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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 never again returned to his enclave, but scoured the outlands ever after, a hawk on his arm and hate in his heart. The hawk, they said, was specially trained to hunt demons.
“Come forward, Lady Shrike. I shan’t bite. Now tell me: Where did thou last see the demon?”
hot diggidy
Still, they say demons are spirits freed from hell by the fifth trumpet, along with cancer and microplastics, which slink into people’s souls and change them into monsters.
but one thing is true: people change.
He’d refused a guest bed—stupid!—and wouldn’t accept a guard to keep watch—arrogant!!—but he made camp in a different place every night, and never lit a fire.
They spoke a dead language and worshipped a dead god, a man suspended gruesomely on two sticks. They gave themselves antiquated names (Ashley, Charlemagne, John) and obscure titles (president, chief operating officer, knight). Finch had tsked her tongue: Nothing grows on a grave while you’re standing on it.
To grieve as I have grieved is unseemly; the wheel turns, and we do not cling, howling, to the rim.
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 came to us as any apocalypse does: slowly at first, and then all at once.
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.
Grief ages you, I thought, and wasn’t sure why I thought it.
Once upon a time there was a woman who became a tree to escape a hunter. Once upon a time there was a seal who became a woman because her skin was stolen by a fisherman. Once upon a time there were seven brothers who became seven ravens because their father cursed them. You see the pattern, don’t you? That’s the true work of a Secretary, of course: not only to remember the stories but to make sense of them. To find the patterns and fashion them into answers.
Why do people change, Sir John? Because they are cursed, pursued, poisoned, trapped, under siege. Because they have to.
Finch always said there were certain places where it was easier to tell stories, and to hear them: around a fire at night, in the mist at dawn, on a porch at dusk. In-between places, balanced on the border between familiar and strange.
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.
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.
Once upon a time there was a knight who married a demon. He loved her so much that he held tight to her even as she changed in his arms, even as her talons tore through muscle and cartilage. He held her so long that she fell in love with him, or remembered that she loved him already. And because she loved him, she kept herself to a single shape, though it chafed like the bars of a cage. So the knight and the demon walked the world, never together, never apart, waiting for the day one of them would cease to be what they were.
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.
😭😭😭😭
