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SUMMER DESTINY NORWOOD stares at the wall in front of her as if she can see through it, if only she tries hard enough. She has made a name for herself out of just that—trying, as hard as she can; of being both the immovable object and the unstoppable force. Lessons she had learned in childhood have sustained her through these long, tiring years after the End of all things as they had known them before. Lessons from Whitmore, where she had gotten more than a standard boarding school education by far. And lessons from her father, who had drilled into her brain that mercy was useless, and that nothing in this world is guaranteed unless you make it so.
Mercy. A concept worth little here, now. Summer appreciates that lesson, but she has also learned how to adapt—that mercy has its place, even if her bastard of a father had never believed in such emotional trivialities.
From the other side of the wall, Summer can hear the groans of their recent capture. She can hear the thuds of fists, the low growl of her deputies as they interrogate the man. The report from one of the merchants proclaims the man’s guilt at having stolen. And while Summer can’t say for certain whether the man is guilty, innocent, or some blended gray in between the two, she knows that he will suffer before her deputies—and the Sheriff herself—are done with him.
The sticky heat of the day is creeping into the building, and Summer can feel her hair clinging to the back of her neck. She collects all of her blonde locks into her hands, carding her hair carefully into place, before tying it up in a ponytail atop her head. Her gloves are resting on the windowsill, and she puts them on delicately, the white leather pristine and unblemished despite her typical work. Once they’re on and tightened at her wrists, Summer pulls the cuffs of her button-down sleeves over their openings. Her shirt is meticulously tucked into her jeans, and her belt and shining gold buckle complete the look that a younger Summer could never have imagined.
Long ago, Summer had embraced the aesthetic of this place and her role. Even the name people know her by, the origins of which Summer has forgotten herself. But it had been Blake who convinced her of the boots, and she oddly didn’t regret it—however southern they had brought her up, however young she had been when she’d first started riding, Summer had never worn cowboy boots.
But the End of the world had brought about a myriad of firsts for many people.
There is a fantastic smacking sound followed by a heavy thud. Summer rolls her eyes, imagining that Zosia has let the interrogation get away from them at this point. She leaves the adjacent room she’s been waiting in and heads to the room where her deputies have been talking with the apprehended, only to see him and the chair he is tied to sideways on the floor.
Typical of Zosia, this overuse of force. They’ve never been subtle, not even in their boarding school days. But when Summer enters, she raises a questioning eyebrow to Zosia’s counterpart, Blake—Blake, who usually does a much better job of keeping Zosia in line. Blake smiles back at Summer, blissfully unconcerned with the direction the “questioning” has taken.
“Enough,” Summer says, just as Zosia is poised above their prey, ready to deliver a blow that would leave the man incapable of answering even the most basic of inquiries for some time. And time, while it seems infinite in this day and age, is still a commodity that Summer considers highly valuable.
At the interruption, Zosia snaps out of it, throwing a disgruntled look to Summer—their lifelong friend, boss, and current nuisance—before rolling their eyes in spectacular fashion and picking the man up by the shoulders and sitting him upright once more. The action puts Zosia’s strength on impressive display; their frame is slim, their figure, lithe and their movements agile. But there is a wiry strength in their body that anyone would be remiss to ignore.
Zosia crosses the room to Blake—their lover, confidante, and other half. The two embrace, their eyes never leaving Summer and the apprehended man at the center of the room.
Summer circles him like a wildcat—majestic, measured, and sure of herself. His head remains down, his chin tucked to his chest. There is a fair bit of blood dripping from his nose and mouth. One of his eyes is already so swollen as to make his vision questionable. But Summer prefers more subtle tactics of interrogation than the two deputies who make up her right and left hands of justice; Zosia wouldn’t know subtlety if it ran naked in front of them, and Blake prefers other methods of intelligence-gathering altogether.
The room is small, perhaps ten feet by ten feet total, and it is empty aside from the four people within its walls, and two rickety wooden chairs that have seen their fair share of questionings such as this one. The man is occupying one chair. The other, Summer grabs from the corner, placing it approximately a foot in front of him. She sits backwards on it, her long legs straddling it, her powerful arms crossed over its back.
