My parents are buried side by side, my father on the left, my mother on the right.

  The churchyard is dim and dismal, quiet and secluded, far from the bustle of any main roads; the grounds are bordered by a thick barrier of wrinkled old trees, gone bare and barren with autumn’s early death. The Church of Saint Michael the Archangel squats on a low hillside near the centre, a grime-encrusted ghoul slavering over this lichyard feast, dyed dark by leaden clouds, blurred behind a shroud of heavy rain. St Michael’s is one of the new churches, planted like mushrooms by the CoE in the decades since Oxford’s expansion. Perhaps once it was white and gleaming, but nowdays it’s stained with lesions of lichen and scarred by the gangrene of concrete rot; they didn’t use real masonry for half these pale imitations. The church claims three foundation stones cannibalised from the lost corpse of St Paul’s Cathedral, but so does every church in Oxford.

  My parents lie at rest in the north-east corner of the graveyard, close to where the fresh plots run out, giving way to thin woods and dead grass. Row after row of low grey headstones march up the shallow hill, punctuated by the occasional mausoleum, mourned by statues of bent-backed angels, sheltered by cold comfort from the gaunt-faced treeline.

  Their headstone is plain grey granite, unmottled by lichen, clean of moss, untouched by time, all kept at bay by regular visits. My real home, more orderly and fitting than any other I’ve known.

  In summer I like to leave flowers. Wind has stolen the stems. Rain has pounded stray petals into the mud.

  My parents. Rafe Carter and Coreen Carter.

  19th June 1982. 7th March 1983. Both deceased, 6th February 2015. Loving parents. In memory.

  There’s some pre-approved nonsense carved beneath the dates, about how they lost their lives to the greatest threat England has ever faced. We didn’t get to choose that part. When I was younger I used to entertain the fancy of coming out here with a chisel and chipping it clean.

  Can’t read the words anyway, not through rain this thick.

  Falling like bullets now, static haze blurring the air, raindrops drumming on the hood of my coat, drowning my thoughts in the throb and thrum of senseless noise. The sane world has shrunk to a few inches of clear grey light, the space from my eyes to the rim of my hood. Beyond that all is haunted, false figures and half-glimpsed phantoms creeping among the gravestones. My shoes are sunk in saturated grass, left leg too heavy to lift, the pillar of my prosthetic the only thing keeping me upright. The sports bag with all my worldly worth lies beside my feet, too much weight for my limbs all slack and limp.

  Cold, immobile, growing fainter by the second.

  Not quite sure how I got here, not least without being picked up by police.

  I’ve been stumbling through the streets, blood caked around my mouth, smeared down one sleeve. The poison is still in me, still doing mortal work; or perhaps the task is done and I’m a dead woman walking. Feverish, shaking, coated in cold sweat. Purging my guts bought nothing but time, and now I can’t take but one more step. Head throbbing, joints aching, lungs fighting for air, wheezing like I’m drowning in mucus. Stomach burns, guts on slow fire, hot and sluggish in constricted veins. Ashen shadows lurk and leer in my peripheral vision, growing bigger and bolder as my world goes dark; they’ve dogged me all the way from the flat, the ghosts of my dying nervous system, summoned to life by the toxins in the tea.

  “Mum … dad … I … I can’t … ”

  Slim hopes wash away in the downpour. I wanted to ask their advice, tell them what I’ve done, or say a final goodbye before going off to die. But I’m not leaving this spot, not under my own power. One more step and I’ll slump across the grave. Ten extra years they bought me, and now I’m right back where I was supposed to be, back with my parents at last.

  Because my Grandmother betrayed me.

  “I wish you were … here, instead … ”

  Rain hammers on my hood. Minutes pass, perhaps more, time lost in the obscenity of failing biology. My left fingers and left toes go numb with cold. My eyes are puffy and inflamed, a migraine lurking behind my scar. Guts harden with slow and steady pain.

  “Mum, dad, I can’t … I can’t save Willow now, not like this. I … I think I’ve … failed … ”

  Oxford Holton Hospital is over an hour’s walk away; I’m not making it out of this graveyard.

  Grey phantoms draw closer, raising faceless heads from behind the gravestones, gathering in rows inside the treeline, peering over my shoulder, plucking at my hair. When I blink hard they retreat, but each blink hurts my eyelids, heavy as lead, sore as old wounds. The ashen wraiths close in again, brushing cold fingers across my cheeks, jagged nails snagging in my skirt, clammy claws wrapping gentle round my ankles.

  I tighten my prosthetic fist, spend the dregs of my strength to drag it through the air. But these ghosts don’t care; they’re in my blood.

  A slender slinking shade detaches from the rest, slithers out of my peripheral vision, leaps up onto my parents’ gravestone.

  A cat.

  Blink hard, chase the other shadows back, but the cat stays.

  A huge off-grey tom, the same one I saw outside the tower blocks. He stares into my eyes, black pupils blown wide, claws extended against the granite, head held stiff and high.

