V. H. King's Ink

Lucille’s arm encircled Rashada’s shoulders.  Shadow turned into the embrace and noticed a streak along Silly’s neck.  A thin white streak.  Shadow started to joke that it was leftover paint, but then she saw the bumps webbing along Silly’s skin.  Not quite like a rash; the pattern was too complex.

“What’s this?”

She nudged Silly, knowing zi could feel her eyes on zim.

“Nothing to worry about.”

“Sill—“

“You remember what the Stavs taught us.”

You know better than anyone. 

Silly looks straight at her.  That auburn gaze pierces through Shadow’s sternum, because she knows what Silly means.  She had the luxury of learning from textbooks.  Silly had been punished on the regular for zis use of craft.  Experience might be the best teacher, but it was not always the kindest.

“How bad?”

“We’ll see.”

“Were you going to tell me?”

“You know how I do business.  Prices are on a need to know basis.”

The bitterness is hard to miss.  Shadow pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling.  She had always been an easy cry.  Angry, happy, or sad—it seemed her emotions only knew how to talk in tears. 

“I’m not buying that,” Shadow said.  “What’s going on?”

“I finished the biggest installation I’ve ever done, and I wanted to show it to you first.”

Silly’s eyes are on her again.  It’s hard to see zis face through the blur and the black and the bright colors swirled around the edges of her vision. 

“I’m not some dealer or patron with deep pockets, Sill! I’m—“

“The person the truth would hurt the most!”

Lucille’s shout should have echoed throughout the stadium.  Instead, Rashada hears the rustle and whisper of curtains.

“You’re the only person I can’t lie to.”

As hushed as snakes through the grass.  And her own heart, breaking like glass. 

“Sill, what did you do?”

Because it was done now.  Whatever it was, it couldn’t be reversed. 

Doings bring due… 

Craft came with a cost. 

Somewhere along the way, their feet had taken them apart.  Like the last 6 months, which had felt like years.  Shadow had known the installment was a big deal.  She didn’t want to pry, and she knew how Silly could get when zi was deep in a project.  Constant anxiety.  The only relief from creating and recreating until it was right.  Not perfect, but right.  Silly had made that distinction clear more times than Shadow could remember. 

Lucille’s silence had still hurt.  Rashada had told herself not to be a baby about it.  Not to take it personally.  To try and be more like Lucille, who could counter any attack thrown zis way.  But she’d never been that strong. 

“I wanted to feel the rush of it,” Lucille said.  “One last time.”

“What—what are you saying?”

“I’m not dying Shadow, don’t worry.”

“Too late for that.”  Did that come out as a mutter or a shout?  “I’ve been worried about you since—“

“Don’t you remember the Temple?  Don’t you miss how thick the air was, back home?  I can barely breathe here when everything in me wants to be there.  But we can’t go back, so I gave up.”

That sounds like a lie.  Lucille didn’t give up.  Zi didn’t run away from anything.  Lucille had turned a stadium slated for demolition into the most elaborate shrine to the Great Beings that Rashada had ever seen. 

Taking in the spectrum of staircases, the celestial signs, the constellations and the cosmic paths that rooted the worlds in place and kept them turning—everything in a mage’s vision—anger finally scorched her throat.

“Why?”

“I already told you—“

“No, why would they make you do this?  Why would they do this to you?”

“Craft comes with cost.”

A lesson that the Stav elders had praised her for learning so carefully.  A simple rule to remember out of courtesy for others, if for no other reason.  But it wasn’t supposed to hurt like this.  The words scratch past the feeling in her throat, clawing their way out the same way she grapples to make sense of what Lucille had lost.

“No!  Silly, this isn’t—this isn’t right!  They can’t just demand your magic back because it’s muted in a world that we were never meant for—a world that they banished us to—“

“Is that what you think?”

“Isn’t that how it feels?  You said yourself—this world is hollow, it’s broken, it doesn’t hold wonders like home.”

“Maybe what’s most wonderful about this world is the fact that there is any beauty at all.”

“It’s not fair!”

Tears sizzle as they drip down her cheeks.  The hair on the back of her neck hisses.  Lucille’s eyes sharpen and in an instant the distance between them closes. 

“Soft, Shadow.  Softly, softly.”

No hands on her shoulders.  No arms holding her tight.  Lucille’s voice is in her ear anyway.  Zis face is right in front of her but she can’t calm down. 

“H-how?  You sacrificed!  You gave the gods your most precious treasure and this is how they repay you?  By taking your magic?”

“Shadow—“

The room is getting brighter as the edges of Rashada’s vision blur.  She hasn’t used her magic in decades.  In another life, she had wielded it constantly—first for the love of it, and then for the ones she loved.  When she and Lucille had escaped here, she had been too exhausted to try.  And when she had recovered, she hadn’t the heart or the will. 

Craft comes with cost.

Lucille holds up zis hands, shielding zis eyes.  Zi could spot away.  A single jump and Lucille could be on the other side of the stadium or even outside in the parking lot.  Zi should have jumped, but never did.  Lucille always stayed. 

Rashada’s lips part but no words come out. 

The stadium is static and sparks. Blue-orange embers firing, fizzling out from Shadow’s hair.  With the dark of the stadium, it’s hard to see the shadows that form at her feet and outline her shoulders.  Lucille can feel the charge in the air—the push of a barrier just waiting to be cast. 

Shadow’s magic isn’t muted—it’s stronger than ever.