***
Studying amongst immortal demons
and dragons–
keeping myself alive
on life force
and blood–
must’ve messed up
my sense of time,
cuz Rails sped
like a rumbling train
before I had time to look back.
She didn’t spend seventy-something years
at a witch school,
but she learned what I taught her
about fighting spells
just fine.
And I was too excited
to have someone to teach,
to think about
her anger management,
her resentment,
how maybe she shouldn’t have
started using hunting spells to hunt
things bigger than rats.
She led those kids
and the people in the cracking concrete houses
to steal food
out of the palace
hanging from the center
of the copper dome.
Rails vowed to take the names of patrollers
who stood in their way
(by killing them)
and give names to all her followers, and
I watched
like a pet owner
when an exotic koala
breaks into the lion pen,
knowing the koala
knows magic
but not knowing
if that will even the odds.
Only when the palace
fell
from the rafters
did I think
maybe my little koala
has made herself a king
and I didn’t prepare her for that.
Only when Rails didn’t feed the new kids
growing up
and told everyone
the next dome over
had all the food
so they’d better invade
the storm summoning people
who believed in a God who punished the wicked
did I wonder
what I’d set in motion;
only when
Rails
established trade routes between the conquered domes–
some hadn’t known anything existed
outside their bubble
until she invaded,
not that that
lessened their chances to
win
by much–
did I wonder how far she intended to go;
only when
the children in The City
grew richer
than the governors
of the outlying domes
did I wonder
when the train would stop;
only then
did I wonder
if Rails
was still that kid I knew
who named her own people,
eager to feed them–
or if she hadn’t changed at all
and I should’ve taught her to.
I thought, as she ruled,
maybe my sense of time
would speed all this up
and she’d die before I knew it
but no
she figured out
how to take life
to keep her from dying.
But she didn’t go after rats
and things hiding in the rocks,
she made it an honor
for a family
to sacrifice a child
and grant her another two years,
then bestowed riches on the family for life
so more families would do it.
One time, I tried to talk her down.
Tell her
I knew a thing or two about irreparable mistakes
and she might want to calm down
before that happened,
but I guess
I then became
her irreparable mistake
because she yelled at me,
told me I was jealous that she’d outgrown me,
told me I was trying to tear her down
and put myself in charge–
as if I wanted
her gilded rooms
her sweeping gowns
these loris-eyed children
sacrificing their lives
on a literal altar
in her bathroom
inscribed with glittery runes–
we fought,
Witch Kook
and Ruler Rails,
witch
of seventy years of language lessons
and shapeshifting spells
and homework late at night,
against conqueror
in many wars,
both
skilled at magic–
she would’ve killed me,
if I hadn’t turned into a rat
and fled.
But her mistake
in not listening to me
was that
Witch Kook
had already mentored one girl
to overthrow The City
and the second,
she could do it better.
Jordyn Saelor 