Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first incident came on a Wednesday.

Nobody was expecting a visit from the Demon Realm on a Wednesday of all days. A Saturday, maybe, especially since Camila started scheduling others for her weekend shifts so she could take Vee to the amateur dramatic society she and Masha joined. Luz had gotten much better at calling ahead instead of arriving without warning and anyone else who might come through the portal was much better at scheduling than her. Amity was much too polite, even after four years of dating Luz, so when the door flared to life and she stepped through into the Noceda living room, Camila was more than a little shocked. She had only just arrived home herself and nearly bumped into her someday-daughter-in-law-she-hoped.

“¿Amity, cariño? What are you doing here?” Camila pressed a hand to her chest. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, popping in like that. Are you okay? Is Luz okay? Is everything okay?”

Amity laughed unconvincingly. “Fine, fine, everything is fine.”

Camila raised an eyebrow at her. Even now, a childhood with Odalia Blight showed in the way Amity cowered slightly back from a raised eyebrow.

“Okay, so, fine is maybe overstretching it. But Luz is okay. She’s not hurt. She didn’t even blow up the university potions lab again.”

“Well, that’s good to hear. Wait, ‘again’?”

Amity flapped a hand. “Story for another time. I actually came to talk to you about Hunter.”

Camila blinked. “Is Hunter okay? I talked to him just this morning before he left.” Her adoptive son had bolted out the door after realising he had spent too long reading the next chapter of his ‘really interesting’ textbook and was going to be late onto campus for his 9 o’ clock class.

Amity twisted her skirt between her hands in a nervous gesture. She was wearing the one Luz got her three years ago for Winter Solstice, the Boiling Isles equivalent of Christmas. Camila would have smiled if not for the next words that came out of the girl’s mouth. “He’s, ah, in the university infirmary.”

Instantly, Camila was on her feet. “Why did you not lead with that information, mija?”

“Because he specifically told me not to tell you!” Amity yelped.

That gave Camila pause. Yes, that sounded like Hunter; but he was notorious for not wanting anyone to know when he was sick in case he caused them an inconvenience. An upbringing of working a job in which sick days were prohibited still showed itself in him now and then, no matter how much progress he had made.

“What happened? Be concise.”

“I don’t know,” Amity admitted. “I was hoping you would. Luz, Gus and I arranged to meet him outside the university main entrance for a late lunch. We were going to try that new bistro in downtown Bonesborough, since none of us have classes after 3pm. When he was coming down the entrance steps he just suddenly fell and didn’t catch himself. He broke his nose on the banister and passed out. Or passed out and then hit his nose. I’m not sure what order it happened in. We took him to the infirmary but when he came around, he got really weird, said it wasn’t a big deal and made us swear not to worry you or Darius or Eda with it. Luz is still with him but I said I needed to call my dad and tell him where I am. Then I flew here to ask you if he’s had any funny turns like this before.”

“¡Ese chico tonto, cariñoso y abnegado!” Camila muttered. She hurried into the hall and returned with her handbag already on her shoulder. She dumped her car keys on the table and scrawled a note for Vee to get takeout when she got home. “Take me to him.”

“No, I – he doesn’t know I’m here!”

“You did the right thing, mija. I will inform him of that so he cannot hold it against you. I would have been extremely hurt if no-one had told me one of my children was injured. ¿Qué voy a hacer con ese chico? ¡Él nunca piensa que lastimarse es un gran problema del que me gustaría saber!”

Amity gulped but followed her dutifully back through the portal.

Hunter would not stop glaring at Amity. It was getting a little annoying. Sure, maybe she shouldn’t have done the one thing he told her not to do, but her heart had been in the right place. And, let’s be honest, Luz knew that if Amity had not gone to get Camila, she would have fetched her mom herself.

“I’m fine, really,” Hunter insisted. “I just got a little dizzy and hit my head. No big deal.”

“It is absolutely a big deal, mijo.” Camila folded her arms. Even though she was sitting down beside the bed in which the infirmary healers had stashed Hunter, she seemed taller when she did that. “Has anything like this happened before?”

Hunter opened his mouth.

“Outside of when you got head injuries on missions as Golden Guard.”

He closed his mouth. Shook his head. Glared even more at Amity.

“I’m sorry, okay?” Amity threw up her hands. “She’s your mom! She cares about you!”

“You didn’t need to worry her over something so trivial.”

“You have a broken nose, Hunter!” Luz pointed out.

“Had. Past tense. The healer fixed it.”

“Pish-posh. You know what I mean.”

He blinked at her. “I have no idea what ‘pish-posh’ means.”

“Hunter.” Camila leaned forward, her tone serious. “I thought we talked about this. I need to know when you’re hurt, mi querido niñito. It is not a test of your endurance to see how long you can function while in pain.”

“I … I know that.” Hunter turned his face away, finally breaking off his glare. Instead, he looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t hiding it from you for that reason. It was just so dumb. I lost my footing and fell on my face in front of the whole student body. Who does that?”

“Oh mi niño maravilloso pero tonto.” Camila reached out. “Permission to touch?”

He nodded and she ruffled his hair. It was getting long again. Luz tugged at her own curls. Hunter’s hair seemed to grow five times quicker than her own and required almost as much upkeep to stop him looking like a well-read hobo. Willow liked to card her fingers through his hair when it was just past his ears, so he tended to keep it at that length but often forgot basic things like haircuts, eating or laundry now that he had access so many non-fiction books in the university library.

Speaking of Willow …

The door thumped against the wall with the force of someone kicking it open. “Hunter!?” Willow rushed into the room, trailing soil like glitter in her wake.

Hunter sat up straighter. “Willow! I’m fine! You didn’t need to–”

“I’m going to kiss you now.” Thus warned, she planted a kiss on him, cutting off his words.

Luz smirked at the way Hunter’s face turned beet red and his ears twitched like his head was trying to take flight.

Willow pulled back but did not relinquish her hold on his face. “I was so worried when Luz called me!”

Whoops. Busted.

Hunter’s eyes slid to Luz. She gave her best shrug and sheepish grin combo.

“No, don’t get mad at her for telling me.”

“It really is not big deal,” Hunter insisted. “You’re all overreacting. I’m fine. I had worse injuries than this back when –”

“You were the Golden Guard,” Willow finished for him. “I know. But you’re not anymore and you have people who care about you and want to be by your side if you get hurt. Someday, maybe you’ll finally accept that.”

Luz saw the moment Hunter’s eyes softened with love for the girl who currently smelled like a compost heap and looked like she had crawled through ten miles of thorny hedge to get here. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I just don’t like to worry you all.”

“Let us worry, mijo,” said Camila. “It’s what families do.”

The door burst open once again and a tall figure in imperious purple strode in. “Where is he? Is he all right? Someone give me some answers, damn it!”

Gus cringed. “Sorry. This one is on me.”

Hunter sighed. “Hi Darius. I’m fine really.”

“I’ll be the judge of that!”

The librarian was very pissed. She was one of those people who thought the best thing for a library was to keep it closed at all times and seemed to resent students who came in to check out books because they spoiled that. Many were the times she had spotted Gus visualising something from his textbook with a minor illusion on the table in front of him and stomped over to hiss at him to stop. The fact that she was a snake demon meant that when she hissed, she really hissed, and Gus had half expected her to bite him for his impertinence.

Today, however, it was not Gus who had pissed her off. Her diamond-eyed glare was fixed resolutely on Hunter.

Gus leaned over to his friend. “Dude, are you okay?”

Hunter nodded, watery-eyed. “Yeah. Just can’t seem to shake this cough. I’ll be fine in a –” His words were lost in another round of hacking splutters that made his shoulders shake.

“Not to sound cruel, dude, but you sound awful. You know you’re allowed to stay home if you’re sick, right?”

“Not sick,” Hunter wheezed.

“Beg to differ. You need a drink of water?” Gus reached into his bag.

“No food or liquids in the library!” the librarian screeched.

Gus rolled his eyes. “Whatever. I think I’m done for the day. Want to head over to the commissary and grab some sodas? My treat.”

Hunter held up a ‘one moment’ finger and coughed some more. When he was finally finished, he braced his hands against the desk to catch his breath.

“Soda sounds good,” he rasped. “Kind of wrecked my throat with all that coughing. All the dust in here must have irritated my throat. But you don’t have to pay for me.”

Gus chuckled. “Why do you always say that? You’ve paid for me plenty of times.”

“That’s different.”

“Explain how.”

The librarian glared at them balefully. “Shhhhhhh!”

Gus shouldered his bag and waited for Hunter to do the same. Silently, they made their way out of the library, Hunter coughing discretely into his fist. Gus thought nothing of it. It was incredibly dusty in there.

Later, he would wish he had taken more notice.

The next incident happened on a Sunday.

Hunter was curled up on the couch, a pencil dangling from his mouth as he read from a weighty tome propped on his knees, every so often pausing to underline something. The margins of all his textbooks were full of notes – Luz knew from borrowing them when she was struggling to keep up with the university workload. They were in a lot of classes together, as usual, since Hunter had started Hexside in her grade despite being two years older. Formal education was not something he had ever had much experience of and both Camila and Darius had decided it was best to give him a running start at it before he took any important exams.

Luz bent over her laptop in the armchair, fingers flying. She had finished her essay for Advanced Potions 101 and was now working busily on the latest chapter of her Azura fanfic so she could give it to Amity for beta-ing. She just knew her girlfriend was going to freak at the latest plot twist Luz had cooked up.

She was just getting to the god bit when a thump caught her attention. She looked up – then jumped up.

“Hunter?”

He had toppled off the sofa so smoothly she could have believed he’d done it on purpose, if not for the fact he was out cold and was crushing his book. Hunter would never willingly damage a book.

Luz dumped her laptop on the coffee table and rushed to his side.

“Hunter? Hunter, wake up!”

She shook him but he did not respond.

“MOM!”

“In a minute, mija. I’m just –”

“MOM, SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH HUNTER! HE’S UNCONSCIOUS!”

Heavy thuds signalled Camila abandoning dinner and rushing into the living room. A clatter from the stairs heralded Vee doing the same, since Luz’s voice was clearly audible from the bedroom. The three of them converged on Hunter.

Camila worked with brisk efficiency, her training as a veterinarian displaying itself in the calmness with which she took control of the situation. Hunter looked pale and sweaty, the bags under his eyes that he had never been able to shake off seeming darker than usual. Camila got him onto his back and raised his legs for his feet to rest on the couch, all the while talking loudly to him. She tapped his collarbone and pinched one of his ears but he did not respond.

“He just … fell,” Luz said lamely. “I heard him hit the floor. But he was fine, I swear it. He was reading and then he just fell.”

Vee took her hand. “It’ll be okay. Mamá knows what she’s doing.”

“He’s not a cat,” Luz mumbled under her breath. She immediately felt mean. Camila was doing more than Luz herself to help Hunter.

Finally, his face scrunched and he opened his eyes. His pupils were blown beneath his lids but contracted the moment the living room lamplight hit them. He threw an arm over his face.

“¡Cuidado, querido!” Camila instructed. “Careful. You’ve had another funny turn, I think. You fainted.”

Hunter only groaned in response.

Luz felt Vee’s hand tighten around her own. “His nose – there’s blood…”

“A la mierda todo,” Camila muttered. Now was not the time to say that cussing in Spanish was still grounds for putting a coin in the Swear Jar, Luz knew. “Luz, the Kleenex.”

Luz fetched the tissue box and knelt to press a handful to the trickle of blood leaking from Hunter’s nose. He had not hit his face this time. His nose remained unbroken. No, there was some other reason for a nosebleed and whatever it was could not be good.

Quickly, Luz ran through the likely reasons in her head: Hunter had eaten a cereal bar she dumped on the book earlier, so his blood sugar wasn’t low, and he was religious about staying hydrated. Maybe it was stress over assignments, but he had slotted so well into the rigorous study programme of university that it seemed unlikely. He and Willow were in a good place so that couldn’t be it. Flyer derby was going well. Was this some grimwalker thing, like how his breathing slowed nearly to a stop when he slept and plentiful sunlight made palistrom flowers blossom in his hair in Springtime? Each of those quirks had freaked them out at first but were now just part of what made Hunter Hunter.

“Sit up slowly, baby,” Camila warned.

“M’ fine,” Hunter tried to say as he slunk his feet down off the couch and tried to lever himself into a sitting position.

“You are absolutely not fine,” Luz corrected him. “This is the second time this week you’ve passed out like this.”

“I’m fine,” Hunter insisted.

“You’re still bleeding,” Vee said softly.

“I’ve had worse.”

“Forgive us for not finding that at all reassuring,” Luz sniped.

“Girls, stop.” Camila pinched a spot between her eyes. “Mijo, they’re right. This isn’t normal. We need to get you checked out. Even if it turns out to be nothing, I’d rather know that than wonder and worry.” She lowered her hand and gazed beseechingly at him. “Please, baby?”

Luz knew that look. She had fallen to that look many times before. All of them had. They all knew Camila would not be angry or hold it against them if they said no to that look but seeing her hurt or disappointed was almost worse. That look meant she wanted nothing but the best for them, even if it inconvenienced her, and refusing her felt like kicking a puppy.

Hunter held the tissues tighter against his nose. “All right. But I don’t think human doctors are a good idea.”

“I’ll ask Darius to make you an appointment with a Boiling Isles healer right away.” Camila leaned forward, waited for Hunter to nod permission and then pecked him on the forehead. “Thank you, baby.”

Hunter sighed. It turned into a cough. He bent forward to catch another spurt of blood from his nose in the tissue, which was beginning to become a sodden red mulch in his hand.

Luz felt Vee’s grip on her hand tighten and tried to focus on that instead of the dread sitting like a lump of lead in her own stomach.

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“¿Amity, cariño?

~ “Amity, darling?”

“¡Ese chico tonto, cariñoso y abnegado!”

~ “That silly, loving, self-sacrificing boy!”

“¿Qué voy a hacer con ese chico? ¡Él nunca piensa que lastimarse es un gran problema del que me gustaría saber!”

~ “What am I going to do with that boy? He never thinks that getting hurt is a big problem that I would like to know about!”

He blinked at her. “I have no idea what ‘pish-posh’ means.”

~ Pish-posh means ‘nonsense’. You say it when you’re dismissing something as being silly.

“… mi querido niñito.”

~ “… my dear little boy.”

“Oh mi niño maravilloso pero tonto.”

~ “Oh my wonderful but silly boy.”

Camila got him onto his back and raised his legs for his feet to rest on the couch, all the while talking loudly to him. She tapped his collarbone and pinched one of his ears but he did not respond.

~ Calling on my own first aid training here. https://www.sja.org.uk/get-advice/first-aid-advice/unresponsive-casualty/fainting/

“¡Cuidado, querido!”

~ "Careful, dear!"

“A la mierda todo.”

~ "Fuck everything."

Chapter Text

Healer Fomai steepled his primary set of hands under his chin. With the secondary set, he flicked through Hunter’s medical records.

“We’re … not sure how old Hunter is precisely,” Darius admitted. “He didn’t exactly have a traditional birth or hatching like most witches or demons. But based on records found in the castle and testimonies we managed to secure from former nursemaids who went into hiding after they were, ah, let go from the Emperor’s employ, we estimate he, ah, came into the world around nineteen years ago.”

“As an infant?” Healer Fomai clarified. Apologetically, he added: “Information on grimwalkers is, unfortunately, rather sparse. Mostly all we have to work from are legends, folktales and, well, Hunter himself as a case study.”

Darius nodded. Hunter’s university fees had been covered by the payments from Healer Coven for all the times he had allowed them to poke and prod at him for their research papers. He was a ‘fascinating subject’, being the only surviving grimwalker ever. Darius had been surprised that Hunter had agreed to subject himself to their ministrations but the boy was nothing if not practical: one research paper in exchange for an entire semester of higher education and all the learning he could cram into his head was a bargain he was willing to strike.

“There are records dating back to Hunter being a baby cared for by wet nurses in the castle nursery,” Darius said without emotion. “Hunter chose his birthday based on the earliest documentation, since until he left the Emperor’s coven he had never had one.”

And hadn’t that been a kicker? Two weeks after Darius’s elevation to Coven Head, only one week after Orion died and Darius’s joy had been turned to grief by his mentor’s death in the field, all anyone could talk about was the new baby that had been brought to the castle from a burnt-out village up on the Knee. The sound of it crying had echoed through the austere halls, providing a strange counterpoint to Darius’s own stifled tears.

Healer Fomai steepled his secondary hands under his chin too and fixed both Darius and Camila with a severe look. “Hunter is, at best, a twenty-year-old young witch. But after extensive examination, I can tell you now that his organs are those of a much older man. And they are aging quite rapidly. More than is natural.”

Darius stared. “Excuse me?”

“What does that mean?” Camila asked.

“It means that we need to run some more tests, for one thing, to see what’s causing the degeneration. When we know that, we can look at ways to mitigate it.”

“Are you saying he’s aging faster than he should?” Darius demanded. “That doesn’t make any sense. He doesn’t look any older.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m telling you that his organs are degrading in a way I would expect to see in a much older witch – one who has lived a hard life that has taken its toll. That might be because of Hunter’s lack of bile sac or it may be for some other reason – until we look into it further, I cannot say for certain and I hesitate to make potentially false equivalencies.”

“So what do we do?” Camila held tight to her handbag, knitting her knuckles together around it so much that her skin had blanched. If Darius were anyone else, he might have reached out to lay his hand over hers. But he wasn’t anyone else, so instead he refocussed on Healer Fomai and leaned forward in his chair.

“I’d like to admit Hunter to hospital for a few days,” Healer Fomai said carefully, all four bright turquoise eyes flicking between the human and witch before him. “And keep him under 24-hour observation until we have some concrete answers.”

Darius frowned. “He’s not a minor anymore. You don’t need our permission to admit him.”

“No, but I still find it beneficial to involve families in matters like these. Even, ah, unorthodox ones.”

Unorthodox was certainly one word for it: Darius filled the role of co-parent even though he wasn’t a blood relation and Hunter only spent vacations and the odd weekend with him in the Demon Realm these days. Still, he appreciated the acknowledgement, even as he slid his gaze sideways to see what Camila thought. She was a much bigger parental figure in Hunter’s life, after all. Sometimes it seemed like she was trying to cram all sixteen years’ worth of love and care that Hunter had missed into every single day he was under her roof.

“If it means Hunter gets the help he needs, then I’m all for it,” Camila said. Her grip on her handbag, however, did not ease. No doubt the thought of Hunter not being home weighed on her. “Do you need me to bring anything from the Human Realm for him?”

“You’d best speak to Hunter about that, though some sleepwear and basic toiletries would be useful.”

She nodded. “Whatever he needs.”

Darius did not echo it like a parrotaur but he agreed: whatever Hunter needed, they would provide for their ersatz son until he was better.

“This is ridiculous.” Hunter folded his arms over the bedclothes pulled up to his waist. “I’m missing three whole days of classes. Three days! I’ll be so behind!”

Willow continued coring a Human Realm apple with her magic and neatly cut off a slice. She handed one to Hunter, which he ate grudgingly. She smiled as she cut another slice, the tart smell of the apple’s juice filling the air. Human Realm fruits really were something else.

“It’s only for a few days and it’s to make sure you’re okay.”

“I feel fine!” Hunter grumped. Willow would not have thought it possible to crunch fruit sullenly until she saw her boyfriend do it. “I am fine.”

She handed him another slice. “Hunter, you’re not. You passed out at least twice out of nowhere. That’s not ‘fine’. Just let the healers do their thing and you’ll be out of here in no time, okay? And if they give you meds, you are going to take them. All of them. Not just enough to get by. Not just enough to get out of here. All the meds. That’s not up for debate.”

Hunter swallowed his mouthful. “I’ll take them. You don’t need to lecture me.”

“I seem to recall someone kept refusing painkillers when he got sick after we first got to the Human Realm.”

He coloured up. He always did when people brought up that time; back when he, freshly escaped from the Emperor’s Coven in all but his mind, had viewed everything as a test and anything that might ease his struggles as a sign of weakness. That first night had been especially bad – though none of them had known the signs to look for back then – when Hunter had not let Camila touch him, cleaned his own wounds with military efficiency and pocketed painkillers instead of taking them when offered.

Hunter had always had a complicated relationship with the concepts of pain and punishment. Yet another thing to thank Belos for. With the support of friends, family and an excellent therapist, he had developed healthier habits over the past four years but sometimes the tense, silent boy he used to be peeked through the cracks.

Willow recalled with a wince how, after one experiment with a portal set fire to the wooden door of the abandoned house triggered an especially bad bout of self-recriminations in Hunter, he had attempted to ‘make up for his mistake’ by trying to weed the little garden she had created behind the Nocedas’ house with a 100-degree fever. Even after Vee realised what he was up to and fetched Camila, he had raced to the front garden to weed that as well, just to prove he was fine and not actually suffering from heat exhaustion. They had been forced to stuff him into an ice bath, force feed him ibuprofen and take turns sitting vigil over the next few days as he recovered. After that, everyone had known to be on high alert if Hunter so much as sniffled because he would not take care of himself if he got sick.

“That was different,” he muttered now.

Willow calmly handed him another apple slice. Human Realm food suited him much better than Demon Realm stuff – probably a result of his ortet being human. Luz struggled finding things that would not upset her stomach over here too, though none of the rest of them had run into similar problems ingesting human food. Witch constitutions were apparently just hardier than humans’.

Hunter nibbled this slice instead of shoving it wholly into his mouth. “I just don’t want to fall behind,” he said, less aggressively. “I like being top of my theory classes. It makes up for some of the practical elements.”

Willow knew exctly what he was talking about. “You know, it’s not too late to switch your minor in Abomination Studies for something with an easier practical element.” She kept her voice gentle, already knowing what his answer would be.

Despite years of trying and failing to find the right recipe, there was still no glyph combo for abomination magic, so Hunter struggled with the practical experiments in Abomination Studies and often got marked down for his lacklustre creations. Yet he refused to give up. His marks in the theory component of the course were extremely high, however, and he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject. Of every subject he was studying, actually. Even students like Amity, who were naturally talented with the practical element of manipulating abomination ooze, came to Hunter for help with the written theory portion of the course. Luz had tried to tell him that it was fine to not be great at Absolutely Everything Abomination-y but Hunter still seemed to take his failures as a personal insult. His exam scores and theory projects were buoying his meagre practical scores for his Abomination Studies. Yet he tenaciously refused to switch to something he could succeed in as much as he did all his other courses.

“No,” Hunter said quickly. “I want to keep that minor. I just … have had to accept I won’t ace it like my other courses.”

Willow sighed. Luz had told her how Vee’s college worked in the Human Realm as a comparison to how the Bonesborough University functioned. It sounded very complicated over there. Willow preferred higher education in the Boiling Isles, where you could take as many majors and minors as you wanted, provided you could keep up with exams and coursework modules, and you had as many years as you needed to complete your studies – especially if you were sponsored by one of the covens. During Belos’s tenure, only the Emperor’s Coven could sponsor students in exchange for years of service after graduation, but thankfully that had gone by the wayside after the Day of Unity. Nowadays, entry to covens no longer came with a personal irremovable tattoo and you could switch covens if you picked one that didn’t fit. As such, covens found they had to compete for members in ways they never had to before and one of the ways they made coven membership more attractive was by offering to sponsor the studies of those interested in their field.

The Abomination Coven was … not sponsoring Hunter’s time at Bonesborough University.

“Darius is proud of you whether you ace Abomination Studies or not, Hunter.”

Willow knew she had got it right when his cheeks flushed red again.

“I-I know,” he stammered.

She smiled and handed him another slice of apple. “Our apple orchard has taken well in the university greenhouse, by the way. This is one of the first crop that you’re eating.”

Hunter nearly choked. “You got them to fruit? Already?”

Willow giggled. “Yep.”

She took great delight in the way his eyes shone. “Willow, that’s amazing! I couldn’t tell I wasn’t eating something grown in the Human Realm!”

“I incorporated your last chemical equation from Potions class into the glyph combo and it removed the acidic element from the Boiling Isles soil that was making the apples corrode on the branches and burn your skin when you touched them.”

She did not miss the way he flexed his left hand in memory. That batch had contained so much acid that it had melted through his protective glove and made a hole in his palm before he could drop it. He had ended up in the university infirmary that time too. He was so careless in his pursuit of knowledge that he often got hurt, and viewed injuries as an inconvenience preventing him from getting back to his studies.

It made where he was now, and the mysterious reason for it, all the more odd – and scary.

Hunter stared down at the apple slice in his hand like it was made of some rare and precious stone. “This will help so much for any humans who choose to come to the Boiling Isles in future!”

“And for the humans already here now,” Willow smiled. “Camila and Luz both took an apple home to try after I text them later.”

“Why text them later if they already have the apples?” Hunter furrowed his brow. “Couldn’t they have tried them right away?”

“Because I wanted you to be the first to eat one after I tested them for safety. This orchard has been your baby all school year, Hunter. And it’s a chunk of both our grades in Horticulture Studies. It was only fair that you got to taste the fruits of your labours first.” She winked. “Get it? Fruits of your labours?”

Hunter groaned. “You’ve been spending too much time around Eda.”

“Oh really? I don’t be-leaf that. You’re being ex-tree-mly silly. Good thing I know your bark is worse than your bite, eh?”

“Stop with the puns!” Hunter laughed, all trace of his earlier sullenness gone. “I surrender!”

Though she did not know it, Willow would hold onto that sound later and take out this memory like her own rare and precious stone.

Luz stood in the doorway, blocking Camila’s path.

“I don’t like it,” she said quietly. “It feels weird.”

“What does, mija?”

“Hunter not being here. The house feels wrong. Emptier. It’s weird and I don’t like it.”

Camila gently pushed her daughter into the house and closed the door behind them. She reflexively locked it and hid the key on a high shelf; a habit she had gotten into to assuage Hunter’s worries of home security.

“Hunter has stayed over in the Boiling Isles before, Luz.”

“Yeah, at Darius’s house. Or Willow’s. Or Gus’s. Or the Owl House. Not in a hospital. And we always knew why he was there before. This is …” Luz wafted her hands vaguely. “It’s weird. And I don’t like it.”

“Luz is right.” Vee slithered from the living room, claws knotted together in a nervous fidget. “I’ve been sitting here staring at my assignments, waiting for you guys to come home and it’s so weird. Like, I don’t even know why the house feel weird, it just does.”

“You didn’t need to wait up, sweetbean!” Camila exclaimed. “You have class in the morning.”

Vee shook her head. “I couldn’t just go to bed before you got back. How is he?”

“Grumpy and hating it,” Luz replied before Camila could.

Vee nodded. “Yeah, that’s on point.” She rubbed her knuckles with her palm. “It’s just for three days, right?”

“Yes,” Luz said, again before Camila could speak. “Just three days. Then we bring him home.”

Camila bit the inside of her cheek but said nothing.

“Are you guys hungry?” Vee asked. “I made casserole we can reheat in the microwave if you like.”

Camila smiled warmly. “Eso suena sabroso, querida. That sounds wonderful. Your casseroles are always so tasty.”

Hunter loved them. She wondered whether that had been in Vee’s mind when choosing what to make.

She Camila toed off her shoes and followed two of her three children into the kitchen, trying not to feel the absence of the third too keenly, even when she got down one too many plates from the cupboard when setting the table.

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

Healer Fomai steepled his primary set of hands under his chin.

~ Fomai is Samoan for ‘doctor’.

“Eso suena sabroso, querida.”

~ “That sounds tasty, darling.”

Chapter Text

“Hmm.”

Fomai leaned forward, squinting at the papers spread across his desk.

This was … puzzling. And he was a little old for puzzles. His mandibles clicked in a longstanding nervous habit. It was not every day you found the former-Golden-Guard-turned-teen-saviour-of-the-Isles as your patient, after all. And when you found yourself suddenly entrusted with the care of a national hero, ‘puzzling’ was not the desired outcome of test results.

The boy had been living in the Human Realm for the past four years but commuting via portal door to the Boiling Isles, first for school, now for university, and often to spend time just with his adoptive family on this side of the dimensional divide. Fomai wondered whether that might have anything to do with the oddness he was seeing – though he would need to corroborate that with someone else who had been doing similar. Portal magic was largely inexplicable, after all. It might be responsible. Luz Noceda commuted too but she was human – although Hunter Noceda-Deamonne was a grimwalker created from a human ortet, so maybe he was genetically similar enough for her to be a viable comparison for –

“Sir?”

Fomai looked up. His secretary stood in the doorway, biting her lower lip fretfully and glancing over her shoulder.

“Yes, Aubrey?”

The petite witch was competent at her job but slightly aggravating in that she always looked like she was about to cry. Now was no different, though her expression was overlaid by a coating of uneasiness that made him focus all eyes on her instead of dividing his attention.

“Head Witch Chiron is here to see you, sir.”

The Head of the Healing Coven? Here? Now?

Well … damn. That could not be a coincidence.

“Show him in please, Aubrey. And could you please see to it that a pot of sweet tea and two cups are brought to my office? Very sugary tea, please. With some extra sugar lumps in a bowel on the side.” Head Witch Chiron had a notorious sweet tooth and Fomai had a feeling he was going to need the energy boost.

Clip-clopping hooves heralded Head Witch Chiron’s arrival, though his bulbous belly entered the room before any of his four legs. Chiron’s sweet tooth had followed him for the four years he had been in charge of Healer Coven and produced the predictable result. He claimed sugar simply helped with stress and was not just because he was a centaur.

Suddenly Fomai wished he had asked for two bowls of sugar lumps.

“Fomai,” Chiron drawled. His Southern Plains accent clung to Fomai’s name, turning it into something reminiscent of mint julips and dust storms. It was an interesting contrast to the beribboned white hair, tail and beard that had all been curlicued to within an inch of their lives. “I hear you got yourself an interestin’ patient this fine Monday mornin’.”

Fomai nodded. “Head Witch Darius’s ward was admitted late last night. I was on rotation and picked up the case.”

“I know the boy.”

“I know you do. You were the only one allowed to tend to him before him being a grimwalker became public knowledge.”

Well, the only one after the Collector was defeated. Prior to that, Hettie Cutburn had led the Healer Coven from her comfortable post in the castle; the only healer in the whole Boiling Isles allowed to tend to either the Emperor or his Golden Guard. After she lent her support to Belos on the Day of Unity and was subsequently unseated as Head Witch in the scramble that followed the chaos left in the Collector’s wake, Cutburn had kept her secrets close to her chest. Other former Coven Heads had exchanged information for mitigation of their sentences or, in rare cases, their freedom. Cutburn, however, had retained her austere silence and left her former second-in-command, Chiron, to figure out on his own any piece of knowledge that had been solely hers and the Emperor’s.

Chiron spread his hands wide and gave an affable smile that was only spoiled by the sharp intelligence of his violet eyes. “So I reckon you can guess why I’m here then?”

“To offer your expertise?” Fomai suggested.

“An’ to check that you’re treatin’ Darius’s kid well.” Chiron winked. “Just jokin’, Fomai, no need to look so afeared. I know you wouldn’t give any of your patients anythin’ less than your best. Hunter is in good hands. But yeah, I’m the Demon Realm’s lead expert on grimwalkers who ain’t actually a grimwalker theirself, so if there’s anythin’ I can offer to help ...” He left the rest of the sentences unsaid.

“Actually, Head Witch, if you’d be willing, I’d appreciate your eyes on these test results I just got back.” Fomai pushed them across the desk towards Chiron. “Tell me what you see.”

Chiron raised an eyebrow. “These Hunter’s bloodworks?”

“Yes.”

“An’ what am I supposed to be –” Chiron broke off. He brought the sheet up to his face and studied it closely. “Oh. Oh my.”

“You see it too?”

“I most certainly do.”

“It should be impossible. Not unless someone really screwed up a potion recipe and then downed it themselves, which the boy has not done. I checked.”

“Mmm.” Chiron held out his hand for the second sheet. Fomai passed it over, watching and waiting. “Oh my.” Chiron lifted his gaze, all humour gone from his voice. “Have you told Darius about this?”

“Not yet. I literally just got these back from the lab.”

“Run the tests again. An’ order a bone marrow needle biopsy plus an endoscopic biopsy of his lungs while you’re at it. I’ll put a personal rush on the lab for the results.”

“I wanted to test the blood of the human girl he lives with, Luz Noceda, to compare whether frequent use of interdimensional travel magic is the root cause of these anomalies.”

“Good idea, but check whether she’s turned eighteen yet or you’ll have to clear it with her legal guardian first.” Chiron frowned at the sheet of paper again. “Hmm. Better add a punch biopsy to investigate Hunter’s skin while you’re at it.”

“You really think all that is necessary?”

Fomai could not help the swoop in all his stomachs when Head Witch Chiron placed the papers back on the table and sighed. “Absolutely. The faster, the better. If this is any indication, we may be working on limited time here.”

Gus kicked open the door and, balanced precariously on one foot, nearly toppled over backwards under the weight of his backpack. He hopped a few times before managing to right himself.

“Wow. What an entrance.”

“Willow?” Gus entered the hospital room and shucked his stupidly heavy backpack. “You couldn’t have told me you were coming here this morning? I had to carry all these ridiculously heavy books on my weak nerdly back.”

“Matty doesn’t seem to think you’re weak or nerdly,” Willow smirked.

Gus felt blood rush to his cheeks and squashed the urge to throw one of the books at her. The biggest, heaviest, sharpest-cornered book he could find.

“Willow never left last night,” said Hunter from the bed. “We have had quite strong words about it.”

Willow wagged a pen at him. “We haven’t. You told me to go home and I said I’m fine on this little couch in here. Then you kept talking. I think you were still trying to get me to go home even after I fell asleep.”

Hunter folded his arms; muscled from hours of working in the university greenhouse and flyer derby practise. Gus could not help but feel aggrieved that Hunter would have had no problem carrying such a heavy backpack all on his own. Then he immediately regretted the thought. Hunter would love to have carried the books because that would have meant he could go to the bookshop himself to get them.

Gus knelt to unzip the bag. “I think I got everything on your list, buddy. All except Agricultural Heritage: Volume Twelve. Apparently, it had a limited print run from lack of interest and dipping sales.”

“Really?” Hunter sounded genuinely shocked. “But Volume Eleven was amazing! Who wouldn’t want to read the next in the series after that thrill ride?”

“I want to think you’re joking but I don’t think you are. Here.” Gus handed over one massive tome that was thicker than his fist. “From Earth To Bones. Look inside the front cover.”

Hunter’s brow creased in puzzlement but opened it. Instantly, his mouth dropped open. “No way!”

“What?” Willow set aside her notebook and pen to look over his shoulder. “Let me see.”

Gus folded his arms smugly. “The author dedicated this sequel to Hunter and Luz, since them talking about From Bones to Earth on Penstagram so much made a ton of their followers go out and track down copies. The publisher contacted the author about a second print run and that one sold out so fast they paid him triple for the rights to a sequel. And here it is, hot off the presses.”

“To my most loyal fans, Hunter and Luz, without whom this book literally could not have happened,” Hunter breathed reverently. “And not to The Owl Lady who robbed me blind and still has not said sorry.”

“Oh, that is very cool,” said Willow. “I wonder if he’d sign it for you too?”

“That,” Hunter intoned. “Would. Be. Awesomesauce.”

“Definitely a Luz-ism.” Willow tilted her head back to regard her boyfriend. “Definitely. You sound more and more like her after living in the Human Realm.”

“I do not!”

“Absolutely do.”

“I’m mortally offended by that!”

“No, you’re not. You’re kind of proud.”

Hunter wilted with a small smile. “Well … yeah. I mean she is my sister. And she’s pretty cool. I guess. But if you ever tell her that I’ll deny it.”

Gus smiled at the banter and easy atmosphere. Things had been so tense when Hunter had been admitted to hospital, but since arriving he had not had another episode and seemed fine in all other ways. He hadn’t so much as felt dizzy and was not even coughing anymore. The all-purpose healing spells cast on him by Healer Fomai last night seemed to have done the trick in fixing whatever had been wrong.

Gus reached into the backpack to fetch another book. He handed it to Hunter and went to grab another, only to be startled by the thump of the first hitting the floor.

“Hunter?” Willow’s tone made Gus turn around.

Hunter leaned forward, nearly bent double, both fists clutched to his chest. A hissing breath leaked between his clenched teeth. His whole body trembled and he had squeezed his eyes shut as if in sudden terrible pain.

“Hunter?” Gus echoed. “Buddy?”

“Gimme a minute …” Hunter gritted. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “Just … just a sec …”

Gus backed towards the door. “I’ll go get a healer –”

“No … m’fine, just … let it pass … s’all good … had worse … as the Gol–”

He gasped. Something tiny plopped onto the bedclothes and dribbled down the mountainside of Hunter’s bent knees. At first, Gus thought it was a sweat droplet. But then another fell, and another, and another, each trailing beads of red that painted the bedclothes with hideous lines.

Gus realised with horror that the tiny things were Hunter’s fingernails.

“Titan below …”

The nails were rimed with blood where they had been embedded in Hunter’s fingers until mere seconds ago. They were ragged, as if they had been torn free, even though that was impossible. Gus and Willow had been right here watching; nothing had touched Hunter.

A seventh nail fell out, then an eighth, leaving only his thumbnails still attached.

“I’m getting a healer!” Gus cried.

Hunter panted, now in too much pain to stop him. Willow rubbed his back in calming circles.

“Okay … maybe s’not … n-not fine …” Hunter wheezed. “Feels like m-my fingers are … on fire …” He groaned and held out his hand.

Despite his claim that he was leaving to fetch a healer, Gus stood frozen, staring at the bloody mess of Hunter’s fingers. Something was pushing out from the nail beds, hooking up and over the shredded flesh there. Hunter whimpered as one of his thumbnails split down the middle, pushed up and apart from the pressure of whatever was beneath.

“Breathe, Hunter. Just breathe. In for four and out for four. Breathe with me. It’ll be okay.” Willow met Gus’s eye. Gus saw the panic there. Willow was just as confused and terrified as him. “Go. Get help. Now, Gus!”

Gus sprinted from the room.

Chapter Text

Hunter stared at his stupid hands in their stupid bandages. He had reflexively tried to refuse painkillers until he caught Willow’s eye but taking them had been pointless since they did little to dull the ache radiating up his arms and legs. Under the bedclothes, his feet were also wrapped tight, as if that might make his toenails grow back or something.

Stupid.

His anger was formless and meandering. He tried to direct it at the healers who had wrapped his wounds but it wouldn’t stick. They had helped him. It wasn’t their fault he hated needing help. So he tried to be angry at himself instead for getting sick. He was good at being angry at himself. He had years of practise. But that would not stick either. He had not done anything stupid to get sick this time. He had not even stayed out in the rain, which had never stopped fascinating him with its cool, non-boiling temperature, no matter how many colds he caught from it.

So instead, he just swallowed his anger and felt it twisting around inside him like nausea.

“Lay back, mijo.”

“I’m fine sitting up.”

“You need to rest.”

“I don’t want to lay down.”

Camila drew back at his snappish tone and Hunter instantly regretted it. Camila Noceda was his mother in all but blood and one of the kindest souls ever to exist in any world. She only ever wanted what was best for him.

“Sorry.”

He allowed himself to be pressed back against the pillows and did not fight it when Camila fussed with his blankets. The green percale tugged lightly at his feet but he did not let the jolt of pain show on his face in case it made her feel bad.

“Dios mío, estaba tan preocupada cuando Luz me llamó a mi trabajo,” Camila murmured in hushed Spanish.

Hunter could not understand every word but he had learned enough of the language to be able to tell she had been worried and that Luz had been the one to call her. He frowned at the news that she had been at work when she got the message that his stupid fingernails and toenails had fallen out. What could that phone call had even sounded like? ‘Mama, you know how Hunter loves to study and take notes and write down his thoughts, plus he has that diary he keeps for his therapy sessions, and Gus just brought him his entire book wish list from the bookshop to read while he’s stuck in hospital, well guess what this weird illness did now?’

“Sé que probablemente estés asustada y enojada en este momento, querida, y necesito que sepas que estoy aquí y que no me iré a ningún lado mientras me necesites.”

“You don’t have to stay with me,” Hunter replied. “You can’t miss work.”

Camila looked startled. “Ach, I forget sometimes that you know Spanish now.”

“Not as much as I’d like,” he admitted. “Vee is better than me.” Vee was such a quick study at languages that it was kind of insane. Maybe it was a basilisk thing; some talent to help blend into society undetected that made learning new languages a cinch. Hunter had been surprised she did not choose to take her MFL studies further after high school. Instead, Vee had firmly opted for veterinary science and was doing brilliantly at it – and often commented that she did not understand how Hunter could study more than one course at a time and not drown in workload.

“Are you comfy, baby?” Camila asked.

She tucked the blanket under the edge of the mattress like he was a five-year-old kid after a nightmare – not that he would actually know what that was like. Belos had never comforted Hunter after a nightmare. He mostly lectured him on the virtues of prayers to the Titan and not letting ‘base fears’ get the better of his ‘young and impressionable mind’. Hunter had understood very little except the implicit instruction to go back to his room and not bother his uncle about such trivialities as bad dreams.

Some days the heavy feeling that burdened his chest was heavier than usual. And not just because he had a galderstone in there.

“I’m fine. I just wish I could hold my new books,” he muttered.

“Would you like me to hold one up for you to read?” Camila offered. “I can turn the pages for you.”

The thought was simultaneously touching and humiliating. “That’s very kind of you but it’s okay.” Before Camila could insist, he asked: “Where’s Luz? I thought she was with you?”

Camila stiffened momentarily. Hunter still noticed. “Oh, she’s just getting some blood drawn.”

“What? Why?”

“Doctor … um, Healer Fomai wants to check whether the thing that has made you so sick is … um …” She pressed forward like she was ripping off a band-aid. “Using the portal door so much.”

“And Luz also uses the portal door as much as I do,” Hunter finished. “I hope it’s not that. If the portal door is the reason I’ve been sick, Luz might be at risk too.”

“I’m sure the portal door is not the reason for anything, baby.” Camila flapped her hand dismissively. “Luz has never been healthier. She just had her physical in the Human Realm.”

Hunter had not been allowed to have a physical with a human doctor because he was a grimwalker and his results would have been so anomalous they would have instantly outed him as inhuman. The irony: too human for witch healers and too witch for human doctors.

Wait.

Oh no.

“If it is the portal door magic and it’s only affecting me, not Luz, then that’s probably because I’m a grimwalker,” Hunter deadpanned. Wonderful. More surprises specific only to him because of what he was. It had been so long since one popped up that he had forgotten to be wary of them.

Camila winced. “I’m sure it’s not the portal, baby. But if it is, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. okay? No tiene sentido preocuparse hasta que tengamos respuestas confirmadas.”

“I wouldn’t be able to keep crossing dimensions,” said Hunter, gaze drifting to his bandaged hands again. “I’d have to pick one world to live in. Give up the life I have on one side of the door. Oh Titan …”

How could he choose? The Human Realm was where Camila, Luz and Vee were. They were his family. In the Human Realm, he didn’t have to worry about things like not being able to digest much of the food available or people side-eyeing him for once being the Golden Guard because in the Human Realm the Golden Guard had not existed. But the Demon Realm had Darius and Gus and all his other friends. It had magic for him to learn and university to attend and …

And Willow.

How could he and Willow live their lives together if he could not cross between worlds anymore? He could not ask her to live in the Human Realm with him. Her whole life was here. She was a full, true witch and had worked so hard to help the Boiling Isles rebuild and become better after the Collector, despite her age. Willow wanted to be where her precious plants were, where her family was, where she had grown up. She wanted to someday raise children here –

“Hunter?” Camila’s voice sounded like it was underwater. “Baby, you need to calm down. Take deep breaths.”

The snarl of pain from his fingertips told him he was trying to grab his shirtfront like he usually did during a panic attack. Which meant he was having a panic attack. Oh joy. It had been a hot minute since one of those. His spine arched embarrassingly off the bed as he struggled to suck in enough air.

Camila stroked his face and talked incessantly, trying to ground and guide him through well-worn calming techniques. Laboriously, Hunter counted breaths and garbled back responses to her questions until his lungs stopped aching and his throat felt less like it was closing up.

“Sorry,” he rasped. “S-sorry.”

