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“I, of course, was not invited to the festival or the execution…”

THE COURT GLEAMED LIKE A GREAT ICED CAKE, AND you were bounced on a hundred shoulders, kissed by a thousand lips while I lay bound in golden cords in the tower But when the night was full as a sail, and everyone had drunk as obble their bearded nanny’s h blade into my dress, crept out of the tower, down those old familiar stairs, one last time into the dark of the prisons where Aerie was born

They looked out at er to theold I had to speak softly, to tell them I was not the Queen at all, but their own Knife, and as their knife I would cut theed child who chewed raw meat and scampered after crows to catch their feathers could not be draped in silk and s in soft ’s, and how randmother’s name had been, and both my sisters’

I answered them all And one by one, I broke their locks until they sat quivering around me like a flock of wild birds Only some forty of them were left, of all our hundreds of warriors

“I can’t let you go under the King’s axe like cattle tomorrow I can buy your lives at a better price than that Only… oh, I’m not sure I can The Wizard cutI don’t know, but I will try I will try Come closer, I think I must be able to touch you—”

They pressedpenetrated me like a slow poison All those faces, cheekbones sharp and high, all those eyes, all those bony fingers grabbing at me! They did not knohat they reached for, only that they reached for me, their Knife, and for salvation

I closed my eyes and spoke in inning of the world I begged her for the power to which I had no right, for light which was not mine

Slowly, I took the sharp stone and dug at h the skin and into the meat of myself, as deep as I could stand it And the blood flowed, red, and darker, but not silver, never silver

I cut deeper, driving the rock into myself until I could hear it scrape the bone I cried out, and my voice echoed in the dark, an echo of an echo, of all hter was born, of all o

So pale dribbled frorandht, but it was there, at the bottom of my body

With h my body alone could keep them warm, I bent low and showed them that they had to taste it, they had to suckle atwoman in the desert will suckle at the blood of her horse to survive

One by one, they took their few drops, and as they did I becareat deal when they are frightened I was

faint and wobbling onthem, and one by one I took their frail bodies into my hands and shaped them as I had seen Grandmother do, shaped them like clay on a stone table

They changed, more slowly than Aerie had, since I was so weak, since I did not have the light of the cave and the stars But the great silver wings cas disappeared under pale down One by one, they staggered upright and squeezed between thebars, into the night scented with festival fireworks, theunder the stars

And I sat in the da with light,out to them as they spiraled up and up and up