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The oldest act of creation demands the oldest kind of magic.

A bed of grass, the blood of maidens, a turn of the wrist withershins for every eight the other way, under the light of the solstice – either will suffice – clad only in one’s skin. Not the most precise of spells, and not the most reliable either – an act of creation that can lead to nothing, or worse, but one tries it as one must.

However, with a lack of precision comes a lack of specificity – the verses in language that no longer stretches to a rhyme are never very clear about what a maiden is. Certainly, two witches who have shared a bed for countless decades can believably be maidens to the right ears.

There are whispers of its efficacy, but few seem to agree on anything – the only thing that rings true in every rumour is that the spell does not always take. Some say there is a price, one that must be paid in full; some say there is no cost at all. Some say that the creation demands a life elsewhere, a child dead so that another may live, but others say that it balances just as any other life created does, the natural order allowing it.

A wordless dash of the knife against each other’s palms, their blood intermingling. Lay it in the spilled entrails of whatever unfortunate small creature comes to hand. Bathe it in the light of the solstice moon, and there is little else to do but wait.

So wait, they do.

—

It is more Rio’s magic than Agatha’s. Rio, who can raise flowers with a glance, blood still dripping from the cut Agatha left on her palm as she murmurs long-incomprehensible words over a disemboweled hare that seems to be roughly the size of an infant. Agatha can only watch – moonlight catching on fresh-spilled blood, turning Rio’s skin to a cold, glowing white. It was as though it was entirely Rio’s magic; Agatha had to do nothing else besides what she always does, and drive the knife through the hare’s throat, feeling its life ebb away with no more than a half-thought-out gesture from her.

All too quickly, and what feels all too easily, it is done. They both have trails of red against their skin - there is no prescribed rule against healing the cuts made for this, but it feels as though rushing the healing would only augur poorly for a spell that demands time.

Tomorrow, they will watch over the dead hare, to make sure nothing unforeseen coalesces around it. Tonight, they take themselves inside, to bandage their palms, to warm their skin again.

Agatha lights a candle, watches the tallow begin to glow for just a moment, but it is a moment long enough for Rio to tiptoe silently behind her, to press herself to Agatha’s back, arms around her waist, lips on her shoulder.

“We still have hours until dawn.” Rio’s voice is husky in the cold, still weighed down by words so old that even Latin cannot describe their language, but her lips are warm against Agatha’s skin, and Agatha lets herself revel in the shiver that runs through her. Maybe it is her words; maybe it is the ice-chill of Rio’s skin, pressed as she is to Agatha’s back, somehow even cooler than she usually feels, yet without a hint that she feels any of that cold.

But Agatha does not dwell on that for long. It is all too easy for her to spin to face Rio, already close enough for their breath to graze each other’s lips. She could draw this out, tease Rio until she begs, but no part of Agatha wants to wait; she kisses Rio fiercely, feels Rio’s tiny, delighted gasp against her mouth, and it only serves to make her deepen the kiss.

They could light a fire, but better to warm themselves with racing hearts and skin against skin, blood smeared on the sheets and on each other. The spell demands patience from them only in waiting for its result; until it does what it will, they have nothing to do but pass the time.

—

It had been Agatha’s idea. It runs through her mind, over and over, as she stares at Rio still asleep, her face buried in a pillow, dawn light not yet beginning to glow. Her idea, made real.

Her idea, though not something she’d have ever expected of herself, truly; children were an irritant at best, an obstruction at worst. Every village they walk past, reside in for a week or a year, full of them, sticky and loud and so very alive, until some disease or other sweeps through and they leave hand-in-hand with Rio in the night. Agatha had never yet stooped to killing them - not out of any sort of mercy, or pity, but simply a lack of necessity.

Perhaps she should have, at least once.

She has her magic, and it grows stronger every time someone is daft enough to try to kill her with their own. Rio has her magic, and although plenty is beyond anything Agatha has ever known - so much of Rio is beyond anything Agatha could ever know - she has power that should be enough. Is enough, usually. She doubts that she can evade pursuit forever. And therein was the seed of an idea.

Half of Agatha wants to stay in bed, lull herself back to sleep with the softness of Rio’s hair and the evenness of her breath, such a simple kind of life that is so at odds with everything that makes Rio herself. But she cannot sleep for curiosity, the idea swimming through her mind once more, the spell half myth and half rumour, and so, the morning chill dances across her skin as she takes a blanket that Rio isn’t using and wraps it around her shoulders, before wandering to the dewy grass to see if anything has changed at all.

Nothing yet, but it has been mere hours, half of which they spent awake; this could take days, weeks, and works rarely enough that nobody quite knows for certain. All Rio knew before they tried is that it can work, and that it won’t demand the balance. All Agatha knows is that if the animal rots, it didn’t take.

They may be safe yet. They may have this bargaining chip still. That’s all she needs to know for now - it’s all she can know for now.

Rio is still asleep, and the bed is still warm, as Agatha curls back into the space where she woke not particularly long ago at all.

—

Each morning, she wakes, faces a dead hare covered in blood turned black. The cut on her hand has scabbed over, is beginning to itch, and the cut on Rio’s has disappeared, but the hare lays as limp as it did when it died by her hand, the only change in the colour of its blood and theirs, and the settling of dew on its fur. She wakes alone, Rio having vanished in the night to take who-knows-who who-knows-where. She wakes with Rio clinging to her back, having kissed her goodbye at dusk, and she knows without looking that there will be dirt under her nails.

She wakes on the sixth morning to find nothing left of the hare but dried blood.

—

“I don’t know what comes next.”

Rio says it casually, softly, as she stares at the blood; Agatha had not even heard her walking to join her, only feeling her presence at the nudge of her knee as she sat close. The sun is not yet high in the sky - Agatha can’t have been out here for all that long, after spending the night alone in their bed, but it feels too long to have spent wondering.

Agatha tries to ignore the sinking in her stomach, tries to ignore that some part of her might have wanted this. An innocent life, with innocent blood, that is why they need this – she is allowed to want that, isn’t she? She has killed for less than this.

Still, she sits rigidly, legs stiff in the posture she has held vigil for a pool of dried blood in, until Rio’s arm reaches around her waist, and all Agatha can do is let herself be held. She shifts, feeling sensation flow back into her body, and closes the infinitesimal distance between them, fear and anticipation leaving her body, leaving only exhaustion behind. She could fall asleep here, with her forehead cradled against Rio’s neck, breathing in the scent of new flowers and ash.

Rio holds her for a moment, just holds her before gently kissing her forehead, and guiding her to stand on still-unsteady feet, to guide her to their bed.

Once upon a time, Rio had not slept, never needed to. Now, she has learned, for no other reason than to rest with Agatha like this.

—

The solstice had been almost a week before the full moon, the hare vanishing under the full moon’s light, and still, nothing. Any witch can cast this spell, yes, but this coven of two, Agatha is certain, must be able to make it do something. A month on, the moon having waned and waxed again, the cut on her own hand gone – perhaps with time, perhaps with Rio’s touch healing without thinking. Dried blood gone in a summer storm, as though they’d done nothing at all.

The realisation – the futility, the normality of failure – curdles deep in Agatha’s gut, and she can’t shake it. She knows what it is to be hunted, to be pursued; she knows what it is to be feared. She does not know what it is to lose to nothing but luck.

But life goes on, as it must. It had been a fair spring, turned to a fine summer; Rio leaves when she must, but it isn’t anything like the years when droughts led to famine, or wars stormed the fields. Time together that does not feel stolen, like it so often does.

Yet still, the cloying grasp of failure makes her feel ill, until it is not failure curling her stomach at all. One afternoon, by a creek teeming with life and far easier waters to fish downstream, Rio leaning against a tree, Agatha’s head in her lap; a place of peace, and reflection, and warmth. There is nobody here to disturb them, nothing here to fear, and so her forehead is closer to Rio’s stomach than her lap, her eyes somewhat shielded from the light, as she hopes for the escape of sleep.

Rio rubs gentle, endless circles against the small of Agatha’s back, and although it does not settle her stomach, at least it soothes. It is less soothing when she asks, “How long since the solstice, my love?” 

“Six weeks,” Agatha mutters. The warmth of the afternoon, the motion of Rio’s hand, it’s enough that she is almost dozing; she doesn’t want to think about this, to be pulled back to the waking world.

Rio’s voice drops, even as she keeps some ease to her tone, as she says, “And how long since you last bled?”

The churning inside her turns from failure to ice as Agatha thinks - thinks back. Seven weeks? Eight? “Before then.” Before the solstice. Before the—

Agatha rolls onto her back, enough to look up, to meet Rio’s eyes. They both know it, in the same instant, long before Rio’s hand shifts from Agatha’s back, fingertips dancing across her waist, to settle on her stomach. “I think the spell took.”

—

The cottage they share is a half hour’s walk from the nearest village, and once belonged to a woman left alone to die – a husband buried in a wartime grave, three sons gone in the same war. That, Rio had learned, when the woman had not yet realised that her body still lay in her bed, when she thought that the woman garbed in green was just an unexpected guest at sunrise, to whom the empty house needed to be justified.

She had only been two days dead by the time Agatha had arrived, to Rio smirking from the front door, surrounded by ivy that was still blooming. “Might be nice for you to sleep somewhere that isn’t under a tree,” she had said, tone light, eyes sparkling, but her leg was bouncing slightly, and it was plain to Agatha that Rio was chewing the inside of her bottom lip.

It was as good a place as any to rest, and to hide, and, before either of them quite intended it, to make a home.