“You do not need to apologise, mijo. I thought this might happen. You are already thinking about the worse case scenarios. But there is no need. Not yet.” Camila gave him an encouraging smile. “This is probably something incredibly simple and we’re all overthinking it and catastrophising things because of the things we’ve lived through. Not everything is a world ending threat though.”

He tried for a smile and hoped it did not look as forced as it felt. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

Camila smiled back. It faltered. She reached out to tuck a lock of blond hair behind his ear. Hunter did not flinch. He used to. Every time anyone so much as looked at his scarred, nicked ear, he resisted the urge to pull his hair forward and cover it up. He was better about it these days – especially with family.

“What is it?” he asked.

She dropped her hand. “Oh, uh, nothing.”

“You’re a terrible liar.” He thought for a moment, then added: “Eres mala mintiendo, mamá.”

“Oh!” Camila gasped. He didn’t know why it was easier to call her mother in Spanish than English. It just was. And every time he did it, it seemed to catch her unawares, even after four years of living under her roof. “Um …”

“Is something wrong with my ear?”

“It is … the skin is changing colour, mijo.”

He tried to clap his hands over his ears and immediately regretted it. When the pain in his hands subsided a little, he squinted at Camila.

“Mirror?” he mumbled. “Please?”

She grubbed about in her handbag and pulled out a little case for carrying lipstick with a foldout mirror on the lid. This she opened and presented to him, angling it so that he could see the side of his own head.

Hunter turned left and right, trying to get a good look. It was the same on both sides.

The tips of both of his ears had turned soft grey and the skin was starting to pucker, as if roughening into fresh scar tissue. He wanted to touch it but could not and something in him did not want to ask Camila to do so.

“Huh,” he said instead. “Weird.”

“Hunter,” Camila said carefully.

Luckily, that was the moment Luz returned and he was able to lose himself in her stream-of-consciousness style speech as she related where she had been and what she had been doing and how Demon Realm medicine wasn’t so very different than Human Realm, really, honest, truly, uh-huh.

Hunter tipped his head to cover his ear tips with his hair and pretended to listen to her.

The lab had processed the detached fingernails and toenails. Chiron had performed the testing spells himself, leaving a clutch of lab assistants and regular healers watching in awe at his speed and competence. It wasn’t every day the head of your whole coven dropped by and did what was considered grunt-work, after all. When Luz Noceda’s blood was brought down, alongside a fresh phial or Hunter Noceda’s, Chiron accepted both bottles and ran the tests on them as well. Then he ran second tests. Then third, just to be sure. He meticulously noted down everything he found and organised the notes to discuss with Fomai. Yet no matter how he looked at it, everything was coming back the same.

“He’s revertin’.”

Fomai looked up from his desk. “Excuse me?”

Chiron placed his handwritten notes and the official printed results down between them. “Hunter Noceda. The first set of results were correct. His body is revertin’ back to his component parts.”

Fomai picked up the paperwork and leafed through it, concerned expression deepening. He found no satisfaction in being right. The various tests and biopsies showed that his skin, lungs, blood and bones were beginning to turn into things other than skin, lungs, blood and bones. Added to the recent development with his nails …

“Why?”

Chiron scowled. “I don’t know. Nuthin’ in any of the texts I’ve read on grimwalkers over the years talks about this. I don’t know if it’s an illness or just what happens to them over time. Belos killed the previous Golden Guards or they died in the field, so they never reached a stage where they had end-of-life sicknesses to test for in Hunter.”

A shimmer of dread went through Fomai. “Then what do you intend we do, Head Witch?”

“You ain’t gotta do nuthin’.” Chiron heaved a heavy breath. “I gotta go talk to the one person in the whole Boilin’ Isles who knows more about grimwalkers than anyone else an’ see if she got answers that’ll help us save the boy before it’s too late.”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“Dios mío, estaba tan preocupada cuando Luz me llamó a mi trabajo.”

~ “My God, I was so worried when Luz called me at work.”

“Sé que probablemente estés asustada y enojada en este momento, querida, y necesito que sepas que estoy aquí y que no me iré a ningún lado mientras me necesites.”

~ "I know you're probably scared and angry right now, dear, and I need you to know that I'm here and I'm not going anywhere as long as you need me."

“No tiene sentido preocuparse hasta que tengamos respuestas confirmadas.”

~ “There's no point in worrying until we have confirmed answers.”

“Eres mala mintiendo, mamá.”

~ “You are bad at lying, Mom.”

Chapter Text

When Hunter was twelve, he came back from a mission to find his bedroom had been destroyed.

The destruction was thorough – one might even say methodical. Whoever had done it had attacked each organised part of his room and chosen the most comprehensive method of damage. All of Hunter’s carefully organised books had been scattered, every individual page torn out and shredded into confetti. The shelf he had built for them had been torn down. His desk lay in two pieces, like someone had taken an axe to the middle, and had crushed the chair tucked neatly beneath. His bed was nothing more than tangled springs with some bits of shredded cloth and straw mixed in. The potion he used to quell nightmares had been unhooked from its nail on the wall and smashed, soaking yellow liquid on the notebook in which Hunter made research notes into possible balms for his uncle’s illness, to render them unreadable. Even his clothes had not survived: his spare scout uniform, single ‘good’ outfit for formal parties and workout gear were in pieces around the room. The window was smashed. In the wall beside it was the imprint of what might have been a giant fist, or might have been a Morningstar Flail from the imperial armoury.

Hunter had stood in the doorway, gobsmacked and staring, unable to truly understand the enormity of the devastation. It wasn’t like he owned much, but someone had gone through and obliterated every single item. Nothing had been missed. Nothing had been spared. All he had left were the clothes he stood up in and the artificial staff in his hand. He had thought he would come home to a hot shower and much-needed sleep. Instead, everything that was truly his and his alone was gone.

He couldn’t stay there anymore. Stoic, taciturn Lilith Clawthorne had escorted him to his new quarters in the tallest tower of the castle; a cramped space barely big enough for a bed and desk, and with no attached bathroom like his old one. Lilith had not explained a single thing, just collected him from the doorway of his old room and dumped him in his new one with the barest of instructions and a curled lip of disgust at his continued shock. They had passed Kikimora in the corridor and Hunter had dimly noticed her smug smile but not the significance of it until later.

“Oh, no more time for reading forbidden books on wild magic now, brat,” Kikimora had laughed upon seeing him arrive for the staff meeting the next day, almost late and hurrying while trying not to look like he was either. Hunter had slept badly in his new room with its lumpy straw mattress and draughty windows, where every breeze rocked the tower unnervingly and seemed intent on chilling his bones. “Such a shame.”

And Hunter had known, then. Of course she had been behind it and of course his uncle had destroyed his things for his transgressions into researching wild magic as soon as she uncovered them. Later, he would realise that this assumption and dull acceptance was the most crimson of red flags, but back then accepting punishments from Belos was as natural as breathing.

The lesson he had taken from that day was a simple one: everything was temporary and security was an illusion. Objects were impermanent. Possessions could be taken from you without warning. It was better to always assume you would lose what you had and therefore never be disappointed when it inevitably happened.

That lesson was proved truth several times during the years that followed. He enjoyed reading but never assumed books would still be there if he put them down to attend to his duties. Plush toys were useful to hug at night when he ran out of dream suppressant potion but all seams tore and all fabric could burn to ash for him to find later. Even bedclothes were nice but temporary. When he failed at missions or asked too many questions that triggered his uncle’s affliction and caused him pain, Hunter would find himself sleeping in his just his nightshirt, shivering until he had earned the right to have sheets again, or his uncle’s temper had cooled enough for him to realise a sick Golden Guard was a useless Golden Guard. It was a hard lesson but one that kept being proven over and over.

It had proved especially prescient when he had discovered he wasn’t even a real witch and fled the Emperor’s Coven entirely. Everything he had was lost to him that day, too: everything but the clothes he stood up in and Flapjack’s staff in his hand.

His friends had never learned that lesson the way Hunter had. They never had to doubt the permanence of their things and so they valued their possessions and assigned meanings to them beyond the practical. They became sad when things broke or got lost. Luz stroked the Good Witch Azura book her father gave her when she missed him. Willow clipped her little flower slide into her hair for confidence. Amity wore her moon necklace every day and clasped it when nervous. Even Gus grew attached to the spyglass earring he took from Adrien Graye.

Hunter kept to his own habits: all that mattered was Flapjack. Everything else could be replaced.

Even him.

After all the battles were over, the Isles were saved and he moved in with the Nocedas, Camila showed that she had never learned that lesson either. She tried to encourage Hunter to collect things and make the basement ‘more his’. She presented him with tiny keepsakes that simultaneously made him squee and made his skin crawl with the knowledge that he would mourn these things eventually. Nothing lasted, after all. Not even Flapjack.

And yet, he kept slipping. He kept wanting.

Wanting as bad. Wanting things only ever led to disappointment. Loss was inevitable, after all.

But still …

One day it was a sparkly notepad with a howling wolf on it. Small. Trivial. Hunter justified it as useful for keeping track of human minutiae to help him better fit in with modern society. It was okay for him to get attached to that, since it was the key to his new life in the Human Realm. Then it was an O’Bailey pin Camila bought from an online store called ‘Etsy’. That was less easy to justify but it was so small and innocuous that he figured it that would probably be okay. Just a very little thing he could call his own and want to hold onto. Then came the Funko Pop figurines, which were too bulky to carry in his pockets but oddly cute and very thoughtful of her. Hunter arranged them on a shelf, looking down on him as he lay in the new bed she’d had delivered for him to sleep in.

“You need a bed, mijo,” she had laughed when he said he was fine sleeping on the floor like before. “This is your home now. We have to make it so.”

Even the we-have-a-special-secret-joke-we-share wink that accompanied the Cosmic Frontier quote had not been quite enough to stop the twist in his stomach.

But then Darius started giving him things, too: a new scroll to keep in touch with his friends; fashionable but functional footwear for flyer derby practise; a beautiful quill sharpening kit carved from old narwhalithan horn. Hunter awkwardly accepted every gift, burning with a welter of emotions he found hard to name at the pleased look on Darius’s face whenever he said he liked something and knew it meant there would be more gifts in the future.

Willow gave him little potted tree to brighten his room after reading about how ‘Bonsai’ helped improve mental health during their enforced stay in the Human Realm. Gus and Amity made him a collage of photocopied memory photos gathered from all his friends. Luz drew him a frankly amazing picture of a wolf that stood on its hind legs and had facial scarring and soft brown eyes. She called it his ‘fursona’ and encouraged Hunter to pin it to the wall so he could see it giving him an encouraging thumbs-up as he sewed.

When he came home one day to a brand-new sewing machine in the basement, it was too much. Luz found him folded in half under the porch, trembling and jabbering about not wanting precious things that could be destroyed or taken away; how he could not cope with the pressure of having things and wanting them. It took an hour to convince him it was okay to come back inside.

The whole story had come out, then. It was the first time Hunter had ever seen Camila cry over something he told her.

“You are entitled to own things, mijo,” she had said staunchly. “Things that are yours and yours alone. You are here to stay and so are the people who love you. We are not going anywhere and neither are you. You are entitled to a life.”

It seemed simple when she said it but so much more complicated when the words were bouncing around inside his head when he was alone.

Sometimes it still felt like he was pretending for her sake.

“You don’t need to bring me stuff,” he said when she arrived in his hospital room bearing a CD player and a collection of audiobooks she had kept in the attic for years. “Honest. I’m okay. It’s nice enough that you take the time to come and visit me.”

“You said you wanted to be able to read,” Camila said staunchly. “And Amity’s father figured out how to harness firebees to power devices since there’s no electrical socket in here.”

Hunter was surprised to hear that. “Alador worked with something other than abominations?”

“He’s a hack but he’s a smart hack.” Darius strode imperiously into the hospital room and halted in a pose that would not have looked out of place on the front of a fashion magazine. “How are you feeling, Little Prince?”

“Amazing,” Hunter replied. “Couldn’t be better. Feel like I could win a whole flyer derby game on my own.”

“El sarcasmo no es útil, querido,” Camila muttered. She fanned out a collection of CD jewel cases like a deck of Hexes Hold’em cards. “I was limited on what I could find in my stash. I used to listen to these in the car on my commute, before I got Bluetooth for my phone. They’re, ah, a little old but since when has getting old made things bad, eh?”

Hunter looked at the covers. Apparently, Camila had a penchant for murder mysteries as well as sci-fi books. He chose one at random and was reading the blurb printed on the back when Luz barrelled into the room holding an armload of candy bars. From the plastic bag swinging on her wrist, they had come from the Human Realm.

“Oh, hi Darius!” she greeted with just a little too much enthusiasm. The continued lack of updates about Hunter’s test results and her own blood tests was wearing on her. She was reacting in her usual way: pretending everything was amazing and couldn’t be better. She thrust a bar of nougat under his nose. “Human candy?”

Darius wrinkled his nose and pushed it away. “With my waistline? No thank you.”

“Aw, you’re not fat, Dar-Dar.” Eda ambled through the door and grinned at his spluttering. “Just adorably plump.”

“This is a six pack!” Darius exclaimed, gesturing. “Not an ounce of unwanted fat on me! And don’t call me Dar-Dar!”

Eda just fired off finger-guns at him, snagged a packet of chocolate covered pretzels from Luz’s bag and made her way over to Hunter’s bed. “Hey, kiddo. Feeling crappy?”

“The crappiest,” Hunter replied without missing a beat.

“Mijo!” Camila exclaimed. “You did not say anything about feeling bad!”

“It was sarcasm, Mamá,” Luz chuckled. She fixed Hunter with a look. “It was sarcasm, right?”

Hunter nodded.

“Oh good. Now scoot your hands out of the way.” Luz proceeded to upend the bag into Hunter’s lap. “I tried to get at least one of everything I know you like.”

“Luz!” Hunter exclaimed at the veritable maelstrom of sweet treats. “You didn’t have to bring me anything!” A frisson of panic zinged through his voice. He did not deserve all this. It must have cost her a fortune.

“I know I didn’t.” Luz smiled down at him. “But I wanted to. You’re my dorky big brother, I’m supposed to be mean to you and shower you with affection in equal measure.”

“Please don’t be mean to him,” Camila chastised. “Está siendo tan valiente.”

“No te preocupes, Mamá. En realidad no iba a ser mala con él,” Luz assured her. “Oh! Before I forget, Willow gave me these to give to you, Hunter!” She reached into the pocket of her jacket and extracted two large pears that gleamed greenish-yellow in the harsh overhead lighting. “She says they’re the first crop and you’ll know what that means. Also that she’ll be along right after they finish doing the daily chores around the orchard. Gus is helping her since you’re … well, indisposed.”

Hunter stared at the pears and dearly wished he could hold them. “Could you, uh, put them on the sideboard please?” He swallowed the thickness in his voice. “Thanks.” He would keep them for when Willow and Gus arrived so they could share the first taste together.

“You got the experimental orchard to fruit?” Camila squealed. “¡Eso es increíble! Well done!”

“Well, it was mostly Willow.” Hunter went to rub diffidently at the back of his neck but remembered just in time.

“It was both of you,” Camila said firmly. “All that research and studying you did, and all those days of tilling the soil and testing every grain – it was all worth it!”

“I have to admit, I didn’t know whether you’d be able to pull it off,” Darius admitted. “Human Realm produce out of Demon Realm soil. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“And the apples truly don’t have to be subdued to siphon off their blood?” asked Eda.

“We just call it juice in the Human Realm,” Luz explained. She pulled an apple from her pocket. “Here. Willow gave me one to try.” Luz tapped an ice glyph against the apple’s shiny red surface. In a trice, it was cleaved into pieces. The remaining ice resembled a pretty modern art sculpture – an improvement on the old days, when a gigantic shard was all Luz could reasonably create.

Luz passed pieces of apple to Darius, Eda and Camila, who all bit into them. Camila almost bounced in place.

“Querido chico, ¡esto es tan sabroso!” she said through her mouthful. “So sweet and crunchy!”

“It does have a sweet tartness about it,” Darius agreed.

“Kind of like you then, Dar-Dar.” Eda eyed her piece with suspicion. “Not sure I trust fruit I don’t have to stab in the neck first but I can admit that it’s pretty good. Five out of ten. Maybe six.” She reached into her own pocket. “Oh yeah, before I forget, I got something too, Blondie.” She drew out a piece of paper and presented it to Hunter. “King sent this for you.”

It was a large crayon drawing of Hunter, upright and out of bed, with a big smile on his face. Around him, his loved ones stood in crayon effigy, applauding him with slightly wonky but still recognisable enthusiasm. Above everything were the carefully scrawled words ‘Get Wel Soon Hutner we miss yu’.

“He spent all day on it,” said Eda. “Hooty helped. Well, he ate the red crayon so King couldn’t add any blood from your defeated enemies beneath your feet.”

Hunter felt a lump lodge in his throat. “I love it. I’ll …” The words stuck a little. They always did. But he pushed them out anyway, reminding himself that it was okay to want things in his life to be more than temporary; even dumb things like fruit or crayon drawings. “I’ll keep it and treasure it always.”

Eda’s smile was wide. The light gleamed off her gold tooth. “He’ll be thrilled.”

Hunter was still focussing on the gleam off her tooth when his vision went fuzzy at the edges and his chest seemed to freeze into one solid lump. Suddenly, he couldn’t get any air, no matter how much he tried to draw it into his lungs. The whole world slowed to a gelatinous slurry around him. He was dimly aware of raised voices and frenzied movement but all he could really focus on was the pain in his chest and the way darkness encroached in on his vision until all he could see was the blurry gold gleam of Eda’s tooth.

And then that, too, snuffed out and Hunter knew only darkness.

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“El sarcasmo no es útil, querido.”

~ “Sarcasm is useless, dear.”

“Está siendo tan valiente.”

~ "He's being so brave."

“No te preocupes, Mamá. En realidad no iba a ser mala con él.”

~ "Don't worry, Mom. I wasn't actually going to be mean to him."

“¡Eso es increíble!”

~ "That is incredible!"

““Querido chico, ¡esto es tan sabroso!”

~ "Dear boy, this is so tasty!"

Chapter Text

Gus and Willow kept pace with each other as they made their way through the streets of Bonesborough. Gus tugged at the large new hole in his jacket sleeve. The jacket had been a gift from Steve on Gus’s last birthday and, despite how irate it made Matty that he was no longer the only one with a facsimile of his brother’s iconic look, Gus loved it.

“Sorry,” Willow said for approximately the billionth time. “I should have warned you.”

“It’s fine, really.”

“I’m just so used to Hunter being the one to help me, and he already knows not to approach the Hogweed from its blind side.”

“Willow, it’s fine.”

“I should have remembered that you didn’t know. I should have warned you.”

“Willow!” Gus resisted the urge to throw up his hands in frustration. “Seriously! It’s okay! If the worst thing that happened was my jacket getting torn on Hogweed tusks, I’d consider that a win.”

Willow’s expression collapsed in on itself. Instantly, Gus regretted yelling.

“Sorry.” He kicked at a rock, watching it skim under a transport worm in the middle of the street. “It’s just … it really is okay. Accidents happen. You’re tense, so you’re doing that thing where you overthink it, but it honestly is okay.”

He noticed how Willow clenched her fists at her sides, even with how quickly she tucked her hands under her armpits. She hunched over as she walked, speeding up so that he had to take longer strides to keep pace. “I know. I just … I was distracted by my own thoughts and you nearly got hurt because of it.”

He didn’t need to ask what – or who – she had been thinking about. “We’ll be at the hospital soon and you can see for yourself that he’s fine. That’ll ease your mind.”

She bit her lower lip. “What if he’s not fine?”

“He will be.” Firm. Confident. Fake it ‘til you make it. “Hunter’s, like, the toughest guy I know.”

“Your boyfriend can literally cover himself in rock armour. That’s pretty tough.”

Heat rushed into Gus’s cheeks. “Matty is not my boyfriend. He is just a boy who is a friend.”

“Uh-huh. But you’d like him to be.”

“We are not having this conversation!”

Gus was glad of the tiny half-smile that curled Willow’s mouth, though he would have preferred his own love life not to be the reason for it. His will-they-won’t-they romance with Matt Tholomule had become something of a joke in the last few months, ever since Matty got wasted at a university party Gus invited him to. After too many hard apple bloods for his tiny body, Matty had sloppily confessed how he had wanted to kiss Gus when he and his friends first returned to the Demon Realm. He had only held back because he was sure he would be rebuffed and could not stand the idea of public rejection in front of all the kids he was trying to convince Boscha to let him help lead. Matty’s ego had become less fragile in the years that followed but still not enough to convince himself that Gus might reciprocate his feelings. Thus, the two of them had dated other boys and girls while circling each other in smaller and smaller circles until the night of that party.

Willow stepped over a pothole and looked sideways at Gus. “Gus?”

“What?”

“You know that if you and Matty did end up trying out being a couple … I mean, if you wanted that, Hunter and I would support you, right? We just want you to be happy. And if Matty is your happiness, well then … that’s good enough for us.”

He sighed. “I know. And I appreciate that. I just … it’s complicated.”

Matty had made it complicated. And Gus wasn’t sure he could get past that yet – especially since Matty himself had woken up the day after the party with a crushing hangover and absolutely no memory of his confession. Gus had never told him what he said and things had been … awkward since then. Awkward and complicated.

Changing the subject with all the grace and dignity of a passenger grabbing the wheel of an airship and yanking it around, Gus asked: “Have you heard from Luz?”

Willow summoned her scroll, glanced at it and shook her head. “Not yet.”

“It’s so weird that Head Witch Chiron wanted to test her blood too.” Gus frowned. “What if the portal door is bad for humans long-term?”

“Then I’d move to the Human Realm,” Willow said without missing a beat.

“Hunter would fight you on that.”

“Oh, I know. But he’d lose.”

“He’d say that your family is here.”

“Probably.”

“And that you love working with Boiling Isles plants.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And that the Human Realm is a nice place to visit but not a great place for witches to live.”

“Yeah.”

“Aaaand you’d tell him that he’s your family now too, you love Human Realm plants just as much, which is why you’ve made studying them such a big part of your major, and that you have an awesome best friend who could make you a concealment stone necklace to hide your ears and fangs in Human Realm so you could live there fulltime.”

“Yup.”

Gus exhaled gustily. “See, that’s what I want. What you guys have. Loving each other enough to do what’s best for each other, not just what’s best for yourselves. That kind like of … of balance, I guess.”

“It’s not easy,” Willow admitted. “And we don’t always get it right. I can be hard-headed and bad at talking about what I’m really feeling if I’m unhappy and Hunter had a tendency to assume his opinions aren’t as important as mine when we try to make joint decisions. Plus, you know, mental health baggage and all. We’re both trauma bunnies in our own ways. But we make it work.”

“And it is worth it?”

“Oh yeah. It’s definitely worth it.” Willow vanished her scroll and wrapped the end of one long braid around her fingers. It was a longstanding nervous habit but, well, at least she wasn’t clenching her fists anymore. That had to be a good sign, right? “I love him, y’know? More than I ever thought I could love anyone. He makes me so happy. And it’s scary, like, most of the time? But also wonderful. But super scary. But still … amazing.” She tugged so hard at her hair that Gus could see the roots on her scalp moving. “It’s hard to put into words. When you fall for your right someone, it just hits you. You may not realise it at first but when you do figure it out, you know.”

Did he feel anything even remotely like that about Matty? Was the scrappy, spiky, weirdo cringelord that was Matty actually Gus’s ‘right someone’?

Thoughts for later. Right now, Willow needed reassurance.

He reached out to pat her shoulder. Some days it was still odd that he didn’t have to reach up to compensate for a height difference anymore. “Hunter is going to be okay. He has the literal Head of the Healing Coven working on his case. You don’t get better medical care than that. Whatever’s up with him, Head Witch Chiron will figure it out and fix it.”

Gus realised he was trying to convince himself as much as her. The memory of Hunter’s bloodied hands and bedclothes streaked with red flashed like a neon sign in his head.

They turning a corner that put them in sight of the rear of the hospital. They had intended to cross the parking lot there, zip in through a side door and hurry up to Hunter’s room from this direction rather than wending their way through the labyrinthine corridors they would have had to travel from the front entrance of the building. Plus, there would be less fuss about the liberal amounts of soil and dirt caking their clothes and hair if they avoided the hospital receptionists.

Willow stopped. “Is that Head Witch Chiron?”

Gus peered around the corner. “It is.”

“Why is he leaving? Isn’t he meant to be getting Hunter’s test results?” She frowned. “He said he was putting a rush on them so we get answers sooner.”

They both watched as the portly centaur stepped into a carriage drawn by a pair of griffins. The carriage had artificial wings attached to its sides, powered by small enchanted glowstones to allow the carriage to be drawn through the air as easily as across solid ground. Similar glowstones shimmered in the griffins’ harnesses, linking the carriage to their flight path to ensure lack of shaking for the passenger. Chiron looked around furtively before stepping inside the carriage, then leaned back out of the window when he had settled himself inside.

“Remember, not a word to the Nocedas.”

Gus felt his blood run cold.

“Did he just say –”

Willow grasped Gus’s arm. “Invisibility illusion. Now.”

The tension in her voice made him pause. He cast the spell, warping the air around them so that they could see each other but no-one could see them. Holding onto each other, they hurried across the parking lot to the carriage.

An insectoid healer in blue robes stood beside the it, looking up at Chiron. “Are you sure this is wise, Head Witch?”

“No, Fomai, I ain’t sure,” Chiron replied. “But sure or not, this might be that boy’s only chance. He’s on borrowed time as it is, with the way his body is degeneratin’.”

Gus heard Willow’s breath catch in her throat. He reached up to place a hand over hers on his arm. They needed to stay quiet or they’d be found out. Who knew what the punishment was for eavesdropping on a Head Witch like this? Even one as nice as Chiron.

“What should I tell his mother about the test results? They’re expecting them.”

“Don’t tell her anythin’ yet.”

“But whatever you learn won’t change what the results are.”

“What I learn may give ‘em a ray of hope instead of us just givin’ Hunter a straight up death sentence.”

Gus’s own throat constricted. Body degenerating? Death sentence? Gus had flunked all his healing classes in school before specialising in illusions but he understood those words. Each one landed in his ears like burning coals, searing through his mind and leaving nothing but pain and confusion in their wake.

It could not be true. Hunter was not going to die. He was sick, yes, but die? There was no way, there was no way.

The insectoid demon sighed and stepped backwards, closing the carriage door with an air of finality. “Titan’s speed, Head Witch.”

“Thank you kindly.”

“And remember.” He frowned. “Don’t ever turn your back on her.”

With that, the carriage window slid shut. The driver, positioned in his seat at the front of the carriage, flicked his whip at the two griffins and snapped his fingers. The glowstones all sprang to vibrant life, sending their silvery magic skittering over the carriage.

Willow dashed forward. Gus did not have time to say or do anything before she had pulled them both against the back of the carriage and summoned vines to tie them into place against the luggage rack there. Gus felt his body lashed against the sturdy metal. Momentary panic suffused him as the glowstones’ magic skittered over his skin, calculating the carriage’s weight to work it into the complex enchantment that would allow it stay airborne.

A twang rang out, signalling the glowstones had finished, and the griffins flapped their wings, dragging the carriage and its occupants, both intended and stowaway, up into the air behind them. The insectoid healer watched them depart, not waving. Gus worried that his invisibility illusion would fail and reveal both he and Willow to the demon’s many staring eyes. But the healer turned and went back inside the hospital without raising any alarm.

“What are we doing?” Gus hissed at Willow.

“We’re getting some answers,” Willow whispered back grimly. “If the people working on Hunter’s case are hiding things from him, I want to know why.”

“But Willow –”

The rising wind drowned out further possibility of speech, leaving Gus and Willow to cling to the luggage rack and hope their combined magic would be enough to shield and protect them from prying eyes or falling to their splattery demises on the ground far below. Gus was forced to wait in silence as Head Witch Chiron’s carriage flew across the Isles to wherever he was headed.

Bonesborough disappeared into the distance. Countryside sped by, punctuated here and there by smaller towns, villages and settlements so tiny that they didn’t even have names. After the Day of Unity and the Collector destroyed a lot of metropolitan areas, many citizens had preferred to live in smaller communities where they felt safer and everyone knew each other.

Despite the changed landscape, Gus began to recognise the direction in which they were travelling. Enormous lichen-covered ribs arced up around them, more battered than they used to be before the Collector’s magic left its mark, but still recognisable.

Why in Titan’s name is Head Witch Chiron headed there?

On the horizon, growing closer with every griffin wingbeat, the Conformatorium loomed.

Chapter Text

Once upon a Halloween, Hunter died in Willow’s arms.

It was easy to pretend afterwards that it had only almost happened. Easier still not to speak of it at all. Hunter hated talking about being possessed by Belos and only did it if the situation necessitated – like therapy sessions and remembering Flapjack. It was simplicity itself to just pretend Camila had dragged him up from the water of the sunken graveyard in time; that he had not screamed like his soul was being ripped out when Belos flowed from his new scars; that he had not shuddered and stopped moving altogether for several minutes.

But Hunter had died that night. His breathing had ceased. His pulse had stopping thrumming under Willow’s hand. His muscles had gone slack. She had felt him die. And if Flapjack had not sacrificed himself, Hunter would have stayed dead and no amount of pretending could have changed that.

Willow thought about it often. The thoughts were intrusive and barged into her brain when she least wanted them. When she and Hunter were cooking dinner together, she would look at his smiling face and get a flash of it still and pale instead. When she kissed him and carded her fingers through his hair, she remembered how freezing and sodden it had been. Some nights, even now, she woke up in a cold sweat, tears streaking her face as she brain conjured scenarios that had never followed that last night in the Human Realm: a funeral, a little grave beneath a tree, a sad palisman returning to the Bat Queen, all the tears shed by those who had loved Hunter most and never gotten to say goodbye.

Over the years the thoughts had gotten easier to handle. Hunter was so full of life, so eager to explore the world and enjoy the little things he had spent so long being denied, that him being dead seemed impossible. No-one so alive could ever be as still as the Hunter of her memories.

“What I learn may give ‘em a ray of hope instead of us just givin’ Hunter a straight up death sentence.”

Head Witch Chiron’s words, dashed off so sharply and concisely, stuck in Willow’s mind like a knife. And from the wound bled all the sights, sounds and other sensations from that Halloween night she had been trying so hard not to think about since Hunter got sick.

She was only half-thinking when she lashed Gus and herself to the back of the carriage. When they rose into the air, she came back to herself and panic swept through her. She was leaving Hunter behind. Suddenly, more than anything she wanted to see him; wanted to confirm for herself that he was alive and safe and well. But by then it was too late. They were accompanying Head Witch Chiron whether they wanted to or not.

The Conformatorium had always existed. That was what it felt like. People of the Boiling Isles had never questioned its existence; it was just there and always had been. It must have been built by someone at some point but not even her grandmothers could remember that happening. It just seemed to have appeared one day; an ominous presence just on the edge of everyone’s consciousness: “Don’t do anything bad or you’ll end up in the Conformatorium.” It was necessary, they were told, because every society needed a place to keep criminals and lawbreakers. As a child, Willow had never questioned what that meant. Laws were how society functioned. Lawbreakers, therefore, were bad.

Then Willow had met Luz and, through her, Eda, who crowed about being the worst lawbreaker in the whole Demon Realm. Willow was forced to reassess her previous certainty, because while Eda was a lawbreaker, she wasn’t a bad person. She definitely wasn’t evil. The idea that Eda was someone who deserved to be locked away in the Conformatorium was ludicrous – much less that she deserved petrification!

When Willow met Hunter, who was tasked with catching lawbreakers for the ultimate figurehead of authority, the Emperor, her distrust of the need for the Conformatorium hit its peak. Belos was not the perfect purveyor of morality she had always assumed. He was petty and cruel and manipulative; someone who could raise a child soldier, abuse them and still think he was ‘good’. Therefore his Conformatorium and the need for it could not be trusted either.

Following the Day of Unity and the Collector’s defeat, there were calls for the Conformatorium to be torn down. It was symbolic of everything that had been wrong with the Boiling Isles under Belos’s rule. Yet it had been kept and repurposed: still a prison, but instead of housing those who broke Belos’s laws, now it contained only those who had supported his regime beyond rhyme or reason, including his desire to massacre the populace if it brought them more power. Citizens seemed to like the idea that those who had once enforced the worst of the Emperor’s decrees with gusto were now trapped in his prison until they had served out their punishments. Four years had not been nearly long for that yet.

Willow’s heart jumped in her chest when they landed. Why were they here?

Chiron disembarked and looked up at the yawning front door with all its carved teeth and staring stone eyes. “Ain’t lookin’ forward to this,” he muttered, so low that even only a few feet away, Willow could barely hear him. He turned to the carriage driver. “Wait here would you, please? I don’t know how long this’ll take.”

“Sure thing, Head Witch.”

Chiron trotted inside. Willow grabbed Gus’s hand, pointed and released the vines holding them. Together under Gus’s invisibility illusion, they scurried after the centaur.

Inside the Conformatorium was just as bad as Willow had expected. Yet somehow, it was not as bad as being inside the castle. The Conformatorium was austere, without any of the tapestries or other frivolities Belos had liked to decorate the Keep. Long grey corridors led to more long grey corridors, each just as utilitarian and plain as the last. It would be an easy place to get lost in without someone to follow but there was nothing in it to glorify Belos or his false history.

A witch holding a palisman staff met them at the branching point of one of these corridors. He was tall, thin and had an obstinate chin beneath curly brown hair. His palisman was a tiny wolverine that snarled and bared its teeth even in repose. The witch tapped his staff against the floor and gave an unsmiling half-bow to Chiron.

“Head Witch. My name is Master Guard Samkisi. We’ve been expecting you.”

“Thanks for lettin’ me in on such short notice.”

“To be honest, Head Witch, it’s no trouble. We don’t get many visitors here so setting up for your arrival was pretty straightforward.”

“Let’s hope this whole conversation goes as easily,” Chiron sighed. “Lead the way.”

The one perk of following a centaur was that noise of his hooves echoed off walls and ceiling, providing cover for Willow and Gus’s own footsteps. They shadowed Chiron and Master Guard Samkisi along more long grey corridors that all looked alike until, finally, they popped out onto a walkway overlooking an enormous round space. Studding the walls like blank eyes were cells, each barred and dark, save a few.

Gus inhaled sharply. Willow paused and backed them up but neither Chiron nor Master Guard Samkisi seemed to have heard anything. They could see where the two went, so she hung back, feeling Gus sagging against her suddenly.

“Iron,” he wheezed. “In the bars.”

She felt it too, though less so, since she was not actively pulling on her magic right now.

Iron was the anti-magic metal. It was rare, potent and unpleasant. Iron’s stability, both atomically and thaumaturgically, meant that it bounced magic back when anyone tried to use spells on it. Enchantments never anchored properly to iron the way they could to other metals, and whenever witches or demons touched it, their magical energy was siphoned off into the air until they let go. Proximity to iron for too long caused pounding migraines, bile-sac-ache and nausea. Willow had only come across it once at school, during a class on the dangers of making your own gardening tools to handle carnivorous plants without being properly training in metallurgy. She remembered how all the hairs along her arms and on the back of her neck had stood on end when her teacher opened the special box that contained an iron trowel, and how she had felt unsettled for the entire rest of the day.

Belos had used an iron dagger to kill his brother. He had collected small bits of iron on his travels around the Isles and smelted the blade himself, specifically because that way no healing magic could be used to seal the wound. He had intended to stab Evelyn Clawthorne to death with it so Caleb Wittebane would have no reason to stay in the Boiling Isles and would go with him back to the Human Realm. Instead, by using iron, Belos had ensured his beloved brother could not be saved after the fatal blow he impulsively delivered, no matter how much he regretted it after he had done it. And still, somehow, Belos had managed to twist that in his mind to blame witches for his grief instead of himself.

It made sense that the Conformatorium would use iron bars in its cells. Willow cursed herself for not anticipating that.

“I’m okay,” Gus whispered. “I can maintain the illusion as long as I don’t get too close to the bars.”

“Are you sure?”

“We came here for answers, didn’t we?” He gave her a watery smile. “Well we’re not getting them by standing here where we can’t see or hear who Head Witch Chiron has come to see.”

Willow felt a swell of affection for her best friend. “I’ll carry you so you can focus on maintaining your spell.”

Emmiline crawled out of Gus’s jacket pocket and glowed, boosting his power with her own. Gus inhaled deeply and nodded. Willow pulled him into a piggyback and cautiously crept onto the walkway, towards where Chiron and Master Guard Samkisi had stopped outside one of the cells. She placed her feet with utmost care, moving so slowly that not even her clothing rustled.

The majority of the cells were empty. This one, however, was dominated by a figure sitting in the centre of the floor, at the farthest point away from the metal bars on every side. Tall, broad and immediately recognisable, she filled the small space with both bulk and presence – which was especially impressive considering she was wearing brown prison clothes and what looked like a blindfold over her eyes.

It took a long moment for anyone to speak.

“Hettie,” Chiron said eventually.

The former Head of the Healing Coven didn’t even look up. “Chiron.”

Willow realised with a start that she had never heard Hettie Cutburn speak before. Her voice was strange and lilting, at once both a low growl and a pretty trill. She seemed to speak with two voices at once, reminding Willow unsettlingly of Belos talking through Hunter’s mouth.

“It’s been a long time,” Cutburn observed. “I won’t flatter myself to think this is a social call.”

“We didn’t socialise even when we worked together. You never deigned to spend more time with me than necessary.”

“Why would I choose to spend my valuable time with lesser beings like you?” Cutburn’s lip curled. “A beastman.”

Willow frowned. Slurs like that had been the purview of Boscha and bullies like her in school, but even then they had been whispered behind cupped hands, the speakers knowing how awful they were. ‘Beastman’ implied someone was less than a person and should not be afforded the same rights as other witches and demons. A few reporters had used it to refer to Hunter when word got out that he was a grimwalker. Both Darius and Perry Porter had been quick to shut that talk down. Hard. Perry had even written a whole editorial piece about it, which had gone viral after people started quoting it on Penstagram.

Chiron barely reacted. It seemed like he was used to Cutburn in particular calling him this. “I’m bringin’ you a chance to do right by one of your former patients, Hettie. Maybe even get your sentence mitigated a little for it.”

Cutburn chuckled. The sound was disconcerting; a layered echo of sound coming from what looked like an ordinary fanged mouth. “You and I both know I’m never leaving the Conformatorium.”

“That ain’t true –”

“Yes, it is. Even if I shared everything I know about Belos’s curse – which I won’t – there are those who would see me dead the moment I set foot out the door for what I shared with him.”

“What you shared with him?”

“You’re not subtle, Chiron.”

“I ain’t tryin’ to be. What did you share with Belos that was so awful it’d get you assassinated?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I would, actually.”

“Why are you actually here, beastman?”

Chiron folded his arms on top of his belly. “You were the only healer in the whole Boiling Isles alive today who ever worked on Belos’s grimwalkers.”

Another unsettling chuckle. “So that’s why you’re here? I should have guessed. It’s about the right timeframe.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Cutburn smiled. It should not have been as creepy as it was. “He’ll be around twenty years old now, right? The last creature he made?”

“His name is Hunter. He ain’t a creature. An’ yes, he is.”

“Then you might want to say goodbye while you’re still able.”

Willow felt Gus’s grip on her shoulders tighten. Her own mouth went dry. She swallowed, pushing down her rising dread.

“What does his age have to do with anythin’?” Chiton asked.

“Come along now, Chiron. It’s not enough that you stole my rank from me, now you want to steal my secrets too?”

“I ain’t stealin’ nuthin’, Hettie. I’m askin’ you to do the right thing for once in your remarkably long life.” Chiron stepped forward, wincing as he got closer to the iron bars but not stopping until he was right beside them.

“Sir, that’s not wise.” Master Guard Samkisi lowered his staff, pointing it at Cutburn. “Don’t get too close.”

“I’m not going to reach through the bars and pull his arms off,” Cutburn snapped, voice stinging like a bullwhip of lightning. “Even though I could – and should, by rights. You stole what was mine, Chiron. And you should know that I am very possessive of what is mine.”

“Yeah, you always were a bit weird about anyone touchin’ your things,” Chiron remarked blithely.

“What is mine remains mine, even if I’m the only one who still knows it,” Cutburn replied icily. “I earned my rank as Head Witch. You were just in the right place at the right time. you didn’t earn it. You didn’t sacrifice anything. You’re not half the healer I am.”

“You can believe what you want, Hettie,” Chiron said calmly.

“If you were as good as me, you wouldn’t be here right now asking for my help.”

“True. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, I ain’t as good as you were –”

“Are.”

“Are, then. Right now, I got a grimwalker boy in my care whose body is changin’ from flesh an’ blood to wood, stone an’ the other things Belos used to make him. I want to know what’s happenin’ to him an’ how to stop it. An’ you’re the only one left alive who might be able to answer those questions.”

“Stop it?” Cutburn chuckled. “You can’t stop the decline once it’s begun.”

“What?”

“Although …” She tapped her chin as if in thought.

“What do you know, Hettie? Is there some way to stop what’s happenin’ to him?”

“You know what? I will tell you something you don’t already know, Chiron. But only because I want to see the look on your face when you realise how out of your depth you are.”

Cutburn rose to her feet. Standing up, her head brushed the ceiling of the cell. She still wore the strange headgear she had always worn during her time as Head Witch. Willow had always thought it was some kind of statement piece to make her even taller but, if she was still wearing it in here, maybe there was some other reason. Despite wearing a blindfold, Cutburn moved with unerring confidence. She leaned forward, towards Chiron, who stared back implacably. They seemed to be having some kind of standoff despite either of them barely moving.

“Grimwalkers are unnatural,” Cutburn breathed so softly that Willow had to strain to hear her. “The magic used to make them is not of this world. It doesn’t fit here. That’s why so few people know of how to make them. You think that if the ability to bring back the dead as more than mere oracle-summoned ghosts was available, people wouldn’t do anything to get back their loved ones? That no mother would want to hold her baby once more? That no child would move mountains for one more day with a parent? That no lovers would cast themselves into the abyss to reclaim their lost sweethearts? Grimwalkers were nothing but myths long before Belos wiped them from public consciousness for a reason. They’re artificial. And the thing about artificial life is that it’s inferior to real life. It can’t outstrip the natural order of things. Grimwalkers draw from the life force of their ortet and so are beholden to the constraints of that life. Their appearance, their nature, their voices – everything about them is predicated on what their ortet was. And that includes their lifespans. They’re defined by their ortet.”

“Are you telling me that grimwalkers’ lifespans are limited to that of the person they’re cloned from?” Chiron asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. Grimwalkers can only live until the age their ortet was when they died, no longer.” Cutburn bared her teeth in the most disturbing smile Willow had ever seen. “And Caleb Wittebane died at age twenty.”

Chiron did not move a muscle. He just stood there, jaw tight, eyes hard. Master Guard Samkisi kept his staff levelled at Cutburn but she didn’t move either. Everyone stayed in this tableau for so long that Willow’s chest began to burn. She realised she was holding her breath – had been holding it, in fact, since Cutburn spoke. Gus was beginning to tremble against her back.

“What’ll happen to Hunter?” Chiron asked at last.

“He’ll die,” Cutburn said with such satisfaction that Willow wanted to punch her stupid face in. “He’ll deteriorate piece by piece until his body rots off his bones. He’ll feel every single moment of it. Oh, it’ll be agony. And he’ll know for each excruciating second that you can do nothing to save him.”

“Because I’m a subpar healer compared to you? Or because there’s no way of savin’ him at all?”

“Both. Neither. Pick one.” Cutburn’s smile got wider.

“You’re not tellin’ me everythin’.”

“No. I’m not.”

“Hettie –”

“That’s Head Witch Cutburn to you.” She stood up, linking her hands behind her back. “Emperor Belos entrusted me with the secrets of the grimwalkers for a reason. They are mine to keep. And as I said, what is mine remains mine.”

“If the boy dies, you’ve lost the last thing you can hold over me as evidence that you’re the superior healer.”

“If the boy dies, his family will mourn. They’ll hurt. They’ll suffer. And since they killed Emperor Belos, that suits me just fine.”

