Indigo fades to steel And gold suddenly blossoms Across the horizon Sending streaks of light Like a sparkler Harbingers of fire The night draws to a close And I slip into the shadows The molten glow still burning in my veins I yearn to reach my pale hand Into the sun’s warmth To hold it there in blissful pain To feel the radiance on my face To live, like others do, under the open blue sky But I am a creature of shadows, of secrets Of dark, vexatious urges And so I wait in the blackness of my own making Slipping into familiar somberness Until the night again bruises the sky With mauves and magentas Until the last gold slips below the horizon Until the inky dark blankets the sky And the stars like diamonds glint In their velvet settings And my face knows only moonlight The pale reflection of joy But I drink it in, let it fill my empty soul

You slide the bag across the table. The hooded figure opposite you peers inside. “Where the hell did you find this?” He asks. His voice drips with avarice. “Does it matter?” You shrug. “Not really.” His hood obscures his face but you can still feel his eyes peering at you with interest. He’s too proud to sigh with frustration but you sense he wants to, that he desperately needs to know your sources, your methods. But if he did, he could bypass the middleman. And since the middleman is you, well, you’re going to keep your secrets. The tavern is dark and the people around are well into their cups and decidedly unconcerned about the figure in a dark hood talking to a small, leather clad woman with cropped hair—though you’d make quite an impression at any sort of reputable establishment—but you still think taking the relic out of its bag might make a bit of an impression. So you just think about it, the way the quartz seems to glow with an eerie blue, the rusty stains that appear to have permeated the stone. (Or perhaps they are originally part of it? Some sort of mineral inclusion? That explanation seems more soothing to you.) You have yet to explain who in their right minds would make a dagger out of crystal when steel is readily available and much more easily honed. It is not, perhaps, the most sinister thing you have ever procured, but it makes you uneasy. “What does it do?” You ask. It’s none of your business, you know; your business is merely procuring the items. What’s done with them after is between the client and whatever gods they do or don’t believe in. You’ve long ago made peace with your own god, been absolved of your responsibility. Nobody asked if you wanted to be left on the streets as a child, forced to make your way through thievery, made strong by duress. You clawed your way to the top of this business. You’re not unhappy with it. But even if you wanted to, there’s not much else available to a young woman used to having her own say. Still, sometimes you wonder what havoc is being unleashed by the items you find. “Does it matter?” You can hear the smirk in his voice as he throws your own words back at you. It’s no more or less than you expected. “Only if it’s going to affect me.” “Don’t worry.” The hooded figure says, sliding a fat bag of coins across the table. “You’ll never even know I have it.” He pats your hand absently. His skin is terrifyingly cold. You watch as he glides out of the tavern. You aren’t certain his feet touch the floor. You don’t even bother to count the gold, other than to place one shining coin on the table. “Barkeep,” you call, “I’m going to need something strong.”

Night lay heavy over the fields, turning the rich gold of barley and wheat into inky black. It was blessedly cool, the heat of the day having dissipated with the sun in the sudden way of the desert. Ruth pulled her cloak tighter, hurrying through the maze left by the men’s scythes to the threshing floor. There was nothing to hear but the rustling of the grain, the men having long since retired to their tents, exhausted from a day’s hard work, full of the lamb and bread and beer brought by the women at sundown. The bawdy songs they had sung around the fires had faded, the fires themselves only embers glistening red in the darkness. Ruth’s own feet made barely a sound as she wove around the sheafs of grain, her footsteps muffled by the soft stalks that had been crushed into the ground. With a sigh she reached the circle of stone where the threshed grain was piled for the night. Even now the breeze tugged at the chaff, spinning it in the air in the way of light motes in a beam of sun. Ruth stepped into the circle and wondered, not for the first time, how she had gotten here.

Midnight in the high desert The sun’s heat has dissipated And it is blessedly cool I throw back my head To see the Milky Way Halogen-bright Against a sky spattered with stars Unimaginable numbers of suns Of galaxies and nebulae And I am so small But the heart that beats Inside my chest is full With the joy Of merely being here On this blue-green earth Under this miracle of sky And I dance To the music of the universe That pulses through my veins

