If you say you needed a change to help you improve your mental health, who am I to question you?”
It took several long moments for her to catch up to him. When she did, she was smiling again. “Thanks, Gus.”
Amity was listening to Luz chatter about some human movie she watched with her mother last night when they turned the corner and Hexside hove into view. The school used to be Amity’s place of refuge, along with the library; the only places where she felt like she was worth anything. Success was her avenue to worthiness, after all; a route by which she could carve out a niche where she belonged and had value. It was nice to look at it now and not feel like all her hopes of mattering to people were pinned on the place.
“Holy crap!” Luz exclaimed. Flapjack startled into the air at her volume.
Amity looked up. “Oh Titan.”
Like every morning, Willow and Gus waited by a bench outside school. It was one of those that had been constructed when Emperor Belos first died and all cities, towns and villages had rushed to erect as many memorials to him as possible. Someone had scrawled graffiti all over this one and then charmed it to move around and fight back whenever someone tried to sponge it off. Gus had his back to them but Willow was facing in their direction, so Amity had a perfect view of how her oldest-and-yet-somehow-newest friend froze up at the sight of herself and Luz.
“Willowwwwwwww!” Luz gave Amity’s hand one last squeeze and dashed forward, clapping both palms to her cheeks. “Yasss queeeeen! You look so fierce!” She did a weird clicky head bob thing and made a face like she was trying to resemble a duck. That had to be a human thing. “Uh-huh! You know it! Work it, queen!”
Willow’s hand went to her hair so quickly that it had to be a nervous gesture. Amity took her time approaching, the better to get an eyeful of the changes. For the longest time, whenever she thought of Willow, all she could picture was the startled, tearful face of a little girl whose heart she had just broken. This was as far from that little girl as was possible to be and hammered home just how much Willow had matured in the time between then and now. Amity’s heart pulsed briefly with pain for the lost time in which they had not been friends. Then again, maybe Willow would not have grown into such a self-assured version of herself if she had been exposed to the Blights’ constant criticisms. Odalis, in particular, saw no reason why Amity’s friends not being blood relations was any barrier to her pulling out their most closely guarded insecurities and clawing at them like a cat with a wounded mouse. She had even made Boscha cry more than once, before Boscha and Amity both took up grudgby as a means of venting the frustrations they could not unleash on the adults in their lives.
“Doesn’t she look awesome?” Gus enthused.
“The awesomest of awesomes!” Luz concurred. “Awesome squared. No, no, awesome cubed!”
Amity smiled encouragingly. “It does suit you, Willow.”
Willow’s smile was small but genuine and absolutely the kind of thing Odalia would have squashed out of existence long ago. “Thanks, guys.”
“Spittin’ nothin’ but facts, dawg.” Luz made a complex hand gesture with her fingers while crossing her arms at the wrists in front of her chest. Amity wondered if it was some sort of code. “Peace out. Hey, did you study for today’s history test? I swear, if I have to read one more thing about the pixie taxes I will literally die.”
“That’s not how you use the word literally, batata.” Amity slid her arm through Luz’s and they all started walking towards the school entrance.
“Literally don’t care,” Luz said airily, proving she did, in fact, know how to use the word but, like so many things in her life, only chose to follow the rule if it made sense to her. It was one of her more endearing qualities and had been one of the reasons she was even here in the Boiling Isles now. Luz had rigid morals but a flexible relationship with rules and laws.
“Pixie taxes aren’t so complicated,” said Willow. “Plus, isn’t today’s test on the Pegasi War anyhow?”
Luz’s jaw dropped. “Please say you’re lying.”
“No, I’m pretty sure that’s what the teacher said. Chapter 16 in the textbook.”
“Noooo! I studied Chapter 6!” Luz paused to knocked her forehead against a tree. “¿Qué está mal conmigo? ¡Si fallo en otra prueba, tengo que limpiar la pizarra durante una semana!”
“History class isn’t until last period, Luz.” Amity caught hold of her hand and gave it a reassuring clasp, tugging her away from the tree. “We can study together at lunch. I did a whole project in elementary school on the Pegasi War while I was in my horsy phase.”
