by B Myers
An unkempt border of bushes crowded the far edge of the little back lawn. Behind this, the woods had already turned murky. From there, anyone could watch the house undetected. The Chaff, crouched on their haunches, could blend into the landscape like knotty twigs. They might lurk there unmoving all night, beyond the light of the windows. For two cold nights two dozen of them had done just that, the young ones hunkered into the leaves, the older ones in their dun capes. Drab as moths, yet still visible—that was the dilemma.
One of them would whistle a drowsy hoowee hoo, then pause and repeat the call a little slower. Then a descending trickle, almost the beginning of a melody. Each night the faint refrain rose and fell over the yard. This, and other little things, would ease certain attentions elsewhere.
The house was a smudge of dark brick and lighter siding, bleak and mortal. But there was a light in the upper story window, and the small form that leaned out from it held their attention. There was a skin-prickling pulse of potent bone magic in the air. There was nothing else like it.
“Born in the eleventh month,” one of them began.
“Moonless night, rain or snow,” came the response.
So the whispering went, bits of refrain meant to recall their need, goad them in purpose.
The boy’s silhouette almost shimmered. They could all feel the pull of it, hanging by its thread. A cat had mounted a dumpster and now sat looking over the fence in their direction, ears forward—a bad sign. But it was a moonless night, and the drizzle seemed likely to go on for hours.
The window was pulled shut and the figure disappeared. Moments later, it went dark. An hour to be safe, then a few of them would steal to the house and find a space to slip through. In the trees, a net of sentries watched the skies. Though nothing moving as fast as starlight could be spotted before it arrived, there were always little signs others were about. Should any Upper pass, they would know. And likely be driven off for the drossy things they were. Chaff were unsanctioned.
But they had a saying: Better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a wolf. Of course, it might be decided to mow the woods and fields. Mulch the whole extended clan of them. It had happened before, they said. But they had another saying: Cut a Chaffy in ten pieces, make ten Chaff.
A party of three had been chosen for the task: the spry youth Nit, the somewhat older Speck, and the mote Pip. The former two lacked wings but were elusive and lithe. Fine leapers that could land without a sound. Legs supple as spring grass.
Now they moved, cricket-style, along the fence. A cracked back window gave them an opening into an odd space (a kitchen, Speck whispered). From there, they hopped to the floor and crept up the stairs. At the top, Pip drifted through the keyhole. All was still.
Speck pushed the satchel under the door and gestured.
“Quiet going now. Where’s your feather?”
“Here,” he pointed to his vest. “Drops. Tongs. And,” he thumbed over his shoulder at the thing sleeved in a harness on his back, “moon disc.”
“Firm hold, hard pull, don’t waste time,” Speck whispered.
Nit eased under the door. Pip had drifted to the window and settled on a pane to watch the sky. Nit crept across the floor, up the bedpost, and onto the pillow, drawing the flask from his vest pocket and pulling the cork without a sound. A drop on each eyelid, two under the nose, and three between the lips. Pause, draw the feather, and tease the mouth open. Now the tongs. A single tug yielded a perfect baby molar, its last.
Nit put the tooth in an acorn shell, capped the shell and put it in the satchel, folded the satchel, and tied it doubly. Pip was already through the keyhole.
From outside, a sentry gave the alarm warble just as time seemed to skip and the shadows evaporated. As though it had always been there, an Upper stood by the window, illuminating the room with itself. Without thinking, Nit had leapt across the room. Now he slid down the door in a tiny heap and squeaked. The reek of its bone magic came in pulses, like bell tones.
He couldn’t remember afterward if he had really spoken. Had he told it the boy had swallowed it? He only knew his eyes seemed locked on the Prime Collector’s winged feet. How in a blink, it was bending over the bed, its iridescent feathers shrouding the child’s head. How it turned to look at Nit just as hands were pulling him from behind and he was yanked with violence under the door.
Pip was flitting down the stairs already. Speck hauled Nit to his feet, and they took the stairs in three leaps. At the kitchen window, they stopped. Speck protruded an eye through the crack. Unlikely that it would follow them into the house interior, especially the stairs. But it might wait outside. The sentry warble had gone quiet. Then, there along the fence Speck saw one, then another Chaff slipping toward the house. And there, on the fence above them, a cat following. Whatever little tricks of shade and hazing they had thrown over themselves the Upper’s radiance had swept away. It seemed the Upper had swept away too.
Pip first, then Speck, then Nit eased out. They crouched on the sill and watched the others approach. The cat, tail twitching, watched, obviously seeing them. Then two flitters landed on the sill, Nub and Peck, their glassy wings quivering.
“We’ll fly it out,” Nub said, gesturing with a thumb behind her. “Over the kitty.”
“It’s too heavy,” Speck said.
“Nah,” Peck took the satchel from Nit and looped it to her chest.
They leapt into the air, Peck grabbing Nub’s legs to make a tiny flying train. They cleared the bushes and swooped low, gaining speed.
Too low. The cat had sidled along the house and now dashed out, leaping and snaring Peck. She squeaked as it caught her in its mouth and darted into a flower bed under an arched trellis. Nub had turned to follow and now landed on the trellis. Another squeak confirmed Peck was directly below. Nub signed to them and pointed.
Nit leapt without thinking. Four leaps took him to the slat below Nub. Speck landed directly next to him a second later.
“Thought you were going after her like a fool,” Speck said.
“Can we distract it?”
