text: Zezili snapped away the remaining bone branches. She had to pull out the bones that had skewered Lilia's shoulder and belly. The wounds did not bleed out, only oozed a greenish sap or pus. Zezili supposed the tree preferred to preserve its prey and feed off it slowly, like a spider.
  
  "Hey, can you hear me?" Zezili asked. "I need you awake. I don't know where the fuck I am."
  
  "It's fine," Lilia muttered. "It's fine."
  
  Zezili spotted a thin line of blood on Lilia's forearm – she must have created it when she pulled her down.
  
  She had a strange compulsion to clear it away. She pressed her lips to the wound. Sucked at the blood. The blood came away sweet. So sweet! Sweeter and more delightful than anything she had ever tasted before.
  
  She pulled herself away from the wound, suddenly dizzy. She scrambled further from Lilia, overcome with revulsion. Had the tree done something to the blood? Zezili headed for the trees. She got eight paces before she felt the pain in her sternum again. The urge to go back, the feeling that if she continued on her own, she would die horribly, rent limb from limb.
  
  "Fuck you!" Zezili yelled at the sky. But no one answered. Not Rhea, not her daughters, certainly not the woozy Dhai girl.
  
  "This is a rude fucking joke!" Zezili yelled. She picked up a skull from the field of bones and threw it into the woods. "Fuck you! Fuck you! I chose to fucking die!" She threw a few more until the gesture was no longer cathartic. Then went back to the girl.
  
  She yanked Lilia up, as easily as if she were a bag of yams, and headed into the woods with her. Zezili wasn't thirsty, but the girl probably would be, and the wounds could do with a wash. Bonded, were they? Well, she couldn't just let her die then, she supposed.
  
  Zezili sensed water before she saw it: a metallic taste at the back of her throat. Had she been able to sense water like that before? Surely not.
  
  As she turned to head toward it, she noted a movement at the corner of her vision. Two young men, Dhai probably, as they did not wear armor. They bore plain metal blades, not infused weapons, which was something.
  
  "Who are you?" one of them shouted, older, bearded, the one in charge. "You put that girl back! She's no concern of yours."
  
  Zezili placed Lilia back on the ground. She could not help it: a grin split her face.
  
  They must have understood that grin, because they bolted from her.
  
  Zezili pursued them, humming all the while, a neat little ditty from some puppet show. The men slid in the mud. One knocked into a tree. She caught them easily, in three paces, before her sternum even began to ache.
  
  She took the oldest by the beard and headbutted him. His eyes crossed. He fell. She broke his neck cleanly. Looked about for the other one.
  
  He was scrambling up rugged terrain backwards, sword out, sweating profusely. "What are you?" he said. "Wh– What?"
  
  "I don't know," Zezili said. She grabbed the flat blade of the sword and twisted it from his hands. A quick flip of the sword, a thrust, and she skewered him neatly through the heart.
  
  He spit blood. Shuddered. She twisted the blade. Blood spurted across his chest. The blood was so very beautiful.
  
  Zezili straddled the body and pressed her hands into the blood and brought it to her lips. It smelled divine. She tasted it, and like the girl's blood it was sweet. So very, very delicious. She cut the man's jugular and cupped her hands beneath the wound, grinning at every flesh spurt of blood. She drank the blood like water until her belly was full and her whole body tingled.
  
  Only when sated did she become aware of her bloody hands. Her sticky face. "What the fuck am I doing?" she muttered. But the blood had made her feel more… alive. Strong. She squeezed the man's neck, sending more blood into her cupped palm, and took it back up to Lilia. She cradled the girl's head with her other arm, and brought the blood to her lips.
  
  "Hey, you hear me?" Zezili said. "Drink."
  
  She wet Lilia's lips with the blood, made her sip at it. Lilia coughed once, grimaced, but then she drank it down as greedily as Zezili had.
  
  A beat, no more than a moment, and Lilia opened her eyes, gaze clear now, not muddled. At the sight of Zezili, Lilia's eyes widened.
  