“Oh, I remember that!” Willow smirked. “When you had all those posters on your walls and made your own pretend blue ribbons for unicorn dressage and pegasi show jumping?”
Amity blushed. “Reveal all my embarrassing secrets, why don’t you?”
“You are literally dating the biggest dork we all know. Nothing you did in childhood can compare to what Luz has done.”
Luz stuck out her tongue. “I’d disagree but she’s right. At least you never ate jigsaw puzzle pieces and had to be given laxative because you didn’t chew the corner pieces enough.”
“Oh my gosh, ew! That’s disgusting, batata!”
“And youuuuu choooose meeeee!”
The laughter came easily and warmed Amity’s heart as they started up the steps to the school doors. She reflected that even though things were perfect, even though there were still problems to face and would be more to overcome in the future, for now she was truly and genuinely happy with her life.
Willow thrust her hands into the pockets of her jacket and shivered a little. Autumn was coming soon. In the Human Realm, kids had only just started back to school after what Luz termed ‘Summer Break’. It was easy to hear the capital letters in how she said the name. It seemed odd to Willow that kids would be unleashed from education for three whole months at the hottest time of the year so their brains could bake into mush and make them forget all their learning from the rest of their time in school. She much preferred the Boiling Isles framework of three-week vacations scattered at regular intervals throughout the year. When winter hit its coldest point and venturing outside became dangerous, kids in the Demon Realm would be tucked up safe at home while human students battled the elements to attend classes, and in summer she preferred air-conditioned classrooms and blooming Breezeblossoms in the Plant Track homeroom to melting in the heat outside.
She and her friends had agreed to eat lunch together in the sunken garden to help Luz study the Pegasi War with minimal distractions. The sunken garden was a failed project of the gardening club several generations ago, wherein they had tried to create a haven of underwater plant life that could survive on land. The endeavour had failed, leaving behind a walled off patch of dirt studded with dangerous vegetation that attacked anyone who got too close. Last time the Choosy Hat escaped, it made the mistake of wandering into the sunken garden and the alligatorweeds tore it to pieces. Willow had made a point of practising her magic on the outskirts when she transferred from Abomination to Plant Track. Her natural affinity for plants had allowed her to get close enough that she could convince the vicious sea-but-land-plants into at least accepting her presence and that of anyone with her without aggression. It had made a pretty awesome secret spot for her and her friends to enjoy away from Boscha and her cronies.
“They’re like your Doberman-guard-plants,” Luz had commented previously, confusing everyone and leading to a prolonged discussion on the differences between earth dogs, hellhounds and direwolves.
Willow had liked the Dobermans Luz showed pictures of, though she preferred those with floppy ears and long tails to those with severe cropped appendages. Their colouring and barrel chests reminded her of Dingbat plants on her windowsill at home. Gus had marvelled over videos of Great Danes on Luz’s phone as the giant but dopey dogs, who turned out not to be related to giraffes, carried around small children on their backs - so much so that he nearly forgot to give the phone back when it was time for Luz to go home.
Now Willow headed to the sunken garden ahead of her friends to ensure her ‘Doberman-guard-plants’ would behave themselves before the others arrived. Both she and Luz had brought bagged lunches lovingly made by parents but Luz would faithfully wait by Amity’s side while she bought something from the cafeteria. Amity had never had a bagged lunch in all the time Amity had known her, even when she stayed at her father’s place. Gus had privately confessed to Willow that he hated eating lunches made by his housekeeper as she never remembered what he was allergic to and he was sick of bringing it up with his dad each time something went wrong and he ended up in the school nurse’s office, only for it to happen again. Luz’s mom had started making extra for her to pass on to Gus to supplement the few things from the school cafeteria he could eat without blowing up like a balloon and it warmed Willow’s heart to see him finally enjoying food again. Apparently human food was much kinder to witches’ stomachs than witch food was to humans’, which just fuelled Gus’s dreams of someday becoming an ambassador to the Human Realm.
