lovetincture

  I found the Persephone girls at long st, after many, mainged nights without sleep in the wilderness. I had escaped where I’d e from and gone chasing a myth. They are in the mountains, I was told. You will reize them by their tattoos.

  If I was expeg a gang of fearsome biker women, Amazonians with tattoos marring them from stem to stern, I was disappointed. I found them, I did, but it took so long that I had all but given up hope. It took so long that when I finally reached their encampment (by lud not through a of my own, for though I am a fine navigator, I had no signs to go by), I was utterly incapable of feeling any joy or pleasure at that fact.

  If I had been capable of any of the higher emotions, I would have been surprised by how ordinary they looked, one and all. All except one.

  Their leader was sullen-faced, with sleepy eyes and a generous, full mouth set in a grim line. Her hair erpetually tied back as though she was going to unch herself into a fight. It was fine and mouse-colored, although there was nothing mousy about her.

  She called herself Lune, and she was the grey-eyed ringleader of a wolfpaisfit girls that she collected just as others discarded them. She looked pin as the rest, but she carried herself like a predator. She had the whiff of danger about her, and I have long known how to st danger, else I would not have survived.

  “Why are you here, daughter?” she asked me when we first met. I lowered my eyes. She wasn’t much older than me, a I didn’t balk at being called her daughter. It’s not that I felt I shouldn’t, for I often do and say things others think I should not. I didn’t want to protest. This fey woman could be my mother, if she desired; I had her to cim me.

  “I’m alone in the world,” I said.

  “By ce or by choice?”

  “Both.”

  Her lips split into a smile. She kissed the top of my head, lips gng against forehead. “Good answer, daughter. Be wele.”

  I ducked my head in aowledgement, and then another woman stepped up to lead me away as Lune greeted the girl in line. She led me to the house that stood ensced in trees at the back of the property. She didn’t lead me with a hand on the small of my back, as my father would have dohe thought heartened me, even amidst the spell of my exhaustion. She ushered me through a wooden door covered in cracked, scabby white paint that looked like it had seeer decades. It was worn but not unpleasantly so. It spoke of rustic charm, of ward and witness.

  Ihe cottage wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t know what I’d been expeg: terrifying, fierce warriors and a living spaatch. A cave, maybe. Something from the dystopian YA novels loved to read when I was younger. Barracks, maybe, something martial. Instead, there was a kit—quaint, like I remembered my aunt’s house long ago. There was a rustic table made from wood, scrubbed and smooth from years of use. There was a ce table runner, a mason jar full of little red flowers and a small amount of water.

  “This isn’t what I was expeg,” I said, for want of anything to say at all.

  The woman who was leading me was older, and blonde, with ugh liched into her sun-browned face. “Expeg harder living, were you?”

  “Yeah.”

  She ughed. “Yeah, well. I think everyone here’s had quite enough of that.”

  She led me to a hallway and swung open a door. “This one’s yours. Make yourself fortable for now. Someone will e get you for the ceremony ter.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and she left me to myself.

  The room was small, roughly the size of a closet, just barely rge enough to hold a twin bed. It had a little, rough nightstand with two drawers, but while the room was small, it was and airy. A window let in cool, sweet air that puffed through in a gentle breeze. I set my pack down on the bed, where the mattress was hard enough that it barely dipped uhe weight.

  I thought about unpag my things, pg them in the drawers, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That would be admitting that this erma, and that wasn’t something I was ready to do yet. I’d been on the run for so long that keeping ready to go on a dime felt safer. Having my pack set to sling on back at a moment’s notice—that felt safe. Instead, I id o my pa the bed and looked up at the ceiling. It was made of the same dark, rough-hewn wood as the rest of the house. There were deep grooves where the beams were id beside one ahe darkness seemed to pool in the ers of the ceiling.

  I ran my hands along the cover to either side of me. It was gray, pilling from being washed over and ain. It was rough under my hands. I looked at my hands, and they were rough too. I’d lived in the woods for a time, making do how I could.

  I turned onto my side and pressed my fato the thin pillow. It was worn and lumpy. I wondered how many irls had rested their heads here, how many had e through this pce. I breathed in and smelled nothing but the light, st of undry detergent and wind. I imagined I could feel the spirits of those irls all around me. I imagihey set their hands on my shoulders to give me strength.

  I didn’t think I’d fall asleep. I was still buzzing with adrenaline from my trip, my flight away from the city. But the room was dark. It was quiet and cozy. From far away, muffled through the walls, I heard the sound of girls ughing: the unplicated sounds of life. I was exhausted, and I must have dozed off, face still pressed into the bedsheets.

  I woke, when I did, to a quiet knock at the door. I was on my feet in an instant, feeling for the knife in my boot, ready to fight. The unfamiliar setting was disorienting. It took me a moment to remember where I was, and why. I opehe door after resheathing my dagger, and there must have till been something wary on my face still because the woman—a different woman this time, one I hadn’t seen befave me a rueful smile.

