The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  The priest said, “No, this needs to be decided upon by the other Winnowers before we make this decision. Once she’s free, everything will change.”

  “It’s too late,” Isla said, smiling. “She’s already putting the finishing touches on the potion to keep her awake when they gas her cell. We just have to make the Holy Child unlock the door to her prison.”

  “Isla,” Father Jones said, raising his voice. “I swear to god, I will break your neck if you put a hand on that child.”

  “I’m getting her out of there, whether I’m part of your little group or not.”

  “We’re finished here.” Father Marshall Jones turned his back on Isla and headed for the door. “You’re finished, too. I don’t care if you’re the niece of the Exemplar of Innocence. I want you out of the Winnowers’ Chapter.”

  “My devotion is to the Disciples of the Deep. To the true God of the people.”

  Father Jones whipped around. “Your devotion is to yourself. You worship only that which will elevate you above others.” He spat at her feet. “You’re no better than the Hydra.”

  “I’m getting her out,” Isla said, unrelenting. “I am the niece of the Exemplar of Innocence. You’re just an old priest, like the rest of them, and that’s all you and the Winnowers will ever be.”

  “And I thank god for that,” Father Jones said. “Because when you ruin everything, the Mother Abbess is going to start with you first. And, yes, we may hang. But you, Isla Taggart? You’re going to live a very long time. She’ll make sure of it.”

  Father Marshall Jones hobbled quickly towards the door, leaving Isla speechless. Felix pulled away and hurried down the tunnel. The door flew open, cracking back against the wall. Father Jones and Isla had started arguing about something else, but as Felix rounded the corner at the tunnel’s end, he wasn’t listening.

  Because there was a statue there. A tall, marble statue with a star-shaped head and a humpback, just like those outside Audra’s cell. It was wandering around the Lyceum, one long arm holding the other. The statue started to suck on the waxen sheet that covered it, like a child would a blanket before going to sleep. It looked sad, as though it were lost, as though it knew it didn’t belong here at all.

  “It was a mistake calling you here!”

  Felix peeked down the tunnel. Isla had gone one way, and Father Jones was coming his. He quickly turned around. Isla’s shouting had to have given him away, and maybe it had. He couldn’t be sure. Because in that second he had looked away, the statue had gone.

  CHAPTER VII

  By the time Felix had reached Audra’s cell, his dress had split and his wig had fallen off somewhere back in the main terminal. Going to her, this supposed supporter of the Winnowers’ Chapter and Worm of the Earth, should have been the last thing he did. But he had to know for himself what she was, and if there was any chance he could save her from what would happen if she were caught with the likes of Isla Taggart.

  The abandoned part of the cloister smelled mildewed today. It was warmer than usual, too, as though a bunch of people had recently passed through. Felix ran to and unlocked the steel door. It gave him a quick shock, but at this point, he’d had worse shocks in his life.

  “Come on, come on,” he said.

  Two thuds. One click. The key stopped turning, and the door popped open. The fluorescent light flickered in the passage beyond. Squinting, Felix shuffled in and shut and locked the door behind him. He crossed the passage and went to the circular door. There was a large bird feather on the ground in front of it.

  “Vrana?” He picked it up. “Are you trying to get to Audra, too?” The feather could have been hers. There was a small piece of skin at the end of it, like it had been ripped out. I have to help her, he thought, pocketing the feather. But when? It’s too much.

  Felix slid the key into the circular door at the passage’s end. There had been one of the strange statues in the Ascent, and the other that had been moving around in the Lyceum. That probably left about twenty on the other side, in Audra’s prison. But when the door rattled open, he found that there weren’t twenty on the other side. There weren’t any at all. They were all missing. Every last one of them.

  Felix slammed the circular door shut and ran to the greenhouse. “Audra! Audra!” He went to the gate and grabbed its bars. “Where are—” He pulled and, much to his surprise, the gate gave. “What the…?” He stepped back and looked around her cell. Cringing, he whispered, “Audra?”