Chiron blanched. “You can’t still be loyal to that monster after he tried to murder everyone includin’ you –”

“Without Belos I was as good as dead anyway,” Cutburn snapped. “I owed him my life. And my debts also remain mine to own.”

“He branded you with a sigil he knew would kill you. There’s no point in continuin’ to be loyal to a man like that.”

“Isn’t there?” Cutburn smiled. “If I repent for my sins, trade my information for my freedom and start a new life outside the Conformatorium like Mason, Osran and the others, I’ll be dead within the year.”

“Why?”

“I’m done here.” Cutburn turned her back on Chiron. “Take him away, Samkisi. I won’t be telling him anything more.”

Chiron stamped a hoof. It echoed loudly in the open space behind them. “Damn it! You’re consignin’ an innocent boy to death to win a pissin’ contest!”

“Come now, Chiron, I’d hardly call the Golden Guard innocent.”

“Do I need to make an Oracle Witch drag what you ain’t tellin’ me outa your brain by force?”

“You won’t do that. Your moral code won’t allow it. Plus, there’s that pesky law against forcing mind magic on people against their will. Following the laws is difficult when they don’t suit your needs, isn’t it?” Cutburn shrugged. “But that’s what you chose when you stole my rank, Chiron. Now you get to live with it. And the grimwalker gets to die with it.”

“Hettie –”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, go ask the Sidhe, you maggot-brained wannabe.”

Chiron’s hands dropped to his sides and bunched into fists. Willow could relate. ‘Go ask the Sidhe’ was a time-worn phrase used when you wanted someone to buzz off and stop bothering you with endless questions. Older students at Hexside often barked it at younger kids who did not yet know that Sidhe-tales were fake; the same kids who would run off to find a can of elbow grease when told to and come back later, unable to find any and equally unable to understand why you were laughing.

Willow had been that kind of kid once. After Amity rejected her so cruelly, Willow had been so eager to please and be liked that she was willing to humiliate herself for the entertainment of others, until she met Gus and remembered what real friendship felt like.

Anger burned in her guts. It froze at Cutburn’s next words.

“Also, you should probably know that there have been two other witches listening to this whole conversation until an illusion spell behind you.”

“What?” Chiron’s expression melted into confusion.

Master Guard Samkisi whirled around, staff igniting with magic. “Show yourselves, whoever you are!”

“Busted,” Gus murmured into Willow’s ear. He dropped his spell, revealing them both. “Um … hi. We can totally explain this.”

Head Witch Chiron gaped at the pair of them. “Miss Park? Mr Porter? How in Titan’s name did you two get in here?”

“We, uh, followed you from the hospital?” Gus said meekly.

Willow put Gus down. They were, indeed, busted. Well, she had nothing left to lose now, did she? “Head Witch Cutburn!”

Cutburn turned her head as if she could see over her shoulder to focus on Willow. “Someone using my proper title for once. What do you want, child?”

“Please, tell us how to save Hunter.”

“Oh? And why do you think I’d react any better to you making that demand than I did to this usurper here?” She jerked a thumb at Chiron.

“I … I don’t know.” Willow stepped forward but halted when Master Guard Samkisi’s staff blocked her path. “But I’m begging you: please, don’t let him die like this. If there’s any way at all to save him, please tell us what it is.”

“Hmm. Such a passionate request. You’re in love with the grimwalker, aren’t you?”

Willow’s throat hurt. She swallowed it down. “Yes. I am.”

“Love is such a frail emotion. So easily broken. Rather like hope in that regard, if not as sweet to see die. You’re one of the witches who killed Emperor Belos, I take it?”

Willow nodded. “But –”

“Then go ask the Sidhe, you stupid girl.” Cutburn turned away and sat down in the middle of her cell, facing the far wall. “Go ask the Sidhe how to save your precious grimwalker and leave me alone.”

Willow let out an angry shriek. She ducked under the glowing staff and ran at the cell bars, stopped only when strong hands closed around her upper arms. She fought against the hold, trying to draw a spell circle, but the nearby iron made it fizzle and die before it was fully formed. Her chest and head hurt with the effort of trying to use her magic. That just made her angrier.

“No! No, I won’t let you let him die like this! Not if you know how to help him! Cutburn! CUTBURN!”

Chiron marshalled her away. “Come on, Miss Park. You and Mr Porter have some explainin’ to do.”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“Oh, go ask the Sidhe, you maggot-brained wannabe.”

~ Sidhe (pronounced ‘shee’) is a Gaelic term used in Ireland and Scotland to refer to burial mounds and the faeries, elves and other fae who inhabit them. In Ireland the Sidhe are considered to be ancient Celtic gods. Pagan spirits of Ireland were known as the Tuatha de Danann. Tuatha de Danann means ‘Children of Danu or Dana’ a legendary race of people who overthrew the Irish in ancient times. When the Tuatha de Danann was overthrown themselves by the Milesians they took shelter in earth barrows (sidhe). Deprived of offerings and affection the Tuatha de Danann shrivelled and withered until they became the little people. The Tuatha de Danann was once called Marcra Sidhe (faerie cavalcade) or Slooa-Sidhe (faerie host). Information taken from Your Irish Folklore and Celtic Society.

Chapter Text

When Hunter went rigid and flopped backwards, Camila dropped everything she was holding. The CD player smashed to the floor in an explosion of plastic and metal but she barely noticed.

“Hunter? Baby?”

He was clawing at his throat, mouth sagging and emitting little huffs, as if he could not get enough air. His spine arched with the effort. Eda got to him first and checked his airway. She tried to turn him on his side to dislodge anything stuck there. Nothing came loose. Hunter’s whole face was turning red, capillaries rupturing in the whites of his eyes.

Camila whirled on Darius. “Get the doctor! Healer! Whatever, just get someone!”

She turned back and didn’t hear him leave, only a gloopy noise, but that was probably magic. All her attention was rooted on Hunter and the terrified look in his eyes. His gaze never left Eda; not even when he started to convulse. Not until his eyes rolled up into his head and he went horribly still.

“HUNTER!”

Camila caught her daughter before Luz could shoulder past her.

“Mom, he’s not breathing! We have to do something!”

“He’s not breathing! You have to do something! Please, doctor!”

People in blue robes flooded the room. They weren’t careful about shoving the two humans and one witch already in it aside. Camila pulled Luz close so that her back was against her, arms around her shoulders.

“Let them work, baby.”

Strong hands landed on her own shoulders. The co-parenting agreement she had with Darius did not stretch to a romantic relationship between the two of them, but damn it if for a moment she didn’t feel like Manny was behind her, giving her strength as she watched her son fight for his life.

“Out, out, out!” A brunette witch with pale turquoise eyes shooed them backwards through the door. “Clear the room, please.”

“But –” Luz started, raising her hand towards Hunter, only to nearly lose her fingers when the door slammed shut. She turned in Camila’s grip. “Mom?”

Camila swallowed her own rising panic. “He’ll be okay, mija. Él estará bien.”

She chose not to think about how she had once said that about Manny’s experimental cancer treatments at the fancy Gravesfield hospital.

“He will be okay,” Darius said behind her, far more confidently than she felt. “That boy is a fighter.”

The door opened and Eda tumbled out. It slammed shut again behind her. She pirouetted on one foot, shaking her fist at whoever had ejected her. “I can help, damn it!”

“Eda …”

She turned. Camila felt Luz leaning forward ever so slightly. She let her go and Luz all but fell into the witch’s arms. Eda shushed her and stroked her hair, mismatching eyes suspiciously glossy no matter how confident she sounded.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, kiddo. They’ll have Blondie right as rain in no time.” Eda let out a tiny, mirthless laugh. “Heh, or right as Raine. Because Raine is fine. Get it?”

“S’a terrible pun,” Luz mumbled into her shirt. “Shame on you.”

There was a time when Camila would have felt jealous of Luz’s relationship with this strange woman from another world. Now, with her much more fluid definition of family, she saw their connection for what it was: love borne of experience and lack of expectation. Eda adored Luz just as much as Camila did and Luz loved Eda right back like a second mother. Not a replacement; a second, equally beloved maternal figure in her life. And heaven knew, Luz deserved multiple parents to love and care for her.

“No puedo hacer esto sin ti, Manny. No puedo ser mamá y papá a la vez. Así que por favor, despierta. Despierta y ven a casa conmigo y nuestro bebé.”

Identical worry hunched Luz and Eda over as they embraced. Camila felt a sob working its way up her throat. She bit down on her lower lip so hard that she tasted blood. Darius must have felt her tense up because he started rubbing little circles in her shoulders with his thumbs – which was actually worse because that was what Manny used to do to the backs of her hands during his chemo sessions and …

Camila lifted her glasses to rub the heels of both hands against her eyes. It did exactly diddly squat to mop up her tears. Damn it.

Claws clicked along the corridor. A pink insectoid demon hustled in their direction. Camila recognised Healer Fomai. He greeted them with a nod but kept going, right into Hunter’s room. Camila caught a glimpse of her boy on his back, eyes closed, a tube down his throat and a spell circle raining little blue sparks over his face. Then the door shut again and she lost sight of him.

The old panic that she was standing in a hospital, watching someone she loved die, gripped Camila and shook her like it was a dog and she was nothing but a chew toy. It was all she could do not to just sink to her knees and wail like she had done the day Manny’s hand went limp and cold in hers.

“Please … no me dejes …”

Fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Healer Fomai came out. There was a streak of red on his robes.  Camila’s heart stuttered in her chest at the sight. He looked around the at the assembled faces before speaking.

“Hunter is stable now. We’re –”

“Going to run some more tests?” Eda snapped. “Seems to me that’s all you guys fucking do, but you never give us any actual results from them.”

Healer Fomai did not react outwardly. “Head Witch Chiron is working his hardest to find out what is happening to Hunter and secure a cure for him. He is the best healer in all the Boiling Isles. In the meantime, we’re doing all we can to help and make Hunter comfortable.”

“All we can do now is make your husband comfortable, Mrs Noceda.”

“Can we see him?” Luz asked in a small voice.

Healer Fomai nodded and led them inside. A few of the healers who had been working on Hunter took that opportunity to exit, leaving space in the small room for everyone. Camila gulped to see Hunter had been intubated and hear his raspy breathing around the tubing up his nose. There was nothing down his throat anymore, but when he spoke, his voice was so croaky that it was obvious there had been. As if the streak of blood on his chin didn’t give it away.

“Hey guys.”

“Oh, Dios mío, hijo mío.” She wiped tears off her cheeks and tried to smile. “You gave us such a scare.”

“Sorry,” Hunter rasped. “Didn’t mean to.”

“What happened?” Darius asked.

“Hunter has suffered a respiratory episode,” said Healer Fomai. “The walls of his lungs hardened quite suddenly and restricted his airflow, which in turn affected the circulation of blood around his body. We’ve foxed the problem for now by means of potions and healing spells but … we don’t know what triggered the episode.”

“So, you don’t know if or when something might make it happen again,” Camila finished.

Luz, Eda and Darius, however, all seemed to freeze up at Healer Fomai’s words.

“Did you said his lungs hardened?” Darius asked.

“Yes.”

“Like …” Luz swallowed audibly. “Like into stone?”

“Not quite stone but very close. If his lungs had actually petrified, there would have been nothing healing magic could have done.”

Eda looked at Luz. “Stonesleeper lungs,” she muttered. “Fuck.”

“That was my thought too,” Hunter wheezed. “Being a grimwalker. The gift that keeps on giving.” He tried to chuckle but winced. “Ow …”

Camila could not help it. She burst into messy, snotty tears.

“Mom!” Luz exclaimed. “¡No llores! ¡Todo está bien ahora!”

“¡Mamá!” Hunter wheezed. “Please don’t –” His words were cut off by a coughing fit. Healer Fomai rushed forward and drew a spell circle to ease it. “Mamá, I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.”

“Por favor, no llores, Camila. Déjame siempre recordarte sonriendo sobre mí en su lugar. I love your smile. It's what made me fall in love with you.”

Camila just cried more. “Lo siento. Desearía poder hacer más para ayudar, pero solo soy humano. Lo siento mucho. Debo ser capaz de ayudar a mis cildren. Debería ser capaz de protegerte. Lo siento mucho, mis bebés ...”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“Él estará bien.”

~ "He'll be fine."

“No puedo hacer esto sin ti, Manny. No puedo ser mamá y papá a la vez. Así que por favor, despierta. Despierta y ven a casa conmigo y nuestro bebé.”

~ “I can't do this without you, Manny. I can't be both mom and dad. So please, please wake up. Wake up and come home with me and our baby.”

“Please … no me dejes …”

~ "Please... don't leave me..."

“Oh, Dios mío, hijo mío.”

~ "Oh my God, my son."

“¡No llores! ¡Todo está bien ahora!”

~ "Don’t Cry! Everything is okay now!"

“Por favor, no llores, Camila. Déjame siempre recordarte sonriendo sobre mí en su lugar.”

~ “Please don't cry, Camila. Let me always remember you smiling on me instead."

“Lo siento. Desearía poder hacer más para ayudar, pero solo soy humano. Lo siento mucho. Debo ser capaz de ayudar a mis cildren. Debería ser capaz de protegerte. Lo siento mucho, mis bebés ...”

~ "Sorry. I wish I could do more to help, but I'm only human. Very sorry. I must be able to help my cildren. I should be able to protect you. I'm so sorry, my babies..."

Chapter Text

“Do y’all have any idea how much trouble you’re in!?”

Gus had never heard Head Witch Chiron shout before. In crystal ball interviews conducted by Perry Porter and his contemporaries, the centaur always came across as easy-going to the point of lackadaisicalness. Gus’s own limited experiences with Chiron at the hospital had only backed up this assumption.

Right now, he looked like he was about to explode with fury.

Willow folded her arms and clicked her feet together, sitting tall in her chair. She wasn’t one to back down from an angry authority figure but right now Gus wished she might show a little of that old deference from the earliest days of their friendship. He immediately felt guilty, since that deference had been the product of so much bullying that Willow barely raised used to her eyeline past anyone’s knees in those days.

“We did what we needed to do to help Hunter,” Willow said calmly.

“Y’mean you poked your gosh darn noses where they don’t got no right bein’,” Chiron retorted.

“Why didn’t you tell Hunter or his family that you were coming to visit Cutburn?”

“I don’t gotta explain myself to you, missy. I am much too busy bein’ mad as a horntailed scuzzlebutt at your sheer audacity! You not only followed me here, invadin’ my privacy, but you lashed yourselves to my carriage in flight? That is so gosh darn stupidly dangerous I don’t even got the gosh darn words to –”

“Is Hunter going to …” Willow bit her lip. “Is what Cutburn said … is that really going to happen to him?”

To his credit, Chiron blanched at the question. He reached for the elaborate crow phone on Master Guard Samkisi’s desk. The Conformatorium’s head of security kept a very tidy, if impersonal office, where everything clearly had its own place and dust did not dare to gather. The crow was caked in secure-connection enchantments and shiny with polish all over its beak and feet.

“We need to call your folks an’ –”

“Is Hunter going to die?!” Willow burst out. “Please. Tell me. Am I … are we going to lose him? Just like that? Can’t we do anything to save him?”

Chiron sighed and dragged his palms down his face, squashing his nose and rumpling his beard ribbons. “In truth, I do not know, Miss Park.”

“So Cutburn could have been lying?” Gus asked.

“No.”

“What makes you so sure?” Willow demanded.

“Because Hettie Cutburn is incapable of lyin’.”

“That doesn’t mean she might not have been –”

“Yes, it does. It’s one of her quirks. She’s vicious, cruel, arrogant an’ aggravatin’ as all get out, but she literally, physically can’t lie.”

Both Willow and Gus blinked at Chiron, processing this new information.

“Why?” Gus asked at last. “Is it a curse?”

“Probably. There are truth-based curses, though they’re rare enough that I ain’t never tended to a patient with one. Hettie weren’t never exactly forthcomin’ with the details of her condition. If I hadn’t worked so closely with her for so many years, I may not have even been able to tell her truth-tellin’ is against her will. She can’t lie when she speaks but that don’t mean she can’t refuse to speak at all an’ refuse answer a question she don’t wanna answer.”

Willow frowned. Gus wondered whether she was replaying the same parts of Chiron’s earlier conversation with Former Head Witch Cutburn as he was.

“Because I’m a subpar healer compared to you? Or because there’s no way of savin’ him at all?”

“Both. Neither. Pick one.”

“You’re not tellin’ me everythin’.”

“No. I’m not.”

Gus realised he was chewing on his thumbnail in thought. “She said you can’t save Hunter but not that there’s no way of saving him at all. I think. It was a bit confusing.”

“Yeah. She’s learned how to not lie but also not make the truth wholly clear,” Chiron said glumly. “I took a chance that maybe I could suss out the truth anyhow. I used to be pretty good at understandin’ her doublespeak when I was her second-in-command.” He blew out a sigh. “I guess I ain’t as good as I used to be.”

“She said someone will try to kill her if she’s released from the Conformatorium. Do you know who that could be?”

“Oh gosh, that’s like askin’ which bubbles are which fish’s farts in the whole Boilin’ Sea.”

Gus blinked at that one. “Ew. Gross.”

“Accurate though. Hettie Cutburn weren’t popular. I daresay there are a lot of people who’d like to see her dead.”

“But why wouldn’t she just say that then?” Willow asked. “I think she’s hiding something.”

“Sayin’ Hettie is hidin’ things is like sayin’ Emperor Belos was a bit naughty,” Chiron snapped. “She hides more truths than she tells. You can’t read too much into that, Miss Park. It weren’t connected to Hunter.”

“Wasn’t it?” Willow said thoughtfully. “I mean … it could be.” A strange look crossed her face; something sharp and harsh that reminded Gus uncomfortably of Boscha. “We could make it connect to Hunter.”

“Willow …” Gus started.

“If she doesn’t want to be released and feels safer incarcerated, would she trade that safety for information on how to save Hunter’s life?” Willow wondered out loud. “Would she tell us the truth of how to save him in order to stay in the safety of the Conformatorium instead of being thrown out of it and left to fend for herself against whoever is after her?”

Gus stared at his best friend. For a moment, he did not recognise her. “Willow, that’s too far.”

“Is it?” Willow whipped around to look at Gus, her usually soft eyes hard as emeralds. “We’re talking about Hunter’s life, Gus. You heard Cutburn. He’s going to die if we don’t do something drastic.”

“But threatening one witch’s life to save another’s –”

“Hunter’s life is worth more than hers.”

Gus reeled back. “Willow –”

“Tell me I’m wrong, Gus.” She glared hard enough that Gus felt like he might set on fire. A pearlescent sheen of green magic rolled over her irises. “Go on. Tell me that Hettie Cutburn’s life is worth more than your best friend’s.”

Gus swallowed the sudden tightness in his throat. “I … I don’t …” He couldn’t say it. He didn’t really believe it, either. But wholesale deciding that he agreed with what she was proposing was too much as well. “Willow, I can’t–”

“It ain’t a case of one person’s life bein’ worth more than another person’s,” Chiron interrupted. “What you’re suggestin’ is illegal, Miss Park. We ain’t in the habit of executin’ prisoners no more, nor weighin’ how much a witch’s life is worth versus sumthin’ we want, or how many lives or how much of our own souls we’d be willin’ to spend to make our own desires a reality.” He met her furious stare. “That’s Belos talk.”

“Don’t you dare compare me to him!” Willow hissed, but there was an edge to her voice that sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “This is a million times different than him petrifying and executing wild witches for imaginary crimes against the throne.”

“It’s a slippery slope, Miss Park,” Chiron said softly. “That’s all I’m sayin’. Quite aside from the fact no-one would allow you to do what you’re suggestin’ – would, in fact, arrest you even if you are a Hero of the Isles – it’s a slippery slope to start down, thinkin’ you got the right to judge the worth of a life.”

“Hunter,” Willow gritted. “Is. Worth. More. Than. Cutburn.” She drew in a ragged breath. “More to me and more to the world. And I will do whatever it takes to save him.” Her eyelashes were spiky with moisture. “Whatever it takes.”

Chiron paused before replying. “I don’t doubt you would. That’s what concerns me.”

Willow made to reply but was cut off by the office door opening. Master Guard Samkisi stepped inside. He half-bowed at Chiron in greeting.

“Master Guard Samkisi, we ain’t quite done here,” said Chiron with an air of frustration that the world was conspiring against him today.

“I’m aware, Head Witch, but we have a, uh, situation.”

Instantly, Chiron was all business. “A situation?”

Master Guard Samkisi nodded, then pointed his staff at Willow and Gus. “One of the prisoners wants to see these two witches and is kicking up quite a fuss. And given that she’s usually pretty well-behaved, I felt moved to bring her request up here to you.”

“Is it Cutburn?” Willow asked, tone threaded with hope.

But he shook his head, looking uncomfortable. “No.”

“Well spit it out then, man,” said Chiron. “Who in Titan’s name would want to see them, if not Hettie?”

Master Guard Samkisi sighed. “It’s Kikimora, sir. She wants to speak to them about the Golden Guard. And she says that it’s urgent.”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

I am much too busy bein’ mad as a horntailed scuzzlebutt at your sheer audacity!

~ Yup, that’s a South Park reference.

Chapter Text

Kikimora’s cell was on the same side of the Conformatorium but one level down from Cutburn’s. Willow and Gus entered the atrium from the office area and climbed the stairs in silence, sandwiched between Master Guard Samkisi in front and Head Witch Chiron behind them. Chiron’s hooves once again echoed off the vaulted walls and ceiling, creating a cacophony that still did not manage to drown out Willow’s deafening thoughts.

She could not get the look Gus had given her out of her head. He had looked so … disgusted by her suggestion. But it wasn’t such a bad idea. It wasn’t. Cutburn was a horrible woman who was mouldering away here in this prison, hoarding information that might save Hunter’s life, just to be cruel. Why shouldn’t they do whatever was necessary to get that information out of her? They didn’t have to actually turn her out of the Conformatorium, just threaten her with the idea. It would be worth it to save Hunter.

And what if she calls your bluff? whispered a traitorous voice in the back of her mind that sounded far too much like Boscha for Willow’s liking. What if just threatening her isn’t enough? Would you actually follow through? Would you toss her out into the world to be assassinated, just to get what you want? Would you orchestrate her death to prevent Hunter’s?

Could you actually kill someone to save his life?

Willow found she couldn’t answer, even if the privacy of her own head. Neither could she answer the even tinier, meaner voice that chased behind it.

Would Hunter ever forgive you if you did that for him?

Master Guard Samkisi stopped walking. Willow was so preoccupied with her own thoughts, she nearly crashed into him. Gus gingerly wrapped his hand around her forearm to steady her. She was grateful to see him shoot her a small, encouraging smile. Gus might not have reacted well to her suggestion but he was still her friend. She could still count on him to be there for her, even if he didn’t agree with her. That gave her more strength than she had realised she needed.

Kikimora sat lay on the small cot against the wall of her cell, pillows propping up her torso, arms linked behind her head and one leg slung over the other in a repose of utter relaxation. If she had not been wearing a brown prison outfit identical to Cutburn’s, or been locked behind iron bars, she could have been mistaken for a vacationer lounging by a swimming pool.

“You took your sweet time,” she sneered by way of greeting. “What, did you get lost in this big not-so-empty place?”

“You have five minutes,” Master Guard Samkisi said sternly. “No more.”

Kikimora pointed at Willow and Gus. “Just those two. I don’t want to talk to you or the centaur.”

“We ain’t leavin’ you alone with them,” Chiron interjected. “So you can forget about that.”

Kikimora extended one arm, ostensibly to examine her claws. They looked sharper than Willow remembered. “Then I’m not telling them what I know about their precious Golden Guard, Belos and my former associate, Head Bitch Cutburn.”

Willow’s heart did a little flip in her chest. Kikimora was full of secrets – her own, yes, but moreover everyone else’s. She had known about the grimwalker graveyard before anyone else. She had known that Belos was aware of Eda and the CATTs’ plans on the Day of Unity. According to Hunter, nothing stayed secret for long in the castle when Kikimora was around. She usually traded what she found out for favours or to buy the emperor’s goodwill. For Kikimora, secrets were a commodity, not a sign of friendship. It made sense that she was trying her old tricks again now.

But still, she might know something they could use to save Hunter. Whatever her price, Willow could not risk losing that chance to save him. She had told Chiron that she would do whatever it took and she had meant it: she loved Hunter and wasn’t willing to let him fade away just because saving him might involve talking to one of their oldest, most annoying enemies.

“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “We’re used to Kikimora. She can’t put one over on us, no matter how smart she thinks she is.”

Kikimora’s smile only widened, showing extremely pointy teeth.

“We can handle ourselves,” Gus added. “And it’s only for five minutes.”

“Chop-chop, little jailer. Giddy-up, not-so-little horsy.” Kikimora twinkled her claws in farewell. “The Heroes of the Isles and I have things to discuss.”

Grudgingly, Chiron and Samkisi retreated to the far end of the walkway, where they waited, arms folded and ears pricked for any sign of trouble.

“Well, Kikimora.” Willow folded her own arms too, jutting her chin out for good measure. It was a nice, strong stance and made her feel less like an imposter pretending she knew what she was doing. “We’re here. What did you want to tell us?”

“Is that all you have to say to me after all this time? Why, it’s been, what, four years since I last laid eyes on either of you at my trial. You’re both grown so much. You’re not the little children I knew anymore.” Kikimora pretended to wipe a tears from her eyes. “You witchlings do grow up so fast. Well, those of you who get to grow up, that is.”

A chill ran down Willow’s spine. Was she referring to Hunter?

“Tick-tock, Kikimora.” Gus adopted a similar pose to Willow. She wondered whether he was mirroring her or if he got an actual confidence boost from faking confidence too. “You only have five minutes with us, remember.”

“Ugh. Fine.” Kikimora hopped off the bed and advanced to the front of her cell. She did not come close enough to touch the iron bars but closed the distance enough that she could speak in a low voice and not be overheard by anyone else. “I know you came here today with Chiron to ask Petty Butt-burn how you can save your precious Golden Guard’s life.”

“How do you know that?” Willow asked suspiciously.

In answer, Kikimora cupped behind her ears. “Have you seen the size of these things? I used to be able to hear an echo-mouse sneeze inside the castle walls with these. People always thought they were speaking in complete privacy but I was always listening.” She smiled toothily. “Always. Oh, I heard such interesting things when people thought no-one else could hear them. So many illicit love affairs. So many resentful words about friends people would smile at the next time they saw each other. So many times I reported on those being disloyal to the throne and had them … taken care of. And, of course, I heard things from that throne room that … well, I’m sure the Golden Guard has already shared that with you, of course, since you’re so close and all.”

Beside Willow, Gus went very still. They both knew Belos used to hurt Hunter. When he failed in tasks he had been set, when missions went awry for reasons Hunter could not help, even just if Belos was having a bad day, his ‘nephew’ would be summoned and would pay the price in that room. There was a reason why, on a long ago Halloween night, possessed and barely able to keep his own body from murdering his friends, Hunter had yelled at Belos that he wished he would never have to set foot in that throne room ever again.

And apparently Kikimora had been aware of all of it the whole time.

Willow’s stomach roiled. “This isn’t making us want to spend the full five minutes with you, Kikimora.”

“Oh? But then how will I be able to tell you of the conversations I heard Belos have with people other than the Golden Guard?”

Willow narrowed her gaze at the little demon. Play it cool. Don’t show how interested you are. “And this is something we care about … why?”

“Because I can tell you things that Hettie refuses to.”

“Things like what?”

“Things like how to save your little Golden Guard from turning into compost.”

Willow’s heart flipflopped again. “Tell us.”

“Ah, ah, ah, little plant witch.” Kikimora waggled a single claw from side to side. Willow resisted the urge to reach through the bars and snap it off. “I have something you want. You have something I want.”

“What in Titan’s name do we have that you want?” Gus asked in genuine surprise. “Your Abomitron was trashed years ago and your hand-dragon is happy in his new life on a Southern Plains ranch rounding up herds of sheepsquatch.”

For the first time, a frown twitched at the edges of Kikimora’s expression, but her smile beat it back. “I’m fully aware of all that. What I want is much simpler than a robot or a glorified pet.” She leaned forward. “I want my freedom.”

Instantly, Willow’s heart sank. “That’s not in our power to give. You were imprisoned here by the Isles Elected Council for your crimes after a fair trial. Until you’ve served your sentence, there’s nothing anyone can do, least of all us.”

“True, but you can break me out. And don’t pretend you can’t. The human broke into the Conformatorium plenty of times and she doesn’t even have magic like you do.”

Gus frowned. “We can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Kikimora’s pitch rose a little. “Don’t you care about your little Golden Guard?”

“I mean we physically can’t. Neither of us are strong enough to take on the Conformatorium’s new defences. What, do you expect Willow to rip off the bars to your cell with magical vines – iron bars that make magic not work right around them?”

Disappointment in herself rose inside Willow like bile. “And we can’t in good conscience inflict you on the Boiling Isles again. You’ve hurt too many people before. If you got out, you’d be a danger to innocents.” She swallowed the hot tightness in her throat. “Hunter would never forgive us for that.”

Chiron shifted his weight, making a single clip-clop with his hooves. Kikimora’s eyes slid towards him and then back to Willow and Gus again with panicky speed. She was sounding less confident now. Had she really expected them to comply with her demand right away without question? Her arrogance had certainly not gotten any smaller with time.

“Then barter my freedom with those who can grant it. Tell them I have information to save the grimwalker but I won’t tell it unless I at least can live outside of this iron-infused concrete box. It doesn’t have to be just letting me walk out the damn door: I could live in the guard quarters or a secure safe house or something.”

“We can’t.”

“You can try.”

Willow bit her lip. She was right. They could try. And what did they have to lose by trying? She turned. “Head Guard Samkisi?”

In a trice, the man was beside her. Willow blinked. Had he warped or was he just really fast? “Yes, Miss Park?”

“Um, Kikimora has a, uh, proposition. She has information that might be able to save the Gol- Hunter Noceda’s life and says she’ll share it if she’s allowed to live someplace other than her cell.”

He shook his head instantly. “Impossible.”

“Dragonshit!” Kikimora spat. “You just like seeing me rotting away in here! You’re a malicious cretin, Samkisi!”

“The terms of your sentence were very clear. You live in a cell, just like the rest. You’re not special. When your sentence is complete, you go free, not before.”

“What if …” Willow bit her lip again. She tasted blood this time. “What if she was allowed outings? Like daytrips outside the Conformatorium? And then came back here afterwards?”

Kikimora bobbed her head. “I’d be amenable to that.”

But Samkisi still shook his head. “Too dangerous. She’d escape at the first opportunity and be at large amongst the populace.”

“I would not!” Kikimora protested. “Everyone in the whole Boiling Isles knows what I look like and would hand me back to the authorities in a heartbeat the moment you put a price on my recapture! I need to be released legally for it to count for anything – time out of here in exchange for the Golden Guard’s life.”

“What about one outing in exchange for one piece of information from her?” Willow asked, hating the way her own voice wobbled at the end. She was supposed to be strong. Tough. Hard as cactus-spikes Willow. Not weak little half-a-witch. “A heavily guarded, supervised outing to a place of her choosing on a day and time of your choice, so you could be sure she wouldn’t run away?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Park. The answer is still no.”

Willow bunched her fists. She was ready to argue but Chiron cut in.

“Hey now, Samkisi, hold on there a minute. You’ve allowed supervised visits outside the Conformatorium for prisoners before.”

“Terra Snapdragon’s visit to her father’s grave on the anniversary of his death and Osran’s daughter’s wedding were exceptional circumstances.”

“If that’s the precedent, then what about if I went to visit family in Palm Stings?” Kikimora asked desperately. “Under guard and whatnot, like the plant witch said. Anything for some time outside this place. I’ll even wear iron chains on my ankles while I’m there as a sign of trust.”

Willow thought they could not trust Kikimora as far as they could throw her, but squashed the thought. Hope was prickling through her.

Samkisi looked thoughtful. “I … suppose that sounds reasonable. We’d have to petition your family first to see if they’d be willing, though.”

“And if they’re not? Could I visit Palm Stings anyway, even if it’s not to see them? I haven’t been there since I was a child. Seeing it again after staring at the walls of this place for four years sounds positively magnificent, even with guards in tow.”

Samkisi sighed heavily and held up an index finger. “All right. One outing, under supervision and with contingencies put in place by me. And in exchange, you tell these kids how to save their friend.”

Kikimora beamed so wide, her face seemed ninety-percent teeth. “Wonderful.”

“But you have to tell us what you know of how to save Hunter first,” Willow added quickly. “If you truly overheard our conversation with Cutburn earlier, then you know his situation is very time sensitive.”

Kikimora waved a hand. “Yes, yes, I know, I know. Don’t get your petals in a twist.”

Willow was trying not to bounce on the balls of her feet with anticipation, the way she did before flyer derby games. Gus’s hand found hers and they waited with baited breath for what she had to say.

But Kikimora instead stuck out her hand expectantly. “Shake on it in an everlasting oath. I get to go to Palm Stings for a vacation in exchange for telling you what you want to hear. And if either of us break our word, um …” She visible fumbled for a suitable punishment. “The party who breaks the oath will have every one of their fingers broken by the oath’s magic. There. That way you know I’m on the level, since I have far more fingers than you to be broken.”

Before anyone could stop her – or she could think better of it – Willow dropped Gus’s hand, reached through the iron bars and drew a spell circle. She clasped Kikimora’s claws through it, pumping her much smaller arm up and down in a brisk handshake that nearly pulled Kikimora off her feet.

“I agree to this Everlasting Oath.”

“Willow!” Gus exclaimed.

Too late. The circle expanded, sweeping through Willow and Kikimora. Willow felt the magic settle into her, seeping into her bile sac in a way that made the very centre of her ribcage itch.

“It’s done,” Kikimora said with glee. “I’m finally getting out of this stinkhole! Ha ha!”

“Not without telling us what you’ve agreed to first,” Willow snapped.

Kikimora rolled her eyes. “Fine. Whatever. It’s not like you’ll be able to do anything with the information anyway.”

Stomach rolling at those words, Willow tried not to meet Gus’s eye as Kikimora began talking.

Chapter Text

“Cutburn is under a geas,” Kikimora said simply. She folded her arms like she had said something significant and was waiting for their stunned reactions.

When a minute passed with no-one saying anything, nor even a single gasp, she wilted.

“What’s a gesh?” Gus asked.

“Geas.”

“That’s what I said.” Gus frowned. “Isn’t it?”

Kikimora sighed. “A geas can be compared with a curse.”

“She’s been cursed?”

“Willingly so.”

“She willingly cursed herself to always tell the truth?”

“No, she willingly entered into a geas that prohibits her from knowingly telling untruths.”

“Wait, did you just say geese?”

Kikimora’s left eye twitched. “Are you trying to be aggravating or does it just come naturally?”

Gus shook his head. “I’m trying to follow this ‘big secret’ you’re telling us and frankly it’s not all that.” He folded his arms. “Head Witch Chiron already figured out that she’s cursed not to lie.”

“Well, I theorised it,” Chiron corrected.

Kikimora’s eye twitched again. “She not under a curse. She’s under a geas, which is only like a curse – and it’s not a one-to-one comparison, since a curse has no benefits for the person under it and a geas does.”

Gus chose not to point out that Eda Clawthorne’s harpy form was a living, breathing contradiction of that. Then again, the owl beast was hardly a run-of-the-mill ordinary curse, so maybe it was best not to judge all curses by it.

Kikimora took what he presumed was a steadying breath. “A geas is a magical personal restriction, similar to being under a curse if that curse was blended with a vow or deep promise. Yet unlike an ordinary curse, keeping to the vow you’ve made can also bring you power and great blessings. A geas is a spell forbidding some specific action in exchange for lack of punishment and also the reaping of predetermined rewards – though the rewards vary depending on who has laid the geas over the person.”

Gus tried to follow what she was saying, he really did. Evidently his struggle showed on his face because Kikimora made a noise had last heard when he accidentally stepped on Emmiline’s tail.

“Think of it like an everlasting oath,” she gritted. “Everlasting oaths magically bind you to perform some task or other and if you don’t comply, the spell punishes you. Like, for example, the one your plant witch friend here and I just swore to each other: if I don’t tell you the absolute truth of what I know about Hettie and the Golden Guard, the spell will automatically break my fingers, and if my vacation to Palm Stings is reneged upon, all her fingers will be broken instead.”

Gus did not miss how Willow instinctively curled her fingers into her palms. Clover, balanced on Willow’s shoulder, rubbed at her witch’s face encouragingly.

“But an everlasting oath is made just to ensure both parties stick to an agreement. It is a purely punitive contract and can be undone by the caster if they so choose – much like the youngest Blight girl undid her oath with the human after their Covention duel – yes, I know about that. A geas, however, cannot be undone by the caster once it has been cast, even if they regret it or change their mind. It is permanent and lifelong. Once you agree to a geas, you have it until you die or you break it – whichever comes first. And unlike either an everlasting oath or a curse, a geas can be good for the one under it. If someone under a geas violates the rules laid upon them, they will suffer punishment. But, conversely, the observing of the rules of a geas can bring that person untold power, wealth, luck, prowess in battle or some skill they hold dear, or other blessings.”

Abruptly, Master Guard Samkisi stood a little straighter, as if a thought had just occurred to him. “Cú Chulainn!”

Gus, Willow and Chiron turned to him in bewilderment but Kikimora smiled approvingly.

“Yes. Now you’re getting it.”

“What’s Cuckoo Lane?” Willow asked.

Samkisi shook his head. “Cú Chulainn. From the stories of Tír na nÓg?” At their blanks looks he asked: “Didn’t your parents ever tell you Sidhe-tales as a child?”

Perry Porter had not had time to read to his young son from The Big Book of Sidhe-Tales. He had been too busy building his career and trying his best not to let grief over his wife consume him, which had led to a childhood of nannies, babysitters and Gus trying to impress his dad with how grown-up and self-sufficient he could be. In retrospect, he had also been trying to justify his father leaving him home alone so much; Gus clearly didn’t need watching over, or Perry would totally be doing that. He wasn’t, and it couldn’t possibly be neglect, so it had to be because Gus was just so mature for his age. Being skipped ahead in school had only compounded that feeling and it had taken a long time to accept that Perry wasn’t the best parent he could have been while Gus was growing up.

“My dads didn’t really like me reading Sidhe-tales,” Willow confessed. “They thought I’d get too scared of all the children being stolen away to be eaten while Sidhe left changelings in their place to eat their parents.”

Sidhe-tales were supposed to teach children morals, values and the mind their parents, Gus knew, but they were rather grim in how they went about that. It made sense that Willow’s dads might eschew reading them to as sensitive a little girl as Willow had been when a witchling. After all, children with lacking or no magic were the ones Sidhe usually targeted to steal away, since they could not fight back.

“Well, Cú Chulainn was a storybook hero,” said Samkisi. “The strongest witch who ever lived, unbeaten in battle and irresistible to women. He fought his way across the land with a weapon in one hand and a flagon of ale in the other, a trail of conquests in his wake. His power was from a magical vow he made in his youth after catching the Queen of the Sidhe bathing in the woods, hiding her clothes and refusing to give them back unless she gave him a boon from the Sidhe royal treasury.”

“Sounds like a stand-up kind of guy,” Chiron muttered in thinly veiled disgust. “Real good example to kids readin’ his story.”

“Just wait,” said Samkisi. “Well, the Queen refused because she was territorial about her possessions, but he wouldn’t give her clothes back otherwise, so she offered him an alternative: a magical vow she would honour so long as he stuck to a few rules. She told him that he would be the strongest warrior in the land and remain unbeaten, which would bring him great riches and lots of women, as long as he never ever ate the meat of a dog, nor ever refused food offered to him by a woman. If he broke either vow, he would not only lose his powers, he would die within a day and a night. He agreed, swore the vow to the Queen and they both went their separate ways. Cú Chulainn became everything the Queen had promised and more, so he followed the restrictions of his vow. But when one of his enemies found out, they got an old woman to sneak into Cú Chulainn’s encampment one night, disguised as a servant, and offer him a plate of cooked dog meat. Cú Chulainn was forced to break either one vow to the Queen or the other, which led to his death the next day. The moral of the tale was to always keep your promises but also to beware the Sidhe, for they can be wily and boons granted by them can be curses in disguise.”

“They weren’t just vows he was under,” said Kikimora. “They were geasa.”

“Geese-ay?” echoed Gus.

“No, geasa!” Kikimora slapped her own forehead. “Oh, this vacation will be so worth it.”

“I’m confused,” said Chiron, tugging at his beard in a habit so thoughtless that it had to be a longstanding one. “You’re talkin’ about Hettie being under a geas. But it sounds like they’re something exclusively from old Sidhe-tales.”

“I am and they are.”

“But Sidhe-tales are just silly children’s stories – bogeys to make little witchlings behave. They’re not real.”

“Aren’t they?” Kikimora asked smugly.

Willow’s eyes widened behind her glasses. Kikimora grinned at her.

“Ah, I think the little plant witch just figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” Gus turned. “Willow?”

“But that’s impossible,” said Willow.

“Is it? Humans used to be thought of as impossible too. Then the Wittebane brothers arrived through a portal and … well, we all know how that turned out. They were very real.”

Gus looked at Kikimora, then back at his best friend. “Willow, what’s she talking about?”

“Hettie Cutburn,” Willow said, in a voice that suggested not even she believed what she was saying. “She’s a Sidhe.”

“What? No, that can’t be right. Sidhe aren’t real. They’re just stories – old legends from before the Savage Ages.”

“Like grimwalkers?” Kikimora purred.

Gus fell silent.

It seemed too bizarre to be true. And yet …

Willow’s hands clenched in and out of fists at her sides. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, you’re right.”

Kikimora held up her hands. “My fingers are all unbroken, so I definitely am.”

“Let’s say you’re right,” Willow ploughed on gamely. “What does any of this have to do with Hunter? You’ve explained to us why Cutburn can’t lie but not what she’s hiding that might save him.”

“Impatient, aren’t you?” Kikimora remarked. “You haven’t even asked who put the geas on Buttburn or why.”

“Is it relevant to saving Hunter?”

“It might be, since the reason she won’t leave the Conformatorium is because she’s wanted by the rest of the sidhe as an escaped criminal.”

Oh, this just kept getting better and better.

“There are other sidhe out there, living amongst witches and demons?” Chiron asked.

But Kikimora shook her head. “No. Cutburn is the only Sidhe on the Boiling Isles. The rest are in Tír na nÓg – the world of the Sidhe.”

“Please don’t tell me there’s another portal door out there somewhere,” Gus said quickly.

“Nothing so base, illusionist. Only Cutburn knows how to get into Tír na nÓg from here and she’s definitely not telling. But if word was to get out that she’s free and no longer under Belos’s protection, there are ways for those hunting her to cross to our world.”

“Belos’s protection?”

“Why else do you think the Sidhe haven’t come for her already? The Sidhe and humans have a complicated history even I don’t know all the details of, just that Belos and Cutburn had an agreement that he would look after her in exchange for her help perfecting his grimwalkers.”

Ice water sluiced down Gus’s spine.

“Grimwalkers are unnatural. The magic used to make them is not of this world. It doesn’t fit here. That’s why so few people know of how to make them.”

“What?” Willow whispered.

“Oh yes,” Kikimora smiled, so wide that Gus could see all of her molars gleaming in the back of her mouth. “The legend of grimwalkers was left behind when the Sidhe fled to Tír na nÓg and sealed the way behind them before the Savage Ages, but Belos found out about it and made it his life’s purpose to recreate his poor dead brother that way. But they were always defective, you see. Failures. That’s why he always made them wear masks, to hide their deformities. What, you thought that was a fashion choice? That’s why he never called any of them by his brother’s name – because they quite plainly weren’t his dear, dead Caleb. But then Cutburn arrived and she knew about grimwalkers. So they struck a bargain. He would disguise her as a witch and protect her within the coven system, give her a sigil to mask her magical signature from those after her, and she would work on his grimwalkers until he got one he thought was good enough to be his new brother. Or at least, that was the plan – until he threw her under the transport worm with the rest of us on the Day of Unity.”

Gus stared at Kikimora, jaw dropped.

She shrugged. “Like I said, I was always listening.”

“It’s a wonder Belos didn’t assassinate you long before the Day of Unity,” Chiron muttered.

