by Katinka Baltazar

Lord Sinawali glided her speeder to a stop on the hillside overlooking the glacial fissure on the planet Hoth guarded and patrolled by a full battalion of the enemy Republic’s finest. Sitting behind her on the speeder, Captain Quinn shivered and tightened his arms around her waist. She felt his chest shudder against her back as he suppressed his sneeze. The hovering speeder was kicking up snow, which the wind picked up and threw in their faces.

Sinawali barely felt the chill. Dark-skinned and slave-born, she had worked hard to escape her past and advance in the literally and figuratively cutthroat Sith society. A human Cyborg and Sith Warrior, she had been conditioned to serve, survive, and kill. Her training at the Sith Academy on Korriban had displaced almost all that was human about her.

Under Darth Baras’ tutelage, Sinawali had learned to transform her emotions into a fiery rage that empowered her in combat. She had forgotten what being human felt like, how to value family and community, and how to love. She had forgotten that she even had a family, a sister who was also gifted in the Force, but had chosen the Jedi path and was now forever out of reach.

Then, two months ago, she had met Quinn, the handsome dark-haired Imperial operative who had been her contact on a mission in Balmorra. After Sinawali had commended Quinn’s initiative in aiding her to successfully defeat the enemy, Darth Baras had offered Quinn any commission he desired. Quinn had chosen to stay with her.

“But why me?” she had asked at her starship’s hangar at the spaceport on Balmorra, where he had knelt to pledge his service to her. “You don’t agree with many of my choices. My instructors at the Academy would have called me weak if they knew what you know about me.”

“I may not agree with all your decisions, My Lord, but I respect them. Surely we can find a way to work together despite our disagreements.” He gazed at her with steady blue eyes set below an aristocratic high brow. He somehow always managed to look rugged and suave at the same time. In the field, he wore a long coat, tall boots, and cybernetic shaded goggles.

“Negotiating, Quinn?” she raised an eyebrow. “Now, you’re sounding like a Jedi. Are you getting soft on me?”

“If I am, I suppose, you will just have to harden me,” he said quite seriously, “My Lord.”

She laughed in a way that felt surprisingly liberating. “I think I will enjoy having you in my service, Captain.”

He had awoken in her feelings she thought the Empire had beaten out of her. Now, she couldn’t imagine going anywhere without him.

She set the speeder on idle and activated its cloaking mechanism. Quinn suppressed another sneeze.

“We’ll be done with this soon enough,” she said.

“Of course, My Lord.” He dismounted the speeder and gave her a hand down.

The speeder’s fans had dispersed much of the snow below their feet, revealing the planet’s hard rocky surface beneath the snow.

So as not to reveal her tension and misgivings about the mission, she resisted the urge to roll her neck and shoulders, and instead adjusted the comm device in her mesh metal helm, which wrapped around her lower face and throat.

“Can you hear me, Captain?” she said softly.

“Loud and clear, My Lord,” his rich baritone whispered in her ear.

She glanced up at him with her cybernetic eye, his Light Side and Dark Side auras equally balanced in her scanner. The sun glinted on his goggles and the chipped metal plating of his blaster pistol.

“Let’s hope we’ll be vastly rewarded after this effort. We could both use some upgrades.” She heard him draw his breath to speak, but she cut him off. “And don’t say your service to me is reward enough. You mean more than that to me, Quinn.”

He was silent, the slight wind ruffling his black bangs and the high collar of his grey long coat. She endured his enigmatic gaze for a moment longer, wondering again how she had earned his approval, how such a sensitive and candid man could have cared for a woman as tough as her steel ablative marauder armor, gauntlets, and boots. She didn’t think she was very feminine. Bronze tattoos marked her forehead and dark warpaint wreathed her lips, and she wore her braided black hair short and away from her face.

Quinn said, “As much as your appraisal delights me, My Lord,” he inclined his head toward the icy valley, “your enemies are waiting.”

“Very well,” she said, unsheathing her dual-wielding lightsabers, which beamed blue in the sunshine over planet Hoth. “Let’s crush some Republic scum.”

The Republic platoons were clustered along the mile-long valley leading to the Jedi’s cavernous glacial hideout, which had emitted a subtle heat signature on the satellite relay Quinn had been monitoring from Sinawali’s starship Fury. Quinn’s discovery had confirmed her Master’s suspicion that the Republic had rallied the locals to drive Imperial forces off the planet. Her mission was to bring down the Republic planetary alliance and identify and assassinate the Jedi leader who had masterminded it.

She dispatched each platoon swiftly and methodically, quietly directing Quinn via her headset or with abbreviated hand signals. After she immobilized the droids, Quinn froze the human troops with carbonite and focused fire on her target. She employed stuns and interrupted casts, and then, with inhuman accelerated force, she cut through her enemies, flesh and machine alike.

She didn’t question why she didn’t have an army of her own to back her up, or why Darth Baras hadn’t simply launched an airstrike to clear the way for her. To question her Master was to ensure an early death, and now that she had Quinn by her side, she was more determined than ever to rise up the ranks, carve her own legacy, and secure some measure of independence.

Weaving her lightsabers, she slashed at the patrolling guards and deflected the fire from their assault cannons. Their weapons were bulky and slow like the wooly mammoths that grazed Hoth’s icy plateaus. The troopers were no match for the acrobatic swiftness of her Ataru combat form. More often than not, their attacks missed, and each time she burned through her enemies, her fury increased.

How could she fear or feel the cold when her rage so consumed her? The snow crunched beneath her acrobatic footwork, her sabers hummed with quiet restrained energy, and Quinn’s pistols blasted with high frequency lasers indiscernible to human sight. In the cavern, the enemy was stronger and more resilient and the droids more massive with heavier artillery. More than once she paused in the tunnels so that Quinn could attend to her injuries.

Finally, they arrived at the underground cave where the source of the heat signature was emanating. Her armor was cracked and splattered with blood, both hers and the enemy, and her fury was nearly spent. She stopped at the entrance to the cave. Quinn stood by her side and reached for her hand. His armor was as damaged and bloody as her own, and his pale cheeks were ruddy from the cold and the fighting.

“My Lord, your hand is trembling. What troubles you? Are you in pain?”

Softly, she spoke, “The Force is strong here. I have felt this power before, but I can’t remember where or when.”

Quinn squeezed her hand. “You will defeat this menace, My Lord. The Jedi’s strength is nothing compared to yours.”

“The Jedi’s power is everything like mine,” she said in the cold mechanical tone of a Sith Lord.

She let go of his hand and stepped forward into the Jedi’s command center. From floor to ceiling, ice sheeted the cave’s walls and glowed from the light of the towering control panel to the side and center of the room. She walked past the crates that presumably contained the arms the Republic was supplying to the locals, and turned on the path to the Jedi’s command post.

