Kylara woke up in the middle of the night.
She stared at the ceiling, unable to go back to sleep. The moon was out. She could see it through her window, shining on wall next to her. That meant it was barely past evening. She flipped over. Yalmay wasn’t in her bed. Probably at Joontah’s then.
She wished Yalmay was here. She had been spending more time at home the past few weeks than usual, probably because she and Joontah had been fighting. But that seemed to have stopped. That meant less time with her sister. It gave her a bit of an uneasy feeling, and despite not wanting to, she sometimes wished they would start fighting again. She knew it was jealousy talking, but it wasn’t like Kylara had any other friends. Not at the moment.
On a whim, she threw her upper body of the bed and pulled out a box from under the bed. It was mostly just silly stuff, a box of cards, a few sketches Yalmay had done years ago, when their parents had first married. A walnut sized lump formed in Kylara’s throat as she looked at it.
She wanted Yalmay to have the chance to go to the University, she really did. What Malyun wanted to do was not fair. But still. She wasn’t sure what she would do once she left. Especially if Joontah left with her, which Kylara suspected he would. She wouldn’t have any friends anymore, and when she was no longer a warder, she wouldn’t have a job either. Just left over resentments and ostracisation.
She picked up the only drawing in the box that Yalmay had not made. In fact, no one had. It was an entad, one of the only in town. It had just appeared one day out of nowhere like most entads did. It was one of the older ones in Kookaburra Creek, having been in the town for at least four generations. Kylara had once asked for more details–who had found it and where? But Wawiriya had given her a non answer, like she sometimes had the habit of doing when she was not in the mood to talk to humans.
Kylara had taken the drawing from the Council House about two years ago (she was allowed, as a Council member) and since then, it had become her favourite entad.
She reached down and picked the drawing up. It was simple, a black a white sketch, either of a butterfly or a moth–it wasn’t detailed enough to tell which. A few lines were scrawled across it at the bottom, something that looked vaguely like the old Aeyiya script but wasn’t (according to Yalmay. She was oddly insistent it was gibberish)
The ink had not blurred at all in the decades people had been handling it. The lines were almost too sharp to look real, especially considering the aging look of the paper.
Kylara flipped it over a few times to examine it, feeling the softness of the paper on her hands. She stared at the drawing for a moment before taking her glove off and rolling up her sleeve. Then she gently rested the paper on her bare skin.
As soon as it was placed on her skin, the ink started to glow with a soft light, then come alive with life. Kylara watched as the simple pattern animated and became more intricate, then disappear.
She removed the now blank piece of paper. On her skin was a faint outline of a butterfly. She flexed her arm a little and the tattoo moved just slightly, shifting under the skin of the wearer. For a second, it felt just ever so slightly alive, although the sensation faded quickly.
Kylara would have about two hours before the butterfly would return to its home on the paper. Two hours of freedom.
Kylara walked to the window and open it. Once she changed the image to something more specific, she would be forced to move. From prior experience, it was best to open the window first. She had slammed into it one too many times.
All magic in Kookaburra Creek was somehow related to moths or butterflies, in the same way Saltsbury’s magic was salt-related and Ya-itma had ice. The summoning, the entads, all of the elder magic–somehow they were related to lepidoptera. It was a manifestation of the their connection with the butterfly warren, which all of Kookaburra Creek was located under.
Even what Dhaligir had done, it was probably based on the same principle. Moths had a habit of endlessly circling and knocking into lights. Something to do with instincts and the moons. Kylara figured that the entad had repurposed simple effects.
The tattoo worked much the same, repurposing butterfly behaviour, although in a much more tangible, almost quantifiable way.
Kylara liked to use it to fly.
Well, indirectly fly. Entads had a tendency to be… very specific. You needed to get creative with them. They had nothing that would directly give you the ability, unfortunately. But this was good enough.
The tattoo would point you to the nearest flower and dragged you in that direction. If the nearest flower was directly above your head, it would drag you in the air. If it was behind a wall, it would slam you into the wall with a moderate amount of force. Kylara was just strong enough that she could usually navigate the wall despite the pull.
On its own, that ability wouldn’t be very useful. No turning, no control of your speed or direction. And it was hard to tell where the nearest flowers were in the first place.
