Content Warnings

Discussion of incest

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Scarlet tries her best to believe. Trust and circumstance and subconscious evidence work in harmony upon the mundane substrate of waking scepticism and motivated doubt. Lit from below by the dull glow of the car’s instrument panel, framed by the glass of the driver-side window, and by the deep, dark, dank shadows of the woodland beyond, by the moss-draped trees and briar-thick undergrowth of England untouched. All artifice falls from her face, sloughing away like dead skin, clean truth beneath. Eyes widen as the sky after a storm. Mouth drops open, colour drains, realisation dawns.

Burning Bright is your sister, behind the guise of transformation. Your soul knew it the moment you saw her, no matter the arm’s length at which it lurks, kept at bay by the tangled metaphysics of our condition. But you trust me now, you know I won’t lie. Not to you, Scarlet. Not to you.

But then those clearing eyes unfocus for a fleeting heartbeat. A wall of cloud covers her gaze, a stone lid on the sky.

The wall of sleep. That final barrier between any waking human and their own soul, even that of a magical girl.

Scarlet’s stare curdles, face gone ghostly pale, a tremor in her chest. Speechless, stunned, silent.

“Scarlet?” I rasp. “Scarlet?” Why even speak? I’ve already lost, nothing I can do against the metaphysical weight of the waking world. “Scarlet, I need you to trust me, even if you can’t believe this. Burning Bright is Bethany Fairfax. That was your sister—”

“Stop,” Scarlet murmurs.

“Burning Bright is your sister. Scarlet? Burning Bright is Bethany—”

Scarlet’s right hand strikes like a snake from the gloom; I brace for a slap, try not to flinch, hold my resolve. But she grabs the front of my borrowed hoodie instead, yanks me halfway out of the passenger seat. Her face glowers inches from my own, gritted teeth and cold anger. The zoog in my lap lets out a chorus of wild hissing and high-pitched rasping, scrabbling for a better grip on my clothes, twisting around to threaten Scarlet with snapping teeth. She ignores him.

“Stop!” she says, shaking all over. “Stop.”

“No,” I grunt.

Scarlet swallows hard, lump in her throat she can’t shift. Her voice is a rush of half-whispered rage. “It’s not just— not just the lie that offends me, Octavia. It’s that you would say this now, this— this absurd lie, after everything— after what we’ve just been through? After we shared— and you would assume that I’ll just believe it? That I would believe this, this lie, about my own sister? My sister!” A strangled shout fills the cramped interior of the car. “She is off-limits, Octavia! Beth is off-limits! How many times do I have to repeat this!? Off limits! Not yours! I might be now, I might be, but she is not! Don’t go there, just don’t! And why, why lie to me like this now, why—”

“I will never lie to you!” I bellow in her face.

Perhaps it’s the lack of guilt in my eyes. Or how I hold her gaze. The sheer determination in my voice, the way I croak out the last of my fading strength, sagging from her hand bunched at my throat. Scarlet lets go, recoils from me, stares with stunned incomprehension.

“You’re … no, you’re lying,” she says. “This has to be a lie. You’re lying to me.”

“This Machine will never feed you falsehood.” Throat raw from the shout, ears still ringing. I ease back into my own seat, internal aches bruised afresh. Skull against the headrest, both arms around the zoog. I stroke his back, try to get him to stop hissing at Scarlet. “After last night? After what I said? You’re right about that part. If you think that was all a lie, you may as well kill me right here. Either you’re my good hound and you trust me to hold your leash, or you don’t trust me at all. Go on. If you think I’m lying, take your sword out and cut my head off. There’s no point in this otherwise.”

Highest stakes wager I’ve ever made.

Scarlet’s eyes look small, confused, frightened. “But, why say this? Why—”

I sigh, exhausted. Have to take her through this step by step. Not her fault. “Think about it. What possible benefit would I get from lying about this now? Stopping the car in the middle of nowhere, with you and me alone, to tell you something that you can’t believe. And I do mean can’t believe. You haven’t seen her transform, so you can’t believe me, metaphysically. That’s how it works, we both know that. So, Scarlet, why am I telling you this?”

Scarlet shakes her head, pretending she’s lost. But she knows, her eyes give her away.

“Because if I don’t tell you now, that’s as good as lying,” I say. “Lying by omission, keeping secrets to manipulate you. And This Machine will never lie to you, even if you cut my head off for telling you things you don’t want to hear. The alternative would make me no different to Willow.”

Scarlet’s stunned outrage hardens to an impossible frown. Her eyes wander to the woods beyond the windows. She shakes her head again, slowly. “Then why haven’t you told me this before now?” she asks. “If this is true — though I’m not conceding it is — why not before now?”

“Why do you think?” I almost laugh at the absurdity of it all. “Because it was Bright’s business, not mine. But then she saw us and tried to get herself killed, fighting you. Kinda changed things, don’t you think? Bright forced my hand. Now I’ve broken her trust completely, it’s all my fault, and I have to fix it. This is the only way.”

Scarlet’s frown deepens, eyes like those of a reluctant messiah at the moment of revelation.

“Scarlet,” I press, because she won’t move without being dragged. “Why do you think I tried so hard to stop you from killing her back there?”

Scarlet shrugs. “She’s your ‘comrade’?”

“Uh huh, maybe. But she was also trying to kill me out of jealousy. If I let you kill her, that’d be safer for me. But you don’t want to kill Bethany. At least I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

“No, of course not! I’d sooner cut off my own arms … she’s … I … oh … ” Scarlet clutches at her own chest, just over her heart, horror curdled on her face.

“Right. So, come on, why do you think I was telling her to un-transform in front of you?”

Scarlet’s eyes finally whip back to me, madness behind her face; with me she has a target for her denial, an evil voice speaking lies. “No. Just no. It can’t be true, it can’t be! If she had un-transformed in front me, then we would have both seen that you’re wrong! No, absolutely not, no!”

“Why else would I have been asking her to do that?”

