by Scott Hale
Leaves fell around Aeson and Bjørn as they cleared the last of the swamp. In the canopy, a small lamia slithered down into a tree and hid there—its eyes two yellow diamonds fixed and hungry. Hand on his sword, Aeson watched the tree and those unblinking eyes. In his mind, the afterimage of the creature had stuck but now started to fade. The top half was the nude torso of what could’ve passed for a fifteen-year-old, slightly stunted, girl. The bottom half, beginning at a false navel, had fused together and scaled over into a long tail checkered with yellow diamonds. The color of the patterns on a lamia’s tail were said to match their eyes, as well as temperament and toxicity. If given the chance to do terrible things to him and Bjørn, the lamia would. He could respect that, though. There was a beauty to its construction, a personality to the way it was put together; that is, some semblance that said the thing was meant to be.
Flesh fiends, however, received no such appreciation from Aeson. Not for what they had done to him, or anyone else, but because they weren’t meant to be. There was nothing about them that suggested they should’ve been here, on this earth, doing what they did best. Only Corrupted could create such a cruel beast and somehow pass it off as purposeful. And they did, didn’t they? It was from their wombs, and the wombs of the Night Terrors they impregnated, that those devils sometimes emerged. Even after the Trauma, the humans were still leaving little traumas where they could. Where was the balance in that?
Bjørn pointed to his eyes and then pointed at the lamia to let it know he knew it was there. Bear mask sliding down his face, he fixed it and then passed Aeson, taking the lead. Not once but twice, he walked straight into the swamp, going chest deep into the black waters. He quickly recovered, and after a third almost-misstep, he brought them out of the swamp and back into the forest.
“Could have been worse,” he said, soaking wet.
Aeson kicked the mud off his shoes. A blue and gold wisp shot past his head. A few more, white, and looking like fractals, rose out of the ground, buzzed around his ear.
“Fuck off,” he said, swatting them away.
The wisps bit at his hand with what felt like an electric discharge and spiraled back into the ground.
Bjørn rolled an uprooted tree trunk out of the underbrush and took a seat on it. “Don’t tempt them. Everything answers to something. I heard the wisps are the spirits of the dead children the lamias ate.”
Aeson shook his head. “What are you doing?”
“Sitting.” Bjørn crossed his arms and leaned back as far as he could. “We’re almost there. I’m scared shitless, man.”
“Yeah.” Aeson looked for something to sit on and settled on the ground instead. Without thinking, he dug into his bag and took out The Blood of Before. “Me too.”
“Can’t breathe right.” Bjørn leaned forward, elbows to his knees, and held his chin and his mask’s chin like a child. “Doesn’t feel right.”
Can’t think about it. Don’t want to think about anything. Aeson opened The Blood of Before to where he left off and started working on deciphering that passage again.
Skivv ovh veqvin kbcv gvvo lktnvo. Bofxpn, Oxlsvb, boq Abtebo hpee ivyeblv Fpnvenb, Cvibs, boq Jvnkxff. Fpnveb'n ltoqpspto kbn htinvovq, boq vcpqvolv nxffvnsn nkv jbr gv ivnytonpgev ati skv jxiqvi ta Jvnkxff.
Skviv kbcv gvvo jxiqvin po Sibvnz epozvq st skv teqvns jvjgvin ta skv cpeebfv. Opfks Sviitin biv ots zotho st epcv etof epcvn, boq sktnv skbs qt kbcv qvjtonsibsvq b lbyblpsr ati cptevolv gvrtoq hkbs pn ivdxpivq st nvv skv gbebolv jbposbpovq. Qvnypsv skpn boq skv hbiopof aitj Ipjv'n veqvin, Bofxpn, Oxlsvb, boq Abtebo kbcv ivdxvnsvq bqqpsptobe ivntxilvn gv fpcvo st skv avispepsr yituvlsn po gtsk Veq boq Eblxob.