“No telling. They’re fast.”
“Maybe the feather…”
Speck frowned.
“…to distract it. Then the drops.” He pulled the cork and handed the flask to Speck.
Speck still frowned. But below them the flowers were thrashing.
Nit, feather in hand, detached the top tendrils of a vine, pulling at it until he could climb on. Speck followed, and the vine descended with their weight. Hanging directly above, Nit wriggled the feather and hissed. The flowers went quiet. Then they exploded.
Paws wide, the creature had leapt straight upward. Nit torqued his body in a hard arc, losing hold of the vine. He went wheeling into the flowers. Speck instinctively threw the flask directly into the cat’s open mouth.
The cat landed and hacked out the little object. It stared up at Speck bobbing gently up and down. It wriggled down to leap again, but then relaxed. It closed its eyes.
“Nit!” Speck hissed. “Peck! I got it—it’s asleep!”
Nit, who had been lying perfectly still under the leaves, jumped up. Peck was steps away, dripping sap from punctures, but otherwise unhurt.
To the Chaff, who preferred that their goings and doings went unseen in the murk of dark woods and grottoes, the night had been far too harrowing. And should any Uppers return bringing radiant vengeance, it would go worse. They fled in silence under the dripping branches.
There were sanctuaries under the tree roots, and halls below them. There, in some guarded chamber, it would be the work of a day: The tooth would yield a small amount of dust, but its potency could be told in grains. Ground and mixed with milkweed floss and cicada wings, it would barely fill a mortar. Added to creek water and hackberry sap, it would just fill an urn hardly as tall as a young Chaffy. But after being shaken and spoken over, it would change, ready to be measured out drops at a time, good for several seasons. Anointed Chaff, along with their entrances and paths, their shaded gardens and grottoes, would go unseen.
A sandy bank stood out in the dark. They turned along it and trooped down into a gulch. Then up a hill to a tree whose downslope roots formed a thick colonnade. Here they could pass out of the rain. Down a passageway and into the earth, shelter in a safe house for the night.
Most of them had already disappeared into the roots when the whiff of wing powder froze the stragglers. It came from the rear. Something behind them, standing on the path, its outline barely discernable. Not the Prime Collector. Smaller, a retainer, its radiance dimmed to fuliginous iridescence.
Nit had fallen to the rear, walking in tandem with Speck as they rehashed those brief seconds in the upper room (a bedroom, Speck said). Now he turned with the others. The Upper was directly above them, bending down. Long fingers wrapped around his torso and he was lifted into the air. He heard Speck’s yelp and the squeaks of the others as it spread its greater and lesser wings, crouched, and leapt upwards. Nit could not even think to squirm. The fingers clutched him surely to its body. They lurched upward to the beat of its wings.
When they cleared the treetops, Nit realized the Upper was going to drop him from the sky. From some awful dark height, it would hurl him to his death. Their punishment was impossible to defy. Even if he was able to speak through his terror, ask for mercy, he knew—was born knowing—the Upper would not respond.
But they weren’t rising. They had turned and were flitting over the trees, almost skimming the top branches. And then he saw the house ahead. They flew over the backyard and made a gliding turn towards the upper story window. An odd blink, and they were inside. Nit was placed abruptly and delicately at the head of the bed.
He stood without moving, limbs still locked terror. A finger tapped his back. He began to turn but was held in place. The finger tapped again, and he realized it was tapping the moon disc. He had completely forgotten the thing on his back. Fingers pulled it slightly from its sleeve and stopped. Then he understood.
Nit finished pulling the moon disc from its sleeve and placed it under the sleeping child’s pillow. Behind him, nothing moved. He knew without turning it was not there. Gone at the speed of starlight.
He took the stairs one by one and made his way to the kitchen window. From here he could see the hump of the cat’s back nestled in the flowers under the trellis. He eased out and made his way along the fence, now more perplexed than frightened.
The strangeness of it was beyond anything he had ever known. Carried by an Upper—no, dare he believe it: shepherded. Goaded to finish. Had this happened other times? Many times? He suddenly pictured other Chaff nudged this way and that, like wayward children.
Why leave it under a pillow? It had a shiny, pockmarked surface, like the Moon. Good for what? Nit was born knowing many things—woodcraft, foodways, earth lore—but also knew his life was measured in seasons. Uppers were otherwise, or so he had heard, with lifetimes that stretched to far horizons.
The patter of the dripping leaves eased him, and he picked up his pace as he thought of the others, Speck’s cry of alarm suddenly coming back to him. Under the densest branches it was only damp. They would be dry in the safe house. Dry, and free apparently, to take their prize down into a deep hall, to place tooth under pestle, feel the pulse of it as its grains were ground and mixed, becoming their own bone magic.
At the sand bank he heard the sudden quiet beating of Chaff wings above him—Nub, stopping to hover over him and call to others behind her. And there, coming up the gulch, were Speck, Pip, and others. Warily, they had followed in the Upper’s direction. Nub dropped to the ground next to him in obvious relief, and soon the others had come tumbling around him, their hoots barely restrained. Nit pulled the harness from his back and held up its empty sleeve, the story beginning to gush out of him.
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© B Myers 2026
B Myers has published short fiction in Propagule, Defenestration, Teleport Magazine, Collidescope, 96th of October, Archive of the Odd, Cast of Wonders, and other places. He works copy for a Chicago publishing company and lives in west Michigan.