Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“This man,” Hornet says, eyes narrowed like two coin discs. Her mouth is a line of taut white thread, nearly the same bloodless color of her hair. Her room is messier than normal, papers scattered like snow across the stiff broadloom carpet, dried-out pens poking through the blizzard like iron caltrops.

She had said last week and the week before and the week before that she would clean it, but it just got worse. Despite this, Hornet has never forgotten where she’s placed a single thing, down to the grocery receipts Lace lets flutter into trash cans on her way out the hissing grocery store doors.

Lace, herself having been partially indoctrinated to Hornet’s natural inclination towards entropy, pinches a crumbled t-shirt between her thumb and forefinger, cutting a glare at Hornet before dropping it prissily on the ground.

“His profile says he’s moved to Peru.”

“Uh huh.”

“For the rest of the semester.”

“Hm,” Lace sighs. She wonders if perhaps Hornet lives in an alternate dimension. When a girl like Lace stands in front of you wearing what might be considered relationship-revitalizing lingerie in some circles, and a white, lacy, corset minidress in others, one does not simply continue talking about their spider venom research.

“I needed him to sign off on my research,” Hornet says, laptop open limply on her lap. It’s a battered old thing, held together in combination by years of tinkering and thick strips of hot pink leopard-print duct tape. That was Lace’s personal touch. Hornet had asked for black tape; in the name of laptop recovery, Lace had ignored her. “I spent three years on this. He kept saying he would. I need this to graduate.”

“Is this about your spiders?” Lace asks, trying not to wrinkle her nose. Not bothering to put that much effort into it, she fails, her face quickly becoming an emblem of distaste. It’s not her fault. She’s quite annoyed at Hornet, in the way that makes her fingers tap and head hurt.

Lace had made her appearance up to be especially sweet and beguiling today – bought nicer hair gel that promised longevity, put on some cute makeup, clothes that highlighted her ample ass and nonexistent breasts. She had sprayed on the perfume that Hornet had mentioned offhand that she’d liked three years ago while they were spread out on a blanket at the park, had brushed her teeth three times over, and spent over thirty minutes debating if the lacy white shawl was giving pearl-clutching church mother or tantalizing tease, before spending another thirty minutes on the shoes, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and just about every accessory there could possibly be.

She had been so ready. She had been so prepared. Finally, she’d thought when Hornet had sent the text asking her to dinner at a deliciously fancy new restaurant. Even the fact that Hornet had mentioned that she had been invited to dine with a guest free of charge didn’t diminish Lace’s excitement – it didn’t negate the fact that Hornet had chosen her to go. This was her sign, she’d thought. This was it.

She shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up.

“Yeah,” Hornet says, tapping a button frantically and repeatedly, before smashing her entire fist against the keyboard. She fails entirely to notice Lace’s lack of regard. “I had to find out from Garmond of all people . . . why wouldn’t he have told me he was leaving?”

“Sounds like you should’ve gotten yourself together months ago,” Lace huffs. She casts a glance at the alarm clock by Hornet’s bed, but the scarlet numbers are too small for her to make out. “Perhaps you wouldn’t be having this issue had you simply had the forethought to plan ahead. Sounds like you’re paying like a fool.”

She briefly eyes herself in the mirror. Still put together. Her buns are holding up well, like parallel stars on top of her head. Her braids are still immaculate, beads glittering warmly; her edges are laid down exactly as she had sculpted them at home. With the sudden notice from Hornet (only a week to prepare!), she’d taken a risk to not make a hair appointment, choosing to simply rely on her own skills, but so far, she isn’t upset with the results – as long as this style stays intact throughout the night, she thinks she can still be tempting enough.

Hornet looks up at her fleetingly from under her brows, face sour.

“My issue was not my lack of proactivity,” she scolds. “Merely an oversight. If I’d known that that man was planning a trip, I would’ve already taken over the project. I have – in all but name.”

Lace sighs, waving a hand. Little of this interested her. Only the fact that it was Hornet’s problem does Lace stay, like a desperate hound waiting for praise from its master. “Well – don’t you just need to present it? It’s hardly a travesty. If you know merely a fraction as much as I’ve heard you spiel while you’ve used me as your extrospective sounding board over the past few years, it shouldn’t be so hard.”

Hornet’s brows knit in a scrunched line, like the center of a heart beat monitor. “You know it’s not that simple. He’s my sponsor. Technically, it’s his research, but I did most of it and he’d said he’d sign off on me publishing it under my name alone by the time I graduated.”

Hornet graduates with her PhD at the end of the spring. It’s April now – a fact of which Lace is starkly aware.

Her stomach swoops a little, and she wraps her white shawl a little tighter. Abruptly, standing barefoot on the broadloom carpet, a few centimeters away from a mysterious pink stain that’s never come up in the entire time Hornet’s lived in this apartment, Lace feels violently exposed.

“I knew he wanted to go on some spiritual journey,” Hornet mutters. “He’d said as much a million times. I’d just assumed he would wait until I had graduated.”

“Anything he promised you, he was probably high while doing it,” Lace says flatly. “Your lab head is Mister Mushroom after all.”

“Don’t call him that,” Hornet says. “And – yes. He might’ve been high once or twice while I was speaking with him. That’s why I sent an email to myself from his account when he was sleeping at his desk – for posterity’s sake. But it’s all meaningless when he’s not even in an area getting reception. An email’s not going to be enough when the university asks me why I stole his research on spider venom.” She sighs, heavily, whacking her forehead with the bottom of her palm. “I should’ve just forged his signature. Why didn’t I forge his signature? He wouldn’t have even cared!”

She resembles a drenched mouse, twitching nose and pathetic aura aplenty. Lace is sure a piece of cheese would similarly cheer her up quite nicely.

“At the time, you said it wasn’t worth getting in trouble over when you already had permission,” Lace says dully. After pushing a pile of papers to the side, she sits herself quite delicately on a small table by the door. Back straight, eyes half-lidded in disappointment, she tilts her head to the side a bit. “It appears you’ve made a mistake.”

“Don’t I know it,” Hornet mutters, typing something on her computer. Her white hair is pulled up in a tight, ugly bun – a slapshod job that merely serves a functional purpose, not a fashionable one. Her attire has mysterious stains on it, and there’s a large pile of clothes in the corner. Lace supposes that it’s an improvement from last time, when the clothes covered every square inch of exposed floor space. Even the tarantula cage had a shirt draped over it. When Lace had pulled it off, she swears the spider gave her prayer hands of thanks before scurrying back into its house. She thinks it shouldn’t be too grateful; it’s still here for Hornet to mess around with for her research after all.

“Can’t you just do your own experiment?” Lace suggests, turning back towards Hornet. “Forget the professor. Do your spider venom tests on your own time.”

Please look up, she silently begs. Look at me. We have somewhere to be. She wonders if using her shoulders to press her boobs together would create a more appealing look, before deciding that would look forced and desperate. Not that she’s not desperate, but Lace is saving that for a crazier time.

“I can’t,” sighs Hornet. She remains infuriatingly glued to her computer screen. “It’ll take at least another year to replicate the results – for the third time, mind you – and this was supposed to be my last semester. I’d go a little while longer, but we really can’t afford it, not when Hollow still hasn’t finished college. It’s not fair for them to keep putting that off for me, you know?”

Lace knows. Hornet’s sibling is a prominent part of her life, permanent in a way that Lace has never been.

“It wouldn’t be impossible to go one more semester,” Lace says instead. You might not get another chance.” She resists the urge to run a stressed hand through her hair, start pulling at the hair style until it all comes unraveled.

It seems like it’s been a waste now anyway. Hornet’s not looking. She’s never looking.

“Maybe,” Hornet says, sounding unconvinced. “I just . . . I’ll talk to Hollow. We’ll see. I’ll figure it out.”

She drags the bottom of her eyelids down, before scrubbing them harshly. She finally looks up and blinks once, twice, at Lace.

“You look nice,” she says, and Lace is pathetic enough to perk up instantly at the compliment. “Is there something you’re going to . . . ?” Her eyes widen. “Oh – oh!”

Lace affects an act of nonchalance. She rolls her eyes. “You just remembered?” she complains. “Why else would I be here if you didn’t promise me free dinner?”

“Yes, yes.” Immediately, Hornet begins to usher Lace out of her room. “I’ll get changed,” Hornet reassures. “We can still go out. The reservation has a thirty minute grace window, and it’s not too far away, if I can just get – uh – go ask Hollow where the car keys are. Or the bus pass – it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” Lace grumbles, finding herself staring at the hallway wall as Hornet pushes her right out.

“The car keys then. Spoiled girl. Give me ten minutes.”

“Spoiled girl – !”

The door slams, rattling the frame.

“I’m not spoiled!” Lace says at the door, half-stamping her foot for effect. When no response comes, she rolls her eyes. As if ten minutes is enough time to look decent. But if anyone can do it, Hornet would be a surefire candidate.

Lace’s mood is lifted, though. She feels a little lightheaded, her shoulder blades burning where Hornet had touched them, her head spinning with the words spoiled girl, almost possessive, almost romantic. If Lace squinted. If she imagined an overlay of a new tone of voice, where Hornet’s voice had been lower, deeper, and absolutely different in every way, it was almost sexual.

Lace cheerily skips down the stairs two at a time, the rhythm a familiar pattern in the cramped apartment. She even knows to skip the second to last step, which creaks so loud, it sounds as though it might collapse should additional weight lend itself atop the wood. One last time, Lace checks her appearance in the mirror by the front door, before moving into the kitchen.

It’s a small room, made smaller by the lack of counter space and unwashed dishes, piled high but neat in the sink. It’s late afternoon so naturally, Hollow’s inside making dinner, chopping up carrots and mushrooms into evenly diced pieces. Lace is fairly certain she had seen that particular chopping board inside the sink only this morning, and raises an eyebrow at the choice.

“Hornet says she’d like the car keys,” Lace says, tearing her eyes away.

Hollow looks up, still holding the knife aloft. They blink once, quite slow, before letting their eyes drag away to the corner of the room, where a stringy green backpack lays. They gesture once with a finger, before going back to their vegetables.

Lace doesn’t have any lost love for Hornet’s sibling. She knows well that Hollow’s been around Hornet for years, but it doesn’t change the fact that Hollow – or any of the uncanny siblings that had been birthed from that family for good measure – is utterly strange. They’re always watching Lace like she’s about to go berserk, all passive stares and pursed lips. Which – isn’t unfair, but Lace still takes offense in the form of an insincere smile and a flounce in the direction of the bag. It’s been such a long time since Lace had actively tried to sabotage Hornet’s life! She thinks that bygones should be bygones.

Retrieving the car key, which is so covered in keychains it resembles an elaborate cat ‘o nine whip, Lace settles on the couch to wait. She gives Hollow a bright smile.

“What’re you making for dinner?” she asks lightly.

Hollow keeps rhythmically chopping, not even bothering to look up. They’ve always been like this – petty and avoidant. No matter how Lace antagonizes them, they never so much as flinch.

“Whatever it is, you’re off to a pretty bad start with mushrooms,” Lace derides, clicking her tongue. “Not a good choice.”

At this, Hollow does glance up, but it’s only to point up at the ceiling, before they go back to their cutting.

Lace glances up as well, and then sighs.

“Hornet picked them out?” she mutters, and then sinks dramatically into the couch. “Of course she did. That woman’s taste is utterly deprived.”

Hollow gives a half shrug. He draws an ‘S’ in the air, and then cuts it in half.

“It was on sale?” Lace says, aghast.

Hollow makes a slight face. Lace turns white.

“They were about to throw it out!?” she almost yells. “Are you kidding me! Why are you using it to cook!? Is your sister stupid?”

Placing the knife down, Hollow shakes his fist and then pinches his thumb and middle finger together, pulling it away from his palm.

“I don’t care if none of you have been to the hospital yet,” Lace snaps as Hollow picks his knife back up again. “Classic – so classic! Utter disregard. Unappreciative. Next thing you know, she’s going to start getting storebrand.”

Hollow gives her a patronizing look and gives the cutting board a particularly hard chop.

Of the decades she’s known Hornet, it’s only when Lace had moved in with her at the age of seventeen that she began to see Hollow hanging around their sister. At that point, Lace had known plenty about their family, had made it a point to seek out Hornet’s family’s misery – but really, who didn’t? It was all over the news. The cult, the “empty vessel” drama – there had been a Netflix documentary made about it just the other week. Hornet rolls her eyes about it and mutters about all the sensationalization, but as far as Lace is aware, Hollow’s the one who allowed them to be made and gets a cut of the ample royalty check every few months, perfectly content with letting their life be dramatized and warped beyond comprehension. As long as they get privacy and a cut of the check, Hollow lets them do whatever they want with the content.

Last Lace heard, they were doing some sort of exorcism movie – The Conjuring type, a slew of jump scares and helpless children and oodles of blood. It’s sure to be a hit. Some big name actors will be in it. None of them look anything like the Wurm siblings but Lace thinks Hollow had mentioned once that that’s part of the agreement – make the actors so dissimilar to the actual people in the real story, nobody would look twice at the Wurm children on the street.

“You’d think I’d get more appreciation in this household,” Lace mutters as Hollow goes back to ignoring her completely. They’re pretty good at it, but between Lace and their life circumstances, they’ve been forced to be. Far too independent and stubborn in Lace’s opinion. Lace thinks they probably need a long, lifetime vacation, but such a thing isn’t really possible, so Hollow merely becomes a study in blank stares and muted ears.

Tapping her foot on the ground, Lace checks her appearance in the dark reflection of her phone once more.

“Lace?” Hornet calls from the front door. “You got the keys? Let's go – we’re going to be late.”

“We’re going to be late,” Lace mimics in a high voice, pushing herself off the couch and down the hallway. “Who forgot in the first place huh?”

Lace turns the corner. It really pisses her off how good Hornet looks with so little effort; Lace knows in her heart that tonight’s look had come together quickly and slapshod, and had involved Hornet merely taking the clip out of her hair and brushing it out; a quick shuffle through her clothes to find something nice and clean; perhaps a perusal through her scrappy jewelry box. And yet the look had come together quite well – her hair looks only wavy, not messy, her face natural instead of wan. The red dress makes her white hair stark and golden against its backdrop, making the eyes glitter like cooling obsidian.

“I’m sorry about that,” Hornet says, voice infuriatingly sincere. She pushes hair behind her ear, reaching for a coat from the closet. “I had it in my calendar and everything – I can’t believe I forgot.”

She looks at Lace out of the corner of her eye, shrugging on her sweeping red coat. She's so beautiful.

Lace blinks, before she looks down. “It’s fine,” she mumbles, and lets Hornet hold the door for her as she breezes outside. As Hornet locks the door, Lace takes the moment to suck in a deep breath, shaking out her hands as if to dry them.

She can do this. It's going to be fine.

The restaurant is one of those trendy places, recently opened, with food far more expensive than it’s probably worth. However, this particular restaurant had apparently extended an invitation to Hornet and a guest of her choosing for a complimentary flight of entrees. At one point, because of Hornet’s national fame, this hadn’t been an uncommon event nor invitation; now, quite a few years removed from Hornet’s dominant, record-setting victory at the Summer Olympics, they have become far less frequent.

Lace runs a finger along the silver plant boxes outside of the warmly lit place. It’s very open, with wide windows and several wrought-iron balconies obstructed by geometric plant life for privacy. Small fires light the walkways. Lace touches one and finds that they’re fake, but give off a warmth as if they were real.

It’s fleetingly chilly in the evenings, as common with spring. Despite this, the restaurant seats Hornet and Lace outside, right on the balcony – their best table, alleged by the hostess who had guided them there, lipstick a little smeared.

“You’ll love it,” she says, her eyes just barely hovering on Hornet a second too long. “It has a lovely view of the water. You’ll be able to see the sunset. And we have heaters surrounding all the tables, so don’t worry about the chill.”

“The chill isn’t a problem,” Hornet says. “We don’t get cold easily.”

“No?” the hostess replies. Her eyes flicker over to Hornet once again. Lace has no idea if she’s merely a fan, or if she seeks more. Maybe both. Lace despises it all, as she has long since lost her security when it comes to Hornet’s romantic life.

“Thank you,” Lace cuts in insincerely, a blindingly false smile on her face. “Beautiful view. We’ll be plenty warm. No need to reassure.”

“Of course,” the woman says vaguely to Lace, clearly not particularly caring. She watches Hornet more obviously now, before her hand twitches towards her notebook. “It’s just – you’re Beaste, right? The gymnast?”

A fan then. No less intense, but perhaps a little easier to deal with.

“Yes,” Hornet says. She rests her head on her hand.

The woman’s face brightens. “You were brilliant in the Olympics a few years back,” she says, almost shyly. “My boyfriend and I watched the whole thing. He used to compete before he broke his arm. Your beam performance was something special.”

“Thank you,” Hornet says.

“Could I maybe – get an autograph?” the woman says, reaching for her notepad with hesitant hands. “My boyfriend would love it. Not that you have to – but – well –”

“Then why did you ask,” Lace mutters, picking at the skin around her nail. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the woman blink at her, almost as if she’d forgotten Lace was there at all. Lace rolls her eyes. It’s people like these that make her regret any hand she’d had in that particular Olympics in the first place.

“Sure,” Hornet says, reaching out for the pen and paper. “But I would like to enjoy dinner with my friend. It would be preferable if we weren’t bothered about work after this.”

The woman flushes a bright red of embarrassment. The shame doesn’t quite stomp out the glow in her eyes when Hornet hands her back the paper, swirling handwriting detailing her long list of hereditary names. She gives Hornet an abashed grin, holding the paper close.

“If that’s all,” Lace says, having moved to tapping her fingers against the table. “Could our service begin? Or would you like her to carve her name into your back as well?” Suggestively, she picks up the steak knife.

“My apologies,” the woman says, not seeming particularly sorry at all. “You ordered the salmon meal, yes? It will come with curried eggs as an appetizer. We will have that out momentarily.”

As she leaves, Lace comments just loud enough, “This place has the professionality of a tarty tourist stop.” She takes great joy in watching the woman’s shoulders slump as she walks away.

When Lace looks back, Hornet’s giving her an unreadable look.

“There’s no need to antagonize the woman,” she says. “An autograph isn’t unreasonable.”

Lace sniffs, placing one of her long nails on the leather menu cover. “I see no reason why she should linger,” she says. “Her face is not attractive enough to continue to look at, let alone enough so to ask you for an autograph.”

“I thought she looked nice,” Hornet comments mildly, which makes Lace want to chuck the menu straight into the water they overlook. A few years ago, she might have.

The Lace of now merely adorns a pained smile. “Her lipstick was smeared,” she says, “and her clothes were two different shades of black.”

Hornet taps her fingers against the white-clothed wood of the table, staring out over the water. “I didn’t notice that.”

Of course she didn’t notice. She can pick out every one of Lace’s flaws on a whim but she can’t see the many, many shortcomings that glow like beacons in literally anyone else. Hornet had never been a cruel person, but she is unyielding and believes that the decisions she makes are innately correct and cannot be subject to criticism.

Lace wonders if tonight is the best night for her plans. She’d only thought about it for a week, after all, and a week is hardly enough time to think through such a major decision as this. What if her own lipstick was smeared? What if she stuttered, or fainted, or something else just as embarrassing. Hornet . . . I know we’ve had our differences . . .

No – it’s been years since all that. Hornet doesn’t hold grudges and Lace is older now. She knows better. She’s at an acceptable age and mentally, she’s never been better.

Hornet is leaving soon after all. Not physically, but worse than that, she’ll be leaving Lace behind. The change that Hornet receiving her PhD would wrought had tormented Lace for the better half of the last two years. Back and forth she had deliberated, moving ages from twenty to twenty-one to twenty-two as Lace became more of a coward. Is it too early? Is it too late? Lace had chewed her fingernails to stubs and remained frustratingly indecisive. An unattractive trait, but one she possesses nonetheless.

“The food’s all been ordered beforehand,” Hornet says, watching Lace’s hand toy with the menu. “Unless you wanted something specific . . . ?”

Lace waves a hand. “I’m sure you ordered something satisfactory,” she says, “surprisingly. I saw you had Hollow chopping up expired mushrooms.”

Hornet sighs, rolling her eyes. “They weren’t expired,” she says. “I bought them just yesterday.”

“From the clearance,” Lace says, no small amount of disgust lining her voice. “Who knows why it was there?”

“They needed to get rid of it.”

“Exactly!” Lace stabs forward with her finger. “Nobody wanted it!”

“”Mushrooms are good for you,” Hornet says mildly. “They’re a good source of fiber.”

“There are other foods that aren’t half as foul. Apples. Peas. Pasta.”

“I like mushrooms,” Hornet says. “You can put cheese on them.”

“You can put cheese on pasta,” Lace replies.

“Not as good,” Hornet shrugs, clothes rippling with the effect. “I put mushrooms in stroganoff. You like that, don’t you?”

“Barely,” Lace mutters. “You always add enough wine to the sauce to get a Russian drunk. The booze hides the taste.”

“Well it’s good thing none of these dishes have mushrooms then,” Hornet replies. “I got us the salmon. It’s got a lemongrass ginger rub.”

Her phone buzzes twice. Hornet moves to tuck it away, before something catches her eye and she squints at the phone.

“Lemongrass like the mosquito repellent?” Lace complains, although she quite likes the flavour.

She watches Hornet tap a few buttons on her phone. The blue-white of her school email comes up, before Hornet enlarges a particular message, words tiny and faint on the screen.

“It’s just the citronella,” Hornet replies absently. She bites her lip, looking troubled, before she puts her phone away for real this time, putting her hand flat on the table. “The plants don’t have that high of a concentration. You’re hallucinating the taste at best.”

“We’ll see,” Lace mutters as the waitress – a different woman than that nasty hostess – takes their drink orders. There’s complementary wine that pairs with the dinner which the waitress brings out alongside their waters.

Lace’s stomach squirms. She places her hands on the table, opening and closing her hands around the silverware until the metal is sweaty and hot to touch. Hornet does not seem to be as afflicted. She takes a sip of her wine, staring out over the water, still looking concentrated on whatever was in the email.

It doesn’t take particularly long for the food to come – lemongrass-ginger salmon, as promised, with capers sprinkled generously on top, laid on a bed of wild, thick pasta covered in a cream sauce. There’s some sort of salsa side, garlicky vegetables, and roasted potatoes for Lace to pick at while her nerves render her entirely unable to eat her dinner. She can’t focus on the conversation Hornet makes, chatter about schoolwork and the dinner Hollow had exploded the week before. Her brain is all-consuming, already punishing her for this detrimental mistake she is about to use to blow up their relationship. Her stomach squirms. Her head pounds in fluctuating intervals, rising up every time she even thinks about cutting Hornet off to just – confess. Get it out, get it over with – this cuckoo feeling that’s been eating her alive for years.

Eventually, she puts down her fork. She’s sweaty. She’s not ready. She can’t do this – but what if she can’t? Hornet moves on and Lace is left in the mud, the same sticky, jealous child that desired so much, she got burned. She can’t let Hornet get away. She just can’t. She’d learned the hard way that Hornet is not off the romantic market – her last stupid idyllic and impeccably regarded girlfriend had put an end to that delusion – so Lace must act forward in order to satisfy herself. Surreptitiously, she checks herself in the dark screen of her phone once more, before firming her resolve.

She straightens, recalling the words that had tumbled through her head all throughout the night before. Hornet – I know we’ve had our differences –

“I need to tell you something –” Lace says.

“I just got news –” Hornet says.

They interrupt each other, before they both stop talking as their voices collide. An awkward silence reigns over the table.

Lace stiffens her shoulders, before blowing a cool breath out. “You first,” she says shakily. “I’ll tell you mine after.”

She’s going to do it after all. It’s not a time that comes every day. To confess to Hornet her years-long love – Lace is only doing this because of circumstances. She’s not stupid. Hornet’s moving on from graduate school at the end of this semester – and heading to some summer internship that’s promised her a job on the condition that she has her PhD by May. It is with all likelihood that the Wurm siblings would be moving somewhere cheaper after this, and it is very likely this would be another country entirely. And Lace could follow, but she doesn’t know if she could handle the embarrassment that would come with such a pathetic display of love. At least a rejection would be a soldered end to her longing. Whenever she would feel tempted to go bother Hornet outside their monthly agreement or do anything particularly desperate like buy out the entire condo complex the Wurm family lived within, she could remind herself of this rejection and cry alone in her room instead.

There’s only two weeks left until finals. Hornet will graduate and become inordinately busy at her new job. Lace will be left behind, a tired obligation.

There’s so little time. Lace, sedentary, watches it drain away.

She’s going to do it.

“Alright,” Hornet says. “I’m going to Peru.”

Lace almost drops her hand into her food.

“Peru?” she says, aghast. “You – what?”

“I contacted the head of the department,” Hornet says. “He responded just now. He sympathizes with my plight, but agrees that they can’t just hand me the research that technically belongs to my professor. Instead, he sent me the address that Dr. Pilocibin was heading to – he said if I managed to get verbal confirmation within a week of graduation, he’d help me out with the rest. I’m leaving Thursday. I’ll be gone – a week, maybe? Back in time for graduation and my internship at least.”

Hand shaking, Lace raises her water to her lips and takes a slow sip.

“Leaving the country is no easy venture,” she says. “You’ve never been to Peru before.”

“Everything has to have a first time,” Hornet says. “Apparently, he’s somewhere in Tarapoto. It’s not like I’ll be wandering around in the jungle. Tarapoto’s not in the middle of nowhere. There’s no need for concern. I’ll hardly get lost.”

Lace is not worried about Hornet in that sense. The woman has an uncanny sense of direction. Lace had watched her track a man who’d left his phone in the gym based on only the direction he turned in and the scent of his cologne.

“You can’t even speak Spanish,” Lace says, aghast. “How on earth will you get around?”

“I can speak English,” Hornet says calmly, taking a sip of her water. “There will be people that know English. Perhaps a few will even know French. If all else fails, I will hire a translator.”

“You don’t even know where your professor is.”

“The university provided an address.”

“Isn’t that an intrusion of privacy on their part?”

Hornet shrugs. “Perhaps. But I believe the address is to a hotel that Dr. Pilocibin is no longer staying at, rather than anywhere permanent, which is not allowed when professors go on leave for more than a semester with school money. The president is hoping I will go there and also convince Dr. Pilocibin to give me his real home address.”

“So you don’t even know if he’s there,” Lace says. She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Are you stupid? Do you want me to think that you’re stupid?”

“You do not make decisions for me,” Hornet says. “This is necessary. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea.”

Lace bristles. “I have a sense for these things,” she snaps back. “I don’t like it and I think this is a bad idea. Your ‘good plan’ is to go run all over a country you’ve never been to – which is mostly jungle – and look for your missing professor. For your spider venom research. How is that not a bad plan?”

“It’s what needs to happen,” Hornet says blithely. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the plan is, because it’s the only one that’s going on.”

“Hornet,” Lace says. “Are you serious? Does Hollow know?”

“They will,” Hornet says. “I’ll tell them later. Don’t stress about it. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“So you’re just going alone?” Lace widens her eyes. “All by yourself?!”

“Do you know someone that has the time to go to Peru for a week?” Hornet raises an eyebrow.

“Me!” Lace bursts out, before folding her lips together tightly. She clings to her silverware, before bringing it down on her plate with an aggressive clatter.

“You have school,” Hornet says dismissively. “Exams and such in a few weeks. I’ll be gone a while. It won’t do for you to miss them.”

“You think I won’t?” Lace threatens. “I will! I will miss them, because I’m not going to let you go wander off in Peru by yourself!”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’m going,” Lace snaps, hot anger rising in her chest. “Stop it with the oh-so-mighty appearance Hornet – just because you’re a Weaver doesn’t mean you’re not immortal. You can still bleed. You can die as much as anyone else in this world. And by god – you’re not dying in Peru!”

Hornet pauses. “You’re more vulnerable than me,” she points out. “If it’s too dangerous for me, what does that make it for you?”

“Fine, because I’m going with you!” Lace throws up her hands, exasperated. “Stop arguing! I’m going! Consider it a senior trip.”

“You’re not a senior.”

“In spirit,” Lace snaps.

Hornet pauses, before appearing to consider something. She gives Lace a sideways look before cutting her eyes away to the tablecloth. Despondently, she places a piece of bread in her mouth.

“I suppose you’re an adult,” she says begrudgingly. “Do what you want.”

“I resent that you’re not overjoyed that I’m coming.” Lace aims for brevity with the comment but she thinks she fails; her discontent leaks into her voice and saturates the entire thing like a streak of red on a white canvas – it’s all she can hear.

“I only don’t want you to do something that has nothing to do with you,” Hornet replies. “It was my mistake this wasn’t done sooner. I will come back – you don’t need to worry about our monthly agreement. There’s no need to burden yourself.”

“Montly agreement – you – it’s not a burden,” Lace snaps, before she squeezes her hand tight under the table and calms herself.

“I’m going with you,” Lace says placidly. She pictures a tranquil lake, undisturbed by the rising sun. She’s not upset. She’s not. “That’s all. I don’t care about the agreement.”

Hornet hums in a disapproving tone, and looks out over the water, hair cascading over her shoulder with the motion. Lace wants to pull it – hard. Get something through the girl’s thick head. She also wants to brush it out, braid it thick and intricate with her own beads and jewelry. They're conflicting desires, but not necessarily at odds with each other.

“We might need a translator,” Hornet says distantly, resting her head on her chin.

Lace’s eye twitches.

“I speak Spanish,” she says, trying to make it seem as though she is not tearing her chicken to shreds out of frustration. “While waste time on some idiot who can’t speak it half as well?”

“You do speak Spanish,” Hornet says thoughtfully. “I do not.”

“You don’t.” Lace enunciates this with a jab of her finger. “And I do. Yet another reason why if you go alone, you’ll just get yourself killed. I’ll go with you and keep your sickeningly helpful spirit from trying to solve Peru’s hunger crisis.” She succeeds with the brevity this time, her lighthearted tone quite well disguising her very-real annoyance.

Hornet furrows her brow. “I don’t understand your problem with it,” she says. “Sometimes, people simply need a favor. Besides, didn’t you directly benefit from my ‘sickeningly helpful spirit’?”

Lace flushes dark red and ignores her. “Have you even booked a hotel room?” she mutters, pulling out her phone in avoidance. “Or a flight ticket? How are you going to find him if you don’t even have a real address?”

“I would have asked around,” Hornet says. “He’s a distinct looking man. Someone ought to have seen him.” She pauses, then lays down her fork. “I have not booked a hotel room. Or a flight for that matter. If that is what you’re doing right now, send me a Paypal later and I’ll pay you back. Otherwise, I can book them.”

“Sure, sure,” Lace says, fully intending to never send the request. She finalizes two plane tickets, her manicured nails tapping against the screen quickly. Then, she opens Paypal and Venmo and blocks Hornet on both apps. “Should we just get a hotel room where your professor was staying? Send me the address and I’ll book it.”

“I’ll just get the hotel room then, since I have the address,” Hornet says while unlocking her own phone, which makes Lace want to tear out her hair. Instead, she quickly and neatly snatches Hornets phone from her fingers, outfit precariously dangling over their mostly-finished meals.

“Hey,” Hornet says, making a valiant, sweeping effort to take the phone back. Lace, expecting this, stomps on Hornet’s foot with her heel. While Hornet reels in pain, she opens Hornet’s email, finding a recent email from the president of their university. The address is there. Copy, paste, send. She returns Hornet’s phone.

“No thank you. I’ll pay,” Lace says sweetly. “You’re poor, remember? This entire dinner is a pity gift for the country’s haplessly unfortunate Olympian.”

It’s a mean thing to say, and Lace regrets it when she sees Hornet’s face pinch. But it’s true. Lace has more money than she knows what to do with. Hornet never has enough. And yet every time Lace tried to pay for even a candy bar at the grocery store, Hornet always insisted on paying her back. Recently, Lace had resorted to just stuffing cash into Hollow’s fist, who always had no problem accepting Lace’s money. But it’s far easier to just not have to resort to that in the first place. Who carried physical cash anyways?

“I’ll pay you back,” Hornet says firmly, shutting off her phone and slipping it into her pocket. “You don’t need to worry about my finances.”

It’s an old argument, one Lace is fully prepared to re-hash with an open mouth and flying hands, when the waitress approaches, two plates in her hands.

“Dessert, madams,” she says, laying the dishes before them. “Coconut pudding topped with a vanilla meringue and granita. It’s held in a sweet chocolate bowl, with milk chocolate interior. To the side is a coconut mousse, avocado-lime puree, and fresh passionfruit. Enjoy.” She bows and departs.

Whatever cruelties Lace was about to spit from her lips quickly dissolve and become lost. She pokes at her dish.

It’s cute. A little bowl of chocolate shaped to look like a coconut, and it holds a mound of a custard-y like pudding, heaped with tiny pieces of granita, meringue, and dried coconut. What Lace assumes is the avocado-lime puree covers the bottom of the dish, shaped like palm leaves, small round passionfruit seeds still carrying their jelly-like exterior placed neatly, like clusters of berries on a branch.

“You don’t like coconut,” Lace says before she can stop herself.

Hornet shrugs. “You do,” she says simply. She places a passionfruit seed in her mouth. “I didn’t like any of the other desserts they had on hand anyway.”

Lace thins her lips. She stares down at the pudding, the way it gleams off the candlelight.

The restaurant had some fancy creme brulee. Lace had looked at the entire menu before she came. Hornet’s fine with creme brulee, but she hates coconut. Says it tastes like shreds of pencil waste. Maybe it’s just a texture thing though; Hornet had seemed fine with coconut curry when she’d had it before. Had eaten it without much emotion and then gone to her room. But Hollow had made it, so it might’ve been that she’d just not wanted to offend them.

Whatever it is. Hornet categorically hates coconut.

“The avocado-lime sauce is very good,” Hornet says. “Aren’t you going to try it?”

Lace shouldn’t have brought up Hornet’s problems – it was unnecessarily cruel. But she’d wanted to make a point a little too badly. And it’s just so frustrating how little Hornet confides, how little of her life she wants to share. It’s so, so frustrating.

She takes a bite of the pudding. It’s good. Sweet and soft, the toppings adding a lovely note of texture and point of interest. She can’t quite bring herself to enjoy it.

“It’s good,” she says, voice lowered in shame, and then Hornet sends her such a soft look it makes Lace’s heart beat a little faster.

“Happy birthday,” Hornet says then. “I know I’m a few weeks early, but I thought you’d like this place.”

Happy birthday.

The words ring in Lace’s ears like a gong. So there had been a reason Hornet wanted to bring her out. Of course.

It had never been innocuous. Hornet had naturally never thought of this as a date, nor had she organically birthed the desire to treat Lace. There had always been a reason, an occasion, and Lace is the only one who had read more into it.

Lace feels the opportunity crumble between her fingers. She lowers her head.

“You could’ve brought me somewhere better than a restaurant you got a free ticket to,” Lace sniffs. “That’s all for my birthday? I do expect more you know.”

“Of course you do,” Hornet says indulgently. “What more does such a spoiled girl want?”

In the dim lighting, Hornet is all golden. The fabric of her dress doesn’t quite manage to hide the firmness of her body, the gymnast body she’d retained religiously despite not actively competing anymore. To spend additional time with her, Lace had taken up the routine with Hornet; the learning curve had been steep, but worth it every time Hornet had brushed her hand to correct her exercise stance or take a weight from her. Such activities allowed Lace to wear a little less clothing than normal in a place where such a thing is socially acceptable. Swimming is another activity that lends a helping hand.

She’d never caught Hornet looking, but surely the clothes were having an effect. Admitting that Lace had seen no change in Hornet’s behavior is like admitting defeat.

She can’t stand that. She can’t stand that sort of defeat. So irreparable, so unraveling.

“Nothing,” Lace says, and takes another bite of her pudding. “Nothing at all.”

***

Lace rats Hornet out to Hollow the moment they get back, tattling like a child to their parent: “Hornet’s going to Peru tomorrow.”