The Jedi was kneeling in meditation on a deck elevated four feet off the ground by metal pylons. There was no one else present except Sinawali, Quinn, and the Jedi shrouded in a golden nimbus, her faced concealed by the hood of her robe.

Sinawali knew who the Jedi was now and why Darth Baras had concealed the Jedi Master’s identity from her. It was ever the Dark Lord’s way to test the loyalty and mettle of his apprentices. She shouldn’t have been surprised or felt any pain. She knew this joyless reunion couldn’t have happened any other way. She had chosen her path long ago, as much as it had chosen her.

“On your feet, Jedi,” Lord Sinawali commanded.

“Must it come to violence?” her long-lost sister Balisong asked.

The Jedi’s nimbus receded like mist as Balisong withdrew her hood and stood to face Sinawali. Her sister was tall and slender, statuesque. Identical bronze slave tattoos marked her forehead, and a serene smile seemed engraved on her face. Her dark hair was twisted in a chignon at her nape, and her brown synthweave robe was light and durable to enhance mobility in combat.

“It already has come to violence,” Sinawali replied. “Or perhaps, you turned a blind eye to the massacre trailing in my wake. What I don’t understand is why you Jedi allow such a monstrous thing to happen. You could have saved hundreds, thousands, of lives, perhaps even your own, if you had confronted me directly.”

“Will you kill your own sister, then? Your family?” Balisong challenged.

“Do you think you can sway me? Is that why you’re here? To convert me to your cause?”

“Is it so wrong?” Balisong asked. “Don’t you remember what the Empire did to our family, our homeworld? How it enslaved us? And then, how it destroyed us, our world exploded into millions of debris now scattered across the galaxy?”

Sinawali’s lips twisted into a grimace beneath the helm that was as much a mask as a piece of armor.

“Don’t you remember, Sin?” pleaded Balisong.

Sin. Her childhood nickname. A play on words. Or a self-fulfilling prophecy. When she was a child, she had spoken with a lisp, so that when she pronounced the word “Sith,” it sounded like “sin.”

She used to call her sister Bali, her big sister who sang to her to help her fall asleep, because even then the Dark Side had been drawn to her latent power and whispered seductively to her in her dreams. She rarely dreamed now, because machines didn’t dream, even the human killing ones.

“Even if I remembered, it wouldn’t matter,” Sinawali said. “This has to end. I will spare your life if you agree to withdraw your Republic forces from the planet.”

“I would rather die than be taken prisoner and tortured by your Sith Inquisitors. The Republic will not retreat.” Balisong unleashed her dual-bladed lightsaber that emitted a purple beam on both ends.

Sinawali likewise brought her weapons to bear. “I want only for you and the Republic to leave. I said nothing about imprisoning you.”

“I don’t believe you, little Sin. Would you betray your Master’s orders to kill me, Bali, your sister?”

For a moment, it seemed she couldn’t breathe, her helm tightening around her neck like a noose, her armor constricting, the cybernetics entwining her veins and tendons like barbed wire. She couldn’t think, she could only act. Her sister was stronger in the Force and as determined as she. If either of them had to die in combat, better at their own hands, a true warrior’s death.

So, with the Force that had forged her destiny as a Sith, she leaped across the intervening space between her and her sister and onto the deck where her sister stood, her sabers arcing above her and pitching forward in a battering assault, while she landed lightly on her feet.

As Sinawali expected, Balisong deflected her attack and deftly twirled her lightsaber, clearing space between them. Now was the time for acrobatic footwork and dancing, spinning and weaving their sabers, clashing and blocking and deflecting, their sabers hissing in the frosty air, and the cavern’s icy walls glowing, heating with the Force energy wielded by the combatants.

All at once, Sinawali understood. The heat signature hadn’t originated from a machine, weapon or device in the cavern, but from the Jedi Master herself. Balisong was the weapon, just as Sinawali was a weapon, though their methods differed. Bali had wanted Sinawali to find her. This was all an elaborate ruse. Bali wouldn’t kill her. It was never her intention.

Sinawali lowered her weapons.

“Are you giving up?” Bali said. “Fight me, you fool.”

Bali charged, her saber held high, and then, descending in a slashing angle at Sinawali’s throat.

If Sinawali were a better person, she might have let herself die, but she didn’t. She deflected Bali’s strike with her offhand weapon and sliced through Bali’s side with the saber in her right hand. Her saber burned through Bali’s robe, which collapsed shapelessly at her feet. There was nothing left of Balisong’s corporeal form. All that remained were the robe and the burnt hilt of Balisong’s saber.

Still standing, Sinawali sheathed her weapons. Quinn came to her side and inspected her for any injuries. There were none.

“A clean victory, My Lord.”

“She wanted to die,” Sinawali said. “That was her intention all along. To die a martyr and rally the Republic and the locals against the Empire. She allowed me to massacre her own people in order to paint me as an example of the viciousness of Imperial rule.”

“She was dedicated to her cause, and perhaps, her people were just as willing to make any sacrifice the cause required.”

“Perhaps.” Sinawali looked upon the tattered robe her sister once wore. She presumed Balisong had transcended, or whatever it was the Jedi did when they passed. She didn’t very much care. She was tired, and she wanted nothing more than to leave this dreary frozen planet.

“Shall we return to the ship, My Lord?” Quinn asked.

“You read my mind, Quinn. Are you sure there isn’t a Jedi lurking beneath your armor?”

“Would you like to find out?” he said. He removed his headset and goggles, and stuffed them in his rucksack. He did the same with her metal helm that had felt so confining.

Then, he pulled her into his arms. She leaned into his kiss, to his lips that were no longer cold but warm and yearning.

She didn’t think about all the dead bodies in the tunnels and the valley aboveground, how the stark crimson blood had stained the snow, and the men and women she killed gurgled their last breaths.

She clung to Quinn desperately, as if somehow she could redeem herself by surrendering to his sweetness, his unflinching tender devotion. As if being able to love proved that some humanity yet remained with her.

“Activate the transporter,” he whispered.

“The speeder,” she objected half-heartedly, “we left it on the hill.”

“We can let it rot for all I care.”

“I will have to report to Darth Baras.”

“Later,” he said sternly. “You’ve done enough work for our Master today. You’ve bled, and you’re cold, and you need to remember that you’re alive, a human being.”

He kissed her again.

She decided that she liked it when he was stern and decisive.

When they were transported back to the Fury, Quinn half-carried her to her quarters, where he shed their armor quickly and without much finesse.

“Captain,” Sinawali murmured, “this is quite unlike you.”

“It’s a bit too late to protest, don’t you think? After all, we are both lying naked in your bed, with your legs wrapped around my waist.” He gazed down at her solemnly.

“It’s just that you’re not usually this bold. I had to work so hard to get you to come around, what with all those many gifts I bought you. You gave me quite a chase.”

