I…  

The man froze suddenly and did not continue any further.

Hesitantly, she reached for the man’s shoulder. But before she could make contact, the scenery around her melted away. When her surroundings re-solidified around her, she found that she was no longer in the field nor was she back in her home’s green halls. No, before her was a wooden stage with a grand piano, front and center. On this stage stood a boyish-looking girl who was dressed in a loose suit one size too large. Upon closer inspection, Atienna found that the girl was, in fact, a young woman. The young woman had unruly red hair that was barely tamed by her hat, and her round cheeks were dotted with freckles. She didn’t seem to notice Atienna’s presence because her eyes were focused on the piano in front of her.

The young woman’s fingers itched for those piano keys. How Atienna knew this, she did not know.

Out of pure curiosity, Atienna tried in the Common language, “That’s a lovely piano.”

The flirtatious smile she was greeted with was amusingly charming enough for Atienna to pursue conversation. Thus began a short talk that was interrupted only by a voice that seemed to belong to someone standing behind the woman—a bartender: “Who are you talking to…?”

Atienna had studied the languages of the twelve countries for many years now, despite the fact that Common had become the most spoken language. She knew many viewed her studies as useless. Regardless, Geminian was one of the languages she found hardest to learn. It was just too far away from her Virgo’s base languages and too far away from Common. But for some reason, as she listened to the bartender’s question, she could comprehend him completely.

Atienna realized after hearing the bartender speak that she could not be seen here by others either—only by the red-headed woman. Wherever ‘here’ was.

The scenery flickered again and began to melt away, but this time Atienna did her best to hold onto it. The stage with the piano re-solidified in front of her eyes as did the wide-eyed face of the young woman.

“No, no, no.” The young woman shook her head and waved her hand in the air. “Go back. Go away, go away, go away. I’ve got enough stressors in my life. Don’t need ta start hallucinatin’. Got enough whack jobs in this city.” The woman looked at her up and down. “Even if the hallucination is a pretty lady.”

“Oh, I’m very real.” Atienna chuckled. “In my point of view, I should be the one denying your existence.”

The young woman blinked at her. “I ain’t havin’ an argument with my imaginary friend.”

In the background, the bartender pressed again, “Seriously. You’re freaking me out. Who are you talking to?”

The young woman glanced over Atienna’s shoulder. In the blink of an eye, her expression of displeasure melded into one of playful lightheartedness. It was such an instantaneous change that Atienna was left wondering if the woman had truly felt disturbed by her presence at all.

“Just ventin’ my frustration with work,” the woman replied to the bartender. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear me run my mouth. Why don’t ya go take a cig outside? Ya sure ain’t doin’ anything in here. No customers.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out a wallet, and tossed it to him. “Here, you can get yourself somethin’ nice in the meantime.”

A thud resounded as the wallet was caught, and it was followed by a pause of silence.

“It’s empty.”

The young woman cracked an even wider grin. “Empty just means it’s perfect for bein’ filled.”

A grunt followed by footfalls and the sound of a door closing.

The young woman’s smile fell from her face, and she regarded Atienna apprehensively. “So, what does my subconscious wanna tell me? That I should stop doin’ underground work?” A laugh. “Sorry, but if you’re my subconscious, you’d be arguing for me to continue as I please.”

Atienna hid her smile again which caused the young woman to frown. “How about instead of choosing to label whatever is happening as reality or delusion,” she said, “we just talk?”

The young woman did a double take. “Talk?”

Atienna nodded before clasping her hands together. “Whether this is real or not is dwarfed by the fact that this experience is something very out-of-the-ordinary, right?”

The young woman squinted at her and then rubbed the back of her neck. “Er, yeah.”

“Even though I’m standing in the middle of this hallway right now in my house,” Atienna continued, extending her hand out. “I can see this bar like it’s right in front of me. It’s a bit like astral projection, don’t you think?”

The young woman cocked a brow before cracking a sly grin and extending her hand out to touch Atienna’s own hand. Their fingers brushed up against each other. Static at the touch. The woman’s eyes widened as her breath hitched.

Atienna took a step forward out of curiosity. She peered into the young woman’s face and studied it. Realization dawned a beat later. “Can you see where I’m standing? My house―the hall?”

