“Sooo…” Adam said from his seat between the two younger children, on a swing set built for a larger family than his. “… Wanna play chasey?”

“No,” said Myriad, echoed almost immediately by her companion. He knew their names (or at least their Lawrence approved ones) without having to ask. How could he not? They’d been all over the papers for a solid fortnight after their show at Parliament House, their miracles scratchily preserved in black and white. Even without that, Maelstrom had been in the New Child, if only as a baby in arms or sporting in a fishtank. Myriad, though, she had to be a later acquisition, whatever her eyes said.

It was embarrassing, to be honest. In the months he’d been trying to figure all of this stuff out, he’d taken to pretending to talk to them from time to time, just to bounce his frustrations somewhere other than inside of his own head. And sometimes to fight lava-pirates.

Adam was rapidly coming to prefer the ones in his head.

“… Lemonade?” he tried.

“No.”

Fine. If his mum and dad were going to banish him outside with his imaginary friends while they chatted with the book people, he was at least going to sate some curiosity. “Are you two brother and sister?”

“No!” the pair both shouted at him, though Adam thought he heard something… else in the boy’s voice.

“Cousins? It’s just—the eyes. Yeah.”

Maelstrom folded his arms, scowling. “She’s a power-snatcher. She’s just using mine.”

“Power copier,” Myriad clarified sourly. “And I’m actually using his mother’s. She’s much better.”    

“Right…” He sat there between them for a few more seconds, trying unsuccessfully not to fidget. “Did I do something wrong?”

Myriad simply huffed at that, but after a moment, Maelstrom let out a sigh.

“… No. Sorry. It’s Adam, right? Nice to meet you.” The smaller boy held out a hand, and Adam shook it, confused. “We’re not mad at you, I’m mad at her.”

“Why are you mad at her?” Adam asked.

“Cuz he’s a weenie,” Myriad huffed again. “A mean weenie who doesn’t listen.”

“Because she made things confusing,” Maelstrom answered softly, not looking at her. “And it hurt.”

“Did not!” Myriad retorted, her voice rising.

“Yeah, Allison,” he whispered. “Yeah, you did.”

Huh, so she did have a proper name.

Adam gazed between the silent pair for a long moment, then shook his head. Honestly, little kids were pretty stupid. It was times like these when he was thankful for all the life experience he held over their ilk.

“Was she trying to hurt you?” he asked.

Maelstrom didn’t reply at once, preferring instead to drop his eyes to the ground, scrapped clear of grass by a thousand sharp stops.

“…I dunno.”

“Have you asked?”

“N—no.”

“Well, maybe you should.”

“I wasn’t trying—”

Adam put a hand over the girl’s mouth. “You, shush.” He could feel spittle on his palm from the girl’s muffled sputtering. Who knew the girl Lawrence felt worth presenting to the whole nation could be such a brat.

Looking to Maelstrom, he said “Now, ask her if she was trying to hurt you.”

Maelstrom took a deep breath. “Were you trying to hurt me, Myriad?”

Adam nodded at Myriad, removing his hand from from her mouth. Frowning, she answered, “No, I wasn’t. I just thought it was weird that—”

“You promised not to talk about it!”

“And I haven’t! Why are you so mad at me when I’m doing what you—”

A hand over both their mouths, this time. Adam noted that Maelstrom protested far less. “Just—just don’t try explaining anything or complaining. Not while I’m stuck out here with you.” Bloody little kids—they hadn’t even done any tricks yet and he was already having to play mediator between the two. He looked right into Myriad’s copycat eyes. “Now, just say you’re sorry.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. If Adam had any brothers and sisters, he would have known what was about to happen.

A sharp, crushing pain, and Adam jerked his his hand away. “Ow!”

Myriad lunged at Maelstrom, pulling him down into the dried mud and whaling on him over and over.

For a moment, David just lay there and took the blows. What else was he going to do? Hit Allie?

Then, he realized: Allie was hitting him.

Allison was hitting him.

Maelstrom screamed, managing to tumble on top of his friend and start clawing her face. Not that his advantage lasted long. He had never used his bare, human strength against another child, while Myriad fought with the ferocity of a dozen primary school bullies, poured into one bioengineered body.

Adam hovered around the scuffle like they were a pair of tussling cats, all sharp ends ready to close tight around any interloper. He wondered if he had stumbled onto something… tender.

Myriad was shouting now, a handful of Maelstrom’s hair in her fist. “Why. Are. You. Such. A. Wimp?”

Definitely.

The girl had her mouth open, ready to lash out some more, but Maelstrom’s fist caught her in the stomach, and whatever she’d been about to say was lost in a high pitched wheeze as the air was forced hard out of her lungs.

“I’m not!” he shouted. “I’m just nice!”

“And I’m not?”

“…No!”

“Grrh!” Another body-slam. Maelstrom swallowed a mouthful of dirt. He wondered if this was what being Veltha was like.

Adam was dimly aware of the rasp of a screen door sliding open somewhere far away.

“I know it might be hard to believe, Mrs. Sinclair, but our Alberto…”  Lawrence’s reassurances trailed off as he saw the ball of violence his favourite students had become.

“Children!” he barked, running over to the children to try and pry them apart like hateful magnets. “Stop this at once!”

The two ignored him, twisting in his arms as they scratched and kicked at each other. Lawrence could only be grateful they weren’t using their powers.

Like wolves fighting with their claws sheathed.

The old man looked plaintively at Tiresias, still standing in the doorway a few paces behind the gawking Sinclairs.

“Help,” he mouthed, garnering only a wry grin from the psychic.

“Sure, Bertie. I’ll get riiiiight on that.”

Myriad was still screaming at her friend, “Why do you let people make you feel like this?”

Melusine barged past Tiresias and strode towards the scene, sending a flurry of panic through Lawrence. He had seen what she did to those who wronged her son. Even Alberto looked concerned.

Those concerns, as things turned out, were unfounded.

Françoise strode between the two like a ship through the seas, the children parting like waves crashing harmlessly off her hull. With a move Adam could not quite find the words to describe, she placed a hand on each of the fighting children’s heads and pulled them apart, tangled limbs and all.  Adam couldn’t quite fathom how she did it, only that she had.¹ Then, she sat down between them.

“Now, Allison,” she said, “why are you and my droplet fighting?”

Allison didn’t seem quite able to look at the older woman in that moment, instead staring determinedly at her feet.

“… Cuz he’s a doop.”

“Am not!” David shot back past his mother. “You’re a meanie, and a bad-truth teller, and a-a… a bad friend!”

Adam watched, confused, as both Allison and the adults from the Institute stared at the little boy like he’d grown a new set of ears.

“… Did the kid just grow a spine?” Alberto asked, one eyebrow raised.

Françoise held up a hand towards Alberto, palm flat, and he wisely shut his mouth.

“Now, David,” she asked her son, either not noticing or ignoring Lawrence’s frown, “do you think Allison’s the kind of person who hurts people just because she wants to?”

“… Sometimes.”

Adam glanced at Allison, expecting her to object. She didn’t. She was still staring at her feet, her lip beginning to quiver.

“Well,” Fran replied, ruffling the boy’s hair. “I think we both know you’re a kind enough boy to forgive someone when they hurt you. Aren’t you?”

“… It was a lot of hurt.”

“Then I’m proud of you for standing up to her. But I want you both to remember that you’re still friends. I’ve seen you cuddling.”

The only reason Allison didn’t blush was that her face was already flushed from the fight.

“Do either of you want to lose that?”

Both children belatedly shook their heads.

“Good. Then you can talk this over with each other later. If you need a grown up to help you talk about it, then come see me. But right now, I’d like you both to give each other a hug, because you care about each other, and that’s what matters. Okay?”

After a few tense moments, Allison pushed herself up onto her feet, and shambled awkwardly across to her friend. Adam watched the two embrace, one eyebrow raising as David tried to stifle a sniffle. He shook his head. Kids were weird.

⬗

Once the blood and grime was rinsed off the children’s faces, and they’d been settled on the Sinclairs’ overstuffed lounge room sofa, Lawrence launched off into a tirade. Mrs Sinclair didn’t much see the point of it, after the Frenchwoman’s intercession, but she recognised the pattern well. How many times had she sorted out some misdeed of Adam’s, only to mention it to his father after he’d come home from work, and have him storm in and open up the whole wound anew.

David and Allison just sat there in their soiled Sunday best, one of Françoise’s arms over each of them, and let the old man’s words wash over them. Occasionally they’d flinch, like they’d been spat at by burning grease.

Adam, meanwhile, feeling that painful super-visibility of any child watching another be reprimanded, silently made note of every line he’d read in Lawrence’s book.

“You can’t afford to let yourselves succumb to this kind of pettiness. A human child who loses their temper might just strike their friend, but you…”

Page seventy-two.

“…You need to set an example…”

Too many to count.

“…And in front of strangers, too!”

Well, that was just universal, wasn’t it?

Mid-lecture, Lawrence turned away from the children to address Mr and Mrs Sinclair. “I swear, they aren’t usually so churlish.” Like a lot of proud guardians of gifted children, Dr. Lawrence seemed to expend a lot of words on insisting that their behaviour wasn’t typical of them.

Mr. Sinclair nodded awkwardly. “It’s alright, Doctor, really. I’m sure they’ve had a long drive.” A faint, pained smile. “We all know what children can be like on boring trips.”

Lawrence’s jaw grew tight, and his back very straight. He was no father, but he was close enough to one to recognise the taste of that silent, politeness-shrouded, and possibly imaginary judgment. “Please don’t try to defend them, Mr. Sinclair. They need to be better than other children, for all our sakes.”

Mrs Sinclair waved a hand, as though trying to disperse the argument like smoke. “We understand, Doctor Lawrence. But surely you came here to talk about our son, not your students?”

Lawrence collected himself: he was letting things get off track. “Yes, of course. My apologies.” He lowered himself onto one of the kitchen chairs that had been dragged out into the sitting area. “So, you say your son has not displayed any sign of extra normal ability since…”

“January,” Adam’s mother admitted.

Lawrence nodded thoughtfully. “But he did perform a superhuman feat in that time, correct?”

A reluctant nod, from both of Adam’s parents. He was starting to dislike being talked about like he wasn’t there.

“Could you tell us about the circumstances behind this manifestation?”

“It’s not something we try to think about, honestly,” Ernest said.

Alberto leaned forward in his chair, pointing between the two elder Sinclairs. “It was Boans, wasn’t it?” he said, his tone barely allowing any ambiguity. “Your kid was the one that killed that Fey of Femurs woman from the Coven.”

You could almost hear the dust drifting through the air. Allison and David both looked at Adam like he was somewhere between god and devil. And yet everyone else in the room seemed to be trying not to look at him, even as he felt more watched than ever.

Jenny Sinclair cast her eyes down towards the carpet. “He didn’t mean to,” she said quietly. “And it was the only way he could save me.”

Lawrence stood and moved to the woman’s side, resting a gloved hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think anyone here is doubting that, my girl,” he said. “The death of that girl was tragic, as any death is. But this one, I think, was chiefly a tragedy of her own making.” The old Oxfordian glanced over to Adam. “You wouldn’t be the first new human child to take a life in the early days of their powers, Adam, and far from the least justified in doing so.”

That was not in the book. Prose hangs around long enough for the author to think it through. Adam sighed. “It doesn’t matter, Doctor Lawrence. The power went away right after. I haven’t done or felt anything like it in months. I’m not like those two,” he said, pointing to the Institute children still gawking at him.

“But you have to be,” Allison piped up. “Your song doesn’t sound human.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “My song?”

Lawrence opened his mouth—  

“People make music only our Allison can hear, and it lets her learn things from them. Supers sound very interesting to her,” Fran explained. “Sorry, Laurie, but you would’ve just confused them more.”

“Well, what does my song sound like?”

The girl wrinkled her nose, tilting her head. “…Cludgy? Like whoever wrote it wanted to include all the instruments they knew? Spanish guitar, harmonica—it’s a mess, sorry.”

So I’m a crap super. Great.  “But my powers still went away. Maybe the song is like an appendix scar?”

Lawrence scratched his beard. “Perhaps it’s psychosomatic? I’ve heard cases of musicians and writers ‘losing their talent’ after traumatic events.”

Alberto stood up. “May I try something, Lawrence?”

The doctor looked surprised. “I don’t see why not, Alberto.” Quickly, he added, “If young Adam’s parents will permit it, of course.”

The boy in question looked at his parents, not sure what his eyes were asking them.

Jenny’s gaze narrowed on the young man like iron-sights. “You’re not going to hurt him, are you?”

Adam hadn’t even considered that possibility.

Alberto grinned. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He pulled a tiny clay bird out from his pocket, setting it down on the coffee table.

Does he just walk around with that in his pocket?

“Burn it,” the man ordered.

Adam looked at the bird, then back at its owner, frowning. “I just told you all my powers went away.”

“Yeah, you’re lying,” Alberto replied casually. “Stop malingering, kid, and just blow up the damn bird.”

Ernest sputtered. “Don’t you go calling my son a liar—”

 Adam’s father was cut off by the esper throwing up a hand, still looking at his son. “I know he is.”

He strode towards the child, his feet devouring the space between them till they were close enough for him to jab his thumb into the Adam’s forehead. From there, Tiresias traced a pattern across the boy’s face, ignoring his squirming. “I can see it—under his skin…” He manually extended his captive’s arm outward, prying his hand open like a schoolboy trying to steal a smaller kid’s canteen change.

Adam tried to pull his arm back, but there was strength in those long, pale fingers. “I said I can’t!”

“Oh, come on,” the psychic growled in his ear. “You’ll bore a hole through a girl, but won’t even cremate a bloody clay bird? The hell is wrong with you?”

“Not won’t, can’t,” Adam half-whined. Why weren’t his parents making the weirdo lay off him? Even Dr. Lawrence looked more worried.

“You know what I think? I think you can do whatever it is you do whenever you damn well please. You’re just a coward.”

Tears started stinging Adam’s eyes. “Am not!”

Hot breath in his ear, alcoholic fumes forcing their way up his nose and bringing more tears with them. “Are too,” Tiresias hissed. “All that moaning in your head.” He launched into a childish falsetto. “Why didn’t the Flying Man save Peter? Why’d that bloody giant give him powers if that’s all he got out of it”

“How’d you—”

“You read Bertie’s book, kid. How do I think I knew that? But that was a good question, but you know what’s an even better one? Why couldn’t you have saved Peter?”

“I was asleep when they got him!”

“Wouldn’t have mattered if you weren’t. Because you’re afraid of rising up above the dross, aren’t you? Keep your head low and the freak-finders won’t bother ya, won’t they?” A crooked grin. “You’d have just stood there and watched them crack open that poor boy’s skull—”

“No!” The boy exploded out of his arms, sending the man into the wall like he had air for insides. “I would’ve done something!”

Adam felt it before he even realised what he’d done. Like his fingers were pressed against summer-warm glass. He looked down at his hands. A sun in each, like a binary star system.

“Woah…”

It was Alberto groaning, slumped at the foot of the wall like an abandoned coat, that brought the child back to the present. The suns winked back out.

“Oh. I’m sorry—sorry—”

The light changed. The whole room smelled the way clouds ought to feel. Even the pull of gravity felt like a friend. Fran, David and Allison shuddered as one, even as the children’s cuts and bruises mended themselves. Adam’s parents both sighed like they were breathing in a bouquet. Lawrence appeared to be in awe.

Alberto stood back up, smiling and cracking his neck, blood pouring from fresh wounds that were already beginning to close. “Christ, I feel like I’ve got the liver of a ten year old.”

The Sinclairs both frowned at him.

“Oh, lighten up.” He moved over to Adam, clasping a hand over his shoulder. “Sorry about all that, kid. Thought I needed to angry up the blood a bit.” He pointed at Lawrence. “See that old fart? His folks paid hundreds and hundreds of pounds for some eggheads to work him over into a psychiatrist, and he couldn’t have gotten that out of you in fifty sessions!”

Lawrence ignored the insult, turning to the Sinclairs. “So, shall we discuss enrolment?”

