In the maw of summer, the heat of aching affections scorched the entrails of strucked beasts to palatable perfection—tire-track garnished, regret ravaged. There is no relief here. Only thirst. Only love. 

I. Juniper Kane Acquaints Herself with Loss, Vaginal Bleeding, and Faerie Trickery

Dust tendrils adorned tired fan blades; their stilted winds lapped just at the crest of Tuna’s ankles. With her sitting stubbornly out of their reach, they had no hope to overcome the rest of the distance to caress her face. Likewise, no amount of gentle coaxing from her Nana could make Tuna move the fan closer. Perhaps letting her swelter was the lesser evil, lest the absence of heat reminds the girl of her mother’s recent disappearance. It was a slow, premeditated affair, and Tuna had the whole, sultry summer to fashion the exact details to her liking. Nana was sick of it.

To Tuna, it started long before Imogen stepped foot into that rotting, misbegotten faerie ring. A circle of macerated snail carcasses surrounding cans of spilled beer, fermenting past intoxication and into deceit on the pavement. Scattered about was a megalithic arrangement of fecal matter— human or animal, who’s to say? Triumphant the snails must have been, to come across such delectable spoils. Damned, they were, for their fragile shells were never meant to brave the shredded rubber soles of Imogen’s clumsy, inebriated stature. This is all besides the point. The fae had taken interest in Tuna’s mother long before her unfortunate, drunken escapees. 

Born facing the sun, Imogen had refracted through life like light through a prism; the agents of the world passed through her presence and exited full of whimsy and vibrance. All Tuna knew of goodness was her mother’s voice harmonizing with the songbirds in the epoch of spring, the trail of her footsteps leaving behind floral patches in the wake of December, weaved autumn leaves turning into regal crowns in her hand, fitting snugly over Tuna’s head and melding into her skin until she felt dizzy from delight. She would bring Tuna to the creek in the summer for pond dipping and to skip stones. They would watch as the dragonflies’ beating wings and the fishes’ swishing tails stirred the current, skipping the rocks forever into the waters of night. It was no wonder that the covetous faeries wanted her likeness in their court.

Attuned as she was to the flora and fauna, Imogen seemed, also, to lose bits of herself within them. Tuna had only a vague awareness of her mother’s life unlived, of the people she had left behind— had loved once. Yet, asking her mother questions about the weight of her past and the curse of monthly bleedings resulted in haze and smoke: My own memories I have swallowed. The only thing left on my tongue is you. To the latter inquiry, Imogen had told Tuna the bleeding was not a curse but the stream of words left unspoken by women scorned. Stripped of their voice in life, their cries live on in the ritual pains of womanhood. To this, Nana had scoffed and simply bought her sanitary pads from the corner store, warning that they might make her pubes itch. While Nana told her to take what Imogen says with a grain of salt, Tuna still couldn’t help but strain her ears to listen to the warnings whispered by the women in her womb: Birth the sun and they will ask for the sky in your irises. Kill the moon and they leave your figs to spoil. Hark, girl, your mother wanders this fog and you shall lead her back by the skin of your teeth. 

When Imogen’s blessing was eventually weakened by the vices of men, the faeries planted a guileful apple in her dreams. She ate of it and was gone the next day. The night her mother was taken, unaware of her absence, Tuna appealed her case to the stars perched upon the beech tree in the front yard. Please, give back my mother her liver, lungs, and echoes of youth. Take of me my mouth and render me a dog born from the tears of her rejoice. Lacking her mother’s innate gifts, she could not notice the stars shirking in helpless despair. She could not explain why her bones chilled with an ache so unbecoming of summer. 

II. The Faeries Chronicle the Events Leading Up to Imogen Kane’s Demise

The discovery of Imogen Kane came as an immense delight to we of the fair folk, as was her acquisition. Older she may be compared to the babes oft-favored for changelinghood, yet the mystical power of her charm proved tantalizing to our earthly cravings. Rare was a mortal soul capable of throbbing with the intensity of a thousand suns. We saw her bending light from the washbowls of our dwelling, and the rolling hills of Avalon rippled the waters in anticipation. To have her as our own was all we desired.