“I don’t know!” Scarlet explodes; sets off the zoog again, hissing and rasping. I fold my arms around him to keep him from scrambling down the side of the car seat and hiding in a crevice. “Some prearranged plan between the two of you!? You and this ‘Burning Bright’? To plant seeds of doubt in my mind about my own sister, to play fucking mind-games with me!? She’s my sister, Octavia, she’s the one person in the world I will not permit anything to happen to, the one person who ever— the only— you can’t understand— nobody—”

“Scarlet,” I say, as slow and careful as I can. “You picked me up from a battlefield and brought me home, the last thing anybody would ever expect. I’ve not been able to communicate with my friends for days. How could I have made a plan?”

Scarlet takes several deep breaths, stares into my eyes, working herself up toward violence.

“If you really think that,” I add, “you should just kill me now.”

Scarlet puts a hand to her forehead. Screws her eyes shut. Keens through her teeth.

“It’s not your fault that you don’t believe,” I say. “It’s just metaphysics. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.”

Scarlet draws herself up, eyes grasping this slender handhold. “Yes, yes, that part is correct! Magical girl identities cannot be verified by anybody except other magical girls. And Dream-Gods, I suppose, but that almost never happens. But you do have to see each other transform, for that to work. Myself, Azure, and Dawn, we’ve all transformed in front of each other. It’s one of the first things we did when we first met. And I’ve seen various other magical girls do so as well, I know how it feels, I know that.” Scarlet folds her arms, unfolds them again, touches the steering wheel, doesn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. “My sister is not a magical girl.”

“Apparently other Dreamland creatures can do it as well,” I add.

Scarlet rolls her eyes, gestures at the zoog. “What, him?”

“Hiiiiimuh!” the zoog rasps at her. I increase the firmness of my petting. He half-hides, snuggles against the front of my hoodie.

“Maybe zoogs can,” I say. “I’m not actually sure about that. Mostly I mean other things. Maybe.”

Scarlet huffs, turns to stare out of the windscreen. “What does it matter?”

“Do you believe me? About Bright.”

Scarlet stays very still for a very long moment, long enough that I start to think she might not answer. Even her eyes don’t move, fixed on something up ahead that only she can see. Eventually she takes a great shuddering breath. “I believe … that you believe. You believe what you are saying.” A swallow, a wet sniff, a hint of glistening moisture in her eyes. “You’re not … you’re not lying to me.” Her voice comes close to breaking, but she holds that off with a deep breath. “You’re not lying to me. Damn you, Octavia. You’re not lying. I … I think I trust you. I want to trust you. You’re the enemy, and I trust you. What am I even doing? Oh, Gods, what am I doing … ”

Reach out with my prosthetic hand, touch her shoulder. Scarlet’s hand goes to my own, clenches too hard. She bites down on what might be a sob, might be nothing.

“Good girl,” I mutter. “I won’t lie to you. I promise.”

Scarlet tries to roll her eyes again, but she’s too near to tears. She shakes her head, clears her throat, straightens her spine. Takes a moment to compose herself, which I give her freely.

“So you must be mistaken,” she says.

“Ahhh, shit.”

Scarlet looks me right in the eyes, and she’s not grasping for straws. She believes every word she says, embers of confidence taking flame behind her face.

“It’s the only possible explanation,” she says. “Your comrade, this ‘Burning Bright’, she’s misled you somehow. Or somebody else is playing a trick on you, perhaps to get at me. My sister isn’t a magical girl, or … or if she is, which I can scarcely bear to imagine, then she’s not that girl, I would know. I would just know. She’s not, Octavia, she’s not.” Scarlet nods. “Somebody is carrying out a psyop on you, to get at me. But we won’t let that happen.”

Can’t help a sigh. “Have you ever dealt with this before?”

“Dealt with what? A targeted psychological operation?”

“Magical girl identity issues. Somebody who refuses to transform in front of you, like this.”

“Well, no, I … ” Scarlet’s turn to sigh. “Octavia, I trust your words, but I don’t trust your judgement, not in this matter. That was not my sister back there. Burning Bright is not my sister, I would stake my life on that.”

“Would you stake hers on it?”

“ … Burning Bright?”

“No,” I say. “Your sister’s life. Bethany. Would you stake your sister’s life on this?”

Scarlet hesitates, a mote of fresh horror in her face. But then it’s gone, she almost laughs. Her confidence ebbs back, flames climbing higher. “There is some clever trick at work here, that’s all. You’ll see, Octavia, but first we have to uncover it. Perhaps your comrade is not even the one at fault. Burning Bright was clearly obsessed with me, and however disgusting that is, I’m willing to concede that perhaps she didn’t plan this herself. Perhaps some third party is using this against all of us.”

“Scarlet—”

“No, I’m serious!” she snaps. “There’s a plot behind this. Burning Bright, she really made some kind of deal with you, to let her have first go at me?”

“Sort of.” I sigh. “It’s complicated. Look, Scarlet—”

“And how did she achieve that? What did she say to you? Did she threaten you? No, threats alone wouldn’t hold you forever, would they? What can she possibly have told you? Octavia, I need to know this, I need answers. I need to protect my sister. Please!”

“Scarlet, stop—”

“What did she say about me!? What did she claim? What possible prior claim could she have … told … ”

Scarlet trails off, flames dying out. Blood drains anew from her face. Suddenly she looks very afraid, in a way Scarlet Edge never does.

A shared secret known only to the Fairfax sisters, so taboo it was never to be told.

And here’s me, with a promise not to lie.

Can’t hold back now.

“Bethany Fairfax — Burning Bright,” I say, as gentle as I can with a throat like sandpaper. “She told me that you and her, when you were younger, you were … ‘closer than sisters are meant to be’. Those are the exact words she used. That was her prior claim on you, if you want to call it that.”

Scarlet just stares, a wax statue beneath a thin sheen of sweat.

“Scarlet? You … okay?”

She reanimates slowly, a woman waking from death by drowning. She swallows hard, forces herself to breathe, can’t seem to fill her lungs. She turns away from me, stares out into the woods through the driver’s side window.

