Chapter Thirteen

“AND YOU’RE SURE you’re not hurt?”

I glance at her over the tops of my eyelids before returning my gaze to my little sibling’s outstretched hands. “For the hundredth and last time, Mama, yes. I’m sure. You just pull on it, that’s right, Aon, reach in with your mind. Focus on how the Energies can become a spark, just in this spot here—”

“You!”

“I told you this was a bad idea—”

I straighten up, Aon still flexing quer fingers, tongue between quer teeth, squinting at the Lunamez candle in my hand. I slip it behind my back as I spin around and spring to attention.

It’s the Hand that hit Lerian a wingful of sunups ago. The Hand that hit Lerian when he should have hit me.

“What are you doing with the prisoners?”

I tighten my grip on the candle and jump when it starts to feel hot in my hands. I bring it out cautiously to the front of me so it doesn’t singe my wings.

“Everyone’s got to light one at the start of Lunamez season, sir. I was just making sure my little sibling here got a chance. Nice work, sherba,” I mutter to quer, as the candle is glowing deep inside its fluorescent tube now, and not by my doing.

The Hand sighs visibly. He glances around the peripheries of the Gathering, where Kashat and the others of the Lunamez learning pod are getting the place ready for the season. Countless Lunamez candles float all across the treeline. The Gathering crackles pleasantly with the effort of keeping the candles afloat like bubbles in the Flowing, but the songs that usually accompany the floating are absent. Oncoming Slicings will do that.

“Go on,” the Hand mutters, his eyes roving my distinctly non-like body. I give him a curt nod and fly off without a backward glance at Mama and Aon in the cage.

As I’m finding a place, an invisible groove in the Energies, to float Aon’s candle, someone shoves me nearly clean out of the air. I turn, tensed, but it’s just a pair of twins, older than me by a couple of harvests. They were in some learning pods with Lerian and me when we were young ones. Ler and I always called them Brute One and Brute Two. They used to tug on my wing sprouts to see if they were really part of me or just pasted on.

“Make sure you actually fly up and take the blame if the Hands don’t like your candle placement, Highlander,” One jeers.

I clench my jaw and instinctively look below me for Lerian. She’s not there. Two against one aren’t odds I want right now. Not when I know Aon’s watching me from the cage, anyway. Not when the Head Slicer’s on his way to strip Dreaming from P’Tal’s newly born when the sun goes down tonight.

“Yeah, you’re really into the Lunamez spirit, huh?”

“Well the way I see it, Highlander, is that the holiday is only for real Grovians. Not ones who play reckless then let real Grovians take the hits for them.”

Aon watching be damned, I fly forward until a viselike grip catches my ankle.

“A newly born is getting Sliced tonight, you three; let’s keep that the only tragedy of the day, why don’t we? Get on your way, both of you.” Jax gets to talk to the twins like that because Jax gets to talk to everyone like that, if he wants. Being our healer and all.

They fly off with two identical, cruel grins at me. I return them as best I can, but Jax is muscling me down to his eye level. “I tried ignoring them, Jax, they just—”

“Don’t pick fights you can’t win, Sadie. Not with a Slicing tonight.” He releases my ankle and runs his fingers over a tired face. “P’Tal’s a wreck. I have to get back to him. Just…keep it calm today.”

I’m going to object, tell him it wasn’t me who needed to be calm. But I just hang my head.

I have all day to stew, because no one speaks to me—and I don’t open my mouth—until the Hands start combing the Forest after the evening labor canon. We are all required to be there, in the Gathering. For the Slicing.

It’s been eight sunups since the uprising when they took Rada, since Zeel gave birth to quer, Aora, and P’Tal’s newly born. Tonight, Blaze—that’s what they named quer—will be Sliced. And we all have to watch.

I get brushed up against Lerian in the push toward the Gathering. She shakes her shoulders at me but otherwise says nothing. I’m excited when she grunts, thinking she’s starting to say something to me, but I look around at her face and realize the grunt was one of pain.

