“What we’re going to do is take you both to the Primary. There, you’re going to spend whatever time together you like, on your own, with Brynn somewhere nearby to pull you out of trouble if any should come up.”

“Why would any trouble come up?” Riley frowned slightly. “It’s going to be, like, a safe house or something, right? Some Logistics facility?”

Therese shook her head. “We had a suggestion.” She grimaced. “From the Headmistress.”

Suliat’s eyes widened. “She knows about—” she started to ask.

Riley laughed softly, nudged Suli with her shoulder. “Of course she does. It’s Gaveny.”

“Headmistress Gaveny,” said Brynn with a hint of asperity to her voice.

“Headmistress. Anyway, she knows everything. I don’t know, maybe the Tower tells her things.”

Suliat looked from Riley back to Therese. “So what’s the suggestion, then?”

Therese glanced across at Brynn, who cleared her throat. “Uh, basically, you’re going to tell me where you want to go, and I’m going to find us a portal as close to that as we can get, if possible, and then we’re going to go there.”

“Anywhere?” Riley asked.

“Yeah.” Brynn pointed at Suliat. “But she’s the one doing the picking.”

“The Headmistress thinks there might be some, um. Resonance. For creating a link. If you’re in a place that means something to you.”

Suliat’s expression had gone distant, considering, when Brynn had pointed at her. After a pause, she asked, “Does it have to be a place that’s important to me, or where something specific happened, or—”

“I have no idea,” Therese admitted, shrugging. “Wasn’t my idea. I think you’re supposed to pick whatever seems right to you, and somehow that will make it meaningful and, listen. I don’t know. This isn’t exactly science, at this point. We’re pretty far off the beaten path of magical theory.”

Riley looked at Suliat, who was lost in thought again. Don’t want to rush her. Or pressure her. Or fuck up this process in any way, really.

But she was only distant for a handful of minutes, and then she nodded. “I can show you on a map, if you’d like.”

Brynn had two large volumes that she’d fetched from the Archives, after a brief explanatory conversation with Key, who she’d had to drag over to the office so that Therese could explain the plan to her.

One of the volumes was a thick, comprehensive atlas, of the sort that technology had largely rendered obsolete. This one was lovingly produced, meant more as a collector’s item for a certain kind of rich person’s library, but seemed also to be up to date — at least as of 2021, which was recent enough for their purposes.

The other volume wasn’t a book at all, but a bound collection of accordion folders, each compartment with a folded sheaf of thin papers. The binding of the collection read ‘Portals, Survey 71, Adept Vargas, Adept Ritter.’

Suliat had already flipped through the atlas to her target section, and after some paging forward and back, she found what she was looking for, and turned the book back to face Brynn. “Here.” She pointed with one finger at the southern portion of Lagos, in Nigeria.

Brynn looked at the page, then looked through a document she’d pulled out of the accordion folders. Her eyes flicked from one to the other, and then she shuffled through the folders until she found the one she sought. The paper she spread out was covered in small inscrutable symbols scattered across what appeared to be a ragged, shredded spiderweb of lines.

A map of The City. Riley recognized it from her arrival. The rolls of diagrams the Rangers had been carrying.

“Okay. Um. How close do you need to be?” Brynn was looking carefully at a cluster of symbols. “Can you get us there from somewhere else in Lagos?”

Suliat frowned, and nodded slowly. “If we have money, I can. But not everywhere in Lagos is safe for us to be on the street. Not dressed like this. Not looking like we’re wealthy and young.”

“I have a portal to the airport; everything closer is going to mean at least a day of hiking through the City. Which I’d really rather not do.”

Suliat nodded. “Will we have money?”

Therese said, “Yes. We’ve got local currency for every major metropolitan area.”

“Then yes, we can hire a car at the airport. But,” she frowned again, “the place is gated and visitors have to check in, and I can explain myself but probably not Riley or you.” She nodded at Brynn.

Brynn smiled. “Oh, you won’t have to worry about that.” Seeing Suliat’s blank look, she wiggled her fingers. “We do have magic, after all.”

The portal Brynn took them to was in the back of a dusty room in the Peripheral tower, after an hour’s walk through old musty corridors and wood-paneled stairwells. The actual portal itself was just an anchoring bracket against the wall, and the plaster behind it was discolored in the shape of a large rectangle, eight feet high and six wide.

“Huh. This hasn’t been used in years,” Brynn said, and then coughed. Riley’s eyes were watering, but she was determined not to follow with a cough of her own. “Well, let’s get it open and hope that nothing’s fucked up on the other end.”

“Like what?” Suliat asked.

“Construction work, usually. If someone decided to do renovations, tear down the building we’re headed to, you know, build something new in its place.”

Suliat looked alarmed. “You understand that my home is one of the fastest growing megacities in the world. Yes? It is always under renovations.”

Brynn waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll be fine. I’m going through first, and I’ve got plenty of experience dealing with portals that drop you off in unexpected places.”

An hour later, all three of them were in the chill air-conditioned interior of a luxury car. The sweat that had sprung out on Riley’s face immediately upon arriving in the heavy, damp air of Lagos had become cold and clammy. Suliat sat in the front seat next to the driver, speaking occasionally in Yoruba, giving directions.

“Is there some kind of Working for translating languages?” Riley asked in a low voice, meant for Brynn’s ears only.

“Not really. But there’s Workings to make it easier to learn languages. Why, you want to learn Yoruba?”