“What makes you think he didn’t try?” Kikimora said archly.

Willow’s throat bobbed. “But Hunter –”

“Yes, yes, I know, I know. How can any of this save your precious boyfriend? Ugh, you people.” Kikimora rolled her eyes. “The geas on Cutburn prohibits her from volunteering information about the Sidhe directly to witches or demons – but not to humans. That was how Belos got around it. I didn’t understand until later how he managed it but, after everything was over, it made sense. I overheard her talking to him about grimwalkers and she wasn’t punished for revealing anything to me because she wasn’t volunteering it to me directly, she was telling a human while a demon listened in.” Kikimora drew her hands apart and brought them sharply together again in a brisk clap. “So get one of your human friends to ask her directly and she’ll have to tell you how to save him from decomposing while he’s still alive.”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“What’s a gesh?” Gus asked.

“Geas.”

“That’s what I said.” Gus frowned. “Isn’t it?”

~ The word ‘geas’ is Old Irish, also known as Old Gaelic, and literally means ‘taboo’. In Gaelic myths and legends a geas is a form of magical compulsion. Those under a geas are required to follow certain conditions or risk suffering a penalty bestowed by fate. If you have more than one such geas placed upon you, and they come into conflict, you're screwed, which is often what happened to people in those old legends. A geas usually takes the form of either a command or a prohibition: "You shall do this" or "You shall not do this" followed by "or this will happen". In practical terms, the geas may be prophetic, bringing about its own fulfilment either through manipulation of cosmic events or by simply instilling into the subject a compulsion which he cannot resist. If the geas can be broken, and is, doing so typically brings about the death of the subject, either directly or by cosmic retribution. I’m playing fast and loose with a lot of Celtic mythology and lore in this story but the geas survived the translation into fanfic relatively intact. Gus’s confusion over how to say it is a reference to the mispronunciations of the word ‘geas’ in video games and other media over the years (it’s pronounced like this, by the way).

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Geas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geas

“Well, Cú Chulainn was a storybook hero.”

~ So like I said, I’m playing fast and loose with Celtic mythology here, much like Dana Terrace did with historical witches and demonology in TOH as a whole. Cú Chulainn is a warrior hero and demigod in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. The thing about him not being allowed to eat dog meat or refuse food offered by a woman, and that being what did him in, is true to his legend, though the bit with the Sidhe Queen is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%BA_Chulainn

“From the stories of Tír na nÓg?”

~ In Irish mythology Tír na nÓg is one of the names for the Celtic Otherworld. It is an island paradise and supernatural realm of everlasting youth, beauty, health, abundance and joy, populated by supernatural creatures and peoples who used to live in the mortal realm but have since left there and closed the way behind them to humans. Various Irish mythical heroes visit Tír na nÓg at an invitation from one of its magical residents (though things don’t always go well for humans who go there).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%ADr_na_n%C3%93g

Sidhe-tales were supposed to teach children morals, values and the mind their parents, Gus knew, but they were rather grim in how they went about that. It made sense that Willow’s dad might eschew reading them to a sensitive little girl like Willow had been as a witchling.

~Seriously, read the original Grimm’s fairytales. They’re all sorts of wild, gory and feature way more r*pe than I ever would have expected of stories that are now more famously aimed at children.

Chapter Text

Luz was helping apply aloe to Hunter’s scars when Willow and Gus arrived in a flurry. Hunter’s skin had always been an issue since his possession, Belos’s presence having left his body weaker in so many ways and stronger in others. Flapjack’s magic infused him still but he had the moisturise twice a day or else the dry, rough skin of his scars split, even after all this time. Luz sometimes forgot to do the same with her own scars – the little one in her eyebrow and other, bigger ones, leftover from the battle in the Titan’s head, that her clothes usually covered and which no-one except Amity and her Mom had ever seen. She knew the uncomfortable pinch that came when she forgot her routine. Hunter’s scars were so big and spread over so much of his body that it took a lot longer for him to moisturise it all. Now, intubated and weakened from seizures, he needed help.

And boy did Hunter hate accepting help. Even though he knew it was necessary, even though he was much better about it than he used to be, Luz could tell from the set of his jaw and the tension in his shoulders that he really, really hated accepting help. Even hers. Even Mamá’s.

They both looked up when the door banged open, frozen, Hunter with his arm outstretched, Luz with a hooked finger full of green glop poised over his inner elbow. Gus and Willow all but fell into the room.

“Cheese Louise, guys, where the fire?” Luz joked, summoning an attempt at levity. She was so damn tired. All she really wanted was to curl up in the armchair she could see in the corner of Hunter’s room and sleep. But she was trying to act positive – for Hunter’s sake, for Mamá’s and for her own. She would manifest Hunter’s recovery through the power of positive thinking alone if she could. “You two finally finished what you were doing?”

“Is the orchard okay?” Hunter asked, voice scratchy. He narrowed his eyes at the panting, wheezing pair. Concern rolled off him. “Willow? Gus?”

“Guys?” Luz frowned. “What’s wrong?”

Gus held up a finger in a ‘one moment’ gesture. He braced himself against the wall, hands on his thighs, and sucked in breath after breath. Willow recovered faster, fixing both Hunter and Luz with a determined gaze that made all jokes shrivel up in Luz’s throat.

“We have news.” A bead of sweat dribbled down Willow’s temple. Damp patches showed under the arms of her shirt. She looked like she had done an entire flyer derby practise in her heaviest protective gardening clothes. Abruptly she frowned, looking at the new contraptions now hooked up to Hunter. Enchantments hummed tunelessly as they worked healing magic upon his lungs and ravaged throat. “What happened to you while I was gone?!”

Hunter winced. “I’m fine, Willow, really.”

“Don’t lie to me because you’re trying to protect me from the truth, Hunter. We talked about this.”

He dipped his gaze. “There … was an incident.”

“An ‘incident’?” Luz could hear the quote marks in Willow’s voice. “What does that mean?”

“It’s all in hand, Willow. The healers are taking good care of Hunter. But you said you have news?” Luz interrupted, trying to dissipate the growing tension. “News about what?”

“About –”

“Y’know, it takes a lot to outgallop a horse,” remarked a voice from the hallway. A portly centaur entered the room, arms folded. “But you two young ‘uns managed it. Carriage had barely landed and you were outta there like a Bat Queen outta Tartarus.”

Hunter’s brown eyes widened. “Head Witch Chiron!”

“Meep,” Luz added intelligently.

“Howdy, Miss an’ Mister Noceda.” Chiron pointed at Willow. “Nu-uh, missy. Hold your tongue. We agreed in the carriage that you ain’t to say nuthin’ until I soundproof the room with a privacy bubble, an’ we ain’t doin’ that until at least one of his legal guardians is here.”

Willow scowled at him and rounded on Luz. “Where’s your mom? Or Darius? Are they here?”

After Camila’s breakdown earlier, Darius and Eda had taken her off to the cafeteria to talk over cups of the Boiling Isles’s best (non-horrific-tasting) tea. Eda had told Luz to stay put, so that Hunter would not be alone, and so that Camila could talk freely without her daughter there.

Luz wasn’t stupid; she knew this whole situation was reminding Camila too much of losing her husband. Luz had been too young back then to really understand that hospitals were not only places you went to get better, but places you went to die. She had assumed her dad would get better care at the fancy oncology unit they have specifically moved to Gravesfield to access, then he would come back to their new house to recover, so they would all move back to their old town again. It had never even occurred to Luz that her dad would not ever be coming out of the hospital again, or that the astronomical costs of his care would mean they were stuck in Gravesfield afterwards. Camila had done her best to cope with mounting bills, daily living costs, her own grief and caring for her daughter while Luz tried to puzzle her way through this strange new reality she found herself in: one where she had no father, no friends, no familiar surroundings and a mother who sometimes seemed like a stranger and asked her to be one too.

She would never, ever stop being grateful that their experiences in the Demon Realm had brought her and her mom closer together, and broken down the wall that had sprung up between them in the wake of that protracted loss.

Luz was getting some flashbacks of her own; being here and watching her loved-one struggle against an unknown sickness. But she had faith in Demon Realm healing magic more than she did in Human Realm medical science. Magic could do so much more stuff than technology could. It had literally worked miracles before. She had seen it with her own two human eyes. It had to be able to make Hunter better. It had to.

“Uh, sure,” she replied. “Both of them are. I can call –”

“Call them,” Willow commanded. “Tell them to come here immediately.”

Her voice was so clipped and authoritarian that Luz took an involuntary step back. She bumped up against the side of Hunter’s bed and he instinctively snapped a hand out to steady her. A hiss of pain slipped through his clenched teeth from the movement, though he smothered it.

Willow clearly noticed though. She crossed the room and took one of Hunter’s hands between both of hers, holding it up to her chest like she was going to make him to feel her heartbeat. “Please, Luz. We have answers for what’s happening to Hunter and maybe a way to cure him.”

Hunter’s eyes widened. A tiny flame leapt up inside Luz, so bright and hopeful that she didn’t even remember pulling her phone from her pocket or bringing up her contacts.

“Mamá?”

"¿Querida? ¿Qué pasó? Suenas extraña. Is everything okay? Is Hunter all right?”

“Mamá, is Darius with you?”

In the background Luz heard Eda and Darius distantly arguing over something or other.

“Uh, yes, he’s here. Why?”

“You need to come to Hunter’s room right now, Mamá. All of you. It’s important.”

The Boiling Sea was noted for many things: being boiling, for one thing, and the array of hardy flora and fauna that could make their home in such inhospitable environs. Sometimes fraternities from one of the Isles’ many universities would enact hazing rituals off the coast, daring each other to jump from cliffs into the frothing, boiling depths just to see who was stupid enough to do it – or strong enough to cast protective bubbles that would stop them being reduced to bones that floated back to the surface. More than once, drunken patrons of public houses would wander home, lose their footing and be found, half-dissolved, the next morning on the beach. If you were lucky, the water got you before the creatures in it did.

Against the backdrop of a glorious sunset, a shoal of cronefish leapt from the water, trying to catch incautious griffin chicks flying too close to the surface. They would not take on an adult that was out fishing but chicks and juveniles would fall to their poison quickly and be unable to escape being dragged into the depths to be eaten.

Suddenly, all the cronefish scattered, sensing the appearance of something above them that posed a greater threat than any adult griffin. Thought they did not have the rational thought processes to understand what had frightened them, their instincts screamed at them one insurmountable message: danger.

From the shore, it just looked like an evening mist was rolling in on the tide. It was actually quite pretty, though there was no-one around to see the sparkles of blue-green-pink light glinted in the swirling fog. The only eyes that might have seen belonged to the cronefish, and unlike most witches or demons, the cronefish showed excellent survival skills.

On the shore of the Boiling Isles, the Féth Fíada made landfall, and brought with it at least one witch’s doom.

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“Carriage had barely landed and you were outta there like a Bat Queen outta Tartarus.”

~ Side-fling to ‘Bat Out of Hell’, the legendary 1977 debut album by singer Meat Loaf and composer Jim Steinman. It is one of the best-selling albums in history and the front cover scared the shit out of me as a kid who saw it on my dad’s record shelf.

"¿Querida? ¿Qué pasó? Suenas extraña."

~ "Darling? What happened? You sound strange."

Against the backdrop of a glorious sunset, cronefish leapt from the water, trying to catch incautious griffin chicks flying too close to the surface.

~ Pun of stonefish, a venomous, dangerous sea creature whose poison is fatal to people stung by them. They are the most venomous fish known to humanity.

On the shore of the Boiling Isles, the Féth Fíada made landfall, and brought with it at least one witch’s doom.

~ The Féth Fíada is a magical mist or veil in Irish mythology, which members of the Tuatha Dé Danann use to enshroud themselves, rendering their presence invisible to human eyesight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A9th_f%C3%ADada

Chapter Text

Darius listened to Willow and Gus recount the events of their day, punctuated by Chiron when he felt they had missed some critical detail. With every word they said, Darius’s heart sank a little further. By the time they reached the part about Hettie Cutburn being an actual Titan-damn Sidhe, it was in his stomach and the acid there was burning holes greater even than those poked into it by his own guilt.

Darius was a flawed man. He knew it better than anyone else. He was vain, arrogant, pushy, prissy and so painstakingly stylish that Alador had once called him The Most Antithetical Abomination Master in the History of Ever. Every previous Head Witch of the Abomination Coven had been some chaotic hodgepodge who looked like they had bathed in slime twenty years ago and abandoned cleanliness thereafter. he took up the post, Darius had reinvented it to suit his own needs and never looked back.

“Don’t be someone people think you should be, Dari. Be the best version of yourself firmly enough and they’ll figure out a way of convincing themselves not only that’s who you should be, but that it was their idea all along. Your authentic self and staying true to it is the most important thing.”

Darius didn’t like to think of Orion much anymore. He had spent too long comparing Hunter with his mentor and had finally accepted that doing so was not fair to either of them.

Darius’s grief over not getting closure for Orion’s disappearance and presumed death had given way to resentment that spilled over onto the little boy who stepped into his place. Instead of questioning why a literal child was being trained to be the next Golden Guard, or why the Emperor was calling him ‘nephew’ despite never ever mentioning any other family, Darius had been wrapped up in his own grief and loss. Eventually he had turned those feelings outwards and formed each painful memory into a barb with which to punish the kid who never asked to be there in the first place. Hunter was painfully obedient, disgustingly eager, repulsively on board with all Belos’s stories of the Day of Unity. The Emperor was infallible, nearly godlike to him, and every adoring word out of Hunter’s mouth made Darius hate him more because Orion never bought into Belos’s schtick nearly as much.

It never occurred to him to ask why Hunter was so loyal and unrebellious for a kid his age.

It had made so much sense at the time. That probably said things about Darius that he wasn’t keen to revisit. He had left a little boy to be raised, abused and enthusiastically murdered by a madman, all because Hunter was a reminder of the things Darius had lost. He could not see the boy as an individual, just as a shadow of someone else he would have preferred to have around.

Just like Belos with his brother.

It made Darius sick to think about now. He would never truly be able to make up for leaving Hunter to grow up the way he had, but at the very least he could try to give him some stability going forward. Darius was flawed, yes, but he was trying to be better and he hoped that counted for something. And even if it did not, he would not stop trying to give Hunter the life he should have had all along.

Thoughts of Orion were inevitably tangled with his guilt over Hunter now. Yet the more Willow, Gus and Chiron spoke, the more Darius’s brain went back to his friend and mentor. He had seen Orion without the mask only once, the day before he was reported missing. Darius remembered being surprised at how young he looked and the then-discomfiting idea that he was being mentored by someone who was, at best, only a year older than him and pretty sickly-looking.

Darius had been nineteen when he lost his mentor. Had Orion’s body started to break down like Hunter’s was doing now? Had he, too, felt his lungs turn to stone inside him? Had he passed out while out on missions and woken up with a bloody nose inside his mask? Had he experienced other, heretofore unknown symptoms and coped with them all alone, unable to understand what was happening to him or to share them with his faithful student? Was that what had tipped him off that Belos had been lying to him – to everyone – or had it been something else?

Did any of that really matter? Orion had still ended up in the pit in the end. They had pulled his bones up with all the rest of the grimwalkers Belos had thrown away like they were garbage. There had been a media stink about it at the time – quite a lot of citizens begrudged giving Belos’s former henchmen anything resembling a proper funeral – so in the end Darius, Hunter, plus their friends and allies, had held a small, private ceremony to honour them and erected a memorial called Memorial To The Forgotten Dead. It was felt that keeping the words ‘grimwalker’ and ‘Golden Guards’ out of the wording would be for the best, to put off those who would desecrate the site for their own personal reasons.

Everyone had scars from Belos. Some people’s were just harder to see.

Darius watched Hunter’s face as Willow and Gus spoke. Hunter was terrible at disguising his expressions. He had lived too long with a golden mask covering his face. While he was better than he used to be, disguising his feelings was never going to be his forte. Every fleeting emotion played across his features in glorious technicolour. Yet Darius could not parse what he was thinking now. The more the two witches talked, the more Hunter’s face seemed to shut down, until it was just a pair of flat brown eyes in a sea of  carefully constructed neutrality. It would have been impressive if it weren’t so ill-timed.

“So we need to take Luz to see Cutburn,” Willow finished at last. “So she can force the truth out of her.”

“Force it?” Eda raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

“Cutburn has to answer if a human asks her directly about the Sidhe and grimwalkers.”

“But that’s not what you said.” Eda’s brows pinched into a contemplative frown. “You said she can volunteer information to humans who ask about those topics and not suffer any bad consequences from her gosh –”

“Geas.”

“Whatever. You said that won’t punish her for talking to a human, not that a human being the one to ask her questions will magically compel an answer out of her.”

“Then we’ll use whatever means necessary to make her volunteer what she knows,” Willow snapped.

“No.”

Darius blinked, hand falling away from where it had been tapping against his chin. Willow looked stunned. Everyone was gazing at the bed, where Hunter’s expression still had not changed.

“No?” Willow echoed. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

“I mean I don’t want you getting involved with Hettie Cutburn or Sidhe or whatever else she has going on. nothing good can come from the kind of knowledge that created grimwalkers – that allowed Belos to make and discard so many copies of his brother for so long.”

“You came from that knowledge,” Willow pointed out. “That’s one good thing.”

The tiny movement of Hunter’s eyebrows was nearly invisible to the untrained eye but Darius noticed it. “Debateable.”

“Uh, no. Absolutely not debateable,” Luz interjected. “Don’t make me hug you and yell praises at you for all the good things you’ve done, dude.”

“I can start listing things off,” Gus added.

Hunter looked away. “Regardless, I don’t want any of you to endanger yourselves by getting mixed up in … whatever this is. Hettie Cutburn was a dangerous person during her time at court and everyone avoided her if they could – including me. Her being a Sidhe doesn’t change that. She was cruel and spiteful and unpredictable. She liked to hurt people who came to her for help. And no, I’m not going to give you examples, just trust me on that one. I don’t want you guys anywhere near her and I especially don’t want you to put yourselves in a position where you might become indebted to her. Not for my sake.”

“Indebted?” It was the first thing Camila had said since she arrived and Luz filled her in on what she had missed. Her cheeks were still stained with the remnants of mascara she had not had time to fix after crying it all off her lashes. Darius had planned to use his own kit to redo her make-up but Luz’s call had precluded that.

“Sidhe-tales are full of stories about how you should never let yourself get into a position where you owe a Sidhe anything,” Hunter said. “If Cutburn offers to trade information for a favour, I know you’d all take her up on that because that’s the kind of stupidly generous thing you do, but owing a Sidhe a favour is really, really dangerous according to the stories, without that Sidhe also being Hettie Cutburn. She’s sneaky. She’d use you up and throw you away in a heartbeat if it benefitted her. And she’s already admitted she hates us all for ending Belos. I won’t let you take that chance.”

“That’s not a decision you get to make for us, Hunter,” Willow said softly.

“Then let me put it this way: I am begging you not to go back there and talk to her.” Hunter looked at his girlfriend and let his expression soften into something pleading. It was still hard around the edges with what Darius now recognised as someone holding off a panic attack with both hands and a cattle prod. “Please, Willow. Don’t. I’m not worth it.”

“You are absolutely worth it,” Willow said unfalteringly. She wiggled her hands under his armpits, to where he had folded his arms and hidden his shaking hands. His fingers were trembling. Hunter was terrified. “I love you, Hunter Noceda. And I’m not going to let you die without a fight.”

Hunter’s throat bobbed. “Please …”

She rubbed her thumbs over the backs of his hands, where his scars reached like the tiny roots of some wispy, dehydrated plant. “I love you,” she said, soft but insistent, all harshness evaporated from her voice. “I love you so much. I want you to be able to live, even if you hate me for doing it this way. And if you can’t forgive me for it, then so be it. At least you’ll be alive to hate and not forgive me.”

“I could never hate you,” Hunter said thickly.

“I will do whatever it takes to protect you, Hunter, because that’s how much I love you.”

His eyes were glossy with unshed tears. “I love you too. That’s why I don’t want you to do this. I want you to be safe.”

“Being safe is pointless if it means I have to let you go without exploring all possibilities on how to stop it.”

“You can’t stop it,” Hunter insisted, voice breaking. “You c-can’t … I’m … I’m a grimwalker. And it didn’t mean so much over the past couple of years but I am one and … a-and that means my body is … that I’m going to … g-going … to die soon …” His words withered away into a sob. “Oh Titan …”

Instantly, Willow, Luz and Gus were on him, wrapping their arms around him in careful hugs. Hunter brought his hands up to his face and sobbed into his palms, trying to smother the noise and shaking his head from side to side like denying the truth would make it simply not be.

Hunter was not just sick. He was dying.

He was dying.

The truth hit Darius like a freight train.

Hunter was dying. And before he died, his body would betray him, piece by piece. He would lose his dignity, his autonomy and, finally, his life. And he was terrified of that – but even more terrified at what his loved ones might try to do to prevent it. Even in the face of his own painful death, Hunter was thinking of everyone else before himself.

Someone touched Darius’s elbow. He turned to see Camila looking up at him, fresh tears brimming behind her glasses. Yet despite this, she looked so blisteringly determined that he instantly knew what she wanted him to do. Without saying a word, he agreed to it.

Hunter was dying.

Hettie Cutburn might know how to stop it.

And Darius was a Coven Head; one of the few witches able to get into the Conformatorium without being burned up by its defensive spells.

Darius grasped Camila’s shoulder and pulled on his magic. Purple abomination ooze funnelled up around them. There was not even time to see the reactions of everyone at this; in an instant, the hospital room had vanished and they were standing on the walkway surrounding the Conformatorium’s central atrium.

Hettie Cutburn looked up, startled. Darius took grim satisfaction in being able to surprise her. It made up for the ache in his bile sac at the sudden exposure to so much iron.

“Deamonne! What are you doing here? And who have you –” Her questions choked off into an ignoble splutter. Though she was wearing a blindfold, Darius could tell she was staring at Camila. “Oh no.”

“Saludos, señora Sidhe,” Camila said in a voice as iron as the bars between them. “I am Hunter’s mother. I’ve come to ask you a few questions. And if you know what is good for you, you’re going to answer every single one of them.”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

Darius didn’t like to think of Orion much anymore. He had spent too long comparing Hunter with his mentor and had finally accepted that doing so was not fair to either of them.

~ Orion is a name that means (amongst other things) ‘great hunter’. In Greek mythology, Orion was a mighty hunter and the son of Poseidon before Zeus placed him among the stars as the constellation that now bears his name.

Had he experienced other, heretofore unknown symptoms and coped with them all alone, unable to understand what was happening to him or to share them with his faithful student?

~ Not me making an MLP: FiM reference in 2023. Nope. No siree. Not me.

“Saludos, señora Sidhe.”

~ “Greetings, Sidhe lady.”

Chapter Text

Camila Noceda knew pain.

She knew it intimately. She knew it from her work at the veterinary clinic. She knew it from the court cases where she testified against cruel people who tortured animals for fun, who still managed to go free in the end. She knew what it felt like to be kicked, both physically and metaphorically, by those stronger than her. She knew the feeling of fists against the side of her head. And she knew the pain of loss. Oh, did she know the pain of loss. And over the years, she had learned how to take the pain she felt and turn it into something else.

So when she looked at Hettie Cutburn and saw the other woman rise to her full height, clearly trying to intimidate her into submission, Camila felt nothing but rage.

“¡No te atrevas a tratar de intimidarme!”

Cutburn paused. “Is that some kind of human cantrip you’re mumbling? If so, it’s not working on me.”

"Dios, dame fuerzas." Camila took a breath. “So you know that I am human.”

“Of course I do. You stink of banality.”

“And I know that you are Sidhe.”

A tendon in Cutburn’s cheek jumped. “Kikimora has a mouth bigger than her ears.”

“You and that bastardo, Belos, had an agreement that he would look after you in exchange for your help perfecting his grimwalkers. And now that he is gone and his protection with him, you are hiding out here, in this prison, behind all this iron and all these protective spells, so that those hunting you will not find you.” Camila folded her arms. “Does that about sum it up?”

The tendon jumped again, faster this time. Cutburn was grinding her teeth and trying not to let it show. Camila took a grim kind of satisfaction from that, though not enough to erase from her mind the memory of Hunter sobbing into his hands in his hospital bed. She squared her shoulders. Her son needed her and she was not about to let him down.

After all, Camila Noceda knew pain. Moreover, she knew she wanted nothing more than to prevent her family from feeling it as much as she was able.

Sometimes, she wondered when she had started thinking of Hunter as hers. It might have been when she heard Luz jokingly call him ‘family now’ at the dinner table and he did not argue, just got teary-eyed. It might have been when she first found him trying to stitch up the holes in the knees of his trousers and taught him how to use a sewing machine; teasing the first real smile out of him after he landed on her doorstep in the rain like a wet stray kitten. It might have been when she saw how protective he was over Luz, and again over Vee, despite Vee not trusting him. Maybe it had been when he had his first dissociation after a nightmare and Gus knocked on her door, scared and confused, and Camila had held Hunter’s head in her lap as he relived more trauma than most adults would be able to survive. Or maybe it had been the first time she realised he never talked about family back in the Boiling Isles, the way the others did, or things he missed about the Demon Realm, and she discovered he literally had nothing to go back to.

Regardless of when it had started, she was his mother now, and just like with all her children, she was willing to fight for her own against whatever might harm them.

“What do you want, human?” Cutburn asked tightly.

“I want answers. Everyone says you’re some super intelligent lady who’s an expert on grimwalkers.”

“Everyone would be correct.”

“I don’t much care what you are – witch or Sidhe or whatever – but I do care that you have information that may save my son’s life.”

Cutburn’s head jerked backwards. “Son? You’re not his real mother. You’re human. He’s a soulless thing.”

Camila’s rage flared. “He is not a thing! He is a person.”

“He is an object; a mere tool shaped to perfectly fit the Emperor’s hand. He is no more a person than a knife or a staff is.”

“Dios, dame mucha fuerza,” Camila muttered. “Did you make Hunter?”

“Not entirely but I was part of the process.”

“Did you make other grimwalkers for Belos?”

“Yes.”

“Are you truly an expert on grimwalker biology?”

“More or less, yes.”

“Are you answering me truthfully right now?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me how to save Hunter’s life?”

“No.”

Camila bunched her fists. “Why not?”

“Because I have no reason to. That grimwalker is the reason I lost my benefactor in this realm. I have no reason to want to save him. He endangered my life, so I take great delight in watching his rot away and all his little murderous friends agonising over how much pain he goes through before he dies.”

“You’re a monster.”

“Call me what you want, human. Unless you have something tantamount to what I’ve lost because of those children, I won’t be lifting a finger to help them.”

Camila’s brain whirred. Cutburn’s wording suggested there was a way to save Hunter, she just didn’t want to share it. “And what would be tantamount to your geas with Belos?”

Cutburn froze. “So you know about geasa,” she said softly. “How … interesting. Apparently Kikimora overheard more than I thought. I suspected she was listening in on our conversations but I could never be sure …” She tilted her head to one side, regarding Camila thoughtfully. “What would you be willing to give me to save your ‘son’, human?”

“Anything,” Camila said immediately.

She saw Darius frown from the corner of her eye. “Camila,” he hissed. “Be careful how you phrase things. Sidhe in the old stories love to find loopholes in the wording of those they talk to and take advantage of them.”

Cutburn laughed. Her strangely layered voice hurt Camila’s ears, like someone had badly edited the audio on an old movie and some parts were far too loud compared with others. “Listen to your pet slime-witch, human. Be wary of promising me ‘anything’. It is a very far-reaching word. Perhaps I would demand your blood-daughter in exchange for your fake-son. Would you pay that price to save him?”

Involuntarily, Camila skinned her lips back over her teeth and took a step away from the cell. Cutburn laughed again. It sounded like a train blaring its horn as it smashed into someone on the tracks.

“I didn’t think so. You say ‘anything’ but you don’t really mean it. The grimwalker doesn’t mean the same to you as your real family. Admit it.”

“Hunter is my real family,” Camila snarled.

“The grimwalker is a tool you’re using to make yourself feel benevolent,” Cutburn replied airily. “He had no home, no family, nothing and no-one, so you generously opened your heart to him and made him one of your own. But, in truth, you only did that to make yourself feel good. You enjoy that self-satisfaction that comes from doing a thing like him a good turn. You like that he owes you. you like that you own him.”

“You’re wrong,” Camila could not stop herself from saying. “No-one owns Hunter. He is his own person. And I love him. He is my son.”

“Then prove it.” Cutburn’s smile was like the ground splitting open to swallow Camila. “Give up your own life for his. That’s what I will trade for the secret to saving him.”

Camila’s ears filled with static. Darius grabbed her shoulder but she barely felt him. Her gaze was locked on Cutburn’s blindfold. She heard Darius speak but both he and Cutburn sounded like they were underwater.

“No deal, Hettie.”

“I’m not talking to you, Deamonne. Go away and leave me and the human alone.”

“Camila, we should leave. She doesn’t have any secrets to share. This is all just some obvious ploy to cause pain to Hunter and Luz because of what they did to Belos. She’s just trying to take you away from them because that will hurt them the most out of anything she could do.”

Camila did not move when he tried to pull her away.

“Camila?”

“What do you mean ‘give up my life’?” she asked hoarsely. “Do you mean to kill me?”

“The clever human learns fast,” Cutburn chuckled. “No. Though it would be fun to slit your throat and let Deamonne translocate your corpse back to your children for them to weep over, that does not actually help me with my own problems. And my problems are the only ones I actually care about, because they are mine. And what is mine is always the most important to me. You would do well to remember that. If helping you to save your ‘son’ aids me in keeping myself alive, then I might be persuaded to give you what you want.”

“Explain yourself, señora Sidhe.”

“Humans have a lifespan. Give me some of yours. I will take those years and live them as a human in the Human Realm, the same way I have lived as a witch here in the Demon Realm after Emperor Belos gave me my sigil and his protection.”

Camila considered this. “How would that even work?”

“Camila, no!”

She shook off Darius’s hold on her elbow. “Explain, señora Sidhe.”

“I would use my Sidhe magic to take the last, let’s say, ten years of your life and use them as my own now.”

“So I would die ten years earlier than I would otherwise?”

“Yes. I will take the years from the end of your life if those are the years you choose to give up. Or you can take years from the middle of your life, or from the start if you don’t mind missing your childhood. Whatever portion of your lifespan you choose to relinquish to me, I will live as my own in your world, as a human.”

“Camila!” Darius protested.

Camila narrowed her eyes at Cutburn. “Five.”

Cutburn stopped smiling. “Excuse me?”

“Five years. That is what I will give you of my lifespan. And only if the information you give me will actually save Hunter’s life. It must not be a ‘maybe’, it must be a certainty.”

Cutburn scowled. “A certainty is hard to come by when dealing with this kind of thing. You’re literally asking me how to flout the natural order of things.”

“And you’re literally asking me to sacrifice my life. For such a high price, I shall charge you a high fee. Otherwise, we shall find some other way of saving Hunter and you can deal with your problems yourself.”

“And you can do it outside the Conformatorium,” Darius added, sighing out the words with such frustrated acquiescence that Camila turned to look at him. “Because if you think I, as a Coven Head, am going to let you stay here sitting pretty while Hunter dies, you’ve got another damn thing coming.” He was clearly furious but nodded at Camila. “This is your decision, Camila. I don’t agree with it, but if you insist on making it, I will help you however I can.” His gaze slid sideways. “Including giving up some of my own lifespan if necessary. Maybe enough that Cutburn only has to take half of what she wants from you and half from me.”

Cutburn snorted, though she did not address Darius directly. “As if more years as a witch in the Demon Realm would save me. The moment Belos died, human, his geas with me ended and I was no longer protected by his magic. It is merely a matter of time before those hunting me find me here. I was only ever buying time by surrounding myself with all the iron in the Boiling Isles like this. You coming here to speak with me was a happy coincidence. Sidhe avoid the Human Realm like the plague. Too much technology and too little magic there. But with a human lifespan at my disposal to protect me while I’m there … oh, I can very much work with that.”

“So you will agree to give us a certain way of saving Hunter’s life?”

“I will give you what you ask for, though you may regret asking for it once you have it.”

Camila contemplated her words. “What does that mean?”

“Only that you must be careful what you wish for, human. You might just get it.”

She blew out a sigh. Her ears rang with the sound of Hunter’s laboured breathing when his lungs started to turn to stone, and his pained yells when his fingernails fell out and palistrom wood from his bones split his fingertips apart. She recalled the moment it truly dawned on him that he was going to die, the grief in his friends’ eyes as they held him, Willow’s anger that she could not save her beloved by herself, Luz’s panicky shout when Hunter fainted and bled over their living room floor, Vee looking so sadly at the empty chair at dinnertime …

Camila had lived through a permanently empty space at their dinner table once before. She refused to let it happen again.

“Will you accept five years of my lifespan in exchange for saving Hunter’s life?”

“I will accept it for information that might save him.”

“Not good enough.” It was risky but Camila spun on her heel and walked away. “Darius, can you translocate us back to the hospital?”

“Of course –”

“Wait, human!” Cutburn snapped.

Camila turned back to her.

“You drive a hard bargain. I’m almost impressed. Almost. If you give me five years, I will give you information that will maybe save him. If you give me ten years, I will make sure he does not die from grimwalker deconstruction but instead lives the full life of a semi-human boy.”

“Done.”

Cutburn grinned.

Darius was aghast. “Camila, you can’t give her a whole decade!”

“Ten years of my life in exchange for you making certain that Hunter does not die from grimwalker deconstruction but instead lives a whole, full lifetime far beyond that of his ortet. If you break our deal, the years return to me in full.”

“Agreed. The deal is struck and the deal is made.” Cutburn lifted her palm and dragged one sharp fingernail across it. Dark blue blood bubbled up from the cut. “Aontaímid leis na téarmaí seo mar a chuireamar síos orthu. Ní mó agus nach lú. Tugaim m'fhocal mar a thugann tú do chuidse. Déanaimid an déileáil seo i fola agus draíocht.”

The air around Camila started to whip up, even though they were indoors. She felt a strange puling sensation in her chest, as if she had indigestion. Her veins began to sing. She had felt this kind of thing only once before, when she passed through an unstable portal into the Demon Realm for the first time. Yet this felt subtly different. Where before she felt like she was passing through magic, now it felt like magic was passing through her.

“The geas must be made with blood, magic and spirit, human.” Cutburn extended her bleeding palm through the bars, though being so close to the iron must have hurt her. “Focus on your conviction for what you want and what you are willing to give up to have it. I will do the rest.”

Camila unfastened her rainbow brooch from her jacket, bared the sharp pin and did not hesitate in dragging it across her own palm, mirroring Cutburn’s wound exactly. She pressed her palm to the Sidhe’s and instantly felt the magic pulling at her whole body centre on the spot where their blood touched.

“Mar sin adeirtear, mar sin a bheidh.”

Something ripped out of Camila. She felt it move, like a broken rib grinding inside her chest. The pain was exquisite. It ripped and tore a path down her arm, into her hand, and into Cutburn. Cutburn threw back her head and gasped in near-orgasmic joy.

“Yessss … I can taste your humanity … it is so sweet … so good … and it is mine now.”

Camila focussed on saving Hunter. It did not matter whether she gave up ten years of her own life if only she could ensure he had a life to live at all. She was his mother her love for him shone as bright as the first star of evening. She would not let him die like this. She would not. No matter what it took, she would not let her son die like a thing instead of the person he was.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the magic stopped. A series of letters in a language Camila did not recognise flared on the back of her hand, moving in a small circle. Even though she could not understand it, their meaning landed inside her head fully formed.

A life for a life. So it is said, so shall it be.

Cutburn released her hand and Camila sank to her knees, utterly spent. Darius lunged to catch her before she pitched forward. His strong hands braced against her stomach and back.

“You stupid, stupid woman,” he muttered. “What have you done?”

“Hopefully, I’ve saved Hunter,” Camila wheezed. She lifted her gaze. Cutburn was trembling and twitching but a huge grin stretched her black-lipped mouth wide. “What now, Cutburn?”

“Now, you take me to the boy and I fulfil my part of our geas, human.”

No sooner had Cutburn finished talking, then the side of the Conformatorium exploded inward in a shower of torn brickwork and roiling, glittering mist.

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“¡No te atrevas a tratar de intimidarme!”

~ "Don't you dare try to intimidate me!"

"Dios, dame fuerzas."

~ "God, give me strength."

“Dios, dame mucha fuerza.”

~ "God, give me a lot of strength."

“Aontaímid leis na téarmaí seo mar a chuireamar síos orthu. Ní mó agus nach lú. Tugaim m'fhocal mar a thugann tú do chuidse. Déanaimid an déileáil seo i fola agus draíocht.”

~ “We agree to these terms as we have described them. No more and no less. I give my word as you give yours. We make this deal in blood and magic.”

“Mar sin adeirtear, mar sin a bheidh.”

~ “So it is said, so shall it be.”

Chapter Text

Darius was aware of exactly three things right now: Camila had just done something incredibly brave and even more dangerous that had left her weak and unable to walk; Hettie Cutburn had promised to save Hunter’s life and, thus, needed to be protected so she could do that; the Conformatorium was under attack by unknown forces. All of which added up to Well This Situation Isn’t Great.

Master Guard Samkisi and several other guards ran into the atrium below, clearly summoned by the noise. They each carried palisman staffs but also had pouches on their hips that Darius knew contained sheafs of glyphs. Glyph magic was useful as a back-up for those who lost their staffs in a fight and bore sigils that limited their magic to only one kind. Conformatorium guards were often not witches or demons who had been part of the now-defunct Emperor’s Coven and, considering who they were guarding, they needed as wide a variety of magic to do their jobs as they could get.

The guards fell into a well-practised phalanx formation facing the gigantic new hole in the Conformatorium wall. It was easily the size of a fully grown griffin and had the hallmarks of something bulling its way through from outside. How anyone had managed not to just bounce off the defensive spells laid over the building, Darius did not know. Those spells were the strongest the Isles Elected Council had been able to lay over the place. It would take an untold amount of power to get through them. Yet all that seemed to be coming into the atrium now was sparkly mist and moonlight.

Something grabbed his shoulder from behind. He turned, shifting Camila to one arm, a spell circle already in his other hand. It was difficult to read Cutburn’s expression, given how much of her face was concealed, but he recognised it simply because he had seen it once before, on the Day of Unity, when the full weight of Belos’s plans for his Coven Heads was revealed as the draining spell emptied the life from them.

Cutburn was scared.

No, more than that; she was terrified.

“You have to get me out of here,” she hissed. “It’s me they’re after.”

Darius frowned. Running from a fight was not in his nature. “Who is ‘they’?”

“You know I can’t tell you that, witch!”

A cry drew his attention back to the atrium. Something had come out of the mist, though it trailed so much of the stuff that it was hard to make out its outline beyond a vague impression. Master Guard Samkisi shouted orders and his guards drew circles with their staffs, creating an interwoven net of magical power that pushed back whatever the thing was and forced it back through the gap.

Was that … dog barking?

Camila coughed. “Who is that, señora Sidhe?”

“It’s the Wild Hunt,” Cutburn answered her. “They finally tracked me down. The geas between you and I must have tipped them off for where to find me in this realm. They’ve come to drag me back to Tír na nÓg as their prisoner. And if they do that, I’ll never be able to save your precious son.”

A plethora of swear words flowed through Darius’s brain. Every atom of his being resisted the idea of saving Cutburn’s life, but if the domino effect was that saving her meant saving Hunter …

A horn blared. Horses neighed, echoing far louder than they should have. Dogs barked and howled. Darius was reminded of the Eberwolf’s estate. Every time he visited the Head Beastkeeper at home, finding them had involved navigating the many enclosures they had set up to tend sick animals before relasing them back into the wild.

Suddenly Darius desperately wished his old friend was there. Eberwolf was annoying but fiercely loyal and usually knew what to do when animals were involved. Heck, Darius would have been happy to have Raine or even ones of the Clawthorne sisters by his side, rather than Cutburn.

Voices raised on the other side of the wall. They were strangely layered and made the back of Darius’s neck prickle.

“Human!” Cutburn did not raise her voice above a whisper but it was a panicky one. “Do something! If the Wild Hunt gets hold of me, that’s the end of your precious boy! They will drag me back for my trial and he will most certainly die without me!”

The horn sounded again. The net of magic keeping out whatever lurked in the mist bowed inwards under its renewed attack.

“You have to get me out of here or those guards will die too. There’s no way they can stand against the Wild Hunt. No witch can. The only thing you can do is avoid it. If you remove its target, the Madraí Fiach Fiáin – the hounds you can hear, that’s how they track whoever they’re after – they’ll sense I’m gone and back off, sparing innocent bystanders. If you leave me here for them to find, they will cut through anyone in their way to reach me.”

As if in answer to her words, the net tore and something enormous and howling leapt through. It was red-eyed and bigger than any dog Darius had ever seen. The edges of its black pelt sparkled, as if it was partly made of the mist. It crossed the atrium in an eyeblink and leapt at one of the guards. The guard spun his staff, blasting it with a spell that knocked the dog back, but another took its place and leapt high enough to land behind the hapless witch. Before Darius or anyone else could react, the dog snapped its jaws around the guard’s head from behind and bit it off. The witch’s decapitated body fell forward, spraying blood from the neck.

“Dios mío,” Camila whispered, hand pressed over her mouth as if she might throw up. She was ashen but that could have been from the sight below or the geas.

“See?” Cutburn pointed. “This is no simple wild witch they’re facing; this is the Wild Hunt!”

Darius dimly recollected stories his grandmother had told him when he was a child, about locking your doors and windows at night and not talking to anyone you didn’t know who asked you to go hunting with them, to prevent a group of lost souls who had been cursed to eternally wander the world looking for things to hunt from making you their prey or stealing you away to be one of them. As with most Sidhe-tales, they had been stories designed to teach young witchlings morals and life lessons, such as home safety and stranger danger. Darius remembered his grandmother saying they had to stay away from the windows on cold nights when they could hear the wind howling like dogs, since seeing the Wild Hunt was supposed to forebode some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it. Darius’s mother had just rolled her eyes and said grandmother was full of old stories and not to pay too much mind to them. When Belos came to power, Darius’s grandmother had muttered about too many witches seeing the Hunt and the new Emperor and his coven system being the plague that had brought upon them.

It seemed like his grandmother had been righter than any of them could have known.

Master Guard Samkisi snapped out orders and the remaining guards drew together into a protective ring, drawing two huge spell circles between them. Their combined magic surrounded the misty hounds – presumably the Madraí Fiach Fiáin – and wrapped them in bubbles of light. The hounds whined in pain, their black bodies standing out starkly within the bubbles.

“Light will slow them down but it won’t stop them,” said Cutburn. “The Wild Hunt only pursues its prey at night and the sun only just set.”

Two guards slapped glyphs down on the floor. The light spells morphed into fire that blasted inwards, reducing the hounds to ash. At the same time, mighty vines sprang forth from the glyph papers and knotted a fresh net of plant material across the gap in the Conformatorium wall. The light balls burst, allowing the ash to scatter on the floor. Muffled now behind the nets of both magic and vines, the other hounds and horses shrieked, still trying to get in.

“Samkisi and his crew seem to be taking care of things,” Darius said.

“They’re fools,” Cutburn snapped. “Get me out of here already. Release me from my cell and translocate me elsewhere.”

“I cannot leave them to fight alone,” Darius snapped back.  

“Then you’re consigning your precious grimwalker to death.”

Darius ignored her and went to the banister around the edge of the walkway. Samkisi looked up at the movement and gaped.

“Head Witch! What are you doing here?”

“Helping you, Master Guard.” Darius drew a spell circle of his own and added a shield of abomination ooze on top of the two nets. “Cutburn says that’s something called the Wild Hunt and it’s here for her.”

“You idiot!” Cutburn cried. “Don’t just stand there talking! Human, make him translocate me to safety! It’s the only way! Do you want your son to die after all you just sacrificed for him? If I’m not here, the Wild Hunt will leave and everyone here will live!”

“Darius,” Camila murmured. “She has to tell the truth, remember?”

As this sank in, Darius’s ears flicked at the horn being blown again. Cutburn let out a frustrated, wordless cry.