Willow’s footsteps crackled the grass. It needed hydration. She drew a small spell circle and pulled up water from an underground source, seeping it into the grass’s roots. It sighed gratefully into her mind. She smiled. It never ceased to amaze her how good she felt when she used plant magic. The days of miserably trudging her way through abomination lessons felt like they had happened to someone else.
“We’re sorry we forced you into a track you weren’t comfortable in, dumpling,” Dad had said the day she came home in a green uniform. “We just … didn’t want to risk you being inducted into the Plant Coven.”
“There are … rumours about Coven Head Snapdragon,” Papa had rumbled dourly. “She doesn’t like children very much.”
Rumours that proved to be true, as it turned out. Her successor, Coven Head Hemlock, seemed a much more stable and less-child-murdery leader who was making concerted efforts to repair the Plant Coven’s reputation after his predecessor’s ignominious arrest and imprisonment, though it would be a while before the coven’s recruitment numbers recovered.
Willow was glad forced initiation into covens had been abolished. If she wanted to join the Plant Coven someday, maybe she would, but if she chose not to it was no longer a criminalised offence to live a coven-less life. Sometimes she caught sight of the sigils on her fathers’ arms and shivered at the thought that they had not had a choice like she did. Societal progress was far from linear but it was definitely better in the long run.
She turned a corner. The sunken garden was just ahead. As its name suggested, the ground there was recessed and involved hopping over a wall around its edges. There used to be a gate but Principal Bump had long since gotten rid of it in an effort to prevent incautious freshman being eaten, traumatised or both. The wall was covered in climbing Black-Hearted-Susan and Hyacinth-Scream vines that lifted their heads at her approach. She ran her fingers over the clamouring yellow flowers and vibrant pink seed pods, which rubbed against her like cats arching their backs for scritches before moving aside to let her pass without treading on them.
“Thank you, little friends,” Willow murmured. “I’ll come back on Thursday this week with some special fertiliser I’ve been working on with help from one of the Abomination Track students and another from the Beastkeeping Track. It’s brewing in the Plant Track homeroom right now but we’ve been chanting charms at it all week and by then it should be ready.”
Viney and Amity had been thrilled when Willow asked for their help on mixing magics, even if Viney’s role essentially amounted to ‘which animal’s poop would be best for composting and not automatically kill any plant it touches’? Amity had immediately fallen to deep research on how abomination magic might help to fuse together the ingredients of a really good all-purpose fertiliser and breathlessly showed her theories to Willow like she used to bring her extra-credit projects to Professor Hermonculus.
Willow had been wary of re-establishing their friendship at first but it seemed like the other girl really had changed. Having context for all the terrible things she had said and done when they were little kids helped, though the remembered sting of that fateful birthday party still hurt to think about. Amity was trying really hard, though, and slowly Willow had come to realise that none of it was performative.
Baby steps, Willow still though thought over and over. She had started trying to reconnect for Luz’s sake but kept trying for herself, hoping against hope that Amity was on the level and wouldn’t break Willow’s healed heart all over again. Baby steps.
She conjured a wealth of thick thorn-vines topped by a large soft flowers to lift her over the wall, forming the vines into steps for her friends to use when they arrived. Hyacinth-Screams tugged at her yellow jacket on her way past. She carefully unhooked them, only to find Black-Hearted-Susan flowers taking their place, as if trying to stop her from entering the sunken garden. Willow carefully unfurled them from her jacket and then from around her hands, allowing magic to trickle into her fingertips in small spell circles to gently make them retreat.
“Behave, now, little friends.” She reached the top of the wall and stepped onto it. “It’s not polite to –”
There was someone in the sunken garden.
Willow paused. No-one else came here apart from her and her friends. She frowned. How had someone gotten in without the mutated plants immediately attacking them? The alligatorweed in particular disliked strangers and was known to fasten its sharp teeth into anyone invading its territory, not to mention the bull kelp’s habit of goring unwary visitors on its keratin horns. Yet someone was standing right in the centre, seemingly unconcerned by any of the delinquent plant life. Willow squinted. She did not recognise the figure. It was not wearing a Hexside unform though. Clover buzzed in her hair.
