Glitter + Ashes

by Dave Ring

  M takes your hand between both of hers, giving it a hard squeeze.

  “I’ll be waiting,” she tells you. “And we’ll get to meet each other properly.”

  You don’t know what that means exactly, but it’s still comforting. Even as she leaves you, it feels like her hands are wrapped around your own, her warmth gently guiding you as you cross the threshold into the labyrinth itself.

  “I’m not alone,” you whisper to yourself. “I’m not going to go through this by myself.”

  Your footsteps echo, ratty sneakers against stone. You wonder how many people have walked this path before you.You’re pretty sure no one’s died here, but it still feels heavy with the weight of loss.

  The path unfolds before you, lights glowing in the distance, ghostlights and whispers glinting in the darkness. You decide it isn’t malice or even sadness in the air. If the dead linger, they mean no harm; maybe, instead, they just want you to know they’re there, keeping an eye out.

  Maybe, you think to yourself, watching one of the lights dance along the far end of the path, they’re trying to remind you that you’re not alone, too. Even the dead could get lonely and lost, and with how things ended—how the world dove deep, deep down into itself while chaos and pain followed—they might need to know they hadn’t burned everything down for the ones who still stood.

  As you walk, the lights dim and eventually fade out altogether. You’ve been in the pitch darkness before, though, without moonlight or stars to keep you going, and the dark holds no fear for you. Your hands reach for the walls to find the waiting rocks and use them to guide your way.

  You aren’t sure if the light will return, but uncertainty is a common enough visitor in your life that it’s almost comforting to be thrown back into it. You don’t know what’s waiting for you, but whatever it is won’t see you coming either. You know too well how to be quiet and unnoticed.

  Even when the world was on its last legs, no onenoticed you. Amidst panic and fear, exhaustion and dread, you were the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. It’s how you thought you wanted it to be, but ithurt too.

  Once again, you were the unwanted child, the weak, worthless, disgraced daughter of a well to do family. You thought that if you weren’t one of those who made it to end, it was probably better that way.

  In the tunnels, lost in the darkness, you smile, baring your teeth. You resolve to see this to the end, for yourself, and for those who came before you and only made it half as far. Not all the dead are kind, but each had one thing in common: they are very, very dead.

  Your feet ache as you keep walking, and your throat is sticky and dry with thirst. You have no idea if it will be only a few more minutes or a few hours left on your walk, but you know you’re going to keep going all the same, even though you can’t fathom how big the labyrinth actually is, how much space is taken up by this strange place.

  You want this. You want to call. this strange crew your friends, your family even. You want to touch M’s hands, kiss her, tell her you’re happy. You want to be happy.

  And you think she wants it for you too. You saw she looked at you, how her hands linger against yours.

  You told M your name, but it felt like a lie, and she called you on it.

  “That was your name,” she had said. “Who are you now, though?”

  You had no idea what to say then, and you still don’t.

  That might be the point of this though, to find yourself in the darkness so you can exist fully in the light.

  As you listen to the sound of your feet, your heart, your own breathing, you decide that yes, you like that idea.

  The lights begin to dance again, flickering and flashing against the walls furthest from you. You’ve been walking with your eyes closed and you’re not sure when they came back, but you can see them now and, as you listen, you think you can hear voices. It isn’t clear how close they are, but you can hear just enough to blur the reality of the situation.

  “Hello,” you call out. “Is any—is someone there?”

  The voices don’t change, and nothing seems to indicate they heard you at all. Your heart starts to speed up just a little. Sometimes this happens—the voices in your head rise up and sing their delirious little songs, to try and lure you into singing too.

  You haven’t told M you were sick. You didn’t mention to her that before the world ended, you were unstable at the best of times; you didn’t know how. You were still worth something to her—after all, you’d survived long enough to meet her— and you certainly weren’t violent, but you can feel the guilt rising up inside you for not saying something.

  Gritting your teeth, you take in several long, deep breaths, counting in your head before you exhale. You’ve never been good at grounding, at cutting through the lies your own mind tells you, but you know you needed to move past the noise to find the truth of the situation.

  The voices aren’t the kind you’ve become used to, the ones laced with vitriol, their words pointed and poisonous. The buzzing of anxiety is there, but the sharpness isn’t.

  For a moment, you consider if, maybe, it’s not in your head. If there might be people hidden somewhere in these walls, if they just don’t know that you can hear them.

  You try calling out one more time, hoping someone might be there to catch the echo. Listening close, you hold your breath and cup your hand around your ear, just in case.

  One word rings through the faint darkness:

  Learn.

  You walk. You remember the world before, and just as often, you remember what brought you here. Pictures play out in your mind,the world smouldering, the horrific sight of your family’s bodies, the way you didn’t flinch when you found them.

  You found other survivors too. The end of the world didn’t stop people from being people; the bad, the painful, jagged desperate parts came out, but so did the gentle, kind, generous parts.

  You did your best to keep your head up and do what you had to do. You had already danced close to death, through so many near misses, that you knew how to survive. You were doing everything you could in order to keep going and the end of the world really didn’t change that much.