The ashes of the two burned hounds shifted and reformed. In only a few seconds, the enormous creatures were back, jaws snapping at the witches who had burned them. Master Guard Samkisi’s attention snapped to them, away from Darius. He gave orders and drew spell circles, trying to wrap the hounds in more light bubbles, but the creatures seemed wilier now. They avoided the spells and instead darted in between the guards, breaking apart their protective ring and scattering them across the atrium.

“Hold the line!” Samkisi bellowed. “Don’t get separated!”

The horn blasted once more. The two hounds howled. Answering howls came from outside. And then another portion of the Conformatorium wall caved in. The prisoners in their cells, drawn by the noise, screamed as debris rained inward. Darius could have sworn he heard Terra Snapdragon shriek and Kikimora cussing up a storm.

A pack of black dogs with glowing red eyes and misty outlines flowed through the new gap, followed by figures on horseback. The massive horses were unlike anything Darius had ever seen before; at once there and not, solid black and ethereally translucent, with rolling red eyes and mouths dripping foam around their bridles. The figures riding them were equally strange. They were all uncannily tall, narrow-hipped and broad-shouldered, wearing armour that was clearly black and yet shone like moonlight. They were draped in enough fur that it turned Darius’s stomach. In addition, every single one had a pair of antlers spearing up from their skulls. It was impossible to see their faces through the mist and the hooded cloaks they wore, but Darius was possessed of a sudden urge to hide from their sight. It was an instinctive feeling and took him quite by surprise. Darius Deamonne had never in his life felt like prey. Not even Belos had made him feel like that.

Yet the moment he saw the Wild Hunt, he froze in sudden, all-encompassing fear.

So did the guards.

The pack fell on them. Each and every guard disappeared from sight beneath the churning, misty bodies.

They did not stand a chance.

The lead rider yanked on his horse’s reins. It reared, windmilling its front legs in the air for a moment, before thumping them down on the concrete floor of the atrium. Its rider did not look at the carnage playing out in front of him. Instead, he tilted his head back to look up, scanning the walkways above. His antlers, much bigger than those of the other riders, were adorned with what looked like gold paint, coins and the skulls of small animals dangling on beaded threads. Darius could not properly see his face, yet when the lead rider lifted his head, he had the distinct feeling of being seen.

Darius should not have been able to see in such perfect detail at this distance, but the moment the lead rider’s gaze locked on him, he saw pale blue pupils set in irises that swirled gold, silver, pink and yellow, and more colours besides, as if someone had liquified a sunset and trapped it in his eyes. The lead rider tilted his head to one side appraisingly.

You are strong, a voice seemed to chime in Darius’s head. Stronger than most creatures in this realm of boiling bones. You are very powerful. Very skilled. You would make excellent quarry. Such a dance you would lead us, I think. Such an exquisite hunt we would have with you as our prey, Pretty Green Eyes.

Darius felt held in place like a butterfly pinned to a corkboard. Though he could not put it into words, he knew that he could not escape. Deep, profound fear settled into his brain and his bones, keeping him in place like a jackalope in the middle of a road as a carriage rushes toward it –

“Darius!” Camila screamed.

It was her voice, not the wet squelch of flesh parting from flesh that brought him back to himself. Darius discovered that he had backed away from the banister and was pressed against the iron bars of Cutburn’s cell. Where the iron touched his bare arms, his skin had started to scorch. He yanked away from it with a hiss. Inside the cell, Cutburn was pressed against the wall, trembling with incoherent terror.

“Darius, your arms!” cried Camila.

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t but they didn’t have time for him to think about it right now. His whole body felt scoured through by whatever that had been. The urge to run away was absolute but he stopped himself from abandoning his duties. He was a Head Witch, damn it. He would not be cowed into submission by a passing glance from some Sidhe on horseback with a few pet mutts! “The guards are dead.”

“I told you,” Cutburn said hoarsely. “I told you to get me out of here. There’s still time –”

Darius drew a wobbly spell circle. His bones still ached with fear. A rope of abomination ooze crashed down on the level that operated the cell door. Holding onto Camila, he dashed into the cell and grabbed Cutburn by one thick wrist.

We shall see each other again, Pretty Green Eyes. I will be looking forward to it.

Ears still full of the sounds of the Wild Hunt and mind full of the lead rider’s strange, shifting eyes and silent voice, Darius summoned a funnel of abomination ooze and translocated himself and the two women out of the Conformatorium.

Amity had arrived at Hunter’s hospital room to find utter chaos. Willow and Gus had gotten there before her and there had evidently been a whole conversation about Hunter’s illness without her. Her initial annoyance at this was quickly swept away when she saw the devastation it had wrought. Willow and Gus each had their arms wrapped around Hunter while he sat upright and rocked in his bed, unable to speak as he came down from a panic attack. Willow looked both concerned for him and furious about Cutburn’s refusal to help, while Gus’s expression was difficult for Amity to read. Much easier was the worry on her girlfriend’s face as she stood off to one side talking to Eda.

“Batata! I’m so glad you’re here!”

“Sorry I’m late. I needed to help my dad with something. What … happened here?”

Luz made short work of explaining what had transpired in Amity’s absence. Darius and Camila had apparently translocated elsewhere after the news broke and Luz was worried they had gone to see Hettie Cutburn.

“She’ll only talk to humans about Sidhe stuff,” Luz explained. “Hunter is really upset that Mom went in my place.”

Amity used to read a lot of Sidhe-tales to kids at the library. Though she did not say so out loud, she shared Hunter’s trepidation.

“Head Witch Chiron has gone to make a few calls to find out if Darius and Mom are at the Conformatorium and try to talk to them before they do something …”

Something stupid. Something reckless. Something they could not take back. Any way Luz might have ended that sentence was not good.

Tension hung thick in the room. Having brought Amity up to speed, Luz now had her phone glued to her ear but her mother was not picking up. Eda cursed at her scroll, suggesting she was doing the same with Darius.

So when a plume of abomination ooze erupted and dumped three people in the middle of the floor, the surprise was almost welcome. That is, until they saw who it was.

“Mom!” Luz cried, rushing to Camila’s side.

“Mamá! Darius!” Hunter swung his legs out of bed, hampered by the intravenous attached to his arm. Willow stopped him when he tried to yank it out. Amity could not help but be happy the healers had fixed up his lungs enough that he no longer needed to be intubated, or he might have yanked that out too. “Willow, he’s hurt!”

And Darius was hurt. He dropped to his knees, pupils mere pinpricks, his arms burned and trembling as they held him up. Eda dashed to catch Camila before she could slide to the floor. Eda bared her teeth at the third arrival, backing off and trying to drag both Camila and Darius with her.

“Cutburn!” Willow growled. “Why are you here?”

Amity remembered Hettie Cutburn from her days of idolising coven heads and wanting to be Star Student so she could someday audition for the Emperor’s Coven. Emira and Viney had told her enough about the former head of the Healing Coven that Amity readied spell circles against her now.

Cutburn cast around, despite wearing a blindfold. Her eye fell on Luz.

“Small human,” she said in a voice that sounded like many voices being played over each other on a badly edited recording. It jangled in Amity’s ears in the enclosed space and made them ache. “I am here to save the grimwalker at what I presume is your mother’s request.”

Luz’s eyes bulged. “My mom got you to agree to save Hunter?”

“Yes, but we haven’t much time. The Wild Hunt approaches.”

“The what now?”

“They killed all the guards,” Darius murmured, sounding so out of it that Hunter once again started fighting to get to his side. “Pulled them apart like they were just … wet tissue paper.”

“The Wild Hunt will stop me from doing what is necessary to save your precious grimwalker,” Cutburn snapped. “They’re in your world now. As long as I stay here, they will not stop until they find me and catch me.”

“How do we know that we can trust you?” Luz challenged. “How do we know you aren’t just going to hurt Hunter to get back at us for defeating Belos? You hate us!”

“Your mother and I have made a deal,” Cutburn announced.

If anything, that just made Luz’s eyes bulge even more. “Mom, what did you do?”

“What I had to, mija,” Camila said grimly.

“Enough.” Cutburn reached up and, for the first time Amity could ever remember seeing, removed her headdress. Underneath were a pair of stubby brown antlers that looked like something on a sickly deer from Human Realm. “I have enough magic saved up in these for one trip.”

“One trip? One trip where?” Luz demanded.

“Do you want to save your – ugh – ‘brother’ or not, small human?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then you will need to do exactly as I say and come with us to help me save him. It is not something I can do alone once we get there. I am about to use all my Sidhe magic to make the crossing.”

“Get where?” Luz cried. “What crossing?”

But Cutburn was already plucking Hunter up into her arms like he weighed nothing. Willow shouted angrily and Gus grabbed at her elbow, trying to stop her.

“Oh do shut up, you two. I’ve had quite enough of your blathering today. I assume you want the boy alive instead of dead? Then let me work. In fact.” She turned back to Luz. “Small human, they can come too. Perhaps their irritating love for this grimwalker will be useful on the other side.”

Her antlers began to glow.

“What the shit?” Eda exclaimed.

“Cutburn!” Willow yelled.

Cutburn reached up with one hand and undid her blindfold. Her eyes were … strange. Amity stared at the pale blue pupils against shifting blue and red irises. They seemed to glow along with her antlers as she summoned whatever magic she was using. Certainly not witch magic. The air filled with dancing motes of light that shone the same shades as her irises.

“Trí mo chuid fola, mo chnámha, mo dhraíocht agus mo spiorad. Oscail an doras go talamh na Sidhe.”

The room was bathed in sudden, blinding light. Sparkling mist fountained from Cutburn’s antlers and washed over them all. Amity instinctively threw herself over Luz to protect her from it, squeezing her eyes shut to brace for impact.

Nothing happened.

“What the fuck-sicle!?” yelped Eda.

Slowly, Amity opened her eyes.

The hospital room was gone. Instead, they stood in what looked like a lush green forest, of the kind she had seen in pictures and on television in the Human Realm. Luz, Camila, Darius, Eda, Willow and Gus also looked around in astonishment. They had been translocated, but it had not felt like when Darius did it, or like when they passed through the portal door. It had felt like … nothing at all.

Cutburn was not smiling. Seeing her without her blindfold or headdress was unnerving enough, but her expression was one of grim apprehension.

“Welcome to Tír na nÓg,” she grunted. “The world of the Sidhe.”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

Darius remembered his grandmother saying they had to stay away from the windows on cold nights when they could hear the wind howling like dogs, since seeing the Wild Hunt was supposed to forebode some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it.

~ The Wild Hunt is a fascinating part of Germanic and Indo-European folklore. I’m playing fast and loose with it in this story but if you’d like to know more about the actual variety of myths and legends about it, I would recommend the Overly Sarcastic Productions video on the topic.

https://youtu.be/vZIl8RZvv6I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Hunt

Madraí Fiach Fiáin

~ Irish for ‘Wild Hunting Dogs’, not an actual part of the Wild Hunt legend but, as I said, I’m playing fast and loose in this fanfic. I pulled a bit more from the English myth of the Black Dog for their design here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dog_(folklore)

“Trí mo chuid fola, mo chnámha, mo dhraíocht agus mo spiorad. Oscail an doras go talamh na Sidhe.”

~ “Through my blood, my bones, my magic and my spirit. Open the door to the land of the Sidhe.”

Chapter Text

Hunter felt dislocated from time and space. It wasn’t the same as dissociation but when he opened his eyes and saw a forest instead of his hospital room, he couldn’t help but think he was in one of his hallucinations. They had eased off in recent years, since he settled into what could pass for a normal life, but every so often he still woke screaming, trapped beneath the smell of rot and mud, pinned in place by the hands and glowing blue eyes of a dead man.

The person holding him now had blue eyes too, but unlike Belos’s, these shifted between red and blue in a way that inspired motion sickness if Hunter looked at them for too long. Or maybe that was just regular old nausea. He couldn’t actually tell the difference.

Damn it, he hated being sick.

His hips creaked when she put him down. All his joints ached like he was older than his years. That was almost laughable, since he wasn’t going to live to get old. His feet felt slightly numb and he struggled to stand unaided. Luckily Willow and Gus rushed to brace him on either side so he didn’t fall on his face.

He gave them a grateful smile. “Thanks, guys.”

Hettie Cutburn looked almost as bad as he did. She staggered backwards, bracing herself against a tree whose trunk was so large that Hunter, both of his sisters and his mother together could not have wrapped their arms around it. Cutburn pressed a hand against her head. It was trembling.

“Mamá!” Luz shouted.

Hunter’s head snapped up. Camila was on her knees, hands around her midriff. Her cheeks held a green tinge but she waved away Luz’s attempts to help her up.

“See to Darius, mija. He’s hurt worse than me.”

Eda was rummaging in the bag she kept on her hip at all times. She had taken inspiration from Luz and always made sure to have spare pens and notepads on her for glyphs. She drew one of each out now and drew a combo Hunter recognised as a catch-all first-aid spell. Eda tore the paper off and pressed it against the deep burn on Darius’s left arm. Hunter recognised the nature of that kind of burn; he remembered it from when Belos had used iron to ‘encourage’ wild witches to take sigils and give up the locations of hidden covenless witch settlements.

“Brace yourself, Dar-Dar. This is going to sting,” Eda said, before tapping the centre of the combo.

Nothing happened.

Eda tapped the paper again.

Still nothing.

“You stupid witch,” Cutburn huffed. “Didn’t you hear me? You’re in Tír na nÓg. There’s no Titan in the world of the Sidhe. Your glyphs won’t work here.”

Eda glared at her, then down at the inert healing combo. It was sticking to pus from the ruptured blisters of Darius’s burn. “Well shit.”

Darius, who had started to sweat when she struck his arm, let out a hissing moan. “Well that’s just marvellous. Thank you, Cutburn, for absolutely nothing.”

Cutburn rolled her strange eyes. “You say ‘nothing’ but this is what you all asked for.”

“We wanted you to save Hunter, not teleport us all to a world with no magic!” Eda snapped. Owlbert stuck his head out from her hair to glare at Cutburn. “Good thing you came too, buddy, or I’d be completely magic-less.”

“Oh, there’s magic here,” Cutburn said darkly. “More magic than even you witches have ever dealt with. But not your kind of magic.”

“Do bile sacs work here?” Luz turned to Amity, then Willow and Gus. “They worked on Earth and there was no Titan there either.”

In answer, Gus drew a small spell circle. A tiny illusion of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn appeared on his palm. It vanished in a puff of magical vapour. “Spell circles work. Looks like your paper about us self-generating our own idiosyncratic thaumaturgical fields was right, Hunter.”

“Yay,” Hunter wheezed. “Got an B on that paper, too. Professor Spitwheel will have to mark it up when we get back.” He coughed. “If we get back.”

“Oh don’t be dramatic,” Cutburn snapped. “You’re only here temporarily. You’ll go home as soon as I’m done.”

Hunter continued to cough. Something phlegmy hit the back of his throat and he spat it out onto the ground. It was lumpy and darker green than it should have been. His breathing quickened.

“Sit down.” Willow eased him to the ground. “Deep breaths. C’mon, you know what to do.”

Hunter shook his head. “I’m fine. Willow, can you do anything for Darius? Do you know any plants that heal or at least lesson pain?”

Willow nodded. “Gus, stay with Hunter.” She hurried over and knelt by the older man’s side, drawing a small green spell circle. A clutch of tiny white flowers blossomed in the palm of her hand, surrounded by red weeds with yellow heads. She held them out at him. “Peaseblossoms and Nanay Hampi. They’re painkillers.”

Darius nodded, a bead of sweating plopping from his temple to the plush green grass beneath him. It was a wonder he was even still conscious, Hunter thought. Darius held out his arm and Willow crushed the flowers between her hands, drizzling the pieces over the worst of his burns. At once, the tension in Darius’s face eased. His injuries were still angry red and bubbling with white blisters but his shoulders dipped from their rigid line. He let out a relieved sigh.

“Thank you.”

Willow gave a tight smile. “Give me your other arm, please. Once you’re not about to pass out from pain, I can see about giving you something to speed up your body’s natural healing processes. It’s not as good as real healing magic but it’s the best I can do. Sorry.”

“I appreciate your help, Willow. You’re doing me a great service. You don’t need to apologise for not doing an even greater one.”

As Willow tended to Darius’s immediate needs, Hunter shifted his attention back to Cutburn. She looked awful. Her cheeks were hollower than they had been when she translocated into his hospital room and her legs were shaking now too. She seemed to sense his gaze and whipped her head up to glower at him.

“You little …” Abruptly, her eyes narrowed. “Hmm.” She pushed off the tree and staggered towards him. Gus tightened his grip, finger poised to draw a spell circle, but Cutburn just sank into a crouch and stared at Hunter with new interest. “Oh yes. Your ortet was human, wasn’t he?”

Hunter’s stomach clenched. “You’d know that better than anyone else, from what I hear.”

She rolled her eyes. “It means my geas includes you, idiot boy. The magic recognises you as somewhat human and apparently that’s enough for me to speak freely to three members of your group.” She raised her voice. “Which is useful, because right now you all need to be listening to me.”

Grudgingly, everyone looked in her direction.

Cutburn took a breath and pushed to her feet. She visibly wavered before locking her knees to prevent herself toppling over. Her gaze found Camila. “As I said, I have brought us to Tír na nÓg. This is the place from whence grimwalkers originated. And this is the place where I will fulfil my side of our bargain and prevent this one.” She gestured at Hunter. “From degenerating into sludge.”

Hunter tensed. A thin whine stabbed through his head.

“Sludge?”

His voice sounded oddly distant. Usually he would dig his fingernails into his palms, the small jolt of pain bringing him back to himself, but he couldn’t do that now because he had no friggin’ fingernails left. He settled for making a fist and allowed the pain from his mangled hands to spurt up his arm and bring reality back into focus with knifelike clarity.

“Well, amongst other things. Galdorstone, Palistrom wood, Stonesleeper lungs, Selkidomus scales and the bone of your ortet will be part of the mix too. But yes, mostly sludge. The magic that birthed you is rotting as it reaches the end of your ortet’s lifespan and I think you’ve already seen what happens to a body when the magic used to keep it alive goes rotten.”

“Belos …” Hunter breathed shakily. He looked down at the dark green muck he had coughed up. Suddenly it looked even less like phlegm.

Cutburn nodded. “It’s not the same kind of magic but the net result is the same. He turned to sludge. You’ll turn to sludge. That is,” she added, turning back to lock eyes with Camila, “unless I prevent it.”

Luz stepped in front of her mother. “And how is us being here going to do that?”

“Since grimwalkers are from Tír na nÓg, then Tír na nÓg is where the secret to his salvation lays.” A shudder went through Cutburn. One of her knees unlocked and hit the floor with a wet thunk. The grass here was very moist, as though Human Realm rain had fallen recently. “But I used all my Sidhe magic to make the crossing and bring all eight of you along with me. I had little enough left after so long in the Demon Realm. I was keeping what I had for an emergency escape if the Wild Hunt ever figured out what world I was in and came after me.”

“Which they did,” Darius spat. “You couldn’t have warned us about those … those monsters?”

Hunter was surprised at the hatred and fear in Darius’s voice. He coughed it away quickly but Hunter had noticed. He thought Camila had too, since she gave Darius a strange look.

“Won’t the Wild Hunt track you here too?” Darius asked.

Cutburn looked at Luz.

Luz sighed harshly. “Won’t the Wild Hunt track you here too?”

“Not quickly. It will take them a while to find my scent trail again, and then it will take them longer to make the crossing back to Tír na nÓg. Especially since I brought us to the Never Never, a part of Tír na nÓg where tracking us is more difficult. Not impossible, but certainly difficult enough for the Black Dogs to have trouble, which gives us some leeway.”

“The Never Never?” Luz repeated.

“A part of Tír na nÓg where neither Court has sway – a strip of land between the two where wild magic reigns.”

“Court?”

“Ar mhaithe le fuck!” Cutburn muttered. “That is a complicated thing to explain and I’m too tired right now. I need to rest and replenish my magic before I don’t have enough strength left to get to a Cloch Sláinte at all.”

“A what?”

“It is a good thing there are three amongst you with human blood, because I may end up murdering one of you before this is all over simply for being so irritating,” Cutburn snarled. “No, not really! Don’t blast me with a spell! I was being sarcastic!”

“So sarcasm allows you to lie now?” Willow sniped.

“I said ‘I may’, not ‘I will’. You’re not nearly as smart as you think you are, girl. And you’re certainly not as smart as me.” Cutburn pinched the spot between her eyes and spoke quickly. “A Cloch Sláinte is a kind of rock that my kind can use to replenish our magic if it is depleted. They do not exist in the Demon Realm. Sidhe antlers function much like a witch’s bile sac, though they take much longer to replenish our internal magic reserves if we don’t have access to a Cloch Sláinte. We can do it but a Cloch Sláinte is faster and right now time is of the essence for what we need to do. There. Happy?”

“Not at all,” Luz replied. “But thank you for explaining instead of murdering me for being annoying.”

Cutburn opened her eyes to glare truculently at her. Then she sighed. “There’s a Cloch Sláinte nearby. Before I use it, I need to lay down a few ground rules for you all.” She held up a finger. “Do not leave this area. This clearing is defensible and you can all see each other clearly. If you wander into the woods, I cannot guarantee your safety. There are things here that would eat witches, humans or grimwalkers in a single bite – and they’re not nearly the worst things that live here. As I said, no-one controls the Never Never. There are no laws here. There are no treaties. You stay near me while I rest so that when I wake, I can lead you along the safest path to where we need to go next. Do not draw attention to yourselves. Do not make a lot of noise. Sidhe rarely come into the Never Never because of how lawless it is but, if one does happen by, your illusionist should hide you immediately util it passes. Do not engage. Anything with antlers is not to be trusted. The plant girl can produce something for you to eat if necessary and the rainwater isn’t poisonous for you to drink but do not eat anything you did not make yourself that looks like food because it probably isn’t. Am I understood?”

Her imperious tone put Hunter in mind of Belos. He wondered, abruptly, if she and he had been friends or merely allies who served each other’s purposes. He dismissed the idea almost as soon as it popped into his head. Phillip Wittebane had not had a single friend in his whole life except his own brother, and that had not stopped him from killing Caleb.

“Wait.” Luz stroked her chin in thought. “Can’t Hunter use one of those … Clock Slant things to heal himself too?”

“Cloch Sláinte,” Cutburn corrected. “And no. It only works for my kind, not his. To heal him we’ll need more powerful magic than that. Now, repeat back to me what you are and are not to do while I rest?”

Obediently, between them they managed to remember her barked instructions.

“Good. And for the love of everything you hold dear, don’t try to run off and leave me behind while I’m at rest. You need me. Don’t forget that fact. You need me.” She stared somewhat possessively at Camila, which made the hairs on the back of Hunter’s neck stand on end.

With that, Cutburn got up and, leaning heavily on several trunks, made her way to a large boulder just beyond the treeline. She glanced back and made one final gesture for them to stay put, then pinched at the slice across her palm to open it wider and slapped her hand on the boulder, leaving a streak of dark blue blood on its surface. With a grinding noise like a tomb opening, the whole side of the boulder split open and furled back. They watched in amazement as Cutburn stepped into the gap. Rock swarmed around her, making a groove within itself that moulded exactly to her shape. Then the split closed, sealing her inside. The blood streak glowed and sank into the boulder with a slurp, as if the rock had drunk it, leaving its surface unmarred.

It took a moment for anyone to say anything.

“Well, that was creepy as fuck,” Eda announced.

That broke the tension. Slowly, they settled in to wait. Willow went back to treating Darius’s wounds while Amity and Luz helped Camila over to sit beside Hunter against the enormously wide tree trunk. Her head sagged back against it and she let out an exhausted sigh.

“Dios mío ... I thought I was done visiting new worlds.”

“Mom.” Luz spoke with uncharacteristic seriousness. “Back at the hospital. You said you made a deal with Cutburn.”

Camila tensed up. “Yes, I did.”

“What kind of deal?”

“The kind where I save one of my babies.” Her hand found Hunter’s and smiled at him. “A mother does whatever is necessary for her kids.”

Once upon a time, Hunter had not known what it was like to feel loved, especially loved by a parent figure. Each and every time it happened, it parked a gratefulness inside him that made life seem a little bit easier to handle. Camila had been his parent for years now but it never stopped feeling unusual to be loved so unequivocally by her.

But Luz was not to be dissuaded. “Mom, I need you to tell us exactly what you agreed to. I’m not kidding.”

Camila sighed. “I … agreed to help Cutburn live in Human Realm in exchange for her saving Hunter.”

Hunter’s eyes widened. “You did what?!”

She waved a hand at him. “It’ll be okay, mijo. I only said I’d help her live there, not let her wreak havoc there. And besides, Sidhe magic doesn’t work in Human Realm. She just wants to live there to hide from those chasing her, so she probably won’t even stay if they figure out where she went.”

Luz bit her lower lip. “Mamá …”

“I couldn’t just sit back and let sickness take my family again, Querida.” Camila’s voice was suddenly hoarse, as if she was holding back tears. “Not again. Not when I could do something to stop it this time.”

“Oh Mamá.” Luz sank to her knees and enveloped her mother – no, their mother – in a hug. “Hey, Hunter, get in here.” She opened one arm and spiralled her hand at him. “Family moment. You too, Amity. And you, Gus. You’re practically family too after all we’ve been through together. I’d get Eda, Darius and Willow in on this too but they’re busy over there.”

It was a bit of a squash with five people in a single hug, but Hunter could not find it in himself to care about the discomfort. For a few moments, at least, he felt calm and warm and present in a way he had not done for a while. Even when Luz let go, the feeling remained. He realised with a start that it was hope.

He had hope.

He might not die.

He might not turn to sludge like Belos.

He might get to live after all.

“Hunter?” Gus asked in alarm. “Dude, you’re crying!”

“Am I?” he sniffled, smiling like a damn idiot. “Oh. I guess I am.”

“Happy tears are good tears,” said an unfamiliar voice. It was high-pitched and slightly raspy with vocal fry. “You cry like this too sometimes, Augustus.”

“As do you, Amity,” observed another unfamiliar voice, this one nasal and drenched with haughtiness.

They all froze.

“Who said that?” Amity’s eyes darted around. She drew a spell circle and the gourd of abomination matter at her waist glowed. “Are those the dangerous creatures Cutburn warned us about?”

“I am no dangerous creature. Well, unless you threaten my witch,” the first voice laughed. It stopped abruptly. “Wait a second … did you just understand me, not-my-witch?”

Gus looked up. Everyone else followed his gaze to the chameleon palisman perched on top of his head. Emmiline’s eyes, which often rotated in different directions, swivelled to both focus on the group now staring at her.

“Oh,” she said with crystal clarity. “Well. That is new.”

“You’re telling me, lizard.” Ghost twined around Amity’s ankles. “Amity, sit down before you fall down.”

“I understood your palisman,” Camila gasped. “¡Esto es maravilloso! ¡Mis lindos bebés mágicos!”

Stringbean slithered out from Luz’s inside pocket. “What’s all the fuss about?” Her voice was just as bubbly and verging on laughter as Luz had always told Hunter it was. But he had never heard it for himself before, because no palisman could be understood by anyone except the witch they were soul-bonded to.

Except for now, it seemed.

Well, Cutburn had said magic worked differently here.

Stringbean looked around in bemusement. “What?”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“Especially since I brought us to the Never Never, a part of Tír na nÓg where tracking us is more difficult.”

~Side-fling to ‘The Iron Fey’ series by Julie Kagawa, which has lived rent-free in my head since I read it in 2011.

“Ar mhaithe le fuck!”

~ “For fuck's sake!”

Cloch Sláinte

~ Literally means ‘Health Stone’, which I found hilarious because it makes it sound like some kind of materia or something from FFVII.

“Dios mío …”

~ “My God …”

“¡Esto es maravilloso! ¡Mis lindos bebés mágicos!”

~ "This is wonderful! My cute magical babies!”

Chapter Text

Camilla settled back against the tree and observed the children, plus Eda, as they chatted joyously with – and about – their palismen. The sudden ability to understand all the little creatures was novel. In any other circumstances, Camila would have been overjoyed to finally be able to talk with Stringbean. She had a soft spot for her daughter’s palisman but Stringbean was so fiercely loyal to Luz that she rarely left her side. Often, Camila had wished that she could sit and chat with her as easily as Luz did. Yet when it finally happened, Camila was too drained to do more than sit against a tree and try not to throw up.

Gah, when will this darn nausea end? I shook Cutburn’s hand almost an hour ago. Not even bad sushi makes me this queasy.

Had she made the right decision by not telling her kids all of what she had agreed to in her deal with Cutburn? They had so much to worry about already. Hunter had been barely holding it together back in the Demon Realm and she could not bring herself to destroy the naked hope she had seen on his face by admitting she had sold a chunk of her own life to preserve his.

It’s no different than doing something like donating a kidney, Camila told herself sternly. That reduces lifespan too, and people donate kidneys every day. They donate all kinds of organs to save the lives of their loved ones. Lifespan is no different. I haven’t done anything wrong.

Even so, guilt nibbled on her brain as she sat and watched. Luz crouched by Ghost, talking so animatedly that her hands were a blur, while the cat sedately cleaned her face and ears in between responses. Stringbean sat on Amity’s shoulder, bouncing up and down with glee that her witch’s witch could finally understand her. Amity looked faintly baffled at the litany of words flowing unstoppably from Stringbean’s mouth. Gus and Eda ran around in circles like little kids, their palismen chasing them, while Willow sat beside Hunter under the original tree Camila had been propped against before she moved.

Hunter looked exhausted but happy. At first, it had been obvious how much he missed Flapjack. He had even commented about how everyone would have loved to talk to the little bird, even if some of his language sounded like something from one of the Shakespeare plays Vee had been forced to watch online for high school English class. But his sadness was short-lived as the other palismen crowded around him, finally able to fully communicate how much their loved their ‘palistrom-brother’ as they apparently called grimwalkers amongst themselves. Eventually they had left him alone to rest but Hunter’s smile had done more to make Camila feel better than Alka-Seltzer.

She was aware of Darius sitting down beside her. His arms were bandaged with wide, flat vines and leaves Willow had strapped to them. His face had a pinched look but nowhere near as pained as before. Camila had an inkling of why he had come to sit next to her – and it wasn’t because he had no palisman of his own.

After a while just sitting in silence, without taking his eyes off the kids, he stated: “You didn’t tell them the truth.”

“I did.”

“Not the whole truth.”

Camila tilted her chin up, as though daring the world to punch it. “I told them what they needed to know.”

“Camila …”

“What, Darius?”

He did not reply. Eventually, she turned to look at him. The profile of his face was striking. No-one would ever compare to Manny, and some part of her could never quite forgive Darius for failing to save Hunter from his uncle for so long, but she could acknowledge that he was a very handsome man.

“Those kids need their mother,” Darius murmured. “Vee, too.”

“They have their mother.”

“For ten fewer years than they should have her.”

She scowled. “Better ten fewer years with me than a complete lifetime without Hunter.”

Darius sighed and finally turned to face her. “Do you think he would agree with that sentiment?”

“No, but that’s because he’s Hunter.”

He paused and then nodded. “Touché.”

“Darius, I know what I’m doing.”

“Oh, so you know exactly how long you’re going to live for and decided the last ten years still leaves you with long enough to raise your kids?”

“You’re being silly now.”

“Am I? What if your lifespan was only ever sixty years? That would mean you only have sixteen years left with them and you just spent ten of those! What if it was less?”

“And what if it was more?” Camila asked in a ferocious whisper. “What if I was destined to die at a hundred years old? It’s a useless argument, Darius. No-one knows how long they’re going to live for. We take our chances and make our choices every day. And I have chosen to give up some of my life to save someone I love very dearly.”

Darius took a moment to gather himself before speaking again. “Are you planning to ever tell them what you traded for Hettie’s help?”

“For Hunter’s life. That’s what I traded for.”

“You’re debating me on semantics instead of answering my question.” Darius rolled his eyes briefly. “I can see where Hunter gets it from.”

Despite herself, a little warn glow sparked inside her. Hunter was not hers by blood but she loved him just as fiercely as if he was.

“Camila. Answer me, please. Are you planning on ever telling them the truth?”

“What does it matter, as long as they get to live the fullest amount of life possible?”

“Because when you pass, I will be the only parent Hunter has. And I would like to know whether I am expected to keep your secrets for you in perpetuity while he grieves you.”

Camila bit back her acid response at his words. She looked down at her hands, fingers wrapping over each other in a nervous habit. “I … I don’t …” She bit her lip. The guilt had stopped nibbling and was now taking great, gulping bites out of her insides. “I can’t –”

A shriek made both of them snap their heads around. Willow had jumped to her feet and was looking around, mouth open.

“Where’s Hunter!? He was right beside me. I looked away for a second and he was gone!”

Camila’s heart stuttered in her chest. She lurched to her feet so quickly that her stomach rebelled. It felt like being punched in the gut. She staggered but Darius was there to catch her despite his own injuries. He only winced a little when she reflexively grabbed his arm to keep from falling over.

Willow’s cries had grabbed everyone’s attention. They swarmed around her and the tree she and Hunter had been sitting beside, all talking at once.

“Ay dios mío,” Camila wheezed. “¿Dónde está Hunter?”

Where was her son? Had he wandered off? No, Willow would have noticed. And why would he leave the clearing Cutburn had specifically told them to stay within? Hunter was good at following direct orders. Had he been snatched right out from under their noses? Camila had only just secured his safety. He could not be gone. Not now. Not like this.

But Hunter had simply vanished, as if into thin air.

Hunter’s eyelids drooped. Next to him, Willow knelt to concentrate on growing a Human Realm watermelon on the patch of ground between her knees. Her eyes had danced when she told him how rich the soil was here. It was the first time he had seen her genuinely happy in a long while. He knew how she felt. Suddenly he felt like he had a new lease on life, too. Amazing what a bit of real hope could do.

He leaned back against the tree and allowed his eyes to close. He was exhausted. Sleep seemed like a good idea right now. If he took a nap, maybe when he woke up Cutburn would be done revitalising her magic and –

The tree behind him disappeared. Or at least, that was how it felt. Suddenly all that was behind him was empty air and a rushing sensation as he was dragged upwards. Something wrapped tightly around his wrists, wrenching his shoulders as it yanked him up. He could not even cry out, as more of the stuff wrapped around his mouth.

Panic suffused him. Ghosts of punishments past, which lurked in the recesses of his brain no matter how hard he tried to exorcise them, pushed to the forefront even though they were completely irrational. Belos was long dead. There was no more artificial magic with which to hurt him.

Finally, he stopped rising and just hung amidst the branches of the tree. He realised with a jolt that he things around his face and wrists were lush green vines. They suspended him awkwardly, the soles of his bare feet scarcely brushing a thick branch. He heard voices from below but it was as if they were a million miles away, too muffled to make out.

Something large and greenish brown pushed out of the trunk in front of him. It was a bizarre sight. One moment it was just a tree, the next a lump was extricating itself from the bark like it was stuck there with molasses and tar. A vaguely bipedal shape took form. A horizontal slit opened across the face.

“Oooooh.” A shrill feminine voice squeezed through the slit. “What are you? I’ve never seen anything like you in the Never Never before. You feel … strange. Your magic feels strange!”

Hunter kicked out. His shoulders screamed. His joints creaked.

His feet only windmilled in empty air. It was humiliating.

The voice laughed like he had done something hilarious. “You’re funny! And you’re pretty, too. Ooh, such a pretty, pretty boy who came into my bower.”

The lumpy brown and green thing changed again, this time resolving itself into an hourglass shape draped in vines and leaves just like the ones on the branches all around him. Solid black eyes blinked up at him while the slit became a bow-shaped mouth beneath. It curled into a smile. The creature had no nose and, more noticeably, no clothes. Hunter looked away on reflex, cheeks flaming.

“Aw, you’re a gentleman! What’s your name, pretty boy?”

Hunter demanded to be released; a request rendered utterly incomprehensible by his gag.

The creature reached out to cup his cheek and tilt his head towards her. She smiled into his face. When did she get so close? Wait. No. her feet were still attached to the trunk. She was leaning out across the space between them, her body horizontal, as if she was unafraid to fall despite how high up they were.

“Oh. Ohhhhhh …” She stoked his face, her mouth opening wide in surprised awe. “That’s … but … you’re made of wood! Wood and flesh and other things besides. So curious! I’ve definitely not met anything like you before, pretty boy.” Her brows pinched together. “But your magic … it feels like it’s dying. Oh. Oh, how sad. So new and interesting and yet so soon to die and leave nothing behind. Oh, I can’t let that happen. I am most certainly going to keep you. Yes, you’re mine now. I’ve decided. You’re too interesting to just let die without leaving anything of yourself behind. Now hold still.”

Hunter struggled but could not pull away as she leaned forward. The vines across his face peeled back, but before he could make any noise, the creature planted a kiss on his mouth.

Instantly, his mind began to empty. The longer her lips stayed on his, the emptier his mind became. His struggles dimmed. His body felt weaker. Everything vital about him drained into the creature through their touching lips.

No, Hunter thought desperately. Please. Someone look up and see this. Willow. Luz. Mamá. Darius. ANYONE. I … I need help.

But even his uncharacteristic admission of weakness was not enough to save him.

Chapter Text

Panic crashed over Willow like a boiling wave. She was dimly aware of Clover landing on her shoulder to pat her face with one tiny leg, the way she did when Willow began to hyperventilate, but the palisman’s usual soothing did not reach her. Her skin felt prickly with alarm. Hunter had been right next to her. How had she missed him getting up and walking away? Or, worse, how had she missed him being taken?

The others started calling Hunter’s name and darting to all sides of the clearing, peering amongst the trees and into the darkness of the forest beyond. Suddenly the Never Never did not seem lush and green and pretty. Instead, the shadows were darker, every crunch was the footstep of a predator and even the trees themselves seemed to be watching them with evil intent.

Clover tugged her braid. The sharp jab of pain brought Willow back to herself. She looked away from where Luz and Amity on the far side of the clearing to focus on Clover.

“Palistrom-Brother went up,” Clover buzzed.

“What?” Willow looked up but all she could see were branches thick with foliage. There was no sign of Hunter anywhere, nor any swaying limbs to indicate he was on them.

“Can’t you sense the strange magic?” Clover asked insistently.

Willow could not, but apparently the palismen could, since all of them were looking in the same direction as Clover now. None of them had followed their witches.

Ghost gave the feline approximation of a frown. “Wood magic,” she hissed. “But not palisman magic.”

“Not palistrom wood,” Emmiline agreed. “But full of magic all the same.”

“It feels strange,” said Owbert in his ponderous hooting alto. “I do not like it.”

“It makes my brain feel itchy,” said Stringbean. She flicked out her forked tongue as if tasting the air. “I never felt magic like this back home.”

“Cutburn did tell us that magic here is not like any magic we’re used to,” Owlbert reminded her.

Suddenly all the palismen froze and a collective shiver went through their little bodies. Without another word, all five either flew or scrambled up the trunk of the tree and disappeared into the branches above; even Stringbean.

“What just happened?” Gus jogged over. “Willow?”

A terrible wail echoed from high above them, ended abruptly as if the mouth making it had been covered. The noise sliced through Willow like a knife of ice, freezing her insides. She knew that voice.

“Willow!”

She was in motion before Gus’s shout reached her ears, vines springing from spell circles around her wrists to lasso a branch so she could swing herself up. She lassoed another branch and did it again, and again, until she broke through a particularly thick layer of greenery and saw Hunter, strung with his arms above his head, kicking weakly against something sticking right out of the tree trunk that had its face pressed to his. The palismen dive-bombed the thing, pecking and scratching to make it release him. Hunter’s legs stopped kicking.

“Let him go!” Willow did not even recognise the feral growl as her own voice.

The thing waved an arm that creaked oddly, like Clover’s staff did if she tried to carry too much weight. The other curled possessively around Hunter’s limp form. Willow caught sight of bare breasts, though the thing’s long leafy hair covered most of its voluptuous body. Hunter sagged, eyes closed, chin dipped to his chest. His skin was even more sallow. He didn’t look like he was even breathing.

“Pretty boy is mine! I found him! He’s mine!”

The fringes of Willow’s vision turned green.

“I said let him go!”

Somewhere below, deep in the rich dark soil she had been so impressed with only minutes ago, something stirred with interest. Willow sensed it, but only in the distracted way that one might sense a cloud moving across the sky while out walking. She had bigger things to think about right now.

“What are you?” the creature holding tight to Hunter demanded. “You’re not of the forest. You aren’t made of wood like my pretty boy. Go away. Leave us alone so I can finish making him part of my tree.”

The green in Willow’s vision blotched with red the colour of rage.

Her magic did not so much cast as erupt out of her. She was not even sure whether she drew a spell circle, though she must have, since bright green rings encircled her wrists. A fountain of green power coursed down her vines and crackled through the wood of the tree itself. Willow concentrated on the tree as she did all plants when using her magic.

Suddenly, instead of being outside the plant and controlling it through a mixture of encouragement, request and force, it was as if she was reaching inside the tree and becoming a part of it. She sank into the tree even though she stayed exactly where she was. Willow felt the stickiness of sap, the roughness of bark, the shining sigh of photosynthesis. Her feet were its roots, buried in the earth; her torso was its trunk wide enough to resist the worst of any storm; her hair was made of leaves and she knew what the rich dark soil of the Never Never tasted like.

Willow’s bile sac reverberated and her veins sizzled with more power than she had ever felt before, as her magic connected with something deeper, brighter and older than anything she had ever felt before.

The thing holding Hunter arched its back with a scream, Willow’s magic coursing through it like electricity. The vines around his wrists released him. He began to fall but, with only a thought, Willow caught him in plants of her own that brought him to her arms. She cradled him close, grateful to feel the rasp of his breath against her neck.

“What did you do!?” screeched the thing, tossing hair made of leaves to glare at Willow. Its eyes were solid black but specks of green power began to coalesce at the centre of each. “You hurt me! You hurt me inside and out! I felt you inside my tree! No-one can be inside my tree but me and those I make part of it.”

Make part of it? Almost as soon as she had the thought, Willow registered the alien click of bone inside the tree; old bodies pressed into it to become part of it as this creature desired. When she had said she was going to make Hunter a part of her tree, she had meant it literally because she had done it many, many times before. Willow could feel the bones as if they were inside her.

Disgust welled up inside her.

“Give me back my pretty boy – ow!”

Clover darted at the thing’s face and raked her stinger down its cheek. The thing tried to slap her away but Ghost landed on top of its head and raked her claws across its forehead and eyes. Stringbean glowed, adopting a floating cat form of her own, and went for the thing’s throat. It didn’t do much but it was  pretty good distraction. The thing screamed in pain and fury.

A whoosh signalled Gus rising up to hover beside Willow on Emmiline in her staff form. On her other side, Eda, borne aloft on harpy wings, had a harder time flying amidst the tree branches and settled for landing on one. When she saw Hunter in Willow’s arms, she bared her teeth and snarled at the creature who had hurt him.

“Leave me alone!” the thing yelled. “I’ve done nothing to you! We are siblings of the soul! You are made of wood also! Why are you hurting me?”

“They’re hurting you because you hurt their friend,” Willow intoned. Her voice sounded different again; sonorous and almost double-layered with power. The backs of her eyes pulsed with something just shy of actual pain. Gus her up and down strangely but she took no notice, her entire focus rooted on the wailing creature. “Why did you take Hunter?” More blotches of red sprinkled through the green around her vision. “Answer me!”

A change came over the creature. Instead of fighting, it cowered back, staring at Willow with horror.

“He’s made of wood! Dying wood! He’s not long for this world! Please, Urramaigh Sidhe! I meant no harm! I merely wished to make him a part of my tree so that his life might not be in vain and he could be a part of something greater even in death. Forgive me! I did not know he belonged to you! I am but a simple dryad. I beseech your forgiveness!”

“Dryad?” Eda echoed. “I’ve heard that word before.”

“They’re tree spirits in old Sidhe-tales,” Gus supplied. “But in the stories they’re always benevolent and kind. They don’t snatch people and try to eat them.”

