My fingers tremble. The pressure of the ocean against the child is greater than the force of lifting his body by its blood and bones. Unless, I admit, I blow the skin wide open in yanking the blood and bones free. Rather counter effective, that.

I kick my belongings free of the lapping waves where I dropped them, then run after the jet bird. Nostrils flaring, I rip the bandages from my face and pant loudly for air. I swallow tangy blood.

The jet bird swoops up, all roiling storm. I come around the cliff corner, eyes scanning the waves, absent of bubbles or thrashing limbs. Those senses reach out for blood and find it, lurking under the water. Not far, relatively speaking. His heart pumps.

I hunt about for an easy rope, a chunk of wood--of course there is no rope here, I didn't think to bring the nets around the cliff--and spot the perfect ring of stones. The missing jade-green creature it once contained. A shallow trail breaks the sand through the ring, scarring the beach until the water. Those senses fixed under the water expand, outside the crystalline blood, and trace the intricate skeleton of a large creature pinning the child down.

The jet bird arrows into the sea, water erupting in a massive spray and I flinch, shielding my eyes. I tear off my boots and drop the bandages bundled in my fist, I slosh into the waves after her. Sucking in air, I plunge under, thrust sideways against the sandy shore and kick deeper.

Silence. Darkness. The waves push me back. With my eyes squeezed shut I spread my fingers wide. Below, ahead of me, the roiling, thick storm cloud of a jet bird tears a dead creature to pieces. Beneath, the child's blood pumps sluggish and slow.

I bring my palms to stillness, the blood slowly seeping off my skin I pull into a solid ribbon. The blood of the dead creature, all springy softness, I grab hold of and coil into a rope.

I break above the surface, gasp out, suck in air through my nose and dive back under. I kick down to the jet bird and use ribbons of my own blood, the creature's blood, to tug against the jade skin, simultaneously pushing the flayed creature with my fists. I carefully tug the bones outward by taffy, nearly losing my concentration on the blood ribbons and my own kicking legs.

The jet bird shears through the spine, a rope of blood pulls the tail away, and the weight I shove against shifts.

My chest aches. I heave against the weight of the fish a final time, meagerly sliding it, before swimming back to the surface. I gasp out air and tread water, too busy with keeping my sodden self afloat to maintain the blood ribbons below me. The ocean sucks them apart.

The storm cloud sense of the jet bird bobs up nearby, wings like awkward paddles slapping the water. I take several deep inhales, and push back under.

Reaching out with those senses, I find the upper half of the fish spine still sits atop the child, while the rest of it has flopped sideways just below him. I sink, paddling deep until my boots collide with the sand. My searching fingers find the child's warm arm, I shove the remaining fish body away with a kick and tug the child up from the muddy bottom. I hug him close and jump off the ground, the ocean forcing my movements thick as sludge. I kick, propelling up, and my chest slow-burns.

The storm of the jet bird dives past me, she swims like she's flying through a headwind, but her small body arcs below us and flaps under the child's legs, buoying us upward like a pocket of air.

We break above the surface, I gasp in the warm air, the jet bird pops up beside us. I kick to shore, heartbeat pulsing, then heave the child onto his side and I sprawl out back first on the cold beach.

I wipe my eyes. Not that it does much, with my wet hands. I push hair from my face, find strands at the corner of my mouth and grimace, tugging them free. The jet bird keeps floating on the water, like she hasn't figured out how to take off again, and she isn't quite capable enough to paddle back to land. Her feathers slap the surface and she caws.

"You'll get it," I mutter, sitting up and rubbing my eyes open. As if my words did something, she slaps the water and lifts off into the air.

I blink and squint until I can see properly. The water blooms violet with blood. I adjust my dripping shirt, wring out the toes of my socks. Of course, there is still aquamarine dripping from my face, and the bandages lie useless by my boots, coated with sand.

I glance at the child. Water leaks from his mouth. I speak a curse, make his muscles contract rhythmically, he curls up and breaks into coughs, water spurting onto the sand. I wring liquid from my shirt.

The coughs stop bringing up water. The curse dissipates. But the child stays curled there, clothes sticky with humidity. I grimace at how peaceful he seems. This child who only ever screams. This child who poked out a fish's eye to claim it was his. The child who stomped a whole loaf of bread into a dirty road after killing the woman who probably made it. I shake my head, waterdrips flinging across the beach. "However do you teach a death mage?" I mouth to the sky, the jet bird fluttering high above. "How do I teach him not to want the whole world dead?"

***

Dear dead, fragments of that after-solstice summer:

Tatter-cloak picked long-stemmed flowers, tiny red things threaded to thin green stalks, said he used to do this for his boyfriend during the, you know, better times. Whatever became of that jerk, anyway? He told you he really shouldn't care, but it'd still be awful if he was dead now.

The two of you wove wreaths of flowers, his hands demonstrating the motions, yours shaky because you remembered ribbon weaving, which was very similar but utterly not. Flowers smelled pretty and creamy. Ribbons smelled like sharp stones, ocean waves, crushed leaves. Flowers could bend but usually preferred whatever shape they'd been in before. Ribbons creased and cared as much, unless you got the expensive kind, slippery like fluttering liquid.

