The Dead and Empty World

by Carrie Ryan

  One day Tabitha ventures down the long dark hallway past the rows of locked doors, past the tiny room with its bed and book and rot. She stops at the end of the tunnel farthest from the Cathedral basement and sits on a narrow set of steps carved into the earth.

  Above her, set flush with the ceiling, is another locked door. Another taunting gate. She’s tired of all the secrets, tired of them chasing her in her dreams. She pulls useless keys from her pockets and shoves them into the lock, but none of them will turn.

  She trembles with the rage of it and storms back to the basement, ripping apart one of the old empty shelves until she has a pile of dry splintered wood cradled in her arms. For good measure, she swipes a few candles from the table just inside the door and piles it all haphazardly under the lock on the door at the other end of the tunnel.

  She strikes her flint, letting sparks fly until everything begins to smoke darkly. Eventually the wood catches and the flames lick the old wood around the lock on the door. She stumbles back down the tunnel seeking fresh air and watches the blaze, her eyes burning and her lungs protesting while heat sears her face.

  She’s never been one for patience, and when she thinks the fire’s done enough damage, and when she starts to fear that the smoke might be drifting too far down the tunnel, she wraps one of the moldy blankets around her arms and scatters the charcoaled wood, stomping it out with her feet.

  Not even caring that the steps are burning hot and that stray embers sear her skin, she kicks the lock until it breaks free.

  Fresh air rushes in through the opening, bathing her face with its pure sunlight. It’s like an epiphany, this rising from the ashes and into an outside world.

  She climbs out and crouches in a tiny clearing, nothing but fresh clover spread around her, white flowers dotting it. An old fence circles her, woven through with blooming vines that make Tabitha feel like she’s stepped into another world.

  A frayed rope tied to a gate trails across the ground, and she realizes that with one tug she could open the gate and escape into the unbounded Forest. For now she leaves it be and pulls herself out into the grass, feeling the caress of the soft earth against her burned face and fingers.

  For a few moments, nothing exists in her world except her breath and blood and pounding heart and the belief that she’s been reborn here for something important: something greater than herself.

  The hare moon is pregnant in the sky. Tabitha watches it from her little clearing in the woods. She doesn’t care that the dead have sensed her and wandered from the Forest to trace their fingers along the old links of the fence. She sits cross-legged, old pilfered tools that she’s used to repair the door to the tunnel scattered around her.

  She has two days to decide what to do about Patrick. The words about duty from the journal rattle around in her head, but her body remembers the feel of his fingers wandering down her spine.

  She prays to God but He’s silent. She searches for guidance but the Forest only moans.

  Two days later her hands tremble so badly she has to replait her hair several times before it will lie flat along her back. Her face is scrubbed clean, her tunic freshly washed, and she pretends to gather wildflowers from the cemetery while she waits for the Guardian patrols to rotate off so that she can sneak through the gate and down the path.

  It’s an achingly beautiful spring day, one whose soft air whispers into Tabitha’s ears about love, and she smiles as she listens. It’s been too many months since she’s seen Patrick, and as she makes her way to him her body almost vibrates with excitement and anticipation.

  In her arms she carries the basket he left for her, this time with fresh flowers hiding a change of clothes underneath. Pressed against her breast is his letter.

  If he asks her to leave her world for him, she will say yes.

  She practices saying it as she walks: “Yes, yes, yes, yes!” But when she arrives at the gate he’s not there and she has a moment of uncertainty. She sets the basket on the ground and then picks it up again. She runs her hands over her tunic, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles. She holds her breath and blows it out and tugs on her braid and paces.

  The dead catch up with her and rake at the fences, which does nothing to calm her agitation. She grabs a stick from the ground and pokes at them, trying to force them away, but of course, they don’t notice or care or move. Not when she flays their skin. Not when she destroys their eyes with a sharp jab, despising the idea that they’re somehow looking at her and judging her.