  “You?” I croak. “How … ”

  Grey cats slide out from behind gravestones, ghost across mausoleum rooftops on soundless paws, creep warily from the shelter of the trees. None care for the rain, their coats untouched by water, as if they are not subject to the storm. One has a bloody muzzle, fresh from the kill; another carries a dead zoog in its jaws, tosses the corpse to the grass with a wet splat, crimson streamers washed away to join the mud. Every cat stares right at me, eyes locked, claws out, slinking inward, slow and silent.

  “ … what? No, no you’re just … just cats … ”

  I raise my arm all the same, try to make another fist. But my fire is drowned in poison, doused by cold, down and out. My hand is limp as wet cotton, my footing so bad I’ll fall before I can throw a single punch.

  “Don’t,” I rasp. Can’t pant for breath, no room in my lungs. “Don’t come any closer. Don’t you … don’t you dare. Don’t … ”

  The big grey tom lowers his head, paws braced against my parents’ gravestone. Muscles tighten, rump rises, tail gone straight and still. Readying himself for a final pounce, for the instinctive and merciless kill.

  “Don’t— no—”

  “That’s quite enough of that.”

  Black-white clarity cleaves through the grey.

  A woman steps from the treeline to my left, out onto the sodden grass. Dressed in loose black robes, shoulders draped with snowy white; is this another apparition, or am I being rescued by a nun? Long hair hangs loose down her back, pale as ivory and fine as chalk-dust. One black-gloved hand holds an umbrella. Dark liquid eyes lie wide in a face like alabaster.

  She strolls between the gravestones, boots clicking as if on dry pavement, each footstep echoing against the vault of the sky.

  All the cats pause pre-pounce, eyes wide on this interruption. She strides directly to my side and turns to face the felines, tilting her umbrella to shelter me beneath the broad black canvas. The terrible static of the rain recedes, replaced with the slow drip of water from the rim of my hood.

  Cats and nun stare each other down.

  The nun tilts her head, thin smile on knife-wound lips. “Best you be on your way. Don’t you think?”

  The big tom’s ears fold back. He bares a face full of fangs, gleaming in rain-spackled light, and hisses like a broken gas main. The world throbs grey and dead and dark.

  “Far too confident,” says the nun. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  The cat does not. He braces for a pounce.

  The nun purses her lips and whistles. A single, sharp, searing note.

  A hallucination bursts from the treeline — a blurring patch of prismatic motion in my peripheral vision, a sickly-slick rainbow in the rain when looked upon direct, muted sunlight through a shifting veil of luminous petroleum. Roiling and writhing, a meaningless corona in the corner of one eye, nothing at all for half a second — then a gigantic cat the next, a twice-sized tiger cast in translucent crystal, a rain-swept illusion brought on by poison and pareidolia.

  The formless mirage bounds forward, trailing streamers of oil-wet light like tendrils in ocean current; it leaps two rows of gravestones and flows impossibly around a third, no more solid than a passing gust of wind.

  Grey cats scatter, racing off into the trees or scurrying up the little hill or slipping away between the gravestones. The big tom waits as long as he dares, eyes fixed on my face; then he ducks and dives, fleeing before the illusion in the downpour.

  When all the grey cats are gone, the half-seen thing turns sideways and vanishes. Nothing but raindrops remain.

  Breath fills my lungs in a great startled gasp, so hard I start to stagger back, lose my balance, going down. The nun’s free hand strikes like a snake, grabs me by the upper arm, steadies me until I catch my own feet, keeps me beneath the cover of her black umbrella.

  “What— what was— who—” Can’t pant, can’t breathe, can’t get the question out. “What— what—”

  The nun peers into my eyes, a curious quirk on her lips; grey shadows leer and loom over her shoulders, crushing my vision down to the pale circle of her face.

  “What did they give you?” she asks.

  “W-what? I don’t—”

  “What did they give you? Do you know the exact substance? Can you describe it? Colour, scent, taste?”

  “ … poison. Bitter? I-I don’t—”

  “Taxonomically, no. In function, yes.” She frowns, staring deep into my eyes, as if my pupils will give up some secret. She lingers on my scar for a moment, then dismisses it with a single blink. “Something to unanchor your mind. A drop of space mead, perhaps? No, something harder, something they should not be playing with. A human would have been decoupled by now, but you are holding on. Low on resources, almost at your limit, but still clinging to your flesh? You things are so much like batteries. And there’s always a little juice left in the tube. Can you stand?”

  “ … uh, barely. Maybe. Yes.”

  She lets go of my arm, hovers her hand for a moment, then grunts with approval. She reaches inside her robes, produces a tiny clear glass bottle, flips the rubber stopper up with her thumb, and holds it out to me.

  “Hand.”

  “S-sorry?”

  “Hand. Hold out your hand.”

  She shakes a pill onto my outstretched palm — small, irregular, red and dark as clotted blood. She quickly stoppers the bottle again and returns it to the inside of her robes.

  “ … you want me to take a strange pill?” I manage to say. “I don’t even know who you are. What is this?”

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t take it. If you don’t take it, you’ll pass out soon enough, and then you’ll be beyond my help. You magical girls are remarkably robust as long as you stay in your bodies, but astrally you’re as helpless as any other untrained mortal. I suggest you take the pill.” She tilts her head, lips stretching with a smile, both slender and sadistic. “Unless you’re giving up. In which case, I’ll leave you to it.”