Safety cannot last forever, though. Some spells demand more than others, and protection demands more than most. Innocent blood is hard to come by, innocent lives even more so - alas, a cottage flung far from a village, shared by two women about whom the villagers know nothing, is a fine place to make the time to save Agatha’s skin.

—

It seems there is a price for this magick, and Agatha resents it.

She had expected transmutation. Maybe a bit more blood, maybe having to babysit a dead rabbit for who knows how much longer than they already did. Not this.

Definitely not Rio finding it funny.

“I’ve never seen you complain this much,” she laughs one night, after Agatha mentions - and she has not mentioned it that often! – that her back hurts, her breasts hurt, that she can’t seem to get comfortable at night. She is sat with a blanket around her shoulders, the fall air somehow feeling colder than usual; probably the same thing that is making everything ache more than it has any right to. But still, Rio says it as she wraps both arms around Agatha’s waist, pinning her arms flat underneath the blanket, as she nudges their noses together before kissing her lightly.

Agatha pouts anyway. “You’re not the one who has to deal with it.”

“I know.” She kisses Agatha’s lips again, and lightly, teasingly, her nose. “It won’t be forever.”

Agatha leans back, just enough to meet Rio’s eyes. “You could have done this instead of me, surely.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I don’t think so.” Rio smirks. “And you killed the rabbit, so it’s on you, sweetheart.”

“Oh, is that how it works?”

“Honestly, I have no idea.” Rio's smirk cracks into a smile.

Agatha can’t help it – she smiles in return, and leans into Rio’s embrace, letting herself be held. “I still hate this,” she mutters into Rio’s shoulder.

Rio kisses her temple. “I know.” She kisses the same spot again, and pauses, her lips still against Agatha’s skin. “A bath might help. C’mon.”

—

With death, life; with decay, rebirth. Somewhere in there, Rio can pull water from the air, from the trees nearby, from nothing at all; it doesn’t matter where, it never does, all that matters is that the water is almost unbearably hot, and that Agatha is lying in Rio’s arms.

Her hair is wet, clean; the ghost of Rio’s fingers still lingering on her scalp, and she can almost forget that her body is not entirely her own right now, aches and nausea dissipating in the heat, leaving her with limp muscles.

Rio's hands are far from relaxed, though, and that is what keeps Agatha from fully sinking into rest. A hand on her hip, her thigh, fingers dancing across her skin and between her legs. She can feel a chuckle from deep within Rio's chest as she shifts her hips, parts her legs, lets fingers find what they seek and shift from idle touches to firmer, surer strokes.

Rio doesn't let her fully slip into her touch – her teeth nip Agatha's ear, forcing her ever so slightly up, enough that she can nip at Agatha's neck instead, lips lingering on her pulse. And then, her hand stops, one finger so close to where Agatha wants it that she whimpers, and Rio murmurs against her skin, “Do you want me to keep going?”

Agatha can feel her pulse rushing, knows that Rio can feel it, too. She can't begin to form the words; she nods, lets out the slightest moan of affirmation, hoping that that is all Rio wants from her.

Not enough. Rio nudges her leg, and Agatha knows. She adjusts, lifts her hips against Rio's hand, and spreads her legs a little further apart, and silently begs her, too caught up to voice the words.

A pause, and all Rio says is, “Good girl.” Agatha scarcely has time to take a breath before Rio slips two fingers inside her, so much gentler than usual, the ease of a caress that nonetheless coils heat and lust within her. She lets her head fall back, her mouth fall open, nothing in her mind but Rio’s touch. One hand, between her legs, fingers inside her. The other, trailing across her belly, to her breast, feather-light. Lips against her cheek, her temple, as she slips down slightly in the water, enveloped in the warmth of the water and the embrace of her love.

A splash, soft in the far-off distance in Agatha’s mind, as her knee breaks the surface of the water, willing Rio to take advantage of the space. There’s no purchase in the bathtub, but still, Agatha rolls her hips up, ever so slightly, trying to beg Rio to thrust her fingers deeper with the gesture. She doesn’t – quite the opposite; she withdraws her fingers, draws them between folds that would still be just as wet were they not in a bath, slows her touch almost to a halt. Her other hand is still resting on Agatha’s breast, and she almost carelessly brushes her fingers across a nipple. But then, there is nothing ever unintentional in Rio’s touch, and this one is no different, not with the jolt it sends through Agatha’s core.

Rio wants her to beg. She gives freely, but she expects something in return, and Agatha wants this too much not to give her what she wants.

“Keep going. Please.”

Rio just murmurs, far too nonchalantly, “Okay,” and it would make Agatha cry out in frustration, but the single word is followed almost immediately by the thrust of three fingers inside her, and it is not frustration that makes Agatha cry out at all. The gentleness is gone, any patience never there, and she can feel her breaths turn staccato-quick, knows that the litany of barely-there moans are exactly the response Rio wants. Agatha’s hand is on Rio’s wrist, and she can feel the flex of tendons and the twist of muscle and bone at every thrust, every curl of Rio’s fingers.

Rio’s hand drifts from Agatha’s breast, back across her stomach, jarringly slowly against the delicious relentlessness of the hand between Agatha’s thighs, until it comes to rest there, too. Three fingers, deep within her, curling and thrusting; one fingertip, tracing circles across heightened nerves, sending fire though every part of Agatha’s body.

Agatha can feel herself on the precipice, one hand still clinging to Rio’s wrist, the other gripping the edge of the bath, but Rio doesn’t slow, every stroke of her hands almost frenetic, and it is all that Agatha needs to fall apart. Her head rocks back against Rio’s shoulder, her mouth falls open with a cry that she knows Rio was trying, so hard, to elicit, and she lets the rush fall through her until she is liquid in Rio’s arms.

Rio's fingers slip out easily, though she brushes them across still-raw nerves that make Agatha’s leg twitch a little, shaking her briefly out of her stupor. It is Rio’s embrace – it is always Rio’s embrace – that lets the stupor swiftly turn to limp exhaustion, and Agatha does not fight it. She relaxes wholly against Rio, hyperaware of the touch of her skin, the softness of her breasts beneath Agatha’s shoulders, and she rests her arms against Rio’s as soon as they are wrapped around her waist.

She almost falls asleep there. Not quite. It is Rio stiffening that wakes her, and she knows exactly what this is. Exactly what it always is.

There is no point begging her to stay.

Agatha sighs, and relents. She leans forward, enough to let Rio step out; Rio kisses the back of her neck, and unwinds herself as though she hasn’t been sat in the exact same position for the better part of an hour. The water is still searing hot, but it feels empty as Rio steps out of the bath, water sluicing from her skin to the floor.

“I won’t be long, my love. Only one needs me for this – I’ll be home before you know it.”

She’s beautiful like this – every artifice stripped back, just herself, tiny swirls of steam leaving her skin, hair wicked together at the ends with damp. Agatha wants to stare at her, to lean into her touch; she wants to press her lips into Rio's stomach, her thigh, beg her to stay with her tongue.

Instead, Agatha rests her head against Rio’s stomach, skin still damp from their bath, and Rio plays with her hair, lingering a second longer than she should, before stepping away.

Too many nights like this, and Agatha knows all too well that all she can do is close her eyes, and open them again to an empty room. All too easily, she is alone, with coolness on her skin where Rio isn't, her knees drawn to her chest, the afterglow of Rio’s touch turned to a chill.

—

Rio always comes home.

It takes moments, or hours, or days, and Agatha does not, cannot, know everything of where she goes, or what she does, only scant details of an existence spent half outside of time. Wanting her here does not mean that she can have her. Sometimes, all that remains of her is the scent of her hair on her pillow.

Tonight, Rio comes home smelling of smoke. She fades in and out of reality, in and out of clothing befitting whatever situation she walks into, and yet, still smells like smoke in the nightgown she left across the bed when she left four days ago. Still, the first thing she does is crawl into bed and wrap herself around Agatha, holding her close as though to climb into her skin.

Agatha wasn’t asleep, not quite – she’d slept on and off through the night, but dawn is starting to creep into their bedroom, and she can’t get comfortable easily any more. Rio’s nose is cold against her shoulder. She murmurs, her voice gravelly with days of disuse, “That bad, hm?”

Rio just nods. Life and death go on as they must, but there are days that she comes home, and Agatha knows that she has just led more people to whatever is beyond than Agatha has seen in her life.

She would hold Rio closer, once upon a time, when she came home like this; Rio’s back against her stomach, their arms tangled together, the scent of loam or salt water sticking to Rio’s hair and filling Agatha’s nose with a thousand strangers’ deaths. She can’t do that now. Not with their child growing inside her, impossible to ignore. Instead, she adjusts enough for their limbs to tangle more freely, and rests a hand on Rio’s neck, scratching at the base of her scalp.

She’s not expecting Rio’s words. She’s not expecting her to say anything at all. But she whispers, her hand resting on Agatha’s stomach, “It’s nice to see this side of it.” Her thumb is brushing idly against the fabric of the thick winterweight nightgown, one that Agatha never wears when they share a bed – one she never needs to, not with the warmth of Rio under the blankets.

The child has been kicking. Quite a bit, really, enough for any faint novelty to have long since worn off. Surely, if it is kicking, it’s nearly over, but the winter solstice has only just passed, the snow deep enough to trap anyone in their house who cannot clear it with a flick of their wrists. Agatha has never been a close enough witness to a pregnancy to know how long after the quickening things actually quicken.

Agatha is facing Rio, her expression barely visible in the gloaming, and she can’t bring herself to look away. But she knows what she must do, she knows what Rio needs. And she doesn’t need to look away to find Rio’s hand, to guide it to a spot that is all too frequently kicked.

