By Marisca Pichette
The treehouse of Raum lies at the center of a broken nest. Between its roots, five salt-stained streets extend in five directions. One mile from their starting point, each diverges into six more streets, cracked stone weaving into the swamps and mountains that border his country. (Our country, before.)
I know the streets and their terminals. Outside, the beneathworld expands in a thousand countries laid out in a thousand variations of this configuration. Streets, rivers, ravines. Cliffs and valleys, mountains and plains. Each holds a kingdom at its heart, ruled by my cousins (Raum’s cousins, though he acknowledges them now only as foes to be kept away, or challenged).
Sometimes there is a nest at the center. Sometimes it is a cave, a barrow, a city. Sometimes it is friendly, but too often it is like Raum’s country: angry, dying, and watchful.
(I hardly know any of them, now. To be without a home is to be no one at all.)
I do not approach Raum’s treehouse from the mountains or the swamps. I could fly, but I choose to walk, like he would.
Around Raum’s treehouse there is a forest of barkless trees. Each reaches into the onyx and lapis sky, their branches terminating in dormant claws. When you cut them, they bleed. I see scars on their skins as I pass between them. Some shaped like eyes. Some like broken wings.
I walk not on the ground (barren, cold) but along the fungal paths suspended between the trees. Mats of mycelium cling to my feet, sinking with each step, but never fraying. I wonder if my claws are any use here. Could I tear a hole in the beneathworld, if I tried? (I will try, but not with my claws. I’ve brought other tools.)
The mycelium grew after I left. The trees were here before.
Before the trees, Raum was a crow whispering senseless words to the mountains and the swamps. I didn’t pay enough attention to his eyes, then. Not until the Conjurer peeled his feathers back to nake his face, and what was underneath was suddenly all that remained.
Mycelium gives under my weight, rising and falling like a living chest. I make no effort to minimize the sound of my coming. Raum knows I am here. He knew before I entered his country that I was returning. His sight is strong. (He thinks this means that he is strong as well. I know that was never the case. I knew from his hatching that he was weaker than his siblings—just not the ways. If I’d known…but there have been years to regret.)
The mycelium quivers as if plucked, its soft glow rising to a blinding shine. I resist the urge to speed up. The light irks me, though. It’s a sign of how little Raum has changed, though nearly a decade has elapsed in my absence. I ignore his warning and maintain my pace, walking between the weeping trees.
(Crying without voices. Sobbing without tears.)
I pass the outer streets and the inner, inhaling salt and rot. Above me the trees flex their claws. I toy with the idea of flying up to them, searching for familiar feet. This forest was planted by Raum, the last thing I witnessed before I left.
It remembers what it once was. Who.
(I’ve spent so many years distracting myself from the point, the reason I knew I would one day return. The point at which blood curdles into mud, fit only for burial.)
Perhaps, after this visit, the trees will grow the bark they should have always worn.
I smile at that. The mycelium illuminates every detail. I hope Raum is watching. (I know he is. I feel his eyes on my feathers, my blackness, my wholeness, my everything that he is not. Everything that he betrayed—for the sake of emeralds and ossuaries.)
His treehouse rises before me now, my path terminating in a tangle of fungal nets. Windows perforate its walls, reflecting the trees and streets and me. I fly the final distance, alighting on a terrace of clavicles. The bones are warm and damp.
Five windows open and skulls peer out. Beaks snap.
“You Are Not Welcome, Crone.”
“The Earl Has Expected This.”
“He Directed Us To Tell You That You Have Wings. Use Them Now To Fly Back To Whence You Came.”
“Lingering Will Only Provoke The Great Earl.”
“Now, He Displays Mercy. It Will Not Last.”
I don’t recognize these bones. All the crows I knew became the trees; those that now serve Raum came after—by one method, or another.
“Raum can see further than any of us,” I say, scratching at a clavicle with my claw. It is soft and gives under my assault. I leave a mark. “Surely he can see that I don’t plan to leave.”
The skulls snap their bare beaks, smoke tongues lashing the air. Garnet eyes regard me.
“The Earl Is Merciful. Leave Now.”
“It Is Your Last Chance.”
“If You Stay, You Will Never Depart.”
