by Ted Sanders
“Barely,” said Horace. “It would have been better if we’d known. Better if I’d seen what was coming.”
April shook her head. “Maybe if you’d seen, we wouldn’t have done it at all.”
But that was not how it worked. The Fel’Daera found a way. Or no—it showed a way, and then it was up to Horace to make it work. He was a Paragon. There was no obstacle that he should not be able to overcome, once it was known.
But it had to be known, whatever the price.
He said none of this to April. “Maybe,” he said simply. “Maybe.” And he could see by the look on her face that she knew what he meant.
Gabriel was looking back across the water, where the Kolfirin’s green light still shone faintly—too far to enchant them—and the Riven’s howls still echoed.
“They’ll come around, eventually,” he said. He pointed his staff in the direction of the archways looming before them now. “But I know a way out. Let us get back to Dailen. Let us get back to Ka’hoka.”
“And then what?” April said. She looked down at Horace. “Then what?”
Horace got to his feet, slipping the Fel’Daera into its pouch. “Then we fight again,” he said. “That’s what we do now. We fight until we’re done.”
Chapter Twelve
The Faded
APRIL STOOD DEEP IN THE SWAYING SEA OF THE VEIL OF LURA. The Ravenvine was wide open, and through it poured the vast song of the multiverse, a knotted and beautiful hurricane blasting from the furnace of the Mothergate.
There was nothing wrong here, not yet. Or at least nothing wrong that was new. The tangles were still there. Maybe they had grown, or maybe April was just getting better at hearing them. Many into one. Rules of broken rules. Threads into threads. It was clearer than ever that too many melodies had been combined with no thought at all for the larger harmonies. Too many stories twisted into a single telling, too many windows open where walls should have been. None of this alarmed April much. The multiverse was self-correcting, because what could not be corrected was simply removed. The removal was the correction.
And soon the Medium would be removed, once the Mothergates had closed. Everything would be fine then. You could not tangle what you could not touch.
April had slept soundly after returning from the Warren, a deep sleep pebbled with dreams of marvelous clarity. She didn’t believe in dreams as portents—dreams were stories the mind told itself about the past, not the future. She dreamed about Horace and Chloe, about Gabriel, about the Fel’Daera. About the Mothergates.
About the fish, of course.
That fish. April didn’t know where it was now. With Falo, probably, or Mr. Meister. At first, when she’d heard it speaking to her in the Warren, she’d hated it. Using the Ravenvine was like opening a door, and while it wasn’t always easy to keep that door closed, she didn’t really want it to be closed, most of the time. Her willing curiosity kept it open, a sort of invitation. But when she’d first sensed the fish in the glass cylinder, she’d felt something different. Not a passive mind waiting to be witnessed, but an active presence, demanding to be heard.
And what had she heard? She had no idea. Mostly just that insistence. And it wasn’t that the fish had known she was there, not at all. Rather that the fish had been . . . what? Broadcasting? Something like that. A living beacon, trapped in glass, forced alive by the power of the Medium. The glass itself was a kind of barrier, she thought, clouding what little she could hear. But inside it, she knew, the fish had been thinking its tormented thoughts, waiting to be heard, for centuries. There was no desire there; it was just a fish. But there was purpose. Nothing but purpose, in fact.
There was a reason this terrible thing had been done, a reason dear to whoever had done it. In her dream, the fish had been a cold forest, April lost inside it. It swam though a harmless sea of broken glass worn smooth by ceaseless tides. In the forest, in the distance over the treetops, a thin trail of smoke had endlessly risen. She’d known absolutely that it came from some promised homestead, some comforting shelter, if only it could be found.
But dreams weren’t portents, no. Definitely not. They only seemed that way because sometimes buried intentions tested themselves in the mind during sleep. If things came true later on, it wasn’t because you dreamed so well. It was because you listened to your mind imagining what you might do.
And April always listened.
