Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Twenty-Two Years After the Passing of The Hero Himmel

The circle broke and Clara was already moving, scrabbling backwards.

Lässig yelled something at Genau. “Genau! Wai—”

Lässig had his hand out. Reaching, trying to grab his partner's shoulder and missing.

Genau did not wait. He wasn't listening.

Genau shot forward like a bullet, the black wings unfurled and fanned wide.

Aufziehen screamed at Clara. ‘SWORD UP. NOW. GUARD LEFT!’

Her body was screaming at her. Kill him. Kill him now. One needle through the throat while the wings retract. Two seconds. He dies. The blond one is twelve feet behind him and already off-balance. Three needles, fan pattern, he has no barrier up, he dies in four seconds. Both dead in six. Eat the blond one first, he's younger, the meat will b—

‘No.’

Clara got the sword up.

The first wing-strike hit the elven bronze and the impact traveled up her arm and into her shoulder and through her chest and she felt her teeth click together. The sound of the conjured metal of the wings smacking into the wings was something strange and piercing.

She held. Lässig was yelling again.

"Genau, just stop for a second. She used Goddess magic. Demons can't do that. That chang—"

Genau's voice was flat. "It changes nothing. She is a Greater Demon who has killed thousands. She trapped me. She dies."

‘HIGH RIGHT. TURN THE BLADE.’

The second wing came from the other side, a scything horizontal that would have taken her head if the sword hadn't caught it at the flat. The force of it drove her back a step. Her feet dug into the dirt and leaf-litter. Genau's face was close enough now that she could see his sweat, the grain of his skin, the faint stubble on his jaw, the absolute nothing in his eyes. He didn't even look mad. Just bored. Another day at the office.

‘THIRD. UP HIGH. NO, WAI—’

Clara’s guard went up.

The left wing feinted high while the right wing curled under the feint and came through at hip level edge-first.

It hit her left arm just above the elbow.

The arm came off.

There was a sound. Clara would remember the sound for the rest of whatever her life turned out to be. It sounded like a hybrid of a wet branch being torn from a living tree and the noise of sawing through raw beef. The arm fell. It hit the ground. It was still holding the shape of a guard position. The fingers were still curled. The elbow was still bent. It lay in the leaves like a discarded prop from a play for maybe four seconds, then it dissolved into dust.

Clara screamed.

The pain was a white thing that filled every channel in her head and left no room for anything else. She screamed in a voice that wasn’t either Aufziehen's controlled operational register and was not Clara's cultivated “nice Mom” voice. It was just pure animal noise.

The pain opened a door in her that she hadn't dated to look through.

The full wanting, the nine-hundred-year -plus years wanting that had killed thousands.

KILL HIM, KILL HIM, HE TOOK YOUR ARM, HE TOOK YOUR ARM AND HE IS STANDING RIGHT THERE AND HIS NECK IS RIGHT THERE AND HIS BLOOD IS WARM AND YOU CAN SMELL IT FROM HERE AND HE WILL TASTE LIK—

‘No.’

Genau pulled back for a kill stroke.

‘CLARA. BACK UP. LET ME WORK NOW.’

Clara backed up.

With the mental equivalent of a wrench, Aufziehen took the body. For two seconds, Aufziehen was in control.

Aufziehen cast Zuwachsen.

The stump of the left arm moved.

The bone came first. White, wet, extending from the shattered end of the humerus like a tree growing in time-lapse. The radius and ulna following in parallel, forking at the elbow joint with a sound like knuckles cracking amplified a hundred times. Then muscle. Red and raw and wet, wrapping the bones in sheets of fiber that wove themselves together in visible real-time, the texture of it like watching meat braid itself. Then tendon, then nerve. Clara felt the nerves reconnect. Like sparks being struck inside her arm, dozens of sparks in sequence, a chain of small lightnings running from shoulder to fingertip then skin, grey-pale, sliding over the raw surface like water poured onto the ground.

Six seconds.

The hand opened. The hand closed. The fingers worked. Clara looked at her own left hand. Her new left hand. It was seven seconds old and which had a full set of fingers and a working wrist and an elbow that bent, and the hand was trembling but it was there.

Something inside her lurched. Her stomach heaved. She clamped her jaw shut and swallowed hard and breathed through her nose in fast shallow bursts.

Pop.

The shoulder joint seated itself. The last piece. The wet final click of bone finding socket, and the arm was hers.

She did not throw up.

It was a very close thing.

‘Clara. Breathe.’

‘Auffie. The fuck. Why. Wha—’

‘Breathe.’

'I am fucking breathing.'

‘You are doing very well.’

'Auffie, my arm just grew back in six seconds.'

‘Yes. That is Zuwachsen in an advanced application. It is unpleasant. I should have warned you. I apologize.’

'You THINK?'

Her new arm was shaking. Her jaw ached from clenching. She was clenching because she wanted Genau's throat in her teeth so she could tear.

She forced her jaw to clench. Her body fought her on it.

Genau had stopped.

Genau was a professional who had killed many things over the years but none of those things had regrown a limb in real time while he watched.

He made a face. His mouth twisted in disgust.

Lässig, twelve feet behind him, had not moved. "What the fuck?" he said. His voice was hoarse.

“Get yourself together Lässig.” Genau said without turning.

But Lässig didn’t. His face was green. Watching meat braid itself onto wet bone while a woman screamed would do that to most people.

Aufziehen felt it.

'Clara. The blond one. He is already nauseous. I can push it.'

'Push it how?'

'An interrogation spell. Nausea induction. It is the simplest mental attack possible. Implanting a single strong physical response. If the target is already feeling the response, the spell does not need to break through mental defenses. He is already feeling sick. I make him feel sicker. It costs almost nothing.'

Clara didn't want to. Lässig had been the one reaching for a different outcome. But she couldn't track him and Genau at once.

'Do it.'

Aufziehen reached.

A thread of mental magic, thinner than a hair, sliding across the distance between Clara and finding the place in his mind where the nausea already lived and pressing the way you press on a bruise to make it change colors.

Lässig's face went from green to grey.

His hand went to his mouth. He turned sideways. His mana flickered, just for a moment, and then he was on his knees and he was vomiting. Hard. The full-body kind, where the diaphragm seizes and the spine curls. Tea and breakfast and whatever else, on the forest floor.

He knew.

That was the thing Clara hadn't expected. His head came up mid-heave and he looked at her with a fury that cut through the sickness.

"You—" He retched. His hands dug into the dirt. “Mental magic. A cheap tri—” He heaved again.

'He is resistant. The effect will fade in fifteen to twenty seconds. Use the time. That was necessary, Clara.'

'I know it was necessary. I also just poisoned the only person in this clearing who wanted to talk.'

Genau turned, eyes widening. He spoke to his partner. "Läs—?"

Genau's back was to Clara.

His attention was on Lässig. For one second the man who never lost focus was looking at his partner instead of at his target.

A golden needle grazed Genau's cheek.

It came from the telekinetic cloud that was still orbiting. Just one needle, flicked sideways.

A thin line of red opened on Genau's right cheek. A quarter-inch long. Barely a scratch.

Genau touched his cheek. He looked at the blood on his fingertip.

He looked at Clara.

Clara was standing with her new arm shaking and fifty-three blades still in the air around her, looked back at him.

"That," she said, in a voice that was still rough and ragged from screaming, "was a warning. The next one goes through your eye. Back off."

‘Clara. You idiot human. Drop your scruples for one second and run.’

Clara did not run.

Genau did not back off.

But Genau did not advance.

He stood with his wings wide and the thin line of blood on his cheek and he assessed.

Lässig's voice, from behind Genau, was very quiet. His breath came in ragged gasps. He hauled himself to his feet.

"Genau. The incoming mana. West. It's getting closer."

Genau did not turn his head. "I feel it."

"It's fast. It'll be here in under a minute."

"I know. I’ll end this now.”

Genau charged her.

He came in low this time, wings folded tight against his back for speed, then fanning wide at the last second.

'He's going to split the wings and use them like scissors. Block one and duck the other.’

Clara got the sword up. Both wings came in from opposite sides at neck height. The sword and long scalpel caught the right wing while Clara ducked under the left. The left wing passed over her head close enough to cut hair. She felt strands fall on her shoulder.

She swung the sword at his ribs. He pulled the right wing back and deflected it. Sparks. The metal rang. She stabbed with the long scalpel. He twisted. She stabbed again. He caught the blade between both wings and torqued and the scalpel came out of her hand.

She sent twenty-four needles at his back.

Genau's right wing swept behind him in a flat defensive arc without him turning his head. Needles bounced off the niello. They skittered along the wing's edge and spun away into the brush.

‘He's using a detection spell. Reading the air displacement. Clara, he is very good.'

'YEAH I FUCKING NOTICED! LESS ADMIRING HUN!'

She backed up. He followed. She threw the twelve short scalpels at him in a fan. Six high, six low. He walked through them, the wings moving in a continuous defensive pattern that knocked them aside. The scalpels hit metal and bounced and Clara pulled them back with telekinesis and sent them again and Genau walked through them again.

Then he was in front of her and she dodged too slow and his left wing caught her across the face.

It was a glancing blow, striking her right cheekbone and snapping her head sideways. Her vision went white for a half-second. She tasted blood. Her helmet had taken most of it but the force had still rattled her skull.

'He's aiming for our head. If he hits us in the head or heart we will die. Zuwachsen cannot regenerate a destroyed brain or a destroyed heart.'

‘Got it.’

She backed up further. Genau followed. He was herding her, she realized. Pushing her away from Klein's hiding spot. He didn't know exactly where Klein was but he knew the general direction he’d last seen him. Smart.

She threw more needles. He bounced them. She threw the scalpels again. He bounced those too.

Lässig had gathered himself, and was moving too, and Clara was starting to panic. She could barely keep up with one. If Lässig got into it too…

Then Aufziehen said it.

'Clara. The cut. On his cheek. Reach out to it with Zuwachsen.'

Clara's stomach dropped.

'What?'

'The wound on his cheek. The needle graze. It is an open wound. Zuwachsen needs nothing more than an open wound. Reach out to it. Not to heal. To grow.'

'Auffie that's… you said it turns people into cancer blobs basically.’

'I am not asking you to kill him. Blind him. Grow the flesh of the wound over his eyes. Just enough to cover them. It will not kill him. His partner will cut it off. But it will stop him for the seconds we need.'