  She wasn’t there. Not in the bed. Not at the worktable. He called out her name again. But this time, something else answered. From the back of the greenhouse, sounds came, leathery and low. And now that he was looking, he noticed that Audra’s mythological plant, the Bloodless, was no longer just a stalk. It had fully bloomed.

  Its roots had broken free of the bindings. They were splayed outward, running like greedy fingers across the greenhouse, in search of that special kind of sustenance. The Bloodless itself, however, was hard to find. He could only make out parts of it, because it had hidden itself behind the other plants and crops growing around it. It looked like it was almost eight feet tall now. And there were flower petals, too. Steely discs with razor edges. If he squinted hard enough, there appeared to be some sort of hole at the top of the plant, with hundreds of hair-like vines spilling out of it.

  And just as he was about to, he heard Audra whisper, “Don’t. Move.”

  With those two words, a clammy panic came over him. He turned on his heels and booked it.

  “Holy Child! No!”

  Felix didn’t get five inches before something wrapped around his ankles and jerked his feet out from under him. Screaming, he hit the ground hard. A sharp, sinking feeling filled his stomach as he struggled to catch his breath. Already crying, he craned his neck around to see what had a hold on him.

  The Bloodless’ roots were wrapped around his ankles, dragging him towards it. The plant wasn’t hiding anymore, either. Hunger had brought it out into the open. The monstrosity’s body had changed completely. It was the color of raw meat, and looked like striated muscle. Pink sacs filled to the point of popping ballooned from its thick stalk. The razor petals he had noticed earlier started to click. From their dark red ovaries, a hissing liquid spewed.

  “God help me,” he screamed, pawing at the ground.

  The Bloodless wasn’t dragging him very fast. It was to be a slow death for Felix. One that he would experience several times over, in his head, before he finally reached the plant’s gurgling gut.

  “Shut up! Take this,” Audra cried.

  The tears in his eyes made the greenhouse nothing more than a stinging blur. But Audra was so close now that he couldn’t help but find her. She was curled up in a patch of flowers, just a few feet from him. She looked bad, like the corpse of a corpse. In her hand, there was a vial. She was holding it out.

  “Take it,” she kept saying, over and over.

  She’s a Worm of the Earth, he heard Justine say to him. You can’t trust her.

  With a pathetic flick, she flung the vial at him. “It’ll stop the Bloodless from eating you!” It bounced off his chest and rolled away. “Grab it!”

  Felix’s hand kept falling short of the vial. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, let alone keep his eyes open. In a sluggish haze, he saw that the hair-like vines coming out of the Bloodless were rubbing against one another. And with every twist and curl, soft, lulling notes emerged. They were soothing, and they were weakening. Each movement they made pressed against his mind, cornering it, until it was capable of only the simplest functions.

  First, he peed himself. Then, he started to drool, and as his tongue lolled outside his mouth, he apologized for all the sins he was guilty of.

  “I’m sorry… for… doubting you.” His eyelids shut, the soft sounds of the Bloodless’ music closing them for him. “I’m sorry, god, for not… being better. I’m sorry for… jealousy. I’m… for letting him kiss me there. I… I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to… like it.”
/>
  The veins in his neck started to bulge. The Bloodless’ roots tugged him harder, faster.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t strong…. I tried to be good.” With his last bit of strength, he forced open his eyes. He was right below the Bloodless. The razor petals were lowering towards him. And he could see bones in the pink sacs, floating through the liquid inside them. “I’m sorry I said… all those things. I just wanted to know… who Mom and Dad…”

  The Bloodless’ roots tried to yank him forward, but he wouldn’t budge. There was something else holding him now. He glanced back and saw Audra behind him, her knee on his shoulder.

  “Drink this!” In one hand, she had the vial, and with the other, she was prying open his lips.

  Felix, dumb with delirium, said, “Stop. You’re a Worm.”

  Audra ignored the accusation. She forced open his mouth and poured the potion down his throat.

  “No,” he cried in a slur.

