Author’s note: Mariel introduced herself to Tristan as “Mary Aldridge,” which is why he calls her “Mary.”

If Mary had a daemon, Tristan never saw him. She wasn’t the type to have a small daemon, an insect or a snake, something slithering under her shirtsleeve, hidden. Though Tristan had never met a witch - never met anyone who had met a witch - he had heard of them. Some people said their daemons were invisible. Some people said they could travel great distances without pain - to the other side of the world, even. Perhaps she’d left her daemon in her country.

She definitely wasn’t a zombi. Everyone knew about zombis: mutilated soldiers and slaves, whose daemons were cut away, or killed, so they felt no pain and feared nothing. He heard they were from Ayiti, or Goedereede, or India. But Ethel’s mother was an Indian (“from India,” she’d always add) and she said her mother told her they did no such thing. Tristan had no reason not to believe Ethel’s grandmother, so he knew the zombis weren’t from India.

The mystery of Mary’s daemon wasn’t the only reason he kept thinking of her. He couldn’t get her off his mind. She mended his shabby old jacket for him, and he’d trace his thumb over the fine seam where she’d patched it, and debate with Seraphael what form her daemon might take. It seemed rude to ask, but he hadn’t met a witch - didn’t know anyone who met a witch - and so he wasn’t sure. He read somewhere that witches' daemons are all birds. She wouldn’t have a common magpie deamon like him, he decided. A hawk would be magnificent enough, but too ruthless. A raven? Intelligent enough but too common. A kestrel, maybe, but try as he might, Tristan just couldn’t imagine Mary with a daemon on her shoulder, or on her hand.

He tried it with other animals, too. After all, she might not be a witch. He imagined a grand lioness with her head on Mariel’s knee. A sleek, clever little fox with amber eyes and fur the color of her hair, a little too red to be real, sitting by her side. But nothing ever felt right.

Eventually he asked her.

“Do you -” He’d never had to ask this of someone before. He wasn’t sure how to say it. “Do you have a daemon?” That wasn’t right. Of course she did. Tristan felt sick in that freakshow caravan. That zombi, a human without a daemon - Tristan could feel the wrongness of it. He’d seen men after the war, men without arms, men without legs. Tristan had seen men without faces, but he had never seen a man without a daemon.

“What form does your daemon take?”

She smiled at him, in the way that she did. He was asking her a question she didn’t understand. He didn’t quite know what he was asking, either. But they were alone, and a few drinks in, and she shrugged and said, “I never thought about it before. I don’t know.”