A moment, and a flutter, and Rio sits up slightly and actually giggles, a sound so utterly unexpected that Agatha feels her mouth open to say something she hasn’t quite planned out, before she relaxes, and watches Rio’s expression. Her hand is still where Agatha placed it, fingers gentle against the curve of Agatha’s stomach, but her eyes are fixed on where she had felt the child kick, her smile wide and free, teeth bared and parted in an uncontrollable grin.

Another kick, and then a flurry of them, which would be horribly unpleasant were it not for the light in Rio’s eyes. The movement stops, and Agatha feels herself still watching Rio, waiting for her to say something. She doesn’t, not yet; instead, she stares in wonder at where her hand lays, as though waiting for another rush of motion beneath Agatha’s skin. But it is early, and Agatha has been asleep; surely, the child has been too. It is as though both of them woke up just to say good morning to Rio.

Agatha trails a hand across her belly - she’s been doing it more recently, and she doesn’t quite know when she started – before caressing Rio’s hand, tracing her knuckles with her fingertips.

And then, Rio reaches for her face – pauses briefly, with her thumb caressing Agatha’s cheekbone – and kisses her with enough force to leave Agatha breathless. All Agatha can do – all she wants to do – is return the kiss with the enthusiasm due, and she does, her jaw shuddering as the kiss deepens. She doesn’t need to sleep that badly, not if this is what Rio wants to do instead.

But Rio breaks the kiss to look at her, joy sparkling in her eyes and her smile. She kisses her again, softly, sweetly, before reaching for Agatha’s stomach once more, and murmurs, as peaceful as the dawn, “He actually feels real.”

Agatha raises her eyebrows. “He?”

Rio smiles fondly. “I don’t know why. I just feel like I know.” She brushes a strand of hair from Agatha’s face, before leaning in to kiss her again, letting her lips linger. Then, she sits up somewhat and, just as gently, kisses the curve of Agatha’s belly, and lets that kiss linger, too.

And then, she lays down flat, an arm out in invitation. Agatha curls into her side - as much as she can - and both of them fall easily into sleep as the day brightens around them.

—

It may be too soon. It may not be long enough. All Agatha knows is that her body has decided that it is time, and she has never known pain like this, not once.

Spring was slow to start, and has been nothing but storms; Rio has vanished in the night and come home smelling of salt, of mud, of blood on more nights than she has stayed. Today, it is oddly quiet, eerily still. As though the world is holding its breath, or it just wants to relish in her cries. Maybe it does. She has taken enough lives; surely, she has no right to give life, too.

It began in the evening, the pain slow to start and fading in and out, enough for her to put her head down and try to rest between contractions, not that it led to anything but frustration. By morning, she has forgotten what it ever was to not be in pain, her body feeling as though it is tearing itself asunder.

She wants to be outside, under the sky.

Wants to be here, on the floor of their home, somewhere dry and private.

Wants Rio.

She closes her eyes, feels yet more tears trail down cheeks already sticky with salt water. Opens them again, to the scent of dozens drowned.

Rio, with mud under her nails, kneels in front of her. Hands trembling against Agatha’s face, her belly, her arms.

In this moment, it feels as though Rio should be here to take her away. But she looks as she always does, and surely, surely, Rio would not conceal that from her.

Anything she might have said vanishes as another contraction tears through her, and she jolts forward, her forehead slamming into Rio’s shoulder. She can’t bear it any more. She can’t even say it. All she can do is let out a low, guttural moan, as Rio rubs her back.

And so it goes. Pain, and cries she cannot control, and Rio, shaking all the while. Cries turn to weeping, and she doesn’t even notice Rio move until she realises that it is Rio holding her upright, sat behind her to brace her in the position she can barely maintain.

A brief reprieve, and Agatha lets her head drop against Rio’s shoulder. Maybe this is it, after all, but Rio’s embrace goes briefly soft, as she kisses Agatha's temple and murmurs, half to Agatha, half to herself, “I shouldn’t be here.”

Agatha wants nothing less than to be alone right now. She can feel it starting again, something shifting within her as though it might be over soon, and she mutters, “If you leave me here, now, don’t bother coming back.”

Rio just tightens her embrace.

She didn’t think it was possible for it to hurt more. But it does, even as instinct drives her body to do what she cannot bear. It hurts, and Rio holds her, and nothing else exists outside of that.

Nothing, until a cry, and there is an infant, bloody and squalid and squalling, so small that it scares her. A boy, that she cradles to her chest without thinking. A boy, settling against her skin, reaching for her hair, staring at her with Rio’s eyes.

Their blood made him. All that should matter to her right now is his blood, not the too-small thing that holds it. But he has quietened at the warmth of her skin, sticky with sweat though it is, and everything feels too quiet. Just the three of them, in a room that stinks of her own blood, the afternoon still, her throat raw with cries she has already half-forgotten.

He’ll need a bath, she realises, almost belatedly. He’ll need everything.

They have to keep him alive, they have to keep him biddable, or else, this was not worth the effort. They knew that this was what they were pursuing, with a spell far too simple for the weight of its result.

Her body aches with exhaustion, with hours and endless months of pain, and she leans heavily against Rio, still half holding her upright. Rio whispers against her ear, anything more too loud to bear, “My love, you’ve done so well.”

And then Rio reaches for their son, her hand gentle against his head, and Agatha knows, deep down, that this is the first child that Rio has touched without taking it away. She rests her head against her love, sheer exhaustion having wholly taken grip of her; she cannot sleep yet, not with the infant in her arms still needing so much, and something of an afterbirth she’s only vaguely aware of, but she can rest in this moment.

She can hear a soft humming from within Rio’s chest, and she knows, all too easily, that it is a lullaby. Sung to children as they slept. Sung to bodies by weeping mothers. Never, not once, sung to Agatha, not even when she was as newly born as the boy in her arms.

I’ve got you, we’ve got you, you’ll be okay.

The murmurs are almost indiscernible, and it is only when Agatha hears the humming trail off that she feels Rio’s eyes on her, and it dawns on her that the words were her own.

It needed to be done. It had to be done. She only did what was necessary to protect herself.

She cannot ignore the thrumming of her heart as she realises that a part of herself is now nestled against her breasts, already fallen asleep.

—

It was not for want of a child.

Innocent blood is too frequently needed, and innocent blood freely given often enough. A mayfly’s lifespan against their own, easy enough to give when the time comes that the life itself is needed, rather than just the blood in the child’s veins. That, he will know nothing else but to give freely.

They call him Nicholas.

There is no reason for it – it just seems to suit him, as well as a name can suit something that has only been in this world a few days. A creature that cries, and clings to her, that left her torn apart in a manner she was all too relieved for Rio to heal. A creature that suckles at her breast and then falls asleep there, milk-drunk and content, impossibly fragile, fitting perfectly in her arms.

He is three days old when Rio first has to leave them. She kisses his head, kisses Agatha's lips, and returns within hours, smelling of nothing at all.

“An old man. He died in his sleep, his youngest grandchild cuddling him. He was ready to go.” Rio says it all with Nicholas in her arms, smiling as he clutches at her hair. “It's all anybody wants, really.”

She disappears again in the night, not waking Agatha from hard-won sleep; Agatha does not know how long she was gone, only that she wakes to see her watching Nicholas sleep in his cot. She doesn’t say anything at all, but so many people die in every minute of every day, people who must be dragged beyond and people who go meekly, most of them barely worth mentioning. Death is natural, death is inevitable, but with a new life born only because they willed it, tiny and fragile and dependent on them both, death is something neither of them want to dwell on.

Soon, spring is turning to summer, and Nicholas seems to grow a little more every time Agatha looks away. Rio is pulled away for a week, a day, an hour, and the first thing she does when she comes home is go to Nicholas, to take in the way that he has grown a little longer, a little chubbier, the way that his hair is a little thicker, that his eyes seem to take in more. She comes home, and curls into Agatha’s side, watches the way that their son suckles at Agatha’s breast, gently cups his head and traces the tiny curve of his skull with her thumb. She comes home, and takes their son in her arms, smiles softly as she lays down, lets him fall asleep on her chest, his tiny hand fisted in a few strands of her hair.

Agatha would not have thought that it was possible for her to love Rio any more. She would not have thought that it was possible for her to love Nicholas at all. She falls in love with them more every day.

—

Nicholas has grown impossibly in his few months of life, but he still feels too small, too fragile, as Agatha holds him against her chest, Rio humming as she ties a sling around Agatha’s back, binding their son to her chest. Agatha doesn’t want to let go, even as Rio turns her around, admires her own handiwork, even as the sling feels almost constricting.

But Nicholas does not seem uncomfortable – on the contrary, he seems to settle despite the warmth, letting out a sigh as deep as one so small can make.

“I think we’re good,” Rio murmurs, against the discomfort Agatha refused to vocalise. She kisses Nicholas’s head, and then Agatha’s lips, before turning for the door, a straw hat on her head, a basket of vegetables looped over one arm.

The walk takes them a little longer than it once did. It had been worse, before Nicholas was born, but they had not gone so far once Agatha’s pregnancy was truly an impediment, winter snows lingering long enough that by the time grass grew, she was exhausted before she lost sight of their cottage. But it is warm today, Nicholas lulled to sleep by his mother’s heartbeat, Agatha lulled into contentment by Rio still humming at her side. It is longer than it once was, but never so pleasant as this.

The basket of vegetables is a gesture, really, to justify long absences from the village. They are known to every person there, but the less excuses made to visit, the better. The villagers are oddly complacent, never questioning the presence of two women in the house of someone they had all known and buried, but Agatha knows what people like this can be like, and she neither wants nor needs one busybody finding an excuse to barge into their home without warning.