It is morning in the Santa Monica mountains As I wind through the high grasses Painted golden by the sunrise In my nose is the tang of mustard and fennel Wilded from their farms a hundred years ago Their yellow blooms nestled In the native purple of hummingbird sage and lupine It is quiet, the buzz of the highway muted The rooftops hidden by the scrubby chaparral Like I have stepped from the bustle of Los Angeles Back in time to the villages of the Tongva My footsteps soft in the sandy soil I round a bend and she is there, willowy, silent We both freeze, eying each other warily Her with bright eyes and ears pointed She is thin, the countour of her abdomen visible over her long legs I take in her coppery coat, the hair tipped in black Her bottle-brush tail high, her glossy nose flared The birds have stilled their chatter Perhaps they too wait with bated breath to see the predators Face to face, wondering what will transpire I do not move; She seems uninterested in confrontation The very air stills I turn; she slinks into the undergrowth The birds resume their gregarious conversations Flitting round the tops of tall yucca and riotously white-lilac ceanothus I resume my walk, knowing I am on her land The wind in the branches whispers to me of coyotes The trickster hero who has padded this land Since long before any human feet And who has outwitted us all To thrive in the dense thickets, ever shrinking That cluster within human habitations In a world that has been tamed she is still wild Still proud Still free

The mirror is inconstant Fickle Ballooning this part or that until I am satisfied Unsatisfied With the lines of me Today the curve of my belly Fills me with loathing Tomorrow the swell of a hip Makes me feel powerful I stare in it, this silvered glass That holds so much power That it can make me a beauty, a hag A turmoil of emotions But it is not the mirror that changes Nor the reflection— Or only incrementally, Not the great sweeping variations That I imagine— No, the mirror reflects not my body But my own insecurity My self-worth with its unpredictable Fluctuations, its fragility And I understand it is not the mirror That needs to change, it is me

I looked into the mirror. My reflection gazed back at me, irises dark through heavy lashes. Was that a wrinkle? I brushed my hand against a high cheekbone, peering deeply into the silvered surface, flicking off imagined blemishes. No, my skin was as smooth as had ever been, my chestnut curls untouched by gray. In front of me sat an apothecary’s treasure of bottles and potions to ensure that. I corrected an errant curl, tightened the bodice of my gown, adjusted my golden circlet. The image in front of me rippled, showing a glimpse of an older woman who could have been me: faded ginger hair, brown eyes crinkled into crows’ feet, skin sagging beneath a pointed chin. I swallowed my displeasure and turned. “You can’t stay young forever.” A voice said. Though it seemed to come from the lips of my mother, trapped on the other side of silvered glass, I knew it to be the voice of the mirror itself. “Don’t tell me what I can do.” I spat. My mother’s face dissolved into a strange, disembodied one with a wide, toothy grin and slitted pupils. “You think you are the first mistress I have served?” The mirror’s laugh was eerie, sending a chill down my spine. “I have sat in front of queens and empresses since long before your grandmother’s grandmother was even a twinkle in her mother’s eye.” I thought, not for the first time, of smashing the mirror, reducing it to slivers of glass on the floor that I might crush beneath my heel. But all of the magic that kept me young was tied into the mirror, and I did not know what would happen if I broke it. “Isn’t it your work to keep me young?” I asked, instead. “You live on borrowed time and illusion. It will slip. One day you will err, and then all that time must be repaid.” I showed my teeth, trying to match the sharpened leer inside the mirror. He only laughed again and dissolved back into the image of my mother, the one he knew tormented me. She wavered into a young queen and then back to an old hag in borrowed rags. I bit my lip against my anger. “Such a silly thing to fear, aging.” The mirror said. “What do you know, demon? Have you aged a day in all your years with me?” I