The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  “Uh, yeah?” Elizabeth’s voice shook, nervously. “Yeah. How did you…?”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. When I left Gallows, she was still there. Is she a friend of yours?”

  Vrana nodded. “She is.”

  “That girl… She’s a tough one.”

  “I know it.”

  “She really is. We went on a mission together. Her and… Miranda and I. She’s… Never met a braver girl than her.”

  Vrana said, “What kind of mission?”

  “To go to Rime. To…” Elizabeth laughed. “I guess it doesn’t matter if I tell you or not anymore. We went to Rime to get back Audra of Eldrus.”

  Aeson drew a sharp breath. “She’s still alive?”

  “Yep. I guess. She rode off with one of your kind, yeah? A Bat.”

  Vrana and Aeson stared at one another in complete disbelief.

  Elizabeth continued: “Then on our way back, we ran into Penance and the Arachne duking it out on the Divide. That’s when Miranda… And after I got back, I was done with the Marrow Cabal. The Skeleton had some insane plan, yeah? He sent most of the Cabal to Angheuawl—”

  Angheuawl? Vrana dug a talon into her leg. That was them outside the village? That’s who the witches sent the Horrors to attack?

  “—and he went to the Dead City. Or something. There are those rumors, but… I didn’t stay around to see them go, yeah? But I should’ve taken the girl with me. I do feel bad about that.”

  “I wish you had taken her,” Vrana said. Her thoughts drifted to that moment beneath Geharra, when she’d first met R’lyeh. She’d been so skinny, and dirty, and the first thing she did when she came out of hiding was grab her octopus mask, as if it was, because it was, the only thing at the moment she had left in her life to cling to. “I really wish you had.”

  “Sorry,” Elizabeth said.

  Aeson started to speak, but the door rattled. A raspy howl limped through the woods outside. Then quick feet crunching through the snow, darting in no particular direction. His back stiffened. His eyes were huge and hardened. Breathing shallow breaths, he focused his attention on the door and the cracks in it, as if probing them for the sights in the pale dark beyond.

  Vrana, seeing this, took his hand. At her touch, he jumped, jerked away. A single tear slid down his cheek, and he swallowed it when it touched his lips. Surprise turned to intense rage, and for a moment, he looked as if he were going to cuss her out.

  But, instead, he closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and took her hand in his.

  “We can do this another time,” Elizabeth said.

  While she packed her belongings, Vrana searched Aeson’s eyes for the lies he’d eventually tell. It was happening again, because it was always happening: triggers, and trauma. The flesh fiend who’d raped him lived inside him now, and was host to the most benign of horrors, whether they were footsteps in the dark, foul stenches on the air, or the inauspicious shadows of dusk. Vrana had thought isolating themselves in the woods would help, but it didn’t. Flesh fiends had scattered to these woods in the eastern reaches of Kistvaen’s range after the Cult of the Worm had been destroyed. She’d seen them in her patrols; never in full, always at a distance and in a blur, like they were watching and waiting, but hadn’t yet worked up the courage to attack the hut. She knew flesh fiends better than anyone, and she knew that couldn’t be.

  Unless they still recognized her from her time with Pain.

  Unless they still took orders from her sister, Joy.

  “No,” Vrana said, as Elizabeth put the last of her inks away. “It has to be tonight.”

  She noticed a wave of relief wash away the hard worries of Aeson’s face. He’d told her he wanted to be tattooed so as to assimilate better into the Corrupted society; to gather more information, as well as victims for her to kill. Vrana didn’t doubt this, but she knew better. She had been transformed by her trauma, and now, he wanted the same. He didn’t want to assimilate with Corrupted; he wanted to be Corrupted. After learning Night Terrors and flesh fiends shared the same ancestry, he forsook his heritage and refused to forge a new mask. Without those things, and with Elizabeth’s ink, he’d be no different than any other human on the continent, as if that’d be enough to stem the tide of depravity he’d convinced himself he’d eventually commit.

  But she didn’t want any other human. She didn’t want anyone else. And try as she might, she couldn’t tell him that.