Hollow immediately puts down their book.

“Don’t worry. I’m going with her,” Lace says. Offensively, Hollow looks even more worried.

Hornet sighs, giving Lace a nasty look. “It’s just a day trip,” she reassures. “You know I got that email that the Doctor went to Peru for a year-long sabbatical. It’s only to retrieve him. I have the address of the hotel and everything.”

Hollow gives her a long, blank eyed stare.

“Maybe it’s a week-long trip,” Hornet mutters, before throwing up her hands. “You two are too worried,” she accuses. “It’s not like Dr. Pilocibin is in the middle of the jungle. He went to collect data from a genuine, established town. It’s not like I’ll be wandering around the mountain or anything.”

“Too worried?” Lace repeats, voice slightly pitchy. “You’re the one who wandered into the den of a serial killer trying to get some girl’s doll back!”

“It was a worthy pursuit.” Hornet tosses her nose in the air. “And this is different. It’ll be as if I’m going over to Munich for a day.”

Hollow makes a slew of gestures, each one faster and more intense than the last.

“Well I won’t actually be going to Munich because the professor’s not in Munich right now is he?” Hornet replies waspishly. “He’s in Peru, which is where I’ll be going.”

Hollow casts Lace a side eye. She rolls her own eyes and shrugs. She doesn’t know what they expected her to do. Hornet would leave with or without them, with or without a plane ticket, luggage, or a plan. She’d build a wooden raft and sail across the Atlantic and hitchhike across Brazil to get her way.

“Stop looking at each other like that,” Hornet scolds. She yanks open the dishwasher with a clatter. “Despite my own good judgement, Lace will be going with me. So you can stop worrying. Lace will keep you updated.”

“Your own good judgement,” Lace mutters. “If I hadn’t forced myself on the trip, you wouldn’t have me coming at all. With the way you’re acting, you’d almost think that you’re planning on doing something you know Hollow wouldn’t like.”

Hollow raises an eyebrow. Hornet clangs some dishes together.

“He’s in a town,” she repeats slowly, as if the people around her are dumb. “A nice town that I will spend a bit of time there as a – what did you call it?” She turns to Lace. “A ‘senior retreat.’”

Hollow opens their palms and quickly brings them together twice, staring at Hornet very deliberately while doing this.

“What about school?” Hornet says. “I’ll be fine. This is for school anyway – the dean emailed me himself. I’ll just ask him to force an extension for any professors who deny me a final. I don’t think any will, though.” Then, she sighs, long and deep. “I’ll only be gone a week at most. It will be a short trip.”

Hollow presses all their fingers together and then hits the center of their other palm twice.

“Money . . .” Hornet looks vaguely embarrassed now. “I’ll get Dr. Pilocibin to compensate me. He has too much of it. But – Lace is paying for the plane tickets there. I’ll give her money back later for it.”

Hollow’s eyes land judgementally on Lace, who straightens. Their face says why are you enabling this to which Lace squawks and says, “I want to see Peru too! I’ve never been. I’m not going for Hornet.”

Hollow gives her a look that says they don’t buy it.

Hornet pushes herself off the counter. “I won’t be going as a tourist,” she warns Lace. “I’m not going to a resort.” Then, she pauses. “You didn’t book tickets to a resort, did you?”

“No,” Lace says indignantly. “There wasn’t one in Tarapoto.”

“So you know this isn’t a vacation,” Hornet says. “I’ll be basically working.”

“I’ll be busy too,” Lace says. “Keeping a close eye on you.”

Hollow makes three hand signals – GPS. Then, they make a v shape with their fingers and tap their mouth twice.

“Yes, I know where Dr. Pilocibin is,” Hornet says, annoyance flickering across her eyes. “The school gave me his location. And don’t use that sign for him.”

Hollow extends their pointer finger, the palm of their hand facing outward while the rest of their fingers curl inwards, before running this gesture across their other open palm.

“Yes,” Hornet sighs. “It’s only a week. No more, no less.”

At this, Hollow presses their lips together and nods once. They point towards Hornet, before curling their index finger down and then running through three more quick letter sighs – PHD.

“Yes,” Hornet says, voice much quieter than before. “I do need my PhD.”

They need money after all. It doesn’t matter that Hollow’s sold the rights to their entire lives, or that Lace tries to stuff them with money and fixed assets whenever possible. It doesn’t matter that Hornet won several medals at the Summer Olympics a few years ago, or that their parents had collectively once held an enviable amount of wealth.

The only thing that matters is that their father is dead. In his death, he had left them with boundless, endless debt that had incurred from his failing efforts to keep their company afloat.

Everything the siblings do is merely one more attempt to get ahead of things while the rotted boardwalk shakes under their feet. Who knows how much longer they can last? Everything they do only rents them time – the Wurm siblings have never been able to own it. They need money – desperately. And since Hornet has categorically rejected every cent Lace had ever tried to give them, the only method forward is the job market, which Hornet must enter upon her graduation, pending now.

Lace isn’t even sure where the siblings have gotten the money to last this long. Hornet must get her PhD. They do not have time for her to not get her PhD.

So in the end, especially with Lace willing to shell out, there is every reason to go and none to stay behind. This is not a desire, but a necessity. For such a simple trip, a back and forth engagement that has no drawbacks, the benefits are boundless. They’d find Dr. Pilocibin in some rotted hotel room high out of his mind, Hornet would get permission, and then they would leave. Such an easy task is quite agreeable.

Hollow takes their arms and presses them over their chest, hands in two fists. Be safe. Then they split their hands into ‘k’s and stacks them on top of each other, making a circular motion. Be careful. They then give Hornet a weak smile and press her into their arms.

Lace watches Hornet over Hollow’s shoulder. She stares resolutely at the floor.

After Hollow, reluctantly, gave his permission, things go awfully smooth. Lace had never been to South America before. Hornet says she’d been to Brazil for a gymnastics competition once. But Lace hardly counts that because Brazil is not Peru.

She packs a variety of outfits for the occasion. In Tarapoto, the inland town on the brink of the Eastern Andes where Dr. Pilocibin is alleged to be, there appears to be a lot of hiking, beautiful waterfalls and steep mountains to climb, so Lace packs athletic wear and bug spray and sunscreen, several pairs of shoes, her entire hair-care collection, a large floppy hat, far too much makeup, a few books she’d been wanting to read, and then adds a sharpened knife and a vial of pepper gel.

Despite this, surprisingly, when they get to baggage in the airport, Hornet’s duffle bag ends up being several pounds heavier than Lace’s suitcase.

“Did you bring all your silly workout gear?” Lace says, watching the kilograms on the scale climb to a worrying number. “Are you going to juggle bricks in Peru?”

“It never hurts to be prepared,” Hornet says vaguely, effortlessly handing the bag to an airport worker, who staggers under the weight.

“You know, it worries me when you say things like that,” Lace grumbles as they’re ushered through security. She checks which gate; it’s close, so she starts in that direction. “Has Mister Mushroom gotten in trouble with the psychedelic police? Are you going to beat them off him by brute force?”

Hornet doesn’t respond. Lace casts a glance over her shoulder and sees her glaring hard at the tickets they’d printed at the kiosk only a few minutes before.

“Lace,” she says, eyes rising dangerously under furrowed brows. “This says we’re in first class.”

“I’m not sitting in economy,” Lace says right back, gliding over to her. “Sitting in economy and rubbing knees against you for fifteen hours?” She pretends to gag, sticking a finger in her mouth. “I want free champagne.”

Hornet gives Lace a downright malevolent look. “Send me the cost of this,” she hisses. “Evil girl.”

Lace pretends not to hear. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Hornet open Paypal and try to make a rather large sum payment; it brings Lace great satisfaction to watch the message pop up: This user has you blocked!

“Don’t think you’ve gotten away with this,” Hornet mutters, but Lace only flounces away like a cloud, floating off towards their gate with all the worries of a pampered house pet.

They arrive in Lima early in the morning, when the sky is still grey and quiet. A taut, pale yellow lines the horizon, like the center of an over-easy egg. The wait for their connecting flight takes the rest of the morning, but the actual flight to Tarapoto only takes an hour.

Despite the mountains in the distance, the town itself is fairly consistent in altitude, square, squat buildings sitting upon dusty roads and leveled earth. Palm trees grow in many corners; often, they are the tallest structure within their own vicinity. Houses and stores are painted any one of a numerous assortment of bright colors: pale pinks and greens, sky blue, peeling yellows. Rickshaws and motorbikes dominate the streets; the bus that Hornet and Lace ride within is one of the few larger vehicles driving down the roads.

“I want to ride a motorbike,” Lace announces, watching one rev by.

Hornet turns a page in her book. It’s a thick manual about spider mating. “They’re dangerous,” she says placidly.

Lace slinks down the window, nose pressed against it. “I’d be fine,” she mutters. “We could ride one together.”

Hornet looks at her blankly over the edge of her book, before looking back down at a detailed description of spider anatomy.

The hotel Dr. Pilocibin is staying at is one somehow both in the center of the town and yet still tucked away, surrounded by dense vegetation that hides the lodge from the sight of the rest of the town. It’s a pretty array of colors, painted a warm orange, and pink flowers crawl down from mounted trellises wrapped around the side of the building.

“That’s good. It’s nicer in person,” Lace says. “The pictures worried me.”

“Go ahead and check us in,” Hornet says vaguely. She’s not looking at the hotel nor at Lace but rather over Lace’s head, down the dry road and somewhere in the distance. “The reservation’s in your name, is it not?”

“Yeah,” Lace replies, getting on her tip-toes trying to figure out what Hornet is looking at. “I can check us in.”

Hornet nods once, sharply, and then starts to make her way down the road, kicking up piles of dust with her rapid pace.

“Where are you going?” Lace cries, but Hornet only continues forward, merely waving a hand over her shoulder in reassurance.

“Check us in!” she calls back.

Lace huffs. Annoyed, she shuffles some of the dust around with her tennis shoes; she only stops when she sees the fawn color start to stain the white sides of the shoes. Hefting both her and Hornet’s suitcases as well as her backpack, she enters the hotel, engaging the woman at the front desk for their room keys.

She can see the tantalizing blue waters of a scenic pool in the courtyard of the hotel guarded by an array of palm trees. The local flora is tasteful and abundant. She nods once to herself, self-satisfied; she had chosen quite well.

Dragging her bags outside, she looks back and forth for Hornet, finding the girl still hadn’t returned. Instead, Lace can see the distinct white hair in the distance, arms crossed and talking to someone of short stature.

Lace hefts her bags and drags them down the road behind her, bumping them over what feels like every rock in Peru. It’s quite arduous, and also quite hot. By the time she reaches Hornet, there’s a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead.

“ . . . don’t have that sort of time,” Hornet is saying. She sounds annoyed. Her arms are crossed in front of her, posture stiff. “You said you’d be ready to go this evening. At 23:00?”

“Yeah, yeah, things come up y’know?” the man says, smiling in a strange, toothy way. He’s shorter than Hornet, a tan, conical hat on his head and brown t-shirt, khaki shorts, and tan sandals almost blending him into the road behind him. The only part of him that’s not chromatic is the black mustache that curls underneath his nose. “My people got busy. I’ll have to take you myself.”

“You said this evening,” Hornet insists. “I paid for –”

Seeing Lace approach from the side, Hornet suddenly clamps her jaw shut. This draws the man’s attention to Lace, who finds she has had quite enough of it the moment his slimy eyes graze her skin.

“Now Miss Hornet,” the man all but purrs. “You didn’t tell me you were traveling with such a beauty.”

Lace bristles, already forming a waspish retort. Hornet beats her to it.

“You shut your immoral mouth,” she snaps. “You’re talking to me.”

“Ah, but surely you agree?” The man does not look away. His eyes start roving. “Maybe I’d be moved to leave this afternoon if she were to come with me.”

“She’s not coming at all,” Hornet says flatly. “It’s none of your business what she does.”

The man shrugs. “Never let it be said I can’t compromise.”

“Hornet,” Lace says, disgust edging her voice, “who is this?”

“Not relevant,” Hornet replies, stepping between Lace and the man. “I’ll be there,” she says to him. “Tomorrow.”

“I’ll leave at dawn,” the man says. “No sooner.”

“I don’t want to hear any more excuses,” Hornet warns. “Dawn. Fine. You’ll be there or I will be getting my money back.”

She grabs Lace’s arm, pulling her away. She’s so annoyed, she drags Lace almost halfway down the road before she notices Lace is fumbling with two rolling suitcases; only then does she take her own back.

“Where are you going tomorrow?” Lace asks, eyes narrowed. She tilts her head, evaluating Hornet, who watches her right back.

“Northwest,” Hornet says. “The professor’s up in that direction. That guy’s just my ride up.”

Lace adopts a severe expression. “Wasn’t Mister Mushroom supposed to be down here?” she hisses. “Isn’t that why we traveled to Tarapoto? Why are we here if he’s not? Why did you have me get a hotel if we aren’t staying?”

“This was the closest town with an airport. And you’ll need a place to stay. I’m going by myself.”

Lace feels her stomach drop. She clutches the handle of her suitcase tight.

“You’re not going by yourself!” she says shrilly. “I refuse. I’m not being left behind in some hick town!”

“You insisted on coming,” Hornet says blithely. She begins to walk down the road, dust shimmering and settling around her. “This is what’s going to happen. I’ll be back in a few days.”

“Days!” Lace hurries to catch up, letting her plastic suitcase jostle and bump over the uneven ground. “You won’t be gone days to find him! Don’t you know where he is?”

“I do. It’s because I know that I can say I’ll be gone for quite a few days,” Hornet says. “He’s in the mountains. Who knows what state he’s in?”

“If he’s in a bad state, two people are better to handle it than none,” Lace argues. “Are you going to lift him by himself? Besides – I told Hollow I’d keep an eye on you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Hornet says. “The two of you are needlessly concerned.”

“Who said I was concerned!”

“It’s appreciated.” Hornet stops in front of the hotel. “But unwarranted. It’ll be a quick trip, made quicker without the addition of another person. If you want to help me, you can give me our room number.”

“I won’t,” Lace says, “until you tell me where you’re going.”

“To look for Dr. Pilocibin,” Hornet says, infuriatingly roundabouting the question. “If you don’t tell me the room number, I’ll just go ask the receptionist.”

“Hornet,” Lace whines. “You’re not being fair.”

Hornet’s unrelenting. She really goes and gets the room number from the receptionist and then walks to their room, Lace sputtering and protesting at her heels. Obstinance isn’t a good look on Lace, but she wears it boldly, demanding and kicking her feet.

Unfortunately, Hornet does not cave.

“You should use your breath for better things,” she tells Lace. “You’re going to run out of air in your lungs.”

“You tell children that,” Lace mutters. She splayed on the bed in a show of dramatics. “I’m not a child.”

“You’re certainly not,” Hornet says. “A child would listen to me.”

“You know how well I would listen to you if you brought me with you?” Lace sticks her arm straight up in the air, ignoring Hornet’s sigh. “I wouldn’t even flinch. I wouldn’t even protest. You’d be so shocked – Lace is that really even you?” Lace mimics Hornet’s lower voice badly, splaying her fingers out above her, admiring her nails.

“I would be shocked.” Hornet shrugs a pair of pants on, before sticking her wallet inside her pocket. “I’d test if you were possessed.”

Lace drops her hand on the bed, a frown pulling on her lips. “I can be agreeable.”

“Sure,” Hornet mutters. “Maybe when you’re asleep.”

“What if you get into trouble?” Lace jumps up off the bed. She’s wearing one of her nicer outfits – a nice sundress and strappy sandals. She’d done her makeup while Hornet was in the shower, but as always, she’s not sure why; Hornet doesn’t seem to notice at all. “Who’s going to save you?”

“I won’t get in trouble,” Hornet says. She has a nice red blouse on, paired with flared black pants. “You’re overestimating the importance of the trip.”

“I think you’re underestimating it,” Lace says. “You’re abandoning me here!”

She jokes, but she also doesn’t, an uncomfortable amount of genuine animosity sinking into her tone.

“I said I’ll be back,” Hornet says. She doesn’t seem to notice Lace’s mood drop. “We’ll spend time together. Aren’t we spending time together right now? We’re about to go to dinner.”

A dinner Lace had reserved. A dinner she feels like she’s coercing Hornet into. It’s no fun like that.

Lace feels a bit like a pacified child. She doesn’t particularly like the emotion, finding her mental state growing more turbulent the longer it persists.

Not bothering to respond to Hornet’s comment, she merely storms past as Hornet holds the door, Lace’s sandals slapping loudly against the tile.

They walk in silence most of the way there. Hornet tries once or twice to make conversation. Lace merely folds her arms and turns her nose in the other direction. Lace has put her foot down. She decides that she will not talk to Hornet throughout the entire dinner.

By the time they arrive, Hornet looks mildly worried. “Don’t you want to have a nice night?” she coaxes. “You’re being petty.”

Lace refuses to even look. Beside her, she hears Hornet sigh. She’s sure the girl is scrubbing a hand down her face.

In truth, Lace knows she’ll crack eventually. The thought of this being her last night with Hornet before several days without her will wear Lace down. But for now, Lace will dig her heels in like a stubborn mule, milk Hornet’s guilt for all she’s got. There’s no reason not to, after all – Hornet’s being utterly ridiculous.

What could be going on during such a trip anyways? If Hornet wanted to be by herself, she shouldn’t have told Lace she was going at all. Lace feels tricked, but in an undeserving sort of way – Hornet had tried her best to dissuade Lace. She’d tried her best to go by herself, but Lace had butted right in, an unwanted presence that Hornet’s now having to work around.

It’s a rotten feeling.

“Reservation for Silknitter,” Lace hears Hornet say to the hostess.

There’s a long pause.

“Ah – we don’t see you here,” the woman says eventually. “Hold on a second . . .”

“It’s fine,” Hornet says. “We can just wait.” She turns to Lace. “Is that alright?”

Lace sighs, feeling her shoulders slump. “Sure,” she mutters to Hornet at last. “I’m going outside. By myself. Tell me when the table’s ready.”

“Lace –”

But Lace has already turned on her heel, pushing open the doors to the restaurant and striding outside in a few quick steps.

Naturally, Hornet doesn’t follow. She’s far too respectful at the worst of times. But Lace herself doesn’t know how to feel about it; she simultaneously wishes that Hornet would follow her outside and keep pushing, but she also loves that Hornet doesn’t. She likes Hornet the way she is, but she can’t help but desire a push, a simple thing to careen them over the edge.

She fixates on the purpling mountains, splashed warmly with the colors of the setting sun. In the distance, she can hear the faint sounds of a band, a waspish flute and thudding guitar. Intermingling is the sound of clinking utensils, the chatter of soft voices and someone’s loud, raucous laughter, rising above it all. A young couple races by on a motorbike, while an old couple stroll hand-in-hand, speaking with their heads tucked close together.

Lace sighs. She leans her head back, staring at the indigo sky.

Would Hornet ever look at her that way? She can’t help but doubt it when every move forward is met with a firm countermove to beat her back into her place. Hornet seems to simultaneously tolerate her company and maintain a desire to keep Lace at arm’s length. Every time Lace is convinced that Hornet is swayed by Lace’s own ardent love, she finds herself pinholed back into a triple-locked friendship box; similarly, whenever Lace thinks Hornet never wants to see her again, she finds herself drawn back in with company and outings. Hornet doesn’t do these things on purpose, but Lace finds the back-and-forth exhausting. These days, awash in her own maturity, she finds herself wishing more and more that these feelings would fall away to friendship as Hornet so clearly would like for them to; alas, they stick to Lace like wet confetti. She cannot shake them.

Part of her still longs to be bold. It wants the firm rejection, the final cut. It believes that this will set Lace free, that Hornet’s acknowledgement and subsequent gentle let down will be all she needs to finally let these feelings die.

Another part wishes to remain tangled in these emotions forever. It holds no regard for what might be best for Lace, stuck wanly in complacency. Like a butterfly tangled in vines, it flutters its delicate wings, remaining hopeful in the face of doubt, insisting upon the Schrodinger’s paradox of Hornet’s emotions – though she has not confirmed them, she similarly has not rejected them, allowing their potential.

Neither is ideal. Lace does not wish to hope, but neither does she wish for a cauterization of her emotions. To hope is a thousand papercuts; to know is like the veins and arteries were to be cut away from her very heart. In the face of this, Lace beats a spineless retreat.

She’d tried once already this month – at the dinner, which had turned into a birthday even before Lace could even breath. She hadn’t expected that. The hope for something more had been too anticipatory. Hornet hadn’t rejected her – Lace hadn’t even got the words out – but Lace had no desire to soil such a considerate memory with her own vile nonsense.

Peru is also quickly turning into a fading opportunity. Hornet is busy already. Already, she lacks time for Lace. Lace cannot see the future, but the thought of such a thing becoming a permanent fixture makes her utterly ill.

Yet another young couple walks past, swinging their arms in unison. The girl has a red flower behind her ear; her boyfriend has a matching one tucked into his shirt collar. Lace watches them go longingly.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lace catches movement, slyly making its way up to her. She chances a glance out of the corner of her eye, before feeling an ugly emotion roil around in her stomach – it’s the man who Hornet had been talking to earlier. The one with the unfashionable hat and pointed features, the one who had the audacity to flirt with her.

She hopes that he’s not coming for her with an optimism carried by thousands of women who had come before. And yet, she finds when she opens her eyes, his ugly face is blocking her view of the mountains.

Can’t she be miserable in peace?

“Hey little missy,” the man says. “The name’s Grindle.”

Lace doesn’t look at him, continuing to stare beyond him at the mountains despondently. “Don’t care.”

“I’m sure you will once you hear what I have to offer,” the man says. He has a slimy smile and slimier hair.

“I don’t think I will.”

Grindle sighs, before leaning against a pole. “I only thought you seemed rather desperate to accompany your boorish friend over there,” he says, gesturing to where Hornet had gone to get some food. “She’s leaving tomorrow, you know. What are you going to do instead? Sniff around those silly waterfalls? Get lost in the jungle? What a waste.” He shakes his head in false commiseration.

Lace looks up sharply, eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”

Grindle puts his hands up, a sly grin slicing across his face.

“I’m a Samaritan,” he smarms. “I’ve helped poorer creatures than you. For a price, of course.”

“Of course,” Lace replies, keeping the disgust well and away from her tone of voice. “And what sort of ‘help’ are you implying?”

“Perhaps the details of a time and place so that you might accompany Miss. Hornet over there,” he says, gesturing smoothly. “Perhaps the ability to transport you in the same vehicle as her.”

“And ‘perhaps’ how are you going to do that?” Lace says right back. “Don’t you think Hornet would notice me? Do you think she’s stupid?”

“Stupid? No, no – just very stubborn,” Grindle says. “She’ll be looking for me to make a deal with someone else, but she’d never look for me to make a deal with you. ‘T’s why she left you alone huh?”

“So you’d hide me in the back of the car,” Lace says, folding her arms. “Then what? I just – pop out? Surprise!” She shakes her hands for effect.

Grindle nods sagely. “By then it’ll be too late,” he says. “Miss Hornet’s not gonna drive all the way back. She’ll have to let you come with her.”

Lace pauses.

There’s a greedy glint in Grindle’s eye as he leans forward, eyeing her up. “So? Whaddya say?”

Lace – should say no. She should cross her arms and stamp her foot and scream for Hornet, pointing at Grindle and accusing him of solicitation or something. Hornet’s business is her own private business. Lace is involved in enough of Hornet’s life.

But.

Hadn’t Lace come to Peru with the entire purpose to spend sorely-lacking time with Hornet? Hadn’t it been to share moments with her, accompany her through a trying time? This is simply Lace showing interest in Hornet’s personal life. It’s basically flirting! It’s not even intrusive – Hornet had said Lace could accompany her throughout Peru, and if Lace stayed in the hotel, she’d hardly be doing any ‘accompanying,’ no? And she had promised Hollow to keep an eye on Hornet . . .

Lace looks back at where Hornet had gone, before furtively leaning in to Grindle.

“Give me the time and location,” she says quickly, before she can chicken out. “Quickly!”

“As for payment?”

Lace gives him an ugly look but quotes a high figure.

“Hm . . . perhaps something more like –”

“You bastard,” Lace hisses, “you know that’s more and away enough for your silly operation. Here – I’ll give you half now.” She counts out some bills from her wallet and shovels them in Grindle’s hand. Then she fishes a notepad and pen out of her purse. “Now write it down! And if you lie, I will tell Hornet and I can inform you for sure right now – I’m not the one she’ll be mad at!”

Pacified by the appearance of bills, Grindle writes down the information.

“I set the hour a bit before Miss Hornet’s arrival. She’s a precise client. She doesn’t show up earlier or later than the given time,” Grindle says.

Lace wrinkles her nose. Client?

Before she can ask though, Grindle has already disappeared down the road, hightailing it halfway across the street.

“The table’s ready,” Hornet suddenly says behind her. Lace nearly jumps out of her skin. “You weren’t answering your phone. Are you okay?”

“Yes! Yes,” Lace says. Surreptitiously, she slides her notepad back into her purse. “Someone just asked me for directions in Portuguese . . . I simply didn’t know the language . . . they must be from Brazil . . .”

Hornet looks at her oddly, but only offers her elbow in response.

“They’ve got our table ready,” she says. “They’re apologetic. They said they lost our reservation in the mix.” Her face softens a bit. “I really am sorry I’ll be missing the trip. I know you planned for some things for us to do together. I’ll be back quickly. We should have a couple of days together still, hm?”

Lace blinks a few times before pasting a weak smile onto her face. Hornet looks startled at the display. Likely it is because Lace had been so angry earlier – usually, Lace manages to stay mad for a good long while.

“It’s fine,” Lace manages graciously. “I’ve already gotten over it. I hardly need you to have a good time.”

“That’s . . . good.” Her personality change appears to have befuddled Hornet, who cocks her head in curiosity. “It’s supposed to be a beautiful country. Good food, good scenery. You’ll like it.”

“It’s a shame you’ll not be able to see it with me” Lace says breezily. She’s entirely back in control of herself. She takes Hornet’s proffered elbow. “I really won’t miss you at all.”

***

A problem quickly becomes apparent when they go back to their hotel; Lace had only booked one room. Two beds; one room.

At the time of the booking, she’d been being intrepid and clingy, not wanting to be parted from Hornet for a moment. Now, it’s inconvenient. How is Lace supposed to sneak out when the number one person she wants to avoid is in the same bedroom as her?

The solution is found in the method countless teenagers have utilized during their partying weekends – Lace decides to stuff her bed with pillows to give the illusion of a body. She worries Hornet won’t buy it though, so she talks endlessly during dinner of the activities she plans to pursue while Hornet is away – this waterfall and that bar, enough that the furrow between Hornet’s brow is clear and

“You’ll have to tell me how they go when I return,” Hornet says, eyes fixed solely on Lace.

“Yes, yes,” Lace had said.

Hours before dawn, Lace’s alarm goes off in the earbud she had left in her ear. Dreary for only a second, she quickly wiggles out from under the covers, grabbing the pillows she’d received from the hotel front desk the evening before. She even grabs one of her bonnets and some hair extensions and drapes them neatly upon the pillow. Naturally, this would only work if Hornet didn’t look closely, so Lace had additionally taken it upon herself to sign in to Hornet’s phone and push the set alarm back by thirty minutes.

As quietly as possible, Lace grabs her backpack (fully packed the night before), a change of clothes, and slips into the corridor outside their room. It’s so early, she takes the risk and changes out of her pajamas right in the open, stuffing her pajamas away before wrenching open an energy drink she’d brought from home and guzzling it down in a few smooth gulps. Soon after, she’s walking quickly down the road with Grindle’s given coordinates plugged into her phone’s GPS.

It’s a few kilometers away, but she makes it with time to spare. She arrives at a large warehouse, garage doors closed and dark.

Grindle’s standing out in front, half hidden by the shadows. “Finally,” he hisses when Lace shows up. “C’mon, c’mon. Get in; we need to go. It’s right here.”

‘It’ is a battering, dirty old truck. Paint is peeling off of it, and there’s a large dent in the side. When Grindle opens the door, a rancid smell emerges.

Lace wrinkles her nose, waving her hand around. When Grindle sees, he grins.

“What? Don’t like your friend’s choice?” he crows. “She’s a cheap one, ain’t she?”

Lace gives him a withering look. Primly, she steps into the cabin of the truck.

“Grab the blanket,” Grindle says. He hops into the front seat. “Make sure you’re all covered so that she doesn’t see you. Your friend seems like the protective type; I’d be loath to be caught.”

“Whatever,” Lace says, but does as she’s told, making sure the blanket covers all parts of her. Under her palms is a rough grey carpet. It smells worse than before, the blanket so foul it appears to be the sole source of odor in the entire cabin. Lace closes her eyes and prays the truck doesn’t have roaches.

The truck rumbles to life, before Grindle reverses and starts down the road, rapidly increasing speed. He drives for a while, enough time that Lace begins to get nervous about having been tricked – who would Hornet pick between her and Dr. Pilocibin? – before eventually, he comes to a skidding halt.

“Don’t move,” Grindle hisses, before there’s the sound of a door opening and shifting fabric.

“You’re quite late,” Hornet says impassively. She sounds unimpressed. She must not have caught on to Lace’s ploy, but the alarm being set thirty minutes late did not appear to have phased her either.

“Yeah, well, somebody insisted on driving around at the ass-crack of dawn. Get in – we’ve got a lotta ground to cover.”

There’s the sound of leather groaning, and then Lace feels something smack her back – Hornet must’ve thrown her bag back here. With the restraint of a thousand brave soldiers and the fierce determination of someone far too deep in love, Lace keeps from crying out in protest.

The door shut, and the rubbery sound of a seatbelt hisses aloud before it clicks home. Grindle starts the engine once more.

“ . . . it doesn’t smell as bad as usual in here,” Hornet comments after a moment of driving.

“No?”

“It smells like . . . vanilla?”

Lace blinks.

“Like women’s perfume.”

“I ain’t unpopular,” Grindle says after a pause. “The ladies love the money.”

Hornet’s silence is loud and judgemental.

“As long as you’re not ripping them off,” she says eventually. “I suppose a prostitute makes more sense than anyone else.”

“Hang on now – I never said prostitute – !”

“I don’t care,” Hornet interrupts. “It would be pleasurable if we could drive in silence.”

“You’re the one who started talking,” Grindle grumbles, before he shrieks. “Okay! Okay, Jesus – you women are insane!”

After, there really is silence, other than the rumble of the engine and the groan of metal. Lace feels a little better now that Hornet’s in the car. She’s realizing now that she hadn’t quite thought this through to its fullest extent; she had experienced a bit of sunk cost fallacy where she had reasoned that because she’d paid him, Grindle would do as she said. She’s lucky he had. In her desperation, she would’ve gone with anybody.

The car ride is long. At some point, Lace falls deeply asleep; when she wakes up again, there’s a disco song on the radio, the synth piercing and annoying:

It's our last night together with our love again,
Another light before we drown in darkness,
Say you'll never leave me now,
Say you're gonna love me now!

She feels her eye twitch in annoyance. She wishes she could read her book or that she could fall asleep again. Hornet had opened the window while Lace was asleep as well; the shredding noise of wind through the cabin of the truck is constant and violent. Lace is surprised the blanket hadn’t flapped off her while she slept.

The air smells cleaner at least. Though the blanket cover Lace is still strongly-scented, if Lace cracks the border, fresh air flows in like water into a sinking boat. The wind flowing through the window erases the smell of her vanilla perfume at the very least. Lace hadn’t even known Hornet could smell that well.

Lace wonders where they are. At this point, they could be hundreds of kilometers in any direction, north, east, south, and west all equal bets. There’s no way to tell. Hornet gave no indication where she wanted to go, other than a firm conviction that she was going in a direction away from Lace.

Lace has never been to Peru, or even South America, but she imagines dense jungle spread as far as the eye could see. She imagines the layerings she’d been taught about in grade school, the emergent layer, the canopy, understory, and the forest floor. She pictures them exactly as how they’d been portrayed in her book: the toucans and macaws and butterflies on the emergent layer, the monkeys and sloths swinging from the canopy, bats and iguanas and constrictors coiled tightly around trees in the understory, and the lone leopard pacing the uniquely leafy portion of the forest floor. The dense nature of the jungle had not been understated; Lace’s teacher had emphasized how impossible it was to navigate.

When Lace was in one of her final high school years, one of her friends had taken a trip to Brazil to see a football tournament. She’d come back raving about the beauty of the landscape, insisting that Lace take a trip.

Lace bounces harshly against the truck floor as Grindle hits a pothole. Well. Close enough.

The road has become rougher though. Lace finds herself bracing against the back of the front seats more and more as they continue. She holds the blanket tighter and prays they stop soon. She might simply pass out soon enough from the lack of fresh air.

She gets her wish sooner than she imagined. Without warning, something randomly gropes the top of her head and Lace flinches, unable to help herself.

Lightning fast, the hand withdraws. Lace has a moment to hope that the hand was Grindle’s, before this hope is quickly doused.

“Did that blanket just move?” Hornet asks suddenly, voice as piercing as a goat herder’s whistle. “I went to grab my bag and something moved under there. There’s someone else in this car.”

“What?” Grindle says. “Nah. This road’s just jostly. Fucking government and their shitty corruption – not an ounce to shell out for the common man –”

“Who is that?” Hornet snaps. Her voice is savage, abrasive and corrupted.

Lace hears Grindle sputter, “Nobody, nobody – wait, wait – come out! Come out, it’s your friend! It’s your friend, Lassie or what’s her name is! Lower the knife – c’mon lady, please!”

Lace takes this as her cue to crawl out from the blanket, the rough car carpet scraping her knees. She clears her throat at she does so, the nervous thickness in her throat becoming stronger.

“Lace,” Hornet says. Her voice is flat.

When Lace looks up, Hornet’s twisted around in the passenger seat of the car, eyes dark with fury.

“You,” she snarls, and for a terrifying second Lace thinks it’s directed at her. Then one of Hornet’s hands shoots out, clasping Grindle tightly by his chicken throat. “I’m going to wring your wiry neck. Why is she here.”

Grindle tries to say something but chokes. He slams on the car breaks, sending all the luggage and Lace flying forward. Unflinchingly, Hornet retains her nail-tight grasp on his neck, her fingers digging in deeply.

“She asked me!” he finally rasps out. “She paid me! She asked me and paid me! A buck isn’t an easy thing to make nowadays y’know!”

Hornet lets go of his throat, flicking her fingers as if disgusted. Grindle breathes in, the rush of cool air clearly doing him wonders. Already does his neck begin to bruise, a lovely assortment of blues beginning to cloud his tanned skin.

“Is that true?” Hornet asks, turned back around to Lace. “Did you pay him?”

Her voice is no longer angry, but rather deeply weary and flinchingly disappointed. Hesitant, not wanting to know the answer to her own question.

Lace looks down at the grey flooring under her hands. “Yes,” she says at last. “But I promised Hollow to keep an eye on you.”

Something spasms across Hornet’s face and she whips around to place an exasperated hand across her forehead. She mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “Aren’t I an adult?”

“Adults don’t run off to the middle-of-nowhere Peru,” Lace mutters.

Hornet presses her hands deeper into her eyes. “Turn around,” she orders Grindle. “We’re going back.”

“What?”

“No way lady!” Grindle snaps. “I’ve already wasted all this time. We’re getting to the destination. I’m not going back!”

“Aren’t I paying you too?” Hornet says. Her face turns mildly ugly for a second before it fades to annoyance. “Go back. Lace shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?” Lace cries. “Are you kidding? Hornet – there’s no way you’re serious.”

Grindle mutters something nasty in Spanish under his breath.

“I’m serious,” Hornet says.

“Why?”

“ . . . My plans were made for one person.”

“That’s silly,” Lace insists. “Just tell them to accommodate one more person. Hornet – I want to go with you!”

