Winnie paused, looking up at me, maybe making sure I was paying attention. I nodded and bent my head so I could hear her bare-branch whisper better.
“The humans thought the passenger pigeon would never die. How could something so plentiful cease to exist? They ate them. Old ones, young ones, fat ones, tough ones. A dozen would feed a family of five—just stick them in a soup pot with potatoes and carrots. They tasted like dark meat on a chicken, but tenderer and more delicious. They weren’t hunted—they were exterminated. They nested, thousands and thousands of them, all together. What was it like? For years, you walked into the forests and they were thick with sulfur, pots burning, sending up clouds of smoke. You think an execution tree is a nightmare? Try being a passenger pigeon’s roost. You couldn’t breathe from the sulfur. Hunched men, with their faces and their feet wrapped in burlap sacks, ran through the smoke, kicking pigs that had been set loose to eat the rotting pigeon corpses. I still hear their squeals and their screams. But worse? I can hear the frightened, terrorized cooing of the pigeons. The men had long sticks, and they would knock them all from their nests. The ground was littered with them. Mothers. Babies. Half-alive. Rotting. I can feel the harried beat of their hearts right before their necks were snapped. They would cart them out by the thousands. Each year, the pigeons came to roost, and each year, hell descended on them. Every time they attempted to land, they were tortured and threatened and murdered. But even that wasn’t enough to kill all the passenger pigeons. In the end, do you know what happened?”
I shook my head.
“One morning, the humans woke up and found the passenger pigeons gone. They weren’t in the forest. They weren’t in their roosts. As the fog cleared and the tide swept in, thousands upon thousands of dead passenger pigeons floated to shore. The waves shoved them in piles onto the beach. The humans gathered around—they’d never seen anything like it. They couldn’t understand it. What had happened? When the tide left, it pulled the pigeons with it, burying them in the water.”
Winnie stared at me, and I could almost make out the fluttering of a passenger pigeon’s wing in her gaze.
“The humans agreed the pigeons had gotten lost in the fog and fallen exhausted into the waves. But that’s not what happened. The passenger pigeon, all the thousands that remained, decided they couldn’t go on. And who could blame them? What being can go on living when every last moment was made into hell. Do you see?”
She pushed away from the door, and I took a step back. She smiled and tapped my wrist, where my tattoos used to be.
“I don’t see,” I said.
She nodded. “Jagger was there too. He saw what happens to a being with no hope. The passenger pigeons taught him a lesson. When someone is as gentle as a dove, you have to give them hope, so they will endure hell until . . .” She shrugged. “Until hell is all they know and all they want, so they’ll fly back to it willingly. He’s very good at keeping you away from the water.”
I frowned, thinking of all the ways in which Jagger kept his nines and even his mines comfortable in their lives. A home. Friendship. Rou.
Even in the worst, most nightmarish days of my childhood, I never ran away from Hell Gate. Why? First, because Jagger was guaranteed to find me and consequently punish me. But second, and more importantly, because Justice and Griff and Rou were there too.
Come to find out, Jagger knew that. He used that.
They were what made Hell Gate tolerable. They were why I willingly kept coming back, shutting and locking the door behind myself, never fighting the hell we lived in.
“And Justice?” I asked in a whisper. “Is Jagger keeping him away from the water too?”
At my question, Winnie’s smile became a terrible thing. “No. He’s shoving him under. I believe he wants to see what happens when his knife finally breaks.”
At that, she turned and knocked on the door, pounding her fist three times against the wood.
A long pause later, and Justice opened it a crack.
Winnie smiled at him, fluttering her eyelashes. “Hi, Justice.”
He narrowed his eyes and stilled like he did whenever he sensed a threat. “Winnie.”
“What do you want?” Jagger called.
She stood on her tiptoes and peered over Justice’s shoulder, focusing on Jagger. “I’m back. I hear the conjurers are coming to?—”
“You’re not invited.”
“—dinner, and while I’d love to come, I’m busy. Maybe next time. Your lockpick is here.” She gestured to me and then turned to give me a side-smile.
She took a step closer to Justice. He tensed and shifted on the balls of his feet. He hadn’t looked away from her once since she’d opened the door. It were as if he thought she was a snake coiled to strike.
She tilted her chin and smiled at him. The difference in their heights was shocking. Justice was tall for a man. Taller than Luvic, but not as tall as Finn. The top of her head reached his chest. She reached out, and Justice tensed.
“Knock, knock.” She tapped his shirt, right over his heart. “Anybody home?”
His mouth tightened. He reached up, keeping his eyes on her, took her hand, and slowly removed it from his chest.
She laughed. “Bye, Justice. Have fun at dinner.”
She strolled away, a happy bounce in her gait.
When she disappeared around the corner, Justice finally looked at me. His eyes widened, and he stepped back as if I’d knocked him over the head. He was stunned. Speechless. His mouth parted, and he sucked in a ragged breath. His pupils grew until they nearly consumed the green of his irises.
