Logline

The death mage, a trans woman in a fictional world, has to heal from the dead who haunt her in order to preserve the land from a foreign warlord.

Blurb

Flickers of fallen people haunt this death mage--kings, queens, and boys buried in the blue ocean. Years ago, she fled those figures, to a house isolated in the tundra. There, she rebuilds herself from the boy she used to be--between the blood of badly done curses, the Skeleton Cook dancing in the kitchen, and the ice of darkest winters.

But in the snows of her garden one day, she finds a magical egg, the size of a skull. Journeying to discover its origins takes her to the royal city, where she must choose to aid the queen in battling for her stolen palace; or take the hatching, violent creature (wanted by enemies in the city) and vanish back into the wilderness.

~Chapter One (her, alone)~

Aquamarine blood drips off the contours of my face, the scent like salt, like ash, joining the trickles of bright ink in the sink. From the bandages in the cupboard--darkly matching my skin and jaw--I squeal a wide roll between my fingers. Rip the strip off. Plaster it to my cheeks, my chin, all above my mouth where the blood breaks out of my body. Nostrils flaring, I set the bandages back in the wood cabinet, at my side.

Then I check the broken mirror, fragments of my eyes and nose and bandages over my mouth glimmering back. Too many sticky ridges stand out like hills on my skin so my fingers flatten them as hard as quakes--but they rise back up. Defying me. Decrying me in this bathroom where I and my reflection war, this blood an incurable truce between our deadly mouths.

I retreat, over the floorboards, to the bed, tiptoed feet stepping just close enough to the trail of blood spatters to make the liquid bend toward my weight.

I stop beside the bed frame. On the pillow, an aquamarine spiral's staining the pale cover. My fingers curl into claws, and magic draws the blood up into the air, pulling it clean from the pillow, erasing the evidence of this lost battle.

The blood ribbon dances after me down the creaky wood steps, to the kitchen. I stream the liquid down this sink, far away from a mirror my hands have cracked too many times.

The Skeleton Cook clanks up behind me, rising from the tile by the fridge. He tilts wide eyes at me, asking if I will eat today, and I don't have to muffle a word for him to tilt his head the other way, all concerned like I'm eating enough.

Of course I'm not. I shudder at the prospect of food flavored with the tang of my leaking blood. I squeeze around him to bend over the metal stove frame with the old rock in the depressed tile floor. And I pat the air radiating with heat from the old rock, a thank you for keeping me from making fires, filled with haunting figures, even if I'm not eating today.

I dismiss the Skeleton Cook, think of him as the ice-white skeleton decorating the fine fronts of the cupboards. He deserves a rest day; dishes are the worst, after all. Terrible for your skin.

I tiptoe past him, catching my breath under the cold kitchen archway, swaying.

Dear brain, let's just be upfront about something. You killed them all. Buried their bones in the blue, lost them to the bitter winter waves. You killed them all, you didn't care about keeping those bones. You knew they'd torment you, no matter that bones are the most important tool. You killed them, and you left their skeletons forever, even though their dead whispers still try to haunt you.

I don't eat today, but I do go out into the garden. For the clear skies, the paltry heat of the red sun hanging low on the horizon. I bring the backpack, too, even though it will make my shoulders ache.

The garden isn't that far; out the hinging door, it takes one-hundred and two steps to go there, on the beaten trail through the snow, glittering white. I blame the extra twelve on the aching weight of my face.

The garden isn't that far, but my body still aches when I get there. From the cold. From the siren song of flee-berries, the intoxicating scent of ember moss. I cut the maroon flee-berries first, silence their song in the pouch of my backpack, third from the top, lined with cat-fur. They shiver like that, I would mutter if the Skeleton Cook were here, because they're terrified of cats. And he'd believe me.

I sheath the knife in the second pouch, the fluffy ember blossoms go in the first one, lined with fat thread. Skeleton Cook has yet to figure out how ember blossoms actually survive the winter, waving warm petals in the pitch dark. Hopes and dreams, I think. Skeleton Cook would disagree, though never say why.

In the furrows of wet soil, I go to the row of rocks last, since they are the heaviest. My back would not complain if it only had to carry petals and violet berries.

I take out my knife, stabbing the first rock. It complains. I glare at it to be quiet. With both hands on the cold handle, I push the knife like a lever, creaking the round rock slowly from the packed snow. It doesn't want to go. But I flick a wrist and it pops free, moans once. I don't ask it why. Sliding my knife into the side pocket, I heft the rock into my backpack, lined with salt crystals. I close the flap and walk back home. My shoulders complain. It is one hundred and eight steps to the door. I think it is because of the blood.