  “Ah, well. You’ll be the new one, won’t you. You’ve all got the same look ht about you, every time. I never get used to it.”

  “I’m not afraid,” I said, because I wasn’t and have never been a coward.

  Her eyes were kind, and she raised her hand as if to touch my face but stopped just short. She pulled her hand back, perhaps thinkier of it. Instead, she turned without making sure that I followed. “The ceremony is starting soon. e.”

  She led me outside through a back door I hadn’t see. It led to a fenced garden and then beyond to a dirt path that cut through the forest. The hour was te. It was dark outside, and our way was lit only by moonlight. We walked along the trail, and I heard nothing, for the forest had grown silent and eerie.

  “It’s quiet,” I said aloud, but my voice was hushed for the night was stra is not usual for forests to be quiet. The woods teem ahe with all manner of life. I had spent enough time hiding amongst the green things to know that.

  “It waits.” My guide said, and then she said nothing more. I followed her lead and fell silent myself.

  It wasn’t such a long walk, in the end. The path was white with sand, and it gleamed in the silvery light. It was an easy way to follow, though it wound and sloped downward into the heart of the forest itself, into a valley.

  I didn’t o be told when we arrived. It in as anything to see. The trees thinned out all of a sudden, and they opened into a great clearing. It was lined with plush, tall grass that gleamed blue in the moonlight. All around was the smell of fresh, green things. The sight of it made my heart sing, for it was devastatingly beautiful.

  Up ahead, the e of a bonfire illumihe night, burning brightly like a star in the edges of my vision. There were irls there, sitting around the fire in a ragged half-circle.

  I’d expected there to be robes, but there were here were just the five of us in our tattered clothes. My hoodie was ripped and stained in pces. It was st prote from the cold, but the night was mild here by the fire. I was better off than some of the others. Some were thin and shivering, and all looked hauhe light of the fire cast an eerie glow on their faces, made them look fey and otherworldly and none more so than the leader among us, Luanding apart at the front of the fire. I wondered if I looked the same.

  I took my seat, go the girl seated at my right. She ale. Her freckles stood out like dark steltions on her face. The snarled bck of her hair tangled like ink over her shoulders. She didn’t move, didn’t say a word. There was a fevered light in her eyes, a hungry iy.

  Then Lune spoke.

  “Daughters, sisters, be wele. You have e here for soce from the bitter world of men.” She looked at each girl in turn as she spoke. Her words had heavy, pregnant silences in them. “You came for prote, for sustenance, for unity,” She looked at me, and even at a distance, her pierg stare gave me chills. “For love,” she said.

  She lifted her arms. “Persephone girls, rise up. For anyone who retes to our living dead Queen.”

  The girls all got to their feet, so I did as well. We rose as one, and Lune beed the shivering blonde first of all. She was waifish, the thi of us all aainly the you. She wore a slip dress stained with what I hoped was mud... what I was sure was blood.

  Lune csped her hand over the girl’s bicep, and Waif winced in pain. When our leader took her hand away after long, heavy seds, a flower bloomed on the girl’s arm. A tattoo such as I had never seen before, it looked to be made of gossamer ink, and it shone as surely as the moon did. The girl gasped to see it, and I did as well. We may have been honor-bound to keep the silence, for that’s how it seemed, but it was a beautiful sight to behold, and some joy ot be tained.

  Luook Waif’s in a lean hand, and there was kindness in her face. She bent forward to whisper something in the girl’s ear, and then Waif threw her arms around Lune. When she pulled away, one of the other women of the pound was waiting to receive her. They directed her to stand off to the side, behind Lune. She was smiling. She looked transformed.

  One by ohe girls went up to receive their marks, until I was the only o.

  “Be wele, daughter,” Lune said. Her sleepy eyes caught the light and mesmerized me. I could hear the words she eaking now, although I don’t know if they were the same words the other women heard. I have never learned what she said to anyone else, nor what they said to she. It rivate endeavor, like so ma magics are.

  “Do you love our Queen?” She asked me.

  I thought it better to lie, but in that sacred pce, I found I could not. I have always been proud. It is perhaps a fw—many times I have been told it is such. But I am proud indeed, and I was swept up in the beauty of the night. I did not lie.

  “I ’t love what I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know your Queen Persephone, but I see her signs iy, and I think that she is good. I think that yood, and I will serve you and her.”

  Luurhat beatific smile on me. She took up my hand and threaded her fihrough mine. A brief, searing pain fshed through me, as though someone had struck a brand upon my palm. It was there and then gone in the instant.

  “It is well, daughter.” She said to me, for my answer had sufficed.

  I dragged my hand away to stare at its palm. There, glinting in the moonlight, erfeegranate blossom rendered in impossible ink. It may have been a trick of the light, but its petals seemed to sway gently in the breeze.

  She pressed a kiss to my forehead in beion, and I went to join the rest of my tribe—those smiling girls alight with feral joy—with an answering grin on my own face.

  Ln our living dead Queen.