couldn’t be certain, but I believed him to be a genie, trapped in a mirror instead of a bottle. He would never tell me much of himself, only trickle information as it pleased him, usually to see if he could get a rise out of me. He knew more than he should and it irked me. But here he was wrong, it was not age that I feared but irrelevance. It was not wrinkled, soft skin or creaking bones or spun-sugar hair, it was being put aside because I could no longer fill the desires of powerful men. I knew better than most what it meant to be beautiful and what it meant to lose that beauty, and if I could start all again I would be born ugly. I remember when my mother, perhaps the most beautiful woman in her generation, began to lose her luster. She did not fight it—why would she? She was the bride of a high king, powerful beyond measure. If her fashion was to wear higher-necked gowns, it would become the fashion of the court. If her hair began to whiten, the ladies would use lye to strip the color from their own hair. She would be respected, adulated, into her dotage because that was the fashion of queens. She believed she had the love of her husband, the father of her children, the ruler of her realm. What she didn’t understand was that his love had conditions. When she began to lose her beauty, he began to lose interest. There were always mistresses—there usually were, with powerful men—but none of them ever threatened her place on the throne so she endured them. But as she aged she lost more and more favor until one day my father cast her out. I cried and sobbed and begged for him to let her stay. I should not have. My father never had really taken notice of me before then, but that day he saw me, barely sixteen, the younger image of my mother. I don’t like to think of what happened after that, for years, until I was more useful as a bargaining chip in intra-kingdom relations. Was I forced to marry an older man, a widower with a small daughter, that I didn’t love? Yes. But my husband was kind enough and my life was comfortable, and I didn’t intend to lose my status by becoming old, and thereby unnecessary. But I wasn’t going to tell the mirror all that and give him more ammunition. “Whatever you do, someone younger and more beautiful will always come along.” The mirror startled me out of my reverie with a terrifying reflection of my thoughts, and for a moment I wondered if he could read minds. “Like your step-daughter. She is growing into a lovely young lady.” Something in me relaxed at the mention of Bianca. He often brought her up to needle me. So he wasn’t likely reading my mind, only a coincidence. But I couldn’t relax all the way, because he wasn’t wrong. Pretty Bianca, hair as dark as ebony and lips as red as blood. “Surely not more beautiful than me.” I glanced at the mirror sharply. The question felt like vanity, but really it was fear. My guts clenched inside of me whenever I thought of the ramifications, not just for me, but for the girl. The risk had been brewing for some time as little girl grew into young woman. We weren’t close: she didn’t understand my obsession with potions and powders and I didn’t understand how she could be so blithely free and innocent. But I cared about her in my way. I didn’t wish her to suffer as I had. And I didn’t wish to suffer as my mother. The mirror looked distant for a moment, his thin lips pressed almost invisible. “Ah, your majesty, you are quite fair, but I fear Bianca is yet more fair than you.” The words took me in the heart like an arrow. I grabbed at the edge of my table, scattering glass bottles. I thought of my mother, her life ending as a beggar on the streets. I thought of myself, subject to the whims of any man who owned me. I thought of that innocent flower, Bianca, and how she shouldn’t suffer how I suffered. I had a plan, a horrible, gruesome plan. I think some part of me hoped it would never come to this, but as the mirror said, I live on borrowed time and illusion, and I wasn’t ready to repay. I stroked the dark wood box and called for my huntsman. Some time later it was done. I clasped my bloody token to my breast and turned to the mirror. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, now who is fairest of them all?” Was it me, or did that toothy grin hold just a little more malice tonight?

