Impromptu camping trip. That's what I call it. Nice weather, end of summer, the jet bird eager for twilight insects, instead of meat. She's conflicted. Branching out. Discovering herself.

The insects irritate her with their erratic flights, hard to track, escaping clacks of her beak. I doubt this is a branch that will bud many blossoms. But I could be wrong. Maybe she secretly enjoys the hunt.

Backpack a pillow, meal of kelp bread, I don't open the canned meat since the jet bird hasn't asked for it. I try to sleep, mouth dry with seaweed.

It's too warm. Muggy. Insects buzz in my ears. I dig out the brown cloak from the backpack and throw it over me. It helps with the insects, not the mugginess.

I trace the jet bird's electric-frustrated blood, fluttering about. "Do you miss the tundra?" I ask her. "The cold?"

She alights in a bush beside me, twigs trembling. I roll my eyes at the bush's fear, they have no idea.

"It was a whole lot easier to sleep without the insects," I say into the cloak. "And I miss the snow."

I miss the snow, so I stick by the ocean, because the mist reminds me a little of snowflakes. The ocean makes me think of ice floes, glaciers, blizzards.

So I tell myself.

I curl up in the cloak and try to sleep, uncomfortable with the sweat trickling down my elbows, the itchiness in my armpits. The buzzing insects I take for a melody, muttering about the heat, wishing for an ocean.

***

Dear dead, we don't talk about the shapes in fire here.

But...the Burners. We could talk about them, distantly remove ourselves as if picturing specimens through a microscope.

Sidetrack: I first saw a microscope moments before hurling it into a fireplace to stop the rabid, sparking army from leaping out to slice us to ribbons. My lungs believed they would slice us to ribbons.

The Burners. They wear masks painted like crude animal faces, they wear nutty shells of oversized fruits as bulbous headdresses, they drag their wagons full of weapons of flame. So they say. I never go close to them.

They can sniff out magic. Whether through...magical means, or means more ordinary. Magical noses. Nosy people. Or maybe neither, and they burn wantonly wherever they go. Empress lands, Empress laws, The Burners Decree the Taint of Magic Using Actions Which Spark Louder than Words.

The Burners. I steer clear of them. Smart thing to do, for a death mage. Smart thing to do, when the burning fires hold memories trying to claw me to ribbons.

***

I miss the snow, so I stick by the ocean, distant waves crashing down below. I walk in the near-end summer heat. The jet bird waddles up ahead of me. She's branching out. Discovering herself. I doubt this will bud many blossoms either, given how I push her forward whenever I pass her, blood vessels like curls of lazy breezes. She doesn't seem to mind. Just continues waddling up the dirt road, ever so slowly, cliffside beside us dipping up and down.

The red sun slowly rises, our shadows cower under the heat.

***

Dear dead, five years ago, after killing the king you ran through the camp, gray tents a maze, slamming heartbeats giving the other contenders away. You shut your eyes, stilled your breathing, crouched beside the flapping entrance of a tent. The jet bird shifted softly in the blanket tied to your waist, tuned to your quiet breaths.

Hearts sprinted past, you crept into the open after them, boots soundless under the flapping of tents, the rushing air.

You'd had enough of bodies that day, standing and counting the slamming hearts sprinting away from you. So you left them, snuck through the camp, senses strained outward in that mad mage hunt; their beating hearts made a map in your mind of cut corners, empty tents scented like spiced smoke, muddy paths. Maybe, afterward, they would believe you could disappear into thin air. Since no one caught any sight of you. Under the cover of broad daylight, you stole an army cloak and bags of supplies, wandering off through the tundra toward Tatter-cloak.

Five years ago, you weren't so careful. But that wasn't the point. You reached back for taffy bones, how slimy those taffy bones, strung them up tight and made them dance. That was the distraction, not the spite. No one was around to watch.

The real bones, the bones you couldn't leave there, slipped out of the ash heap, cracked by heat. Shaking finger bones tugged taffy-strung arm bones free from under the collapsed pyre. Femurs threaded hips and vertebrae out from traps of charcoal.

While the king danced foolishly on the stage, the queen's skeleton crawled away, through the ocean of silent bodies, around tents, through the wide path leading to the tundra the crowd of watchers had come by. She crawled, since half her right shin had shattered beyond recognition, and her left foot bones curled around the barely strung-together bones of her right.

You waited for her, between the gray tents and the white buildings of the village. The Empress hadn't burned this place. She had merely brought the people out to watch their queendom burn.

The people who then hunted you through the camp as readily as any soldier. You decided not to tell the bones. They might get offended, for your sake.

***

There is a child following us. I don't know if they know we are here, ahead of them. I don't know how I didn't know there was a child following us for the better part of a day.

I veer off the road where it dips, turning away from the seaside. This muggy plain boasts towering grass and squat bushes, which I part with itching hands. The jet bird waddles at my feet.

When we find a clearing, where the grass has fled to leave bare dirt, I sink to the ground. Rub out my calf muscles. I unknot the backpack from my hips, unsling it from my shoulders. The seaweed bread I dig out from the side. I pry open the canned meat, plug my nose against the pungent scent and I slide it towards the bird, scraping the soil. She grabs it in her claws, flutters to the shadow of a rock whistling with wind-whipped grasses, and snaps the can to pieces.