III. The Boy, the Beetle, and the Beech Tree (Not Necessarily in That Order)

Nonetheless, her natural gifts made her a target not easily deceived by our wiles, not easily tempted by our promises. Thus, ours was a proxied war of attrition, of discerning where the wind blows. We saw the infamous blight of men on the family of Kane, and there we lurk. Her superior at work would interpret her passing glance as an invitation for something more and we fuel his delusions. The man Tuna refuses to acknowledge would darken their door and we gave him a silver tongue to make Imogen forget his past wrongdoings. A physician would examine her and we blinded him from her failing organs, leading to a diagnosis of hysteria. We would goad the man sitting next to her at the bar to order her a drink, and another, until she could not see past his intentions. To Imogen, they told sweet lies of exaggerated abundance, benevolence; to themselves, they conflate devotion with domination. With the days stretching on forever and Imogen’s patience bitten to the quick, what better solace to turn to than the heat of mead in her throat and the fumes of additives in her lungs. As her own protections waned, we sent a final brigade of corrosive alms: summer storms, faerie rings, bitter truths whispered in the lull of the night. When she arrives in faerie land, the fruits of our orchards will surely heal her, wash away the handiwork of man. A sickly brood of our own will be given to the family in return in due time, for we are not without our honor. A life for a life. A reckoning of souls.

The scarab beetle inside the radio was not imparting wisdom like it should have been. The shadow of the beech tree’s gnarled branches had already fully wrapped Nana’s potted azaleas and deep rooted plums blossoms in a phantom envelopment, no longer merely a creeping presence. Atop its branches, Tuna supervised the intimacy between the plants in Nana’s garden with the scrutiny of a fledgling god, still learning to separate divinity from desire. The scarab remained indignant to the fraternizing flora. She tapped the side of the radio impatiently at first, then a second time, more carefully, or else the scarab would grow ever the more fickle.

What are you doing up there? It was that boy again. He lingered (as he often did at the foot of classroom doors and the periphery of her interest) at the edge of the morning glories.

See for yourself, she cajoled from the heavens. The leaves rustled and baulked at the weight of the foreign boy, having only before supported Tuna’s breezy, nimble frame. The horizon shifted as the boy gingerly approached her on the thick bough. 

Tuna did not interact with him often, though she was intrigued by his soft voice and faint bruises. Nana had warned her before of the scourge of men on the family lineage. Of the misfortune of catching their attention. But for all her time spent reading scripture, Nana’s harpings were hardly gospel truths, and the boy was hardly a man. Tuna called to mind her mother’s quip on the nature of sons: They experience suffering, just as we do. They learn that to inflict it is power, as we do not. At what point do these simple creatures become crude beings? At what point is it too late to be undone? She tired of the mental labor to reconcile the two ideas. 

It’s not working, she told him with a grimace, fingers poking and prodding.

The radio? he asked, squinting at the device as he squatted next to Tuna on the branch. Unsure if he should continue forward, of where to put his hands. 

The beetle. Tuna turned to face him. You know how Ma’s missing? It’s supposed to tell me where to find her. Seeing the boy’s incredulous reaction, his awkwardly shifted limbs, Tuna scoffed at Nana’s needless concern. This bumbling dolt served no threat to her at all. 

It came from the sky when I was salting the slugs that were eating Nana’s marigolds. She gestured for him to sit down beside her. I haven’t seen one so fat before. He dropped down on the branch heavily, losing his balance, careening over the edge. I thought it was attracted to the flowers because they look like the sun. Beetles push the sun around the sky, you know. She caught his arm breathlessly, pulled at his wrist, brought him closer. Her grip was uncomfortably tight. But it kept bumping into me instead, as if I can ever shine that bright. As if his broken wings could ever fly him that high again. He grasped her other arm to right himself, leveraged his legs on the hooks of her ankles, felt the calluses on her hands. I caught it between my palms. Felt it scratching madly to escape, like slugs shriveling with salt, like worms wishing for rain… daughters begging for answers. The boy leaned closer to catch the last murmured words, the trail of her breath writing embroidered tales on the curve of his cheek-bones. I figured it still craved to embrace the sun. All creatures do. The humid summer winds stirred the twinkling tears of salt in her hair and, subsequently, the blood in his rapidly beating heart. 

Ma saw it in my hands and coaxed it to rest in the radio. Gave it purpose again, planted her voice in the hum of its wings. She straightened up and leaned away from him, sobered by the memory. It used to tell me what she was doing, where she was. I can’t hear it anymore.

The boy, mourning their lost proximity, flinched when she lifted the radio up towards his head, like an apple begging to be accepted. He slowly put his ear up to its speakers, straining to hear a word, a buzz, anything. There was silence. Despite being aware of Tuna’s tendency to embellish her tales, he felt, admittedly, disappointed. Perhaps, even cheated. 

