The goblins recovered, healing from the wounds that hadn’t been dealt by metal. She reloaded her gun.
She ate and drank. The sandwiches had been made as she’d specified. Close enough to her favorite ham and cheese.
When all of the goblins were standing, Buttsack included, she was ready.
She paged through Demesnes to find her way to the ritual.
A demesnes wasn’t in the game plan.
“I hereby make a claim,” she said. “Let this be my statement.”
The goblins watched.
She improvised, using the demesnes ritual for a guide, a loose outline to follow. “I claim a name, and I claim only that name. I claim it by the connections here, and only these connections. I-”
She hesitated.
“-I name myself Mags. By this, this remnant of my old name, I claim my Self, I claim my strength, and I deny Maggie Holt from taking anything further. I give up what I have lost, and I hold to what I still have.
“But I won’t be half a person. I claim other things. I claim myself to be the wild card. I claim myself to be the neutral party. Three times, I was met and welcomed, and three times did I bargain. I know these people have no reason to gainsay me in this. I will be the messenger, the ambassador, the deciding figure, in Jacob’s Bell, until I’m replaced or unable to serve.”
I will be a part of this shithole for the indefinite future.
“Let this be my challenge.”
The words had a resonance.
“If anyone would deny me this, I bid them to come, and to go fuck themselves. I’ll answer them, and meet them in fair contest of mutual agreement. I so swear, with all my being to hold onto what I have here, I swear with my everything, as my being is all I have left.”
She aimed her pipe gun and fired it.
The sound rippled, reaching far.
She waited.
Footsteps passed outside.
Sandra.
“No contest.”
She couldn’t track time.
But the cracks didn’t seem so deep.
Johannes.
“No contest,” he said.
She nodded slowly.
Then another figure.
She could see her, but not hear the footsteps.
The voice was her own.
“You had to surround yourself with goblins of all things.”
“Yeah,” she replied.
“Bits of goblin. Filthy, nasty. Mess. Ruins.”
‘Yeah.”
“Eugh. Not worth it. You’re conceding?”
She clenched her teeth so hard it hurt. “In part.”
“I very nearly had you.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m interested to see how this next bit plays out.”
“Fuck you, Padraic. I bet you did a shitty job of being me.”
But Maggie was gone, as was Padraic.
All of this is so I can keep fighting. I may be giving up on the name, but that doesn’t preclude killing you somehow.
Mara was next to appear.
“I won’t be so easy,” Mara said.
“I won’t have my dads,” the girl in the checkered scarf said. “Not wholly. I won’t have my old life, or even the school I hate. If you want to be cruel, and force me to travel the harder path, let me keep going like this.”
Wind blew, whistling through the holes in the shack.
“No contest.”
The girl in the circle nodded slowly.
Time passed.
She waited, and she ate. She conserved water, but time passed, and it finished.
The goblins watched, pacing, wanting an opportunity to attack.
Even as they watched, she relieved herself in the second bucket. She endured the catcalls. Then she resumed the sitting position.
Another figure.
A group.
They didn’t peer through the holes in the shack, but opened the door.
Rose Thorburn, out of the mirror, a black, gangly kid with a bird on his shoulder, a taller girl with a luggage case behind her, and a shorter girl with a cigarette.
“No contest,” Rose said. “You’re done.”
Mags nodded slowly.
“You okay?” Rose asked. “I heard what happened.”
“I’m not okay, but I’ll deal.”
Rose nodded.
There were no cracks anywhere they didn’t belong as Rose offered Mags a helping hand in getting to her feet.
“You’ve got to tell me your story,” Mags said, stepping outside, her eyes on the strangers. “Starting with where Blake is.”
The quiet, confused looks were an answer unto themselves.
“What?” she asked.
9.01
When I opened my eyes, rain had settled in my one eye socket. The act of opening my eye meant that freezing water seized the surface of the eye itself, and a thin dribble ran along my cheekbone.
I blinked, and found I couldn’t see out of the one eye, even after the moisture was gone.
My hand grasped for purchase, and it found mud.
The rain was as cold as water could get without being ice. My body was numb and damaged. When I tried to rub a sticky smear of blood from my face, I succeeded only in getting blood on my hand and grit on my face.