by Daryl Banner
Link takes one look at his daughter, then Faery, and something very fast and agonized passes over his eyes before he charges from the tree, through the bitter cold storm of ice, and right at Faery, who regards Link with only a second of confusion before his body slams into hers, and over the edge of the garden the both of them fall.
“LINK!!” screams Kid.
Then: BOOM!
All around her, a rush of heat and flame brushes past, wiping the cold away, shattering the ice, then gone in an instant.
The ground beneath her cracks wide open, and she tips forward, losing balance. Her feet break free from the ice, and then she tumbles down the now-sloping floor, helplessly. The cracking tiles beneath her bend and twist and snap into pieces.
Kid throws out her hands and grabs hold of the first thing she can, a fresh crack in the ground. Her fingers dig into it, desperate for purchase, but then there is another shift, a loud, high-pitched groan of metal, and then something else gives away beneath her, the whole structure of the garden tipping.
Three people fall past her as she feebly hangs on—two guards and someone else, a woman, screaming out—then plummet over the edge, dropping to the slums below. She doesn’t know who.
With a scream, Kid pulls herself up, climbing and climbing as the ground beneath her threatens to drop away. Her ears fill with the noise of fire and groaning metal and screaming, most of it coming from the square far, far beneath her feet.
Once her feet gain purchase, Kid scrambles across the jagged crescent moon of the garden that unsteadily remains, rushing to the side where Link had gone.
When she peers over, against all odds, she finds Link dangling by a hand, the shadows swirling around him.
“LINK!” She reaches down at once, grappling for her father’s hand. “MY HAND! TAKE MY HAND!”
He meets her eyes, still seeing her, then obeys, grabbing hold of her hand. He grunts and yells out as he pulls himself up.
But the garden shifts and groans again, and another large piece of it some distance away breaks off, plunging.
“HURRY!” screams Kid.
Link, one hand clasped to hers, claws at the jagged ledge with his other, slips, grabs hold again, and pulls some more.
Then the whole garden shudders and groans again, bending the wrong way, and Kid nearly loses her footing. She reaches out blindly and manages to grab hold of a thick, bent metal pipe that now sticks out of the ground, the other hand still desperately gripping Link’s.
There are tears of desperation in her eyes as she looks down at the face of her father. Her hand is starting to hurt terribly. “Dad …”
He keeps pulling, slips again, sliding farther out of reach, and his spare hand loses grip. Only Kid holds onto him now.
“Akidra …”
She hears the defeat in his voice. “PULL!” she cries out. Tears come to her eyes, and suddenly she bursts out, “I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry, I’m sorry, daddy, I’m so sorry …”
Link makes one glance down, then back up at her. His shadowy, ghostly eyes fill with sadness. “You have to let go.”
“NO!” Kid tries to dare letting go of the bent metal pipe so as to lend him both her hands, but she hasn’t the proper balance. There is nowhere left for her to gain purchase. Only a step to her right is a certain fall to the slums, to her death.
“I will survive the fall,” Link calls out to her. “You won’t.”
“DAD! NO! PLEASE!” She can’t lose him. She’s let go of too many hands. She won’t let go of another. “JUST PULL UP!”
“I can’t. You’ve got to let me go, Akidra.”
“NO!”
“Akidra …”
The piece of garden upon which they remain tips even more.
Kid’s hold on the bent pipe slips, she screams, and with one last grab, she grips now the very, very end of it, sharp and painful to her palm. Every muscle in her body trembles as she strains to maintain a hold on both her father and the tip of that metal thing.
Link meets her eyes importantly. “I will see you again. Let go.”
“NO!”
“You and I will find our way back to each other when this is all over with. Please, Akidra … you must let go.”
“No!” Tears are falling freely from Kid’s face. She won’t let go, not again. Ames … Link … Faery … She swears it, now and forever. She’ll never let go again. “Please, daddy … please …”
“Father and daughter. We always find a way. I love you. Let go.”
She meets her father’s glowing eyes, terrified, tears falling.
