The Edge of Everything

by Jeff Giles

  “You must spare Jonah,” X said again, this time to Dervish. “He has no part in this.”

  “Ha!” shouted Dervish. “You have refused to bring me the father—so I will take the son! It seems a fair trade, does it not? I regret snuffing out the life of such a sweet boy—it is not the way of the Lowlands, just as it is not our way to parade about in the Overworld like this—but you yourself have driven me to it. It is you, not me, who is the cause of all this pain. It is YOU who laid waste to this mountain—YOU who imprisoned that boy in his tomb. Had you not been so insolent, none of this would have come to pass! But you believed yourself too fine for the Lowlands—just as your vile mother did. You are better than NO ONE and NOTHING, I assure you. Because you ARE no one and nothing. The foolish letter you call a name will not alter that. Your beloved Tariq should never have trusted you. He dealt you so much rope that you strangled not only yourself but a family of innocents besides!”

  The words struck X hard. He knew there was truth in them.

  “Release the boy,” he said, “and I will follow you home.”

  No word had ever tasted more sour on his tongue than the word “home” did now.

  “I will NOT release the boy, and you will come regardless,” said Dervish. “If you tarry even an instant, we will return for your plaything, Zoe. How much blood will you see spilled before you simply do as you are commanded? I am curious to find out. Now, please, I am weary of words. Let us watch this house die together, shall we? If you do not misbehave, I will let you pick the boy’s bones from the ruins and make a gift of them to his mother.”

  Dervish turned away, twirling his cloak like a dancer. The house began shuddering. Spidery cracks spread through the ice. Wood buckled. Windows burst. Neither X nor Ripper had the power to undo what the lords had done. They stood there watching as the roof split apart like a burst seam. The noise ricocheted down the mountain and echoed back endlessly, growing softer and softer but never quite disappearing.

  The lords stared menacingly at X and Ripper, still hoping they’d be foolish enough to fight.

  “Are you ready?” said Ripper, jolting X out of his shocked silence.

  He gazed at her desperately.

  “Do we really stand a chance against a hundred lords?” he said.

  “Heavens no,” she said, smiling the fearless smile that made so many in the Lowlands believe she was insane.

  With that, Ripper raced forward. She struck a lord square in the face, then leaped over him—she was a golden blur in the moonlight—and landed on the roof of Zoe’s house. Almost immediately, her boots gave way on the ice. She tumbled halfway down the shingles before regaining her footing. X watched as she crawled back up—her useless fingernails struggling to hold on—then lowered herself into the crevice in the roof.

  “Jonah! Are you there?” she shouted. “My name is Olivia Leah Popplewell-Heath, and I once had a boy just like you!”

  The lords stood stunned, their heads craned upward. Finally, two of them sprang into the air, alighted on the roof, and stalked after Ripper.

  “They will cripple her in an instant,” Dervish told X with a sneer. “But at least she is enterprising—unlike yourself, you quivering lamb.”

  X nodded, almost respectfully.

  And then he punched Dervish in the throat.

  The lord fell backward.

  A clutch of lords rushed at X. He lashed out in every direction, but even the slightest of them was many times more powerful than he was. For every lord he struck, another five seemed to materialize from nowhere, as if reinforcements were pouring in from the Lowlands. X was kicked and buffeted and pushed to the ground. Someone had his hand over his face—it was impossible to breathe. X’s chest heaved. Regent stood motionless just a few feet away, still glaring at the snow.

  X tore the hand from his face, bending the fingers back till the bones popped and their owner cursed. He gulped in air. But more lords kept coming. He couldn’t stand. The weight on top of him grew greater and greater. He felt as if he was not just being held down but actually pushed into the earth.

  Behind him, he could hear the house screeching, bursting, imploding. He could hear Ripper—she was still shouting for Jonah. Hadn’t she found him yet? How long could he last? Through the tangle of limbs above him, X could see shards of the moon. It was like a cold eye staring down—reminding him that he had failed. He heard the lords cursing at him in a dozen languages.