What if it’s dead? he surmised. Tuna’s face flickered with anger for a second, and the boy feared he had erred. I-I’m sorry. He said it twice, for fear of being misunderstood, for fear of swallowing the sun. She twisted her face again, but it seemed she was no longer listening to him.

Stop that, she snapped. The boy was aghast. Ah, no, not you. I’m sorry, the voices get louder when I’m on my period. Tuna did not elaborate, leaving the boy to wallow in his own confusion. Tuna slowly brought the radio to her heart, gripping it tightly, running her fingers through the seams of its design. After a quick moment, she resolved something within herself. Let’s find out, she said, and before he could stop her, she threw it as hard as she could into the sky. It flew in a yawning arc and came crashing down to the sidewalk, scattering into pieces. 

The boy stayed frozen in his place from disbelief as he watched Tuna scramble down from the tree and rush to pour over the pieces. If the beetle was alive earlier, it probably wasn’t now. Did she know that? He watched her shift through the broken fragments, and couldn’t tell which bits were radio and which were beetle. Finally, Tuna picked something up from the pile, clasping it tightly in her hands. After rising and casting an indecipherable look back up at him, still in the tree, she took off running down the street. He stared at the spot where she was for a long while, feeling as if he had just woken up from a magnificently curious dream. He was not sure what exactly had just transpired between him and Tuna. She scared him, this weird, feral girl. She excited him. Eventually, Nana saw him still loitering outside, glossy-eyed and stupid-faced, and pelted the lad with rocks to get him to leave.

Later, on the bike ride home, the boy will stab needles into his ears and etch grooves into his brain that will replay their entanglement like a throbbing, misshapen record, echoing his own reprises, hoping they would find their way to her: I figured it still craved the embrace of the sun. Like they crave you. All creatures do. Like I do. 

In the nearby woods, while shoveling dirt onto the corpse of her mother’s psychic beetle, Tuna’s ears gushed with blood.

IV. The Faeries Take One Last Look to Behold Tuna Saddling into the Cusp of Insanity

In the languid spire of late-summer, we faeries of Avalon cast our gaze down, again, to the mortal realm. We see the foolish daughter, Juniper Kane, who lives on the precipice of conviction, who tells her peers that their dicks will someday shrivel off and reveal, underneath, a slit like hers that bleeds when it thirsts, who steals the fallen threads of her mother’s hair, twists them into thick braids, and knots them around her neck like a noose. The women speaking through her womb plague her every waking moment. The summer rot has settled in her head and stewed in the absence of her mater. Hers is a case of madness, of consuming hunger. The years of her ripening beyond our scrutiny will be marred with uncertainty. She will take her grievances to the sea, dissolve them in sea foam, and still be left with her hands. 

V. Juniper Sees an End to the Cyclical Nature of Her Family’s Suffering

We know of Tuna’s futile efforts to reach Imogen through the insectoid servant of her mother’s grace. We know of her minglings with the boy who is only still there because no one has told him to leave. We see the thread of their fates intertwine in great strides of fervent paces, and is abruptly cut short four blocks from Nana’s house. Tuna will inherit her mother’s naivete concerning the casualties of boys as they grow into men, and learn the habitual cycle of her suffering. We look upon her visage reflecting on the recent woes of Avalon. For all our wisdom, we have failed to gauge the wickedness of man, the potency of their poison. No amount of drinking from the pools of our lakes could replenish Imogen’s endless well of tears, no taste of our innumerate, fleshy fruit can return the color to her cheeks. Imogen is broken beyond the aid of our spritely hands, and so has been taken out of our weeping grasp to be returned. Tuna does not know this, trudging down the boiling streets of August with a matted collar around her neck, grave soil beneath her finger nails, bleeding out of her ears. She does not know that waiting for her at home is a ghost of the woman she has immortalized in the prison of her mind. As she nears her abode, we watch her narrow her eyes down the road at a hazy mirage of a slender figure on the horizon, shift towards it hesitantly, and give up when her Nana hurries for her to come inside. Seeing her small frame swallowed by the rowan doors, we washed our hands of this affair. 

