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They read this short story in middle school about a girl who lived on a planet where it rained all the time, and it was only every seven years that the sun would come out. And the girl, she didn’t do well in the rain. She had a bad time. And then when it finally came time for the sun to come out, the other children locked her in a cabinet as a joke, and they forgot about her when the first rays poked out from behind the clouds.
And she missed it. She missed her only chance to see the sun for seven more years.
But that was just kids being kids, wasn’t it?
Lucy thinks about that story a lot. It’s one of those works of literature that sticks with you. When she used to get bullied for being too tall or too quiet or too Lucy, she would think about that story.
And she’d remind herself that, eventually, the sun would come out.
Her first day at Aguefort, a halfling girl walks right up to her at lunch and demands to know why she’s sitting alone. “Well, I don’t know anybody…”
“I didn’t know anybody this morning,” the girl says. “But now I do. That’s Mary Ann.” And she points to a kobold across the cafeteria. “I’m Kipperlilly Copperkettle. What’s your name?”
Which is how Lucy Frostblade makes the first and only best friend she’s ever had.
Being part of an honest-to-goodness adventuring party turns out to be amazing. Because they’re friends, but also because they’re teammates. There’s a structure to their friendship, a guide, a rulebook. It’s Kipperlilly’s job to root out information and draw conclusions. It’s Ruben’s job to provide inspiration. Mary Ann’s the muscle. Oisin is their spellcaster, and Ivy is their fighter. And Lucy is the healer.
It feels good, being needed.
When Kipperlilly scrapes her knee trying to climb up a bookshelf, it’s easy for Lucy to place a hand over the injury and allow Ruvina’s power to flow through her, knitting the skin back together.
When she looks up, Kipperlilly is watching her with the expression she uses when she’s trying to solve a puzzle.
Lucy wasn’t aware there was anything to solve where she’s concerned.
But it’s a little bit exciting, the idea that Kipperlilly sees something mysterious in her.
The rat killing starts after their second week at Aguefort.
And Lucy isn’t wild about the idea, but Kipperlilly has it all mapped out, and she’s so enthusiastic that it’s hard not to fall in step with her. She explains how stomping out rats and twig gremlins in the woods is a more effective strategy than whatever the rest of these adventuring parties are doing, because nobody can count on villainous vampires and dragons and fiends to turn up on a routine basis, but rats will always be there.
“It’s sustainable,” Kipperlilly explains, ponytail bobbing as she leads the rest of the High 5 Heroes through the trees. “Instead of engaging in combat when it pops up, we make a concentrated effort every single day. Boom. Experience. Success.”
Ruben just shrugs and strums his ukulele. But Lucy watches the way the autumn sunlight falling through the leaves falls on Kipperlilly’s face. And she thinks there aren’t many places she wouldn’t follow this girl into.
Even so, she starts hanging back and resurrecting the rats.
They never did anything to anybody. And if Kipperlilly’s theory is right, and they’re becoming better adventurers by killing the rats, then isn’t she gaining even more useful experience by using her spells to bring them back?
(What would that look like, if the High 5 Heroes committed themselves to helping and healing creatures instead of exterminating them? Would she sound weak if she suggested it?)
There’s another short story Lucy read in literature class, about everybody in the town putting names in a hat. And whoever’s name gets drawn on the day of the big event is then pelted with stones until they keel over dead.
She’s not sure what that story was meant to teach her. What it did teach her is that being the odd one out is the most dangerous place to be.
So she goes along with killing the rats, and she doesn’t let anyone see her stealth back in the evening to bring the poor creatures back.
And that’s her freshman year at Aguefort— letting Ruben bounce songwriting ideas off of her, peering over Mary Ann’s shoulder at the cute animals in her game, trying not to take offense at Ivy and Oisín’s jokes that she hardly ever gets. And Kipperlilly, always Kipperlilly. The words, “though she be but little, she is fierce” come to mind. Lucy’s never known a soul fiercer than Kipperlilly Copperkettle.
