Her father loved her mother, maybe too much. More than he loved the child they knew was growing inside her, swelling under white skin. And the mother? She might have loved him, but not enough. Not as much as she loved how it felt with that juice running through her veins, tripping out and all the gardens growing growing growing behind her eyes. Leaf-green sky-blue blood-red explosions.

She said, I need it.

Will you be all right, he said. Will it hurt the baby.

She just looked at him with those eyes, glassy and shining so bright, and said, I need it.

And he got it for her, of course. He went to the women with her castle-like house, met her in the cold stone room. The women who some people said was crazy, who others called a witch because of the potions she could make. Potions to make everything stop hurting and become lovely, a singing fire in your veins when you took it.

She stood looking at him, her tiny fatherless child curled on the couch just out of eye’s view.

He said, I need it.

Are you sure, she said. Can you pay.

Anything you want for it, he said.

She smiled.

He took the vial, the needle, home to her. She was crouched in the corner of their bedroom, crying. When she saw him she stopped, stood up.

He said, I have it.

She took it and stopped crying, until she ran out again. And he went back to the
woman, said yes, anything you want, and the woman, the witch, smiled.

And then the baby was born. She was so small, perfect-looking. Thick blonde hair growing a few days after she left the hospital, and her eyes, like her mother’s eyes. But more; she did not have that half-crazed broken look that lurked in the woman’s. But she wasn’t perfect. Born too early, too small, the doctors said. It must have been her mother’s desperation for that one thing she craved that did it. Delicate skin, bones, brittle. Veins showing through. She was always quiet until her mother started crying for her fix. Then she started screaming, tears and noise mixing together until he could not stand it, and he went back to the witch. He took the girl, because her mother shrieked at him to take it away, that she did not want it, and he was afraid to leave her behind.

He went to the woman and said, please.

I need it, he said. Anything, he said.

She looked at the bundle in his arms, now asleep. Looked at the pale porcelain skin with painted-on veins, looked at this tiny faye creature, and smiled.

Anything, she said.

He barely hesitated. He thought of the woman at home, and the way she would scream without what he needed to get her.

Anything.

He left the child with the witch and returned home one last time, where the woman took the needle and did not come down off her high, this time, died with a look of pain and ecstasy on her face.

He barely hesitated. He took her body and left. That night, there were two bodies in the river.

The witch let her own child name the baby. The child, who could only just talk, named her Amy, having heard her mother cal it Anything so often, and mangling the word with her careless child’s mouth.

Amy did not grow stronger-still too delicate for the harsh world, she stayed in the witch’s house. But she grew taller, more beautiful. Her hair continued to grow past the normal rate, waves of golden to the ground, and she would spend hours washing it, combing it. Her only companion was the witch, so many years her senior, and the girl who, sixteen years ago, had named her. And so it was natural for them to be close; the girl did not leave the house often either, though for different reasons than Amy.

Or maybe Amy was the reason. Certainly the daughter watched Amy, could be caught staring as she combed her hair and sang. And she helped with Amy’s hair, of course, holding the locks off the ground, and it was only natural that something would grow between them, these two girls who knew so little of the outside world and so much of each other. Something that was more than friendship.

So these two girls grew, and grew together, sharing a bed and their lives. Eventually the woman who was the mother of one of them and the keeper of the other died, and left the house and all she had saved to them. They did not continue what she had done, locked her workroom and never spoke of it. They did not speak much, in truth, lazy days where it seemed always warm and sunny, and they did not need to speak. Sometimes Amy would sing, and that was the loudest noise in the house. A year slipped by, unnoticed, and another. Now Amy was eighteen, and the daughter of the witch was twenty.

Sometimes the daughter would leave the house, leave it to buy food and the few clothes that they needed. Amy never left, still delicate. The witch’s daughter could still trace all those veins, not hidden underneath the skin that never darkened or burned. How could it, when there was never any sun?

When the daughter left, Amy would wait for her by the window, keep the door locked. Sometimes she would sing to keep herself company.

The man wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Prowling the streets, looking for whatever it was he had lost. Maybe it started when his mother had left, left to look for what she said she needed, that juice in her veins. I need it, she said, and left him.
His father started working more and more then, and the boy that the man had been never saw him much. It started then, the wandering, looking for something to make himself less alone, less vulnerable.