“… What?” Asked Ernest. “After a stunt like that? Are you f-” Alberto glanced sidelong at him, and the sentence seemed to fizzle out in his throat like a dying sparkler.

“There some kind of problem?” Tiresias asked, the corners of his lips tugging upwards in a small smile.

The Sinclairs seemed to struggle for words for a moment, Ernest shifting just a little in his seat, before:

“… No.” Jenny replied. “No problem. How soon can you take him?”

“…What are you doing to them?” Adam asked, the fear rising painfully in his gut. “Let them go. I swear. You stop it right now-” Alberto glanced at him, and he crumpled to the floor, fast asleep.

Alberto let his eyes wander around the room. David and Allison both staring at him, the girl accusing, the boy terrified. He looked at Lawrence, glaring disapprovingly at him, and at Mel, her head resting on her son’s shoulder. Always start with Mel.

Myriad opened her mouth to speak, but Tiresias wasn’t in a mood to humor her. Both children lay back in the couch, dead to the world.

Ernest jumped out of his seat, probably to fetch his gun or the like, but instead just fell forward onto the shag carpeting, his wife soon following.

“I wanted to at least try talking it through with them,” Lawrence growled. “It’s called common courtesy, Tiresias.”

“You did try talking to them,” he replied. “You did it badly, and I got bored. We’re just lucky the Sinclairs were polite enough to shake my hand. For their reward, they all get to remember something better happening instead. I’m sure Elsewhere’s folks would be happier if I had just done that when they all rolled up.”

Lawrence narrowed his eyes. “This isn’t something we should rely on.”

Alberto’s eyes flared. “Let me make one thing clear, old man—I’ve been pulling you out of the fire since the day we met. ” He poked at Adam’s father with his dress shoe. “While you reflect on that, I’ll be checking The Importance of Being Earnest over here’s beer fridge.”

As the psychic headed for the back door, Lawrence surveyed the sleepers in the lounge room. He didn’t think he had seen Myriad and Maelstrom so peaceful since AU’s return.

He just hoped the memory Tiresias wrote for them wasn’t too ridiculous.

^{1. The Complete Child Separation maneuver (CCS) is an ancient parenting trick passed down between mothers since the dawn of time.↩}

Previous Chapter                                                                                                           Next Chapter

The Sinclairs never made it to Dunsborough. Not that they tried. They just got Mrs Sinclair’s arm splinted and fled from Perth as fast as their wheels would carry them, imagining DDHA cars and trucks lying in wait off every exit in the road.

News of the attack at Boans still beat them back to Kalgoorlie. The papers were quietly jubilant at the death of Fey of Femurs—always one of the more cruel and gruesome of the Coven—though much to Adam’s offense, they speculated her defeat was the final outcome of a turf-war among the city’s supervillains.

“I’m not a baddie!” he had protested when he first saw the headline, standing behind his father at the petrol station line.

His parents had just looked at him like he’d said a dirty word. When they finally made it home, they didn’t let their son out of their sight. The few neighbours who asked after him or the family’s unexpected return (or the plaster on Mrs Sinclair’s arm) were told they were driven back by Jenny taking a bad fall and Adam coming down with pneumonia. Adam tried protesting the situation exactly once, the lies especially. It was the first time his father had ever shouted at him. It had been a shock, to say the least. He’d looked to his mother for help across the dinner table, and she’d just stared back as the man beside her bellowed. He’d hidden in his room for hours, after that, doing his best to ignore the man’s awkward, stumbling apologies through the door. When the man came in and tried to hug him, he’d fought. He didn’t want to forgive.

Unlike at Boans, however, he couldn’t escape his father’s arms.

Ernest Sinclair felt his son’s struggles, and clung to him tighter still. There were tears in his eyes.

Adam was crying, too. His sun was gone, and that strange strength with it.

Not that that was the end of his parents’ fears. It seemed unlikely the DDHA would accept that their son’s superpowers cleared up overnight. The Sinclairs spent most of their holiday in their lounge room, one eye on the television and the other on the road out front, with the volume knob on the radio set just low enough that they would hear sirens three streets away.

Eventually, though, the holidays came to an end, and soon Mr and Mrs Sinclair ran out of plausible excuses for not sending Adam back to school.

He just barely managed to convince his mother to let him walk the two blocks over to North Kalgoorlie Primary. She still fussed over him all the way to the front door, though.

“You brushed your teeth, right?”

Adam made a face. “Yes¹, Mum.”

“Packed your cricket gear?”

“Yep.”

“And have you got your pencils so they won’t rattle around the bag and get marks all over your new—”

“I’m fine, Mum!” her son whined, exasperated. “Just let me go, I’m gonna be late!” It was the first time he had ever complained of such a thing.

Jenny Sinclair relented. “Alright, alright. But you better not dawdle after all that fuss.”

Before her Adam could step out into the high summer morning, his mum put a hand on his shoulder. He was turning to complain when he saw the renewed fear in her eyes.

“I know you might be sad how things have turned out, Adam. I think I would have been to, if that had happened to me. But it really isn’t like how it goes in the cartoons.”

Adam was going to argue, to tell his mum she just didn’t know what it felt like. To ask what would happen if people like the Coven came to Kalgoorlie.

But she kept looking at him like that.

“Yeah,” he said, hollowly. “I know.”

⬗

He came in April.

Adam was lying awake in bed, as he often did these days, listening to his parents’ hushed conversation seeping through the thin plaster walls.

“You still look at him odd,” he thought he heard his father say.

 “And he still flinches when you speak too loud,” his mother replied. “There are some things we can’t help, love.”

  “Do you think he understands? You know, what he did?”

“He’s nine. I think he knows he killed someone, I just don’t think he’s aware of it. You know?”

Adam could suddenly smell barbecue. He remembered Fey of Femurs’ eyes. Had she known she was going to die then?

“You wouldn’t call him a murderer, would you? I know it was hard for my mum to look at dad when he came home from the War…”

“… No. I’d call him a little boy who wanted to help his mum. Do you think he knew what that power would do when he used it?”

A space that might have been a sigh. “I don’t know, Jenny. There aren’t exactly books on this sort of thing.” Unhappy laughter. “Cholic, puberty, and superpowers. I’ll tell you what, though, I’ve never heard of them just going away.”

“Then it was a miracle,” he heard his mother whisper, her voice only barely audible through the wall. “It happened, and it went away, and as long as no one ever finds out about it, then he’s safe, okay?”

If his father agreed, Adam did not hear it. What he did hear was a shout. It took him a second to realize it wasn’t coming from the kitchen, but outside.

“Are the Michelsons going at it again?” he heard his father say, hushed tones forgotten.

The boy rolled over and tugged at the cord of his window blind.

A war elephant was treading slowly down the road, its flesh (so to speak) completely hidden under plate upon plate of intricately carved golden armour, its silver inlay flashing back the pale yellow light of the street lamps². Armed, shimmering skeletons flowed past it like the sea around a rock. Adam thought they looked like they were running late to audition for Jason and the Argonauts.    

At the head of the procession were two skeletons that would have been giants in life, carrying between them a banner of woven sunlight. In neat, Times New Roman, it bore the message:

PEOPLE OF KALGOORLIE, LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS, SURRENDER YOUR GOLD, AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED—AU

Despite this warning, some of Adam’s neighbours were in the street trying to fight the golden host—every man who lived even remotely near a gold-field imagined themselves defending home and family from AU at some point. Best case scenario, they drove off the strange, Oriental menace with their Australian grit. Worst case, they were knighted posthumously for their noble sacrifice.

What the men of Butterfly Street’s heroic fantasies didn’t account for was the horde’s indifference to their blows. It wasn’t that the golems were tough—they were made of gold, after all. But whenever a man managed to bend a clavicle or dent a skull, they sprung back into shape as readily as rubber. Their mortal strength could not overcome the beauty of AU’s weapons.

A few of the men had pushed and shoved their way to the centre of the mass and started hammering at the feet of the elephant, like puppies snapping at the heels of a St. Bernard, their wedding rings slipping off their fingers and melting into the behemoth’s side, tiny raindrops lost in the ocean.

Adam couldn’t help but giggle. Some villains, like the Coven, were cyclones. You lashed mattresses to your walls and boarded up the windows, praying all the while it would pass you over. Others, though, were great thunderstorms. You battened down the hatches, made yourself a hot drink, and listened to the world be a little more than it normally was.

When morning broke, Adam wasn’t sure which kind AU was.

⬗

The raid on Kalgoorlie left no casualties, bar a few broken bones and wounded egos.

And the local economy.

The gold-fields had been sucked dry of everything accessible from the surface without a year or more of new excavations, at least. Miners were laid off in droves, their newfound poverty trickling down to everyone in Kalgoorlie whose livelihoods depended on their comfort. The Sinclair Family Deli barely clung on. Their haberdasher aunt had to take an unwelcome early retirement.

And as Adam’s father kept reminding his son, they were the lucky ones.

Kalgoorlie never copped well with the Other. The mere presence of Indigenous was enough to stir up resentment in her white residents. But at least blackfellas bled when you shot them.

The paranoid hum the Flying Man had inspired two years earlier became a cacophony. DDHA posters multiplied around town like fungi. Beneath the usual graffitied calls to “castrate all niggers”, Adam kept seeing the post-scriptum “…castrating the demis is too good for them!³”

 One morning, a girl from his class didn’t turn up to school. Nobody saw her again for over a month. When she returned, there was a dullness to her eyes. Neither Adam nor anyone else ever managed to get much information out of her, but the rumour in town was that someone had called the freak-finders on her after she made an unusually accurate guess as to the number of jellybeans in a jar.

Some claimed the DDHA received so many reports from Kalgoorlie, they stopped following up on any calls from the town. Maybe things might have turned out differently if they hadn’t.

One morning, when long after summer had succumbed to winter, Adam ran into the kitchen to find his mum and dad waiting around the honey oak table, scratched and scuffed by over a decade of domestics, each with a glass of something amber in front of them. Neither bid him good morning. His mother seemed to be trying to avoid looking at him

“Sit down, son,” his father ordered gently.

Adam obeyed. “Is something the matter?”

Mr. Sinclair nodded. “Do you know a boy named Peter James?”

Adam thought about it. “I think his little brother is in my class?”

Fingers rapping against wood. “Well, you might not be seeing him at school for a little while. Last night, there was—”

“Cut the shit, Ernest,” Jenny said, shocking both husband and son. “Last night, some of our neighbours got blind drunk at the York, decided the James boy was a demi⁴. They kicked down their door, dragged a fourteen year old out of his bed, and cracked his head open with a rock.” She drained her glass like they were sitting in the middle of a desert and got up from the table, stalking out the kitchen. Before she left, she turned back to Adam and said, “Never tell anyone.”

That day Adam learned how readily love and resentment flowed into each other.  He also learned that the men judged to be the ringleaders of the mob got off with a reduced sentence. As the defense argued:

“Asking an ordinary man to behave rationally in the aftermath of demi-human attack is like expecting a fish to react calmly to the hook dropped into their world.”

Nobody saw the Jameses again in Kalgoorlie after that.

⬗

Sunday School after that, Adam got canned. The old nun who ran it out of the chilly backroom of St. Mary’s Church was regaling the young Catholics of Kalgoorlie with the story of Lazarus.

“And that, children,” she said in a voice scorched by nearly a hundred outback summers, “proves just how merciful God really is.”

Adam raised his hand. “Excuse me, Sister?”

“Yes, Adam.”

“How was that merciful?”

Silence. Enough smartarses⁵ had passed through the class that everyone knew full well how these digressions played out.

Sister Scholastica⁶ smiled with tested patience. “Because Jesus was willing to preserve this one man from death, even though he had done nothing for him.”

“But he’s Jesus. He can do anything, right?”

The nun nodded.

“So it would have been dead easy for him to do.”

Sister Scholastica wasn’t sure whether it was more blasphemous to concede or object, so she took a third route. “The point of the story isn’t the ease of it, but the grace.”

“…Why did Jesus pick Lazarus?”

The Sister smiled wryly. “I think you’ll have to ask him that yourself, Adam.”

Laughter, though not from Adam. “Did nobody else deserve it more? Really, really nice people… little kids?”

Scholastica’s smile flattened. She silently prayed none of the other children chose that moment to—

The Carmichael girl piped up with, “Doggies?”

Shit. “It’s important to remember, children, that Christ will save us all from death, by giving us eternal life in Heaven. Lazarus was one way of showing us this.”

Adam was growing flushed. “So what, Jesus only went around doing miracles because he wanted to show off?”

The Sister scowled. Right. She’d given the serene teacher tact a try, now it was time to fall back on the bulwark of her vocation. “Do not blaspheme—”

Adam shouted over her. “Your lot are always telling us how great Jesus is and how he’s always looking out for everyone, but awful, bad things happen all the time, and you say it’s all part of the plan! But then sometimes he brings people back to life or cures their diseases or gives them food! Why do some people get saved and other people don’t? How does he choose?” Blood had rushed to the boy’s face by the end of his tirade, along with tears.

The nun gave him a canny look. “You sure you’re talkin’ about Jesus, son?”

Maybe Adam was imagining it, but afterwards he thought the whacks across his knuckles were a bit half-hearted.

⬗

God (or whoever) wasn’t the only one whose innaction Adam cursed. He was sure that if he had been there, he could have made the sun rise again in his hands. Been able to do something.

Like what, he kept asking himself, put holes in our neighbours?

He could do more than that, surely? He’d been strong, too, back in Boans, he knew that. But where had it all gone?  

And so, Adam became the youngest scholar of his own kind, if his kind they even were. Not daring to ask any adult, he first fuelled his studies with the most abundant resource he had: old comic books.

They were harder to find than he expected—most had been confiscated by antsy parents after the Cuban Crisis, with many of the survivors outright burned in an enthusiastic demonstration of panic after the gold raid⁷. Every issue was hard won by favours, swapped lunch treats, I.O.Us, and all the other coin the grey market of childhood rests upon.

All completely useless. Even forgiving the expected air of falseness, the comics for the most part concerned themselves little with the lived experience of superhumans. What it felt like being one, where their powers came from, and, most importantly, what might snuff them out.

To be fair to the medium, the boy did come across a fair few stories where the hero lost their powers. By the 1960s, they were nearly the only stories you could tell about Superman unless you relied on his patient, boundless sadism towards his loved ones. But Adam couldn’t recall being bathed by any weird space rays, and he doubted the jewelry department of Boans was hard up enough to resort to using gold kryptonite in their wedding rings.

So, with a heavy heart, Adam Sinclair resorted to checking his local public library. This too proved not to be the easy route he had hoped for. Much to his surprise, there wasn’t enough publically circulated scholarship on superpowers to justify its own shelf. It would have been even more surprising if he had known there was even less of it than before the Flying Man’s world debut, not that he risked asking the staff about it. Superheroes especially occupied an odd place in the literature, their wartime contributions acknowledged, but in the same tone of grudging haste as the Soviets.

Adam wasn’t a naturally bookish boy—he seldomly read anything less than fifty percent illustration when left to his own devices—but now he forced himself to be. He scoured over anything that even tangentially mentioned supers. Patchy newspaper archives; stray sentences in history books; dusty travelogues and biographies in half-formed English detailing chance, dreamlike encounters on lonely roads.

Most science books, it turned out, felt the need to bring up supers at least once, if only to acknowledge their eternal exception to the laws of physics. Almost every treatise on any mythological figure you might care to name included a sidebar on theorized superhuman inspirations⁸.

What he soon learned to avoid was anything put out by the DDHA. Especially Introduction to Demi-Human Neurology:       

‘It is the conclusion of the gathered evidence (Horatin et al, 1958; Reinhardt and Sumere, 1956; Puce, 1960) that demi-humans lack the same basic faculties of empathy and interpersonal awareness to pain that is possessed by their human counterparts. This is hypothesized to be the result of their neurological deviations rendering them incapable of developing to the same standard of experience as human beings, thus rendering them generally incapable of caring for their evolutionary kin.’

It was all couched in words Adam hardly understood, but he knew when he was being insulted.

