Kylara sat down by the last embers of the evening’s fire. The flames were almost extinguished, just a few bright streaks left dancing at the base of the wood and smoke wisps curling up and disappearing on the breeze.

The interviews had not gone well today–not that she had expected them to. There had been two. Nicol, the first one, had been a bit of a disaster. The kid himself was fine–he was too young to really understand what was going on, and that had manifested itself as disinterest rather than frustration.

The problem was that Kylara had made the mistake of interviewing Nicol with his parents still in the room. She really should have insisted they leave, because she was sure she had pissed them off. Kylara had implied that she was not likely to chose a six year old to be the next warder, and they had not taken kindly to it. Their sweet Nicol, they had argued, was the most mature six year old in town and he had the emotional intelligence of someone who was easily ten, or fourteen, or even Kylara’s age. Why wasn’t Kylara considering him seriously, was she stupid? Did she not respect their family?

Kylara felt a flash of anger just thinking about it.

The second interview had been with Lenah, one of the less sane Wanderers in town. At least that one had been quick. Actually, looking back, Kylara thought it had even gone well, considering. Other than the creepy comment about the bugs wanting her dead–whatever that meant–Lenah had acted fairly normal.

Kylara stuck a stick in the dying fire and watched as the flames rose higher and higher as she moved it around. There wasn’t much left to burn, and the flames died down soon after she stopped.

“I let the twins light it today,” her father said, sitting down next to her. “You would not believe how long it took for the spark to catch.”

“I can imagine,” Kylara said. She shifted a bit on the bench so her father would have more space. She had already eaten dinner with the rest of her family and now just wanted some time alone.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Fine.”

Kylara’s father had a square face, a thick jaw, and a slanted nose that had been broken some time in the distant past. Despite being born with one leg longer than the other (and thus walking with a slight limp), he was renowned as one of the toughest fighters around. Jerong was stern, eccentric, and sometimes strangely sentimental over the oddest things. Kylara had known him all her life, and sometimes she felt like she didn’t know him at all.

“Your grandfather kept me informed about what happened,” he said.

“It’s nothing to worry about. Dhaligir is all sorted. The entad was responsible.”

For that one at least. The reasons behind the other two incidents were still unaccounted for. But those had not been public.

“I don’t mean about that,” her father said. He looked sad. “I mean about the creek.”

“Oh?” Kylara had mostly forgotten about that, but of course Jerong was still worried. The creek was by the Desert. Kylara usually avoided mentioning her trips there. Her father got so worked up about it.

“Were you there?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Honestly?” Kylara thought a bit. With the whole incident with Dhaligir and meeting Multhamurra, the weird display at the creek seemed so long ago, although it had only been a few days. “I just had a bad feeling. I was looking for Billy.”

Her father closed his eyes.

“You shouldn’t go there,” he said. “I’ve told you this.”

“I can see where the border is,” Kylara said, “I’m not like your other children.”

“It’s bad luck.”

“Hm,” Kylara said. She looked up at the stars. “Perhaps. I’m going back inside.”

Jerong sighed, then lifted a hand to his forehead and rubbed his temple. “Fine.”

“You’re not going to ask me why?” Kylara asked. She wasn’t trying to be confrontational, but she was genuinely curious. Usually her father would question her more than that. Jerong never accepted things at face value. Just saying ‘fine’ was almost unheard of for him.

He looked at her. Truely looked at her, which was rare. He never looked at her. Not really. He pointed his eyes in her general direction often enough, but she got the impression that her presence had was always slightly foreign to him, despite the fact that she was his oldest child.

His hard eyes met his daughters for only a moment before drifting down to Kylara’s right arm. “What’s the point?” he sighed. “You said you’ll go back to the creek, and you will. I can’t exactly stop you. You still have that thing on your arm.”

That thing on my arm? Kylara thought. Is that what you are calling it now?

Kylara very pointedly did not move it.

Her father closed his eyes. “You know that’s not what I meant. But you could’ve phrase that better.”

Kylara didn’t disagree. Her promises were promises. Her father was right. By saying she would go the creek again, she set her intentions in stone. Eventually, she would go again. “I could’ve,” she said.

Her father looked at her with disconcertingly penetrating eyes. Kylara stared at her feet. The weight of her father’s gaze felt heavy enough to close around her neck. Ever since the bushfire, the wall between them had only grown.

She looked back to their own little campfire.

The bugs want us all dead…

When she was little, Kylara had always left one end of a fresh log poking out of the fire pit. It gave the bugs a chance to escape. She wondered if the twins had done that.

Probably not, Kylara decided. It had been something her mother had taught her, and she was gone now. Who knew if it had even worked?

“Do you know where the twins are?” she asked.