A handful of vegetables for a carved lamb, it seems an unlikely exchange, but the old woman – now the oldest in the village – coos over Nicholas for a good ten minutes, asking inane questions about how much he sleeps and how much he eats. She also pries far too much about how Agatha fared carrying him through the winter, with only her dear friend to care for her, and Agatha has to bite her tongue. She’d roll her eyes too, but she’d rather continue to exploit that nobody in the village questions how they have kale and turnip in the summer.

Rio just looks amused, the corner of her lip turning up. She’s not the one who can smell the old woman’s breath.

It is not as unpleasant as the smattering of women holding infants, some of an age with Nicholas, one woman bloated as though she’s carrying about five of the rotten things. None of them have the decency to give Agatha her space, nor Nicholas. That they all seemingly live in each other’s skin does not mean that Agatha wants any part of this, but better this than them trying the same damned thing on her doorstep.

She could kill them all, wouldn’t be hard, but she’d rather not have to raise and butcher her own meat.

Rio is still at her side, the vegetables that she grew from nothing this morning now replaced by the carved lamb and a sack of flour, and she smiles an oddly calm smile as she listens to a woman – the only redhead, the only thing that makes her stand out – go on about her own son, an ugly little thing with a flat nose.

“You’d know, though, about the sleepless nights, if your boy is anything like mine. Up with the birds, as though he hadn’t been trying to summon every mother in town with his cries not an hour before. Oh, but I wouldn’t have it any way – he’s such a darling, lights up as soon as you do so much as touch him.” The woman holds him out, and Rio touches his cheek at the woman’s insistence.

His wrinkled face beams with a gummy, lopsided grin. Rio’s smile stiffens, and she withdraws her hand.

The woman doesn’t notice. Just keeps talking, as her gaze flickers between her child and the women in front of her. “My husband, though, he sleeps through it. Loves to play with Edward during the day, but the dead don’t sleep as well as he does in the night. It’s a mother’s instinct, really, to wake with your child, but you’d know that, I’ve no doubt.” Agatha feels her eyebrows dart up. “But you’re not the only one in the house. So how fares your—your sister?”

“No, not her sister.” Rio’s smile regains some of its ease, but she’s watching the woman, watching the horrendous child squinting at the sun. “Nicky wakes me, too. But he goes to sleep when I hold him, if he isn’t hungry.”

Nicky. It suits him. Suits a boy just beginning to learn how to laugh. He’s content against her chest, sucking his thumb, gazing at the brim of her hat.

Suddenly, it is not just that Agatha wants to be away from here, from these people; she wants to be home, with her family, and only her family.

She cuts the conversation off. “I think he needs a nap.” Rio glances at her and nods, shifting the basket on her arm.

The woman peers at Nicholas – at least her breath isn’t pungent – and giggles a little. “Probably not all he wants, but, well, best not do that here, not unless you want John’s eldest trying to take a peek.”

With that, Agatha nods sharply, and they turn for home.

—

The warmth of the morning has turned into a searing afternoon, enough that Agatha can feel a trickle of sweat running down the small of her back. The air is a little too sticky, and the sun seems to be sucking all of the moisture out of her skin and none from the air. Agatha wants to strip to her skin, and she will, when they are home; for now, she holds her hat firm over her brow, keeping Nicholas’s face in the shade.

Rio doesn’t seem to notice it. Her skirts are heavier than Agatha’s, and the basket is dragging at her elbow, but her hat is just to keep the light from her eyes – her skin never burning, her body never succumbing to the extremes of weather.

They reach home – not nearly fast enough, and Rio immediately unties the sling at Agatha’s neck, and loosens the laces on her back, before taking Nicholas in her arms, leaving Agatha to shed layers of wool and linen, leaving only a shift that is damp wherever it touched her skin.

Rio bounces Nicholas in her arms, before she strips him to his nappy. She lays him flat in his cot, and tickles his stomach, his half-learned giggles filling the air.

Agatha can’t help it. She rests a hand loosely on Rio’s waist, waiting for her to turn around; as soon as she does, Agatha kisses her, long and slow, one hand cradling her cheek, the other still on her waist.

“I’m glad you didn’t have to leave,” she eventually murmurs against Rio’s lips, and she feels Rio smile, feels Rio brush their noses together.

“So am I,” Rio whispers, their lips still touching, before she resumes the kiss.

They stand in each other’s embrace a moment longer, until Rio leans back a bit, looking at Agatha's forehead, and then her neck, her forearms. Only under Rio’s stare does Agatha feel the prickle of sunburn on her skin - not so much today, not with the hat she wore more for Nicholas than herself, but it’s enough that Rio pouts a little, before she says, “Go sit down.”

Agatha sits down without question, sinking into their couch, her back still straight as she waits for whatever Rio plans to do.

Rio comes out of their bedroom with a comb in her hand. She doesn’t say anything as she stands behind Agatha, just quietly begins working the knots out of her hair, alternating between the comb and scratching her nails against Agatha’s scalp, and Agatha can feel her eyes grow heavy. Rio’s fingers unspin the knots; her magic draws the burn from Agatha’s skin. Soon enough, the knots are gone – for the moment, at least – and Rio is playing with her hair for no reason other than to touch her. Agatha lets her head fall back, bumping against Rio’s stomach; she wants nothing more than to stay here.

The moment doesn’t last. Nicky’s fussing cuts through anything – not a cry, not yet, but Rio’s fingers against her scalp turn to a light touch against her shoulder, and when Agatha opens her eyes, it is to Rio with Nicky in her arms, murmuring something to him that Agatha can’t quite hear.

Rio smiles at Agatha. “I don’t think I can help here.” She’s made the same joke more times than Agatha can count, and it hasn’t been funny once, but she smiles back anyway.

Wordlessly, Agatha takes one arm out of her slip; it is too warm to have too much of Nicholas’s skin against hers. Rio makes faces at him – sticks a tongue out, crosses her eyes – as Agatha sets a cushion on her lap, and it is both of their hands that settle him comfortably, the motions of feeding him having long become routine.

It is peaceful, for a moment, until Rio says, “Martha’s boy isn’t long for this world.”

Agatha frowns at her. “The redhead?” She remembers the look on Rio’s face. She’d never have remembered the woman’s name.

Rio nods. “I don’t know how. But it’ll be soon. No more than a few days. He might just fall asleep and not wake up. It happens, sometimes.” She reaches forward, lightly touches the top of Nicholas’s foot. Reminding herself that he is still alive, and that he will stay that way.

Agatha looks down at Nicky – his skin flushed in the heat, his eyes flicking between his mothers. She reaches for his hand, and his fingers – grown impossibly since his birth, still impossibly small - grasp her finger, holding as tightly to her as she hopes he clings to this world.

—

Rio leaves before midnight. It is barely half an hour until she comes home and strips back to the shift she had gone to bed in. Out, and in again, and she comes to bed cradling Nicholas, who does not stir as she lays back in their bed in a spot that had barely had time to cool.

“I don’t think he even knew it was happening.” She has a hand on Nicky’s back, her other next to his hand, waiting for him to grab her finger, to hold her in return.

Agatha knows what will happen in the morning. She had seen it, once, her mother’s dearest friend losing the only child she would ever have to a fever; she has heard it, too many times, when Rio cannot suffer what she has seen alone. The mother will wake to a body long since gone cold, having slept as her child’s soul was taken elsewhere. She might mistake the child for sleeping, in an all-too-brief moment, before she realises what has happened. But she will know. And she will scream, or beg, or simply weep until she cannot. It makes her sick to think about.

But for now, a woman sleeps in the village, unknowing. For now, they are the only two who know that this has happened. Agatha can barely see Rio’s face in the darkness, but there is enough light from the moon for her eyes to shine.

Agatha doesn’t say anything, but she rolls onto her side, rests a hand across Rio’s stomach, Nicky’s feet brushing against her forearm.

Rio sighs deeply, before she whispers into the silent night, “He wasn’t much bigger than Nicky.” She breathes in, as though to speak, but hesitates.

All Agatha can do is hold her a little closer.

After a moment, Rio collects herself enough to go on, fingers still idly tracing Nicky’s back. “Sometimes I go, and I have to pick the child up myself; it’s too new to even know what’s happening, it has no idea why its mother is crying, only that someone is carrying it away. Or it’s a mother and child, clinging to each other, the only time they’ll ever get to do that.” Rio pauses, and her breath catches. “And whenever that happens, all I can picture is you. And it was worse again when it’s the mother. The children don’t know what’s happening, and nobody knows I’m there; they just weep, there’s nothing to be done. The mothers beg me to stay. But it used to be okay. This is what happens, it always happens. But all I could see in him was Nicky. All he’d have seen in me was someone his mom showed him to earlier, had he even opened his eyes. He didn’t know a damned thing. I don’t think Nicky would, either.”

It is, really, too hot for the embrace, but that doesn’t matter. Agatha leans in close, and Rio stares back at her, ignoring the tears beginning to fall. She doesn’t have the words - she doesn’t know if there is anything she could say to help. So instead, she kisses Rio’s face, over and over, and holds her close as Rio begins to sob.

—

Agatha had been young, when they did it. Young enough that it was still a mortal lifespan, even if hers was never to be a mortal life. Her own coven were already nothing but bones left where they had landed on the ground around her pyre, and she had lost track of how many bodies she had made since then.

And every time, a woman in green, watching her, until the woman came to speak.