“Hey,” I say loudly to the Hand who pushed her roughly, to get her to move her faster as we trudge toward the Gathering.

“Calm down, faerie, you don’t want to make them start beating down on us again,” Lerian counters through gritted teeth. I splutter. E’rix glances at me furtively as she takes Lerian’s arm and tugs her along so the rough Hands don’t feel the need to. I grind my own teeth, jealousy flaring in the pit of my belly.

“Ler, I wasn’t trying to—” But the rest of the half-formed thought dies on my lips, because she’s not wrong. She got hit because of something I did, not her, and because they didn’t want to hit someone with their bone structure, with their eyes. Lerian gives me a long, sad look as she splits in a different direction with E’rix.

I almost punch my fist into a nearby platform, but I hold my breath to restrain myself. When I feel calmer, I fly off toward the closed infirmary tent. As I slip inside, I think Artem, the Head Slicer, looks up from his preparations, from his position in the center of the Gathering, flanked on each side by two Hands. I think his eyes flicker with some emotion I can’t identify as he catches my gaze.

When I look back at him, his gaze is keenly focused on his instruments of mutilation, my wings, my faeric filth, my betrayal, apparently forgotten.

Mom opens the flap of the infirmary tent wordlessly as she sees me approach through the small opening they’re required to keep during the Slicing. I settle onto a cot next to Mom and in front of Jax.

“Lerian still angry?” Mom asks me. I grunt.

She puts her arm underneath my wing sprouts. “I’m sorry, Sadie,” she says, putting her forehead to mine, and tears sting my eyes.

I catch a glimpse of Jax out of the corner of my eye. His chair is faced away from the opening of the tent, and he’s doubled over with his elbows on his knees. I pull back and glance questioningly at Mom.

“Bad day,” she explains with her body language.

I shake my shoulders back and forth. He has those pretty regularly. And today, I’ve contributed. I look down in guilt.

In the relative safety of the infirmary tent, I stare out at the Controller, standing next to Artem. Her stare is hard and glassy, and there are purple folds under her eyes. Her posture is more rigid than usual. Daring us to undermine her most sacred duty as Controller: —to oversee Slicings. Her gaze sweeps over the Gathering even though her body is still.

After everyone settles in and the Hands have tossed and thwacked the last of the centaurs and faeries into the Gathering, no one really moves.

With Blaze about to be under a knife, Mama and Aon in the cage, and the Hands out in force, if we think of using our numbers to surge at them, we resist. We won’t be the cause of their deaths. Slicings are risky enough to begin with.

We only watch.

An unnatural silence falls on the Gathering. It’s broken only by the youngest ones sobbing. Faeric and centaur young ones usually have sharper memories than non young ones, and most remember their own Slicings. Vividly.

The Head Slicer—Artem, Artem, I hate that he bought me drinks, that he was kind, that he called this unpleasant, that he wasn’t excited about it, that he kind of talked about it how we talk about labor, all grim—is escorted from the edge of the Gathering to the space just below the infirmary platform, where Blaze will be held overnight to make sure que doesn’t die from the intrusion into quer skull.

The Gathering takes a collective breath as a dozen Hands flank Artem, in an eerie reenactment of the tributes that we create with the centaurs to escort newly borns and their growns home after birth. Another set of Hands march Zeel, Aora, P’Tal, and Blaze, tiny and stumbling but moving quer hooves valiantly, from the edge of the Gathering to its center. Mom’s grip on my knee tightens as the centaurs part sadly for them, their arms extended out to their sides to rest on the shoulders of their companions next to them, a communal centaur salute of mourning.

The procession of soldiers and growns pauses in front of the new center of the Gathering. It’s now a public prison, a cage.

I glance at Mom, who’s staring at Mama and Aon. Aon is squirming around; que’s gotten so much bigger in the short time que’s been imprisoned. I wonder what parts of quer growth we missed, that only Mama shared with quer.