“Hello? Can I help you?”
The figure turned and looked up at her.
Willow’s throat closed.
All at once, she wasn’t on the wall around the sunken garden. She wasn’t at school. She wasn’t even standing on her own two feet anymore. Instead, she was floating in empty air, her mind foggy, staring up at someone she could not see clearly but whom she knew was important.
The dream had been coming for the past six months, ever since the fabled Day of Unity celebration the old disgraced Emperor Belos had promoted right up until the day he died. Under pressure from diehard enthusiasts, most of whom refused to believe any of the bad things about him that came to light after his death but all of whom were voters and taxpayers, the Coven Heads had gone ahead with the celebration on the appointed date. They peddled it to the general public as a celebration of all witchkind and downplayed the idea that Belos originally intended it as a ritualistic spell designed to increase the fortunes and powers of the citizenry. Rumours had abounded about what the disgraced Emperor had been planning when he was still in charge but, ultimately, the day had been little more than a parade and a ceremony celebrating everything and everyone witchy or demonic, followed by a big party, after which they’d all gone home. Willow had gone to the festival with her dads and noticed their coven sigils glowing faintly with yellow light during the few minutes the moon eclipsed the sun but nothing more. She had gone off with her friends in the evening, playing games at the stalls, eating mobile food seller wares and generally having a lovely time.
Ever since then, however, she had started having the dream. It began only now and then, making her toss and turn before waking in a cold sweat, images of red eyes dancing in her head before fading into nothingness. Then it happened more often. She could never remember it fully when she awoke, just unsettling bits and pieces that slipped from her waking mind like she was trying to hold handfuls of water. Mostly she remembered emotions: fear, pain and deep-seated despair mixed with loss so pointed it made her cry into her plushies when she woke.
She had tried sleeping potions but nothing worked. Her parents noticed the growing bags under her eyes and wanted to take her to a doctor when she told them. Willow had waved them off. What could a doctor do about a recurring nightmare other than prescribe stronger sleeping potions that would just make her groggy at school the next day? It was probably stress about upcoming exams, she reasoned. Once the finals were done, she would be fine.
Finals came and went. She was not fine.
Soon the dream was coming four or five times a week and Willow was saving for new glasses she could enchant to hide the dark circles around her eyes.
She remembered more of the dream with each repetition, holding onto fractured images to try to figure out if it was more than just the product of her own anxious mind. Had she been cursed like Eda? Was this a spell someone had cast on her as a bullying prank? Had Boscha taken against her newfound confidence and sought to punish her for thinking she was better than the Half-a-Witch-Willow she had always been?
The images were never coherent enough to let her relive the dream in its entirety. What she did manage to remember was like trying to decode a shifting kaleidoscope of colour and sound: golden light streaming up into the sky; floating over the Boiling Isles without a staff; a figure laughing above her; the hot press of a mouth on her own; sad eyes a shade of pink so dark they were almost red; her own distressed face reflected back at her in a spreading pool of blood and the certainty that the person bleeding was hurt because she had not been fast enough to save them. These snatches confused and disconcerted her every single time.
And then this morning she had sat bolt upright in bed, grasping for a hand that was only just out of reach, a screamed name on her lips that vanished like smoke the moment she opened her eyes. Frustration had welled up inside her as she hugged her knees and cursed the dream, until she grabbed a pair of scissors so she could at least look at herself in the mirror from now on and no longer see the frightened girl from a blood-spill who she knew – knew – had failed in some hugely important task.
The figure in the sunken garden smiled.
Willow was frozen in place. Her mind locked up. She was faintly aware of Clover’s buzzing and her little plant friends at the periphery of her consciousness but they sounded dim and far away. All she could focus on was the figure below her and the hazy memory of laughter she knew didn’t sound right –
“Willow!”
She blinked. She turned. Her friends were climbing the vine steps she had made behind her. Luz looked worried.
“Hey, Willow, are you okay? We were calling you for, like, ever!”
