Authors: Ekaterina Sedia
The young man stares at her, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, cradling his wounded hand. She tries to speak, fails, and spits blood and plastic into her palm before trying again.
“Sorry,” she says.
She collapses, but not before closing the precious, stolen thing that the crows and the humans want tightly in her hand.
She wakes on a pallet in a strange room. The scent of noodles, cooked meat, and vegetables, has sunk deep into the walls. A thin blanket lies draped over her. When she shifts, its rough weave catches on her torn skin.
The young man from the alleyway enters carrying a tray holding a bowl of water, a bowl of soup, and a roll of gauze. He sets the tray down and backs away. His hand is wrapped; two spots of crimson have soaked through the white.
He could have run, too. He could have left her in the alley on the blood-colored ground. Why bring her here? Perhaps she reminds him of someone.
She sits up, letting the blanket fall, and reaches for the gauze. He watches, wide-eyed, as she licks the wounds she can reach with her tongue, and cleans the ones she can’t with water from the bowl. The young man is too frightened, too stunned, to look away.
After she wraps the last of the bandages, he shakes himself and hands her a shirt from a pile draped over the back of a chair. She catches his scent—sweat, laced with pheromones, but mostly with fear.
The shirt is clean. It reminds her of the wind on the rooftops. She pulls it on. Only now that she has covered herself does the young man blush, as though his skin has just remembered shame. He looks away.
She reaches for the soup and drinks, swallowing until she almost washes away the taste of crow-oil and shadows and blood. The young man looks back at her as she sets the bowl down; she smiles—a fox-grin.
“What’s your name?” he asks. He watches her as though he believes she will bite him again, or worse.
“I don’t know.” As she speaks them, the fox-girl realizes the words are true. “I don’t remember.”
She lifts the plastic square, which she held tight even as she slept, letting the young man see.
“I stole this. Do you know what this is?”
Fear flickers through his eyes. “I think so.”
He perches on the edge of the pallet, rigid. He doesn’t meet her fox-eyes straight on, but looks at her from the side.
“My name is Yuki. If you don’t have a name, what should I call you?”
She shrugs. She isn’t interested in names, only the patterned plastic in her hand.
“Ani. I’ll call you Ani.”
The way he speaks the name makes her look up. He holds the name on his tongue like it’s a precious thing, one he’s afraid of breaking. The name has a physical weight; it changes the air in the room and leaves it tasting of ghosts. That he has given her this name frightens her. Once she had a name that meant something. Names have power, and this heavy name, fallen from his lips and soaking into her skin, might change her if she lets it. Maybe it already has.
She pushes the thought away. “Tell me about this.” She holds up the stolen plastic again.
“It’s a computer chip, from before the war. Everyone used to have them, but now they only exist in tower.” He points to the window. “I used to deliver food there, but not anymore.”
Ani looks. The tower glitters. A thousand windows catch the setting sun and turn it into a column of living light twisting up from the scrub-brush of the city surrounding it.
“I carried a stone on my tongue,” she says.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” She closes fox-eyes. “Except sometimes, I do.”
She remembers.
Before the glass tower there was a tower of stone. It is nothing like the glittering tower outside Yuki’s window. It has no windows, but it is open to the sky, and it rustles with the sound of restless wings.
In the central courtyard, a line of men with cold, hard eyes stand on a raised platform. If the fox looks straight ahead, she can only see their shoes. Even if she changed, they would still look down on her. She is less than nothing in the Crow Lords’ eyes—all foxes are. So she stands with her head held high, just to show them she can.
Above the hard-eyed men, hundreds of crows line the tower’s edge. The fox-girl holds her tail erect; she does not show her throat; she does not bow.
“Why are you here?” one of the Crow Lords asks.
“I’ve heard you need a thief. I’m the best there is.”
She meets their eyes, bird and human both. Her tongue lolls, a fox-grin. She speaks truth.
Powerful and ancient as they are, there are places no Crow Lord can go. They were tricksters once, but they’ve forgotten the old ways, or let them go. Fox-girls were born to steal, and no fox-girl is quicker or cleverer than she.