“But you enjoyed it, didn’t you? Just as you’re enjoying this now.” And he moved with her in such a luxurious way that proved his point immensely.

“Naughty boy,” she admonished, though she pulled him closer and nipped his neck.

“Not naughty, My Lord.”

He rolled onto his back and pulled her onto his lap. He ran his hands over her hips. She shivered.

He said, then, quite seriously, “I am merely indulging in a little bit of sin.”

THE END

by Katinka Baltazar

My original orders were to cut directly south of the Cordilleras and rendezvous with our escort through the valley and back to King Ahmed’s main army encampment. For the next three to four months, the rainy season would herald typhoons, flood the valley, and force the enemy to cease hostilities. My team had been working the mountains for nearly six months. It was time to go home.

Easily enough, we had accomplished our recent mission, which was to free a hostage being held in one of the northern villages under rebel control. We had freed not only the hostage but the entire village, which was now under Letizhan territorial control. We had left the battalion at the village, thereby advancing our frontline.

However, we hadn’t been able to capture or dispatch, much less identify, the Nigromante Mages that reinforced the rebels in this sector. Even our inside agents had seen only their shadows. Our mission was accomplished, but in my mind, without real success.

Though we hadn’t encountered any resistance in the last four hours, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that we were being watched.

So, when we crested a ridge overlooking Duguan Valley, named after the blood grass that rampantly carpeted the Territory, I signaled a halt and huddle.

I said, “The bird’s wingspan is too long for it to be flying that low in these dense woodlands. Cor, scout it, and tell me what in Dove’s name that beast is about.”

A camouflage bandanna concealing her titian hair, Corinna slung her crossbow over her shoulder, and moved away from our huddle. She bridged her hands like a visor to shield her eyes from the sunlight streaking through the tall mountain pines. A totemist, Corinna hadn’t inherited a Letizhan magical ability and was attached to my unit as a special agent.

All the six members in our unit wore dark green camouflage short tunics, trousers, and boots, and snug carabao leather vests. The kits on our belts contained maps, compasses, gauzes and antidotes, in case we were separated from our healer. Singular tubes used for sipping water ran over our shoulders to the waterskins strapped on our backs.

We carried our handheld camouflaged crossbows in shoulder holsters, and concealed them in terrain during close-quarter raids. Except for our Prime Psychic, Rika, we were equipped variously with climbing rope, clay smoke bombs, and tranquilizer darts, but we all employed the Sentry’s longsword and dagger, the espada y daga.

All except Rika, a noncombatant, whose main function was to prevent the Nigromante Mages from raising the dead. Instead, Rika carried folding butterfly knives known as balisong in self-defense, for we preferred to travel as lightly in the field as possible. She had also received mandatory training in the martial art, and being a healer, well knew the vital points that could be struck to instantly incapacitate or kill a man.

Corinna lowered her hands to her hips, but she didn’t take her slanted gray eyes off the black bird that had drifted farther away.

“It’s circling back,” Sebring said.

I gave him a pointed look.

For a Sentry, he was stocky, rather than lean, but he was as quick and sure on his feet as he should be. Square-jawed and clean-shaven, he rarely spoke except to state the obvious.

He shrugged. “Sorry, Commander, but the Prima can’t see from here.”

“I can speak for myself, Lieutenant,” Prima Rika instantly reprimanded. Dusky, slight of height, and more slender than I considered healthy, the former Prinsesa of Bukwana province wore her short dark hair tucked over her ears to forget where she had come from.

Sebring shifted uncomfortably on the balls of his feet. I allowed my team to speak their mind so long as they didn’t disrupt our unity or morale or disobey my command, but Rika wasn’t as lenient.

I touched her cautiously on the small of her back. Though she tensed, she didn’t flinch. She relented and turned her amber eyes on me.

“I don’t like this, Julien. You’re chasing ghosts, and you know as well as I, we shouldn’t keep them alive.”

Though I was surprised she had called me by name, not because I was her commanding officer, but because she was normally aloof toward me, I merely said, “Have you a premonition, Prima?”

She hesitated.

I had asked more out of curiosity than a need to know. Like Corinna and Sebring, I was a mestizo, and had been called unkindly a mongrel in my childhood, before I had learned to fight back. I considered myself as full-blooded a Letizhan as any, but I wasn’t particularly superstitious.

Impatient now with Rika’s silence, I resisted the urge to rake my fingers through my hair. For one thing, I had tied on a bandanna, since my hair was more golden than brown, wavy and shaggy more out of vanity than practicality, though not having a military haircut allowed me to blend in as a civilian more easily.

In any case, I couldn’t allow Rika’s worries to cloud my judgment. I had suspicions of my own; I had already decided to follow the lead, and was only awaiting Corinna’s confirmation.

Still, I had to ask. “Come, Prima, out with it. Is there something I should know?”

“I don’t know any more than you,” Rika said flatly. “This could be a trap, loosing the bird to entice us. It’s too obvious. It wants to be seen.”

“Even if it is a trap, we have to know.”

“I know,” she snapped. “I just don’t like it.”

Lieutenants Marco and Emeril, who were tasked with providing fire cover and shielding the Prima during combat, shifted to catch my eye. The two were as brothers but varied in provincial dialects and customs. The compact Emeril wore his dark hair in a queue, while the lanky Marco wore his unfettered to his shoulders.

Seeing as the team was getting restless and Corinna was still occupied with whatever a totemist did to commune with her animal spirits, I gave the team leave to relieve themselves and stretch or otherwise relax.

Since I had taken point and preloaded my crossbow, I carefully slung it on my shoulder. I tilted my head back and exhaled mightily into the humid sullen air. Mosquitoes scattered overhead before quickly reforming into a small swarm. Somewhere in the distance, a gibbon hooted, while in the nearby pines, small animals scrabbled the prickly needle leafs.

“The night after we infiltrated the village,” Rika began, “I had a dream.” She hadn’t left my side but gazed at me with those unnerving, unblinking, amber eyes of hers.

“Go on,” I said curtly. I didn’t like whatever was going on with her, but it was better to know now, and resolve it, than have it distract us when we were in the midst of battle.

“I dreamed of a puma embattled with a crow. Its tawny fur was mangled, its eyes as blue as the Dove’s were gouged out, and blood streaked its muzzle and paws.”

It was a Sentry’s worst nightmare to have his eyes disabled, for without his Sight, his combat magic was useless. Rika’s intention was kind, but I still didn’t like it.

Though I bore no lineage to the Amber Puma Throne in Rosales, I was often called the Amber Puma by the Sentry, who deemed my features and speed in combat catlike. I neither encouraged nor discouraged the nickname, which I preferred far more than mongrel.

In a floundering war, it bolstered morale for our people to have their heroes. Yet, I didn’t want Rika to see me for anything other than I was. It was difficult enough to recruit and retain Prime Psychics for the Service; unlike the Sentry, they were always women descended directly from Letizhan nobility.