A green witch – like any other green witch, but nothing like the others at all. A beautiful woman – like so many others that Agatha has kissed, has had fall for her, but unique, and unfathomable, and the first person she ever loved.

Of course, they would swear to protect each other. Of course, they would do more than just swear it in mere words. A ritual as old as magic itself, older than any language still spoken. A ritual where the words do not matter, only the intent behind them. And the pain. And the blood. Under a full moon, always a full moon.

“I won't harm you—” Rio had sliced the blade down Agatha's right palm, deep enough for the pain to sear— “And you won't harm me.” Agatha had returned the motion, slicing Rio's palm just as deeply, grinning at the look of surprise on her love's face.

They had grasped hands, their blood mingling and dripping on their skirts, and they had stayed there, letting a hundred heartbeats pass. Blood running down their wrists, staining their sleeves. Blood on their skirts. Blood in each other's veins.

A hundred heartbeats, and Agatha had lifted their still-joined hands to kiss Rio's knuckles, blood staining her lips. Her tongue had darted out to taste it, neither the first time nor the last, and Rio's eyes had flicked towards her mouth, before she leaned in to taste the blood herself.

Blood to protect themselves, to protect from anything that may seek to harm them. That it was Rio was all that truly mattered to Agatha, but that it was Rio meant that perhaps, she, too, would be protected as more than a mere mortal.

It is not enough.

—

Of course, Agatha is alone with Nicky when it happens. Of course, they would seek her out eventually.

They send a single witch, bound by their bidding; they know it is her, when she leaves the fire witch an empty husk the second the witch tries to attack her. There is a joy in the new way in which fire dances in her hands, but it is not enough, not when it is no longer only herself that she has to protect.

They don’t come, not yet, but Rio does – wearing her other face, as though it might be enough to ward them away a little longer. “She said there were seven of them. Said they’d help her, if she helped them find you. Don’t think that worked out for her.”

But they have to do something. Something that they have planned for, that they prepared for, that they knew they would have to do.

Agatha wants nothing less than to do this.

Nicky is beginning to crawl, and they’ve had to rearrange half the house as a result. Nowhere for him to crawl behind, out of sight; nothing dangling where he might grab it. He has one tooth, just beginning to come in, and delights in throwing things at the ground.

He is so, so innocent. As is his blood.

He doesn’t have the faintest idea what his mothers need to do.

The protection spell is long, and elaborate, and it takes most of the day and half the night until it is time. And Agatha feels herself freeze as she goes to Nicky’s cot.

He’s sleeping through the night, now. Swaddled against the winter, his lips parted, his breaths even. This is to protect him, but he does not know that. They wanted him to do this willingly. They did not think – they had hoped – that maybe, they could hold out long enough for him to be capable of want.

Rio comes in to find her, to find them. For a brief moment, she watches their son sleep, before she whispers, “We need to do this soon, or it won’t work tonight.”

Agatha nods, but she cannot bring herself to move. He won’t even remember this, but something of it will linger in his mind. She’s holding the knife, and a small bowl – they don’t need much for this, but they need it. She can feel Rio’s gaze burning on her.

Rio’s voice is ice as she mutters, “I don't want to come home, and find that somehow, something has hurt you. Either of you. I don't want to come home, and realise why I'm home.”

“You do it, then.” Agatha knows it needs to happen. That does not mean she can do it herself.

Rio watches their son, asleep, unaware, and then she takes him from his cot, still wrapped in blankets to keep the winter air from his skin. She holds him carefully, murmuring words that are too quiet for Agatha to hear, and kisses the top of his head, pausing to breathe in the scent of him. They take him outside, starlight glistening on the snow, so that the spell can be cast with blood as fresh as it can be.

And then she motions to Agatha, to bring the palm-sized bowl close. And she cuts their son's skin, comforting him as he wakes and immediately begins to wail, as Agatha holds the bowl underneath his too-small arm, blood dripping into it.

Enough for a ritual, enough to protect them – it doesn’t take much innocent blood at all; the cost is not in the blood itself.

The wound knits itself before Agatha's eyes, but that does not stop Nicky from crying. Agatha wants to reach for him, hold him close; her breasts ache at his sobs, her heart stings. But it is Rio who clings to him, Rio whose eyes are glistening, Rio who wipes the blood from his unmarred skin and cradles him until his crying subsides.

She takes him back inside, and Agatha cannot bring herself to follow, does not think she will be wanted there anyway. Instead, she waits, and though they are both needed for the final steps of the spell made with their son's blood, neither of them can meet the other's eye as they cast it.

—

The footsteps stop, a hundred feet from their cottage, and there is no path away. Dried brown flecks flash against the snow, a few scraps of thread cling to a nearby tree. Nobody would know that anybody had been there, not unless they knew what to look for.

They won’t return now. Not for years. They don’t know that the worst of this spell fades quickly, that soon, all it will do is force passers-by with magic in their blood to choose another path. The Salem Seven are patient – they have waited this long, and they will wait until they think it is safe again.

Agatha wishes that there had been another way.

—

The woman is alone. Wandering at dusk, empty handed, utterly alone in the woods.

She's young, probably, Agatha notices, watching her in the dying light, with light brown hair, skin burnt red by the summer. She could almost be pretty, at the right angle, and she has not a lick of magic. The protection spell is a year and a half old, not long enough to quite fade, but that is sign enough that the woman has happened upon them by chance.

And she has seen the cottage. Seen Agatha, clearly enough to rush over, almost tripping on her filthy skirts as she does. Agatha doesn’t even get a chance to flinch away before the woman grabs her hands.

“I'm sorry to intrude like this, but might you spare a place for me to sleep for the night? Only my husband—” And she bursts into tears. Great, heaving, sobbing things, any more words lost indistinguishably in the wet.

Agatha has run before, she has feared for her life before, but she has never let it ruin her like this. No dignity, no fight, no sense about the woman. It’s almost too easy, but Agatha is bored.

And so, she smiles, tries to make it touch her eyes, and says, “Of course, dear.” A hand on the shoulder, and the woman is pathetically soft under her touch, now sobbing in relief.

Nicky's in bed, and Agatha hopes to hell he stays there. This woman doesn't need to know he's there. Though she doesn't seem bright enough to notice anything not under her nose.

Agatha disguises the sparking of the flame by her hand, but the woman sits at the table, hands trembling, noticing nothing, just waiting for the offered tea. She asks idly, more to see if the woman is paying attention at all, “What is your name, dear?”

The woman responds, but Agatha doesn't care to listen.

They keep herbs and tinctures in their kitchen, most drawn from the ground by Rio's hand, but Agatha recognises enough now to pick her own in Rio's absences. She knows what she needs. A little for colour, a little for taste, the last of one particularly small pot just to use the last of it.

The woman doesn't even think before she drinks from the cup handed to her by a stranger, as that stranger sits across from her, empty-handed. Sips, startles at the heat, sips again. Probably the first thing she’s had all day, daft creature. A few more sips, and she starts blathering again about the husband, something about him never having been like this when they were courting, and Agatha nods in the right places, hums in affirmation, watches the woman drain half the tea.

It's getting dark. A flick of her wrist, and Agatha lights every candle in the room - it will be nice, then, when Rio comes home, to see her clearly. And the woman stares at her.

“You're a witch.”

Stating the damned obvious. “Well, of course I am.” A witch. A very bored, lonely witch, waiting at home for her lover to return, impatient enough to try to lure her.

The woman glances down at her tea, and back up again. “What have you done to me? What are you doing to me?”

And Agatha smiles, letting her teeth show, enjoying the woman's eyes widening in realisation. “You've made it very clear that you know why a person might want to hide from rather... unsavoury figures.”

She could have killed the woman as easily as she sparked the flame for tea, but this is far more fun, and she has not liked keeping belladonna in the house since Nicky got old enough to open cupboards. This was as good a chance as any to use the last of it.

“You're a witch, of course you're a witch, all alone out here with—”

Agatha leans across the table, and presses one finger to the woman's lips, all it takes to stun her into silence. “That's enough of that, dear, and truly, I'm not alone at all. I'd rather you don't wake my son. I don't want him to see you like this.” This is getting tiring.

“You don't want him to know what you've done?” The woman spits it against Agatha's finger.

“Oh, that's not a bother. But he gets ever so uncomfortable around dead bodies. Not something I'd have ever expected as the child of either of his parents, but children are odd things, are they not? Never what we expect when we first hold them in our arms. Well, not that you'll see much of that.”

The woman goes to cry out, and Agatha clamps a hand over her mouth. The woman is struggling, but she is succumbing, the belladonna working swiftly and painlessly, the suffering all conjured up by panic. It takes mere moments.

At least she has the grace to die quickly, Agatha notes, as she wipes the dead woman's saliva off her hand, onto the bedraggled cloak the woman hadn't taken off.

She doesn't have to wait long for Rio to come home.

She's scrubbing the traces of belladonna tea from the cup – maybe they'll just get rid of it, it isn't worth the risk – when she feels arms around her, and she turns in the embrace to kiss Rio in greeting. She’s missed her. The days are long, and her blood is running hot, far hotter than can be solved by her own hand, though not for lack of trying.

Rio kisses her back, without any of the fire Agatha was hoping for, before clinging to her tightly. A hand twists in the hair at the back of her neck, fingers catching in knots that Agatha hasn't bothered to brush. Her breaths are ragged, her grasp relentless.

“All I knew, Agatha, all I knew was that someone was dead here, and I—” Rio clings somehow tighter to Agatha. “Please don't do it here. I don't want to be pulled here thinking it's Nicky. Or you.”