“Akidra …” he breathes.
She stares into her father’s eyes which, for a fleeting moment, she can see perfectly through the swirling anti-glow and shadow that swims around him.
To those eyes she loves, she whispers, “Make it fly, Shye …”
And she lets go.
Link falls like a black star, eclipsing the flames and the sparkles of light in the rioting, exploding square of screams and terror below. He falls and he falls, swirling through the air, a writhing shadow.
Then he’s gone.
Kid brings her newly freed hand to the pipe, then pulls herself up just as the rest of the garden tips its last. With a scream of terror, she pulls herself up the rest of the way, then races up the steep, steep piece of tiled ground that remains.
The second the last bit of the garden lets go of the Lifted City, Kid collapses upon the obsidian street, her face slapping the ground.
Distant screams from far below fill her ears as she climbs to her feet and kicks away from the jagged edge of the road. Her heart is up in her throat as she kicks away from it, a mess of tears and fluids down her face as she pants and wheezes, traumatized, paralyzed.
Lifted folk have emerged from their homes, scandalized. Many gather near the ledge, but too afraid to go right up to it. No one even approaches the balcony of the obsidian street, no one ballsy enough to take a peek down at the slums below, which rage with fire and noise and swirling smoke.
Kid sits mere paces from that ledge, closer than any Lifted fool dares to come. Did Kendil fall down there? she wonders, staring at the nothing ahead of her, the nothing where once a garden existed. Did Faery drop to the slums, too? Did the blond boy?
She sits there for an eternity, and all she can see is her father’s face every time she blinks. That last look of resolve in his eyes before she let go. That piercing, enduring look of a father’s love.
Kid starts to cry again, overcome.
Father and daughter. We always find a way.
You and I will find our way back to each other when this is all over with …
No one notices her anymore. No one looks her way, nor gives her a squint of curiosity, nor acknowledges her at all. Whatever odd moment of permanent visibility she had, it’s gone now.
And so is he.
Please, Akidra … you must let go …
She rises to her feet. With a quiet sort of peace inside her heart, she moves to the very edge, fearless, and peers over, staring down at the noise and the chaos below.
I love you. Let go …
She lets go of the chaos beneath her, lifting her face up to the moon overhead, which still looks as lonely and foreboding as a pale sister of the sun ought to be.
Yeah, I’ll let go. Kid’s face, lit by the flames and the blinding light below, tightens with conviction. I’ll let go of the girl tonight, now and onwards. I’ll let go of the Kid from the house, scared of shadows.
I’ll let go of the ghost and the invisible monster I once danced with.
I’ll let go.
Akidra turns her back to the chaos and walks away, leaving the view to the Lifted fools, to the night, to the pale and fickle moon.
Epilogue
He is splayed out, fingers tiredly clawing the dirt, no strength left in his bones to even push his face off the muddy ground.
What a pity. I could have easily saved my last ounce of strength to die properly.
H
e used his last ounce of strength an hour ago to climb a hill.
Now I’m doomed to just lie here and wait to become a sand wolf’s dinner. I haven’t even a splash of chemical to ease the pain.
Dran Avermoor does not close his weary eyes, too drained. He doesn’t even have the energy to shut his mouth as swirls of passing dust carelessly make his tongue drier and drier by the second.
Even the black oil about his eyes looks more like ink, runny and thin as water.
Just let me die, he begs, exhausted. His sore fingers have stopped clawing the dirt, and he didn’t even notice. It’d be a lot easier to just let me breathe my last. Why all this wasted time? Let me slip away so that I may not suffer seeing yet another sunset.
But fate would have its way with him first, for hours later, Dran pays witness to another sunset indeed. Right before his eyes, which face west, he watches the sun dunk its furious, bright body into the earthy soup of the world, and then night pulls a blanket of darkness over him.
Two weeks he’s traveled. Two weeks of food he’s eaten. Two weeks of water he’s carelessly swallowed down his thin throat.
One weapon he lost fighting off a stupid sand wolf.