Riley shrugged. “I dunno, it might be interesting to be able to talk to Su in her own language. But I’m fucking awful at languages so if I still have to learn it, even ‘easier’ probably won’t be easy enough.”

Brynn laughed softly. “Ask Theory about it. I think they don’t like the accelerated learning Workings, but I never got a good explanation for why.”

Riley’s attention drifted out the dark tinted windows as the car wound its way through the city. The buildings that lined the expressways, just behind the retaining walls, crouched low, brown with a patina of dust. They crowded the roadway, four and five stories, in clusters separated by a profusion of smaller, single-story structures. Shacks, trailers, renovations halfway through completion. And everywhere, everywhere: construction. The whole place seemed to be under construction.

The expressway traffic tangled into stops at interchanges, and somehow the traffic seemed to be half, or more, made up of bright yellow vans. Dozens. Hundreds. Entire streets clogged with yellow vans.

And then they were out of the city and its hunched buildings, and on a bridge that curved out across the lagoon, the defining inland body of water for Lagos. It was so large that the far shore was just visible as a smudge at the horizon. The bridge took them south, and the city sprawled away to the right, out Riley’s window. The car, like an American car, had the driver on the left, so Riley was able to lean forward, tap Suliat on the shoulder, and whisper, “Are those boats out there?”

Suli glanced to her right. “Stilts. It’s a slum built over the water. On stilts and floats.”

“Oh. Is that safe?”

Suli laughed, and there was a shade of old bitterness in the sound. “No. It’s terribly dangerous, and extremely poor, and the people there are as tightly knit a community as you will find anywhere in the world.” She paused, and Riley thought she might be done, but then she spoke again, her voice distant. “All over my city, all over my country, people come together in these shared communities of hardship.” This time, when she fell silent, she did not continue.

The bridge rejoined the land, and now the buildings rose higher, and then higher. The expressway took them towards and through a cluster of tall office buildings, the sort that always seemed to house banks. This part of the city was wealthy; the advertisements that lined the expressway were for luxury goods. Cars. Watches. Banks. A vast glass office complex slid past on the left.

And then they came to a stop, and Suli spoke with the driver, and handed over more money.

Outside, the heat had thickened, stifling and heavy like wet fabric. Riley felt like she couldn’t take a full breath, with the humidity pressing in on her and making her clothing feel stuck to her skin. The road was dusty, and even as they left their car, other cars and trucks honked and swung wide around it to slip past. The walls and fences that flanked the road pressed in, leaving the space narrow and constrained, and beyond, tall buildings peeked out from behind well-tended trees.

Brynn seemed entirely unaffected by the heat, and stretched. “Here, each of you. Take these.” She handed over two metal discs, each the size of a large coin. “Stick those to your clothing, like a badge.”

They did so, and Riley poked hers. “What does it do?”

“Makes you not very interesting.”

“Like invisibility?” Suliat asked.

“Ha, no. And don’t let Nora hear you say that. She has uh, strong opinions about invisibility. No, it just makes people kind of not interested in you. You’ll still show up in recordings, photos, whatever. But people you meet will ignore you, if possible, or forget you right away if they can’t ignore you. It’s a neat trick, honestly.” Brynn affixed her own.

Suliat looked up and down the street they’d been dropped off on. They were standing next to a wall, a washed out khaki-colored wall that stretched down the length of the block. Atop it were coils of razor wire.

“So um, what is this place?” Riley asked.

“It’s where I went to secondary school.”

“Oh.” Riley looked up at the razor wire. “How do we, uh, how do we get in?”

“If Brynn is right, we walk right through the delivery entrance, which is this way.” She started walking down the street, keeping the wall to her left. Brynn trailed along behind them.

The delivery and service entrance was gated with heavy black iron, and several guards stood idly at the gate, occasionally strolling over to cars and trucks that approached, to lean down and speak with the drivers.

“So we just, we just walk past them?” Riley said, more than a little anxious. The thought of getting in trouble with authorities was already terrifying, but the thought of doing it in a country she’d never been to, where she didn’t speak the language, was a whole new level of social anxiety.

Brynn nodded. “You’ll be fine. I’m going to wait out here, but if there’s trouble, just do some kind of Working. Really any kind. I’ll be able to tell. There’s not a lot of background noise here, magically speaking.”

Riley and Suliat nodded, and then plunged ahead towards the guards.

Who did, in fact, ignore them completely, and then they were onto the broad green open grounds of what was clearly a very, very expensive school. The contrast between this place, and even the wealthy neighborhood outside its walls, was stark.

“Let’s walk. I want to show you where I lived.” She looked over at Riley. “It’s a boarding school. I lived here through the school year.”

The buildings were all a deep brick red with white trim, and were shocking against the fields of green and clusters of trees. They looked, universally, like they had been transplanted from somewhere else. They looked out of place.

They passed the house where Suli had lived in sixth form, and then circled behind it to where a pair of trees sheltered a bench. Girls moved quickly past with their bundles of books and laptops cradled in their arms, wearing white and plaid uniforms with cute little ties. None of them noticed the two strangely-dressed interlopers.

They sat on the bench, in silence. Then Suliat took a breath, as though she would speak, but instead she just released it slowly. Quietly, she said, “I hated it here.”

Riley looked up, startled. “Uh, so why did—”

“I don’t know. It felt right. Therese told me to use my intuition, so I did.” She waved her hand around. “Look at this place. What does it make you think of?”

Riley looked around. Before she could compose an answer, Suliat continued. “England. Fucking England. That’s what it is. It’s a colonizer school, built for the children of the wealthy colonizers, and the children of the wealthy who want to mimic the colonizers.”