If Rika’s House hadn’t renounced her, she would have served as a Diwata, a Dove’s Priestess; she had been denied Temple initiation after it was discovered she had been compromised. In respect of her former noble rank, my office had redacted the incident from her file.

“In your dream, did the puma live?” I asked her.

“I didn’t see the end of it,” she said.

Whether she meant the dream or the puma, I didn’t ask.

“I have no intention of dying, Prima. At least, not today. In any case, I grew up an alley cat, a streetwise Rosalito, far from royalty.”

“I had heard you were uncouth in your youth.”

“Only in my youth?” I raised an eyebrow. “I suggest you put your anxieties aside. This is not the time or place for them. If you’d like, I can reassure you after we are done here.”

There was no mistaking my suggestion. She flushed and looked away, her chin harsh in profile.

She hadn’t deserved it. I trusted her with my life, as I did all my team members, but I didn’t know if I could give her what she needed.

Finally, Corinna approached.

“It’s not a bird,” she said.

That much was obvious. There was more, else it wouldn’t have taken Corinna so long to scout. “What is it then?”

“Magical.”

“A Mage?” Sebring said dubiously.

He and the lieutenants regrouped with Corinna in our huddle.

“Shape-shifted,” Corinna replied.

Emeril gave a low whistle.

This was the closest our team had gotten to a Mage, and now, we had not only seen one firsthand, but verified that the Nigromante could take on bird form.

“What was it doing?” I asked to confirm.

“What it seemed,” Corinna said. “Watching and reporting back.”

“How many are there?”

“More than one,” Sebring grumbled.

I let it go. It would waste time and effort to reprove him, and I was already considering our next course of action.

Corinna elaborated, “My spirit animal couldn’t tell. The Mage thought like a bird. It was focused on its prey.”

“Were you able to get a visual from the shapeshifter?” I asked.

“North at the foot of the Caldera. That’s all my spirit animal could see. The environment was blurred.”

“Bloody hell,” Marco said sourly. “That’s behind their lines, and open terrain.”

Emeril clamped a hand on Marco’s shoulder. “Lucky for us, we won’t be crossing it. There’s a gully on the Caldera’s southern approach where we can dig in with the Prima.”

I glanced once more at the sky. My blood rushed with adrenaline. Hunting Mages was no mean feat. My father had come close to killing one; it had finished him first.

I measured my breaths, one, two, and the blood rush subsided.

“The terrain will be smoky, gray and ashen, natural cover,” I said. “We’ll have the advantage with our Sight, but if it’s a migrant flock, then they may have nested.”

We had never come across a nest either.

I could tell the men were equally excited because their eyes had sharpened and their body language signaled they were even more alert.

As for the women, their responses varied. Corinna was undaunted, a mercenary, a professional, only doing her job. Rika was tense, a healer, doing her job, despite her instinct to preserve life not kill.

I continued, “With the trees sparse near the Caldera, the Mages may have spread out. We’ll assess our options when we get there. We’ll signal the Rangers to rendezvous with us as we move east, but first, we need to take care of this bird. The Mages know we’re approaching, they’re waiting for us, but they don’t need to know we’ll have reinforcements.”

As I unslung my crossbow, the team stepped out of the huddle. I moved to a spot I had noted earlier, where the ground was slightly raised, I could see through the treetops, and I had at least a five yard range all around me. The team took flanking positions, but didn’t yet draw their weapons.

We kept our eyes on the bird. It noted our movements, but didn’t retreat. If anything, it veered closer. All the better. My immediate goal was to ground it. I had already sighted it and predicted its path. But if it dived, I could meet it straight on. It would likely target Rika first.

“Keep it in my line of sight,” I told her.

Testing the bird’s field of vision, she moved behind me. I was a head taller than Rika, so the bird swung overhead and veered again. Like Corinna had said, in bird form, the Mage wasn’t very smart, but singularly focused under specified orders.

When I motioned Rika to the side, the bird followed, and then it hovered, with great sweeps, preparing to attack.

Nearly all was hush in the clearing, and because my team was conditioned, I couldn’t hear their breathing either. The mosquitoes had fled, and the forest animals had gone still, as if they had sensed the battle about to ensue.

All was hush but the flap of the bird’s wings, which loomed preternaturally larger as it neared, the air circulating in giant drafts. The bird would dive fast; I would have to draw faster.

Since we hadn’t encountered a bird in combat before, I hadn’t developed thorough protocols on how to disable one. I would have to depend on my instincts, prior speculation, and limited practice for now.

“On my draw,” I said quietly.

I sighted along the stock.

I felt the delicate balance that I always experienced on the brink of combat. My muscles tensed, sinewy and bunched, poised to spring; my breathing and senses vigilant but relaxed.

I knew from experience that my team was waiting for a sign of movement, not in my body, but in my eyes; gauging how my eyes operated, the lenses retracting, and now, how they focused solely and intently on the descending bird, its glistening black plumes become vast and monstrous, shadowing the clearing, and my eyes piercing blue, as I phased, my vision gray and ghostly, images in stark silhouettes, suspended, as I engaged the enemy, in one complete motion, aimed, drew, and fired.

And the bird shrieking defiantly, folding its wings, diving, and then silenced, as the iron bolt struck. Yet, it didn’t spiral uncontrollably. Instead, its eyes glowed, like sunlight reflected on a mirror, likely blinding, if we weren’t trained.

Talons emerged from beneath its wings like human arms, but scaly and serpentine, and though its wings remained sheathed, its shadow was all encompassing.

Rika fanned open her balisong, her footwork triangular, continually moving, her stance open, arms raised to each side.

Now, there was no more speaking, for the beast had penetrated the canopy, too close for crossbows, the iron bolt still embedded in its throat, and swerving laterally as Rika moved again, further exposing its side.

I let go my crossbow and unsheathed my sword and dagger. The bird plummeted with even more rapidity, though it did not stray from its target, who had moved into position so the bird would launch over and behind me, as Rika and I had practiced.

Though the bird’s flight was swift, it appeared to stutter in my Sentry Sight, as frame by frame I sprinted, ghostly in real time, but deliberate and calculated in phase, my dagger near my hip, and my espada, silver steel and sharp and glinting, the brightest light in my phased vision, slanted, poised above my shoulder.

Zoning outside the bird’s taloned arms, I leaped, slashing my espada high and right at the bird’s exposed neck, and unintentionally, dislodging the iron bolt. The bird was heavier than I’d calculated and dropped much faster.

I had mistimed, reached early, and now, I ducked, pure muscle memory fanning my dagger to block the bird’s outstretched talons with the flat of my blade, and simultaneously, slicing its wrists.

Though its blood splashed hot and sticky on my face, its thick bill grazing my cheek, its breath heavy and scorching, it still didn’t quit its attack.