“Hello,” she says, and the word leaving her lips is more a purr than anything else.
A wildcat indeed.
“Look at me,” she continues. And her tone brooks no disagreement. The man’s head lifts the barest bit, and his one remaining good eye opens, taking her in. His breathing quickens. Summer smiles. “Good, good. Now,” she extends her hands in a gesture of goodwill. No weapons here, her open and empty hands say, nothing here with which to hurt you.
An empty gesture, a lie.
“Tell me your name, would you?”
The man’s eyes are frantic, darting this way and that. He sees the two deputies across the room, but they’re hardly even paying attention now, having become more enthralled with each other. And the woman before him, he knows her, he thinks—at least knows of her, and that makes this all worse. So much worse.
“My name,” he says, valiantly attempting not to stutter, to stumble over his words. The woman nods encouragingly to him, and he almost feels happy to comply. It’s odd, sitting here bleeding and swollen and bruised, that the dictator of his torture could make him feel safe—could almost make him feel... loved? “I’m Malcolm.”
“Malcolm.” His name sounds like something wholly different, sweet and terrible, as it rolls off her tongue. Her voice is poison, and he would greedily drink it down if he could. “And do you know my name?”
Malcolm struggles, because he doesn’t know her name. But he can guess who she is—he’d be a goddamned idiot if he couldn’t at least do that.
“You’re...” He breathes deeply, his chest and ribcage aching painfully with the motion. “You’re the Sheriff.”
At this, Summer throws her head back and laughs. Malcolm does not understand what could be funny, not about any of this. Almost as if Summer realizes that it really isn’t funny, not at all, the laughter dies in her throat and her face looks so stony and passive that Malcolm wonders if he had imagined the entire thing. Perhaps his life before entering this room had been Purgatory. And now this, this is Hell.
He isn’t sure if that makes any of this better or worse.
“Malcolm, I am the Sheriff. Very good. And what is my job?”
Malcolm swallows thickly. “Peace,” he says, “and order.”
Summer doesn’t blink as she answers. “That’s just what it says on the badge, Malcolm. Dig deeper, will you?”
He shakes his head futilely, looking again towards where the other two people in the room, Zosia and Blake, are entirely engrossed in one another in the corner, their arms entangled and their bodies pressed flush to the wall of the second floor interrogation room.
Summer snaps her fingers right in his face, and Malcolm refocuses his attention, reminding himself as he does so that he only has one goal, if this is not, in fact, Hell: survival. As this thought crosses his mind, Summer can practically read his intentions. She knows that whatever she gets from Malcolm from this point forward may be tainted by his will to get out of here alive; anything he says could be a deception, or it could be the unmitigated truth, poised to bury her and her will either way.
Summer has to change that. Has to work her will on this man, so that anything he says, anything he does, he says and does for her.
She tilts her head back, and she waits.
Malcolm thinks before he opens his mouth this time. A full minute passes, and Summer—the Sheriff—lets it.
Finally, he speaks.
“To win,” he says, and the words barely escape his mouth, gravelly and weak. He coughs and spits blood on the floor to the side of them both.
Summer smiles, the corners of her lips curling into a malevolent grin. Does this man truly even understand how close he’s come to the truth?
Does he understand how right he is, and how wrong?
Summer and her Sisters had been in northeastern Arizona when the End had fallen down on all of them at once, like so much bullshit. They had been on a mission for the network of Whitmore Girls, an assignment that Arke had delivered to them directly after a rendezvous with her twin, Iris. It had been a simple mission—or at least, a mission simple enough for three Whitmore Girls. If anyone else had attempted it, three soldiers alone would have equated a mission doomed to failure. But Summer, Zosia, and Blake were a well-oiled machine. They’d completed their mission and been about to head out when the world had changed.