'Auffie, that's—' What could she say? Awful? Disgusting?

'Clara. He is going to kill us, and then find Klein and kill him. The wound on his cheek is the only advantage we have. Use it or we die and Klein dies alone in a hole.'

Clara looked at Genau. Genau was moving towards her still, his wings folding for the next charge. The thin red line on his right cheek was still there. A quarter-inch long. Barely a scratch.

A scratch was all Zuwachsen needed.

The wanting surged. It said: not the eyes. Not just the eyes. All of him. Grow it everywhere. Every wound. Every scratch. Every pore. Let the flesh consume him. Let him become what he becomes when a human body is given to Zuwachsen without limit. He cut off your arm. He is trying to kill your son. Let his own flesh consume him. Let him choke. Let him die.

‘No.’

She reached.

It wasn’t like healing herself at all. Every time she healed herself, her body had wanted it. The body had cooperated. The regeneration had been the body doing what it did, just faster. This was different. This was reaching into someone else's flesh and telling it to do something it had no intention of doing. This was the curse part of the spell.

The wound on Genau's cheek began to close.

The flesh at the edges of the cut began to grow. New tissue pushed outward from the cut like mold growing in a petri dish. It spread across his cheek in a glistening sheet of bubbling meat.

Genau felt it immediately.

His hand went to his face. His fingers touched the growing flesh. The flesh was soft and new, and his fingers sank into it the way they would disappear into wet dough. He pulled his fingers out and the holes they left filled in immediately.

His eyes went wide.

It was the first real expression Clara had seen on his face. Fear. Genuine animal terror.

The flesh spread. It climbed his cheekbone. It reached the lower lid of his right eye and began to grow over it. A sheet of raw skin sliding across the eye like a living curtain. Genau's hand came up and he clawed at it, tearing the new flesh off his eye with his fingernails, and the torn flesh grew back. In two seconds. The sheet reformed. It reached for the left eye now too, climbing across the bridge of his nose in a slow wave of pale wet meat.

Genau screamed.

His wings flared wide in an involuntary defensive reflex and he staggered back and both hands went to his face and he was tearing at the flesh that was growing over his eyes and the flesh was growing and the flesh was growing and the flesh was—

'Auffie. That's enough.'

'It is not enough. He can still—'

'AUFFIE. THAT'S ENOUGH. I'm not turning him into a blob. I'm not. You said blind him. He's blind. ENOUGH.'

Clara held the spell where it was. She stopped the growth from spreading past his eyes. The flesh sat there. An eyeless mask of new tissue covering his eyes and the bridge of his nose and his upper cheeks, pulsing slightly. Genau's hands were on it, pulling, and the flesh was repairing the tears as fast as he made them.

He was blind. He buckled to his his knees.

He was still screaming.

Lässig's screamed too. "GENAU!!" His mana surged.

A flat wall of compressed air slammed into Clara and lifted her off her feet and threw her backward. Ten feet, fifteen, twenty, and she hit a tree trunk spine-first and the bark cracked and her ribs cracked and the tree cracked and she went through the tree and hit the ground behind it in a tangle of armor and cloak and shattered wood.

Her connection to the Zuwachsen around Genau's face snapped.

She felt it go.

‘Without our mana sustaining the growth, the tissue will die. The body will reject it the way a body rejects a skin-graft that has lost its blood supply. It will take maybe thirty seconds. We have to move.’

She breathed. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Her broken ribs healed. She started to try to stagger up.

Then Lässig was standing over her.

His face was white and twisted in an expression that was easily identifiable. Hate. His hands were shaking.

He kicked her. Hard.

His boot had a steel toe, and it caught her in the right side just below the arm and Clara felt ribs shatter. Again. The fragments moved inside her, and one of them punctured something.

'Seven ribs. Lung punctured. Internal bleeding. We are healing. Do not move.'

The drive was the loudest it had ever been. Louder than the charcoal-burners. Louder than the dinner table with Mottek. She was on the ground broken and her body was done asking permission.

His ankle is six inches from your right hand. One needle through the boot-leather above the ankle-bone and into the joint. When he falls take the second needle and put it through the soft skin under his jaw, upward, into the brain stem. By the time the blind one hears the blond one fall you have four needles in the blind one's throat. Eight seconds. Both dead. Then you eat. You eat the blond one first. He is young. The young ones taste—

Clara's hand twitched toward the needle.

‘No.’

YES. HE IS GOING TO KILL YOU. HE IS GOING TO KILL KLEIN. KILL THEM N—

‘…yes.’

A golden needle trembled and rose a quarter-inch off the ground. Clara pushed it towards Lässig's ankle.

He let out another gust of wind, and it and every other needle and scalpel in the clearing were held to the ground by a cushion of compressed air.

She was done. That was all she had.

She could not have moved if she wanted to. The pain was wore than the pain of losing the arm.

Lässig was talking. His voice sounded angry and scared. Clara could hear him. She could not respond.

"You know what the worst part is? I almost, almost bought it. The Goddess magic. The 'I don't want to kill you.' The tears. The mother and child act. I actually thought for a second—" His voice cracked. He was pacing. She could hear his boots in the leaf-litter, back and forth, back and forth. "I told Genau to wait. Because I saw your stupid green circle and your stupid crying face and I thought maybe there's something here we don't understand."

He stopped pacing. He was standing over her. She could feel his shadow.

"And then you reached into my head. You put your fingers in my brain and you made me vomit on the ground like a dog. While I was defending you to my partner. While I was trying to give you a chance."

His voice went quiet. The quiet was worse than the shouting.

"Genau warned me about this. He said once that clever demons are the dangerous ones. He said the ones who talk are worse than the ones who fight because the ones who talk make you think and hesitate, and when people hesitate around demons people die. I should have let Genau kill you when the circle broke."

A pause.

"I want to know how you did the Goddess magic. I want to know how a demon casts a spell that requires alignment with something good and real. I want to know because Serie will have a lot of questions I cannot answer."

Another pause.

"But you’re too dangerous to be left alive."

Lässig kicked her again, this time with a wind blast channeled from his foot, and she lifted off the ground at least five feet into the air and came down on her back hard. More things shattered. Even Aufziehen had given up cataloguing them.

She lay there on her back. In too much agony to move.

‘Shock. You’re in shock.’ Aufziehen told her. She sounded panicked.

Clara felt Aufziehen reach out with mental magic again.

Her nausea spell. Her sleep spell. A fumbling mental jab. They bounced off of Lässig’s mind like a Nerf dart off a wall. He was too angry to register them.

Lässig drew his wind back. He was pulling mana for something bigger. Clara could feel it building, could feel the wind forming into a blade.

The sky above her was very blue. The pines framed it. She could see a squirrel, sitting on a branch far above the fight. It didn’t care that things on the ground were fighting. It cared about acorns presumably.

She thought about Klein.

She reached for his mana. The Is he there, is he safe, is he breathing check she did forty times a day without thinking now.

She could not feel him.

He was suppressed. He was doing exactly what she had told him to do. He was doing it so well that his own mother could not find him.

She tried again. Reached harder. Pushed past the pain and the shock and the blood in her mouth and the broken things inside her.

Nothing. The silence where her son should be.

'He must have run. When the fighting started. He must have run. He's smart. He's fast. He knows the woods. He—’

She was lying to herself. She knew she was lying to herself. Klein would not have run. Klein would have stayed in the hole and counted pine needles because his mother told him to count pine needles and Klein did what his mother told him to do. Klein was alone in a hole in the ground and his mother was about to die a few hundred yards from him.

'Auffie.'

No response.

'Auffie. Is this it?'

Nothing. For a long, terrible second, nothing. Clara thought Aufziehen was gone. That the damage had been too much, that she was alone in a broken body on the ground of a forest she had never wanted to be in.

Aufziehen's voice. Very quiet. Quieter than Clara had ever heard it. The voice had no armor on it at all.

'I'm sorry, Clara.'

'What?’

'I am sorry.

That sounded like… 'Auffie. Stop. Why are you apologizing?

'Our son was right, Clara. And you were right. About the warband. About telling them to stop killing humans. About telling them that I love them. I should have told Stahlblau years ago. I should have told all of them. I was afraid. I have been afraid for hundreds of years and I dressed the fear up as research and methodology and protocol and it was just fear.’

'Auffie. Don't talk like we're dying.’

But Aufziehen wasn’t listening.

‘I was afraid if I told them I cared about Versuch they would call me weak. I was afraid that if I told them what I knew about humans they would reject me or judge me insane and if Stahlblau judged me I woul—'

She stopped. The thing she was trying to say was bigger than she knew how to say.

'I would not have survived it. If Stahlblau had looked at me the way demons look at demons who are broken. The way Macht looked at me when he snapped my horn. So I said nothing. I studied love like a disease because documenting it was safer than admitting I had contracted it.’

‘Auffie. Stop it. Stop saying this stuff. This isn't the end.’

‘It is the end. We are going to die. And I am done being a coward about this.'

'You're not a coward. You mouthed off to a Sage of Destruction.'

'I could mouth off to Macht because I did not love Macht. Bravery toward people you do not love is not real bravery. My real cowardice was always toward the people I loved. If we die another truth will be left unspoken. Clara. Our son was right. You're my frie—'

She didn't finish.

She didn't finish because the sky went black with birds.

‘Vogelfrei?’ Aufziehen said. It sounded like a prayer.

They came from the west. An entire murder of crows erupting through the canopy in a black screaming wave, stinking of mana.

Lässig threw his arm up. The wind he’d been forming redirected. Upward and outward, a defensive gust that scattered the first wave of birds. Black feathers exploded across the clearing as birds slammed into tree trunks and dissolved into mana dust. It didn’t matter. There were hundreds more.

Behind Lässig, Genau had staggered to his feet. The flesh on his face was receding and sloughing off in dried dead strips that fell to the ground. His left eye was clear. His right eye was still covered. He was half-blind, shaking, his wings folded tight against his body and his hands at his sides, and he was already pulling mana. Reaching for the birds.

‘Oh fuck no. He’s going to grab them.’

Of all the times to remember something from the show. ‘Auffie. Genau can control birds. He uses them for messaging and spying. He controlled Stilles for the mage exam.'

Aufziehen’s ‘voice’ was tight with fear. 'If he takes control of Vogelfrei's crows, Vogelfrei will be a hindrance, not an asset. We need to warn Vogelfrei now.’

'How?’

