The Brink of Darkness (The Edge of Everything)

by Jeff Giles

  “Good enough,” said Sylvie. “Now let’s concentrate on the two of you. Once we get up to the stadium, you may see me speak in a way, or behave in a way, that’s … less than polite. I apologize in advance. But if Dervish thinks I will let my son—or the girl he loves—be imprisoned another second, he needs to be reintroduced to Versailles.”

  twenty-six

  The trip through the tunnel was torturous. Zoe crawled in front so she could make a bridge with her body for Sylvie when they came to where the rock had fallen away. X followed so he could try to shield his mother from the floods. Sylvie didn’t seem afraid, but she had no powers, no superhuman resilience. X felt as if he were transporting a pane of glass.

  As he inched ahead on his stomach, he thought about what it would be like to be free. It was selfish, but he couldn’t help it. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop the thought that came next either: What if the Lowlands never let him go? He imagined a guard thrusting him into the dark mouth of a cell. He imagined the bars slamming shut like teeth. Would it be enough to know that Zoe and his mother loved him—and that they loved him not because they didn’t know what was in his heart but because they did? The answer came at him hard.

  No, it wouldn’t be enough.

  He had to have Zoe. He had to be free.

  When they reached the last stretch of the tunnel, where the fossilized sea creatures winked in the light, X got his first real glimpse of the canyon ahead. The little sea around the statue now lay utterly still. Even the waterfall that had rained down in front of the tunnel entrance had stopped—literally stopped, as if someone had pressed Pause. X could see the beads of water in midair.

  Zoe called over her shoulder.

  “Here we go.”

  He watched her slip out of the tunnel, then help his mother into the water. He slid forward to join them.

  “This is the part where I say we’ve got company,” said Zoe.

  X lifted his eyes. There were lords up on the rim of the canyon, not just Regent and Dervish but a hundred of them, all peering down. They must have come from a dozen neighboring hives.

  Word had traveled.

  The three of them bobbed like corks.

  “I know we don’t seem like much,” said Sylvie. “But we can do this.”

  X saw that his mother was shaking from the cold. He hoisted her out of the water, and carried her up the canyon wall. When he looked back down for Zoe, she was gone. She’d swum off in another direction.

  “Wait,” she called. “I think I see a friend.”

  X scanned the water. There was a body, clothed in red, floating on its back near the base of the statue.

  The Ukrainian. His face was black with ash.

  But he was moving.

  X watched as Zoe lifted the guard over her shoulder and began scaling the canyon beneath him and Sylvie. Her strength was beautiful to watch.

  “I thought you were dead,” Zoe told the Ukrainian.

  “Was already dead,” he answered gruffly. “Please pay attention.” He squinted up at Sylvie. “You are mama, of course?”

  “I am,” said Sylvie.

  “Your boy look very hard for you,” said the guard. “He was annoying about it, if I am being honest.”

  X climbed toward Regent, ignoring the other lords. He climbed fast to show his strength. He would not be intimidated. Zoe was going home, and his mother was never going back to the Cave of Swords or any place like it.

  Sylvie embraced Regent the instant they were out of the canyon. Her gingham dress was as wrinkled as a wrung-out cloth. Her boots were ordinary. But in the way she carried herself, she was more regal than any of the lords. They seemed to know it, too. They parted to give her and Regent room. They watched her with something like awe. X could hear Dervish ranting deep in the crowd, but the other lords held him back. A good sign.

  “Hello, old friend,” Sylvie told Regent. “Has it been dull without me?”

  Regent gave her a rare, unguarded smile.

  “No, it has not,” said Regent. “We were joined by a mischievous young man so like you that it was as if you’d never left. I see that you have made his acquaintance.”

  “My boy has a good heart, doesn’t he?” said Sylvie. “He came for me.”

  “He has a very fine heart,” said Regent. “It is his mother’s.”

  A screech cut the air: “Enough!”