They sheltered in place for a few weeks, which was probably the only reason they even lived through the Before and made it to the Now. Weeks after entering the old hospital’s basement turned fallout shelter, they exited and began heading immediately to Phoenix. They’d had little more to their names at that point then the equipment they’d gone in with, and the horses they’d stolen—the only three horses still left alive after the blast. If there was remorse to be had about those actions in the immediate aftermath, it had yet to catch up with them all these years later.
Phoenix was a disaster zone. Millions dead. Infrastructure entirely collapsed. And in just those few short weeks spent underground, a pathetic series of gangs had risen up and taken control. Every street, every neighborhood, was run by someone more ridiculous and ill-equipped than the last.
Summer and her crew plotted and planned, and then they took over a segment of the city. Street by street. Neighborhood by neighborhood. Until every gang leader and nuisance maker was dead, and the rumors were spreading like free advertising, propaganda to build her reputation up as high as it could go: there was a new Sheriff in town, and she wasn’t fucking playing around.
That had been years ago. Others with similar ambition, drive, and strength had plowed into Phoenix, turning the tide of gang warfare to something that more resembled a series of small dictatorships than anything else. But it worked—Summer and the others kept order. And they made names for themselves, developed mutual and begrudging respect for one another over time. Each group was a House, and Summer’s House is very dear to her. Summer’s House is her family. And if you are a member of Summer’s family, you have certain rights in the city. But betraying Summer’s House, betraying her family? That comes with a price, and the price is steep.
Malcolm is right—Summer loves to win. Which means she hates to lose.
But this... this is about more than that. The leader of one of Summer’s rival and most hated Houses, the House of the Wolf, has been making moves against Summer. And that, Summer cannot abide.
“What do you know of Wolf House, Malcolm?”
Malcolm furrows his brow. “I... I haven’t been here long enough to know of many Houses other than yours, Sheriff.”
“How long?”
“Weeks,” he gasps, wheezing out a pathetic cough again. “Perhaps two months at most.”
“And how many mouths are you responsible for feeding?”
With a shuddering breath, he stares Summer right in the eyes for only a second or two before looking away, ashamed. “Four,” he says. “My wife, our two children, and myself.”
“Children at the End of the world,” Summer tsks, as if Malcolm has broken some unwritten rule about procreating in the time of ultimate plague, strife, and human misery. “You know why you’re here, don’t you, Malcolm?”
Malcolm suspects. But should he say, either confirming the Sheriff’s suspicions or else giving her reason to have him strung up in the streets?
When he meets her eye again, he knows that he cannot lie.
“A loaf of bread.”
Summer’s face remains unmoved by Malcolm’s words. She glances at Zosia and Blake across the room, where Blake has Zosia pressed against the wall. Zosia surfaces just long enough to look at Summer and nod, confirming his story to be true. Then they turn back to their assault on Blake’s neck with their mouth.
“We do not condone stealing in the House of the Owl.”
“Do you condone starvation?” Malcolm asks.
And his bitter tone causes even Blake to stop and turn in his direction. Often the calm to Zosia’s crass, Blake looks ready to tear into Malcolm herself for daring to question Summer this way. But Summer holds up her hand, causing Blake to back down. Summer has this effect without even turning away from Malcolm. This effect, Summer has always had on the people who follow her. Whether in Owl House Now, or Whitmore Before.
“I have an understanding with everyone in my family, Malcolm, with everyone who is a part of Owl House. When you steal from one, you steal from all. When you harm one, you harm all. And if I were to allow one to get away with such indiscretion, I would be condoning every single member of my family to do the same. Have you ever run a business, Malcolm?” Malcolm shakes his head in the negative. In the Before, he had been an accountant for another firm, had never had his own business. And accounting wasn’t exactly a revered and requisite profession nowadays. “I care about the bottom line. And the bottom line is that you have committed a crime. And you must pay for that.”
A sob leaves Malcolm’s throat. It has bubbled up so suddenly that he’s not entirely sure where it came from, why it has chosen this moment to make itself known. But then he realizes it, realizes it with a certainty that yields another sob, followed by an unforgiving series of them escaping his chest: his mortality is all too real, all too fragile. And he will probably not leave this room alive.
