Tosho is Dead

by Opal Edgar

  I hadn’t felt it.

  My head swam. Bart had gotten me. With his soul-sucking sword. And yet I was still here.

  I shuffled as Alpheus looked at my arm and evaluated the damage. He started bandaging my arm up and I asked him why. Didn’t all injuries here look after themselves? I mean it’s not as if we could die of an infection anymore.

  He shook his head. His slate read: “Hold cuts closed when you eat for them to repair. Bandage helps.”

  It made sense. Not like the sword leaving my soul intact where it was. I mean I didn’t feel any different, I doubted it would be the case if I was soulless.

  “How come nothing happened when Bart cut me? Shouldn’t Merlin have been sucked out?” I finally asked.

  Alpheus shrugged and his slate read: “You have a curse. Saved you.”

  The curse walled my soul in: stopping it from evolving, communicating and I guess also from being cut out of my body. It was the second time I was saved by my curse. Take that power thieves: despite all your best efforts, you had saved Merlin and me.

  Alpheus admired his work. My arm was all wrapped up in bubblegum pink, as if I hadn’t looked ridiculous enough already. He nodded and his slate asked: “Feeling all right?”

  “Blimey-O-supa-astronomic, bum-face.”

  His eyebrows rose, and his head cocked to the side. I might have had time to explain Kemsit’s theory about his ugliness, but the low rumble building in the pit of his stomach didn’t give me time. A thunderous laugh broke out of him. I could just imagine his gleaming fangs, the whole three rows, under his helmet. If anyone deserved a good laugh it had to be him.

  I offered him the glass eyeball. Unlike me, he knew how to fight, and this thing had better never fall into the wrong hands. When his ribs stopped shaking, he let out a slow breath and took the spirit-eater from me.

  The Bartholomew sword glinted on the ground. I lowered to get it out of the foul muck it lay in. The pommel was copper plated and carved with glum pictures of twisting bodies. It felt oddly right in my hand. As if the grip had been made just for my fingers. I shivered once again and pushed the thought away.

  Mission accomplished. It was time to save Elise.

  “I’ll get my axe,” flashed on Alpheus’s slate.

  Chapter 24

  The Enemies We Know

  Kemsit hung round my neck like an oversized pendant. She was oblivious to the seriously scary sword in my hand. I held it as far away as I could. Behind us was pulped wood where Bartholomew's door had been. Alpheus had gone a little axe happy.

  “You found it!” Kemsit danced round.

  “Who do we tell that we have completed our mission?” I asked.

  “You don’t need to tell anyone, silly dumb-dumb.” She laughed.

  “But how do I transform into a—” I started.

  “They’ll summon you.”

  “So why the hell did I bother getting that thing if—”

  “Because it got you one step closer to becoming a monster. But you haven’t yet done what you’re supposed to do with it. And you also promised the Styx you would free her soul and all that – but you need to find someone who can extract souls first, and—”

  “I wouldn't stand so close if I were you,” warned Baas, his teeth unnaturally long and scary in the corridor light.

  He threw his sword on top of the corridor junk, unbuckled his sheath and passed it to me. I shook my head at the incongruity, but took it anyway. I was going to give the sheathed weapon back to him in a cordial back and forth, but Baas point-blank refused, going as far as taking a step backwards. Kemsit turned to him.

  “What are you scared of? I thought your soul was in the vampire council vault: like all vampire’s souls.” She frowned.

  “It is, but hopefully not for much longer. I’ve been petitioning for my soul back.” Baas shrugged.

  “So you really don’t want to be a vamp anymore?”

  He shrugged again. It was so obvious that he didn't want to talk about it – even I cringed as Kemsit continued.

  “What kind of monster do you want to become?” She prodded at him, bouncing cutely round.

  But I was more intrigued by how he could still walk round without his soul. Each time I thought I understood something: the rules shifted. People kept adding new information or twisting it, or told me it was the basics and I had to learn the specifics later. There were so many things that didn’t make sense. How come everyone so far had been incapable of going on without a soul? The Styx herself couldn’t move out of her river, she had to cling on to passing souls, but Baas was fine ... Why? I ended up asking.