‘I feel him. He is close. Maybe a hundred yards. There. Feel?’ Aufziehen gave a mental nudge, and Clara felt him. He was on a branch. Watching. Directing his birds.

She was still on the ground, Zuwaschen healing dozens of broken and shattered bones. But her lung had healed. It had healed enough she could shout.

So she shouted.

"VOGELFREI! THE HUMAN WITH WINGS CAN TAKE YOUR BIRDS! DON’T LET HIM TOUCH THEM WITH HIS MANA! PULL THEM BACK!"

Her voice cracked on the last word. Something in her throat tore. She tasted blood again.

Lässig, still standing over her, flinched.

Genau's half-cleared eye locked onto the treeline.

"Lässig. She knows my abilities. How does she know my abilities?"

Nobody answered him. Clara was on the ground coughing blood. Lässig was standing over her. The crows vanished into dust. Dispelled. Vogelfrei had heard her.

The two humans started. Genau spoke again. “Lässig. Kill her no—”

The spear came from the treeline, so fast that Genau didn’t pull up a wing in time, and it would have sank into his chest if Lässig hadn’t sent another wind gust at it that blew the bone spear into a tree.

Then Clara heard a voice she had only heard in memories her headmate had shared with her. “Hag. Now!”

‘Now what?’

‘Telekinesis, the blades. The wind mage. I’ve been looking at the wind spell. It can only affect what he can see.’

Clara threw every single blade she had at Lässig’s back. At this point, she barely even cared if it killed him.

Genau was faster, barely. A shimmering hexagon of defensive magic erupted behind Lässig’s back, and Lässig scrabbled away from her.

Lässig shouted to Genau. “Genau, I’ll hold the female!”

“Finish her. Now.”

Lässig looked down at Clara. His jaw worked. She could see the decision happening on his face.

"I can't do that and help you at the same time. And we need to know how she knew about your abilities. She described your bird-control magic to another demon. From where, Genau? How does a demon we've never encountered know what you can do? That information doesn't come from nowhere. She has a source. A dead demon doesn't tell us what that source is."

He looked down at Clara again. His face was still white.

"She stays alive until I know how she knows. After that, she's yours."”

Genau’s mouth tightened in a line. He looked pissed. But he didn’t argue with Lässig.

Then Vogelfrei was there, coming out of the trees.

He flew in low and fast. His feathered mantle billowed around him in all the colors of birds imaginable, reds and blues and iridescent greens and the flat matte black of crow feathers, hundreds of them, layered and shifting. The mask was carved wood, a stylized bird beak, and there was a crack running from the bottom to the temple that had not been in Aufziehen's memories. The eyes behind the mask were a deep volcanic red. The scars on his chin where the mask didn't reach were ugly and old.

He had a wicked looking knife in his left hand. Curved. Serrated on the inner edge.

He came out of the treeline at speed and the knife was already moving and it scraped along the outer edge of Genau's left wing with a sound like a fork dragged across a plate.

Genau pivoted. His right wing swept back. Vogelfrei was already gone. Twisted sideways, the mantle flaring, landing three feet to Genau's left with his weight on his back foot and the knife held low.

"That's an interesting spell, human," he rasped.

His voice was different from what Clara had expected. She had heard it in Aufziehen's memories. The flat, precise diction, the careful pronunciation of someone who had chosen every word he'd ever said. In person it was rougher. Rawer. The rasp had a physical quality to it that memory had smoothed away.

Genau's wings folded and re-fanned. He faced Vogelfrei with the same grim expression he had faced Clara. But his right eye was still half-obscured by the last strips of dead Zuwachsen-flesh, and his left eye was watering, and for the first time in the fight he was facing a fresh opponent while he was damaged.

Genau grunted. "I don't make small talk with demons."

"What, are you simple-minded and can’t talk and fight?” Vogelfrei asked as he circled left. His voice was flat. His feet made no sound. Genau’s grim face got grimmer.

His wings struck. Fast. The right wing lashing out in a horizontal slash aimed at Vogelfrei's chest. Vogelfrei leaned back. The niello edge passed two inches from his mantle. Feathers stirred but did not cut.

Clara felt a blanket of compressed air shove her to the ground, keeping her pinned. She was healing, but even if she healed she couldn’t rise.

Vogelfrei feinted inside Genau's guard and Lässig had to push a crosswind to slow the demon's knife-arm.

Vogelfrei studied the wing as it retracted. Clara could see him studying it. The red eyes tracking the way the niello sections folded and re-fanned, the way the joints articulated, the way the metal caught the light and redistributed it.

'He is analyzing the spell. He wants to understand the construction.' Aufziehen sounded exasperated of all things. And almost fond.

Clara was incredulous. 'We’re in the middle of a fight. Why?’

'Vogelfrei has always wanted wings. Real ones. Not flight magic. Wings.'

Genau struck again. Both wings this time. The scissor-cut, the same move that had nearly taken Clara's head. Vogelfrei dropped under it, his knees folding, his body going flat, the mantle spreading on the ground around him like a puddle of feathers, and both wings passed over him and clipped together above his back with a metallic snap that would have severed a standing man at the shoulders.

Vogelfrei came up inside Genau's guard. The knife flicked. It caught the inner joint of Genau's right wing. The articulation point where the niello sections hinged. Vogelfrei twisted the blade, testing the joint, feeling for give.

There was no give. The niello held.

"The joints don't bend outward," Vogelfrei said to himself . His voice sounded like he was taking notes. "The sections are rigid. They fold and fan on a single axis. The range of motion is limited to—"

Genau’s left wing slashed out. Vogelfrei ducked it.

Lässig had pulled back from Clara. He was twenty feet from her now, his hands working the air. A sustained compression field holding Clara flat while gusts channeled through the clearing to slow Vogelfrei's movement. He was working hard. His mana was draining fast.

Vogelfrei sidestepped. His knife came up and scraped along the underside of Genau's left wing as it passed. The blade ran along the niello the way a finger runs along a surface to test its texture. Genau's wing swept back and Vogelfrei pulled the knife away and looked at the edge.

"The metal regenerates. Small scratches close. Interesting. It's a sustained conjuration, not a fixed construct. You're feeding it mana constantly. If your mana drops, the wings degrade."

"Shut up," Genau said, and there was heat in it now. Real heat.

Genau committed. Both wings forward in a thrust. Vogelfrei took the hit on his forearms, crossed, and skidded back six feet.

"Heavy. You can modulate the weight. That last one was heavier than the scissor-cut. You shifted mana distribution to favor impact over edge."

Genau's eyes, both clear now, narrowed.

"You are analyzing my spell. In combat. While I am trying to kill you."

"It's the best time. You're showing me everything." Vogelfrei tilted his head, the mask giving the gesture a birdlike quality. "The detection spell you're using… Air displacement reading. Passive. Constant. Very efficient. I use something similar with my birds. Yours is tighter. Single-sense. Mine is distributed across multiple sensory inputs. Yours is better for close combat. Mine is better for area coverage. We should compare notes sometime."

"We will not be comparing notes."

"Pity." Vogelfrei said.

Genau came again. Right wing high, left wing low. The same compound angle that had taken Clara's arm.

Vogelfrei jumped nine feet into the air. The kind of explosive vertical leap that human bodies could not do and demon bodies could. The wings passed under him. He came down with the knife aimed at Genau's right shoulder, at the point where the wing attached to the coat.

Genau caught the knife on his right wing. The metal rang. Vogelfrei landed and Genau shoved him back with both wings fanning outward and Vogelfrei went backward and skidded and came up in a crouch.

Vogelfrei let out a tiny tut. “I see now. You have pins. In your coat. That's the anchor. The wings generate from the pins. If I break them—"

Genau's Zoltraak formed in his right hand within a second.

Vogelfrei went still.

"Ah. That's a problem."

Vogelfrei barely dodged the Zoltraak, flinging himself backwards.

Then he came back, circling just outside of wing range. "Genau. That is your name?"

"Yes." Genau growled out. He blasted another Zoltraak that Vogelfrei ducked.

"Genau. I have a question."

"I am not interested in your questions."

"It is a short question. The wings. Did you develop the spell yourself, or did you learn it?"

"I developed it." Genau said as he flung another Zoltraak that Vogelfrei ducked under.

"You developed a spell that generates functional wings from a sustained conjuration of a mixture of metals anchored to a wearable focus, from scratch?"

"Yes."

"Astounding. I want that spell."

"You won’t work it out just from looking at it." Genau said as he threw Zoltraak from both hands, the right one just barely missing Vogelfrei’s right shoulder.

"No. Probably not. But I would like you to know that I have never met a human whose magic I genuinely coveted."

"I am honored," Genau said, with sarcasm.

"You should be. Talking about it was why I waited."

Genau's eyes widened again. "Waited? For wha—"

The bird came from behind the humans.

The Stille was maybe twenty grams of bird-shaped meteoric iron. It flew at a velocity that broke the sound barrier.

It hit Lässig between the shoulder blades.

His coat did nothing. The coat was wool and thread.

The Stille was shaped like a robin, not a bullet or an arrowhead. The blunt impact was worse than a clean puncture would have been. The force spread.

Lässig went forward.

The sound-wave followed the Stille. A crack like a bullwhip against the size of a building, or a rifle going off. A shockwave that Clara felt in her knitting back together ribs, that shook loose leaves from the canopy.

Lässig’s feet left the ground. His arms went wide. The compressed air shoving Clara down discharged into the air in a directionless burst that stripped leaves from branches in a twenty-foot radius. He traveled eight feet before he hit the ground face-first. When he hit the ground his body made a sound that Clara would add to the list of sounds she would remember along with sound of her arm coming off. A sound like a bag of dry sticks being stepped on. His ribs and spine breaking.

He did not get up.

He was breathing. Clara could hear him breathing. The ragged, wet breathing of a man whose lungs were filling with blood. His back was a ruin. The coat was split along the impact line. Beneath it she could see the shape of the damage. The Stille itself had bounced off him and lay broken and twitching three feet away, dying as well.

Lässig was alive. Barely. For now.

But he was not getting up.

Vogelfrei straightened from his crouch. He looked at Lässig on the ground. He looked at Genau, who had frozen.

"That is what I waited to do.” Vogelfrei said casually.

Clara surged up.

Her left leg protested, her knee grinding bone on bone. But Zuwachsen was working. The pain was a thing she could push through. The alternative was lying on the ground. She put her weight on the right leg. She raised her hand.