  Shake my head. I don’t want to die here, I want to live.

  I take the pill.

  “Crush it between your teeth if you want,” she says. “No need to swallow it whole. Ah, yes, rather bitter, isn’t it?”

  “Ugh. Very.” Goes down like chalk and old vegetables, tainted with iron and rust.

  The nun turns away to look out over the graveyard, though she keeps me covered beneath the canvas of her umbrella.

  Whatever she just gave me, it works almost as fast as the poison. In a few moments my lungs clear and I take the first deep breath in what feels like hours. My stomach stops clenching and roiling, my joints cease their impression of seized-up pistons, and the throb behind my scar ebbs down to almost nothing. After another thirty seconds the grey shadows in my peripheral vision begin to peel off and slink away, skulking behind the gravestones or sliding into the trees, becoming one with the leaden sky or the raindrops or just floating off in a sulk. No more phantom motion in the corners of my eyes.

  I take several deep breaths, straighten up as best I can, lower my hood and shake off the rain. Make and unmake a fist with my prosthetic. Still weak and shaky and covered in the chill of cold sweat, but I no longer linger at death’s door.

  My mystery benefactor waits for me to recover. Up close I’m not certain what she is; a nun’s habit, white shawl on her shoulders, neck wrapped in white bandages, black gloves vanishing into deep dark sleeves. Her eyes are like windows on a starless night, heavy-lidded in a pale face, such a deep brown they’re almost red. Her hair is the colourless white of extreme age, but her face is smooth and unlined. She could be anywhere from twenty-five to sixty, impossible to place. Very tall, over six and a half feet. Her lips are tilted with a permanent hint of sadistic smile.

  “Who were they?” she asks.

  Her voice is smooth and deep, a southern accent, but not old London or new Oxford.

  “ … the cats?”

  “This grave.” She nods at the headstone.

  “Oh. My parents. This is my parents’ grave.”

  “Hmm.” She hums, still gazing out across the churchyard. “An unwise retreat, with the whole world looking for you.” Her sadistic smile widens by a quarter-inch. “But I sympathise. It is important to account for one’s roots. Hard to know where one is going, when one does not know from whence one has sprung. This applies to more than parents, of course. History, culture, science. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, even the lowest among us. Don’t you agree?”

  Straighten my spine, compose my face, flex my prosthetic hand. “I … I’m not sure. I suppose so.”

  “Not in the mood for abstract notions, are we?”

  “I don’t even think I can walk yet.”

  “Then why not stay here?” she says. “Talk with me a while.”

  Silence fills the gap, raindrops drumming on her umbrella, hammering on the gravestones.

  “Well … thank you,” I say. “Whatever you gave me, I think it’s working. Now I’ve taken it, will you tell me what it was?”

  “You might bring it back up,” she says. “And that wouldn’t do.”

  “Fine. So, who are you?”

  She looks at me sidelong, eyes glinting red in the grey rain-light, lips kinked with subtle hint of fiendish pleasure. “The balloon went up. I simply happened to see it.”

  “Balloon?”

  “It’s an idiom. The balloon—”

  “I know it’s an idiom.” I tut. “Somebody told you I’d be here? Told you to watch out for me?” I pause, throw caution to the wind. “Signal?”

  The nun smiles wider, raises her eyebrows. “Loose lips sink ships.”

  Can’t help but sigh at that one. “Fair enough. Thank you for helping me, regardless, I suppose. Assuming that was help. What was all that, with the cats?”

  She tilts her head. “You were hallucinating.”

  “Don’t give me that. Those were more than cats.”

  Her sadistic smile widens out, from subtle to smug. “Always insist upon the truth. Such an attitude will take you far, if you can handle the answers, and give a few of your own.” She looks away from me, eyes roving across the graveyard; a glimmer of rainbow illusion pauses in front of the church, then vanishes again, no more than a trick of the light. The rain begins to slow, drumming lighter on her umbrella. “A little bird informed me of a lost girl who might be in need of help,” she says, lips lingering liquid and languid over each clicking syllable. “I’ve had enough of helping lost girls for this lifetime, especially when they tend to lose themselves again so soon. But you were making such a terrible din. It seemed unfair not to give you a sporting chance. I turned mundane eyes away from you, as much as I could bear.”

  Two and two come together fast. “You mean that’s how I’ve been avoiding the police?”

  “You have not been avoiding the police,” she says. “They had you the moment you used your phone. But a hand on their net sent them running astray.” She flicks the air with one black-gloved finger. “Long enough for you to slip through the gaps.”

  “ … how?” My skin prickles with fresh sweat. My gut clenches hard. My blood turns hot. “That’s … that’s not possible, you … ”

  The ‘nun’ looks at me again, sadistic pleasure in the curl of her lips, a laugh in the corners of her dark eyes. “It is best you speak your mind. Or die wondering.”

  “Are you a Dreamer?”

  “Perish the thought,” she says. “The day I lose myself to a dream will be the day the world is ending, not an hour earlier.”

  “Then … a magical girl?”

  Her eyebrows twitch sardonic. “No.”

