by Scott Hale
R’lyeh was dead.
And the Skeleton had brought her back.
Vrana’s beak dropped open. Shaking with rage, she restrained her urge to turn the Skeleton into dust.
“I know I know you,” R’lyeh said, her affect flat. “Can I hug you?”
Stricken with hate and hurt, Vrana didn’t move as R’lyeh drifted drunkenly towards her and threw her arms around her. The girl was cold; the gesture colder.
Vrana took her by the shoulders and gently pushed her back.
“Vrana…” The Skeleton banged the saw against the dais. “That is where I know the name from. R’lyeh was looking for you. I was going to help her find you…”
“How… did…” Fat, stinging tears fell from Vrana’s eyes. She didn’t know she could still cry like this. She’d thought the witches would’ve taken that away, too. “What… how…?”
“She is a very brave girl.”
R’lyeh stood there, staring absently at them.
“She followed me to the Dead City, because she thought she would be immune to the diseases there.”
R’lyeh opened her mouth, closed her eyes; opened her eyes, closed her mouth. She smiled.
“She was immune to a lot of things, but not the Green Worm. That was the disease that covered the City. I tried to save her.”
R’lyeh rubbed her hands against the apron, breaking up the dried blood and flicking the flakes away.
“But I was too slow.”
R’lyeh went to the dais, grabbed the dead man by the hands, and dragged him off it. His body smacked into the ground, and his back tore open in places.
“Camazotz and I brought her body here.”
R’lyeh leaned over the dead man. A silver necklace with a red gem within a tangle of worms slipped out from underneath her apron.
Vrana gasped, and thought: What the fuck is that doing here?
“I suppose he was lonely, and sad. The world is unfair. It took Atticus’ family. I thought he would be a little happier with her.”
R’lyeh grabbed the necklace, slipped it back under the apron, and kept hauling the dead man to the corpse wall.
“I see that she meant a lot to you.”
Vrana nodded, the feathers around her eyes soaked.
“I could give her to you, as a parting gift.”
For a brief, disturbing moment, Vrana considered his offer. Her mind latched onto a future in which she, Aeson, and R’lyeh were in it, and the three of them had resigned to the Frozen North, where R’lyeh had always wanted to go; getting fat off the land, like they were getting prepared to hibernate for the cataclysm to come. But then she looked into R’lyeh’s dead eyes and saw no reflection. Not Vrana, nor this world around her. She wasn’t really here. It was just her body, and the Black Hour possessing it.
“Kill her,” Vrana said, forcing the words out. “If you love her, don’t do this to her.”
The Skeleton unrolled his sleeves, threw the hood over his skull. The Black Hour’s growth oozed across his bones.
“Atticus, I know you think you lost your family when Kistvaen went off…”
“He did,” the Skeleton said.
“Are you sure?”
The Skeleton didn’t say anything.
“She’s not your family. She’s not your atonement. Please… not to R’lyeh.”
“What do you know about my family?” the Skeleton asked, his accent returning.
“That they might still be alive, yeah?”
Vrana spun around. Elizabeth had climbed into the room, with Aeson right behind her.
The Skeleton hobbled around the dais. “Elizabeth?”
R’lyeh, hearing the name, hurried to the Skeleton’s side and whispered, “I know I know you, too.”
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.” Elizabeth covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh, R’lyeh. Our Deadly Beauty. What’s he done to you?”
“I know I know you, too,” R’lyeh said, to Aeson. “Wow, everyone’s come.”
The Skeleton said, “What’s going on? What’s this? What’re you doing, Elizabeth?”
“I thought Gemma would be here…” She shook her head. “R’lyeh looked up to you, Atticus. She trusted you. Why would you do this? You didn’t even do it right, yeah? Did you even get her soul from the Membrane? What’s really inside her? You fucker.”
The Skeleton put an arm around R’lyeh’s shoulder. Speaking to Aeson, he said, “You look like me.”
Aeson touched the skull mask he wore, stepped forward. “You look like me, too.”
Lightning pushed through the cracks in the Keep’s façade, like glowing fingers.