Vmyvqpspto svbjn kbcv ivsxiovq aitj skv Qvbq Lpsr. Ta skv shvosr nvos st pocvnspfbsv skv bivb, apcv ivjbpo; skv tskvi shvosr yvipnkvq st skv letxq ta qpnvbnvn skbs vocvetyv skv lpsr. Skv nxicpctin biv ots vmyvlsvq st jbzv ps skitxfk skv hvvz. Skvpi ivytisn, hkpev qpaaplxes st ateeth, biv ltonpnsvos: Skviv pn epav po skv Qvbq Lpsr, boq bgtcv ps, nsbin biv abeepof aitj skv nzr.
Skpn hpee gv jr apobe vosir. Bofxpn kbn tiqvivq skbs ovh bilkpcpnsn ivyeblv jv.
Ati bee txi vaatisn st hbnk ps bhbr, nspee hv biv ltcvivq po skv gettq ta gvativ.
Aeson didn’t have to decipher this entry to know that there was something wrong about it. The previous entry, which marked the first actual entry by his parents, was simple and to the point.
Anguis has elected myself (Quinn) and my expecting wife (Mika) to the position of Archivist, which we will share with equal responsibility.
A famine (possibly related to the returning expeditionary force) has struck the village.
Gisela has been exonerated, and she will be removed from the village (whereabouts unknown).
The previous Archivist, Emmanuel, is nowhere to be found anymore.
“Aeson,” Bjørn said.
But Aeson pretended not to hear him. Not now, he thought, flipping back and forth between the pages. Doing this, he noticed a small splotch of blood near the spine. Had it been his parents’? Or the previous Archivist’s?
“Now’s not the time.”
Yes, it is. He took out his own journal. There had been a hint in his parents’ first entry—a partial equation. Either they hadn’t finished writing it into their own entry, or the previous Archivist hadn’t told them the method by which they could decipher his text.
Thoughts of Vrana crept across his mind, like the shadows of doctors gathering over the anesthetized. He could feel her talons tugging from deep within. Wings battered his ears like a fighter’s fists. She wasn’t here, he told himself, even though she had always been, ever since they first met, when they were young and stupid and dared each other to eat every bug they found.
The equation. The equation. He shook his head and consulted the equation in his journal, which was this: d(x) = a(x – b) mod m. It was almost complete, but what was missing?
An exponent. The equation had been written through his parents’ entry, with each part of it being unsubtly bolded to make it stand out. But this was an Affine cipher, he was sure of it, which meant he needed the co-prime exponent to see how far the Archivist had shifted the letters in the alphabet to—
Bjørn cleared his throat with about as much passive aggression as an old lady at PTA meeting.
One, three, five, seven—the possibilities for the exponent could go even higher than that. But he had to have been missing something. The equation was obvious; therefore, the missing exponent had to be, too. One seemed too easy and… and if he could count anything in the entry, it was names. Anguis, Quinn, Mika, Gisela, and Emmanuel. Five. It wasn’t a bad place to start.
“What’s it say?” Bjørn asked, finally relenting.
Aeson held up one finger, and with the other hand, started deciphering. It took several blissful minutes of complete focus and total ignorance to get there, but he got there. If he was glad for anything the elders had made him learn, code breaking was certainly it.
When he finished, Aeson read what he had decrypted aloud. It was this:
Three new elders have been chosen. Anguis, Nuctea, and Faolan will replace Giselsa, Verat, and Meshugg. Gisela's condition has worsened, and evidence suggests she may be responsible for the murder of Meshugg.
There have been murders in Traesk linked to the oldest members of the village. Night Terrors are not known to live long lives, and those that do have demonstrated a capacity for violence beyond what is required to see the balance maintained. Despite this, and the warning from Rime's elders, Anguis, Nuctea, and Faolan have requested additional resources be given to the fertility projects in both Eld and Lacuna.
Expedition teams have returned from the Dead City. Of the twenty sent to investigate the area, five remain; the other twenty perished to the cloud of diseases that envelope the city. The survivors are not expected to make it through the week. Their reports, while difficult to follow, are consistent: There is life in the Dead City, and above it, stars are falling from the sky.
This will be my final e
ntry. Anguis has ordered that new archivists replace me.
For all our efforts to wash it away, still we are covered in the blood of before.
Bjørn made a humming sound and dug his heel into the dirt. “That takes me back.”
Still we are covered in the blood of before. Aeson snapped out of it and asked, “How old are you?”
“Forty-nine.”
