GDeyke

They taught me, “Wear a mask, lest you, breathing, sicken others.” So I learned: to drop my hands drop my heels sit still sit quiet bear touch smile appeasement never speak eat alone to accept the stifling cling as carved in stone (I pruned away my halo’s rays chopped myself to pieces, sanded flesh all so if they breathed me in they’d breathe me out again untouched and I’d not fester in their lungs – tried and tried to scrape the bloodstains clean but couldn’t stop myself bleeding.) and when finally I choked on all I was forbidden to exhale they mourned – not me – but what I had become: “How sad,” they cried, “they thought themself diseased – how sad! they threw themself away!”

I don’t think Mama realised it was the Thing In The Hole making the whispers. She was always at the hole anyway, digging, every day. By the time she got home I was already in bed most nights, but sometimes I’d wake up when I heard her and go to say hello, and she always looked so tired I don’t know if she’d even notice the whispers weren’t there so far away from the hole. All the grown-ups were always digging, except Miss May, who watched us kids during the day and was supposed to teach us things. I remember when she took us on a field trip to see the hole. That was when I heard the whispers the first time. “What are they digging for, anyway?” asked Sammi. He never remembers to raise his hand. Or maybe he does and just doesn’t care. Miss May got that weird look she always does when we ask something we’re not supposed to. “That’s for Rubente Dextera to know,” she said. She always says that. Nobody asked about the whispers. I didn’t either. I was too busy listening. I couldn’t

Her eyes were the pale colour of robins’ eggs, incubated in the warm hollows of her skull. By her very presence she commanded me to seek out worms by which to feed them: plucked from my thoughts, dug out from my veins, unburied from my heart. I fled before I could see what they hatched.

She awoke one midnight to find a starling perched on the edge of her bed, iridescent and speckled with white. It ruffled its feathers and spoke. She had seen videos of starlings imitating human speech, an alien’s uncanny gibberish; this was nothing like that. “You alone can save the world,” it said. “This magic pin will grant you all the power you need.” Bracing her heart, she took it. - Dressed in the sparkling armour of magic, she fought monsters, saved kittens, helped old ladies cross streets. She hunted down lost property; she mended broken hearts. She robbed banks, redistributing wealth to greater equity. She punished those who had escaped justice. She teleported into billionaires' bedrooms to murder them in their sleep. Hands soaked in blood, she sobbed to the starling: “Does it ever end?” The bird only shrugged. - Maybe the world is a better place, now. Maybe it isn’t. It’s hard to see from where she is, holding the very fibre of the world together. It

He lives in a different world now. They were friends, even briefly lovers, but not so close that she would upend her life to come with him; not so close that he would stay. Still, each month his magpie flies between worlds to deliver a letter; and each month she reads it, fondly, and replies.

The white tern has been a white tern for only as long as the world has been ending, but already he can feel the tern’s instincts calling him to return home. The trouble is, there’s no home to return to. The trouble is, home is a word with no meaning in this place. The tern is flitting through a miasma that could be called sea just as readily as air. If there are islands somewhere in the gloom – if one of those islands could be called home – he doesn’t know how to find them. The emptiness speaks to him from nowhere: he is all alone in this place, the last living thing in the world. This isn’t the end of all the world, it says. Only of yours. But that can’t be right. Yes, he is a seabird now, white and black-eyed and ghostly, but he is still whole; the only thing whole in this world, the only thing alive in the twisting fog. As much as his isolation wounds him, it proves to him that he is still alive. And look, there is an island, twisted branches reaching through the mist.

“I swear by the God of a Thousand Eyes,” he says, “I will never doubt you again.” She smirks, beautiful even in her displeasure, and casts a knife down at his feet. Gilded hilt, jewelled pommel, set with diamonds and amber: too fine for anything but ritual. But the blade is sharp bright steel, as deadly as those she uses to saw through their meat. “Prove it,” she says. - He prostrates himself before the God’s altar. The God is painted in gold and shimmering green, the thousand eyes portrayed by a thousand gleaming gemstones. He cuts his hand on the amber-hilted knife and marks the altar with his blood. “I swear I will never doubt her.” She demanded this of me – but he crushes the thought, buries it deep. The God of a Thousand Eyes is always watching. - She’s long gone, but his oath holds him bound in fear. The God’s eyes are everywhere. He doesn’t dare to doubt her. She abandoned – no. But she hurt – no. She – No. He doesn’t dare to doubt her. He cannot rid

I watch your smile and imagine freedom. Imagine myself with golden wings, ruler of the skies, free to fly wherever I wish. Away, forever. But even an eagle is loyal to its mate. The edge of ice in your smile says you won’t be with me much longer. I envy you the freedom to leave.

It’s a beautiful morning. Inside, the smells of pancakes and coffee and fresh blueberries wind through the air; through the window, a warm breeze brings the lark’s morning song wrapped in scents of pollen and growing grass. The pancakes taste as good as they smell, fluffy and delicious. The blueberries: large and ripe, just sour enough to offset the sweetness. The coffee: rich and dark, the colour of mahogany, and hot enough to boil her soul. Or somebody’s soul, at any rate. It’s a beautiful morning. She finishes breakfast and returns to the basement, which is dank and dark and smells a little of mould – she should really call someone to look at that, sometime – and of blood and iron. It’s cooler here, almost too cool this early in the day, but when the sun heats up the house above it will seem refreshing. The most comfortable room in the house, really. From a corner comes a quickened breath, then a hoarse whimper, as she turns on the light. She starts to hum as she sets

They lead him down into the darkness, praise him for his brightness and his delicacy and beg him to sing. And sing he does, for all his frailty; for all that his brightness is a fading yellow in the deep devouring dark. He does not know that they are only waiting for him to die.