  But he also heard a new sound now: a sort of dark purring. It rose up from the base of the mountain. It grew louder, grew closer. In the craziness of the moment, it took X a long time to realize what it was.

  The car came up the drive like a bullet.

  X was still pinned to the ground, his body so broken that some of the lords had grown bored with beating him and drifted away. He managed to turn his head. He saw Zoe’s mother drive toward them. At the sight of her, he felt a wave of shame that eclipsed even the pain. She had told him to stay away from her family. Then he felt a second wave—a wave of fear for her. The lords would not scatter now simply because a mortal had appeared. The tragedy was in motion. It could not be halted.

  X knew what would happen next: Zoe’s mother would stop the car. She’d come rushing out of it. She would scream at the lords. When that failed, she would plead. The lords would descend on her. They’d push her back and forth, spin her around. They’d laugh at her uselessness. If they were feeling merciful, they would kill her quickly. If they weren’t, they’d sit her next to X and Ripper, and make the three of them watch Jonah die. Either way, the tragedy would swallow everyone it could.

  But Zoe’s mother didn’t stop the car. She didn’t even slow down. She came roaring toward the lords. Some of them had never seen a car before—and all of them were startled by the woman’s audacity—so for a moment she had the advantage.

  X watched as she slammed into one of the lords and flattened him against the house. He watched as she backed up—her tires spinning madly, blackening the snow—and knocked a second down. He listened as the car thump-thumped over the body.

  The lords left X where he lay, and swarmed the car. He stood, feeling useless and ashamed. He looked toward the house. The façade had been torn away. It looked like a dollhouse now. He could see furniture, toys, dresses, boots, and picture frames—all of it sliding and crashing into crazy heaps.

  He could see Ripper, too. She’d been captured by the lords. They forced her to the edge of the house and flung her off. Her golden dress was torn, her arms and legs bloodied. But she landed like a cat.

  “I could not find the boy,” she told X.

  Tears began to spill down her face. X had never seen her cry, and the sight of it made his own eyes sting.

  “Either he was too frightened to answer when I called out,” Ripper said, “or his little lungs have already been crushed.”

  They turned toward the car. A lord had immobilized it with just the palm of his hand. A half dozen others circled it now, their robes billowing. They shattered the windows with their fists. They reached for Zoe’s mother, their arms like the tentacles of a beast. Still, she would not surrender. She gunned the engine, hammered on the horn, even set the windshield wipers flapping crazily.

  Ripper dried her eyes.

  “Oh, I like her,” she said.

  X stumbled to Zoe’s mother. He knew the fight was lost. He begged her to come out of the car. He begged the lords not to harm her. Dervish was back on his feet now, a dark bruise spreading on his throat. When he saw X debasing himself, his rage dissipated and the glow returned to his face. He nodded for the other lords to unhand Zoe’s mother.

  She opened the car door. Like Regent, she would not even look at X. She pushed past the lords, and darted toward the house, screaming Jonah’s name. But the house was in its death throes. Every wall, every joint, every nail was aching to give way. It screamed back even louder.

  X lurched toward the house now, too. No one made a move to stop him, for they knew he was too late. Every
time he took a step, another wall crumbled, another ceiling fell. The bedroom where he had slept, the living room where he had answered questions from the silver bowl: everything was crushed, unrecognizable, gone.

  In his mind, he saw only Zoe. He remembered how she looked on the lake where her father had been fishing—the way her eyes went wide with fear. I don’t think they’re coming after us. I think they’re going after Jonah. He saw her reach up to embrace him. He felt it so clearly that it was as if she were right there in front of him. He remembered the things they said to each other in those last moments. He remembered the way her heart had hovered over his own for a fraction of a second before touching down gently, as if docking there. He had pressed his lips to hers for so long she’d finally pulled away in alarm.

  “You’re kissing me like I’m never going to see you again,” she’d said. “Stop it.”