“But—” Summer begins, and Malcolm blinks through his tears and up at the Sheriff, this steward of the west, this leader of Owl House, whose reputation more than precedes her. “But... I will allow you to pay for your crime with something other than your life. How does that sound?”
Malcolm thinks of his wife and children, their hungry faces flashing through his mind’s eye; he can see them now, barely getting by—and he can see them in a few short days or weeks, starving and beaten, dying or dead.
And as Malcolm’s mind shifts to his family, Summer can see them too—she can see into his mind, clear as day. This, a trick not even the Whitmore School could have taught her, a skill that her mother called magic one day, a curse the next. A bit of the supernatural that Summer had appreciated and despised in equal measure over the years. A secret talent that Summer’s mother kept hidden from her father until her dying breath and beyond.
Summer had learned secret-keeping from the best, years and years before heading off to the Whitmore School at age twelve. Summer knew the value of such a skill, and she knew it well.
Her eyelids flutter as Malcolm’s mind moves out of himself and closer to her. There is a woman in the eye of Summer’s mind, and there are also two little girls. Both blonde-headed, like the man before her. The children are still freckled, perhaps overly so—the parents have tried to protect them from the sun and the Winds, but they’ve only been able to do so much. Not enough. But Summer knows that this, inherently, is the value of places like the Phoenix of Now, the Houses in the area, the leaders like herself.
And Summer tells herself that the vision does not sway her. Summer tells herself that the mental image of those two girls, those two innocents, does not stay her hand.
Summer tells herself a lot of things. Because the truth has never been easy for Summer to face. And a truth like this is too close to weakness for Summer to willingly acknowledge.
“Anything,” Malcolm says, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, willing his chest to stop heaving. “Anything for you, Sheriff. Anything to pay you back.”
Summer smiles, a grim, wide smile that shows her teeth. Malcolm catches sight of it and shudders.
She stands from her sitting position, her motions fluid, and gestures to Zosia and Blake to come closer. They immediately cease their kissing and inappropriate touching, and they approach Malcolm.
“I’m so glad to hear you say that,” Summer says again, her voice sweet and light, cheery and hopeful. “You stole bread to feed your family, yes or no?”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“You are sorry for your actions, yes or no?”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“You are not a spy for Yuuko of Wolf House... Yes? Or no...?”
“Y-yes, Sheriff. Not...” Malcolm sobs. “Not a spy, Sheriff.”
“You will do anything for me, Malcolm—yes or no?”
Malcolm looks into Summer’s eyes, and they both see his life flash before them.
“Yes, Sheriff.”
It’s the most sincere and reverent he’s sounded yet in her presence. Summer knows that she’s got him exactly where she needs him. Exactly where she knew she could him—and in record time, no doubt.
“Deputies,” she says, gesturing Zosia and Blake forward. “The prisoner has admitted to stealing. What is the crime for stealing in the House of the Owl?”
“Death,” the two say in unison.
Zosia takes a utility knife from her back pocket and swiftly cuts through the zip tie that was keeping his hands secured to the back of the chair. She does nothing about the other two zip ties, one on each of his ankles. Blake grabs his right arm, Zosia his left, and they look to Summer for whatever direction comes next.
“Death indeed,” Summer says. And at these words, Zosia presses the extended utility knife to Malcolm’s throat. He cries out, a pathetic but warranted sound ripped from his throat of its own volition. “But—” Summer says, raising one of her hands to stay Zosia’s. The utility knife gets lowered, and Summer raises her hand, curling her fingers. Blake extends Malcolm’s arm out, over the top of the chair where Summer had just been sitting moments ago. “Today is not the day you die, Malcolm.” He whimpers. “Today is the day you become my eyes and ears,” she says, “in the House of the Wolf.”
And without even a pause, she pulls a hatchet from its holder on her hip, pivots to the side, and brings it down with a mighty swing, severing Malcolm’s right hand from his body at the wrist joint.
