Chapter One Taissa #3
Creatures from the forest—golden-haired and finely dressed gruagachs, snub-nosed bumpy-backed hobyahs, and even the occasional fomorian—like to watch the spectacle of Taissa’s bloodthirsty weeding with amused eyes, half-hidden in the woodland shadows.
The higher-level Protection glyphs she etched into the trees with her qyl shortly after her move-in prevent the more unsavory creatures—those of the Unseelie court, such as the ogreish fomorian currently beadily eyeing her, as well as the people-eating hobyahs—from actually trespassing onto her private territory, but nothing stops them from laughing as she shreds a weed to pieces.
It’s a cacophony of chuckles ranging from the sound of chiming bells (those would be the kindly gruagachs) to hoarse cackles (those from the lumpy hobyahs and the fomorian).
Taissa sends the Unseelie a wary glance.
These wild faeries are far more deceitful and dangerous than their modern counterparts: Those who choose to live in the forests of old tend to lean toward the ancient ways.
They are the ones that might enchant you to dance until your feet are bloodied; they are the Fair Folk, who are every bit as tricksy as a feral fox and every bit as sly as a winding snake.
A trickle of sweat drips down Taissa’s temple as she digs back into the soil.
She fervently imagines the day she wreaks her vengeance upon Coach Frasier for that Level Three Luck glyph.
It’s a worn-out fantasy, riddled with wrinkles from its age, but Taissa cannot stop her mind from shooting in that direction.
She hadn’t wanted him to put that glyph on her.
She hadn’t needed it, hadn’t needed any luck to beat the Stymphs.
She was Taissa fucking Cho, for Morgana’s sake.
She could execute an aileron one-handed with her eyes shut.
She’d beaten every carriwitchet record at the age of nineteen.
And her bond with Sansa, her wyvern, was unrivaled.
Which was why it was so fucking debilitating when they stripped her of that Bonding glyph, ripping it from her chest like a leech off skin.
Even now, she can hear her own scream: hoarse and unending, joined by Sansa’s cries of pain and terror as her witch was taken from her, as that same glyph was burned from her scales.
It was like losing a limb, losing Sansa. Like having her heart wrenched out of her broken rib cage. Like being plunged into the darkest, coldest winter after four years of vibrant summer. It was like dying in the most horrific ways. Suffocating, drowning, bleeding out.
She bonded to Sansa at eighteen when she first joined the NCL, a bright-eyed rookie with a head full of dreams. Sansa was a runt, and the other players had opted for the larger beasts with fierce tempers and pounds of deadly muscle, scorning the little wyvern as useless.
Coach Frasier was utterly unimpressed by Sansa and had been on the verge of selling her back to the breeder when Taissa laid eyes on the tiny wyvern in the stable’s stall.
When the Winged turned those huge, luminous eyes back onto her, Taissa knew. Immediately.
This was her wyvern.
Coach Frasier protested, of course. He did a whole song and dance about how Sansa wouldn’t last the season, how she was cranky and unreasonable, how she’d bitten a handler so badly that he’d had to go to the hospital. Taissa didn’t care. Sansa was already hers, in her heart.
And, perhaps more important, Taissa was already Sansa’s.
The Bonding glyph only secured that, and gave her and Sansa a channel to speak through.
She’ll never forget the sound of Sansa’s voice ringing through her head, bright and happy, with the sort of quick humor that only a wyvern could possess.
The riddles she posed to Taissa before each game never failed to make Taissa laugh.
“Walk on the living, they don’t utter a mumble. Walk on the dead, they mutter and grumble.”
“Leaves?” That particular riddle was one of Sansa’s easier ones, but Taissa was still rewarded with a happy nuzzle from her wyvern and the ability to ride her throughout the match.
That particular part of the game is where carriwitchet derives its name.
In order to mount their steeds for the match, each player has to correctly answer a riddle posed to them by their Winged.
It’s an old, old custom. The sport, after all, comes from Ye Olden Days of magic and mayhem, when warlocks would ride cunning Wingeds into battle against rival armies.
This battle tactic was amply used in the First and Second Seelie-Unseelie Wars; the Great Elven Conflicts of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries; the Undead Horde Incident; as well as—bizarrely—the Audacious Bannik Uprising of Rus.
Why witches chose to ride steeds such as dragons and wyverns into battle against poor Russian bathhouse faeries who simply wanted better (and more modest) lodgings is far, far beyond Taissa.
The Wingeds had been wild then, not bred and domesticated as they are now.
So in order to prove themselves worthy of riding upon the Winged’s back, a witch had to demonstrate their wit through the solving of a carriwitchet.
But then the Wingeds, much like magic itself, began to die out, hunted by humans and their ilk.
It was why the glyph-warded Hidden Cities had been established, to offer a refuge for the magical.
Yet by that point, the Wingeds were little more than hunting trophies hanging on human walls.
In a conservation effort, more were bred, but they were not as wild—nor as ferocious—as before.
Oh, most certainly they were violent, especially during the games, but the Wingeds of old could topple mountains with their bellows.
The idea of Sansa doing something like that was always incomprehensible to Taissa. Her small wyvern was more likely to get distracted by a passing butterfly (her favorite snack).
How dare Coach Frasier give her to someone else?
To Elise, of all people?
For Morgana’s sake, it was Taissa that had finally broken through to the aggressive wyvern, Taissa who spent hours gambling her limbs to bond with the violent, sharp-toothed creature.
Elise urged Taissa to pick a new steed, Elise had shot her dirty looks and muttered under her breath about “dirty runts,” Elise doubted that Sansa could be anything great—and now her ex-friend was reaping the benefits of Taissa’s hard work. It sickens her to her stomach.
Now, as she rips through the soil, a gaping hole in her heart where Sansa once occupied, she is entirely unaware of the soft footsteps approaching her.
Unaware that things are finally diverging from her usual, depressing schedule.
Taissa is only cognizant of how badly she misses her wyvern.
She hopes, oh so dearly, that Sansa has been noshing on Elise, that stuck-up, preening, vain piece of—
Her scrabbling, angry hands freeze in the dirt, falling very, very still amongst the Swiss chard. A shadow has seeped across Taissa’s vegetables, and her blood runs cold as the sun is blotted out from above her.
The shadow clears its throat. Impatiently.
Who the fuck, Taissa thinks very calmly as she shucks off her gardening gloves, is this?