Page 74 of Tidal Creatures

BOOK IVGibbous

Let us be Diana’s foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon; and let men say we be men of good government, being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

—William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I

Sunlight wakes me

Warm and still

Moonlight moves me

Always will;

Firelight warms me

Starlight stirs me

No light at all makes me feel

Glad to be with you.

—Talis Kimberley, “Any Kind of Light”

The whittled-down Crow Girl was standing at the edge of the mesa, looking uneasily down, an expression on her face that implied she had never contemplated anything she liked less than the idea of jumping to join them.

“I’m too short to fall without hurting myself,” she said, somewhat petulantly.

Zib blinked, then frowned. “Can’t you be birds long enough to fly down?”

“I’m not sure being birds would be a good idea,” said the Crow Girl, and hugged herself. “I think this is part of what it costs, eventually, to be a flock without a heart. The only way I get to be bigger again is if I make or steal more birds to join myself, and they won’t have been part of whoever I was before I traded my name away. They won’t know how to be me. I’m going to wind up turning into somebody else before this is all over, and I don’t want it. So I don’t want to be birds anymore, not unless I very much have to.”

Avery, who had felt the loss of the shine from his shoes as a blow to his very identity, nodded slowly. Even if he assumed the Queen of Swords had told the Crow Girl all the consequences of getting what she wanted, even if he believed she had been honest and upfront, the Crow Girl had lost so many birds—and the memories that contained—at this point that she was no longer the person who had agreed to pay. She was, in many ways, caught in a bargain she hadn’t made, just like any other child. And like any other child, she was afraid.

He stepped closer to the wall, so that he was right beneath her, and spread his arms.

“Sit and push yourself over the edge, and I’ll catch you,” he said solemnly. “I promise.”

She looked at him gravely, as if assessing his honesty, then did as she was told, sitting and pushing herself away from the edge, eyes screwed tightly shut as she dropped toward him.

Avery caught her and staggered, more from the force of impact than from her weight, which was even slighter than he would have expected from the size of her. He remembered reading somewhere that birds had hollow bones, and supposed she must be proof of it.…

—From Into the Windwracked Wilds, by A. Deborah Baker

Mare Anguis

TIMELINE: AUGUST 18, 2017. THREE DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

Isabella walks fast, purse clutched against her side, trying not to think about what may be waiting for her when she gets home, what she may have done by inviting a strange sunrise-skinned girl to stay for dinner. She’s flirted with the magical world since she was a child and realized not everyone could see the spirits attending on their daily lives. She served her apprenticeship with the old auntie everyone had known was no relation of hers, who first taught her how to solicit the spirits for help, for the answers to impossible questions and the locations of hidden things.

It was when her auntie passed away that she had finally stepped forward and declared herself a proper hechicera, ready to convince the universe to do things her way through whatever means necessary. Even dead, her auntie had been there the whole time, supporting and egging her on, and when she’d followed up that declaration with the announcement that she was moving to America, the rest of her family had wept and cheered in the same breath, glad to see her following her own path—and, to a degree, even more glad that it was a path that would take her away from them. Hechiceras were nice things to have in the family, nice things to brag about or be able to call upon in times of emergency, but they were hazardous things to keep at home. If she was going to practice, it was better she do it far away from them, where there would be less chance of them getting caught in the backlash.

She knew those things, had known those things when she moved to California, when she allowed the whispering of the universe to guide her to a welcoming community and help her find her footing in a new land, and for years she had practiced the best ways of doing things. She had kept people carefully at arm’s length, preventing them from getting close enough to be caught in the backlash when she inevitably pushed the universe too far and got slapped down for her troubles.

(For that moment, too, was an integral part of the hechicera’s education. The moment when she pushed things too far and was knocked on her ass was a reminder of her place, telling her where the limits of her power were. Once she knew those limits, she could work to strengthen and expand upon them, growing the sphere of her influence until she was a properly powerful old hechicera and not a talented and ambitious young one.)

Only no one is really meant to be alone forever, however talented they are, however much the universe whispers to them in their dreams, and when a tall, handsome mechanic named Juan had walked into the occult shop where she’d been working, she’d been unable to resist making doe’s eyes at him, standing just a little too close, bending just a little too far to give him glimpses of her cleavage. He’d been shopping for his sister’s birthday that first time, and the time after, he’d been looking for a good luck charm for the shop where he worked.

The time after that, he’d been looking for Isabella, and the time after that, he’d found her. Their courtship hadn’t been the stuff of fairy tales, but it had been the stuff of romance novels, all heated looks and sweat on skin, the taste of pheromones on their tongues making everything twice as delicious as it should have been, the sound of bodies against bodies. She’s often believed that love begins with a look and grows to encompass every sense the body has. She had been lost from the moment she’d seen his soul.