“Your parents?”

“My father. I grew up just north of here, in a place where every house is walled and guarded and defended by armed security. There are guard stations to get into my childhood neighborhood. My primary school was locked away behind a residents-only checkpoint.” She laughed, but it was not a happy laugh. “You know, I still don’t entirely know what he does? For his job, I mean. Something to do with international finance.”

Riley nodded. “I’m not sure what my foster parents did, either. Something in tech. They both worked for Microsoft. They went golfing a lot.”

Suliat gave a half-laugh. “We’re right near an exclusive members-only 18 hole golf course. Right in the middle of the most expensive real estate in Lagos. Fucking golf.”

Riley watched Suli, who was staring off into the distance. After a minute of silence, Suliat spoke again. “I spent a lot of time here, under the trees. Hiding, really.”

“Why?” Riley shook her head. “Sorry, I know, you hated it here, but… I mean, was there, uh, abuse?”

Suliat looked down at her lap. “No. Nothing like that. No boarding school horror stories. Just…” She looked back the way they’d come, where a ten-story office building was visible, its upper floors still under construction, banners hung to announce the name of the leasing company and depicting the gleaming perfection of the building in its intended final state. “That’s new.” She pointed. “It was just a skeleton when I was here.”

She paused for a moment.

“Money comes here, to the city, to this part of the city. It accumulates. Draws other money to itself. It insulates, it forms its own ecosystem within the boundaries it defines. This is wealth, and this is poverty, and this is the hard line between them.” She sighed. “Sorry. You probably don’t need a lecture on Marxism.”

Riley shook her head, motioned for Suli to continue. She slipped her hand across the space between them, catching Suli’s hand, interlacing their fingers. Gentle pressure as reassurance.

“Outside these walls, there’s poverty and desperation. Inside, we’re all proper little British children learning to speak the global language of money and power.” She sighed. “I’ve only really seen my own city from behind the tinted windows of a car. I’ve never walked its streets. I’ve never met its people. I was… cultivated. Like a European flower. Grown in a controlled climate.”

Riley could hear the dark anger rising in Suliat’s voice, and squeezed her hand, pulling her closer.

“The worst part is that my father was right. We want to control our own destiny, but with what? The British took all the tools of power away from us. The knowledge. The resources. The money. And the only way for us to even hope for self-determination is to learn from them, to become like them.”

She laid her head on Riley’s shoulder. “I hated them. The British. It’s why I went to school in America. I couldn’t stand the thought of being part of… this. All of this. Empire.” She gestured out at the school grounds. “Not that your country is better.”

“Worse, in a lot of ways.”

Suliat nodded. “The oil and gas money comes in, and Nigeria becomes rich, but somehow that wealth never seems to reach the people.” She turned her head to look up at Riley. “I’m sorry. I’m lecturing.”

Riley pressed her lips against Suli’s forehead. “And I’m listening.”

“Can we just… sit here for a while? Can you hold me here, for a while?”

Riley nodded. “For as long as you need.”

Then they were quiet together, and the sound of traffic and the sound of teenagers playing faded gradually away until they both drifted into a trance.

Suli?

Riley? Where are— is this the link?

I think so. I think it must have happened while we were drifting off together. I remember reaching out for you, wanting to hold you.

Suliat radiated warmth and love at her. Now what?

Come closer, Riley thought, and then they were in the guarded place in her mind, together.

Oh. Suli’s breath caught. You’re—

Riley smiled. A girl.

No, you idiot. She insisted on willful misunderstanding. Suli didn’t feel like entertaining her nonsense. You’re beautiful. Is this how you’ll look when—

How should I know? Riley shrugged. Probably not. I’m taller in real life, and my um. Shape. Isn’t so round. She blushed, and so did Suli, because they had both looked down at Riley’s hips when she thought about her shape, and they were both aware of their shared, rising pulse.

Our hearts. They’re beating at the same—

Is that normal? Suli thought.

Um, what’s ‘normal’? I’ve only done this with Therese, and we’re—

The twinge of discomfort from Suli was almost too quick to catch, but Riley’s hand shot out to pull her into a hug.

Suliat squirmed with shame. Sorry. I know it isn’t— I know you’re not interested in— I just—

I know. Riley’s thoughts were embarrassment colored by frustration. And for what it’s worth, she and I both feel the same way. It’s fine, it’s not bad, it’s not too intrusive, but it’s a closeness neither of us chose.

I know. I can feel how you feel about her, here. Suli released a tensely held breath, for whatever that meant in the no-space of Riley’s mind. It’s just a… little, ugly jealousy I’ve been carrying for months, and I hadn’t really thought about it until just now. She smiled, pressed her face against Riley’s gently curving neck. I’m glad to let it go. I’m glad. I hate feeling jealous.

Riley’s fingers traced the curve of Suliat’s ear, and she shuddered at the touch. I don’t understand why none of us do.

What?

Feel jealous. Riley leaned back into her, kissing her just below the ear.

I don’t— The thought of her conversation with Therese about the Tower’s interference leaped up into her mind. Shit.

Riley lifted her lips and teeth from where she’d been nibbling. You’re worried about that.

Suliat nodded.

Don’t.

Suli pulled back to look into Riley’s eyes, saw nothing there but pure affection. How are you so blasé about it? About the Tower fucking with us?

Riley’s smile turned into a little crooked grin, and she looked down at herself. I’ve had to come to terms with the Tower fucking with me on a pretty deep level, already. And, well.