That was where its other ability came in handy. It was species specific. If Kylara willed the design of the tattoo to shift, it would, taking on the characteristics of whatever butterfly (or moth) it changed to.
For example, Kylara could will the tattoo design be a blue triangle butterfly and the simple black outline would shift to have a vivid blue color and a black band outlining its wings. And blue triangle butterflies, like most butterflies, went to only specific flowers. They didn’t pollinate or lay their eggs on everything. So the tattoo would only drag her towards ones the Blue Triangle liked, like camphor or lolly bush.
So you could navigate, but it involved a lot of preparation. You had to know what species matched which flowers, for example. Then you needed to know where the flowers were, which involved keeping track of seasonal variation as well as location, and then, once you found the right spots, you needed to be able to calculate when to switch the tattoo from one species to another to get the velocity and angle you needed. It was a lot of work and skill.
Back when she was a proper warder, Kylara had placed flower pots up in the sky, above the street. It made it easy to know where the nearest flowers were and have an unobstructed line to reach them. Plus, it gave good lift.
Now, the wards that were holding the pots were gone. They had broken a few months back when she had lost most of her warding. All the flower pots had fallen to the ground at the same time. Kylara hadn’t been in town at the time, but she had been glad no one was injured. She had heard it had been loud.
She sighed and looked out the window. Navigating was so much harder now. She had to relearn everything.
Not too long after the fire, back when she still naively thought choosing the next warder would be easy, Kylara had spent several weeks in the charred forest, training. It had been a good place to practice. The fire had been in the lowest point in the valley and none of the flowers had survived. It had meant that all the points of pulling were far away and high up. But now that some of the greenery had come back, including flowers, everything was hard to keep track of. That and the fact that Malyun had who decided to shame her for benefitting from the fire had meant that Kylara hadn’t been able to focus in the forest. All she saw was flames. Practicing in town was much easier.
Kylara cleared some of Yalmay’s rubbish from the window sill and pulled the window open with a bit of force. Yalmay’s side of the room was much more messy than her own. She had a habit of throwing things on the floor when she was done with them to use later. She never used them later, but Kylara usually did not mind. She trusted Yalmay to clean up if she asked.
Kylara took a deep breath of the outside air. It was a beautiful night today, a good one to go out on. It wasn’t Yalmay’s mess, or even the baby crying (he had been especially colicky lately, Kylara wished she still could make sound muffling wards), but she felt suffocated. She knew if she stayed too long cooped in the house, she would just get annoyed and irritated. The solution was to go out.
She took a few steps back, taking a running start, then jumped out the window. As she did, she willed the tattoo to transform into a Wanderer butterfly (she didn’t know why they were called that, they didn’t seem to have any connection to Wanderers), which shot her to the bottlebrush tree outside her house. Just before crashing into it, she changed the tattoo to a moth, and her body pivoted up. She landed on the side of the tallest house and grappled her way up the wall, using the pull of the tattoo like a grappling hook.
She grabbed the gutter of the roof, which was filled with dust–it hadn’t rained in quite a while– and closed her eyes. She took the in the breeze with a deep breath. The air was crisp and dry and nice.
It had been only a few days since she had been out, but it was almost like she had forgotten what this felt like. The sensation was new every time.
The further the flower, the faster you could go. The trick was one–getting high enough so that nothing was in your way, and two–choosing the right species to do that.
Kylara pulled herself up on the roof with a grunt. She had done with route many times before, but there was always a bit of danger there. She usually started off slow, then built up confidence for the bigger stunts. It always took her a few minutes to get in the swing of things.
She walked to the edge of the roof and then turned and ran to the other side for a sprint, thinking of what could go wrong.
Perhaps something had eaten the flowers, or they had stopped blooming for the season. She sometimes threw up a trigger ward to see if the plant was where it was supposed to be, but it did not always do much good. It was rather difficult to determine if the plant was still flowering, and trigger wards that focused on a particular part of a plant–the leaves, or the bark, or the flowers–were a pain to make. Wards worked best on a species to species level. Anything more specific required some thought.
Still, it was not too dangerous. As long as she still had warding, she was not going to get injuries from falling six or seven metres. Even if she landed on her back or neck, she would be fine.
She landed on the roof across the street from where she had jumped. From this vantage point, she had a good view of Footcross Field and the centre of town. She could see her grandad’s house, in its bright colours and elegant design.