  Aeson, calm again, said, “Yeah, we’re good.” He smirked. “I bet we’re the most fucked up Night Terrors you’ve met yet.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “I’ve got a soft spot for monsters, being one myself once, yeah? I don’t know. I spent a lot of time with R’lyeh. Made me curious about your kind. This one—” she pointed to the octopus tattoo on her face, “—is dedicated to her. I think she’d get a kick out of it. Plus, Night Terrors pay better.”

  “Desperation will do that,” Vrana said. “You said what you did before. What are you doing now? Why are you helping Night Terrors? Why are you doing tattoos in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Just trying to get by, and trying to get somewhere.” Elizabeth snapped her finger.

  Aeson laid his arm across the table.

  “Where?” Vrana asked.

  “Back to the Skeleton,” Elizabeth said, dipping her needle into the crimson ink. “Rumor says he’s somewhere in the mountain range, riding a giant bat. I know that bat, and I know the little girl it, more or less, answers to, yeah? I’ve got some bones to pick with the Skeleton, but I’ve got a spot on my back just for that little bitch.”

  Vrana didn’t know what Elizabeth was talking about.

  Aeson, eyebrow cocked, didn’t appear to either.

  “Revenge,” Elizabeth said, needle readied. “The oldest reason, yeah? A classic. Never goes out of style. Alright, Night Terror, are you ready?”

  Aeson didn’t say anything. Vrana knew he’d been waiting for this moment ever since he’d fallen on the lawn of house Gloom. He’d never got back up, not really. Many hands had been offered, but it was only Elizabeth’s he seemed willing to take. She would lead him where Vrana couldn’t. It wasn’t fair.

  The needle centimeters away from his forearm, Aeson said, “Hold on. What’s in the ink? What makes this better than any other tattoo?”

  “Well, for one, I’m doing it, yeah?” Elizabeth poked his skin.

  Aeson yelped.

  Vrana’s feathers rose on the back of her neck.

  “And for two, the ink is from the Nameless Forest. It’s from a spellweaver I met there. She created it just for this reason: to make things appear Corrupted. I think, at some point, us freaks in the Forest thought we’d all have to get tatted if and when we left the place.”

  “Is that what your Corruption is?” Aeson asked.

  She shook her head. “Born and raised Corrupted. Not in the Nameless Forest, though.”

  Vrana stood. She patted him on the shoulder and blew him a kiss. It was the only way she could kiss him these days without taking a chance of ramming her beak down his throat.

  Aeson caught the kiss, smiled.

  “But I’ve said enough,” Elizabeth said, clamming up. “This is going to take a while, so let’s get started, yeah?”

  Vrana crossed the hut and went to the window. Part of her told her to keep an eye on Elizabeth, to make sure she didn’t try to hurt Aeson, but she ignored it, listened to the other part, instead, which didn’t say anything at all.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Elizabeth had slipped her needle under Aeson’s skin. The crimson ink flowed from its tip and through his flesh like ribbons. Silky and sentient, the ink twisted, unraveled, dissolved and sometimes doubled back upon itself, creating patches of Corruption with varying brightness and color. For a moment, Vrana wondered if Elizabeth had injected Aeson with actual Corruption, and questioned if such a thing could be done, and if so, what would happen?

  Without a murmur of protest or a shiver of pain, Ae
son was taking the process like a champ. He looked over at Vrana, and she nodded back. They had to be in this together. They would be nothing apart.

  Vrana turned back to the window, pushed it open. The bitterly cold air came in at once and made itself at home, plummeting the temperature. She knocked the snow and ice from the other side of the window and shut it. Now, she could see better. Now, she could see all she needed to see.

  Shivering skeletal trees, wrapped in a glittering mist; albino darkness; the snow-covered ground, white as the sky—the two nearly touching at times, as if it to become one; an otherworldly light leaking from the otherworldly moon, like yolk from an egg; beautiful blood splatters painted by her and others—a universal canvas by the creatures that shared these woods; jagged icicles; hazy torches erupting to life in Communion; shadows; and more shadows; and songs, not sung but seen; invisible verses like forces of Nature, rippling through the woods; a chorus building to a crescendo; shadows, and more shadows.

  Something is happening.

