That Saturday morning came bright and fair. On the kitchen counter of a sleek, one-bedroom apartment, three little wicker men, covered in blood, glittering in the morning light.

"Hey, baby." Throne looked at his reflection in a ritual dagger. "Yes, first thing in the morning." He turned on the faucet of his sink, then cherishingly held the dagger up. "What? You know I like it rough. So. What do you say?"

Water gushed over the kitchen sink. "Oh, shit." Throne shut the faucet. Throne bapped a hand on the counter. "Shit—" Throne clutched the very wrist. "Ow, ow." The gauze wrapped over that wrist turned to pink, then to red. "It was all going so well." He set the dagger aside and then stared into the full sink, taking a deep breath.

"Fill with black pitch." Throne snapped his fingers above the sink. The water turned to a thick and tenebrous tar. Eyes watering, lungs burning in the haze of black petroleum vapors, Throne took one of the small blood-soaked whicker men from the counter beside him and held it above the sink-made cauldron. "The first whicker is tall." In it went, then another little whicker he took. "The second is not." In it went. "The third is short and wears a skirt." In the last whicker went and sinking into bubbling tar.

"A cut of the wrist, it's into the cauldron." Throne held his blood-soaked bandaged arm over the cauldron. A sharp breath. "Come on, baby." Off the bandages came, and into the cauldron they went. "A pleasant day for those who float." The first and second whicker popped the surface of the tar, and a moment later, so did the third.

Throne slapped his hands on his head with a face for screaming. "God, no. God, no, no, no." He staked a hand beside the cauldron and put the other to his forehead. "No, no, no." Blood ran down his arm, pooling over the countertop onto the floor. "They say."

All three whickers burst into flame, and each little flame was drowned in the tar. Throne submerged a hand into the black, and it glided from his pale flesh as he withdrew a flickered ember, pinched between his middle and thumb. Throne crushed the tiny ember in a snap. Glowing embers drifted from his left eye as it wept a tear of tar.

"Pick up, pick up." Eyes wide, relief came. "Reign? Thank, God. Are you safe?" What black magic Throne invoked, it was for a phone call. "Am I alright? Of course, I'm alright." He paced and the dagger, hanging off the countertop, he knocked off the table with his hip. "Babe—!" He caught it as it fell, and his head jerked to the side, like there was a loud noise in one ear.

"What? Why would I be with a girl? Wait—why, of course, I'd be with a girl. Of course, yes. Yes, very funny. I called you to tell you I wasn't gay." His spoke fast, and because, it was full of stuttering and odd pauses.

"But, no." A pause, then a slow breath. "I was doing my usual divination, and there was an omen about your whicker. No, it floated—but it came up later than Conquer and Fife's. How much later? Why do you ask?" Throne's head bobbed from side to side, guessing. "Half, quarter second. That doesn't matter, Reign. They're supposed to come up at the same time." He stabbed a finger into the kitchen counter to drive his point. "They always have."

There was quite a silence, and through it Throne paced the kitchen, dripping red off his arm. "It's not a conspiracy theory." A clear blue tear, mixed with the black one, fell out of his eye and rolled down a distraught face. "Dad won't listen either. I haven't talked with Conquer in months, and Fife thinks I'm fucking crazy. They both do, but Conquer doesn't talk to me. You know this. You're the only one that bothers talking to me, and you do more than that. You listen to me. Yes, I know. But whenever I bring up divination, he changes the subject. He doesn't like that it's a feminine magic."

"I don't know what to do," he said in a sigh, closing his eyes. He listened and nodded. "You're right. It floated, it's probably nothing. What? More blood?" Throne looked at the blood on the floor. "No, no. I haven't been putting any more blood than usual into the ritual."

"No, it's nothing. No, I'm not bleeding." Throne took a roll of gauze from the kitchen counter and coiled it around his center-split wrist. "Reign, please do me a favor. Be careful. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Don't go anywhere without Fife. He's with you, isn't he?"

Throne pulled the gauze tight. "I'm coming to meet you at the airport. No, I don't care. If I can't make it to Chiba in time, I'll meet you at the station. I'll make it if I drive all day. I don't care. I'm coming to see you. If dad won't listen to me, I'll show up and make him listen." Tapping his foot. "Good. Love you too, sis. I'll see you soon." Throne snapped his fingers, and the sink was full of water again, shimmering in the morning light.

Clood covered the counters and floors and dripping from some of the cabinets. Throne caught his reflection in the mirror across the room; red speckled the white of his blue-and-white pinstripe shirt shirt, red smattered on his face, red drying to the black of his hair— "Had to wear white today, didn't I?"

Throne slipped on a blue waistcoat—freshly ironed on his coffee table—that helped to hide the blood. He stiffed out the collar of his shirt, then gave a so-so nod to his reflection. "Covered in blood. But looking good, yeah." He cringed then headed out the door into the apartment hallway.

"Throne?" There was a young woman with Ronin tattoos from arm to shoulder frowning at Throne from down the hall.

"Akira, I—" Akira approached him, shaking her head, keeping eye contact. She started, but Throne continued. "I swear to God, it's not as bad as it looks," he said.

"Are you going somewhere?"

"As much I wouldn't mind you helping me redo my gauze," he said with a smile that was trying to be charming, "I have to pick up my sister from the airport."

"You're going to Chiba."

"Yes."

"Like that?"

"Yes, I am."

"Okay," she said with a blink. "But what about me?"

"You?"