Hornet stills. The look she levels Lace with is almost unreadable. A little suspicious, a little confused, maybe a little soft, but it’s a puzzling ratio of the emotions, a baffled mix of nonsense.

Lace gives Hornet her most pathetic, wretched, and miserable look. She senses that Hornet could perhaps be reasoned with if Lace could get her emotions sympathetic enough.

“We can go back,” Grindle mutters then, ruining the moment. He bangs his head on the stirring wheel. “But I want double and payment for making the trip back.”

“Lace already paid you,” Hornet says, still looking at Lace strangely. “You never finished her task. You can use that money as payment for the trip back.”

“That – that’s hardly anything!”

“I don’t believe that,” Hornet says, finally withdrawing her gaze. “You probably got more money out of her than it was worth. I’ll agree to the double. But it’s either you refund Lace’s money and I give it right back to you for the trip back, or we cut the middle man and just let you keep it.”

“Fine! Fine, whatever. Get out of the car; stretch your legs. I need to fill us back up on gas and I’m not stopping again.”

Hornet nods sharply, before beckoning to Lace. She crawls ashamedly forward, stepping out of the truck alongside Hornet.

The world outside is a brilliant array of green. Dust is settling behind where the truck had already driven, glimmering in the air. Trees sway softly in the breeze, huge leaves shaking as birds take flight. Animal calls ring through the air, the shimmer of bird calls underscored by several strange shrieks. Perhaps monkeys. Lace had heard there were monkeys in Peru.

On one side of the road is a sheer cliff face, climbing high into the sky. It’s so vertical, it almost seems to lean over itself, an optical illusion of a grand scale.

When Lace peers over the other side, there’s a slope, not quite ninety degrees, but steep enough that it would still be impossible to stop forward momentum should one be misfortunate enough to fall. They’re far up in the mountains, close enough that even the clouds are tangible. Besides a vague feeling of nausea and the sensation of her ears popping, Lace hadn’t even known.

Behind her, Hornet’s face has gone back to blank. Lace has no idea what she’s thinking.

“It’s not fair you get to gallivant around Peru by yourself,” she tries, folding her arms in front of her.

“I’m not gallivanting,” Hornet says, mellow. “I’m looking for Dr. Pilocibin. Why would you want to come with me to do that?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Lace challenges. “You said you have his address. Is he somewhere particularly rural? I can handle roughing it for a bit. I’m not inept.”

Hornet looks at her out of the corner of her eye. “You complain about things an awful lot.”

Lace flushes. “That’s different!”

“How so?”

“It just is!” Lace says. “I just complain to talk. I won’t complain a bit if I come.”

Just then, Grindle’s truck comes to life with a loud roar of the engine. This startles Lace, who flinches backwards, running straight into Hornet. From the front seat, Grindle gives them a nasty grin, flipping them an aggressive middle finger.

“He’s so predictable," Hornet mutters.

The truck reverses in a quick two-point turn-around, spinning a one-eighty rather professionally for such a narrow road. Grindle sticks his hand out the open window, giving the two of them a sweeping wave.

“Good luck ‘turning around’ now!” he crows. “Have a nice time walking home!”

“What the hell!” Lace steps forward, shock racing through her bones. “Our stuff is in there!”

If Grindle drove off, not only would they be stranded in the middle of nowhere, but they would be utterly bereft. Forget finding the professor; they would be hard-pressed to get themselves out of the Peruvian mountains safely. Lace, who had half-anticipated a nice vacation, recoils at the idea.

“Hold on,” Hornet mutters, eyes narrowing as she watches Grindle drive away with all their supplies.

“He has our stuff!”

“He’s not getting away.”

It sure looks like the man is getting away. His truck rumbles merrily down the narrow road, cheerily bumping over stones and rocks with little regard for the passengers left behind. Grindle even has the audacity to lean his hand out the car window and wave, rings glinting in the sunlight like casts of fire.

Then – the tire explodes, debris and dirt flying in every which way, making Lace stumble back this time. Hornet catches her, holding Lace steady.

The man loses control of his car, swerving it every which way until he – luckily – manages to crash it into the side of the mountain, avoiding a fall down the cliff that would have cost them their gear.

Lace, watching the events play out with wide eyes, gapes.

Hornet puts a small metal triangle from her pocket. “Tire spikes,” she says before Lace can ask.

Grindle gets out of his car, cursing and yelling and stumbling around.

“Why do you have tire spikes?”

Hornet shrugs. “He seemed a little eager to drive us into a remote part of the Andes is all,” she says as the man storms up to them. “I have a knife too. A gun would’ve been nice, but I didn’t have time to get the proper permissions.”

“Oh,” Lace says. Then she narrows her eyes. “Does this happen often with Mister Mushroom? Like – you needing a gun to rescue him from the middle of nowhere?”

“Don’t call him that,” Hornet says. She doesn’t answer the question.

Grindle finally reaches them. He likely has a concussion – he seems dizzy and unfocused, unable to walk in a straight line.

“You bitch,” Grindle snarls, stumbling forward, “that was my – my fucking truck! How dare you!” He reaches in his back pocket, face contorted in anger.

His vague, confused digging is no match for Hornet’s brutal reflexes, who has her knife pointed under his chin before he can even find whatever weapon he was digging around for.

“Lace,” she says, “go get the bags from the car. Grindle is going to stay here with me.”

Grindle’s eyes are bulged like gumballs, fury and fear blooming rapidly. He spits and sputters, fear keeping him still. But Hornet’s hand is steady. She does not flinch while holding the knife. She’s altogether too calm about this.

“And just leave you here with him?” says Lace indignantly.

“I’ll be fine. We need our supplies. Go ahead.” She gestures with her free hand.

Lace watches Hornet for a moment, taking all of this in.

“Fine,” she finally mutters, before she walks towards the car.

Within the car beside their backpacks, there is also a heat shield, a pack of jerky, sunglasses, a blanket, a first aid kit, several plastic water bottles, the nasty blanket Lace had been concealed under, and a large black box, sealed with a silver rotary lock.

Lace splits all the aforementioned supplies between her and Hornet’s backpack, before dragging the black box into a better position so that she might break it. Single digit rotary locks aren’t hard to pick; Lace simply pulls the handle and twists to find the snags, clockwise, counter, then slowly picks at every number until she finds the one that releases the lock. The silver handle falls away, and Lace snaps open the box.

Inside is a disassembled machine gun.

Lace blinks. Quickly, she snaps the box back shut, grabbing their supplies and slamming the car door behind her. By the time she comes back with the backpacks, Grindle has disappeared, only a pile of clothes where he once had been, and Hornet is kicking the ground, pushing the dirt this way and that.

“What were you kicking?” Lace asks.

“Nothing. Did you get everything from the car?” Hornet says. “I think I saw he had some jerky.”

Silently, Lace hands her the pack. “He had a machine gun,” she says, pointing to the car. We need to be careful is the implication, but instead, a flicker of interest crosses Hornet's eyes. Then she sighs, forlorn.

“That would be too big to haul around,” Hornet huffs, looking disappointed. “We’ll have to climb the rest of the mountain by foot. Unless we can get the car up and running, it will only drain our energy.”

“It’s a machine gun,” Lace says slowly, like Hornet missed it the first time.

“Is it particularly portable?”

“. . . no.”

“Then we’ll leave it behind,” Hornet says again, raising an eyebrow. “We’re going up there.” She points straight up the side of the mountain. “We’ll be hard pressed enough to drag the stuff we have with us.”

She nods, like this is a perfectly reasonable answer. Lace supposes it is. But she feels like she’s missing something big. Hornet doesn’t look panicked at all.

“Where did that man go?” Lace asks. “Did he give your oh-so-vigilant eyes the slip?”

Hornet pauses. Then, almost deliberately, she sheathes the knife that’s still in her hand.

“He wanted to go for a walk over there.” Hornet gestures to the dense jungle.

“Naked?” Lace asks. She gestures to his clothes, which sprawl across the asphalt.

“Everyone has their proclinations,” Hornet says placidly. “But he did have pants on.” She gathers his clothes, tucking them into her backpack. Lace notices that she’s acquired another knife – likely the truck driver’s. “Come on. Before his untimely departure, he did confirm for me that this was the correct mountain. He is a man of his word, after all.”

Hornet looks at her steadily. Lace stares back, backpack drooping from her hand.

“Typical man,” Lace eventually mutters. She starts following Hornet down the dusty road, away from the totaled truck, and away from the red droplets that trailed to the side of the mountain, only a few remaining that Hornet hadn’t managed to finish kicking dirt over.

Grindle must’ve made a break for it. Hornet had naturally responded. That’s all. Lace hadn’t liked the man anyways.

Ascending the mountain is much slower going without the truck. It’s dizzying work, and the trek is difficult. It rapidly elevates at an obscene rate, twisting and spiraling around the cliffs, sheer walls of rock crumbling from the sky. At times, the road is so narrow, Lace doubts even one car could fit across it, let alone two. Other times, the vegetation on either side of them is so dense, Lace can barely even see cracks in the sky. The sun beats down on them so harshly, Lace forgets at times her entire purpose in coming here.

Eventually, the road narrows. The asphalt has long since disappeared.

“Are you sure this is right?” Lace whines, feet so sore she feels like every step is on splinters.

Hornet glances at her phone, then the compass she’d pulled from her bag, before looking back up at the sun. “I’m sure,” she says confidently. “I have a tracker on him.”

“A what?”

“I put a tracker on him,” Hornet says. “Dr. Pilocibin tends to wander when he gets high.”

“That’s not normal,” Lace says in response. “Hornet, I don’t think it’s normal to have a tracker on your professors.”

“Dr. Pilocibin needs one,” Hornet says mysteriously. She stops, rolling her shoulders back. Her backpack seems heavy. It sags with weight, packed dense and firm. It hadn’t been a horrible burden when Lace had grabbed it from the car, but she can imagine that such a thing could build up over time.

“What’s Mister Mushroom even doing out here?” Lace grumbles. Most every step she’s taken has been over roots and thick, tall grass. The path has thinned out to nearly nothing at all, perhaps only visible to someone with an active imagination. She vaguely worries about ticks, then thinks of wolves, then of jaguars. Were there jaguars in Peru? Lace isn’t sure. She somewhat remembers them being referred to as ‘elusive,’ but Lace thinks they’ve long since entered territory that might turn the ‘elusive’ jaguar into a sovereign threat.

“Research,” Hornet replies, infuriatingly vague. “There’s a flower here he wants to look at. It could have medical benefits.”

“Or it’s just some new way for him to get baked,” Lace says, pushing herself over a root.

“It’s not that sort of flower,” Hornet says, checking her phone again. She looks up, glancing around, before tucking her phone away. Her compass remains out, needle wavering within the glass. “Let’s take a break. We’ve been walking a while and I hear running water east of us.”

“God – yes,” Lace groans. “My thighs are killing me.”

Hornet’s eyes flick over to Lace for a moment before moving forward again. “This way,” she says softly.

They walk for ten more minutes before Lace can hear the same sounds of running water that Hornet had described. Even then, it’s thirty more minutes still until they reach a stream, flowing smooth and fast. Lace could cry with relief.

She slumps against the ground, whacking her head against a tree. “It’s so hot,” she complains. “How much further until we reach the professor?”

“A while,” Hornet says. Moving to the stream, she splashes some water on her face before filling up her water bottle. “We’re technically heading to a town so I can catch a new ride. We’ll get you a hotel room while we’re there.”

Just like that, the weariness evaporates from Lace’s bones, replaced by irritation.

“You’re dropping me off there?” she says sharply. “Like a child?”

“Not like a child,” Hornet says. “This is my job. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Your job is not to wander through the Peruvian mountains, looking for your professor,” Lace says, standing up straight now. “If anything, you need someone to come with you. It’ll be more dangerous by yourself.”

“I’ll take that risk,” Hornet says. She puts the water bottle back in her bag, before fronting Lace. “You hardly liked the walk up here. It’s really just a lot more of that. Nothing exciting.”

“Then why can’t I go?” Lace asks, vexed. “It’s not like anything exciting’s going to happen in Tarapoto or wherever place you’ll find for me. At least this way –”

She cuts herself off, the remnant of the sentence I’ll be with you too embarrassing to speak out loud.

“It’s simply not your responsibility,” Hornet says. “What would Hollow say if you got hurt?”

“What would Hollow say if you got hurt?” Lace retorts. “You’re their sister." She folds her arms decisively. “I’m going with you.”

She wants to spend time with Hornet. Of all people, Hornet is not going to stop her from doing that. Lace is going to be stubborn about this. She’s going to put her foot down.

“Hold on,” Hornet says. She’s looking at Lace’s back. “Don’t move.”

“You’re not distracting me from this –” Lace twists around, trying to keep Hornet at her front.

“Shut up,” Hornet says. “Stop moving.”

“What,” Lace says, her stomach suddenly sinking. “Hornet – what!”

Hornet makes a humming noise. She gently brushes her finger against the back of Lace’s windbreaker, and then Lace feels it – the sensation of something moving, something crawling up her spine.

“Hornet,” she says, every syllable like the bite of a knife. “Is that a spider?”

“It is,” Hornet says pleasantly. Her finger prods Lace’s back. “It’s quite fascinating too.”

“This is just great!” Lace says, voice a little more high-pitched than normal. “Just great. Can the Spider Princess please get it off of me?! Please?”

“Look at the shapes on the abdomen,” Hornet says, notably not moving the spider off Lace’s back. “Four black squares on the abdomen, and a reverse color scheme on the thorax. Lovely set of pincers too.”

“Pincers to bite me?” Lace screeches. “Pincers to bite me and chew me all up? Pincers to poison me?”

“Poison might improve your attitude,” Hornet mutters. “But it’s not venomous. It would only be like a little bee sting.”

Lace shudders, resisting the urge to sweep her hand to her back and slap the spider silly. Knowing her luck, Hornet had misidentified the spider and it’s actually an arachnid that uniquely combusts and squirts its acidic guts everywhere when killed by beautiful and intrepid young ladies.

“I swear to god I’ll sting you like a bee –” she starts, before Hornet slaps a hand over her mouth, leaning quite suddenly over her back.

“Hush,” Hornet whispers. Lace does not immediately obey, choosing to squirm around instead. “I heard something.”

All Lace hears is the sound of dripping water and Hornet’s warm presence on her back. She strains her body to try and feel the spider again – to her fear and chargrain, she doesn’t know where it’s gone.

“The spider,” she whispers through Hornet’s hand, only to get hushed again, firmer this time.

“I meant it. The creature won’t hurt you,” Hornet murmurs in her ear. The words send a shiver straight down Lace’s spine. She suddenly becomes very aware of the existence of Hornet’s arms around her shoulders and her mouth, tantalizing and soft against her lips. She has the bad idea to lick Hornet’s hand. “Look. There is someone.”

Lace’s eyes dart to the left. Her eyes widen. There, kneeling by the river, is a man wearing a skull cap.

He holds a large bone weapon, nearly the size of his body. He wears a thick red poncho, the color of boiling hot tomato soup, and a green bandana the color of the living jungle leaves closest to the ground. His hair is neatly braided down his back.

He scoops up a pot of water, humming quietly to himself, before retreating back into the woods.

“We’re not alone,” Hornet murmurs. “We don’t know if the . . . locals are friendly or not. We’ll have to tread carefully.”

Then, she furrows her brows. Without warning, she buries her face in Lace’s neck. Her nose is soft against the baby hairs of Lace’s neck, her lips warm as silk across Lace’s skin.

In response, Lace lets out a truly embarrassing squeak. Her brain clicks offline, vanishing without a trace.

“I knew I recognized your perfume,” Hornet says after a moment. “I should’ve known. Say – how’d you even get out of the hotel room anyway? I swear I saw you when I left.”

She pulls back normally, like nothing had happened. Lace is left stuttering, eyes much wider than they should’ve been for something so innocuous.

“I – I –” she can’t get the words to come out right at all.

Hornet shakes her head. “Nevermind. It’s not important.” Finally releasing Lace, she walks over the the river they’d seen the man at, stepping on stones before she reaches a deeper section.

“No?” Lace replies shakily.

“Well – you can tell me about it later.” Hornet stares vaguely into the distance. Shielding her face against the sun, she looks up at the trees, squinting her eyes tightly. “I’m curious.”

Lace gets a hold of herself firmly, a practiced action she’d learned over the course of many years.

“I just stuffed the bed with pillows,” she says, carefully balancing on a stone behind Hornet. She controls her breathing – in, out. “It’s not my fault you’re unobservant.”

“Can I assume that you’re the one who turned off my alarm as well?”

“I left one on,” Lace says, unashamed.

“That’s true. I suppose it’s my fault for also letting you know the password to my phone.” Hornet shakes her head. She glances sideline at Lace, before her eyes return to the trees. “I’ll make sure to change it later.”

Lace reaches the stone directly behind Hornet. “That won’t stop me,” she says. “You’re not careful about inputting it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole of South American knew your password by now. I’m sure that Grindle guy of yours saw you put it in.”

“Maybe,” Hornet says. She’s still looking at the trees, watching. Observing.

Then, she says, “I’m going to need you to promise me something.”

Squatting down, she kneels by the water, letting the flow through her fingers, before she sniffs the air.

“Maybe,” Lace says. “I’ll think about it once I hear it.”

Hornet casts her eyes over to Lace in annoyance, before flicking water off her palms at her. Lace shrieks, jumping back.

“This is how I know you and your stupid sibling are related,” Lace hisses, assessing her shirt for damage. “All you two do is splash me with water!”

Hornet gives her an indulgent look before going back to her river water, rinsing all the dirt off her fingers. She then stands, folding her hands in front of her stomach.

“From now on, you must only do as I say.”

“Do as you say?” Lace gives her a strange look, only to find Hornet giving her a stranger one in response, all stern and flinty. “Why would I listen to what you tell me?

“You snuck on this trip,” Hornet points out. “That makes me the de facto leader. You’re an interloper.”

“That doesn’t make you automatically better.”

“Lace – you’re a bit of a bon vivant,” Hornet says. “A ‘yuppie.’” She says ‘yuppie’ like this is the first time she’d ever used the word in a sentence, which might be true. “Putting you in a survival situation is like putting a screeching cat in cold water.”

Lace pulls a face. “I’m not that bad,” she says. “Why would I rough it when I don’t have to?”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Hornet shrugs, “just a fact of life. Your experience here is limited.”

“And yours is expansive?”

“Comparatively.”

Lace glares at Hornet, who stares impassively back.

“I’ll promise,” she mutters. “But only for survival subjects. This doesn’t apply to anything else!”

“As if I could really make you do anything you don’t want to do,” Hornet mutters. Her eyes flicker upwards, back towards the treeline. “You’re completely obstinate. Just listen to me and you’ll be fine.”

Completely fed up with Hornet’s distraction, Lace turns around, hands on hips, squinting into the sun to look up into the thick branches canopying them from the sky. “What –?”

There’s a man in the tree.

It’s hard to see him at first. He’s wearing all green and brown. All Lace can see is the glint of a blade – it’s the only thing she notices before he’s on the ground, dirt flying up with his landing. Several more people descend behind him. A few rise up out of the ground.

The man in front is quick. In his hand is a long sword, the handle made of something white and ivory. He holds it in taut fingers as he swings at Lace, precise and fast. Lace only just barely moves out of the way in her shock. She recoils, but falls off the rock into the stream. Because of this, she isn’t able to set herself up into any position other than surrender. She manages to regain her footing within the slippery water, only to find the blade right at her throat.

The man suddenly hisses something aggressive, voice brittle and low in an unfamiliar language – a warning. Lace sees Hornet, hand half behind her back, seemingly reaching for something from her backpack. The man makes a pointed, harsh gesture in Lace’s direction, moving the tip of his blade closer to her neck.

Hornet freezes.

Lace watches Hornet’s eyes dart once to Lace, before slowly raising her hands. She seems tense, like a coiled spring about to burst.

Jabbing forward with his sword, the man rips the backpack off Lace’s back while one of his companions does the same to Hornet. Lace mutters protest, but complies. There’s nothing useful in there anyways; she doubts Hornet is much better off.

The man says something else, gesturing with his sword. A woman with the iron discs nods vigorously, like he had just said something profound. Unfortunately, their language remains unknowable.

When it becomes clear that their language isn’t something that they share with these strangers, the people exchange a glance, before the man steps forward.

“Spanish?” the man grunts in the language. Lace makes a face, but nods.

“You trespass,” he says. “You fight, you can stay. You lose, we hunt.”

“Hunt?” Lace says despondently. “Can’t we just leave? We’re very sorry. We got lost.”

The man shakes his head. “The mountain provides,” he says cryptically. “Good, bad – it must be used. If you are not good, you are bad. The mountain will help you win if you are good.”

“What?” Lace says. She bites her lip nervously. “I don’t understand.”

The man huffs frustratedly, before hitting his fists together, one on top of the other.

“You,” he points deliberately, “fight,” he mimes a punch, “our,” he gestures towards himself, “leader,” he waves a hand, as if to show the height of someone very tall.

“What’s he saying?” Hornet asks urgently.

Lace ignores her. “There’s no other way?” she says miserably.

The man narrows his eyes. “You consent to the hunt?” he says enthusiastically.

“No!” Lace throws her hands up, before lowering them, rubbing her fingers together stressfully. “A second to talk with my partner?”

The man looks displeased, but nods. He does not lower the sword, but gestures with it, allowing Lace to take two separate steps back, moving closer to Hornet. As soon as she’s within distance, Lace yanks Hornet’s wrist.

“They want us to fight their leader,” she says, fingers probably too tight around Hornet’s wrist. “Like – that or they hunt us, whatever that means. Something about a mountain providing for them? I don’t know. Do you think we can run? It’s not cowardly if we’re outnumbered.”

“They want us to fight?” Hornet says, brow knitted. Lace thinks she sees something nasty flicker through Hornet’s eyes before it’s gone, Hornet’s expression as placid as ever. “Both of us?”

Lace pauses.

“Do both of us need to fight?” she asks the man in Spanish.

He shakes his head. “One,” he replies. “Fight against our leader.”

“Just one of us ,” Lace says to Hornet. Instantly, Hornet relaxes. Her hands loosen; she suddenly becomes far more confident.

“I’ll fight,” Hornet says soothingly. “Don’t stress.”

“Are you planning on talking them down from it?” Lace replies urgently, voice rising with worry. “They don’t seem the type to negotiate. Hornet – you’ve never fought anyone in your life! I’ve at least done fencing. I – I can do it.”

“No,” says Hornet sternly. It’ll be fine. Tell them it’s fine; I’ll do it. ”

“Hornet –”

“Tell them. Unless you want to get hunted down the mountain?” Hornet raises a challenging eyebrow. “Then we’ll both be in trouble. And I’m not letting you fight for me.”

Lace bristles. “Don’t patronize me,” she says. “Neither of us are good options. We’re two girls lost in the middle of the jungle – I could fight for you just as well as you could fight for me. In fact – which one of us did competitive fencing for ten years? I’ve won several national titles you know, and fencing isn’t far removed from real sword fighting. The footwork’s all the same. I can adapt it. It’s not impossible, and there are worse things to make work. There’s no need for you to risk your life, not when you’ve not had combat training and persist in a delusion of strength.”

Hornet waits, watching Lace dither with patient eyes.

“Lace,” she says. “I’m not human.”

Lace exhales sharply. “You forget – I’m not either,” she snaps.

Hornet hesitates.

“It’s different,” she says at last. “You know this. You and me – it’s not the same. Let me do it. Weaver blood allows for great capabilities.”

“Enough to win a fist fight against an enemy you know nothing about?”

“It’s something we’ll discover,” Hornet says firmly. “At the very least, it’s more of an edge up than the body you were gifted. Don’t look at me like that; it’s true.”

Lace thins her lips.

“If you want to die so bad,” she mutters, deflating. In truth, she knows that Hornet is their best option. Years of training hadn’t even gotten Lace close to being Hornet’s physical equal. She’d tried and tried and failed and failed her entire life until she’d found out about the whole Weaver soul thing and it had all come together like puzzle pieces on a marble table, laid out in just the right order for a perfect coup d'oeil to strategize a quick method to lay them together.

It didn’t make her feel better though, once she’d found out about Hornet’s preternatural abilities. Not then, and certainly not now. It just made her feel hopeless.

“We’re figuring a way through this,” Lace snaps, jabbing a finger in Hornet’s chest. Then, she turns to the man.

“She’ll do it,” Lace says in Spanish.

The man sighs, looking disappointed. “A waste,” he mutters, but beckons for them to follow.

They walk alongside the river, heading up the mountain in the opposite direction of the water’s flow. Hornet and Lace are separated by two bodies, with the aggressive man in front and two other men behind Hornet. They clearly have deemed her the greater threat, as they all keep their hands shiftily on their weapons.

Hornet, for her part, appears utterly unperturbed. When Lace takes the time to glance back, Hornet’s eyes are half-lidded, almost like a cat who has found a new mouse to toy with in the barnyard. A predator who has found a prey most interesting.

It’s not clear what happens first: whether the thick tangle of trees starts to thin or the houses start emerging out of their depths. Either way, it almost comes as a shock when Lace looks up to find people staring at them from wooden houses, heads tilted in curiosity. They’re in the middle of day-to-day chores, holding hoes in gardens or carrying water buckets or wood. There’s a woman embroidering on the front porch; children running amok with a floating kite, hanging a rainbow tail in the air; a couple of women shelling beans; a man throwing feed at chickens. They all stop to stare at the procession.

The aggressive man in front says something to the kite-flying children, before flicking them a small, amber object. They shout something, sounding enthusiastic, before bolting off, bare feet quick as lightning as they scramble across the earthen flooring.

Lace glances behind her again. She finds that all the people they have passed have stood up to join the parade. They follow behind Hornet, subtle murmurs shared between some of them. One sees Lace staring and makes a quick sign with her hands, as if in prayer.

Eventually, the group stops in front of a small home. The aggressive man goes inside, returning with a selection of different blades, all varying degrees of sharp, all quite deadly.

“Weapon?” the man asks Lace. It takes a second before Lace realizes he wants her to translate.

“He wants to know what weapon you want,” she says to Hornet.

Hornet doesn’t even look like she’s paying attention. When Lace speaks to her, it takes a second for her to focus.

“Oh,” Hornet says. “I’ll use my own.”

She gestures for the backpack, which is held aloft by one of the fellow warriors detaining them. The warrior looks to the aggressive man, who looks at Lace questioningly. Lace gives Hornet a miserable look, but translates.

Upon hearing Hornet’s request, he nods to the warrior holding the backpacks.The warrior slings her backpack from her shoulder, letting the green bag fall to the ground. Zipping it open, she pulls out a long, narrow, short blade with a hollow circle at the end of the handle, wrappings firm and worn.

Swinging the weight around, she reluctantly hands the blade to Hornet who takes it eagerly, almost possessive.

Lace stares at it a moment. “You’re certainly prepared, aren’t you,” she grouses, watching as Hornet hefts the weight into her right, then left hand.

Hornet casts her gaze sidelong in Lace’s direction. “Never hurts,” she says vaguely. “I’ve never been to Peru.”

“This all goes far beyond ‘never been to Peru,’” Lace snaps, already working herself up, but then the man taps her shoulder.

“Come,” he says, beckoning. “Skarrsinger will be there.”

“Skarrsinger?” Lace asks for clarification, but her words trail uselessly after the man.

“Let’s follow,” Hornet says. She puts the backpack back on, but keeps the blade tight within her grasp.

Lace falls back with her, leaning over her shoulder when she gets close enough. “Couldn’t you attack him?” she says quietly, voice barely more than a brush of grass in the wind. “There’s hardly anyone else around. We should run while we have the chance.”

“There’s always someone around,” Hornet says, voice just as silent. “There’s movement in the trees even if those around us are limited. It’s also impossible to tell these people’s combat abilities without having ever crossed swords with them. These people seem familiar in the language of violence and would have no problem using it if we stepped out of line.”

“So what – we’re just supposed to let you go fight some Peruvian mountain man?” Lace snaps, working to keep her voice low. “Despite what you seem to think, I do hold regard for your life!”

“You’ll get your silk,” Hornet says. “Even if I die – you’ll get your silk.”

Lace is so angry at this comment, she can feel her pulse pounding behind her eyes. ‘My silk, my silk – I don’t care about my silk!’ she goes to say, but before the words fly from her mouth like the feathers of a furious bird, they come across a group of people, all circled around an open space, watching the two of them with intrepid eyes. They step aside for Hornet and Lace’s passage towards the center of the ring, marked starkly with white stones.

Lace changes her response. “I don’t want you to die,” she hisses through slitted teeth. “You are going to die, Hornet! You’re going to die!”

Hornet waves her off like Lace is a particularly annoying fly.

“I’ll be fine,” she says yet again. Then, “You’ve been worrying quite a bit. If you’re not careful, I’m going to start to think you care.”

Lace could slap her. Her lips slice a severe line across her face. Her body feels agitated, like her brain had just run itself against a brick wall.

“Don’t say that,” she says lowly, brows low as rain clouds over her face. “Hornet.”

“Just be safe,” Hornet says. She walks to the center of the ring, blade in hand. “Follow what they say. Don’t worry about it.”

The aggressive man steps between them. He begins to herd Lace away, leaving Hornet alone in the middle of the dirt ring, standing straight-backed and tall, casually confident.

“Hornet,” Lace calls. When she tries to step forward, she’s blocked by the man. “Let go of me – Hornet!”

Hornet doesn’t even turn to look. She stands, blade in firm hand. She’s always like this. So independent. Too independent. Lace wants to rake her fingers down Hornet’s back and glue them there so that Hornet might never run off again.

But Hornet doesn’t even look. She just stands there and assumes everything remains passive behind her, as calm as the waves on a pond’s warmest summer day. Lace pushes against the man until he physically drags her out; she bites at him until another man comes forward and assists in pulling her away.

As Lace is ushered out, a woman opposite her steps into the ring, imposing presence clear as glass.

“The Skarrsinger Karmelita,” a man announces.

He is nearly a foot shorter than her. Her height is nearly obscene. She must be over two meters tall.

The woman wears a long dress, dyed the same red as the red of her tribe and stitched with white, flowery patterns on a series of panels, several petticoats making it larger around her. On her head is a bowl-like hat, positioned at an angle, flowers stuffed and piled within, tied around her chin with several chains of clicking beads. Intricate beatwork lines a white lliclla she wears, rectangular patterns prancing up and down the fabric. She wears her hair in two thick braids, tied together with a scarlet hairpiece that is almost reminiscent of a fluffy matzoball. Her eyes are half-lidded as she evaluates Hornet. In her hands is a long rope, weighed down on the ends with several dark rocks.

As she passes, the men and women bow, each murmuring Skarrsinger under their breath. This continues until the entire area is silent as a stone, each watching their Skarrsinger with wide, eager eyes.

Evenly, the Skarrsinger takes a stiff pose in front of Hornet, her eyes calmly watching. The difference between them is nearly comical. Hornet is taller than Lace, but Lace barely clears one and a half meters; the Skarrsinger looms over her with a straightened back and a heavy face.

“Weaver,” she says eventually, in clear-toned English. Hornet straightens up a bit at the address. “Your type is a curse. You in particular – you have done nothing to stay out of the limelight. Even out here, an ocean away, I have heard of Herrah’s daughter.”

“I do what I must to survive,” Hornet replies. “Doesn’t anyone?”

“Even so,” the Skarrsinger says, “you should not have wandered here. While your mother has one of the better ones, you are all Weavers all the same. And that one up there with you – she is unnatural. You bring an experiment with you to our land? Your daring will offend the gods.”

“I’ll dare all I like,” Hornet says, a fraught note entering her voice. “Lace is not unnatural; do not insult her like that.”

Lace, who has now been ushered to the border of the ring, a man keeping a firm grip on her shoulder, blinks, her eyes widening a bit. Her stomach flip-flops, and she pulls her jacket tighter around her shoulders, goosebumps rising at the base of her neck.

“If you wish to sustain such a creature with your own flesh and soul, so be it,” the Skarrsinger sighs. “To entertain such a parasitic creature will only be to your own detriment."

“As you say, it’s my choice,” Hornet says, voice tight. “Are there any rules to this fight?”

“We do not kill,” the Skarrsinger says. She unties her hat and unknots her lliclla, handing both to a man on her right, who bows deeply in respect. “If you lose, there will be other purposes for you and your friend.”

“I would prefer not to kill,” Hornet agrees, watching the woman closely. “Anything else?”

“That is all,” the Skarrsinger says.

She straightens her shoulders and bows. Hornet copies.

They both ready themselves, circling cautiously, sizing the other up. The Skarrsinger balances two of the connected balls in her hand, before releasing them to spin lightly around her body, almost hypnotic. Hornet keeps her blade steady, aloft in front of her. She has a firm, two-handed grip on the thin blade, and she rocks back and forth on her heels.

The Skarrsinger strikes first, sending one of her balls hurdling towards Hornet’s head boldly.

Lace almost can’t watch. Her stomach seizes. She almost vomits.

Then – Hornet twists with experienced movement, removing the momentum from the dart-like throw with her blade. She doesn’t even flinch.

Hornet had done gymnastics for most of her life. To most of the world, it’s the most notable things about her. She’s known for her vaults, precise, lofty things that launch her several meters in the air. She twists, always perfect. She lands, back straight. Arms up.

Lace has never seen her do a bad routine. A faulted one, sure. She’s learned the hard way that Hornet’s not perfect, although she tries her best.

But Hornet’s always been nigh flawless with her physicality. She’d gone to the Olympics and left a champion.

In response to the Skarrsinger’s attack, Hornet lunges forward, kicking her leg straight out, angled up. She moves to the side when Karmleta dodges, bending her back to perform a sweep with her other leg, momentum carrying her all the way through.

The fight begins in earnest.

The Skarrsinger is clearly an unparalleled opponent. Lace, though untrained in the usage of these particular weapons, has fenced competitively her entire life; she knows the footwork of a confident opponent when she sees it. The Skarrsinger is aggressive, her movements firm and unflinching. With her weapon of choice she is sure, aiming deliberate shots at Hornet’s legs to try and trip her up. Every time the balls hit the ground or Hornet’s blade, a loud, violent clack rings through the air. Lace can see the vibrations ripple down Hornet’s blade and notices quickly that Hornet begins to try and dodge the blows rather than deflect.

At one point, the Skarrsinger’s throws begin to be more aggressive, slinging two brutal balls towards Hornets face, which naturally, Hornet is forced to deflect. However, just as her blade went up, the Skarrsinger suddenly flicks her wrist; the balls jerk down, the momentum carrying them to wrap around Hornet’s weapon like a vice. The Skarrsinger hums, before yanking her weapon back at her waist.

Hornet lets go immediately, releasing the tension running thick in the air at the tug-of-war between weapons and using the Skarrsinger’s momentum against her. Before the Skarrsinger could react, Hornet had already swept her weapon up from the dirt, ferociously moving in for an attack. The Skarrsinger dodges and the fight continues.

On Hornet’s part, she remains carefully defensive. It is clear she is unused to the Skarrsinger’s weapon, and edges around it deliberately. Only when the Skarrsinger recoils her flail weapon does Hornet lean in close to the Skarrsinger, striking fast and forcing the Skarrsinger on the defensive. The woman is quick as well though, and her skirt holds vicious blades that fly out when she swirls her skirt with force, nearly getting Hornet the first time she’d moved in for a strike. Though the Skarrsinger has no explicit defensive weapon, she uses her wrists to block Hornet’s blow, which must be reinforced with steel under the fabric of her sleeves – Hornet’s blade does not make a dent.

Hornet quickly is forced to the defense. The Skarrsinger’s attacks are relentless as they are precise, each blow calculated to try and get under Hornet’s skin. When Hornet gets in close, those skirts flare with a dangerous glint, and when she gets too far, the swinging ribbons start to blur once more, forcing Hornet to dodge and block lest they clatter against her head. Hornet, for her part, is patient, weathering the blows and hits with a calmness that Lace cannot seem to find within herself.