"I did not hold you to punish you."

The green circle snapped into place. This one was ten feet across, wide enough to catch both mages inside it.

The green hummed. Steady. The field locked.

Genau hit the wall immediately. His palm struck the invisible surface and the surface held. His Zoltraak came up blazing and hit the circle from the inside. The green rippled and absorbed it the way it had absorbed the first one. The circle held.

He hit it again. Harder. The green pulsed.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Zoltraak after Zoltraak. Genau was done with everything in this clearing.

Clara gritted her teeth. The circle held. Barely.

Vogelfrei tilted his head owlishly. The mask gave the gesture the vibe of a bird examining something unexpected. He had gone still the moment the circle went up, his red eyes fixed not on the mages but on the green light itself.

"That's new, Hag. What sort of spe—"

His voice cut off. His gaze narrowed. His eyes moved from the circle to Clara.

"Your mana feels strange. There are two layered signatures. One reads like you and one reads like—" He stopped. "I do not know. Hag. What have you been doing?"

'Auffie, what do I say?'

'Tell him there is no time. We cannot hold the circle long. Focus.'

"There's no time, Vogelfrei. I'll explain later. I promise. Right now we need—"

Genau's next Zoltraak hit the circle and Clara felt it crack. A hairline fracture in the green, spreading from the impact point like ice breaking on a frozen pond.

"We need to kill them now," Vogelfrei said. His voice was flat. A yank of telekinesis pulled his bone spear back from where it had embedded in a tree. It flew to his hand. He primed to throw it through the barrier. "The Northern Magic Corps will be coming. If these two filed their location before they ambushed you, more humans are on the way. We kill them. We leave."

"No, wai—"

Vogelfrei stopped at Clara's cry. The spear held, cocked, his arm frozen mid-throw. He looked at her.

"Hag. What?"

"Don't kill them."

Vogelfrei cocked his head at her again. "Why? They’re humans. They are threats. There’s no reason not to."

The drive agreed with Vogelfrei. That was the terrible thing. Why does it matter? They're humans. You’d feel better if you killed them. Just these two.

"I know," Clara said. Her voice came out thin. ‘I know it doesn't matter to you. I know it doesn't matter to the body. It matters to me. Other people matter. I will not. I will not. I will not.’

"They will try again. If we leave them alive, they will heal, they will report, and they will come with more humans. Killing them now is the correct operational decision."

'Clara, what are you doing? He is right. Now is not the time for your scrup—'

'And then what, Auffie? We kill two first-class mages and they'll send more. An army. Or Serie will come herself.'

Aufziehen had a sharp uptick of fear at that. If Serie decided to come north personally—

'…that is a good point. Very well. I have a plan. I can condition Zuwachsen to activate on a delay. If we tie it to the binding spell… I need you to speak exactly as I do.'

Clara turned to Vogelfrei. She straightened her spine. She set her jaw. She let Aufziehen's cadence flow through her mouth.

"If we kill the mages, the human response will only escalate. The Continental Magic Association does not forget its dead. The Living Grimoire will come. We cannot fight her."

"Then what do you suggest, Hag?" Vogelfrei's voice was tight. His spear was still cocked.

"They care for one another. Like our warband does. The blond one screamed when I blinded his partner. The partner threw himself at me when I wounded the blond one. They are bonded. Use it."

"How?”

'Tell him: we wound them both heavily enough that they cannot follow, but lightly enough that they will not die immediately. Each one will have to choose between chasing us and keeping their partner alive. They will choose the partner. They always choose the partner. Humans are predictable in this.'

Clara relayed it, word for word, in Aufziehen's voice.

Vogelfrei considered this. His head tilted the other way. The spear lowered an inch.

"And the wounds?"

'I will place Zuwachsen on both of them. Delayed activation. They will need a skilled healer to undo what I have done before it becomes permanent. That healer will need to reach them within six to eight hours. That gives us six to eight hours of head start.'

Clara relayed this. She watched Vogelfrei process it.

"You can do that? Place your healing curse on a delay?"

"I have done it before." Clara said it in the Hag's voice, and saw Vogelfrei's eyes narrow slightly.

"How long to set it?"

"Thirty seconds. I need them still. Make him stop."

Vogelfrei looked at the circle. Inside it, Genau was gathering another cast. Lässig was on the ground, barely breathing, not moving.

Vogelfrei raised his hand. Dozens of birds flew into the circle, circling and swamping Genau.

Genau thrashed. His wings came up, slashing, and the crows dissolved into mana-dust. More came. Six. Ten. They covered him. They sat on his wings. They sat on his arms. They pecked and clawed. He tried to control them, reaching with his mana, and Vogelfrei simply dispelled them and summoned another swarm. Genau was fighting birds instead of casting spells.

"You have thirty seconds, Hag."

Clara knelt. She put her hands flat on the ground. She felt the two human bodies inside her circle, one standing and thrashing and one prone and broken. She found their wounds. All of them.

She placed Zuwachsen on Genau first. The scratch on his cheek. The scratches and bruises from the crows. The strain in his shoulders from the wing-conjuration. She seeded each one with a tiny thread of Zuwachsen, set to activate in half a minute. When they activated, the healing would begin. And the healing would be wrong. Bones would fuse at angles that locked joints. Muscles would knit short, pulling limbs into positions that did not work.

Then Lässig. Lässig was worse. The Stille had done catastrophic damage, and Clara realized with a lurch he was minutes at most from dying. ‘What’s keeping him alive? Anime mage bullshit?’ Clara threaded Zuwachsen through the shattered ribs, the pulped muscles, the contused lungs. Same delay. Same wrong-healing. When the threads activated, Lässig's ribs would knit at angles that compressed his lungs. His back muscles would reattach in crossed orientations that made it impossible to stand straight. He would breathe, but every breath would cost him. He would live, but he would not move.

Twenty-eight seconds.

Clara pulled her hands off the ground. She stood up.

"It's done."

Vogelfrei recalled the crows. They lifted off Genau in a black cloud and dissolved into dust. Genau stood in the circle, breathing hard, feathers in his hair, his face a mask of fury. His wings were re-forming. His Zoltraak was gathering.

Clara looked at him through the green light.

She spoke to him in Aufziehen's voice. "Your body is going to start healing wrong. So is Lässig's. I’m going to leave your legs working. You will have hours to find a healer who can undo what I've done. If you chase us, you won't find a healer in time. Choose."

Genau looked at her.

"I will find you," he said. It was a threat. Or a promise. Or both.

Clara looked at Genau. At Lässig, his life trickling away on the ground with every breath. "Maybe. But not today.” The last part she added was for herself. “Remember that you started this. My son and I were just going to visit the village. You attacked us. And I didn’t kill you or your friend when I could have.”

If that mattered to Genau, he didn’t show it.

She scoffed, and turned.

Then she and Vogelfrei were gone.

I am in an hole in the ground under some roots.

Ma said count. So I am counting.

I am counting the things I can see. There are pine needles on the ground in front of me. I have counted six hundred and forty-three of them. There are roots above my head. I have counted twelve. There is a beetle on one of the roots. A different kind of beetle from Bug. Smaller. Brown. I have counted the legs on the beetle. Six. I have counted the spots on the beetle. Four.

I am counting because Ma said count. Ma said do not stop counting until I come back. So I am counting.

The wanting-to-kill part of me is very, very loud.

It’s been loud since Ma put me in the hole. It wants to come out and run toward the loud sounds and the bright mana and the thing that is happening that I cannot see. It wants to fight. It is screaming inside me like how the chickens screamed when a hawk came and the chickens couldn’t get inside the coop fast enough and Ma had to throw a needle at the hawk.

The me-part is counting.

Six hundred and forty-four pine needles. Six hundred and forty-five.

Ma's and Other-Mom’s mana are very bright right now. The warm-green and the cool-red-orange, both at the same time, louder than I have ever felt them. Ma's mana is not normally this loud. Ma's mana is normally quiet, the way a creek is quiet even when it is moving fast. Right now Ma's mana is a river in a storm. It is so loud I can feel it in my teeth.

The two human manas are loud too. One feels like a blade being sharpened. The other one feels like a windy day. Both of them are very angry. I can feel anger in mana. Anger makes mana hot at the edges.

I don’t like angry mana. It makes the wanting-part louder.

Six hundred and forty-six.

Something happened. I heard Ma scream. Loud enough that it came through the rocks and the roots and the dirt and into my hole.

Ma screamed and the wanting-part surged up so hard I bit my own tongue.

The me-part held.

I tasted blood in my mouth. My tongue was bleeding where I bit it. The blood tasted like blood. I swallowed and kept counting.

Six hundred and forty-seven. Six hundred and forty-eight.

Six hundred and forty-nine.

More sounds. More mana-spikes. The blade-sharp one and Ma's were close together. Very close. They were fighting.

The wind-bottle one moved. I felt it move toward Ma. I felt the anger in it get hotter.

Then Ma's mana spiked again and there was another scream. Not Ma this time. The blade-sharp one. His mana went wild. Jagged. Wrong. Something had happened to him that his mana did not like.

Six hundred and fifty.

More sounds. A crash. A crack of a tree going over. The wind-bottle one's mana went huge. The biggest I’d ever felt that wasn’t Other-Mom’s. Ma's mana went dim. The way a candle gets dim when you put a hand over it. Ma was hurt. Ma was hurt badly. I could feel the cool-red-orange of Other-Mom working fast, the way it worked when Ma cut had herself in the kitchen, but faster. Much faster. Other-Mom was fixing things. Other-Mom wasn’t fixing things fast enough.

The wanting-part wanted to come out of the hole and kill whoever had hurt Ma.

The me-part counted.

I was crying. I knew I was crying because my face was wet and my breathing was the broken kind of breathing that happens when crying and counting happen at the same time. I was crying and counting. Both at the same time. The way the wanting-part and the me-part ran at the same time. Both real. Both happening. One on top of the other.

Six hundred and fifty-one.

Ma was going to die. ‘NO.’

I stopped counting. I went to get up.

A new mana. From the west.

Not human. Not Ma. Not Other-Mom. Something else. Something that felt like my mana and Ma's mana. Different from a human’s. The way a dog is different from a wolf but you can tell they are the same kind of thing. Oily-spiky. Sharp at the edges. Fast.

A demon. He felt like the way bird feathers feel.

There were sounds of fighting again.

I counted. Six hundred and fifty-two.

