The Knight and the Butcherbird

by Alix E. Harrow

We learned, after the old world died, not to put our faith in wood pulp or motherboards; the only archive that survives is the one we carry with us.

She knew me then, at the beginning of ourselves, and she knew me now, here at the end, when she did not even know herself.

I couldn’t stop smiling—the euphoric, hysteric smile of a woman who has been lying on her lover’s grave and has just felt the earth move beneath her.

Why do people change, Sir John? Because they are cursed, pursued, poisoned, trapped, under siege. Because they have to.

I wondered then where all those shape-shifting stories had come from. If, every now and then, there was someone who changed, because they had to, and if we caught glimpses of them, every now and then, and named them as if they were fixed things. Siren, selkie, sphinx; angel, demon, mutant turtle.

But she’d been willing to kill for me, and so she must have loved me, after all. As I loved May, as Sir John loved his wife, as God loved the world: with blood on our hands.

she knew me, still. But I no longer knew her. She’d changed out of all recognition, shed her sick body like a skin and become something else. I could cling to her, like

that loyal bride to her groom, until both of us were covered in blood—or I could let her run free. And hope that, one day, I could run after her.