  Audra grabbed his chin and held his mouth and nose shut, until he swallowed. She sat down, wrapped her legs around his chest, and took both his arms. Between her and the Bloodless, Felix felt as though he were going to be torn in half.

  “It hurts,” he said, his stomach on fire.

  The singing, hair-like vines extended further down the Bloodless’ stalk. They crawled into Felix’s dress and started to worm against his skin.

  He tried to bite at Audra’s hands. “You’re killing me!”

  “I know,” she said. She held on tighter to him as the razor petals descended on them, determined to cut loose the boy from her grip. “It’s the only way.”

  Felix bucked as the Bloodless leaned forward, the chomping hole at the top of it inches from his feet. “Oh god, please help me!”

  Audra started to say something, but screamed instead. Something hot and wet splattered across Felix’s face. I’m sorry god, he thought, eyes shutting for good. Don’t let it hurt.

  The Bloodless’ mouth closed over his feet and started to suck them dry. I don’t want to hurt anymore. I just want to go home. I just—

  CHAPTER VIII

  “The thing about hell,” Samuel Turov had once said, “is that you won’t know you’re in it until you’ve gone too far. Until all doors close behind you, and every escape feels like a dead end.”

  These were the words going through Felix’s head when he finally came to. Needless to say, he could have done without them. He looked like something that even the grave couldn’t stomach. Sweat and soil clung to his goose-pimpled skin. He was groggy, his eyes large and their lids heavy. Swallowing all the spit in his mouth was hard, because he was pretty sure he might have swallowed a few knives hours before. His feet, bare now, were purple, inflamed by the thin cuts left there from the Bloodless. And try as he might, he could not seem to move himself much further from where he lay now. Whether it was the plant or the potion, he couldn’t be sure, but something had sapped his strength.

  “Well, all that was unexpected,” Audra said.

  Felix took his fingers and opened his eyes. It was the only way he was going to be able to see where he was. He was in Audra’s prison, outside her cell, near the circular door, where the living statues should have been. The Bloodless was still confined to the greenhouse, its gate now shut and seemingly locked again.

  “I know how you’re feeling right now.” Audra knelt down beside him. She was a boney blur of blotched skin and good intentions. “Take this.”

  Felix opened his mouth. With a bowl, she poured some water in, dousing the fires raging along his throat. He tried to get her to stop, but she kept going, until the bowl was empty, and his chest was drenched.

  Audra sat down. Again, she wrapped her arms around him. But this time, she held his head against her chest. He sighed, smiled, as her fingers ran through his hair. No one had done this for him before, no one except for Justine.

  “It will pass soon. I drank the same thing. It was a proxy potion called Vein Rot. I don’t know who came up with these potion names, but sometimes, they are a little on the nose.” She laughed. “I knew the Bloodless would bloom, eventually. Vein Rot tricks your body into thinking its infected with a blood disease. It’s temporary, but as you can see, the Bloodless didn’t want much to do with us once it was in our system. The problem is that it knocks you out. Makes you feel god awful. Not exactly the best defense.”

  Felix finally got a good look at her face. She had a long cut running across it, eye to nose to eye, from the razor petal. It looked like gory war paint.

  “I made another potion to fight off the gas they use to put me to sleep. I’m kind of getting the feeling they wanted me to escape. I mean, they gave me all the ingredients, Holy Child.” She touched his forehead, hummed to herself. “So I drank the potion, and then they gassed the chamber. At the same time, the Bloodless bloomed. When they came in to drop off food and supplies, the plant attacked. I overreacted and drank the Vein Rot. And because all they feed me are freaking leftover crumbs, it kicked in quickly. So the door was open, but that stupid plant had eaten the two guards with the key, and I was too sick to move.”

  “Then I came along,” Felix whispered.

  Audra laughed. “Yes, you did. I would have eventually gotten out of the cell, but not out of this prison, not without the key to open these doors.”

  “You could have left me,” Felix mumbled. His hand found the white key, which was still in his pocket.

  “I’m not that kind of woman,” Audra said.

  “What… do we do?”