Now, it could wriggle its throat, and so, it did, shrieking again, and blasting its wings to check its descent. The daggers Sebring and Corinna launched at it connected but rebounded. It modified its course.

Its black hackles rising, balefully, it eyed me, and raucously, deafeningly, crowed.

I knew behind me Rika would have rolled to a crouch and zoned to the side; Marco and Emeril had moved into position to finish off the bird when it came down.

All this I experienced in excruciating suspended animation, visually and physically, my tendons strained, ligature taut, the pressure on my joints compacting. My body couldn’t take the prolonged tension of being in phase much longer. Sentry magic wasn’t intended for extended battles, heavy weapons and armor, but for precision and accelerated force.

It was time to act. I knew the bird’s strength, speed, and weight, and the density of its leathery feathers.

It swept its wings back, gathering force. Sheathing its wings, it plummeted.

Low, I crouched. Again, I could feel its breath gusting on my face, blowing off my bandanna, but this time, I rolled to the ground and twisted, faster than humanly possible, though painfully arrested in phased Sentry combat, and faced the bird’s black frilly underbelly.

Swiftly, forcefully, bracing my sword, I thrust, low into the bird’s side, and swept my espada upward and diagonally, through the bird’s abdomen and chest. Its entrails spilled over, steaming, bloody, and putrid.

Grimacing, I shook my hair, and made a mental note not to recommend that particular move for our training protocols.

The bird zipped and spiraled, and then, thudded to the ground and skidded to a halt, with one last flutter of its wings, against the buttressed roots of a mountain pine.

Marco and Emeril prodded it with their swords to make sure it was dead, but Rika had already knelt, her back to me, arms bent, slightly raised, hands palms up.

I motioned the lieutenants to back away.

I had disengaged from my phased combat stance, though I hadn’t disengaged my Sentry vision, so I could observe Rika’s work. I rarely had the opportunity to observe her when I was in combat, since we kept her at long range as much as possible.

I assigned Corinna to stand guard. She unslung her crossbow, and held it ready as she walked the perimeter.

Solid and human and physical again, I removed a felt cloth from my rucksack, and wiped clean the edges of my blades, the mahogany hilts still warm from combat, and sheathed them. I picked up the iron bolt and wiped it clean as well, stuck it in my quiver, and slung my crossbow on my shoulder. I retrieved my bandanna, though I didn’t bother to tie it over my head.

I sucked some water from my tube and spat it out on a rag, and cleaned my face, neck, and hands. I had a clean spare uniform in my rucksack, but I would wait until we reached one of the Bukwana River tributaries to wash and change, for only the physical battle was done.

I approached the bird from the side, though not close enough to touch it.

It lay on the roots of the pine tree, one wing stiff against the tree trunk and one outspread on the ground. Its talons were upraised, like the paws of a dog rolled onto its back in surrender. Its throat and belly were gutted, its thick bill lying to the side, its large rounded bird’s eyes facing me, open and unnaturally milk white, and from its open wounds, its dark spirit overflowing, and Rika’s magic uplifting it.

She knelt with the bird’s head on her lap, but where her figure would have appeared as a gray silhouette in my Sight, I saw a column of white light superimposed, her hair long and glowing, maidenlike, and I knew I was seeing her in her Spirit form. I shifted deeper into my Sentry vision, so I could shade the contours and mute the light.

The lieutenants had looked away from whatever they had seen on her face, and I knew they had never seen her in this way before either.

“Find something to do,” I crisply instructed, because there wasn’t anything they could do at this point, and they didn’t need to see this.

This was the real battle, the real test, for the Mage’s spirit fought Rika’s ministrations, and sought to remain earthbound. Most spirits fled the unfurling Nigromante specters that would deny them passage to the Afterlife, but there were no specters chasing this spirit.

For this spirit had emerged a specter. Toward Rika it swirled, birthing wings from its gauzy shapeless form, darkening and enwrapping her. She turned her hands, no longer uplifting, but outward and away. She backed against the tree trunk, using it for support, the dead bird’s head lolling to the ground.

The specter itself had grown a head now, and beak, and claws. It battered at Rika’s magic with its wings, pecking holes into the column of light, chipping away.

The column was diminishing, so I could see Rika’s profile. She hadn’t turned her face, but closed her eyes, and her wiry lips were pressed and chapped and bleeding. Her cheekbones, which had always been strong, otherworldly, instead, appeared gaunt, and from the base of her throat to her forehead, her skin was paling.

The specter was scratching her uniform with its claws, tearing at the leather, stripping the cloth and her flesh.

The white of her collarbone was showing, her breath had become shallow but quick, and when she swayed against the tree and nearly slumped, her hands held against her chest, no longer pushing away, no longer fighting, but defensive, I dropped my crossbow to the ground and knelt by her side.

There was nothing I could do. I could not fight for her. I did not have her magic. Hers was spirit, mine was physical. I could not protect her from a ghost. I knew I was only seeing the visual representation, enhanced by my Sight, of the battle she was waging. In reality, her body was intact. The war she fought was within.

But she seemed to have a connection with me. Earlier, she had said my name, confessed she had dreamed of me, expressed concern. There must be some way I could support her, and yet, my hands, so steady in combat, trembled when I reached for her.

So easily and decisively I could kill.

Yet, this act of holding a woman against my chest, her heart palpitating through her back, my arms entwining her shivering slim frame, my hands enfolding her clammy hands, my body warming hers, this simple act of caring, one body giving to another, reminding her that she was alive and human and woman, not spirit or specter or bird-beast, this act, this magic was more challenging and terrifying to me than the violence I had committed to the enemy not a moment ago.

I breathed in the way I was trained, slow and deep and measured, and I leaned my head against hers, and I murmured in her ear, and I counted my breaths, until they became her breaths, and she was breathing in time with the rise and fall of my chest at her back.

I had closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see the specter attacking her, and when I felt her hands warm, responding, her fingers squeezing mine, I moved my hands to her forearms, and then, to her elbows, and under her arms, until she was raising them again. Her brown skin smooth, unblemished, did not give beneath my rough hands.

I moved my hands to her waist, as she arched against me, her magic resilient again, her head thrown back on my shoulder, the lavender fragrance of her hair in my nostrils.

Overcome with the brisk sensation of her enraptured body against mine, I pressed my lips to her corded strained throat, as exposed as the bird’s neck had been to my blade’s sharp edge, but to this precious woman’s neck I pressed my lips with a tenderness as sleek as the fanning of our blades.

She was perspiring now, as if she were fevered, but she didn’t relent, and even though my eyes were closed, I could visualize with predictive Sentry Sight the tide of her primal magic, sweeping up the specter, transforming it, and in a column of white light, funneling it to the Heavens.

There was the roaring in my ears, and the swift euphoric release of tension in all my limbs, and her magic washing over us as fresh and clarifying as the Bukwana River.