  “You can’t be an occultist. Occultists can’t do things like that. Or whatever you summoned to drive off those cats.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  She sighs with her whole chest, deep and wide, looks away again. “Occultist. What an empty word, so dry and dull. As if every dabbler is another Carroll or a Crowley. As if we’re all Victorians, so desperate to bottle mysteries for easy sale. Fifty years ago you wouldn’t have used such a word for me. We had better terms back then. Witch, magician, mage. I would prefer the world had never discovered us, had never put a word to our faces. Then you would call me nothing, because you would not know I exist. Do not perceive me. Do not name me. For I am not here.” She smiles to herself. “Hm! What an intoxicating nostalgia. I must take care.”

  “So you are an occultist? I thought all occultists were with the government these days. You’re supposed to be … I don’t know, regulated.”

  The nun rolls her eyes. “Do you think I would submit to ‘regulation’? I have avoided far worse than the modern British state. They can’t burn me at the stake, they can’t even name what I do. No, occultists are housecats. Gelded and tame. I would sooner die.”

  Can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Then I suppose you’re a tiger?”

  She sighs. “Tiger? I don’t think so. Far too large and ostentatious.”

  “Alright, fine. So, what, you’re a magician?”

  Her smile returns; her eyes flow back to me. “I am a woman of God. As you can see.”

  “Which one?”

  The nun bursts out laughing, cold and clear as a crisp winter’s day. “Oh, that is the question, isn’t it? That is the question of our age. To which god do we pledge ourselves? Do we choose the least inhuman of our own reflections in the mirror? The ones that don’t scare us with too much savage truth. Do we construct our own god, from cloth and branch and bits of shiny tin? Set it up in the town square and throw the dead at its feet? Do we fall back on this old thing?” She gestures at the church building up the hill, grey slabs emerging from thinning rain. “Or should we give up on gods entirely? What do you think?”

  “I think it’s possible to mistake you for a nun, but only from a distance. No offence or anything.”

  Her lips kink with amusement. “Quite.”

  “Why did you help me? Not how did you know, but why do you care?”

  A shrug. “Old agreements must be honoured, no matter how onerous. Where would we be without our alliances? Alone and overconfident, as all who stand by themselves must be, for the necessity of keeping themselves from terror. Of course, there is only so much I can do, only so long I can lead the constabulary on a merry chase. I cannot hide you forever, nor would I be inclined to try. You must sink or swim eventually.”

  “And the cats?”

  “Mmm.” She purses her lips. “Mundane eyes can be fooled well enough, but those felines were straight from some Dreamland pretender, all too familiar. My little friend will keep them busy for a while, an hour or two perhaps. But they will return to their godhead with more than scratches, and then it will be war. I suggest you be elsewhere before then, Octavia. I will certainly not wait to be found.”

  “You know my name?”

  “You have been all over the news. Even I read the newspapers.”

  “Then you have me at a disadvantage, madam,” I say. “And I don’t like that very much.”

  The nun turns her upper body toward me, dips her head in a pantomime bow, and crosses herself with her free hand. “You may call me Winter.”

  “Alright. Winter. Thank you.”

  Winter smiles with that sadistic gleam, like she’s just gotten one over on me. “You are very welcome.”

  “So you’re … what, with the Opposition?”

  A sigh, a shake of the head, that’s all I get. “Now, seeing as I have saved you from an uncertain death, I think I’ve earned the right to a personal question. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I … suppose so.” I shrug, try to shift one foot. My legs work again, though shaky with effort.

  “Good, good,” Winter purrs. “Then here is my question. Now that you’re one of those rare and lucky few, what do you plan to do?”

  “Rare and lucky few?”

  Winter’s eyes slide up and down the length of my body. “I thought you were smart, or so you appeared. Why ask questions in echo?”

  I bristle, draw myself up, glower at the fake nun. “And you speak in riddles. Occultist or magician or whatever you are, I can punch a hole straight through you.”

  She raises her eyebrows, as if to say ‘no need for that’.

  Clear my throat, take a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m still … I feel under siege. Okay, I’m going to assume you mean magical girls, then. As for what I plan to do, I … ” Embers of anger fade to almost nothing. “I’m going to rescue a friend of mine. She’s being held in hospital, by Dream Control. Will you help me with that, too?”

  Winter looks away with absolute disinterest. “Not the question I intended for you to answer.”

  My turn to roll my eyes. “Then what did you mean?”

  Winter shakes her head. “I will stay a few more moments, but I see you are no different to the rest—”

  “Fuck you,” I growl, losing what little control I thought I had. “I’ve had nothing but bullshit and lies for the last two days. I’ve been shot and stabbed, then shot again, fed nonsense by dream-gods, lied to by magical girls, threatened, abducted, teleported around without my consent, and then poisoned! Fuck you, ‘occultist’. Fuck you and your help.”

  Winter turns back to me and breaks into quite the smile, beaming with sadistic joy. A shiver crawls up my spine.

  “I spoke not of immediate aims,” she purrs, “but of long-term goals. I’ve seen so many of you come and go, and still but one in fifty has any idea of what you’re really for. Catalysts, marching yourselves into the flame. You must grasp a burning brand for yourself, put it to good use before it burns out. What are your long-term aims, Octavia? What do you wish for?”