"But you said you'd help me with my stats homework sometime this weekend."

"Yeah, of course. Sometime this weekend."

"It's Sunday."

Throne's eyebrows raised on his face, mouth open, about to speak. He wiped the sweat off his forehead, smearing blood across it. "I'm sorry (?) I have to go. I'm sorry, I really am," he said, as if unsure he really was sorry.

Akira crossed her arms. "Throne, you look terrible."

"Oh, why thank you," he started to move, but she stepped in his way.

"Don't take it like that," she said with a slow, horizontal shake of head. "You shouldn't be driving."

"Akira." Throne walked around her. "I have to go. I'm running late and don't want to keep my sister waiting any longer than she needs to be. When I get back, after I've had some time with her, I'll help you with your fucking stats homework."

"God, you're immature," Akira said in a scoff. "Okay." Not that it was. "Go."

"I'm sorry." A pause with an open mouth. "I'll make it up to you, okay? If you want to help, get me something sweet when I get back. I'll probably need to get my blood sugar up anyway."

Only Throne laughed. Akira stepped aside and gestured him to the end of the hallway.

Throne lurched forward; then he jogged backwards, shrugging apologetically at Akira. "Bad joke. Really, though. I'll make it up to you—I promise."

Akira replied with nothing but raised, nonplussed eyebrows before Throne pushed through the hallway door. He took two steps at a time down the apartment stairwell, jumping the last few of each flight. At the bottom, he slapped a hand on the door—his non-injured hand—and shook his head. "Akira. Of all the people to run into." He hung his head, leaning against the bar of the door. "Sorry, man."

Out into the parking lot he went, but for whatever reason, in that bright and fair morning, the sunlight felt cold. The air tasted bitter, and the birdsong was atonal.

"No. I can still enjoy this day." Throne unlocked his white 86' diesel and got in. "Look how beautiful it is." Throne stared at the bright, cloud-billowed sky. "But Akira." The Mercedes purred to a start and tore out of the parking lot. "There isn't an excuse she'd believe, is there?" Throne rapped his fingers on the wheel. "Nothing to do but apologize—which I did—and drive."

It was Saturday, so the highway was clear. There was an occasional cloud of dandelion swept from the countryside Throne couldn't help but smile at. Every sunshiny field and autumn forest he passed, the crisis in his look eased away. The pleasant portent of nature's beauty and his excellent pace had Throne gripping the wheel firmer than when he left.

Rural Japan passed by, and dusk neared as Throne stalled in Tokyo's traffic. "It'd be faster on foot." But even the gridlock was faster than he could run. Neither would be fast enough to get to the airport. A single, reckless slide through traffic set him on the offramp towards to the Chiba Station, and in little time, the Camri swung in between two parking spots in an empty parking structure.

Throne rushed into the station's pavilion—lush green ivy spilling over a half-circle of steelwork lattice—and checked the sky. It was dark, but it wasn't dusk. "I can make it." Throne pushed past couples and families and businessmen crossing between shopping centers and terminals. Sign after directory Throne navigated, and passerby after passerby he asked, "Do you know where the Line Five Monorail is?" until a kindly police officer asked, "Are you well, young man?

"No," he said, a mess, "I'm terribly late. My sister is already on a train headed for Fuyuki, and I believe the train is about to leave without me."

"Let's hurry then."

The officer lead Throne down the lane, and to an enclosed staircase, beside a bus pass. Throne dashed up at the stairs, and, at the top, night had come but for a slip of sunset on the horizon.

A monorail departed from the station and glided over the twinkling of the nighttime city. A smile crossed Throne as a host of blue-flaring faeries burst from the train car—as Reign often sent to greet her brother—and as shadows took the last gold of evening from the air, then came a surge of orange. Molten glass shotgunned the buildings on its sides. Smoke and fire jetted from every window. Sparks deluged from the undercarriage, and with a groan of steel, the train car tore from its rail and plummeted into street below.

Throne fell to his knees. His eyes became white with tears, and he sobbed whimpers to the air. Screams began, then sirens, and the officer's dress shoes clacking down the stairs. Throne shut his eyes from the bonfire until a soft nudging came at his side.

A small, blue faery fluttered just above his head. Another was tugging on his waistcoat and another on his thumb. From the street, three more flitted to his side and began pulling on his clothes.

"Hello, there." Throne's voice was cracked, broken too. "Is she gone?"

The faery nearest to his eyes nodded. One by one, their forms paled and flickered a lighter shade of blue. Throne lowered his chin, face crumpling into a sob, but the faery pulled his head up by his bangs.

"What do you want?" Throne asked, "Do you want me to follow you?" Throne stood, and the faeries release his clothes. The six faeries became a loose swarm, and flittered off down the platform staircase. "Wait—"

Police, firemen, and paramedics evacuated the train station while Throne chased his sister's faeries. Ceiling lights spun and flashed emergency yellow, and he passed empty stores and corridors, until the faeries stopped at a locker room; they gestured with a smile on each of their tiny blue faces for Throne to enter. As he did, the faeries flit to a locker, and one of them dialed numbers on the keypad. A click came from the lock, and the faerie that unlocked the strongbox tapped Throne on the nose with a puff of blue glitter. Then the faeries, all six of them, smiled at Throne, before turning to stone and crumbling to rubble on his boots.

Throne swallowed and eased the locker open. In a thick glass case was a tawny-paged book bound in tattered leather. The front cover was ripped and torn, but the title was still legible: "THE FUTURE TALE."