When one of the upperclassmen sidles up to Lucy at lunch one day and starts asking if she has a boyfriend, all she sees is a flash of blonde ponytail before Kipperlilly is standing between her and the older girl, perched on the bench. Her protector. “Hey, Penelope, why don’t you mind your own business? Mmkay?” Kipperlilly says, sweetly aggressive in the way she’s managed to master.
“Oh my God, whatever you little freak,” the older girl grumbles.
She leaves Lucy alone after that.
When the rest of the adventuring party starts making noise about changing the name, Lucy backs Kipperlilly up without question. She’s the leader, she made up the name High 5 Heroes. And Lucy doesn’t even like that they’ve become, essentially, a meat grinder for rats. Naming themselves after it just seems tacky.
They’re outvoted.
But Lucy feels like she’d rather lose on Kipperlilly’s side than win on anybody else’s.
So the High 5 Heroes become the Rat Grinders. The Rat Grinders still hang out a little bit over the summer after freshman year, except Oisín’s family travels over summer vacation, and Mary Ann’s always got conventions and Quokki pet tournaments happening. More often than not, Lucy and Kipperlilly hang out alone.
Which Lucy likes a little too much.
They have sleepovers, and Kipperlilly wears gloves so she can braid Lucy’s hair without getting bothered by the cold. They stay up all night doing quizzes out of glossy magazines. Are you more pirate or pop star? Which monster matches your energy?
Kipperlilly never minds when she’s quiet, because she’s usually got enough to say for the both of them. When she does talk, though, when she gets really animated about something— Ruvina, usually, or sometimes whatever book she’s reading at the moment— Kipperlilly listens with rapt attention.
In group settings, she’s always the first one to make everybody else shut up so Lucy can speak. Despite her stature, Lucy’s never been the kind of person to draw or demand attention. Kipperlilly is happy to demand it on her behalf. It’s like having a tiny cheerleader by her side at all times, jumping around and forcing other people to acknowledge that she is there, she takes up space, she matters.
She does that the first time the Rat Grinders all meet up with Porter Cliffbreaker.
He keeps talking over Lucy when she expresses concerns about the new plan, and Kipperlilly just about jumps down his throat. “You want us on your team, big guy?” she demands. “You listen to Lucy.”
Now instead of just killing rats, they battle polymorphed monsters transformed by the sorcery teacher, Jace Stardiamond. Schoolwork starts to matter less than the things they’re doing after school, the sparring with Mr. Cliffbreaker that feels more and more serious every day, the mock battles against mock monsters, the grandiose speeches about making the school a place of fairness and equity.
Lucy is over at Kipperlilly’s house after school one day in the January of their sophomore year. Despite being a frost genasi, she always feels a little spark of warmth within her when she’s cuddling up on the couch with Kipperlilly like this, a warm glow that emanates from her sternum and envelopes her from her fingers to her toes.
Her faith in Kipperlilly has been keeping her going, lately. Because she doesn’t like Mr. Cliffbreaker’s ideas about reigniting a goddess of conquest and rage. When she reaches out to Ruvina for guidance, she receives nothing but sorrow and doubt. Her deity seems as unsure about Mr. Cliffbreaker as she does.
“I know you’re scared,” Kipperlilly says, tossing a piece of low-fat white cheddar popcorn in her mouth. Her mother only ever stocks healthy snacks in the pantry. Lucy likes sneaking gummi worms and Doritos to her. “I would be, too! You’ve got the biggest role to play, Lucy. You’re the linchpin.”
“I don’t want to be a linchpin,” Lucy says, sinking down into the couch. They’re half-paying attention to the movie they put on. But only half. More like three-eighths, now. “Why can’t we just… go to class and go fight monsters and do… normal stuff?”
“Because we’re not normal, Lucy,” Kipperlilly says, grasping her hand. “We’re extraordinary. And the way the school is set up, it doesn’t reward extraordinary students. It doesn’t care if you’re an amazing cleric or a brilliant rogue. All it cares about is if you have some tragedy in your past, or if you’re in the right place at the right time.”
She’s right. She always is.
Lucy squeezes her hand. She’s got cold hands, she knows it. She’s got cold everything.
But she knows it’s going to hurt when Kipperlilly lets go.
Instead of letting go, Kipperlilly squeezes her hand back.