Willow blinked again. Her thoughts felt slippery. There was that grabbing water feeling again. She looked back at where the figure had been but the sunken garden was empty.
Panic sluiced through her. “Did you see someone else go over the wall?” Her voice sounded tinny, like her ears were full of cotton wool.
Luz frowned. “No? Just you. You were standing and staring like you’d seen a ghost. Which, actually, did you see a ghost? I keep forgetting they actually exist here.”
Willow swallowed and shook her head.
Gus looked at her sceptically. He was on the top step. He reached for her hand but she pulled away. “Will?”
“I’m fine, Augustus.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m fine.” The words came out snappish. He flinched. Willow took a steadying breath. “Sorry. But I really am okay. I just … thought I saw something and it startled me but I must have been mistaken.”
“What did you think you saw?” Amity asked. She held a pre-wrapped sandwich from the school cafeteria in a too-tight grip. The plastic crackled. Clearly, she sensed the air of weirdness that had settled over them.
Willow looked back. The garden remained empty. Had she hallucinated? It had seemed so real. Was she going mad?
“I … I’m actually not sure.”
She tried to ignore her friends’ anxiously exchanged looks and the memory of a phantom mouth against her own when she knew for a fact that she had never even had a first kiss yet.
King sat on a rock and glared at the waves. The Boiling Sea stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. It never ate away at the beach of this island. It never melted the sand here into glass. The tide never came in nor went out. It just stayed, endlessly licking at an invisible barrier that kept the island secluded, removed from space and time. King knew this because King knew everything.
Well, maybe not quite everything, but enough. He did not know how he had been transported back here, to the place where he had hatched. He did not know why Jean-Luc was in the temple, when he should have been in King’s bedroom at the Owl House. He did not know where Eda or Luz or any of his friends were right now.
But he did know he was going to figure out a way to get back to them.
His claws curled into fists. “Collector,” he growled. His voice was still shrill and babyish. Eda’s laughter at his Squeak of Rage filled his mind. His fists tightened. He needed to get back to her. She was his family and family did not just abandon each other if there was any other option.
Was that what happened with my dad? Did he not have any other option but to hide me away where I’d be safe from … whatever killed him?
How long would it be before he was old enough to inherit some more of those Titan powers that might help him get off this island? His powerful scream was no use in flying him over a literal ocean. For that he needed a staff or some kind of winged beast that could withstand boiling sea spray. Those were in short supply in this place. Aside from King and Jean-Luc, the entire island was uninhabited. Fruit trees grew abundantly but he had already tried making a raft from their wood. It had not gone well.
He missed Bonesborough. He missed the Owl House. He even missed Hooty. Though he apparently only had one unbroken horn now, King would give both it and the other stump to hear one of Hooty’s inane stories. He missed making bread puns with Luz. He missed Eda’s snarky remarks when they made bets King never won. He missed digging to help Willow grow things in the patch of dirt she had turned into vegetable garden outside the kitchen window. He missed recording stupid crystal ball message for Gus. He missed the way Amity would scritch under his chin, her skills perfected by owning a cat palisman. He missed Lilith’s tiny hums when she was deep in a history book and disagreed with the author. He missed playing Owlbert at chess even though neither of them knew how to play. He missed them all.
Were they okay? Were they imprisoned somewhere like him right now? He could think of no other reason that they would not have come to find him. According to the marks he had made on the inside temple walls, it had been six months since he woke up here. There was no way Luz or Eda would have left him alone that long unless something was preventing them from rescuing him.
He knew the direction of the Boiling Isles from his trip out here with Luz, Lilith and Hooty. He always faced that way now, from sunup to sundown, until hunger drove him back into the temple where Jean-Luc would feed him and he would rest until the next day’s vigil. Part of him hoped that eventually he would spot a familiar staff in the sky and be ready to guide them in for a safe landing. It hadn’t happened yet but if it did, he would be ready.
He knew the Collector must have put him here. He just didn’t know why.
“It’s called ‘The Game of Life’ and he left me all the rules in his brain. It sounds super fun. Well, for me. You guys might not find it so fun but at this stage I think I’ve earned the right to be Gamemaster.”
