Finally the night stretched too thin and the black water ran out of it. Green and yellow and orange light climbed into the sky, and the stone around us broke away.

We had survived. I leapt off the branch, flapping my wings to shake off the last shards, and crowed glory at the top of my lungs.

“Shut up, shut up!” Hex screamed, huddling over her babies.

Somewhere far away, Johnny crowed back. Thrasher came in on the tail end of Johnny’s. I waited for Moose. It sounded like we all were waiting. Then I remembered he wasn’t going to crow and let loose again.

“You’re going to bring the gods!” Hex hopped off her babies and chased me a few strides from her nest, swinging fists at me and beating her wings, then ran back.

“No I’m not.” The gods never came when we crowed. “They’re not looking for us guys, they’re looking for girls.”

That shut Hex up.

I was right. No gods showed up. Thrasher did, though.

“You’re nesting?” He scowled at Hex, her stone babies, and her dead tree. “Here?”

“It’s a good spot! You wouldn’t have found it if Angelpunk wasn’t here yelling.”

He glared at me. “Get out of here. Hex isn’t yours.”

The witch queens weren’t anybody’s. Not really, not like the bearded ladies had been Moose’s. They went with whoever they wanted to whenever they wanted to.

“Why? I was going to show her and Moonie my mating dance.”

Hex rolled her eyes.

Moonie perked up on her perch, a big smile on her face. “I’d like to see that.”

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Thrasher’s spurs came out. Muscles jumped in his arms and chest. He raised his purple-black wings up over his head because he wanted me to remember how much bigger than me he was. Like I had somehow forgotten. Like I wasn’t always measuring the difference.

I stood up tall, puffed up my chest, and stretched my wings out to their full span. The light falling through the thinning leaves made my black feathers gleam with green. Warmth soaked into me where they caught the sun.

Then we were crashing across the dead leaves and snapping twigs and cold dirt and small plants while Hex screamed at us to get away. My spurs caught Thrasher a few good warning shots, but his kept coming like I was a monster and he had to kill me or run me off.

His eyes said he wanted that first one to happen. He didn’t even yell at me while he slashed and jumped and beat his wings. His everything was focused on killing me.

A spur ripped open my jaw. That was way too close to my throat. I was going to die or get injured too bad to fly up in a tree at night.

That couldn’t happen. I took off, running blind.

Thrasher tore through the underbrush behind me. I jumped up and flapped, banked through a narrow copse. My feet hit the ground on rock and I pushed off again.

My wings caught an updraft. I had jumped down from a cliff.

The breaking branches and crackling stems tapered off behind me as I whiffed into the shade of some more forest, but I hit the ground still running. I could feel the wounds now, cold spots opening into my hot insides.

When had Thrasher got me in the stomach? I didn’t remember him tearing open my thigh, either, but it was right there, dangerously near my groin.

I slowed down. Limped a ways, looking at the trees and panting. I didn’t recognize the white bark peeling off these trunks or the yellow leaves fluttering down around me.

A few paces later, the trees ended in a thicket of berry bushes. Over the thorny canes, I could see forever stretching out in tall grass.

No sound or sign of Thrasher. No sign of anybody.

I picked a few berries and looked closer. I was alone, plus I could always heal when the stone sleep came over me. I might not always be able to find something to eat.

The berries were the red and black kind that left your fingers bright, bloody magenta and made you vomit and dump for hours. I chucked the ones I’d picked over my shoulder. Two bounced off my right wing.

I slipped through a break in the brambles. The tall grass swayed and twisted like a giant wingtip was smoothing across it. The wind whispered through the bobbing seed heads.

I had never been in that kind of tall grass before. Its tops tickled my face and chest and arms as I walked into it.

There was no tree cover. Anything in the sky would see me, and I wouldn’t be able to hide.

But there was a hill up ahead. From the top of that, I could figure out where I was and find my way back home.