“Cocky child.” Another Crow Lord speaks, and the fox-girl turns to him. His eyes are cold, harder than those of his brothers, filled with contempt.
“You must learn your place,” the Crow Lord continues. “I will take your name to teach you respect.”
Every fox-girl earns her name. It is a battle, hard-won with teeth and claws, with wit, and cunning, and quickness. But with a thought the Crow Lord rips her name away, leaving a hole where a thing she can’t even remember anymore used to be. The hole fills with ice; it slows her blood and threatens to stop her breath. She shivers as though at winter’s deepest cold.
The Crow Lord steps down from the platform and crouches. She could reach his throat, tear it out. The cold spreading from the place where her name used to be keeps her from doing anything at all. He laughs—a sound like rustling wings.
He grabs her muzzle, forcing open her jaws. Her needle-sharp teeth are so close to his skin, but she cannot close them while he holds her.
“I could snap your neck,” he says in a voice like feathers brushed against fur. “I could rip your lower jaw from your skull and leave you broken and bleeding on the floor.”
With his free hand the Crow Lord takes a smooth stone from the pocket of his long, black coat. He places it on her tongue. She expects it to be cold—and maybe it is—but it also burns.
“Your name belongs to me until the moment I choose to return it, if I ever do.”
He lets her go. She wants to retch. She wants to whimper and yip, but she won’t give him the satisfaction. He watches her with hard, empty eyes. She does not look away. The shadow of a smile lifts the edges of the Crow Lord’s mouth.
She knew when she walked into the Crow Lords’ hall that this could happen, but she came anyway, because no other fox-girl would. When the Crow Lords fly, her sisters lower their eyes. They keep their places, the places the Crow Lords give them. They whine and show their bellies. And if the Crow Lords’ sharp beaks seek their lights and their livers, they hold their teeth, and whimper as they die.
So for the sake of her sisters, she refuses to look down. She needs to show the crows that at least one fox-girl is not afraid. She bares her teeth, trapping a growl at the back of her throat. A name is a small price to pay.
“What would you have me steal?” she asks, and she does not say,
my lord
.
“The humans in the tower are trying to resurrect their old magic, their circuits and wires. This time they are trying to infuse it with Crow Lord magic. They have forgotten their old ways, and they have forgotten their place in the world. They seek to steal from the oldest and the highest. We would have you steal from them what they stole from us first.”
“Then it is done.” The fox-girl grins, showing sharp teeth.
She will steal this precious thing for them, not because they asked her to, not for their favor, but because she
can
.
Ani wakes with the moon and stars still bright in the sky. Even now, shadows and oil linger on her tongue. She slips from the bed, and tiptoes past Yuki, who lies snoring on the floor.
The night air is cold, raising goose bumps. It hardens her nipples, making them stand out against the fabric of her borrowed shirt, fabric so thin that it shows the thatch of hair between her legs—dark as burnt wood.
A man waits beside the dumpster with its peeling paint. The chill in the air dampens the smell of rotting food. A rat squeaks its fear at Ani’s approach, turning tail and running. Ani faces the hard-eyed man, waiting for him to speak.
“You took something from me,” the Crow Lord says.
There is pain in his voice where she expected cold anger. She meets his eyes, which are crow-black and hard, but not as hard as before. The moonlight throws his shadow over the cracked pavement. Ani sees the jagged hole where her teeth tore part of that shadow away.
She can taste him, even after a day and a night, she can taste him. He tastes like the sky, like the wind and the stars. He tastes like freedom.
With a suddenness that stuns her, Ani understands. It’s no wonder the Crow Lords look down on her kind. The entire world is a blanket spread beneath them. They speak with the dead; they know each current of air by its secret name. Humans read their flight to auger the future, and everything that walks the earth, or swims the seas must look up to them.
Ani understands, and she hates the understanding. She wants to vomit up his shadow—feathers beak and all—and force him to take it back, covered in her bile. But she can’t. It’s in her blood; it beats in her heart. It is part of her.
“You took something from me first,” she says, thinking of the stone and her name.
“You walked into our house.” Light shines in his eyes. Is he the one who placed the stone on her tongue? All Crow Lords look the same.