  “Didn’t I tell you we all have our specificities?” He rolled his blue eyes: my eyes. “Particularly when we have a lobby as strong as mine.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense!”

  He nodded. “Fine. The reason I stay dead is that when I drank the blood of my lord, to become a vampire, I drank some of his soul. Or, I should say, I drank some of the soul he drank from his own lord who absorbed it from his own lord and so on. We all carry a fraction of one single soul. That multitude of strength, sharing one united soul, makes us the most powerful undead in existence. The price we pay for this gift is our very own personal soul. They’re stored under our most sacred grounds, and guarded at all times by our most feared warriors.”

  “Yeah, the vamp council is a bucket of fun,” Kemsit added. “But it’s what gave Lil’Mon his idea.”

  I turned to ask what she meant, but she was already slithering her way to Alpheus, oblivious to us. He was busy drawing and writing something complicated on his slate and she wanted in on his plan. I buckled the sheath at my waist.

  “That reminds me, Baas, you never answered that vampire question I had,” I said. “How can you cross between the living and the dead worlds, drink the living’s blood and not become a golem?”

  “The vamp council negotiates our rights with the living every 100 years. They have a closed door ten day assembly with the Oracle. He’s the one who sets our rules.”

  Oh. That kind of made sense. Actually, it sounded obvious. The Oracle kept the worlds separate, distributing immediate punishments to people who smuggled their way in. He was the one that granted the permits for crossing between worlds, and set the limits for them.

  The power thieves who had killed me hadn’t been marked for golem-hood, therefore, they had an agreement with the Oracle. Therefore, they had talked to him. Therefore, he knew them. Therefore, … My head spun.

  “The Oracle either allowed the power thieves to kill me or planned my death himself!” I exclaimed.

  Kemsit punched me in the gut with her little fist. It was surprisingly painful. “You know you’re only dumb as long as you believe you are,” she said with a shrewd look, before hopping away.

  Solving the mystery of my death could only take us closer to Elise and the plotting power thieves. We all agreed that the Styx could wait for her soul until after we had gotten Elise back.

  A dark walk later, we were at the Oracle’s coral gates. The golem blobs parted for us and questions kept popping into my head, including, “Oracle, isn’t Merlin your friend? Why did you betray him? Did you know he was my soul when you allowed power thieves a special killing pass? Aren't power thieves criminals in the dead world? How can you make deals with them?”

  For every step forwards, I was taking two steps backwards. I had already walked this path and missed half of the clues. And Merlin himself had trod this path before me. He’d left big muddy prints everywhere, and I was getting the blame for them. How murky was this water we splashed in? We all gathered round the Oracle’s fishing hole, peeking at the clouds down below.

  He had known so much more than he had let on. Kemsit had been right biting me. I’d walked in like a tourist and come out with no shirt. He had tricked me and now I owed him, gambling more than I could ever repay. I even had one of his warning blisters on my palm. Yet here I was again, about to confront him about my murder. Stupid. Reckless. But it wa
s the only way to save Elise. I just wanted to rip him out of his damn hole.

  “If I were him, I wouldn’t show my tail,” Kemsit said.

  “I’m no coward,” came his voice from behind our crouching circle.

  We jumped up. He wasn’t a fish this time, but a flaming red-headed man armoured in gold instead. His beard reached down to his navel. His cuirasse was made of fish scales, and looked so heavy it was a miracle he could move at all. There was something grand about him, as if he had been king millenniums ago, leader to one of those long forgotten civilisations.

  “I am glad this time you chose to show yourself, Honorary Priestess Kemsit, daughter of Thutmose the Deceitful. It did not become you to crawl beneath us in your snakeskin.”

  That sure was a mouthful of a name.

  “Why didn’t you say anything if you knew about me all along!” she complained.

  “What would have been the point? You were much more useful as a distraction for our sweet little zombie friend.” The Oracle smiled.

  I was tired of these games, of people saying things and lying through their teeth, of not knowing who was leading the dance and where it was getting me. I wanted answers, I wanted Elise back, I wanted to fix things, now!

