Echoes of Memory

by A. R. Kahler

  “How?” I whispered, staring at her, angry that the words could escape my lips. I wasn’t listening to them. I’m not giving in.

  “Kill her,” the voices said. And I felt him now, behind me. His arms wrapped over mine, hands sunk into my hands. A warmth. A glow. A guiding.

  My hands moved up to Kaira’s neck. Her pulse was a caged raven, wild and violent and frighteningly delicate. One squeeze. One crush.

  “And this will be over,” he whispered in my ear. “All of this. Over.”

  I closed my eyes. I forced out her image. It didn’t help. Her throat begged as the boy demanded.

  “End this,” he said. “Kill her, and the nightmares will cease. Embrace me, and you will know Heaven. Such a little thing, her life. Take it. It is yours.”

  When I opened my eyes, Kaira blurred around the edges, her body crystalline and glowing. But no, those were my tears. Falling to her skin. Turning to ice on her flesh. My fingers tightened. My fingers glowed.

  “Bring her home,” Heru said, but now it was my sister’s voice, and her hands were on my shoulders. Telling me it was okay. Not her voice. Heru’s. Was there a difference? Were they the same?

  It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. This had to end. For both of us.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. To myself. To the birds storming against the door.

  I closed my eyes and tightened my grip.

  Wake up, Kaira. Wake up. Her voice. My voice.

  It inked through the darkness like silver, a swirl. It lifted me, steadied me. So why did I feel like I was drowning?

  Wake up, Shadechild, she begged.

  She had begged so much. To wake up. To let her speak. But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t let her control me. I wouldn’t let myself be someone other than myself.

  I am you. And you must wake up.

  The darkness grew thicker. Darker. And I was scared; my heart fluttered weakly, and the darkness closed in. I felt it press against my lungs, curled closer than Munin, closer than coffins. It contracted, a serpent, a snake, a dragon around my throat. The Midgard Serpent guards the Tree, a dragon coiled beneath the sea.

  I couldn’t breathe. Not underwater. Not in the darkness.

  I had never been afraid of the dark. The shadows were my home. Our home. So why were these shadows so terrifying? Why did I suddenly fear the end?

  Wake up!

  And the darkness wasn’t black; the silver not stars, but blood. A constellation of red sparks. Of ravens falling from the trees. The Tree. They fell in droves, in heavy clouds, the sounds of their broken caws barely overpowering their thuds when they hit.

  Kaira, wake up! Do not let him win before it has begun.

  She stood before me, wearing my skin, but though she stood within reach, she was eons away. She tried to reach. To force me to wake. But I would not be led. I would not be forced. I swirled in the stars, in the darkness. Hot blood like rain fell on my face.

  Maybe this was my end.

  Maybe this was what I had been waiting for.

  So why did I hear crying?

  His crying.

  His.

  “Chris.”

  My eyes blinked open, heavy-lidded, and there he was, leaning over me. His skin glowed gold. Angelic. Why was that terrifying?

  Why was he crying?

  Why couldn’t I breathe?

  My eyes did a slow scan, down from his closed, weeping eyes, to his arms. His arms stretched to the hands clasping my throat. His muscles contracted, straining—but not with pressure, not with force. He wasn’t pressing tight into my neck, though I couldn’t force in air. He strained against himself.

  “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t.”

  His grip didn’t loosen.

  Chris.

  I tried to speak. Found only a gasp.

  Then he opened his eyes. They locked on mine, and there it was, that spark, that gravity, that jolt from his chest to mine.

  His golden eyes.

  He blinked and pushed himself away, leaped off the bed. My lungs expanded on their own, a labored breath in, the rattling bones of the dead.

  “Kaira,” he said. Or asked. Blood thrummed in my ears, and I could barely hear him over the noise. My ragged pulse. My angry pulse. “It’s you.”

  Like I would be anyone else.

  Then he shuddered and clenched his hands to the sides of his head. His nails dug in, red half-moons pooling blood. Every muscle in his face contorted, his eyes shut so tight, I thought his eyeballs would rupture. What the hell was going on? Why was he here, in my room, covered in tears?