“He is my brother.” The Crow Lord reads her mind. “All Crow Lords are brothers.”
As all fox-girls are sisters, she thinks. But she is different now. There is crow-shadow in her blood; she has no name—or rather she has a name given to her by a human man.
She is part anger, part defiance, as she was when she walked into the Crow Lords’ tower. Yet now she is something more. She has tasted crow-shadow and human blood. She looks at the jagged shadow on the ground.
“I could eat more,” she says.
The Crow Lord’s eyes widen. The memory of shadow tastes of power,
his
power. She wants to turn away, but emptiness gnaws in the pit of her stomach—a craving for freedom. The world has been still too long, crows above, foxes below, and men somewhere in between. She growls, a low animal sound.
The Crow Lord doesn’t move. She catches his scent—cold wind, silver stars, and empty sky as black as her fur.
She threads fingers through the Crow Lord’s hair—dark as feathers—and pulls his face close. She kisses him, lip bruising lip in a hungry kiss. It tastes like freedom.
Sharp, white teeth nip fragile skin. The Crow Lord tries to pull back, but the fox-girl holds him tight, licking his broken lip with her long tongue before she lets go. Her eyes glow, fox-fire bright in the dark, and she whispers, “I could eat more.”
Yuki brings her white rice and strips of cooked meat, which Ani wishes he had left raw. There is something so earnest and sweet about Yuki. She thought she understood the world of men, but he is different. The more she doesn’t ask of him, the more he gives. In time, will he learn to read her mind? Will he feed her meat, bloody and raw, and let her lick red juices from his fingertips, flavored with salt from his skin?
He watches her as she eats rice and meat with her bare hands, looking for someone beneath her skin. Ani—the name comes back to her, weighing heavy in the air between them.
“Tell me about her,” the fox-girl says.
Yuki looks up, startled. His eyes are the color of good, clear tea, shining in the sunlight falling through the window. For a moment Ani wants to taste them. She imagines Yuki’s tears would be just like that hot, strong drink. She imagines they could wash away even the taste of shadows and oil and blood.
Ani sees the question of how she knew to ask about a girl die on Yuki’s tongue. He shakes his head and turns away, looking out the window at the glittering tower rising above the waking city.
“Her name was Ani,” he says, which she already knew.
The fox-girl looks at the tower, reflected in Yuki’s gaze. The thousand glass eyes that make up its infinite sides are formed of all the things that people have lost, left behind, and given up by going inside.
“She worked in the tower. When they ordered food, she was always the one who met me at the door to take the delivery. She smiled at me, every time. Sometimes, when she gave me my tip, I think she put in a little extra, even if her co-workers were cheap, so it would seem like more. It’s stupid, but I thought I was in love with her.”
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know.” Yuki sighs. “She called me . . . the last time she called, she sounded scared. She didn’t order any food. She couldn’t catch her breath, and it sounded like she was crying. I think her hands were shaking, because the phone kept moving away from her lips and back, her voice going in and out like the wind.
“Then she was gone. The people in the tower stopped ordering food. I called every number in their directory and asked about her, but every person I talked to told me they’d never heard of her. I’m afraid she might be dead.”
Ani can’t bear to tell him that the name of the girl he thought he loved tasted like ghosts when he first spoke it aloud. She sets aside the empty bowl and picks up the plastic chip marked by her teeth and stained with her blood. She traces the frozen quicksilver patterns.
A memory shivers across her skin, fleeting and quick. In a moment of stillness, she might even catch it.
“If I could get you inside the tower to look for her, would you go?” she asks.
“Yes.” Yuki looks like he might cry, spilling good, hot tea down his cheeks. “But how could you get me inside?”
Ani grins. “I’m a fox-girl.”
Ani sits on Yuki’s pallet, while he sleeps on the floor. Her knees are drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, her mind seeking after the fragment of memory buried under her skin.
Yuki’s dreaming helps. He is dreaming
his
Ani, dreams strong enough to conjure her into the room. Fox-Ani remembers the girl, remembers where she has seen her before. She looks at the rising spire of glass through Yuki’s window, and remembers being inside.