There is a creature in my house that I do not recognize. It sits on the kitchen table calling my name, bug-eyed and bare boned. There is a shadow of a tired smile on its lips, but it is grotesque upon its gaunt face. I’ve missed you, my Tuna. What happened to you? Are you hurt? Its spindly arms open in want of an embrace, but I step back, stricken with disgust. It deflates reproachfully, shrinking back in despair. There is sloshing in my ear drums. The pit of my stomach burns. The whispers from my womb surface through the pain. It lies… An imposter… a changeling they have given you. I scrutinize its shrink-wrapped flesh, its rasping breaths, its dull demeanor. This is not the Ma I knew. It can not be. A changeling? A changeling. A changeling. 

What are you doing, lass? Your mother has returned, just like you wanted. Nana wraps her arms around the creature and scowls at me. Why are you just standing there? 

I retreat until my back is up against the door, shaking my head incessantly, splattering blood on the carpet, rattling murmurs in my head. Your Nana knows… she thinks you’re a fool. 

Stop girl! What’s the matter with you? How can your mother get better if you’re like this? At Nana’s shouts, the changeling cries fake tears, playing its part in feigning sorrow. I choke down sickened sobs of my own, grabbing hold of the doorknob. 

Despite Nana’s shrill insistence that what sits there, crumpling upon its own foulness and guilt, is my beloved mother, I run. 

Out the doors, I am blasted with a wave of heat that singes the hair on my arms, and cooks my feet to sludge in their shoes. In the weeks prior I had prayed for an unprecedented heatwave to make me forget the frigidity of loss. It is sweltering now, hotter than I had ever wished for it to be. I strip my feet and toss the remnants on the ground, the sweat in my socks sizzling on the pavement. I lurch forward abruptly, afflicted by another round of hot flashes in my abdomen. The women are screaming now. Look up girl, look there. I look up and see the figure I had seen earlier, swaying wildly with the waves, clearly the outline of a woman. Her hair burns the same red as the sun, the same red as the cord squeezing around my throat. There is your love. There is your oasis. 

I make for my mother, speeding down the road. The soles of my feet barely register the prick of black tar over the excruciating pain in my gut, of the roaring rapids of blood and crooning hags in my ears. My vision blurs, making me see double, triple, quadruple. In the distance, my mothers starts to convulse. Hunched over, her images blurs into the nibble build of an antlered deer. I blink and the deer leans into the shoulders of a grizzly bear, a second later, the bear expels a sleek mountain lion from its stomach, another second, shits out a horde of two-faced bunnies, another, coalescence into a bleating, pure-white lamb, then, back to my mother. I must be going mad. Perhaps, I have been mad for a very long time. Nothing more but a trick of the fae. An illusion to fool your senses. 

There is a rumbling coming from the thicket next to the road, I slow down to a jog and watch with rattling breaths as a herd of buffalo— or is it a double-decker bus? or a murder of crows? a cement truck’s bulbous ass? a pilgrimage of chittering forest critters? Fuck, I don’t know— completely trample my mother, a cloud of dust the only evidence of the stampede. I stop completely and dry heave off to the side of the road. It is starting, child, prepare yourself. 

Shut up, I croak, wiping the spit off my mouth. I turn to face the wreckage. 

It’s hard to identify the truth of the remains. There’s a snout here, an antler there, a shredded cotton tail, a scalp of fury red hair, all mixed in a soup of steaming intestines, livers, hearts, kidneys, and lungs. The blistering pavement is making the entrails crackle and pop, squelching nauseatingly. I spot my mother’s cleaved head, oozing out spinal fluids and mushed brain matter, and instantly clutch my abdomen. Haha! A searing, incomprehensible pain arrests my midriff, magnitudes higher than what I’ve been enduring. Your body prepares itself for absolution. My diaphragm, kidneys, and liver push up into the space framed by my ribs, several cracking from the effort. Spoiled milk leaks from my tits, running down my legs, making a foul pink goop with the blood from my ears. My stomach balloons up in size. I drip stalactites of saliva from my mouth. I have never known hunger before this moment. 

This is the bid you made with the stars all those nights ago, girl, the crones in my uterus howled. And we bitches of the accursed womb have answered your prayers. I collapse on my knees into the pile of steaming flesh, writhing in agony.

You will save your mother the way all mothers want to be saved. To be devoured and born again. To exist from the resolve of their own flesh. I claw at my mouth, at my stomach, at the tainted pavement.

Eat, stupid girl, and Imogen Kane will return through you. 

The sun is setting now, and I grow tired of my body. I gain one moment of morbid clarity. I delicately pick up my mother’s skull and kiss her forehead. She is beautiful even in pieces. Trembling, I open my mouth.

Edited by Cailey Niandrea Pasco