The Skarrsinger is similarly as patient. The fact that none of her moves connect with debilitating force does not phase her; if anything, her movements get faster over time, as the strength of the wind increases during a storm. She blooms with the challenge Hornet provides her, skin glistening with life and sweat and the heat of blood as she wretches two knives from the folds of her skirts and throws each one at Hornet with pinpoint accuracy. Lace’s eyes widen at this new move, so sudden and abrupt.

Hornet flattens herself under one, and then springs in the air above the other. While the Skarrsinger recoils from her throw, Hornet takes the opportunity to move in close once more, blade singing against the wind.

She’d been using her own weapon as both a defense and an offense, blocking and responding with zealous rigour. Lace thinks that Hornet might’ve used her silk to stick the blade to her fingers, and is proven right when Hornet launches the blade at the Skarrsinger’s eye, a silken thread recoiling the blade right back at her when the throw proves unsuccessful. Lace isn’t sure why the throw isn’t successful – who would expect that recoil? – except that the Skarrsinger not only dodges the throw, but comes in quickly afterwards while Hornet is still grappling the blade back into her hand. Her blades nearly cut Hornet’s stomach open, but Hornet sweeps the dirt under her feet into the Skarrsinger’s eyes, forcing her to misjudge the distance by a mere hair. Hornet uses the opportunity to twist her body around the Skarrsinger’s back, using her momentum to debilitatingly sweep her blade towards the nape of the Skarrsinger’s neck; this, the Skarrsinger just manages to duck underneath. She strikes out at Hornet’s feet while the woman is unbalanced with her own weapon, finally managing to wrap Hornet’s ankles up in the threads of the weapon.

She lunges for Hornet immediately, blade in hand. Lace stiffens. Though the rules had been simple – no killing – Lace fears that this might be cast aside in favor of total victory. Anything to win. Anything to dominate. Even Lace can understand this desire.

But Hornet appears to be anticipating this. She rolls to the side quickly, avoiding the blade, before slicing the Skarrsinger’s weapon in two, kicking out with her newly-freed foot to make harsh contact against the Skarrsinger’s side. Hornet kip ups, taking her blade into a backwards grip and flinging it across her entire body, point aimed right at the still-down Skarrsinger, whose feeble attempt to toss up a defending blade is quickly shoved aside.

The Skarrsinger is not able to block the blow this time. Hornet’s blade stops just before reaching her eye, angled in such a way that a simple thrust would go right down the Skarrsinger’s throat, penetrating her lungs and heart.

“Have you within yourself to surrender to a Weaver?” Hornet asks, grip steady. “I’d rather not kill you. I sense you have great influence. Fighting my way out of your tribe for killing you would only end in several of your members dead.”

“I am not an ungrateful loser,” the Skarrsinger says, bowing her head gracefully. “I surrender.”

Hornet moves her blade away, righting it once more. The Skarrsinger rises, her skirt flouncing around her like a cloud.

Lace cannot move her face away from shock.

The Skarrsinger bows then, a low thing, her skirts taken firmly in hand and spread to the side. Hornet copies her in a much shallower fashion, merely twisting her body a fraction to the side, accompanied by an inclined head.

Lace eyes are so wide with astonishment, she barely feels a tug on her arm from the man who’d been guarding her. It’s only when she snaps back to herself that she finds herself being led forward by one of the Skarr, over towards Hornet. The crowd of Skarr parts silently for her like overgrown vines in the face of a gardener’s shears. They all watch her with milky, quiet gazes.

The Skarrsinger rises. She says something in their language to one of her men, who nods, stepping forward.

“You will be shown to a room,” the Skarrsinger says. “You and your friend.” She gestures dismissively in Lace’s direction. “I will discuss your needs with you, but I must ask that you leave come tomorrow morning. While you have earned your right to stay here, her presence remains unnatural. I will not have my children exposed.”

She refers to Lace as she says this, who blinks in indignation.

“My existence is not subject to your egocentric morals,” she snaps.

“We will take your hospitality,” Hornet agrees, taking a firm grip on Lace’s hand, “although you must know that naturality is subjective. In the eyes of humans, both yours and my existences are ‘unnatural.’”

“I have never judged myself nor my children by the standards of humans,” the Skarrsinger says. “But that girl – she is a grotesque existence within the uncanny.”

The words rattle like marbles, but Lace’s face drops straight into offense. She sees now that the Skarrsinger has some supernatural affliction contained within her soul, similar to Hornet’s Weaver blood. Despite technically being part of the world as well, Lace avoids much of it for this very reason – her existence is widely shamed. Hornet had long ago warned her that many would see her existence as a deficient one, one with no purpose and no claim to life. But Lace primarily and exclusively interacts with Hornet and her sibling, and thus had little true exposure to this world’s opinion of her.

“Even if you had not informed us we must leave tomorrow, I would have done so nevertheless,” Hornet comments. There’s a note of disgust in her voice. “I would not like to stay in the vicinity of someone who cannot see beyond the debate of ordinary versus unusual.”

The Skarrsinger bows again, seemingly content with Hornet’s judgement. She says something else to the man who has stepped forward.

“He will guide you,” she says. “Someone will summon you for dinner in a few hours. We will discuss further then.”

She retrieves her hat and lliclla from one of her people, before striding off with long strokes her legs. Lace watches her go, feeling foggy and vague.

“Lace,” Hornet calls. When Lace turns to look, she finds Hornet has already taken several steps in the other direction, following the designated Peruvian man the Skarrsinger had assigned to lead them away. “Let’s go.”

Numbly, Lace follows.

The fighting ring was evidently on the outskirts of these people’s settlements; as Lace and Hornet follow the man, more and more houses begin to spring up, agricultural outposts boasting the beginnings of mashua and maize, prospering nicely in the brilliant spring weather. The houses tend to be smaller versions of what was displayed in Tarapoto: single-storied but well-maintained, painted primarily light greens as if to blend in with the vegetation around them.

The house they’re led to is made of brick, with a stucco-like, sagging roof and a bamboo door. The windows have glass in them, but this does not appear to be particularly common; while many of the houses look similar, some have glass and others don’t. Still others have wood fences that wrap about vegetative backyards. Others have two stories. Lace isn’t sure what’s indicative of wealth or status. The horticulture for the house they’re led to proves to be beautiful though, a thick bush overflowing with red flowers blocking one of the windows.

The man takes out a key and unlocks the door. “Dinner – later,” he says to Lace in rough Spanish, to which she responds with an offhanded, “Yes, yes.”

Though the house is small, there is a nice sitting room with a few cushioned chairs and a few kitchen appliances set up on small tables. The main area is painted a lovely, robin-egg blue. A singular door is on the opposite wall; when Hornet opens it, it leads into a bedroom with two small twin beds, outfitted with thick, miscellaneously-stitched quilts to keep out the cold mountain air.

The man silently closes the door behind him. The click sounds like a gunshot to Lace’s deadened ears.

Hornet closes back up the bedroom door.

“It looks nice, at least,” she says. “They’ve left our stuff in here.” Sure enough, their slumped backpacks lay sullen on the rugged floor. Lace does not care about that though.

“Hornet,” she says. The door is shut, and Lace balls her fist. “What was that?”

Hornet sits on the floor, stretching her legs. She takes a handkerchief and a bottle from the bag and begins to rub the blade with some sort of oil. Up close, Lace can see a honey-comb pattern on the blade, the golden glimmer that emerges whenever Hornet tilts the blade into the light.

She sighs.

“I didn’t want you to come,” Hornet starts, as if that makes a single thing better. “You snuck on Grindle’s car. You came with me. If you die, that’s not my fault.” She gives Lace a stern look.

“You better steel yourself,” she says. “Things won’t get better from here.”

“Are you avoiding – you know full well what I mean!” Lace bursts out. “You clearly planned this – coming here and roaming around with that blade of yours –”

“I didn’t plan on coming here. That was an accident.”

“ – roaming with that blade of yours, risking your life while I, what, was supposed to lay around the pool in Tarapoto, sipping a margarita and pining for you while you were out here flinging blades against a two meter Peruvian woman to – to – what are we even doing out here!? Looking for your professor?! What the hell is he doing out here?”

“Professor Pilocibin likes to experiment with plants and fungi that naturally enhance one's soul,” Hornet says, answering the least relevant question of the bunch in her infuriating calm way. “This area’s particularly abundant in them. Naturally, it would attract other creatures who feed off and use soul.”

Lace hadn’t known Hornet’s stupid professor did soul research. She’d thought he’d researched psychedelics. How the hell did he justify getting funding for that?

“Naturally,” Lace repeats, aghast. “Naturally. I’m going to naturally slide my knife into your belly – Hornet!”

“I wanted you to stay behind,” Hornet says. “It’s not my fault.”

This makes Lace so profoundly angry, she cannot help but storm right up to where Hornet was sitting, wretching the girl’s chin in her hand.

“You,” she snarls, “are going to tell me the truth.”

Hornet stares with steady, dark eyes that dilate ever so slightly. Then, she sighs, shoulders slumping.

“You’re so nosy,” she complains, leaning back slightly.

“Does Hollow know?”

“Of course not,” Hornet says. “They have enough stressing them out.”

“And you don’t think it would stress them out if one day their sister never came back from what was supposed to be a simple research trip?” Lace snaps. “You think I would be ambivalent should a week have gone by and I was still by myself in Tarapoto? I would’ve gone looking, Hornet, and I would’ve gone with Grindle and starved by myself in the jungle. All because you were a rotting corpse somewhere in the mountains.”

Something flutters through Hornet’s eyes, her normally stern exterior failing in the face of Lace’s words.

“I’d not have died,” she says. “I’ve not died before.”

“Before?!” Lace screams, taking Hornet’s shoulders in her hands, oozing desperation and fury. “What do you mean before!? This isn’t your first time?!”

Hornet blinks, suddenly and quickly. This is Lace’s only indication that Hornet had said something she hadn’t meant.

“As I said, Dr. Pilocibin likes to research soul-enhancing drugs,” Hornet replies slowly. “I’ve accompanied him on trips like this before. The Skarrsinger was a particularly vicious opponent, and she is truly one of the most difficult opponents I’ve fought. Normally, any fights I’ve gotten in haven’t been half as close.”

“You think that’s supposed to make me feel better!” Lace screeches. “That you’re getting into fights on your professor’s behalf!?”

“He’s doing important research,” Hornet says stiffly. “The fieldwork is a necessary aspect of it.”

“Not for you. You’re doing spider venom research!”

“As I said,” Hornet says, voice a little annoyed. “I’m sorry you had to witness that fight. It’s unfortunate we wandered into the Skarr people. They must come out farther than usual for the spring.”

“You knew they were here?!” Lace whips around, her eyes bulging with anger.

Hornet cuts her eyes away before she bows her head.

Lace presses the back of her hands firmly against her eyes. She has a mounting headache.

“So let me get this straight,” she says slowly. “Mister Mushroom goes around the world to experience cultural acid trips to try and boost his soul, and you go with him as a what – a body guard? To make sure he doesn’t die, because people are willing to kill you over this nonsense?”

“That’s one way to put it,” Hornet says.

“And you kept this from me – and Hollow – why?”

“It would only cause worry,” Hornet replies firmly. “Dr. Pilocibin is doing important soul research that I’m personally invested in. It would be silly to give up, especially when I am perfectly safe.”

“Perfectly safe –”

Lace cuts herself off. She feels viscerally betrayed. Her stomach roils and bubbles like the sea, she herself a bobbing buoy battered by the waves. What can she do? There is nothing in the world that can convince a Weaver she is wrong. There is what the Weaver has concluded, and then there is the incorrect answer.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Lace mutters. She thinks of her mother, and then shuts her eyes tight to block out the vision of the woman. “You just do what you want.”

Hornet stands. “I was thinking of you all,” she says. “You and Hollow. And wasn’t I right? Isn’t this causing you undue worry now? It was better when you didn’t know.”

The bolt of fury that jolts through Lace is so sudden, it’s as if she slammed her fist into the wall. She wants to, desperately. Instead, she straightens.

“I’m going to bed,” she says, neutral. There’s no point in this conversation. Not with Hornet so stubborn as to remain deliberately blind to the damage she’s caused, not with Lace so bound up. She wants to tackle Hornet to the ground and bury her deep beneath it; she wants to beat Hornet to a pulp. She wants to be Hornet’s equal, but she’s always known that this was impossible.

Hornet is quiet. She watches Lace tread heavily to the bedroom door and does not stop her when she slams the door behind herself.

***

The call for dinner comes a few hours later. The sun is low in the sky at this point. A mix of fire and electric lights have been activated, providing a path to the center of the village. When they’re seated, Lace crosses her arms and does not speak to Hornet.

Hornet watches her as if thinking about how to placate a feral streetcat. Lace doesn’t appreciate it.

This tense silence is broken by neither of them. Lace is hard-pressed enough to admit her own wrongdoing when she’s genuinely at fault; when it comes to a situation such as this, where she’s right and has a right to be angry, she will not break. It’s something her own mother possessed in spades and it’s something that resides within Hornet as well; in this way, Lace is as close to being a Weaver as she’s ever gotten. She had always occupied a unique space in every life she’d affected – almost like them but never quite, almost human but never fitting, almost Weaver but born wrong. Her mother had raised her wrong. Her mother had raised her reliant.

In this way, Lace has now become reliant on Hornet. It’s not necessarily willing; not in the objective sense. Lace had minded at first, even if she doesn’t now; her love for Hornet had blossomed with Hornet’s disregard and lack of interest in taking dominant responsibility over Lace’s life. She had taken in Lace while Lace had been at her lowest and demanded not a single thing in return. She had been downright uncomfortable with the notion.

At the time, Lace had been grateful; nowadays, it’s only frustrating. Lace possesses none of the immaturity of teenagedom anymore, nor is her mental health as dire as it once had been. Hornet’s resolute determination towards Lace’s independence and freedom has become a persistent thorn and a solid brick wall cutting through the bowels of their relationship.

With her whole heart, Lace wants to be Hornet’s everything. She doesn’t know how to acquire this though. She’d tried a slew of personas; none had appealed. She’d tried naturality and beauty, she’d tried gifts both monetary and homemade. There had been one time she’d gotten herself wine-drunk and broken into Hornet’s apartment wearing a dainty and gossamer opaline slip, all but dragging gloss-stained lips across Hornet’s cheek. And Hornet had tucked her in to bed. To bed!

It had hit Lace’s confidence so hard, she’d had red-stained eyes for weeks. She’d only thought that she’d seen Hornet’s gaze getting longer sometimes when they were studying together – a little more lingering, a little more appreciative. She’d thought perhaps something changed, but perhaps nothing ever had. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d misread such a situation.

But so badly does Lace want Hornet to want her. She wants Hornet to keep her. She wants Hornet to trust her. So much does she hate her younger self for being jealous of Hornet. So much does she hate that her younger self had been so bitter. She’d do almost anything for their relationship to change.

But here she is – still stagnant. They sit across from each other and stare at the swirls in the wooden table.

Lace isn’t sure if the Skarr eat communally every night, but tonight seems to be one such dinner. The Skarr scatter across a variety of outdoor seatings, benches and blankets spread on the group and wooden tables, all organized cacophonously. The chatter spills over like boiling milk, rising and falling, the occasional voice soaring distinctly above the rest. Women start to bring out dishes; rolls of bread, trays of rice, a thick-looking, steaming stew that smells of meat, garlic, cilantro, and fermented corn, bowls of simmered beans and braised yucca root, soft-boiled eggs and salted fish. Food is distributed via a buffet. Hornet grabs two dishes without asking, shoving a heavy plate of beans, bread, rice, and yucca accompanied by a bowl of soup in Lace’s direction before going back to get her own food.

It’s good food. It’s good enough that Lace almost feels bad she can’t enjoy it.

Hornet eats all of her first plate and goes back for seconds. Lace stabs at her soup with no small amount of disregard. She’s still hungry enough that despite the fact that her anger is making her feel quite ill, she eats it, though her bubbling anger doesn’t let her enjoy it. There are the white beans and rice that she picks at for a bit, before Hornet asks, halfway through her third bowl of soup, “Are you going to eat that?” and Lace knows it’s just to annoy her.

She glares at Hornet, pulling her food close to her body.

“Get more of your own,” she snaps, the first words she’s said to Hornet all evening. “Or do you need my permission all of a sudden?”

Hornet looks back down at the table. Lace huffs, the taste of rice sour in her mouth.

Whatever. It’s not Lace’s responsibility to ensure that Hornet feels great about her decisions. In fact, she’d be pleased if Hornet was feeling a little pressed right now, but Lace doesn’t think Hornet treasures their relationship that same way Lace does.

Lace hits the bottom of her soup bowl with her spoon again. She wants to curl up in her bed. Though she had just woken, she feels as though she had gotten little sleep, longing too much for her bed back at home. She appreciates its comfort all the more when she’s away from it. She does not feel as though she had rested at all, brain already exhausted from being in Hornet’s polarizing presence.

She takes another pointed slurp of her soup.

In front of her, Hornet’s eyes flick up once, then again, this time widening in recognition. She sits up a little straighter, putting down her cutlery and laying her hands on the table. Curiosity bubbles up in Lace, but before she can bite out a question, Hornet says:

“Shakra? What are you doing here?”

Lace freezes, her hand halfway to her mouth.

“Hornet Beaste!” Shakra says, bold voice both familiar and dreaded. “And Lace Silknitter! It is good to see you two safe in such a remote place!”

Lace almost snaps the wood fork. Right down the middle – a clean break with no splinters. Just like that, her bad day had suddenly gotten worse.

Shakra is a tall, stick-thin girl with two thick, neat cornrow braids that hang down to her waist. She’s brutally smart. From the coast of Senegal, because of her work with geographical anthropology in the Sine-Saloum Delta, she had been given a scholarship to attend a French university of her choosing. Additionally, she has the look of a model – a serious but narrow face, almost like a wisp of a cloud. Large golden bracelets jangle on both wrists, matching the hoops hanging from her ears and the beads she’d had woven into her hair. Last Lace had heard, Shakra’s doing something with logging cultural South American disaster education – real down-to-earth things that involve her going to places of common disaster and tracking fatalities and flooding patterns to create ample warning systems for the locals, then tracking their migration patterns to evaluate the best plan of evacuation. When she and Hornet had been dating, it had been all Lace ever heard about – Shakra is going on a dive to map the ocean floor, or Shakra is flying to Belize to research coastal flooding in a tropical zone. Obviously all this had been paid and sponsored through outside organizations; Shakra is just so outstanding that the entire world needs to recognize her genius.

“It is good to see you as well,” Hornet says. Lace does not share this sentiment. “I’m assuming that you’re here for your new anthropological project? Last I heard, you had gone south with your professor. What are you doing with the Northern Skarr?”

“The Northern Skarr were our preferred choice all along,” Shakra says, her voice gruff and firm as it’s always been. Everything she says sounds like a command. Every word is accompanied by a facial expression more severe than death. “My professor had sent a letter to them over two years ago. It was only this year that we finally received a response. An offer from the Skarr to conduct field research amongst them is rare as chicken teeth. Naturally, we were quick to pack up and move.”

“Of course,” Hornet agrees graciously. “It’s a fantastic opportunity. If we were so lucky to have something of the same nature, we might’ve had a much easier time maneuvering amongst them.”

“You trespassed?” Shakra looks curious. “Then you must’ve already fought the Skarrsinger. I regret that I had ventured south for the day. Seeing you in action is always an enjoyable show.”

Had even Shakra known about Hornet’s international activities? Why her? What made her so special?

Lace gives a Hornet a vile, shrivelling glare. Hornet studiously avoids her gaze.

“They seemed quite recalcitrant to our presence,” she says.

Shakra nods sagely. “The Hunters’ March is notably prickly about outsiders,” she says, “hence why my professor sent a letter beforehand, asking them if they would host us. She intends to study and preserve these people’s culture, which they said they appreciated. After they accepted her request, we went through a series of trials to show our sincerity. Simple chores and such.”

“Why didn’t we get those sorts of trials?” Lace grumbles.

“You were not invited,” Shakra replies. “The Skarr believe that trespassers are either gifts given from the god of the mountain, or beings of great respect that must be treated accordingly. This is determined through combat. Tahmina Beaste has achieved victory, so hence you are treated with respect.”

Tahmina Beaste. Lace feels prickles in her heart at the name. So loathed at one point. So loved now.

Tahmina is technically Hornet’s name. A part of it anyways. It’s a culture in Hornet’s disintegrated matrilinear family that daughters should be named after their mothers and pre-existing female relatives. There’s a generally accepted minimum of three names (including the mother), but Hornet’s mentioned that an aunt of hers had sixteen names. The mother’s name comes first, then the relative’s names, then the daughter’s own unique name, which is usually how the daughter is to be referred as. So for example, technically, Hornet’s real name is Herrah Odile Rahela Nesrin Elzhana Tahmina, and Lace knows people call her Tahmina and Mina and all sorts of stupid names, but Hornet doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like Tahmina or Mina or Tammy or Hina or whatever cutesy nicknames people came up with. Lace knows this for certain – she’d used to spend all her time figuring out ways to make Hornet tick and one of the most surefire was to coo Tahmina into Hornet’s ear.

Hornet is by far the girl’s preferred name. Lace had asked about it once, many years ago. They were friends of some manner at that point.

Hornet had turned to the side and blushed lightly.

“I was learning to spell,” she mumbled. “My name’s complicated. So my mom would just have me abbreviate it when I was a kid – H.O.R.N.E.T. So she started to call me that, as like a nickname, and it just become habit over time. Hornet’s an easier name to remember anyway, and it’s far less pretentious than Tahmina.”

“That’s rather silly,” Lace had said at the time, but she thinks that she wishes her mother had even a single, ephemeral thought about Lace that possessed a fraction of the amount of love Herrah had for her daughter.

“We’re here to find Dr. Pilocibin,” Hornet says then to Shakra. Lace realizes that she’s been gripping her fork so hard, clear indents appear in her palm when she releases it. “He flew off to Peru before granting me full access to my research project. It’s still under his name, and I need the publication to break into the field. I don’t suppose you’ve seen him?”

Exhaling sharply, Shakra shakes her head, her braids moving ever-so slightly. “I have not, but I remember you worked hard on that. A very important topic to you! I will assist in any way I can.”

And then she pulls up a chair, sitting on it with her legs splayed in two different directions. Lace wants to kick the chair out from under her. Send her sprawling, legs in every which way like a turtle on its back.

The problem with Lace is that she easily becomes jealous over any woman, man, or creature that comes into Hornet’s life with less-than-pure intentions. Her emotions have never been well-regulated, but when it comes to Hornet, they resemble a grenade with its pin pulled. Even when she was younger, locked in the throes of hatred for Herrah’s perfect daughter, mentioning Hornet would send her straight into the clutches of anger, spiraling around and around and sending her straight to a fencing room or a study room or a canvas on an easel and she would practice until her fingers bleed and she collapsed on the ground. Anything to be worth it. Anything to be worthy.

Now, having changed quite little, she’s found that she’s become so lovesick, that the mere mention of Hornet’s name from someone else’s lips has her ill with jealousy. It’s not an uncommon effect Hornet has on other people. Dozens of people consider themselves in love with her, the Olympic athlete; a million people have a crush, and a million more wouldn’t mind having a date with her. She’s as lovely and desirable as they come, and Lace isn’t even one in a thousand.

It was one of the worst days of her life when Hornet had come to one of their study sessions and offhandedly mentioned that she wouldn’t be able to stay after one of Lace’s matches that weekend – she had a date.

The words had been like a bullet rocketing through Lace’s mind. A date? A date with who? Who could be good enough? Who could be worthy? It had always been a sticking point in Lace’s head – that even though she’s not dating Hornet, at least no one else is. Perhaps she might not be of romantic viability in Hornet’s mind, but at least the rest of the world isn’t even worthy to grace the study sessions Hornet holds for Lace personally. But Shakra proved her wrong – that it wasn’t that Hornet was uninterested in the sexual world around her, but rather that she was entirely uninterested in Lace.

Shakra had hung around for six miserable, miserable months. When they’d broken up, Lace had bought herself an entire cake and eaten the entire thing, bit by delicate bit.

“Have you fought the Skarrsinger?” Hornet asks, leaning forward a bit. “I’m curious what you thought.”

“Only in spars. She’s quite good,” Shakra admits reluctantly. “More than a match for me. Her technique is quite formidable; I have never seen anyone use a bolas with quite that amount of weaponized proficiency before. It truly grieves me I didn’t get the see the fight between the two of you. I presume you used a blade?” At Hornet’s nod, Shakra continues. “The Skarrsinger is especially competent combating those. If it ever comes to a fight between the two of you again, keep your blows short and quick. She knows well how to entrap your weapon and pull it taut.”

“She used that maneuver on me,” Hornet says. “It was quite startling.”

Lace hadn’t noticed any startlement on Hornet's face. Only quiet determination and quick reaction. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that she’d been doing this for years, apparently.

The thought sours Lace’s mood even more.

“My professor is quite proficient in combating her,” Shakra says approvingly. “They’ve gone several bouts and the winner is a toss-up every time. In time, I will improve to her level.”

“Where is your professor anyway?” Hornet asks, eyes giving the clearing a quick glance. “I do not remember her being the sort to miss events.”

Shakra blinks. Momentarily, something sharp passes through her eyes, before it fades away. She places a hand under her chin.

“I am . . . not sure,” she admits reluctantly. “A few weeks ago, she had gone northeast to take water samples from an offshoot of the Huallaga River to test its pollution levels. I had expected her back some days ago; in truth, it is what I was doing away from the Skarr camp all day. She has never done things typically, but it is also unlike her to go so long without any communication.”

Though her tone does not betray her, worry flashes through Shakra’s eyes.

“Northeast . . .” Hornet narrows her eyes. She glances once at Lace, before her gaze returns to Shakra. “As in . . .?”

Shakra gives Lace a furtive glance as well, before nodding.

A troubled look drops onto Hornet’s face. Her brows tense.

“She hasn’t returned,” Shakra says softly.

Hornet exhales through her nose, laying a palm on her forehead.

“What,” Lace snaps. “Why not just move to speaking in Ancient Latin too! If we’re going to have a conversation I’m not able to hear.”

Hornet still won’t look at her. She slides her palm down to her eyes.

Shakra finally addresses her. “My professor has gone to a swampy region up north called Bilewater,” she explains. “It is known for being . . . tricky, to navigate.”

“Then why didn’t you just say so?” Lace says, not feeling particularly polite.

Shakra doesn’t reply. Her gaze has returned to Hornet, who is still sitting with her hand across her eyes.

Eventually, she sits back up, face back to neutral.

“I’ll assist you,” Hornet says. “Could you leave tomorrow morning?”

“Yes,” Shakra says. “To leave at first light was my plan anyways.”

“Then we’ll go with you,” Hornet says simply. “It might take us a while – water messes with scent. But I will help you scour for at least a few days.”

“Two put together is better than one,” Shakra says. “Thank you. Your assistance . . . it’s much appreciated.”

She seems truly grateful, her care for Hornet evident although they have been separated by continents for a number of years at this point.

Lace mutinously takes another bite of her soup. She senses she is, once again, not being included in these plans. The thought hollows out her stomach and fills it instead with a large block, one that doesn’t quite fit the mold, one whose edges slide and poke at the inside of her belly.

What about me? She wants to whine, but she’s not so childish and she’s angry, unwilling. She keeps her mouth shut.

“We’ll find her,” Hornet says. “I am heading north anyways. A detour will not kill me. But,” and here Hornet gives Shakra a meaningful look, “we cannot stay with the Skarr. They have allowed us to stay the night, but no more.”

“No –?” Shakra furrows her brow, before she blinks twice and understanding dawns on her face. “Ah. I see. No – I have acquaintances in the area. Lace Silknitter can stay with them.”

Lace grinds her teeth. “I’m right here,” she says, not looking up. “Why must I be the only one who stays behind? I don’t know these strangers.”

“They’re good people,” Shakra promises, although that’s not the point. “You will be comfortable.”

“I don’t want to be left behind,” Lace says. “I’d like to go as well.”

The two women are silent. Lace feels distinctly like an unwanted little sibling tagging along as third wheel for their older sister’s date.

“It’s not that you can’t come,” Hornet says eventually. “It’s just –”

“Then I will,” Lace says. “Thanks.” She rips a chunk out of her bread. She decides then that she doesn’t really care if she’s an interloper – if her presence interrupts Shakra and Hornet’s bonding time, all the better.

Hornet makes a face, a bit apprehensive. “Lace –” she starts hesitantly, but she is interrupted by a bang up in the center of the Skarr’s town clearing, over where a small, make-shift stage has been set up.

At that moment, the Skarrsinger steps out on the stage. Her clothes have been changed to something far more intricate and performative, a few more skirts piled on her body, all more brightly colored than the last. In one hand she holds a guitar, honey-gold against the setting sun. Cheering begins, claps ringing throughout the clearing. Chairs scrape the earth as the Skarr people begin to get up, hands meeting hands and elbows hooking around elbows.

“Is she going to perform?” Hornet asks, looking a little bemused.

“She’s the Skarrsinger,” Shakra says simply. “It is an honorary title. The Skarrsinger brings hope to the village. The Skarr people believe that joy comes from two things: victory and music. The Skarrsinger is their harbinger of both,” Shakra explains. “Their current Skarrsinger is Karmelita, who is gifted in voice, hand, and tongue.”

Hornet takes a surreptitious swig of her drink. “She is gifted in combat, that’s for sure.”

The Skarrsinger strums a chord on her guitar, before lifting a glass from the seat next to her.

She calls something in their unique language, and the clearing, which had chattered with noise only a second earlier, falls completely silent.

“She calls them her children,” Shakra whispers. “It is believed that the Skarrsingers are chosen by the gods to rule, and therefore have temporary possession over the rights of the people’s souls. How could one be more of a parent than that?”

Lace presses her lips together in a thin line.

The Skarrsinger’s speech is short, accompanied occasionally by staccato laughter from the Skarr people. The Skarrsinger seems well-liked and revered, more so than just her alleged connection to godhood. Even godhood cannot make people like you. But the Skarrsinger, a mortal, seems to have no problem in her leadership. In front of her entire clan Hornet had beat her, and yet she still commands the respect of a king.

The high note of a flute cuts through Lace’s reverie. The Skarrsinger had finished her speech. The guitar strums alongside it, and a drum begins to beat in sync.

The Skarr people are quick to stand, finding partners with a well-oiled familiarity. Partners of what look to be decades match up alongside each other, taking fitting hands and clicking their sandals in time with the music. The speed at which they dance is incredible, tense and agile, almost like a fight. But the Skarr people never falter.

The Skarrsinger’s voice is like a moonbeam, subtle and fragile, every note held aloft by a strange, foreign power. Her outfit glitters in the setting sun, her skirts swaying in the wind while leaves skitter across the makeshift stage. All this appears to happen by the power of the woman’s own voice, bending the natural world to her will. Even the instruments soften against her song, mighty in its lone frailty.

The Skarr people never stop dancing, as if missing a step would insult Karmelita’s song. They dance fiercer than ever, skirts flying and hats waved in the air.

Shakra stands.

“Shall we dance?” she asks Hornet, holding out a hand. “I will teach you how. It is not too hard, but we will stand aside while you learn.”

Hornet hesitates. She shoots Lace a side-long glance.

“You’ve clearly never needed my permission to do anything else,” Lace says, not trying to disguise her annoyance, but pushing her deep hurt far beneath the surface. “Leave me be.”

Hornet’s face remains cloudy. She studies Lace with pursed lips, eyebrows furrowed.

“We’ll be right back,” she promises eventually, before allowing herself to be pulled away by Shakra.

Lace watches her go, skirt gliding against the ground. She rests her head on her arms and stares at the two of them sideways, watching the way the dying sun and the firelight glimmers off Hornet’s hair and bounces off Shakra’s golden jewelry, watching the way Hornet’s skirt hits the sides of Shakra’s long legs.

Shakra must be a dozen centimeters taller than Hornet. When they dance, Hornet allows herself to be led while Shakra shows her the ropes. Then they switch, hands fumbling against each other in eager reciprocation.

Hornet had mentioned surprise that Shakra had immigrated north to study the Skarr, but the surprise had not been reciprocated in turn when Hornet had explained she was here to retrieve Dr. Pilocibin. Had Shakra . . . known about all this? Hornet’s responsibility to Dr. Pilocibin? Hornet’s risky behavior?

The thought makes Lace’s stomach sink to the pits. Her mouth feels wooly, dry. She feels like an utter fool, a fool who loved more than she was treasured in turn. Her anger turns to grief, a heavy, sobering emotion. She mourns what she can’t have, just as she similarly wants it. Shakra has Hornet’s trust, and Lace has no idea what the girl had done to achieve that.

What is Lace even doing? Watching the woman she loves dance with someone else? It doesn’t matter that Lace has intruded on this trip – to dance with Hornet isn’t something that she’s ever been indulged in. Shakra had appeared out of nowhere and Hornet seems more inclined to spend time with her. Lace swears that they hung out like, seven months ago. Isn’t that enough?

But Hornet lets Shakra spin her around like it isn’t enough. Shakra lets Hornet spin out, their arms linked, before pulling her back in. Hornet’s white hair spins in a circle, haloing her face, sparking gold. Dance comes easily to her, like it’s a natural state of being. Hornet is a Weaver after all. If she hadn’t been a gymnast, dance would’ve been the alternative. She’s already glorious as a gymnast, all might and pure power. Dance would’ve made the world fall to its knees for her.

The final song is a slow, Spanish one, just the Skarrsinger and her guitar. She’s a beautiful woman, tall and strong. Just as Hornet likes them. Like Shakra.

Lace can wear heels and posture and play pretend all she likes, but at the end of the day, she’s still only Lace. Born too late for significance, too early to be what people needed. Born wrong and remade incorrectly.

The Skarrsinger’s voice rumbles over the people. Hornet, who doesn’t understand, dances closely and easily with Shakra – she laughs at something the other woman says.

Lace, who does, listens.

The air which holds in its hands
the flower of the past
with its perfume from yesterday,
this air says very softly in our ear
its song learned from sunset.
It tells us, with a mysterious voice,
about moon and tuberose,
about perfume and honey,
about how holy is the love of the earth
and how sad the absence that leaves the past.

Everyone returns. [1]

***

The three of them depart north for the swamps the next morning, quite early. The Skarrsinger sends them off, put together despite the hour.

“The eastern jungles are controlled by Groal,” she says. “He’s a drug lord who has paths into Ecuador and Columbia; a fat, greedy man with no regard for human life. He also has a penchant for beautiful women, but a terrible track record for keeping them alive. It would be best if you stayed out of his path.”

Shakra and Hornet glance at each other before looking away. Lace watches them with narrow, observant eyes.

The Skarrsinger hands them all brown, wrapped packages.

“Food for your journey,” she says. “And coca leaves for the mountains. If you find civilization once more, it would be good to get sorojchi pills. You are looking for your professor at a much higher elevation, yes? It would be good to get them then.”

She bows once to Hornet. “Fighting with you was a great honor,” she says. “I have found I have much to learn, Weaver.”

“You were no easy foe,” Hornet replies. “Your style of fighting was unique and innovative. Another match would not have a set victor.”

“Perhaps we shall meet another time then,” the Skarrsinger says. “In less dire circumstances.”

They both have roles to play after all – the Weaver and the Skarr.

The group leaves soon after, journeying down the mountain back west and finding a narrow road within four hours. The way down the side of the mountain Shakra takes them leaves Lace feeling a bit like a mountain goat, clinging to the side of the rock face with the tips of her shoes. But Shakra is the only person Lace knows that might out-pace Hornet when it comes to navigational and tracking abilities, which is quite impressive as Hornet is aided by her strange, preternatural Weaver instincts. Between the two of them, there’s little chance that they would get lost.