And now he might have found it. Wandering the streets and heard that voice, the one that cut through the walls of houses and the air like a razorblade. He followed that voice, to where he could look in the window-at an angle to hide himself. And he saw her.

She couldn’t be real, he thought at first. Almost transparent, the only thing he could really see was her hair, gold and shining, and he wondered, what is this feeling? She was familiar and so like himself and yet different. He couldn’t take it, and crept to the door of the house. The handle was locked, and he knocked, timidly at first, and then louder. The voice stopped. No one came to the door, and he left, his desire for something more satiated but still so hungry.

Three days later, he came back. There was no one at the window, but by crouching below it he could hear the murmur of voices. The voice, the one he’d heard before, the sweet blade-like song, was there again. It pierced his chest and left him gasping for air. The other voice, he barely noticed. She was all he could think about.

He spent a feverish week trying to sleep, trying to eat, trying to do anything but think of that girl, that voice. How could she seem so familiar, he wondered.

Finally he returned. This time e crept closer to the house, hiding behind bushes. When he got there, there was a woman going up the path to the house. It was not his woman, of course, but still, he stayed and watched her.

She reached the door and stopped, called Amy, it’s me. Open the door.

And he saw her. She was there, and he could feel himself flush at just this slight glance. She was so thin, so pale, couldn’t be real. But she was. The other woman, the one he just barely glanced at, stepped into the house. He watched, though, as her arms went around his girl, his beautiful blonde lady-child-Amy, was that what she had been called?-and burned with rage. How dare she take his goddess, his perfection, and sully it with her dirt, perversion.

The door closed. The man went home. He tried to learn about the house, but no one seemed to know.

It’s always been there, they said. Never really thought about the people. He cursed, and his obsession grew.

The last time he went back, he stayed until he saw the woman leave again. He waited as long as he could bear to, and went to the door.

He called, Amy, it’s me. Open the door, and his voice had changed now, sounded like the witch’s daughter.

The first time Amy saw the man, she was waiting for the witch’s daughter. She kept singing, but seeing him, even through the window and across the yard, felt like a blow.

It was his eyes-the same blue as hers, but with something else, something that found some shred of memory in her and pulled. And she was lost in them, until he knocked on the door. Her voice was cut off like the noise was a knife. Seeing him, recognizing him, was one thing-but opening the door to anyone other than her lover, to the outside world, was another. She did not, couldn’t go quite that far. And eventually he left, and the witch’s daughter came back.

Amy did not tell her about the man.

When the witch went out again, Amy did not sing. She waited silently, out of view of the window, until the daughter came home again. Amy opened the door at her familiar voice-rough, but beloved. Over her shoulder, she saw the man again. His face was drawn tight, and there was a hating look to it. But still-those eyes, that sweet sting of half-forgotten recognition.

And then, the witch’s daughter was gone again, and when Amy opened the door to her call it is not the witch’s daughter at all-not her lover, soul-sister-but the man.

He looked at her with that intense, ferocious look in his eyes, reached out and grabbed her arm in a grip that hurt. She welcomed the pain.
And with that grip, that pain touch bond, she was lost. She gave herself to him. She would have died for him, followed him anywhere, done anything. As long as this man, the man who might have been her brother or her lover or her friend, was there.

I need it, he said.

He was filled with that joy of possession. She was his, this fey girl child, this moonlit bloody dream.

And then the witch’s daughter came home. She knew at once, of course, how could she not see? Those same eyes, looking into each other with that intensity.

She dropped the bag she was holding, and perhaps a little of what they had called her mother’s magic remain, because instead of the class shards from the bottle flying out as it smashed, they flew up, into the blue eyes she knew were, even now, stealing her love, her life.
He shrieked and bled, and Amy dropped to her knees heedless of the glass, and held him, his blood soaking into her hair. The witch’s daughter stood, frozen.

And then the man died. His blood stayed on Amy’s hair, crusting the gold over with rusty red-brown. Amy cut off her hair, broke the lock on the witch’s workshop.

The witch’s daughter knew it was coming. She did not cry when she found Amy on the man, grace, a look of pain and ecstasy on her face. She buried Amy next to him, returned to her house. She fixed the lock but left it open, workroom gone years unused but now needed again.

The daughter of the witch was now the witch. People whispered her name in shamed tones but still came to her for what they needed. Soon she had a child.

And then the man came to her, weary face lined and desperate.
He said, I need it.
Anything.
The witch smiled