TRIAL AND ERROR | short stories + snippets

Amina leverages the door open with her hip, careful not to spill any of the mixtures from the vials on her tray.

Ominy, as always, was happy to mix her everything she asked so that she could trial them for the flight machine engine. She's not sure whether Ominy is eager for her to succeed or whether he considers Amina so mentally deranged that he's afraid to suggest she's on a fool's errand. Amina has no intention to spoil it by asking.

She is aware that most people consider her an idiot. They still look at her in the way they did when she was four and sketched her first flight machine prototype with crayons. But if ships can float, she can't see why her contraption couldn't eventually fly. All she needs is the right–

Amina feels as though she has been slid into a rubbish disposal. First, her body is hacked into bits, then flattened with a compressor. She only realises she has dropped the tray when her feet, unprotected in sandals, sting from the chemical burn.

"Amina!" Worry rings like the clock tower bell in Isulas's voice; it reverberates into the floor.

They leap from the workbench toward her but Amina stumbles back. Glass groans under her sandals.

Isulas halts. Amina's terror is reflected back at her, though it warps into something darker and serrated in Isulas's green eyes. They straighten their spine and Amina prepares for death, hopes it will be painless.

"Please, Amina."

The plea snaps something within her. Fear is caught in a mousetrap and all that is left is anger. Hatred. Because she has known Isulas since they were children. Fifteen seconds ago, Amina would have called Isulas her dearest friend.

All the while...magic?

The pair have always spoken only of discovery, of science. Is that not what they have dedicated the past decades of their lives to, much longer if you count all their studying? And Isulas has always been among the most vehement critics of magic, of the blood that needs to be spilt for it. When they first started at university, they spat at one of the Great Mages at a protest, even when it resulted in their arrest.

Has that all been a lie? And if not, when did the switch take place?

"Who?" Amina spits.

Her friend only watches her. Are they enjoying watching her squirm, watching her flounder in the web before they kill her?

"Who, Isulas? When?"

"I've never killed anyone," they plead. "I was born with it."

Amina scoffs. It is beyond pathetic if that is what Isulas expects her to believe. Does Isulas think her to be so stupid?

She just walked in to find Isulas repairing the tail of her flying machine model by running a mere finger along it. She may know little of magic, but she knows science better than the dark on the back of her eyes, and that was no science. There is not a soul in Cendiot who doesn't know that the only way to gain magical ability is to kill the one who held it first.

"Please, Amina."

"Stop saying that!"

"You're hurt. Just let me help."

Isulas's gaze slips to her feet and only then does Amina register the searing of her skin. She stumbles from the pain.

The different mixtures have splattered onto her, fused together, and burned away layers of dark skin. Blood seeps across the arches of her feet and down her ankles.

Isulas steps forward and she steps back.

"I'm going to tell the officers," Amina says but now that she has seen the rawness of her skin and recognised the blood loss, she grows dizzy. The workroom sways, black dots needle her vision. She's sure that her voice is the opposite of threatening. "You'll have to kill me."