The Ritual

She reached into the pocket of her flannel shirt and pulled out a jagged triangle of mirror. It was from the same stash she’d used in the creek bed. The edges were razor sharp, catching the moonlight and throwing a fractured reflection of Leo’s terrified face back at him.

"Give me your hand," she commanded.

Leo hesitated. His survival instinct was screaming at him. *She’s crazy. She’s on something. This is a suicide pact.*

But then he looked at the lights of the town below. The grid of suburban streets. The school. The house where his parents were asleep in front of the TV. A life of grey static.

He looked at Iris. She was vibrant, dangerous, promising a world of color.

He held out his wrist.

Iris took it gently. She stroked the veins on the inside of his forearm.

"It only hurts for a second," she promised, her voice dropping to a hypnotic lullaby. "Then the iron leaves. And the wings come. We’ll go to the Court. There’s music there that never stops. And the fruit tastes like sunlight."

She pressed the sharp edge of the mirror against his skin.

"Ready, my Prince?"

Leo nodded, tears prickling his eyes. "Ready."

She applied pressure. The skin began to depress.

* Wooooop. Woooop.*

The sound cut through the air like a knife.

A siren. Blue lights flashed against the tree line below, reflecting off the metal tank.

"Hey!" a voice shouted from the ground, magnified by a megaphone. "Kids! Get down from there! We see you!"

The spell shattered.

Leo flinched, jerking his hand back. The mirror sliced a shallow line across his skin—just a scratch, not the deep cut she intended.

"No," Iris hissed. Her face contorted. The beauty vanished, replaced by a snarl of pure, animalistic rage. "The Hounds! They followed the scent!"

"Iris, it's the police," Leo stammered, backing away. "We have to go down."

"I am not going back in a cage!" she screamed. She looked at Leo with sudden, withering contempt. "You flinched. You pulled away."

"They're coming up," Leo said, hearing the clang of boots on the ladder.

"You aren't a King," Iris spat. "You're just meat. Just heavy, rotting meat."

She stepped backward.

She stepped onto the railing again.

"Iris, don't!" Leo lunged for her.

She didn't look at him. She looked at the moon. "I'm going home."

She leaned back.

She didn't jump. She just let go of the world. She tipped backward into the empty air, her flannel shirt billowing like broken wings.

Leo screamed her name. He scrambled to the railing and looked down.

He expected to see a broken body on the rocks below. He expected to hear the sickening sound of impact.

There was nothing.

The canopy of the trees rustled as if a large bird had taken flight. A cloud of something—dust? moths? glitter?—shimmered in the beam of the policeman’s flashlight as it swept the ground. But there was no girl. No flannel shirt. No blood.

"Kid! Stay where you are!" the officer shouted, his head popping up over the ladder's edge.

Leo stood alone on the catwalk. The wind roared in his ears. He looked at the jagged piece of mirror lying at his feet. He touched the shallow scratch on his wrist, the only proof that she had been there at all.

He looked up at the stars, wondering if she was flying, or if he was just crazy enough to believe it.