The blade-sharp-one's mana went jagged again. The wind-bottle-one's mana was doing something big, holding something, straining. The Bird-demon’s mana was moving fast, darting, circling.

Then a sound like the world cracking open. A single sharp crack that I felt in my chest.

The wind-bottle-one's mana almost went out.

Dim. Very dim. The way Ma's mana had gone dim when she was hurt. Dimmer than that. The wind-bottle-one was badly hurt.

Six hundred and fifty-three

Time passed. I do not know how much. The manas moved around each other. Ma's mana did the green-new-leaf thing, the Goddess-spell thing. The blade-sharp-one hit it and hit it and hit it and it held.

Then it stopped. The fighting stopped. The manas settled into positions that did not move. Ma's green spell went out. Ma's mana moved.

Ma's mana moved toward me.

Six hundred and fifty-four.

Feet on leaves. Ma's feet. I know the sound of Ma's feet. I have listened to Ma's feet for my Whole Life and I know them the way I know the sound of the creek and the sound of the chickens and the sound of Bug walking on my hand.

"Klein? Baby?"

Ma's voice. She sounded wrong. She sounded like she had been screaming and then been hurt and then been crying and then been fighting. She sounded like all of those things at once.

"Klein, baby. It's Ma. You can come out."

I came out.

The light was very bright after the hole. I squinted. Ma was kneeling in front of the rocks. She was wearing the armor. The armor was dented and scratched and there was blood on it. Her face was bloody. Her hair was full of pine sap and broken twigs and something grey that might have been bark or might have been skin that had healed wrong and peeled off.

She looked terrible.

She was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen.

"Ma."

"I'm here, baby."

I ran.

I hit her chest and her arms went around me and I heard something in her ribs make a sound like a crack, which meant they were still healing, and she made a sharp small sound but she did not let go. She held me tighter. I put my face against the brooch on her armor. The metal was warm from the gems.

"Ma. You're bleeding."

"I know, baby. I'm healing."

"I counted six hundred and fifty-five pine needles."

"That's a lot of counting, baby."

"You said don't stop."

"I did. You did good. You did so good, Klein." Why did Ma sound like she was crying if we were hugging?

Behind Ma, there was someone.

I felt him before I saw him. The Bird-man mana. Oily-spiky. Sharp. Close. Very close. Standing at the edge of the rocks, maybe ten feet away.

I looked over Ma's shoulder.

He was tall. Taller than Ma. He wore a mantle made of feathers, hundreds of them, in every color. His mask was very cool. Like a bird's face, with a crack running from the bottom to the side. Through the eyeholes I could see red eyes. Deep red. Like coals at the bottom of the kitchen hearth.

He was looking at me. He was not blinking.

"Ma?"

"Yeah, baby."

"Is that the Bird-man in My-Dad’s warband?"

Ma turned her head.

"Klein, baby. This is Vogelfrei."

"The Bird-man? Who is friends with the Ice-lady?"

Vogelfrei blinked. His head turned from me to Ma.

"Hag. What have you told the spawn?" His voice was flat and raspy. "Graupel and I are not frien—"

Ma gave him a Look. I know Ma's looks. Ma has many looks. This one was the look she gave me when I said something I knew wasn't true and she knew I knew it wasn't true and we both knew but she was going to make me say it anyway. The come on, Klein look.

"Vogelfrei. Come on. Yes you are. The mutual bickering is just cover and you know it. I know it. Stahlblau knows it. Even Stürmer and Graupel know it."

Vogelfrei's mask did not move.

"…the spawn calls Graupel the Ice-lady?"

"His name is Klein. Not the spawn. And yes. He calls Graupel the Ice-lady because I told him she has ice magic and is big and loud. He calls you the Bird-man because you have your whole bird aesthetic and give people birds when you like them. He has been asking about all of you for weeks."

Vogelfrei looked at me again. I looked at him.

"Hello," I said.

Vogelfrei did not answer for a moment.

"…hello." He sounded unsure. Like he didn’t know how to say hi to people. Why does a grownup not know how to say hi?

"Ma says you give people birds."

"…I do."

"Can I have one?"

The red eyes did a thing. The same thing Ma's eyes did sometimes. The crinkly wet thing that meant a feeling was happening that was bigger than the face could hold. It happened fast. It was gone in less than a second. But I saw it. I see everything. I always see everything. I put it in a place.

Vogelfrei raised his hand. A single crow came down from the trees. Landed on his fingers. It was small. Neat. Black with bright eyes. It sat on his hand and looked at me with the sideways look that birds use for looking.

He held it out.

I reached out and let the crow step onto my finger.

It was light. Its feet were small and scratchy. It tilted its head at me. I tilted my head at it. The same way. The bird-way.

"Thank you, Uncle Vogelfrei."

The mask did not move, but Uncle Vogelfrei looked very confused. “…you’re welcome? What is an uncle?”

I held the crow on my finger. The crow held me back.

Behind us, the two human manas were moving. The blade-sharp-one was carrying the wind-bottle-one. Going south. Going away.

"Ma. The humans are leaving."

"I know, baby."

"They're not going to chase us?"

"Not today."

"Okay."

I looked at the crow. The crow looked at me.

"What's his name? The crow?"

Ma looked at Vogelfrei. Vogelfrei looked at the crow.

"Why would she have a name? Conjured birds do not require names."

"Everything needs a name," I said.

Vogelfrei shrugs. "…give her one, then."

I looked at the crow. The crow looked at me. She was small and black and bright-eyed and she was sitting on my finger and she was not afraid of me and I was not afraid of her.

"Her name is Black Bird, because that’s what she is." I said.

Ma made a sound. Something that was both a laugh and sob.

The crow named Black Bird sat on my finger and tilted her head and I held her very carefully. The afternoon light came through the pines and touched the feathers and they shone.

“That is a terrible name.” Uncle Vogelfrei said.

Uncle Vogelfrei sounds like Henni, so I tell him this. “You sound like my friend Henni.”

“What in the world is a Henni?”

Ma sighs. “A human girl. In the village. He plays with her.”

Uncle Vogelfrei looks very confused. “What have you been teaching him Hag?”

Before Ma can talk I say, “Doesn’t Hag mean ‘really old lady?’ Ma isn’t really old. She’s Ma-aged. It’s the right age.”

Ma laughed. A real one. Uncle Vogelfrei stared at her. I don’t know why.

Then he talks to me. "That is not a real age category."

He’s wrong, so I tell him. "It is now. I made it."

Vogelfrei is looking at me like I have three heads and purple skin. "Hag. The spawn—"

"Klein."

"—Klein, has opinions."

"He has a lot of those."

"I see that. It is clearly your influence." Uncle Vogelfrei paused. "He also appears to believe I sound like a human child."

I tell him that he does sound like Henni. "You both told me my names were bad, Henni said Bug was a terrible name for my beetle. You said Black Bird was a terrible name. You sound the same. They are not bad names. They say what they are. You and Henni are silly."

Uncle Vogelfrei bristles like one of the cats in Graufeld does when it gets wet. "I do not sound like a human child. I am not ‘silly.’"

"You sound like Henni when she's being bossy."

Ma is trying not to laugh hard.

"Klein," Vogelfrei said.

"Yeah?"

"Your mother is not ‘Ma-aged.’ Your mother is nearly nine hundred and sixty, which is old by any standard."

Uncle Vogelfrei is Wrong, but I am nice and don’t tell him. He’s still talking anyway.

"However…."

I wait.

"That crow is one I have been conjuring since I am a child. I ate its source bird and took the feather I use to conjure it when I was a little older than you. So she is far beyond the age of any natural crow. Hag would be a better name for her."

I look at Black Bird. Black Bird looks at me.

“Would you like to be Hag instead Black Bird? Caw once for yes. And two for no.” Black Bird caws three times.

“Do you want to be Black Bird the Hag?” She caws one time.

That is a good name. I turn to Ma. "See? Uncle Vogelfrei gets it. Names should be what the thing is."

Ma wipes her face with the back of her hand. Blood and tears and pine sap come off.

Her voice is doing a laughing thing. "Yeah, baby. He gets it."

Uncle Vogelfrei looks like he doesn’t know what to say, so he talks about another thing instead. “Hag. Klein. We should move. Start walking until we’re out of the mages’ detection range, so they can’t tell which direction we are leaving in, then fly.”

We start walking in the woods, keeping our mana down. Vogelfrei looks at me. “Your suppression is good. The Hag has been training you?”

I tell him. “Yes. I can fly for four hours and suppress mana and sense it and I can pick up a rock heavier than me with telekinesis and start little fires and turn rusty nails into good nails again.” I don’t tell him about the Sneaky-thing. That is a Me-thing, it’s mine, and it’s not Done yet. Ma doesn’t even know about the Sneaky-thing.

Vogelfrei has a look that says I am impressed and confused.' It is a big look. “Four hours? That is is well done for your age.” Someone not my Ma saying I did a good job feels good. I put that in a place.

Uncle Vogelfrei is looking at me while we walk. The look Ma gets when she is reading one of the hard books in the priest’s house.

"Your suppression is not just good. It is architecturally unusual." Uncle Vogelfrei says.

I don't know what architecturally means. But I know he noticed something.

"Ma taught me," I say.

This is true. Ma did teach me. She taught me the basics. The pushing-down and the holding-still and the keeping-quiet. But the Sneaky-thing is just Me. My magic. The way Zuwaschen is Other-Mom’s. It’s a thing where eyes want to drift away from me, the thing I have been working on by myself in the garden and in the woods and at home. I make a place mine. I walk the lines that make the place mine. Then I make it so I am safe. If they don’t want to look at me, that is better than suppressing. Then it doesn’t matter if I suppress. That is mine. I made it. It is not Done yet. I do not tell Uncle Vogelfrei about the Sneaky-thing.

"The Hag taught you," Vogelfrei repeats. He sounds like he doesn't think this is the whole answer. He is right that it is not the whole answer. He just looks at me for a minute and then looks ahead at the trees.

I put Uncle Vogelfrei noticed something about my suppression and did not push in a place. Grownups who notice things and do not push are grownups who will come back to the thing later. Ma does this. Other-Mom does this. I will have to be careful.

We walk for a while. The trees are tall and the light comes through them in long stripes. Black Bird the Hag is on my shoulder. She weighs almost nothing. Her feet hold on to my shirt and she makes small sounds when we go over bumpy ground.

Ma turns to Uncle Vogelfrei. “Vogelfrei. Where is the rest of the band?”