Their lips met, but in the no-space, they could keep talking, their inner voices and their tides of emotion operating independent of their mouths.

I love you. Whatever brought us together, to this place and this time? I’m grateful for it. Fate or destiny or chance or magical bullshit. I don’t care. I love you and—

Suli could feel the thought hovering right at the edge of Riley’s mind, teetering on the verge of release, her hesitation weakening and wavering. Suli didn’t convey any words, didn’t form any clear thoughts, but her need and her desire and the way her heart leapt up into her chest—

please

And Riley let the thought escape, released it. I love you and I want to be with you forever. For however long that is. I don’t ever want to be apart from you, Suliat Amadi.

The walls of their independent identities collapsed.

Their egos swirled together into a single entity, a composite person, memory and thought and impulse and will all intermingled. We’re… we’re together, they thought, and the shiver of joyous ecstasy that shot through them had the sense of a premonition. We’re going to—

Some profound experience was building in them, deep within. Something incomprehensibly large.

Yes, we are—

The sensation wasn’t an orgasm, but it was of the same species. Shuddering, passionate, intimate, their conscious minds eclipsed by the agonizing rapture that was coursing through them. When it passed, they could feel its wake as a throbbing persistent euphoria. They knew that if they focused on it again, it would overtake them again.

What the fuck was that? they thought, and then immediately the answer came to them. Oh. That’s what love feels like, multiplied like this. Doubled.

We need to—

Yes. I think it’s time for you to—

Let’s separate—

For now?

Yes, for now.

I don’t want to give this up.

Neither do I. We can come back.

I love you, Riley.

I love you, Suliat.

And then they split into separate persons again, the last trailing remnants of their shared identity fading into the space between them, the lingering sense of wholeness and oneness dissipating as though reluctant to do so.

This is going to be a lot. Stay close to me, Su.

Suliat looked around at the no-space with a smile. I don’t think I can get any closer than this.

Riley shrugged, a sheepish look on her face. It’s hard not to think of this as a place, with the rules of space and distance and— anyway, I’m stalling. Whatever happens, don’t worry. I’ve done this before.

Suliat radiated readiness, but she was not, as it turned out, ready at all.

Torn Asunder by Taloned Wings, Riley thought, and Suliat had only a moment to think oh this is so much more than I was expecting and then her world vanished in white fire.

# # #

The portal location for the trip to Dublin was further away from the Tower, but the path there was clear and well-maintained. Riley thought to ask why, but she was pretty sure she knew why a portal to Ireland saw more traffic than a portal to Nigeria.

Suli, now back in their suite, responded by projecting a kind of resignation along the link. While they’d been merged, Riley had seen the Tower from her perspective. I’m one of the only people here from Africa, she’d thought. I’m the only Novice from Africa. Not just Nigeria. Africa. The whole fucking continent. I’m one of only three Black Novices in the whole Tower. And Riley could see the shape of her anger and determination.

So yeah, the pathway to Dublin was nice and clear, debris moved aside, and the portal room itself was spacious and had arching ribs overhead supporting a vaulted ceiling with the faded remnants of a fresco, something with vines and clusters of grapes, painted across its surface. There were hand-carts in the portal room, pushed off to one side. For big shopping trips, Riley supposed.

She wondered what would happen with her link to Suli when she crossed back into the Primary. Would she be able to feel her still?

Suliat sent reassurance. Their link was so strong and clear already that it was like Suli was present with her all the time.

I sure got used to this in a hurry, she thought, and felt a pang of disloyalty to Therese. It wasn’t her fault, and Riley knew she felt the same way about the link, but the vague sense of unease and disquiet she had with Therese’s presence in her mind simply wasn’t there for the link with Suli. That felt as comfortable as being curled up together in bed, arms wrapped around each other, breathing in each other’s breaths, scents mingling into one scent, whole-body sensation of bare skin to bare skin—

She realized that she was getting horny, and could feel the echo of the same sensation from Suli. Thinking about her body made Riley—

No, gotta focus, gotta stay focused.

She squeezed Eve’s hand, while Brynn opened the portal for them, and Eve gave her a small, quiet, grateful smile.

Eve knew instantly where they’d go for her linking ritual. She pointed to the square of green in Dublin without hesitation, and Brynn didn’t even need to look it up in her reference documents. “There’s two portals that can get you within a kilometer of it. You’ll have a nice walk, assuming the weather holds.”

As they stepped through, Riley had a moment of disorientation. The room they’d walked into was… still in the Tower? Then she realized that the light coming through the window was sunlight, white-yellow, not the aging orange of the City’s sun. And the room didn’t have the heavy odor of abandoned rooms and ancient dust.

It was, however, a very old room, in a very old building.

They’d stepped through a door into the room, which was empty except for a few of the handcarts they’d also seen on the other side. Brynn closed the door behind her, and then immediately opened it again; the black void that had been there just a moment before had vanished, leaving just a short hallway.

They’d emerged into a solicitor’s office, which Brynn explained was itself entirely a Tower front, handling local issues in Ireland. The staff was all Logistics, of course. The serious-looking women in the serious suits gave Brynn nods of acknowledgement and the Novices curious looks, as they emerged from the back rooms of the office and left through the front door into the building’s lobby.

I guess when you work for the Tower, strange girls wandering out of your storage room are probably low on the scale of weird stuff that can happen.