  You think that was what drew her to you, your dear friend waiting in the center of the dark. M saw the scars on your arms, the fire in your eyes. She saw your lean, hungry form and deemed you someone with more power than anyone would have thought. Worthy enough not to be a thing to hunt down, or to leave behind, but to ally herself with.

  You thought you were alone. But, as you carry yourself forward, even through your exhaustion, hunger and thirst, you know the safety of a pack, of a group to rely on, is drawing ever closer.

  You wear a key around your neckto remind you that you can find your way anywhere. No door is going to keep you out and there’s no way to keep you locked inside.

  You didn’t always believe that. It took the world ending for you to realize you don’t need help, that you carry your own fate and can find your way. If this doesn’t work, if the life you long for isn’t with these people, you know you’re going to keep going. You’ll find happiness, with bared teeth, or blood on your claws, or, if you’re lucky, with hope and a promise.

  The darkness slowly lifts, and the lights return, soft and gentle, welcoming and warm. The center is nearly at hand. You think you hear whispers again and this time, you’re sure they aren’t coming from your own mind. You can feel the sound against your ear, the slightest shift in the air.

  You hum, because you can’t think of what else to do except to offer a kind song in response to the gentle words.

  The whispers grow louder, rising up from what feels like the walls themselves. Your heart beats faster and your eyes widen in the dark. You feel the ghosts stirring, the faintest feeling of hands brushing your back, your shoulders.

  “Easy,” you whisper to yourself. You breathe in and out, holding each one long enough to hurt. Through shaking breaths, you remind yourself that. This is safe, you are safe, and the dead have no po
wer over you. Anything to ground yourself, to stop your mind from racing and rambling in the darkness all by itself. It doesn’t work, not at first. Your heart still slams in your chest, your hands clench, fingers twitching and curling and digging into your palms. And then, very abruptly, your heartbeat slows, and the tension in your shoulders, your jaw, your fingers, starts to release. You feel your breath even out and your body remembers what normality feels like.

  The grasping fingers shift and relax and desperation melts away into a reassuring pressure against your shoulder and the small of your back.

  You were so drained, so tired. Butas the dim light ushers you onward, you’re sure you can see this through until the end.

  You think you see M before she sees you, but as you get closer, you realize you’re wrong. She turns, a smile already on her lips, and you feel the last bits of tension, of fear and exhaustion, shed off you like old skin.

  “Hello,” she says, holding out a hand to you. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  You smile back, shaky but pleased. “Hello.”

  “So.” M tilts her head, showing off the curve of her neck. “Who do I have the pleasure of meeting?”

  You laugh, excitement and nervousness mixing in the sound, raising one hand and touching your own neck, before letting the words fall from between your teeth.

  “My name,” you start, your voice careful. “I’m—” You shake your head, unsure if you can even bring yourself to say it. It feels strange, to take on something like this, a new name, a new self; but you know you shed your old life with the old world.

  You start again, letting the weights of the previous world, the life you’d led and the person you were, slip from your lips along with the words. “My name is Hecate.”

  When you hear it out loud, you feel all of that fall away, and you find yourself left in the dim light with this strange, wonderful woman and the life you can now embrace. You can’t help but grin.

  “Welcome, Hecate.” She smiles as she says the words, leaning in to kiss you once again. “I am the Morrigan.”

  You look at her, almost surprised; then you laugh, shaking your head.

  She takes your hand, watching you as she does. “Come on. It’s time I introduce you to the rest of us.”

  As the two of you find your way back out, you feel free and full of possibilities. You feel like a goddess, walking hand in hand with power and promise and divinity.The labyrinth opens up into a whole wide, crumbling world, and you feel the myths wrapping around you, claiming you just as you’ve claimed them.

  The world might have ended, the old stories crumbled, but some myths will live forever.

  Caydee scales the mech like a spider, her tools clinking whenever they make contact with its armor. The machine is three times her height, a lusterless giant at once completely technological and as faceless and ancient as a clay golem.

  She ratchets two mesh housings off the top of the armor, drawing a greasy forearm across her face to move the sweat around. It’s cool in the mech bay, but she’s coated with the usual film of perspiration and synthetic lubricant. She wrenches the grating off with a grunt, then changes the LEDs underneath with acute, obsessive tenderness. She swaps the actual lights first, then more bulbs that cover other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is very dark outside—always, always dark—and the pilots need every kind of light they can get. That done, she climbs down and stretches until her vertebrae pop.

  “Good girl,” she says to the mech.

  “I’m good,” a low voice says from over her shoulder, “this is a machine.”

  Caydee jumps. Probably not more than an inch, but it feels like a foot. She’s not new to mech work, and knows she’s wrenched all the kinks out, but she is new to this pilot. Pairing up survivors is normal, and she’s done it more than once, but this pilot’s reputation casts a long shadow.

  “Hi,” Caydee says, and starts babbling. The pilot is slim, scarred, and quiet. There’s a bit of grey in her close-cut hair. Caydee gets herself under control enough to say things that make sense. “So, you want me to use your name or callsign?”