His parents, unable to perceive the patterns in their son’s reading, were glad to see it. Adam, however, felt ripped off. He was getting smarter for nothing. He was about to give up and… he didn’t know, divine the flights of birds for omens (and at least be done with Greek fairy tales forever) when he found the book.

It was sandwiched between two volumes of a new mother’s handbook. The only reason Adam was even looking in that section was a rumour he heard about a furred baby born down in Albany. A thick hardback bound in maroon leather, faded gold leaf finches rested below the legend:

The New Child: An Inquiry Into the Race to Come

Dr. Herbert Lawrence, Ph.D

Adam glanced around himself like he had suddenly stumbled onto The Killers. The only other souls in the library was the librarian bustling about the shelves and a mother reading to her toddlers, but it was still far too crowded for the boy’s liking.

He risked a look at the book in his hands. He had subjected himself to enough pulps in his studies to recognize the buzzwords, but this didn’t look like a pulp. It looked like a textbook.

It had to be a mistake. Some librarian got lazy and didn’t look too hard at the cover. It definitely didn’t look like anything the DDHA would put out. Slipping it into his hessian library bag, he trotted up to the counter and rung the boy.

“What have we got today? A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls, Tanglewood Tales, The Greek Myths⁹…” A smile. “Will you be leaving us any books, Mr. Sinclair?”

“I try, ma’am.”

Adam didn’t know if you could steal a library book, but he was going to try.

He read The New Child the way older boys read dirty magazines: snatched pages in the bushes behind school and beneath his bed covers in the dead of night, the beam of an awkwardly balanced torch flickering across age-blotched paper like candlelight.

Herbert Lawrence, at least from what Adam could glean from the book, was one of those old baseline adventurers that hovered around the edge of superhumanity, like Tim Valour or Doc Savage¹⁰. The main difference was that while those sorts tended to spring from the military, or the East India Company, or the unorthodox educational schemes of their widowed scientist father, this one began as a psychology student at Oxford.

Dr. Lawrence wasted little time on his biography—just a couple cursory pages bashfully explaining his boyhood as the only son of a prominent Perthite gentleman, shipped off to boarding school to inoculate him with proper Anglo-Saxon values from their very source:

Thetis¹¹ tried to burn the mortality out of her son in the fire of the hearth. The mothers and fathers of my crowd meanwhile send their boys to Eton to scour the colonial out of them. As silly and insecure as that is, for me, it worked all too well.

By the end of the first chapter, Lawrence was a fresh-faced psychiatrist returning to his native Australia in search of superhumans, or posthumans as he was calling them by page fifty. It skipped over how exactly the good doctor had come to this fascination, but then Adam had no idea why anyone wouldn’t be interested in superhumans.

It was page twenty-one that that gave the boy all the reason he needed to keep reading:

For the sake of his privacy, I will only refer to my first student by the nickname he went by at the Institute: AU.

Adam had to put down the book for a moment. The bloke who wrote this knew AU, had taught and took care of him for years. More shocking still, AU had been a kid.  

His parents told me their son was pulling the wedding rings off of passersby when he wasn’t a year old. Even with all I’ve learned—From John¹², from Żywie, from all the posthumans I have ever known—I still can’t begin to guess the whys and hows of AU’s power. More things in Heaven and Earth and all that.

I can’t blame the boy for being willful at the start. Pulled from his home, dragged around the country by an old Englishman like a puppy on a tether; a life chopped up into hotel rooms and guest bedrooms. I can tell you, it took me some getting used to as well.

I can’t stress how glad I am we both pushed through it, though. I never had children of my own, nor a wife; not uncommon in academic circles, regretfully. So many men like me cut themselves off from the young, from women, from anyone remotely different from ourselves. It can have, I fear, a calcifying effect on the soul. Our personalities run the risk of becoming settled, fossilised.

That’s not to say that childishness was the only virtue in AU’s company. Even as a boy, he had a way of cutting to the point of things. Fond of a barb, for certain, but never I think entirely without kindness.

If AU ever reads this, I hope he understands I never meant for things to turn out the way they did.

Adam checked the book’s copyright: 1958. AU wouldn’t make his supervillainous debut for another six years. He felt vaguely cheated, not that the book didn’t offer other attractions:

I had never heard the word “superhero” when AU and I first encountered them. To my recollection, that term only started being bandied around in 1940 or so. Looking back, it feels strange it took so long for someone to come out and say it. For decades, we called men like the Crimson Comet “adventurers” or “masks” or even, God bless us, “mystery men”. Then two Jewish cartoon writers took the word from the tip of our tongues, and the dialogue became much less tortured, if very loaded.

It must have been 1936 when we first met Ralph Rivers¹³ I had been told of a  Sydneysider super calling himself Jack Jupiter—doubtless derived from his fascination with lightning strikes.

From that trivia, you good readers might already have surmised that Jack was what many laymen in their ignorance call “mad scientists” those posthumans whose gifts manifest as impossible insight into scientific theory and praxis. Historically these remarkable individuals have enjoyed a great deal of scorn and ostracization from regular folk, even more so than other posthumans; likely for the same reasons the public has been wary regarding scientific advances. So often I have seen such miracle workers¹⁴ caricatured as manic, bitter souls, smothered in layer upon layer of malicious ego.

Sadly, poor Jack very much lived up to the stereotype. I had managed to arrange an interview with the man at his workshop in Padstow, and the next thing AU and I knew, we were trussed up in a drafty warehouse, listening to Jupiter threaten the Lord Mayor over the phone with the detonation of every wireless set in the city.

“Jupiter,” I tried imploring him after he slammed the receiver down, “This is a dire waste of your powers.”

Protests. He had no powers, he insisted, just a scientist. A sadly common delusion among his breed, I’m afraid, but a child playing at Einstein would have produced more coherent equations; and been able to explain why the great bronzed spider he had curled up in the centre of the warehouse specifically needed a bolt of lightning from the actual sky to come to life.

I kept trying to get through to Jupiter, despite AU’s continual imploring for me to keep my peace (perhaps the wiser course of action, I will admit) which only resulted in that addled soul raising the offspring of a trident and a tesla coil to my throat.

I was fairly certain I was facing death, then. Part of me thought there was a fittingness in dying at the hands of my life’s study. The much larger part was screaming.

That was when the wall exploded.

Photos, or even those ghastly comics they put out, can never capture the weird, lurid glory of the Crimson Comet. The ridiculous red of his costume, still bright even with the layer brick-dust and drywall. And those great, gold-cast wings, scalding the air with their glow. The man was where giant met archangel. But most amazing of all was his face. Mechanical men were closing in around him on all sides, their eyes aglow with their master’s spite, and it was as if he didn’t know what fear was. In fact, I could swear he was smiling.

You’ve no doubt seen the newsreels, or the pictures. I don’t need to tell you how he fared against Jupiter’s machines.

If Adam had one bone to pick with this Herbert Lawrence, it was his clear disinterest in action.

In this book, I will say many things about the superheroic tradition. You might come away with the impression that I consider it a… maladaptive institution, or even a waste of posthuman potential. And you’d be right. But that’s not to say that many superheroes aren’t fine men or women. And none more so than Ralph Rivers.

Over the years, we grew quite familiar with each other. Even before the Institute, where he was always welcome, his humble flat was similarly open to me and AU.

It was Ralph, over a few pints at his local, AU safely stashed with his sister at home, who first told me about what John Smith would later call “the Asteria presentation”:

He was nine years old, when he became a posthuman, he told me. Asthmatic and runtish, his classmates smelt weakness the way our kind’s young are wont to. One day, they had him against the wall, and then:

“There was a man.”

I cannot tell you how many times I would hear those words, good readers. He was a giant, Rivers said, with stars for eyes, whom the night sky followed half the day too early. He tried warning his menacers of the giant, but they laughed it off, a half-simple boy trying to make them turn around.

“I thought he was God. Still not sure he wasn’t.”

And when the giant looked at him, he was filled with what felt like the Holy Ghost.

“Except I don’t think the Holy Ghost would’ve let me break Pete Jenkins’ jaw with a slap.”

So he wasn’t alone, Adam realized. No less than the Crimson Comet had seen the giant, had been changed the same way he had.

“I’m not proud of it, Lawrence. I think, in the end, these powers are for us to help people. Killing—I’m not going to say it never needs doin’—that’s a job for guns and bombs. A mystery man, they shouldn’t have to resort to that.”

We sent this man to war. God help us.

Oh. So that was why. He had failed. Taken the easy way out. Killed when he could have done anything—literally anything—else. The man with the stars in his eyes had found him wanting.

Adam closed the book, hurled it back under his bed, and finally started trying to forget his sun.

⬗

Spring had revived well by the Saturday morning Jenny Sinclair roused her son early.

“Did church change days?” he asked blearily.

“No, no, nothing like that” his mum answered, an anxious smile playing across her lips, “we have guests. They’re here for you.”

That was all she would tell him till he was up and presentable, and pushed, still on autopilot, into the kitchen.

Around the table, a large, bearded man in a green suit and tie sat waiting, flanked on either side by a beautifully carved blonde woman with eyes like shards of ultramarine, and a young man whom adolescence seemed to cling to like cobweb. Next to his uneasy looking father, meanwhile, were two sullen children, their eyes unmistakably those of the woman’s.

Like the sea in summer.

It was like hearing a word he had only seen written. “…Dr. Lawrence?”

As the doctor’s eyes widened at the recognition, the younger man to his right leapt up from his chair, strode over to the young Sinclair, and shook his hand, all smiles.

“Tiresias! Pleased to meet ya, Adam.”

^{1. But not well.↩}

^{2. Perhaps reflecting the theatricality that afflicts most of his kind, AU was prone to building specialized “showcase pieces” for each of his gold raids. The fact the Kalgoorlie Elephant included silver—an element AU was known to have no special power over—shows the trouble he was willing to go to. ↩}

^{3. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most calls made to the DDHA from Kalgoorlie concerned Aboriginal persons.↩}

^{4. Peter James’s status as a demi-human would later be confirmed via autopsy by Dr. John Smith, a medical advisor for the DDHA. “Yep, link present and accounted for. Would’ve been easier to tell if they had left me more of his brain.” ↩}

^{5. Also known in one southwest church as “Kinseys”.↩}

^{6. There were no known nun supervillains at the time. At the time. ↩}

^{7. Which was strange, as most of the comics burned were at least ostensibly opposed to supervillainy. ↩}

^{8. Despite the keen edge of Occam’s razor, suggesting a mythological hero or monster was simply a superhuman often earns one sideways looks in academia. As Dr. Bartholomew Finch, a prominent voice in superhuman studies put it, “When ya specialize in anything, whether you’re talkin’ medicine or history, you run the risk of putting everything a little interesting down to your own bugbear. Sometimes, sensory overload is caused by autism, not telepathy. And sometimes, our great, great-whatevers just had functioning imaginations… or they really pissed off Athena.”↩}

^{9. By Robert Graves.↩}

^{10. Adam was always a little foggy on whether Doc Savage was real or not. ↩}

^{11. She was interrupted at the last second by her frighted husband, and explaining your actions and getting on with it had not yet been invented. Others say Thetis dunked the infant Achilles in the River Styx, bar the heel by which she dangled him. This is generally considered apocryphal, as even forgetting that Achilles’ nigh-invulnerability was an invention of the poet Statius, the anecdote implies the notion of turning the baby around was beyond the goddess.  ↩}

^{12. Lawrence was too polite to not use the Physician’s proffered name in anything meant for public consumption.↩}

^{13. The identity of the Crimson Comet was quietly revealed to the public in 1951. Given that the hero mostly worked in construction in his civilian life, this was not met with much fanfare.↩}

^{14. Lawrence would always regret never finding a “mad scientist” for the New Human Institute, but such powers tended to escape the notice of the DDHA.↩}

Previous Chapter                                                                                                           Next Chapter

Adam Sinclair sat by a rack of sundresses in the women’s fashion section of Boans Department Store, while his mother tried on what felt like every scrap of fabric in the place. Tea-towels included, probably.

Sinclair family holidays were never grand affairs. Every January, with more regularity than the seasons themselves, they would hitch up their Carapark toaster¹ to the Holden and park themselves over in Dunsborough or Margaret River for about a fortnight. Maybe even Rottnest, if Mr. Sinclair’s bonus was good that year.

Pleasant enough, in Adam’s eyes, except that at the end of the Great Eastern Highway lay the city of Perth. This might not have been a problem, or likely even been a plus… if his mother hadn’t used their annual getaways to stock up on new clothes.

Adam was running his hands through the hems of some cheap floral blouses, bored out of his mind, when he noticed the hush spreading through the store. It started on the ground floor, and infected the shoppers who peered over the bannister to see what was the matter, only to quickly back as far away from the precipice as they could. The boy tried to get a look for himself, but his father had his hand on his shoulder, pulling him in close. In the sudden quiet, the boy could even make out the faint ching of one of the teller machines being opened.

There were voices. Young ones, full of merriment, echoing through the petrified store. The shoppers might as well have been especially lifelike mannequins.

Adam heard cabinets being opened, and another voice, this one plaintive and appeasing. Then a snap, almost lost in the screams.

Mr Sinclair’s arms tightened around his son.

Someone was coming up the escalator. Four someones, in fact. The youngest might have been seventeen, the oldest less than thirty. One, an ivory blonde girl in a fur boa that shared an unfortunate resemblance to a swollen caterpillar, rode on the bannister. Next to her was someone Adam recognized immediately:

“That’s the Fox—” His father clapped a hand over his mouth before he could finish. If the bespeckled, bored looking man in the too-big, orange zoot suit and matching wide-brimmed hat heard his name being used, he didn’t react. Too occupied with the pound notes he was counting, perhaps.

“We don’t have time for this,” he grumbled. “Still have three shops left on the rounds.”

“Aww, don’t be like that,” a boy further up the moving stairs called back. He looked around eighteen, maybe older: it was hard to tell given how short he was. He wore a leather vest covered with unfortunately identifiable stains, the cleanest thing on him the red neckerchief that lay untied around his neck. He had an arm around a somewhat older, dark-haired lady with a pageboy cut and a white flapper dress. As he smiled at her, his flat face, framed by shaggy, lank black hair, scrunched up briefly. “You’re always talking about getting our name out there.”

If the Coven still needed to get their name out by this point, then in all odds nothing would help. The cabal had shared dominion over the headlines with AU for well over a year now.  AU was definitely the more spectacular villain, but unlike him, they left bodies in their wake. When they made the papers, sometimes the Sinclairs wouldn’t even let their son look.

“We could call it a double date!” the woman in the flapper dress added.

The girl with the boa—Vixen, Adam wanted to say her name was—leaned in close to the Fox. “I want a new dress,” she cooed.

The Fox looked like he was considering pushing her off the escalator while he had the chance. “Fine,” he sighed, “but make it quick.”

Once upon the second floor, the Coven started circling towards women’s wear, wandering through motionless, terrified shoppers like a clutch of Gorgons. Now and then, the boy with the neckerchief would twig a nose or pull an ear, laughing whether their owners kept their composure or squeaked in fright.

The Fox rubbed his temples. “For God’s sake, Redcap.”  

Adam couldn’t decide if he was excited or terrified when the quartet stopped near him and his father. His mother, hopefully feeling the change in the air, hadn’t stepped out from her changing booth.

Pageboy spun a dress carousel, watching the resulting blur of colour thoughtfully. She raised a hand, snapping her fingers. “Attendant!”

Silence. A few more insistent fingersnaps. “Attendant!”

A Boans girl emerged from behind the perfume counter, picking her way towards the supervillainess. Adam thought she had to be the bravest woman in the whole world. “Y-yes… ma’am?”

Pageboy removed a few dresses from the rack. “Which of these do you think would look best on me?” Her question sounded casual, like she was asking her sister on a normal Saturday shopping trip.

“…That one,” the Boans girl said, pointing to a white gown broken up by blue, swooping wrens. She screwed her eyes shut, clearly expecting a trick.

The woman thought about it for a second. “Interesting choice. I’m already wearing white.”

“…But you’re gonna wear white again, surely?”

  The villain shrugged. “Fair cop.” She strode over to the row of changing rooms, and pulled aside one of their curtains.