“I’m Aeson, a Night Terror like Vrana. She’s… She’s everything to me. More than a girlfriend or…” He took a few deep breaths. “She’s everything. I lost her, and what I went through to get her back… there was nothing left of me. I thought she’d see me, what I’ve become, and after all that, she wouldn’t want me. And I was afraid I’d see her and… I’d be the same. Like everything we went through… it wouldn’t have mattered. We’d be too fucked up, too unrecognizable to each other.
“Elizabeth told us about you and Clementine and Will…”
“Clementine and Will,” the Skeleton repeated in a whisper.
“I don’t think any of us really know what happened to them, but if they’re still alive… what you’re doing… it’s going to catch up with them. You know nothing can stop you, except you, or the Vermillion God.”
“That’s why we’re here, Atticus,” Elizabeth said, “to kill It. I know you’re not going to go back to Clem and Will, yeah? I know you’re afraid of what you might do, or the shepherds. We’re all fucked up, and not good for much else but something stupid and suicidal. We saw what you did to the land… to time. What do you think God can do? It can die for a reason, yeah? It should die.”
Vrana stared at R’lyeh. Her heart ached in a way it hadn’t since she watched her mother die. It was like a cold blade ripping through her, excuse by excuse, intent by intent. The justifications were back. The reasons to keep R’lyeh alive were mounting. And then the grimmest thought came: Could he bring Mom back, too?
“R’lyeh,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”
R’lyeh, confused, said, “For what?”
“I used her to find Children of Lacuna,” the Skeleton admitted. He stared at the ground, ashamed. “She lured them here.”
“Son of a…” Vrana stopped herself. It was the same thing she used Aeson for when it came to her feeding.
A clap of thunder rocked the Keep. A sharp blast ripped through the halls above them—the outer walls had been struck by lightning. There was something else. A new sound. Raised voices; hands and feet; and the sharp promises of weapons, and the wounds to come.
“Do you like my necklace?” R’lyeh took out the silver necklace, held the Red Worm’s gem attached to it in her palm. “Something tells me I should give it to you.”
“Why… why does she have that?” Vrana asked.
“Found it after we killed the Red Worm.” The Skeleton reached into his robe once more and took out a red sealing stone. “Been trying to get them all. I buried the necklace with R’lyeh. Thought she’d earned it.” He turned the stone over in his hand, then pocketed it. “They’re coming for me.”
Vrana focused her ears on the sounds of the mob swelling inside the Keep. When she’d first visited this place a year ago, she’d thought it was townspeople who were attacking, getting revenge for all their friends and family he’d killed. But it was the vampyres. They’d seen Vrana and the others enter the Keep, and now they had the courage to do it themselves. To kill the Skeleton. To free their master, Camazotz.
The Skeleton balled the sides of the robe up in his fists. Grunting, eyes bulging farther than what seemed possible from his skull, he tore it from his bones. The Black Hour’s mold that lined the robe instantly shot up inside his rib cage. It’d been a flash, but Vrana had seen it: The Black Hour’s heart where the Skeleton’s own should’ve been. The m
old formed a protective barrier around the heart, and filled in the rest of the ribcage with dark, glistening tendrils of raw chaos.
“I’ll go with you,” the Skeleton said, accent having returned completely. “I shouldn’t be left alone.”
“No shit, yeah?” Elizabeth said, laughing nervously.
“What about R’lyeh?” Aeson asked.
The Skeleton stared at the Octopus, tongue lying over his teeth. Eyes shining with tears he couldn’t produce, he took the girl’s hand and said, “I should’ve never done it. I didn’t even do it right. Got to let things go.”
R’lyeh smiled; she listened to each word with complete indifference.
“Keep spinning my wheels, but it never gets me out of the mud; and ruins everything around me.”
Do the right thing, Vrana told herself. Do what you can’t for Aeson.
“We are what we are, aren’t we?” The Skeleton reached for R’lyeh’s necklace.
Elizabeth said, “Deadly Beauties. Beautiful to ourselves; deadly to the rest.”