Gems and bones. These were worth more to you than family? I ruffle my feathers; the only feathers that remain in this country that was once my home. Clustered around the treehouse’s foundations I see the remnants of the nest I built of yarrow and horsetail. I flex my wings, conscious of the extra weight across my chest. My one chance—the last chance.
I will not be forced away a second time.
“I will speak with Raum.”
Two windows swing closed, their skulls replaced with reflections of the forest. The other three remain, watching me as news of my obstinacy is brought to Raum, who needs no messenger. His sight told him when I arrived that I would not be going.
(What else did it reveal? Did it see what rests on my chest, inconspicuous in its visibility?)
When the skulls return, I have carved a deep groove in the clavicle on which I stand. The marrow within is pink, deceptively healthy. And this is how he does it. Surrounding himself with the dead, prized apart and meticulously clustered into beds. A garden of arrested souls.
“You Will Follow Us To The Great Earl.”
The skull vacates its window, and I fly up to the sill. It is constructed of black marble, veined green. Nothing like the lush nest I built for my children, it is cold against my feet. I hop down to the floor and follow my guide into Raum’s domain.
Beneath the skull the crow—the once-crow—is entirely bone, joints held together with golden wire. Its claws echo against the floor. Covered in flesh and skin, my feet make almost no sound. My feathers whisper to the walls.
In my mind, I remember their screams. These walls were once alive. Now they are definition-less, imprisoned between growth and decay. Captured lifeforces hang humid in the air, condense on my beak. I shake the drops away, imagining blood.
I follow Raum’s servant through the treehouse, past beds of scapulae, vertebrae, phalanges. These gardens weep heat and moisture, living bones in a building constructed of stone and precious things.
The Conjurer made it to hold Raum, taught him how to warp life—divert the surplus into ghosts and sight.
After years, I still bristle at this lie. Raum’s sight was always there. The Conjurer did nothing to strengthen it. His tricks only tied it to his will, and this place that once was mine.
We pass a bowl of pearls. Glistening, wet, they remind me of ice crystals. I swallow, stretching and refolding my wings. My chest itches. I resist the urge to preen, fear growing now that I am within these walls of eternal dying. The secret I carry must not be revealed before I face him.
My fear fails to keep my thoughts from lingering on the past. I’ve lived with my regret long enough for it to ripen into something more.
After the Conjurer took Raum’s feathers, he left this country, pursuing other gains. He vanished beyond the mountains, untraceable even to Raum’s sight.
But a mother never forgets the scent of her son.
We stop before an ivory door. The servant steps to the side and I realize it is my turn to lead. The ivory is new, but the shape is the same I remember slamming behind me, leaving while I still had myself. I resettle my wings, check the plumage on my chest.
Raum is on the other side of this door. He will see what he expects.
(I hope.)
I remember how he looked, before I left. In the wake of the Conjurer’s disappearance, when Raum planted the first trees to prolong his rule, I visited him behind the door I now face. He attacked then, tearing feathers from my skin. When he accused me of seeking his sight, I knew I had no family left in this country.
A silver chain hangs from the center of the door. I take it in my beak and pull.
Heat shoves me back. Bones and gemstones roll forward, dripping moisture that should have died when the blood was drained away. Despite myself, I wretch at the scene.
No longer neat beds, the garden here is a heap. Mounds hint at hidden shapes, covered in wet and sparkling things. Opals, teeth, brass. Tibias and rib cages filled with alabaster and obsidian. There is no order to this room of power, no adornment save for a mess of mutated life, picked apart and reduced to fragments, still radiating their pain.
Does Raum feel it? Does he know what produces that heat? Does he know what it’s like to never die, despite being broken again and again?
I try not to breathe, forcing myself into the mass. My claws are covered in warmth, the floor slick beneath my feet as I walk to the center of the room. I don’t see Raum, but I know he is here. His scent may be diminished, but it lingers in this place. I wonder if he ever leaves.
The trees he planted outside were never for viewing. They serve only to hold his power, spread his life across a country of mute and dissected subjects.
“CRONE.”
The sound rattles the bones and sends rubies slipping between my toes. I turn, chasing the echoes until I see him.
Raum squats on a nest of coccyges and sapphires. His arms are spread, pale and puckered. Seeing him again I am shocked at how small he is—small as any crow denied his feathers. He snaps his beak, skin wrinkling around his neck and naked legs.