The wail he releases is eerie and intense, and for a moment—just a moment—Summer dares to regret this life. Everything about it. Who she was Before and what she has Now become. She wonders about summers spent in the Smoky Mountains, trips to Maine with her father on business, shopping excursions to New York City with her mother. She remembers the boarding school where she met friends, enemies, lovers—where she made every right decision, and every wrong one, too. Summer remembers life after graduation, the joke that was college after the education she had received at Whitmore, and the way her career had progressed. She remembers what had taken her far from home, and what had driven her back, in time. She remembers... everything.
And then she shuts it out.
Malcolm is convulsing in her deputies’ arms, and Summer lets him bleed more—lets him hurt. Because she can’t be seen as weak. There’s little else that could be worse, in a world like this one.
Once the shock sets in and just before he passes out, Summer picks up Malcolm’s severed hand. She holds it as if it’s still attached, as if she’s shaking it in greeting with her own right hand. Then with her left, she grabs ahold of Malcolm’s wrist. Blake and Zosia hold him steady, hold him still. And Summer presses the clean cut back together.
“Whole once more,” she whispers, her eyes slipping shut. “Whole and ours.” When she repeats the words, the voices of her deputies join in. “Whole once more, whole and ours.”
This will work, Summer is sure of it. And if it doesn’t, if the magic is spread too thin anymore to hold, then she’ll find another way to go about it. But she needs someone on the inside, someone that Yuuko will not expect. If a man claiming to have stolen from the Sheriff and gotten away with it shows up inside the territory of Wolf House, Yuuko will want to meet him straight away. And then Malcolm will be in—and he won’t forget Summer, won’t forget that the Sheriff had his life in her hands and gave it willingly back to him. That she healed him, in a way no one else in this godforsaken city could have done.
Summer needs to know what Yuuko is up to, needs to know exactly how big the alliance is that is being formed against her. Because she knows alliances are being forged, and no longer with their leaders even being smart enough to do so in the dead of night—brazenly has Yuuko been conducting meetings in the daylight. She would love nothing more than to see Summer fall and fall hard. But Summer has a family to protect, and she doesn’t just mean the two friends chanting now alongside her.
The people in the House of the Owl, in Summer’s family, are mostly not related by blood. But Summer has bound them all together, regardless. They are bound by something that isn’t quite love, but that also very much is. What Summer does for them is love because it keeps them alive. It isn’t love, because she can turn cruel and unforgiving in an instant. But that has kept most of them not just alive, but somehow thriving amongst the Waste of the world for the last several years.
Her love, her mercilessness. Her kindness, her cruelty.
She hasn’t always been like this, Summer.
Sure, she was born and bred into a competitiveness that some would call sadistic. When she was in school, she had to be top of every class, first in every competition. After graduation, she went after the biggest and best assignments, the most prestigious work.
Summer used to do things right. Now, she does whatever it takes. Even if that means using some magic of the Sisterhood to sow in Malcolm an unwavering loyalty.
“... Whole once more, whole and ours. Whole once more...”
They continue. Summer can feel the eyes of Blake and Zosia on her, but she does not break her concentration. Their words effuse the air, and it’s some minutes before Summer feels it: a pulsating heat thrumming through her fingertips and into Malcolm’s flesh. Her voice crescendos, and the other voices follow, blending into one voice, one chant, one thread of power in the air.
Suddenly, the tension snaps—the sound tangible and crackling, like a lightning strike contained within the four walls of the room. All three of them get pushed backward from the chair holding their prisoner. Blake loses her footing momentarily, going down on one knee. Once Zosia has their wits back about them, they move to help their lover back up.
Summer is standing still, looking down at what they’ve just done—what they’ve just successfully done.
There is blood everywhere, but no more is making its way from Malcolm’s wrist. He somehow still has not lost consciousness, but his head lolls uselessly on his shoulder. He is also looking down the length of his arm, down to the fingers of his right hand. One by one, he twitches them. Then he clenches them into a fist. His hysterical bark of laughter breaks the silence.
Summer’s eyes are alight with something, be it power or bloodlust or whatever the magic awakens inside a person. And she steps closer to Malcolm, unrestrained even as both of his arms are.