The listening she did now, though, had nothing to do with the fish. A sentinel, Falo had called her, and that’s what she was being. It was true that she could feel the Mothergates closing, moving slowly toward a moment she couldn’t precisely predict. Three days? Four? Through the Mothergate here in Ka’hoka, she could hear the other two—a kind of whistle in the river of story, like a window closing on a howling wind. She knew by now that one would close before the other, though she couldn’t say which, and that the Mothergate she stood in front of now would close last of all, just as Falo had claimed.
As for the other thing she was listening for, she had no doubt she’d know it when she heard it. She even had an idea what it might be like. If Isabel managed to reach one of the other Mothergates, and began to weave the flows that would force it to remain open—not against its will, exactly, but against its need—
“Do you think she can do it?”
April spun around, craning her neck. The voice had come from above. Neptune hung overhead, sitting crisscross applesauce, high among the rippling waves of the Veil.
“Hey,” April called up to her.
“Hay is for horses,” Neptune said, and then huffed a shallow laugh. “The end is neigh.”
Through the vine, April quieted the roar of the Mothergate to a babble. “Are you asking about Isabel?” she said. “You must have been reading my mind.”
“I was there in the Proving Room yesterday. I heard what Falo wants you to do.” Neptune drifted lower, her cloak billowing softly. “I still remember when Isabel severed me, when she was just a Tuner. When she had Miradel.” She shook her head. “She did things to the flows in my Tan’ji that were . . . very surprising. Astonishing.”
“I’m familiar,” said April. She watched Neptune carefully. The things she was saying about Isabel sounded an awful lot like compliments. Like admiration. Neptune hadn’t been the same since the fall of the Warren, and April had assumed it was because she was worried about Mr. Meister. But now Mr. Meister was back, and Neptune hadn’t brightened, hadn’t found her old sharp shelf. She seemed . . .
Sad. Lonely. Uncertain.
Like your average teenager, maybe, but . . . April knew something had changed, or was changing. Or was about to change.
“When you ask me if she can do it,” April said, “I have to wonder what you mean.”
Neptune laughed. “Do you?” She rolled onto her belly in the air. “They say that empaths become empaths not because they love animals so much, but because they understand things. Human things. People.”
“But I do love animals,” said April. “And I don’t feel like I understand people at all.”
“I don’t think anyone who’s met you would agree with that second part. You’re very soothing. I’ve never been soothing, myself. How are you so soothing?”
April shrugged. She’d never been called soothing before. And people were an absolute mystery, as far as she was concerned. “Maybe . . . ,” she began, trying to form an idea on her tongue. “Maybe it’s because I really don’t understand people, and so I end up giving them a lot of room. More room than I even give animals, which is a lot, I think. And maybe people find that room soothing.”
“That makes sense,” said Neptune. “But also you understood me, when I asked if you thought Isabel could do it. I think you understood me very well.”
And April was pretty sure she did. “You want to know if Isabel can actually fix the Mothergates. Not just force them to stay open, but fix them. Fix the medium. Fix the Tanu.”
“See, this is what I’m talking about. You do understand.”
Neptune sighed and did a slow somersault. “The Riven don’t believe there is anything to fix. They only think the Mothergates need to remain open.”
“But that’s wrong. I can feel the tangles. I can feel the danger.”
“I believe you,” Neptune said. “I never didn’t believe it. As for fixing those tangles, Falo claims she herself can’t do it, and I believe that too. But Isabel is becoming a whole new thing. Even Mr. Meister said so. And maybe that whole new thing can do whole new things. Things we thought were impossible.”
April didn’t answer right away. A queasy nervousness nibbled at her gut.
Because Neptune was wrong.
And it occurred to April suddenly—standing here in the Medium at its source, listening to things the girl high overhead couldn’t begin to imagine—that maybe April knew better than anyone how tainted and tangled the Medium truly was. How big the crumpling patch of the multiverse had become. It occurred to her that maybe not even Falo knew as much as April knew now. For Falo, it was faith stacked atop rumors stacked atop facts. A precarious pile, but not wrong. For April, meanwhile, the tangled multiverse was the story she was living in now. The life that belonged to every branching version of herself, in every snarled universe. The song that played in her head when she went to sleep.
