‘Did that hurt?’
Crowkisser nodded. Furious. Betrayed. Small hands clenching. Her mum tilted her lowering chin up to meet her eyes. ‘But you’re still standing?’
She nodded again. Her mum kissed her head, and she felt the fury vanish like rain.
‘That’s all it takes, little bird. Stay standing after they lash out. That’s all you need to do.’
She reached into the grass and dug around, lifted a rock. ‘After that, what you do in return is up to you.’
She handed the stone to Crowkisser, rough and too big in her palm. Pointed to where even now the green bug roamed the path,unaware of its crime. Looked at her daughter. ‘There he is. And you’re still standing. So, what are you going to do?’
Crowkisser bent down to look at the bug, its carapace still emerald against the light, but struck through with colours she hadn’t noticed before. Purple, blue, fading again to green. She raised the rock, looked at her mum.
Her mother shrugged. ‘If you want, little bird.’
She looked at the rock again, at the weight of it, and then at the bug, and its joints and the sun on the path. As she set it down she felt a brief ache in her muscles as her mum gently took her hand.
‘OK, little bird.’ She squeezed Crowkisser’s fingers and ran a hand over the small of her back. ‘Why not? It bit you after all.’
Crowkisser rubbed the drying scab. ‘Doesn’t matter, Mum. Bugs bite. It’s all they know to do.’
Her mother lifted her onto her shoulders. Whispered into her cheek. ‘You don’t blame them for that?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s how they are, Mama.’
She’d laughed at that. ‘I love you, bird button. But,’ she’d said, slinging her piggyback, ‘I know whatyouare.’
‘What’s that, Mama?’ she’d asked.
‘Hungry,’ her mum replied. ‘Let’s see what your father thinks to fish stew.’
Long strides down the path.
Long strides into her life.
Her mother the teacher.
Her mother the joker.
Her mother the host.
Her mother the memory.
the fire is dipping lower
night still calls you home
The rocks she’d lifted since. For if the great cities had never shown their face, she’d followed their trail through generations before her, following the work of other hunters that wanted to know about the worlds buried beneath their own, and in theprocess, she’d stumbled on something else, guided by book and map and blade.
Hidden far beneath where the great spinners might have lain. Through structures dug so far under the skin of the earth that she forgot the shape of the sun. Then curving back up to the surface, emerging shyly from under waterfalls, and between clefts in cliffs.
She found herself exploring not cities, but caverns. Networks that hollowed the land. And in them, she’d unearthed more than memories; paintings, relics, traces of people. And when she’d finally found what those people believed in, down in the dark, she’d come away more bloodied than ever before.
But still standing. She’d peeled back the skin of that blasted world, and taken its power.
Crowkisser had known since her mother died what she was going to do. She was going to kill the gods. And the people of the darkness, in the painted caves beneath the earth, had given her the gift she needed to do it.
the fire is dipping lower