Long silence settles between us. A secret too far, a side of her even I wasn’t meant to know about.

“And what,” she says eventually, in a tiny, distant voice, “do you think about that?”

A shrug, though she can’t see it. “I’ve never had a sister, I wouldn’t know. Not my place to judge.”

“Not your place to judge?” Scarlet rasps, still not looking at me. “Incest, and not your place to judge? You are talking about incest. It is one of the most shameful things I’ve ever done. My second greatest regret.”

“Was it rape?”

Too tired to be delicate about this, could have phrased that better. Scarlet’s head whips back around, eyes blazing like Armageddon, tension tight in every muscle. She’s finally going to kill me, and this time maybe I deserve it. But she doesn’t answer, because this question is so far beneath her that words would be an indignity.

This Machine must have clarity. “Glaring at me isn’t an answer.”

“No,” Scarlet grinds out. “It wasn’t even … there was nothing filthy about it. Don’t you ever dare suggest that again. It was pure. Pure and … and wrong.”

Another shrug. “Alright, so what’s to judge? I’m not going to berate you for something you did as a child.”

“And what if I want to do it again now?” Scarlet asks, voice shaking in her throat. “Will you condemn me then — as you should do!” she snaps before I can answer. “It was unhealthy, pure but unhealthy. Like … like breathing pure oxygen. What we did was the height of unhealthy behaviour, and that is an extreme understatement. We never should have done it. I love my sister, but … ” Scarlet shakes her head, hard enough to hurt her neck. “It was not right. It was not.”

She subsides, sags forward, head bowed, hands gripping the steering wheel. When she speaks again, her voice is low, sad, broken.

“Well,” she says. “Now you know everything.”

“I already knew.” Reach over, stroke her hair. “Good girl.”

Scarlet stays like that for a long time, allowing me to pet her hair. Eventually she tuts and gently shakes me off, straightens back up. She takes a deep breath and wipes her eyes on the back of one hand. Sniffs hard. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected otherwise, not from a wanted terrorist who hides on the moon. I don’t understand how you can approve of this, this … this … me. But you do, and I don’t understand it. Fine, I accept your insane approval. But you never breathe a word of this to anybody else, you understand? Never.”

I wince. “Bit late for that.”

Scarlet goes wide-eyed and frozen. “What? Octavia, what do you mean!?”

“We all know. My new comrades, I mean. The girls from the moon. Me and Bright, obviously, but Signal and Grimgrave too.” I leave Tissy out, too much to explain. “Grimmy makes jokes about it, she uses it to insult Bright sometimes, but I think she means well, sort of. Bright’s pretty violent, she kinda deserves it. Nerys must know too. And the zoogs.”

Scarlet boggles at me. “The— the zoogs? What!?”

“They pick up everything they hear, they’re like little sponges.” I pat the zoog in my lap. “Aren’t you, little guy?”

“Spongeeee,” he rasps, leaning into my petting.

Scarlet looks baffled beyond her ability to process, horror held at bay by confusion. “I … but … she would never have told, she would never … ”

Clear my throat. Need to be a touch more delicate about this. “I assume Nerys found out from Bethany herself, but I doubt it was her fault. Dream-Gods have a way of learning things about us, you know?”

“I … I suppose.”

“Grimmy probably heard it from Nerys, they’re really close. Then, well, the secret was out.” I shrug. “We won’t tell the world or anything. I mean, Grimmy might, but I’ll tell her not to.”

“And she’ll listen to you? She’ll do as you say?”

“Mmhmm.”

Probably, but it’s not a good time to bring that up.

“She’s the one who threw a bomb-tipped javelin at me, isn’t she?” Scarlet says. “Are you certain? She won’t make it public, just to hurt me?”

“I’ll make her understand. Grimmy can be … difficult, but she means well. She’s my good girl too, don’t forget that.”

Scarlet takes a deep breath, shakes her head, stares off into the woods, shocked beyond words.

“You know,” I say, “you and her — you and Bright, I mean, not you and Grimmy — you’re really similar. I didn’t see it before, but you’ve basically asked me to do the same thing. She demanded I stay away from you, she was all jealous after you and I met, because you ran me through on your sword. Thought you were maybe kinda into me or something. Which I guess you were. And now here you are, screaming in my face that Bethany is off-limits.”

Scarlet huffs a humourless puff of laughter. Pulls a grimace, as if she’s eaten something distasteful. “I should say thank you, but it all seems so pointless. Why should I care anymore what the public thinks of me? After this stunt I’ve pulled, I … I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.” She wraps her hands around the steering wheel again, knuckles turning white. “But perhaps you were right, perhaps your little rodent god really did kill that cat. Maybe we can still keep this quiet.”

“What, so you can go back to living a lie?”

Scarlet darts me a sharp look. “Never mind that right now, I can’t think about it. We have to focus. Your knowledge of my personal history doesn’t prove anything. This ‘Burning Bright’, she must have gotten this out of my sister somehow. Blackmail. Magical means, perhaps. Or it could have been some third party, as I suggested earlier.”

Can’t help a sigh. “Scarlet. I need you to—”

“I cannot believe this!” she snaps. “I simply cannot, Octavia!”

“Do as I say.”

Scarlet stares, stunned into silence.

“You can’t believe that Bright is Bethany, fine, whatever,” I grunt. “But I need you to act like it anyway. Do this for me, do it because I need you to be a good girl. Because you need to trust this, or you’ll die. You’ll kill your own sister. She’ll throw herself at you again until you’ve got no choice, and then it’ll be too late for proof or evidence or anything else.”

Scarlet swallows with difficulty. “Why would she … why would she want that? Why would she possibly want that?”

A shrug. “‘Cos she’s fucked up. Like all of us. Doesn’t matter right now, okay? Just don’t kill her. That’s all I’m asking. Don’t kill her.”

Scarlet hesitates, eyes darting away, down to the zoog in my lap, back to me, elsewhere. But then she nods. First a tiny motion, then harder.