They emerged into the street, where a brisk wind caught at their coats. Brynn had insisted that Riley dress warmly; she was still thinking of the suffocating wet heat of Lagos, and the overcoat felt like far too much. As the wind bit right through her dress, and she gathered the coat around herself to quickly button and belt it shut, she understood why Brynn had insisted.

Eve’s cheeks had turned red, and she grinned at Riley. “Good old November Dublin.”

This was the weather holding? The damp chill spread through Riley almost immediately. It wasn’t, she supposed, actually raining, but the ground was wet and the sky was mottled, grey and blue. It’s just like home, she thought, remembering walking through Belltown in the kind of drizzle and damp that separated the tourists from the locals; the former carried umbrellas.

Brynn stood with them on the narrow street outside the anonymous office they’d just exited. A short flight of steps led up to the door they’d emerged from, and the signage next to the door had a tasteful and completely mysterious company logo on it. Tall windows loomed above, in three rows, curtains drawn across them so that Logistics could do whatever it did here in relative privacy.

“You know the way from here?” Brynn asked Eve.

Eve looked around, saw something she recognized, and nodded. “We should, we just—”

“Just walk over there. I’m going to do some shopping. If you need me, just do a Working. Anything, really.” She handed over one of the little coin-sized badges to each of them. “But I imagine you’ll be fine here.”

Eve smiled, hesitant, shy. She doesn’t know Brynn, not really, so all her shyness is back in full force. Riley had slowly started to understand Eve’s paradoxical tension between assertiveness and reticence. She feared strangers, she feared being seen, being noticed, being thought of as anything out of the ordinary. Judgement; the idea of being judged in some way filled her with dread.

But once she knew someone well enough, she no longer feared their judgement. She reveled in it. She wanted to be seen by the people she trusted. She wanted to perform for them. Everything that made her self-conscious around strangers, she indulged extravagantly when only her partners were present.

Brynn had wandered off down the road away from them, and Eve watched her for a moment, and then seized Riley’s hand again. Her face broke into a huge grin, and she started dragging Riley towards what looked like a larger road, lined with shops and pubs and buildings of mysterious purpose.

“How old is all this?” Riley asked as she tried to keep pace with Eve, who navigated the pedestrian throngs with practiced, familiar ease.

“Hm? Oh, I don’t know. I think that church is a few hundred years old?” She pointed across the street at an elaborate edifice with a vivid red door. “It’s the city. It’s all old. Or new. Depending on where you are. Come on!”

Riley let herself be dragged along until, finally, they reached a larger street, with a tangle of buses, cars, crosswalks, pedestrians, and strollers complicating her sense of place and distance. Across the street a black iron fence, as tall as the people walking alongside it, seemed to be holding back a wall of vegetation.

“What’s that?”

“That’s where we’re going. That’s the Green.”

They picked their way across the street, and found an opening in the fence. Stepping through it was like crossing a threshold into a different world. Which is an odd thought, given that we literally just crossed a threshold from a different world, Riley thought. But the City was exhausted and gloomy, the fantasyland of a dying universe. This, this green place? It was what Riley had always imagined fantasy worlds to be. It was what she’d been seeking out in the park when she’d crossed over into the City, what seemed like several lifetimes ago.

The trees had screened the Green away from their eyes, and once past the fence and onto the paved paths within, another layer of trees kept the full extent of the park hidden from them. Eve didn’t pause to look around and get her bearings, though, pulling Riley unerringly off to the right, dodging tourists pushing strollers and pensioners out for a walk in the brisk chill.

The sun emerged from the ragged clouds that had hidden it, turning the pathway into a dappled shadow-and-light pattern, a chiaroscuro of leaves pierced by shafts of tepid sunlight scattering across the ground and across their faces.

Eve kept looking over at her, and Riley could see the excitement that shivered just beneath the surface. Faintly, distantly, she could feel Suliat’s curiosity and accompanying enthusiasm. She’d want to experience Eve’s joy from Riley’s perspective the moment they returned. For now, here on the Primary, she was too distant to be more than a far-off echo of emotion.

Then they rounded the bushes on the left, and there was water, and fallen leaves scattered across the water’s surface, dark and wilted in the last days of November. Pigeons stalked in assertive little gangs, approaching anyone who seemed likely to give them food, and ducks glided across the water, breaking its glass reflection with their wakes. The benches that lined the path around the water were filled with couples and students and artists and old men with canes taking a rest.

Eve’s eyes were shining. She slowed, as they approached the water’s carefully paved edge. She released Riley’s hand, but only long enough to slip her arm around her waist and cling to Riley with her other hand, drawing them close, warm and soft.

Riley leaned her head against the top of Eve’s, and then kissed her on her temple.

“I want to walk all the way around the water.” Eve looked off to their right, nodding to where the paved pathway circled around and slipped between stands of vegetation.

“You’ve been here a lot,” Riley said, and it wasn’t really a question.

Eve smiled. “I’ve fallen into this water three times.”

“How?”

“Let’s find a place to sit, and I’ll tell you.” Eve’s voice had become just slightly dreamy and distant, like she wasn’t entirely present anymore. Wandering through her own memories, perhaps. Times before the Tower and the horrors of their present.

They walked, arms around each other, keeping the lake on their left. Stepping through the narrow opening in the vegetation was like crossing another threshold. It became oddly still, the trees acting as a baffle to quiet the hum of traffic, people talking and shouting, and the ambient noise of the city. Just here, in the noise-shadow of the hill and the gentle sound of the water, it was quiet.