The young woman pulled back, shook her head.

Atienna frowned and leaned in close. “Are you all right?”

The young woman straightened and shook her head again before pinching the bridge of her nose. “Saints be damned. I feel like I’m havin’ a really bad morrowheat trip.” She studied Atienna―more curious than flirtatious. “What is goin’ on here?”

“I’m not sure,” Atienna said with a thoughtful frown before she extended her hand once more. “But what I’m sure of is that I am Atienna Imamu, and I’d like to understand this—and you—better. Real or not.”

The young woman stared before she seemed to snicker to herself. Extending her hand and accepting Atienna’s gesture, she said, “Cadence Morello. And I gotta say, ya sure sound like ya know everything.”

“I wish I did—”

Atienna blinked.

Cadence Morello and her dimly lit bar were gone in the next instant.

“Cadence?” she tried.

The green-painted halls answered her silently.

* * *

When Atienna arrived in front of the large wooden doors that guarded the kitchen, she was greeted by muffled shouting. They were arguing again. With a sigh, she pressed a hand against the cool surface of the door and pushed it open. The shouting stopped immediately.

Their kitchen was a modest one. Nothing as spectacular as the well-equipped and extravagantly decorated kitchen of the Council Hall. A stove was built into the corner with a hearth crackling just beside it. At the center of the kitchen stood a rectangular table that could sit six people. At the ends of this table stood her father and her brother. Panting, breathless.

“Atienna!” both men exclaimed at her entrance.

“My dear, how are you feeling?” her father pressed, crossing the kitchen and placing his hands on her arms. “The medical Conductors said you were recovering, but…”

“Much better, father,” Atienna replied before she smiled. “I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything.”

Both men exchanged looks and said nothing.

Her father raised his hand to touch her face. His eyes were tired. She remembered when they used to be bright with laughter. She took his hand in her own and gave it a squeeze.

“Atienna, I can’t allow you to be harmed any more than this,” her father murmured. He side-glanced at Bachiru. “None of my children should be put in danger like this! If anything, what has happened to you just highlights my poor decision to remain on the Council.”

Atienna and Bachiru exchanged looks.

“Father…” Bachiru frowned. “You can’t possibly be suggesting that you step down from your position as chieftain.” He shook his head and took a step forward. “That would just be doing what they want! Obviously, someone wanted to scare you off because of your support for the Sagittarians!”

“Enough, Bachiru—”

“You are choosing fear over what’s right!”

“I am choosing my family!” her father bellowed

Atienna’s heart skipped a beat. Her head swam as her father’s voice rang in her ears.

“You’re going against everything mother worked for if you do this!” Bachiru snapped before he recoiled at his own words. “I-I meant…”

The world blurred around her. A vague memory tugged at the corner of her mind, but she refused to look at it. Instead, she squeezed her fists tight and bit the inside of her mouth. She glanced at her father and found that his face was drained of color. She tasted iron.

Her father stumbled backward and fell into his chair beside the table. Atienna and Bachiru took a step forward to aid him but he waved their efforts off.

“Father,” Bachiru tried, “I just meant…”

“Atienna, Bachiru,” her father sighed. “You should both retire to your rooms. We still don’t know if another attempt will be made.”

“But—”

“Enough, Bachiru.” Her father shook his head. “Atienna, take him to his room. Please.”

Before Bachiru could make another stand, Atienna placed a hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eye. His words died as did the flame in his eyes. In response, she offered him a smile. Dazedly, she led her brother out of the kitchen and down the hall and dropped him off to his guards stationed there. He looked as if he wanted to say something more to her but made no move to.

She continued down the hall away from him in a stupor. She could not face her mother like this. And so, she passed by the corridor that led to her mother’s chambers without sparing it a glance.

But was that the correct choice? Atienna did not know. Too many choices, too many consequences. It was more complicated than what was right or what was wrong. Everything, that was. Poison. Purpose. Politics. Even peace.

Her vision of Werner and Cadence from only half an hour earlier seemed like a faraway dream.