“Alright,” she murmurs. “Alright. I cannot promise I won’t defend myself against her, but … ”

“Just don’t kill her.”

Another nod.

“Promise me.”

“I promise not to kill Burning Bright, or let anybody else put her down,” she says. “Until I witness her transformation for myself, and confirm that she is not my sister, and that you are mistaken.”

“But not before then,” I grind the words out.

“But not before then. How’s that?”

“Perfect. Thank you.”

A massive breath goes out of Scarlet, like something she’s been holding for far too long. Muscles relax, her eyelids seem heavier. She turns her eyes forward, to the road ahead, leading off through the shadow-choked undergrowth of the woods on either side. Have any magical girls ever pushed the metaphysical knot of this problem this far before? Has anybody ever come close? What has this done to Scarlet Edge? She doesn’t seem like she’s about to have a seizure, or stroke out, or go insane.

“This is absurd,” she mutters, reaching for the key in the ignition. “We need to get moving.”

“One more thing.” Have to take this risk, have to try, can’t let it drop. “Scarlet, if you can’t keep all this covered up, or even if you can, maybe you should come to Luna. Maybe you should run. I know I said it would be dangerous, but maybe if you … I don’t know, maybe there’s a way to … Scarlet?”

She’s giving me a very unimpressed look. “It’s all well and good for you, with a Dream-God you can cart around like a pet.”

“What?”

“Octavia, if I turn on England, my parents and my sister will never see the light of day again. And despite my parents, I do not want that for them. They don’t deserve that. And I would never let it happen to my sister.”

“What if you’re left with no choice? What if—”

“Stop!” she hisses. “I can think about this once you are out of here, not a moment sooner. Don’t forget, Octavia, you and I are still enemies. I am not on your side. I am not about to join your side.”

“Enemies, huh?” I grunt. “Didn’t know enemies had shower sex.”

That earns me a great big huff. “It’s complicated! We are complicated, alright?”

“Alright. But, hey, Scarlet?”

“Yes, what?”

“I’m not suggesting anything for the sake of ‘my side’. I’m suggesting it for you.”

Scarlet can’t meet my eyes after that. She sniffs hard, blinks away what might only be my imagination, then reaches down and turns the key in the ignition. The car purrs itself awake, engine smooth as warm butter. Scarlet doesn’t bother with a turn signal for the empty road, pulls away from the treeline and out of the lay-by, cruising off between the trees.

A sensible route keeps us off the main roads, away from the endless cameras that might read the car’s license plate or record our faces through the tinted windscreen. These days even the little places of England bristle with outcroppings of the surveillance leviathan; Scarlet has me pull my hood up and turn my face away whenever we skirt a village, hoping to confuse the cyclops for long enough to slip past. She sticks to the woods whenever she can, surfacing from the great green seas to thread our way through a patchwork of countryside fields and rolling meadows. She seems to know the route well, a meandering southward curve, taking the westward way around Swindon; no map on her phone, no GPS, no double-checking at crossroads, she simply drives onward. We see plenty of other cars close to civilisation, but almost nobody out in the woods, nobody in the desolate fields between the trees, or at occasional lonely houses just off the road, few of them inhabited.

Dangerous to live so far from a shelter, unless you can afford one in your own cellar.

Each time we plunge into a fresh patch of forest it takes longer and longer for us to emerge again, the woods either side of the road thicker and darker. Eventually we don’t emerge at all, ten long unbroken minutes of winding roads climbing steadily uphill.

“Burning Bright,” Scarlet says unprompted, eyes fixed on the road. “Will she try to kill you again, if you return to your hideout?”

“Yeah, probably,” I mutter, lulled toward sleep by the motion of the car. “Until I’m fixed up, I guess. Then I can knock her on the head. This Machine can fight a dragon, I think.”

“And your other comrades can protect you in the meantime?”

“Grimmy and Signal? Yeah. Especially Signal.”

“Good. No need to change our plans then.”

I shift in my seat, eye her sidelong. “What would you do if I couldn’t go back?”

Scarlet stays silent for a moment, focused on driving. Then says, “I don’t know. Think of something, I suppose. Hide you somewhere.”

“Where?”

A shrug. Scarlet’s not keeping any secrets on that front, no hidden magical-girl safe-houses that we might need to know about.

“Weren’t you gonna call in that fire?” I ask. “Before it burns down your family home?”

“Tch,” Scarlet tuts. “I don’t want to risk turning my cellphone on again. Not until we get where we’re going, then it should be safe. Look, somebody will have sensed the fight, they’ll know, somebody will have gone there, probably another magical girl. The house will be fine.”

“Mm,” I grunt. “You know we left that chunk of my armour behind in your bedroom?”

A sharp sigh. “And your bloody clothes in my bathroom. If somebody checks … ” Scarlet shakes her head, chews on her bottom lip. “I’ll have to hide it as soon as I get the chance.”

“Not get rid of it?”

She glances at me, as if this is an absurd proposition. Then she realises I’m teasing, cheeks flushing a delicious light pink. “It— it’s part of— I’m not keeping a piece of you— I mean, I don’t—”

“You could’ve just borrowed my unwashed t-shirt or something. I hear that’s what most people do.”

“Tch!” Scarlet tuts again. “Shut up.”

We lapse into a long silence, the road unravelling beneath the car’s tyres.

“Nice car, by the way,” I croak. “Engine sounds good. Better than I expected from some Vauxhall.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t drive?”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the machine. Seriously, the engine sounds lovely. Like there’s more power under there.”

“It’s a Q-car,” Scarlet says.

“A what?”

“Q-car. You know, like the police use. A high-performance engine hidden inside a regular body.” She lets out a humourless laugh. “Sort of like us, I suppose.”

“Uhhh, okay? Why are you driving a sleeper car with a souped-up engine?”

Scarlet glances at me, a little flicker of a smile on her lips. “Because I wanted it. Who doesn’t want a fancy car? Magical girls can get pretty much anything they want, you know?” But then a sigh. “Not that I get much chance to drive, not much point. I’ve had it five years and I’ve never really put my foot down.”