Holding the Red Worm’s gem, staring at R’lyeh, he said, “How would you like to go to sleep?”
R’lyeh nodded. “I am sleepy.”
“You’ve been awake too long, I reckon.” He took the necklace off her.
She reached for it but didn’t put up much of a fight to get it back.
“I’ll keep it safe,” he said, “like you did me, though it shouldn’t have been you to have done it.”
R’lyeh shrugged one shoulder; spit dribbled like jewels down her lips.
“Say ‘Goodnight,’ R’lyeh.”
R’lyeh turned to Vrana, Aeson, and Elizabeth and, waving, said, “Goodnight, R’lyeh.”
Elizabeth whimpered, “Goodnight.”
“Night,” Aeson said, smiling sadly.
Vrana went to her and knelt down in front of the girl. She closed her wings around her and pulled her in tight. “Goodbye,” she said, forehead to hers—the best kiss she could manage. “Goodbye, R’lyeh.”
R’lyeh grinned. And then, for a moment, there was a spark in her eye; a band of light, not unlike those that meandered through the Membrane.
To Vrana, she said, “Thank you.”
The Skeleton touched his thumb to her forehead, drew a symbol there. It killed her.
Vrana held R’lyeh there a moment, under the raging sounds of the storm and mob, and, standing up, still holding her, said, “Why the change of heart?”
The Skeleton looked at his ribcage. “Still got my own. And when you saw her and heard why I did it, you understood. You all did. I could tell. Think I’ve just been waiting these last few months for someone to come in here and knock me around for showing my ass. I’m done grieving. I’m ready to get.
“Here—” He lowered the silver necklace over Vrana’s head. “Oh, you got one?”
She did. The Blue Worm’s necklace. Hidden behind her feathers. She’d forgotten it was there.
“I’ll take it,” she said, putting that necklace beside the other. “Trophies.”
“I came for Gemma, yeah?” Elizabeth said. “But I’m not looking for a reunion.”
Vrana glanced up. The doors in the halls and rooms above them were being slammed open, and the vampyre children were flooding through.
The Skeleton grabbed his robe off the ground, took out a giant fang from inside it.
The vampyres hissed and cried out when they saw it.
“Where to?” he asked Vrana.
Still holding R’lyeh, she said, “Alluvia, to bury her.”
The Skeleton chanted out a string of unintelligible words.
The Keep began to shake, but not from the thunder or lightning, or the wind. The movement was coming from inside the Keep. It was being torn apart, ripped down.
The vampyres knew what was coming, and they got out of the way.
Camazotz burst through the ceiling above them. Beating her mangy, tattered wings, she blasted her children back against the walls with the air pressure. Lightning streaked across the sky as she lowered herself beside the Skeleton. Hail pelted her matted body. Already, pools of water were beginning to form as the rain collected in the ditches.
“Climb aboard,” the Skeleton said.
Elizabeth hopped on first, with a burst of giddy excitement that seemed as if she’d wanted to try this ever since she was a vampyre herself.
Next went Aeson, who appeared more afraid of the children than the idea of mounting a massive bat.
“Where to after Alluvia?” the Skeleton shouted.
Vrana stopped beside Camazotz, readjusted R’lyeh’s dead body against her own. “The Ossuary,” she said.
“That’s where God came from,” he said.
She nodded. She knew from the witches that a creature as powerful as It would never fully leave Its domain. A part of the Vermillion God still had to be there. It’d never leave Heaven unattended.
“After all I’ve done, never thought I’d see the pearly gates,” the Skeleton said. “Funny how things work out.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Isla sat on the edge of Onibi’s lake, drawing stick figures in the snow, while Joy walked across the frozen waters, to speak with the spirit of the dead. It was midday, mid-March, but this far north, the land only knew an everlasting winter. Snow fell in flurries or by the foot, but it always fell, and it never seemed to melt. Sometimes, Isla looked back and believed she saw the rest of the world below her. Rime and the ice-dusted wastes of Gelid were her staging points. Together, they were the table upon which her campaign map for total conquest rested. Here, in nowhere, a nobody could become a somebody. And today, she was going to show the Winnowers and the Rimeans who she really was and what they had to be if they wanted to survive the night to come.