  “Why did you send power thieves to kill me,” I asked bluntly.

  Baas raised an eyebrow, which was his equivalent of my jumping up a good 20 metres in shock. Kemsit kicked me and Alpheus still had his helmet on, so his reaction was anyone’s guess. But the Oracle didn’t miss a beat.

  “Because I was asked nicely.” He smiled.

  “Let’s just clear things up once and for all. Are you saying it wasn’t you who initiated the plan to kill me?”

  “It wasn’t,” he said amiably.

  “But you know the power thieves who did,” I stated.

  “I do know the power thieves who killed you,” he admitted.

  “Did you know they kidnapped Elise?”

  “I was unaware of that,” he said. “I’m not sure how that concerns me.”

  Could you believe the guy? I was rendered speechless with revulsion. I thought he was meant to hold some kind of order and justice in this world. But no. He had sold my life to a bunch of power thieves: mine and one of his friend’s, if he had any others. Elise, one of the nicest people in the afterworld, was in trouble and he wouldn’t lift a finger. What kind of place was I in?

  Baas didn’t believe in the good of people. I couldn’t really blame him. All he had left was plain fury. He exploded. “They ate her world and they’re sinking their pilfering teeth even deeper! Those cancerous larcenists have been left to breed like rats for too long. They’re gnawing our shinbones already! This concerns us all!”

  He walked towards the Oracle, who glowed like the sun. I had never realised how small Baas was until now. There was something about his presence that made him feel threatening and mature and big, even though he didn’t reach my shoulder.

  “You, who always presents yourself as holier than us. You, miserable vermin, you will do the proper thing,” Baas commanded.

  The Oracle lowered his superior eyes to him. He smiled malevolently, like he knew how to do so well. He waved to his golems. They glided, smooshed, flattened and elongated. In seconds they became a great mirror. I waited for Elise to appear in it. The Oracle turned and smiled at his reflection, nodding proudly. A fire-red velvet cape appeared on his shoulders, fastened by a chain of gold laurel. Rivets zipped past our heads and screwed themselves onto his armour. The cape draped down to the floor.

  Was he truly ignoring us? And really checking out his clothes?

  “What do you think the vampire council will do to the vampire who diminished their privileges in the living’s world,” the Oracle suddenly asked Baas.

  The Oracle didn’t even look at him. He styled his beard slowly, admiring himself. Baas froze. I had no idea what would happen to him, but from the look on his face it would be very bad.

  “I don’t care what happens to me,” Baas whispered.

  Kemsit rammed into him, so angry that I was surprised the make-up didn’t bubble and burn off of her face.

  “What would Elise say to us if she came back and you weren’t there? Do you really think she could be happy? Do you really think she’d pat us on the back and go, ‘Hey, I’m glad you let the fanged fool sacrifice himself?’ I don’t think so! She’d kick our rear-ends, and she’d be right to do so! Back down, bat-boy, and let the ones without a lobby on their backs do the talking.”

  The Oracle laughed. “Well, this has been fun, but I’m kind of busy, so I’ll have to ask you to step out of my powder room,” he said. He wasn’t laughing at all when he turned to us. His cold stare chilled me to the bone.

  But I wasn’t leaving any more than any of the others. I stepped forwards. My smile was plastered on my face – I could feel it hurt my cheeks. “Sorry, you have to forgive someone stupid like me. I hadn’t understood properly the first time. I naively thought you were a good guy protecting living, breathing people. I’m slow. But now I get it, your control of the interactions between the living and the dead is blackmail. It’s a way for you to get even more power. So, what’s the price for you to get us to Elise?”

  The Oracle laughed.

  “Tosho!” Kemsit yelled. “He signed your death warrant! I’d want to eviscerate the fiend! Where's your frenzied lust for revenge? Don’t deal with him!”

  She pounded on my back. She was a little ball of rage bouncing round, taking on each of our causes, saving us, energising us, cheering us on … but she had been right. Elise cared deeply about the three of them. Me, on the other hand, I wasn’t important. I’d known that all along. Whatever happened to me was ... not important. I was just sorry that my family had to struggle without my help. I should have been there for them. If it wasn’t for this jerk I’d have sponsored my cousin through his studies. I couldn’t do anything about that now. All I could do was get Elise out of the trouble I had dragged her into.