Crouched low to the worn, well-trodden carpet, still in her underclothes, Mrs Sinclair stared up the other woman. Her eyes darted from the skull and crossbones tattoo on one shoulder to the skeletal hand clutching a heart on the other² before settling on her bleached irises. “H-hello,” she stammered. Looking back, Adam could swear in the mirror behind her his mother was standing. Maybe it was the angle.

The tattooed woman smiled. “Recognised me, have you? Sorry to interrupt.”

From the linoleum walkway, Redcap and Vixen both laughed. The Fox just rolled his eyes. Their compatriot pointed back at the boy. “Don’t look too hard, Red. We all know how you like older women.”

He grinned. “Not that old.”

Turning back to Mrs. Sinclair, the villainess said, “Don’t worry, ma’am.” She uttered the last word like she was addressing a long mummified widow. “None of us mean you any trouble. That I know of.” She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the other Coven members. “My friends are their own people.”

The other woman smiled queasily. “I’m sure you don’t. I mean, all that stuff they print about you, it has to be lies—”

A grin. “Oh, it’s all true. But that’s business, just like all that stuff downstairs. Right now, I’m here to try on some dresses.” She raised her voice, addressing the whole store. “No different from any of you.” She quirked a shoulder, before adding at a more conversational volume “Well, I’m probably not paying for any of mine, to be honest.”

“Well how is that fair?” Redcap shouted. He glanced around at the other Covenanters, the Fox jerking back from him like he was infectious. “We don’t want these nice folks thinking we’re snobs, do we?” The young man ran towards the bannister, screaming “As of now, one time only, 100% percent off sale at Boans! Don’t bother the checkout lady on your way out, she’s nursing a broken arm!”

The Fox raised a hand. “No, no, absolutely not³.” His voice rang with an odd authority, like he was a septuagenarian judge handing down a doom, and not a twenty-something super-criminal of vague powers in a baggy suit. “Everyone is to remain in the store until ten minutes after I and my companions exit the premises. No one will remove anything from the store without paying—”

“No!” Redcap shouted. “You’re not going to spoil this for me!” He spun on his heels, pointing at a portly, bearded fellow trying to hide amongst a forest of trench coats. “You, garden gnome!”

The man gave up on his hiding place. “Yes?” he whimpered. No one held it against him, except, maybe, Redcap himself.

“Take something, and leave.”

The Fox sighed and pulled out a heavy, silver fob watch.

“I’m fine, really,” the object of Redcap’s attention said.

Redcap frowned while raising an eyebrow. “You won’t be if you don’t do as I say.”

As the unfortunate stood there and looked for something to shoplift, the white-eyed lady shot Mrs Sinclair a look of conspiratorial glee, as though sharing a joke only they of all the women in the world could hope to get.

Eventually, the fat man settled on one of the coats he had hoped would conceal him. Draping it over his left arm, he started making his way towards the escalator, glancing left and right at the other shoppers as he passed. His face looked apologetic, whether for leaving them to the Coven’s tender mercies, or for playing along with this mad child’s panto at all.

For a second, he made eye contact with Adam. The boy tried to nod encouragingly without moving his head.

As the man walked, he started to sweat. The perspiration was joined by tears. Then red started leaking into the saltwater.

As screams rose around him like a cresting wave, the man bled from every pore, blood spilling from his mouth like wine from a drunkard. Still, he kept walking, till he collapsed face down onto the escalator, the stairs carrying him away like a funeral barge.

“I love you,” Adam’s father whispered to him. “Me and your mum love you so much.”

The Fox looked disdainfully at the younger super. There was nothing like disgust in his eyes, Adam saw. Just the arrogant contempt of an older brother failing to be impressed. “And what was that for?” he asked, cooly.

Redcap grinned, saluting the other villain. “He didn’t do as you said, bossman.”

At the changing booths, his girlfriend asked Adam’s mother her name. Casually, as though the man she had just watched die had never been anything but an early, morbid Halloween decoration.

Shaking, she answered. “Jenny. Jennifer Sinclair.”

The woman extended a hand. “Fey,” she said. “Fey of Femurs⁴.”

The laughter that escaped Jenny was the kind you sometimes hear at funerals. There was a snap, and the laughter tapered off into a ragged scream.

“Mummy!”

It was then Adam saw him. Towering over Redcap, Vixen, and the Fox, there was a man.

Everything was all wrong. Wet bone was jutting from his mother’s arm. That poor man heaped at the bottom of the escalator was dead, all because he had done what those freaks had told him to. And didn’t Boans have a ceiling? And why was it night already?

The Coven had all turned to look at Adam. Fey of Femurs was wearing a smirk that spoke of angry, wounded pride. Adam was surprised. Did you really pick a name like that if you didn’t want people to laugh?

The bone-warper was saying something, but if any sound was coming out of her mouth, it didn’t reach Adam. Probably just a threat pretending to be a bad joke. What mattered to him right then was why the man with the starlit eyes wasn’t doing anything. Why wasn’t anyone stopping people like the Coven from going around doing whatever they wanted?

Adam stepped out from his father’s arms. It was surprisingly easy, like he was being held by a ghost.

“Ooh, we have a brave one here.”

The man made a shoving gesture. Adam followed suit.

“That’s not how you pray, kid.” Fey extended an arm, only to frown, seeming surprised to find her hand at the end of it.

Adam pushed his hands forward. For a second, he held the sun at his fingertips.

When the glare died away, you could see through Fey of Femurs’ chest. It didn’t bleed much. There was just the smell of charred meat. She blinked a few times, her mouth opening and shutting like a fish gasping for water, and then she fell.

“You little—” Someone knocked down Redcap before he could finish. The spell was broken; people were running for the exit, a few even leaping from the bannisters, some having to avoid the droplets running from the freshly melted hole in the store roof.

Adam wasn’t done yet, though. He ran at the prone Redcap, flipping him over and using one hand to pin him. The other was saved for punching him in the face.

“You. Hurt. My. Mum!”

His strikes were those of an angry amatuer. There shouldn’t have been any force behind them, yet every blow shattered a few more of Redcap’s teeth. One of them went through his cheek.

In a corner of men’s wear, the Fox was shouting into a makeup compact, a panicked Vixen hanging off his shoulder. “Super on the premises! Evac! Evac!”

Redcap winked away like a television being turned out, leaving Adam’s fist to crack into the floor. The solid wood gave way easily, while the lino covering it bent and wrapped around his hand.

The Fox followed not a second later, leaving Vixen clawing at the empty air. “Hey!” she shouted, realizing her predicament. “Heeeeeey!”

Adam felt hands around his waist lifting him up, holding him close to the chest of someone large. He pushed away, falling back to the floor. Someone yelled. His father.

He grabbed his son by the hand. His wife had her good hand wrapped around his forearm. “We have to go!”

They were gone before the DDHA arrived.  

⬗

It was evening when Alberto had the vision. He had been sitting in his room, enjoying a private, liquid desert while rereading his childhood copy of Cuore⁵ for at least the sixtieth time. It was one of the only possessions he had managed to hold onto when Lawrence and the others had snuck him out of  Milan.

By all rights, he should have hated the story: a sappy, patronizing, thinly veiled morality tale of an Italy almost thankfully wiped away by the War. But nostalgia was a hell of a drug, and as a grown man, Alberto could appreciate the irony of the work of an avowed socialist being devoured by little wolf cubs across the country. Still, not the most thrilling of tales.

Maybe the vision had come to save him from the book. They were never dramatic, unless they involved fairly immediate threats to his person. It was more like the low whine of tinnitus, or the flashing of scales just beneath the surface of a deep, black lake.

He rolled his eyes: yet another sneak preview of a possible future student. He got those a lot; new enrollments sadly being the main delta of change around the Institute. Before the DDHA had almost put Alberto out of a job, these visions had been the main source of new supers for Bertie’s collection. The psychic let the old man think it was some kind of power-focused clairvoyance, which he seemed to believe, despite knowing full well his usual range. Thus Alberto was allowed to curate the combination of students that aggravated him the least. It was how he had gotten Windshear for bugging Maelstrom, Metonymy for restocking his favourite vintages, and—not to mention—Phantasmagoria for bugging Lawrence.   

Alberto wasn’t completely selfish, though. He had helped the Institute avoid some whoppers, too. Like the boy whose only power as far as he could tell was expelling porcupine like quills from his skin. And he thought he was tough! Or would have thought he was tough, Alberto wasn’t sure on the grammar. And then there was the girl who saw through all lies…

He shook his head, trying to dispel that never-memory. The esper didn’t particularly feel up to dealing with a new kid, but for want of anything better to do, he wandered down the hypothetical like a spelunker following a cave-line.

“Oh.” He grinned. Maybe he ought to give Lawrence a heads up after all.

When he felt like it.

^{1. So named due to their looking like the chrome appliances of a very chic giant. ↩}

^{2. This being before we started tattooing even our most milquetoast pop-stars. ↩}

^{3. The Fox would not have gotten as far as he had if hadn’t realized a protection racket required its targets to retain an income. ↩}

^{4. Fey of Femurs, mid-20th century Perthite supervillain. First known member of the Coven to be killed in action.↩}

^{5. Or Heart.↩}

Previous Chapter                                                                                                           Next Chapter

It was the heat that woke Bran Davies his first night at the Institute. His mouth was dry, but his bed clothes were soaked with sweat. Less than six months earlier, when his family had first clambered off the Fairsky at Newcastle, the heat had been its own thrill. It was like all the Welsh summers he’d lived through in Dolgellau had been poorly staged recreations of the ones they put on down here.   

Now, though, he was getting sick of it. It was supposed to get cold at night, damn it. Why else would they have invented blankets?

Bran reached for the already drained glass on his bedside table. Dipping his fingertip into the thin skin of water still coating the bottom, he stirred up its past, feeling the cool wet rise over his knuckle.

The boy gulped down the new-old water greedily. He needed air—and to get rid of the first glass of water. He glanced around Wallaby dormitory. Nobody else seemed to be awake, and the only sounds were gentle breathing, the conversation of crickets, and the water-witch’s son’s quiet whimpers. For everyone else, the nightmares Bran had been warned of had either passed or not yet come. To his relief, moonlight had bleached the darkness from the dorm like a painting left in the sun. He had never coped well in the dark.     

When he wrenched himself from his hammock, Bran realized he wasn’t the only child out of bed. One of the hammocks was empty, and the door was ajar. He hoped this meant they had license to wander after bedtime. None of the teachers had said they didn’t. But then again, it wouldn’t be the first time in recent memory Bran had got it for breaking some unexplained, grown up rule.

His bladder left him no choice. He stepped out into the night.   

That business soon sorted, Bran took a moment to survey the New Human Institute. His new home, Dr. Lawrence had promised him.

It was funny, really, seeing it this way. Deserted, lit only by the cold, silvered light of a thousand distant, indifferent suns; their only competition the few lights still glowing in the windows of the great, manoral farmhouse and the cottage of that trembly science teacher.

Not even the same sky, he realized.

He was searching for the fabled Southern Cross when he heard the girl’s voice. “New boy?”

Bran startled, turning to find a girl standing behind him, a book held folded around her hand. She was a couple years older than him, blonde; he remembered her shooting him a smile a few times at dinner. It had helped, a little—made him feel more at home.

“Ah, yeah. You’re…”

“Artume,” she finished, frowning slightly. “Not Atrume, Artume.”

“Okay…”

She shook her head. “Sorry, sorry, lotta people get it wrong for some reason.”

The boy extended a hand. “I’m Bran.”

Artume laughed. “Don’t bother telling me your name. You’re not going to be using it long.”

“Oh, yeah, that. Not sure what I’m going to pick.”   

“We don’t get to pick.” The girl sat down in the grass. “Care to join me?”   

Bran took the suggestion. “Good book?” he asked. By the starlight, he could just make out its title: Children of the Atom. On its dust jacket, a boy and a girl stood huddled together with their backs to a baying, greyscale mob, their shadowed eyes empty of everything except hate and fear. The girl looked like she rather thought the boy ought to tear his attention away from whatever he was looking at and pay some mind to the crowd behind them.  

Artume glanced at the hardback as though she had forgotten she was holding it. “Hmm? Yeah, I guess. Lawrence told me to read it. Said it was ‘prophetic’.”

“What’s it about?”

“Buncha radioactive scientists have super-babies—boring ones, though, they’re all just really smart—and an old bloke gathers them all together at a special school because people don’t like them much.”

Bran snickered, raising a grin from Artume. “Yeah, I know, right? I think I liked More Than Human better. Least those kids had real powers.” She tilted her head. “You from England or something? You don’t sound Aussie.”

The boy scowled. “Wales.”

The girl’s smile brightened. “My grandmother was from Wales. Couldn’t sleep?”

“Too hot. What about you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really sleep. Well, one night a week, but only a couple hours, tops. One of my powers, I think.”

“Isn’t that just insomnia?”

A giggle. “Maybe. Still, the grown-ups let me walk around at night when it’s warm.” She puffed out her chest. “Call me the night-watch. Want to see what else can I do?”

Bran nodded.

Beside Artume, the darkness pooled and thickened, flowing into itself like tar, until it had formed a ring of sorts, like a hole opening all the way to the centre of the Earth, lightless. Bran felt that if he dropped a coin into that abyss, he wouldn’t hear it hit the bottom; even if it had a bottom.

Artume plunged her hand into the rent, rifling through as if it was a purse, until she appeared to find whatever it was she was looking for. Some of the darkness came away as she pulled her hand out, spiralling and dispersing into the night air like unsettled fog. In her hand was a bottle of Coke, plated with frost.

“Lawrence says my power generates an other-dimensional pocket filled with a dense, non-refractive gas analogue that I manipulate via charged electromagnetic fields, accessible via localized temporal-spatial distortions.”

“…What does that even mean?”

“No one knows. What I do know is that this bottle’s been in there for weeks and it’s still frosty. Maybe time goes slower in the dark or something.” She offered the cool drink to her new acquaintance.

Bran took the bottle gratefully, pulling off the cap with his teeth, only to jerk back as the liquid within frothed out the neck and flooded his nostrils, Artume laughing as he sputtered. Clever girl. Clever, evil girl.

Dropping the Coke, the boy glared at her, before snatching the cap off the ground. The unopened glass bottle coalesced beneath it, and—giving it a good shake for luck’s sake—he shoved it Artume’s face and opened it.

“Gaaah!”    

Bran was already up and running by the time his new friend gave chase.

⬗

“It’s going to be alright, Metonymy,” Basil said, resting a reassuring hand on the boy’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “It’s only Artume. You’re friends. You’ll do fine.”

Bran took a deep breath, and genuinely tried to believe what the older man was saying. But he knew, somewhere deep down inside, that he was going to mess it all up. Why did it have to be Artume? Why couldn’t it be Reverb, or Ex? Someone who didn’t give him the time of day, who he could be pathetic with and not have it matter. Why’d it have to be Artume? He liked Artume! Heck, a little bit of him had been hoping he’d get to do one with her and he hated that bit of him right now.

“Hey, Met,” Basil said. “I appreciate you replacing my clothes, but you don’t have to do it five times.” Metonymy flinched, suddenly aware of the leather shirts strewn around his feet. Had he been doing it again? Damn it.

“… Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” his teacher said, his voice low and gentle. “Listen. You just go in there, you listen to what she tells you, and you’ll be fine. You’re not gonna hurt her, and she won’t think any less of you when it’s done.”

“… She’ll tell me?” Bran asked. “W-what to do?”

“If you ask her to,” Basil murmured. “Let her take the reins. Makes it easier to stay friends afterwards, okay? Trust me. I’ve talked a lot of kids through this.”

“… T-thanks. Thanks, Basil.”

“Don’t mention it. Now, go on. You’ve got this, kiddo.”

He turned towards the door, and felt a leather clad hand slap him lightly on the back. He didn’t look back, couldn’t bring himself to. He opened the door and stepped inside, his heart thumping in his chest like a brass drum.

“Hey, Met.”