“Maybe there is no correct choice…” Atienna murmured to herself as she studied the book in her hands. “Or maybe it’s just that I…”

Her fingers itched. Much like Cadence’s fingers when she stood in front of that piano. However, Atienna knew her fingers did not itch for something as lovely as that piano. No, what her fingers itched for was—

“I forgot the apples…”

* * *

When night fell, Atienna slipped out of bed, walked over to her bookcase, and selected a black tome from the highest shelf. It was a hollowed-out book and within it were several small glass bottles of paint and a roll of linen-bandages. She dipped her fingertips into the paint and dragged it across her face. A dot here, a dot there, a long stroke, and then she was unrecognizable. After wiping the paint off her hands, she carefully wound the linen around her fingers and palm. A perfect fit.

She hid away the paint and the roll back into the tome and stored it back on the shelf before she climbed on top of her bookcase. From there, she reached for a latch hidden in the corner of the ceiling. When she gave the latch a tug, it opened up a crawl space that she pulled herself up into. After she made sure to close it behind her, she crawled forward into the darkness until she reached a dead end. She then reached above her head and pushed. The ceiling gave way, and she broke out onto the rooftop. She nimbly, quietly pulled herself up onto the roof and crept to the edge of the building. Just beneath her view, she could see the guards standing resolute.

It was not difficult to slip past them, as she’d done it many times before. She did feel bad, however, for their hard work going to waste, but she set the matter aside as she’d always done.

Through the dimly lit streets of town, she stalked twisting down alleys and through trees and vines that overgrew dirt and stone buildings alike. Down into the depths of darkness, she went until the trees completely consumed the buildings and the chatter of town became lost to the cries of crickets and other wild nightlife. Very few knew this path, but she knew it deep in her heart. She had engraved it carefully there as to never forget. A couple more steps and—there. She broke out from the thrushes and overgrowth into a clearing marked by the silver light from the full moon.

In the clearing was a ring lit by torches. Around the ring stood individuals with painted faces, like hers. Bright splotches of red, blue, green obscured and twisted their features strangely in the flickering flame light. Others wore masks that made them look beastly. Perfect in this setting.

At the center of this ring stood a shirtless man wearing a long and wooden mask carved into the shape of a snake. The fangs of the snake curved down his cheeks and touched the base of his neck.

Atienna slinked down through the crowd that parted for her and entered the center of the circle. The snake-masked man nodded at her, and she nodded back in turn.

“No names. No tribes. No conductors,” the man in the long mask bellowed out. “This is how it is meant to be. No bad blood, no good blood. The Night Circle.”

With that, the people around the ring began to chant, to stomp their feet, to clap their hands to a steady rhythm. Thump. Thump-thump. Thump. Like a beating heart.

Into the ring stepped another figure. A man. Face painted bright red with streams of white running down his cheeks from his eyes. Painted tears. How ironic.

The snake-masked man stepped out from the ring and then let out a shout that tore through the night. It had begun.

Atienna regarded her opponent, and her opponent regarded her. A beat of silence passed, then her opponent swung at her with a fist. Atienna dodged it with a lean to the right before she swung her leg up and cracked her opponent’s head with her foot. She followed through the momentum of the spin and used the force of it to power her punch which connected with her opponent’s skull again a second after.

Her opponent stumbled backward in stupor, but she did not relent. She swung her leg out again and swept his legs out from underneath him. Before he could fall, she sent out another kick that sent him toppling sideways. Once again, she did not let him fall.

“And it is right to not think at all? To sit back and watch things progress and hope for the best? Like we’ve been doing all these years?” 

She cut upward with her fist.

“I am choosing my family!” 

Again and again.

“You’re going against everything mother worked for if you do this!” 

Punch after punch. Kick after kick.

She didn’t know how long it was before she stopped throwing punches and kicks, but when she was done, her opponent lay motionless in the dirt. Heaving and panting, she wiped the sweat dripping from her brow and felt the paint smear onto her arm.

Distantly, she heard the noise from the crowd. Somewhere between her punches, they had stopped chanting and had instead started cheering—“Queen of the Night! Queen of the Night!”

Their cheers rang in her ears as did the blood rush from a complete victory.

The itching in her fingers and the buzzing daze in her mind subsided. No uncertainty, no choice, no consequence. A wonderful relief.