  “It’s such a shame I have no time, you are so much fun,” the Oracle said. “But I’ll be blunt, you have nothing to offer anymore, shell-of-Merlin. I’ll deal with him when he breaks out. Thanks to you, he owes me so much more than he’d intended.”

  The walls crumbled into more golems. I guess the whole place was made out of them. They shifted so that within seconds we found ourselves dozens of metres away from the Oracle. The room was expanding, and a wall grew up from the ground. The golems pulled up in blocks, separating us. I ran. He wasn’t getting rid of us that easy! I skidded on the tiles. Baas and Kemsit sprinted in front, so much faster than me, but the blocks fell under their feet and sent them tumbling back behind me.

  We weren’t going to make it!

  “STOP!”

  The voice echoed round the room: it was like bells, drums and all the other instruments of an orchestra tinkling, falling, playing and screaming at the same time. It stabbed our ears.

  And everything stopped.

  Baas had a foot in the air but stood rigid as a statue. The Oracle had eyes the size of platters and couldn’t even blink. The golems remained motionless stones. I fought to keep going, but my body was stuck. Kemsit had been caught mid-air: she dropped down like a rock and oscillated where she fell. Alpheus’s hand steadied her so she didn’t fall.

  What was going on?

  Alpheus walked forwards. He was the only one still able to. He strode past Kemsit, Baas and me, and climbed over the wall. He reached the Oracle.

  “I had vowed never to use such a vile power,” Alpheus said, “but because of you, I break my word.”

  His voice boomed. It felt like the walls would crack and our eardrums explode. That’s what Bartholomew had meant about his voice. I wondered how many hundreds of years of restraint had been thrown out the window. Alpheus wasn’t mute. But I didn’t quite get what his voice did. Did it stop time?

  Alpheus pulled his helmet off and threw it on the ground in anger. His white mane rippled out and his rows of razor sharp
teeth gleamed, but righteous shame danced in his eyes. I guess I didn’t have to keep his secret anymore.

  “Look at me!” he yelled, clashing cymbals in our ears.

  All the faces in the room turned to him, compelled. Even the golems obeyed. We couldn’t fight his orders. There was no resistance. Our bodies moved on their own.

  “I might look like a monster, I might be in a monster state, but take a good look at my ghastly face because if you still had a soul, it would be even uglier than I am.”

  Alpheus looked so grand at that moment that I wanted to tell him he was anything but monstrous. He looked majestic. It was the Oracle in his gold suit that was the worm. But even my mouth had stopped. Kemsit was probably yelling inside too.

  “Now, take us to Elise,” Alpheus said.

  His wish was the Oracle’s command. The Oracle collapsed, released from his previous order to “stop”. He hit the floor, cape spreading round him like fire, and threw us a killer smile.

  The ground opened up under Alpheus’s feet and mine: two little fishing holes looking into the sky below. Kemsit and Baas remained firmly stuck on the golem ground.

  Once again, the Oracle had interpreted what he wanted. Alpheus and me, that was the “us” he chose, that was the “us” that plummeted to “take us to Elise”.

  Alpheus was quick. He hooked his axe over the edge of the hole. Staying suspended. The sharp edge flashed like the hungry death-mirror. A wave of pain flooded my eyes. That’s all I saw before my head reached below the floor. There was nothing I could do. Frozen, I fell, zooming through the clouds. But the Oracle was faster than Alpheus. The holes closed up, trapping the axe in the floor. Alpheus looked down at me, getting further away by the millisecond. He didn’t hesitate. He let go. The axe handle stayed stuck in the floor above. Alpheus soared down in an athletic dive, trying to catch up.

  Clouds parted. Birds screeched away, insects stung as they splattered against us and the wind whipped at our faces.

  “Stop smiling like an idiot!” Alpheus grumbled, like orchestrated thunder. “People think they can’t hurt you.”