  "Tira," she breathed, and blood wet Lilia's own chin. "What have you done?"
  
  "You feel better?" Zezili asked. "You here?"
  
  "You look… like an animal. Did you murder–"
  
  "Are you well or not?"
  
  "I… yes… did you…?" Lilia touched her finger to her lips; the finger came away bloody. "Did you feed me… blood?"
  
  "It worked, didn't it?"
  
  Lilia turned over and spit.
  
  "How are your wounds?" Zezili asked. She checked them; they were still pus-filled and oozing, but not bleeding out. "Not a cure-all, then. We have to get you some real care. Where the fuck can we go? You've made a lot of enemies."
  
  "I've made enemies? You made far more enemies than I did."
  
  "Yeah, well, this isn't Dorinah we're in, is it? What day is it? What month?"
  
  "I only know the Dhai months."
  
  "And?"
  
  Lilia told her.
  
  Zezili sat back on her heels. It felt like she'd been punched. "I've… been gone… a year?"
  
  "Your face is different. You look… younger. No scars."
  
  Zezili pressed her hands to her smooth face. She had a dim memory of gazing into a mirror after the cats came at her, her swollen right eye, the jagged rent, the lopsided smile, and her fingers… Rhea, she had lost fingers. No, more than that. Saradyn. Saradyn had taken her hand. But this girl knew nothing of that. They had last seen each other in the other world, when Lilia broke the mirror, yes. She must be talking about her other scars, the battle scars, the ones that Zezili had borne so long she had thought herself born with them.
  
  She pulled her hands away and stared at them again. They were whole. No scars. No missing digits. Two smooth, perfect hands.
  
  "This is a miracle," Zezili said. "A fucking Rhea-blessed miracle. What am I?"
  
  "I don't know."
  
  "Someone brought me to you… in a box? That's what… some woman said, when I woke."
  
  "Emlee? Yes. You were supposed to be some great warrior, from Kalinda."
  
  "I don't know who Kalinda is."
  
  "I'm not sure how she found you, or why she was looking. I'm sorry. I… didn't know. I just… needed allies."
  
  "Whatever way you could get them."
  
  Lilia nodded.
  
  "It got you stuck up a bone tree," Zezili said.
  
  "I don't regret any of it."
  
  That was the dumbest thing Zezili had heard the girl say yet. "Then you're a fool."
  
  "You said you want to kill the Tai Mora."
  
  "Who doesn't?"
  
  "I can help you, like I said. We need to go west, until we reach the sea. Then north. There's a great temple there. Something that can help us push them all back to their world."
  
  "Their world is dying."
  
  "Yes."
  
  "You intend to just… send them all back. Murder them all the way they've murdered all of you?"
  
  "You have a better idea? Where did you get all this blood?" Lilia gestured at Zezili's stained face and tunic.
  
  Zezili snarled. "What if it hadn't been me?"
  
  "What do you mean?"
  
  "If it was someone you didn't know. Someone else who wanted to die. Would you have done it?"
  
  "I needed allies."
  
  "You're no better than any of us."
  
  "If you really wanted to die, you could have left me up there. You would have died soon enough."
  
  "I don't know if that was possible. Your blood is delicious, but the idea of murdering you makes me seize up."
  
  "Well, that's a relief."
  
  "Is it? I'm sure it will work the other way. You can't kill me either. If I can ever die. I don't know. That's depressing."
  
  "I'm sorry. I didn't ask how it works."
  
  "Where is the woman who did it?"
  
  "Kalinda? I don't know. I'm sorry."
  
  "No, you aren't."
  
  "Well, maybe I'm not. I needed an ally, and you were a terrible monster. Maybe this is what you deserved."
  
  "Fuck you."
  
  "You're always so angry."
  
  "You aren't?"
  
  "Of course I'm angry. But I don't sit here complaining about it."
  
  "Fine." Zezili stood. Let's get moving."
  
  "You'll come with me?"
  
  "You haven't given me much choice." She tasted the remnants of the sugary blood on her lips, and felt a craving she could not name.