  I tried to reach out, to get him to stop hurting himself, but I couldn’t move. My limbs were limp, way too weak. Pain looped around my neck. I tried to push myself up to sitting, and the world swam with shadows.

  “No,” he whispered. To himself? To me, for trying to ask him what the hell was going on? Someone was pounding outside the door, calling his name. Saying he couldn’t be in here.

  Wait, this wasn’t my room. Where was here?

  “I won’t do it,” he said. His fingers clenched deeper. Blood dripped down his cheeks, and I couldn’t move to make him stop. I couldn’t yell at him. Not even when his fingertips glowed gold, when the skin beneath charred and cracked.

  His eyes snapped open and landed directly on me. My chest constricted.

  “I’ll never hurt you.”

  I’d never heard him sound so afraid. So unsure. And so determined.

  Before I could ask what he meant, before I could even connect that he’d just been trying to strangle me in my sleep, he scrambled to his feet and slammed out the door.

  The nurse, Bettie, stood there, confused, looking between him and me.

  “Let him go,” Freyja said from the shadows.

  Let him go? Where? Where would he go?

  Then it clicked.

  I knew that fear. I knew that face.

  I’d worn it the night I’d stared into the mirror, my mother’s scissors slicing into my wrists.

  Energy pulsed through my limbs. I couldn’t let him hurt himself. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew that: I couldn’t let Chris be hurt.

  Before I could let Freyja or the nurse stop me, I pushed myself from the bed and ran down the hall. My head was fuzzy. The hall twisted as I ran. Chris raced in front of me. Fast. So fast. His coat trailing like wings. Freyja screamed in my head, telling me not to follow. Let him go. Let him end it. Let this battle end now.

  If she wanted me to stay back, I would run forward. It was the only thing I knew for certain. I would never do what she wanted me to.

  I ran faster.

  Chris darted out of the nurse’s office. I stumbled after him, vaguely aware that I was wearing pajamas. Vaguely aware that they weren’t mine.

  What was mine, anyway? What was mine beyond this fear, this need that clawed and cawed in the depths of my chest? The need to save him. The need to let him go. One of those emotions was mine. I didn’t know which. Maybe they both were—maybe that was the problem. But I knew which need I’d act on.

  So I ran, unable to do more than croak out his name. I didn’t feel the cold air that slipped through my pajamas when I burst out the front door, barely noticed the ice that stuck to my bare feet. Chris dodged past a few kids wandering from the Dark Note, and they did little more than mutter. Until they saw me. Me in my pajamas and no shoes, and then they gasped. Beyond that it was silent, the air unnaturally calm and still, like we were all waiting for the storm to break. There was only the blood in my ears and my feet slapping icy pavement.

  The ground felt warm. Maybe I was bleeding. Or maybe I was so cold, the rest of the world was a furnace.

  I certainly didn’t feel the wind whipping my face, the flecks of snow that had begun to fall.

  I focused solely on Chris. Because my thoughts were a congealing whirl, my mind still stuck in that cosmic blackness, the slow swirl of constellations. If I let my gaze slip, if I let myself look at the corners of my vision, I would see her. Fr
eyja. Standing naked in the snow, sometimes wearing my skin, sometimes her own. I knew the look she wore. I knew the disapproval. But as I ran across campus, Chris always a few steps ahead, I realized I didn’t care.

  She might be a god, but Chris was my friend. He was mortal, with a very mortal, very tender heart. I wouldn’t let him snuff that out.

  Why are you saving the one you need to kill? Why, when he was trying to kill you?

  Because of his eyes. That look. That gravity.

  That loneliness. I knew it. I knew it better than anything else.

  We ran to the edge of the campus, him never slowing down, not even when I managed to yell his name—but how could he hear it over the ravens that cawed behind me? They burst from the trees at my footsteps, swirled above and around me in a cloud, never ceasing, never silencing. They screamed out not his name, but mine—they begged me to stop. Demanded it. The birds didn’t vanish when we entered the woods. Freyja didn’t cease her apparition at the corners of my vision, her face pained.