Agatha holds Rio tighter. “He didn’t even wake up.”

“Oh, you killed her quietly,” Rio says flatly. She buries her face in Agatha's neck, and Agatha can feel the rush of air against her skin as Rio’s breathing steadies.

Agatha tries to keep her tone light as she rubs a hand against Rio’s back. “Quietly enough. She was hardly a fighter. I wouldn't have wasted my time had she kept walking.”

Rio sighs, finally seeming to relax in their embrace. Eventually, she whispers, “Well, let's see her.”

The body still lies slumped on their table. Eyes open, starting to film, fingers not yet beginning to stiffen.

“She was running away from a husband, you know,” Rio says, idly, poking at the woman's clothing, pressing at her pocket for anything besides dried rosemary.

“She said something like that.” Agatha watches Rio in her cursory examination.

“I don’t think she was lying. She still seemed surprised that you, of all people, would do this to her, and not that husband.” Rio chuckles. “More fool her.”

Agatha shrugs. “Well, he can't get her now.”

They should probably deal with the body before Nicky wakes, but it is deep in the night, and she is nobody special enough to be worth burning at the witching hour. It may better to wait until morning.

Rio finishes her study, straightens her back. Something has shifted in her face, the little mirth gone, her gaze suddenly distant. And she says, softly. “Get her out of here. I need to see our son. And you know what he’ll be like if he sees her.”

And she leaves Agatha alone, with guttering candles and the anonymous corpse.

—

He is two years old, all smiles and giggles, humming along as Rio sings lullabies older than time to him.

He is three, befriending the creatures that emerge from the forest and the children that play in the village, making up songs to sing to Mami when she gets home from wherever she goes, that Agatha cannot help but join in harmony.

He is all too quickly four, and five, and growing faster than either of them could have anticipated. Tentative steps have long since become steady legs, which he uses to wander through Rio's vegetable garden to look for slugs, as his mothers watch on from the porch, Rio's head in Agatha's lap, tea going cold in spring air.

Truly, all Agatha wants him to do is slow down. To be the little boy who would hold her hand a little longer than he does now, who wouldn’t ask questions about why they must live so far away from the village, or why his mothers are a coven of two, or where Mami goes when she has to leave.

The last, he asks, one night, when Rio vanishes in the middle of the afternoon, and Agatha stumbles on her words – she knows death intimately, but she fears what comes beyond as much as any other mortal. All she can say is, “Mami takes people when they have to go on a long journey, and she makes sure they know the way.”

Nicky nods, but he doesn’t seem happy with the response. But he is tired, too. His eyelashes flutter as Agatha strokes his cheek, and he sinks further into his pillow and sighs as Agatha pulls the blankets closer to his chin.

She kisses his forehead, smooths his hair. It’s getting long, but he hates having even the ends trimmed, so it stays long. All she wants is to crawl into his bed and hold him close, both of them wanting Rio there, but more and more, Nicky insists – with all the force that can be mustered by a child missing both of his front teeth - that he’s getting big now, and he doesn’t need his mothers to cuddle him until he falls asleep. Not unless he crawls into their bed, of course.

It takes Rio two days to come home. Agatha has never quite understood it – one hundred and twenty people die in every minute of every day, but Rio is home sometimes for days at a time, or gone for mere hours. And then, she is gone for two days; sometimes, it is a war, a famine, something else of an unfathomable scale, but sometimes, there is nothing at all, just lives ending as they always do. Rio can’t quite explain it, either: “It just is.”

But she always comes home.

And today, she comes home, and the first thing Nicky asks is exactly what he asked Agatha, down to the cadence of his words. “Mami, where do you go?”

Rio just looks tired. There’s nothing strong clinging to her skin – not the ashen smell of a thousand killed in flame, nor the mildew stink of a hurricane – but her shoulders are sloped, the shadows under her eyes pronounced. She sinks into their couch, and Nicky scrambles onto her lap, leaning easily into her embrace. She kisses his head, breathes the scent of his hair. Something tells Agatha that too many of those that she took away were little boys with gaps where teeth will never grow.

Later, Rio will spend as long as she can in the bath, scrubbing the memories from her skin as Agatha scratches at her scalp. For now, Agatha touches her shoulder briefly, softly, and goes to make tea.

She can hear their murmuring – the only two people she has ever loved – and does not want to be away from this conversation. She can see them from the doorway; neither of them pays her any mind. Rio is playing with Nicky’s hair, now, and her expression has softened, as it always does when she is with him.

And Rio says, as calmly as Agatha has ever heard her, “I know it doesn’t seem fair. But it’s the fairest thing of all. Everyone has to go there, some day. And sometimes it is sad. But I take people away when they’re very sick, or very old, or very hurt. They already have to go, sweetheart, I can’t change that; I just make sure they go to the right place.”

Nicky stares for a moment, brow furrowed. “But aren’t you and Mama very old?”

Rio smiles, just a little. “We get old differently.”

Nicky’s voice is quiet when he asks, “Will I get old differently, too?”

At that, Agatha feels her stomach twist. She tries not to think about it, tries never to think about it. How Nicky mimics her hands whenever she casts a spell, nothing more than a wave of his hands. The only magic he can forge is that which his blood is used for, and Agatha fears that it is something he will never grow into. They had to recast the protection spell, not long ago at all – a lone witch, seeking to move unnoticed, wandered closer than she should have been able to; she will never be noticed again, and her power is still warm under Agatha’s skin, but it was indication enough. Nicky had bitten his lip and squinted with focus, trying to help with the spell that his blood was central to; nothing had come from his fingertips except for a slight shake.

Agatha does not want to die, and she does not want to outlive her son.

Rio, however, manages to not let her slight smile waver. “We’ll see, but first, you must grow up, my love.”

“But some day, you’ll take Mama and I away, too?”

Rio’s arms tighten around their son. “One day. But not for a very, very long time.”

The kettle whistles; the moment is broken. Agatha tries not to let on the way that her stomach is still churning.

—

Agatha hears Rio come home before she sees her.

There is no ripple in reality as she comes in from wherever she goes – it is just the quiet creak of floorboards, Rio’s feet bare so as to not wake Nicky as he sleeps, as she tiptoes into his room to see him. It is not late, as such, but it is late enough for a boy of six, who spends spring days chasing butterflies and swimming in the creek, and he sleeps through the night, has for years now.

Rio always goes to their son first when she comes home late at night. Kisses his cheek, or just tucks him, never waking him. Always in bare feet.

And she always gets ready for bed. She could come home in any way she wants – a travelling cloak, her pyjamas, nothing at all – but she always comes home, and then strips her absence away. Tonight, it is a light linen dress – not the one she left in, and too light for the settling fall – and she sits on the edge of the bed, waiting for Agatha to put her book down and to untie the laces on the back. There is no reason that she needs to do this other than that she likes to; Agatha likes the way that Rio relaxes under her touch, how she so often shivers into it.

The book is nothing important – a smattering of spells from green witches long dead, who had to put everything they were into casting something that Rio can do with a distracted wave of her hand. Nothing Agatha can do at all, but the book had fallen into her hands, and she had hoped that Rio would come home before the candles on their bedside table guttered out. Agatha happily abandons it to slowly loosen laces, to tap her fingers across Rio’s lower back in a way that turns her shivers to a soft laugh.

The candlelight dances across Rio’s skin as she stands and lets the linen fall to the floor, and Agatha lets her gaze dance with the candlelight, half willing Rio to not bother with a nightgown, half hoping for her to reach for one solely so that Agatha can undress her again.

Rio is fidgety, that much is clear to the tiny part of Agatha’s mind that can think past staring at every curve, every shadow on Rio’s body. But still, she stares, knowing every inch of Rio’s body, how easily to induce a flutter or a cry or a twitch.

And Rio is watching her in return – smirking at her, enough for Agatha to belatedly realise the way in which her mouth is slightly agape, tongue pressing at her teeth. Her mouth snaps shut, and Rio just grins, all smugness, before shaking out the nightgown in her hand, and making a damned show of dragging it over her head and smoothing it against her thighs.

She stares expectantly at Agatha as she crawls into bed, knowing full well that there’s something on Agatha’s mind, and exactly what that is. There’s still something dancing behind her eyes that is not this present moment, that is not Agatha’s touch, but all Agatha murmurs is, “Welcome home,” and she kisses her love in greeting, relishes the pooling of heat at the simple touch.

Rio relaxes into her touch, and it is the way that she goes soft – warm, pliant – even as she leans over Agatha that makes the heat now clawing through Agatha’s body take hold, and there’s nothing in the world besides the woman in her arms, their bodies fitting together as though Fate herself had seen to it.

It is very, very easy to convince Rio, through naught but touch, to sit up, to follow the motions as Agatha peels the nightgown off – not yet even warmed from Rio’s skin - and for Rio to mirror the movement with Agatha’s, her eyes never leaving Agatha’s face.

Rio leans in, presses her lips against Agatha’s jaw, her neck, and it is enough for Agatha to want nothing more than to seize control before Rio seizes it herself.

And so, Agatha says, “Lie down.” The words rasp in her throat, sticking as she refuses to yield the little control she has to Rio’s touch.

Rio smirks - again - but she obeys without question; she takes her time settling herself, adjusting pillows, smoothing her hair back so that she isn’t laying on it. But she obeys, watching Agatha all the while. Only when Rio is still does Agatha lean in, and Rio leans up to meet Agatha’s lips as soon as their noses brush.

”Ah, ah, ah,” Agatha murmurs, letting her breath ghost over Rio’s lips. “You got home so late. You need to promise me you’ll be a good girl, and be quiet.”