  She’d looked at him sternly.

  “If you don’t come back, I’ll commit some horrible crime just so I get sent to the Lowlands,” she said. She was trying to be funny, but she’d begun to cry. “Ripper will come get me—won’t you, Ripper? And when I get there, I will find you, X. I will find you wherever you are, and I will act really obnoxious and dress really inappropriately, and I will tell everyone that I’m your girlfriend.”

  She paused. Tried to pull herself together. Couldn’t.

  “Promise me again that you’ll come back,” she said. “Promise me the way you promised me before. I want to hear the ‘two worlds’ thing.”

  X leaned forward to kiss her once more. His face was so feverish it felt like a lantern.

  “I will come back,” said X. “If I do not return, it is only because not one but two worlds conspired to stop me.”

  Only then could she let him go.

  Zoe’s mother lay doubled over in the snow, wailing. X tried to block out the sound—his heart couldn’t bear it.

  “Jonah! Jonah! Jonah! Mommy’s here, baby! Mommy’s here!”

  Ripper knelt beside her. She put an arm around her and pulled her close, as if trying to share the pain. X looked away. Even the tenderness was too much. He hated himself for what he had done. There had been a wall separating two worlds—a wall that stood there for a reason. He had burned it down.

  He was innocent once. He was not innocent anymore. He’d finally made himself worthy of his cell.

  The house gave a last shriek and sank into itself. The screeching and rumbling was terrifying, but the silence that followed was worse. Zoe’s mother stood and rushed into the rubble, desperate to find her son’s body—desperate to hold it in her arms.

  Dervish strutted toward her.

  “Tell me, woman,” he called out, “are you aware of who it is that caused you all this pain? Are you aware of who savaged your family and brought down your house?”

  Zoe’s mother was searching frantically through the wreckage. She stopped for a moment. She straightened up, and turned.

  “He did,” she said.

  She was pointing at X.

  Dervish smiled, his tiny rodent’s teeth flashing.

  “A wise answer,” he said. “Perhaps you can convince him to return to the Lowlands before I must extinguish your heartbeat, too.”

  “Why don’t you just take him yourself?” cried Zoe’s mother. “Why don’t you take him right now instead of—instead of all this?”

  “A superlative question!” said Dervish. “FINALLY I meet someone intelligent! Our friend X must come willingly so that I know he has learned his lesson well—and truly been brought to heel. Also, madam, I will not lie to you: ‘all this,’ as you call it, is more fun.”

  Dervish motioned to the other lords. They swirled toward him in unison. They raced over the snow toward the decimated sea of trees that used to be a forest—Zoe would have said they zoomed—and vanished one by one.

  X drew close to Ripper, his face a picture of agony.

  “I will not be the cause of more savagery,” he said. “I will return to the Lowlands as the lords demand, but first I must ask a final kindness of you.”

  “I will do anything you ask, even if it involves mayhem or murder,” said Ripper. She thought for a second, then added, “Especially if it does.”

  “I ask only that you carry a message to Zoe,” said X. “Tell her the Lowlands will not hold me long. Tell her that, even as I grovel at the lords’ feet, I will secretly do the very things I am promised are impossible. I will find my parents—and I will find a way back to her. Whatever portion of ‘forever’ I am allowed, I mean to spend with her.”

  X spoke a few more words, and then Ripper pulled him into a sorrowful hug.

  Behind them, Zoe’s mother continued to search for Jonah’s body. They joined her without speaking, picking miserably through the rubble. Every minute that passed without finding him was torture. Zoe’s mother moaned in an almost animal way. Once again, X tried to block out the sound. He listened for something, anything else. He heard grouse flapping around a shattered stump. He heard deer politely crunching through the snow.

  And then, listening harder, listening deeper, he heard a sort of rustling beneath the ruins. It was so soft that Zoe’s mother had not noticed it.

  The noise was coming from belowground—from where the basement used to be.

  X staggered toward the sound.

