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PXIE WAS PREGNANT again, and he was not happy about it. He was getting too heavy to fly, which was already insulting enough. But worse—worse by far—was the thing inside him, growing, waiting. When it came out, he’d have to feed it, keep it alive. Pixie could barely manage himself on a good day, let alone a wiggling, biting thing.
If only he’d won the dance battle! Every spring the guups gathered on the high plain. Bodies heaped and twirled, glit and spun in the air, their wings rippling in shimmering waves. Pixie had given his all: He had hurled himself upwards and sank down, he had folded and spilled, turned and trembled. He had been magnificent! Already, his eyes had been set on the tree he would get as a prize, a beautiful cherry in full bloom. All that fragrance, all to himself! But his focus had faltered, and in the last shimmy, Pixie had let his opponent come close. Too close.
And so, instead of setting house in the fragrant cherry, Pixie had left the high plain with a belly full of teeth. And regret.
He knew only one solution: he’d have to bring the thing to the swamps. Again.
The swamps had once been rivers, and the rivers had once been roads. Humans had lived there, a grand nation of tradesmen, until they had died. The rivers reclaimed the roads. The swamps reclaimed the rivers. And the witches came like mould after heavy rain. Maybe they were the descendants of humankind, maybe they were something else entirely. Either way, Pixie didn’t care.
The witch wore a red bandana knotted tight over her bald head. She blinked at him in recognition and her eyes closed sideways.
‘No more flying worms,’ the witch said, showing a row of tiny, sharp teeth, like broken glass arranged at random.
Pixie’s wings drooped. The thing inside was ready—he could feel it coiling. Before he could say anything more, it slithered free, grey and slick with slime.
The witch recoiled.
‘No more flying worms,’ she hissed and vanished.
The thing blinked up at Pixie with enormous eyes. It cooed—a horrid, wet sound—and crawled to his belly. Pixie screamed as the baby sank its teeth into his flesh and began to feed. Fat he’d been collecting for months melted into its little mouth.
Pixie tried to fly up but his wings wouldn’t lift him, not with the parasite suckling from his flesh. He walked. The swamps seemed endless on foot. Eyes followed him. Other witches watched from the shadows. He felt their hunger and their eagerness, his last chance at freedom.
‘Baby guups!’ Pixie cried out. ‘Fresh one! Free to take!’
The witches stirred like smoke. One stepped forward. Then—
‘No flying worms!’
The scream scattered the crowd. The red-bandana witch had returned.
‘Why not?’ Pixie asked weakly..
‘One worm,’ she said, ‘and the mind flies day and night. Never stops.’
Pixie looked down at the thing latched to him.
‘I don’t know what to do with it.’
‘You do nothing,’ said the witch. ‘It feeds. It leaves.’
And with that, she vanished again.
Pixie should’ve felt relief. Witches didn’t lie. But they didn’t tell the whole truth either. There was always a hook in their words, even when you couldn’t see the line.
The little guup burrowed deeper, slipping under skin, curling through muscle, heading somewhere Pixie didn’t want to imagine.
‘If you wanted to go back in,’ Pixie gasped, ‘why’d you come out?’
The little guup answered by gnawing a hole in his gut.
Pixie dragged himself along the ground. The baby was carving its way through him, digging tunnels of pain. It feeds. It leaves. Would it leave anything of him behind?
Finally, Pixie collapsed beyond the edge of the swamp. He could no longer walk, no longer scream. The baby guups reached his chest. Then his throat. Then his brain. Fear flickered, but it was dim—his mind was already mostly gone. Pixie closed his eyes.
NewPixie wiggled free of the hollow skin. He stretched, all damp wings and newness. His old husk lay wrinkled beside him.
Thank you, NewPixie thought.
Learn to shimmy, little worm, the husk replied.
Shimmy?
The husk was silent.
NewPixie waited for his wings to dry. When they finally unfurled and he launched into the sky, all thoughts of old husks and shimmies had already been forgotten.
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