  They couldn’t stay here much longer. They couldn’t stay anywhere for long. They were safe for as long as they were new, she knew, but once that wore off, once they stopped being strangers and started becoming visitors, or even acquaintances and, god forbid, friends, people would take interest, people would figure things out; people would find them and want to kill them. She could send Aeson out to fetch her meals only for so long until, one day, he wouldn’t return. And why wouldn’t he? Because he’d be dead somewhere? Or because he couldn’t bear it anymore, this life of theirs? These genes of theirs?

  He wanted isolation, but these woods here weren’t any different than the world they were trying to escape. There was violence, there was death; and there would always be flesh fiends, be it before him, or within him. Vrana wasn’t a runner. She moved. She kept one eye looking back, and one eye looking forward; she’d stumble and look stupid, but she moved. He might go insane if they left this place, but she’d go insane if they stayed.

  Going to go insane, anyways. Might as well do something before then.

  Vrana heard Aeson and Elizabeth laughing about something. That was good. She liked Elizabeth, too. She hoped the feeling was mutual.

  Because they had something that needed doing. She stared into the heart of winter, and saw Its vermillion blood pumping through the ball of veins atop Kistvaen. Elizabeth was right—revenge was a classic—and Vrana wanted nothing more than to rip God off Its throne.

  It didn’t seem possible at first, months back, when the sky was still the color of ash and the magma hadn’t cooled. But here was Elizabeth, on a mission to find the Skeleton; and there would be the Skeleton, a figure she’d met twice, once in the Black Hour, once in Lacuna. He’d been the leader of the Marrow Cabal, and if the rumors could be believed, the only person capable of controlling and manipulating the Black Hour.

  Vrana still believed in “the balance,” but not the fascist, genocidal balance the elders proposed. The world was out of balance. God had tipped the scales so that they’d never be right again. But then again, had they ever been? Prayers were like love letters people sent to imprisoned serial killers. What if the world were truly balanced? Would it be worse? Would it be better? Was God a biological necessity, like a heart or lungs, or a vestigial limb humanity wouldn’t yet let the surgeon lop off out of fear of pain and what would happen next?

  Vrana didn’t know, but she did know this: She had to keep moving, she had to do something, and that, by the Worms and witches, she’d become a part of this.

  So she turned away from the window and from the world, back to their own inside this rundown hut of good ideas gone bad, and said to Aeson and Elizabeth, “We need to do something about God.”

  CHAPTER VI

  Isla sat at Joy’s feet, her back against the woman’s legs, and tingled as Joy combed Isla’s hair with her careful, considerate fingers. The fireplace before them was picturesque; a perfect orange blaze that seemed as if it could burn forever atop the perfectly cut pieces of woods. The moment was perfect, and Isla felt perfect, and though she wished the moment could last forever, she knew it wouldn’t. Isla was never comfortable, never satisfied; not for long.

  “I see a lot of Lux in you,” Joy said.

  Isla’s eyes darted to the book on the table—Lux’s A History of Hell—and rolled them. Lux was her hero; a social justice warrior who had taken on with an army all her own the injustices, intolerance, and ignorance of the Old World. There was no comparison between her and Lux, and yet… and yet Isla had always suspected there might be a connection. After all, she did find Lux’s complete body of work. After all, they did seem to have… so much in common.

  “I wish I had known her,” Isla said. “I know her better than anyone else, I think, but I wish had been alive to meet her.”

  “She would have liked you,” Joy said, softly.

  Isla couldn’t stop herself from smiling. If anyone would know that, Joy would. Joy, and her sister, Pain, had been the ones to train Isla, bestow powers upon her. That, and not a lot of people liked Isla. She chalked it up to her being an unruly woman. But it would’ve been nice to have a friend for once.

  “Her message hasn’t changed,” Joy said. “It’s even more relevant now that God is awake. This world will turn into the Old, I promise you.”

  Isla shook her head. The heat of hate spread through her chest like roots, and her heart struggled against them, until she felt as if she were going to black out. This world of injustice, intolerance, and ignorance was bad enough as it was. Cultural appropriation, heteronormative values, a truncated spectrum of gender and sexuality, and so… many… men, and so… many… women in her way.