Eve stopped at a pile of rocks that sat alongside the path. Riley’s eyes had been pulled to the black mirrored surface of the water, peeking between the saplings, where there was something swimming, flickering scales just under the water, dappled by the sunlight through the surface. Something large. Some kind of enormous fish. Something iridescent, fascinating, approaching the shore.

Riley didn’t notice that Eve had stopped until the arm around her waist tightened to bring her to a stop alongside.

“Look,” Eve said, pointing forward, and Riley dragged her eyes unwillingly from the shape in the water, to see a man approaching them from the other direction along the path. Unlike everyone else they’d met so far, this man was looking at them. He could see them.

“It’s him, Riley. The man I met on the bridge.”

It took Riley a moment to connect this bit of information with the memory that was struggling to emerge from her unconscious. ‘You could ask an AI to make a picture of an old Irish guy and it would have been this guy.’

The man had a flat cap and mutton chop sideburns and a round, red nose. His mouth was creased in a smile, but not a broad one, and his eyes lacked the twinkle that his demeanor would otherwise suggest. His tweed jacket had a few bits of twig and grass and leaf clinging to it, as though he’d been laying on the ground and had stood up suddenly to brush himself off.

“I thought you were well away from this place, lass,” the man said, and it took Riley a beat to parse the words. It was English, but with an accent that was as far from Eve’s as Eve’s was from her own, if not farther. The tangle of vowels and aspiration and rhotics was enough to require her concentration to translate, and she felt somehow overwhelmed by the task, disoriented, subdued by it.

“What d’you mean this place? The Green? Dublin?” Eve had no difficulty following the man’s words, it seemed.

“Ach, the river, lass. You were meant to stay clear of the river. She’s got her finger on you now, and one pond’s much like another if she wants you.”

Riley could hear a distant sound like pipes, like wordless music, breathed notes with no content. It rose and fell, and she wanted to ask what it was, but she was having trouble keeping track of who was talking and what they were saying. She considered sitting down on a rock, but Eve had a tight hold on her.

“What, here? On the Green even?”

“They fill this bit of lake from the river. It’s all hers. Didn’t they teach you anything at that place you were taken off to?”

“How do you know—”

“Never mind that now. Your girlfriend here is already being pulled into the song.”

Eve turned to look at Riley, her eyes wide and worried. “Riley, are you—”

“She’ll be fine.” He said it foine and it seemed to drawl out forever. Time felt so elastic. “I’ll  draw the lady away while you do what you came here to.” The man looked them up and down, shaking his head. “That Headmistress of yours ought to be given a talking-to, letting wee children out alone in this city. She knows what lives here.”

Riley had caught up, at last, to the phrase ‘pulled into the song’, and finally found words. “I can hear a, some kind of a song?”

“Aye, yes, of course you can.” The man had come closer while talking, and Riley noticed that his pupils were oddly shaped, like keyholes. “The merrow’s song is meant to carry, and you can hear it by any of her waters.”

“M-merrow?”

The man rolled his eyes and looked over at Eve with an expression of clear disapproval. He sighed, and then pulled out a pair of spectacles from his coat pocket, and perched them on the bulb of his nose. “Well, then, before I go tell a pack of lies to the lady in the water, to keep her away from you, let’s have a look.”

Riley had just realized how short the man was. His presence had seemed so intensely real and vivid that it had given a mistaken impression of him as tall and round and looming, but at the range of inspection via the little wire glasses, Riley saw that he was no more than five and a half feet tall.

“Ah. Well, that explains how I got to you before the lady in the water did.” He seemed to finish his close inspection of Riley, and nodded. “It’s a good bit of trickery, that. I wouldn’t have caught it without these,” and he tapped his spectacles.

“Trickery?” Eve was keeping up for both of them. “What do you mean? What kind of—”

“The lass has been hiding as a boy, hasn’t she?”

Riley jerked, her swimming thoughts suddenly becoming focused.

“I don’t see how that’s—” Eve began, a rising irritation in her voice.

“No, Eve. It’s okay.” Riley put her hand on Eve’s shoulder. “That’s something the Spike said to me, too. Or something like it.” She turned to look into the man’s unsettling eyes. “But I was born like this. I wasn’t hiding.”

The man tilted his head and squinted one eye. “Well now.” He laughed softly. “It’s worked as trickery in any event. The merrow will stay confused while I hook her and take her off to play.”

“How do you hook her?” Eve asked.

“Stories. Long ones. The kind that wander around and never reach the point. Yarns.” The man grinned, and now it was a real grin, that touched his strange eyes. “She’ll follow me till I tell her the end, so as long as I never reach it, you see?”

Riley and Eve nodded.

The man looked Riley over once more. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of you,” he finally pronounced.

“One of—”

“Witch.” The man tipped his chin towards her. “Used to be a lot more of you. Just as well. Your lot always stirs up the local trouble, and the lady in the water won’t be the last of them to come sniffing at your heels. Old magic; they can smell it on you, and they’ll want it. Better get your business handled and get back to your school, the both of you.”

And with that, the man put his spectacles back in his pocket, shook both their hands firmly, and tugged down the front of his flat cap. Now all Riley could see was his grin, with the rest of his face hidden by the checkered fabric.

“Stay near your lass, witch girl. She’s got more sense than you.”

He turned in a strangely dance-like pirouette and began to stroll away, and as he did, he began to sing in a language Riley didn’t recognize.

“It’s Irish,” Eve said. “Gaeilge. Sorry, I don’t know it well enough to tell you what he’s singing.”