Her father lazily pointed. “Inside,” he said. “It’s Yonerda’s turn to put them to bed.” Kylara nodded. Yonerda was a good stepmother. The twins weren’t hers, but she could put them to bed faster than anyone.

“I’m going in,” she said.

“Fine.”

With that, Kylara rose to her feet and made her way into the house, leaving her father to tend to the dying embers of the fire.

The baby was crying.

Kylara found her stepmother in the kitchen. Yonerda was pacing back and forth, rubbing the back of the crying infant nestled in her arms. Her face was etched with exhaustion.

“He won’t go to sleep?” Kylara asked.

“He’s teething.”

“Mummy!” Jack ran in and pulled on Yonerda’s skirt. “When are you coming, you’re taking forever.”

Yonerda rocked the baby harder. “Give me a second, honey. Just wait in your room.”

“I dunwanna.”

“Please Jack, just give me a minute.”

“But Tabara won’t let me play with her.”

“Tabara is going to bed too,” Yonerda said.

“Yeah but–”

“I’ll put them to bed,” Kylara volunteered.

“You will?” Yonerda said.

“You will!” Jack almost jumped up in excitement.

Kylara knew Yonerda would not ask her husband for help, even if she was overwhelmed. The two of them took the whole ‘taking turns’ thing very seriously. If it was not his turn, it was not his turn. Yonerda would not ask him for help and violate their little agreement. She was too proud.

“Sure,” Kylara said. She knelt down to Jack. “I’ll met you in your room. Tell Toba and Tabara to get ready for me.”

“Okay!” He nodded a little too enthusiastically. Kids were horrible liars. When she was finally allowed to lie, Kylara resolved to be very good at it.

“He seems excited,” Yonerda commented. “It’s cute how much he looks up to you.”

“Perhaps he’s sick,” Kylara said. Jack was never enthusiastic about going to bed. He was too hyper.

“And thanks for helping.”

“No worries,” Kylara said. Yalmay was at Joontah’s, so it was not like she had anything else to do.

She walked into the room to see Toba trying to paint his nails and Tabara trying to shuffle a desk of cards. Kylara shrugged. This was calmer than usual for them.

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“I’m putting you to bed today,” Kylara announced, gently shutting the door behind her.

Toba looked up and groaned. “Where’s Yonerda?”

“She’s busy with the baby,” Kylara said.

Tabara shuffled the deck again, not looking up. She seemed upset.

Probably jealous of the baby, Kylara suspected. Tabara was always very conscious of anytime Yonerda spent time with her own children instead of them. She did not seem to understand that babies simply required more attention.

“I don’t get why we are going to bed at the same time as the baby,” she said. “We should be allowed up later. We’re older.” Tabara bungled the shuffle and cards spilled out all over the rug.

“Here,” Kylara said, knelling next to her. “If you are are going to try a riffle shuffle, the cards need to be further apart. Here, try it.”

“I know how to do it.”

“Really?” Kylara crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “Then why aren’t you?”

“I’m doing it right. Your hands are just bigger than mine, that’s all.”

Kylara nodded at the excuse. “Who’s teaching you?” she asked.

“Uncle Don. Why?”

Figured. Uncle Don was terrible at shuffling. He always showed the cards. Kylara was convinced that the reason he always sat next to her in card games was because she was forbidden to cheat. She always knew his cards, but she could never act on it because it was ‘against the rules.’

Kylara cleared off a chair with neatly folded clothes on it. Toba and Tabara’s mother–Kylara’s first stepmother–had been a laundress. It was kind of cute. She had taught her children the proper ways to fold clothes. The twins remembered, and unlike most kids their age, always folded their clothes meticulously.

Kylara settled on the stool. “I’ll tell you a story if you go to bed quickly,” she said.

She caught a small flash of a smile from Tabara at that. She wouldn’t admit it, but she loved stories. And Kylara loved telling them. Only when you were telling a story, with everyone aware it was not a falsehood, had she ever said anything close to a lie. It was the closest she had come to being free with her words.

“How about the Liar and the Lyrebird?” Kylara asked.

“The magsman already did that one,” Toba said.

Right. She had not been there except for the first one. She wondered how long he had stayed.

“He told it better than you,” Toba said.

“Yeah,” Tabara agreed.

And of course the twins had to be obnoxious about it too.

Not that they were wrong–Kylara didn’t think she could tell a story better than the magsman. But still. They could keep quiet about it.

Toba went up and whispered something in his sister’s ear.

“Actually,” Tabara smiled, looking at her brothers. “we had an idea. Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” Kylara said. “But no guarantees I will answer.”

“I know, I know,” Tabara said, you always say that.” She looked again at her brother. They were planning something.