Rio’s eyes are blazing as they meet Agatha’s, and she nods without a word, the only sound the soft rise and fall of her breath.

Agatha mirrors the damn smirk that Rio has worn all evening, feels herself bare her teeth, feels Rio’s breathing grow heavier, stilted, and that is all the cue she needs.

Her lips travel slowly over Rio’s body, tasting her pulse, her skin, the gooseflesh rising from perhaps the cold, perhaps Agatha’s touch. Not a word, not a whimper, until she nips her teeth against Rio’s thigh, and is rewarded with a gasp.

It is a blur, then, of Rio’s heel digging into her back, of open mouths clashing, of nails and frantically grabbed scarves digging crescent moons and red indents into skin, until they find themselves both breathing heavily still, frenetic movements turned languid, red marks left to be worn with pride, no matter how easily Rio could heal them. Rio shifts her arms stiffly, one hand coming to gently brush Agatha’s bicep, fingertips against her skin with no purpose but to touch.

Agatha is just as slow, just as gentle as she undoes the gag in Rio’s mouth. She strokes Rio’s cheek where the fabric had been pressed, wipes the corners of her mouth dry.

Rio is watching her, intent, silent, unblinking. She watches as Agatha flings the scarves to the floor, not caring where they land. She watches as Agatha settles against her, close enough for their noses to brush, and she says, quite plainly, “I want another baby.”

Agatha’s mouth falls slightly open, and she can feel her heart, its beat suddenly thrumming violently. Anything she may have said, gone with the surprise.

And then Rio kisses her, absurdly gentle; Agatha can’t help but sink into the kiss, entirely under Rio’s thrall. Her heart is already slowing – the surprise gone, the idea already burrowing itself into her.

They’ve both seen Nicky with the village children. They can’t lose him, even when he is out of sight, his laughter carrying in the breeze, impossibly distinct from the other half a dozen children his age. The winter comes, and they barely leave their home; by spring, he is almost sick of his mothers, and is trying to make friends with the creatures that dare venture out of the forest. He likes to be alone, yes, but it does not change that sometimes, he is very lonely.

Agatha knows what it is, to have been a lonely child. Her mother’s coven had all been her mother’s age; their children, young enough to barely even have their milk teeth when Agatha orphaned them all at once. Nicky’s age, some of them, if that.

It should terrify her. This is something that they should not have done once.

Rio has long since broken the kiss and is instead watching as Agatha loses herself in her thoughts. “It doesn’t have to be so soon,” she whispers, and she brushes a thumb across Agatha’s cheek. “But it might be nice.”

She could think on it – there is still time to truly think on it – but she knows it, instantly. Knows it in her bones that she wants this.

And so, she says, the whisper all too soft for the way it is making her head spin, “I think we should.”

And Rio smiles at her, biting her lip a little, and Agatha can see the relief in her eyes. She wants to live in the look in Rio’s eyes, she wants to let this moment live on forever in her mind, but she can’t do that, and so, Agatha kisses her, long and slow.

—

Winter comes, and the solstice. Agatha is the one to find the hare, and she twines it with ropes of air, leaves it on the edge of the woods so that Nicky won’t see it – he’ll want to bring it home, and she does not want to have to break his heart when she slits its throat.

He’s long since asleep when the time comes.

Agatha and Rio strip to their skin, feet going numb in the snow, the world glowing around them as Rio murmurs the words and Agatha slits the hare’s throat. They know what to expect, now. Agatha can feel a phantom ache in her lower back, jarring with the excitement whirling in her stomach, and she bites her lip - she wants this, she does, wants it enough that her heart aches, but it terrifies her, now that she knows exactly what she wants to go through again.

Rio sees her, catches her eye. Reaches for her hand, and gently, with ice-cold lips, kisses their joined fingers. And without a word, she leads Agatha inside, away from their new-laid hope.

—

They could not, should not have expected it to work a second time. They could barely have expected it to work the first.

Still, Agatha does not expect the lurch in her stomach when she sees it.

She is walking with Nicky, slow and steady footsteps on snow that has hardened to slipperiness. Their usual winter route - the village is too far in snow like this, especially with Nicky insisting that he is big enough to walk the whole route that they take under the feeble midday sun. His hand is a vise on hers, and he leads her around the perimeter of the field around their house, past his favourite tree, and back towards the vegetable garden, where the dead hare lays.

He doesn’t know what it is for. They know the spell is one that rarely works - they do not need Nicky taking hope as a fact.

He kneels close, and Agatha is glad they’ve raised him with the sense not to touch dead things without one of his mothers checking it first, though the aversion is as much his own.

“It’s dead, Mama.” His face is screwed up as he studies it, as though his own focus could bring it back to life – a power beyond anybody, even Rio.

Agatha nods, not that Nicky sees. And she kneels next to him, to look.

It is too cold for it to truly rot. But she can see it, clear as anything. They had waited six days before the first hare had vanished, and it could have been sleeping that whole time, were it not for the sheer amount of blood and the gaping wound at its throat. But this hare – its stomach is distended, the wound by its throat gaping. Its eyes are seeping away, ants beginning to crawl into the crevices, to claim what is theirs and which will never be anything more than dead.

Nicky’s hand is cold in hers. “You’re crying, Mama,” he whispers, and Agatha finally notices the pinprick tears not quite falling.

She can’t tell him why. Not all of it. But she can tell him what he will understand. “Mami and I wanted to do—a spell. With the hare. But it’s dead, so it didn’t work.”

Nicky nods, his expression as sombre as a child can muster. “Maybe it’ll work next time.”

Agatha tightens her grasp on his tiny, cold hand. “Maybe one day, my love, but not yet.”

—

Rio has been gone for a day when they find the hare rotting; she is gone another day yet after Agatha burns the wasted creature, the snow too deep to bury it. She comes home in the morning, footsteps crunching in snow the first sign of her arrival. Agatha is watching Nicky play in the snow – well, less play, more digging through to see what remains of the vegetable garden, not that it will be any effort at all for Rio to fix whatever is underneath.

Rio sits next to her on the step, her cloak sweeping out behind her. Agatha just leans against her shoulder, and sighs as Rio rests an arm around her shoulders.

Nicky is fixated on the husk of a dead ear of corn, no indication at all that he is listening. Still, Agatha speaks at a bare whisper, and she can feel Rio leaning closer to hear her properly. “Do you have any idea why it doesn’t always take?”

Rio purses her lips in thought. “No – I mean, I can guess, but no.”

Agatha raises her head a little. “You can guess?”

Rio rests her head a little more firmly against Agatha’s, forcing her to relax. “I can’t know. Nobody can. But it’s like any other baby, I think. Sometimes, it is the right time; sometimes, it isn’t. The wrong time for the mother, the wrong time for her body, the wrong time for the world. Just like it is for everyone else.”

”Oh.”

”Not necessarily a bad thing, really, for us to struggle as much as anyone else. It could be easier, too easy, and they’d be swarming.” Rio’s tone lightens, and Agatha feels her soul lift with it. “Anyway, can you imagine if we’d had a baby every time we’d fucked?”

Agatha just snorts.

It is winter now. But the summer will come, and they will try again.

—

Summer comes, and it does not take. Nor does it take in the winter – almost a relief, as Nicky picks up a flu from the village children, and spends weeks bedridden with it, Rio’s touch not enough to keep it from returning.

Seven children in the village never leave their beds again.

Agatha has never been so relieved to be woken at the witching hour by Nicky clambering under the blankets between her and Rio.

—

Spring comes, and with it, newborn lambs on every farm, new growth in the forest. Summer comes, and with it, new children in the village, bearing the names of their dead siblings, dead uncles and aunts, dead grandparents. No life wholly new, no true change but the growth of those already alive.

In fall, Nicky asks, “Why don’t I have any brothers or sisters?”

He says it innocently, as he carves the yucky bits – at his insistence – from a potato. Rio tries not to giggle as she drops bones into the stock pot, fingers wet with the gore of butchering. And, infuriatingly, she does not say a word, simply staring at Agatha and waiting for her to begin.

”It... takes a lot of work,” Agatha begins lamely, and Nicky is rolling his eyes before her sentence even ends.

”But lots of people in the village have lots of babies, and they don’t seem to mind.”

Agatha tries to measure her thoughts before speaking, but nothing seems right. “They don’t always have as many babies as they want, either.”

Rio murmurs under her breath, “Except the Hutches, they can’t bring themselves to stop.”

Nicky doesn’t hear her, thankfully; Agatha could have swatted her for it. He just starts talking about another family – one with a boy his age, one of the few families lucky enough to have not buried any children. Agatha doesn’t care enough about them to listen, but she is glad for the melody of Nicky’s voice.

Agatha can almost trace Nicky’s growth in their evening stews alone. He had learned its taste from the broth, learned to chew with potato simmered enough to barely hold its shape. The seasons come and go and with it: rabbit, preserved beef, chicken, goat. He eats a small mug of it, and then a bowl, and then as much as Agatha herself whenever he is about to seemingly shoot up several inches overnight.

Spring creeps to summer, and it fades to fall, and one evening, Nicky sits down with his dinner, and doesn’t seem to want it at all.

He stares at the stew blankly – not the way he’d turn his nose up as a toddler because the carrots were cut the wrong way, or because he doesn’t like rabbit. It's something else, and it terrifies Agatha. “I’m not hungry,” he says, a childishness creeping into his voice that she knows she hears less and less as he gets older. Less and less, until recently. Refusing to eat, or eating so little that he may not have tried.