“The story,” Riley said, quietly. “The hook. To lure the merrow away.”

“That makes sense.” She looked around, saw the rocks again. “Sit, um. Sit with me?”

So they sat, and by the time they were both settled down on the shady hillside, the song had entirely slipped from Riley’s mind, and even the man’s face was becoming a vague blur in her memory.

She held Eve’s hand, and after a moment of tangling and twining their fingers in a silly game with no rules, Eve looked away and towards the lake.

“When I was very young, my mam and da brought me here. I don’t remember this at all, but I’ve heard the story so many times that it’s like a memory. I wanted the ducks. I had learned the word for ‘duck’ and I’d had a book with ducks in a pond, and whenever I saw that page, I would shout ‘duck!’.” She lowered her head, an embarrassed smile on her face. “So we got here, and I saw the ducks in the lake, and, well. I wanted them. So I ran, like how babies do when they first learn to run? They’re fast, babies.”

“You ran into the water.”

“There was no railing there. Just paving stones. I ran off the edge and right into that mucky bit you can make out just through the trees there.” She pointed. “My mam said I wasn’t crying for falling in; I was crying because the ducks all swam away and left.”

Riley pulled Eve closer, because even with the screen of trees and hillside, the wind was slipping in and around them, and it was damp and cold.

“The second time, I was here on a school outing.” She laughed a little. “I didn’t really have friends in school, you know? Classmates, sure. Acquaintances, yes. Not friends, though.” She looked at Riley, caught her eyes, smiled. “You, the whole lot of you, are my first real friends, I think. The first ones I’d trust.”

Riley leaned in to kiss her, and they paused a moment while that ran its inevitable course. Then, after they parted, Eve continued in a quiet voice. “But I didn’t know that. I didn’t know I was lonely. I thought they were friends. I thought that’s what friends were.”

She looked back towards the lake. “There’s a bridge, over that way. We were on the bridge, and the other girls were sitting on the edge of the bridge and dangling their feet over the water. We weren’t supposed to. So I wasn’t. But they told me to come up, to sit with them.”

Riley could see where this was going, and a cold feeling settled in her stomach. She wrapped her arms tightly around Eve’s shoulders. “Eve—“

Eve shook her head. “No, it’s fine. It’s—” She took a ragged breath. “It was a long time ago. I don’t even know that any of them pushed me. Maybe I really did just fall in.” She frowned. “I lost one of my shoes in there. For all I know it’s still at the bottom.”

She was quiet for a while, and Riley couldn’t tell if she was crying, but she held on tightly regardless.

“They blamed me for falling in. The school, I mean. The other girls said I’d been the only one sitting on the bridge.”

Eve’s voice was quiet and distant, now, like they were drifting further and further apart even as Riley held her closer and closer.

“The third time…” She trailed off.

And they fell into the trance together.

The third time was during my first year. In the spring.

The memory of the place and the time flooded Riley’s awareness, overwhelming her own featureless interiority with its vivid insistence. She was with Eve, walking, holding hands with a girl—

Her name was Natasha, and she was Ukrainian, and I was so in love with her. Eve was silent for a moment, and Riley could feel the old hurt just below the surface, the ache of longing and the spike of betrayal.

I’m sorry.

It wouldn’t have worked, anyway. I think we both knew that. I, I just… she was only the second girl I’d ever kissed. We talked about spending a year taking the train all over Europe. It was stupid. I was stupid.

Riley squeezed Eve more tightly. In the no-space, they were walking around the lake that Eve had imagined into Riley’s mind, arms around each other. They trailed behind Eve from a year ago, walking hand-in-hand with the shifting blurry black-haired form of Natasha, who was taller than Eve, whose steps were confident and certain where Eve’s were hesitant and cautious.

She broke up with me here. We used to walk here when we first started dating, when we met, at the beginning of the year. Now the place feels—

Eve hesitated, and Riley found words for her. Poisoned by her memory.

Eve’s arm around Riley tightened. How did you know—

The link. We’re falling towards each other.

Eve felt a skittering panic race across the surface of her thoughts.

—if she sees me if she knows me she will hate me she will know how pathetic I am—

Eve. Stop. Eve.

I— I can’t, I don’t know how to—

Finish the story.

There was a moment of struggle, Eve bringing her panic attack under control as best she was able.

W-we were walking around the lake. That afternoon. She said she wanted to talk. I think I already knew what was about to happen. When someone says they want to talk. You know.

Riley nodded, though she didn’t really know, having never had any relationship closer than ‘acquaintance’ in her life. But she could feel the dread, the experience of that sinking feeling, trickling up from the depths of Eve’s memories. We need to talk. We need to talk about our relationship. We need to talk about us. She shuddered.

She told me she still loved me, but didn’t think we were right for each other. She told me she just needed some time alone, to figure herself out. She told me she needed room to explore herself. Eve’s breath was ragged, hitching. She didn’t tell me about Maggie, the girl she’d been seeing for a month.

Riley could feel the sliding towards Eve taking hold once more, the drifting of their awarenesses together, as her emotions became less and less filtered. She let it happen, knowing that Eve would flinch away once more if she realized.

She left me by the edge of the lake. Right over there. Eve pointed, but in the shifting memory-world she’d created in Riley’s mind, it wasn’t clear what she was pointing at. I stood at the edge of the water for a really long time.

They stood by the water themselves, and the scent of the damp and the hint of rotting vegetation surrounded them. At the water’s edge, the memory-Eve hesitated.

You know the painting of Ophelia?