“H-hey Artu-” Oh, God. She was naked. Why was she naked already? Metonymy considered turning out the lights, but that would be unfair. Darkness hid nothing from Artume, and surely she had worse to look at. And the part of him he hated wanted to keep looking. The part that was a mammal and not a boy. Or maybe it was nothing but boy.

“Kept me waiting, pal,” The girl said, smiling across the bedroom at him, a trace of sadness tugging at her cheek. “… You okay?”

“I… I think so.” Oh God. Oh God. No. She was so pretty and this was so wrong and God, why was it so hot all of a sudden? He felt a heat rushing to his face, a tightness in his chest… and his pants.

“Ah, there we go” Artume sighed, glancing down, her smile growing melancholy as she saw. “… So, you do like me, huh?” She laughed half-heartedly. “It probably sounds silly, but I was almost hoping you wouldn’t, you know?”

“… I’m sorry.” He mumbled, looking down towards the floor, ashamed. “… Y-you’re my friend—big sister, really, but… You’re still… still pretty… I’m sorry.”

For the longest time, she didn’t answer; then, finally:

“Yeah,” she muttered bitterly. “I’m sorry, too. Take your pants off. Let’s just do this.”

He hesitated for a moment, then reached down and began fumbling with the button of his shorts. He felt like scum. Why had he wanted this? Why had he wanted anything like this, and why was the awful, traitorous little thing between his legs still so damn ready?

The shorts fell to the floor around his ankles, his underpants following a moment later. He looked up at her, gazing across at his crotch dispassionately, and, in the weakest voice he’d ever heard, asked:

“Are—are we still gonna be friends a-after?” He felt his voice crack a little towards the end, the last words coming out a little choked. “I… I wanna still be friends… Please?”

He wasn’t sure how he’d been expecting her to respond to that, really, but it certainly wasn’t with tears.

“… I hope so,” she whispered. “I-I really do.” She lifted an arm to her face, and wiped the tears away with her wrist. “Heh,” She laughed wetly. “I’ve made this awful already, haven’t I?”

Bran laughed too at that. He didn’t know what else to do. He felt something wet on his cheeks.

“… Well,” she smiled. “We should fix that. C’mere.” She extended her hands, beckoning.

Hesitantly, the boy stepped forwards towards her, crossing the few short feet between them in just three or four strides. He found himself wishing he’d taken shorter steps. Then he was in front of her, and it was even harder not to look. Why’d she have to be so pretty?

“It’s okay, Met,” she whispered, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. “It’s okay. Don’t be sad. Smile. You’re cute when you smile.” Then, she leaned in, and gave him a kiss.

It was confusing. All of it. What sort of cute did she mean? She was bigger than him. Why was he so sad, when was his body so excited? Why was he so excited? Her lips were so soft and warm. Why didn’t that help?

She pulled away, and gave him another smile, small and sad.

“Hey, wanna make a deal?” she asked.

“… What kinda deal?” He mumbled, forcing himself not to look away.

“… A way to stay friends, I think,” she replied. “You’re a boy. I’m a girl. We’ve both got… stuff. A-and… we both have… well, you’ve had dreams about girls, right?”

Bran nodded, a touch less ashamed. He’d had his first one a few months ago. Melusine. He wasn’t even original in his lust. He hadn’t been able to look Maelstrom in the eye for almost a week, and the boy had noticed; not that he wasn’t used to it.

“Well… what if we… we just explore?” Artume asked, her cheeks scarlet. “As friends. No judging.”

“… Promise?” He asked, not quite able to believe her.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Honestly… I was… thinking of doing that with you anyway. Letting it be our thing, instead of theirs. I guess we lost that chance… But… you know… we could still make it ours?” She gave him another smile, shy and nervous; excited.

He’d have given anything to be able to believe it.

“… Okay.”

⬗

Metonymy sat waiting on Basilisk’s plastic wrapped bed, draped in a spare dressing gown, staring at the floor through the gap in his knees. Żywie was tending to Artume first, of course. Had to make sure that, well, he took. Metonymy was glad to be spared the possibility of a repeat performance, but that made him feel like even more of a monster.

He felt a gloved clad hand come to rest on his back, another holding a disposable cup in front of him, a wisp of steam rising from it. The boy didn’t move.

“Come on, boy,” Basil said, giving the boy a pat. “I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you think. You’re not the sort to hurt he—”

“It was awful,” Metonymy muttered, staring at the cup without raising a hand to it. “Not just for her. For me. I-I know she still likes me—and I still like her—but is it meant to be so… weird?” He glanced up at his teacher for a moment, saw the stony look in his eye, and quickly averted his gaze. “I mean, it felt… okay, I guess. But it was just so gross! Why is that supposed to be fun?”

Basilisk sighed. “First times are always a little disappointing, Met. And a lot of fun things kind of get spoiled when you make it into a job. You build this sort of thing up in your mind, and nothing’s going to live up to your expectations. Especially when you’re young.”

“Then why do we have to do it when we’re young?”

Before Basil could answer—if he even was going to answer—Lawrence stepped into the room, beaming proudly. He strode over and slapped Metonymy on the back “There’s the man of the hour!”

Funny, after all that, Metonymy felt younger than he had in years.

Despite the lack of reply, Lawrence kept going. “I have to say, you’re handling this with a lot more dignity than many others boys would, I expect.” He chuckled. “More than many have, in fact.” When Bran refused to look at him, he sighed. “Metonymy, you do understand the beauty of what we’re creating here, yes? Children who may grow to change the whole world some day. Can you imagine it, young man? A new human with Artume’s control of space, combined with your mastery over states and time? My boy, this is a great day. I think you’ll see that, when you meet your child.”

It was everything Bran could manage in that moment to sit still. He wondered, in the back of his mind, if he could push his power a little. Revert the old man to his own infancy. He pushed the thought from his mind.

“…Can you leave me alone, please?”

⬗

Artume, Metonymy, and Ēōs lay spread out under the evening stars, Artume mapping out the constellations for her younger sister. She’d performed this nighttime ritual many times over, to the point where Ēōs probably knew each constellation’s story better than the god who had placed it in the sky, but Artume still did it whenever the little girl asked—each time swearing it would be the last.

Personally, Metonymy always thought the matter of which stars connected which seemed fairly arbitrary. “You can make any shape you want with whatever stars you like,” he’d said more than a few times over the years. Oftentimes, he’d go on to prove his point by weaving the stars into absurd, vulgar arrangements: The Three Fleeing Idiots, or the Weeping Mealy, and almost every part of the human body.

At that point Ēōs, with her earnest brown eyes obscured by her sister’s golden hair, would glare at Metonymy and—without taking her reproachful gaze off the boy—tell her big sister to keep telling her about the real constellations.  

“…So Orion was this big old giant hunter that Linus’ auntie had a big crush on. Did you know that his name just means “piss” in Greek? No, really.”  

Ēōs did, in fact, know that, but she still giggled. “And he walked on water, didn’t he? Mealy got off so lucky…”

That first night at the Institute, when the chase had died down and Artume had mentioned having a sister at the Institute, Metonymy had incorrectly pictured twins. The five year age gap had taken him by surprise, though not so much as the fact that only Ēōs had been born with her powers.

“How’d you get yours?” he’d asked.

“There was a man.”

Metonymy had soon gotten used to that answer. Aside from a few outliers like Stratogale and Elsewhere, it was either that, or born blessed and cursing the dark. Dozens of books, all opened to the same page.

“So, Linus’ dad got jealous—gods are weird, don’t ask—so he sent this scorpion…”

Metonymy was pretty sure Artume didn’t hate him, not yet at least. Why would she still wake him up for this sorta thing if she did?

“Sheilah,” Ēōs rarely kept to the Namings after dark, “did Żywie tell you what the baby was going to be?”

In the dark, Sheilah blinked. It was still so easy to forget the married day had even happened. Her belly hadn’t started swelling, and the loathing for Metonymy she feared would rise in her had not come. She wasn’t even feeling sick yet. God knew she liked it that way.

But why shouldn’t Dawn be excited? She was going to be an auntie, and their friend was going to be the daddy. And one day, she would give the baby a cousin. Or a little brother or sister, she thought, remembering Stratogale.

“Yeah,” she said, “a boy.”

Dawn nuzzled against her side. “What do you think you’ll call it?”

Artume sighed. “We don’t get to pick.”

Previous Chapter                                                                                                           Next Chapter

Mabel Henderson sat craned in the gentle shadow of her concealing copse of yarri and honeysuckle, drawing paper, crayons, and colour pencils spread out before her. She was scribbling away intensely, occasionally glancing up from her scratchings to study the grey breasted robin hopping around and spreading its wings photogenically in the dust. Its feathers had a painted sheen to them, and from certain angles appeared almost flat.

Mabel liked art. She liked looking at it, and she liked putting it to work for her. So when someone (she wanted to say Brit, or maybe Haunt was the culprit¹) had told her how funny it was that she of of all people couldn’t even draw a realistic stick-figure², she had taken it to heart. Why should she—Phantasmagoria herself—need rely on the imagination of others just to work her power?

And so, she had set herself to the task of learning how to draw, freeing herself from the yoke of artists and illustrators. Then, Mabel reasoned, she would be just shy of God Herself, and—more importantly—would open up a whole new world of staging opportunities for the Watercolours.

However, like a man who sits down and tries to teach himself himself Greek after growing up on The Odyssey, Mabel soon discovered that learning anything often ran counter to actually enjoying it. She couldn’t figure out how the people who did the covers of her pulps gave cityscapes of paint on flat paper such depth, or why her attempts to give her creations cheekbones always ended up looking like facial tumours, or why her birds ended up with far too much anatomy. She’d never realized how clumsy her fingers were.

Still, her father wouldn’t have given up, so neither would she.

Mabel had made some noise to Lawrence about hiring an art tutor, but the headmaster had shot down the idea.

“But why?” Mabel had whined. “You bring in all these teachers for Allie—”

Lawrence had given her a look.

“I mean, you get all these teachers for Myriad.”

A chuckle. “Phantasmagoria, Myriad only needs a single session with an expert to learn everything they have to teach her. I doubt you could manage that feat.” He had put a hand on her shoulder then. For a moment, she felt like her dad was talking to her. “If they kept coming back, my dear, they might notice something they wouldn’t understand.”     

With that disappointment under her belt, she then asked Basilisk for help, not that she had expected much technical insight from him. Pen and pencil hardly lasted long enough in his hands for anything like art. Still, the man had a way of making even admissions of ignorance seem insightful; plus, he could order her books.

Aside from that favour, her teacher did have one bit of practical advice:

“Draw from life, girl. That’s what everything I’ve ever read about art tells people to do to get good at it.”  

It seemed like a good idea to Mabel… at first. The problem she found was that life is often defined by movement. Other children, wallabies, and freshwater penguins alike wouldn’t stay still long enough for her to capture them into wax and oil. Stratogale wouldn’t even make her birds pose for her. It occurred to her that she could have started with trees, buildings, rocks or even the river, but that sounded boring.

It had all seemed hopeless, but then, an idea occurred to Mabel. She might not have the patience for drawing from life, but surely anyone who managed to get work as a professional artist did. It only followed that any of their work projected onto reality should count as life.

She started with animals, partly because she had the vague idea that you had to start with naked people, and she couldn’t find any pictures of those she wanted to make real.   

Mabel stood up from her work, studying her drawing. She thought it was an improvement over her previous efforts with the robin, but in her mind, there was only one true test of quality.

She focused on the pulses beneath her skin. They were always there: skeins of nameless pressure wrapped around her veins. Invisible spheres—that’s what it felt like, at least—slipped out from under her fingernails. She pushed them down into the drawing, like she was working air bubbles out of an IV line, letting them burst when they sank into the paper.

Mabel had never quite figured out how to describe the feeling of bringing an image to life. It was breathing into it and pulling it through all at once, like giving a drowning man mouth-to-mouth while hoisting them onto the boat. It always made Mabel feel warm. She liked to think it had something to do with her father. Better that than fire.

Her robin appeared beside its inspiration, sending it twittering frantically into the branches.

The bird was deformed, its creator’s attempt at perspective having cursed it with one wing much shorter than the other, and two supernumerary talons on its left foot. It turned its head in profile to look at its creator, a plea for oblivion in both black eyes.

Mabel tore up her drawing, blinking back tears of frustration, angry grawlixes flashing above her head. That was the other reason she hadn’t started with human subjects. At least animals didn’t yell at her when she got them wrong.

Even then, it was a small comfort. There was a unique frustration to Mabel’s workaround. A real bird was careless in its perfection; a fine drawing was proof that someone, somewhere was much better at art than her.  

“Whatcha doing, Phantasma?”

Mabel turned to find Myriad standing behind her, clothes over her shoulder, the blue in her eyes and water-darkened hair tell-tale signs of an adventure with David. She looked away sharply. It wasn’t the first time Mabel had seen the other girl in such a state, but context is everything. “Allie, your clothes?”

“Oh, sorry.” There was a low hiss, followed immediately by a thunderclap. When Mabel looked back, the other girl was dry and dressed, her hair damp and frizzy. She repeated her question. “So, what were you doing?’

Some powers make people so lazy. “Nothing much, just drawing practise.”

Myriad smiled. “So you can make whatever you want? Neat…” She looked around at nothing in particular, before blurting out “…Did David walk through here?” She knew he had, of course, but it was what you asked.

David had indeed passed Mabel, tears frozen to his cheeks even as steam rose off his skin. That wasn’t a new sight for his friend. What had been new was how he hadn’t answered her when she asked what was wrong. David had never hesitated to share his many hurts with the girl before.

At least, not till lately.

Mabel nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t say anything, though.”

“Okay.” She sat down beside Mabel’s pile of rejected drawings; the ones that had only offended her enough to be crumpled, instead of shredded. She smoothed one of the paper carcasses flat again. “This one’s pretty good,” she lied kindly.

Mabel sat down beside her, trying to make it look like she believed the compliment. “Thanks. Were you and David in the river?”

Myriad’s face brightened. “Yep! We had a pirate battle! Then we turned the boats into the monsters!” She giggled. “I melted his turtle. Underwater.”

Lately, it had dawned on Mabel that there were really two kinds of supers in the world. There were the ones like herself, or Arn, or even Billy: simple doers of extra-things. Special, maybe, but in the same way Elvis Presley or Anne Bancroft were special.

Then there were supers like the Barthes, and maybe the Flying Man. The ones who lived differently from everyone else. The ones who got to do things lesser supers like her never would. The ones who didn’t need to be scared of the things she was.

“Uh huh.”

“Maelstrom ever take you under the water?”

Mabel shook her head. “He tried once, in a bubble. I almost drowned.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Until now, it had been.

“Mabel?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve known about the married days a while, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Since when?”

“Since I asked Żywie why the big girls were getting so fat.”

At least you weren’t too wrapped up in yourself to notice, a low, bitter voice in the back of Mabel’s head whispered.

Myriad frowned. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Mabel suddenly felt very hot. “I-I thought about it. It’s just—I like you guys. I didn’t want you to get freaked out. Does Billy even know where babies come from?”

Myriad shook her head.

Mabel let out a half-laugh. “You’re the one explaining that to him, not me.”

“…It feels weird, don’t you think?” Myriad asked. “Just… knowing that’s… gonna happen, someday.”

“I guess so,” Mabel replied. “But is it that different from out there? Only weirdos don’t have kids when they grow up.”

“Lawrence doesn’t have any kids.”

“Not that we know about.”

Myriad giggled. “He has us.”

Mabel didn’t seem to see the humour. “He didn’t have to make us.”

“…Do you think it hurts?”

Mabel remembered the blood pooled between her mother’s legs. “…Your power has weird gaps, Allie.”

“Not that. The part that comes before.”

Mabel gave her a disgusted look. “Eww. I don’t wanna think about that!”

Myriad sighed. “Well, me neither. But it’s still there, isn’t it? It’s still gon-”

“I’m learning to draw!” Mabel overrode her loudly, almost angrily. “That’s what I’m doing today. I’m learning to draw so I can make my powers better and so that I don’t have to think about the gross, stupid grown up stuff we’re gonna have to do when we’re big! No! It’s not good. No, it’s not fair! It stinks! But it’s gonna happen, so stop making people miserable by bringing it up, stupid!”