Another weapon he lost fighting off that same sand wolf, which came to finish what it’d started the very next night.
I’m not so good with fighting sand wolves, Dran decides.
He closes his eyes. For fuck’s sake, kill me.
When he hears the soft padding of paws in the dirt, he knows his prayers have been answered. Ah, it’s my lucky night.
I’ll be food for the wilds. He has already surrendered his body to the wastelands completely. Hopefully I shall feed the young pups of a tired, overworked sand wolf mommy. At least then, when my body is being ripped to shreds, I’ll know it is for a good purpose.
But it is not a set of slobbering jowls that falls upon his face.
It’s light from a lantern instead. “Dran?”
So he lied; he does, in fact, have one more ounce of strength in him, and he uses it to turn his head upward, squinting through the annoying light.
Dran’s face turns sour. “You?”
Rone Tinpassage looks down upon him with a smirk. “Well, I guess there might’ve been far more fun things to run into out here.”
Dran assumes the reason for Rone’s appearance at once. “I am not coming back. Tell Korah to go fuck herself. In fact, tell yourself to go fuck yourself, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Fucking myself? Trouble? No, it sounds like a regular Saturday night in the ninth to me. Is that comfortable, by the way?” Rone then asks. “Resting like that? Your face looks awfully uncomfortable.”
“Do you mind very much?” groans Dran. “I am trying to die.”
“Well, it so happens, I do mind.” Rone extends a hand. “Up, up.”
“No.”
“Get up.”
“I said I’m not coming back to Gaea.”
“Well, that’s lovely, because I’m not taking you back to Gaea.” Rone wiggles his fingers.
“I said go fuck yourself.”
Rone sighs, then shrugs. “Alright, have it your way.”
Then the boy grabs hold of Dran’s hand anyway, and at once, Dran falls through the earth with an unbecoming shriek. His vision is a blur of sand and nothingness as he swings helplessly from Rone’s grip, lost somewhere in the sand. He finds all sorts of stray bits of strength in him as he swings like a pendulum, phased away, Rone’s grip being the only thing saving him from being buried alive.
“Don’t mind the terrifying sensation!” Rone calls out overhead. “It’s just that it’s far easier to carry you along when you weigh half your weight. An added little bonus of my Legacy, it turns out.”
Dran tries to shout in protest, but his voice is muffled by the sand, or his weariness, or something else, and so he just succumbs to the odd way of travel, hanging on, as the boy strolls along through the dusty lowlands under the night sky, lantern swinging.
By morning, Dran is no longer a phased piece of meat, as he is generously revived with some water and a few morsels of food from Rone’s own pack. The two now walk like normal people do, feet upon the ground, right where they ought to be.
Few words are shared between them.
And for good reasons.
“I haven’t forgotten,” growls Dran. “What you said at camp, the night before I left. I haven’t forgotten any of it.”
Rone says little in response, except for a muted, “Alright,” and then a mumbled offering of some dry, edible bitter root he pulled from the ground, to which Dran bitterly declines.
Hours roll by as they move through tall patches of brown, dry grass and sticky grey mud and clay that sucks upon their feet.
Then, as if delivering an important speech to the wastes, Rone says, “There comes a time now and then when you must set aside your qualms and make … a friendship of convenience. It doesn’t mean we must love upon one another, even if you’re sweet on the eyes for a boy and have a nice, wide set of lips I may enjoy around my cock.” Rone shoots Dran a sidelong wink, which he promptly ignores. “But we really ought to cooperate, despite our twisted pasts, so that we may increase our chances of survival out here in this hell. Agreed?”
“If you ever try to put my lips around your cock,” says Dran as flippantly as he might report an itch in his crotch, “I’ll be certain to bite it straight off, cook it, and eat it for lunch.”
Rone seems to consider that. “Aye, well it’ll get into your mouth just the same.”
Dran scowls. Even my wit fails me out here. I must already be dead and this is my punishment for all eternity, time spent with Rone, the one who’ll fuck anything with a hole.
Of course, so might I.
