Blood in the Water by Tash McAdam Page B

the demon armies could march, unchecked, across our
world. Billions would die screaming, and others would live only as
slaves. Our land would be a blackened wreck, empty and void of
life.”
    Does she have to be this
dramatic? I idly rub my thumb across the
four black and red tattoos marking the inside of my wrist—one for
each dimensional tear to which I’ve been exposed, and subsequently
closed. As soon as I’m in range, the tattoos start coalescing—black
marks where magic is being pulled through my skin by a rift
opening, and then words I can’t read, forming faint on my flesh.
Once I’ve closed the breach, I get a red seal around the edges,
which means the door is shut, and the stitch is complete. The red
outlines the black marks like fineliner around watercolours. When a
mark—‘stitch’—is sealed, it means the weaver has a sort of bond
with that particular dimension, and can open the doorway again.
Intentionally.
    That might seem weird, wanting to open a
dimensional doorway, but sometimes it’s the only way to gain an
advantage. If there’s a big pitched battle, for example—some demons
trying to get through a large opening—sending troops around to
flank them might be our best chance to push them back. If that
happens, it takes a weaver with a full stitch to manipulate the
Warp, open a tear, and push the troops through.
    All of my stitches are closed now, so I can
force rifts to those four dimensions. I check the marks all the
time, just in case something has changed. The stitches contain the
magic—they’re how I channel the energy of the Warp—but the human
body isn’t made to withstand magic burning through it. Things can
go wrong; the power can escape and burn you up. They tell me that
unsealed stitches are more likely to burst, letting the magic out,
and that’s reason enough for me to want every single one
closed.
    I clench my fist. My first stitch is a little
darker than the others, because I’ve been close to that particular
dimension three times now. Every time I’m near a breach on the same
frequency, the stitch will blacken further, whether or not it’s
closed. Older weavers have tattoos so dark they look like pieces of
coal framed in blood. The seal—closing the tear, and therefore the
stitch—gives you more time before the magic escapes. But if I’m
exposed to too many breaches on the same frequency, or all at once,
the stitches will burst open, flooding my body with magic. My blood
will change to acid, and burn me from the inside out.
    I’ve seen a picture of a weaver fraying.
That’s what they call it when the tattoos spread out too far. It’s
as though the marks somehow trap the different frequencies of magic
inside you, keeping them organized so you can follow each thread to
its home dimension. But if they touch each other, they set off a
chain reaction. In the picture, the boy was screaming and his hands
were jet black. Not a natural kind of black—a lightless void. It
was blossoming up his arms like it was sucking the life out of
him.
    I shiver. Every time I’ve been near a breach
so far, I’ve been with a senior weaver—someone who could ensure
that I didn’t make a mistake. I’m a little intimidated by the idea
of being out on my own, which could happen any day now.
    Suddenly the professor moves on to
a topic that interests me. “And as for water breaches...” I perk
up. Would demons who came through water
breaches be mermaids? I totally want to meet mermaids. But if a
breach opens under water, would the water all drain through into a
different dimension, like a giant, mystical plughole? Is there a
department to make sure that doesn’t happen? The Department of
Interdimensional Water Levels. Hey, that could explain the rising
oceans; maybe the ‘global warming is a hoax’ people know something
we don’t and really we’re just getting shafted by some poxy
dimension dropping all its water onto us!
    I’d be more likely to believe that if science
didn’t show