  Slow my thoughts right down, think with great care; I have failed to appreciate who and what I am talking with, because poison and sickness slowed me to almost nothing. This woman, Winter, if that is even her real name, is an occultist, the first with whom I have ever spoken, and she is not the tame kind. She claims credit for turning the police away from me, which may or may not be true. But she drove off those cats, that was real enough — cats sent to spy on me or put me down, straight from a Dream-God or the Trio themselves.

  Somehow I am neither scared nor impressed. Maybe I’m just too numb. Maybe I don’t care anymore.

  “I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine first,” I say, speaking slow.

  Winter cocks an eyebrow, still smiling.

  “What do you mean by ‘catalysts, marching into a flame’?” I ask. “Is there something I don’t know about being a magical girl?”

  “Many things, undoubtedly.”

  “Answer the question,” I say. “Please?”

  Winter considers for a moment, reddish eyes going up and to the left. “Have you ever heard of kodoku? I see not. Kodoku is a Japanese magical practice. The would-be sorcerer places several insects together in a jar. Predators are best, preferably ones with venom, the stronger the better. Trapped in the jar, in close proximity, without food, the insects kill and devour each other, until only one is left alive. In that survivor, all the literal and metaphysical venom of the dead insects is now concentrated. A little like how heavy metal contamination makes its way up the food chain, accumulating in the apex predators. Or perhaps in us. That one surviving insect is extremely potent, an essential component in all manner of curses. Do you see?”

  “Magical girls aren’t being forced to fight each other. I mean, not usually. What are you getting at, what does that metaphor mean?”

  Winter tilts her head, eyes briefly closed as if in surrender to my point. “I am merely comparing the situations, not making a direct analogy. Have you never considered why there are so many of you magical girls? Or where you come from, what you’re for?”

  Can’t hold back a sigh. “I’ve been a magical girl for a single day, and a particularly busy one at that. Excuse me if I haven’t had time to contemplate the existential niceties.”

  Winter waits, eyebrows raised.

  Another sigh. “We come from the Dream-Gods. That’s all I know.”

  “Ahhhh,” Winter says. “But the Dream-Gods are us, are they not?”

  Roll my eyes again. Look away, into the dying rain; the downpour is trailing off to drizzle, mere damp in the air. Winter tilts her umbrella back, glances up at the sky, smiles at what she sees.

  “Now for my question, Octavia,” she says. “What are your long term goals? For what do you wish?”

  Roll my shoulders, squeeze my eyes, clench my jaw, trying to work some circulation back into my sorely used body. Feverish no more, but still not back to how I was prior to my Grandmother’s poisoned tea.

  “The only thing I care about is Willow,” I say. “That’s her name, my friend in the hospital. I want to save her. Be at her side. Everything else is in service to that. Long term, I would … I would tear down anything that threatens her. That’s what I wish for.”

  Winter stares at me for a long moment, nasty little smile twisted sideways. I try to hold her gaze, but something squirms in the back of my head, so I look down at my parents’ gravestone again.

  The rain has trailed off to nothing, wet droplets dripping from naked branches, grey gravestones glazed with shimmering cold. The sound of traffic on a distant main road filters through the growing silence. The distant whirr of a sky-bound drone lurks on the periphery of my hearing. The mundane world, peeking beneath this rain-sodden rock.

  Winter lowers her umbrella, shakes off the canvas, and collapses the ribs. “Is that really true? You care about nothing else?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Would you destroy the world for this girl?”

  Yet another sigh. “I don’t enjoy nonsensical hypotheticals. You may as well ask what if the world was made of pudding.”

  Winter’s sadistic smile thins on her lips. “In your current position, you must work in hypotheticals, no matter how distasteful. Would you destroy the world for this girl? Would you kill all the teeming billions, just for her? If the price of your wish was oblivion for everything except Willow, would you make that choice?”

  “That’s meaningless. Just stop, stop it—”

  “Would you kill yourself, if she demanded it?”

  “No!”

  Silence. Drip-drip-drip. The air turns colder in rainstorm’s wake. Winter waits.

  “No,” I repeat, breathless. “Alright? No, thank you. I want to live. Alongside her. Why is that so difficult to understand?”

  “And what would you do,” Winter asks, “if your friend was dead?”

  “Don’t,” I hiss. “Don’t go there, don’t—”

  “Humour me,” she purrs. “If your friend was dead, if you reach the hospital and she has already passed away, or if you rescue her only for her to die within a week or a month, what would you do then?”

  A wall rises in my mind, cold and clammy and slick with slime, a barrier of chill flesh between myself and an impossible answer to a paradoxical question.

  “Revenge?” I try to say, but it comes out a murmur.

  What would be the point in revenge, if Willow was truly gone? Yesterday morning I was contemplating life without her, consigning myself to a slow and lingering death-in-life, marching toward my inevitable end. But even then Willow would still be out there, living on without me. If she was truly gone, what would I do? I have no idea what I would want. What would it mean to want, in her absence?

  “You would do nothing without her, then?” Winter asks. “You are defined entirely by this other girl, this other person. You have no wishes of your own?”