“Summer—” Zosia starts, but Summer holds up a hand, silencing her friend, before she makes it to Malcolm’s feet.
And there, Summer kneels. She kneels in his blood. And she looks up at him from where she sits at his feet. He looks down the crooked length of his nose at her, and Summer knows that she has gotten exactly what she always wanted out of this exchange: loyalty. Because when her eyes connect with Malcolm’s, Summer no longer sees the faces of his wife, his children.
All Summer sees in Malcolm’s eyes, in his mind, is herself.
“In the dead of night this very evening, you will go, under the cover of darkness and my silent and unseen protection, to the borderlands between the territories of Owl House and Wolf House. You will pass from my lands to Yuuko’s. Your story will spread—of how you escaped me, unscathed despite committing one of our lands’ cardinal sins. Let them know I seek to destroy you, let them think I will stop at nothing to keep my name from being dragged through the mud. Yuuko will bring you to her, but she will not know that you are mine. Do you understand, Malcolm? Do you see the plan unfolding even now in your mind’s eye?”
As Summer has been speaking, so has the plan been embedding itself into the synapses of Malcolm’s brain. This being just one of Summer’s abilities, honed over the years on instructors and diplomats alike, on politicians and lobbyists, on enemies, even on her family, when the time came to leave, when her father wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise... And Malcolm’s mind accepts her instruction gladly, because he is now as loyal as any of Summer’s compatriots. And Summer knows the truth of it: that he would rather sever his own right hand than betray her.
She really wouldn’t have it any other way.
They exchange no more words. With a mere look at her deputies, they untie Malcolm and take him to get cleaned up, fed and watered, and back to his family by nightfall. Just as Summer has said, he and his family will remain unmolested in their journey as they leave the House of the Owl, as they move towards Wolf territory. And this piece of the puzzle falls into place.
Summer leaves the room and goes to her own quarters. The knees of her pants are stained red, and she isn’t sure it’s a stain she’ll ever be able to remove. But she’s all right with that, she decides. A small sacrifice.
She strips out of the dirty clothes, right down to her underwear. The old building, even with the windows thrown wide, is stifling and hot. Luckily the sun is on its descent into the west, and the room she chose all those years ago faces east—so she can rise with the sun, and avoid its hot face in the evening.
One of the few real mattresses left in the place is on the floor in her quarters, and Summer drops down on it, exhausted. The magic has cost her something, she knows that—knows that there is only so much of it she can use before she has to replenish. And to replenish—to return to the Whitmore School—is not an option, not in this world as it is. Travel is dangerous, and to leave would be to give up control of Owl House entirely. Zosia and Blake are strong, but they aren’t Summer. They can maintain order for a handful of days, but not for the duration it would take Summer to return to Appalachia—to return to the place where the Whitmore School for Girls remains to this day, nestled there in the mountains, hidden by a power that Summer still doesn’t quite understand, even when given the chance to harness a bit of it for herself.
And she does believe that the Whitmore School still stands. Arke would have told her if something had happened to it, Arke would have felt it, Summer knows.
And the Summons... the Summons wouldn’t have worked if the Source had been destroyed.
And it worked, Summer can feel that in her very bones, like a desperate, pleasing ache in her cervical spine—a pinch every time a Whitmore Girl goes the wrong way, away from her; a slippery thrill every time they inch closer.
Summer does not know how many of their Sisters are out there. She does not know how many have taken heed of her call. But perhaps Arke will know better, will know more, once she returns from the meeting with her sister, Iris.
Those two sisters, Summer thinks, so different from the Sisterhood of Whitmore, but no less powerful.
But Sisters, they always show up for each other. No matter what histories they may all share. No matter what memories, transgressions, and tragedies they remember, and no matter the role they each may have played in them.
Whitmore Girls know how to atone for their sins. Summer has been doing it for years, hasn’t she? New sins committed; old sins forgiven. A cycle, vicious and daunting and habitual.
But Whitmore Girls always make it right in the end. Summer needs this to be true, needs her Sisters to believe it just as she does.
Summer is counting on it, after all.