But these weren’t easy things to say. They wouldn’t be easy for Neptune to hear.
“Did Falo part the Veil for you?” she asked Neptune, keeping her voice light. “Is that how you got here?”
“No. Falo doesn’t even know I’m here. It turns out she was right about the Veil, and the Mothergates—the Veil isn’t hiding them very well anymore. The Mothergate has tremendous gravity. You probably can’t tell. But to me, it feels much more massive than it is. Or I guess it actually is much more massive than it looks. It feels as big as a building to me. Bigger. Bigger than the Willis Tower. I’ve felt it before, when Falo brought me through the Veil, but now I can feel it even from the outside. I came straight to it through the Veil just now.” She furrowed her brow down at April. “Did you think I ought to be asking permission before coming here?”
April didn’t. But her nervousness was bubbling a little harder now. She scarcely knew why, and she hated the feeling. She shook her head. “I don’t believe in permissions,” April said honestly. “Not for this. Not now. If you need to be here, you should be here.”
Neptune laughed softly. “There you are again, giving me room. And I do feel soothed.”
Something fell to the floor beneath Neptune with a barely audible plip. And again. Neptune rolled onto her back, hands on her face. She was crying.
“Are you okay?” April called softly.
Neptune wiggled her head. Her body shook.
“I can leave, if you like,” said April.
Neptune flapped an impatient hand. “Like that wouldn’t just make me feel worse. You’re actually doing something here. I’m just . . . moaning into the void.” She folded her legs beneath her again and sank slowly toward the floor. She let herself drift until she was just a few inches off the ground. April sat in front of her, folding her hands in her lap.
“You went back to the Warren yesterday,” Neptune said.
“Yes.”
“The Riven are there now. I hear they brought a crucible dog in, which means they’re turning it into a nest.”
April hesitated, waiting. What was it Neptune wanted to hear? What could April possibly want to tell her about what she’d seen and heard and smelled through the vine, through the animal witnesses left behind in the Warren? Crumbled walls, sooty fires burning, the Wardens’ own belongings tossed from their dobas like trash. Cruel taunting chants being sung, vile-looking words carved into stone, precious looted Tanu in the hands of the Riven. She hadn’t even told Horace or Gabriel about these things.
“I don’t want to know, do I?” Neptune said.
“That’s not for me to decide,” said April. “Are you asking?”
“I’m not asking if you’re not offering,” Neptune said. “Besides, it doesn’t matter.” She gazed into the Mothergate. A curling wave of the Veil swept past, throwing muted shadows. After a minute Neptune said, “You also didn’t really answer me when I asked if Isabel could fix things. And I’m not dumb. I know what that means.” She nodded at the Ravenvine in April’s hair. “The patient is inside you. And if you say the only cure for what ails the universe is to let the Mothergates close, I believe you. I already believed it, I think. I just didn’t want to—and I’ve wanted to less and less with every day that’s passed, now that it’s becoming real. But somehow you make it okay to believe. Easier.”
“I haven’t even really said anything,” April pointed out.
“Well, April, maybe that’s just the magic of you.”
“I don’t believe in magic,” said April, watching the lights streak through the darkness of the Mothergate.
“Me neither,” said Neptune. “And I’m totally floating right now.”
They laughed. They watched the Mothergate. The Veil rippled around them, a blown curtain over an unseen moon.
“I’ve been thinking about stopping,” Neptune said after a long while.
“Stopping what?”
“Stopping,” Neptune said, and she tossed something onto the floor, a tiny pointed dagger of a stone—her Tan’ji. She fell onto the ground, still seated but swaying, looking suddenly heavy. Her hair lay strangely flat. Her cloak hung limp.
April held her breath. She looked down at the tourminda, the little stone that let Neptune fly. Stopping.
