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This was early August, three hundred and some odd years after the apocalypse, during one of those heat waves that dries up the creeks and kills the corn. Only the cicadas were happy, crooning like a funeral choir from the trees.
Once upon a time there was a brave knight who was set upon by a demon. In the battle he lost his left ear—and his young wife. The knight vowed on her grave to rid the world of demons.
He blinked. “North,” he repeated, mildly, but of course he didn’t believe me. In my eyes he’d seen the truth: that I hated him, and would kill him if I could.
but one thing is true: people change. They hide it at first. So there are pinfeathers pressing out between your ribs: you pluck them. So there’s a second row of teeth coming up through your gums: you pull them. So you’re sick—terribly, mortally sick: you lie. Claws can be hidden in boots, gills beneath thick scarves. You can puke in private, with no one to hold back your hair.
“Lady Shrike—Widow Shrike.”
I said, “No,” but I don’t know why; Mayapple Coal had never done a thing I told her to.
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.
(Here Sir John interrupted, although it’s bad manners to interrupt a Secretary when she’s telling a story. He said, “But the Applegate texts are centuries old! How could she possibly know them, without libraries or hard drives—was she even literate?” And I said, “Shut up.”)
Do you know what human blood looks like, up close? Tiny castles circled by tiny walls, like a thousand little enclaves. Demon blood is different: there are no castles and no walls. Instead there are endless, winding tendrils, which branch like roots or antlers— “Yes,” said Sir John, so harshly that he escaped the bounds of parentheses and entered the story proper.
I lowered my voice, gave it a little rise-and-fall rhythm; one of Finch’s tricks. “Everyone thinks you get sick because you begin to change, but it’s the opposite: you change because you get sick. Because you have to.” I smiled, and knew it was my scavenger’s smile: wide, and full of teeth. “The wheel turns, Sir John, but so do we.”
“Do you know that shrikes once went by another name, in the Old World? Butcherbirds, they were called.” His voice roughened. “Your mother named you well.”
At six, I’d thought love was a full belly; at sixteen, I’d thought it was wildflowers and gooseberries and Mayapple’s mouth on mine. At seventeen, I knew better: love is whatever you’re willing to kill for.
Or perhaps she was a woman made as Eve was: from the bones of something else. Her legs doubled back, doglike, and her ribs swept sleekly outward, like the breast of a dove. Only her face was human: handsome, sharp boned, clove colored. Old.
Once upon a time there was a young knight, fresh from the enclaves, eager to make his name slaying demons. Once upon a time there was a pretty outlander woman who liked the look of him.
Finch had never been very affectionate with me—I was her apprentice more than her daughter. 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’d changed, and I refused to admit it. I went to her unarmed, defenseless. Well, I was raised in the church, wasn’t I? That’s how a believer proves his love: blindly, on his knees.”
The knight smiled. It was the smile of a saint at the stake, unafraid, certain of what came next. He said, “Run, Lady Shrike. Once more,” and the last of the light struck his eyes. I saw—or thought I saw—a flash of red. I ran.
Before I go, I’ll tell Iron Hollow how that story ends. I’ll tell them what I saw as I walked down the mountain that day.
One of them was graceful, confident, slipping purposefully from one form to another, and the other was clumsy, as if unused to himself. I heard a woman’s laugh. They chased and changed above me, knight and demon, husband and wife, shifting like clouds in strong wind, and then wheeled together, toward the horizon.