“Prove it.”

“What? Excuse me?”

“Prove it. Open her up.”

Scarlet frowns. “Open ‘her’ up?”

I make a pedal-pressing motion. “Vroom, vroom.”

“Oh! Oh. Well. I have been trying not to attract undue attention. Isn’t that the first rule of trying to get away with a crime? Don’t commit traffic violations with a boot full of drugs?”

“Does that make me a kilo of heroin? Worried you’ll get addicted?”

Scarlet sighs. “Yes, very clever.”

“Nobody’s around to see. We haven’t passed another car in ten minutes. Open her up, Scarlet. Come on. You know you want to.”

Stone-faced silence answers that suggestion. Eyes on the road, hands at ten-and-two, head back against the headrest, Scarlet drives like an instructional safety video. I sigh with residual disappointment, sink lower into my seat, stroke the zoog’s head. Not really the right time for a bit of fun, fleeing from the forces of the state, straight-laced magical girls, Dream-Gods in the wild, and who knows what else.

But then we round a corner, emerge into a long section of open road, and the Vauxhall suddenly leaps forward. Engine purring like a caged tiger, trees whipping past on either side.

Scarlet smiles, giddy, off-balance. She squeezes the accelerator toward the floor. Sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety miles an hour, and we’re flying. The zoog in my lap clings to my hoodie, eyes wide, tail curled around my right wrist.

“Woo!” I cheer, throat still a little ragged. “There you go, Scarlet! Holy shit, this thing really is fast.”

“That’s enough for now,” Scarlet pants as if she’s been sprinting, easing off the accelerator and onto the brakes as we approach the next corner. The engine cycles down, a beautiful sound; I’d love to get my head in there and take a look at it up close. “Just a little taste, I think that’s enough.”

“We’ll make a bad girl out of you yet,” I say. “What’s the point of being magical if you can’t break the rules now and again?”

A longing sigh. Scarlet shakes her head. “If somebody else had been coming the other way … ”

“Yeah, yeah. But they weren’t. And it was fun, right?”

“Yes. It was.”

We lapse into a more comfortable silence, the woods creeping by beyond the car windows, green leaves and brown trunks and the deeper shadows beyond. A dull headache throbs just behind my eyes, but not a migraine. Exhaustion and weariness, deeper than mere muscles, down in the core engine-components of This Machine. Not quite as exhausted as I was when I first woke in Scarlet’s bedroom, but still not well. Spent most of what I’d regained dealing with Burning Bright. Now I feel hollow and slow, a bag of loose parts held together by a thin metal shell. Need to get myself put in for repairs.

Home. Is Plato Base home now? Suppose it must be.

“Scarlet,” I mutter, drifting deeper. “Where are we going, anyway?”

“That’s classified information,” she says. “Until we get there.”

“Seriously?”

“I don’t want to tell you in advance, you might … freak out. But it’s our only option. And you look too run-down for freaking out right now.”

“Mm. Feel it. This Machine is thirsty. Got any water in here?”

“Check the glove box, maybe?”

The car’s glove box turns out to be full of loose junk. I dig for a moment to unearth a half-empty plastic bottle of water. I hold it up to the light, shake it, wrinkle my nose. “How long has this been in here?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Scarlet says. “Just drink it.”

“I’ve got nothing against an indirect kiss, but I don’t want your six-month old mouth germs.”

“Oh for crying out loud!” Scarlet tuts. “You can’t get ill! Magical girls cannot get sick, not in the traditional sense. Just drink it. I don’t want you dehydrated.”

I spin the cap off the bottle and drink up. Tastes like stale plastic. “Ugh. Mmhmm, a mundane human would probably hit their yearly limit on carcinogens drinking this.”

Scarlet tuts, ignores my whining. I settle back into the seat again. Trees blur beyond the windows, all the same.

“Your driving is putting me to sleep,” I mutter.

“Good!” Scarlet barks. “Take a nap if you have to. We could be another ten to fifteen minutes. Maybe a little longer.”

“Through all this unbroken woodland? Where the hell are we going, Stonehenge?” Scarlet doesn’t laugh. Bad joke, or close to the mark? “Fuck me, we’re not actually going to Stonehenge, are we?”

Scarlet tuts. “Of course not. I can hardly sneak you into a closed government site. And what would be the point? It’s just rocks.”

“Really? Aren’t there a bunch of occultists down there, doing … something? They talk about it on telly sometimes.”

Scarlet shrugs. “That’s mostly to keep terrorists away from it.”

“The Opposition?” Scarlet shoots me a sceptical look. “Hey, I have to ask. Are they trying to blow it up, or do something else with it?”

“Are your people working with the Opposition?”

“Classified information.”

“Tch!” Scarlet shakes her head. “Take a nap. You might need it.”

File that one away for later, for Signal to pass to her Opposition contacts if I ever make it back to Luna; are they really trying to access Stonehenge, and if yes, why? I don’t particularly like the idea of the Opposition trying to destroy the finest surviving example of prehistoric megalithic engineering, but perhaps they have a good reason. Or maybe Scarlet’s just full of shit.

Her advice is good though. Sleep takes me slow and rough, a short and drifting nap, head against the seat’s backrest, then lolling onto the hard plastic pillar next to the window. Snippets of road and forest flicker past through slitted eyelids.

Not quite sleep. Best I can do.

The waking world dribbles back as Scarlet finally brings the car to a stop, applies the handbrake, kills the engine, retrieves her keys. She shakes me gently by one shoulder, but I’m already smacking my lips and blinking myself fully awake.

“Weather’s changed fast,” I croak. “Dark out there?”

“It’s always like that here,” she says. “Come on, we need to get moving. From here we’re on foot.”

Scarlet steps out of the car, shuts the door, crosses around to the passenger side.

“Come on, little guy,” I croak at the zoog. “Back in the pouch, come on.”

He nuzzles my hands, then burrows back into the hoodie’s front pocket. Scarlet opens the passenger side door, offers her arm to help me up and out.