“We split up. Blau told me to go ahead when we realized you were fighting. He followed. He should catch up soon. And Graupel and St—”

Uncle Vogelfrei stops talking for a second. He and Ma and I feel it at the same time. Another oily-spiky mana. This one feels like the color blue looks. “There is Stahlblau. He will be here shortly.”

I am excited and a little scared. I want to meet My-Dad, but he sounds scary and bossy and I don’t know how to tell him he shouldn’t kill people.

Ma asks him, “What about Graupel and Stürmer?”

“Ah. Yes. Stahlblau had a plan to draw off the human patrols from helping those two fight you.”

Ma’s voice goes cold. “What kind of plan?”

“Nothing too dangerous. He sent them to distract them. Told them to attack that village. Kill a few of the villagers, start a fire. Simple.”

Ma stops walking.

She has the face she has when I have done something bad and she is deciding what to say about it. But this time it is not me who has done something bad.

"What village, Vogelfrei?"

Uncle Vogelfrei looks at her. He doesn’t know why she’s asking. "The one you were near. Graufeld."

I am suddenly very very scared. Graufeld has The Golden Goose and Mr. Hess and Ms. Mottek and kittens and Henni, and the others don’t know to not kill humans, that it’s bad.

Ma's mana does a thing I have never felt it do before. Both of them. The warm-green goes bright and hot and the cool-red-orange goes dark and cool. Warm-green is angry. Cool-red-orange is sad.

They are both afraid.

"When." Ma's voice does not sound like Ma's voice. It sounds like Other-Mom's voice coming out of Ma's mouth. Flat. Cold. The voice that means someone is about to get in trouble and the trouble is going to be very big.

"They should be hitting it about now. Standard operating procedure. Fire and noise. They will kill some, eat, and leave. Draw the human patrols to that spot. It is a good plan. Stahlblau's plans are always—"

"Vogelfrei. Stop talking."

Uncle Vogelfrei stops talking. He stops talking because Ma's voice did the thing that makes even me stop talking, and I am her son and I talk about lots of things.

Ma is looking at Uncle Vogelfrei. Her face is doing many things. I count them. The jaw is tight. The eyes are wet. The mouth is a line. The nostrils are wide. The hands at her sides are making fists. The fists are shaking.

"My son's friend lives in that village, Vogelfrei."

Vogelfrei doesn’t seem to know Ma’s mad. "…Right. I still mean to ask, what exactly have you been teaching him. How does he have a human that’s a fri—”

"Stop talking."

Ma's voice breaks.

She stops. She breathes.

I am holding Black Bird very tight. Too tight. Black Bird makes a small sound. I make my hand be gentle.

Uncle Vogelfrei looks mad. The mask covers his face, but his eyes are narrow.

“Why does it matter? Hag. What has happened to you? Your mana feels strange. What was that binding spell? Why is your offspring so strange? Why do you care if some human villagers die? We talked, and we agreed we would stop raiding once we got away from pursuit. Lay low. But there’s no need for that now, and distracting the mages is a good idea.”

Ma looks up quick at ‘stop raiding’. I know she wants to ask. Part of me does too. But I don’t. I am thinking too hard.

"Mr. Hess is in that village," I say.

The grownups stop talking. Uncle Vogelfrei looks confused. That makes sense. He doesn’t know who Mr. Hess is.

Ma looks down at me. Her face does the thing where it is trying to be brave and is not doing a very good job.

I explain to Uncle Vogelfrei. "Mr. Hess told me about demons. He told me they were bad. He was wrong about me. But he was nice. He was my friend too. He paid for my lunch. He has a dwarf friend named Ms. Mottek. She is very short and very smart and she doesn't like people being unfair. And my friend Henni is fun to play games with and talk to. She has kittens. There are five kittens and one of them is named Klein like me and he has yellow eyes like me. We were going to see them today.”

Uncle Vogelfrei doesn’t say anything to me. He looks at me like I am a strange bug that lives under a rock. He looks at Ma. He looks at Ma the way I think Henni would look at me if I told her I was really a demon. Like he thought he knew who Ma is, but now he doesn’t know who Ma is.

I look up at Ma. Ma is crying again. Tears on her face.

"Ma. We have to go back."

Ma does not answer.

Uncle Vogelfrei does. "Why? Why does it matter? If you want to kill humans, there will be time later. We don’t have to go help Graupel and Stürmer, we need to get awa—"

"We have to go back." I say it louder. I know interrupting a grownup is Rude. But this is important. "The Ice-lady and My-demon-Big-Brother don't know. They don't know it's bad. They don't know Henni is there. If we tell them they'll stop."

"Stop what? What’s bad Klein?" Uncle Vogelfrei says my name like he is trying to be patient with a thing he does not understand.

“Stop killing humans. It’s bad. It’s a bad thing. Humans are people like us.”

Vogelfrei stared at me. Then at Ma. Then at me again. The red eyes behind the mask are doing a fast looking-back-and-forth thing. Like when the chickens see something they don't understand and their heads go side to side very fast. Chickens do that a lot.

Uncle Vogelfrei lets out a big long tired breath. "What. What. What have you been teaching him, Hag? What is wrong with you?"

Ma's jaw tightened. "Nothing is wrong with me."

"'Humans are people like us.' He just said that. Your offspring just said humans are people like us. That is— I don’t even understand what that means. Hag, that is insane."

"It's not insane. It's what I've been trying to—"

"Have you lost your mind? Did something happen when you gave birth? Did the process damage your faculti—"

"Vogelfrei."

"—because I have known you for a hundred and fifty years and you have said some strange things and had some unconventional thoughts but that is—"

“VOGELFREI. Stop talking.”

Uncle Vogelfrei went very still. His hand had tightened around his spear.

Ma closed her eyes. She opened them. She looked like someone who had just said a thing she had not planned to say yet.

"Vogelfrei. I'm going to tell you something and you are not going to understand it and I need you to hear it anyway."

Vogelfrei let out a long sigh. "You have been doing that to me for the last ten minutes, Hag. None of the things I have heard have made any sense."

"This one is worse."

"I doubt that."

"I am not Aufziehen."

The forest went quiet again.

“What?”

Ma said it again. "Or rather, I am not just Aufziehen. My name is Clara. I am a human. I was born in a place you have never heard of. I was put into Aufziehen's body by the Goddess. The binding spell is Magic of The Goddess. Aufziehen is still here. She is the cool mana you can feel underneath mine. We share this body now. The Aufziehen you knew is still inside me and she can hear you right now and she wants me to tell you that she is sorry she left without telling you and she is sorry she has been gone and she agrees with what I am teaching our son."

Uncle Vogelfrei did not move.

He stood in the woods and he did not move at all. His eyes were fixed on Ma's face.

"…prove it," he said.

Ma reached into the mana. I felt her do it. She reached for the cool-red-orange and she pulled it up and she let it sit next to the warm-green and she held both of them, visible, on the surface, the way she had in the fight, except now she was not fighting. She was just standing in the woods and she showing Vogelfrei what she was.

Vogelfrei's eye narrowed.

"…that is the Hag's mana."

"Yes."

"And the other one is not."

"No."

"The other one feels like—" He stopped. His head tilted a bird-way. "—the other one feels like a human's mana being channeled through a demon's body. That should not be possible."

"And yet."

"That. Should. Not. Be. Possible."

"Vogelfrei. Possible does not matter. It is what is."

Uncle Vogelfrei stared at Ma for a very long time.

Then he said, very quietly: "Hag. Aufziehen. If you are in there. Say something only you would say."

Ma went quiet. The quiet I knew meant Other-Mom was talking and Ma was waiting for the words.

Then Ma spoke, and she talked the way she did when she was telling me something Other-Mom had said.

"Vogelfrei. You have been pretending you hate Graupel since you have known her and you think I do not know what you feel for her is not hate. I know. I have always known. Your mana patterns synchronize when you are in proximity for longer than six hours. I did not say anything because it was not my place and none of us had the words. It is the same thing I feel for Stahlblau and he feels for me that we did not have the words for. You kick and mumble in your sleep. Graupel has mentioned this to me at least twice a year for ninety-seven years. You put your arm around her when you think she is deeply asleep and will not notice. You told me this, once, forty-four years ago when you drank all the ice-beer in the dwarven tavern we torched that one summer. You were very drunk. She also told me this. She was drunk as well. She does not sleep as deeply as you think. She knows about your arm. She told me she likes it."

Uncle Vogelfrei's mask did not move.

Nothing moved.

Then, very slowly, Uncle Vogelfrei said: "…that is something only the Hag would say. It is also something the Hag would not say, unless someone told her it needed saying."

"Yes," Ma said, in her own voice again. "It is."

Uncle Vogelfrei looked at Ma. He looked at me. He looked at Black Bird the Hag, who was now on my shoulder. I hoped she would like Bug, and not try to eat him. He looked south, toward Graufeld, toward where the Ice-lady and Big Brother might be killing people who I had eaten lunch with.

He looked back at Ma. Let out a big sigh. He sounded disappointed.

“This is insane. The human Goddess is not real. She is a myth the humans invented, so they had someone as impressive as Our King. That is what my mother Geier told me. It is true. If she existed, she is a long dead human or elven mage who made impressive spells that have the fools follower her.”

Uncle Vogelfrei had a Ma too? I think that it’s nice to know I am not the only demon with a Ma. But I wish Vogelfrei’s Ma Geier didn’t tell him wrong things. The Goddess is real. Why would people make pretty windows for her if She wasn’t real?

I tell him this. “The Goddess is real. She brought Ma here so she could help Other-Mom. She’s very nice. She’s like the Ma for the whole world. Books say so.”

Ma looks surprised. I don’t think I have told her this in so many words before.

Vogelfrei stares at me. Confused. “Just because someone writes a book about something doesn’t make it true.”

Duh. I know that. I tell Uncle Vogelfrei that. I’m almost-one, I’m not a baby. “Yeah. I know. But Ma said the Goddess is probably real. Ma never lies.”

Vogelfrei blinks at me a lot. He looks like an owl. I don’t think he knows what to say.

I am thinking about something. Geier. Uncle Vogelfrei has a Ma. Or had a Ma. Ma told me that most demon moms leave. I want to know about Uncle Vogelfrei's Ma but I also know that some questions are the kind of questions that hurt people when you ask them.