Once the road opens to a wider part, more cars begin to whizz by. They hitchhike in a truck driven by a grizzled Peruvian man who tries to set Shakra up with one of his sons – “Your height – his height – your child will be a great basketball player!” – and shows them pictures of his deceased wife. He has pasted her face over an image of the Virgin Mary and hung the picture on his rearview mirror. “I can’t imagine anyone more holy,” he blasphemes solemnly when inquired about it. He is a far better companion than the man who’d tried to abandon them on a mountain top and steal their stuff, so when they finally get dropped off, Lace is in a great mood.

Shakra apparently had some contacts who live nearby the area she intends to search for her master within; they are very gracious people and welcome Shakra and her companions with open arms.

“She saved our son’s life when he was out travelling,” the woman says warmly over dinner. Her name is Frey. She has a long neck and a weary but genuine smile. Her voice croaks like a rocking chair. She owns a store in the nearby town where she sells some of the vegetables her family grows. “We get plentiful flooding over here. Ms. Shakra had all those fancy tools and knew when to expect a horrible storm – she ran out in all that rain to go and get him from the flooding zone. Sure enough, the next morning, the entire area was covered in water!”

The son in question is around fifteen years old. He flushes when his mother tells the story, picking at his dinner quietly.

“It would be immoral of me to have refused,” Shakra says severely, “considering I had responsibility.”

“Many people wouldn’t have,” Frey says wisely. “Saving a stranger at great risk to yourself – such a thing goes far beyond responsibility!” She heaps more salted fish onto Shakra’s plate. “You may stay as long as you need.”

Frey’s hospitality is extensive. She has made up beds for all of them, adorned with her own thick, handmade quilts. She boils water for them to bathe, and has a nice, clean-scented soap she’d made herself. By the time Lace emerges, she truly feels like a new person, scrubbed clean and dry. Frey even has a nail kit she’s willing to let Lace borrow, allowing her to sand down her broken nails.

In fresh pajamas she’d borrowed, Lace makes her way to the small bedroom she and Hornet would be sharing. Shakra gets her own, on account of being Frey’s hero.

Lace is carrying her backpack when she happens to catch a glimpse of a whisper from Shakra’s room: “ – leave early. Lace will still be asleep.”

Lace stops. She slinks back to the door immediately, putting her ear right against the crack.

Shakra is speaking.

“You’ve got the west?” she asks. “We can meet in Bilehaven. That’s a worst case-scenario.”

“Yes,” Hornet replies. “At that point – I’m not sure we’ll be able to find much. The heart of the Stilkin is rotten and detestable.”

“Perhaps it would be best not to look there,” Shakra poses. “It’s truly a wretched place. We’d have no purpose. We’d save no one.”

“But we’d find your professor,” Hornet counters. “That’s what matters. This is for closure.”

Just then, as Lace moves forward to hear better, her foot lands on a loose board. The wood squeaks loudly through the hall, abruptly ending Hornet and Shakra’s conversation.

Lace quickly stands up. A second later, Hornet yanks open the door.

“Lace,” she greets. “You’re not coming.”

Lace just stares at her flatly, before turning on her heel and marching off to their bedroom. Behind her, she hears Hornet give Shakra a hasty goodbye before hurrying after Lace.

Lace throws her backpack to the ground, before fishing out a brush and bonnet. It’s a little dusty, but it would do.

In the room is a wooden dresser, prettily carved with flowers and leaves. Lace pulls out the seat and starts to prepare her hair, just as Hornet rockets into the room.

“I’m going,” Lace says, not looking up.

“I’ve already talked to Frey,” Hornet replies. “You can stay here until we return. It shouldn’t be more than a few days.”

Lace rolls her eyes. “I won’t,” she says. “I’ve already said I won’t. And don’t you go sneaking off in the morning again either. I’ll feel sick if you leave without me. I’ll be sick in your bed.”

Hornet glares at her from under her eyebrows. Lace puts her hands on her hips and glares right back.

“What – are you going somewhere dangerous again?” she says. “You shouldn’t have said yes to Shakra if you are. If her professor wandered somewhere with people like the Skarr, it’s her own fault if she dies.”

Hornet looks down. “I’m not worried about that,” she says. “There shouldn’t be much danger.”

“Besides wandering into the Peruvian swamp wilderness?” Lace prompts.

“Besides that.”

“Give me another reason why I shouldn’t go,” Lace orders. “You haven’t convinced me.”

“Well,” Hornet hesitates. “The place we’re going to is nicknamed Bilewater. The water is quite toxic. There’s a lot of fowleri in it, maggots and leeches and such.”

“So I’ll hold my nose,” Lace snarks. “Are we swimming in it?”

“If there’s no path.”

“Then I’ll swim in it.” Lace puts down her hairbrush. “It’s not a big deal. Unless there’s something else?” She gives Hornet a meaningful look.

There’s a long, elastic silence.

“No,” Hornet says at last. “There’s nothing else.” She looks distinctly displeased though, tapping her finger rapidly against her arm.

“Then I’ll go,” Lace says, ignoring Hornet’s heaving sigh. “I don’t want to do farmwork and chores in the morning. That sounds boring.”

“Lace,” Hornet tries one last time. “It really will be muddy and exhausting and probably a little dangerous. There’s probably caimans at the very least. Big spiders, mosquitoes, rain.”

“And a drug lord,” Lace says. “Which you’ve avoided mentioning insofar.” She looks at Hornet in the mirror. “Is he why you don’t want me to come? If you’re worried for me, you shouldn’t be going either.”

“I promised Shakra,” Hornet says.

“And I promised Hollow – I would keep an eye on you,” Lace says, suddenly quite weary. She puts her hands on her lap. “Hornet – things like this – it’s how you get yourself killed. If you’re all so worried about the state of the swamp and its dangers, you must know then that Shakra’s professor is dead.”

“Yes,” Hornet says simply. “I do. But Shakra holds hope. For that, I will help her.”

“Then as long as you’re doing that, I’ll go with you,” Lace in response. She stands, pushing the settee under the dresser once more. Walking up to Hornet, she looks the girl straight in the eye: “Don’t you dare leave me in the morning. I am going with you. If you leave without me again, I will follow you. Then I’ll be by myself in the swamp. If you think my chances of surviving with you are low, what do you think they’ll be then?”

Hornet thins her lips. Their lovely pink flushes white, stark against her face.

“You’re very headstrong,” Hornet says at last, annoyance threading loosely through her voice. Her dark eyes look right back at Lace, unflinching. “I suppose that’s my fault.”

Lace shrugs. “Blame who you like.” Looking away, she starts for the bed, pulling back the quilt and tucking herself within. “It all comes back to you in the end anyway.”

***

The morning they go to Bilewater dawns bright and clear. They catch a ride in Frey’s husband’s truck, heading over to a town quite a few kilometers east. From there, they get on a long-distance bus, which drops them off at a nebulous-looking stop, absolutely plastered with graffiti, broken glass, and burnt-out cigarette butts.

The bus driver squints at them as they get off. "Are you sure?" he says in Spanish. "Around here - ladies like you don't last long."

"We'll be alright," says Shakra gravely. "Thank you for the concern."

The bus driver shakes his head and exhales sharply, but rumbles off down the road. Soon, he's not even a speck in the distance.

“She disappeared around here,” Shakra says. “We took the same bus she did. This is her last known location.”

“You’ll go west then,” Hornet says. “As we discussed. We’ll go east. Log any notable disturbances. Meet back up at the agreed-upon coordinates.”

Shakra nods. “I will see the two of you on the other side,” she says, before she bows low. “Thank you.”

Hornet nods, and then she and Lace are off.

There’s no path where they’re going. Hornet simply plunges into the jungle, civilization rapidly disappearing like petals shed from a rose bush. Lace thinks she can recall a warning telling her to never leave the beaten path on a trail, but unwilling to be left behind, she puts her trust in Hornet and simply follows.

“I heard you said that you were going west last night,” Lace says, picking her way after Hornet. The ground isn’t too bad right now – just a little moist. Her hiking shoes combat most of the damage.

“I talked to Shakra. We switched directions,” Hornet says. She whacks a leaf out of the way.

“Why?” Lace asks.

“There are less hazards this way,” Hornet says. “It’s less swampy.”

Lace squints, following carefully in Hornet’s footsteps. “Is it because of me?”

“In large part. Watch your step; it’s muddy right here.”

“I can deal with the swamp,” Lace protests, stepping primly over the large, sinking puddle. “I said I wouldn’t complain.”

Hornet casts her a dubious look.

“I won’t!” Lace insists. “You’re judging too harshly!”

“I don’t think I’m judging hard enough,” Hornet mutters. She snubs her toe through the slime of the thin mud.

“What are we even looking for?” Lace asks after a moment. All the trees look relatively the same to her: tall, expansive, and enveloping, shading them from the sun like a parasol. The floor is similarly dense. Lace’s shoes squish with every step she takes.

“Evidence that the professor came through here,” Hornet replies. She has her compass out, phone put away. “Tears of fabric, shuffled leaves, footprints in the mud. Her scent would be muddled because of the water and I know neither of us are familiar with it, but try and detect it anyway.”

“Her scent?” Lace says flatly. “How on earth –”

“Nevermind,” Hornet says quickly. “Just look for the other things. Don’t wander too far.”

“What, you won’t be able to sniff me out?”

“I fear your stench blends with the environment.”

Lace doesn’t take offense. “I don’t smell like vanilla anymore?” she says sweetly, swinging her hands behind her while she walks. “I’m completely unrecognizable?”

Hornet’s shoulders stiffen, but it’s the only indication she’d heard Lace at all. She simply chops another leaf out of her way and keeps moving forward, occasionally checking her compass as she moves along.

Truly, the overhead canopy is so thick, the leaves are almost like rainclouds, washing away the sunlight entirely. Long shadows drape themselves over the ground like lounging ladies, waving their fans in a lazy fashion. Hornet generally leads them in long, meandering paths around the larger bodies of water, which lays still and undisturbed, a black void nearly undecipherable from the real ground. Lace isn’t sure how Hornet is able to identify it. To her, it all looks the same.

Occasionally, leaves rustle with the weights of birds taking flight. At one point, a monkey stares down at Lace, bright brown eyes curious and intrepid. It takes off quickly, and Lace watches it go

“Look,” Hornet whispers. “There’s a caiman. I told you they were out here.” She points over the water, somewhere in the distance. They’ve been picking their way through the thick forest for quite some time at this point.

Lace squints, but cannot see it. Hornet pulls her closer until their cheeks are flush together. Lace blinks rapidly, forcing her eyes to focus on the landscape in front of her.

“Do you see?” Hornet says, voice a faint murmur in Lace’s ear. Briefly, Lace closes her eyes.

Inhaling the thick air, she squints through the various browns and black expanse of the space in front of her, searching for the reptile.

Eventually, a glimmer catches her gaze. The caiman’s eye, stark against the water. It leads Lace’s stare to find the creature’s silhouette, half-hidden in the water.

“I see it,” she whispers back. “There.”

Hornet lets out a huff of air, pleased. “Did you know that they cry while they eat?” she says. “Crocodiles do it too.”

Lace sends her a questioning look. She’d never seen a crocodile, nor a caiman in the wild before; she has vague memories of a class trip to the zoo when she was a child, but no more than that. She remembers squinting through the smudged glass at lions and giraffes, wandering in their dusty cages.

The zoo hadn’t had a caiman, or even a crocodile, but it had had two alligators in a large glass box. One swam through the water like a cutting wave, smooth as velvet. The other had sunbathed, eyes closed despite the schoolchildren all banging their hands against the glass, begging it to move. Even at the time, Lace had been a prim little princess; she’d felt quite bad for the alligator, for she knew that she would have been irate if all of her classmates had come banging on her window while she slept.

“It’s been observed that butterflies will land on caimans to drink their tears,” Hornet continues. Lace turns her head to look at the girl, only to find her eyes helplessly drifting to Hornet’s pink lips, a little chapped and a little dry. Lace wants to bite them, pull them taught. “Their tears have salts and proteins in them. The butterflies use them to survive.”

Lace squints. The reptile flicks its eyes between the two of them like the pendulum of a clock. She tries to picture the creature such as Hornet described: adorned with butterflies, all fluttering around its eyes like a little crown.

“I would eat the butterflies,” Lace says. “I’m crying. They’d come lick my tears? Rude.”

“Well they’re not sad,” Hornet says. “And it doesn’t hurt.”

The caiman slides under the surface of the swamp without a sound. Not even a ripple.

The two continue deeper and deeper into the forest. It feels nearly endless. Thick brush trips Lace up where she walks, like a hazardous crack in the sidewalk. Half of the time, the leaves are so thick she cannot see her feet.

“Are we there yet?” she grumbles, continuing to march forward after Hornet’s relentless pace. She’s long since stopped looking for ‘signs’ to track Shakra’s professor with – there’s clearly nothing around that she’s going to pick up on. Although Hornet has traded directions several times after kneeling in the mud for several minutes. So maybe they really are going somewhere.

Hornet looks troubled.

“I picked up on a trail, but it seems to be going in circles,” she says. “Or at least in a very non-linear fashion. It doesn’t align with any normal person’s walking patterns.”

“Maybe she went through the trees,” Lace suggests, only half-joking. “The ground is utterly soaked.”

“She’d still have direction,” Hornet refutes. “There’s no reason for her trail to have been traced back so many times. Unless she was trying to avoid something . . .”

She checks her compass again. Then she squints at the sun, dappled through the canopy.

“Lace,” she says slowly. “I think we need to go back.”

“Finally,” Lace mutters. She stretches, turning around immediately. “I was afraid you’d never say that –”

She feels something taut at her shin. Far too used to plowing through the floor-level vines, Lace ignores it, pushing forward.

The hair on the back of her neck stands up. The air around her is suddenly displaced.

“Lace!” Hornet yells, before grabbing Lace’s wrist and yanking her backwards, knocking her hard to the ground.

Over Lace’s head, a large, round ball flies over, absolutely covered in spikes. Momentum carries it a little further, before it swings back in the other direction, decimating the foliage in its path.

“Bilewater,” Hornet murmurs. “That’s their sort of trap. Damn. I was hoping to avoid it, stay on the fringes, but the border isn’t set in stone. It’s not like it would be on a map.”

She sighs, before offering her hand to assist Lace in standing. “We’re in it now. You’ve got to watch your step. This place is hemmed to the teeth in pitfalls.”

“Ah,” Lace says. “I got that.”

She takes Hornet’s hand, brushing dirt off her pants. The bottoms are soaked, which she complains about.

“I could’ve let you be skewered,” Hornet replies. “And you said you wouldn’t complain.”

“This is different,” Lace grumbles. “All my promises are reset in the event of a life-threatening event.”

The ball of spikes is not the only trap. There are several more of its sort, as well as knives that plunge out of trees, thick swinging logs, and exploding mines half buried in the mud. Alongside the man-made, there are also natural traps – quicksand, pitfalls, hollows in roots that will trap your foot, and rotted wood simply waiting for someone to put weight upon. Furthermore – Lace swears she hears whispering in the trees, as well as rustling branches that when she whirls around have nothing within. Traps start appearing where Lace swears they hadn’t before, or activating when she had been nowhere near the trigger.

Lowering her voice, Lace points this out to Hornet.

“That’s Bilewater,” is all Hornet says in response. “They know we’re here for certain; the people of Bilewater are setting off these traps now. It’s only surprising they haven't confronted us yet.”

She sounds tired. Her grip on her knife remains firm.

Despite this response, the Bilewater residents remain in the trees. Traps continue to be activated, knives thrown and explosions activated. Lace and Hornet continue forward slowly, picking their way through the treacherous landscape.

Eventually, the land starts to thin of trees and brush. It becomes more landscaped, a little easier to walk. Hornet clearly doesn’t like this, by the way she glances around, staring up at the increasingly numerous swaths of blue sky symptomized by the lack of trees with a distinct air of distaste.

Her aversion becomes clear soon enough when a building – scummy and feculent looking – emerges from the vegetation. It’s guarded by a single silver door, but the complex expands much farther out, rooms sprawling in every direction as far as the eye can see. It’s held aloft by stilts over a thick swamp water that grows much deeper only a few meters from the entrance to the compound.

“Hm,” Hornet says, glancing at her compass, before glancing up once again. “We’ve been corralled. That’s not good.”

“Corralled?” Lace says, shifting nervously. She looks towards the strange structure. It appears to be made of mostly rotted wood, like a strong breeze or violent wave may knock it over.

“The residents of Bilewater wanted us to go this way,” Hornet mutters, glancing behind her furtively. “They’ve not confronted us other than guerilla attacks, so they don’t want to directly face us without the support of their little nest. That’s at least . . . good.”

She sounds dreary though, waterlogged and miserable.

“C’mon.” She beckons Lace forwards. “I doubt they’ll let us go in any other direction. I had hoped . . . but . . . Bilehaven’s going to host us for the evening.”

“Bilehaven?”

“The center of Bilewater.” Hornet pushes open the door. It’s unlocked, a dead security passcode doing little to keep anyone out. Lace supposes that Bilehaven doesn’t get many residents out here anyway. “It should be fine. Just stick with me.”

After taking a glance inside, she holds the door open for Lace to follow.

The inside of Bilehaven is like the interior of a rotting fruit, all soft and strange. Mold and grass grow in every corner, poking through poorly-nailed together dark wood boards. What few windows line the hallways are pasted over with filth, only allowing weak rays of sun through in sickly yellow waves. The main source of light are dim fluorescents, covered heavily by the dead bodies of moths and wasps and flies that had become trapped in the fixture. When Hornet steps forward, the entire structure creaks heavily, like it would collapse at any moment.

“The only way through is forward,” Hornet says wearily. “We’ll need to find an exit they’re not expecting us to take.”

She paces forward, padding heel to toe, clearly trying to keep her noise level down. Lace copies her, keeping herself pasted to Hornet’s back. She feels like they’re being watched.

“Have you been to Bilehaven before?” Lace asks. “If you’ve been to Bilewater . . .”

“Bilehaven’s not really a place you ‘go,’” Hornet throws up air quotes. “You usually don’t leave. At least not in one piece.”

“Oh,” Lace says at Hornet’s worrisome answer. “You seem calm though.”

“I think we’ll be fine,” Hornet says. They reach the end of the hallway they’re on, provided the choice between going down two identical hallways, one to the left and the other to the right. “Their leader’s not here. Last I heard, he’s up in Ecuador trying to merge territories with some other drug lord.”

“Oh,” Lace says, dumbly this time. “But his men are still here?”

“He’s the real threat,” Hornet says. She tries a door handle, tsking when she finds it locked.

“I can pick that,” Lace volunteers. “Some things in life require a delicate touch.”

“Thank you for offering,” Hornet replies, “but I don’t care for Bilehaven to have your touch that much.”

She winds up, kicking the door twice before it gives. Within it is – another hallway.

It’s wider this time though. A little cleaner, the lights sharper and more modern-looking. It looks less like an abandoned trailer and a little more like a place a drug lord might hide out.

“You’d think they could get the mold up though,” Lace mutters, eyeing a black patch near the ceiling.

“I can’t imagine that sort of thing is easy when the humidity’s this high,” Hornet remarks calmly. She blinks up at the new lights. “Not to mention that I don’t think that they have much time to clean. And it’s not like they could hire a housekeeper.”

The hallways in the new sections quickly grow just as weary as the ones in the first section. They meander on and on with no purpose much like a long hair in the mouth, dragging about to this way and that, so similar and conglomerous that Lace cannot help but wonder if the place had been designed with a labyrinth in mind, rather than a genuine place to live.

The hallways go on for so long – so many empty expanses of open, filthy air – that when they finally stumble upon human life, Lace freezes like a deer in headlights.

To be fair, so does the guard, face open in shock. He wears thick cameo colors, a forest green cloak that’s strangely ruffly around his body, almost like a shag carpet, and dark brown pants. A mask of similar materials covers his face, black holes where his eyes should be. Lace imagines he’s sweating like a pig underneath all that fabric. He holds in his hand a gun, gripped between loose fingers.

Hornet springs into action, the blades in her hands quickly whirring to his throat. A single neat cut later and the man collapses silently, a spray of blood disappearing into the dark walls.

The two of them stare at the body on the floor in silence.

“Well,” Hornet sighs. “At least Groal’s up in Ecuador."

“Groal?”

“The leader of Bilewater.”

Before Lace can ask how Hornet could possibly know the name of a Peruvian drug lord, a gunshot rings out, echoing vibrant and stark through the hallway. It chips a bit of the wood wall right near Lace’s ear. There are several more guards approaching, all wearing the similar shag-carpet look of the guard Hornet had struck down.

Hornet snatches the gun from the dead guard’s hands. Briefly, she pauses to take a shot, two-handed grip firm and steady – it hits one of the approaching guards dead in the forehead.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” Hornet says then, dragging Lace through the labyrinth of Bilehaven.

They bang through countless doors, pushing on until they lose the sounds of the guards behind them. Hornet doesn’t quit running for a long while though, moving so randomly it makes Lace’s head spin.

Eventually, they slow. Hornet’s still tense. Lace breathes heavily, the extended running having taken its toll on her.

“We’ll rest for a second,” Hornet says, fishing around in her bag. “Get some water. It’s going to be a while until we get out of here.”

“Have you been here before?!” Lace gasps. She snatches the water bottle Hornet offers her. “You seem far too familiar.”

“I’ve never been here. I’ve only heard of it.”

“Through what grapevine?!”

Hornet shrugs, looking uncomfortable.

“I think this is a topic fit for a better time,” she murmurs. Seeing that Lace is done with the water, Hornet takes it for herself, taking a long swing.

“I think it’s perfect for right now,” Lace replies, watching Hornet chug down the water. “Why do you know about Bilewater?”

A crash comes from behind them, startling the both of them. Hornet readies her gun; Lace takes a step back.

It’s only a ceiling tile that’s fallen from the ceiling, landing to the ground in a plume of smoke.

“This place is falling apart,” Hornet mutters, lowering her gun. “God. We need to get out of here. Lace – I’ll talk about it later. I promise. But we’ve got to go.”

Lace chews her lip bitterly before spitting out, “Fine.”

The two of them move at a jog from then on. Hornet checks around every corner, holding out her hand so that Lace might remain firmly behind her.

The hallways seem far more sinister now. Lace feels exposed, like every piece of mold has eyes.

Several times are they caught. Hornet is forced to use her gun, each shot she takes carefully measured and aimed, a dead ringer through these men’s heads. She only has as many bullets as were loaded in the barrel though, no matter how carefully she conserves them. Sooner or later, she’ll run out.

“We need more bullets,” Hornet mutters, whacking the side of the gun when she’s on her last shot. “We won’t stand a chance if we don’t have a long-range weapon.”

“Can’t you scavenge?” Lace says. “Let’s circle back around then. Take the bullets off their bodies.”

“You don’t think the area won’t be swarmed with the Stilkin?” Hornet asks a bit sarcastically, but she seems thoughtful. She’s been called the residents of Bilewater Stilkin, seemingly forgetting to put up a front of ignorance when it comes to the place.

Lace ignores it. “They’re all looking for us, aren’t they?” she says. “We’re not getting anywhere right now. There’s no good exit that won’t get us caught. We might as well store up.”

Hornet considers this for a moment before turning on her heel.

“If you’re comfortable with it,” she says.

As Lace had predicted, the men of Bilewater had left their fallen comrades splayed out on the wooden floor. You could almost be convinced they were sleeping with the way their hands lounged behind them, bodies twisted facsimiles of rest. If you could ignore the bullet wounds. If you could ignore the stench of iron, piss, and sweat.

Lace can’t. She gags as Hornet relieves the men of their bullets and guns, if the bullets are incompatible. All the extra bullets, Hornet hands to Lace to shove in her backpack.

“Can’t I have one?” she whines when Hornet shoves the guns themselves into her own bag.

“Have you ever used a gun?”

“No.”

“Then absolutely not,” Hornet says. “You’ll shoot yourself or shoot me. Yes you will. Don’t protest.”

“I’m not stupid,” Lace grumbles. “I know where to aim.”

“It’s not about that. Your first gunshot shouldn’t be at a moving body.”

Hornet can be oddly responsible about things at very inconvenient times. She’d always been religious about ignoring both the spirit and letter of the law until it came to something silly that Lace was doing, like buying weed to go smoke with a friend or sneaking into a college building after dark to get her forgotten earbuds. Hornet got all responsible and lofty then.

“Do as I say, not as I do,” she’d say primly, arms folded. And Lace would gesture wildly and protest, “You never said anything!”

She’d had a couple of extremely perverse visions inspired by Hornet’s crossness over the matter, ones that included ropes and spankings and the like, but considering that they hadn’t even had their first kiss, Lace felt a little bad over it. What if Hornet’s tastes don’t lean that way? Lace, deciding better safe than sorry, always chose to repress those thoughts.

“Whatever,” she sighs in the present. “If I die, it’s your fault.”

Hornet jerks her head. “You’re not going to die.”

“Maybe not if I had a gun.”

Surprisingly, it’s this comment that has Hornet looking conflicted for a second, before she shakes her head, brows firming.

“When we get back, I’ll teach you,” she says. “Until then –”

Quickly, she raises her hands and shoots her newly-reloaded gun thrice. Lace spins around to see two Stilkin fall, bodies jerking with the force. More men pour in behind them, shouting obscenities and pointing. There’s more of them than before. They’re more confident than before as well – rather than shooting and ducking away, they charge forward, unloading their weapons quite bravely. Most every gun they’d just collected goes into shooting them down, Hornet’s deft fingers slotting ten bullets into her handgun in mere seconds, her steady eye nailing several men in the arm, leg, head, gut with every reload.

The men keep coming, like the watery release of a tsunami. A few have explosives, which Hornet manages to nick out of midair several times before the Stilkin give up entirely, recognizing that the explosives are harming their own men more than they are Hornet and Lace. The bullets keep coming though, never ceasing. Eventually, they catch Hornet in the leg when she accidentally sticks it out a little too far to try and get a shot.

She swears, loudly. The blood wells up quick and fast, pooling on the wood beneath her. For a second, she squeezes her eyes shut.

Viciously, Lace grips the cloth of Hornet’s jacket. She wants to close her eyes, wants desperately to cover her ears as well, before steeling herself to keep them open and wide, consuming the world around her. She leans down, wrapping her hands around Hornet’s pulsating wound, trying to gauge the speed of bloodflow.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hornet says, before taking a stumbling stand. She throws the last of her guns to the floor, staring at the weapons with a furrowed brow and pained expression, as if they’d betrayed her.

Lace doesn’t even have time to think before Hornet’s pulling her down another hallway.

This time, when Hornet kicks open a door, it leads into a large room, hundreds of meters long and across. It almost seems like an office, false walls and desks and lamps set up in uncannily normal fashion.

Hornet closes the door behind her and the two of them crouch behind a desk far from the door. She all but throws her backpack to the ground, fishing out a role of greying bandages, dark with water and mud.

Without being asked, Lace quickly helps her tie off the wound. There’s no easy way to fish the bullet out, so they simply leave it in. Hornet chugs three painkillers with a sip of her water and then looks at Lace with a strange expression in her eyes.

“There were more of them,” Lace says. Hornet offers her the water; she accepts gratefully.

“Yes,” Hornet says, sounding resigned. She’s not looked away from Lace’s face. Her expression is loose, considering. “There were many more.”

Lace flicks her eyes up to Hornet’s.

“Does that mean something?” she asks cautiously.

The door bangs open. The sound of the door hitting the wall behind it shakes the entire room, all the desks and false walls shifting and jumping like a tiny earthquake.

Hornet blinks.

Lace gives her a thin look, before poking her eye to a crack in the desk, a small strip of light allowing her to see outward.

There’s a man in the doorway. A large man, a balding man, a man with a rifle, thin and long.

Slowly, the man begins to thud through the area, footsteps shaking the entire floor. He seems dull, beady eyes deep-set on his sun-weathered skin. His body is the shape of an overly-ripe watermelon, almost ovular. He wears the clothes of a proper Spaniard, pressed, pin-striped pants and an olive button down covered by a black fitted jacket with shoulder pads. He is bald on top of his head, but hair grows in a ring around ear-level.

“Hornet,” Lace murmurs. “Who is that?”

“Damn,” Hornet swears all of a sudden. She suddenly grabs Lace’s hand; her hand is hot and sweaty. “Damn, damn, I thought he was out of the country!”

Lace levels her with a sharp look. She digs her hand deep into Hornet’s already-firm grip.

“Who?” she hisses. “Hornet, who is that?”

The man’s imposing presence remains a sharp, bleeding thing. He doesn’t appear too interested in leaving, his shoulders broad enough to block entire doorways.

“Weaver,” he snarls, dark and cruel and deep. “Come out.”

“Groal,” Hornet says. “The Lord of Bilewater.”

She sits on her haunches with calm eyes. She palms her sword and waits. But her leg is hurt – Lace can tell by the way she keeps her weight off of it, half-leaned against the mold-covered wall. Sweat beads her brow. Her face is a faint grey color, eyes and lips plum purple in stark contrast.

In a voice so low it doesn’t even disturb the air, she says, “Lace – in a few moments, I will get up and attack him. I am going to lead him away. Do not leave this spot until we are gone.”

“You know I can fight too,” Lace replies shakily, body frozen like a winter leaf as she watches Groal make his paces up and down the floor. “I’ve done fencing for most of my life.”

“It’s not the same,” Hornet says, watching Groal with keen eyes. “If you can find a road, you can get back to civilization. I trust you can make it there.”

“Not the same –!”

“Hush,” Hornet murmurs. She closes her eyes and then opens them once more, resolve weaving its way into her pupils. “I’ll be fine. You need to go back to the main road. Here – take my compass. I’ll find my way back on my own.”

She presses a small, warm metal disc into Lace’s hand, folding her fingers over it, before letting go of Lace’s hands entirely.

“Hornet – Hornet!”

Lace’s voice makes no impact. Hornet grabs the corner of the table, smoothly vaulting herself over it with both knives in her hands. Groal’s attention is reeled in, baited and caught. Hornet throws one of her knives at him, which he brushes aside easily with a mere sweep of the gun in his right hand. He fires a shot a second later, the bullet shattering something above Lace’s head. She huddles in on herself. When she glances back up, Hornet and Groal are gone, a series of gunshots echoing loudly from the corridor.

Lace creeps out from behind the desk a second later, slinking across the floorboards. The sounds of fighting are muffled, growing further away by the second. When Lace deems that they are distant enough, she doesn’t even hesitate before she snatches up Hornet’s discarded knife and follows the sounds of fighting deeper into Bilewater.

She gets lost, more than once. She’s forced to stop and duck out of the way of on-coming Bilehaven guards, hiding behind doors and around corners until they disappear. Many run in the direction of the commotion between Hornet and Groal, holding knives and guns ajar in their hands. Because of their distraction, there are times where Lace gets lucky, times where she likely should’ve been caught but is not because of their focused distraction.

She maneuvers through the halls slowly, until abruptly, the noises of fighting stop. The gunshots cease; the heavy footsteps grow quieter.

The silence, more than anything, gives Lace an utter chill down her spine. It rings stark against the thick wood of Bilehaven, the very walls trained to recognize the violence. They laugh, carrying the voice of their master.

Lace falters, but she regroups herself quickly. She takes Hornet’s knife firm in hand and continues to head in the direction of the last place she’d heard gunshots.

The halls have returned to their thick, moist equilibrium. The kinetic energy left over from Groal and Hornet’s explosive fight flees back into the walls.

Lace runs down through the labyrinth. She has none of Hornet’s innate tracking skills, but she has a compass, a memory, and far too much love for a girl who might’ve just gotten slaughtered against a wall.

For a second, she can understand how Shakra feels about her professor, that insane determination to pursue someone’s mere corpse to the ends of the earth when Lace finally comes across a group of Stilkins with mops, throwing water over a veritable ocean of blood, trembling droplets dripping between the cracks of the shoddy wood flooring. They do not see Lace, but Lace sees them; she freezes, heart unsteady with terrifying fear.

She shudders, lungs tremulous with a lack of breath. The amount of blood . . . she’d not seen anyone lose that much and live. She thinks of Hornet’s cheek under her hand and thinks of it cold, waxy. She thinks of Hornet growing stiff in some backroom of Bilewater, her body thrown to calcify in the mud like an abandoned toy. Hornet who is so lovely, Hornet who saved Lace’s life every day for the past several years.

Her fingers quickly indurate against her knife, the uncontrollable trembling ceasing with practice. Lace soothes and smooths herself, wrenching her lungs and heart and mind back into working order. Every part of her body is under her control. Every emotion is her own. Her choices affect her and her alone, and Lace does not answer to anybody.

Hornet has lied to her. She’s lied and lied and lied, spitting them from her lips like watermelon seeds into a rushing river. She’s pushed Lace away and kept her distant, regarding her with a coolness best suited for a general towards his soldiers. Even now, Lace suspects there’s more she’s keeping hidden, more Hornet is retaining until pushed to confess.

But in her own way, Hornet had nevertheless tried to. She’d always served Lace first, and then herself. She’d tried her best to keep Lace comfortable while she’d gone off and done the nasty work. The lake of blood spilt on the floor was for Lace’s sake. If Hornet ends up as a body in a swamp, her life would have been forsaken so that Lace could escape to the road.

There’s also the simple fact that Lace loves Hornet. She loves Hornet, who even at her worst tries to do her best. She’d rather die alongside Hornet’s limp body than live a drawn-out and prolonged existence, struggling forward without a Weaver to supplement her ailing body.

Lace takes a long breath. She moves further away from Bilehaven’s exit. She enters the beating heart.

There are far more Stilkin the more inside she travels. They chatter frivolously, playing knife games and cocking their guns in the rooms Lace slides by. They grow less camouflaged as Lace winds deeper within, their comfort and sense of safety clearly growing with their perception of their own protection. There might also be an element of relief rendering them less vigilant than usual; Hornet is a formidable opponent, and she has just been defeated. There might be a celebration later that night. Even if they think of Lace, they will not regard her as a threat. They might have even assumed she ran away.

Without Hornet, the hallways are dimmer, more claustrophobic. Lace can feel them closing in on her much in the way a lion hides in the glimmering grass, watching an antelope feast. The mold grows several new cells where it hosts itself on the wall; the dust is thick and eye-watering. All the doors look the same, every hallway can only be differentiated by the pattern of fungi that grows from the ceiling. The very air is toxic, the floor is vaguely damp.

A pair of double-doors catches Lace’s eye. They seem a little grander than the average door around Bilehaven, a little cleaner and a little shinier. They seem thick, bulletproof. They’re tucked away into a small corner of a dead-end hallway that Lace had stumbled upon several stressful hours after Hornet had been taken.

Lace makes a quick glance around, checking both directions for movement. Then she quickly kneels in front of the door, fishing around in her hair for her bobby pins. She keeps a couple tucked within the base of her braids, always thinking just in case. Always a little paranoid. It’s a gift her mother had given her.

She bits the rubber ends off the sides, spitting them out to the floor. Bending one with her teeth, she inserts it as the lever, before splitting the other in a ninety-degree angle and twisting one side into a small handle. This is her pick.

She lets out a long, shaky breath, settling her thoughts, before she goes to work on the pins.

A mere survey tells Lace that this is an average deadbolt lock, which makes her stomach settle a bit. Picking those is hardly strenuous. Every lock has its flaws; every pin a fault. Lace has taught herself to know them all.

Jiggling her pick, Lace puts rotational pressure on the barrel of the lock using her lever, looking for a seized pin. She finds it quickly when the second pin lifts with comparative difficulty as opposed to the first pin. Carefully, she works it until there is a click. So she moves forward similarly with the third, fourth, and fifth pins. The fifth pin is seized; when it clicks, she tries the lock.

Nothing happens.

Stomach sinking, Lace pushes again. Still nothing. Then, considering that one of the pins might’ve been pushed too far up, she decreases the rotational pressure slowly with her lever. This time, the lock snickers out of place.