When it was over and I could see again, all that remained of the bird were ashes.

She was holding her face in her hands and weeping silently.

I was still kneeling behind her, and holding her against my chest. This was the harmony we felt after victory.

But it wouldn’t last. We both knew how nearly we had lost.

“It’s not enough,” she wept. “My magic isn’t strong enough. I couldn’t stop it.”

And I knew she wasn’t talking about the Spirit War and the rebellion and the dark spirits she fought to save.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “Nothing justifies what was done to you.”

She rested her head against my shoulder. I held her for a little while longer, and with a steady hand, smoothed out the tangles in her hair.

When she ceased crying, she turned into my arms to face me.

She said my name, Julien, in such a way that all the consonants and syllables were soft and rounded and leading into each other, like the phrasing of a birdsong.

And I felt whole and safe and accepted.

And then, I saw unmistakably that her eyes were bloodshot and her uniform top was tattered and her collarbone still showed through her skin. The specter had pierced her flesh after all.

“Damn it, Rika. Heal yourself.”

Her eyes dimmed, and she collapsed in my arms, as if all the spirit had been sucked from her, and now, she was all bones and frail skin.

Yet, her pulse was strong. She had collapsed from exhaustion. Her healing magic coursed through her even as she slept.

I dressed Rika’s wound, which wasn’t as bad as it appeared, for the blood had already dried and her flesh was closing over. I removed her leather vest, and retrieved a clean tunic from her rucksack, and clothed her in the clean tunic.

There was no way around it. I would have to carry her now.

I raised my head to see what the team was doing. Corinna was still walking the perimeter. Sebring had taken to inspecting the ashes. Marco and Emeril were perusing a map of the area.

I tossed my crossbow to Sebring, and yet again, fired off revised orders.

“We’re done here. We’re going home. The Mages have changed strategy. They’re targeting the Primes directly now. Without the Primes, we are as good as dead.”

I would have to use my time off to figure out how to keep our Primes alive.

“Emeril, you seem most familiar with the area. You and Marco get to the Caldera and start the surveillance. They sacrificed one of their own. I need to know how long it takes for them to regroup, how their magic works, and if they’re nesting, how long before they leave their nests, and everything else they’re about. When we reach base, I’ll send a team to relieve you. Corinna, you have rearguard. Sebring, take point, signal the Rangers, and have them bring us fresh horses. We’ve done enough bloody walking in these mountains.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied promptly in turn.

I checked my equipment, made sure the straps were snug, all was in order and would hold.

The sun was beginning to set now, and my vision was normal, not magical, but in full color, so I could see the lavender and gold and amber of the sunset blurring among the prickly leafs and over the treetops and the clearing now veiled in the natural gloom of the ending day.

I hoisted Rika up and against my chest.

I didn’t know why I’d been so afraid. She was featherlight and breathing softly but surely.

Soon, she would awaken and recover.

With the footsteps of a trained soldier, clearing obstacles with my boots, softly to avoid detection, I cradled her through the evergreens and down the steep mountainside.

THE END

*This was written before PANTHER and contains earlier material and ideas that I was considering for the novel.

by Katinka Baltazar

It was the dry hot season in Letizha. So, after reviewing the final stage of the evacuation plan with King Ahmed and the other Joint Command officers, and setting the plan into motion, I returned to my quarters, stripped out of my fatigues, and bathed. Though I’d grown a stubble in the three weeks we’d been in meetings, I didn’t bother to shave; the Sentry wore our hair longer than standard military regulations. I dressed in a white sleeveless sando and a pair of loose trousers and sandals, because the street clothes reminded me of my childhood in Rosales and I didn’t know when I would see the city of my birth again.

A smattering of sunlight sprinkled the darkening sky as I hiked the narrow path from Fort Pasig through the small jungle to the stadium. Braziers had been lit along the inner walls of the open-roofed complex for the few Service men and women still training. The obstacle and close-quarters simulation courses had been closed a year ago, when I’d begun relocating the forces under my command, so only the grassy midsection of the field was being used. Some of the Service personnel were practicing their archery skills; others were dueling or grappling on mats.

Beneath the broadleaf canopy, from the hilltop, I could look upon the valley and over the stadium and open field without employing the enhanced Sight genetically engineered by our ancestors three hundred years ago to combat the Rakhiiri Mages. At that time, the Sentry were able to communicate telepathically with Prime Psychics. Few in the Service retained the skill, though we could sense to varying degree our teammates’ emotions. Our teams were carefully assembled to ensure balance, compatibility, and the highest efficiency.

But the Mages were still winning the war. Over the past three hundred years, they had destroyed our technologies, seized much of our lands, and subjugated our peoples. Now, we were forced into exile. We had to find a way to adapt, survive, and change the way we did battle. Or we would go extinct.

I engaged my Sentry Sight, which tunneled and blurred in a prismatic array of colors, and then, arrested on the woman I sought. I could hear small animals rustling the undergrowth and monkeys scrabbling the trees and the steady thwacking of crossbow bolts and machetes and empty hands connecting with their targets.

Distinctly, I observed Rika’s slender fit frame poised in weaving double stick fighting, one of the native martial art forms outlawed by our Rakhiiri conquerors. She wasn’t very tall, but she was agile, and her grip was assured. From her brow, bare arms and shoulders to her lightly-muscled midriff exposed by her cutoff shirt, her tan skin was flush with heat and sweat-sheened. She was also wearing sandals and loose trousers.

Breathing evenly, she pivoted and repeated the drill. She started with her main hand, striking high and right at the foam-padded practice dummy, her secondary stick tucked under her arm, and then opened both arms, striking high and left, and closed her arms, striking with her offhand. She repeated the form, now striking low, retracting and jabbing, opening and closing in a weaving continuous motion, alternating striking points and sticks.

And I observed her abbreviated motion, as she lowered her weapons and cocked her head, her blunt black hair swaying along her jawline. Scanning those brown eyes, with their golden flecks, so familiar and similar to mine, and her face scarred on her right side with small fading claw marks, I didn’t want to think just then about the things I couldn’t have prevented and the things I might not be able to change.

I jogged down the hillside and through the stadium doors. I sprinted across the open field, and growling, tackled her to the ground. She gasped for breath, and then, threw her head back and laughed. Stretching, she spread her arms wide and above her head, and opened her hands so that her nearly weightless rattan fighting sticks rolled onto the grass.

I rested my weight on my elbows, twined my fingers in hers, and pinned her beneath my hard body.

“Julien, not here,” she murmured, but she had closed her eyes and turned her head, her face now flush from another kind of heat.

I chuckled. She had given me an opening, and so I took it, nuzzling her neck where it curved to her shoulder.

“You smell nice,” I said. She did, faintly of lavender, and the natural body musk that was hers.

“Liar. I smell like sweat.”