  “You must kill him anyway,” she called. “Let this end.”

  I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  I followed closely at his heels. And there was someone else there, flickering in and out. Not Freyja. A girl. Her hair was short and dark and dripping wet, and she watched the both of us with eyes like moons and tears dripping diamonds.

  Was she just in my head? Like Freyja? Like Munin?

  Were they all in my head?

  “Chris!” I yelled again. My word broke through the ravens, but he only ran faster. And that was when I heard him. Yelling, No, no, I won’t hurt them. I won’t hurt them.

  “He lies,” Freyja said, flickering beside me, like Peter Pan’s shadow, untethered and unceasing. “He will kill you.”

  I pushed her voice away. Pushed her down. I don’t know how I did it, but I’d spent my entire life suppressing things. Maybe I was just used to it. Or maybe she was tired of fighting me.

  We reached the lake too quickly. He didn’t stop running, and I didn’t stop following, even though the warm snow reached up my calves, nearly swallowed my knees. How was he faster? How was he so far ahead?

  It was deep winter, the lake studded with ice houses and pickup trucks, yet the moment his feet touched the ice, I felt a rake of fear in my chest. I knew what he was going to do. I tried to run faster. Tried calling his name again.

  Chris ran faster. Glowed brighter.

  Then he stopped, just skidded to a halt in the middle of the ice, far from the huts, far from the shore. Far from me. I watched him stoop as I ran, watched him carve a small circle in the snow with a bloody knife, a ring of red, of roses. Ashes, ashes . . .

  No. No, no, no.

  I tried to run, but my legs slowed. Like they were stuck in molasses. Like they were no longer mine. And I felt her then, in my mind, clawing through my veins. Her words commanding me to stop. Let him go. It will be easier then. Let him go.

  He turned to face me. Or maybe not me. Something flickered before him, just outside the circle. Something glowing and gold, a lace of wings and light. A bird. A boy. To the other side, the dripping girl, screaming silently, her hands outstretched, unable to pass the bloody circle.

  I slowed. I forced Freyja down. Tried. She resisted, pushed harder, telling me this was the way it should go.

  “You want me,” Chris said. Not a question. Not to me. He stared defiantly at the figure that was and was not there, and it was then I knew who his anger and loneliness were trained at. The glowing, winged god. The figure that made my cold blood boil. “Then fucking have me.”

  The ice was thick. There were trucks parked on it farther away.

  So why did I hear the crack? Why did the whole world shift?

  Chris brought the knife to his wrist. He didn’t slice. He stabbed.

  I screamed out, but even I couldn’t hear it over the rush. Chris flared with heat, with power. It poured into and from him, a light. A burn. He seared like the sun, and with it, a roar. A howl.

  Thunder like gods calling.

  Ice cracking.

  The lake beneath me shifted. I fell to my knees, and then there was silence. Silence and darkness.

  When I looked up, there was no sobbing girl. No circle of blood in the snow. No glowing figure.

  No Chris.

  Just a hole in the ice, the water beneath as black and surging as hell.

  “You can’t save him,” Freyja said beside me, staring on with dispassion. “You should not try. Let him die. It will be easier for you both.”

  I wanted to scream at her, because what the hell did she know? I couldn’t push myself to my feet. My legs had gone numb. Gelatinous. But I scratched my way forward, pulling through thick snow, even as—at the edges of my senses—I heard people calling out. Fishermen? Coming toward me. Toward us. Freyja kept pace at my side, her whispers of he is lost, he is lost spurring me forward.

  Why did she sound so sad?

  I forced my way forward, my tears staining the snow black.

  Toward the hole.

  Toward Chris.

  Toward Hell.

  When I neared, I nearly collapsed from the effort.

  “He is gone, Kaira,” Freyja said. She crouched beside the hole, beside me, both of us staring down into the sloshing black, the shatter of tiny ice crystals, swirling like sinking boats. Sinking stars. “His soul. He is gone.”