Kylara sighed, then sat down next to her younger half sister. Jack inched over next to her and glanced up at her through his soft, messy hair. Yup, they had been planning something together.

Maybe that was why Jack had been so excited when Kylara said she would be putting them to bed.

Kylara looked between the two of them. “Have you actually been getting along with each other?” she said, half sarcastic.

“No,” Toba lied.

Impressive.

Usually the twins and Jack started a fight within about three sentences of conversation.

“So,” Kylara said. “Don’t leave me waiting. What is it?”

Tabara took another second to internally debate whatever she was going to say, and then looked up. “You know how you used to tell us stories about mummy?” she said.

“Do you want hear one tonight?” Kylara asked. Jerong had not been married to his second wife for very long before she had passed away. She had died when the twins were only five.

Kylara had been close with the woman, and some of her favourite moments with the twins were when they were asking questions about her. But Kylara was running out of things to say. It was sad, but the memories were fading. She wasn’t sure how she would break it to the twins when they ran out.

“Well,” Toba said, “we always ask about our mum, but we never hear anything about yours. We wanted to know what she was like.”

“You never talk about her,” Jack said. “Even Wawiriya doesn’t talk about her.” He shivered a bit remembering it. Kids never liked Wanderers much. Jack had not grown out of the ‘Wanderers are creepy’ phase yet.

“And we know she isn’t dead, like our mum,” Toba added. “What was she like? Did she look like you? Where is she?”

She did, in fact. Not that Kylara would ever admit to it, but she used to be told she was a twin of her mother.

“Did you not like her?” Jack asked.

Fondness washed over Kylara as she looked at him. His voice was so curious and precious.

“No,” Kylara said. “I didn’t.”

What was she supposed to tell them? That she had not seen her mother since she was ten? That she had no idea where she was? That almost every problem that Kylara had ever had she blamed on her?

“It was years ago,” Kylara said. “And I think we should keep it in the past.”

“Pleeaase.” Kylara smiled a bit just to pretend. Or pretend to pretend.

“Why?” Jack asked. “Was she mean?”

Both Toba and Tabara was watching her with rapt attention.

Kylara looked between them, they sighed. Her father had given her permission to tell them the story. He had said it was her decision whether or not to tell it and when. Now seemed as good a time as ever. She had wanted to tell it before she transferred warding anyway.

She pulled up her sleeve and unbuttoned her glove. Jack’s eyes went wide as she did. He struggled to stay still. Kylara did not blame him. She almost never did this, even at home. The glove always stayed on. Only Yalmay, who shared a room with her, ever saw her bare arm.

“Do you know how I got this?” she asked. She held up her arm. Both twins shifted closer.

Her right arm couldn’t have looked more different than her left. It had no colour. There was no pigment or shading, or even the hint of a hue. The veins on her wrist were white, the creases on her hands were white, the cuticles on her nails were white. It looked almost fake, almost as if someone had sculpted an arm out of marble and forgotten to paint it brown.

“It says you’re the warder,” Toba said.

“It shows that I am a warder,” Kylara corrected. “It doesn’t say it. Most warders won’t have this.”

“Really?” Tabara asked.

“It’s how warders heal,” she said. “If you cut me, I’ll bleed red, then pink, then white. Warders heal fast, but they heal without colour. They scar white.”

It had been why she had been trying to get Dhaligir to hit her on the right. Not only would the white on white bleeding not be as noticeable, but she had not wanted another permanent mark.

Back in the old days, every country marked their warders different. There had been hundreds of types of adornment scars. Warders in Moahar had two cuts on the shoulder, one cut on the back, and four on the forearms. The old Koulan people–Kylara’s predecessors–had had two long ones on the shoulders, one between the breasts, and two on the cheeks. It had told people which country you belonged to.

But the warder scars had gone out of fashion centuries ago. And given how uncommon warders were today, the scars were simply a sign of Kylara’s difference. She hated the stares.

Hence, the glove.

“I don’t get it,” Jack said. “That’s not a scar. That’s your arm.”

“It’s both,” Kylara sighed. “You know my mother was exiled, right?”

Two nods from the twins, and a blank look from Jack.

“Do you know why?”

“No,” Tabara said.

“It was because she wasn’t a good warder, like you,” Toba said. Kylara smiled a bit at that answer. It was rare that any of her siblings admitted to looking up to her. If they did, it usually meant they wanted something or other. But this seemed genuine.

“She was a fine warder,” Kylara said, “for most of her life. She was a warder for almost twelve years. But then she got ill.”

“I thought you didn’t,” Tabara interrupted. “You told me you couldn’t get sick.”