  She’s about to scream in frustration, so she closes her eyes and inhales deeply, trying to find a way to calm the mortified burning of her skin. She’s standing just like that, strong and tall in the middle of the path with her fists clenched, when Patrick finds her.

  “Tabitha,” he says, his voice sounding smaller than she remembers.

  She smiles, of course she smiles, the world suddenly tilting into place. When she turns to him he’s different and the same all at once. The blurred bits of her memory sharpen into focus: his eyes are a deeper green, his lips fuller; his skin that much more lush and warm.

  “Patrick!” she cries out, racing to him.

  It isn’t until he fumbles with the gate that she sees he’s not alone, and her steps falter. She cocks her head, looking at the little boy grasping Patrick’s fingers.

  “Patrick?” she asks. She’s thrown off by his absences, by his being late. By the child.

  Patrick looks between the two of them. He pulls the boy in front of him and grasps his shoulders. “My brother,” Patrick says. She can tell he’s trying not to sound hesitant.

  “I...” She doesn’t know how to finish.

  “I need your help, Tabby,” Patrick says, and she hears the misery in his voice. He gently moves the boy aside, wraps his arms around her and presses his face into the hollow at her throat. Her hands go to his head, slip into his hair, but her eyes are still on the little boy, who just stands there. Watching.

  Patrick’s telling her how he missed her. How he loves her and didn’t know what to do when she wasn’t there before. How so much has gone wrong and his father has died. She nods and tells him she understands and how sorry she is for the loss of his father, but really she’s waiting for him to explain the boy. She feels the muscles in her cheeks straining and twitching, an aching pain beginning to radiate through her mouth.

  He tips his head back, his cheeks damp. “I need to ask you something,” he says, and she trembles, waiting for the words he’s whispered to her every night in her dreams—Run away with me.

  She’s waiting for him to unlock the world for her.

  “My brother’s sick,” he tells her.

  She looks at the child, her eyes wide. “Infected?” she breathes before she can stop herself.

  Patrick shakes his head adamantly and tugs on her hands, demanding her attention. “Your village, they have medicine. They can fix him.”

  She struggles to get away from him but he won’t let go.

  “Please, Tabitha, please,” he says. “We don’t know medicine the way your village does. “She jerks her hands until she’s free and stumbles away.

  “I thought you were going to ask me to leave with you,” she says, her forehead crinkled.

  “There’s nowhere for me to take you,” he says.

  “But you talked about the world. Life outside the Forest.” The bindings around her breasts are pulling too tight, squeezing her so that it’s difficult to breathe. The little boy’s just standing there. Staring at her.

  Patrick shakes his head. “I have to make my brother well first. I promised my mother I would take care of him. It was the last thing she asked of me before pushing me out of our village.”

  A bright grief begins to wail inside Tabitha. She presses her lips together, doing everything she can to swallow the growing agony. She turns away from Patrick. She wishes she had something to lean against, because she’s not quite sure her legs will support her anymore. But there’s nothing—just fences lined with the
dead, waiting for any chance to make her theirs.

  “How did your father die?” Her voice is defeated.

  Patrick slowly walks toward her; she can feel when he’s just behind her. When he inhales, his chest brushes against her back and she closes her eyes, aching for him to take his finger and run it up her spine.

  “He was infected,” he says softly.

  She clears her throat. She will not sound weak. “How?” she asks.

  “A woman from another village. They checked her over when she arrived, but she’d hidden the bite by cutting off her own finger. They thought it was under control after my father got infected, that they could keep it from spreading farther, but...”

  Tabitha winces. “But your brother? And you?” She thinks about the book in the basement, the story of her village scribbled in the cramped margins of the words of God. It’s the way her world has always been.

  “He’s not infected, Tabby,” Patrick says. “Nor am I. I promise.”

  “The rest of your village?” She clenches her fists tighter and prays to God, Please, just this once, let the answer be what I need it to be. She’s been a loyal believer for so long, all she asks is for this one small token in return.