“Do you remember the old elders and Archivist?”
Another lamia slithered through the branches overhead. It gave out a hiss, and then it was gone.
“Goddamn things. I, uh—” Bjørn shrugged, “—yeah, a little. When I was fifteen, they sent me up to Traesk and the Divide. My childhood… I don’t remember much. Don’t really want to.” He started to stand; poised to strike, he mumbled, “Goddamn things.”
Childhood. The word sent him reeling ten years into the past, when Vrana was just Vrana, and Aeson was Aeson, and they didn’t need masks to be sure of that. He remembered she had been the first to approach him—her knees skinned and scabby, her face grubby, and her nails dark. He remembered she smelled differently (figured it was a girl thing), but now, thinking back, thinking darkly, she smelled just like the flesh fiend.
“This book,” Aeson said, forcing out the words and the recollection, “isn’t a history. It keeps harping on the same thing. It keeps coming back to our people trying to populate. If this really is our history, then… I mean… is that all that matters?”
“Doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’re here,” Bjørn said.
And here we are, not far from Death’s doorstep.
Bjørn took off his mask and laid it on his lap. “What’re you thinking?”
I’m stalling, Aeson thought. Bjørn knew it, too. But the Bear’s feigned interest wasn’t bait he was about take. He pressed on.
“Every entry so far has been about Lacuna, or the Children of Lacuna, or the Night Terrors’ infertility. I never realized how obsessed our people, or, at least, Anguis, Nuctea, and Faolan, are with figuring out how to reproduce. It keeps coming back to that. But it’s not just the infertility issue. How many elderly Night Terrors do you know?”
Bjørn shrugged.
“I can’t think of anyone over sixty in our village.”
“There’ve been a few, but I can’t say what happened to them.”
“Did you know Gisela and Verat are spellweavers now? They’re still alive.”
Bjørn’s mouth dropped open. “I figured they went somewhere. Verat was a young elder. Younger than you. They’re the ones under Kistvaen making it disappear?” He laughed. “That fucking Snake. He put them there. Gisela must be… what? Eighty?”
“Eight-four. And she’s insane. Lucid, but a complete cannibal. The book says she murdered Meshugg, and she would have been about sixty-four at the time.
“We can’t reproduce like we ought to, and it seems like we’re not supposed to live past a certain age.”
“Yeah, but how long has this been going on? That Archivist, Emmanuel, mentioned expedition teams that came back from the Dead City, diseased. And then after that? Your parents wrote about famine in Caldera.”
Aeson nodded, said, “Yeah. I think he worded it badly. It made it sound like only one team was sent out, but what if all of the villages, or even just a few, sent teams to the Dead City? What if they all brought something back that made some of our people infertile? It’s not completely widespread—”
“—Gisela was insane before the teams returned,” Bjørn added.
“Could be separate.” Aeson bit his lip and re-read the entry. “Could be that hadn’t been the first time they tried to go into the City. They haven’t been back since. What if we were meant to die with the Trauma? Like most of the Corrupted? Anguis and the others… all they’ve been doing, it seems, is trying to keep the tribe alive.”
Bjørn laughed and put his mask back on. “And yet here we are, the last place where anything living should want to be.”
“What’s the blood of before, though?” Aeson asked, sensing his diversion coming to an end. “They went to the homunculi for help, and they said they were disappointed in what we had become. ‘We’ as in the homunculi? Or us?”
Bjørn’s shoulders went tense. He laid his sword across his lap and started rubbing his hands together. The diversion was over; the delay had ended. Aeson closed The Blood of Before and his notebook, because what good was history to those who might not be alive much longer to use it?
Above them, shafts of sunlight cut through the canopy, but even still, they were no match for the darkness here. Where the light touched, the darkness deepened, as if it fed off the very thing that was supposed to kill it.
Behind them, the not-too-distant swamp beckoned them back to its black waters. Loud crashes of water careened through the forest wildly, the sound waves, like the waves that had spawned them, chaotic and desperate. Aeson could hear something beating the surface of the lake, drumming out sharp, crackling notes, as if to say: “Here I am. Come and see what you missed.”
