On the occasion that Ava let Lili out of the shed, she would teach her the way of death. Not of how to kill dragons, should the need for it arise (it never did), but in the way of slaughtering her best friend. That was what she meant.
“When you want to behead someone,” she starts, and she takes the axe she’d pilfered from a nearby Bunnings when she says this, “you want to be quick about it. No second thoughts.”
Lili is nineteen. She’s never had to think about the possibility of killing her best friend, nor does she have the means to do so—Lili has never managed to use ether as Ava does. She hopes that she’ll never have to put any of today’s lessons to practice, but she knows that this is fruitless to think about. Ava had to kill someone out there just the other day; she puts people out of their misery all of the time, and now it’s time for Lili to learn the same.
Ava demonstrates her technique by swinging her axe into a wall. She’d chosen a neighbourhood close to them, one where the houses were old, weatherboarded and likely infested by roaches. The street runs adjacent to an overgrown soccer field, and over that field sits their makeshift home: a shed that struggles to stand even during the windless summers. Lili is never far from home; Ava makes sure of it.
She watches the wood splinter under her axe. The white paint comes off in flakes and sticks to Ava’s blade. Then she hands the axe by the handle over to Lili. “Your turn. Show that house who’s boss.”
When Lili does take up her blade, she drops the head of the axe into the grass and in between her feet. It digs into the dirt by the edge, which causes Lili to jump back a bit. Ava makes it look so easy.
She grits her teeth and hoists it back up—her core and biceps strain in protest. If she can’t even lift a weapon as small as this, then how is she going to defend herself when it matters? She should stick to kitchen knives and keychain-multitools, but she knows that only axes can kill a person with the precision and speed that she needs.
Ava speaks up again. “The world isn’t made for weak women. It’s a man’s world out there, and to be strong you can’t be a woman. So be a man.” She’s spent most of her free time reading feminist literature as of recent, and this is what she’s gotten out of it, that she’s been handed the short end of the stick by being born a woman.
“What does that have to do with killing someone?”
“Just be strong. Think like a man. Be angry.”
Lili hasn’t seen a single man in a year. The last one she’d seen, she’d seen from afar, and he was ambling around in such a way that made Ava place a finger to her lips before approaching him. She’d re-emerged with blood on her sleeves, and she’d told Lili that he’d lunged for her like a snake at a bird’s nest. Lili remembers that evening well—Ava’s fingers had still glittered with ether as they made the trek back to the safehouse. She later confessed that there was something strange about him, that his eyes had glowed like uranium in the dark, and that she was scared and wasn’t sure of whether or not she’d made the right choice in the end. This was one of the only times Ava was really vulnerable around Lili. She hasn’t been vulnerable since.
So in short, she has no idea of how to ‘think like a man.’ The midday sun makes everything all the more worse, and the outfit Ava picked out for her—a long sleeved undershirt and a loose knit cardigan—isn’t helping at all. She feels like she could drop the axe into the earth again. It can’t be like that. It has to weigh less.
Lili teeters back. Her legs wobble, her arms shiver—and then she swings the head of the axe into the house. She leaves a scratch and exposes the wood from the paint, but not much else.
“Again,” Ava says.
Her arms will be sore by morning, Lili thinks. She swings it again anyway. Then she swings it again. Again. Her arms need to be sore, they need to be non-functional tomorrow because that’s how it all works, because pain is the only way she’s come to know growth.
By the sixth swing, she slices cleanly through some sort of pillar that was resting inside the walls, and the house teeters on its foundations. Lili doesn’t quite remember what happens next, but Ava has her by the shoulders and by the axe—in fact, she’s holding the head with her bare hands, closing her fingers around it and catching her skin in the edge of the blade. “Lili, look what you’ve made me do,” she's saying, and Lili isn’t quite sure of what she’s done nor the scale of disaster that she’s inflicted upon this poor house, but she what she does know is that she’s smashed right through the wall and that there’s blood—Ava’s blood—on this person’s abandoned lawn.
The house doesn’t fall.
Lili looks back at Ava, hoping that for once in her life she’s done something right. But then Ava lets go of Lili’s axe, and she winces as the metal leaves her hand. “Nice work, Lili,” she says. “You could’ve killed us today. You’re useless and a fucking hack. I’m going home.”
Lili doesn’t bother staying. She patters behind her friend, making sure to step lightly as to not disturb her. When she stops to wipe the side of the blade against the grass, she notices that the axe is as light as a feather.
And Ava’s fingers, though they remain by her sides, are glittering with ether.