What had the Collector done? Had he discarded King from his game; dumped him out here on the island where no-one would find him? What had he done to the others? Worry clutched at King’s heart like a hand covered in knives. Visions of Belos’s body unravelling and then popping out of existence played through his mind. Had the Collector done that to his friends and family? Were they okay? Were they ensnared in whatever a god-child considered to be a ‘game’?
Were they even alive right now?
He shook his head. He refused to so much as entertain the notion they were dead. Either they would save him or he would get big enough to figure out how to get off this island and save them. Either way, they would be reunited someday.
“And that’s a promise,” he muttered, eyes fixed on the distant horizon. “Clawthornes never give up on those they care about, weh.”
The Collector sat in a tree and watched the human and her friends comb their little walled garden. The plant witch was asking her florae to corroborate what her own eyes has told her. It made him smile in delight to have caused such a reaction with barely a few seconds of input.
Hunter was right, life can be a really fun game if you play it right.
He sometimes still felt echoes of the grimwalker. His soul was gone, vaporised into non-existence by the possession process, but most of his memories remained and those that didn’t probably hadn’t been worth keeping anyway. In the half a year the Collector had spent recovering his strength, he had spent some time looking through them. Inevitably he always got bored and gave up – Hunter never played games while he was alive, not until he joined that flyer derby team and even then, he’d only played one stinking match. Yet now and then, he picked at a few, rewatching them and laughing at how pointlessly cruel they were. Phillip truly was a buttface of the highest order.
Or had been. In this reality, he had died before Hunter was ever created, which struck the Collector as deliciously fitting for the crumbly old geezer. All Phillip’s plans had come to nothing. Served him right. Buttface.
The Collector knew Hunter had tried to trick him with his ‘Game of Life’ ruse. It had been an elaborate scheme to save his friends by levying the Collector’s personality against him. He didn’t hold it against the kid; he had been desperate and the Collector hadn’t minded the terms of their agreement if he got a new body out of it. Hunter’s body wasn’t as strong as the Collector’s real one but the galderstone heart really helped to focus his magic in a way that stopped the rest of it from exploding like any other mortal flesh would have. And luckily, the Collector was very, very good at playing even fake games.
Rewriting reality had taken a lot of his power. He was good but after being locked away for so long, expending so much energy all at once had left him weakened. Sixteen years was as much as he could manage but it was a reasonable game board to play on, even if there were a few cracks here and there. Now he got to see how his changes were affecting the pieces he had inherited from Belos. Watching them scurry about, living their lives like they actually mattered, was sort-of fun as a prelude to the main event. When his powers recharged fully, he could get on with the business of moving them around himself and watching what they did. And in the meantime, he had absolutely fulfilled his side of the bargain by saving Hunter’s friends. It was the grimwalker’s own stupid fault if he hadn’t stipulated they had to stay saved.
The plant witch’s memories were something he had not counted on but he decided to treat them as a wild card rather than a flaw. If just seeing him for a few seconds was fun, he couldn’t wait to see what happened when he really got going. It had been a lot of fun breaking her the first time around, even if kisses were yucky. He would have to be inventive with her this time if he wanted to avoid a repeat performance of that.
Sometimes he wondered about the weird tugging sensation he had felt when he performed the rewrite. It had reminded him of that last battle with the Titan, when he was locked away. The Collector scowled. He really, truly hated Titans. Luckily, his cult had taken care of any small ones who were left after his imprisonment, so there were none to spoil his games anymore. His magic had horribly little effect on Titans, which made them terrible playmates. Plus, they all seemed to be born with a stick up their butts about using lesser mortals as game pieces, and had a habit of attacking the Collector when he did that. Stupid spoilsport buttfaces.
The plant witch was looking at the sky and touching her mouth again. The human drew circles in the dirt with a twig. Such basic magic was almost cute. The Collector smiled. Oh, he was going to have so much fun with them when the time came.
After all, there was no-one left who could stop him from playing his games anymore, and that was just the way he liked it.