“Her mind was ill,” Kylara said. “It’s different. Warding won’t protect you from that. She started doing things that she never would’ve done before and…” Kylara paused, because she wasn’t sure how to describe it. She had been young, and she barely remembered ‘before.’ Had her mother really been all that different? Her father claimed she had, but Kylara had no way of knowing. She had been nine when everything had happened.

“And I guess she…” Words failed her again. It was hard to describe her mother and what had happened in nice terms. Kylara didn’t think she had thought of her mother in nice terms in almost ten years.

“I guess she was very scared and confused,” she finished. “She sometimes didn’t know what was real or not. It made her act in ways that were not normal.”

“What did she do?” Tabara asked.

“She got into fights,” Kylara listed. “She stopped eating, she stopped sleeping. She saw things that were not there. She said things that did not make sense.”

“I thought warders couldn’t say things that don’t make sense,” Toba said.

“Exactly,” Kylara said. She was trying to think ahead and come up with a good way to formulate the next part of the story. She wasn’t sure she could. “The Council got worried, and they lined up another woman, five and a half years younger than my mother, to be the next warder.”

“It wasn’t you?” Tabara asked.

“No,” Kylara said. “It was someone who had volunteered.”

“Who?”

“Malyun’s daughter,” Kylara said. Mullilah.

She didn’t say the name out loud, despite nearly a decade having passed. She didn’t want to disturb Mallilah’s ghost. Violent deaths caused the spirit to rest uneasily, and Kylara did not want to stir her.

Toba frowned. Both of the twins knew Malyun well. Probably too well. Malyun had taken it upon herself to berate them every time they caused the slightest nuisance. “I didn’t know she had a daughter,” Tabara said.

“She doesn’t anymore,” Kylara said. She put the glove back on her hand. It took longer than usual. Her hands weren’t shaking, but her fingers still felt weak.

“My mother was not herself that day,” she said. “The Council was in a panic. My mother had already lied once a day or two before, and for no apparent reason. None of the wards were working anymore. They knew they needed to transfer the power quickly or she would lie again and the power would be lost forever.”

“Why couldn’t they get another?” Toba asked.

“Another warder?” Kylara asked. “It doesn’t work like that. And this town gets most of its wealth from warding, so people were worried.”

Malyun exaggerated the dire state of Kookaburra Creek’s finances, but she was right on one account. In the long term, if Kookaburra Creek lost their warder, they would almost certainly lose their independence. The only reason they were not a part of Warrung’s empire was because the town was too wealthy.

“So what happened?” Jack said.

This was the hard part to explain.

“My mother was very ill,” Kylara said again. “Very, very ill. She was confused.”

“Like a Wanderer?” Tabara interrupted .

“In a way. But Wanderers don’t hurt people. My mother did. She thought they were replacing me–her only child–with Malyun’s only child. She thought they were coming after us.”

Kylara took a deep breath.

This was it.

“She killed Malyun’s daughter,” she said.

Her siblings’ eyes widened. Tabara quickly grabbed Jack’s hand and squeezed it. Toba voiced something silently on his lips–either how or wow, Kylara wasn’t certain.

“It was in her sleep,” Kylara said. “I don’t even know if she realised what she was doing until it was too late. And then, because she thought they were coming after me, she went back home,” at Tabara’s wide fearful glance, Kylara added, “It wasn’t here. We lived in a different house back then. But it was late at night and I was younger than both of you. She told me to pack my things, so I did.”

“Did you know?” Tabara whispered.

“No,” Kylara answered. “I didn’t know anything. I just did it. She was my mother.”

I had even been excited about it, she thought bitterly. She had said that it was going to be an adventure, and I believed her.

It had taken Kylara a long time to forgive her father for leaving her in the dark about what was happening. If he had told her, she never would’ve gone.

“We left in the middle of the night and walked for about an hour before I realised something was wrong. She kept looking at my strangely and asking me odd questions, like she thought I was an imposter. I got nervous and started talking back and I think that sent her over the edge.”

Kylara unconsciously ran her fingers over her arm and curled her fingers around her wrist, cradling it.

Tabara’s eyes went wide. “Wait,” she exclaimed, “She tried to cut off your arm?”

Kylara didn’t correct her.

There were still several questions left unanswered about that day.

How long had her mother left her bleeding out before she had realised what she had done? Was it right away, or had she waited until her daughter was nearly dead? And why had she gone for her arm in the first place? She had smothered Mallilah in her sleep just an hour before. The two seemed like very different crimes.

And most importantly, why had she changed her mind? Kylara had been close enough to dead that only a warder’s accelerated healing could have saved her. And it had. But how her mother gotten around the rule that prohibited that, she didn’t know.

“I don’t remember much of what happened,” Kylara finished, “but I woke up three days later under Imla’s care. It took about a month and a half for my arm to grow back.”