I sprawl out, on the hard-packed dirt, close my eyes and trace the sense of a child's crystal-sharp blood. They meander along the road. They move steadily, thoroughly unlike how I imagine a child would, distracted by passing insects or sticks to carve swirls in the soil. I chew seaweed bread, lying down. Reluctantly I sit up for the bottle of water, then lie back down, pressing my boots against the rock.

The child passes our hiding place after the sun has moved from morning to noon. The jet bird tearing at the canned meat doesn't pay attention. I sit up, eyes tracing the child's plodding steps. A coal-warm fury at the Burners alights within me, edges into the heat of two. To leave a solitary child--thoroughly unchild-like, with heavy footsteps and crystal-sharp blood--to wander up the coast.

I glance at the jet bird. The metal can has completely vanished in silver ribbons. "You wouldn't do well with a child around," I say. I say it to both of us. Anger at the Burners sits easier in my gut than guilt, I know. I am so angry at the Burners.

***

Another morning, another town, the same coast. The jet bird hides in the cloak, tied to the side of the backpack, digging into my hips. I fold my arms, weaving through the near-empty streets, hardly a stray soul rushing to and fro. No shouts from a market. No cries from any seabirds perched on rooftops.

To quiet the itch in my spine, I blame it on the earliness of the morning. It's just a drowsy town in the mugginess of near-end summer. I squint at the store signs over wooden doors to search for some place to sleep, some place to buy food. The itch in my spine rises at the motions of blood inside the buildings, two stories high, shutters shut, wood beams creaky in the breeze. I turn off the main road, to escape the few rushing souls. A wide lane meets me, lined with uneven bricks. There are no store signs here. Merely barred windows, shuttered doors. I pass a solitary soul on the street, his shoes loudly clopping. He doesn't look at me. I pause to stare after him, eyebrow raised, the jet bird poking her head out at my hip. His blood courses like sharp bone needles, he coughs into a brown sleeve and keeps clopping.

We walk, footsteps slow, the itch in my spine crawling across my shoulder blades to make me shiver. Another morning, another town, "I hate this place already," I whisper to the jet bird. She rustles in her cloak pouch.

A child stands at the end of the street, where it curves. He stares at the ground, jumps up and down. My eyes dart to the crooked door he dances in front of, the scent of burnt food trailing from inside. I wrinkle my nose. The jet bird's blood goes dark and cloudy.

"Hi there," I say.

He quits jumping, crystal-sharp blood pulsing hard.

"Are you playing a game?"

His dark eyes meet mine, deep and reflecting.

The jet bird shoots into the air, her cloak fluttering to the dark bricks.

Words utter from his mouth, at the bird, who screeches like claws on ice and the words fall flat.

Deja vu,

***

Dear dead, you are standing in a street of red clay, there is a stranger leaning on the corner of the squat building, his cloak glitters silver.

"I could teach you," he says. This specter. "You wouldn't have to go to the funeral, if you came with me."

You slowly let go of the curtain in the dark door frame, leaving it to flutter. "But--"

"You're different. I'm different, like you."

"What's that mean?" you asked, the memory foggy; the street, the sky, the distant sounds all white space.

He held out a hand, his smile bright, "you can speak a language no one else knows. I can teach you how to use it," he knelt in front of you. He whispered, "as soon as they find out you murdered that girl, they will kill you too."

There wasn't much you could say to that. Small child dusty by a door, adult in a silver cloak telling you if you stayed you would be dead.

***

Deja vu, I blink away the image seared to my mind of Kolariq's giant hand cupped around ours. I have been here before, positions reversed. I hope our clothes don't glitter silver.

The jet bird comets into the street of dark bricks, showering stone clatters, she crashes past whatever the child was jumping on and he falls down. Instantly begins crying. The jet bird waddles out of her crater. "I told you you'd be bad with a child," I say.

I don't know what to do with a death mage child. Whatever Kolariq didn't do. The child begins screaming, clutching his knee. I sigh. Approach him, the crater, find a muddy loaf of bread that's been jumped into the bricks. I sit beside him. "Hi," I say. "Were the Burners because of you, or because of me?"

As if he knows that.

He glances up, and his squinted-up expression hardly masks cold fury. He screeches louder, tears running rivers down his cheeks. The jet bird waddles up to him and tries to lick his face. Naturally, he screeches at her, clutching a bloody knee, his screech goes abruptly silent and the words shift sharp, tumbling over themselves. The jet bird tilts her head, clacks her beak, and the words shatter to wisps.

"I'm not very good at healing," I say. I point at the open door, no heartbeats thrumming from inside. "Why don't we go in there?" I glance sideways at the jet bird. Who pecks at the bread as if nothing happened. The child begins bawling, fingers a misshapen circle around a bloody wound on his knee. "Right," I say. "You probably don't want to walk like that."

I peer closer at the wound, the fire of infection a niggling trap if I delve too deep. I poke a black speck with my fingernail, find it is a chip from a broken brick and flick it free. The child screams at me. I grimace, grab him around the back, hoist him up and find him lighter than the backpack. He quits screaming. Long enough for me to sigh in relief and for him to suck in a breath. My ears ring but I push a cracked door sideways, I wrinkle my nose to the scent of burned matter.