Several fires were lit and people were mingling between them. Some people were dancing and singing in couples. Others were just sitting, enjoying the music and each other's company. There was a lot of laughing going on. The ones who didn't have a partner had gathered at the edge of the firelight as if they weren't sure what to do next, but they still chatted amongst themselves.
A woman shouted a phrase, and the dancing group suddenly stopped and started laughing and running. It must have been some sort of game.
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There was usually groups outside doing things in the evening. Sometimes Kylara went outside to hang out, but she didn’t know many people her own age. She had been too isolated as a child, always kept apart. She always felt awkward around them. Even some of the slang was difficult for her, although once Yalmay had found that out she had started impromptu lessons.
She left the scene of Footcross Field after a few minutes of watching, unsure if it had made her feel better or not. She did like watching people, and she usually derived happiness from their happiness (her grandad had always said happiness was contagious), but there was a sense of differentness than always reared up when she did. It left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Instead, she went to the darker streets, where only the moonlight and a few oil lamps imported from Warrung lit her way. The town was small enough that the fires and flickering light of Footcross field never faded behind her, however. The silhouette of the dancing and the trees cast interesting shadows and made the sky feel fuller than it was.
Down High Street, Kylara had a good view of the Council House, the only building in Kookaburra Creek that was three floors tall. The roof was slightly pointed and built in the style of the Bairnsgam Revival movement. It was almost eleven metres high. Well, ten and three fourths on one side and ten and one fourth on the other, if Kylara was being exact. It was on a very slight slope.
A few weeks back, Kylara had spent an entire arvo climbing the side of the building to put flower pots on the roof. It had been a surprisingly difficult task, trying to navigate it for the first time. Getting high up was hard when you couldn’t just throw a ward up and walk up it like a ramp.
She missed the freedom of warding. It made everything easier. Now she was confined to only the rooftops. With warding, if you tagged the transitions just right, switching the species of butterfly at the apex of a curve and shooting herself upward, she could get hundreds of metres high. Now the limit was the tallest building.
She wished they were larger, but with the size of the town, it was not going to change anytime soon.
She landed quite forcefully and after getting her balance, reverted the tattoo to its normal blank state. It was the only way to stop. Even if you were very near a flower, the tattoo had a bad habit of circling. It looked a bit ridiculous and was rather annoying, so Kylara usually willed the tattoo back into its neutral shape.
As she reached the top of the building, she paused to take in the view. From this vantage point, she could see the entire town sprawled out before her, a patchwork of streets and buildings stretching to the fields and orchards in the west and the forest and Desert to the east.
Kookaburra Creek had shrunk since Kylara had been born, just slightly, with several families moving to the cities of Saltsbury, Warrung, or Bormbora. Wawiriya had once let it slip that this was the first time the town had shrunk since she had arrived, centuries before.
Once upon a time, families staying in the same country for generations and generations, passing down knowledge and secrets. But now things were changing. It had sped up after the Snap, but even before, people were trusting their local magics less and less and trusting the worldhoppers more. Despite the greater risks while travelling, picking up and moving country was more popular. People were less easy to stay in one place for their entire lives.
Warrung was now weaker but, in a somewhat contradictory fashion, the world had become more centralised. Other city states did not feel the need to be subservient any longer. Songlines were more accessible for trade. And because Warrung was seemingly unable or reluctant to edit magic, people were more hesitant to use it. Especially elder magic. Personally, Kylara had never heard of elder magic that had gone wrong, but she supposed it very well could. Usually it was the Deserts, or the entads, or the summonings that were dangerous. Perhaps that was why things were changing. Or at least, that’s what she assumed. The only other thing that had changed were the Wanderers. Kylara didn’t understand it, but something had changed when they had died. She had been young, but things just felt different back then.
Kylara grabbed a flower pot from the roof and plucked a rather large flower from its stem. The tattoo had an annoying habit of being erratic with short distances, which made putting a flower on a stick and following it like a guide dog impossible. But sometimes throwing things worked. It was necessary if you were already on the highest point around. She tied a the stem around a small peddle and ran in the direction of the nearest roof, throwing the rock and the flower up and above her as she jumped. She shot upward, following the trajectory.