“I wasn’t going to eat him!” the dryad keened. “I was being kind by giving him a second life in my tree! He would not be forgotten that way. But I didn’t know the pretty boy belonged to you, Urramaigh Sidhe! I am so sorry. Please don’t kill me.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” said Willow. The dryad visibly relaxed, yet tensed again when she went on in a disdainful tone: “If you tell me right now why I shouldn’t cut off every one of your branches and suck the goodness from your roots for this impertinence.”

Gus stared at her. “Willow?”

“I meant no disrespect, Urramaigh Sidhe!” The dryad covered her head with her arms. “I will put back what I stole from your property!”

With that, she raised her face, opened her mouth and vomited up what seemed like a blizzard of coloured lights. They twisted through the air and arrowed into Hunter’s mouth. He choked, eyes flying open as the lights flowed down his throat. Willow heard snatches of conversations she recognised and saw glimpses of faces and events she knew. She saw her own smiling face from the perspective of someone with a floppy blond forelock that constantly got in his eyes.

“You stole his memories?” she shouted.

The dryad cowered even more. “But I put them back! Look! See? All back in your pretty boy.”

“Insolence!”

Willow’s eyes pulsed so hard that they felt like they might burst. Power sparked within her, rushing down her arms and into her hands. She felt her skin begin to harden. Her fingers lengthened and fragmented. Her jaw hurt, presumably from how hard she was gritting her teeth.

“Willow!” Gus shouted.

“Whoa, kid,” said Eda. “What are you even doing right now?”

Willow loomed. She wasn’t sure how but she felt bigger than usual, though that might just be psychological height from riding the crest of her anger and protectiveness. She held Hunter close as he panted, bandaged hands pawing at her but unable to hold her as he so clearly wanted to. Hunter was confused and scared and hurt – and that creature was the reason why.

With a thought, Willow sent the dryad slamming backwards into the trunk of the tree. With another, she splayed the creature’s arms perpendicular from her sides and pulled with her magic. This dryad was nothing but a plant, after all, and Willow was a plant witch. She pulled until the dryad’s limbs creaked and her mouth was round with a scream that made satisfaction curdle in Willow’s belly. And then she pulled some more. She enjoyed that sound. It felt good to hear it.

“Please! Please, stop! It hurts! You’re hurting me outside and in!”

The dryad’s left arm began to splinter.

“Willow!”

“I don’t think she can hear you, kid.”

“My witch! Please stop this!”

“Mrow, you are overtaxing yourself, Willow!”

The arm cracked at the elbow, sap running from the wound like blood. Willow relished the wet slide of it against her senses. She revelled in the dryad’s very deserved agony.

“W …Willow.” Hunter’s soft murmur cut through the haze of her rage like nothing else had or could. “Please … stop.”

She looked down at him. His brown eyes were soft and worried. He gazed up at her, mouth moving. She tilted her head.  

“Can you hear me, Willow?”

Slowly, she nodded.

“You need to stop. Something’s wrong. You’re not acting like yourself and you look really strange.”

She looked strange? Not acting like herself? How preposterous. She was acting exactly like herself. She was acting like her truest self, in fact. Such insolence from a creature just one step up from a stupid dryad was intolerable. She should punish it for –

Revulsion washed through her. She could never hurt Hunter. She could never punish him. That was what Belos did, not her. What was she thinking? What was she doing?

The blotchy green and red fringing her vision faded. She released the dryad, who collapsed in tears, clutching her left arm.

“I-I …” Willow stuttered. She had trouble forming the words. Her fangs felt too long for her mouth. “I d-didn’t mean t-to …”

The world started to fade back in around her. Clover buzzed in her ear. Gus gripped her shoulder. Hunter murmured soft reassurances, even though he was the one who had been hurt. Eda was staring at her, white-on-black eyes wide with shock.

No, not at her, just at her feet. Willow looked down.

Oh Titan …

Her legs were vines. Unlike previous instances, wherein she had lost her temper and wrapped herself in vines to gain height, this time her legs tapered off around her knees and split into thick, thorny green fibres braided together to give them stability for holding her upright. The vines stretched all the way to the ground like a beanstalk in one of Luz’s childhood books. Willow realised with a jolt that she was holding Hunter with both hands, no longer held up by a lasso over a branch of the dryad’s tree. Her hands were covered in bark and her fingers has split into twigs that hooked into Hunter’s pyjamas and had scratched deep red marks into his skin as they held him tightly – possessively.

Oh Titan. What had she done? What was happening to her?

Cutburn’s words floated back to her. “Oh, there’s magic here. More magic than even you witches have ever dealt with. But not your kind of magic.” They had not seemed ominous at the time, but now …

“I am sorry,” the dryad continued to sob. “Please don’t kill me, Urramaigh Sidhe.”

Urramaigh Sidhe. That was the fourth time the dryad had called her that. But Willow was not a Sidhe. She was a witch who wasn’t even from this world; a witch who had apparently been messing with magic rom this world that she should not have.

Suddenly all Willow wanted was to go home, shut herself in her room, crawl into bed and never come out again.

“Shhh, shhh, it’s all right,” Hunter murmured. Her brushed her cheek with his bandaged hand. It came away wet. “You’re going to be all right, Willow. But I think you need to let go of your spell circles.”

“I … I …”

“Here, kid.” Eda reached to take Hunter into her strong, capable grasp. “I’ve got him. Goose, brace her.”

Gus hooked his arms under Willow’s armpits while Clover converted into her staff form and hovered beneath. Gulping down her tears, Willow tried to release her spells. Usually holding a spell was like tensing a muscle and letting it go after a long time bought the same relief as dropping weights after a particularly brutal set of reps. This time, the release did not come easily. Unsticking her mind from the magic trying to consume it was like dragging herself out of quicksand. She floundered, panic rising.

“It’s okay, Willow. Just breathe. Find your centre,” Gus said calmly. “In for four and out for four.”

She slowed her breathing and closed her eyes, focussing on what usually came so effortlessly. Finally, the spells ended with a familiar jingle. Her bile sac ached like it had been overworked, yet she could feel that her magic reserves were completely full. The deep, bright, old magic of this world that she had unconsciously connected with fell away, receding back into the earth from whence it had come. Part of Willow mourned its loss, even as the rest of her shivered in fear. She felt hollowed out and used.

Gus caught her when her legs reverted to flesh and bone. He propped her up until she could get a grip on Clover. Willow panted, shaking her head to clear it.

The dryad had stopped crying. She peered at them curiously. “Urramaigh Sidhe?”

Willow took a steadying breath. She could not let this dangerous creature hurt any one of her friends again, but the idea of hurting her still burned hot and awful in her recent memory. She decided to take a chance on this ‘Urramaigh Sidhe’ thing and try to use it to her advantage.

“What is your name, dryad?”

The dryad’s eyes flew wide again. “You … wish to have my true name?” Fear coated every syllable.

“What do you call yourself?” Eda demanded. “Or should we just call you ‘firewood’?”

The dryad threw up her hands. “Apologies, shapeshifter! I call myself Oaklea.”

“Then Okalea, as Urramaigh Sidhe, I say that you will leave us alone for as long as we are resting beneath you. And you will make sure no other dryads bother us either,” Willow gritted.

“And in exchange for this, you will spare my life?” Oaklea asked imploringly.

Willow nodded. “I will.” She would deal with whatever a ‘Urramaigh Sidhe’ actually was later. For now, the term was getting them something they wanted and needed.

Oaklea clapped her hands. They clonked like empty wooden jugs knocking against each other. “Such generosity! I shall indeed shade your weary heads and protect you and those who belong to you while you remain within range of my branches and roots, Urramaigh Sidhe. Thank you so much! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“Belong to her?” Eda muttered, sotto voce.

Willow waved a hand. She felt exhausted and wanted solid ground under her feet. “And you are especially to leave Hunter alone, Oaklea. You are not to touch him, talk to him or do anything to him – especially not kiss him – no matter what. He is off-limits.”

Oaklea nodded so much her leaves started to fall off. “I agree to this. Thank you, kind and generous Urramaigh Sidhe!”

Willow craned to look over her shoulder at Gus. “Let’s head down. I … I need to head down.”

“You got it,” said Gus. “Eda, you carry Hunter. Palismen, follow us.”

Swiftly, they descended back to where the rest of their group waited. Darius and Camila looked like each of them was the only reason the other was still upright. Amity and Luz held onto each other, wearing identical worried expressions. Their faces cleared when they saw the returning party.

“You got Hunter back!” Luz cried.

“We heard noises, and then a giant set of vines shot down here and did that.” Amity pointed at the hole in the ground nearby. It was deep and had thrown up a lot of dirt. “But Owlbert flew down and told us you had everything in hand.”

“I might have overstated things somewhat,” Owlbert said from his perch on Luz’s shoulder. “But it seems I was correct in the end.”

Willow did not reply. She wobbled when she tried to get off Clover. Her knees buckled and she pitched forward. Amity sent out a rope of abomination ooze to catch her. It knocked the breath from her. She wheezed as her head sagged forward, allowing fresh tears to drip down her nose.

“Willow.” Arms that ended in bandaged hands wrapped around her from behind. She felt Hunter’s chest press against her back, the reassuring beat of his heart against her skin, even through clothes, wonderful and excruciating at the same time. he was alive. He was safe and here and alive. “I’ve got you.”

Willow wanted to scream at him to let go of her. She wanted to tell him to run far away. She wanted to say that she was dangerous and he should keep his distance from her.

She did none of those things.

She had wanted to hurt him. For a single, horrible moment, she had wanted to punish him just like she had punished the dryad. She had wanted to pull off his arm and revel in the warm splash of his blood. It had not been an idea put into her head by some alien entity or mind control spell. It had been all her.

Unable to put her thoughts or her emotions into words, Willow just burst into tears and let the boy she loved hold her as she sobbed.

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“Dryad?” Eda echoed. “I’ve heard that word before.”

~ The Dryads were one of the many types of nymphs in ancient Greek lore. The Greek word drys meant “oak” and the term dryad initially only applied to those nymphs who were spirits of oak trees. In time, however, the word became a term for all tree nymphs regardless of the type of tree they inhabited. As you can probably tell from her name in this fic, Oaklea is indeed a dryad of an oak tree. All nymphs were thought to occur throughout the natural world, but they often hid from humans. When they were seen they were described as beautiful young maidens who were graceful, but occasionally a bit wild. As spirits who were far removed from interaction with most people (they were the spirits of trees and preferred wild woodland and places away from human habitations) the dryads were often depicted as shy. Their wild nature showed, however, when some of them joined in the revelries of Dionysus, the Greek God of Wine, who was known to throw incredibly rowdy, bawdy and tawdry bashes with plenty of wine and plenty of fornication.

Chapter Text

Gus wasn’t sure what to do.

When Willow finally stopped crying, she sank into a strange kind of exhaustion. Whatever had happened up in that tree had really taken it out of her. Gus had seen her tired before, after flyer derby games and after overtaxing her magic when they first came back to the Demon Realm to face the Collector, but this was different. She seemed hollowed out by the experience. She stared into space, eyes half-lidded, barely aware of anything around her. Hunter sat down, gently pulled her into his lap and tucked her head under his chin. It was awkward for him to hold her with his bandaged hands but nobody stopped him.

“It’s okay, Willow,” he murmured, over and over. “I’ve got you. You’re okay. I’m here.” It seemed to totally escape him that he was the one who had been rescued and also needed comfort for what the dryad had done to him. He was so focussed on Willow that his own issues faded into insignificance. That was how it always was with the pair of them.

Gus felt helpless. He used to think he would always feel that way in a crisis, until the crises piled up and it was either learn to step up or be crushed under the weight of them. It had been a long time since he felt helpless in a crisis. He had not missed the feeling.

“Do you think it’s safe to stay here?” Luz looked around at the other trees surrounding their clearing.

“We have to stick near Cutburn’s rock,” said Eda tightly. “Willow got the dryad who owns this tree to agree to protect us as long as we stay here, so we should be okay.” She sounded tense.

Gus did not blame her. Eda had seen Willow lose control too; seen her not only change shape but change personality so fundamentally that, for one terrifying moment, Gus had not even recognised her. Willow was his best friend in all the world – in any world – and he knew her almost as well as he knew himself. But when she tortured that dryad she had become someone else. There had been pleasure in her eyes while she was inflicting hurt and so much anger when she looked at Hunter that it had reminded Gus entirely too much of when Belos possessed Hunter’s body in the old graveyard on Halloween.

“How long do you think Cutburn will stay in there?” wondered Amity. “Will we have to stay the night here?”

“How long is a piece of string?” Camila hunkered down near Hunter to stroke Willow’s hair back off her face. Willow did not react to the touch. Camila raised her face. “We wait until she comes back, however long that is. In the meantime, I think we all need some food. I don’t have much, but …” She opened the pack she habitually kept around her waist and pulled out some squashed cereal bars. “I keep these around for hangry moments. I know Cutburn said Willow could grow us things to eat in this soil but I don’t think she’s up to that right now, so this will have to do.”

“You’re such a mom,” Eda said, some of the tightness fading from her voice. “Carrying snacks everywhere just in case.”

“Don’t you keep food in your hair for King in case he gets hangry, Eda?” Luz asked.

Eda’s eyes widened. “Shoot, I do!” She dug her hand into her gigantic grey mane and extracted a whole metal lunchbox. “Ha ha! Well remembered, kid!” She flipped it open to reveal a range of Boiling Isles dried foods. “Bon apetit! That’s Human French for ‘grub’s up, suckers’.”

Gus’s stomach growled traitorously. How could he think of food at a time like this? Still, the curried eyeballs did look nice. And they smelled pretty good too. Against his will, saliva filled his mouth.

Eda pulled out the little shrink-wrapped bundle and passed it to him. “Here you go, Goose.”

He glanced at Hunter and Willow before accepting it gratefully. “Thanks, Eda. Hunter, do you want some?”

“I’ll stick to the cereal bars but thanks.” Hunter pressed a small kiss to the top of Willow’s head. She blinked but that was all. “Easier on my stomach.”

“Ditto,” said Luz. “Thanks, Mami.”

“Suit yourselves,” Eda shrugged. “More for us witches.” Owlbert cleared his throat. “And palismen.”

They settled down to eat. Darius created small cups from hardened abomination ooze and gathered rainwater from a hollow in the dryad’s oak tree. The meal was mostly silent, peppered with awkward attempts at conversation that each fell flat.

Gus nibbled on the curried eyeballs and wished he knew what to do.

“King will be so worried,” Eda murmured at last. “He’s a resilient little guy but still … I hope Lily comes over to look after him. Ma too. She’s got such a soft spot for the adorable furball.”

“Vee will probably check in when she can’t get through to any of our phones,” said Luz. “She’ll take care of King.”

“We disappeared from the hospital room without telling anyone where we were going,” said Amity. “Do you think Head Witch Chiron will figure it out? He had the most interactions with Cutburn before. Maybe he’ll figure out what she did.”

“Maybe.” Luz broke off a piece of cereal bar to feed to Stringbean. “Do witch hospitals have security cameras?”

“Security crystals,” Darius replied. “CCCBN.” At Luz’s blank look he sighed. “Closed Caption Crystal Ball Network. They’re in all public buildings. They’ll have been triggered when the Conformatorium was invaded and Chiron or someone will be able to put the pieces together.” He frowned. “Hopefully before the Wild Hunt does any further damage.”

“Cutburn said the Wild Hunt would leave as soon as they realised she was gone.”

Darius nodded but seemed unconvinced. “Call me crazy, but I don’t trust every single word out of Hettie Cutburn’s mouth.”

“She’s been right about everything so far,” Luz pointed out. “And we kind of have to trust her if we ever want to get back home, unless one of you mastered dimension-hopping magic in the last thirty minutes?”

“Would the Collector be able to cross worlds to Tír na nÓg?” Eda pondered. She crunched meditatively on a deep-fried ratwing. “Could we get a message to him to pass along, maybe?”

“The Collector hasn’t even been near the Boiling Isles in a long time,” Luz sighed. “They’re probably a million lightyears away right now, living it up travelling among the stars.”

“But still, maybe we could –”

The sound of grinding rock caught them all off-guard. The Cloch Sláinte that had absorbed Cutburn had grown a seam down its middle that gleamed with ice-blue magic. It peeled back, allowing her to step out. She did not look any different than before but when she glared at them her eyes seemed brighter. As the Cloch Sláinte closed behind her, she marched across to their group. Gus nearly choked on his last curried eyeball. Somehow he always forgot just how tall and imposing Cutburn was until she was right in front of him and he felt like she was about to squash him under her boot.

“Well, none of you got yourselves killed while I was gone.” It was a terrible greeting but was the only one she offered. “Good. You’re not totally incompetent then.”

“Hunter was almost murdered by a tree spirit.” Camila was on her feet and wagging an angry finger at Cutburn before anyone else could draw breath. “How could you be so irresponsible as to leave him where something like that could hurt him? That totally negates our deal!”

Cutburn narrowed her swirling, colourful eyes. “A dryad? You were given trouble by a puny dryad? I would have thought a mere baby could handle something so weak. It never even occurred to me that you people couldn’t handle one of those things.”

“Maybe we would have fared batter if someone had warned us.” Camila folded her arms and glared accusingly up at the taller woman. “Por el amor de Dios, es como si quisieras que sospechara de tu honestidad.”

Cutburn rolled her eyes. “I had other things on my mind than warning you of the Never Never’s equivalent of a mosquito. Dryads are pathetically underpowered. They literally cannot move from where their tree is rooted. I assumed you could handle yourselves.”

“Well, that mosquito took a shine to Blondie, sucked out his memories and then tried to eat him!” Eda got to her feet and gestured at Hunter and Willow. “That doesn’t sound pathetic to me.”

Cutburn eyed Hunter, who held tighter to Willow, pulling her closer as if trying to protect her from Cutburn’s gaze.

“Hmm. I suppose you are weakened by your degeneration. If a dryad managed to catch you by surprise, it probably could restrain you enough to absorb you into it. Is that what happened?”

Hunter nodded stiffly. “Willow got hurt saving me.”

At that, Cutburn looked surprised. “Your plant witch got hurt by a dryad? A literal tree spirit?”

“It turned her into a plant.”

Cutburn’s eyebrows climbed towards her stubby antlers. “I have never, ever heard of that happening before in my life. Dryads literally don’t have that kind of magic.”

“Urramaigh Sidhe.”

Gus only realised he had spoken when everyone looked at him.

“What did you just say?” Cutburn’s voice was deadly soft. Suddenly, her bravado abandoned her and she sounded apprehensive.

Gus cleared his throat. “Urramaigh Sidhe. That’s what the dryad called Willow when she started turning into plants. And she kept calling her that. She sounded scared when she said it, too.”

“What … do you mean by ‘turning into plants’?” Cutburn asked carefully.

Briefly, Gus explained the changes in Willow’s body and how the vines of her legs had thrust themselves into the ground far below the dryad’s branches. Eda added a few details he missed, also remarking at the change in Willow’s attitude and conduct alongside her physical alterations, and how Hunter talking to her had been the only thing that seemed to bring her back to herself so she could change back.

Cutburn swore under her breath.

“You know something.” Eda looked at Camila when Cutburn ignored her.

“You know something,” Camila echoed. “Tell us what it is.”

Cutburn hesitated.

“What does ‘Urramaigh Sidhe’ mean?” Luz asked. “Is it something dangerous?”

“Is Willow in danger?” Hunter demanded, ears standing straight up. He bared his teeth at whatever invisible enemy might threaten her, heedless of how ridiculous he looked showing fang while in pyjamas, bare feet and bandages.

Cutburn marched over to kneel next to him, taking Willow’s chin in one massive hand without warning. She turned Willow’s head left and right, squinting at her like the healer she had always purported to be back in the Demon Realm.

“Girl,” Cutburn finally said. “Park.” She snapped the fingers of her other hand in front of Willow’s face. “Answer me, plant witch.”

“Her name is Willow,” Hunter growled.

“I know what her name is,” Cutburn snapped back. “Has she been like this since she transformed?”

“No, she cried a bunch first and kept apologising to Hunter, even though she totally saved him and had nothing to even apologise for,” said Luz.

“She’s just in shock,” said Cutburn. “What concerns me is that she was able to take over the dryad’s body and wrest control of the thing’s own tree with her plant magic. You witches generate your own magic from your bile sacs, but without the underlying power of the Isles to pull from, your magic should be weaker here in Tír na nÓg. She should not have been able to do something as complex and energy-consuming as body transmogrification without help from an external magic source unless she is exceptionally powerful, which she is not.”

“Willow is plenty powerful,” said Hunter mulishly.

Cutburn rolled her eyes. “Young love. How annoyingly banal. She’s powerful for a witch, yes, but not to the level needed for that kind of spell while here in Tír na nÓg.” She pressed her thumbs into Willow’s cheeks, tilting her head up and forcing Willow to look up at her. Her thumbs glowed pale blue, magic sinking into Willow’s skin. “Girl, I need to know: did you feel anything strange when you used your plant magic to save your little boyfriend?”

Willow blinked at her. Slowly, awareness crept back into her gaze. Gus wanted to sigh with relief. He reminded himself that, whatever else she apparently was, Cutburn was a healer and a powerful one.

“Strange?” Willow mumbled.

“Yes, strange,” Cutburn confirmed impatiently.

Willow frowned. “I felt … something. In the earth. It gave me a boost to … to help me save Hunter when I got angry at … at the dryad.” She sounded unsure of herself, like she was trying to remember a dream.

Cutburn cursed again. “The Green Man. Has to be.”

“The what?” Darius finally spoke.

“The Green Man.” Cutburn sighed and sat back on her heels. Even kneeling down, she was on eye level with Darius. “You asked what ‘Urramaigh Sidhe’ means, human. There’s no direct translation into your tongue. The closest is probably ‘revered’ or ‘respected’, though neither are entirely accurate. A better description might be ‘touched by the divine’. There are spirits here in Tír na nÓg. They are made of old magic – older than witchkind, older than the Sidhe, older even than humanity. They predate us all. They’re ancient and vital and very, very dangerous. Luckily, they’re mostly inert or, at the very least, benign. The Green Man is one such spirit. He resides in nature and the natural world. Mostly, he’s benign and doesn’t take much interest in the workings of mortals, but …” She trailed off. “If one of the Old Spirits connects with a mortal, we call those mortals ‘Urramaigh Sidhe’. Connecting with an Old Spirit changes a mortal.”

“Changes?” Hunter repeated. “How?”

“It varies from mortal to mortal and Old Spirit to Old Spirit. As I said, the Green Man is usually benign and content to let the natural world play out as it desires without any interference from him. But if he has taken an interest in you, girl … well, let’s just say we need to complete our business and get all you witches and humans back to your own world as soon as possible.”

Gus felt like someone had poured ice water down his shirt. Willow was in danger? And from something older and more powerful than any of them could fight?

“What do we need to do?” He was on his feet and crossing the clearing to help Willow up before he had even finished asking the question. Willow’s hand felt cold and clammy, and her gaze still swam a little when she got up. Gus allowed her to lean against him, giving room for Hunter to clamber to his feet also.

“What do we need to do?” Hunter asked when Cutburn did not reply.

“We need to start walking.” Cutburn followed her own instruction. “Follow me.”

“Where are we going?” Camila hastily gathered up the few things scattered on the ground and zipped them into her pack.

Cutburn kept walking, evidently assuming they would all follow. “To the only place where we’ll find the means to save you from rotting where you stand, grimwalker: the Seelie Court.”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“Por el amor de Dios, es como si quisieras que sospechara de tu honestidad.”

~ For God's sake, it's like you want me to suspect your honesty.

“The Green Man.”

~ The Green Man (also called Jack in the Green, John Barleycorn, Herne of the Hunt, the Green Knight and many, many other names) is a character from British and Irish folklore, whose leafy face often decorates old churches and other structures. He is primarily interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, representing the cycle of new growth that occurs every spring. There are a lot of old stories that feature nature spirits in this way, though the Green Man is often the most popular and commonly featured. Obviously, I’m playing fast and loose with his legend, as I am with all the myths and folklore I’m pulling from in this fic, but he’s a fascinating character if you’re interested in looking up lesser-known bits of pagan folklore.

https://www.alehorn.com/blogs/alehorn-viking-blog/celtic-symbols-the-green-man#:~:text=This%20is%20the%20Green%20Man,constant%20for%20thousands%20of%20years.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-remarkable-persistence-of-the-green-man

Chapter Text

Hunter was flagging. He tried very hard not to let anyone see it but his energy reserves were already much lower than usual and his body ached from the exertion of walking. The respite they had enjoyed in the clearing had been nice, and he certainly had needed some food, but the incident with the dryad on top of his illness had taken a toll. Amity had made him a pair of abomination shoes to protect his bare feet, for which he was grateful. They were surprisingly comfortable and reminded him a lot of his worn-in Golden Guard boots. That uniform had been annoyingly longwinded to put on but he had to admit he had never found such a good pair of boots since ditching those in a fit of pique a few days after they arrived in the Human Realm.

He wished for his crocs. Everyone mocked him for wearing them so much but he loved them. They were comfortable and durable and oh-so-easy to slip on – no buckles or laces or belts or press-studs or anything. Plus, each time reminded him of the first time, when Camila lent him hers after Willow shyly invited him to join her in the backyard of the Noceda house, where she was starting a vegetable garden to help feed them all without breaking the household’s already straining budget.

Willow. Hunter looked at her, walking along behind Cutburn with her hands cupping her elbows. She still looked half out of it and he didn’t blame her. Connecting with an Old Spirit sounded terrifying. Clover clung to her witch, murmuring words of encouragement and rubbing her fuzzy ruff against Willow’s neck and cheek.

Hunter stumbled and cursed. Had that been a pothole or one of his knees giving out? He straightened and tried to carry on like nothing had happened, arms swinging.

“Stop.”

“Hmm?” Willow turned and blinked myopically. “What?”

“Hunter.” Darius hurried in front of them both and half-crouched. “Climb on my back. I’ll carry you.”

Hunter stared at him. “Darius, you’re not giving me a piggyback.”

Willow frowned. “Piggyback?” Then comprehension dawned. “Oh my gosh, Hunter, you’re walking!”

“Of course I’m walking,” he replied. It was testament to how troubled she was that she hadn’t noticed until now. “I have legs and we have somewhere to be, so I’m walking there.”

“But you shouldn’t be!” Willow exclaimed.

“You’re clearly exhausted and we can’t afford for you to get any sicker,” said Darius, still in his crouch. “Get on my back.”

Hunter took a step back. “No.”

“Hunter –”

“You’re still injured, Darius! I’m not making you carry me!”

“Then ride one of the palismen. You shouldn’t be walking.” Darius looked around. “Luz, would Stringbean be willing to adopt her staff form and let Hunter ride her?”

“Stringbean?” Luz held out her arm to speak to the snakeshifter curled around her wrist. “How about it?”

“Of course!” Stringbean chirruped. “If palisman-brother can’t walk I’d be happy to carry him.”

“I can walk!” Hunter protested.

“It’s not a case of ‘can’ it’s a case of ‘shouldn’t’,” Darius insisted.

“Hunter, please,” said Willow.

“Is Hunter being self-sacrificing and noble instead of sensible again?” Amity sighed.

“Of course he is,” Luz replied. “He’s Hunter.”

Hunter pouted. “Why do you say my name like that whenever I make a perfectly rational decision to do something you disagree with?”

“Because, mijo, you have a habit of making decisions that get you hurt and worrying those who love you when you think you’re being a burden,” Camila said softly, laying an equally soft hand on his shoulder.

Hunter resisted the urge to pull away from her too. He was a burden. He always ended up causing undie stress to those around him. His friends and family were only in this strange new world now because of him, after all. Everyone would be home safe if his stupid grimwalker body wasn’t breaking down and turning into mush.

“Listen to your mom, Blondie,” said Eda. “She’s a smart lady.”

“Well, most of the time,” Darius said with an odd undertone to his voice. He stood up and pointedly did not look at Camila. “Though right now her son is acting an awful lot like her.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Gus, looking between them like an observer at a tennis match.

Darius folded his arms. “Stubborn and self-sacrificing to the point of ridiculousness when there are those around who would gladly help him.”

Camila’s hand tightened on Hunter’s shoulder. It was only for a moment, and such a small contraction of her fingers that he might not have felt it at all if he wasn’t so keyed up and alert for hidden dangers.

“What is the holdup?” Having pulled ahead of the rest of the group, Cutburn halted to turn and glare at them, precluding further debate. “If any of you get lost in the Never Never I cannot guarantee your safety.”

“For someone who claims to be the best healer in the whole Boiling Isles, you sure did forget your patient pretty fast,” Luz sniped. “Hunter was in the hospital just a few hours ago and now you’ve got him hiking through a strange forest like it’s no big deal.”

“But it’s not a big –”

“Hunter, if you finish that sentence, I will introduce you to La Chancla 2.0: Luz Edition.”

Cutburn muttered enough curses to fill a whole swear jar, stalked back to the group and towered over Hunter. Instinctively, he pulled on the magic Flapjack had left him in preparation to flee. It took effort to remain in place and glare up at her, Camila’s hand still on his shoulder.

“Pesky, badly-made, shoddy grimwalker,” Cutburn muttered to herself. She snatched hunter from Camila’s hold, scooped him up and tucked him into the crook of one massive arm. “There.”

“Hey!” he protested. “What the- put me down!”

“We need to move as fast as we can and your little human friend is right; you’re a liability if you can’t run or fight and you’re just slowing us down if someone doesn’t carry you.”

Hunter glowered up at her. This close, he could see each individual close-cropped white hair on her scalp and the flecks in her colourful eyes. His entire right side was pressed against her bosom no matter how much he tried to pull away. Her skin was warm beneath her plain brown prison clothing. Her size and effortless hold on him made him feel uncomfortably like an infant.

“At least don’t carry me like a damn baby!”

“Would you prefer I carry you like a princess?”

He fizzed with annoyance. “You know, I never liked you when we worked together. Now I remember why.”

“Good. The feeling is mutual, you aggravating little brat. I never wanted to make you in the first place but Belos insisted and forced my hand by threatening to call the Wild Hunt down on me if I refused. He just had to have one last little Golden Guard by his side for the Day of Unity.”

Hunter’s next retort died in his throat at her words. “You helped him make me?”

She shrugged, bosom pressing closer with the movement. Hunter’s face flamed all the way to his ear tips. “I provided the Sidhe magic to bind your ingredients together and tended your plot myself while they melded and fermented into the correct shape. What, you think Belos was willing to spend hours measuring chemicals to get the PH balance of the soil right so you didn’t come out blue as palistrom wood instead of flesh-coloured? I showed him what to do to perfect the grimwalker growth cycle but he was always too impatient. He tried pulling them out of the ground too soon and was always disappointed by the results. Their faces were half-formed like the first few he managed alone, necessitating masks even when in private conference with him, or their guts fell right out of their malformed ribcages, or something else easily preventable if he had just been willing to wait. Most of the time he ended up euthanising the failures so he could recycle them for parts.”

Hunter’s mouth ran dry. He had known, of course. He had seen the pit of bones. After the Collector was gone and everyone worked to rebuild the Isles, King had pulled Eda and Luz into an awkward secret conversation in which he confessed what Kikimora had showed him when taking him to meet the Collector for the first time. The discussion of what to do about the place took so long that it ended up involving the whole Isles Elected Council. The discussion of whether to allow Hunter down there took even longer. In the end, he had eschewed them all by sneaking out one night and warping himself into the place using Flapjack’s magic. Darius and Eda found him there the next morning, on his side at the bottom of the pit, holding a skull so small it could only have belonged to a new-born, in the throes of such a powerful dissociation that he had not come out of it for three days. When he finally did wake, he promised never to go there alone again. He had kept to his word, too.

But the idea of someone else helping Belos; of someone else knowing what Hunter was all along, even before he knew himself – and that same person knowing Belos was killing the Golden Guards over and over and not doing anything to stop it …

Hunter swallowed saliva the consistency of molasses. How old was Hettie Cutburn? Had she been around the whole time, helping Belos rise to power from the shadows? Or had she arrived long after he started his plans and only helped ease his struggles with trying to bring back his dead brother and finally get Caleb’s approval?

“Does that make you his mother?” Stringbean floated over to curl protectively around Hunter’s neck and shoulders, flicking her tongue at Cutburn. “You don’t smell related. Palisman-brother smells like wood and love and home. You smell like dirt and rotten leaves and resentment. Blech. Nasty.”

Cutburn’s expression became thunderous. She started walking at such a fast pace that even Darius’s long legs struggled to keep up.

“I am nobody’s mother!” Cutburn snarled. “Not now! Not ever!”

“Good, because I already have a mother.” Hunter searched until his eyes found Camila, hurrying along beside them. Despite Cutburn’s legs being much longer, Camila kept pace with her, though doing so was making her pant and go red-faced. “And she’s a better mother than you’d ever be.”

“You’re remarkably rude for someone who wants me to save his life,” Cutburn sniffed.

“You’re remarkably calm for someone on the run from the Wild Hunt. What did you even do to make them chase you across whole worlds? Surely you leaving Tír na nÓg should have made them leave you alone.”

“None of your business, whelp.”

“Considering that if they catch up with you here, they’ll catch up with us too, I think it is my business. And slow down, will you? You’re leaving everyone behind and you just finished telling us not to get lost in the Never Never.”

Cutburn bared her fangs at Hunter like an angry cat but slowed her pace. “The Wild Hunt would only make you their prey if you get between me and them and tried to stop them from catching or killing me, or if they think you’d be a fun quarry.”

“Fun quarry?” Darius echoed, eyes wide.

“What’s a quarry?” Luz asked.

“A quarry is the thing being hunted. They’re eternally looking for the best quarries to hunt or tracking down the quarries of others. If they stop, they die. That’s their geas.”

“The Wild Hunt is under a geas too?” Luz shook her head. “There seems to be a lot of that going around lately.” She shot Camila a look Hunter could not interpret, which Camila summarily ignored.

“The Leader of the Hunt was once a Sidhe prince,” said Cutburn. “He was born thousands of years ago and loved nothing more than hunting, drinking and carousing in brothels. He declared that he would give anything to be allowed to do nothing but hunt the best quarries with his horses and his dogs, and make merry with his friends for the rest of his life. He made a bargain with an Old Spirit to get exactly that. But the trick of it is, their lives are tied to their hunting. As long as they keep hunting, they keep living. If they stop hunting, that’s the end of their lives. Their years catch up with them and they turn to dust and bones on the spot. So if the Wild Hunt has declared you their quarry, you will never escape them. They cannot stop hunting you or they will perish, and in a choice between your life and their own, they will always pick themselves. They cannot be bargained with, bribed, dissuaded or defeated. They are unstoppable and they always catch their prey in the end. All you can do it outrun them for as long as you can in the hopes that their geas eventually declares you uncaught enough to turn back on them and turn them to dust.”

“And that’s what you’re doing since you pissed them off enough to get on their hitlist somehow,” Luz surmised. “Clever.”

Cutburn glared at her. “Watch your mouth, human.”

Darius looked stricken. Hunter struggled to see him over Cutburn’s bicep. “Darius? What’s wrong?”

Darius shook himself, capelet wavering with the movement. “Just thinking about how much I do not want us to be caught in the crossfire if they catch up with Cutburn, Little Prince.”

Hunter frowned. Darius rarely called him Little Prince anymore, and when he did it was usually in a moment of unguarded affection or worry. He was prevented from saying more, however, by Amity drawing close to Cutburn and talking out the side of her mouth.

“We’re being followed,” she murmured, just loud enough to be heard over her own footsteps. “Ghost says something is in the trees.”

“More dryads?” Hunter shuddered. Each tree was a potential threat, according to what Cutburn had said about the creatures.

“No, it’s been following us for a while and the dryads can’t leave their own trees behind. Right?”

“Correct.” Cutburn’s eyes darted around even though her head did not move. “Did your palisman say what it is that’s tracking us?”

“Something small. Not a Sidhe but it has magic. That’s all she could tell from this distance.”

“Can she get closer?”

Amity pursed her lips. “That might be dangerous if we don’t know what it is.”

Owlbert landed on her shoulder. “I can accompany Miss Ghost in a reconnaissance endeavour.”

“Reconnaissance endeavour? Wow, Eda.” Luz nudged her in the ribs, chuckling quietly. “Owlbert is so smart. Do you even know what a reconnaissance endeavour is?”

“Can it, wiseass,” Eda grumbled. “It’s because he’s an owl. Owls are naturally smart. Owlbert used to read the dictionary for fun in his downtime between scams.”

“Aren’t you an owl though?”

“I’m an owl harpy beast.” Eda touched the stump of her missing arm as if she wanted to fold them and pout. “That’s different. All the appetite for voles and none of the extra intelligence.”

“Aww, sorry. If it helps, I think you’re totally street-smart. Nobody else in the entire Boiling Isles is as devious and conniving as you.”

Eda nudged Luz back with a fierce little smile. “Thanks, kid. Owlbert, no heroics. Just get a good look and then come back and tell us what you see.”

Gus drew a small blue spell circle. Instantly, an illusion of Owlbert popped out of Eda’s hair with a hoot and an illusion of Ghost hopped onto Amity’s shoulder, while the real palismen shimmered and vanished behind a veil of invisibility. Eda gave him an approving smile.

They kept walking. Hunter was surprised at how smooth Cutburn’s steps were. Though being carried like an infant was still humiliating, he had to admit that his aching joints appreciated the lack of jostling.

“What’s the Seelie Court?” he asked after a moment. They could convince whoever was watching them that they weren’t paying attention to them if they kept talking.

Cutburn frowned, and he thought she would refuse to answer, but apparently she came to the same conclusion as him. “In Tír na nÓg There are multiple … the closest word you’d understand is ‘countries’, though ‘spheres of influence’ is probably more accurate. Each is governed by its own royal court, from which it takes its name, and rulers within that court. In the Demon Realm your Sidhe-Tales talked of things like ‘The Queen of the Sidhe’ or ‘The Prince of All Sidhe’ but those titles are nonsense, since the Sidhe are not a united people. We are divided into Courts, factions within factions, each in conflict with someone else. Wars happen often and over the smallest things. If you are ruled by one court, you hate whoever you are directed to hate, fight whoever you are directed to fight and, if called on, die whenever you are directed to die, all to please the rulers.”

Hunter thought of Belos’s bloody rise to power and pulled a face. “That sounds familiar.”

“Yes, well, fitting into the Emperor’s way of running the Boiling Isles was easier than I thought it would be, since I was already used to following the whims of an autocratic tyrant.” Cutburn cleared her throat as though she had said too much. “The Seelie Court is one of the larger spheres of influence in Tír na nÓg, though it is not largest overall. It holds a lot of territory and contains a lot of Sidhe and other creatures. We’re more likely to find help for your condition there than anywhere else.”

“And why are they more likely to help Hunter than anyone else?” Willow asked.

Cutburn ignored her question until Luz repeated it.

“The Sidhe of the Seelie Court are infamous for being do-gooders. They’re very nearly blinded by their own magnanimity and practically knock themselves flat with how often they pat themselves on the backs for their acts of generosity and compassion to those less fortunate. They hold those ideals in the highest regard and consider themselves better than all other Sidhe because of it.”

“You don’t sound like you approve,” Luz observed wryly.

“They’re insufferable,” Cutburn replied. “They think they’re so wonderful and everyone else is so worthless in comparison. Though in this case, it might serve our needs quite well. The level of magic needed to reverse the deconstruction effect of a grimwalker’s limited lifespan is beyond that of any regular Sidhe. But if we can get a poor, pathetic, dying grimwalker who looks like a wet kitten in front of the King and Queen of the Seelie Court, they may see it as a perfect opportunity to display how wonderfully generous they are and how much more powerful and better they are than the rulers of other courts. They’d heal him just to prove they could and then put him on display for the other courts to know of their great and magnanimous deeds.”

“Wait, put him on display?” Camila repeated. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

Cutburn let out an aggravated sigh. “They won’t stuff him and mount him on a wall. They’ll just throw a few feasts, maybe a grand ball or two, and invite nobility from other courts to come and marvel at their guest of honour whose life they so generously saved with their powerful magic.”

Camila frowned. “You didn’t mention this before.”

“We were short on time before and it didn’t seem prescient. You want your grimwalker son saved and this is the best way to do it before he dissolves into a puddle of goo.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Hunter protested, a shiver tracing his spine. He remembered once again the sound of Belos’s body slamming against an archway and liquifying on impact.

“Won’t there be questions about … y’know, our lack of antlers?” asked Luz, gesturing at her scalp.

“Probably but the desire to prove how good they are will outweigh that. It always has before. And before you ask what I mean by ‘before’, when the veils between dimensions were much thinner in ancient times, Sidhe of the Seelie Court used to travel to Human Realm, Demon Realm and several other worlds all the time to save babies who might otherwise die of parental abuse and bring them back here to raise as changelings. And those babies grew up into people who interbred and created new generations. Servants without antlers are not as uncommon in the Seelie Court as you might think.”

“I thought Sidhe stole babies to eat!” Gus exclaimed.

“They didn’t eat the babies they stole?” asked Luz.

“Maybe some of the other courts did but not the Seelie. They loved crossing over to rescue or help good and worthy folk they deemed in need of their help. They took food to the poor and elderly, seed and pots of Tír na nÓg soil to hardworking but unlucky farmers, helped overworked mothers, changed the bandages of those sick and dying of diseases that made their own kind abandon them, and gave gifts to those they favoured – especially those who passed stupid tests they posed to test ‘goodness of heart’ or whatever. Oh, you can’t beat a Seelie Court Sidhe for hiding as an ugly old crone in need of food and shelter on a cold night in exchange for no money, just a single rose, or some other malarkey. Ugh. It’s all just an exercise in stroking their own egos so they can boast about how good and kind they are to the less fortunate, even if they have to literally go to other worlds to find less fortunate willing to endure them.”

“Do their motives really matter if they’re helping those who need help?” Hunter asked.

He needed help, after all. He was willing to be a guest of honour are as many boring parties as the Seelie Court wanted if it meant he didn’t have to die. He wanted to live so, so badly, and now that he was allowed to have that thought, he couldn’t stop thinking it. He wanted to live. He wanted to grow old with Willow and build a life with her. He wanted to go to Luz and Amity’s wedding someday. He wanted to see Gus and Matt finally stop being stupid and date each other like they so clearly wanted to. He wanted to figure out a career for himself. He wanted to explore the Human Realm some more, maybe go backpacking to one of the far-flung countries like Australia or New Zealand after university. He wanted to see and hear and taste and touch and smell and feel as many things as both the Demon Realm and Human Realm had to offer, and have the time to do all that in. He wanted it so much that the old guilt over wanting stirred but the desperation not to rot away in his own skin crushed it down again.

Cutburn made a grunting noise in reply. “If we don’t get to the Seelie Court, it’s all moot anyway. Stay sharp, everyone: the Never Never has been quiet so far but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s safe here.”

“A dryad tried to kill me; I think we know it’s not totally safe,” Hunter retorted.

Cutburn let out a mocking laugh that seemed to layer her strange double-voice over and over itself even more. Hunter’s ears flicked at the noise. He saw Gus and Willow both lay theirs flat against their skulls, their sensitive witch hearing balking at the cacophony.

“If you thought a dryad was the worst the Never Never has to offer, whelp, you haven’t been listening to me.”

As if on cue, a small brown bullet shot out of the canopy and landed at her feet in an explosion of feathers.

“Owlbert!” Eda dashed to her palisman, scooping him up in her widening palm. Claws sprouted from her nailbeds and blackness crept into her eyes when she saw the three parallel cracks across his middle leaking green ichor. “Are you okay? Speak to me!”

Owlbert looked up at her, hooting softly. “They … spotted us …”

“They? They who? Stay with me, buddy. Who hurt you?” Eda’s voice dropped to a bestial growl. Grey feathers popped from her neck. “I’ll kill ‘em!”

Owlbert pointed one wing back up at the canopy. “Up there … feline creatures of some sort … two of them … they attacked us when we were still invisible as if they could see us … like they knew we were there all along and were just toying with us …” He blinked one eye at a time as if he could not properly focus. “They took Ghost …”

“Ghost”?” Amity turned and glared up at the canopy. “Give me back my palisman, whoever you are!”

“They ran away with her.” Owlbert pointed again. “Through the trees … that direction …”

Amity started running. “Ghost! Where are you, baby!?”

“Don’t get separated!” Cutburn thundered. “Stay together!”