  He wasn’t gone.

  Not so long as I was there to find him.

  I looked from the water to Freyja. I felt the sadness in her voice. Like she, too, felt the loss. And maybe she did. Maybe even the gods felt pain.

  “Then you’re helping me find him. Or dying with me.”

  The last things I felt as I slipped into the warm water were her hands on my back. The slow unfurling of carrion wings.

  Then the water swallowed us whole.

  Dreaming.

  Must be dreaming. Screaming.

  His hands

  on my heart.

  Tumbling

  in darkness, sinking

  light lifting. Not

  lifting, falling

  deeper.

  “I won’t

  let you hurt her.”

  I will save her. God,

  let this save her.

  My words

  choke

  on water

  not water. Something

  heavier. Oilier. Deeper. No ocean

  runs this deep. No lake

  spans this far. Fathoms stretch

  and he grips my heart as I grip

  his throat, Kaira’s throat. No. His throat.

  Heru.

  I must do this. I must

  die. I must end this.

  Him.

  I must end him.

  “I won’t hurt her—”

  We sink deeper. His light

  fades. My light. My lungs.

  Her hand,

  reaching

  down, a reaper—wings

  of shadow. Fingers touch

  “I won’t—”

  slip.

  Fingers

  slip. Sink.

  fade

  I won’t . . .

  You will.

  Hell hath no fury.

  They say that, don’t they? Something about hell, and a scorned woman?

  But that was not true at all. Because hell was silent. Hell hath no fury.

  At least not here.

  Maybe I just wasn’t feeling scorned enough. Though Freyja definitely was.

  I didn’t need to ask where we were. I could feel it. Just like when you closed your eyes and walked into your childhood bedroom. I knew this place in the hollows of my bones. And now that I was here, I knew it had always been here. Always calling. Always waiting.

  But still, I asked the question.

  “Where are we?” Even my words felt heavy.

  Freyja stood beside me, looking at the darkness like she had come to her childhood bedroom. And maybe she had.

  “The Underw
orld,” she whispered.

  Just the way she said it made me know there was a capital U.

  “Right,” I replied. I stared around, tried to make shapes out through the darkness. But there was just shadow, just the cold, damp earth beneath my bare feet. The air was heavy and cool and wet, cavernous. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could feel the weight of the worlds resting above me, just as I could feel the yawning expanse of this place. Of course this was the Underworld. This afternoon I’d woken up in the nurse’s office with a boy’s hands on my neck. Where else would I have gone after that?

  I looked to Freyja. She leaned against something—something wide and smooth that seemed to stretch from the floor up into the emptiness—and she watched me with those cold, violet eyes. I wished she would put on clothes; looking at her made me feel self-conscious.

  It was then that I realized: This was the first time in ages I wasn’t fighting her off. Wasn’t trying to keep control over my own thoughts. Right now, I actually felt like myself. The “me” from before I killed myself, from before Munin’s words of warning. I felt mortal and normal, and that made me want to laugh. Because I was in the Underworld, and that meant I was dead.

  I’d spent the last few days fighting Freyja off, and the last however long in some strange half-consciousness, grappling with her, trying to keep her from fully taking control. I knew I’d invited her in. I’d jumped into that classroom circle and let myself open to her, if only to take down Jonathan and that . . . thing . . . that was controlling him.

  The thoughts made my head swim. What had happened to Jonathan? The god made of owl feathers? And why did I keep thinking of Chris, when his mere mental image made my heart race? Even that, though, slid from my senses.

  None of it mattered if I was dead.

  The Underworld was a lot chillier than all those right-wingers had led me to expect. Where was the fire and brimstone? Because, I mean—I’d committed suicide to kill my ex. It wasn’t like I expected to go to Heaven.

  “It’s not Hell,” she said, looking at me. Her violet eyes were paler than usual. She looked tired. Could gods even get tired? “At least, not entirely. There are many levels to the Underworld. Infinite, really. You have a lot to learn.”