Tarmac crumbles beneath my feet. Wet vegetable rot invades my nose. Chill air brushes my face, fingers my collar, takes my exposed left hand in ghostly fingers. We’re still in the woods. Parked on a tiny square patch of asphalt at the termination of a road that looks as if it hasn’t been resurfaced in eighty years, no markings, edges worn away by water and mud, no signposts or junctions in sight. A road into the forest, leading nowhere.

And what a forest.

Never seen anything like it, not even in pictures on the internet. So dense it could be from the dawn of time, before human feet found these isles. Gnarled trees tower in an endless canopy of darkly hanging green, forest floor a tangled mass of ferns and thorns, deadfall and shadow, sheets of shelf fungus, mats of crawling moss, and a thickly cloying carpet of rotten leaves mashed into black mud.

Slivers of visible sky have gone iron-grey with a threat of rain. Mist creeps high between the tree trunks, tendrils of chill extending out across the road. Crows call in the distance, harsh voices on still and silent air.

Shivers cover me with goosebumps, thankful for the enclosing safety of the borrowed hoodie. The zoog peeks out from the pocket, then quickly retreats back inside.

“Scarlet,” I murmur, not sure why I can’t raise my voice. “Where the hell are you taking me?”

“It’s not actually that much further, not too much of a walk.” Scarlet gestures at a pair of upright metal posts set into the ground at the edge of the wood, where rough tarmac meets untouched earth. The posts are slick with moss and lichen. A narrow pathway climbs into the woods, solid concrete steps crumbling to sand, barely visible through the mud and leaf-litter. “Those crocs … ” Scarlet looks at my feet with a tut. “I wish I’d thought of that when we left the house, but they should be okay, you should get to the other side alright. I’ll carry you if I have to.”

“The other side of what? Scarlet, what is this place? Where are we? These woods are impossible.”

Scarlet hesitates. “East of Bath, south of Swindon. About equidistant between Swindon and the New Forest, I think, but you won’t find this on maps, or in satellite imagery. No roads get any closer than this. The only ways in and out are either on foot, by flight, or translocation. And … ” She gives the woods a long and searching look. “I wouldn’t recommend the journey on foot to anybody but another magical girl. If you see any crows or ravens, don’t pay them any attention, and don’t respond if they talk. Especially ravens, whatever they say. Understand?”

I squint. “Is this safe?”

“As long as we stick to the path. It’s maintained by government occultists, don’t ask me how. I’ve only ever used it three times before, usually I just translocate or fly here, when I have to.”

“Scarlet. You need to tell me more. Where the fuck are we going?”

Scarlet draws herself up, tightens her support on my prosthetic arm. “The closest thing the Trio of Albion have to a headquarters. Us and all other magical girls in England. You’ll see. Octavia, do you trust me? I’m not trying to lead you into a trap, I swear.”

I do trust her, don’t I? I must be mad. A sadistic fascist who gutted me with her sword, and my life is still in her hands. Hard not to trust, after the last couple of days.

“Alright,” I grunt. “Let’s go, then.”

Scarlet leads me into the woods, onto the mud and the leaves and the narrow pathway of sunken concrete blocks. The crocs handle the ground better than I expect, sure-footed enough on the steps, not slipping too badly in the mud. Scarlet holds me by the arm for the first stretch, then settles for holding only my hand.

The pathway leads uphill, a stuttering switchback progress up muddy banks and along narrow passages of cleared ground. Within a minute the road behind us is invisible, Scarlet’s gleaming red car swallowed up behind the undergrowth. Water drips onto dead leaves, the occasional ticking of a vast irregular clock in this gigantic cathedral of trunk and branch. Thick undergrowth presses in from both sides, brambles like barbed wire, ivy like curtains, ferns so large they seem a throwback to when dinosaurs walked this land. The undersides of fallen trees gape like the mouths of mud-choked dragons, their roots rotting away in the damp air. Crows call and reply overhead, distant signals we cannot interpret.

More upright metal posts are placed at regular intervals alongside the path, dark poles of iron alternating from left to right. The woodland seems to shy from them. Occultist stuff, I assume.

Scarlet pays them no attention, concentrates on where she’s putting her feet, the pathway ahead, the woods to either side.

Darkness presses in from the distance, silent shadows thick beneath the trees; peer into the woods and night lurks at the edge of sight. More than once I catch a glimpse in the corner of my eye, something moving between the trunks, sliding away as soon as I look; shapes lurk in the boughs, silent slippery motion from tree trunk to tree trunk. Eyes vanish as you turn to look. Claws and teeth hide behind trees, merely a trick of patterns in the bark. Heavy breathing is just far-off wind. Nobody’s there. Stop looking.

Scarlet senses it too. She pauses as the pathway curves away to the left, glares off into the trees with defiant anger. Shadow-draped forms respond, a slippery motion seen peripheral, nothing more than a trick of the mind.

“Scarlet,” I hiss. “Scarlet—”

Scarlet flicks her right hand, plucks her ruby-red sword from thin air. She merely holds it by her side, dares the next hint of motion.

All is quiet and still. Just trees and undergrowth. Nothing was ever there. Move on.

“Alright,” she mutters, leading me forward once again. “We best hurry.”

“What was that?” I hiss. “How did you—”

“The things in the woods? Search me. If you ever find out, feel free to let everybody else know. Don’t worry though, they don’t breach the pathway, and they’re not stupid enough to attack a magical girl.”

“No,” I say. “I mean summoning your sword without being transformed.”

“Oh.” Scarlet glances down at her naked blade. “Can’t you?”

I give her a grumpy look. “Swords are your thing. And I’ve not exactly had time to experiment, have I?”

Scarlet shrugs as she leads me along the path. “Perhaps you can learn how, with your … um … fists? Oh, whatever. Just focus. It’s not too far now.”

We creep onward through the forest, to the occasional chorus of distant crows. The ground seems to level out, no longer climbing a hillside. Nothing approaches the path again, not with Scarlet’s sword on display, though my shoulder-blades and the back of my head crawl with hidden attention. Once I look up and spot an owl watching us from a branch, great round eyes tracking us around the next bend.