At night, you slept with the herbal scent of fluffy leaves wafting from fingers pressed to your closed eyelids, woke with wilted red petals in the ends of your hair, walked and laughed about how stained green both your hands still were.

Fragments of that after-solstice summer: Tatter-cloak found a boat, gifted from a nomadic family who liked the craftsmanship of the floral wreaths, was willing to trade for them for the funeral of one of the grandfathers. Tatter-cloak apologized for taking such an expensive boat, wouldn't they need it?

The Empress, they said. Better to travel inland, where the invading vessels couldn't find them so soon. You, tight-lipped, just nodded. That won't make them immune, said the queen's bones rattling in the nearby bushes. But of course, neither would anywhere else, really, so why bother pointing that out? But still the queen's bones rattled, and Tatter-cloak loudly thanked the family for their gift and waved, and they plodded away, carrying flowers for a funeral.

Fragments of that after-solstice summer: together, you both carried the boat half a morning to the sea. The daily pattern turned to you and Tatter-cloak paddling down the coast, never far from shore, when the sun set you scraped the little boat up a beach and collapsed, exhausted, set up the tent and slept inside soundlessly.

For breakfast, you ate from your remaining supplies--the drying mushrooms, the shriveled fruits, the meat scraps and hardened bread. Smiled about how nice the heating rock had been. Rolled up the sleeping pads with aching shoulders and collapsed the roof of the tent. Bundled your belongings under the hard benches of the boat and paddled more, the jet bird a hollow weight by your boots, ceaselessly glaring. You glared back, paddling to your left until Tatter-cloak called to switch, paddling to your right until your shoulder ached, resting briefly when a current caught you, paddling harder through splashing ice water when the current shifted and carried you back the wrong way.

Fragments of that after-solstice summer: the blurry shape down the coast resolved into a town many times, brick buildings, beige tupiit, or temporary villages set up mid-crossing from the mainland for the summer to the not-so distant islands for the winter.

The blurry shape on the coast filled out into a town many times, and you and Tatter-cloak kept paddling, past the children laughing in the water, past the towering, wood-frame merchant boats in the harbors. It was partially out of fear, partially because you still had supplies, that you never dared enter one of the towns.

The blurry silhouette on the coast filled out into many towns, many people, but when you finally recognized the outline of the town it was a town you dreaded.

Fragments of that after-solstice summer: you knew this town better than you knew Rattle-bones, days and weeks of consecutive years spent there, but knowing Rattle-bones didn't live there anymore made you dread it.

You whispered to Tatter-cloak about it while you propped up the tent, at sunset, on a nearby shore. All rocky and grassy, so you knew you wouldn't sleep well, but Tatter-cloak didn't complain. Neither had they suggested offshore that you could push on to the town before dusk faded, with you rushing on about needing to quickly get to shore for something important, sure as you were that you knew the outline of this next town filling out down the coast.

You whispered to Tatter-cloak about it; how this was the town you'd probably have to leave the boat at, since from here you knew the way to the house between two white hills. You whispered how you used to come here at the beginning of every summer--technically, you still were doing that--and trade; how that summer, just a short while ago, you met someone. Who was dead now. And you dreaded going back.

***

I finish a bone necklace. All stubby teeth. I cut the end of the thread with a ribbon of blood dripping from my face. Then I launch the liquid sideways, into the shallow bowl I made from the sand-coated bandages. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the aquamarine-filled bowl. Probably dump it out into the sand. I'm not sure why I'm filling a bowl of sand-coated bandages.

Setting the necklace inside the mouth of the damp bone sack, I then chip out the shape of a bone knife from a rib using the point of the needle that pulled the thread. Then I grind the shaped bone against denser bones, fishes to whales, carving out a blade. Using my dripping blood, I shear it to a razor point.

The jet bird, spiraling high above, comets into the beach, far from me, so the spraying sand settles beyond me, my discarded boots and bandages, and the empty sack. But then she shoots straight back into the sky, blood jagged, and I imagine it's because she got sand everywhere. She plummets into the ocean.

I glance at the child to my left, still curled up, clothes drying out. My stomach growls. I blame it on the frantic swimming and dragging the child through the water. I didn't bring any food, on account of the bandages, now ruined.

I rub the bone knife against my palm, the side of it, pretending like I know about design and balance. I could get some thicker thread to wrap around the hilt of it, there really isn't much hilt, maybe I could tie it to a longer shaft made from driftwood. Would that work as a kitchen knife, or a fishing spear?

The jet bird flutters from the sky and carefully alights on the sand. She hops sideways. I point at the unconscious child. "Do you want to watch him, or find another road off the beach?" I ask.

She tilts her head. So I sigh, set the knife in the sack of bones and climb to my feet. I gently tug her blood towards the child, trying to tell her to stay. Watch him. If he wakes up, don't let him crawl into the water again. Don't tell him about the fish.

I slosh the aquamarine blood into the sand, hug the sack of bones to my stomach and trod away down the beach. "Attempt two," I whisper. The jet bird screeches behind me, hopping onto the child's shoulder. My lip twitches; I pretend she says he won't go crawling anywhere.