  “I … I don’t … don’t want to think about this.”

  Winter takes a deep breath, casts her gaze over the gravestones.

  Tendrils of white fog begin to edge from the treeline. Thin mist seeps from the graves, lapping at the base of the headstones. A slow tide of clinging white miasma rises around the churchyard hill.

  “Is she what you really want?” Winter muses, as if talking to herself. “Or is she merely the easiest path, the closest painkiller to hand? When you cannot have the one you love, sometimes you learn to love the one you have. But this is not always truth, for we so often lie to ourselves. The courage to take what we really want only comes when we stop denying our desires. Living life so as to avoid that challenge, it is as if we never lived at all. Are you alive, Octavia? Or are you already dead?”

  Fog thickens as it flows down the lined-up gravestones, drowning them beneath ghostly waves. Mausoleum rooftops and angelic statues bob waist-deep in the pearly murk, climbing to their chests, chins, and brows, eyes and wing-tips riding above the creeping current. The church itself towers above the mist, a grey-wrapped sentinel with a face like a hound, but the graveyard sinks into veiled obscurity.

  Dark trees lurk beyond sight in hidden rows, black teeth poised to chew on blubbery mist. Fingers of fog chill my bones through my coat, play with the ends of my hair, leave cold moisture on my brow. Distant sounds of traffic fade to nothing, muffled beyond the gloom; the drone noise in the sky turns away or passes by, dwindling to soft silence.

  In under a minute the whole world is white haze, air still as death, cold as a grave. I can’t see more than a few meters away.

  “What … what is this?” I whisper. “Are you doing this?”

  “Avoiding my question?” Winter asks.

  “How am I supposed to answer that!? Yes, I want Willow! Yes, I love Willow!”

  “Because she was there.”

  “Because she’s perfect!” I hiss “Are you summoning this fog? Is this your doing?”

  Winter smiles, tight and bright with sadistic glee. “The fog will give you long enough to collect yourself. An hour or two, but do not rely on more than that. You have spent so long hiding yourself from the world, Octavia. In that, you and I are the same. Let me take on the work of hiding you, if only for a moment. My gift, to a lost child who may yet find herself.”

  Wet my lips, try not to panic. Occultists are meant to be all magic circles and chanting and such, but I didn’t see her doing anything. Maybe she is a Dreamer after all.

  “Alright,” I say, carefully. “Thank you.”

  “You and I have much in common. We must both hide ourselves from the world, for the world would tear us to pieces if only it knew what desires lie in our hearts. Don’t you think it would be better if the world moved on from older ways? If the world, or at least these ancient isles, accepted that everything has changed? What if you could live free, if only you accepted you are no powerless pawn?”

  “I’ve spent the last day getting chewed to pieces, then hiding in shame,” I whisper. “Whatever you’re getting at, it’s a bit advanced for me. Try again later.”

  Or not at all, I resist the urge to add.

  Winter’s smile twists the other way, like a criminal mother with a prodigy child. “Ungrateful and spiteful and full of fire.”

  “I … I do appreciate the assistance, really I do. I don’t appreciate whatever it is you’re trying to put in my head. Especially about Willow.”

  Winter sighs. “Your head is already a battleground, and you refuse an obvious ally. You—”

  She glances past my shoulder. I follow her gaze, met by a bottomless well of fog, the corner of a towering mausoleum, the lost wings of a mourning angel.

  “It appears your friend has arrived,” Winter says. “My role in this moment is done. I wouldn’t want to get in the way, would I now?”

  “Friend? You mean Willow? How?”

  “Think on what I’ve said, Octavia. If you survive the next few days, a week or two perhaps, we’ll speak again. Maybe you’ll see sense. Until then.”

  She bows her head, crosses herself, and turns away. Without another word, Winter strides toward the black and looming teeth of the barely visible treeline, her boots clicking as if on solid ground. Fog swallows her fast, closing cold fingers around the rear of her black robes.

  “Wait!” I call, voice muffled by the fog. “Wait, you—”

  A wet footstep squelches in soggy mud, far away to my right, deep between the gravestones and the statues.

  My heart leaps into my throat. I still don’t feel whole enough to run or fight, not even certain I could lift my sports bag back to my shoulder. The mist swirls and settles, disturbed by a wavering shadow. A white phantom rises from within the fog, growing as it glides between the graves, as if emerging from the mouth of a well.

  Clench my fist, raise my arm, grit my teeth. If this was all some trick, then I’m ready to face it with a final punch. But if it’s not false, if this is a friend, then maybe …

  “Willow?” I whisper. “Willow, is that … you … ”

  A snow-clad fairy steps from the fog-wreathed waves, white trainers and leggings splattered with brown-black mud. Green eyes glow like little lanterns, set in a cold-flushed pixie’s face.

  Grimgrave staggers to a halt, almost slipping on the saturated grass.

  “Yooooo!” she whispers, as if muffled by the fog. Her eyes go wide, her face lights up, a distant echo of her maniac grin. “Occy! I found you!”