Riley nodded, able to see the vaguely familiar image in Eve’s mind.

I kept thinking about it, about what it would be like to float into the lake, let the water close over me. What I would see looking up at the surface. Could I do it without panicking? Could I keep my face calm and serene like in the painting? Just letting myself be taken?

In the memory, now, there was the faintest hint of a song. Wordless and almost dissonant, just rising and falling notes that felt like the lapping of gentle waves against rocks. The memory-Eve stepped forward, and the water rose up to take her legs.

I was in the water to my waist before anyone noticed me. Before I noticed, I guess. She smiled, but there was no real humor in it. I definitely lost a shoe that time.

The memory-song swelled in volume, though it was still strange and ethereal enough that Riley couldn’t possibly have identified it later. Atonal sounds, unexpected pitch changes; it was alien, but it was compelling. It made her want to walk into the water with the memory-Eve.

I remember shouting. I think that someone who worked for the park was there, and she was very upset with me. I went down to my shoulders, then my neck. I remember the water was so, so cold.

And Riley felt the clammy fingers on her wrist, her waist, pulling, dragging. Frigid claws in the shapes of hands. Clutching. Pulling her, Riley-who-was-Eve, down towards the black surface. Moving towards the bridge. Moving towards the song.

It felt like coming home.

The water went over my head then, and I opened my mouth because I wanted to breathe it in, all of it, the whole lake. I wanted to be Ophelia, whose face was so serene. I wanted to be serene.

Riley, who could see the painting in Eve’s memory, thought that Ophelia didn’t look particularly serene at all. She looked tormented, as far as Riley could tell. Like she’d been crying, like she’d died of grief.

They pulled me out. I don’t remember it, or anything else for a while. I had pneumonia. I breathed in the water of the lake and it wouldn’t come out of my lungs. Like once I’d breathed it, it would stay with me forever.

Eve. Why did you bring us here?

I don’t know. It felt right.

Eve. Eve, look at me. Did you bring us here because of the song?

S-song?

Riley waved towards the water. The song we’re both hearing. The song coming from the lake, the bridge over the lake, the dark place underneath it.

—the song—

Eve began to cough. It was a heavy, wet cough, fluid bubbling in her throat. It choked her, and she leaned forward, Riley catching her by her waist to keep her from tumbling forward into the lake.

Black water began to trickle from her mouth, splashing out in bursts as she tried to cough, spattering their feet. Then the water trickle became a stream, and then a flood. Dark, noxious, and foul, clotted with water-weeds and knots of rotting leaves, it was endless. Eve’s body could not have held this much lake water, but it kept pouring from her.

Riley heard, in the rush of water, words that surged just under the surface of the sound. Festal Songs of the Shallow Drowned, the words said, and Riley saw the intersecting curves of the Sigil for just a moment before they faded, and the magic that had held Eve finally let go, the sense of a celestial presence in the no-space with them draining away like water from a tipped basin.

It was long minutes of horrifying vomit that convulsed Eve’s body before the flow stopped, and Eve sobbed with relief at the reprieve from it. Together they moved away from the water’s edge, and sat once again on the rocks.

She, it, the—

The merrow—

It was inside me. It was inside me.

It was a Sigil, Eve. It was a Sigil she trapped inside you.

She brought me back here. I, I was still hearing her song, I—

It’s gone now. Listen, Eve, I can’t hear it anymore.

I brought us here to drown, Riley!

Her thought-voice broke into a sob, and she flung herself around Riley’s neck, sobbing into her shoulder, the ache of loneliness and betrayal and abandonment throbbing in her.

You wanted to be loved, and she

She offered me love

We just wanted to not be alone

We just wanted

Someone to feel what we

How we felt, why we

We just wanted to not be alone

And their identities collapsed, their egos sliding together into a single, aching entity, caught in a many-toothed trap of sorrow and alienation.

We see it now, though, don’t we? We’re not alone.

Why does it still hurt so much, then?

Because the pain is still there in the memories—

It’s too much—

—but now we can feel them together. Now we can endure them together.

It was a hollow kind of comfort, and for a moment they curled up, fetal, around the terrible ache in their stomach, loss and loneliness distending their abdomen with black water.

The presence that joined them was faint, just a warmth, no words or even coherent emotions. It enfolded them, suffused them. Like a thick robe warmed from hanging by a fire, faintly spiced with smoke from strange woods, it covered them and the pain eased.

Suliat, they thought, and she was with them, barely. Comfort and reassurance flowed in endless supply from the ghost of her presence, and they began to warm. The ache in their guts from the black water of abandonment and solitude faded.

We’re together.

We’re, we never have to

We never have to be apart ever again

We will always love each other

I will always love you, Eve Murray

Riley, hold me? I love you, Riley

Suliat, the warm presence of family that held them together, suffused them with joy and contentment. She loved them.

This, what is—

Riley knew what the sensation was, knew the incoming tsunami of ecstasy that was rushing towards them for what it was.

Oh Eve

and the orgasm hit them both, the combined force of their love and the soft warmth of Suliat’s love as well, and they were wordless and thoughtless for long moments, as the joy thrashed through their shared identity.

this is the

yes, the link

do I need to

no, I’ll take care of this

I love you

stay calm, and remember, love, that I have done this before.

And then Riley pulled free from Eve just enough to say the words into the no-space: Torn Asunder by Taloned Wings.

The white fire filled their shared awareness, and Eve felt her ego swept away by the rising flood waters of the Sigil’s power.