Amity took the cork from her gourd of abomination ooze and summoned it, coating her hands in spiked purple gauntlets. Her ponytail swung behind her like a double-helix as she ran, poking through the back of the helmet she also created. As with most things Amity made with her abomination magic, it bore catlike aesthetics – in this case a pair of triangular ears on top and claws on the gauntlets’ fingertips.

A weighted net dropped from the canopy, enveloping her. Amity let out a single yelp before the net swooped her up into the trees and she was lost from sight.

“AMITY!” Luz screamed, sprinting after her.

“Stay together!” Cutburn boomed. “She’s lost. The Never Never has her now.”

“Sucks to that idea!” Luz held out her hand and Stringbean slithered from Hunter’s shoulders to return to her witch and convert to her staff form. Luz hopped on and zoomed up into the treetops. “Amity! I’m coming, sweet potato! Hold on!”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“What’s the Seelie Court?”

~ In folklore, the Seelie and Unseelie Courts are Celtic names for good and bad fairies. Seelie means ‘blessed’ or ‘lucky’ and refers to the fairies who serve the King and Queen of that court being nice to humans and those who are favoured by them being ‘blessed’.

https://writinginmargins.weebly.com/home/the-seelie-and-unseelie-courts

https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/2021/01/24/the-seelie-and-unseelie-courts/

“Oh, you can’t beat a Seelie Court Sidhe for hiding as an ugly old crone in need of food and shelter on a cold night in exchange for no money, just a single rose, or some other malarkey. Ugh. It’s all just an exercise in stroking their own egos so they can boast about how good and kind they are to the less fortunate, even if they have to literally go to other worlds to find less fortunate willing to endure them.”

~ Side-fling to the opening narration from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1991).

Chapter Text

Ghost struggled, trying her best to swipe across the face of the creature carrying her. Tufts of blue and green fur already clung to her claws. Unfortunately, since it had her by the scruff, she was left flailing as it jumped from branch to branch, carrying her further and further away.

“Don’t worry, little sister. We have you now,” said the second creature, the one Owlbert and she had been observing when the pair hidden in the leaves jumped them.

“Unhand me, wretch!” she screeched. “Coward! Sneak attacks are unbecoming!”

“Such a foul mouth for one so pretty,” said the third.

The one carrying her gave a grunt that Ghost felt through her fur and skin. She wanted to revert to her wooden form but feared it would just make her easier to carry away and she would not know where they were taking her at all if she couldn’t see the journey.

“Ghost! Where are you, baby!?” yelled Amity from the forest floor below. Ghost felt her witch’s emotions thrum through the soul-bond. Amity was angry and scared.

“Don’t get separated!” shouted Cutburn from further off. How far had Ghost’s captors travelled already? “Stay together!”

“My witch will never let me go,” Ghost snarled at the three creatures. “Release me of she’ll blast you to bits to rescue me! She’s the most powerful abomination witch in the Boiling Isles!” That was not strictly true but it would be someday, Ghost was certain of it. She had complete faith in Amity’s abilities.

“Oh, witches,” said the second creature in the tone of someone who had just thought of the answer to a particularly hard crossword clue. “From the Boiling Isles. That makes so much sense. They’re always snatching up unwitting creatures and running off with them. Goodness, it’s been a while since any witches fell through the In Between. I’d have expected to see fresh humans before fresh witches or demons.”

Ghost growled low in her throat, teeth bared in a hiss. It was a good hiss. Back home it would have made a full grown slitherbeast think twice. “That witch is mine! She will not abandon me! She will chase you to the end of time to retrieve me!”

“Well that would certainly be inconvenient,” said the second creature.

“Shall I take care of little sister’s witch?” asked the third.

Ghost’s eyes widened. “You leave Amity alone, you wretched cat wannabes!”

“You transfigure, I’ll carry,” said the second creature, ignoring her outcry.

The third halted on a branch, turned around and leapt off. In mid-air, it disappeared in a brief flash of silver magic. It seemed to Ghost that she blinked and then a weighted net on the end of a long rope sailed through the air where the third creature had been. It plummeted through the trees to land on top of –

“Amity!” Ghost shrieked. “Look out!”

The net fell directly on top of Amity, bolos wrapping together, tangling her up in milliseconds. The second creature took the end of the rope in its jaws and pulled, yanking her up into the treetops. Once there, it gripped the net between its teeth and ran after the one carrying Ghost.

“Amity!” Ghost mewled.

“Ghost!” Amity called back. “Did they hurt you?”

“No but they clawed Owlbert open!”

“He’s safe. Eda has him. What are these things?”

“Soon to be nothing but carrion for the birds to pick over,” Ghost snarled. “If you hurt my witch I will gouge out your eyes and shove them up your rectums!”

The one carrying her chuckled, deep voice thrumming through her scruff and into her shoulders, making them vibrate. It was completely unperturbed by her threats. It never missed its footing once. Neither did the one carrying Amity, despite her trussed-up body still being bulkier and harder to transport than Ghost’s tiny frame.

“AMITY!”

“Luz!” Amity twisted, trying to look in the direction of her girlfriend’s voice, but she was too tangled to move. The net seemed to wrap more of itself around her when she tried.

Cutburn’s voice boomed out, echoing off the tree trunks as Ghost, Amity and their captors got further away from her. “Stay together! She’s lost. The Never Never has her now.”

Ghost skinned her lips off her teeth again. She did not like Cutburn. Not one bit. The next opportunity she got, she was going to use one of her shoes as a litterbox.

“Sucks to that idea!” Luz shouted back. “Amity! I’m coming, sweet potato! Hold on!”

“Luz!” Amity called. “We’re over here! Hmmf!” A piece of the net whipped over her mouth, effectively gagging her.

Ghost opened her mouth and yowled, loud and long. Her voice sliced through the air, making Amity’s sensitive ears pin back. Ghost kept yowling as loud as she could. Her captor could not silence her as easily and still keep running, and Luz would follow the noise.

True to form, Luz cannoned past them on Stringbean and turned, hovering in the air and blocking their path to the next tree.

“Oh wow. Weird neon cats. Not what I was expecting.”

Their captors halted, but instead of staying put or fighting, they simply leapt to lower branches and attempted to circumvent Luz that way. Luz landed on a sturdy limb and twirled Stringbean, casting a broad glowing circle of magic.

“Let my girlfriend and her palisman go!”

A blast of light streaked from the circle, forming a sphere around them that resembled the protective bubble Lilith Clawthorne had wrapped Luz herself in on the drawbridge of the Emperor’s castle many years ago. Ghost’s face bumped against the inside of the bubble when the creature carrying her could not stop its forward motion in time. She rubbed her nose with one paw.

“Maybe you misheard me,” Luz enunciated as if speaking to a slow child. “Let. My girlfriend. And her palisman. Go.”

“You heard her!” Ghost crowed. “You’d better not make her mad. She’s the most powerful human magic-user who ever lived in any world and very protective of my witch.”

The creature carrying the net spat it out. “That’s a human!” it exclaimed. “Why are humans, witches and Sidhe travelling together in the Never Never? It makes no sense. You’re not from the Seelie Court. You don’t wear their colours.”

Luz twirled her staff again. The bubble containing the creature and Amity split and reformed into two separate bubbles, the latter of which floated over to Luz before popping. Amity’s trussed and gagged body plopped neatly into Luz’s waiting embrace.

“Hi, Amity. Long time no see,” she said conversationally.

Amity shook her head, eyes wide. She struggled against her restraints and tried to speak through her gag.

Luz frowned in confusion. “What? Whoa!”

The net erupted off Amity’s body and flew at Luz’s face. It glowed silver and the third creature landed in its natural form, hissing and spitting, all four legs wrapped around Luz’s skull. Luz shrieked and stumbled backward out of instinct. Amity toppled in the other direction, arms now freed but windmilling with no staff to catch herself. Her foot slipped and she toppled off the tree limb at the same time Luz blindly fell off the other side. Ghost could only watch, trapped in her protective bubble.

“Gotcha!” Eda swooped up on harpy wings and caught Amity. “Stringbean!”

Stringbean transformed into a parachute attached to Luz’s back, allowing them to drift gently down to the ground below. Luz yanked at the brightly coloured creature on her face, grabbing it under its forelegs and holding it out at arm’s length with a gasp. The thing flailed, swiping claws to try to add more deep red divots to her face and neck.

“Hey!” Eda landed, releasing Amity, and grabbed the creature by its scruff. Ghost felt mean-spirited satisfaction at the way it dangled helplessly in her enormous harpy hand. “Quit with the scratching and the biting, you mangy moggy.”

The creature stared at her. “A harpy? With humans, witches and a Sidhe? Who are you people!?”

Eda curled her upper lip at it. “Incredibly ticked off, that’s what.”

“I asked who, not what!”

“I know, but I had the reply all ready to go and couldn’t let a little bump in semantics stop me.”

It boggled, whiskery face slack. Then it raised its paws above its head as if in surrender. “We yield. Brothers, stop fighting them.”

“We what!?” yowled the creature left alone in the bubble next to Ghost’s. “Strongintheclaw, have you lost your mind!? These are common mortals! We do not surrender to common mortals!”

“There’s nothing common about them, Tailofwavingfury. Look at them!”

“I am looking. I see a stupid human, an ugly one-armed harpy and a witch whose only saving grace is her affinity for our ears and claws.”

Eda bristled. “Hey! Who’re you calling ugly, you measly little beast? You’ve only got one damn ear and half a tail!”

“Enough,” said the one she was holding. “This is my decision as Yowler. Follow my instructions, both of you. Essenceofmoonlightgrace, release the little sister.”

“My name is Ghost.”

The creature blinked at her. “Nothing else? Just ‘Ghost’? Not Ghostoflovelypawprints? Or Midnightghostofbeautifulsolitude?”

“No,” Ghost snapped. “Just Ghost.”

It shook its head. “Hmm. Maybe we were wrong in thinking you were one of our kittens kidnapped by interlopers.”

Amity held out her arms when Stringbean resumed her staff form to let Luz separate Ghost off into a bubble of her own. It popped in Amity’s arms. Ghost rubbed her head against her witch’s chin, purring furiously. Her scruff was wet with spit and she overflowed with puff-furred humiliation at being carried like a helpless kitten – at being mistaken for a damn kitten! How insulting! Ghost was probably older than all of them, since she had been carved by Amity’s mother in the days before she became so cruel and neglectful that Ghost made the unprecedented decision to break their soul bond and offer herself to Odalia’s lonely youngest daughter instead so that she could help her to become her own person outside her toxic mother’s influence.

The empty bubble of Luz’s magic floated over to encase the creature in Eda’s grasp.

“Right,” said Luz, thudding the end of Stringbean’s staff against the ground.

All three of the neon feline creatures hovered in front of them in separate protective bubbles. Their coats were so bright that it almost hurt to look at them, with strange patterns of conflicting colours swirling through their fur. In shape, they resembled the Maine Coon cats Amity had been so enthralled with in the Human Realm, but in coloration and the sheer intelligence they were closer to witches than mere beasts.

Luz brandished her staff at them. “Now that’s over with: who and what are you three and why did you try to kidnap some of our group and injure others?”

The one Eda had been holding gazed at her. Then it lifted itself onto its hind paws and performed a flawless bow. “We are grimalkins. Delighted to make your acquaintance, ignorant human. Now please, tell us what in the blue blazes you and your unsettlingly strange party are doing in our territory?”

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“We are grimalkins.”

~ A grimalkin (also known as a greymalkin or graymalkin) is an archaic term for a cat that references a Celtic legend of faery cats that dwell in wild countryside where humans aren’t plentiful. During the 16^th Century the name grimalkin – and cats in general – became associated with the devil and witchcraft. Women tried as witches in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries were often accused of having a familiar, which was frequently a grimalkin. A familiar cat named Grimalkin is mentioned in Shakespeare's play Macbeth, so my use of the name here is a side-fling to that as well as the character of Graymalkin from the Iron Fey trilogy by Julie Kagawa.

Chapter Text

Hunter gawked in amazement. Luz, Amity and Eda walked towards them, each carrying a ball of pink containment magic with a large cat inside.

“What in Titan’s name …” Gus muttered.

Owlbert, cradled in his arms, pointed with one wing. “Those are the creatures who attacked us and stole away Ghost.”

Ghost now balanced on Amity’s shoulder, safe and sound. She looked tiny next to the cats in the bubbles. As they got closer, Hunter could see how large they truly were. Their coats were long and thick, with swirling patterns that stretched from scalp to tail-tip and almost seemed to move as he watched. Their ears thinned at the tips to elongations that looked like antennae and ended in tightly curled balls of … was that hair, a flap of skin or something more prehensile? Their eyes were disturbingly intelligent and when his friends stopped, the one in the centre lifted a paw and gave a little wave.

“Greetings, bipeds of various hues and origins. Luz the Human has told us all about your quest into Tír na nÓg and, I must say, it all sounds very exciting. Apologies for stealing away one of your party; she is so small and delicate that we mistook her for one of our kittens – a mistake we shall not make again.”

Ghost bristled. “Kitten indeed! I’m over thirty years old!”

“To be fair, small one, to us thirty is still a kitten. We grimalkins regularly live to be three-hundred or more. The Great and Glorious Yowler Supreme is said to be in his sixteenth century!” The middle cat turned back to Hunter, Willow, Gus, Darius, Camila and Cutburn. He looked at each of them but focussed on Cutburn. “Hmm. You’re rather big for a Sidhe, aren’t you?”

Cutburn bristled even more than Ghost. “Why you impertinent little –”

“Ah, ah, ah. There are children present.” The cat gestured at Gus.

Gus stood a little straighter. “I’m not a child!”

“Really? You look very young. Though, admittedly, I’ve not met witches in these parts for so long that I’m a little rusty at distinguishing things like age and gender.”

Cutburn’s upper lip rippled. “Ugh, I hate grimalkins.”

The cat, who seemed to speak for the group, tilted his head to one side, making his long ears wave like stalks of corn in a breeze. “Oh? And why do you hate us? We never seek out your kind if we can possibly help it, Sidhe. We only ever encounter you if you wander into our territory, and if you’re in the Never Never you’re knowingly risking your own life and safety.”

Cutburn folded her arms and focused on Luz instead of answering. “Why did you bring them back here? If you caught them and retrieved what they stole, you should get on with it and kill them already.”

Luz was clearly aghast at that idea. “I’m not killing cats!”

“Grimalkins,” said the centre cat smoothly, as if he wasn’t in dire peril.

“You’ll regret it if you don’t kill them,” Cutburn insisted. “Grimalkins are tricksters and charlatans. They never do anything for anyone’s benefit but their own. And they find immense pleasure in tricking the unwary right to their deaths for their own amusement.”

“I take offense at that, dear lady,” said the centre cat, though he did not sound at all offended. In fact, he sounded amused. Hunter wondered whether he was really as trapped in that bubble of magic as he seemed. “Sometimes we just trick them out of all their worldly possessions, not their lives. You can’t steal from the dead. It’s just picking up garbage at that point. Where’s the fun in that? Carrion is so gauche for predators such as we.”

Cutburn snorted and gestured with one broad hand. “See? Get rid of them or you’ll be sorry.”

Luz frowned. “Strongintheclaw, you said you were on the level.”

The centre cat, now identified as Strongintheclaw, turned in his bubble to face her. He dragged his tongue over a forepaw and rubbed it over his face and ears as he spoke, his tone pure nonchalance. “Technically I’m currently very unlevel, since I’m inside a sphere. But if that is your curious human way of saying that I was being honest with you, I was. I said that if you brought us to meet the rest of your party, I would help you get out of our territory safely, and that is precisely what I intend to do.”

A thought occurred to Hunter. “Uh, where exactly does your territory end?”

Strongintheclaw stopped washing his face to smile at Hunter. It was a very unnerving smile, since his mouth stretched further than it should up his furry face and was filled with thin, needle-like teeth. “An extremely good question, young man! Very astute of you to ask it. Our territory ends at the edge of the forest, just before the Stream of Forgetfulness.”

“Stream of Forgetfulness?” Camila echoed. “Dios mío, no me gusta cómo suena eso.”

Strongintheclaw’s eyes gleamed. Hunter could not tell what colour they actually were, since the containment bubble made all three cats look only varying shades of pink and black, but the grimalkin’s pupils narrowed so much they were almost invisible. “What language is that?”

Camila blinked at him. “Oh, it’s Spanish, a Human Realm language, uh … Señor Gato.”

“See-nyoor Gaht-oh.” Strongintheclaw gave a little hop, his grin widening. It put Hunter in mind of an illustrated copy of Alice in Wonderland he had seen at the Gravesfield Library. The Cheshire Cat has been nowhere near as unnerving to look at though. “That’s fun to say! What does it mean?”

“Um … Mister Cat,” Camila translated. “I hope that is not offensive.”

“Mister Cat!” Strongintheclaw mewled in delight. “How charming! Ooh, what would my actual name be in Span-eesh?”

Camila looked at Luz, who nodded. “Fuerte en la garra. Although really it should be ‘El de fuertes garras’ since that means ‘the one who has strong claws’.”

Strongintheclaw gave another little hop. “Delightful! My name sounds positively regal in Span-eesh. What would my cohorts’ names be?”

He gestured at the grimalkin on his left, who only had one ear and half a tail, and whose face was bisected by a long scar. Hunter could not help but see a bit of his old self in the creature’s mutilations and implacable forward stare, perfect for long hours of standing straight-backed at the Emperor’s side. It made him shudder.

“This is Tailofwavingfury, a most fearsome warrior, even if he does look like he’s holding in gas most of the time.”

Tailofwavingfury’s tail flicked.

Camila considered for a moment. “El cuya cola se balancea furiosamente.”

“And what does that mean?”

“The one whose tail sways furiously.”

“Such fun! And Essenceofmoonlightgrace?” Strongintheclaw gestured to the last cat, who was smaller than the others and whose limbs did not possess so much obvious muscle. Instead, there was a wiry kind of grace and coiled strength that put Hunter in mind of fencers and gymnasts. The final grimalkin also had a much longer, thinner tail. “What is her name in Span-eesh?”

Camila stared at the third cat, who stared right back without blinking. It took a few moments for Camila to answer this time, during which Strongintheclaw bounced from paw to paw in excited anticipation while Tailofwavingfury continued to stare straight ahead.

“La reina que encarna la esencia de la gracia lunar,” Camila said eventually, her breathy alto rolling the words around before spilling them into the air. “It, uh, means ‘the queen who embodies the essence of lunar grace’. We call female cats queens in the Human Realm, and male cats toms.”

Essenceofmoonlightgrace gave something slightly too long to be a blink. “Queens,” she murmured. Her voice was high and fluty, like birdsong – though whether describing a feline that way would be insulting, he wasn’t sure. “In your world, I am a queen?”

Tailofwavingfury finally allowed his face to wrinkle into an expression of disgust. “Pah. We have no use for queens or kings in the Never Never. That is the purview of the Sidhe and their courts. To resemble the Sidhe is to invite disaster.”

Essenceofmoonlightgrace’s ears dipped slightly but she said no more.

Strongintheclaw brought a paw to his chin thoughtfully. “I like this Span-eesh. We’ve never had humans here who spoke anything like it before. I wish to learn it for myself.” He looked squarely at Camila. “All right then. I have an offer for you, human.”

“No more deals!” Hunter realised he had spoken only when everyone looked at him. He coughed, more out of self-consciousness than because anything was actually caught in his throat. “Mamá, please. No more geasa or deals or anything like that. You already owe Cutburn safe passage to the Human Realm, which is bad enough, but at least it’s a pretty benign cost. Next time you might not be so lucky.”

Darius made a strangled sound that devolved into a cough. He waved Hunter off when he saw him looking. “Sorry. Swallowed a bug, I think.”

Hunter refocused on the three grimalkins. “Mister Strongintheclaw, if you need to make a deal, please make it with me, not my mother.”

“Mother?” Strongintheclaw looked at Hunter, then at Camila, then back at Hunter. Then he burst out laughing. “Oh child, we grimalkins despise the use of geasa. Our deals are purely transactional and based only on the honour system. No magic required. Besides, all I was going to say is that I wish for your mother teach me to speak some Span-eesh in exchange for helping you on your quest. I’m even willing to leave the Never Never for a while and travel with you all to give her more time to teach me. And a grimalkin is a very useful thing to travel with, even outside our territory.” With that, his body glowed and morphed into a perfect copy of Ghost. He glowed again, becoming a pile of rope. Finally, he became a beautiful flower that swayed in an impossible breeze, before glowing and changing back into his own form. “Very useful indeed. There is a reason we used to be known as the best spies in all of Tír na nÓg.”

“Hundreds of years ago,” Cutburn interrupted. “The days of grimalkins working for anyone but themselves are long past.”

“Well, you would know about only looking out for your own kind, wouldn’t you, Sidhe?” Strongintheclaw replied easily. “These witches and humans are in far more danger travelling with you than they would ever be with me.”

Cutburn snarled at him, baring her teeth. Strongintheclaw responded by cleaning his face again as if he did not have a care in the world.

“Or you can try to leave the Never Never without our help and we shall be on our way with no further quarrel, since we know now that Ghost is not one of us and you pose no real threat to grimalkin-kind,” he said between licks. “That’s also a rather good plan, since it means we wouldn’t have to spend more time with a smelly giant Sidhe than necessary. When did you last wash, my dear? You positively reek like a sewer. And are those prison clothes? How vulgar.”

“Why you little –” Cutburn began.

“I can teach you some Spanish,” Camila cut her off. “And if I do, will you see us safely to the edge of the woods and past this ‘River of Forgetfulness’ that you mentioned? It sounds very dangerous and I do not want my children in more danger than they absolutely have to be.”

“That sounds like a fair deal,” said Strongintheclaw. “On behalf of myself and my compatriots, I accept your offer … uh … I’m sorry, I did not quite catch your name, ma’am.”

“Camila.”

“A lovely name. But not your True Name, I fear.”

“Do not give them your True Name,” Cutburn growled. “Never ever hand over your True Name.”

“What’s a True Name?” asked Eda, now cradling Owlbert close and eyeballing the grimalkins truculently. “Also, kitties, at some point I expect an apology for the damage you did to my palisman.”

“We shall indeed make amends for hurting him in error, wonderous harpy lady,” Strongintheclaw promised. “And a True Name is your actual name, the embodiment of your you-ness, not merely the title by which you are addressed.”

“Shut up, grimalkin,” Cutburn snarled. “You’ve said enough. If these idiots are determined to have you along, on their own heads be it, but I’ll be watching you.” She made a gesture that Hunter did not recognise but which made Tailofwavingfury fluff in anger and Strongintheclaw laugh again.

“Oh yes,” he laughed. “I can see we’re going to have lots of fun with you.”

Chapter Text

The trees had begun to thin, with larger gaps between them and less underbrush to clamber through. Hunter found the going easier but his breath still puffed from his lips in a way that he tried to hide. He had insisted on walking and ducked under Cutburn’s arm when she made to pick him up. She tried a few times to catch him but eventually compromised by giving Hunter a boost of healing magic when he kept slipping her grip and refusing to let her carry him like an infant again. Now she trundled along behind the group like a tank bringing up the rear.

 “Are you ailing, boy?” Strongintheclaw hopped onto a low branch to peer into Hunter’s face as he passed. “You’ve gone positively pallid.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you?” Strongintheclaw tilted his bright head to one side. Out of the containment bubbles, it had become apparent just how startlingly colourful the three grimalkins actually were. Strongintheclaw’s pelt was a mixture of vibrant light blues and greens spackled with swirls of white and edgings of much darker blue. His eyes burned a shade of cobalt that turned Hunter’s stomach to look at for too long. “You don’t seem very fine to me.”

“I’m. Fine.”

“Hunter!” Luz stopped in her tracks, forcing him to halt or crash into her. “Please. We all know you’re super independent and all that, but right now? Is not the time. There aren’t any hospitals here.”

“We have Cutburn.”

“I think she’d agree with me that preventative medicine is better than curative. Right?” Luz looked over her shoulder to where Cutburn had paused in her long-legged stride.

Cutburn made an affirmative noise that could just as easily have been a growl.

“See? She agrees with me.”

“Luz –”

“Hunter, you’re my brother and I love you, so I feel completely fine saying that you’re being outstandingly dumb right now. You have a blind spot when it comes to things like this. You don’t have anything to prove. You’re sick. Until a few hours ago, you were literally hospitalised. They put you under a ventilator spell because your lungs turned to stone, Hunter. A ventilator spell. As in, you literally could not breathe for yourself. And that was before you got kidnapped by the crazy tree spirit lady. You need help. So let yourself be helped. What’s the point in us even being here if you drop dead from exhaustion before we get halfway to the Seelie Court?”

Strongintheclaw’s eyes widened. He glanced at Hunter’s bandaged hands, then up at his face.

Hunter squirmed. Luz’s gaze felt like it was penetrating straight through to his bones. “You’re already … everyone is doing so much for me already.”

“Because we care about you, dumbass. No matter how often we have to say it, the truth will always be that you don’t owe us anything in exchange for us caring about you. You don’t have to struggle on alone, or pretend you’re okay when you’re not, or … or be ashamed of looking weak!” Luz’s voice dropped to a soft murmur. “You’re not with him anymore.”

He wanted to argue. He really did. Unfortunately, when he opened his mouth to speak, a burst of feline laughter cut him off.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Strongintheclaw waved one paw, his other three gripped into his branch as if he might fall off from the guffaws wracking his body if he did not. “Pause! Tarry! Suspend your conversing momentarily!”

Luz looked a little annoyed. “What? We’re kind of having a moment here and you’re totally hasrhing the vibe I was going for.”

Strongintheclaw pointed at Hunter. “He is the sick one of which you told us? The being whose life hangs so precariously in the balance? The grimwalker?!”

“I mean … I thought the hospital jammies gave it away but I guess you might be familiar with those here.” Luz rubbed at the back of her neck, shooting Hunter an apologetic look. She knew he preferred not to reveal such information to just anyone but he could understand why she had done so. They were strangers in a strange world and lying seemed like the worst thing they could do if they were trying to build trust in potential allies. “So, um, yes. He is.”

Strongintheclaw snorted dismissively. “No, he is not.”

Hunter and Luz stared at the grimalkin.

“He is.” Luz’s voice adopted into a tone he could not identify, her gaze shuttered. “And he’s sick with a grimwalker-specific disease, so we’re going to save him.”

“My dear young lady, he is not a grimwalker,” Strongintheclaw insisted. “His eyes are entirely the wrong colour.”

Understanding dawned on Hunter. “Oh. That’s not … they were. They’re just not anymore.”

“Were?” It should not have been possible for a cat to arch its eyebrow but somehow Strongintheclaw managed. “Do you mean to tell me that you have been ensorcelled to have brown eyes now instead of pink as some kind of illusion?”

“My eyes aren’t an illusion. They really are brown.” The same soft brown he had seen so often looking back at him from Flapjack’s single eye. Even though it had been years, a lump rose to Hunter’s throat. “They … changed colour a long time ago.”

“Of their own volition?” For some reason, Strongintheclaw sounded scandalised.

“No.” Cutburn had reached them and stood, arms folded like a bouncer at a club door. She looked like she would be only too happy to toss Strongintheclaw out of their party. She focussed on Luz but was clearly speaking to Strongintheclaw. “I was instrumental in his creation. He was made perfectly in all ways.”

The grimalkin wrinkled his upper lip. “I highly doubt that. Perfection is beyond you or your kind.”

Hunter swore he could hear Cutburn’s molars grind together. “His eyes were pink when I pulled him out of the ground. They were pink for his whole life until he went to the Human Realm. When he came back, they were brown.”

“Hmm. A result of exposure to the lack of magic in the Human Realm perhaps?” Strongintheclaw wondered.

“How would that even …” Luz shook her head. “No, his eyes changed colour because he nearly died and his palisman sacrificed his life to save Hunter’s. Flapjack gave Hunter all of his magic to heal the damage that had been done to his body in … a really nasty fight with Belos.”

A fight. That was one way of putting it, though it hardly encapsulated the raw horror of being possessed, nor of how Belos’s curse had scoured Hunter inside and out until his organs were so ravaged that they shut down and he had died in Willow’s arms. Flapjack’s sacrifice had clawed Hunter’s soul back from the edge of oblivion and healed his desecrated body enough that Hunter was able to live in it again, but at the cost of his own body and soul instead. Hunter would never forget opening his eyes to see particles of evaporating light, or the aching void of loss that had opened up inside him when he breathed again.

Strongintheclaw’s pupils slitted, the blue of his eyes dwarfing them. “You merged your life magic with another being?”

“Yes?” Hunter said warily.

“That’s why your eyes changed colour?” Cutburn exclaimed. “You absolute … why didn’t any of you mention that before?” She sounded incensed.

Luz took a step in front of Hunter, extending an arm with the flat of her hand facing toward him. “Well, first of all, back in the Demon Realm there wasn’t really much chance to chat before you literally kidnapped us to another dimension. And since then, in between all the threats to our lives and general ugh-ness, when were we supposed to figure out that you didn’t already know that?”

Cutburn pressed her fingers to her forehead and dragged them down over her face. “You stupid, stupid children. This changes things.”

Luz’s spine straightened. “Changes what?”

“Everything! He’s not the grimwalker that I made anymore!”

“He’s still Hunter.”

“Don’t start challenging me with semantics. He’s biologically different than the creation I carefully crafted for Belos. You mixed the Sidhe magic that made him with magic fundamental to the Demon Realm while in a third realm altogether. Who knows what that did to what powers him and keep him functional!?”

“My galderstone is still working.” Hunter reflexively tried to clutch the fabric over his chest with his bandaged hands.

“Galderstone?” Strongintheclaw laughed. He looked down his nose at Cutburn even though the branch on which he sat put them on eye-level. “You used a galderstone to power a grimwalker and you’re worried about a bit of palisman magic affecting his recipe? Next you’ll be telling me that you used palistrom wood for his bones or some other such imprudence.”

“Uh …” said Luz.

Strongintehclaw’s eyes bulged. “You did! Oh, my goodness gracious, why did you do that, you stupid smelly Sidhe!? Don’t you know how volatile that could have been? Galderstones are pure raw thaumaturgical energy in crystalline form! They’re powerful enough to maintain multiple portals for centuries without running dry. And you mixed it with palistrom wood!?”

“What’s wrong with palistrom wood?” Luz rubbed Stringbean’s head as if to reassure the little snakeshifter.

“Palistrom was the only naturally occurring magical wood available,” Cutburn muttered. “Dryads don’t live in the Demon realm and nothing else could contain the thaumaturgical output of a galderstone without shattering.”

“I cannot believe what I am hearing here. A galderstone and palistrom wood together? It’s insane. I’m surprised your grimwalker didn’t just explode while still in the ground!”

“A few did explode before we got the mixture right,” Cutburn muttered, head shifting so that Hunter knew she was looking at him even though she still wore her blindfold. “It was trial and error in the beginning. We realised we could use fragments of bones instead of whole ones and have the same effect, which allowed us to create more specimens even if some failed to meet expectations.”

Hunter felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. Of course, he knew there had been other Golden Guards – other grimwalkers – before him, but it had never occurred to him that any would not even make it out of the birthing pits before they died. Cutburn talked about them as if they were nothing more than chemicals in a test tube, easily discarded and started over with nary a thought. Had those who died underground felt any pain? Had they possessed any sense of self yet?

She sounded so much like Belos in that moment that made his gorge rise.

“At least tell me you used proper stonesleeper lungs and selkidomus scales to mitigate the combined effects of them,” Strongintheclawsniffed.

Hunter winced, remembering the herd of stonesleepers Belos had kept in pens at his summer mansion. He had seen them whenever they visited the place, ostensibly for time away from the castle to allow his uncle’s mind time to decrompress from the rigour of ruling. Now he knew that stonesleepers had gone extinct long ago except for a clutch that guarded the Collector’s disc. Belos had used the same research that rendered basilisks back in the world to clone each stonesleeper until he had a breeding herd and slaughtered one each time he needed a pair of lungs for a new grimwalker.

“Yes,” he gritted. “Stonesleeper lungs and selkidomus scales.”

“Well at least you got something right, smelly Sidhe,” Strongintheclaw mewled. “What about his circulatory system? What genus did you use for that?”

Hunter’s ears pricked up. The castle had been destroyed, taking almost all of Belos’s research with it. There had been little to no verifiable information on grimwalkers recovered that was readable, and what they had retrieved was incomplete. Still, it felt odd to learn there had been more that had gone into his creation than just the few already mentioned.

Cutburn’s shoulders squared defensively. “Feline.”

Strongintheclaw’s fur puffed up. “Excuse me?”

“We used a feline circulatory system.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought you said.” His voice had become easygoing, though Hunter sensed danger lurking below it. “Feline. Hmm.”

“Hang on a second, are you saying that all this time Hunter has been part cat?” Luz demanded.

“His ingredients ceased to retain individuality upon the grimwalker spell’s invocation,” Cutburn growled. “Much as when you blend ingredients to make a cake. They are still there but no longer definable from each other.”

“But his, like, veins and arteries are from a cat?”

“Luz …” Hunter began.

“From a sphynx.”

Strongintheclaw’s eyes glittered such cold blue that Hunter’s breath stilled in his throat. The world seemed to get quieter around him. He could not look away. He was at once in the Never Never forest and also in a throne room that no longer existed, listening to a thump that might have been from the giant heart overhead or might just have been from his own tightening ribcage.

“A sphynx,” the grimalkin repeated. “Did sphynxes devolve since I last met one and become mindless, unlanguaged beasts?”

“Sphynxes are quite sentient and capable of speech,” Cutburn told Luz, as if Strongintheclaw was not even there.”

“And yet you chose such a sentient being as an ingredient in your human stew. Please tell me sphynxes are at least plentiful in the Demon Realm.”

“Sphynxes are not plentiful in the Boiling Isles. Have you ever seen one, human?”

Lux flinched. “Uh, no.”

“That is because they hide in the mountains. They’re wily creatures who stay away from witchkind unless sought out and directly provoked.”

“So you killed a rare, sentient feline simply to create a grimwalker?” Strongintheclaw surmised. “And not even one motivated by your own grief and passion to rebirth a loved one, but a grimwalker for an undeserving other to whom you owed some kind of debt.”

Cutburn said nothing. There was nothing she could say under her geas.

Strongintheclaw looked Hunter up and down, as if he could see all the different stolen parts that made him up. “How … disappointing.”

“How disappointing, Hunter.”

The world faded away. Hunter was aware of it but could not stop it from happening. He was familiar enough with dissociation by now to recognise that it was happening, even if it did not happen nearly as often as it used to, in those first intoxicating days of freedom from Belos. His vision narrowed to a pair of icy blue eyes and his mind rocketed backwards into the past.

“Do I put too much faith in you, I wonder? You are very young, after all. Perhaps I made a mistake in elevating you to Golden Guard so soon. Perhaps you should return to working as a basic grunt to learn the importance of success on missions.”

“No, Uncle! Please, give me another chance! I can do better, I swear!”

“But can you, Hunter? Can you really? I think we both know the answer to that. It is to your benefit that I love you. Men less charitable than I would not be so kind as to keep you around even after you have failed.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle.”

“You’re always sorry, Hunter. But you never get any better.”

A sharp crack of pain across his face. Stars exploded in his vision. The coppery taste of blood burst over his tongue. He stayed kneeling as he had been taught. As was expected.

“You know that I only do this because I love you, Hunter. I need you to associate failure with pain, so that you may try harder to avoid both.”

“Yes, Uncle. I understand.”

Another sharp crack. The metal gauntlet bit into his cheek, dragging through skin. His cheek burned freezing-hot. Something wet and red dripped off his chin to puddle on the floor between his hands.

“I love you, Hunter. I have always loved you. That’s why I’ll never let you be anything less than what you were intended to be.”

“Yes, Uncle. I understand.”

“Oh Hunter.”

Images overlapped, smearing and merging together. The scene distorted, shifting like pots of paint poured into one another over and over, until everything was a blurry mess of half-recollections and mushy thoughts. He was in his old bedroom, huddled under bedclothes to nurse fresh wounds. He was on his staff over a flyer derby field, revelling in victory. He was underwater, drowning, watching the surface get further and further away as his body went numb. He was nestled in the crook of his girlfriend’s arm, safe and warm and happy. He was fighting Amity and King at Eclipse Lake. He was eating dinner with his family, listening to them jabber in Spanish. He was standing guard for two days straight and trying not to fall asleep. He was writing a paper on Abomination theory for university, so caught up in his work that Darius brought him enchiladas that he had learned to cook specially for him. He was gnawing on a crust of bread, the only thing he was allowed to eat as punishment for failing to secure fresh palismen for the Emperor. He was biting into the first apple of the crop he and Willow had cultivated. He was poring over Cosmic Frontier with Gus. He was play-fighting with Luz and Vee over what movie to watch. He was letting his Mamá comfort him after a nightmare. He was cowering on the floor of the throne room again and again and again.

And through it all shone two bright blue glowing eyes.

“Oh Hunter.”

He was terrified. He was loved. He was lonely. He was respected. He was victorious. He was a failure. He saw his whole world in a single face. He saw nothing from the inside of a mask.

“Oh Hunter.”

He was being crushed by the weight of expectations and the pressure of dark, cold graveyard water all around him, pulling him down. He was being crushed under the certainty that because of what he was, a creature that had never been intended to live, he was going to die. Because he was a grimwalker, he was going to die. Because the creatures used to make him had died, he deserved to die. Because Caleb Wittebane did not get to live, Hunter was going to rot and wither and die a painful death.

He was going to die.

He was going to die.

“Oh Hunter.”

“Hunter!”

The pain faded, replaced by coolness against his feverish skin. Hunter blinked. He was face-down in the grass. Something fizzled and crackled in the air above him.

“That should do it,” rumbled a voice. Cutburn’s, he thought blearily.

“What happened?” demanded another, a hairsbreadth from a screech. “We left you guys alone for, like, less than a minute!”

“Eda, please. I think he’s waking up.”

“Hunter?”

That last voice he recognised instantly. Hunter tried to turn but his arms refused to work properly. “Wil … low?”

“I’m here, baby.” Her familiar calloused palm and fingers cupped his cheek. “I’m right here.”

He tried to push himself upright again and failed. His shoulders ached. So did his elbows. In fact, his arms felt like nothing but two giant bruises. “Hurts …”

“You fell straight on your face, hermano,” said Luz. “Broke your nose. Cutburn healed you.”

“Oh.” He shifted but could not see her. “Thank … you.”

Cutburn grunted. “He’s deteriorating. We need to get him to the Seelie Court as soon as possible.”

“Much good as they’ll be able to do him,” muttered Strongintheclaw.

He and the other two grimalkins sat together on his tree branch, peering down with varying expressions. Strongintheclaw looked both disgusted and curious. Tailofwavingfury’s umber, yellow and orange face remained stoic beneath his tufted ears. Essenceofmoonlightgrace’s golden gaze was anxious and she padded the branch with her silver and pink paws as if she wanted to jump down to Hunter.

Strongintheclaw yawned and studied his paw, even going so far as to buff it against his fluffy chest. “You’re on a fool’s errand. You changed the recipe, smelly Sidhe. What makes you think the Seelie Court will be able to save him? What makes you think anyone on this side of the veil can do it?”

Cutburn’s rumble became a fully fledged snarl. “They’re more likely to be able to do it than you.”

“Pshaw. Lest we forget with whom we’re talking, smelly Sidhe.”

Pain ricocheted through Hunter’s shoulder and into his neck. He let out a groan.

“Careful, hijo.” Camila knelt by his side, her face a mask of concern. “Be still. Let Cutburn work.” She twisted to look behind her. “Please. Can’t you do anything more with your healing magic? He’s in pain.”

Cutburn drew a spell circle and rained down cool blue motes of magic. Wherever they touched, the aching eased, but did not go away completely. Slowly, however, Hunter began to feel more coherent. His thoughts unjumbled.

“Dissociated,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologise for that,” said Darius somewhere nearby.

Their instant understanding and forgiveness for his weakness made Hunter want to cry. His eyes prickled. He swallowed back any tears and focussed on at least rolling onto his side or back; anything but staying on his face with his nose pressed into the dirt like a grub.

“Hold on, hold on,” Camila advised. “Slowly. There we go.”

His spine ached when he lay back, settling into a low throb in his lumbar region. His shifted his hips to try to ease it but nothing worked until someone shuffled forward and lifted his head into their lap. He looked up to meet Willow’s soft green gaze.

Hunter cleared his throat. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

“You look really pretty from this angle.”

She chuckled but her cheeks were wet. “You dork.”

“Your dork.”

“My dork.”

Gently, she leaned down and kissed his forehead. He sighed. It was ridiculous but his aches and pains seemed less stringent with the touch of her lips.

At least, until he noticed her gaze skittering to his arm and then away again. He followed it, eyes widening. His breathing sped up.

“Calm down, hijo,” said Camila, though there was an edge of serrated worry to her usually comforting tone. “Deep breaths.”

“My … my hands …”

The bandages were stained with muck, the shape beneath distorted in such a way that he knew – knew -  that the hands inside had melted and was seeping through. When he lifted his left wrist, the sodden lump of bandages did not come with it. Instead, he could see the brownish shine of wood poking from the gloopy black mess that remained, like bones from rotten flesh.

Except they were not bones. Not anymore. And his flesh was no longer flesh either. It was slimy, gooey mud.

His arms looked exactly like Belos’s had before the end.

“Hunter,” Willow began.

But he could not hear her over his own screaming.

Chapter Text

“Hold up, the others fell behind.”

Eda’s voice whip-cracked across Willow’s muddled thoughts. She blinked, turning to follow the older witch’s gaze. Gus and Amity turned too. Willow realised belatedly that they had been flanking her the whole time they were walking. She hoped they had not been talking to her and she ignoring them. They didn’t look annoyed but that wasn’t exactly solid evidence.

At their feet, Tailofwavingfury growled softly. “Strongintheclaw is baiting the Sidhe again.”

“He really doesn’t seem to like Cutburn very much. “Not that I can blame him.” Darius folded his arms. It would have looked intimidating, had Essenceofmoonlightgrace not chosen that moment to hop up onto his shoulder. Her head bobbled cutely when Darius dipped with her extra weight. For some reason, he did not brush her off, but allowed the smallest grimalkin to perch there.

“The Sidhe are an arrogant people,” Essenceofmoonlightgrace whispered. Willow was beginning to learn that everything she said sounded like an apology. “They look down on all others and antagonise them by acting as if they can never equal Sidhe power, Sidhe magic, Sidhe intelligence, Sidhe grace – to the Sidhe, the Sidhe are supreme in all ways and thus shall it always be so. It can be … very frustrating to interact with them, especially if one’s own skill is commensurate with theirs.”

Willow remembered how angry Cutburn had been with the mere idea of Chiron being her equal in healing magic. Yeah, that tracked.

“Strongintheclaw likes to antagonise arrogant beings just to see what will happen,” Tailofwavingfury snorted. “He thinks it’s amusing to watch them get angrier and angrier while he pretends not to care.”

“Wouldn’t know anyone like that,” Amity sniped, glancing at Darius. “No colossal bitches here.”

“Should we go back and fetch them?” asked Camila, chewing her bottom lip. “Hunter looks so tired, even though Cutburn gave him a boost with her magic.”

Willow’s brain had felt sludgy and thick since the incident with the dryad. Her thoughts came slower than usual and it was an effort to pay attention to what was going on around her. Yet now guilt pierced the miasma around her mind at Camila’s words. Hunter was sick and she had, once again, not noticed him trying to act like he was not. She was supposed to care about him, How could she have not noticed him acting like … well, like himself?

She took a step towards where Luz, Hunter, Cutburn and Strongintheclaw were deep in conversation. “We should –”

Abruptly, Hunter’s whole body started to shake. He pitched forward, not even trying to save himself. By the time Luz reacted, his face had already crashed into the ground, sending up a small spurt of blood.

“Hunter!” Willow and Camila shrieked at the same time.

Camila started running. Willow reached instinctively for Clover and flew to his side faster than his mother could. Hunter convulsed, grinding his crushed and bleeding nose into the ground, eyes rolling back and limbs convulsing as if he was being electrocuted. Spittle flecked from his open mouth.