Ma taught me about this. She said some people have things they carry that are heavy, baby, and if you ask about the heavy thing they have to pick it up and show you and that can hurt. She said you can ask, but ask gently, and if they say no, stop.

"Uncle Vogelfrei?"

"What?" He says what the way some people say go away. But he does not say go away. He says what. I think this means I can ask.

"You said your Ma's name is Geier."

He does not answer right away. He walks three more steps. His feet do not make sounds on the leaves, which is something I want to learn how to do.

"Yes. Her name is Geier."

"What is she like?"

Four more steps. No sound.

"She left."

The way he says it is flat, like a door closing. Like when Ma says we're not talking about this right now, Klein except Ma's voice is warm when she closes the door and Uncle Vogelfrei's voice is not warm.

She left. Like how Ma told me most demon moms leave.

I want to say something. I want to say I'm sorry your Ma left. I want to say my Ma stayed. I want to say maybe your Ma wanted to stay but didn't know how. But I remember what Ma said about heavy things, and Uncle Vogelfrei's face behind the mask looks like a heavy thing that has been picked up and is being held and he wants to put it down.

So I say: "Black Bird the Hag will not leave. She is on my shoulder and she is staying."

Uncle Vogelfrei looks at the crow on my shoulder. The crow looks at Uncle Vogelfrei. She caws once.

I do not know if Uncle Vogelfrei knows that one caw means yes. But I know.

Uncle Vogelfrei looks at the trees ahead. He walks. His feet still do not make sounds.

After a while he says, very quietly: "Geier taught me about birds. How to catch them. That is where my magic comes from. She stayed for one season. Then she left."

"One season is a long time for a demon mom to stay," I say. Because Ma told me this. Ma said most demon Mas stay for days if they stay at all. One season is longer than days. One season is a lot of days.

Uncle Vogelfrei says. "It was. It was a long time." He doesn’t sound like he thinks it was a long time.

I don't say anything else. I hold Black Bird the Hag on my shoulder and I walk beside Uncle Vogelfrei and I let the heavy thing be put down.

We walk.

After eighty-nine more steps Uncle Vogelfrei says: "She taught me that the point of being alive was killing humans."

I think about this. Ma told me that nobody told the warband that killing humans was bad. That they were taught wrong things when they were small. Uncle Vogelfrei's Ma taught him a wrong thing when he was small.

"She was wrong about that," I say. I say it the way I say things that are true and that I know are true. Like the sky is blue or Bug is the best beetle.

Uncle Vogelfrei looks at me. The red eyes behind the mask are very still.

"You sound very certain for someone who is not yet one year old."

"I am. Humans are people. Killing people is bad. I am almost-one and I know this."

Uncle Vogelfrei does not answer. He walks. After a while he makes a sound that is not a word. It might be a laugh or it might be the sound you make when something hurts inside and you do not want to make the sound that goes with hurting.

I do not ask which one it was. Some sounds are like heavy things too.

Black Bird the Hag wiggles on my shoulder.

Uncle Vogelfrei is watching her do this.

"You treat the bird carefully. Most demons your age would have eaten it by now," he says.

"I know."

"Why haven't you?"

I think about this. It is a good question. It is the kind of question Ma would ask. The kind where the answer matters and you have to find the right words for it.

"Because I decided not to."

Uncle Vogelfrei's walking does not change. His feet still make no sound. His mask still points ahead. But something in the way he is walking changes. Something very small. Like a thing that was tight becoming a little less tight. Or a thing that was closed opening a crack.

"You decided not to," he repeats.

"Yes. That’s what I do with things I shouldn’t eat yet. I gave her a name, and I’m not hungry, and I know she’s made of mana so she wouldn’t feet me anyway. I do the same thing people. Ignore my wanting-part."

"The wanting-part?" Uncle Vogelfrei asks.

"The part of me that wants to kill things. Ma calls it intrusive thoughts. Other-Mom calls it the drive. I call it the wanting-part. It is always there. It wants all the time. It wants right now. But that doesn’t matter. I’m the one who decides. Not my body."

Uncle Vogelfrei stops walking.

He looks at me. Very still.

Uncle Vogelfrei is quiet for a long time. Longer than any of his other quiets.

"I have never heard a demon describe wanting to kill humans this way," he says. He does not sound confused. He does not sound angry. He sounds like a person who has found a door in a wall he thought was solid. He does not know what is behind the door. He is not sure he wants to open it. But he can see that it is there.

"I am not like other demons. Ma says I am the first one raised like this."

"Raised like what?"

"Raised like a person." Vogelfrei doesn’t sound like he knows what that means.

We keep walking.

Black Bird the Hag caws once on my shoulder. I check my hand. My fingers are gentle. The me-part is holding.

Uncle Vogelfrei asks me things while we walk. He asks them the way Ma asks me things when she is checking if I learned something. Like she already knows the answer and wants to see if I know it too. Except Uncle Vogelfrei does not know the answers. He is asking because he wants to learn me.

"What do you eat?"

"Squirrels. Rabbits. Eggs. Chicken sometimes. Vegetables from the garden. Stew from the inn. Bread. Pork."

"You eat cooked food?"

"Ma cooks it. Raw meat is fine but it tastes better cooked."

Uncle Vogelfrei's mouth does something behind the mask. I cannot see it but I can hear the shape of it in his breathing. I think he is trying not to smile. I don't know why this is funny.

"Have you killed anything?"

"Animals. Squirrels. Rabbits. Bugs, but not anymore. Bugs are neat. Big animals with Ma. Deer. Boar. A bear once."

"Have you killed a human?"

"No."

"Why not? Don’t you want to?"

"Yes. Every time I see one. The wanting-part wants to. The part of me that matters doesn’t."

Uncle Vogelfrei is quiet for four steps.

"Who taught you to read?"

"Ma."

"Who taught you to fly?"

"Ma."

"Who taught you about mana suppression?"

"Ma."

"Who taught you that killing humans is bad?"

I think about this one. It is a different kind of question. The other questions had one answer. This one has a bigger answer.

"Ma taught me. But I figured it out too."

Uncle Vogelfrei looks at me. "You figured it out.?"

"Yes. Henni is a human. Henni is my friend. Killing Henni would be bad. Other humans are like Henni. So killing other humans is also bad. It's like snacks.  If eat all my snacks at once, my tummy will hurt, and we won't have more snacks.  If I eat them when I'm supposed to, they'll last a long time, and my tummy won't hurt.  If I kill a human, then they're gone forever.  That would be sad.  It'd only be fun for a minute.  If I don't kill humans, they could be my friend, and then we'd have fun for a long time. It is not hard to figure out."

Uncle Vogelfrei walks another six steps without talking.

"It is not hard to figure out," he repeats. He says it like he is holding the words up and looking at them from different sides.

"No. It isn't."

"And yet no demon in the history of our species has figured it out."

I don't have an answer for this. I don't know about the history of our species. I know about Henni and Mr. Hess and Ms. Mottek and the freckled boy and Ma and Other-Mom and Bug. I know that the people I know who are humans are people. I don't need history to know that.

"Maybe nobody tried," I say.

He does not say anything else for a long time after that.

Ma puts her hand on my shoulder. Her hand is warm. Ma's hand is always warm.

Ma talks. Her voice is the gentle voice. The one she uses when she is trying to help someone understand a thing they don't want to understand. She uses it on me sometimes. She used it on Other-Mom a lot in the beginning, Other-Mom told me once, through Ma. "I know this is a lot. I know none of it makes sense by the rules you've been living with. But we don't have time for me to explain everything. I need you to trust that the Hag is in here, that she is not a prisoner, and that what I have been teaching Klein is something she and I agreed on together."

Vogelfrei's jaw moves behind the mask. I can see the muscle in his chin. It is the muscle that moves when a person is biting down on something they want to say.

"You are asking me to trust a human I have never met, who is wearing the body of my comrade, based on evidence that contradicts everything I know about the fundamental nature of my species."

"Yes."

"That is an extraordinary request."

"It’s an extraordinary situation hun."

Vogelfrei looks at Ma. He looks at me. He looks at Black Bird the Hag on my shoulder. His red eyes keep coming back to me. I think he is looking for the thing that is wrong with me. The thing that would prove Ma is lying. The thing that would let him file me under human trick and be done with it.

He is not finding it. I can tell he is not finding it because his looking keeps going and does not stop at a place.

"The child…" he says, slowly. "Klein. He is... not performing. He genuinely considers a human girl his friend."

"Her name is Henni. Yes."

"He genuinely believes killing humans is wrong."

"Yes."

"And the Hag agreed to this. The Hag whose preferred food is the internal organs of young human children agreed to raise an offspring as a pacifist who gives awful names to beetles."

Ma's face does a thing. A complicated thing.

"She's changed, Vogelfrei. People can change. Even demons."

"Demons do not change. They do not need to ‘change’. I don’t even know what means."

"You're wrong about that."

"I have been alive for three hundred and fifty years, and in that tim—"

"And that whole time you have been sleeping next to Graupel and putting your arm around her and not knowing what to call it. That's change, Vogelfrei. You changed. Slowly. Over decades. Without anyone telling you to. You changed because the people around you made you into someone who could change."

Uncle Vogelfrei goes very quiet.

Ma's voice gets softer. "When did you start putting your arm around her?"

"That is not relevant."

"When, Vogelfrei?"

A long pause. "Maybe a century ago."

"And before that?"

"Before that I did not."

"Why did you start?"

An even longer pause. Uncle Vogelfrei's feet have stopped making their no-sound. He is standing still.

"I do not know. It happened. One night. We were in a camp. It was cold. She was cold. Her ice magic does not help keep her warm. She was shivering. I put my arm across her because the shivering was preventing me from sleeping."

"And the next night?"

"She was not shivering the next night."

"But you put your arm around her anyway."

"...yes."

"Why?"

"I do not know."

"You do know. You just don't have the word."

Uncle Vogelfrei's mask turns to Ma. The red eyes behind it are very bright. Like wanting-to-not-cry-bright.

"The word is irrelevant," he says. "Whatever I feel for Graupel is between myself and Graupel and has no bearing o—"

"It has every bearing on this, Vogelfrei, because what you feel for Graupel is the same thing Aufziehen feels for Stahlblau. What Klein feels for me is what Stürmer feels for Stahlblau. It is the same things that humans are capable of feeling too. Humans do it because their societies try, in some flailing half-assed way, to teach them to do it. You learned it by accident. Without anyone but your mother who left after a few months and your warband teaching you. Klein is learning it on purpose because Auffie and I are teaching him. That is the only difference. You didn’t have that teaching, so you didn’t know the words for what you were feeling. I have the words. I am a human, and humans have had the words since there’s been humans. The word is love, Vogelfrei."