“I wouldn’t be the first,” Neptune said. “Far from it. There are faded walking these very halls. And the faded will survive when—”
“Faded?” April asked. “I don’t understand.”
“All I have to do is . . . stop listening. I’ll drift away from my Tan’ji, from its powers. The bond will thin. And eventually my Tan’ji won’t be mine anymore.” She poked at the tourminda. It tumbled over like a dead thing.
“But how can you just stop listening?” April said. She was as conscious as ever, here in this strange sad moment before the Mothergate, of the Ravenvine burning with power along her skin, bringing the Medium’s song into her ear. “I feel like I could stop breathing before I could stop listening entirely.”
“Most would say the same,” Neptune said. “But my Tan’ji is nothing like yours. It’s a fine thing, I suppose, and it’s been in my family forever. But I feel myself drifting away already. It’s not that I’m afraid to die—although I am afraid. It’s more like . . .” She shrugged, looking down at the tourminda, and there was no light in her eyes at all. No love. No self. “I’m just done.”
April sat silently with the words. For a moment, several moments, she wondered if this was a thing she herself could do. Stop listening. Fade away.
Survive.
But even as she rolled the thought around like a taste, like a crime or a bravery she might commit, she knew that she would not. Could not. She was not even sure that there was an April anywhere in the Medium’s song that could have done it, anywhere in the tangled universes. She supposed it was terrible, in a way. A kind of failure.
But it didn’t feel like a failure. It felt more like one of Horace’s willed paths. A thing that not just ought to be, but would be.
Neptune’s eyes held none of this. And that wasn’t a failure either. Not in the least. Surviving never was, because the order of the universe depended upon it.
April reached out and took Neptune’s hand. They squeezed each other. The tourminda lay between them. Neptune unclasped the cloak at her throat, letting it rumple to the ground.
“I think I might do it now,” Neptune said. “It started on its own, but I can help it along.” She squeezed April’s hand again and released it.
Neptune stood up. She glanced over at the Mothergate, pointing, suggesting not just the Mothergate itself but what lay beyond it. “Does it create us?” she asked.
“No,” April said. “It’s the other way
around.”
Neptune nodded. “That’s nice. It’s nice of you to say that.”
“It’s just true.”
“Then I am creating it right now.” She turned to April. She nudged the tourminda with her toe. “Take it for me, when you leave. I can still feel it, and I will for a while, but I don’t mind. You take it. Okay?”
April nodded.
Neptune looked up into the Veil. “I think I’ll walk now,” she said, and she turned and left.
April watched her go, watched her fade into the rolling light, kept watching long after Neptune vanished in its arms.
April let the tourminda lie there. She listened to the Medium, the thick cabled story, felt the raveled knots within. She imagined she could hear all the slender threads of Neptune, somewhere within. But probably she could not. She sat for hour upon hour, learning to bear the sad strains of universes beginning to forget themselves. Not that forgetting was necessarily sad—forgetting was a way to make room for something new. A beginning rather than an end. Forgetting could be a good thing.
But not for the forgotten.
At some point she remembered the wonderful Tanu she’d taken from the Warren. She pulled it from her pocket. Inside the little glass sphere, a tiny sapling grew swiftly before her eyes, green and limber. The forever tree, Horace had called it, but that wasn’t right. Each tree was a new tree. A life could never last forever, even if life itself just might. April sat with the little sphere for hours more, watching trees grow, bear fruit, and die; grow, bear fruit, and die. When she began to believe she could hear it through the Mothergate—an infinitesimal inscribed loop, a coiled and endless eddy in the story of the multiverse—she put the sphere away.
Falo brought her food. They didn’t speak—not with words, anyway, not even when Falo saw the tourminda lying abandoned on the ground. Not even when April picked it up and slipped it into her pocket. They sat in silence while April ate, and later Falo was gone. April stayed, watching, listening. She might have slept, might have dreamed of Neptune fading into a future April herself might not ever see, dreamed of her brother, Derek, and poor lost Joshua and brave First Baron, and—