And before them… before them lay the greatest temptation of all: Kistvaen, and the sight, a sliver though it may be, of the fields outside the forest, between here and home. Autumn hadn’t left much in the fields, but what was there was enough. Tall grass, brittle and wind-bent, glowing a cool yellow beneath the retreating sun.
Bjørn must’ve seen what he had seen, too, because he cleared his throat and said, “Death’s coming for us at some point. Maybe it is best we meet It halfway.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” Aeson said. “This was my idea.”
“I know that, but Death’s in the business of death. It’s going to try to sell you Itself, and with the way you’ve been acting, I don’t know if you’re going to be able to tell It no.”
Aeson’s face started to burn. A muscle spasm wriggled like snakes in his neck. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and thought of Vrana, not as she had been before, but as she was now.
“What did you lose?” he asked Bjørn.
“Huh?”
“When the Witch took her. What did you lose?”
“You being sincere? Or are you trying to fight me again? You see a pattern? You get lost in that book, then you break down, and right before you get anywhere, you clam back up.” Bjørn gathered his breath and exhaled slowly. “What did you lose, Aeson? That’s what you’re really getting at, anyways. I lost a friend. I lost a daughter, even if she wasn’t mine. I failed her. She came back to Caldera after Geharra, and she told me about the elders sending her to Lacuna, and I let her go there, anyways. That’s me. That’s what I lost. My good sense, and the only good goddamn thing in my life besides her mother that I care about. What’d you lose? You and I both know we aren’t talking about the person, but ourselves. Maybe I don’t talk a lot, but I know things. What’s gone from you, Skull Boy? What’s there now?”
Bjørn stopped himself. He reached for his mask at his feet, as if to shield his grief-stricken face, but then sat back up. “Please. You got to let it out. I know what it can do to a person if you don’t. You got time to heal later.”
Aeson pushed himself off the ground and walked over to Bjørn. For the first time in his life, and probably the last, he stood over the Bear. Was Death watching them? he wondered. When they were finished baring their souls to one another, would Death come to snatch their souls from them? He stared at Bjørn, but saw something impossible instead: Bjørn rushing to a tree, cutting Aeson down from the rope around his neck, while his mother and father swung overhead, the tips of their toes brushing against his scalp.
“I lost a part of me,” Aeson said. “Vrana has been in my life for so long that it’s like she was… is a part of me. I mean—” He growled and considered giving up. “—I’m not trying to say she isn’t…” His cheek twitched. “I am not me without her. She was with me, even when she wasn’t. I love her for her, for who she made me.” A weight began to lift off his chest. He sighed and closed his eyes. “It’s not because she was m
y girlfriend. Hell, we were only dating for like five minutes before she left for Geharra.”
Bjørn laughed, and when he stopped, there was still a small smile on his face. “You two were dating since they day you met. Just didn’t know it.”
“I just… I just wanted—” The smell of rotting flesh; the click of talons; the flesh fiend filling herself with him. “I just… want… wanted… want her back. I knew she would be different. I think… I’m okay with that. I have to be. I want to be. But I need to be better. I’ve always relied on her and… she saw it.”
“The flesh fiend.”
Aeson nodded, said, “Yeah,” and started tugging on his earlobe—something which he hadn’t done in years. “Maybe it would’ve been easier if she hadn’t seen it happen—”
“It wouldn’t have,” Bjørn said.
“—but she did. I couldn’t do anything. I let it happen.”
“Aeson, no, you didn’t.”
“She saw it. She had to save me. I’m… we… we’re supposed to save her.”
“She needs help, not saving.” Bjørn furrowed his brow. “You know that. She will know how far you went and what you went through to bring her home.”
“That’s the thing.” Aeson backed away, until he backed into a tree. “I don’t want her to.”
Shaking his head, Bjørn said, “That’s not how it works. You’re not any less of a man because of what happened.”
Yes, I am, Aeson thought.
“She doesn’t care who you are, as long as you are you.” Bjørn shook his head. “You’re sitting here convincing yourself you have to be something else.”
“You told me to be,” Aeson said, spitting. “You dragged me out here. You armed me, told me to kill.”
“I’m sorry,” Bjørn said. Finally, he came to his feet. “I’m a blacksmith. I beat things into the only shape I know. Vrana took to it, but not you. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