  She’s added layers to her all-white outfit. A long loose skirt swishes around her calves, hem stained with flecks of mud. An oversized hoodie swallows her tiny frame with shapeless fabric, hands hidden deep within the sleeves. Hood up, messy hair tucked down inside, green eyes gleaming bright beneath the shadow.

  “ … wh-what? You?”

  “Sent me all round the fucking houses, you did!” She whispers again, tottering closer on the wet grass, until she’s close enough to steady herself with a hand against my arm. She eyes my raised fist, cracks a smirk, upturned eyes a-glitter with joyous relief. “Yo, hey, it’s me? Yeah? Occy? Heeeeeey?”

  Lower my fist. Swallow my surprise. “Grimgrave—”

  “That’s me!”

  “—did you see the woman?”

  “Woman? Eh, what?”

  “The woman, the nun. She was right here, next to me.” I glance at the treeline, but we’re too late; the trees are barely visible through the fog, and Winter is long gone.

  Grimgrave pulls a scrunched-up frown. “What fuckin’ woman? What you on about?”

  “There was a woman. An occultist. She gave me a … oh, never mind.” What’s the point? I am not giving Grimgrave any additional ammunition with which to mock me.

  Grimgrave’s grin gets worse, bouncing with infuriating glee. “Shiiiiiit, Occy. Glad I found you, hey! You doing alright? Didn’t get into any scrapes, at least, or you’d be dead, right? Yeah? Huh … ” Grimgrave’s grin dies a slow death. She goes up on tiptoes and peers at my face, far too close, gleaming green eyes filling my field of vision. The scent of chilled sweat and fried chicken briefly overwhelms the mud and the rain. I try to pull back, get her out of my face, but she holds on tight and bites her lower lip. “Shit,” she says. “You’re all like, mega messed up in there, yeah?”

  “No thanks to you,” I hiss.

  “Eh?” She relents, eases back, far enough that I can breathe.

  “You didn’t come after me,” I whisper, anger bubbling inside my chest. “When I translocated, you didn’t come after me. You didn’t follow me, didn’t try to help me or save me. All that talk about me being one of you, that was all lies, wasn’t it? I was alone down here, lost and … and … ”

  I have to turn away, clench my jaw hard, fight back the threat of tears. Cross my arms and hold on tight; but Grimgrave staggers with me, won’t let go of my upper left arm. What am I even upset about? Why does this warrant waterworks? Weakness and nonsense. Nothing more.

  Grimgrave laughs, under her breath, beneath the fog. At me. “Occy, you dumb bitch! We didn’t know where you went!”

  I’ve got no good answer to that. Grimgrave has a point.

  “Besides, hey, I’m here now, aren’t I?” she hisses. “Got you before the filth and the pigs could find you. Come on, that’s more than just luck!”

  Sniff hard. Wipe my nose. I will not cry before this absurd and rampant imp of a woman; I refuse to reveal more weak spots for her to poke and jibe. With all her strange beauty and her insults and the way her slender body moves with such grace, I will not let her see me weep.

  “Hey, shit, you got blood on your sleeve,” she whispers. “Yours?”

  “How did you find me?” I force myself to say.

  “Detective work!”

  That forces my incredulous eyes back to Grimgrave’s face, because she has to be joking. First good one she’s made.

  Her grin flickers back on, a laugh behind her lips.

  “What? You think giggling’s all I’m good for?” she whispers. “This is where your parents are buried, right? Riiiiight … there!” She points at my mother and father. “See, found you right where you should be!”

  “You had Signal’s help, then.”

  “Guess you can call it that, if you wanna.” She glances left and right, peering at the dense mist, so close on either side. “This fog ain’t natural, like, but I dunno how long it’s gonna stick around, yeah? If I can find you paying respects and all that shit, cops can too. We should get moving, Occy. Come on, yeah?”

  I look her up and down. Resist a second glance. “You aren’t exactly inconspicuous in all that white.”

  “Sure I am! Nobody sees shit they don’t wanna. You gotta learn how.”

  Shake my head, try again to pull away. This time I succeed, dragging my left arm from Grimgrave’s grip, taking half a step back, shoes squelching on the grass. At least I don’t fall over. Got most of my strength back.

  “I’m not coming with you,” I say. “I’m not one of you. I’m not like you. I’m going to save Willow.”

  Grimgrave snorts. “Figured you’d say some shit like that. Well, here I am, yeah? Not going anywhere without you, jumbo-dumbo.”

  Heat flashes in my chest, halfway to humiliation. “I’m not going with you!” I hiss. “What’s the point!? I’m not blind, I saw what was going on up there, back on the moon. You all tried to keep me there. Signal, worming her way into my head. Nerys and her … her lies, all of it. Bright’s a total psychopath. And you … you bombed my best friend. You’re a terrorist and murderer, and maybe I am too, fine! But I’m not one of you, I’m not some sex-crazed dyke. I’m not into violence as a way to blow off steam, and I’m not leaving my best friend, my only friend, to get dismantled by Dream Control, or rescue her just to get shipped off to rot in some Opposition hideout. I’m not! I’m not doing it … I’m not … ”

  I trail off, having a tantrum. Pull myself back up. Take a deep breath. Sniff hard, nose almost dripping in the cold.

  Grimgrave shrugs. “Okay, cool. Whatever.”