  “Pilot is fine.”

  “Huh. Okay. You probably read my file, but just call me Caydee. As in K.D. It stands for—”

  “I don’t want to know. How charged are my cells?”

  “Eighty percent.” Caydee rattles off information while the Pilot gives the mech a walk-around. It stands on its own, a giant patchwork of armor and hydraulic struts. The machine is festooned with flashspun fiber saddlebags for salvage, and there’s a gun mounted over one shoulder. The weapon is a skeletal set of rails twisted into something like a unicorn’s horn.

  “I rebarreled the coil gun for three millimeter. It won’t drain your batteries as much as the old cannon did, and the muzzle snap won’t ruin your night eyes.”

  As the Pilot finishes her inspection, Caydee whispers a command into her earpiece and the armor plates blossom open. Caydee steps up onto one armored knee and offers the pilot a hand. The Pilot climbs past her without a word and slumps awkwardly back into the machine’s saddle, snaking her arms into the suit.

  “Right, just lie back and let me tuck you in.”

  The Pilot ignores her. Caydee unhooks thick cables from the suit and lugs them away. The armor closes around the Pilot until just her face is visible. Caydee climbs back up and lowers the last, huge armor plate, enveloping the Pilot completely in high-carbon alloy and hermetic silence.

  Caydee uses an impact wrench on the bolts and seals the Pilot in. The coil gun pivots left and right as fire control systems come online and the Pilot looks side to side. The suit doesn’t have a head, just little bubble camera sponsons all over its superstructure. None of them look at Caydee as the Pilot marches the suit toward the door outside. All the lights in the bay go out for an instant, and the exterior doors open.

  Frigid air gusts in from outside as other mechs walk up the ramp to join the Pilot. Ash swirls in through the gap and muffles the machines’ steps. They file out into the dark and the doors close like giant steel curtains. Caydee settles in to wait.

  The Pilot was having a hard time getting used to her new mechanic. Caydee wouldn’t stop talking; everything about her was blunt, unfiltered, and perpetually in motion. It disrupted any sense of calm the Pilot felt getting ready to go scavenging, which was all she was willing to apply any deep focus to. The rest of her days passed listlessly, eating tasteless food, sleeping formless sleep, and dreaming about the dark outside. Things her waking mind wouldn’t admit, even to itself.

  Every time she got ready to head out, she felt like a surly parent talking to a very energetic child. Walking around the mech, making sure the maintenance and repairs were on point, which they were to an almost sublime degree, the Pilot couldn’t think of a good word to describe her.

  “Do you have to be this cheerful?” the Pilot said, slumping into the suit.

  “Yeah,” the mechanic replied, looking up at her as the petals closed. The Pilot didn’t actually ask the next question out loud, but Caydee answered it anyway. “So that I can imagine this moment as something other than nailing you into a coffin.”

  Before the Pilot could say anything, the mechanic pulled the armor plates closed and the world went quiet. Her external view popped up, projected on the interior surfaces all around her. The camera bubbles gave her a very wide field of view, and the mechanic was a motion blur at the bottom of her field of vision. Muscle corded and thrummed in her arms as she bolted the Pilot in. Only a very faint metallic rattle made it through the armor from Caydee’s impact wrench.

  Unsure why, the Pilot felt like she ought to say something to the mechanic. She engaged her coms.

  “Anything I need to look at, Pilot?” Caydee’s voice came through clear. They were only ten feet apart. The link would be lost not long after she walked out into the swirling ash. Static electricity in the infinite plume made lightning sometimes, and thunder that came from everywhere at once.

  “Pilot?”


  She started. “No.”

  “Okay,” Caydee said cheerfully, “good talk.”

  More silence.

  “Caydee?”

  “Pilot?”

  “It’s not a coffin. I’m a better machine than anything out there.”

  The Pilot’s time outside was no time at all. She made a point of not remembering any of it. It caught her, often, in her sleep. Clouds of ash and a sky, in the rare moments with enough light to see it, like the underside of a lake during a storm. The metallic tap of debris in the wind against her armor, the quiet terror when her sensor suite told her something in the sky was sweeping the earth with radar, looking for her.

  The world outside the bay couldn’t reach her, though, because she didn’t let herself see it. Didn’t let it touch her. Didn’t let anything touch her. The sky had dropped a black cloth over her soul, and made her invulnerable. She piloted her machine around the dark world, and took whatever was left that was of any use. She dumped it all in the saddle bags, and tried not to get caught. There was always the gun, if anything went wrong. It’s flat, harsh snap wasn’t all that different from the lightning. She came and went, unseen and unknowing, until the bags were full and she passed back through the bay doors in a snowy swirl of ash. Until she had the mech parked back in Caydee’s little pool of light.

  “How was it up there?” the mechanic chirped.

  “Dark.”

  “That’s it? One word? No blue sky or fruit trees?”

  “I’m not talking about it,” the Pilot said. She was just old enough to remember what blue sky looked like, and used to hate going scavenging because of it. She worked hard to lock that down, and Caydee was chipping away at the armor with her endless collection of tools and flippant comments.