Myriad opened her mouth, then closed it again. There wasn’t anything to say to that. It wasn’t as if she could say Mabel was thinking about it wrong, but there was something about the timbre of her song in that moment, something very sad.

“Is there other stuff that’s… just too sad for you to think about?”

Mabel didn’t answer that. Not with words, at least. Myriad didn’t even see the slap coming. All she knew was that a few moments later her cheeks were smarting, and Mabel was stomping off back to the Institute.

⬗

Haunt lazily flicked shillings through the east wall of the barn, peering through the solid timber as they landed in the hay. He had picked up the habit in the hope of either refining his power, or maybe just pinging one of the Watercolours in the side of the head. He’d stopped doing it while they were inside after a long lesson from Żywie on the physiological effects of a coin lodged in the brain, but it was still a good way to a warm, floating boredom.

“You really should give these a try,” Growltiger said from the patch of clover he was lying in, a thin hardback covering his face.

“Read what?” asked Haunt, as if he didn’t already know.

Billy missed the sarcasm. “The Famous Five!” He jumped to his feet, pausing only to gently place his book on the ground like it was his own newborn child. “They’re great! They go on adventures and solve mysteries, and-”

“And eat scones,” Haunt interjected, deadpan. “And frolic, and play around for ever and ever in a world where even the poor people are happy and the baddies never do more than tie them up.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Billy asked, sounding a little defensive.

“Tiger,” Haunt sighed. “Remember how we were attacked by a supervillain? Think he would’ve just tied us up?”

Growltiger thought on this for a moment, before: “… Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, I think he’d only have tied us up. Didn’t you think it was kinda weird how none of us got really hurt? We were fighting a supervillain.”

“Look,” Haunt groaned. “My point is, they’re silly. They’re kid books, and that’s fine, because you’re a kid. But they aren’t like real life.”

There was silence between them for a long while after that.

“… And what’s wrong with that?” Billy asked, his voice shaky. “What’s wrong with wanting to read about a world where everything’s nice and safe and okay?”

“…. Fine. Name one book, and I’ll read it, even though it’s gonna be crap.” Haunt finally deigned to look around at the other boy, waiting for him to give his single, stupid book recommendation.

Growltiger grinned, picking up his book off the grass. “That one! Five Go Off in a Caravan!” He handed it to Haunt. “It has circuses!”

Haunt looked down at the book’s bright, delicately etched cover, before making, a show of flicking to a random page. “You have to admit these books are corny, Growly. All that food! No wonder they’re always going on bloody adventures, otherwise they’d crush their bikes under them.”

Billy looked dejected. “Mabel likes them.”

Haunt groaned. “Why does it matter so much that I like this stuff? You read what you like—I don’t care.”

“… Can I ask you something?” Billy was staring at the ground, his lower lip trembling slightly.

Haunt sighed, bracing himself. “Fine.”

“How—” Billy swallowed. “When the other kids say things about you being…”

“A boong?” Haunt offered.

“Y-yeah,” the boy opened his mouth to elaborate, then closed it again. He did this twice.

“What?” Haunt asked with suppressed irritation.

“… Why does being different hurt?” The boy mumbled, breathing in a short, sharp breath through his nose that Haunt recognized all too well as a sniffle. “I thought the others would stop once I got my name, but they keep doing it! Even the ones who let me play with them call me stuff all the time.”

Haunt rolled his eyes, reaching down between his feet to toy with a stray root. “It just does, Bill. Always has, always will.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

Haunt sat him down. “Look, when someone acts like a dickhead at you, you don’t let them think it bothers you.”

“I don’t!” Billy cried. “I laugh at all their jokes, and that just makes them make more!”

“No,” set Haunt. “You don’t laugh with them. That’s more obvious than crying. You have to make them think it doesn’t bother you at all. Then you throw something back at them.”

“Like a rock?”

“No, not like—jokes, Tiger! Mean as you can make them. You remember when Abalone saw you coming out of the toilets?”

“Yeah?” Billy answered, wondering where the older boy was going with this. “He said I was supposed to use the litter-box.”

“Little shit,” Haunt said, with no particular venom. There was something Billy found thrilling about the other boy’s swearing. “Right, next time he says something stupid like that, you say something about him pissing the bed.”

“…Why?”

“Because he does.”

“No, I mean, why do I need to be nasty back?”

“Because they’ll never leave you alone if they think you’re soft.”

Billy thought about this. “But they still make jokes about you. And Basil sometimes, too. And Mealy—”

“Mealy is his own thing, Bill. And I didn’t say they would stop, because they won’t. Not forever. Sometimes, maybe, after a long time, they might forget you’re different long enough to let you be their friend.”

Growltiger collapsed back onto the grass, eyes cast down between his knees. “Is that really the best we get?”

“Fraid so, mate.”

“What are we talking about?” Myriad said, her wireframe form floating up from the earth like a spirit from Hades.

Haunt startled, jumping backwards. “Jesus—is that what it’s like on the other side of that?”

Billy giggled. “Yup.”

The pair watched as the girl’s features were sketched in. She tried to smile. “Guess so. Um, you two seen Maelstrom or Phantasma?”

Haunt frowned thoughtfully, finding his composure again. “Well, it’s been a couple years, so I figure I’ve seen those two a few times, yeah.”

Billy laughed as Myriad rolled her eyes. “I saw Mealy pacing around the garden,” he chimed in. “He was muttering a lot, and a bunch of the pumpkins exploded.” Earnestly, he added “Someone should remind him about pants.”

“I haven’t seen Phantasma since breakfast,” said Haunt. “I did see a dragon skulking around the bush ‘bout an hour ago—a very ugly dragon.”

“She’s learning how to draw,” explained Myriad. “Don’t be mean.”

Haunt hummed, whether in agreement or not Myriad couldn’t tell.

She tapped her foot a few times. “Ah, Haunt.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re eleven, right?”

Haunt shrugged. “Last time I checked. Żywie says I don’t get any older while I’m a ghost, so maybe knock a month or two off. Why?”

Myriad whistled slightly. “So, it can’t be long before your first married day?”

The boy’s lip twitched. “That’s still years away, Miri.” He was actually making eye contact with her.

“Not that many,” she replied. “Two or three, maybe.”

Haunt reminded himself that two or three years ago, Myriad was in kindergarten. “Why are you asking about married days anyway?”

“It’s just… it’s weird to think about, you know?” Her words started to run together. “And Mabel said it wasn’t fair and that it stinks and stuff and—”

Haunt threw a hand up, silently cursing God for making little kids. “I get it, I get it. What exactly do you want me to tell ya, Miri?”

Myriad lowered her head. “That it’s worth it? That it’s not that weird? And if it is, what do we do about it?”

Haunt patted the ground beside him. “Come sit down, Miri.”

“…I can stand.”

Haunt grinned. It never suited him. “Aww, come on, you need to be comfortable for this.”

“She—Miri should stand if she wants to.”

“Aww, don’t be silly, Bill. This is a historic moment. We’re gonna teach Myriad a lesson.”

Myriad was starting to see why Haunt had wanted to be part of The Tempest. With some trepidation, she sat down beside the boys.

Haunt leaned forward, his hands folded. “Hey, Miri, mind telling us what year Captain Cook landed at my great–great-whatever granddad’s back garden?”

“1770.”

“Nice, round number, innit? Can ya tell Billy here where the famous Tom Long lived before he came to the Institute?”

“…That Talos?”

Haunt’s bluster popped like a balloon. “Well, I guess we know what your power thinks isn’t worth knowing, huh.”

“Oh. Sorry… Tom?”

“It’s alright, Myriad,” Tom said. He sounded like he meant it. “Wandering, by the way. Wandering Mission. And no, that ain’t a containment centre. Not for demis, at least.”

A few disparate facts came together in Myriad’s head. “That’s one of the places they send half-caste kids, isn’t it?”

Haunt nodded. “Yep. To be honest, the freak-finders aren’t a new thing. They just started going after white kids sometimes.”      

“What does that have to do with married days?”

Tom tried not to let himself get angry at the girl. Edward Taylor knew what he was like when he got mad. “What I’m saying, Miri, is that I got taken off my parents and put in some awful kid-jail, just like you did.”

“Why’d they do that?” Billy asked. “Couldn’t they look after you?”

At least that distracted Tom from Myriad. He sighed. “Nah, Billy, they could. Dad was a”—it was only then that Haunt realized he couldn’t name his father’s profession—“boilerman.” That seemed like a plausible enough guess. It would explain the old fella’s overalls. “Never that much money around the house, but me and my brothers and sisters never starved or anything.”

“So why’d they take you?”

“Oh, lots of reasons. Not the nicest place, Wandering. The Christian Brothers weren’t very big on things likes maths, but they’d flog ya good if you didn’t act white enough. I mean, I was lucky, sort of. Dad was pretty Anglo, really, but some kids I knew there could barely English! And if you were a girl…” He shook his head. “No, not very nice. Do you two want to know what the secret of the world is? Grown ups, especially poms like Lawrence—”

“Lawrence is Australian,” Myriad pointed out.

“Yeah, but he wishes he was a pom.” Although, maybe an Aussie trying to be a Brit is better than a bunch of Brits coming over and saying they’re the real Aussies. “Point is, they always want something from you, or want to change you, or who knows what else. And you know what? As far as grown ups-in-charge go, Lawrence isn’t that bad. Yeah, he’s a weirdo who wants us to give him babies, but his tucker’s good, the company’s alright, and at least he likes us. More than I can say for the Christian Brothers. I mean, no one takes us away to do stuff to at night and sometimes we go months without anyone getting thrashed.” He stretched out in the grass, eyes closed like he was one moment of quiet away from a long, summer nap. “Way I see it, that ain’t a bad deal for a bit of lying back and thinking of Kuranda.”

Myriad looked at him. Even with his eyes shut, Haunt could tell his summation of the situation hadn’t satisfied her. That was the nice thing about X-ray vision. “That’s how you get through life, childlers,” he said. “You hitch yourself to the least awful bossman you can find, and hope he doesn’t bother you too much till you die.”

“That really what you think?” asked Myriad. “About the married days and all?”

“I don’t think about them that much,” Haunt lied. “Why don’t you go bug one of the big girls about it? They’re the ones dealing with this crap.”

“Fine, I will.”

As the girl huffed off towards the farmhouse, Haunt’s mind wandered down an old but ill-loved path. It was overgrown with thorns that bit at his ankles, but steep enough that the only way he could avoid tumbling head over heel was to keep walking.

Lawrence often said that, one day, every child alive would be posthuman. His predictions about such a world were close to open fantasy:

“Imagine it, children,” he had begged them one pitiless winter night, when the whole Institute (much smaller then) had taken their supper clustered around the parlour fire. “Everyone with a purpose, something they are uniquely born to. Generations of doctors like our Żywie, mending flesh with a touch; children like little Maelstrom pulling forests out from under the Sahara.”

Żywie and Maelstrom both shrank into the corner of their shared couch—Żywie perhaps because of her barrenness, and Maelstrom because that was just his way.

“Um, Laurie,” Britomart, not even six then, had interrupted. “What happens if one of the doctor kids want to be a firefighter?”

It was a good question, Haunt had thought, but there was another that dug at him. Lawrence never talked about the world between the one they lived in and the one he dreamed of. The one where supers ruled, but their predecessors were not yet a memory.

Tom could imagine it. The few, dwindling naturals—if that word still even made sense—herded onto the poorest country, the lands the supermen could find no better use for. For their own good, of course. Far kinder than forcing them to navigate a world that had no use for them. Maybe, in their kindness, the supermen would leave them labour they couldn’t bother themselves with. And when a lucky child among them manifested powers, they would of course be taken to be raised with their own kind. They would forget their parents soon enough; better a moment of grief than a life wasted among a dying race.

The consistency of history was almost a comfort to Thomas Long—he didn’t know what he’d do if things actually improved.

“Tom?”

“Yeah, Bill?”

“Who do you think I’ll have a married day with?”

“…Dunno, mate.” Awful choice of words. “Maybe Brit?”

He didn’t know who was served worse by that lie.

⬗

Ex-Nihilo lay on a bed of spider-silk, woven between the branches of the tallest trees she could find, a glass staircase spiraling around one of its trunks. It had taken her a while to figure out how to coax her protoplasm into adopting its substance, but like most everything else, it was still just a few chemicals in a line. She had fretted about huntsmen or even redbacks and funnel-webs smelling out the hammock and claiming it as a squat, but so far none had come. Maybe they knew a knock-off when they saw it.  

Hanging the thing up was more of a chore, but Gwydion had provided Ex-Nihilo one of his weird platforms. That boy had been doing everything in his power to please her and her sisters, ever since his first married day, and every kindness made them hate him a little more.

Still, it was a rare escape from the frantic joy of younger children, and slight relief from the first blows of summer. Ex-Nihilo had never much enjoyed the warm months, and the child inside her seemed to agree. It was like it was sweating inside her. She was a great, bloated whale, struggling through a syrupy, kettle-hot sea.

“Ex?”

The voice came from below her: high pitched, but slightly husky, too. Ex-Nihilo always thought it sounded like it was recovering from a coughing jag. “Myriad?”

The little girl’s voice was laced with wonder. “Is that you up there?”

“Who else would it be?”

“…Shelob?”

Myriad almost felt the teenage scowl wafting down from above her. “Ha. Ha.”

“Was only joking. Do ya mind if I come up and take a look?”

Ah, so this was it, Lana thought. The small ones had found her refuge already. Soon enough the hordes would be using it as a trampoline, or worse. Probably break their necks doing it, and then who would they blame? But if she told Myriad to buzz off, then no doubt she’d go and whine to Basil, or Laurie, and then she’d get told off for not behaving in the proper sisterly spirit.

“We all have a role to play in shaping the children, Ex-Nihilo,” Lawrence would say.

And some of us got double-cast. “Sure, I guess.”

She heard a thump, and the leaves above her rattled. A moment later, she saw Myriad scuttling up one of the anchor trees, her back against the bark, facing forward. She grinned, clearly proud of herself.

Lana couldn’t help but be impressed, but she also couldn’t help but feel unsettled by the sight. The child looked… insectile. Then again, surely insects would rather be able to see their legs when they climbed? “…There were stairs, you know.”

“More fun this way.” She launched herself from the tree trunk, landing beside Ex-Nihilo and sending the hammock swaying in the air for a few shuddering seconds.

The older girl gripped the silk tight. She found herself thinking back to the dead mother from The Secret Garden. At least with Żywie around, the kid wouldn’t be a hunchback³. Thankfully, as her perhaps too cursory research had suggested it would, the cloth held true. “Jesus, Miri.”

Myriad stretched out, looking up through the leafy canopy to the blue, unblemished sky above. She thought it was like what a crowded marina would look like from underwater, each leaf drifting around like the shadows of boats at anchor. “How long until your baby comes?”

Ex-Nihilo shrugged. “Couple of months.”

Myriad stared at the older girl’s belly. All that, from a couple of cells. An entire life—from beginning to end—from just that lump of flesh. “What’s it feel like?”

Ex-Nihilo looked at the little girl. If she had known in advance what Myriad was going to ask, she probably would have called her a mongrel and thrown her off the hammock, without a care whether or not she found a song or whatever that might cushion the impact. But as it was, all she saw was her own past: a gap on the canvas where the old image hadn’t quite been painted over yet. Herself, back when she and her sisters’ biggest concern was whether they’d go swimming that day; herself, back when Linus might as well have been a strangely shaped girl. Herself, back when she had wondered what Melusine’s baby would look like. Before the joy of curiosity had been ruined by the answer.

“They say it changes everything, sex,” Lana said. “As soon as they tell us what it even is, it’s all about how special it is, and how having it too early or too late or with the wrong bloke will ruin everything. But it didn’t change me.” She figured if there was any child she could be frank with, it was Myriad. “I mean, it was weird and sticky, and I’ve had a better time with my own fingers, but I didn’t feel anymore grown up or dirty or anything, least once I had a shower. And Linus was good about it.”