The Skeleton Cook used to live here, dear brain. Remember that? You, stumbling weak, blood pouring like water from your nose, your eyes, your arms, your chest... Brain, he ran out there, in the cold, packing snow against your wounds. You tried to tell him. You really did. It's not your fault you were too weak to tell him.

You killed him with a touch.

I rouse the Skeleton Cook from before the counter cupboards, hand him the backpack so he can store it in the fridge. It is not a real fridge. Or, the front is, but the back isn't. Plus most of the kitchen is a freezer, as cold as anything outside, so who needs a real fridge?

He holds the backpack in skinny hands and I take the rock out, waddling back through the dining room to the door, setting it on the tile with a thunk. The Skeleton Cook goes, silently ducking into the glossy fridge, and I bend over to trace the bumpy rock. My hands dig into the knife-wound, tear it apart. Magic laces my fingers, and the rock's guts spill to the tile. I inhale through my nose and the bloodlike-goop rises up, pale brown fungus mush.

This fungus I just call "rock" because if I didn't know about the guts inside I would never know. This fungus is called "rock" but every day the fruit grows larger, swelling, a hive of nutrients and sugars and spores--fruit, but really more like a perfectly still heart. Nutrients flowing, but no heartbeat, no true veins.

I lift the goopy guts from the tile with a motion of my hands, and it floats. Mushroom guts or blood, it warms this house. The wooden pillars in each corner, where I scrawled my power--they awaken, at the metallic smell. There is a reason I do this the day I bleed aquamarine.

My hands stream the fungus guts across the house, front, left, back, right; by the door, the dining table, the bare stairs, the sitting room. And all that is left is the husk of a rock. The Skeleton Cook comes back, and he picks up the shell. Cradles it like a cracked egg. Carries it to the kitchen.

I follow, breathing through my nose. I walk to the fridge, which is not really a fridge. I open the door, to the fridge, to the cave. Brain, I remember every second of chiseling this cave from the ice, the frozen tundra. I used weapons to do it, knives of diamond, teeth of bone, and my hands still feel like those claws sometimes, scrawling curses in the finished walls--there can be no blood here but my own.

The mouth of the cave yawns wide, narrowing to its throat. In the summer, when the sun never sets, sometimes this place glows, like the hollow neck of a prone sculpture. It glows like glass and I have glass to spare, spun from the bleeding ceiling.

The heart is full of jars. Jars of aquamarine, jars on ice shelves. There can be no blood here but my own, but the bones...

Bones are the most important tool, Kolariq says, because bones are set, within your body, and the only way to get them out is to kill you.

My scrabbling fingers find a jar of glass, glass like ice like glass, on the high shelf on the ribbed wall. My spine itching, I set the jar on the rectangle table in the heart of this cave. My treasure chest, this table. Beneath it lies the one skeleton of bones I will never touch.

Brain, let's get this straight, him dying was the whole entire reason. He died, and the part of you that loved discovered how to stop believing. Not that it was his death that did it, but it was what happened after. Claws, ripping you to shreds, cracking you like an egg--those parts of you wilted to stone. And you were never very good at healing.

I tear the bandage from my face, skin burning. But I make a funnel of my hands above the jar for the dripping, closing my eyes to the plink, plink in the hollow ice cavern. My fingers shake, but the edges of my magic make a steady funnel, spiraling the aquamarine blood into the glass-like-ice jar. The jar only trickles half full before the tears start, salt and metallic tang mixing on my lips, so I stop and push the bandages back into place. They stick to my skin, still. They stick as well as the lid to the jar of ice-like-glass.

I put the blood on the shelf, next to the other jar. Above the shelf of other jars. The only blood in this body is mine, which is why I do not count them.

I leave the cave, leave the jars of aquamarine and red, because blood can be poisoned, but it is still mine.

The skeleton cook lies sprawled on the kitchen floor, finger bones curled between tibia and femur, where most of his knee would've been. The skull rests on the ribcage, leaning into the fridge. Which I shut. And he tips over. I lift the skeleton cook with my hands, by the collar bones, and set him on the counter so he can sleep by the painted wall, near the hot oven. I arrange his hands in his lap, let the legs and feet dangle off the edge. He looks almost nice, this way. Pale white in this ice castle.

Late, I'm awake, lying perfectly still in bed, the starlight prickling the windowpane above my head. A heartbeat shivers under the snow. The creature's not moving. And they weren't there in the garden earlier.

So I think it's young, the heartbeat. I think it's only just come alive.