They say that eyes are windows to the soul But I am lost before that In the radial tessellations of muscles The complex crystalline structure of the iris Long before I can dive into the inky blackness Of the pupil I am caught by the starbursts of color Rippling lines of blues and greens and browns and golds No two alike Like fingerprints or snowflakes Strange that such artwork Has grown for such a mundane function How muscle, like a bicep or a heart, Has become such a jewel set in our face How it is.such a small part of us A miniature in a machine of a body Of levers and pulleys and hinges How wondrous we are These complex creatures of carbon and luck and time Perhaps it is true that eyes show the soul For observing them I find my own

The walls are verdant, high There is nothing lurking around the corner But still I do not know which way to turn Standing among the leafy corridors Some are dappled with light And some are fragrant with jasmine and camellia They call to me But still there are twists and turns And dead ends And I wonder how to choose the path That leads most directly To where I should be headed But what if life is not a destination What if I stop and smell the camellias Rest in the corner Braid flowers into my hair Spend some time in the sunshine Before I choose my next path What if I wander the maze Not seeking an exit But enjoying the journey The wonders that await me With every precious step

“Why don’t you give it a chance, Mir?” Mom asks me, as if she cannot see me clenching the tablecloth in my fists, my knuckles turning white. A restlessness wells up in me, and I want to flap my hands wildly to dispel it, but I know Mom disapproves. So I gnaw my lip instead. “I don’t WANT to.” I say, but it comes out stilted and angrier than I meant. I am barely holding in a barrage of “no”s. I try to remember what my therapist said about deep breaths. I jiggle my foot under the table. I push eggs around my plate, the same scrambled eggs I always have with melted cheddar, but today they turn my stomach. “You might like it.” Mom says. Her voice is mild, but I’m pretty sure it’s booby trapped. People say things they don’t mean. How am I supposed to know whether or not they mean it? Talking to people is like walking through a mine field. I might like it. But that’s not the point. I don’t think Mom understands that it’s not that I dislike change. I’m not just a little nervous, nor am I trying to be stubborn. But change is a gaping void ready to swallow me. It’s like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, asked to jump without a parachute. It’s like I’m being dragged in one direction while my feet are glued to the ground. Change is physically painful. I’d rather stay in the pillow fort of familiarity. I’m not against trying new things. It’s just, you have to prepare me for them. Like dipping a toe in the pool, when it’s just a bit too cold. I’m not the sort of person who can just jump in. Mom keeps packing my lunch—peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off, an apple cut into eight slices, two Oreos—as if this were a normal day. It’s not a normal day. Last week I knew my school. I didn’t much like it, but I knew what to expect. “I want to go back to my old school.” I said. Mom whips around, her eyebrows drawing in. Angry, I label, remembering the flash cards from my therapy office. “Well then, you shouldn’t have gotten kicked out of it.” She yells. I yelp and cover my ears. I hate it when she yells. Anyhow, it wasn’t my fault I got kicked out. Those other kids should have followed the rules at handball. If they just followed the rules, we wouldn’t have had a fight about it. I hate it when people don’t follow the rules. It makes me uncomfortable, physically uncomfortable, like an itch I can’t scratch. Mom sighs. “I’m sorry Miriam. I shouldn’t have yelled.” She scrubs at her forehead, leaving a smear of jam. I rub my forehead in solidarity. I don’t know how she doesn’t notice the stickiness. “But you can’t go back to your old school. This new one is better for you anyway. It’s specifically for people like you.” People like me. Mom rarely uses the “a” word. But I don’t mind it. It helps me understand myself better. I fidget with my fork. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to go to a school where other people understand me too. Maybe they’ll even help mom understand me better. I still don’t like it. I wrap my arms around myself to still the trembling. “What ifs” fly through my head at an alarming rate. But I put my shoes on. I slip on my favorite bracelet, which has beads that I can slide around. I wonder how this new school feels about fidget toys. My old school didn’t let me have them, but they calm me down and help me pay attention. Otherwise everything gets pretty loud. I don’t mean just sound, either. It’s like the volume of everything is turned to 11. In the car, I slide the beads around my bracelet over and over and over again. Mom tries to make conversation, but I don’t feel like talking about anything, not even constellations, which are my current favorite. Every time we make a turn that isn’t toward my old school I flinch a little. Finally we pull up. The building isn’t too different than my old school. That helps. “Alright, Mir, here we are. Maybe someone can help you find the office? Or do you want me to come with?” I weight the options. Outside the school I see only teenagers, no parents. I think bringing a parent would be socially unacceptable. I don’t really need to start here with people making fun of me. “No,” I say, “I’ll find it.” Mom tries to hug me. I let her. I clutch my backpack as I get out, like a shield. My eyes dart from person to person. They’re not clustered in big groups like in my old school. A few are talking to each other in pairs. A lot of the kids are alone, just sort of spacing out. Some of them are flapping their hands or rocking. Nobody is trying to stop them. A little spark of hope ignites in my heart. I approach the nearest girl, who wears a fuzzy pink sweater. “Excuse me.” I say, looking at my feet. Then I remember my manners and try to meet her eyes. She looks quickly away. I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing, socially, but I’m glad she doesn’t make eye contact. “I’m Miriam. I’m new.” “Oh.” She says. “I need to go to the office.” I tell her. She brightens a little. “I can show you.” We shuffle into the building. The lights are LED, not those terrible halogens that flicker. The walls are painted with all sorts of things. I stop in front of a section that looks like the night sky. “That’s Hydra. It’s the biggest constellation in the sky.” I say, pointing to a series of dots. “It’s brightest star is Alphard. It’s an orange giant.” She says. “You like constellations?” I ask. “I like stars.” She says. “My name is Isabel. Are you scared?” She asks. “A little.” I admit. “You want to hold my squish?” She offers me a stuffed cat, about the size of my hand. I take it. It feels like a marshmallow. “It makes me feel better.” She confides. “But I think you’ll like it here.” She flaps her hands excitedly. “Don’t they get mad at you for that?” She looks puzzled. “What, for stimming? Of course not.” She frowns. “Did you have to get that therapy where they tell you to change everything to make the NTs happy?” I’m not sure what an NT is, but I can guess. Nobody ever told me to change, not in so many terms, but they certainly showed their disapproval. My neck starts to unclench. I don’t know how to answer the question so I just shrug. “Here, they let us be ourselves.” She says. “We have better things to worry about. Like astronomy class.” She smiles a little. My heart flutters. I try to keep myself from flapping in excitement, then I remember I can. I think, perhaps, that I might be happy here. Sometimes change isn’t all bad.