  Ripper followed. She heard it now, too.

  Finally, Zoe’s mother turned, as well. In her daze, she’d picked up a twisted hanger and a shattered skateboard. She seemed not to know why she was holding them.

  She dropped them and waded through the wreckage to what was left of the basement stairs. They were blocked with crumbling plaster, mangled kitchen chairs, a ruined floor lamp, and a hundred other fragments of the Bissells’ lives.

  She and X and Ripper hurled everything to the side. They cleared a path down. They were in the middle of what used to be the basement—it was just a concrete pit now, open to the sky—when they found the source of the noise.

  It was coming from the empty old freezer that lay on the floor.

  They watched as the lid creaked open. They watched as three trembling beings emerged in exactly this order: two black dogs and the pale little boy who had saved them.

  twenty-three

  Zoe emerged from the woods and hiked the twisting ribbon of road back toward the beach. She was so numb she didn’t feel the cold. She was so shell-shocked she couldn’t think, beyond wishing—as she had since she was younger than Jonah even—that the cold months weren’t always so snowy and so long. After Bert had gotten senile and absolutely everything seemed to tick him off, he’d liked to say that winter just didn’t know when to shut up.

  She passed the spot where the truck had been parked on the shoulder of the road. It was gone now, the only evidence of its existence two muddy ruts in the snow. The truck must have been her father’s. As she walked, she said a silent prayer that she’d never see him again. She remembered what Banger had said to her at the hot springs: “You can’t do what I did to my family and expect them to forgive you … Best thing would be if they decided I was just a bad dream.”

  Jonah and their mother deserved to heal.

  So did she.

  When Zoe got to the beach, she stood awhile and stared down at the row of huts on their stilts: yellow, red, blue. The tide was out, which gave the beach a desolate look. The birds were gone, too. They’d pulled the plastic bags out of the red hut, down the white ladder, and onto the rocks, where they’d torn them apart and feasted on the remains of Zoe and X’s breakfast: French toast, onion rings, chocolate cake.

  A raw wind curled in from the ocean. Zoe zipped her coat up to her throat, and headed down to the water in the dark, her feet click-clacking over the loose bed of stones. She rounded up the garbage at the base of the hut. It was gross and cold and scattered everywhere. The plastic bags had filled with air and sailed down the beach. She managed to catch one and stuff it into a pocket. The second one floated out over the water before she could get to
it. She didn’t feel like walking into the surf, even in her boots. She watched it go.

  It was strange climbing up to the red hut again. It was just a tiny, rickety box, but it felt like her and X’s home somehow. She knew that was stupid. Still, he had brought her breakfast here—breakfast in bed, kind of. And she’d kissed him as he slept. Just ducking into the hut now made her crazy with longing. And there was a surprise, because X’s presence—his magic, or whatever it was—hadn’t yet faded. The place was still warm.

  Zoe sat in the hut with her back to the wall. She listened for footsteps on the rocks. She waited. Once, X had told her that he tried not to turn his memories of her over and over in his head because he was afraid they’d fray and fade if he did—and then he couldn’t keep them forever. It was excruciating not to think of him, but she tried. She focused all her energy on listening. In the end, it wasn’t much different from thinking of X because what she was listening for was him. The warmth in the room was like his breath somehow. It made her feel loved. It made her certain that he’d return from her house with Ripper, even if it was only to say good-bye.

  Sleep took her by surprise, and she had an intense dream about watching X bathe in the stream.

  She woke up an hour later to the sound of barking.

  The hut was deathly cold.

  All evidence of X was gone. Zoe tried to remember her dream—she grabbed at its receding tendrils—and held it close for a second before letting it go.

  She saw her mother and brother trekking down the dimly lit beach with Ripper, Spock, and Uhura leading the way. Her mother ran to her the moment she saw her standing by the hut. Ripper was in no rush. She was carrying Jonah. His arms and legs were wrapped around her like a koala bear, and she was whispering in his ear and making him squeal with laughter.