Lace shoves the door open as quick as she can, snatching her knife from where she’d laid it down. She tucks the hairpins back into her pocket and locks the door behind her. It had taken her a total of four, delicate minutes, which she heavily disapproves of; her record was a mere twenty-seven seconds using a lock pick kit.

In her childhood, Lace had found that her mother kept far too many doors locked and closed. Lace had resented it, so she’d learned to open them. Much of this ability she had come to regret having, for it led to Lace seeing many things she’d rather have never known about.

This new room in Bilehaven smells strongly of sweat and urine. It’s darker than the previous section, if such a thing is possible. There aren't any windows available. Just boundless doors, a long hallway full of them. They’re all wooden like before, with little gaps to see through to the outside, but rather than being filled in with glass, wrought iron bars are cemented in. It looks very much like a prison. If Hornet is still alive, she’d doubtlessly have been placed in here.

Lace quickly begins to go from door to door, checking each cell. Many are empty. A few have limp looking prisoners stuck inside, hair dirty, greasy, and hopeless. They sag emptily against the far wall or curl up miserably on a single, dirty blanket. They’re so lost in themselves, they don’t even notice Lace peering through the bars, standing on her tiptoes to look inside.

Halfway through, she finds Hornet.

It must’ve been at least six hours since the girl was taken at this point. Lace’s exhaustion had kicked in long ago. She stands at the door, blinking stupidly for several minutes at the sight of the girl in the cell, before fumbling the hair pins out of her jack, re-bending them into better positions, and wiggling them into the lock once more.

This time, it takes her several tries to achieve success. Her hands are shaking too bad. Sweat drips into her eyes, stinging the corners and coagulating on her eyelashes.

The lock snickers open on Lace’s sixth attempt. The speed with which Lace kicks open the door could have beaten the shutter-snap of a camera.

In the cell, Hornet is strung up, thick rope wrapped around her waist and legs and even hair, pulling her tight in every direction. On each rope, an evenly-cut piece of paper hangs limp with humidity, several strange markings splattered on to both sides. They look almost like paper talismans, meant to keep a lock on one’s soul.

Blood drips steadily from a large cut on Hornet’s forehead, plinking into a pot bit by bit. When Lace peers over the pot, it’s far too full. Hornet might not be human, but she’d already lost so much blood earlier. Eventually, she’ll run out, running dry and empty on something for the first time in her life.

Lace rushes forward, placing a desperate hand on the bottom of Hornet’s chin, forcing herself to calm down and focus. A pulse, slow and sluggish, but steady. Then, Lace places a hand over Hornet’s heart and abdomen.

Cold. As dull as the pale face of an eroded stone. Only the tiniest glimmer of silk made soul shows itself to Lace’s fingers before it collapses entirely.

Lace blanches. This, far more than Hornet’s languid heartbeat, is something that makes Lace's stomach rise straight to her mouth as bile.

Hornet’s soul is evermore. She spins it herself, makes it homemade. As long as she is still in her intact body, the odds of her living are almost certain. This is what it means to be a Weaver. Few things can take it without her express permission.

But whatever Groal had done – whatever talismans he had mounted on these ropes – had drained her soul. So little remains, Lace doesn’t even think she could use it for a double knot. She doesn’t know if Hornet can regenerate all this on her own.

Taking Hornet’s knife in hand, Lace frantically saws at the ropes binding Hornet. She doesn’t worry about the talismans; they’re delicate things and really only serve to affect one person’s particular soul, in this case Hornet’s.

Any negative effects that might be caused by moving Hornet from this position are quickly negated and ignored in the face of getting her out of here. Groal wants her soul, but this isn’t something Lace can allow.

Hornet slumps when the last rope is cut. She possesses no faculties, holds no awareness. Her mouth slides open. There’s a clump of blood on the side of her head where her hair had clearly been ripped out. Strands of white lay strewn about the cell floor.

Lace swallows her bile, laying Hornet flat on the floor. She must get them out of here. This is the only thought she can think; she cannot think of the possibility of failure.

Using her inertia, she rolls Hornet into a fireman’s carry, her shoulders protesting heavily. Lace had never favored weight-lifting exercises at the gym except when Hornet forced them upon her; now, she’s glad for every session. Her back screams, but she starts taking steps forward, out of the room. Towards the road Hornet had told her about, towards an exit.

She limps through the hallways of Bilewater, clutching Hornet’s body with her entire strength. Corridor after corridor – it all looks the same. Wooden and ropey, strange traps that are nearly impossible to avoid with full mobility, let alone with another person on your back. The Stilkin have settled for the night, but guards still remain, shuffling cards back and forth and speaking to each other in low voices.

Meanwhile, on her back, Hornet gets worse. Her breathing slows to a crawl, her body cold. Lace grows exhausted, the humidity drenching her like a bucket. She almost collapses, legs trembling, before biting her lip painfully tight. Yanking open the closest door, she plummets, crashing her head into the shelves as her body gives in on her. The clatter terrifies her and so she lays there, still, like prey in the dark.

Eventually, Lace inhales. Exhales. She pushes herself up on her elbows, struggling to orient herself in the dark, and with great pains, closes the closet door behind the two of them.

Hand over Hornet’s heart, hand over her stomach. Her silk has faded more, now barely a puff before it falls in on itself. Lace’s hope falls with it.

Hornet needs soul. She needs an almost impossible amount of it, a shot of adrenaline to keep her systems functioning.

The only method Lace knows of is obscene. Her mother had taught it to her near the end of her own days in one of her final attempts to shape Lace into a better daughter. It’s vile, immoral, invasive.

But what does it matter if she’s a bad person if only Hornet will live?

Struggling to her feet, Lace picks up her knife.

“I’ll be back,” she whispers to the air, before slipping out of the closet, carefully closing the door behind her once more, shuttering Hornet away from the world. On the bottom corner of the door, she uses her knife to carve a small star in the grime, a way as to not forget the closet in the labyrinth maze of Bilehaven.

Like a butterfly, Lace lightly wavers through the halls, eyes wide and delicate as soap bubbles. She thinks back over her path through Bilehaven, the countless, confusing doors and the endless mold, the crumbling floors and derelict ceiling panels. She thinks long and hard, letting her feet take her left and right until – there. A guard, dressed in the same uniform as his peers. He’s short, squat. Likely, he’d be eye-level with Lace if they ever were to stand in such a position. Lace has no plans to.

Lace has guided herself behind him. The square hallways had not let her down; the directions she had taken had landed her straight behind him.

The man’s shuffling cards. There’s a lit cigarette in his hands, glowing slightly through the haze. He flicks it a few times in the air, watching the embers float down neatly in front of him, trailing like fireflies in the dark.

Lace creeps up behind him, a fragile step at a time. Her grip on the knife is white-knuckled. Her mouth is dry; it takes everything within her not to clear it.

She gets so close behind the man, she can smell his cologne, the thick scent of his sweat. She rises like a spell-bound cobra, watching the back of his exposed neck with intense eyes.

He does not notice her. He seems tired. There are heavy bags under his eyes. The cigarette in his land is limp.

Lace’s hand shakes as she lifts it. She had always wondered how her mother felt. She had always wondered what sort of desperation had driven her mother to go to such lengths to obtain such an ephemeral amount of soul. Obtaining a human soul is no more fleeting than smashing a firefly in between your hands. Even after the glow is gone, the black smear stays stuck to your hands, the bug’s little antibodies and luciferin and twitching leg still stark against your skin.

Lace understands now. Desperation has reached her; opportunity has delivered itself.

A creature with an impossible amount of soul . . .

Lace closes her eyes to rid the memories, before shuffling the knife in her hand. She strikes out at the Stilkin viper-quick, her knife carving a smile into his neck before she can think of anything else. He collapses much in the same way – he never knew what hit him.

Lace drags his body towards the closet. She had thought to shove him in there, but the body leaves an awful trail of blood, stained red on the wood floor and starkly obvious. She’s forced to abandon her initial plan. Instead, she takes out her knife, still crusted in his blood, grits her teeth, and plunges it right into his chest. She yanks to the left, down his abdomen. It’s much harder than she anticipated. The skin does not slide apart like butter, nor does it fall to her knife like an undefended watchtower. It’s warm, clammy. When it finally splits under the force of her pull, Lace almost fumbles and drops the knife.

She curls her lip, and then plunges her hand inside his upper chest.

The heart is far more in the center of the chest than most people anticipate. It’s squeezed between the deflated lungs of the corpse, still fluttering with the final remains of oxygen and pumping blood. It links to a tangled accord of veins and arteries, rushing up his neck and arms and the thick aorta running down to his kidneys. Lace takes the heart in the middle and pulls, ripping it free from its final true vestiges of life.

It’s slimy, taut, and firm. She cradles it, rushing back to her starred closet.

Hornet is still there, slumped and unconscious. Lace can’t even see her breathing.

“Okay,” Lace whispers. “‘C’mon. Just –”

She knows what she must do.

She shuts her eyes, looking up at the ceiling. Then, she brings the heart to her lips and bites a chunk out of the center, ripping through layers of bloody meat and viscera, breaking through the pericardium to the softer interior.

She chews, eyes still closed. It tastes like blood, salty and warm. Raw pork may be similar, but Lace had never tried it; the heart simply tastes like any other slice of meat she’d tried before, texturally strange but vaguely familiar. Blood bubbles up over her lips. Lace almost licks her lips to catch it before she stops herself.

When the meat is thoroughly pulverized, Lace wretches open Hornet’s jaw. She presses her lips to Hornet’s – don’t think about it don’t think – and spits the ground-up meat into her mouth. Lace then forces her jaw closed and holds it there until Hornet passively swallows. This action she repeats several times with the bloody heart, each an exercise in self-control.

When Hornet’s soul feels as though it is blossoming again, more than a faint, limp thread hovering close to her chest, Lace allows herself a sigh of relief. She leans back, hands bloody and dirty, and presses a single finger to Hornet’s forehead. This, she allows herself before shutting her eyes again for only a moment.

Then, she heaves Hornet back over her shoulders. It would be preferable to wait for Hornet to wake, but Lace has not been provided with that sort of time.

The night is half-passed. Lace isn’t sure how long it’s been since they entered Bilewater. Several hours, some of the worst of her life. Her vision grows hazy and then it grows kaleidoscopic, new colors and phosphenes muddling her perception both when she wearily stares forward and when she closes her eyes. She feels haunted, hunted.

She thinks she’s heading for an exit. But she’s not sure anymore. Every door leads to another dead-end room. Every window hangs over deep ravines or muddy waters or just nothing at all, the darkness stealing the soft curves and rigid edges usually present during the day. Bilewater truly, truly all looks the same.

She clicks open another door, dragging their collective bodies to the window. She peers out at it. Nothing. It’s black; hot like hell. Her sweat has gotten worse; it clings to her armpits and falls into her eyes with abandon. Her eyes feel pinned open, like if she blinks a bit too long, she might collapse right to sleep.

Behind her, the air suddenly displaces, almost like the sensation she’d felt when the trap had activated. Just barely, she manages to throw herself to the side, burying her face in her forearm. There’s a violent flash of white, like the explosion of a small sun.

Lace blinks at the wall. It’s charred, smoking. There’s a hole where it once was. The sound of crickets and frogs leaks inside.

“I’d wondered where you went,” says a voice from the door. “The Spider’s little fly.”

At first Lace thinks she’s hallucinating. Bilewater has been so quiet, the dark voice is like the crack of a whip.

Slowly, she turns. Seeing Groal there allows such a hopeless feeling to emerge in her stomach, Lace almost sinks with the sensation.

His neck bubbles over his brown collar like pale worms in bubbling brown water. His eyes sink deep into his skull like two embedded buttons, darkened by the shadows they pull. There’s a vile aura around him, a deep-seated, roiling anger. In his hand is a strange iron gun, a large thing with a humongous barrel.

Hornet’s eyelids flutter and her soul should at least be recovering now, but true lucidity still escapes her. Even if she had been awake, Lace isn’t sure that she could even stand, let alone fight. She clutches Hornet farther up her back.

Lace considers her options.

She picks what is probably the worst one. She places Hornet down gingerly. No matter how unathletic Groal is, she won’t outmanuver him with Hornet on her back.

“Are you going to fight?” Groal asks, amused. His body takes up the entire wall. He’d had to squeeze himself through the narrow door like a string goes through the needle’s eye. But now that he’s in here, there’s not a way to escape. His body blocks the way.

“If I must,” Lace says grimly. “To protect her.”

Groal laughs, a deep, chortling sound. He shifts the strange gun in his hands.

“You know your little Weaver’s a contract killer,” he says, amused. “If you’re protecting her for morality’s sake, mine and her sins likely cancel out.”

Lace can’t help it; she inhales once, sharply. It’s nothing compared to the turmoil that’s broken out within her stomach, but even such a mere reaction gives her away entirely. Before she gets ahold of herself, she sees Groal grin; he knows he got to her with that comment.

“Did she not tell you?” he says languidly. “I hadn’t suspected she wouldn’t. I was merely pointing out a fact. But if you wish to know more, she’s been quite the thorn in my side for a few years now. Other people pay her more, pay her better.” His eyes glitter malignly. “I’m not just after her soul, although it’s not a shabby thing to gain at all. I want the Spider pinned and dead.”

“Our desires conflict there then,” Lace says. She files away what Groal says for later. No matter how betrayed she becomes on this trip – Hornet had still saved her life. There’s a debt Lace can’t pay back. There’s the fact that Lace loves Hornet, but there’s the simpler fact that without Hornet, Lace will cease to exist. “I need her alive.”

“Disappointing,” Groal says. “But you know – I’ll tell you what.”

There’s a lascivious glint in his eye Lace hates.

“You’re a pretty young lady. I’ve never liked wasting those. Here’s a deal – give up your friend there and I can give you a nice place right beside me.”

Lace shudders, clinging tighter to her knife. There’s a glint of metal in Goal’s hand. He has a gun, slightly angled at Lace’s stomach.

The sight doesn’t frighten her. Perhaps she’s too tired. But things have been worse before.

“You have nothing to offer me,” she says. “A place in your swamp? I would rather drown myself.”

Groal chuckles again.

“Perhaps you’d prefer that,” he says. “But the longer I look at you, the more appealing I find you.”

“Really,” Lace says flatly. The grip she has on her knife is nearly inseparable.

“Really,” Groal says. “There’s far more power found in things like these,” he shifts his gun, “than in relying on a Weaver’s soul.”

“And that ‘thing’ is . . .”

“Charged purely by soul,” Groal says. “No bullets necessary. The only type I know of. One Weaver’s soul, one gun. A steep cost, but the power is a justifiable result.”

Lace’s nostrils flare. She eyes the charred wall. She would’ve been eviscerated had she not moved.

“You can see for yourself,” Groal says. “The power is immense. While getting ahold of a Weaver is the slippery part, the potion to suck their souls is quite an easy brew. Hand her over and you won’t have to deal with her will anymore.”

It’s not even remotely tempting. Not anymore. Groal’s several years too late.

Lace grips her knife tight. She lowers her eyes, silence an answer in and of itself. There’s nothing else for her to do.

Groal sighs.

“That’s too bad,” he says. “But you know. I still think I’d like to have you.”

He shifts his massive weight, hefting the soul gun onto the table behind him.

“Can’t have you full of holes,” he says, Lace watching him with wide eyes. “Little too gory for even my tastes. I’ve never been a necrophile.”

Lace cannot believe her luck. This man had taken one look at her and evaluated her thin frame as easily dominated. He’d looked and seen a delicate moth, a piece of cotton in the wind. Her clothes are feminine, her nails (although chipped) have been manicured, her hair is neatly cut. Lace’s mother had once looked and saw something similar.

“I can’t say I feel the same way,” says Lace, voice dripping in false sympathy. Her face carves itself into a grim smile. She moves her knife, raising it in front of her in a defensive position. Groal makes no such move, his mouth curved in a gaping smirk.

Bilehaven isn’t Lace’s typical fencing grounds, nor is Groal her typical opponent. But Lace has gone up against fencers twice her size before, has gone up against cheaters before, gone up against people with years more experience. After they’d become friends, Hornet had spent weekends pummelling Lace into the ground until she’d learned to stand on her own two feet and return a punch. Hornet is no Groal, but she is fast and she punches hard, going right for the throat.

Groal lumbers towards her, undefended. He’s an easy opponent to read, but he’s not trying too hard. Neither is Lace.

She allows her eyes to flick where she wants her blade to land. She twists her body in the direction, lunging forward to direct Groal’s attention towards his right side, which, naturally, he reaches out a hand to defend. The moment he commits, Lace wrenches her body in the other direction, making a thin cut against the side of Groal’s hip. She retreats immediately, dancing out of reach.

Groal makes a noise of frustration. He grabs at her again; again, Lace feints. She performs a balestra, lunging while he’s off balance to try and reach his kidney. He manages to move out of the way, but Lace can tell this move humiliated him as she slips through his grasp yet again.

He grunts, before pulling a knife from his own jacket pocket. He lunges for her, trying to grab her upper arm, bearing down aggressively with the swing of his knife. Lace gracefully deflects it. This time, as the blade sings off her own, she twists her hand, and punches him right in the eye, sending him staggering.

Groal glances up, shock quickly turning into anger as he feels around for his gun, forgetting he threw it away like a fool. He glances back at the murky darkness behind him, reaching for the table he’d place the gun on, only to be forced to recognize his mistake when Lace chooses to thrust forward, getting him right through the wrist. He’s forced to defend, but she counters backwards immediately, avoiding the furious fist that comes rocketing at her in response.

“Oh no. Don’t look away!” she says lightly, swinging her knife deftly, almost like a conductor for a choir. “Keep looking at me.”

Groal rubs his eye, holding it tight. It’s blackening quite nicely.

“You’ll pay,” he says lowly. “Not with your life.”

He stands, an utter mountain of a man, a monstrous contortion of flesh and cloth.

“When I get you,” he snarls, “I’ll string you up across from your little Weaver friend. I’ll let you watch the soul drain from her body. Then I’ll throw you to my men for them to enjoy.”

He smiles, a large, sadistic thing.

“I think that would make me feel better,” he says. “It’ll be a nice cure-all.”

Lace tenses, coiling in on herself like a snake. The words are disgusting, but she does not allow them to stick. She keeps her legs loose, easy and quick.

Groal lunges at her once more, aiming his knife for her face. Lace once again deflects, before moving out of the way of her falling body. She takes the opportunity to kick the back of his knees, sending him crashing to the floor. He roars, but she’s already launched herself at his back, grappling to hold on. Seizing the opportunity, she curls her knife towards his neck, pressing in fast; he just barely manages to get his hand between her neck and his blade and she slices, ripping her knife straight across his hand and out the other side, flinging his blood against the wall.

Groal stands and tries to smash her against the wall. Lace lets go, dropping to the floor. She slinks forward, extending her leg with flare, before roundhousing him in the side.

This is her mistake.

Groal had not been as staggered from her previous attacks as Lace had hoped; nor had her kick had enough power put behind it. She was half off-balance for it, taking a foolish opportunity rather than a smart maneuver.

Before she can fully lower her foot, Groal reacts, grabbing her ankle entirely in his fist. He yanks her forward, sending her stumbling, falling on her knees. She does not even fully hit the ground before Groal is reaching for her neck, enveloping it with all five of his fingers, putting intense pressure on her windpipe.

Lace gasps and squirms. She’s far too close to him; she can smell his rancid breath and see his two rotted teeth, can see every micro-color of the black eye she’d given him – the blooming plum purple and the pink sunset shade, awashed golden in the yellow of his skin. It’s the most beautiful thing in the room – the last thing she’d see.

Then, suddenly, his black eye explodes. It’s been cleaved in two – a blade driven right through the center, pierced bloody like a water balloon. Groal’s remaining eye widens and his mouth drops open, as round as the bulb of a tulip.

He wails, staggering backwards, dropping Lace to clutch at his eye. From below his hands, blood drips heavy down his cheek, first dropping then gushing, his entire left face awash in blood. His body rumbles the room as he begins to throw himself around with violent disregard, perhaps hoping to crush Lace in his reckless movements. She quickly skitters out of the way, snatching back up her knife.

Clutching his eye, Groal lifts up his knife, spinning around towards Lace quite suddenly and purposefully, hundreds of kilograms suddenly bearing down on her. His face is an ugly thing, full of hatred and stark desire to take someone down with him if he must die so viscerally. Lace is not able to move out of the way this time. Her eyes widen.

Groal strikes out with the tip of his knife, overbalancing in his confidence and grim resolve and the adrenaline and blood rushing straight to his brain. He’s heavy. It’ll take him far longer to get back in position than the bird-boned Lace. She’s quick; he hits heavy. Normally, in a true battle of two similarly built humans, Groal would simply need to exhaust Lace before making the final blow.

But he’s hasty – and she’s not human.

Groal strikes out, stabbing straight through Lace’s arm, piercing it and ripping it utterly in two. He clearly expects this to be a victorious move; the position he arrives in afterwards to lop off her head could only be executed if Lace were to recoil back from the explosive blow. Had she been truly human, she necessarily would have. Groal had just torn her arm open.

Instead, she’s moving forward as if she feels no pain. She runs her dagger deep into Groal’s stomach, shattering the meat and tissue where his kidney might be. She runs it right through, jerking it out the side, so close she can smell the tang of his sweat, so focused that she can think of nothing else but the suction of his body, the resistance of the flesh against the sharp metal of her knife.

Where her arm is torn open, there’s no jagged skin, no bloody ruins or piercing white bone. There’s only torn silk, broken threads fluttering weakly over an empty hollow, a lacuna in Lace’s very continuity.

“Silknitter’s doll –” Groal groans, hands covering both his wounds now with the desperation of a waning individual. “You – you –”

He uses the table to hold himself up, beady eyes fixed steadily upon Lace. His face is vile, a splattering mix of eye viscera and horrific, blooming colors, all twisted deep within the crevices of his entrenched hatred.

“Weaver!” he snarls suddenly, screeching rasp entering his voice with abandon. “You –!”

He rushes past Lace, behind her towards –

Lace gasps, turning –

Hornet stands there, mouth stained in blood, liquid dribbling from her mouth, her tongue stained red –

She has recalled the blade she’d sent careening into Groal’s eye, licked the bloody viscera free from the blade to spin her silk –

Hornet jerks the blade by the translucent, shimmering thread that wraps around her wrist. She firmly grips it within the palm of her hand before she slices diagonally across Groal’s bulbous head, slicing the skin connecting his head and neck into two. Blood splurts from the side of his neck. His momentum carries him forward, but Hornet neatly side-steps him; as his dying body passes her, she kicks the side of his stomach with her boot. He falls to the wayside, skull making an ugly crunch as it hits the wood floor.

Hornet pants, chest rapidly rising and falling. Her face is white, the color of bone. She glances up briefly, eyes like miserable dark scars across her face.

“I’m – sorry,” she heaves. “You –”

She falls to her hands and knees, descent to unconsciousness much more graceful than Groal’s had been. This is assisted by Lace herself, who rushes forward to grab her by the arms. She quickly lays a hand on Hornet’s stomach and heart. Still enough soul – enough soul that Hornet wouldn’t die. Nothing near the state it had been in before, but still debilitating enough that such simple actions had rendered her senseless.

“I can’t move,” Hornet whispers, bracing herself against Lace. “You – oh you –”

“We’re getting out of here,” Lace says, hushing her. “If you die, I die. You’re like my meal ticket, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hornet says, voice shaking with pain. She does not appear to have computed most of the sentence.

“C’mon then.” Lace hefts Hornet over her shoulder. “Let’s go. Guide me out of here.”

Hornet’s face is greying rapidly, her eyes bloodshot and pained. “West,” she breathes out. “Just – head west. Your compass – ” she closes her eyes, before opening them once more, “ – your compass will help. Any exit. Any exit.”

“I’ve been going west,” Lace hisses. “West and east and north and south - It’s a lot of nothing!”

Hornet doesn’t reply. Her face is grey as a corpse, the color of lead. Her fingers grip Lace’s shoulder harshly, her breath ragged against her lips. She had passed out again.

Someone starts pounding on the door, kicking it inwards. Lace looks up in fear.

Her eyes land on the table with the soul gun. Lace considers for only a moment, before she rushes forward to brace it under her arm. It’s ridiculously heavy, weight solid and firm. Lace squeezes her eyes shut before she aims the barrel at the door.

The door gives. Lace squeezes the trigger.

A burst of soul careens out of the front. It’s blindingly white, impossible to see through. It’s so concentrated, Lace can feel the power suck the air from the room, sending atoms in a dizzying array of directions.

The soul destroys the front of the room entirely. For a moment, Lace can see the jagged silhouettes of the Stilkins, running to help their master, before they are eviscerated entirely, crusted to ash and blown away. The soul continues, breaking through wall after wall, and when it runs out of walls, it shoots through the night peacefully, sending birds soaring through the sky, monkeys screeching in anger and fear.

After, it is quiet.

The gun is warm. Lace lowers it, arms shaking with strain.

She sinks to the floor, just for a second, before picking herself up and draping Hornet against her shoulder.

“West,” Lace mutters. She heft Hornet a little more, ignoring the rip on her arm. “Okay. Let’s keep going.”

Together, the girls hobble west. Lace checks her compass once, but cannot afterwards; it’s too clunky to maneuver Hornet and pull the compass from her back pocket, so she just – doesn’t. She limps forward and doesn’t stop, moving westward as much as she can.

There’s a shout behind her. Lace doesn’t stop to turn around. She keeps going, but she knows she’s running out of rope. Her time is trickling down. Her stagnation has cost her.

Feet thunder rapidly behind, the sounds of guns clicking off their safeties utterly chilling. Lace glances up. In front of her is a window. An exit, unconventional.

Lace doesn’t even hesitate; she smashes the window with the butt of her knife and, without looking, leaps, pulling Hornet’s limp body with her.

The Stilkin roar. Gunshots ring out overhead. The sensation of freefall doesn’t allow Lace to concentrate on such a thing as the world spins in gaps around her: a flash of blue sky, a face full of dirt, Hornet’s red shirt that Lace keeps a unpriable grip upon. She hopes that the knife is somewhere else instead of spinning through the air, ready to strike into her skull; she hopes she doesn’t land on a sharp stick or a branch and find herself skewered. Very little can be done about that. But Hornet had taught her a lot about hope. Hope is only what you can make of yourself.

So Lace digs her arm into the side of the cliff, desperately searching for anything to cling to that might slow their fall. It tears up her arm something nasty. The branches and roots dig into her forearm like a handful of nails that had been tossed to the wayside, each uniquely puncturing a different part of her skin. Perhaps they had slid through a wasp’s nest; Lace wouldn’t be surprised with how rubbed raw her skin has gotten.

Suddenly, her fingers grab something rough and taut. It yanks her arm powerfully, making her shout. Her body wants to let go of Hornet’s limp frame and tries to, but somewhere along the way, her wrist had gotten tangled into Hornet’s clothes and Lace finds she couldn’t let go if she wanted. Instead, Hornet’s entire weight sinks further down the mountain, trying to bring Lace with it. Something grisly snaps in Lace’s right arm socket, the one holding Hornet. The other strains and groans, muscles trembling. She screams, a long, wavering thing, tears budding at the corners of her eyes and bile bubbling in stomach from the intense pain, and tries to gather herself.

There’s little on the slope of the hill. With her forward momentum stopped, the hill isn’t steep enough that she and Hornet would necessarily keep sliding down, but it’s also not flat enough to where Lace could easily drag Hornet upwards.

She’s in so much pain. Hornet is heavy, a stark, stifling weight around her wrist, the fabric wrapping so tight around Lace’s arm that she can feel the circulation cutting off.

“Come on . . . come on,” Lace whispers, digging her fingernails deep within the dirt. Slowly, bit by heaving bit, she pulls Hornet’s body limply towards her. The pain in her shoulder is excruciating, like tearing a stiff paper to tiny shreds.

She begins to crawl sideways across the mountain, inching her way through the mud on her stomach. Her fingernails slide through the dirt one piercing motion at a time. Dust clogs her lungs. Mud smears all the way down her front. It’s cold on her cheek, sliding down in a mix with her tears.

“Help,” she whispers, before louder: “Help! Please, someone – help!”

Her voice breaks. The humidity pushes her down, keeps her lulled in the mud. She doesn’t have the energy to shrug it off.

She just lays there, her hand loosely clasped around Hornet’s wrist. She wonders if she’s dying. She wonders if she really can die. If anything short of setting every silken thread of her body on fire would be enough to get rid of her. Her mother had made her both resilient and delicate, a monarch butterfly that could be ripped asunder by the wind and yet is still expected to migrate thousands of kilometers to a forest of oyamel firs. A thin-boned swallow, a salmon from the south, a ruby-throated hummingbird.

It doesn’t really matter. She’d find out now. Slowly, sinkingly.

The last thing Lace hears before she loses consciousness is the sound of footsteps, suctioning and slurping in the mud.

***

Lace wakes. She’s no longer in the mud, although it’s still caked to her throat and hair and skin and lips. Above her is a dark wooden ceiling and she panics, flailing her limbs, terrified the Stilkin have caught her.

“Hush, hush!” comes a voice, the Spanish stretched and fraught with age. “Calm yourself girl; you’ll make yourself sick.”

Lace stares, chest heaving. A woman stands over her, grey hair piling in a bun atop her head. Her face is so wrinkly, it’s like the gnarled trunk of an oak tree. Dozens of necklaces clink against her neck, interwoven with thick red beads. Large earrings pull her lobes down; her eyelids are smeared with a cherry stain.

“You woke quickly,” the lady says, voice a croaking rasp of a rough throat. “What a fascinating specimen!”

Lace sits up, head throbbing. She blinks a few times to clear her vision.

“Hornet,” she gasps suddenly, before turning to the woman with fierce eyes. Her head punishes her for the sudden movement, but Lace yanks hard on her hair to counteract the pain. “What did you do with her –!”

“I assume you mean your friend?” the woman asks. She doesn’t appear concerned by Lace’s posturing, busying herself with a few glass bottles. “Look beside you dearie.”

Lace does. To her right is another cot. Hornet lays unconscious on top. A wrathful bruise is making its presence known on her cheek. Her white hair is shaded with thick mud, dried and flaking now. Her nose is a little crooked, all bandaged up; it might be broken, perhaps in the fall. But her chest rises up and down at a steady pace, and she is alive.

Lace struggles to her feet. Her head grows more dizzy, field of vision spinning like a child’s top. She braces herself on the side of Hornet’s bed, vaguely feeling the woman try to grip her back the back in support.

“Will she survive?” Lace hears herself say. “Is she going to wake up? There’s – I tried my best –”

“Hush child,” the woman says. She taps Hornet’s forehead, where a neat line of stitches now sits. “The Weaver will be alright. A little blood loss has never killed a single one of them.”

“Will she?” Lace breathes. “Oh.”

Then she sinks right to the floor, body sagging like a caught fish. Her shoulder aches fiercely, her arm feels disjointed. Her entire body stings. But she’d done right. She’d succeeded.

“Stand up,” the woman scolds. “Let me look at your arm again. I assume this was from a run-in with Stilkin? Nasty people. Full of secrets and illegal goings-ons. They run a coca farm somewhere in the north, but this here swamp’s where they keep the business side of things.”

Allowing the woman to feel her shoulder, crumpled fingers gingerly feeling out the location of the bone, Lace narrows her eyes.

“Is it well-known?” she asks, then clarifies, “the drug trade I mean. Is this an area to avoid?”

“Oh certainly. Any local could tell you you’re more likely to go missing than see anything interesting in the swamp. You and your friend almost became part of that statistic, no?”

She and Hornet almost had. Distantly, Lace knows that the only reason the two of them had survived is because of their strange and inhuman natures. Hornet had her Weaver blood, and Lace had . . . whatever her late mother had done to her. Otherwise, the fall down the mountain would have killed them. Hornet would have bled out over the pot. The Skarr people would’ve slaughtered them. Grindle might’ve gotten the jump on them. And countless times before they had even arrived in Peru – safety evades their grasp no matter how wide a net they may cast for it.

If Bilewater had been so known as Groal’s exclusive territory, why had Shakra’s teacher ventured within?

Lace’s first desire is to believe that Shakra accidentally led them astray, or perhaps her teacher had gone somewhere further than Bilewater, with the swamp simply being an incidental stop that hadn’t been anticipated. Darker thoughts led Lace to want to think that Shakra had led them in this direction on purpose, as this would give reason for Hornet to dislike Shakra.

But she knows that neither of these are true. Shakra had said her teacher was somewhere in the vicinity, and the only vicinity was Groal’s bile swamp. Furthermore, Hornet hadn’t seemed bothered by the appearance of the encampment, instead plunging in with the experience of a veteran. She’d snuck around corners and slipped through the shadows like they were curtains, nary a breeze tailing in her wake. Shakra too had an uncannily good idea of where her teacher might have gone – she’d led them straight for Bilewater.

All this combined with the fact that Hornet had tried desperately to leave Lace behind at every opportunity, sneaking away and lying about times and locations – Lace becomes almost certain that both Hornet and Shakra knew they were heading to Bilewater and furthermore, they both knew exactly what Bilewater held. They’d split up so that Hornet may go along a far less populated route. It was pure bad luck she’d run into Groal.

How far is Hornet entrenched within this world?

Your little Weaver’s a contract killer. Lace thinks of the tire spikes, the way Hornet had handled the gun so fluidly and easily, the way she’d fought Karmelita like a tornado, the way she’d not wanted Lace to go to the mountain with her. The many, many “school-sponsored trips” Hornet had taken to their university’s sister campus near Paris. She thinks about all of this in ways she’s been trying to avoid since Hornet’s easy explanation that sometimes she traveled to meet with other soul-bound beings. She thinks about this in a way that makes her head wail with pain.

The thought leaves a raw, sick wound in Lace’s stomach. She looks down at Hornet’s limp body, battered and bruised. How many times had Hornet shown up to work or class with bandages and cuts on her hands and arms and face? She likes to work with robots and feral spiders – such a thing is only natural until it’s suddenly not.

“She’ll wake up soon, right?” Lace asks the woman, who taps her chin.

“Hard to say. Within the week – sure. She’s a Weaver, so as long as no one shreds her silk soul to pieces, she’ll make a full recovery?”

Lace furrows her brows. “You know she’s a Weaver.”

“They’re fairly distinct,” the woman says. “Their souls are so powerful. It’s a shame they live so far. I’ve only ever seen one more in my life, but I’ve never forgotten the shape of her soul.”

“What are you then?” Lace asks, feeling her stomach clench a bit, “that you would know about them? You called me an ‘interesting specimen’ earlier – who are you that you would know this?”

“Dearie – I’m a snail shaman,” the woman says, almost patronizingly. “Perhaps we are looked down upon by most, revered by others, but it does not change our knowledge. A Weaver’s soul is as distinct as a person’s hair. Meanwhile, you are as strange as a severed leg. Your arm injury was quite interesting.” Her eyes flicker up once. “May I ask what happened?”

“You may not.” Lace draws and snaps herself up instantly. She is not sure she even has the power to fight off even an older lady such as this, but trying is not outside of things she is willing to do.

The shaman raises placating hands. “It’s not important then,” she says. “I was only curious.”

Lace sighs. She rubs a hand down her face. “Don’t ask again,” she says, heart still pounding. “. . . but thank you. For saving us.”

“Well you two are little curiosities,” the shaman says. “And I do love my trinkets. Besides the fact – I have love for the people of Bilewater. Foul, rude things! Anyone who is moving against them deserves a hand in my book. But – might I ask this – what were you two doing mixed up in all that?”

“Who knows,” Lace groans. “I certainly don’t. Something about a friend of Hornet’s – her professor went out here and never came back. We promised to help.”

“A professor? As like a university?” Something like disappointment flickers through the shaman’s eyes. Lace doesn’t catch it.

“Yeah.”

“Hm.” The shaman narrows her eyes. “What is their discipline? What are they doing all the way out here?”

“Anthropology, I think. They’re studying the Skarr.” Lace tests her vision again, sitting up much slower this time.