“Stay back!” Cutburn snapped. “Let me work!” She drew one half of an enormous spell circle with each hand and pushed it down onto Hunter. the healing magic absorbed into his back, leaving behind a trail of sparkling blue that looked like veins and arteries. “Come on, you! You’re not allowed to die just yet, boy!” She drew another spell circle and repeated the action.

“Witch magic?” Strongintehclaw said in amazement. “How can a Sidhe do witch magic? You have no bile sac!”

“Shut up,” Cutburn snapped. “I need to focus.” She drew a third spell circle and shoved it into Hunter. He continued to convulse.

“C’mon, Hunter,” Luz hummed next to Willow. “C’mon, you’re stronger than this.”

She reached out the hand not cupping Stringbean to lace her fingers with Willow’s. Luz’s hands were clammy with nervous sweat. The feel of them brought the bits of Willow’s mind that were already starting to go fuzzy at the edges back into the pulsating knot of her thoughts.

Footsteps thundered up. “¡Mi bebe varon!” Camila wailed. “¡Se está muriendo! ¡Por favor, no lo dejes morir!”

“Stay clear. Let Cutburn work,” said Darius, clearly holding her back.

Cutburn drew another spell circle. How many was that now? Willow had lost count. More than should have been necessary. Hunter should already by awake right now. At the very least he should have stopped seizing. Cutburn was the most powerful healer in the Boiling Isles and an expert in grimwalker biology. She should have been able to bring him around already. Unless-

Unless …

No, Willow thought. This can’t be it. This can’t be the end. We’ve come too far and done too much for it not to be enough. This can’t be when it happens. Not now. Not like this. Please, please, no!

The miasma around her mind flexed. That was the only way to describe it. It felt like a hand in a velvet glove that had been resting against her now twitched, drawing her attention to its existence. The same presence that had touched her magic when she used it against the dryad now roused again, drawn by her desperation and helplessness. Despite all her power, Willow could not do anything to save the boy she loved.

Death is never far from life. That is the way of things.

Willow gasped. She had heard oracles talk in her head before but this was different. This did not sound like words. It did not feel like another person’s thoughts speaking directly to her own, the way Odalia Bight had spoken to her children through their telepathy gems. No, this felt like Willow had touched a naked flame with her bare skin, only more so; like she had briefly brushed up against the surface of the sun itself. Her mind reeled at the enormity of the sensation.

“Hunter!”

“That should do it,” rumbled Cutburn. Discretely, she wiped sweat from her brow. Her antlers seemed duller and less glittery than before, her face more pinched, as if she had skipped a few meals. That healing had taken more out of her than she was willing to admit to them, but Willow noticed.

“What happened?” Eda demanded. “We left you guys alone for, like, less than a minute!”

“Eda, please,” Luz begged. “I think he’s waking up.”

Willow instantly let go of Luz’s hand and knelt by Hunter’s side. He was indeed coming round. “Hunter?”

He groaned, the noise muffled by his face pressed against the damp earth. He tried to turn but flopped back, cheek smearing in the blood that had leaked from his now-healed nose. “Wil … low?”

“I’m here, baby.” Willow cupped his cheek, heedless of the blood. He felt warm and real and blessedly alive. “I’m right here.”

Hunter tried to push himself upright again and failed. His arms moved like they were numb. His face screwed up and a breath hissed between his teeth. “Hurts …”

Luz leaned over Willow. “You fell straight on your face, hermano. Broke your nose. Cutburn healed you.”

“Oh.” Hunter tilted his head in Cutburn’s direction and blinked groggily. “Thank … you.”

“Hmmph.” Cutburn turned away, folding her arms. “He’s deteriorating. We need to get him to the Seelie Court as soon as possible, before he reaches the point of no return.”

Willow’s entire ribcage turned to ice, prickling cold outwards into the rest of her body. They had staved off death this time, but it had obviously been a struggle. If Hunter deteriorated too much, what then? Could Cutburn save him if he had another seizure like this? Could the Sidhe from the Seelie Court? Could anyone?

Death is never far from life. That is the way of things.

Willow shivered. Not his death. Not now. Someday, but not now. I won’t let Hunter die yet. I won’t.

You speak as though you have a choice.

“Much good as they’ll be able to do him,” muttered Strongintheclaw from a tree branch. Tailofwavingfury and Essenceofmoonlightgrace perched next to him, though Essenceofmoonlightgrace padded back and forth in agitation, her big eyes flicking between Hunter and Darius. “You’re on a fool’s errand. You changed the recipe, smelly Sidhe. What makes you think the Seelie Court will be able to save him? What makes you think anyone on this side of the veil can do it?”

Cutburn whipped around to bare her teeth at the three cats. “They’re more likely to be able to do it than you!”

“Pshaw. Lest we forget with whom we’re talking, smelly Sidhe.”

Hunter groaned. The noise vibrated up Willow’s arm. Helplessness chased after it. she wanted to take his pain away and give him back the independence he valued so much, but she could do neither. All she could do was stroke his back to try and soothe him.

“Careful, hijo.” Camila knelt on his other side, expression tight with worry. “Be still. Let Cutburn work.” She twisted to look behind her. “Please. Can’t you do anything more with your healing magic? He’s in pain.”

Cutburn drew a smaller spell circle than before, which rained down motes of blue healing magic. Hunter let out a long breath and his shoulders lowered from around his ears.

“Dissociated,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologise for that,” said Darius.

Willow saw Hunter’s throat bob and tears bead at the corners of his eyes. Her heart ached for this boy who, in his most vulnerable moments, was still so unused to kindness that it brought him to tears. Even years after it had happened, Belos’s scars remained, both inside and out. Hunter was so gentle and eager to do good, but never thought he deserved to be treated the same way by anyone else.

Hunter tried to turn over again and this time both Willow and Camila helped him.

“Hold on, hold on,” Camila advised. “Slowly. There we go.”

Willow shuffled forward and lifted his head into her lap. Hunter blinked up at her. He stared for a long moment, as if she was just coming into focus. Then he smiled. It was crooked and strained but it made her aching heart sing and chased the miasma further back from her mind.

This was why she was here. This was what was most important. Nothing else mattered as much as this sweet boy and making sure he got to live the life he deserved, no matter the cost.

“Hey,” Hunter croaked.

“Hey yourself,” she replied throatily.

“You look really pretty from this angle.”

Willow chuckled through her own tears. “You dork.”

“Your dork.”

She nodded. “My dork.”

Gently, she leaned down and kissed his forehead. She was so, so grateful that she had been granted even a little bit more time with him and vowed to do everything in her power to keep it that way. She would fight for Hunter. She would never stop fighting for him. She loved him too much for that.

His arms tried to raise to hold her cheeks the way he always did whenever she kissed him like this. He would pull her down, his lips searching for hers, and she would kiss everything in between first, giggling as she smooched his forehead, his eyebrows, his eyelids, his nose, his chin and then, finally, his mouth. But this time he did not sweetly cup her cheeks upside down. His arms trembled and fell back to his sides. She glanced at them, then immediately looked away.

Hunter’s hands had liquified and were leaking through what remained of the hospital bandages. This undeniable proof of how much closer he was to death made her stomach churn.

Hunter’s breathing sped up; his own gaze now locked on his hands.

“Calm down, hijo,” Camila tried to reassure him. “Deep breaths.”

“My … my hands …”

With monumental effort, Hunter lifted his left arm. A wet pop punctured the air, as the remains of his hand sloughed off at the wrist. Pieces of shiny selkidomus scales studded the gungy mess. Just visible were his bones, which had degenerated to the blue and brown palistrom wood from which they had been carved. Hunter’s skeleton was reverting. They had even less time to save him than before.

“Hunter,” Willow began, intending to reassure him.

Hunter screamed. He screamed and screamed and screamed, thrashing in her hold. Gobbets of rotting muck flicked up and hit Willow in the face but he did not seem to notice. He just kept staring at his mangled arms and screaming.

“Hunter!” Willow begged. “Hunter, please!”

“Not like him, please not like him.,” he babbled. “Please, please, please, I don’t want to be like him. Anything but that. Anything …” Deep sobs wracked his chest. “Please … please … I don’t want to be like him … I’ll do anything …”

Willow did not have to ask who he meant.

“You’re nothing like Belos,” Luz insisted. Evidently, she had figured out his meaning too. “Nothing like him! You hear me, hermano? You’re nothing like Belos!”

“Rotting like he did,” Hunter wheezed. “Please … please, I don’t want to … to go like … please … please, no …”

Visceral anger grabbed hold of Willow. She trembled with fury at how Belos continued to hurt Hunter even now. But more than that, she was molten with rage at the injustice of this entire situation. Hunter had done nothing wrong. He did not deserve to suffer like this. He did not deserve to literally watch himself decay and fall apart, feeling himself dying by degrees. She wanted to help him and her anger stoked even higher that she could not.

The presence brushed against her mind again. Willow shivered. Her bile sac reverberated. Threads of green snuck into the edges of her vision. Her veins vibrated with more power than she had ever felt before, as her magic connected with something deep, bright and old. She recognised it. It terrified her.

Child of the green. Daughter of nature. Use what you have. Death is never far from life, but life is also reborn from death. That is the way of things.

As if of its own volition, Willow felt her own magic reach out. It wrapped itself around where the presence directed and sank into it. Willow pushed and pulled, guiding and chiding the plant life she found, until it braided together under her will and allowed her to push some of that power into it to stabilise the volatility she found there.

“Oh my gosh … what’s happening?”

“Willow?” Gus’s voice chimed through the miasma. “Is that … are you doing that?”

Willow concentrated on her task. Only when it was done did she unclench her magic’s hold and fall back, gasping for air. The presence in her mind faded to a background hum, until she could barely be sure she was even feeling it at all anymore, or just imagining it. Strong hands caught her and she realised she had toppled backwards.

“I’ve got you,” said Amity.

“¿Lo que acaba de suceder?” Camila breathed. “Willow, sweetheart, what did you do?”

“Hunter?” Luz said in a tremulous voice.

“I’m okay.” He sounded exhausted but more coherent than before. “I’m … better than okay, actually.”

“I … how … what did Willow just do?” Gus stammered. “Cutburn? What’s happening?”

Cutburn did not answer.

Slowly. Willow peeled her eyelids apart. It took so much strength to do it that it felt like someone had attached little weights to each one of her lashes. She looked up into Amity’s face, then craned her neck to see where Hunter lay. Had she dropped him? Oh Titan, had she freaking dropped him?

Hunter sat up. He extended first one arm, then the other, eyes huge with incredulity.

Instead of rotten, dripping muck, his arms now ended in twists of blue and brown bark, which thinned and twisted into plaits of flexible palistrom wood shaped into palms, thumbs and fingers. They were not carved, but formed out of the very wood itself. He flexed them, watching each joint move, mouth open in shock. His liquified old hands were still on the ground beside him, bandages and all.

“Willow … did you do this?” Gus asked again.

Death is never far from life, but for a child of the green, death and rebirth are as one.

“Willow?”

Willow was not sure if she had said that last part out loud, but she had no more strength to repeat it if so. Her eyes slid shut and she sank into blissful unconsciousness.

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“¡Mi bebe varon!”

~ "My baby boy!"

“¡Se está muriendo! ¡Por favor, no lo dejes morir!”

~ "He's dying! Please don't let him die!"

“¿Lo que acaba de suceder?”

~ “What just happened?”

Chapter Text

Hunter felt … strange. Camila rarely let him have more than one cup of coffee a day but this felt like he had drunk ten, each stuffed with enough sugar to give him diabetes. His veins fizzed. His eyes jittered. And his hands …

His hands.

They were incredible. Even more incredible than their mere existence were the sensations they were sending his brain. His eyes told him they were made of wood but his brain registered … more than that. More than just skin and bone and yet exactly like skin and bone. His fingertips just felt a little rougher when he rubbed them together but he also felt the infinitesimal striations of woodgrain. He knew, somehow, that if he pressed them to the ground, he would be able to feel even more –

“Willow?”

Hunter looked up from his wondrous new hands just in time to see Willow slump in Amity’s arms, green eyes fluttering closed.

“Willow?” Panic sluiced through him. He struggled to get up. “Willow!”

“Hold on, buddy.” Gus tried to stop him, bracing against his chest. “Take it steady. You just took a ginormous fall –”

“I have to see Willow!”

Hunter resisted the urge to push Gus away. He was just trying to help, after all. In doing so, Hunter’s new left hand met the ground and he jolted with the rush of sensation. It felt like the earth was alive. He could feel it pulsing with life, from giant thick-trunked trees to tiny insects burrowing through the soil. It was so unexpected that Hunter rocked back with a short cry.

“Hunter?” Camila rushed to him. “Cariño?”

“I’m … I’m okay, Mamá.”

Still, she cupped his elbows with her own palms and guided him back upright, muttering in rapid Spanish. “Dios Todopoderoso, gracias por salvar a mi hijo.”

Hunter curled his new hands into his chest. If that was what touching the ground felt like, he didn’t want to know what touching anything else would do. “Please, Mamá, is Willow okay?”

“I don’t know, hija.”

Camila followed his gaze to where Cutburn had knelt beside the two girls, placing one wide palm against Willow’s forehead. Even under her blindfold, Hunter could tell she was frowning. She drew a spell circle with her other hand and pressed it into the centre of Willow’s chest with more gentleness than he would have expected of her. Increasingly, Hunter did not know what to make of Hettie Cutburn. She was still the towering, unpleasant person who had ruled the Healing Coven with an iron first, but he never could have imagined the figure he had seen in the castle all his life being so gentle with an unconscious girl.

“She’s just exhausted herself,” Cutburn rumbled. “Her bile sac is completely depleted.”

“I’m not surprised. Look at what she did!” Gus gestured at Hunter.

“Willow is totes our MVP,” Luz muttered. “Well, also you as team medic, Cutburn. Two MVPs!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, human.”

“That’s okay. Not many people usually do.”

“Will she be okay?” Hunter asked, gaze riveted on Willow’s face. She looked so wan and still. Her eyes did not move beneath their lids. Only the slight rise and fall of her chest indicated she was even still alive. Clover crawled out of Willow’s pocket and cuddled up to her neck, buzzing softly, her little body aglow with warm gold light. Hunter recognised that she was sharing some of her magical energy with her witch through their soul bond, just as Flapjack had done for him all those years ago.

“I’m not one for feckless platitudes, boy,” Cutburn replied. “What she just did was no mere witch spell. I told you before that witches from the Demon Realm generate their own magic from their bile sacs, but without the underlying power of the Isles to pull from, witch magic should be weaker here in Tír na nÓg. There is no way she could have transmogrified the grimwalker a new set of hands from his own palistrom wood bones on her own. That magic is far too complex and far too energy-consuming. She should be dead from casting it.”

Hunter’s spine became a column of ice. “Dead?”

“The fact that she is not, and is instead only depleted and sleeping, indicates that she truly is Urramaigh Sidhe.” Cutburn turned her face away and spat out something that sounded an awful lot like swearing, despite the language barrier “Amhail is dá mba rud é nach raibh go leor agam déileáil leis cheana féin. Cén fáth go gcaithfidh gach rud a bheith chomh casta domsa?”

Eda glared at Cutburn. “Care to tell us what you just said?”

“No.”

“Bitch.”

“Says the animal-woman.”

Eda paused. “Did you just ‘I know you are but what am I’ me?”

Cutburn ignored her and cast another healing spell on Willow.

“Urramaigh Sidhe?” Essenceofmoonlightgrace repeated softly, peering down from the grimalkins’ branch. “The girl witchling is Urramaigh Sidhe?”

Cutburn wrinkled her upper lip. “Yes. In the brief time I left these idiots alone while I used a Cloch Sláinte, she managed to not only wake but also touch the power of an Old One”

Essenceofmoonlightgrace’s eyes widened. “Which Old One?”

“Is it not obvious? She’s a plant witch and made the grimwalker new hands from wood.”

“The Green Man? But he has not chosen a mortal to make Urramaigh Sidhe in generations!”

Cutburn grunted in response.

Essenceofmoonlightgrace turned to Strongintheclaw. “Yowler, we must protect the Green Man’s Urramaigh Sidhe.”

Strongintheclaw yawned hugely. “Perhaps. And perhaps the smelly Sidhe is wrong.”

“Can we afford to take that chance? The Never Never has been kind to us for all the time our kind has lived here, but the Green Man could make it not so if he chooses.”

“You worry too much.” Strongintheclaw set about meticulously cleaning his ears. “The Green Man has no interest in mortal affairs.”

“But can we afford to take that chance? If he chose this girl witchling as his own and used her to heal the grimwalker’s decay, they may both carry his blessing now. We must protect them.”

“We must do nothing unless I, as Yowler, decide it,” Strongintheclaw said mildly.

“And do you?” Tailofwavingfury’s voice was so low that Hunter strained to catch his words.

Strongintheclaw scrubbed at the inside of one ear with his paw and examined his footpad as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. “Hmm. Why not? We might as well, since we’re here anyway. Essenceofmoonlightgrace, consider yourself the plant witch’s bodyguard. Tailofwavingfury, you take the boy. I’m not letting the smelly Sidhe out of my sight, I don’t trust her.”

“I’m right here, you know.” Cutburn looked up from pressing another healing spell into Willow’s skin.

“All right. I’m not letting you out of my sight, smelly Sidhe. I don’t trust you.” Strongintheclaw licked his chops and arranged his paws neatly beneath him. “Better?”

She growled.

Essenceofmoonlightgrace and Tailofwavingfury leapt down from the tree, their bodies glowing. Camila wrapped her arms around Hunter, shielding his body with her own. He felt Darius move up beside them, putting himself between them and the two grimalkins. Before Hunter could protest, the glow faded and the two grimalkins’ changed forms stood tall amongst them. They had not changed shape overmuch, just increased their size and widened their backs, but they also now wore strange saddles that arced up into what Hunter could only describe as handlebars over their shoulders.

“Whoa,” Luz whispered. “Bitchin’!”

Tailofwavingfury crouched next to Hunter. “Get on, grimwalker.”

“Dios mío ...” mumbled Camila. “I think I watched cartoon as a kid that looked like this.” She blinked. “The big cat was green though.”

“Did you not hear me?” Tailofwavingfury tilted his massive head, giving Hunter an acute look at his teeth when he spoke. “I said to get on. We have much distance to cover and little time in which to traverse it. Do you not wish to reach the Seelie Court and seek aid to halt your degeneration before you perish?”

“That’s still going to happen?” Emmiline clambered onto the top of Gus’s head to gesture with her three-toed feet as if she was Principal Bump at a Hexside assembly. “But Willow fixed him! She got the Green Man to fix him!”

“That is not how being an Urramaigh Sidhe functions,” said Strongintheclaw. “She is a vessel through which the Green Man can use some of his power, but the amount it would take to reverse a grimwalker’s decline once it has entered the final stages would literally tear her body apart. The Green Man is not some simple witch power source like a galderstone. He is a deity. An immortal in the truest sense. No mortal body can withstand his power for long.”

Clover huddled closer to Willow’s neck and Amity tightened her hold too.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Luz demanded.

Hunter pushed Camila and Darius aside enough to focus on Strongintheclaw. “Are you saying that what Willow just did for me –” He stared down at his new hands. “Giving me these … might kill her?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. At the moment she’s perfectly fine, just exhausted. But she’s connected with the Green Man now. She has channelled his power. If she continues to do so, his power will burn through her and eventually her body will be destroyed as thoroughly as yours.”

“No …”

“I told you already.” Cutburn snatched Willow out of Amity’s grasp and plonked her into Essenceofmoonlightgrace’s saddle. Willow slumped to one side but Cutburn caught her before she could fall. “We need to get to the Seelie Court, finish our business as quickly as possible, and get you all back to your own world. Only placing her beyond the Green Man’s reach will ensure her safety now. He is an Old One of this world and cannot travel beyond it.”

Hunter scrambled to his feet, wobbling but eschewing help from anyone. Willow had placed herself in great danger to save him. She could not have known that was what she was doing, but Hunter knew her well enough to also know that being aware of the danger would not have stopped her.

“Let me ride behind her. I’ll keep her from falling out of the saddle.”

Cutburn shrugged, scooped him up with her other huge arm and plunked him down behind Willow. It was a tight fit but the saddle seemed to mould around them, making them more comfortable. Willow’s back was warm against his chest. Hunter wrapped one arm around her, reaching forward with the other to grasp the elongated pommel, feeling a zing that was not nearly as overwhelming as when he had touched the ground. Wherever he touched Willow, his new hand tingled as if touching static electricity. Her head tilted, nestling her face into the side of his neck. He took solace from the soft puff of her breathing against him.

“Keep her steady, Clover,” he murmured, receiving an affirmative salute from the palisman on Willow’s shoulder in response.

Tailofwavingfury’s namesake lashed from side to side. “Should I transform back, Yowler?”

“No. You are still tasked with protecting the boy.”

“Could … could my Mamá and Darius ride him instead of me?” Hunter asked hesitantly. The shimmering feeling where his hand touched Willow was distracting. He knew his ears were wiggling. “They’re both tired and low on magic too.”

“Hm. A grimwalker who loves someone other than his creator. How interesting.” Strongintheclaw shrugged. “Sounds fine to me. If they’re weaklings, they’ll only slow the rest of us down.”

“Weaklings?” Darius bristled.

Camila wrung her hands. “Hijo, are you sure you don’t want to ride with one of us? You’re still sick.”

“It’s okay, Mamá.” He tried to give her an encouraging smile but, from her response, he wasn’t sure he had done it right.

“I will not let him fall,” said Clover. “He’s important to Willow so he’s important to me too.”

Camila still did not look convinced but she nodded and clambered aboard Tailofwavingfury instead. Darius still bristling, climbed up behind her and they awkwardly arranged themselves until the saddle slid backwards, dividing itself into two, each with its own pommel. With everyone seated or ready to walk again, Essenceofmoonlightgrace an Tailofwavingfury got to their feet and started off with smooth, padding steps that kept perfect pace with the group.

“And if we could all stop almost dying, being kidnapped or generally being a nuisance for five damn minutes, that would be grand,” Cutburn grumbled.

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“Dios Todopoderoso, gracias por salvar a mi hijo.”

~ “Almighty God, thank you for saving my son.”

“Amhail is dá mba rud é nach raibh go leor agam déileáil leis cheana féin. Cén fáth go gcaithfidh gach rud a bheith chomh casta domsa?”

~ “Amhail is dá mba rud é nach raibh go leor agam déileáil leis cheana féin. Cén fáth go gcaithfidh gach rud a bheith chomh casta domsa?”

“Dios mío ...” mumbled Camila. “I think I watched cartoon as a kid that looked like this.” She blinked. “The big cat was green though.”

~ Side-fling to Battle Cat from He-Man.

Chapter Text

The Stream of Forgetfulness was poorly named.

“That is not a stream,” Darius declared. “That is a raging river.”

“’Raging’ is rather an exaggeration, don’t you think?” mused Strongintheclaw. He lifted one hind leg to nibble and lick between his claws in a thoroughly gymnastic manoeuvre. He seemed to have gotten something stuck there – probably related to when he had dived into the underbrush before they left the Never Never and come back grinning like … well, like the cat who got the cream.

Darius pursed his lips. “Not at all. I would say it’s a perfect descriptor. That is a river. The water in it is flowing incredibly fast. There are many very large, very sharp rocks. Ergo, a raging river.”

“Nomenclature is immaterial. If you wish to get to the Seelie Court, you need to ford this ‘raging river’.” Strongintheclaw stopped chewing on his hind paw to shrug. “And you must not let its waters touch you. Even a few droplets are enough to erase memories from the mind of a mortal.”

“And a dousing will wipe your mind completely, so for the love of whatever you hold dear, don’t fall in,” snapped Cutburn. “I know it might be asking a lot but please, please display a little self-preservation instinct.”

“Hey, bitch-tits, have a little faith,” said Eda.

Cutburn’s tightly folded arms tightened even further. “After what you people have managed to accomplish just in the short time since we arrived here, I don’t trust that at least one of you wouldn’t do the worst possible thing in any given situation.”

“Perfect,” Darius sighed. “Absolutely wonderful.”

“That includes you, Deamonne.”

“Uggggh.”

Luz could not see through her blindfold but she could have sworn Cutburn rolled her eyes. “This is just like being back in a Coven Head meeting with you. You always were an irritating windbag who thought he knew more than he actually did. I’m surprised the Emperor didn’t assassinate you years ago.”

While Darius made affronted spluttery noises, Luz looked as far as she could in both directions. The river curved away into the distance, disappearing behind rolling hills. Behind them, the forest of the Never Never ended in an oddly straight line, as if there were an invisible barrier there that it could not cross. Not even weeds crept out from between the trunks and roots there.

“Is there a narrower place we could ford?” she asked, turning back to the riverbank.

“This is the narrowest spot,” replied Cutburn with an air of talking to a slow child.

“And it’s not a raging river.” Strongintheclaw was back to gnawing on his hind paw. Luz watched as he finally managed to extract the small, brightly coloured feather from between his toes and spit it onto the ground, where it landed in a soggy splat. “It’s the Stream of Forgetfulness and you’d do well to remember that – so to speak.”

Luz sighed. She held out her hand. Stringbean chirruped and changed into her staff form to land in her palm. “I guess we’re flying over then.”

Eda gave a sharp grin, fangs already elongating as her wings and claws unfurled. “Works for me. Hey, can you grimalkins grow wings to carry your passengers across? No worries if you can’t – I can make a few trips to carry your passengers and you if you shrink back down.”

In answer, both Tailofwavingfury and Essenceofmoonlightgrace glowed, their outlines shifting. When the glow faded, each bore enormous feathery wings in the same shades as their fur. Hunter looked down at the wing now touching his left leg, pulling Willow tighter against him. Essenceofmoonlightgrace purred soothingly, the way Ghost did sometimes when Amity was upset.

“Are you sure you can carry us?” he asked. “We wouldn’t be too heavy?”

“It is our honour to –” Essenceofmoonlightgrace started.

“We can carry far heavier cargo than you, boy,” Tailofwavingfury interrupted. “It is not us you should worry about.”

“Don’t worry,” said Gus. Emmiline transformed and he hopped aboard.

“We can travel under our own power,” Amity finished, letting Ghost climb from her shoulder down her arm to land in her hand as a staff.

Essenceofmoonlightgrace stared at the cat palisman. “You really aren’t one of us.”

“Very nice,” yawned Strongintheclaw. He kicked dirt over the soggy feather and sauntered towards them. “But who is going to carry the smelly Sidhe?”

As one, they all looked at Cutburn. She unfolded her arms, jammed her hands onto her hips and tilted her chin truculently. It only made her look taller and broader.

“Can you carry her, señor gato?” asked Camila. “Like your friends are carrying us?”

Strongintheclaw laughed as if he had just heard the most outrageous joke. “I will not let the smelly Sidhe’s rump rest upon my back! Nor will I allow any of my brethren to do so either.”

“What?” Luz cried. “Why not?” Cutburn was too big to ride a staff and the river was too wide to jump across. It made the most sense for her to ride on a feline steed too. If they could reduce the number of trips over the river, they could also reduce the risk posed to everyone from the water.

Strongintheclaw glared at Luz. “Why don’t you carry her, human child? You have magic, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, I have Stringbean, but –”

“There you go then. That’s settled.” Strongintheclaw leapt into the air, transformed into some kind of silvery bird of prey Luz assumed was native to this world, and zoomed high into the air in a wide arc. He landed on the other side of the river and resumed his regular shape when at a safe distance from the spray. “Come along, everyone.”

“Hey, I didn’t agree to this!” Luz protested.

She wasn’t even sure she could carry Cutburn over the river. She would have to fly as high as Strongintheclaw had to avoid the merest chance of any spray hitting them, and Cutburn was bigger than any passenger she had ever attempted to carry before with just Stringbean’s magic. Usually she had her glyphs too, even if just as a back-up, but now if she failed there was no magic safety net.

Amity’s fingers laced through hers. “We’ll do it together, batata.”

Luz smiled gratefully and squeezed her hand back. “Thank you, sweet potato.”

Another obvious eyeroll from Cutburn. “Ugh, gag me.”

“Don’t tempt us,” Darius replied.

“Discutes más que niños,” Luz heard her mother mutter under her breath. “De hecho, estos preciosos niños se portan mejor que los adultos.”

The grimalkins made their way over the Stream of Forgetfulness without incident, following the same high arc as their leader. Hunter held tight to Willow but neither was in any real danger of falling. When Tailofwavingfury landed, Luz caught sight of Darius and Camila’s hands clutched together. She had no illusions that either of them were romantically interested in the other but she was glad they held such trust in each other all the same.

“C’mon, Goops,” said Eda. “We’ll bring up the rear after the girls in case Hettie tries to go for a swim.”

“I hate you,” Cutburn muttered.

“Tell me something I don’t know, toots,” Eda said without hesitation. “Ally-oop!”

Amity brought Ghost around in a half-circle. Luz mirrored the move from the opposite direction. They had cast collaborative spell circles with their palismen before, so the act was not entirely new. Still, it was not something they had done often, so Luz still felt nervous until the zing of magic signalled the two halves of the circle connecting. Purple blended with gold, their distinctive magic types threading through each other to strengthen the whole. Then the circle advanced on Cutburn, swallowing her up in a pink containment bubble that fizzed with their combined power. Together, Stringbean and Ghost rose into the air, dragging Cutburn along behind them. The translucent pink sphere bobbed like a balloon tethered to them, making her brace her hands and feet against the side to keep from stumbling over.

“This is humiliating.” Her voice was muffled but audible inside the bubble. Luz remembered what it was like to be touted along in such a spell by Kikimora on the Day of Unity. She could not disagree with Cutburn’s assertion. There was a special kind of embarrassment to being transported in what amounted to a magical hamster ball. “Don’t drop me.”

“Don’t worry,” Eda sniped as she and Gus flew slowly behind them. “Even if they do, that containment spell will keep you protected from the memory-erasing water. You’re probably safest of all of us right now, actually. Not even the spray can touch you.”

“Oh joy,” Cutburn replied in a flat monotone. “However shall I contain my delight?”

“Shutting up might help.”

“Take your own advice, Owl Lady.”

Eda’s grin shone with fangs.

Luz concentrated on maintaining the spell. Amity made this look so easy. Since Luz did not have a bile sac, the magic was coming completely from Stringbean, rather than the load being shared between them the way Amity and Ghost did. Luz, however, had to guide Stringbean’s raw power as if it were her own, which required a lot more focus of her than an average witch. Hunter had explained it to her when she was learning how to properly use her own staff. He had been invaluable, since he also had no bile sac but had lived experiences of working with Flapjack. Other witches had tried to teach Luz how to best handle a staff, but in the end her best teacher was her ersatz wet cat of a brother.

The thought of losing him raised its ugly head again. Luz shoved the thought back down. They would not let Hunter die. They would save him. She needed to believe that.

“Looking good, kid!” Eda called up. “Nice work, Boots! Steady hands and not a single crack in the containment spell.”

“Yeah, you’re both doing great!” Gus added.

Luz appreciated the encouragement. Judging by her tight smile, so did Amity. Cutburn, on the other hand, looked like she loathed every moment of this.

It was when they were at the apex of their arc that disaster struck. Quite literally, in fact. Bursting from the treeline of the Never Never came a flock of strange, squawking birds that looked like what you might get if a parrot mated with a goose and a velocitator simultaneously. Beaks curved like scimitars flashed in the sun while tint vestigial arms protruded from their chests, reaching for Luz and her group. The birds honked as they flew straight at the motley group of fliers, making no effort to change course even though it was obvious they were going to collide.

“Watch out!” Luz called uselessly. On instinct, she threw up the hand not wrapped around her staff. Razor sharp claws raked at her as the birds flew between them. Loud shrieks filled her ears, like rending metal in a horrific car accident. One of the birds even pecked her ear. She felt the skin part and hot blood leak down her face. “Ow! Let go!”

Amity squealed in shock and pain. Gus yelped. Eda cursed. Luz tried to see what was happening but the air was thick with brightly coloured feathers and beady eyes that gleamed with malice. These birds weren’t just coincidentally colliding with them. They were attacking their group on purpose.

Cutburn bellowed. Gus cried out again. Luz caught sight of her friend grabbing for his staff with both hands as it fell alongside him, feet pedalling empty air. An enormous pink sphere obscured her view of him as Cutburn’s containment bubble dropped like a stone. Luz felt it slip from her magical grip.

“No!” she shouted.

“Goops!” Eda hollered. “Hold on, I’m coming!”

“No, Eda!” Gus yelled back. “You’re too close to the water!”

Luz’s stomach lurched as she heard the several large objects hit the surface of the Stream of Forgetfulness, sending up an enormous geyser of enchanted water.

Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs

“Discutes más que niños.”

~ “You argue more than children.”

“De hecho, estos preciosos niños se portan mejor que los adultos.”

~ “In fact, these precious children are better behaved than you adults.”

Chapter Text

Gus’s first thought when he plummeted towards the Stream of Forgetfulness was ‘is forgetting my entire life better or worse than just plain dying?’

He did not have time think a second thought.

“Goops!” Eda folded her wings to plunge after him and the falling pink sphere that held Cutburn. “Hold on, I’m coming!”

“No, Eda!” Gus yelled back. “You’re too close to the water!”

He was too close to it as well. The grimalkins had said only a few drops could erase memories and being dunked would wipe his mind completely. Spray from the fast-flowing river glinted in the light like daggers waiting to shred his sense of self back to babyhood.

“Brace yourself!”

Eda crashed into Gus hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs. Her powerful wings slapped the air, giving her enough momentum to knock him off his trajectory and into one on a completely different axis. Gus went from falling down to rocketing sideways, his vision a spiral of sky, water, sky, water, sky, water – ground!

“Gus!”

He managed to bring up his arms and legs to turn his pell-mell crash landing into a roll the way Hunter had taught him. It siphoned off some of the momentum, though he felt dozens of cuts open up as every bit of available skin skidded and scraped along the ground. Eventually, inertia won out and Gus fetched up in a patch of long green grass, where lay on his back, breathless and waiting for the world to stop spinning.

“Gus! ¡¿Estás bien?!”

He wanted to respond to Camila’s frantic shout but was too winded. His spinning vision made nausea rise in his throat, so he shut his eyes. So many fresh pains assaulted his mind, already soused with adrenaline and fear, that he whited out.

“Gus!” Hunter shouted. “Hold on, we’re coming!”

Thoughts tumbled through Gus’s malfunctioning brain. He grasped at them, desperate to reassure himself that the memories still existed and had not been wiped away by the River of Forgetfulness. Hunter. Hunter was sick. Hunter was dying. Hunter should not sound so concerned about him. Because Hunter was dying. Gus had no right to claim anyone’s concern or sympathy right now because Hunter was the one who was dying and if they did not hurry and find a way to save him, he would die, and not just temporarily but forever this time.

A thin whine rose in Gus’s throat. Heavy footfalls heralded someone’s approach. Something soft and moist snuffled his forehead, breathing hot breath into his hair. A nose? One of the grimalkins, no doubt. Yes, that was right. They were in the land of Sidhe. They had come here to save Hunter. Pieces of information dropped back into place in Gus’s mind and he breathed a tiny sigh of relief. He had not forgotten. He still had all his memories.

“Small witch?”

Definitely a grimalkin, though right now he was too muddled to place which one. He went through their names just in case. Strongintheclaw. Tailofwavingfury. Essenceofmoonlightgrace. Those memories were intact too.

Far more distant than should have been possible, he heard the squawks of the birds that had attacked them and what sounded like a lion’s roar.

“B … birds …”

“Tailofwavingfury and Strongintheclaw are taking care of them,” said Hunter. “Lay still, Gus. Don’t try to move yet. You took a heck of a fall. I’m amazing you don’t have any bones poking out.”

Gus groaned. His head ached. “Eda …”

“She knocked you out of the sky while you were falling so you didn’t hit the water after you fell off Emmiline.”

Immediately, Gus’s eyes shot open. He tried to sit up. Bile rose in his throat. He swallowed it back. “Emm … iline …”

“I’m here, my witch!” chirruped a voice. “I’m all right!”

“Step upon my wing, tiny wooden lizard,” said the grimalkin. “I shall lift you.”

Gus felt Emmiline’s familiar weight settle onto his shoulder. Immediately, he felt much better. His stomach still roiled and the world still spun, but physical contact with his palisman quelled the burst of panic in his guts.

At least, until he remembered that he had not been the only one falling into the river. “Are Luz, Eda and Amity okay? And, uh, Cutburn too, I guess.”

“Luz and Amity are okay. They stayed high enough to avoid any spray,” said Hunter. “They levitated the shield sphere out of the water after it fell in.”

Gus groaned. He hoped the sphere really had protected Cutburn. If she lost her memory, Hunter was screwed. The thought of losing his best friend after all they had gone through made his stomach roil even more.

“And …” Gus swallowed. Why did he have so much saliva all of a sudden? “And Eda?”

“She bounced off the shield when it hit the water and landed on the bank. Darius and Mamá are tending to her.”

“That’s … good.” Gus leaned forward. “So dizzy … think m’gonna hurl …”

Running footsteps approached. Gus heard them through the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears.

“Gus! Oh my freaking gawd, are you okay!? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Luz, don’t flip him the bird at a time like this!”

“He was supposed to count them, not you, Hunter!”

Someone crouched next to Gus and took his face in their hands. He unsquinched his eyes to meet Luz’s soft brown gaze. Her brow was creased in abject worry. Over the shoulder on which Stringbean balanced, Amity limped up, Ghost cradled in her arms. The two girls were peppered in cuts, bloody slashes and claw marks from the flock of birds.

“Are you guys okay?” Gus asked.

“Dude,” Luz replied. “Are you? ¡Podrías haber muerto!”

“M’fine.”

“You are so not fine.”

“Bit … vomity …”

As if reacting to this admission, Gus’s gorge won the battle and rose fully up his throat. His cheeks bulged. He pulled back sharply, leaned away from Luz and threw up into the long grass.

Emmiline patted the side of his neck. “My poor witch. Bring it all up. That’ll make you feel better. My poor, poor witch.”

By the time he was done, Gus felt like he had been turned inside out. He started to drag a sleeve across his mouth but someone thrust a small square of cloth in front of his nose instead.

“Here,” said Amity. “Take my hankie.”

“Thanks.” Gus burped, acidic fumes filling his nose from the inside. He wanted to sneeze and covered it by coughing into the hankie. “Oh, Titan, that’s nasty. But seriously, are you guys okay?”

“Better than you, dude. Did any of the water touch you?” asked Luz.

“No. I was done for, but Eda saved me.”

“Yeah, she’s stupidly heroic like that, even if she’d deny it every time.” Luz’s eyes tracked sideways and she nibbled her lip, before snapping her gaze back to Gus. “You’re sure none of the water touched you?”

Gus wiped his mouth again “Luz.”

“Yes?”

“Go check on Eda.”

“Oh. That obvious, huh?”

“Only a lot.”

“We’ll stay with him.” Hunter, still sat atop his enormous feline steed, Willow’s unconscious body clasped to his chest, nodded down at them. It was a bizarre sight, yet at the same time somehow reminded Gus of pictures of old knights he had seen in Human Realm fairytales. “Right, Amity?”

“Sure,” Amity nodded. “Go make sure Eda’s okay.”

“And tell her thank you from me,” said Gus.

“We’ll dissolve the spell on Cutburn’s shield the moment it doesn’t have any water left on it that could fall on her when we do,” Amity added. “Hopefully she’ll be grateful enough to heal Gus’s injuries.” As Luz scampered away, she turned to Gus. “We have to check you for concussion in the meantime.”

“Concussion?” echoed the grimalkin. It was the female one. She shook her head in quiet disbelief. “Mortals are so fragile.” Folding her legs, she managed to lay down next to Gus without unseating Hunter or Willow. “Lean against me, small witch.”

“I, uh …” Gus tried not to jump when her silvery tail brushed against him, pushing him forcefully sideways to lean against her side. “Oh! I guess … okay?”

Essenceofmoonlightgrace! That was her name. Gus’s brain seemed to still be rolling around inside his skull but each memory that came back to him made him feel a little better.

When she began to purr, he felt instantly soothed. His headache did not disappear, but it did lessen and the nausea receded. A steady thrum vibrated through his body. Slowly, he found himself relaxing and leaning further into her soft fur.

Emmiline raised herself up onto her hind legs, pressing her little front feet against the grimalkin’s belly. “Ooh, that’s nice! You’re so soft, big cat!”

“When kittens are bumped and bruised from exploring the world, we do this with them to soothe their ills and give them comfort,” Essenceofmoonlightgrace murmured. “And what are small witches if not kittens under a different guise?”

Gus wanted to disagree with being called a kitten, but the noise and feel of Essenceofmoonlightgrace’s purring was too nice. He closed his eyes and pictured his headache like a ball of steadily shrinking spikes. When the ball vanished, the pain did too.

“Do you feel better?” Essenceofmoonightgrace asked softly.

“I don’t know about Gus, but I sure do,” said a voice above them.

Gus looked up. “Willow!”

She stretched, as if she had just woken up from a restful nap instead of a bout of unconsciousness triggered by overworking her bile sac and connecting with an ancient entity. “Hey, guys. What did I miss?” She squeaked. “Oh!”

Hunter leaned his forehead against her back, arms wrapped around her middle in a tight hug. “Quite a bit,” he said in a strangled voice that betrayed just how much emotions was brimming inside him at that moment. “Titan’s teeth, Captain, I’m so glad you’re finally awake.”

Willow blinked down at her midriff. “Hunter … your hands …”

“Yeah.”

“Did … did I do that?”

“Also yeah.”

She gulped. “Holy Titan. I missed a lot.”

“We’ll fill you in,” said Amity. “Suffice to say, we once again attracted trouble we didn’t ask for and didn’t want but managed to come through it relatively intact.”

“I can see that.” Willow laid her hands overtop Hunter’s but her gaze found Gus. “Oh my gosh, Gus! You’re hurt!”

“I’m okay,” he hastened to reassure her. “Mostly just cuts and bruises. I got lucky.”

“Extremely lucky,” Amity half-chuckled. “I’m genuinely amazed you came through that fall as well as you did. Maybe fate intervened and kept you in one piece so that you can have an epiphany about what’s truly important in your life, and when we get back to the Boiling Isles you and Matty can finally figure your stuff out like we all know you want to.”

Gus blinked at her. He waited for the requisite memory to plop into place like all the others had.

It did not.

“Um … who’s Matty?”

Amity looked poleaxed. She opened mouth to respond, but a cry cut her off. As one, all of them looked over to the shore, where Camila lay on the ground, Eda pinning her down. Her claws were at Camila’s throat. Beside them, Darius lay sprawled as if knocked aside while Luz approached with palms out.

“Calm down, Eda!” Luz begged. “Please!”

Eda bared her fangs. “Who the fuck are you people!?” she demanded. Gus had never heard her sound so frightened before. Her wide eyes darted around, taking in her surroundings. “Where am I? And what the fuck did you do to me?”

“We didn’t do anything to you,” Luz assured. “Don’t you recognise me?”

“Bitch, I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know what you are.” Eda glared down at Camila. “Either of you round-eared freaks. The last thing I remember was going to sleep in my own damn bedroom. I was supposed to wake up and go to the Emperor’s Coven try-outs. Instead, I wake up here, with you weirdos, looking like this!”

Her wings fluttered as if not fully under her control. Her feathers, usually sleek as a body suit, started to pop out in all directions. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.

“And where the fuck is my other arm!?”

Eda’s eyes clouded with blackness. Gus had not seen that in years but he knew exactly what it was. She staggered back, clutching at her head.

“What is happening to me?” she wailed. “I … I want my dad! I want my dad!”

As her friends and family looked on in horror, her spine bulged outwards, rounding into a larger, bulkier shape. Her centre of gravity changed and she fell forward onto three legs, face distending as an abundance of extra teeth filled her mouth. Her voice deepened to a raspy growl that struggled to form words.

“Daaaadd … Mooom … Lillyyyyy … hellllp … meeeeeee!”

“Oh no,” Amity whispered.

The Owl Beast flared its massive wings, hissed at them, and took off.

“No, Eda, wait!” Luz called. “Eda!”

It was too late. Unheeding of her cries, the Owl Beast flew back across the River of Forgetfulness and disappeared into the forest of the Never Never.