The forest is very quiet.

I am watching Uncle Vogelfrei's face. Or the parts of it I can see behind the mask. He looks like he wants to bite something.

"You presume a great deal, human," he says.

"I’m not presuming shit Vogelfrei. Just calling it how I see it hun. And I can see a lot. I’ve seen Auffie’s memories. I am telling you now: you are a family. You love each other. You did not have the word. Now you have the word."

Uncle Vogelfrei stands very still for a very long time.

Then he says: "I need to think."

"We don't have time for you to think, Vogelfrei. Graupel and Stürmer are hitting a village full of people my son cares about."

"I need to think." His voice is sharp.

Ma closes her mouth. She holds my shoulder. We stand in the forest with Uncle Vogelfrei while Uncle Vogelfrei thinks.

He thinks for maybe thirty seconds. I count them. Thirty seconds is a long time when nobody is talking.

Then Uncle Vogelfrei says, slowly: "I do not accept your premise. I do not accept that the Goddess is real. I do not accept that what I feel for Graupel is the human word you are using. I do not accept this framework that invalidates demon behavior."

He pauses.

"I do not believe The Hag agrees with this. I believe you are lying about this. The Hag is your prisoner. This child has been twisted into something against his nature.”

Ma looks really mad. "I'm not lying, Vogelfrei."

"That is what liars say. I have said it to many humans. Why would a human not say it to a demon?”

Ma nods. "It is. But it's also what people telling the truth say. You'll have to figure out which one I am."

"I intend to." Vogelfrei says it very seriously. His voice sounds scary.

We keep walking. Nobody talks for a while. The forest is doing its forest things. Wind in the pines. A bird somewhere. A real one, not one of Uncle Vogelfrei's. The light is getting lower. It is afternoon and the afternoon is getting old.

Ma is limping. Her left leg is not done healing.

Ma looks down at me. Her face does the happy-sad thing. The crinkly wet eye thing. She squeezes my hand once.

"You okay, baby?"

"My tongue hurts. From biting it. And I'm tired. And I'm worried about Henni."

"I know, baby. I'm worried about Henni too."

"Ma. If we can't get there in time. If the Ice-lady and Big Brother already—" I don't know how to finish this sentence. I have the words for it but the words are too big to say out loud. The words are killed Henni and I cannot make my mouth say them.

Ma crouches down. Her knee makes a sound. She puts her forehead against mine. The helmet is cold. But Ma's forehead behind the helmet is warm.

"We're going to do everything we can, baby. I promise."

"Okay."

"I promise."

"Okay, Ma."

She stands back up. We keep walking. I keep holding her hand.

Uncle Vogelfrei is watching us. He has been watching us the whole time. His red eyes move from Ma's face to my face to our hands together. I can see him watching and I know he is putting things in places.

They are not fitting into the place he wants them to fit.

"Ma?"

"Yeah, baby?”

"Tell Other-Mom that Uncle Vogelfrei's feet don't make any sound when he walks and I want to learn how to do that."

Ma makes a small sound. Almost a laugh. She is quiet for a second, the way she is quiet when she is listening to Other-Mom.

"Other-Mom says that Vogelfrei uses a subtle air-displacement technique. She says the silence comes from redirecting the sound-waves of each footstep into the ground rather than into the air. She says she asked him to teach her once and he refused because, and I am quoting her here, it is mine and I do not share techniques with people who stomp everywhere like a drunken elk."

Uncle Vogelfrei makes a sound. It is a sharp sound. Short. Like a cough that wasn't a cough.

I look at him. His mask is pointed straight ahead. His eyes are pointed straight ahead. But the muscle in his jaw is doing something.

"She does stomp. The Hag has never once in a hundred and fifty years moved quietly anywhere. How does someone who never wear shoes walk so loudly?"

"That's what she said you'd say," Ma says. Her voice has the warm-trying-not-to-laugh sound.

"Because it is true."

"She also says you offered to teach Stürmer and he said no because he thought you were trying to trick him."

"I was not trying to trick him. The boy is loud. His footwork is atrocious. I was offering genuine instruction. He refused because he is stubborn and because Graupel told him I was untrustworthy."

"Were you untrustworthy?"

"I was going to teach him the technique and then use it as leverage to make him stop leaving his kill bones in our sleeping area. It was a fair trade."

Ma laughs. A real laugh. She laughs and then makes a face because laughing hurts her ribs.

I am watching Uncle Vogelfrei while Ma laughs.

Uncle Vogelfrei is watching Ma laugh.

Uncle Vogelfrei looks away. Into the trees. His jaw muscle goes tight again.

I think Uncle Vogelfrei is a person who is holding a lot of heavy things right now and he does not have enough hands for all of them.

We walk.

"Stürmer lost an arm."

Ma stops walking. "What?"

"The Northern Magic Corps mages. Stürmer took a Zoltraak to the shoulder. The arm came off."

"Did it—"

"It hasn’t grown back. He is still—" Uncle Vogelfrei pauses. "He is still adjusting."

Ma makes a face I have seen before. I know this face because Ma makes it sometimes when she tells me about Tyler, her other son from the other place. The face that says I should have been there.

"Vogelfrei. I could have healed that in minutes. That’s what Auffie just said."

"You were not there."

"I know."

"You were here. Having a child. Teaching it to name beetles and to deny its purpose!"

Ma flinches.

Ma says. "I’m sorry. I'm sorry we weren’t there."

I felt it then. The blue mana. Closer now. Much closer. Coming through the trees from the east, fast and heavy. He has more mana than Other-Mom and Ma. The most mana I've ever felt from anything in the whole world.

My-Dad was coming.

Uncle Vogelfrei feels it too. His whole body changes. He stands straighter. His mask lifts. His hand goes to his knife and then settles.

"Stahlblau," he says. Like he is reminding himself who is in charge.

I say "Is that My-Dad?" even though I know it is.

"Yeah, baby, That's your Dad."

I am scared and excited and worried about Henni and confused and tired from counting and my tongue still hurts from where I bit it. I am holding too many new things in too many new places and the places are full. My-Dad will be here soon and I don't know if he will tell the Ice-lady to stop.

Uncle Vogelfrei has gone quiet.

Ma talks to him "Vogelfrei. When he gets here we can expla—"

"No."

One word. Flat.

Ma sounds confused. "Vogelfrei?"

"You have explained. I have listened. I have heard things that do not make sense. I have watched a child call me ‘Uncle’ and tell me that my mother was wrong about the purpose of being alive. I have heard you say the word love as though it explains something. I have heard the Hag's laugh come out of your mouth. I have heard memories spoken aloud that only the Hag could know."

He pauses. He is still facing east. Toward the blue mana. Toward Stahlblau.

"None of it helps, human. None of it makes this clearer. Every piece of evidence you give me is consistent with two explanations. Either you are what you say you are: a human soul placed by a Goddess I do not believe in, living peacefully with a demon. Or you are a human, probably a priest, using some possession magic and have studied the Hag's memories."

He turns to look at Ma.

"Both explanations account for the evidence. Both are internally consistent. I cannot distinguish between them. I have been trying for the last twenty minutes and I cannot distinguish between them."

"Vogelfr—"

"So I must choose. And I must choose now."

Ma is very still. Her hand is still on my shoulder. Her fingers have tightened.

"You could just tell him that you don't know."

"I could. Stahlblau would assess. Stahlblau is more patient than I am. Stahlblau would listen to you the way I have listened and he would weigh the evidence the way I have weighed it."

"Then do that."

Uncle Vogelfrei is quiet for a moment. A long moment.

"If you are what you say you are, that is the right choice. If you are what I fear you are, that is the worst choice.”

He stops.

“If something wearing the Hag's face is against us he could not fight it."

The forest is very quiet.

"I will not risk that. The cost of being wrong about you is too high. The cost of being wrong about a lie that wears the Hag's face and knows the Hag's secrets is Stahlblau, and Stahlblau is—"

He stops again.

“—Stahlblau is my friend. And my Lord.”

Ma's eyes are wet. "You're protecting him."

Uncle Vogelfrei's jaw goes very tight.

"Do not patronize me."

"You love him. You're protecting him because you love him. The same way you put your arm around Graupel. The same way—"

"Do. Not."

Ma stops talking. But the words are already in the air.

Uncle Vogelfrei is looking at Ma. His red eyes are bright. Very bright.

“You’re friends with my-Dad?” I ask. It is the wrong thing to ask.

He whirls to me. Stares. "A human title of affection towards a sire. Dad. Meaningless drivel."

"It's not ‘meaningless’, Uncle Vogelfrei," I say.

I say it because I can hear that he needs to hear it, even though he does not want to hear it. "It means the person who made you and who is supposed to take care of you. It means the person who picks you up when you fall down. The boy version of Ma. That's what Ma says it means."

Uncle Vogelfrei looks at me. His red eyes are very still.

"Geier did not pick me up when I fell down. Geier taught me about birds and told me the point of being alive was killing. That is not what it means by your definition."

"No," I say.

"Then what is it?"

"I don't know. Ma would know a word for it. Ma has words for everything."

Ma, very quietly, says: "The word is mother, Vogelfrei. Not all mothers are good at it."

Uncle Vogelfrei's jaw goes tight. The mask settles. The eyes go flat.

"Enough," he says. "I have decided."

Ma's hand tightens on my shoulder.

"Vogelfr—"

"I have decided. The risk to Stahlblau is too great. I will not present you as an ally. I will present you as a threat. When Stahlblau arrives he will assess you under restraint. If you are what you say you are, you will survive the assessment. If you are not, Stahlblau will deal with you."

"Vogelfrei, please—"

"I won't kill the body you're in. The Hag may still be salvageable. But I can hold you until my Lord arrives."

His hand moves on his spear. I don’t why his hand moves on his spear.

Ma looks confused. The confused of a person who thought we were just talking.

"Vogelfrei? What are you—"

"I'm sorry," he says. And he sounds like he means it. He sounds like the sorry is real and the sorry does not change what he is about to do. "I'm sorry. I cannot take the risk. Not with him."

Vogelfrei throws the spear.

Ma doesn't expect it.

The spear hits her in the stomach and goes through.

I scream.