“The Skarr . . . if your friend knows of that girl’s Weaver heritage, there’s a good chance that they must be looking for the Everbloom then.”

Lace blinks, tilting her head. “The Everbloom?”

“Yes dearie,” the shaman says. She pulls a thick-looking book from a laden shelf, sagging under its own weight. “It’s why there’s so many creatures out here that use soul and soul magic. All of them are looking for the Everbloom.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” Lace says. She determinedly doesn’t look at Hornet, splayed out and unconscious on the bed.

Opening her book, the shaman finds a yellowing page. On it is a single ivory flower with pointed petals, drooping over a long, slender stem.

“It’s rare, but it can increase the bounds of one’s soul potential, almost to the point of a Weaver’s self-regenerating soul. If you have met the Skarr, they have a location where they cultivate the Everbloom in secret. This is given to the Skarrsinger ritualistically when they come of age.

“Similarly, there are two other tribes that possess access to the Everbloom – the Karak, who travel from west of the Huallaga River every decade to harvest the flower for their most accomplished member, and those from the Shellwood, who harvest to increase the power and immortality of their leader. It can be exclusively grown on the highest peaks of the Andes alone. Many covet it, but find the terrain to any potential growth sites impossible to navigate, and that’s only if they even manage to find one in the first place.” The shaman sighs, forlorn. “I’m far too old to be in the race, but how I wish for an Everbloom! The spells . . . the potions . . .”

“So that grows . . . here?” Lace says. “On these mountains?”

“At the top,” the shaman says. “In the northern Andes; not on any mountain particularly. In the places where the earth is pure, you may find the Everbloom flower.”

Lace ducks her head, wringing the blanket under her hands.

“Do you get a lot of soul-creatures seeking it?” she asks.

“Many,” the shaman says. “Everyone who knows of it wants it. It’s powerful enough to transform a human into something remarkably close to a soul-using creature.”

Lace stills on the bed.

“Who would want to be that?” she asks faintly.

“Oh many people. The promise of power is an alluring call,” the shaman says. “Even I myself am not immune.”

“I suppose,” Lace says. She glances down at the blanket, before stealing a furtive glance at Hornet’s body.

The shaman must see it, for she follows Lace’s gaze. “Did you save that Weaver on your own?” she says then, hand on her wide hip. “She’ll owe you quite the debt.”

“Hardly,” Lace says, a note of real regret written within the lines of her voice. “Unfortuneately, I owe the Weaver far more than could be paid back in a life time.”

“Oh?” the shaman questions, her voice an upwards croak. “Surely it’s not so bad. A life for a life is a common enough trade – even the Weaver will be forced to admit that. You’d be free of your life-debt from here on out.”

Lace is silent. It’s unusual for her, but she thinks if she opened her mouth she would just start bawling.

To be free of her life debt . . . to be free of Hornet . . . The dullness of her life would supersede her vitality quicker than she could physically fall apart at the seams.

The shaman furrows her brows. “You don’t think the Weaver will let you go?” she says, befuddled. “But she’d be forced to. The debt is no more. Come now, celebrate, as I’ve always heard that Weavers are cruel mistresses –”

“Yes, yes,” Lace says at last, cutting the shaman off. “Who wouldn’t want to be free of a life debt? I’ll talk to her when she wakes.” But she curls her fingers around the edge of her blanket and sinks her nails into her skin.

“Alright,” says the shaman. She tilts her head a bit, evaluating Lace up and down, left and right, as if she can find a piece missing. “You must be starved. I’ll go make you a plate of food.”

She leaves the room, tapping her cane along the wood floor as she goes. Lace can hear it echo throughout the house, thudding rhythmically as the shaman retreats to the kitchen.

Lace settles back down into the bed, situating herself on the lumpy mattress. Her arm – the one Groal had torn into – feels sore, tight. When she lifts it to examine it, she sees that it’s been neatly stitched up. Ordinary thread would not keep Lace together, but this thread – a white line zigzagging clearly against her skin – appears to be far more than ordinary. Perhaps it was made with soul or silk as like all the other threads Hornet had provided for her. It must be quite rare.

Lace has the vague idea to thank the shaman. Instead, she turns over, staring at Hornet’s silhouette, steadily breathing up and down. Each inhale is a hope, each exhale a fulfillment. No matter how angry Lace gets, how betrayed, she finds that no longer does the release of these emotions hinge on Hornet’s suffering in turn. Lace longs for acknowledgement. She longs for something more than the hollow promise of sisterhood.

Your little Weaver’s a contract killer.

Lace would be mad about that later. She is mad, somewhere distant in the recesses of her mind. But at the moment, she is only desperately, pathetically thankful.

At one point, the shaman comes back, the promised plate of food in her hands and a glass of water. She says something, voice like a creaking cicada in the height of summer. Lace can’t make it out.

Her adrenaline has quit on her. Lace, exhausted, falls back asleep.

When she wakes again, she feels far better. It’s already late afternoon on the next day, the sun sliding gracefully down the horizon once more. Lace flings herself out of bed, finding that her body has decided to work with her once more.

She creeps out of the room to find the shaman bustling in a horrifically messy kitchen. Pots pile high in the sink, dripping with strangely-colored substances. Crumbs adorn every counter, knives are stabbed at strange angles into cupboards.

“You’re going to get ants,” Lace says, making the shaman jump.

She then snickers at the comment. “Oh trust me dearie,” the ants aren’t going to want to eat this.” She jabs her finger at a bright pink concoction, the consistency of liquid glue. “You’re feeling better then?”

“Much.” Lace eyes around. “Do you need help to clean?”

“You’re sweet to offer, but I fear most of these potions would have a dozen negative effects on those unused to even the mere fumes,” the shaman says. “How about you wait in the living room? I’ll make us coffee.”

Lace nods. The rooms are so stuffed to the brink with trinkets, her eyes have not stopped finding things to be interested in since she had walked in. The walls are crammed with pictures and paraphernalia of a dozen religions: the cross of the Catholics, the yin-yang of the Taoists, the Dharma-wheel of the Buddhists, the Khanda and five Ks of the Sikh. There are bottle caps, small ragged dolls, toys from fast food meals, dangling tourist keychains, postcards, cut out pictures of plants, real plants all pressed and dried, large paintings of fruit and people walking and the ocean, small paintings of eyes and human anatomy, a stuffed fox, a stuffed caiman, bottles of every electric color, a rolled out rug woven of neon reds and oranges, and pots of plants, their dangling leaves teasing Lace’s face when she gets too close. Every space not occupied by a knickknack is crammed with books of all sorts – romances and cookbooks and nonfiction and historical dramas in every language imaginable, even ones Lace cannot even recognize.

Lace sinks down on a couch which possesses arms that rise higher than her head. She curls her feet under her butt and rests her head loosely against the back.

The shaman comes back from the kitchen, two cups steaming in her hands.

“Here you are dearie,” she says cheerily.

Lace peers down into the cup at the cup of black coffee. She makes a face at its dark color, for she prefers her coffee milked and sweetened. But she’s pleasantly surprised at her first sip – the coffee has a treacle flavor, as if sugar had already been added. Lace drinks the rest with gusto.

“My own recipe,” the shaman says proudly, eyes sparkling at Lace’s enjoyment. “My family always enjoyed it.”

“They’re not here?” Lace blurts before she realizes she should probably be more sensitive to the woman who saved her.

Luckily, the shaman doesn’t seem perturbed. “My brothers have always been freer spirits than I,” she says wistfully. “I am content with remaining at home. But my brothers sought grander things. One’s a doctor in Europe somewhere; the other disappeared into Siberia some odd years ago. He’s always been anti-social.”

Lace blinks, furrowing her brows.

“But to restrain them would’ve only caused resentment,” the shaman says. “Perhaps one day we will reunite. That is Fate’s game.”

Abstaining from commenting, Lace takes a slow sip of her coffee. Nevertheless, the shaman reads her instantly.

“You don’t believe in Fate,” she says.

“I think it’s silly,” Lace says. “If we left everything up to fate, what on earth would get done? We’d all lay around lazy, expecting someone else to come propel us to our futures.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” the shaman observes.

“Or we’d get enthralled in endless wars,” Lace says. “They’d say that was our fate. Mass religion has never boded well with me. Nor has the idea of a ‘correct’ path forward.”

“No?”

“No. Who’s to say you made the right choice?” Lace brings her finger to slide along the rim of the coffee cup. “Even if you help a homeless man – who’s to say he won’t use his newfound strength to turn around and rob a store? Perhaps he’ll kill someone.”

“Are you saying we shouldn’t help the poor?”

“No. I’m saying that cultural determination of an idyllic ‘right’ doesn’t mean that it’s fate. Wouldn’t you say bringing some African kid over to Europe is an act of benevolence? But children can suffer just as well in Europe as they can in Africa.”

“Perhaps it was the child’s fate to suffer,” the shaman observes.

“And perhaps someone should interfere," Lace says. “But if we have fate, no one will ever do it. It’s someone else’s fate. The blame is absolved from the individual.”

“I see,” the shaman says. “You see Fate as a stand-in for god.”

“I see god as a stand-in for fate. Fate is a universal ideal; god is a curated image per religion of the same ideal.”

“I see Fate as the course of choices you make throughout your life,” the shaman says. “In another life, perhaps it was not your Fate. But Fate has shaped you in this one to end up on my couch.”

“My choices are my fate?” Lace says sarcastically. “I saw an inspirational poster like that once – ‘I am the master of my fate.’ That’s pretty non-committal."

“You’re conflating luck and Fate dearie,” the shaman says placidly. “You think of Fate as stumbling around blindly, happening upon a result. I think of Fate as acknowledgement of a life you may have. You have many Fates and only one path. Depending on your actions, you are destined to have choices.”

“I think you’re making this up as we go along,” Lace says, annoyed. She grows quickly weary of the conversation. “You’re just saying things.”

“Maybe,” the shaman says. She doesn’t appear vexed by this conversation at all; in fact, her eyes crinkle with delight. “I enjoy people like you – the nonbelieve sort. You’ve seen the extent of the weaponization of a being’s very soul, but your imagination cannot extend to Fate?”

“It simply seems ridiculous,” Lace says, face pinched. “A soul to me is like blood. Who knows if it’s even a real soul or just some innate magical ability a soul-creatures are born with? Fate is far more nebulous. I see no evidence – only the results of both my own and people’s choices. Even if the wind that pushes my sailboat was caused by the flap of a bird’s wing, the cause still progenerated the effect.”

“I see,” is all the shaman says simply. She takes a sip of her coffee. Her nails are painted a sparkling silver. “What do you call then meeting the Weaver when you so direly needed her? You must be stitched together by soul – quite often by the looks of things. Is it a coincidence you met her?”

“Hardly,” Lace snaps. “If my mother hadn’t taken me in the first place, I wouldn’t have needed to know her, nor would I be here at all.”

“But your mother made that choice.”

“I was already in the circle,” Lace says. “Hornet is not fated to help everyone she meets. And don’t go putting that idea in her head – she’s already bad enough about it.”

“Is that how the two of you ended up in Bilewater?”

Lace sighs, long and loud.

“Unfortunately,” she grumbles, “the Weaver you’re housing is a fool.”

“Hm,” the shaman murmurs into her coffee. She chuckles to herself, once, before er eyes flick up to Lace once. They’re warm, almost motherly. Lace can imagine this woman having children, although no evidence of any such offspring lies within the numerous trinkets whirled violently around the room.

“You care much for her,” the shaman observes after another moment. She sets down her coffee. “You feel asleep looking at her. You don’t mind your debt as much as I know many who do.”

Lace pauses.

“She saved my life,” Lace decides. “She continues to choose to save it. I owe her for that. What I did in Bilewater only touches the surface.”

“And that’s all?” the shaman says. “A simple life-debt?”

“What else could there be?”

“Dear,” the shaman says. She taps her staff upon the floor. “I can smell your heartbreak from halfway across the continent. You're as subtle as a smear of jam on a white blouse.”

Lace flushes, legs quickly bringing her to her feet. “I’m not heartbroken,” she hisses. “There’s nothing to be heartbroken over.”

“But you seem to be quite discontent,” the shaman observes. She shuffles her feet, using her cane to move closer to Lace. “Perhaps you don’t want love, but you want something from that weaver-child. Respect, perhaps? The warmth of a body? A better friendship? These are all things to be heartbroken over.”

“I’m not heartbroken,” Lace insists, suddenly feeling very defensive. “You’re a deluded, pseudo-religious old lady living in the middle of the jungle – what do you know?”

“Plenty of things child,” the shaman says calmly. “I know, for instance, that though you deny it your feelings for the Weaver grow with each passing day. It’s in your nature to be obsessive. Your mother spun you that way.”

“My mother didn’t spin me in any way,” Lace says harshly. “My mother desired something she couldn’t have, so she acquired a substitute. That is all.”

“Don’t all mothers spin their children?” the shaman says. “She nurtures you at her bosom and provides roof and education – isn’t it her who you reflect?”

“I don’t,” Lace snaps, digging her fingers into her sleeve. “You don’t know anything. You batty loon, I bet you try this philosophy spiel on any fool who comes walking through, don’t you? More likely than not do people have parents that have disappointed them. You’re hardly more than a charlatan at the fair.”

Even in the distant lands of South America though, Lace cannot escape her mother. Her words, though aggressive, ring false. The shaman’s humble analysis shook her more than she would have liked. Few things chilled Lace like the idea of her soul being like her mother’s. But she thinks of her mother’s obsession with Herrah Beaste’s daughter and thinks that some things are inescapable.

“I fear I’ve offended you,” the shaman says after a beat.

Lace giggles, a little hysterical. “Of course not!” she chirps with wide eyes. “How could I be offended by something so untrue? Your lies hardly affect me; your words are entirely useless. As I said – you’re only guessing. Sometimes your words must strike true for you to throw them around so recklessly – but that is not the case here.”

“Still,” the shaman says. “Allow me to show my sincerity when I apologize.”

In her cloak, she digs around in her pockets for a moment, patting her body down, before ah-hah-ing, a creased smile blooming on her face. Withdrawing her hand, a small plastic bottle lays inside, some murky liquid sealed inside by a screw-on cap.

“I’ve always been rather good at brewing potions,” the shaman says, a note of pride in her voice. “Far better than my brothers, at any rate. This here is a bit of my best work. Cinnamon, for permanence. Purslane, for tolerance. Toloaxihuitl, for allure. Parsley, for an aphrodisiac. Although – I altered my recipe here.” The shaman winks. “Normally, I divide the parsley into masculine and feminine portions, but I exclusively used feminine parsley for this recipe. It’s quite one-of-a-kind.”

“What,” Lace says, “are you talking about.”

The shaman throws her hands in the air. “Aiya,” she groans. “Your plight has moved me. Your pathetic feelings have earned my sympathy. Dearie – this is a love potion. Pour the dose in your beloved’s drink and they won’t fall out of love with you for as long as they live.”

Lace stares at the shaman for a long moment, a tendril of disgust curling through her chest. “You think I’m stupid?” she says lowly. “You’re a scam artist! I’m not paying for a love potion with parsley in it! Parsley tastes like soap! It’s not an aphrodisiac!”

The shaman’s face stiffens with offense. “Silly girl!” she scolds, whacking Lace’s leg with her cane. “Don’t you know how many girls would be begging for a love potion made by my hands? Don’t you know the lines I have at my door? All poor idiots, crying my husband left me and my boyfriend doesn’t love me – all those people, and I chose your foolish soul to bestow my talents upon, only to find you ungrateful!”

“I didn’t ask for a love potion! I don’t want one!”

“And here I am giving you one. For free, might I add, an offer that might expire within the coming moments!”

“I don’t –” Lace pinches her nose. “I think all of this is quite frankly, a bunch of hogwash. Your fate, your potions – keep your drug. I don’t need it.”

“Because you’ve been successful in pursuit of the spider so far,” the shaman says, suddenly all grandmotherly and pseudo-wise. Her voice gentles. “I truly feel for your plight child. Countless people have come to my shack, but few have a disease of the heart quite like you. I have a soft spot for lovers as loyally devoted as you. I want for you to change your Fate.”

“I just said I don’t believe in it.”

“This isn’t religion. The potion doesn’t require belief for it to work. Child, you resist so vehemently – what do you have to lose? I’m loath to watch you pine away in misery because you’ve sat back and watched from afar for so long.” The shaman’s eyes glitter. “Worst comes to worst, my potion doesn’t work and your spider gets an extra splash of cinnamon-parsley to her morning coffee. But if you don’t do it at all, wouldn’t you always be curious?” She leans forward, placing the plastic vial in Lace’s hand, before folding Lace’s fingers over it.

“Haven’t you always dreamed of this?” she says lowly, squeezing Lace’s hand within her own, wrinkled cold one. “Haven’t you spent your life wishing that the Weaver would take you in her arms?”

Lace feels her throat close up. The back of her head starts to fog, the front of her mouth starts to wring itself dry of saliva. Wishing – her heart could beat out her chest with her helpless wishes.

“Just try it,” the shaman says warmly. “A gift from an old lady with many regrets.”

Her voice inflects downwards at the end, and she ducks her head, before stepping back. She thuds her cane once against the floorboards. Lace’s hand limply hangs, cradling the potion.

“Once the spider has recovered, you two will be on your way,” the shaman says. “Your professor should be somewhere at the top of the mountain.”

She gives Lace a knowing look, before stamping her way into the kitchen, ducking under a weedy, tendriled plant that shades itself in the doorway.

Lace stares at the frame blankly, watching the leaves sway back and forth from the wake of the shaman’s passing.

Almost automatically, her hand curls around the plastic vial. Without looking at it, Lace tucks it in her pocket.

***

Two days later, Hornet awakes. Lace has hardly slept during this period. What little sleep she got was disturbed and nightmarish, leaving her clutching at Hornet’s limp hand for comfort. Lace would find Hornet’s heart and stomach and feel the silk of her soul running under her fingers in a warm circlet.

But relief quickly fades. The longer Hornet remains peaceful, passive, the more Groal’s words and Hornet’s own actions – her stupid, stupid actions – come to haunt Lace. The more they ring through her head. The more Lace finds her teeth grinding against each other, unsure where to even begin to confront Hornet.

By the time Hornet wakes, Lace is angry, tapping her foot and burying her nails into her skin. It wants to burst out of her, but insofar as Hornet remains unconscious, the anger retains an edge of worry.

The worry fades rapidly when Hornet wakes up.

Hornet’s eyes crack open first. They find Lace and they soften. Then they search the room, hardening as they find it unfamiliar.

“Where . . .” she croaks, unable to get more out of her spent throat. Silently, Lace hands her a glass of water, which Hornet chugs down.

“We made it to a local’s home,” Lace says neutrally. “We’ve been here the last few days. The shaman here helped us greatly.”

“Shaman?” Hornets eyes sharpen as she puts down her water, but the aggression in her eyes settles once she learns they are no longer in Bilewater. She clears her throat. “Snail shaman?”

“Yes.”

“Hm,” Hornet looks troubled. “Owing a snail shaman is always more trouble than it’s worth.”

“She saved your life,” Lace snaps. She plucks the cup from Hornet’s grip. “Be grateful for that at least.”

“I can be grateful and suspicious simultaneously.” Hornet’s giving Lace an odd look, face evaluating. “You’re angry.”

“Yes.”

“What for?” Hornet furrows her brow. “Was it Groal? He’s a nasty man; it’s fortunate he’s dead.”

“It’s not Groal,” Lace says.

“ . . . the danger then? I did warn you, but you’re so insistent –”

“It’s not the danger.” Lace slams the cup on the table. “Hornet. It’s you.”

Hornet stares at her with wide eyes. They still lag with sleep, undercut by dark bruises. Lace refuses to allow herself to feel bad. For once, Hornet is in her debt.

“You lied to me,” Lace continues. “Groal said you were a contract killer. You’re fanatically good at fighting. The preparations you made for this trip went far beyond reasonable paranoia – you were preparing for something specific. Did you think me dumb that I wouldn’t notice?”

“I don’t think you’re dumb.”

“You act like it,” Lace says. “All the time. So what – you kill people? Is that how you make your money? I always wondered how you stayed afloat. I’m assuming Hollow doesn’t know about this – they let you go far too easily on your trips.”

Hornet is silent.

“Who knows what you do,” Lace continues dully. “I only know that I’m not a part of it. You’re very good at keeping yourself compartmentalized Hornet, and that’s not a compliment.”

“It was for the best,” Hornet finally says. This sends Lace almost bubbling over the edge.

“How long,” she says through gritted teeth, “did you lie. And don’t you dare continue to lie about this.”

Hornet studies her with dark eyes, as if evaluating what more she can get away with. Lace remains unyielding.

Hornet breaks first. “Three years.”

Lace sucks a breath in through her teeth.

“ Lace – you must understand our financial situation.”

“Oh I understand it,” Lace says. “I understand. I’ve been with you for most of it! What I don’t understand is the insanity it took for you to go gallivanting around with a gun and supernatural reflexes to – to kill people or steal or blackmail or whatever else it is you do and not even try to inform those who care about you!”

“This trip truly wasn’t a job,” Hornet says. “I really am retrieving Dr. Pilocibin. Just – there’s reason to believe that he might have been . . . apprehended. By a local gang. The First Sinners, they’re called.”

“I don’t care what they’re called,” Lace says. “And I don’t care if you mounted all their heads on a stick and paraded them around in Paris. I care that you lied! I would have never found out if it weren’t for Grindle and his love of money!”

“Damn Grindle,” Hornet mutters.

“No! Not ‘damn Grindle!’” Lace throws her hands in the air. “You’re not getting it! You don’t get how selfish you were! How selfish you’re being to me and Hollow!”

“To get you involved would be to risk your lives further,” Hornet says. “You and Hollow have been through enough troubles. To live a life so domestic is such a vision you two crave, but that is not something I find necessary. Dying for a cause would be a far better Weaver death than many who came before, hunted and skewered for their souls.”

Lace can’t make her understand. She can’t do it! Hornet refuses to see that her lies are hurtful. She refuses to see that Hollow would be devastated; that Lace is so right now. She cannot see that harm brought to her own body brings emotional harm to both Lace and Hollow, she cannot see the communal, collective detriment that would collapse their tiny community had she really died. She cannot see that her death would ruin Hollow. It would kill Lace.

Years of this. Years and years and Lace never suspected. Who would? It was easier to accept that Hornet was a Weaver than it has been, in the face of overwhelming evidence, to accept that Hornet ventures out to kill people for a living; even now Lace finds her mind denying it.

“If you can’t think of yourself,” Lace says, “then think of me. If you die, I live – what, maybe a few months more? Nothing significant! I’ll just come undone. My body will unravel. I don’t know any other Weavers; I was lucky to find you. Otherwise my body would’ve just disintegrated when I was seventeen and I would’ve had no idea why!”

“I had a plan for that,” Hornet says softly.

“Did you,” Lace says flatly. “Well that’s reassuring. That’s flattering. What – are you going to wrap your silk on a spool for me to weave myself?”

“Well – yes,” Hornet says. “It was a surprise.”

Lace pauses. Her mind stops running for a second, before it kicks back online.

“A surprise,” she says faintly. There might be a note of horror in her voice. She’s not sure. Suddenly, she can feel her own shoes on her feet.

“It’s in part what Dr. Pilocibin is researching,” Hornet continues. “I mean – he loves his psychedelics. But he’s also trying to figure out a way to materialize silk-soul in a permanent fashion, to replicate a Weaver’s natural purpose. I agreed to work with him because my soul works best for his research purposes, he paid me for it, and then also paid for my research on spider venom and my robotics projects. I thought you would be tired of relying on me for such things anyways; working with him would give me direct access to any prototypes he might develop. You could be first in line to get one. Then you wouldn’t have to see me as often for my silk. You would be free to do as you like.”

She gives Lace an entreating look. “Isn’t that better?” Hornet asks. “We can move our visits from once a month to perhaps every six months. Maybe even once a year if we’re careful. How does that sound?”

Lace’s brain had shut down again. She gapes, but no words arrive.

Her chest is freezing. Hornet could have stabbed her through the skull, sliced her head off like she had Groal and it would have hurt less.

“What?” is all she can get out. The word sounds hollow and deafening to her own ears.

“Dr. Pilocibin has been working on a device that can maintain large amounts of soul for an extended period of time,” Hornet replies patiently. “I thought it would be perfect for you. You’re quite adept at spinning the silk I give you into your body by now. Wouldn’t this be better?”

Lace cannot believe what she’s hearing.

“So you’re leaving,” she says, stunned. “You’re really leaving. You’ve been planning it all along.”

“What?” Hornet replies, eyes confused. “I’m not. I’ll still be here. It’s just –”

“You’re leaving!” Lace accuses. “You’re sick of me.”

“I’m not,” says Hornet.

“You are. Why else would you have done this –!” Lace throws up her hands. “This! This!”

“This? Lace, I want to give you freedom.” Hornet leans forward deliberately in bed. “This is freedom! The freedom to do as you please, rather than having to rely on me!”

“Maybe for you it is freedom,” Lace says. “Freedom to only see me once a year. A solution that doesn’t hurt your pesky morals. This is not freedom for me. This is a surrender. You’re forsaking me. What if it doesn’t work huh? All this and you’re still not disengaged from me!”

“Then I’ll keep doing what I’ve done for years – Lace, I don’t understand.” Hornet truly seems like she doesn’t. “This is what you’ve wanted.”

And maybe at one point, it had been. Perhaps at one point in time, Lace would’ve liked nothing more than to be free of Hornet’s influence. She had certainly acted like it, back when she was seventeen, back when her mother had been both everything and nothing, back when she’d still called Hornet Tahmina and spat on it to anyone who would listen. Back then, everything had looked like a deciduous tree in the winter night, serrated and craggy with no real defining features to speak of. Her own mother was the moon, all Lace could ever see.

After her mother had betrayed her, Lace had seen Hornet as a mere replacement for a long time. A different shape, softer words, but the same – forced to rely on another for survival, except this time, the mask had been lifted. The facade had collapsed, the sheet had come up to reveal the fingers casting shadows upon the walls. Lace had never learned to see a form for what it was under the Sun. Everything grew blurry and suspicious.

Over time, Hornet had coaxed love from her like a stray cat from an alley. Her permissiveness of Lace had been far too tolerant. Lace knows she’s brutal, had known it even before the visceral violence Hornet had displayed in Bilewater, but it had never quite turned her off. It had never taken on an unappealing element because Hornet had never been brutal to her.

Inadvertently, Hornet herself had allowed the green spring to come to Lace’s heart. Surely, she hadn’t meant to. But it remains the fact that she had. Lace blames her for it the same way she loves her.

“It is, isn’t it,” Lace murmurs, rubbing her hands up and down her forearms. “It is what I wanted, isn’t it?”

Hornet looks lost. She’s just woken up from her pseudo-coma. Her hair’s a mess, a ragged descent of white waves. When she was younger, it had been a thick fall to her waist, then she’d cut it terribly short, right above her ears, and now it falls a bit past her shoulders. It frizzes outward from the heat, a little greasy, quite dirty.

The silence lulls between them. Lace looks to the ground. Her anger finds no great outlet and drains away like a poorly built dam. What’s she supposed to say anyway? That Hornet should stay when she so clearly wants to go? Breaking the only real tie between them?

“Is there anything else you need to tell me?” Lace mutters, digging her fingers into the loose flesh of her elbows. “Anything else of life-changing importance?”

“I only did the Summer Olympics because you asked,” Hornet says after a long pause. “Back when you asked – remember? – about what I was going to do to earn money. I didn’t want to tell you what I was really doing. I thought you’d give it up. But you didn’t. So –” she gestures vaguely. “I entered.”

Lace had given her money to practice. This is after Hornet had refused countless of Lace’s checks. She’d been desperate.

For some reason, this simple fact makes her feel, more than anything else that’s happened in the past few days, like she wants to cry.

“Anything else?” Lace asks, hoarse.

Hornet picks at the skin on her nail. A bit of color has returned to her face. She looks faintly misty, eyes vacant.

“No,” Hornet says quietly. “You already know about Hollow. Now you know all about me. Are you satisfied?”

Lace picks at a thread on her elbow. “I don’t believe you,” she sighs. “Unfortunately. Lying will do that.”

“Believe what you want,” Hornet says. “This is all there is to tell. I can explain to you the nuance of the First Sinners if you’d like to hear it. I can tell you about Bilewater and Groal, or I can rehash every detail of the jobs I’ve done over the past few years. But as for the whole – it’s been explained. I’ve got nothing more.”

“I’m telling Hollow,” Lace says, trying not to vomit.

Hornet huffs. “I thought you would.”

Lace squeezes her skin harshly between her fingers. She feels the silk give, push down and inside. She has no blood, no veins or arteries to carry it. Her bones are like a mannequin draped with the finest fashions. At this point, her bones might be the only true part of herself, the only part of her that has followed her since birth. She’s someone’s lost thought experiment, a false person quite literally built from the ground up, injected with personality and winded to life with a bronze key. Is her heart the same? Is it even there? Are her lungs, the spine stretching like an elongated spider between them, still inhaling the same air?

Hornet quite literally keeps her whole. The silk she spins as a Weaver, the selfsame silk she spins to keep her own soul alive – this makes up Lace’s entire body. Once, it had been her mother’s silk. Now, it is Hornet. Hornet spins her.

Now, Hornet wants to give her up. Like a trinket. Like an object. Like her mother had.

Lace turns on her foot mechanically. Her feet feel cold and numb. Her hands shake. Fury has retreated like a flood, leaving only broken planks and cement foundations in its wake.

“Lace?” Hornet calls. She starts to get up off the bed before she clutches her head – she must not be entirely healed. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” Lace says. She has two feet out the door, a hand on the doorknob. “I need to go out.”

“Wait –” Hornet says. She tries and fails to get up again. Eventually giving up, she turns bright red. “I don’t think you understand. I don’t think you’re understanding. I’m not just leaving – this is just an aid. I don’t want to leave!”

Lace has already shut the door. None of these words are sharp enough to pierce through her mind. She’s already too firmly entrenched.

***

By the time they leave the shaman, Lace has all but forgotten their original purpose in being in Bilewater. She just wants to leave this country forever, go back to her home in France. Hornet must remind her of their mission.

“We don’t have to go back out,” she says, strapping her backpack back on. “But we must find Shakra.”

Like a dog with a trigger word, Lace slams her clothes down into her backpack angrily. She’s weary of this.

“I don’t want to,” she says mulishly. “Shakra can rot.”

Hornet stares at her, like Lace has become unfamiliar.

“Then I’ll go by myself,” she says, which is like another trigger to Lace. She takes a pulp book and heaves it at Hornet.

“Absolutely not!” she shrieks, made more furious by the fact that Hornet harmlessly catches the book in her hands. “Try and leave me one more time and I’ll – I’ll –!”

Unable to come up with a sufficient threat, Lace yanks her backpack tight around her. She stomps to the front door, almost missing the shaman.

“Oh dear,” the woman says. She’s been gracious and invaluable to the two of them over the past few days. Hornet had already offered her money which had been categorically refused. This had clearly left Hornet off-balance; her suspicions about the shaman were written all over her face. “A bit of a spat?”

“It’s alright,” Lace says, breathing through her nose. “Thank you for your hospitality. I don’t know how we could ever repay you.”

“Oh nonsense, this speak of repayment,” the shaman says, waving her hand. “Just come and visit me sometime and we can call it even.”

“We’ll think about it.” Hornet had emerged from the room as well. Her face had gone blank.

“We’ll come visit you.” Lace ignores Hornet and addresses the shaman with the words.

The shaman smiles mysteriously, before reaching forward to roughly pat Lace’s cheek. Hornet makes a noise of protest and an aborted movement forward, cut short by Lace’s glare.

“Have a good trip,” the shaman croaks lowly. “I’ll be rooting for you.” Her eyes drop meaningfully to Lace’s pocket.

Lace flushes and pulls away.

They leave soon after, walking west according to Hornet’s compass. Hornet has a slight limp, but is able to get around pretty well, and doesn’t hinder them much at all.

Lace doesn’t make much conversation. Hornet doesn’t try to engage, other than sending Lace troubled looks now and again. Sometimes, she offers her hand to help Lace across mud puddles and large cuts of water, occasionally standing in the water herself to do it. The gesture sends flutters through Lace’s stomach, but she’s angry enough to refuse Hornet’s offered hand at least half of the time.

Lace chews her emotions over in her head, turning them around as if spinning a sunflower stem between her fingers. They blur together, a spinning circlet of yellowed emotions that she cannot drag apart for the life of her.

She wonders, not for the first time, what Hollow would think of this. She thinks they’d be furious.

Eventually, the ground becomes more stable, less muddy. The elevation begins to climb. Hornet sniffs the air, snatching a handful of dirt between her fingers before pointing: “This way.”

The two of them start to climb. The way is steep, unmarked and slippery. Several times does Lace think they might fall, only to cling to the side of the hill like a mountain goat thousands of feet in the air.

In the distance, the sound of roaring water starts to pick up. They come across a sloping stream, bumbling over rocks and draped by the jewel tones of slender leaves, which Hornet guides them upwards against the flow of the water.

The sound of roaring water comes to a head. In the distance is a large waterfall, surrounded by flat silver rocks. Beneath it is a tiny figure – Shakra, cutting a clear figure across the landscape in her amber clothing, staring up at the clouds.

Climbing the last few meters, Hornet hurries to meet the girl. Lace follows at a much more leisurely pace. She glances around at the scenery. It’s unlikely this area has been touched by humans for years – it smells fresh and clean, sharp and wet with water. White and green moss grows plentiful and freely on several rocks, scarred by small fissures and chipped edges. There is no sound available to the ear but the rapid descent of the pounding waterfall and the hum of insects and the call of the birds, unafraid of the humans in their midst.

“Shakra,” Hornet says, hurrying forward as quickly as she can on her limping leg. “There you are. We weren’t able to find your professor, but – oh.”

She stops. Even Lace, who still boils with anger, knows better than to make a comment in such a moment.

Shakra’s professor’s body is silent. She slouches against a wet rock, the thunderous waterfall falling heavily behind her. She’s a fat woman with many beaded necklaces and laugh lines around her face, crow’s feet around her eyes. A bit of blood pools under her, appearing to have leaked from a cut on her head. It’s covered by the flare of her skirt, limp and wet in the mud.

Shakra’s posture is slumped, weary, but she straightens a bit when Hornet comes near.

“I believe she had a heart attack,” she says. “Hit her head.” Her voice does not reflect this weariness, although there is a quieter tone than usual to it. “You look injured. Thank you for coming nevertheless.”

Hornet sighs. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I had suspected, when our trail led to Bilehaven, but . . . well. I only met your professor once. She seemed upstanding.”

“No matter how upstanding, life does not become a home for anybody,” Shakra says. “To not expect such an outcome is naivety I’ll shoulder myself. A proper show of grief would be to continue her work.”

“Of course,” Hornet agrees. “But do not neglect to mourn. It’s hardly a weakness.”

The waterfall pounds behind them. Individual droplets cast off from the main body of water, flinging themselves onto the nearby rocks. It’s so loud that even the birdcall cannot penetrate, so loud that Lace finds her thoughts subsumed by the display of power, almost breathless with awe.

Fate could not have made something so wonderful. Lace doesn’t think that fate has the power to orchestrate the death of someone as insignificant as Shakra’s professor. There’s simply no substitution for cause-and-effect, and there’s no alternative for the degradation of an unwilling body. It simply is. Nothing else.

“In the end, the time spent with her felt like one very short day,” Shakra says, staring down at her professor. “But it was a good day. I would not trade it for another.”

***

The way back to Frey’s is stark and silent. Shakra is clearly grieved. Lace cannot make herself think about anything other than Hornet’s betrayal, constant, deliberate, and brutal. And Hornet is clearly thinking about something over and over without coming to a conclusion.

“We’re heading out tomorrow morning,” Hornet says to Lace after they arrive back at Frey’s, having showered and eaten.

Lace doesn’t reply in turn.