When they reach the rocklands where the ground turns hard and bumpy and uneven—and brutal to the feet—Dran asks, “How did you come across me, anyway?”
“Oh, I tracked you. Easily. Though, if I am to be fully honest here,” Rone then adds, “I sort of hoped you might be Wick, coming out to find me and beg me to come back.”
“You should have left me to die.”
“But what a waste of a pretty set of lips that’d be.”
At once, Dran spins about and throws a punch straight into the self-important jaw of Rone Tinpassage.
And, rather, his fist goes straight through the self-important jaw of Rone Tinpassage, for the boy is suddenly phased.
“You’re fucking quick,” growls Dran.
“I won’t be when you put your lips on it,” murmurs Rone with a point down at his crotch. “I can last a long time.”
“Is that all you are? Dick jokes and suck jobs?” Dran scoffs and turns away, pushing along. “No idea what Wick sees in you. You’re a fucking loser. I ought to put an end to you for what you’ve done.”
“It wasn’t anything I’ve done,” Rone starts to say, “but rather—”
“BECAUSE OF YOU, FYLAN IS DEAD!” Dran screams at once, letting it out. “BECAUSE OF YOU AND WICK AND YOUR STUPID FUCKING ‘RAIN’, I AM OUT HERE, MY BROTHER IS DEAD, AND MERCY IS ALL ALONE IN THAT CITY!”
Rone closes his mouth, his eyes turning serious at once. He says nothing in response, only staring at Dran with a glassy-eyed look of guilt and reluctance and sadness.
Suddenly Dran can’t stand the sight of him. “Whosever fault it is,” he grunts as he carries on, then throws a gesture at the Wall, which looms closer and closer each day, “if we make it back, I don’t ever want to see the likes of you or that walking baby Wick again. I swear it, if I see you on the streets of any ward, I’ll fling a retractable sharp through your face quicker than you can blink away as you do.”
Rone nods. “Fair enough, my friend.”
“I’m not your fucking friend,” growls Dran.
“Fair enough, my enemy.”
The wind stinks of mud and rot out here, even in the rocklands. They carefully scale and maneuver over the jagged stones in silence. Twice Rone asks Dran to give him a
hand, and it’s a hand Dran does not lend, pushing onward and letting the fool fall behind.
His feet burn upon the hot surface of the stones, and he’s certain they’re cut up in twelve different places.
And still he goes, pushing on.
What a lovely time for my strength to return to me in full.
It’s a day and a half later that the two of them reach the Wall. Its tall shadow falls over them like a second night, and it’s through that vast, unending shadow that they walk along quietly, searching for a weak point in the Wall.
No matter which spot Rone stops to stick his head through, he is unable to see the other side, the Wall too thick. He can’t blindly leap, not when they don’t know if there is another side on which to land.
Despite Dran’s aggravation, he asks evenly, “Well what happens when you try to turn your hand solid while it’s inside something?”
“It depends on the material. Sometimes I get stuck. Sometimes I break apart the object. Sometimes I can’t turn solid at all, trapped in my perpetual state of …” Rone’s eyes drift away, lost in a thought.
Dran suspects it’s a memory of falling through the Last City of Atlas, clear from the top of Cloud Tower to far, far beneath the slums themselves. He’s heard the story a dozen times.
It’s a story he won’t care to disinter again.
Along the Wall they stroll, searching, periodically stopping for Rone to poke his head through. He never sees a thing but thick metal and darkness. Soon, the shadow of the Wall is swallowed by the shadow of the world as night befalls them again.
And it’s in the darkness that they spot it at once. “Is that …?”
“Fire,” finishes Rone. “I see a pale fire.”
Dran squints. “A campsite …?”
The two of them break into a sprint, edging along the outside of the Wall, which sometimes bends inward, sometimes bends outward, and sometimes has a random nook in its shape, never completely smooth or straight. Often, the material of the Wall changes, one part made of solid iron, and another, of solid steel, and yet some other sections appear to be made of brick and sandstone and metal piping.