  “When you’re ready to walk, we’ll walk out of here together. You said you were going to help me. Do you have anything prepared yet?”

  Felix shook his head. Crap, this is going too far too fast.

  “That’s okay. We will figure it out.”

  “You can… stay in my room,” he offered, not really thinking about what he was saying.

  “You really want a Worm of the Earth rooming with you?”

  “Oh. Did I say that?”

  Audra nodded.

  Felix closed his eyes. In the emptiness there, he saw god’s light, and god said to him, You are doing the right thing.

  “I’m not a Worm. I guess I can see why you would think that. But look at me.” She tilted his head back. “Do you really think I am one?”

  Her face was gaunt, her cheekbones like the sides of a cliff. Her lips were chapped, chewed up. Her eyebrows were a mess and coming together in the middle. She had nice teeth, but they were dirtier than a used fork.

  He peered into her emerald green and bloodshot eyes. When he had looked at Samuel Turov, Alexander Blodworth, and even the Demagogue, he always saw the dark inside them. It glinted in their pupils, like the scales of a fish swimming through placid waters. But when he looked at Audra, he didn’t see anything evil. He just saw the woman who had lost almost everything, and who could have finally lost it all by saving him.

  She wasn’t a Worm of the Earth. She was something Mother Abbess Justine didn’t understand, and because of that, she hated her for it.

  “I think you’re okay,” Felix said. “Why not use the shadows to escape?”

  “I wish it worked that way. Like I said, it takes a long time to understand them. Trying to get them to do anything for me is an exercise in futility. It rarely works.” Laughing, she said, “Maybe if I were a Worm I could force them. But I’m only human, like you.” She jerked her right arm. “Only Corrupted.”

  Felix hacked up some phlegm. He sat up, away from Audra. “What do you think they are?”

  She smiled at his progress. “I think they’re us.”

  “Like dead people?”

  “I think so.”

  “From hell?”

  “That would make sense. They’re unhappy enough that it’s certainly not heaven. But I try not to think about it, Holy Child. Being able to talk to the damned doesn’t put me in a particularly good light.”

  If the Worms are from hell, I can see why Justine doesn’t trust her. I just have to show her she
’s wrong. He asked, “Why do you think they are reaching out to you?”

  “I think it’s the same reason they reached out to Victor Mors. They want someone to listen, to help them, if they can. Maybe stop people from making the same mistakes. If I were stuck in hell, I would do the same.”

  Felix nodded towards the greenhouse. “What about the Bloodless?”

  “I don’t know.” She stood up and held out her hand for him to take. “Maybe we can find a way to destroy it before I leave.”

  Quickly, Felix said, “Audra, do you know what happened to the statues that were here?”

  She shook her head. “I guess they had someone better to go spy on.”

  It was dark outside. Felix had been gone for several hours. So he knew when Avery and Mackenzie finally spotted him, they would freak. Or, at least, he hoped they would. He was kind of counting on it.

  Felix backed out of the hidden place, into the Ascent. Audra was further down the hidden place, shivering. He was dressed in his usual robes, to better hide the Bloodless’ wounds.

  “Stay here,” he said, slurring his words, not yet fully recovered. “Do you remember where I told you to go?”

  She nodded. He had given her the best directions that he could to his room. First, he would cause a distraction, running past this same place. Then, when she thought the coast was clear, Audra would go to his room and wait there until he came back later that night. If she decided to do something else, like escape Pyra on her own, then there was nothing he could do stop her. The Third Commandment: God’s followers are missionaries; it is their duty to save those who have strayed from god’s grace. He was pretty sure she didn’t believe in god, but he still had to help her all the same.

  “Crap! Hang on,” Felix said, remembering that, right outside this place, one of those living statues had been posted. Crap, crap, crap, he thought. Big crap. I hope it didn’t hear me talking to her. He crawled from the hidden place, out from behind the bookshelf, and into the Ascent’s hall.

  But there was no statue. It was gone. He could see where it had been—there was dust around where it had stood—but as far as he could tell, it had been moved or moved itself.