Lucy’s heart skitters in her chest like a dying rat.
“I’m scared,” Lucy admits, tethered to her best friend in this moment, facing an impending spring break where she’s bound to be tested in ways she never asked for, butting heads with a barbarian teacher and a sorcery teacher when she’s never wanted to be anything other than a cleric of Ruvina and a good friend. “Whatever’s coming, it scares me. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be scared,” Kipperlilly says, clutching at her hand. She reaches up and brushes the bangs away from Lucy’s face, and Lucy knows she’s blushing, knows there’s nervous frost spreading along her cheekbones and fingertips. “You’re going to be the champion, Lucy. I’d be scared if it were anybody but you. But you’re an incredible cleric. You’re thoughtful. You’re deliberate. You never give up. I feel bad for anybody who doesn’t know what it’s like to have Lucy Frostblade backing them up.”
The words burn in her chest like hot coals. Lucy wants to kiss her more than she’s ever wanted anything.
“You’re always hyping me up,” she mumbles, letting the moment melt away like a snowdrift.
Kipperlilly laughs and knocks their shoulders together, and then she goes for another handful of popcorn.
Spring break is scary, and not fun-scary. Not the way that Lucy imagines other parties go on scary adventures, where it’s spooky and scary like Halloween, like a quest, like a fairytale that has a clear beginning and end. Spring break is scary because Jace Stardiamond is there the whole time and when Ruben dies and Lucy has to revivify him, Jace actually looks bored. Like he doesn’t care if the students in his charge die.
Spring break is scary because it’s the first time that Lucy really notices Kipperlilly acting differently in front of the group compared to how she is when it’s just the two of them.
She also notices the way that Kipperlilly acts a little different with Ivy than she does with Mary Ann, different with Ruben, different with Oisín. She clocks a shrewdness and polish that usually gets used on people outside the party. Watching Kipperlilly turn up her masterminding all the way on their own party is— weird.
Kipperlilly was born to be a politician.
Lucy just didn’t expect to see her smooth-talking veneer up close like this.
Spring break is scary, but it doesn’t last forever.
But Lucy doesn’t think she’s the only one affected by their travels.
Ruben goes through a moody phase after spring break, slumping sullenly in the corner when the rest of them are having spirited conversations, dragging big slashes through the lyrics she’s watched him work on for two years. “Are you okay?” Lucy asks him once, bringing him a seltzer.
Ruben glares at her from underneath the bangs he just cut. There’s still a smudge of black hair dye on his neck. “Are any of us ‘okay’?” he ponders.
Mary Ann is the next one to start acting a little weird. She’s always had a hair-trigger temper, but after spring break, her charming brusqueness just starts to feel mean.
Ivy’s sharp tongue gets sharper and sharper.
One day Lucy picks up Ruben’s phone by mistake and realizes that there’s a whole group chat for the rest of her adventuring party minus her.
It’s a strange feeling, to be heartbroken and at the same time, somehow unsurprised.
Lucy curls up in her bed at night, scrolling through Fantasygram on her crystal without really seeing anything. She turned in the paperwork today to change her worship from Ruvina to her unnamed sister. She feels— strange. Empty, without the presence of her goddess tied around her soul. Like she’s a snowflake, adrift on the wind, something that used to be a part of something larger now hopelessly untethered.
Forgive me, she prays, reaching out as she burrows tighter and warmer in her quilts. Forgive me, Ruvina. I need to help my friends.
She is going to be the champion. It’s what Kipperlilly wants.
It’s what Lucy wants, isn’t it? To bring a god back from the dead? Everyone at school is raving about Kristen Applebees apparently doing just that on her spring break. Ruvina has other worshippers. Lucy can put her faith somewhere where it matters, somewhere where it will do some good.
And as she struggles to fall asleep, she feels the press, not of her old god or her new god, but of Kristen Applebees’s newly revitalized deity. She feels doubt.
If giving herself over to the shadow of a dead goddess of conquest was what she was supposed to do, why would it feel so strange?
If Ruvina’s hope for her was that she would bow down and praise her long-dead sibling, why would the sorrow echoing from her goddess burn so brightly, like blinding sunlight on snow?