“That goes without saying.”

She wrinkled her nose.

It was a very cute nose, so I kissed it.

“You like the smell of sweat?”

“Only on you.”

I licked her wiry lips and tasted the salty moisture on her upper lip and along her jawline and down to the base of her throat. She pressed close to me and slipped her fingers out of my hands, so she could curl her fingers in my hair.

“You looked like a panther on the hill,” she said, “stalking me with your piercing eyes and the sunset glinting in your shaggy hair.”

I growled menacingly.

Laughing again, she wrapped her arms around my neck.

“Do you like it when I growl?” I said. “If that’s all I need to do to arouse you, it would save us much time. We could go straight to the good parts.”

She punched me in the arm.

“What was that? I thought I felt a fly alight on my arm, but it’s gone now.”

But she didn’t laugh this time, and I knew she was feeling insecure again. Even though it had been nearly fifteen years since she had escaped from a Rakhiiri Warlord, even though she knew she was safe with me, sometimes when we were in bed, she still cried.

I kissed her again, softly, until she responded, trembling slightly like a skittish bird.

“Rika, there’s nothing wrong with you. If we were alone, I would take you, here, under the open sky and the full moon, and I would sculpt your body as if you were a goddess.”

I molded her waist with my hand to show her how I would.

“You treat me well, always,” she said. “I make you work too hard. I’m sorry.”

“Damn it, Rika. Stop it.”

It was the same argument we’d been having for the past five years. I rolled onto my back. I was beginning to feel the long hours of the day and I didn’t want to crush her. Though I wasn’t brawny by any means, I was sinewy and tall and at least eighty pounds heavier. She rolled with me and rested her head on my shoulder. I took her hand and set it on my chest and covered her hand with mine.

“I’m glad you made it back safely.”

“The journey wasn’t so safe. We encountered a raiding party on the road from Bukwana. Marco injured his arm.”

“You healed it?” I absently stroked the back of her hand with my thumb. I was looking at the sky and the gloomy sunset and the emerging moon, pale and cratered and rounded. The sounds of clashing weapons and scuffling feet, and the combatants’ grunts and inhalations were less frequent now. The stadium had begun to empty.

“It wasn’t a very serious wound.”

“That’s good. We need him.”

“Then, you’ve decided?” she asked.

“Yes.” I looked back at her. “We’re accepting the League’s offer. They’ll allow us a base for our operations and safehouses in various locations. Ahmed and his family will be relocating to one of them tomorrow.”

“So soon?”

“The Army will maintain our bases in the mountains. I’m deploying about a thousand Sentry units and half as many Primes with them.”

“Guerrilla warfare?” she frowned.

“We have no choice.”

“And the other thousand?”

“Scattering and regrouping when the time is right. We’ll use the League’s network to destroy Rakhiiri operations abroad and hunt down the Mages until we get to Crow himself.”

“And what do they want in return?”

I braced myself. “They want us to work for them.”

“So, that’s what we are now? Mercenaries?”

“It’s not such a bad job. Corinna has been of great service to our team.”

She sat up, and then, she stood, and still dissatisfied, she picked up one of her fighting sticks and started batting the practice dummy.

I stood and went to her and put my hands on her shoulders and pulled her back against my chest.

“It’ll be alright. I’ll find a way.”

“You take too much upon yourself.”

“Even so, it might not be enough.”

There were no more battle sounds on the field now. All the combatants’ weapons and equipment had been put away, and all the braziers in the stadium had been snuffed out, except the one on the wall nearest us. She released the fighting stick that had been a symbol of our nation’s valor for centuries and turned in my arms to face me.

“Send them away,” she whispered.

I turned my head, and with a brief signal, dismissed the lieutenants guarding the stadium doors.

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me with all her heartache on her lips and fingertips.

That night, I made love to a goddess, and each time she cried my name, she made me feel like a man again.

Naked beneath the star-splashed sky, I lay with my head on her shoulder, while she stroked my hair and the dark stubble on my chin and hummed a Letizhan lullaby.

If I weren’t so tired, I might have asked her to sing to me of the courtship of wily monkey and spurned monkey. I might have asked her to tell me why the carabao has black horns and how the Dove turned greedy dolphin into a shark, and perhaps, I would have asked her to tell me the story again of the founding of our nation, of Romar, the first Sentry Commander, whose black hair glinted golden like a panther’s and mine.

Instead, I rested, the dry hot air of the country on my back and shoulders, and my woman’s proud body by my side.

THE END

i posted some pics on flickr awhile back. sometimes, i forget they’re online.

It’s freaking brilliant. It’s a fantasy. You know, like sword and sorcery.

What kind of power does your hero have?

She talks to cats. I grin.

She talks to cats.

His unenthusiastic monosyllabic response makes me feel stupid. Maybe my idea isn’t so brilliant after all. My disappointment must have shown on my face, because he follows up with a smile.

And, of course, your hero is a beautiful, independent, strong, smart Filipina.

That goes without saying, I reply.

We laugh. I feel brilliant again.

I elaborate, Her cats are all named after my hunter’s cats in WoW.

I thought you had quit that game.

I rejoined my old guild, too. I missed my friends.

He frowns. And how are you getting along with your co-leader?

I’m not co-leading with him anymore, so I don’t have to talk to him as much. I’m keeping up my boundaries. I’m not going to play unless I want to.

Well, it is voluntary, he says.

It’s supposed to be, but sometimes, playing WoW feels like a job.

WoW is what my therapist and I talk about because I don’t want to talk about the hard stuff.

At the end of therapy, he tells me that I’ve been delightful, in a lively mood.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you finished your novel?

It would be awesome, I say.

“Your name isn’t on the list,” the grim-faced bouncer said, drawing his fat stubby finger on the tablet as he pretended to search the guest list.

“Check again,” I said silkily. The prismatic curved horns on my temples were starting to itch. I was going to kill Fatex if he’d neglected to fill out the requisition form again. Not only wouldn’t I get into the Firehouse, but I’d have to put the drinks on my tab. The cocktails in this particular shitty nightclub cost fifty dinero apiece. I never carried more than three hundred when I was working.

“Look, hunter, you’re gonna have to find another dive to give tail.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“No pun intended,” he added.

I leaned over the red rope cordoning the line, and grabbed the red-bearded dwarf by the collar of his purple vinyl jacket.

“For a tawdry caract of so little intelligence, you somehow managed to insult my sexual proclivity and race in the same word and my occupation in the same sentence.” I breathed into his face, trying not to inhale the dwarf’s nauseating tobacco fume. His cheeks flushed, and sweat beaded on his forehead. I didn’t lay down the heat. “My tail is twitchy, and the more I breathe on you, the thirstier I get. Convince me you’d made a mistake.”

He clutched the Cerulean blue hand that was gripping his collar. He yowled when his fingers sizzled.