Rio watches him, silently; Agatha doesn’t see the look on her face, not tonight. She’s distracted, caught up entirely in Nicky – filtering the stew back to a broth, so that even if he cannot eat, he can still have something in his stomach, so that he can sleep.

It is three days of this. Three days of bone broth and bread sliced thin, the savage edges of crusts cut off, just so that he can turn away from it with a wince, until Rio lays her hands on him to ease it – his shoulders, a gentle caress; his lower back, stroking his shirt with her thumb. Every night, she does it. Every morning. And it does not last.

Agatha can barely eat anything herself, not with the way her stomach twists as she watches their son writhe in his sleep. He’d always slept so soundly.

Rio whispers it outside his closed door one evening, her touch on Nicky having barely been enough to lull him to sleep. “It won't stop.” She doesn't – can't – meet Agatha's eyes, she doesn't try. “It's too deep in him. I can—we can heal the damage it does, but it'll always come back, and it'll only keep getting worse.”

Agatha knew this already. They have both seen people sicken like this, die of this. Were Rio able to fix it, she would have done so already.

But it still feels like a final failure to hear it aloud. Something growing within their son, hiding until it was too late for anything to be done at all, and now, all they can do is wait.

It is though Death herself has set her sights, and nothing can stop her.

But Death herself is here, and she herself cannot stop it, no matter how she tries – only stall it, only minimise the pain enough for their son to rest.

Agatha does not say anything at all. There’s nothing left for her to say.

—

He's asleep. He sleeps so much now, always seems to be asleep for as long as the sun is, even in the depths of winter, succumbing to something that seems to be the slowest thing in the world, and yet, it is as though no time has passed at all. Wakes coughing, or vomiting, more blood than anything else: always the blood, as he comes apart from the inside. But at least in sleep, he seems to be at peace, even with fever turning his skin red, his chapped lips parted as Agatha smooths his hair back from his face. He'd be cooler with his hair cut short, but he has always hated haircuts. And a part of Agatha wants his hair as it always has been.

So that when he feels better, he is still himself. When, she tells herself.

It is not to preserve the image of her son in her mind, for when that image is all that she has.

A soft creak of floorboards, and Rio comes to kneel next to her, avoiding her eyes, fiddling with her hands. Her nails are ragged, the skin around them picked at. She comes home, and sits next to his bed – it is all she does at home now, just as it is all that Agatha does, in every moment that she can.

“I think he's—” He's not getting better. Agatha can't lie to herself. She can't stop herself from weeping. “He's sleeping comfortably. He's not hurting right now.”

“Agatha,” Rio says, her voice cracking. She inhales sharply. “He's not going to survive the night.” She’s chewing at her fingernails now, her eyes wide.

“Don't say that,” begs Agatha. “Don't. We can—you can—heal him, he’s still here!” She knows that she is begging for the impossible now, but still, she begs.

“I did. As much as I could. He shouldn't still be alive. And I can't stop it, not any more.” At that, Rio sobs. “Sometimes, Agatha, boys die. They come to me with scabby knees and their mothers screaming over their bodies and they die.”

Agatha tries to ignore the bile rising in her throat, the thought of anything that isn't Nicky, that the days, weeks they thought they had are barely hours. She can barely bring herself to whisper, “What's going to happen to him?”

Rio shudders. That they've both seen him suffer as they have, that Rio has seen as much as she has, and it still scares her, terrifies Agatha. But all she says is, “It'll hurt.”

“Can't you at least stop it from hurting?”

“I can, but—” Rio's cheeks are wet, glistening in the candlelight. Odd, the things one notices in times like this. “I can.”

—

Her love mixes herbs and plants, as she has a thousand times before. Most grow in their garden already; one does not, because they've no need to keep it, but Rio finds it in the woods, unable or unwilling to give it life herself.

Agatha watches, cradling Nicky in her arms on their porch. She could have left him to sleep, but she can't bear to be apart from him, not now, not when she will be, so soon. He seems a little more comfortable in the cool of the night air, at least, and in the ever-rarer instances when he opens his eyes, he stares at the stars.

He'll be gone by morning. One with those same stars. Or wherever Rio will take him, wherever boys go when they die.

Rio is watching them both, even as her hands move without thought to make this philtre. She doesn’t say a word. She just watches. Muddles leaves, crushes berries with the flat of her knife.

Valerian, to help him sleep. He'd have nightmares, when he was small, but half a cup of tea made with valerian would be enough to make his eyes droop. He'd fall asleep between them in their bed, and neither of them ever had the heart to move him.

Honey, to do nothing but ease the taste. The same as he liked on his porridge, that he'd sneak by the spoonful when he thought neither of them was looking. He liked the bee hives, kept by the old man in the village, and never cried when he was stung, because Mami would fix it, and kiss the spot better. She always made the pain stop.

Belladonna. To make it stop.

Their son is now watching her, too.

Soon, Rio is curled into Agatha's side, so that she can see their son's face, holding his leg as though it will keep him with them. Nicky clutches at Agatha's shirt, skin hot and sticky with sweat, his eyes frantically searching his mothers’ faces until they settle on the cup in Rio's hand. Mami is the one who gives him tisanes that make the winter coughs go away and who makes summer teas that smell like tomorrow, she is the one who will make the ache in his tummy stop.

And she will, and it will.

Rio passes the cup to Agatha – as though passing poison through someone else's hand is all that is needed for this to be allowed. She’s not—she’s just helping him along.

He takes it with both hands, clutching it unsteadily, as though he is half his own age, still learning to drink from a cup.

And he drinks it. Tastes the honey, lets Rio’s fingers slip through his hair, and soon, he is relaxing against Agatha’s breast, shrinking into her embrace.

His eyes are drooping as he murmurs, voice already fading from the world, “I don't want to go to sleep.”

All Agatha can do is smooth his hair back, damp against his brow, and murmur, “I know.”

He curls into her. His breathing is slow, and growing shallow. It’s all happening too fast.

Agatha whispers, her lips against his forehead, “I love you, Nicky. So much. We both love you so much.” She’s doing everything within her not to cry, not to let his final moments in this world be spent listening to his mama weep.

Rio doesn't say a word. She doesn't need to. She has more time. Her fingertips are still running through their son's hair, lulling him to an easy sleep, gentle as a breath, as though he'll wake as easy as breathing, too.

Rio has more time. Agatha does not, not any more.

Their son is still in her arms, and she wants nothing more than to shriek, to claw him back to life, to take back what they gave him and eke out a final few days, no matter how much pain he’d spend them in.

But she cannot. It is over. He is gone.

Rio is still by her side, but she will leave any second now, and Agatha does not want her to linger here, does not want Nicky to be alone, wherever he is. He’ll have his mami soon, but after that— “Do you know where he’ll go when you take him?”

Rio’s chin wavers.

”Do you know where any of them go, at all?”

She doesn’t say a word in response. She just leans in and kisses their son’s forehead, damp and clammy and cooling in the night. And she murmurs, “I'll stay a little longer. We'll stay as long as we can. Here. With you. I promise.”

And Rio is gone, and Agatha is left alone, holding their son. It is him, and it is not. He has already left, and found Mami’s hand with his own. She is holding an empty shell.

She does not move until the sun breaches the horizon. She is stiff. He is stiff. She feels as cold as he is, but there is blood flowing in her veins, whereas nothing moves within him, not any more.

Rio still isn’t home.

She wraps their son in his blanket. She is loath to let him go, but she cannot stay here, wishing him back to his body.

Instead, she finds a shovel. Rio’s, from her garden. Rio’s garden, and Nicky’s: days spent finding insects and shooing them away from half-grown vegetables. Agatha is digging a grave for the only life she has ever grown.

She digs. She weeps. She screams into an empty forest. The only two people she has ever loved, and one is gone, and the other has not come home.

Rio cannot come home. She cannot leave Nicky to face whatever comes next alone. She cannot stay with him, cannot go with him into it. She has to come home. Coming home, with his eyes, and his nose, and his smile, and without him.

How deep does a grave need to be? Agatha has never waited to find out.

She digs, until her body cannot dig any more. He lays nearby, as if simply sleeping – he has done so much of that recently, it could be like nothing has changed.

She must do this.

Before she can bear herself to hold him for the last time, she takes a knife, and cuts a lock of hair from his head. He’d never have let her, were he here to protest. And with that, she knows he is gone.

The sun is already beginning to set as she places him in it, as gently as she once lay him in his crib. As gently as she has ever held him before.

She sits vigil by his open grave, until the moon is high, and snow begins to fall. Only then, when it is snow blanketing his body, can she begin to blanket him in dirt, too.

The snow stops as swiftly as it began. His grave is naught but freshly turned soil. Rio is still not home.

Agatha steps inside their home. The fire has long since burnt out, and it is as though a layer of dust has already settled inside.

She finds her locket. Places half of the lock of hair in it, and leaves the other, bound in a ribbon, on their kitchen table. It is there, for when Rio comes home. She has to come home.

Nicky’s bedroom smells of sickness. But it smells of him. She cannot bear it. She wants nothing more than to sink into it.

She makes his bed.

Waits.

Forces herself to eat – stale bread, that Nicky had not wanted.

Still waits.

It has been days. Rio is not here.

It is not home, not now.

She cannot stay.

Agatha packs the little she can think of that she may need. The little clothing she cares to carry. A small bell, that Nicky had been so fond of. There’s nothing else here that matters beyond what Nicky has left behind. She cannot bear to look at it, to realise that the smell of her son is already fading from this world.

She leaves, and lets herself look at his grave once more, barren dirt under a blue sky, and walks away before she can change her mind.

She hopes Rio gives him flowers.