  “Chaos,” he says simply. “My mother shoved my brother into my arms and told me to save him. I ran to you.”

  She clenches her teeth to stop from crying out.

  She turns to face him. “Do you love me?” she asks.

  His expression softens and his lips part. “More than anything,” he says, stroking her cheek with the back of his fingers.

  She feels the tears in her eyes. She doesn’t want to give up on the dream of running away with him. She doesn’t want to turn back to her village and its claustrophobic fences and rules.

  But Patrick has asked for her help and she loves him. “Then I will help you,” she says.

  As planned, Patrick and his brother stay on the path until darkness falls and wraps itself thickly around the village. Tabitha spends the hours kneeling in the Sanctuary. Her lips tremble as she prays, the words hollow in her heart.

  When she’s sure no one will see them, Tabitha leads Patrick and his brother into the Cathedral. The boys are wide-eyed, astounded by the warren of hallways and the soaring Sanctuary. She takes them to her room and tells them she must leave them there.

  “I have duties,” she says. She doesn’t know why it’s so hard for her to meet Patrick’s eyes. Maybe it’s because he’s sitting on the bed. Her bed where she’s dreamt of him and thought of his fingertips sliding along the back of her calves to her knees.

  She shivers and looks down at her hands. If the boy weren’t there ... would Patrick touch her like that when she returned?

  “We’ll be okay,” Patrick says. His little brother sits next to him on the bed, silent.

  “I’ll try to bring food,” she says. Patrick nods. She finds it strange for him to be here in the Cathedral, with its sharp stone walls and ceilings, rather than on the path with the fresh air and the leaves and the light and the freedom.

  Tabitha walks to Midnight Office, welcoming the silence of thoughts.

  Tonight she’s slow with her prayers. Ami and Ruth kneel beside her, their heads bowed, but she sees them glance at her and then at each other. She knows they sense that something is wrong, but she keeps her fingers twined tight and her lips moving in praise of God and doesn’t allow her friends the chance to interrupt.

  When she goes back to her room there’s a promise of morning in the air, the sweetness of grass and dew. She slips open the door and Patrick is asleep under her blankets. The hare moon is still in the sky somewhere, allowing her to see his face. She stands for a bit, the moans of the Unconsecrated threading through the fences as she stares.

  He sleeps with his lips parted, one hand thrown out to the side as if waiting for her to slip her fingers into his.

  It’s as though he cares for nothing. Has no fears.

  Tabitha knows she herself sleeps curled around herself in a small ball, protecting herself from the world.

  He opens his eyes, sees her.

  She inhales at the intensity of his gaze. Something inside her flutters, warms, spreads. He doesn’t say anything as he slips from underneath the covers, the thin sheet trailing over his chest and down across his hips.

  He’s wearing nothing. She swallows.

  Her voice is a panicked squeak. “Your brother—”

  “Is in the room next door. It looked vacant—dusty. Never used.”

  She nods her head. No one’s stayed in that room as long as she’s been here. He comes closer. She swallows again. She’s still not looking directly at him and he raises a finger.

  He starts at her thumb, trailing his touch around her wrist, up the inside of her arm and across her elbow. Along her upper arm, so that his knuckles brush against her bound breasts.

  She’s not sure what breathing is anymore. What heat is.

  His fingertips dance over her collarbone, slip just lightly under the hem of her tunic, over her chest. His skin is sleep-warm, his eyelids heavy.

  “My Tabby,” he says, lowering his face to where her neck meets her shoulder. Every part of her is alive and waiting for that first touch of lips to skin. When it happens she opens her mouth, her body unable to contain air any longer.

  He kisses the line of her jaw and along her cheekbone. Into her ear he murmurs, “My love.”

  She stands there, eyes closed, wound up so tight she expects his next touch will cause her to explode and end the world.