“I won’t abandon you at any more hotels or stops,” Hornet adds. “If you’re worried about that.”

Lace grabs her brush and begins to smooth down flyaway hairs in a very deliberate manner, ignoring Hornet as she does so. Her hair is ruined from the mud and grime of rural Peru. It’s going to give her stylist a fit.

“Lace,” she hears. Then a long sigh. Lace feels fingers touch her arm, right where Groal had ripped into it with his bayonet. Lace schools herself. She remains face-forward.

“I didn’t notice this,” Hornet says. “Where did you get it?”

Lace remains stubbornly silent.

“I’ll fix it then,” Hornet says after a beat. She begins to weave Lace’s arm back together, a much more professional and stable job than the imbuement the shaman had tried. She’s quick about it in a way that speaks of years of experience, gentle in a way that speaks of care.

Hornet really shouldn’t be doing it at all with the state her soul is in right now, but Lace doesn’t stop her. She just stares down at her brush, not even looking at Hornet’s careful fingers as they needle in between the tattered remains of Lace’s arm.

When she finishes, Hornet doesn’t immediately take her hands away. Her fingers smooth down the ripped area, as if trying to find a loose or broken string. Where the new silk is, Lace’s skin is pure white. Eventually, as time passes, it will fade back to a familiar brown as what little of her skin that remains heals over it. Until then, it is a stark ivory.

Lace looks up at herself in the mirror. Her hair is more white than black these days. Her entire body starts to fall apart sooner rather than later. You’ll always know exactly where – her skin is patched like a porcelain statue, all covered in alabastrine.There is no monotony to be found in her skin. On a good day, she looks unique; on a bad day, she looks like she has a disease.

Behind her, Hornet smoothes over Lace’s arm one last time.

“I want to make things easier for you,” she says. “I wanted you to have a choice. I don’t mean to abandon you, or anything like that. I only didn’t want to be your mother.”

Lace is silent. She meets Hornet’s dark eyes in the mirror.

“I don’t want you to rely on me,” Hornet says. “And I don’t think you do either. Why you’re so against this, I can’t figure out . . .”

Lace brings her gaze to her lap. Her reasoning to keep Hornet near her is just as selfish as it is repugnant and exploitative – she simply does not want to stop seeing Hornet. She likes having a reason to see Hornet every month, just as she likes being as close to a part of the Wurm family as she can get without sharing blood.

Hornet shakes her head.

“I’m going to bed,” she says. “I’m . . . “

She trails off. Then she moves away, towards the bed. She lays down, spreading the quilt across her back. “We’ll leave in the morning,” she says, voice muffled. “After the sun rises. It’s better to have light anyways.”

It takes an awfully long time for Hornet’s breath to even out, smooth itself into something rhythmic. Lace listens for it. She listens for every stir and every movement Hornet makes in the bed. She listens to the rising, sheep-like sound of frogs in the night and the whistle of hawk flies, throwing themselves mechanically at the window.

Lace puts down her brush. She stares at herself in the mirror for a long time.

***

The next morning, they leave late enough in the day that they’re able to eat breakfast with Shakra, Frey, and the rest of her family.

There is rice and fried chicken and bananas and a starchy yucca mash. Lace, suddenly famished in a way she hasn’t been this entire miserable week, eats quite a bit of everything, shoving more food into her mouth before she had even finished chewing the first bite. She’s so woeful she can’t even feel it anymore. All her self-pity has retreated in the face of her ravenous hunger. She eats away her feelings and doesn’t look up at Hornet once.

After, they pack their belongings. Frey had said they could stay as long as they liked, but Lace can tell Hornet’s feeling guilty and bit antsy at the woman’s continued, free hospitality. They would not return to her home after this.

They make the dusty, inclined walk to the nearest bus stop, a few kilometers west. From there, they ride to the nearest biggest town, where more modes of transportation are available.

“What will you do?” Hornet asks Shakra after the bus drops them off.

“I’ll go back to Tarapoto first,” Shakra says. “I must call the university.”

“And then you will go back to the Skarr?”

“Likely,” Shakra says. “It was my professor’s life dream to study their culture. I’ll continue to do so in her stead. Now that I know more about it, I will also try to investigate into Bilewater. The Skarrsinger holds no love for those people; she will doubtlessly help me. They must be disarray if it is true what you said – their leader is dead?”

“I can’t imagine him coming back from a decapitation,” Hornet says.

“Then I will hope they will be hasty. They will leave plenty of openings for a stick in their wagon wheel,” Shakra says unfalteringly. “I will press forward then.”

“Your determination is admirable,” Hornet says. “I will keep in touch.”

Shakra nods. She will go buy bus tickets to yet another town now, which will then provide a bus line to Tarapoto, according to Frey. Who knows when she and Hornet would physically interact again? Although they hug in farewell, Lace cannot stop the overwhelming feeling of relief and superiority when Hornet takes her by the hand and tugs her away, not once turning to wave goodbye again to Shakra who takes her leave with long, rhythmic strides.

They wander the town for a while before Hornet finds what she’s looking for. She fishes in her wallet for a second before triumphantly pulling out a stack of sol.

She counts out some of it and slides it over to a dubious-looking man. “Tell him we need a motorbike,” she informs Lace, whose eyes open up wide.

“Really?” she says, an embarrassing amount of excitement in her voice.

“It’s that or a horse,” Hornet grumbles, but there’s a faint red to her cheeks that speaks of apology.

Lace bounces on the soles of her feet before rapidly translating Hornet’s request.

His eyes grow narrower.

“License,” he grunts in English, which Hornet pulls out with a flourish.

“Since when do you have a motorcycle license?" Lace asks as the man inspects the card. “I thought you said they were dangerous.”

“I thought it might be useful,” Hornet says. “I’ve got a boating one as well. Just because something’s dangerous doesn’t mean it's not useful.”

“When do you find the time?”

Hornet shrugs.

Her license appears to be in order, because the man reluctantly slides it back over, giving them one last suspicious glance before heading to the back. He doesn’t ask for insurance, but instead returns with a black motorbike.

“Tank filled,” he says, gesturing to the gas tank. “You want – three days?”

“Yes,” Hornet says. “Could we have some gas as well?”

Lace eagerly translates when the man looks at her. He sighs, before adding the cost to the overall bill.

Hornet signs a few forms he gives her, before accepting the keys. She starts the motorbike with a rumble, balancing back and forth on it for a moment before looking expectantly at Lace. It’s only then that Lace realizes that in order to ride the motorcycle, she must get on behind Hornet and – hold on. Like in the movies. She hadn’t even thought about that – she’d just thought it would be fun to go so fast, so far with the wind in her hair.

Lace perks up even more, eyes brightening and all but sparkling. She quickly trots over, slinging one of her feet across the back and pasting herself across Hornet’s back. In this moment, she can almost forgive Hornet for everything she’s put Lace through these past few days. It’s easier when Lace has Hornet close; it’s easier when Shakra isn’t here, a constant threat. Now, the sky is bluer and the grass is greener; now, Lace can ice the worst of her emotions and place them somewhere deep.

Hornet taps one of the motorcycle handles.

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” she says.

“Another one?” Lace grumbles, wrinkling her nose into the back of Hornet’s shirt. “I’m sick of secrets. I’m filled to the brim. I’ll be ill if you tell me another.”

Hornet snorts in amusement. She half turns her head, glancing at Lace with a faint sparkle in her eye.

“I don’t have a motorcycle license,” she says quietly, so that the stall owner might not hear. “That was a fake.”

She revs the engine once, twice, and then peels out of the town, kicking up an asthma-inducing pile of dust behind her. Lace, who only had a second to compute what Hornet had said to her, clutches Hornet’s middle with all she has. It’s probably choking Hornet, but Lace thinks it’s deserved.

“Where are we even going?!” she yells above the roar of the vehicle.

Hornet’s response is almost lost to the wind. “Dr. Pilocibin is nearby!” she shouts back. “Up there!”

She points up at the mountain looming ahead of them. It’s almost purple against the clouds, golden and stern and royal. It blooms verdant from the flat earth, like a clover field in the sky. Several of its sisters rise behind it like guards, valleys running to and fro like the abundant curve of a breast.

Lace opens her mouth to say something else, but gets a mouthful of Hornet’s hair. Between spitting it out and wetting her dry mouth once more, she entirely forgets what she had wanted to tell Hornet.

Instead, she just lays her head down, resting it against the back of Hornet’s neck. The world moves by in a blur of green, jewel-like tones, resplendent with lush blossoms, breaking the pattern with thick swaths of scarlet and amber. Hornet smells nice, like lavender. If Lace closes her eyes, she can pretend that nothing has ever changed.

She wishes it hadn’t. She wishes she could find a moment in time, in the past, where she could’ve put a pin in something and stopped all this from happening. Dr. Pilocibin’s research, Hornet’s job – any of it would be considered a worthwhile pursuit to enter the flow of time and prevent. It’s not an uncommon wish, but Lace thinks she desires it more ardently than any who came before.

Time doesn’t reverse though. The motorbike continues forward, on to Pilocibin, on to Lace’s fate.

They stop only a few times to use the bathroom and so Hornet can check her GPS and refill the tank with the canisters of gas she’d tied to the side of the vehicle. She has some solar-powered battery that she’s been using to charge her phone these past few days. Lace makes a note to ask her about it. Reliable technology is becoming increasingly rare to find these days.

Once they hit the mountain, they go much slower. The landscape gets more dense. Birdsong and bug cries get louder, more cacophonous, just as they had on the Skarr’s mountain. They are unused to modern human presence.

They’ve been riding for several hours when Hornet shuts off the bike. It’s late afternoon, but Lace can only tell this by the deepening sapphire of the sky; the sun appears to hang in the sky by a string, as a child would hold a yo-yo, fingers of burnt orange unfurling from the bosom of the horizon.

“He should be somewhere around here,” Hornet says. Her voice is noticeably lower. “I worry someone’s with him. He’s much farther north than I would’ve expected him to be. Most of his research should’ve been taking place farther south. The Skarr reign right on the northern border of it all.”

“He’s looking at the Everbloom, right?” Lace asks, enjoying the look of shock that temporarily overcomes Hornet’s face that Lace should know such a name.

“. . . Yes,” Hornet confirms. “He wants to know if it can be reproduced at a faster rate. But it doesn’t grow here – the landscape’s not ideal, and every condition about the Everbloom must be perfect.”

“So you think he’s in danger.”

“It’s likely,” Hornet says. “Just stay close and quiet. We’ll walk the rest; the motorcycle’s too loud and large from here on out. He’s only a few kilometers away.”

They leave the motorcycle, traversing the road on foot now. It’s for the best, as the path begins to quickly narrow, thick, deep bushes corralling them into a single-file line soon enough.

“This feels horribly familiar,” Lace hisses. “Are you sure we’re not back on the Skarr’s mountain?”

“Hush,” Hornet silences, hand gesturing similarly.

The shadows stretch far, reaching out clawed grips. They’re already so dense, Lace has no idea how they’d be able to navigate things once night truly fell. Bilewater had been a nightmare for that reason alone, nevermind everything else.

Hornet checks her phone again before she freezes, heading spinning left.

Without another word, she grabs Lace by the hand and drags her into the dense vegetation to their right, sweeping a thick, palm-like leaf in front of the two of them. She lays flat on her belly, shrugging branches and leaves over their heads.

“Don’t move,” she whispers so lowly, Lace has to strain to hear.

There’s nothing for maybe ten minutes. Lace starts to get annoyed, until she hears voices, branches cracking underfoot.

Through the thin slats of the thin branches, Lace watches a man lumber out onto the path they’d just been on. He’s very large. In his right hand, he’s got a handgun.

Another man comes up behind him, this one thin as a rail and far shorter, almost the same height as Hornet.

The short one says something in Spanish, words far too rapid and quiet for Lace to make out. The taller man shakes his head. The shorter man whips his head in disbelief. He says something else, loud enough that Lace can make out “ – dragged me all the way out here for nothing?”

“Not nothing,” the bigger man grunts. “People were here. I saw movement.”

“The boss only wants the Frenchie. If you saw people, you didn’t see the Frenchie, did you?”

“He could have met someone else.”

“And it could’ve also simply been two tourists.” The smaller man looks ready to burst with anger.

“Tourists up here?”

“Tourists wander. They’re a bunch of good-for-nothings, pieces of –” The smaller man’s voice lowers back to a mutter as he storms away.

The bigger man stays for a second, sniffing the air. He looks around, surveying the area with slow, steady strokes of his eyes.

For a moment, he looks right where the two of them are hiding, eyes flinty as steel. Something dumb and cruel as mountain peak snow glitters within their depths.

Lace grabs Hornet’s hand and squeezes it tight.

The man makes another glance around, before finally striding off after their companion. Lace can feel her heart pounding like a relentless drum, never ceasing and and never failing a note.

“This way,” Hornet’s already saying, tugging Lace further into the brush, keeping a low crouch. She’s looking at her phone again. “We’ll stay off the trails. It’s only a bit more anyway.”

“Did you hear them?” Lace whispers in response. “They’re looking for a ‘Frenchie.’ A man, by himself.”

Hornet’s brows worry together, and she increases her pace.

It feels like they’re going slower off the trail, but perhaps that might be the number of obstacles they now have to contend with. As narrow and thin as it was, the trail had at least been beaten down enough that roots and nuts and seeds that had potential as tripping hazards were fairly visible, even if you had to squint; now, wandering through waist-deep vegetation with the sun almost entirely gone, the terrain proves to be much more difficult to navigate.

Lace grabs the back of Hornet’s shirt, making the girl jump. “How much longer?” she murmurs. “Are we almost there?”

Hornet clicks on her phone, before furrowing her brow.

“He should be right here,” she says. “Very close. Visible – oh – uh oh –”

Then she’s racing forward, leaving Lace to hopelessly pick her way after her.

It takes Lace an additional few moments to see what Hornet had spotted first, but once she does, she can’t unsee it. The low-lying brush of the mountain provides little coverage, and the stark, slumped silhouette of Dr. Pilocibin is bizarre even in the dark. He lays on his side, eyes half-closed, clothes dirty and rumpled, vomit staining his shirt. Behind him is a squat little house, build-half into the side of the mountain and covered by brush. The only reason Lace can see it at all is because a faint glow spills from the sides, the barest tendril of light brushing against the oppressive night.

“Dr. Pilocibin,” Hornet mutters, and then slaps his cheeks. “Dr. Pilocibin!”

His head lolls around, mouth falling open.

“You –” he mutters. “You –”

“C’mon professor,” Hornet says. To Lace: “We need to get to the shelter. Those men have probably found the bike by now. It’ll be impossible to get back in the dark.” Indeed, the night is so dense, Lace can barely see Hornet lit in moonlight, standing right in front of her.

“You move the rainbow to see the sky,” Dr. Pilocibin says nonsensically, eyes suddenly wide open. “The bow can only pull across the strings they give you.”

Lace had forgotten – the man is crazy.

Ignoring him, Hornet takes the front half of his body in her hands. “Grab his feet,” she orders. “Let’s haul him inside.

As Lace moves to grab his legs, Dr. Pilocibin blinks at her blankly. “The organ that fails to deliver will never beat again,” he says cryptically. “Who are we to deny our greater purpose?”

“You’re quite the muddled old man,” says Lace. He smells thickly of smoke, a skunky scent that's always faintly clung to him. “I don’t suppose a bit of drug rehabilitation will make you any better?”

“Lace,” scolds Hornet.

“What? He’s flying around on Jupiter somewhere,” Lace scoffs. She grabs Dr. Pilocibin’s ankles, bracing herself to lift him. “He took a year off to go get high in Peru. That’s classy.”

“He looks at addictive substances and their role in neurological degradation,” Hornet says.

“Was this before or after he learned he could do research on himself?”

“Enough. Let’s just get him inside.”

Dragging him through the threshold isn’t as hard as Lace expected. Dr. Pilocibin is quite light, despite his pot-belly, and the women deposit him on the ground unceremoniously before Hornet limps to set up a trap on the front door, a nasty looking thing that involves large, sharp nails and pressure set against the door frame.

The interior of the shack is quite humble. There are no windows; only the door they entered by. A small cot lays in the corner, a brown sheet over the top. A few cans of food are stacked in a pyramid next to an assortment of water bottles. The floor, ceiling, and walls are made of hard-packed dirt, the roots of grass making strange designs along the ceiling and tips of the walls. There's a bong in the corner, smoke curling faintly from the mouthpiece. The scent of weed permeates strongly throughout the shack; Lace wrinkles her nose at the smell of it.

“Do you think they’re still out there?” she asks nervously. There’s a low-lying candle flickering wearily in the corner that provided the light she had seen outside; despite the darkness she quickly moves to put it out. Hopefully, the little shack is out of the way enough that they will be undiscoverable in the dead of night, thick smell of weed aside, and then can drag the professor out in the morning.

Standing by the door, Hornet’s face contorts for a second, pain clear on her face, before it clears. Lace notices that she keeps her weight entirely off her left foot though.

“Probably,” Hornet says. She walks stiffly to the lone mattress on the ground, before slouching down upon it. “I can’t imagine they would simply give up, although perhaps they are taking the time to regroup for the morning. The night here is absolute. Not even a flashlight could pierce it.”

“Typical,” Lace sighs, but she can’t stop her hands from shaking. Despite all her trials, poverty had never been an issue for her – now, she’d never gone so long without a shower, and her stomach was constantly rumbling. With all these muscular, large people swinging baseball bats at her and trying to trap her in a cage, the stress makes her muscles seize. Truly, this has been an awful week.

“Get some soup from my backpack won’t you?” Hornet says, drawing Lace’s attention. The woman has laid down on the mattress, back straight and staring at the ceiling. “We can drink some of it while we assess our resources. Make a plan.”

A drop of water falls on Lace’s face, making her flinch. She glances up to see a menagerie of stars in the sky – there’s a hole in the dirt roof. Despite a lack of clouds in the sky, it had somehow begun to rain.

Handing Hornet the entire bag, Lace watches as she distributes two cans of soup - mushroom - and some dried fruit between the two of them, before shaking out the rest of the backpack to the ground. Out rolls a few more dented cans, vacuum-sealed packages of dried meat and fruit, several throwing blades, a first aid kit, rolls of bandages, a long, wicked-looking knife, a few more tire spikes, a water purifier, a bottle of painkillers, a baggie of black powder, her phone, solar phone charger, and several large bottles of water.

“You’re remarkably prepared,” Lace observes mildly.

“It never hurts,” Hornet says, shaking out her pockets to reveal a few more knives. She grabs the rolling bandages, before extending her right leg. Carefully, she pulls the fabric of her pants away from the skin; it sticks with dried blood and she hisses in pain.

“It’s bleeding again,” Lace observes. “When did that happen?”

“Must’ve caught it against a branch,” Hornet says. She dribbles the tiniest bit of water onto her leg, before pulling out a small vial of rubbing alcohol from the first aid kit. “Didn’t notice.”

“Were you going to tell me?” Lace asks.

Hornet gives her a funny look. “Didn’t you just find out?”

Lace presses her lips together and looks at the ground.

Hornet finishes wrapping her leg. She shifts, grabbing the plastic baggie of black powder. She bites her lip, before pouring a vague amount into her half-drunk plastic water bottle and shaking it around.

“What’s that?” Lace asks.

“Activated charcoal. It’ll limit absorption of whatever drug he’s taken. He’s definitely high,” Hornet says, crawling over to her professor. “I don’t know what substance he’s used. It might just be weed, but it might also be something stronger. He’s half-comatose, so this won’t hurt.”

She pinches Dr. Pilocibin’s face open, before pouring the water down his throat, taking a few breaks so that he might ingest it better.

“Empty your pockets when you empty your backpack,” Hornet calls over her shoulder. “You might have candies or something. It’s best to know exactly what we’re working with.”

Lace sighs, but does as she’s told. She turns her backpack over, shaking it a few times in mimicry of Hornet’s own actions.

She doesn’t have the same useful menagerie as Hornet. There’s a change of clothes, an edge brush, hair gel, some snacks, a book, the knife Hornet gave her, the compass Hornet gave her, and a handful of bullets remnant of Bilehaven. Lace’s luggage looks far more like someone who was going on minimalist vacation versus Hornet, who had packed for a survivalist soiree.

Clicking her tongue, Lace moves to her pockets. She’s got jean pockets, and then she has zip-up waterproof pockets in her windbreaker.

“I don’t have much,” Lace says. She feels around in her jeans, before moving to her windbreaker.

Hornet slides over. “It’s plenty,” she says, observing Lace’s haul. “Anything you have in the middle of nowhere is something. Look – you can use these clothes for extra bandages and warmth, or the book for kindling. If the hair gel has alcohol in it, it could be used as a fire starter.”

She picks up one of the wrapped snack cakes Lace had dumped out. “We can eat this for dessert after the soup,” she says. “It’ll be a good moral booster.”

In her windbreaker pocket, Lace’s fingers wrap around a small plastic vial. Her brows knit in confusion before she draws it out; it takes her a moment to place what it is.

“What’s that?” Hornet asks, peering over. “Where’d you get it?”

Lace flushes a deep red. “It’s not important,” she mutters, but Hornet puts her hand over Lace’s to prevent her.

“Is it medication?” Hornet says. Her head moves sideways, observing the bottle. “Could we use it for anything? Even if it’s empty, we can maybe use it to throw –”

“It’s a love potion,” Lace mutters, before looking at the wall. “From the shaman. The one who saved us in Bilewater.”

“A love potion?” Hornet says, voice almost startled. She picks up the plastic vial between two fingers.

“It’s just a hallucinogenic,” Lace mutters. “The shaman said she put toloaxihuitl in it – that’s all that is.”

“But why did she give it to you?” Hornet presses, staring at the vial like it holds all the world’s secrets. “She’s a snail shaman. They’re as selfish as they are curious. She wouldn’t just hand you a love potion, phony or not. There must be some intrigue for her.”

Lace is silent.

Slowly, Hornet puts down the vial. “Perhaps she meant to stir up drama between us,” she says. “But what? Her tricks aren’t complicated. Surely this would have been discovered. After all, you have no reason to give this to me.”

Lace grips the side of her can with a white-fingered hold. Her mind is not in an objective state.

“Lace?” Hornet prods. “Do you know?”

Lace turns her face away, looking down at the floor. “You know,” she says softly. “You’re just asking – if you know, you already know.”

This week has driven Lace crazy. She feels a little insane, but she can’t stop the words from coming out.

“I –” Hornet starts and then she stops. Stiffens in every direction, the line of her body from eye to limb moving together in one straight line like a doll on a string, drawn up rigid.

Lace straightens as well, unfolding herself from the corner she’d placed herself within. “You know,” she says, a little firmer, moving to meet Hornet’s eyes, which dart around so fast, they’re like furious wasps on a summer’s day.

“Maybe not,” Hornet says quickly. “Forget this. The shaman has her reasons. We’ll just throw this out and –”

“Hornet,” Lace interrupts. She clasps her hands, begging just a bit. “This whole time.”

Hornet starts stubbornly picking at her rationed food, the can of mushroom soup she'd opened a few moments earlier. Lace refuses to sit down, remaining above her like a looming judge. In part, this is because she thinks if she starts to move back into her seat, her legs might give out entirely and set her spiraling, limp and half-conscious. The chair is so flimsy, she’d probably crash right through it. Hornet wouldn’t even notice, so enamoured she is with her stupid mushroom soup. She’s been waterboarding the same carrot in the broth for the past few minutes.

“I . . . didn’t not notice,” Hornet says at last. She pushes the carrot down again, letting it marinate for longer than she had before. “I thought perhaps your feelings,” she lets the carrot come to the surface once more, “might have already gone away. You now and you back then – you act differently. I thought if I left the subject alone, your feelings might have just finished disintegrating in peace.”

Lace is offended. It must show on her face, as a fish cannot come to the surface of the water without it rippling out in waves, because Hornet quickly waves her hand.

“It’s not that I doubt your sincerity,” she reassures. “Rather the opposite – we’ve been so sequestered together all our lives. You’ve never had a chance to truly explore the world. All you’ve ever known is your mother. You’ve spent most of your life trying to one-up me.”

Lace flushes darkly and clenches her fingers. “I’ve changed,” she says through gritted teeth. “It’s been a while since then.”

Hornet continues. “I’m three years older than you,” she says. “How could I not feel as though I’m taking advantage?”

“Shakra’s four years younger than you,” Lace says flatly. “Was she a mere subject to your whims? Were you taking advantage of her as well?”

“I met Shakra in college,” Hornet says helplessly. “We were adults. We only dated for a few months, and nothing really happened at all. I wasn’t in love with her, although I do hold her in great regard.”

“Oh that’s reassuring.” Lace rolls her eyes, but she pulls her nails into a tight ball inside her palm. “So it’s not that I’m too young or too naive, but rather I’m simply not the thing that you want. You don’t hold me in high enough regard. Have I got it straight?”

“Don’t twist my words.” Hornet furrows her brows, annoyance creeping slowly over her pace in a caterpillar’s crawl. “You’re fine the way you are. It’s only that there are things I don’t think I can give you.”

“So it’s you, not me,” Lace spits bitterly. “That’s nice of you, Hornet. Real nice. Everyone says you’re so nice – if only they knew how nice you truly were.”

“Lace – don’t be like this. My family’s millions of dollars in debt,” Hornet says, face pinching. “Why do you think Shakra and I broke up? Half is that it wasn’t fair to her. So you, who I’ve known far longer than her – why on earth would I drag you into it more so than I already have? It’s unfair Lace.”

“What’s unfair is your insistence on making decisions for me,” Lace snaps back. “I don’t mind your debt – obviously I don’t mind your debt! It’s not your fault and you’re stupid to try and make it so. But ever since you rescued me, you’ve decided I’ve been nothing but a victim. Some hapless nobody who never got off your back. This is just your latest excuse.”

Hornet looks sympathetic. Lace hates it.

“I don’t think that,” she says gently. “It’s only – you don’t really want me. You want a savior. I can’t be that for you. I help where I can, and that’s simply not enough. You don’t really want me.”

“I’ve wanted you since I was seventeen,” Lace replies. “After you dragged me out of my mother’s burning house? The one she used to try to immolate both of us? And then you let me stay with you for years – just – just – doing nothing! You never expected anything from me! Remember that? You think you’re not already my savior? You think you’ve avoided that? I don’t want you for that alone! I don’t want you to save me further. You fancy that you don’t want to be my savior, but you also think that you’re saving me from a relationship I don’t want. I’m not the child you grew up with. I’m not a victim anymore."

“It’s still taking advantage,” Hornet says fiercely. “I’ve been here since the beginning. I wasn’t just going to let you get thrown in the system when you had nothing to do with anything that was going on! Weaver business is weaver business. Silknitter shouldn’t have adopted you and tried to force you to become a weaver – she was sick in the head Lace. Sick in the head! And what did you expect me to do about your romantic feelings? Reciprocate!? I was twenty! I was in crushing debt that I’m still paying off. You were seventeen. You had no one else to live with! Taking advantage was the last thing I was ever going to do!”

Hornet is too good. She’s too sweet. Lace wants to eat her up.

“I desperately wished you would take advantage,” Lace says darkly. “I’d lay awake at night thinking about it. Legs spread apart, hands reaching down – can you truly say you never imagined it? Imagined me?”

“Stop,” Hornet mutters. She pinches her nose hard, avoiding Lace’s eyes like the plague.

Lace moves closer, feeling self-possessed and bold. What’s unspoken shimmers in the air like golden thread, and Lace cannot resist the urge to pluck.

“I’d touch myself to the thought of you just – coming in and taking what you wanted. Showing me my place, telling me what I deserved. You could hold me down, take me however you want.”

“Stop.”

“Had you told me to kneel, I would have done so gladly. Had you only retained me, I’d do it gladly. I’d do anything if it meant you’d never let me go.”

“I said stop! You’re just saying things!”

Lace abruptly shuts up, tilting her head just so. She does not move back. Rather, she breathes the next words, delicate and true into Hornet’s neck.

“I want you,” she whispers. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted. My beautiful savior, my lovely princess – you’re so good.”

Hornet has her head buried in her hands. Her silver hair is pulled harshly against her scalp.

“I can’t,” she says. “Lace – I just can’t.” She looks completely tortured, eyes wild and cornered. Her lips are pulled thin as a wafer, bloodless as a clam.

“Please,” Lace whispers. She’s so close she can taste Hornet in the air, like a snake on a rock, warm with the sun. “Just one chance. I promise I’ll be good. I can be everything you ever wanted. Everything you ever need. You’ll never want for a single thing.”

Hornet’s eyes snap right open. “See!” Her voice rises so abruptly, Lace almost reels back in shock. “There’s the problem! That right there! None of what you said is what you want! It’s what you think I want!

“You’re so convinced that everyone just wants you to be a – a mold of yourself! If I wanted you, I wouldn’t need you to be anything else! You’d resent me for it. Love isn’t something you forge yourself into the shape of. You’re not made of stone and you’re not the easy-going person you try to convince everyone else you are – the only part of love that you’re enamoured with is the idea that they’ll never leave you. The idea of love, to you, is a jail cell. You want to bind together with someone using the thickest chains imaginable. Guilt, obligation – none of it’s a substitute for love. It’s just entrapment. It’s a pit you’re far too willing to fall down into!”

Hornet’s face had gone from one of shock to determination. It’s entirely closed off, firmly shut. Lace flounders for words to say, the only thing she had to offer quite firmly rejected.

“It’s not entrapment,” Lace says weakly. “I know you. I didn’t mean those things I said before. I know you would never do that.”

“You certainly seemed like you meant them when you were saying them.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t. There’s just – what else can I offer?” Lace asks desperately. “You’re smarter than me, prettier than me – more liked than me. What am I supposed to offer except to be what you need?”

“I’m not your mother,” Hornet says firmly. “You don’t need to be anything except who you have naturally become. I don’t want a blank-slate lover. I want someone who I know. Not their potential to be someone else.”

Lace feels her face spasm. If the sea came up and swallowed her whole, she would not even sputter on the salt water with how fast she would inhale it in pursuit of suicide. What is Lace but wasted potential? What is she if not the ability to become someone else?

“I’m not going to require you to be a perfect friend or daughter or whatever you’ve got going on in your mind,” Hornet finishes. “You don’t need to date me to receive my friendship, nor do you need to be in my bed to receive my silk. I like you the way you are.”

Frantically, Lace shakes her head. “I don’t want to date you because I think you’ll leave me otherwise,” she denies, although that’s not quite entirely true, but it’s true enough that Lace is able to spit it out rather quickly. “I do want you! The way I want you – I’ve never wanted anyone else like it before. I see you and it’s like the sun has come out – I need you just as much. Every touch you give me is like a brand. How am I supposed to say I’m not in love with you!? I cannot walk ten steps without circling back around to some thought of you! I only love you! I only wish for you to not leave.”

“I’ve been a constant in your life for years,” Hornet observes gently. “I’m truly not going to leave. But perhaps –”

“If you say we should spend less time together, I truly will go mad,” Lace threatens. She cannot sit down, but she cannot remain standing. She feels viscerally ill.

“Perhaps a few months of separation wouldn’t be amiss,” Hornet says reassuringly. “Just a few.”

The rain patters rhythmically on the leaves outside. The steadiness is thunderous to her ears, each motion awash in the sounds of waves. Ever since she was a child, one of her first memories had been of the ocean, giving and taking as the moon rose out of its abyss. She can still hear the roar if she strains. Back when she was still a child, things were much simpler.

Lace despairs. She mourns.

Hornet seems to be trying to find something to say.

“You don’t understand the complexity of the issue,” she starts, and then stops when Lace looks up at her with dripping eyes.

“Is that really how you see me?” she asks, voice hoarse. “A child? Like a simple little child? Like how my mother did? I’m still her, aren’t I? I’ve never been anything else.”

Hornet pauses.

“I don’t see you as a child,” she says. “Lace.”

“What about a lover?” Lace says. Insists, really, on dragging her hands across the coals when Hornet’s tried so hard to pull her away.

Hornet is silent.

“Please just say you don’t,” Lace begs. To put her out of this misery would be a mercy. To be unwanted is to retain familiarity. Even if Hornet holds regard for her as she does Shakra, it is difficult to come back from a broken heart. Lace doesn’t know if she would ever.

Hornet shifts, before turning away.

“I can’t help you,” she says distantly. “I can’t save you from this.”

“You can – just say you don’t love me!” Lace bites. “Stop obfuscating. Stop – this. You don’t love me as I’ve always wanted. So what? So what! You’re not special – you’re not unique!”

Hornet’s tired – it's clear. The Lace of nowadays would know to stop pressing or stop talking or stop something, but the Lace of nowadays has washed away to the Lace of yesterday. She’s a bitter, unloved child who bites the hand that feeds. She’s an ungrateful wretch who doesn’t know where to stop, where to start, or where to stall. She wishes her mother loved her; she wishes she had friends. She hates Hornet more than anyone else in the world because Hornet always had what Lace always wanted – a good family, support, siblings, friends, and now, she possesses Lace’s beating heart right in the palm of her hand and she squashes it carelessly with one fist.

“I do love you,” Hornet says finally, wearily. “I love you plenty.”

“You don’t need to placate me,” Lace says bitingly. “We both know it’s not in the way I want.”

“Sometimes I think it’s exactly in the way that you want,” Hornet replies. She looks like every word is a bullet she’s being forced to swallow. Her face is white as a ghost. “I think sometimes, I want you too much.”

There’s a ringing silence. Lace, who cannot tear her eyes away, watches Hornet’s throat bob. She watches Hornet’s tongue come out, wetting her lips, before quickly withdrawing.

“I don’t know,” Hornet says at last. “I just don’t know.”

“You don’t know?!”

“I don’t know!” Hornet throws her hands up, before wincing at the sudden movement. Lace quickly takes a step forward to assist, only to be stopped by one of Hornet’s hands.

“There are things I don’t know,” Hornet says miserably. “I don’t know how I love you. I only know I do – I want you. I don’t – it’s not right that I love you beyond a dear friendship. You’re still recovering from Silknitter – don’t you dare deny it – ”

“I’ve ‘been recovering’ for years!” Lace screeches. “I’m as recovered as I’ll ever be! Some things just aren’t fixable! Do you think I would fare better with someone else?!”

She throws out the words to inspire jealousy; as expected, they missed their mark entirely. Hornet only looks pensive.

“Maybe that would be better,” she says slowly. “Dating someone entirely separate from the situation might benefit your overall mental state.”

“Hornet,” Lace says, aghast. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

Hornet stares down at the fabric of her backpack, twisting the green burlap in her hand.

“You think that this is better?” Lace continues. “Treating my feelings like they’re some sort of ball to be tossed from person to person? So much for loyalty! You think I could love someone other than you? Think again! Reject me properly, but don’t insult me like that. Of all things, I’m not a faithless truant. I know what I feel in this one matter. Hornet,” Lace says, tears stinging her eyes, “you’re completely heartless to even suggest that!”

Hornet digs her hands into her eye sockets. Lace finally sinks down onto the cold ground, for once uncaring of the dirt. The silence between them is fraught, ribbed with needles.

Lace cannot help the self-pity, the anger. Still a child. Still so naive. How had she thought Hornet would take more from Lace than demanded? A friendship is more and way enough. They are equals in this regard. Their relationship was too unbalanced to ever be anything more. Lace was too unbalanced to be anything more. She’s nothing like Shakra – too manic, too emotionally prone. She’s not like Hornet’s sibling – too unreliable, too affected.

There’s nothing to be done. Hornet doesn’t want a persona, but she doesn’t want Lace either.

“I think I’m going outside,” Lace says after a moment. She stands, abruptly, and starts for the door.

In the dark, Hornet’s eyes glitter. A little animalistic, a little greedy. “Lace,” she says softly. Her tone is grating, exhaustion and pain saturating every crack in the name spoken.

Lace ignores her, shutting the cabin door firmly behind her, crouching low in the brush so no one can see her. Then she breathes. Then she cries.