  “No, that’s not going to happen,” Isla said, turning around, looking up, like a child, at the pale woman in white satin.

  “Then we’re going to need supporters. A following. A… Cult,” Joy said, licking her lips.

  Isla nodded, her eyes glowing hot. “I have the Winnowers’ Chapter. They’ll do anything for me.”

  “We need more.”

  Isla thought, and then: “The Night Terrors, here in Rime. But I don’t want them part of our cause.”

  Joy pressed her hand to Isla’s face, took the side of it in her palm, and wiped her brow with her thumb. “They will be a part of it, so much as grease is a part of gears. Are you willing to get your hands dirty?”

  This time, Isla didn’t have to think. She need only look at her hands. They’d never been clean. She hoped they never would be.

  CHAPTER VII

  Felix didn’t get but thirty feet away from Gemma before curiosity had him turning on his heels and going back to where he found her and the severed head she was carrying. The girl was still waiting, not having moved an inch, except this time, she wasn’t standing. She was levitating.

  “Came to your senses, I see,” Gemma said, baring her teeth. “What’s up?”

  His eyes were locked on the still-dripping severed head. He didn’t recognize who it’d belonged to, but that’s how things went these days. A lot of new faces following a lot of new orders he’d never known himself to issue.

  His stomach turned. His head hurt. He looked for a reason to fight, to flee, but Gemma gave him none. She didn’t care. She wasn’t a threat to him, he knew. And he knew a threat when he saw one. They came with masked intentions; with promises that were too good to be true; with hungers a decapitated, blood-spurting head couldn’t satisfy.

  Gemma held the head with both hands and let the slits in her palms suck up what little was left of the blood inside it.

  “I’m not going to kill you.” She winced—“Ah.”—and dropped the head. An artery dangled from the slit in her right hand, like a loose string. She yanked it out, tossed it over her shoulder. “Hate when that happens.”

  Felix squeezed the keys in his hand. The tunnel seemed so much narrower now that he was sharing it with this creature. Darker, too. Realizing this, he looked back and forth, not wanting to get caught off-guard again, th
is time by the rest of the Marrow Cabal, wherever they might be.

  Biting down on her lip, Gemma said, “Wow, slow down, Motormouth. I can hardly keep up.”

  She wiggled her foot in the air and then kicked the head like a ball down the tunnel. It smacked and crunched over the stones before coming to a sticky stop somewhere in the dark.

  You’re the Holy Child, Felix told himself. Act like it.

  “Do you… know who you’re talking to?” he asked.

  Gemma’s eyes went wide and her mouth, slack-jawed. “He speaks! Halleluiah!” She paused. “Yeah, man, I know who you are. Can you get a message to God for me?”

  “I don’t speak for that—”

  “Tell It to tell Its Speaker to chill, and that he’s cute…”

  Felix avoided her gaze.

  “… and let’s get this show on the road.” Gemma turned towards the way she came. “Hey, Holy Child, I think God’s got a message for you.”

  Felix said, “I just got it.”

  With two thumbs up, she said, “Aces. The rest are going to flip when they see you.”

  “Are… they expecting me?”

  “I mean, Hex has been with the Mother Abbess all week, right?”

  Felix said nothing.

  “Figured one or both of you’d be down eventually.”

  “Why did you escape if you knew we’d be coming?” Felix asked.

  “Escape?” Gemma laughed. “I was just hungry, dude. You should see the crap they pass off as food around here.”

  Felix followed her from a distance farther down the tunnel. Going anywhere without an armed escort was one of the dumbest things he could do. Dead or alive, he was worth more than most on this continent. All Gemma had to do was take him down, tie him up; and the whole of Cenotaph would be at her and whoever else’s mercy. Samuel Turov had done it once, but this time if it happened, he’d get to say when and where. This time, there’d be no Vrana to save him. Just the Worm who said she loved him.

  This is stupid, he thought. This is so—

  The tunnel let out to light, and a decapitated body lying in a pool of blood, the stones beneath coming through like etchings. Gemma stepped through gore and bone fragments merrily. At the corpse’s feet, a door stood ajar. She leaned against it, beckoning him in with nothing but her bobbing eyebrows.