  She wants to raise her hand and touch him. To wrap her fingers around his muscles and feel them twitch. She wants to make him catch his breath. She wants to make him feel as full of need and desire as she does at this moment.

  His lips are just skimming hers. She breathes him into her and he breathes her into him and she wonders if anything can be more intimate than this: this sharing of breath that is life.

  He slips a hand behind her neck, into her hair, untangling her bun. His fingertips dig into her scalp and she can feel that he is wound tight, like her. That in the next moment he will pull her mouth to his and they’ll ignite. She’ll crack open and be nothing but pure, light energy, her soul bursting into the world to bum with his.

  The scream is high-pitched and long, and so unexpected that it takes Tabitha and Patrick too many heartbeats to understand what’s happening.

  In the hallway, there’s a roar of commotion and banging before the door flies open. “Tabitha!” Ruth comes racing in, blood trailing down her arm. She’s too far into the room before she realizes what she’s barged in on. Before she sees the naked young man with his arms around Tabitha.

  Ruth pauses, and in that moment, a tiny body struggles out of the darkness at her. It’s Patrick’s brother, his lips dripping blood and his fingers digging into the Sister’s knee as he bites at her calf.

  Tabitha screams. Footsteps pound down the hallway, and before she can warn anyone away Ami careens into the room. Patrick’s brother switches targets, pawing at the newcomer.

  Ruth stands there sobbing and Ami dissolves into panic just as fast, trying to fling her body to dislodge the Unconsecrated child but managing only to tangle herself in her tunic. To allow him access to her ankle. More footsteps in the hallway. The boy drops Ami and looks straight at Tabitha. He stumbles toward her and Patrick rears back.

  Tabitha doesn’t think. She just acts. She snatches the boy by his arm, twisting him to keep his teeth from her. With all of her strength she flings him across the room. He slams into the wall and Patrick shouts.

  “Out!” Tabitha screams at everyone. Patrick tries to approach his brother, who lies crumpled on the floor, little mewling moans dribbling from his lips. The boy starts to crawl toward them, his fingernails shredding and snapping against the stone floor as he tries to gain traction.

  Tabitha pushes the two infected Sisters from the room and grabs Patrick’s arm, tugging him behind her.

  He grips her hand as she slams the
door. “I didn’t know,” he says. “I didn’t know,” he says again, as if repeating it over and over again will still the confusion inside.

  Tabitha sits in the comer of a cramped room while the rest of the Sisters figure out what to do next. The two infected Sisters are in the infirmary. They’re being given last rites and will be put down soon. “We’ll tell the village it was a bout of food poisoning,” the oldest Sister, their de facto leader, says. Everyone else murmurs in stunned agreement, but Tabitha stays silent.

  “Now, about the infected child,” the head Sister says. As if she’s leading some sort of meeting with an agenda.

  Patrick’s brother is still in Tabitha’s room. She knows he’s made it to the door because she thinks she can hear him scratching against it. Tiny moans float through the hallways. Patrick’s been tied to a bed in another room. Tabitha’s sure they gagged him or else she’d be able to hear him shouting for his brother, screaming that he didn’t know.

  She presses her lips together tightly. She’s very aware that everyone around her is struggling not to look at her. She’s trying to figure out what she believes. She’s trying to decide if it matters.

  She knows she asked him directly if his brother was infected and he said no. She doesn’t know if he was lying. She closes her eyes, remembering the earnest panic of his expression as she pulled him from her room.

  Tabitha thinks about the book in the tunnel room. About how long this village has lasted because it was cut off. How she has endangered that.

  Ruth and Ami, her only two friends in the Sisterhood, will be dead soon. Her family could have died as well. Everyone in the village could have become infected.

  “Someone will have to take care of the child,” the oldest Sister says.

  Tabitha rubs a hand over her face, shifting in her chair. It’s all her fault. Whether Patrick lied to her or not, she was the one to bring the infected child into the village. The little boy is her responsibility. Just as Patrick’s fate belongs to her.