It felt like she was leaping, and Kylara loved it. Walking on sky wards was great, but even when in the air, it did not feel like flying. This did. This felt like freedom.
Kylara landed on the top of the nearest roof with a thud. Back when she had warding, she had put up sound wards on the roofs of all the buildings. Now she could not be so sloppy. She needed to stick the landings or people would complain of the noise.
She took a few more flowers from her pocket and tied them to rocks. Lately, she had been asking the elders a lot of questions on butterflies, and most of the species were ones she had carefully picked. The problem with this particular entad was specificity. Most butterflies didn’t really care what they ate. Those species were largely useless, because Kylara did not want to go veering off to the nearest plant, she wanted to go to one she choose. Oh, there were some patterns. The bigger butterfly species tended to go for the tube shaped flowers, like pentas or wonga wonga vines, while the smaller ones liked open flowers like tea trees or bottlebrushes. But so far, she had only found a dozen or so flower/butterfly combinations that worked. It made her fairly limited. It was why she needed to resort to rocks.
She threw another stone and pulled herself into the air again. The one good thing about having her right arm as it was was that even with the tattoo on it, it did not feel like she was being pulled. She had once tried to show Yalmay how to use the entad. She had tried it and complained that it made her arm hurt. Kylara simply turned off the pain. Afterwards, she had hung from one arm for thirty minutes from their ceiling while casually chatting with Yalmay, just to see her sister’s exasperation.
She smiled at the memory and jumped again and landed on the nearest roof, using two quick switches to correct her angle and avoid colliding with the roof. The jolt pushed her upwards, like a double jump. As she crested the second arc, she tried to keep her balance on her feet this time, instead of bounding forward and almost falling off the roof. The pull of the flower slowed down when you got closer, but it while it lost much of its initial impetus, it never completely stopped. The forward force tended to orbit around the flower instead of lessening gracefully. You had to cut it off entirely, so it took skill to land.
Kylara landed on the roof with a thud, almost tripping on a slick spot. Odd. It hadn’t rained lately. She needed to work on her balance. It had got worse since she stopped practicing with wards. Walking on sky wards really did wonders for confidence in high spaces.
She could hear shouting in the distance, but she paid it no mind as she continued across the rooftop. The streets here were mostly empty at this hour, and the lights were further between. She had to focus in order to not trip with the poor visibility.
As she walked along the roof, footsteps thudded behind her and she looked down. A shadow darted between the buildings. Then the sound of breaking glass and shouting. Whoever had been causing the commotion before was coming her way.
With a flick of her wrist, Kylara shifted the tattoo to a Jalmenus butterfly (which liked acacias, the nearest one was on a balcony nearby), and grappled down one story of the building, resting on a ledge.
She took out a small metal hook, which caught on one of the screens on the window above her then, after testing its stability, swung out over the street below her. Her body arched through the air with practiced ease.
Another noise jolted her attention and she shifted her body to look over the other side of the building, facing north instead of east. As she did, Kylara finally caught sight of the source of the commotion.
It was Dhaligir. He was arguing with Pemulabee. Kylara kept silent and listened.
“We need to know what happened,” Pemulabee was saying. “You said someone gave you the hair clip?”
“I said nothing of the sort,” Dhaligir said.
“Your sister says otherwise, and two other people saw you talking to a man earlier today.”
Kylara peered through the darkness. “I’m not telling you anything,” Dhaligir said. “You’re lucky I still have it.”
Pemulabee moved closer. “You’re lucky you got to a healer early, or you wouldn’t be walking now. Now tell us who gave it to you.”
Dhaligir shrugged his shoulders “No one gave it to me,” he said.
“Then where did you find it?”
Dhaligir looked at the elder councilman. “Can’t remember,” he said after a moment. “Or maybe, I do but just don’t feel like telling, so I wouldn’t bother wasting your time to find out.”
Kylara propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look at Dhaligir’s body language. It was almost unheard of to talk to an elder that way. Sure, Kylara did it, especially to Malyun but she was the exception. For everyone else, it was one of the strongest taboos.
“Either way,” Pemulabee said, “we need it back.”
The two men stared at each other for a long moment before Dhaligir slowly shook his head and turned to walk away.
“Dhaligir!” Pemulabee shouted. “I think you should know that we won’t be happy until the entad is returned.”