Lucy punches her pillow into shape and buries her face in it, trying not to feel like the pressure of championing a dead goddess of conquest is crushing her lungs.
The next day, Kipperlilly reminds her that everybody is meeting up in the Far Haven Woods after school. Just like always.
She knows something is wrong.
She shows up anyway.
Because if nobody else can stay loyal, Lucy will simply be extra loyal. Lucy will give all of herself up to help compensate for people who apparently wouldn’t do the same for her. Her cleric teacher taught her that sometimes, the only thing left to believe in is believing.
So maybe she’s naÏve.
Or maybe she’s just an exceptionally devoted cleric.
Lucy goes into the woods one afternoon and she doesn’t come back out.
She thinks she’s meeting up with the other Rat Grinders, but when she reaches their meeting spot in the clearing near Shimmerstone Lake, she only finds Kipperlilly. “Hey,” Lucy says, forcing herself not to curl her hands into fists, forcing herself not to reach for the Spirit Guardians stirring at her heels.
“Lucy? Are you alright?” Kipperlilly says, brushing a single stray strand of hair out of her face, and even that feels practiced, orchestrated. Like she’s putting on a show of being imperfect, being relatable. A born politician.
Lucy smooths her hands over the hem of her shirt. “Fine,” she says. “I’m fine.”
“I think the others are going to be late,” Kipperlilly says, taking a step closer. “We can get started without them.”
“Started on what?” Lucy says. “Killing rats? Fighting fakey monsters that Stardiamond dreams up? What are we doing?”
Kipperlilly draws closer. “What we’ve always done,” she says. “Working hard. Getting it right.”
Lucy wants to say, I don’t believe you, but the words stick in her throat. Of course she believes Kipperlilly. She always has. She believed her last year, so of course she believes her now. Even if she’s wrong. Sometimes the only thing left to believe in is believing.
Kipperlilly Copperkettle is standing right in front of her now, and Lucy feels the warmth of a tear sliding down her face. “Please,” she says.
Her best friend in the whole world responds by walking her back against a tree trunk. “It’s going to be fine,” Kipperlilly swears, reaching out to grasp at her arm. She tugs, and Lucy goes willingly. She would answer to that voice even in death. “Lucy, everything is going to be okay. Do you believe me?”
Does she believe Kipperlilly?
No.
No, she doesn’t.
It’s a terrifying thought, but the idea of whatever Kipperlilly is about to tell her might be worse. And she will follow Kipperlilly Copperkettle to so many places, but she might have finally found her line.
She went to the front office and withdrew her deity change paperwork earlier today. She is a cleric of Ruvina. She always will be. She will do a lot for her friends, but she will not abandon her faith for them.
Kipperlilly climbs and Lucy bends, until they meet in the middle.
“It’s not too late to turn back,” Lucy says, desperately.
And then Kipperlilly surges up and kisses her like she’s punching her, hard and fast and brutal, lips bruising in a way that makes her feel like she’s losing something she can never get back. “It is,” Kipperlilly says, and she sinks her dagger into Lucy’s heart.
The impact isn’t what hurts most.
It’s the moment immediately after, when the shock starts to hit her body and the blood pools around her chest. The moment when she starts to cast a Healing Word on herself, but then she watches Ruben and Mary Ann and Ivy and Oisín emerge from the trees. And she realizes that she is not walking away from this.
Even though she retracted her deity change paperwork, she still submitted it in the first place. She let her friends and her commitment to them draw her away from the worship that feeds her. She’s never felt further from Ruvina. She’s never felt further from herself.
Kipperlilly stabs her again as Ivy dashes out to slash at her side. Lucy slumps against the tree, outnumbered, hopeless, weak.
She can still taste Kipperlilly’s lip balm on her mouth.
She thinks again of that short story about the girl being locked away in the closet and forgotten. Schoolyard cruelty turned violent and vicious.
Ruben comes down on her with a killing blow as the darkness closes in, and with her last conscious thought, Lucy asks Ruvina for forgiveness, and she asks her goddess to look out for her parents in their grief.
It feels like a mockery that her last sight is of Kipperlilly’s face, pinched in concentration.