His eyes are wild. They are still his, and I think they would be somehow more bearable if cut from stones or the bones of others. His pupils dilate beyond possibility, crowded with reflections of gems shimmering, unrelenting in their light.
In the wet heat of this room, I look at my last son, and find him hideous.
“Raum.”
All I meant to say is sliding back down my throat. I’ve made my decision, haven’t I? (I decided before I came. I decided when I smelled him miles and miles from this nest he never leaves, and again when I wrapped what remained around my chest like a second skin.)
“YOU WILL JOIN MY FOREST.” Raum’s claws dig into his nest, dislodging stones and shards of white. He is damp as the air, as the bones and gems. Moisture drips from his beak. “YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE RETURNED.”
“The Conjurer is dead,” I say.
Raum falters. His unease pleases me more than I expected. I move towards him.
He doesn’t back away. He knows he is stronger than me. (He doesn’t know that my strength is wrapped around me, blending with my darkness.)
“YOU KILLED HIM,” Raum guesses, watching me approach.
Did I? I’m not sure what happened when I finally tracked the Conjurer down, following the scent of Raum’s once-feathers out of the beneathworld and into pale sunshine. He was sick by then—slung with too many talismans and too few motives. Was his life so pointless as to have no end, except in a gray field, exposed to freezing rain?
I sat beside him while he died. My company was more than he deserved. In the morning, I tugged my son’s feathers from his clothes.
(I led him into the field. I stole his food and frightened his horse to bolting. But I did not kill him. The rain saw to that.)
That night fades, replaced with a hall of heat and deathless agony. I stand before my son, this featherless thing that I watched hatch. He has let me come close, my feet buried at the edge of his weeping nest.
To Raum, I say, “Yes. I killed him.” And I shed my second skin.
One flick of my beak is all it takes, tugging the outer layer from my chest and flinging it forward. He cannot fly. But in that moment he tries, waving his naked arms, seeing at last what I came to do.
The net I’ve made with his feathers tangles over his head and arms, clinging to him as he tumbles back. He screams and, in his scream, I hear the screams of his siblings as he plucked them. Screams as he rolled them into trees to direct his sight. Screams and screams I couldn’t stop, until I only had one nestling left.
And that one would never fly.
Raum sinks back into his nest of gems and bones. His feathers wrap around him, driving themselves into his skin wherever they touch. I don’t let myself look away, just as I didn’t allow my eyes to close as the Conjurer lay dying.
(If you don’t watch, you miss things. I learned that when I turned my back on my weakest hatchling and lost the rest.)
Under my net of feathers Raum crumples like his siblings, pieces wedged together, growth halted and reversed. When the feathers cease twitching, I tug the net away with my beak.
Raum’s bones lie bare, white and dry.
Already, I feel the room cooling. Distant clatters tell me that the servants have collapsed, Raum’s magic broken. But I didn’t know them. Their end is not what I came here to see.
I lift myself from Raum’s room and fly out through the ivory door. I leave his remains where they lie beside his feathers, amid a heap of cooling bones. He deserves no better grave.
I stop at the first window I find, turning the latch with my beak and shoving it open. The air I breathe smells like eggshells.
At first, I see no changes. The forest stretches in thirty directions, pale and naked and still. Then a spot of black sprouts from a nearby tree. It grows, spreads to its neighbor. The mycelium quivers as the trees expand, their skins filling with feathers, their branches reaching for the sky.
The first tree that regains its black is the first to break apart. My children tear from their imprisonment by scores, wings unfurling from trunks, legs from branches.
They fly from this country, a country that is no longer anything. They take their bodies back, filling the air, the spaces where Raum made them grow in unnatural death. The temperature drops and the breeze turns brittle and dry.
The treehouse won’t stand long, now. The Conjurer’s trick has reached its conclusion.
I spread my wings and join the flock, following their scent to a new home.
* * *
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts. More of her work appears in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Vastarien, Fantasy Magazine, Asimov’s, Nightmare Magazine, and others. Her poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin Awards. Their first novella, Every Dark Cloud, is forthcoming in March 2025 from Ghost Orchid Press.