I jump when Zeel tears quer throat with quer screams. The procession continues, reaching the space under the infirmary. Jax’s head slumps against one of the arms of his chair, his merperson markings dull and lifeless against his skin. I look back down; Aora holds Zeel back, and P’Tal…P’Tal looks like I feel, like Jax looks dead inside. I look down at Blaze, at Artem picking quer up and placing quer onto the table they’ve set up, twisting the Energies to restrain quer small, flailing limbs. I keep looking and promptly regret it, as the Head Slicer’s scalpel cuts into the newly born’s flesh. There is no sound in the Gathering. Even the insects and birds are marking the atrocity with silence.

Hot red blood leaks out of Blaze’s temple, and my stomach clenches as I glimpse the pure white of quer skull. Mom squeezes my hand so hard it feels like my fingers will fall off.

Artem sucks up thick, golden dragon blood out of the vial he’s brought with him, into a vessel attached to a long, thin needle. As the blood harvested in massacres is pulled up the little tube, the head Slicer’s eyes swivel up into the gap of the infirmary tent flap to meet mine. I can’t read his face. But I don’t look away.

I tear my eyes from Artem’s, not wanting to watch as he plunges the needle directly into Blaze’s brain. Infecting quer with the blood that will tear away quer ability to Dream. —The dragon blood that would prevent quer, were que a faerie, from ever having a hatchling tree and dragon. I’m glad, at least, that centaurs like Blaze don’t have that to lose.

Aon is crying in the cage, in Mama’s arms. I can’t look at quer face. It’s shining with tears, but wide-eyed. Learning.

The Slicing continues.

My eyes sting.

And then it’s over. The Slicing is done—little Blaze will never Dream again—and the Controller is thanking the Head Slicer, bright newly born blood dripping from his hands. She is thanking the Grovian citizens for supporting Aora, Zeel, and P’Tal in their decision to help keep Lunav free of a horrible plague.

Decision.

It would be funny if it weren’t so brutal. Forcing growns to watch someone open the skull of a newly born they helped bring to life. Violating quer body, forever changing it, without quer consent.

Decision.

Jax jolts out of his stupor, like he’s just realizing where he is. “She has to release Hazal and Aon now,” he says, his voice scratchy. He sits straight in his chair and flares open the infirmary tent flap, lowering the platform to the ground so P’Tal and the others can come stay with their newly born while he completes quer post-Slicing care.

I nod at him and fly out of the infirmary into the dispersing crowd of mourning Grovians, Mom’s hand locked in mine. I can’t look at P’Tal’s face as we pass him. I don’t even think he notices us. He’s holding Blaze like he’s never seen someone so tiny before, like if que jostles quer even a little bit, que will never wake up.

Before I process where my wings are taking me, Mom and I are directly in front of the Controller. A breeze makes her light cloak stir along with her flowing locks, and I refuse to speak. She knows that she promised to release my family if her first Slicing proceeds without further interference.

“I could argue that the little riot against my Hands last week constitutes interference with the Slicing,” the Controller says with false levity in heavily accented Grovian faeric.

I just stare. Mom flies even closer to Evelyn. “Let them go, Controller, or I swear, last week’s uprising will look like—”

“You don’t want to finish that sentence,” the Controller deadpans before inclining her chin toward the cage, her eyes locking into mine. I hold her gaze—which is hard and blazing with an emotion and intensity I can’t identify or explain—until a small body slams into my side. Aon’s arms are all over my torso, and I wrench my eyes away to greet quer, laughing at quer’s warmth and fervor. I grin crookedly as Mama kisses Mom with deep ferocity, both of their hands everywhere at once. Lerian whinnies loudly and suggestively behind me, and I laugh as Mom and Mama startle apart in response. Aon doesn’t look so sure that que knows what’s funny, but que joins in the laughter until que starts to cry.