Better than Gwydion, at least. That awful, nervous mix of fear and shame and excitement. And he was so small.

“So it’s not so bad?”

Lana didn’t answer immediately. “What does change you? Being a mother. I don’t know if we’re ‘mums’, but we are mothers. You spend nearly a year with this kid growing inside you. There’s this heat. You feel it all the time, even when you’re asleep, really. Żywie told me once that having a baby changed the way your DNA worked a little, and I believe her. And even once it’s out, the kid’s still part you. Just this little piece of yourself that you’ll never get back, that’ll be walking around doing things even after you’re dead. And you hope it will be, because you love it. Babies are like drugs, Myriad. Every chemical in your body forces you to love them. It was weeks before I could even look at Spitfire without getting my blouse wet with milk.”

Myriad squirmed a little. “That doesn’t sound—”

“And you can hate them, too, right along with the love.”

“…Why?”

“Because they’re how they keep us where they want us.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Men? God? Just Lawrence? I don’t know. But I can’t leave Spitfire, and nobody out there’s going to want to take in some little slut with weird powers and a baby that starts fires when he sneezes, so I guess I’m stuck here until him and the kid inside me are all grown up!”

Myriad had no response to that, except to take hold of Lana Firrens’ hand. It was shaking.

The two children stayed up there for quite some time.

⬗

Alberto crouched under the obstacle course’s metal slide, sand and the rubber of his thongs rubbing his feet raw, his daughter clinging happily to his side. He would have put an arm under her, but she seemed content levitating. The baby looked up at her father with large, sloe-blown eyes, crying “Gah!” before burying her face in his shirt.

The psychic smiled. He had to admit, even when she wasn’t blasting all nine of his senses, there was something about Ophelia’s presence that pleased him. Maybe it was just the brainwashing chemicals that prevented cavemen from clubbing the shrieking little shits that ate all their food to death, but he was glad she… glad she was, he supposed.

Shame this wasn’t a pleasure walk.

Allison had let go of Eliza’s song, the lights of her thoughts popping back into Alberto’s view the moment she had done so, dancing on the edge of his vision like afterimages. This was good. Now he had an idea of where she was and what she was thinking, and it didn’t seem like he was on her thoughts much.

On the other hand, now the girl had gone and turned herself into what he was sure Eliza’s old masters would have called the ubermensch, and he still had no hold on the girl’s mind. If she took on the witch’s powers again, who knew when he’d get another chance to sink his hooks in? And what might she find out in the meantime?

Still, he had plans. Two, to be exact. Plan one was to try and touch Allison before she decided to tweak her immune system to eat colds better or something. If he didn’t get to her in time for that, plan two was to have Ophelia clap, hope it made her let go of the song, and hope he himself recovered his wits before she did.

God, he hoped she was content with her biology.

Near as he could tell, she had spent the last hour and a bit playing and commiserating with Ex-Nihilo, blowing bubbles in the air that dried into gold and silver. It was all very sweet, he was sure.

He watched as the two girls stepped out from the treeline, like witches returning from a sabbat. The younger child hugged the older, trying her best to avoid the baby-bump, before they went off their separate ways.

Good, that should make things easier.

Once he was certain Myriad was out of sight of Ex-Nihilo, Alberto started walking towards the girl, his daughter floating in tow. There was no way she didn’t know they were there, but he hoped she would just assume he was sleeping off some of the Lamb’s Blood he kept for especially dreary afternoons. “Brainiac!” he called out, in his own non-branded form of cheerfulness.

The girl turned to look at the man. “Tiresias?” She spotted the flying baby. “Ophelia?”

The toddler laughed with her father. “How’d you guess? So, I hear you’ve been going around asking questions about the married days.”

Myriad kicked up some dirt, muttering “Yeah. I just want it to make sense. To sound okay.”

Tiresias looked thoughtful. “Hmm. Who’ve you asked so far?”

“Um,” Myriad wasn’t sure how seriously Tiresias took the names, so she erred on the side of Lawrence, “Phantasmagoria, Ex-Nihilo, and Haunt. Growltiger was there, too, but I wasn’t really asking him.”

“That’s a good cross-section, I suppose. Would you like a father’s perspective on the whole business?”

Myriad nodded. “That would be good.”

“My advice? Stop stirring up shit, Allison.”

“…What?”

Tiresias threw his arms up like he was holding up the sky. “Girl, did you think all this was free? That Mad Laurie pulled all you children out of the shitholes they had you in because he was just so bloody nice? That he feeds and clothes you and tolerates your endless fuckin’ dramas out of the kindness of his heart?”

“Ye-yes,” Myriad stuttered. “He said so.”  

A long, hoarse cackle, dangerously close to turning into a hiccup, cross-harmonized with an uncomprehending, joyous giggle. “Remember what Haunt told you, Allison? About grownups always wanting something from you?”

“How did you—”

“Don’t be slow, I know everything that goes on here. And he was being too kind. Nobody does anything if they aren’t going to get anything out of it.”  

“That’s not true!” Myriad protested. “People donate to charities and stuff.”

Tiresias smiled, coldly. “Charity is tax-deductible, dear. And all the worst millionaires and robber-barons give money to the poor, or build them schools and hospitals. Makes them feel better at night about being most of the reason they have so little to begin with. More importantly, it helps other people forget that, too. ”

Myriad still looked dubious. “What does Lawrence get out of us?”

He laughed again. “Why, that’s an easy one!” He grabbed Ophelia, spinning the child much to her delight. “Babies, love!” He let go of his daughter, letting her bob in the air like it was water, before gesturing to the empty air next to him. “Stratogale! Physical wonder!” He pointed at himself. “Tiresias! Mental marvel!” The psychic wagged Ophelia’s cheek fondly. “He’s like a little kid, isn’t he? Bashing blocks together to see what happens!”

His audience grimaced.

Tiresias frowned. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You think I wanted to screw Sadie? She’s a kid! And there’s a perfectly good woman around…”

“…Wait, you and Melusine…”

He shrugged. “We were young. And bored. Still are, sometimes. But me and Stratogale? No joy in it. Just biology and friction.” Alberto saw an opportunity. “I don’t see why there even needs to be sex. You’d think Eliza could just turn whatever cells inside you she liked into seed”—a smile—“a whole school of Madonnas.”

“I guess…”

“Me? I reckon Lawrence prefers it physical. I’m sure he thinks it promotes communal bonds or something, but the old man would’ve been brought up on that Greek myth crap, Zeus laying with Leda and all that⁴. The man half-thinks we’re gods, why not have us act like it?”

“But-but is it right?”  

The man sighed. “Look, married days are crap, if you let yourself think about them that way, but they’re what needs to happen for that old pervert to get his wonder-babies. And that’s why he keeps you here. Why he keeps all of us. That’s why you’re allowed to play with your little puddle of a friend, and go to class, and not be scared, lonely and bored every minute of every day. Yeah, it’s disgusting, and Tim Valour would burn this place to the ground and salt the earth if he ever found out what was going on here. We’re all studs and broodmares, but that’s a small price to pay for what we’re getting. The old man’s a creep, but he’s given you a shred of your life back.” Before Myriad could react (which was saying something, after her personal renovations)  Tiresias was whispering in her ear. “So stop being so fucking precocious and asking questions that piss everyone off.”

Alberto straightened, beckoning Ophelia to him. “You’re eight years old, Allie. Just enjoy being hairless and only bleeding when someone pricks you as long as you can.”

As he walked away, the telepath felt the summer heat on the little girl’s face, and the grass beneath her bare feet, while her apprehension and disgust washed over him like floodwaters over parched, cracked ground.

Just for fun, he flexed her fingers. It was a small thing, nothing she wouldn’t have done herself, but it still filled him with relief.

He was safe.

He had to say, it felt good being Allison, at least physically. Maybe, someday, he’d finagle a way of getting her to give him a tune up, too.

He felt other things, too. Like the rage and betrayal that bubbled and flowed from David into Eliza’s twisted plants, till they burst from it. Maybe he had that boy wrong.

And as for the Eliza’s little secret, now, at last, he had leverage.

^{1. It was Haunt.↩}

^{2. Haunt was of course joking, but there is actually a species native to the Magellanic Clouds, largely made of tubes of neon, that to human eyes resemble stick-figures—Mabel’s didn’t look like them, either.↩}

^{3. He wasn’t a hunchback in the book, either, but nevermind that.↩}

^{4. A common historical misconception.↩}

Previous Chapter                                                                                                           Next Chapter

“It’s not that different, is it?”

Elsewhere and Myriad lay in the loose hay that carpeted the barn loft, the missing planks in the ceiling striping their faces in light and shadow. They had spent much of their time alone together since their final initiation into the mysteries of the Institute.

Well, final thus far.

“My mum was only seventeen when she married Dad,” Elsewhere continued. “Wasn’t that long before Drew was born.”

Myriad was surprised Elsewhere had brought up his parents. Since joining the ranks of the abandoned, he had been steadfastly pretending that he was an orphan. “But they were married,” she said. “And nearly the same age.”

“Linus and the big girls are the same age,” her friend pointed out.

“Gwydion isn’t.”

“He’s what, fourteen? That’s nearly grown up.”

“Is it?”

“Well, Lawrence said it was.”

Silence.

“It’s Metonymy and Artume’s married day this weekend,” Myriad said. “Lawrence is going to announce it Friday.”

“Married day” was an emerging euphemism at the New Human Institute. It’s what they called the times the older children were paired off to produce offspring.

“I do wish it hadn’t caught on like it has,” Lawrence had confided to her. “Marriage is an artifact of my kind, Myriad. I should hope your race works out more sensible ways of giving order to love.”  

“How do you know that?” asked Elsewhere.

Myriad shrugged. “He told me.” 

“…Do you think you and me are going to have a married day?” Elsewhere asked. “You know, when we’re big?”

Myriad felt queasy. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t as though they were related. And Elsewhere was her friend. Would she rather it be with a boy she didn’t like as much?

Of course, chances were that was in her future, too. “Yeah. Probably.”

For a little while, the barn made more noise than either child.

“I’m sorry,” said Elsewhere.

“For what?”

“…I don’t know.”

She rolled over closer to the boy, squeezing his hand. “We’re still little. We won’t have to think about that for years if we don’t want.”

“Yeah.”

Myriad got to her feet, making her way to the edge of the loft. “I’m going outside. You coming?”

“Nah.”

For reasons not even Myriad could understand, Elsewhere’s answer came as a relief. With a few notes of Britomart’s song, she leapt to the ground and ventured out into the new New Human Institute.

In the days since AU’s attack, Lawrence had tried to marshal the students into restoring the Institute’s pastoral character. Their cooperation had been half-hearted at best. Many of the children, as it turned out, preferred the Post-Golden Age¹ landscape—with its all new scars and curiosities. Down by the water gold nuggets were now as common as riverstone; trenches dug by ice and fire were already seeing service as forts and battlements; and of course, AU’s battle dead still held a silent watch. The students had taken to naming them like hedges: Ol’ Scatterclaws, G-Rex, and a whole host of others².

She wandered through a game of tag, Abalone shouting a greeting as he ran past after Ēōs.

The destruction had given the children an unspoken licence to make their own alterations, too. Veltha had cut tunnels beneath the school, so that her fellow students could play in her dark underworld. Britomart and Talos had uprooted enough trees to construct a palisade, from which Windshear ruled as a bloody queen. In an unprecedented spate of cooperation, Ex-Nihilo and Growltiger had erected castles of limestone and emerald all throughout the grounds. As the girl watched, Tiresias plummeted from one of their roundels, and had to be carried to the sick-bay, over his woozy protests that he could just walk it off. Everywhere Myriad looked, the world was changing with its children.

Unlike a lot of young girls, Myriad had never fantasized much about motherhood. Involved too much babies for her taste. However, she had assumed she would one day be a mother. It was just how things went for girls, unless you wanted to be someone’s sad auntie.

She wondered what having a baby would feel like. Would she be able to hear its song from within her? Once it was born, would she be able to copy it, or the other way around? Would it even have her powers, or one of the many she had dipped her toes in?

Would it have her eyes, or David’s?

Not now. Not yet.   

As she walked, she played Żywie’s song, pushing through the unwelcome memories that came with the ghostly piano chords. She had tried to assume the healer’s powers a few times again since the Quiet Room. Not so much for any actual healing—she had Maelstrom and Talos’ songs for that— but rather to puzzle out the unease the woman’s abilities inspired in her. It couldn’t just be the piano, could it? Or that note? Surely she wasn’t that big of a wimp? The experiments hadn’t gone well. In truth, she hadn’t managed to hold onto her teacher’s tune for more than a few seconds before losing her nerve. This time, though, she was surprised to find the revulsion wasn’t there.

Well, if she had the song, why not dance to it?

Żywie had been busy. The woman had come up with a plethora of biological refinements, and she had used herself as a testbed for all them. And now, Myriad decided, it was time for her to share.  

Charles Darwin never uttered or put to paper the words “survival of the fittest”³, for the simple reason they aren’t true. Despite what generations of pulp writers might have told people, natural selection does not strive towards any higher plane; it only blindly prunes the inadequate. This is why human beings start to fall apart after less than a hundred years, while somewhere in the ocean drifts a brainless jellyfish older than that entire species.

If you want a truly exceptional creature, that takes craftsmanship.

Myriad smiled to herself. The changes she set in motion would take time, unless she wanted to starve to death on her feet. She would have to keep Żywie’s song playing for days—even in her sleep—but after all was said and done, she would be a little less baseline.

She ate like a horse that evening.

⬗

Alberto Moretti sung his way softly through Kookaburra Dormitory⁴, making the rounds. His ten phantom limbs lay asleep on either side of him, waiting for the psychic to renew his mark on them. As he passed each hammock, he laid a hand on its occupants, his fingerprint seeping into the children’s minds. Their dreams played in his head: wild collages of fear and fantasy, both hazier and more real than the waking world.

“Fran, mum and dad, Fran, forgot to put on pants to breakfast, known Kadath… Eliza?” The esper looked back up the row at Haunt. “Really?” Alberto continued his recitation. “Flying Man, spider-house—” He stopped, index finger resting on Britomart’s forehead. He looked down at the girl and grinned. “Maelstrom! You kept that well hidden, kid.”

It was an easy evening for the rounds; it was the one night of the week when Artume actually slept. It was a nightmare having to sneak around her all the time, and God knew that this would be a bad week to let things slip. Well, bad for Lawrence at least.

Long term behavioral modification was a funny old game. When Bertie had first decided he wasn’t above it after all, he had had the psychic take a rather heavy handed approach to things— some of the kids he’d practically turned into little robots. But the thing about the human mind is that if you meddle with too many parts too often, you start to see knock-on effects. Try to make Windshear wash her hands consistently, and you wake up one morning to find the girl crying as she scrubs her skin off.

He paused again when he reached Maelstrom, snuggled up with Tigger and Mabel.

Hmm… not tonight.  

Allison was sleeping alone that night. Good idea, Alberto thought. Might as well enjoy it while she could. He pinched a toe.

He couldn’t get any traction on her. It was like her skin was made of teflon. He focused on the little girl. There was nothing. No dreams, no lights sparking inside her head; nothing. If it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of her chest and the REM twitching of her eyes beneath their lids, the psychic would have thought she was dead. He had never seen such an impenetrable mind since—

That spill he took on Castle Greystone. That kraut bitch.

Alberto started hyperventilating. The girl had taken on Eliza’s song again. Why? What possible interest could flesh witchery have for an eight year old girl? Did she remember that morning after Chen came home? Or anything else? If she did, who had she told?

If Eliza knew, he was done for. If Fran knew, he would wish he was.

He felt the child’s forehead, hoping he was wrong, hoping he would find even a little purchase on Allison’s mind. Still, he found nothing. If anything, the girl felt feverish, though she seemed quite content.

It suddenly occurred to Alberto that he couldn’t remember Eliza ever coming down with so much as a cold.

He ran out of the dormitory, praying to a God he wished he didn’t believe in, a God he knew would never listen to him of all people. He remembered Allison remembering that evil Finnish gypsy’s note. The lines he knew she hadn’t read out for her cohort:

PS: Beware the one who holds the wires taut.