“I don’t care,” Dhaligir said. The corner of Kylara’s lip turned slightly upward. Part of her was glad he was treating everyone this way. It was nice it wasn’t just her.
“You’re not going to get very far with that injury,” Pemulabee said.
“So what? It’s the same either way. You’ll find me, take me to the council house, lock me in that little room you have there for gods know how long…”
“There’s a meeting in two days, we can handle you then. It will not be long.”
“You want me to seriously stand in a cell for two days?” he laughed. “That is not going to happen.”
“You attacked our warder.”
“And you know what? She deserved it. Imla says she broke my leg.”
“You attacked her.”
“I didn’t intend to hurt her.”
“You had a knife, ” Pemulabee said.
Dhaligir didn't answer. He just stared at the nearest oil lamp.
“Look, we’re not going to do anything dramatic, just keep you for a bit while we sort out everything that happened. You need to give me the hair clip, tell us who gave it to you, and then, I’ll even be generous. You can sleep here for the evening. I’ll get Kylara to put a trigger ward around your house so we’ll know when you leave, but it will be more comfortable than the council house.”
Dhaligir shifted on his feet. Then, “I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said. He started running.
Kylara responded immediately, pushing herself off the wall and into the air. “I’ve got him!” she shouted as Pemulabee looked up.
As she jumped off, she switched the entad to a cycad blue which, well, only fed on cycads. Luckily there was one ahead. She landed on the nearest rooftop and dropped down to nearly street level, sliding down the slope almost as if it were a ward.
Dhaligir looked up and his eyes widened. He was nearly below her. Then he sped up and turned down another street.
Kylara followed. It was not easy. Usually she had time to think about what direction she needed to go in and shift the entad accordingly. But this was mostly on instinct. The shadows of the trees and branches flickered as she ran and the wind was cool against her face. She smiled like an idiot. She hadn’t had this much fun in months.
Kylara jumped across another gap and followed Dhaligir down another alleyway. The street was narrow enough that she figured she could jump across without even extending her strides with the entad. She grinned again. The chase gave her a thrill.
At the end of the alleyway, she noticed some mistletoe on a nearby tree and leapt into the air, quickly turning the tattoo into a mistletoe-feeding amaryllis azure butterfly. Then she willed it off, then back to a butterfly, then off again, using the jagged pulls up and gravity down to balance herself and slow her fall. Here, close to the ground, she had to be careful because people kept gardens.
Dhaligir slowed to stop as she jumped. “Just couldn’t let me go, could you?” he said. He gripped the hairclip tightly. It was too dark to see his face, but Kylara imagined he was grinning.
Then it activated. Kylara could tell, because it was the same feeling she had had before. It was just like on her grandad’s verandah–like her sense of direction had been replaced with someone alien and strange.
But this time it was different. Kylara knew exactly where she was. She felt a rush of adrenaline coursing through her body. Her muscles tensed as she coiled like a spring. For a moment, she was weightless, suspended in mid-air. The world around her seemed to slow down, as she took in her surroundings. She could see every detail, from the lines of the fingerlime orchards in the north to the tall red gums by the River Parer. A party of crows gathered in the distance, fighting over some scraps of food.
And then, with a twist of her body, she began to curve in the air. The wind rushed past her, blowing her hair into her eyes. She didn’t care. She didn’t need to see. For a moment, it was all that mattered.
With a soft thud, she landed next to Dhaligir, who was staring at her in shock, his mouth opened. She casually walking to pluck the hair clip out of his hands. His grip released easily and the sensation of normalness returned.
“How..?” he trailed off. “The flips, I thought you were supposed to loose balance.”
Kylara looked at him. How long had he lived in Kookaburra Creek?
“It’s the moon,” she said. “Moths navigate by the moons. In the evening,” she held up the hairclip, “this confused me, but now?” She pocketed it. “If anything, you helped me get a better sense of direction. That’s all it does. Moth magic, like every other magic in this town.”
Of course it would be debilitating in the day, when there were other light sources. But at night? When she was literally in the air? What better time was there for the navigation skills of a moth?
“Stay here,” Kylara said. “Wait for Pemulabee.”
Somewhat surprisingly, Dhaligir did. When Pemulabee came, he went without protest or complaint.