All the Birds in the Sky

She almost turned and ran, but she would only have gotten lost in the Brambles and possibly eaten by something before she could have reached any kind of road. So instead, she made herself walk up the sharp steps to the Greater Building, where they were waiting for her in Formal Hall. She drew her thin black gown, with its yellow trim and ermine collar, tighter around herself against the sudden chill. Why had they demanded her presence when she was finally starting to build a life without magic?

Diantha found an empty seat in Formal Hall, in the back corner, as far as possible from High Table. Portraits of dead witches scowled from the dark walls, and chandeliers shuddered overhead. They were serving some kind of fish course, but the fish and the potatoes were the same mushy consistency. Someone tried to make small talk, but Diantha just kept her head down and pretended she was eating.

Just when Diantha thought the whole ordeal couldn’t get more miserable, she heard an inhuman chatter from the corridor outside, and the group burst in. A dozen of them, in their little suits and starchy dresses, singing madrigals. Fucking madrigals. Was there a more repulsive trend, in the entire universe? Trust hipsters to make even the collapse of civilization unbearably twee. These were the advertising jingles of the Renaissance, written by wife killers and creepy stalkers. Diantha wanted to scream, to drown them out with obscenities, to fling her fishtatoes at them.

Someone slipped an envelope onto the table, instructing Diantha to come to the Upper Common Room for after-dinner sherry.

The UCR was not the nest of luxury Diantha and the other students had always imagined. Just a mahogany box with seven leather armchairs and a crimson-and-jasmine carpet. The ceiling was a wooden grid, as were the walls. Everything tidy and regular, because this was Eltisley Hall.

Another hand reached for the sherry at the same time as Diantha, and she recognized the slim white wrist even before she looked up into the face of Patricia Delfine. Patricia still looked the same, like an eager baby. She hadn’t grown prematurely old the way Diantha had. Patricia smiled, she actually smiled, at Diantha.

The half-full sherry glass slipped from Diantha’s grasp as Patricia poured for her, almost ruining the immaculate carpet. Patricia helped steady Diantha’s hand. She resisted the urge to throw her drink in Patricia’s face. Instead, she looked at her own feet.

“It’s so weird to be back here, after so long,” Patricia said. “Feels like a lifetime since we left, but also like we were just here yesterday. Like a spell that makes us both younger and older. I am glad to see you again.”

No, Patricia really had changed — she moved like a Bodhisattva, or a Jedi, not the rambunctious klutz Diantha remembered. And behind her thin-lipped smile, she had some underground lake of sadness. Maybe sad to see what Diantha had become.

“I know why you’re here,” Diantha said to Patricia. “But I’m not sure why I am.”

“Why am I here?” Patricia took the daintiest sip, leaving a lava-lamp patina on the inside of her glass.

“You’re the prodigal daughter. They bring you back into the fold, and show that they can forgive.”

“You feel like you were exiled, but me, they let back in,” Patricia said. “The truth is, you exiled yourself.”

“You can choose to see it that way if it eases your mind.” Diantha turned away.

Patricia put her hand on Diantha’s forearm — just three fingertips — and it felt like the sharpest static charge. Diantha felt as though she’d tongued a dose of Ecstasy. Warm, at ease. This was not something the old Patricia could have done.

“What are you?” she stammered. Everybody in the room was staring. Patricia’s hand was long removed, but Diantha still wobbled.

“We don’t have much time, things are changing quickly,” Patricia said in Diantha’s ear with quiet clarity. “You’ve turned your guilt into resentment, because that seemed easier to face. You won’t move on until you turn it back into guilt, and then into forgiveness for yourself.”

The rational part of Diantha’s mind was saying this analysis seemed much too facile, too straightforward, but she found herself nodding and sniffling. Now everybody was definitely watching, though nobody else could hear what Patricia said.

“I can help,” Patricia said. “I want to help you, and not just because we need you to work with us. If I help you throw away the guilt that you’ve fashioned into armor that constricts your every movement, what will you do for me in return?”

Diantha came so close to saying she would do whatever Patricia wanted, anything at all. And then it hit her: She was being Trickstered. She’d been this close to becoming a slave to her former best friend. Diantha backed away, almost tipping over a teak side table full of drinks.

“Serious…” Diantha scrambled to remember the arrangement of facial muscles that constituted a normal expression. “Serious … seriously. What happened to you?”