For months, Alberto had assumed that was him. Desperate for reassurance, he plunged into the storm of futures, and was relieved by what he saw. The Institute would be finished by Christmas, but he’d seen that coming since New Year’s. More importantly, in all but the most improbable tommorows—now that the Institute had weathered Chen—he persisted. The school might die, but the road stretched out long before him.

Alberto’s pace slowed to a walk as he forced himself to take a few long, grateful breaths. He started heading back towards the farmhouse. He had missed a few kids in his panic, but that didn’t worry him too greatly. Where he slacked off, he had full faith the bullshit Bertie had filled the children’s heads with would make up the difference.

He would be glad to be rid of this place.

⬗

Myriad woke up happy that Thursday morning. She’d never been a very loud smiler, but today she was. She actually sung in the showers, which got her a few loofahs lobbed into her stall. As she had done for the last three days, she dug into breakfast like a bear cub on the first day of Spring.

“You gearing up for a growth spurt?” Mrs Gillespie asked. Her tone was bemused, but she was a little concerned. Myriad wouldn’t have have been first of her girls to develop an unhealthy relationship with food after having things explained to her, although the usual tact was to starve themselves.

Myriad swallowed her mouthful of egg and bacon in one painful looking gulp. She beamed at the teacher, “Nah, that’s not till next year.”

Myriad was not joking. She managed to pocket a knife as everyone got up to head to class, shooting Maelstrom a knowing look that only got confusion in return.

Tiresias locked himself in his room. Nobody noticed.

The school day passed for Myriad in a blur of impatience and anticipation as she was passed from teacher to teacher, gophering stationery and textbooks and cups of tea from one end of the house to the other.

Once, when she was fetching the Institute’s copy of The Mystery of the Cathedrals⁵ from the library, she dropped Żywie’s song for Melusine’s. She went icy—just for a moment, like a photonegative flash—before picking up the healer’s tune again.

She smiled.

After what felt like a whole school week, Myriad was released from her duties. She ran out into the afternoon sun, following Maelstrom’s song down to the river. A set of green and blue shorts and T-shirt lay neatly folded on the bank. David’s song radiated from the river’s depths like the last orchestra in Atlantis, all glass harmonica and whalebone whistles.

Myriad took hold of it, then evaporated out of her clothes, her kit falling to the ground with an uncharacteristically weighty thud. She recondensed some ways out above the river, twisted in the air, and dropped into the water with a joyous splash.

She simply floated at first, unbothered by the chill river currents. Then she kicked downwards, air escaping out of the sides of her mouth in a plume of bubbles as she plunged, mermaid-like, past the point where bright, glassy green gave way to murky marine blue. She could have liquified, become one with the river itself. She had done it before with David, and it was always uniquely freeing, but right now, Myriad wanted to feel the cool, muted gravity of the water; to churn it with her feet and hear its quiet roar in her ears.

She flew over planes of river weeds, rippling sideways like grass in the wind, punctuated by broken bottles, lost shoes, and drowned toys. A pirate ship in miniature lay half-buried in the silt, its exposed prow long ago given up to moss and rot; fossilisation in reverse. David had shown it to Myriad the first time she had ventured underwater. When Linus and the oldest girls had been small, he told her, they had built the thing over a summer for the sole purpose of sinking it, just so they could say that the river had a sunken ship in it.

The boy was sitting in the middle of the riverbed. It was deep enough there to drown a careless child, but not so deep you couldn’t see the sun scattering across the surface.

Myriad gave her friend a small wave as she approached, nervous. They hadn’t really had a chance to talk alone since AU’s attack. It felt different now. David smiled as he caught sight of her, and she settled down next to him, sending up a small, silent explosion of dust and sand. He laced his fingers in hers, and they let the light rain down on them, shattered into yellows and greens, dappling their skin like they were sitting beneath a stained glass ceiling.

They sat together in companionable silence—not that they had much of a choice in the matter. Little silvered fish flitted in and out of sight.  

Myriad suddenly found herself hesitating. She didn’t know why. It was good news she had for him. Still, she didn’t want to surface quite yet, to have to crack and scrape her thoughts trying to shove them into words.

And then there was the all other stuff.

No. No thinking about weird, confusing things right now. Now was fun time. That was what time with David was meant for.

Then the idea struck, and she grinned. Why did the best ideas take so long to turn up?

She gave the boy’s hand a squeeze before letting go, kicking off from the riverbed. David had just enough time to look up questioningly at her, when he saw the pirate ship wrench itself from its unkempt grave, its struggles echoing and burbling through the water. It rose to meet Myriad’s bare feet just as the last of her ice-spun piratical accoutrements crystallized around her. She raised her newly made, translucent sword, and barked silent orders to an imaginary crew.  

David giggled, before melting away like a dream.

A few fathoms from Myriad’s revenant vessel, a phantasmal clipper manifested, its many sails fanning out like fins and dragonfly wings in the water. The body of the craft was long and thin, almost serpentine in its dimensions, with a suspiciously familiar looking young mermaid as its figurehead.

Myriad suddenly wished David’s powers came with a tail. She frowned at her own figurehead, the begrudging compromise between a unicorn and a dragon. A growling, boyish tiger grew over it.

The ghost of a proud Royal Navy captain appeared on the clipper’s deck, resplendent in the memory of his dress uniform. Unlike the pirate queen, this seaman had the loyalty of a full crew of spectral sailors.

The clipper’s cannons bombarded the diminutive galleon, a dozen tailless comets slamming into its hull, sending wood splinters sinking to the bottom of the river like pine needles.

Myriad lowered her sword sharply, imagining her grizzled sea-dogs returning fire. Which they did.

The cannonballs struck their target true, shattering David’s ship like a glass model. Myriad was cheering to herself when she saw the boat mend itself, like time flowing backwards.

A cannonball struck Myriad’s mast, sending it and her rotting, tattered sail floating off into the green.

Purely out of habit, she huffed. It was her own fault, she knew. Using a wooden boat for this was like picking black in chess. Down here, David was Jumpcut, Growltiger, Mabel and Elsewhere all in one.

But then, so was Myriad.

A pillar of ice grew from her ship’s wound, sprouting a sail that slipped in and out of visibility as the boat cut through the water, ramming into HMAS Triton.

And so it went. Every blow David inflicted on the NAS⁶ Anne Bonny, Myriad patched with ice: the ship of Theseus in real time. The old boat died in inches, surrendering to its own ghost.

And as the ships fought on, they forgot their shape, mutating as they regenerated. They became leviathans and giants, mountains and swords. For one brief, glorious moment, they were a whale and a squid, but neither child took note.

Eventually, Myriad bored of this distance combat, and swung across to David’s sea-turtle on a glittering rope⁷.  

Whatever changes his vessel had undergone, David’s own playing piece still looked the same. The officer and gentleman lunged at the little girl, and a frantic bout of sword-clashing ensued, the two fighters clinging tight to the turtle’s shell as Myriad’s box jellyfish ensnared her in its tentacles.

Myriad could barely keep apace, small as she was, with the captain’s flurry strikes and parries. She soon gave up on that, letting the blue fade from her eyes and the ice float off her skin, instead reaching for the songs drifting down from the world above. David watched, at first confused, then with an enraptured giggle, as a deep crimson phoenix rocketed from the girl’s hand. Blue tipped wings cast dancing, glimmering shadows all across their submarine battlefield and tinted the gloom with the bright, vibrant orange of fresh flame. The bird let out a soundless screech and streaked over the turtle, a shower of discarded feathers melting through its shell like Greek fire.

As he picked his way through the remains of the older students’ boat below, David grinned at the sheer novelty of underwater fire. It reminded him of his mother’s stories from the war. He focused his efforts on healing his turtle, deciding to just hold things together until Myriad ran out of air and called upon his power again. Four minutes later, the turtle was gone, and his friend still hadn’t swapped back.

Myriad saved the captain for last, waiting until the turtle had subsided back into the flow of the river before turning her firebird’s fury on its passenger. David was only half focused, too busy trying to figure out how Myriad was staying under so long without a breath to put up much of a fight, and thus the final battle between bird and swordsman was short lived. The phoenix smote its foe, the beating of its wings blowing the patch of silt where it stood into glass.

David was applauding when the two of them surfaced. “That was brilliant!” he shouted. “You, and the boats, and… and…” He hugged his friend. “Such a good idea.”

Myriad relaxed. She didn’t know what she had been worried about. David was going to love this.

The boy let go of her. “You held your breath a long time down there… right? That was a long time for people who aren’t me or Mum?”

She laughed. “Yeah, it was. Hey, got something to show you.”

“What is it?”

Myriad grinned as the blue returned to her eyes, and a rogue wave swept them both back towards the shore. Myriad waded excitedly out the water, David and a thin sliver of ice trailing behind her.

She ran up to her fallen clothes, fishing a piece of scrap paper from one of her short pockets. From where David stood, it appeared to be covered on either side with small, many-coloured shapes, with little notations he couldn’t discern next to each of them. The girl held the paper out like a matador’s muleta, whistled, and the ice-dart zoomed past David’s head, piercing the page and pinning it to a tree.

David golf clapped. Myriad’s eyes went hazel again. “That wasn’t what I was going to show you.” She pulled the knife from her other pocket.

David threw up his hands, stepping backwards. “Okay, okay! Sorry!”

Myriad realised how she looked, and lowered the knife. “Not for you,” she said, still smiling. “Well, sorta.” She handed David the knife, before backing away a few paces and putting her hands behind her back. “Throw it at me.”

David dropped the knife. “No!”

“Aww, come on, pretty please?” She darted over to her friend, plucking the knife of the ground and forcing it back into his hand in one fluid movement. David barely registered the motion. “You’ll probably miss anyway!”

David’s tone was offended as much it was pained. “And what if I don’t?”  

Myriad shrugged. “Then I’ll go icey, or bronze.”

“You might bleed to death before you change!”

She giggled again. “Since when were you so good at throwing knives? And people only die from getting stabbed right away in stories, ‘less it’s in the brain.”    

David fretted with the breakfast knife, scrapping it across his forearms.

“…You’re not going to hit me in the brain, David.” She dug her feet deeper into the dirt, closing her eyes. “I’m gonna stand here till you throw that knife at me.”

They stood in silence for a while, the quiet hiss of the river occasionally drowned out by the shrill cries of birds and children. David shuffled his feet, hoping the world would end right there and then, or that Ophelia would choose that moment to clap. Neither came to pass, not that he would have been able to tell them apart. Every once in a while, Myriad furtively opened an eye to check if her friend was any closer to throwing the bloody knife.

David screamed, hurling the knife gracelessly at the girl.

Myriad’s hand whipped in front of her face. She heard David let out a small gasp. She opened her eyes, confirming what the feel of smooth wood against her fingers already told her. She held the knife handle less than an inch from her nose, the blade pointed at her reluctant attacker. She laughed. “It worked!”

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” David asked, impressed. “The circus?”

“Nope!” She jumped backwards, springing off the tree where she had nailed her scrap of paper and landing on her feet behind David. “Didn’t get that from the circus, either.”

David whistled. “Who then? Was that Brit? Why weren’t you glowing?”

In lieu of an answer, Myriad led the boy by the hand over to the tree, tearing the paper roughly from its spike and handing it eagerly to her friend.

Much to David’s surprise, being able to read the diversely scribed lines of text next to the shapes only made their meaning less clear. Next to a blue triangle: “pain numbing”. A red shield: “heart rate”. A diamond split halfway between violet and sky-blue: “hysterical strength”

There were dozens upon dozens of others: “sleepy-time,” “stay-awake…”

“…Ovulation?” David asked, frowning.

“Girl-bleeding,” Myriad explained, unnecessarily. “That’s for later.”

“What is this for, Miri? Are you making up a board game or something?”

The girl bit her lip conspiratorially. “They’re ‘biofeedback triggers. They’re like…” If Myriad had been born maybe a decade or two later, the comparison to cheat codes would have been obvious. “It’s like I’ve laid down telephone lines inside me. The pictures, they’re like buttons, but imaginary—but real, too. They’re like shortcuts. All the stuff your body does without you thinking about it? You’re heart beating, breathing… other stuff? If I think about the right buttons hard enough, I can control those things. You ever hear those stories about mummies lifting cars off their kids? Not supers or anything, just normal people like Lawrence. They can do stuff like that because they’re too scared to care that it’ll break them.” She clenched her free hand into a fist and slammed it into the tree, leaving a shallow, splintery indentation in its wood. She quickly went clear and back before David realised how many bones she had broken with that stunt. “I can do stuff like that whenever I want now! And it doesn’t matter because now I heal so much better. Watch!”

Myriad calmly and unhesitatingly cut a gash along her palm. The knife was hardly more than a slightly serrated butter-spreader, so she had to dig a little into her flesh, but she had nothing if not conviction.

She found herself in David’s arms, the knife pressed uncomfortably between their chests. “Don’t,” he said, his voice choked with revulsion and what Myriad could have sworn was shame. Anger, too, but not at her. “I know it sounds scary, but it’s a long time away… we’ll be good, alright?” David hoped they were still wet enough that the tears weren’t obvious.

Myriad wrapped her arms around him, her blood staining his shoulder blade like okra. “It’s not that, David.” She backed out of the hug, the knife falling onto the dry mud, and held out her opened, slashed palm. “Look,” she said, “really look.”

David did look. The bleeding had stopped, and although it wasn’t a minute old, the wound was already scabbing over.

“It’ll be all better in ten minutes—no scar. I mean, I don’t really have scars since I met you, but still.” She hugged herself, grinning. “I feel so good, David. It’s—it’s like I was covered in mud before and I’ve just gotten out of the bath. Everything’s so clear now, my eyes, my ears, everything. I feel like I could run and run and run for hours and not get tired.”

“That good?”

“Better.” She wiggled her toes. “I could grow a tail, you know. Like a real mermaid. Scales are easy.

“Really?”

She giggled. “Yep. Gills, too. Not that I need them with you around.” She stepped in close to David, squeezing his hand. “We could walk back into the river, right now. Just swim until we get to the sea,” she whispered. “How have you not been in the ocean?”

That last remark had come in to her mind as a joke, in honesty, but by the time it had reached her mouth, she meant it.

“We could go find whales. I want to hear their songs. We wouldn’t have to worry about people, or being alone, or married days. It could just be us and the whales.”

For just a moment, David thought he was going to turn around and run into the water. The River Avon would carry him and Allison to Swan River, and then out to sea. He would know saltwater for the first time, and forget the taste of air. Maybe they would find his grandfather, and he would know what it was like to love someone else without it hurting.

Instead, he asked “How? How did you do all this? Whose power?”

“Żywie,” Myriad answered conspiratorially, a glint in her eyes like she was letting slip a friend’s secret crush. “She can do herself!”

“…What?” David said, his tone and expression flat.

“Żywie’s powers work on herself. No clue why she doesn’t tell people. Maybe she doesn’t want everyone bugging her for extra powers, I don’t—where are you going?” Myriad said as the boy stormed (or maybe gusted) off.

“All really neat, Miri,” David said as he marched back towards the Institute, his voice a little too controlled, even as his song ran discordant. “See you at dinner?”

“…Yeah, sure… I think it’s potato salad tonight.”

“Nice.”

Myriad knew better than to follow. She sat down against the trunk her long-suffering test tree, and wondered what exactly she had told her friend.   

^{1. Almost everyone agreed that the period after the Golden Age was in many ways preferable to the Golden Age itself, thus making it unique in the accounting of time.↩}

^{2. A Whole Host of Others was very popular. ↩}

^{3. That dubious honour goes to philosopher and biologist Herbert Spencer. People who use the aphorism in all sincerity are likely unaware of his fondness for trade unions and self-identification as a radical feminist.↩}

^{4. Sister of the Wallaby and Lorikeet dormitories. ↩}

^{5. A well regarded textbook on modern architecture.↩}

^{6. Nova Australian Ship. As much as Myriad tried to forget what the witch had show her, that could-be city park still found its way into her dreams.↩}

^{7. It was connected to the same anchor point as Tarzan’s vines.↩}

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