“Scarlet,” I mutter after a while. “How big are these woods?”

“Nobody knows,” she says, voice distracted, her focus on the path ahead. “Exploring on foot is too risky, people get turned around, reappear in odd places. From the air it’s … well, it’s odd. Best not to think about it.”

A few moments of close silence. Can’t keep my peace.

“This is a Dreamland overlap,” I say. “Scarlet, this is a Dreamland overlap, right in the middle of the English countryside, and your ‘headquarters’ is here? Bit hypocritical, isn’t it?”

A shrug. “Maybe so.”

“Do you even know what that means?” I hiss. “A Dreamland overlap!”

“Do you?” Scarlet shoots over her shoulder. “It’s not an overlap. Not in the way you think.”

“Then what is it?”

Scarlet pauses and turns to me, dismisses her sword with a flick of her hand. “You think this is all so simple, don’t you? Your merry band of freedom fighters against the evil empire.”

“Uh huh. And I’m right.”

Scarlet laughs without humour. “This isn’t a Dreamland overlap, not like London. Magical girls and their Dream-Gods are not the only power at play in England.”

“Yeah, I know. There’s also a cabal of Lucid Dreamers.”

Scarlet sighs. “I didn’t mean that. Look, I don’t understand everything, okay? I just need to get you out of here. We can talk about the complexities of this war some other time.”

“What war? Us against England?”

Scarlet sighs. “I wish it were so simple. Now come on, we’re almost there.”

Another hundred paces proves the accuracy of Scarlet’s estimate; the forest ahead thins against iron grey skies, drowning the world in leaden cloud-cover. Scarlet slows as we approach the end of the path, gesturing me to silence, peering ahead before we venture to the edge of the woods.

The forest ends in a sharp line at the apex of a lofty hill, the crown peak of the incline we’ve been climbing all this time. A narrow valley lies below us, ringed by tall dark trees on all sides, an impenetrable thicket of branch and leaf and briar and thorn, cupping the valley in a woodland fist.

The path turns into clear concrete slabs as it descends into the valley, crossing the whole length and climbing the far side, where it becomes raw stone and vanishes into distant woods. A wide barrier of naked metal has been placed across the far end of the path, as if blocking the narrow road would somehow stop any foot traffic when one can just step around it, into the open fields. Scraggly long grass, tall hardy thistles, the occasional withered tree, leafless and gnarled, punctuated by half-fallen dry stone walls. I spot pale horses wandering the ruined fields, strange scarecrow figures collapsed over some of the walls, dark blotches on the overgrown grass, the remains of great pyres, a greasy scent in the air.

All this is eclipsed. In the middle of the valley squats a lunatic’s memory of a castle.

A massive structure built to block the road, by an architect who could not decide on style or era. A Norman keep grown gigantic has been stitched to a half-finished wing of some 19th century gothic revival, all peaks and sharp angles and high narrow windows. A curtain wall with blocky crenellations and square guard towers gives way to the straight lines of a star fortress. Many windows — some modern, others like arrow slits — show lights inside, weak and watery as candles in the sea. The near side of the castle is mostly stone, but the far side is more modern, all concrete and searchlights and lines of barbed wire, watched over by empty gun emplacements and deserted guard towers. The gate on this side of the road is straight out of the medieval era, a drawbridge and a portcullis. Inside the walls is a modern helipad. Rooftops bristle with antennae. A telescope dome is pointed toward the cloud-choked sky.

A Union Jack flies from the highest tower, limp and still. The Cross of St. George has been painted on many of the exterior walls, bright white and bleeding red, faded and struggling in the cold, damp air. Great rookeries of black birds — ravens or crows, can’t tell at this distance — have smeared vast streaks of the towers and walls with bird shit, despite rolls of razorwire and other bird deterrent; they seem to have pulled sections of the wire away and colonised the resulting clear spaces.

At least there’s nobody manning the walls. No, maybe there is. Faint wisp-like outlines stand at attention, suggestions barely visible against the ground fog and grey skies.

Scarlet gives me a moment. “I know,” she says, a sigh in her voice. “Same reaction when I first saw it.”

“What is this?” I find my voice, find it weak. “Scarlet? What is this?”

Scarlet sighs, half-shrugs. “It has two official names. Castle March, as in the Welsh Marches, though it’s not Wales we border out here. The other official name is the Queen Elizabeth the Second Memorial Castle, but nobody ever calls it that. Sometimes it’s just the border, or the dump. We think it used to be Ludgershall Castle. Well, the occultists do, but I don’t see how that makes any sense. Ludgershall Castle was just a few nubs of stone, there’s none of it left now. These woods overran Ludgershall village and Tidworth back in 1985, apparently. Adjusted the landscape and so on. The castle itself came a little later, a ‘joint venture’. Before my time though. Don’t let the outside fool you, the inside can actually be quite pleasant. It’s not all damp and dripping like it looks. There’s rooms, and training facilities. Stuff like that.”

“That doesn’t answer my actual question.”

Scarlet gives me a rueful smile, as if she’s just unveiled some horrible family secret to which I am now party, whether I like it or not.

“This is England’s embassy to the Dream,” she says. “Or their embassy to us, I’ve never quite figured out which way it goes.” She gestures at the far end of the valley. “But don’t go that way, whatever happens. There’s a good reason it’s blocked. It doesn’t lead back to the waking world.”

“I wasn’t planning on it, thank you.” I swallow, can’t help it. “Isn’t this a huge risk, me being here?”

“Not really,” she says. “It’s usually good as deserted, relative to the size of the place. Only a few girls live here these days, and there’s so much space that nobody has to see each other if they don’t want to. And the Dream-Gods, well … never mind about that now. We’re exceedingly unlikely to run into anything that cares. And besides, we shouldn’t have to go much further. Hold on.” Scarlet lets go of my hand at last and takes her mobile phone out of her pocket. She turns it back on, makes a call, holds it to her ear.

I brace, trust we’re not about to be located and tracked down by the phone signal. Scarlet must know something I don’t.

Silence lies thick across the narrow valley, broken by distant bird calls. Crows wheel over the castle. Dark shapes move in the treeline far away. Something makes the leaves behind us crinkle and crackle, but when I turn to look there’s only empty path.

“It’s me,” Scarlet snaps into the phone, almost makes me jump. “You’re still there? Good, okay. Yes, I know, I had to take a longer route, forget it. Now, I need you to come outside, up to the head of the trail, just- what? No, I can’t come in, I’m … no. No! I can’t come inside. You come out here.” A long pause. Scarlet closes her eyes and clenches her teeth. “Fine. Fine. Who else is around? Alright, okay. Where? No, where are they, exactly? Alright, good. Make sure you’re ready. I’ll have this phone on, call me if anything changes. Yes, fine, I know, just do your best! Now stay there.”

Scarlet kills the call, lets out an exasperated sigh, stares at her phone.

“Shouldn’t have to go much further, huh?” I echo.

“Oh, shut up!” Scarlet snaps. “Fucking hell! I didn’t think of this.” She glances down the valley at the castle, chewing on her lower lip.

“Think it’s a trap? How much can you trust this mysterious person on the other end of your phone call? And why aren’t you telling me who it is?”

Scarlet shoots me a tight glare. “It’s not a trap. We’re going to see somebody who can get you home without suffering explosive decompression, or whatever it is that’ll happen to me if I set foot up there.”

“Another magical girl?”

Scarlet hesitates.

“A Dream-God?” I ask.

“Neither,” she huffs. “It’s complicated. Look, this isn’t a trap, it’s just … I don’t want to take you in there, but there’s no other way. Too much risk of being seen. It’ll probably be fine, nobody will care, but … ”

“Cameras?”

“No, there’s no security cameras here. The chances of running into anybody are low, but not zero.”

“What if I transform? Nobody except you, Azure, Dawn, and Willow have seen me transformed, right? Bright too, I guess. You can pass me off as some newbie or something.”

Scarlet’s eyes widen in relief, but then the frown crashes down again. “No, no, absolutely not! Everybody will know who you are soon enough, and if I’m spotted leading you into Castle March, they’ll know I’m a … ”

“A traitor to England?”

A dark laugh. Scarlet sighs. “Too late for that. They’ll all know.” Scarlet draws herself up, takes my prosthetic hand in hers again, faces toward the castle. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You pull that hood up, hide your face as best you can, especially your right eye and your scar. Don’t say a word, don’t speak to anybody. With any luck we won’t bump into a soul, and the few we might meet should be easy to overawe, or just ignore.”

“Who lives here anyway? Why would anybody?”

Scarlet dismisses the question with a toss of her head. “Rejects and defects, don’t concern yourself with them. Just stay silent, move in my shadow, and don’t let go of my hand.”

“Right. And what if this doesn’t work?”

Scarlet raises her chin. Takes a deep breath. “If we are discovered, with no chance of recovery or believable excuses, then that is why you must hold my hand.”

“Ah.”

“If we’re caught, I shall translocate us both. I’ll have to charge out of the castle first, so I may have to carry you. But I’ll take you home myself, consequences be damned, I’ll accept them all. Now pull up that hood, Octavia.”

I hesitate, don’t feel like hiding my scar anymore. Guess there’s no other way. “What am I?”

“What?”

“If we run into anybody in there. What am I supposed to be?”

Scarlet hesitates. “A … civilian occultist? No, that won’t work, that won’t make any sense … ah. Hm. I … I suppose … ”

“Your new squeeze?” I purr. “Not a lie, is it? Though I’m hardly dressed for a hook-up.”

“Tch!” Scarlet tuts. “Fine, yes! That would be easy enough. If we run into anybody, you’re my … new … plaything. Stick close to my side. Don’t speak to anybody else. Pretend we’re going to my quarters.”

“You have ‘quarters’ here?”

“I never visit them. It’s just an empty room with a bed.”

“Ever take a girl back there?”

Scarlet shoots me a sidelong glare, sharp enough to reopen my facial scar. “What do you think, Octavia?”

“First time for everything.” Can’t help a smirk.

Scarlet takes a step forward, yanks on my hand. “That’s not where we’re going. Now come on, and hide your face, don’t let anybody see. Everybody would recognise you, everyone knows who you are. Stick to my side, don’t say a word. And don’t you dare let go, Octavia. Don’t you dare let go.”

“Sure thing, good girl,” I murmur. “My big scary guard dog. As long as you remember who gives the orders.”

Scarlet swallows a whimper. “Shush.”

Downward we tread, passing into the penumbral vale, on the old road to an English castle at the edge of the waking world.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

That went about as well as it could have done. Well done, Octavia, you’ve successfully found a workaround for metaphysical thought-blocks. Now it’s time to go explore a spooky castle. Magical girls don’t tend to get on so well in spooky castles, do they? Look out for ghosts, or scary dominatrix ladies. That sort of thing.

Also I do have to say, it was a lot of fun writing about Octavia and Scarlet getting some time together in the car which wasn’t taken up by yet another crisis. These two are quite amusing when they’re not trying to kill each other or dealing with the pressures of being magical girls. Perhaps, maybe, in some ever-distant future …

Behind the scenes, arc 6 has finally concluded at 9 chapters. So you’ve got another three after this before the start of arc 7. Hooray!

Meanwhile, if you want more Maidens right away, you can always:

Subscribe on Patreon!

Right now patrons have access to three chapters ahead! For the moment I’m going to try to keep it as three; in the future I hope to push this out to more.

Thank you for being here, dear readers! Thank you so much for enjoying my story, being here and reading along. Without all of you, there would be no Maidens, falling or otherwise. Nobody to watch Octavia carrying on extremely unhealthy relationships with other magical girls. Thank you all!

Next chapter, spooky ooky castle time. Just in time for the spookiest month of the year. (I swear I did not plan this to line up with October! Pure coincidence!)