  I sigh. She’s impossible. “Where are the others, then?”

  Grimgrave’s grin switches off, all gone all at once. She fights to keep it lit, loses quick. “S’just me.”

  “ … what? I mean, pardon?”

  Grimgrave looks at the ground, stares at a gravestone. All her bounce and energy has suddenly stopped, like a rubber ball on sand.

  “Signal and Bright,” she says, “they’ve like … you know.” Another shrug.

  “No, Grimgrave, I don’t know.”

  She digs at the grass with the toe of one shoe, pressing rainwater from between dead blades. “Siggy’s real cautious, you know? That’s just her style, like. Won’t expose herself or nothing, barely ever gets her hands dirty. She threw me a few bones … uh, pun not intended, believe it or not. She put the word out you needed looking for, with her contacts and stuff. But she won’t really help. And Bright? Ha, whatever. Bright doesn’t give a shit, won’t lift a finger. Probably went home already to jill herself off while crying into her sister’s dirty knickers, or whatever she does with her time.” Grimgrave lifts her face, guilt and shame behind bright green eyes. “They won’t say it, but they’ve given up on you already, Occy. They don’t think you’re gonna make it another day, let alone a month.”

  Then the magical girl revolutionaries of Luna are no different to the rest of the world, no different to England and all her cowards. For all of Nerys’ high-minded words, her girls are just the same. To them I am another cripple to be discarded, another corpse to be ignored, another mangled lump of flesh buried beneath the rubble, soon to be put from their minds. Signal’s motherly purring, Bright’s aggressive challenge, all pantomime to soothe their own egos.

  “And you do?” I say, surprised by the crack in my voice. “You think I’m going to ‘make it’?”

  Grimgrave nods. “Yeah. Always fuckin’ do. Always—”

  “Why!?” I shout, surprise myself, voice muffled by the fog; Grimgrave flinches, a shiver beneath her oversized hoodie. “You barely even know me! You met me, what, yesterday? Yesterday! You shot me! You mock me, you make jokes at my expense, you laugh in my face! You tried to get me in your bedroom, to seduce me! And I’ve been nothing but rude to you in return. You say you want to be my friend, but why the hell should you care? What does that even mean!? Why do you care?!”

  Grimgrave shrugs. “The world’s chewed us up and spat us out. Different ways, like, but we’re both standing in the same place now. And like, it doesn’t matter if I barely know you. Each other’s the only thing people like us have.”

  Shake my head. Can’t move my legs. Tears gather behind my eyes. “Nonsense. I’ve got nobody now. Nobody but Willow. Nobody.”

  “Sure, yeah,” Grimgrave says. “You wanna rescue your girl or whatever? Fuck it, I’m in.”

  “W-what?”

  “I’m in. It’s stupid as shit, it’s not gonna work. I bet you haven’t even got a plan, like? Yeah, didn’t think so. But fuck it. I’m in.”

  “You can’t.”

  Grimgrave snorts, but she’s not smiling. “And you can’t tell me what to do.”

  “No, I mean, you can’t possibly care about me. You can’t. Not me.”

  Grimgrave smiles, but it’s barely there, no more than a flicker. “I don’t, like, actually care if you’re rude to me or shit. I’m not just gonna let you die.”

  Can’t hold back the tears, pressing tight against the inside of my face. Grit my teeth, hold my breath, don’t let it out. Never show it. Never.

  “Occy?” Grimgrave takes a step closer again, reaching for me.

  Don’t let her see. Don’t let anybody see.

  “Occy, you—”

  Draw breath through my teeth, wet with the need to weep, shuddering with something worse than pain. Bite my lips to hold in the whine, bite until I bleed. Screw up my eyes, because it slips out anyway. Hug myself to stop the shaking. Can’t hold it anymore. But I must.

  “Occy? What’s wrong?”

  “My … ”

  Don’t! Don’t say it! Don’t let anybody but Willow into your heart, or they will tear it out and stomp on it. Only Willow can understand. A cold slug fills my mouth and stops my words, reminds me that only Willow loves me, only Willow can.

  Only Willow. Only Willow. Only.

  Grimgrave takes my hand — my right hand, my prosthetic. She holds it like it’s flesh and blood.

  My eyes snap open. She’s right in front of me, face filling the world. A fairy in white, gormless and clueless and beyond comprehension, surrounded by mud and mist and death, glowing like she’s the only thing left alive.

  “My … I went … ” Words come out like kidney stones, wet with clotted blood through quivering lips. “I went home.”

  “Yeah?”

  “My grandmother … she … ” Deep breath, stained with coming tears. “Put poison in … in a cup of tea. For me. Because Dream Control told her to. Poison. My own … my Gran.”

  Weakness wins. I break and give in, crying like a child. Big wet sobs, soaked up by the fog.

  I try to turn aside, pull away, go back, hide my shame in my hands.

  And that’s when Grimgrave puts her arms around me.

  Grimgrave doing some juggling (of Nerys and a shotgun), and also in full transformation (complete with skeletons), both by flaxsquiddle! Thank you so much for these, it's so much fun to see readers having fun making art!

  Maidens right away, you can: