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She pulled a long knife out of one of the sheaths at her waist and held it across her lap She stared at the ood, my boy, you did very well But it didn’t kill her, so it is not enough only to wrap her up in it and wait for her to wake up Not enough The slave never cut deep enough, never enough, and I e myself that deeply just once This tih to fill her egg with a yolk of starlight, deep enough for irl to come home”

Leander did not understand for a s which were not written out plainly before him in three kinds of ink But when she raised her blade, he knehat she ed forward to stop her, but she was much faster than he, and sank the knife in her chest before he could wrench her hand away

“Enough,” she barked, and with a horrible sawingThe blood flowed into the skin, dark as dungeons, dark as geese eyes And then it caht, first in drops and then in a sickly strealass It becaht Knife slurass, her body empty as a hole in the sky

Soon, the light had drained entirely into the skin, and it was dark again, red against the shadowy grass After a few , scratching and weeping, afainter Leander wanted to rip the egg open; he wanted to fall to the ground and , but watched helplessly, his feet knotted to the ground

With a great crack like the splintering of a palace colu for purchase on its slick surface A girl eed, her hair streith shards of the cri fluid She pulled herself up with painfully thin liht of her slender foot and froze She held out her hands, staring du beneath his tree

Aerie opened her human mouth for the first tiales fell dead frohs

She could not stop screa Her chest rose and fell swiftly, and her cries filled the night Leander rushed to her and she collapsed into his ar at her hands He didn’t think she could speak; what language could she have, after all? He whispered gently to her—it’s all right, you’re safe, it’s your brother, it’s all right—and as she began to struggle against him, he tied the remnants of the skin around her small waist like a lady’s sash She slashed at hi Only when she saw the body of the Witch did she quiet, and strain towards it Still holding her fragile form, he helped her craards the crumpled crone

Aerie stu a single word that told the Prince that she knew language andthe spell was not meant to encompass—she had been aithin the bird body since her first day of life

Aerie fell into Knife’s ar voice:

“Mama, Mama, Mama…”

They lay together on the wet earth, and Knife did not wake

Still, Aerie would not ers curled into her mother’s hair, Leander’s hands curled in hers One by one, the wild geese hopped out of the door of the old hut, waddling over to Knife and the ruined egg-skin One by one, they laid their pearly heads on her body, all finding a place for themselves on her still-warm skin One by one, they closed their eyes, not to be parted from their s, and each bird’s silent death took her further from her children

Leander let go of his sister’s hand and opened the cloth bundle that sat beside the limbs which had once been Knife Inside lay a loaf of bread, luly reddish color baked into the crust It was not soft, nor did it seeood, but Leander understood—it was his own loaf, kneaded by his broken hand, his blood and tears folded into it, over and over It had always been , staring Aerie into his ar , and he, too, ate a few pieces of the strange food, its tang bitter on his tongue

After a long while, they walked froht

Aerie stood at the well, washing her new hands until they bled