The lake’s surface flashed like how an LED screen might. Lux always talked about cellphones and computers in her books. She called them her ‘tools,’ and often compared them to the torture devices inquisitors would use to tease out the truth from their prisoners by any means necessary. It sounded easier to perform social surgery in the Old World. With so much technology at their fingertips, each hand had the potential of being judge, jury, and executioner all at once, in a matter of seconds. Isla knew she was fantasizing the past, but the idea of tracking a pervert down through social media and dissecting them on the Internet’s stage, to lay them bare, bloody and raw and unshielded, excited her. The thought of hosting a moratorium on heteronormative values, cultural appropriation, and the patriarchy by simply recording a video and uploading it to a website for millions to see seemed so perfect.
But it wasn’t; at least, not for someone like her, if she’d lived then, or if this world changed and regressed to the world before. Lux always told her augurs—the name for her followers—if they were going to flay others, then others would try to flay them. “Social Justice,” according to Lux, “is two people in a dark alley with knives, each taking turns cutting the other’s skin off. The loser is the one whose knife dulls first.” A true augur was someone who’d been hardened on the inside by their experiences; and by their experiences, they had the credentials to validate the experiences of others.
That was Isla’s problem. She didn’t have any experiences of dehumanization to call her own, or so they said. As the niece of Augustus Enfield, the Exemplar of Innocence, her life had been cushy and controlled. Despite what she preached to others, nobody had ever laid a hand on her, nor had any man made a pass at her—and that went for both sexual assault, as well as just pure and simple sex. In this harsh hell that crowned the world, she was taken care of. Everyone, more or less, did what she said, and nobody did anything to her, or so she was told. Even after her mind had been opened to Lux’s teachings, she still struggled to find micro-aggressions and insidious non-verbal cues.
Marshall Jones, one of the previous leaders of the Winnowers’ Chapter, had said it wasn’t because she was somehow above such things. It was because: “People dislike you so much, Isla, that they can’t even be bothere
d to be around you. You’ll live forever, I expect, only because Death doesn’t want you whining to Her afterwards for all eternity.”
“Fuck you,” Isla whispered under her breath. She covered her drawings in the snow. “Fuck all of you.” They never gave her a chance. If they had just listened when she was younger, she wouldn’t have to yell so much now. If they had just watched, they would’ve seen her actions were her words.
She rose to her feet. A cold fire burned in her joints from sitting too long. Joy was at the center of the lake, and below her, Onibi—the headstone engulfed in flames—burned within the ice. The two exchanged words for another few minutes, and everything changed.
The frozen lake kept flashing, but now it was flashing out images, like minds’ eyes blinking out memories. They were landscapes; in particular, lakes. Bodies of water in fields, plains, forests, woods, mountains, deserts, and coastal areas. One after the other, in dizzying display, the geography was filtered through by Onibi. Joy had told Isla she was looking for someone, and as soon as she found them and did what she had to do, she would focus the rest of her efforts helping Isla go to Eldrus and claim what she claimed was Isla’s rightful spot on Edgar’s council.
“Will this take long?” Isla cried to Joy.
Her voice carried across the landscape with such clarity, she was afraid the soundwaves would cause avalanches all around them. After a moment, she was disappointed they hadn’t.
“Yes,” Joy said. “In the meantime, practice your speech.”
“I could’ve stayed back and done that.”
Isla started forward, to join Joy on the lake, but she held up one hand, signaling for her to stop.
“Don’t touch the ice,” Joy said. “Onibi is hungry and hates you. This is but a taste. I need to be sure we’re both going to get our fill.”
Isla didn’t know what that meant, but she was smart enough to heed Joy’s warning. She went back to her rut on the shore and sat.
“The best things a person could ever say to another comes from moments of intense solitude,” Joy said. “You are your only distraction out here. Practice your speech. It’ll determine the course to come. Besides—” Joy glanced over her shoulder; her eyes were two flaming headstones, “—sisters go everywhere together, don’t they?”