“You are as stupid as I thought. Everyone knows it’s usually fatal to touch a Cerulean, especially a female.”

He was gasping for breath, even though I’d been careful not to touch his skin.

“So, are you going to convince me, or what? Is my name on the list?” I released him.

“Of course, Authenticator Batsheba, your name is on the list.”

“Show me.”

“Right here.” He pointed to the entry on the tablet.

Good. Now that my identity was on record, I could charge my drinks to the Agency.

The bouncer unlatched the rope. I took a deliberate step forward on my platform heels.

“One more thing,” I drawled.

“Yes, Authenticator?” the dwarf quavered.

“Who instructed you to keep me out?”

“Who?” Still quavering.

“Who told you to lie to me?” I stared him down, which didn’t take much effort considering he was a dwarf.

“The Author.”

“I know that,” I said impatiently. “Which one?”

“Shaman Andramedy.”

“Excellent.” And just to be nice, I gave him a ten dinero tip. I wouldn’t need to spend money tonight, anyway.

I crossed the red carpet into the foyer of the nightclub, where a pair of security guards menacingly approached me, their brawny chests bulging, thumbs latched on their belts, and steel-toed boots gleaming. Humans. I grimaced.

“I have a better chance of getting Johnny Depp than you have of getting Dr Novak,” Clancy says their first night together.

“I don’t want to get Dr Novak,” Noreen adamantly replies.

“As least, Johnny wouldn’t get in trouble if I got with him. Novak could lose his license if he slept with you.”

“I don’t want to sleep with him.”

“Yes, you do. Who wouldn’t want to? He’s cute.”

Noreen giggles like a little girl. “Yeah, he is.”

On the other side of the room, Clancy rolls her eyes. Noreen shuts hers tight and pulls up the covers to her chin.

“Well, Johnny would get in trouble if his wife found out. Everyone would hate you for breaking up their marriage.”

“I don’t care what people think.”

“I do. I’m a people pleaser.”

“Fuck that psycho babble. I hate being labeled. My psychiatrist diagnosed me as borderline. Now he wants to put me in some Zen meditation therapy group. He said I need to learn how to control my emotions. Fuck you, I said. I stormed out of his office, went back to my apartment, drank all the rest of my vodka, and stabbed my arm with
a kitchen knife.”

“I noticed that.”

Clancy’s left arm is heavily bandaged. The gauze wraps are rusty red in the spots where blood has seeped through.

A nurse carrying a clipboard peeks into their room. He has checked on them every fifteen minutes during his shift. The women are on Level 1 lockdown for suicidal ideation and don’t have patio privileges. Noreen started her seventy-two hour hold two nights ago.

“You’re lucky you’ve got Novak,” Clancy says. “I have Bradley again.Last time I had him, he put me in Room 208 because I pulled off the curtain around my bed. I wrapped it around my neck. He accused me of trying to kill myself. I just wanted to feel something. If I wanted to kill myself, I told him, I could have used my bed sheets. He said I was doing it to cause drama, to get some attention. I can’t fake the way I feel, you moron, I screamed at him. So they put me in isolation with a pillow and a blanket and a mattress on the floor, and watched me on the monitor in the nursing station.”

“At least they didn’t put you in restraints.”

“I heard they don’t use restraints here anymore. This is one of the best teaching hospitals in the country. They actually want to help you here. This place is like a five-star hotel compared to the other psych wards I’ve been locked up in. This is the first place I take myself if I’m feeling suicidal. If they don’t have any beds here, they bus me out. One time, I ended up at County.”

Through pale blue eyes, Clancy stares at the ceiling. Her head, crowned with spiky pink hair, rests on the underside of her right forearm, while her left arm lies woodenly by her side.

“What’s County like?” Noreen breaks the silence.

“It’s a zoo, and when you leave, you feel worse than when you came in.”

“God, I hope I never end up there.”

“You won’t. Look at you, you even brought your own blanket from home. I could give a shit about myself.”

Giggling, Noreen uncurls her knees and flops on her back. Her wavy black hair fans out on the pillow.

“You know what we should do, we should order some pizza, you shouldn’t have drank all that vodka, you selfish bitch, you should have saved some for the party. Oh my God, I can’t stop laughing. I swear to God, they spiked my pills, they spiked my pills, oh shit, that’s like fucking ironic. How can you fucking spike pills that are already spiked? Pills spike you out. They’re supposed to. That’s what they’re made for. You pop one and all the world goes psychedelic and shit. You move in slow motion or you’re spinning and vomiting your brains out because you feel like you have more than one brain, I have one that goes up and another that goes down, sometimes they roller-coaster all in the same day. Or maybe I have an elevator brain, one side up, one side down, because the fucking trigger in my brain keeps pushing my buttons.”

Noreen sits up, her long hair falling gracefully down her back like the white lace curtains hanging against the windows in her mother’s house.

“I don’t know how you do that.”

“Do what?” Noreen giggles.

“Laugh like a maniac and talk like one of those crazy people on the streets and still look and sound like a princess.” Clancy has been watching and listening to her the whole time.

“I am a princess. I’m a royal fucking gypsy. I’m nomadic. I have no home. And I dance.”

Noreen stands and twirls on her tiptoes. “I’m going to the nursing station to ask them to order us some pizza and they’ll bring in a radio so we can dance and the bottle of vodka from your apartment instead of the tap water they fill in our pink hospital pitchers. I’m a princess, and I can have anything I want.”

Laughing and singing, in her sweatpants and t-shirt, Noreen runs and stumbles out of the room.

“Great,” Clancy mutters to herself, “not another rapid cycling bipolar.”

After another round of checks, Clancy gets out of bed and walks to the nursing station to take her night meds. Obviously sedated, Noreen sits groggily in the chair in front of the nursing station, while her nurse checks her blood pressure and other vitals.

“So, no pizza?” Clancy asks.

“Here’s what we think is wrong with you,” he says.

“Sometimes children in troubled families develop coping skills to help them survive, but when they become adults those coping skills don’t work the same way anymore.”

I stare at the curtain separating my bed from my roommate’s. My fingers tremble and cover my chin, lips, jaw.

“I can’t remember how to be an adult. I’m scared I won’t be able to write again.”

“You will. These medications can help. You could be in therapy for a year, two, maybe more, but you’ll learn new coping skills. You can live a normal life.”

“I want to. I want that more than anything.” I look him in the eye. I see his compassion. His eyes are green, his hair is brown. He smiles in a way that makes me yearn to touch him, but I don’t.

“I believe in you,” he says. “I can tell you’re a strong person.”

“I am a strong person. I am. I’m a strong person,” I recite like a prayer.

“Listen, we’re going to take you off the Seroquel and start you on an antidepressant. I’ll come back with the consent form,” he pauses. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

After he leaves, I curl up on my bed and pull up the covers. I weep until my day nurse comes to help.