  Dervish had broken away.

  X and Regent moved to protect Sylvie.

  Dervish moved faster.

  His eyes were crazed. The gold band had eaten into his neck. He hurled himself at X’s mother, and swept her over the side of the canyon.

  X plunged in after them. As he fell, out of the corner of his eyes, he saw two others diving with him.

  Regent. Zoe.

  Dervish had his hands around Sylvie’s throat, and was holding her underwater, letting her up every now and again just to see her scream.

  X and Regent swam at him from one side, Zoe from the other.

  “COME NEAR ME,” Dervish shouted, “and I shall HOLD HER UNDER until her lungs COLLAPSE! I may not be able to kill her, yet I can turn her brain to PUDDING!”

  X looked to Regent so they could coordinate an attack, but Regent was peering up at the lords. He seemed to be waiting for a signal.

  “See how they STARE?” said Dervish. “You told yourself that they care, but why should they?”

  He held Sylvie under again. Her legs kicked madly.

  Just then, there was a scream from atop the canyon. Maud had pushed through the crowd with Vesuvius in her arms. She was watching.

  X thought of the story of the drill, of how Fernley and the surgeon had tried to make his mother docile, compliant. Dervish was attempting to do the same.

  Regent shouted to the lords.

  “I shall end Dervish’s reign with my own hands, if we are in agreement. Show me a sign!”

  Of all the silences X had ever heard, the one that followed cut deepest.

  It was Zoe who finally broke it.

  “Regent!” she said. “It’s time to stop asking permission!”

  She cut through the water toward Dervish, but even in pain his powers were greater than hers. He swatted her away with his free hand, and she slammed against the wall of the canyon.

  “How can you just watch?” X screamed at the lords. “Does nothing touch you?”

  Again, they gave no answer. The silence doubled, tripled, until there seemed to be more of it in the world than air.

  “How their apathy feeds me!” said Dervish. “It might as well be APPLAUSE!”

  But then, one by one, the lords leaped into the water.

  There were 5 of them, then 10, then 20. They swam up behind X and Regent, and—like an army, like a wave—closed in on Dervish.

  Fear slid over Dervish’s face. He pushed Sylvie into the water and pulled her out again. He did it faster and faster. He did it with a kind of mania. The water churned. Sylvie’s body was limp as a doll’s.

  The fourth time he wrenched her up, she sprang to life. There was something hidden in her hand. She slashed his face with it.

  It was the shard from the porcelain pitcher that Fernley had beaten her with.

  A bloody seam opened on Dervish’s face. Shocked, he released Sylvie, and clasped a hand against his cheek to heal it.

  Sylvie swam toward Zoe, but was too spent to reach her. Zoe closed the distance in an instant. X watched as she gathered Sylvie up, and climbed with her toward safety, toward Maud.

  The wound on Dervish’s face disappeared beneath his touch, but the gold band burned even hotter at his throat. He fought to pull it away from his skin, just as the Countess had.

  X looked at Regent, a question in his eyes.

  Regent understood, nodded.

  X tore to where Dervish struggled in the water.

  “Let me help you,” he said.

  He reached for the gold band, and ripped it off Dervish’s neck.

  twenty-seven

  X hande
d the broken band to Regent, who looped it around his arm, then dragged Dervish up the canyon like a corpse. The other lords followed. X stayed behind a moment, watching them rise up the wall en masse. With their wild colors and jewels, they looked like an ancient race of creatures finally leaving the sea.

  Up on the stadium floor, the lords stood in a ring around Dervish, and debated his fate. X couldn’t see Dervish himself, but he heard him wailing like an animal. No, that wasn’t fair: X had never actually heard an animal cry like that. Even Vesuvius, when the Countess had stolen him from Maud and imprisoned him in a box, had protested less.

  X went to Regent. He needed to know what would happen next. He’d accepted that his mother would remain imprisoned in the Lowlands forever—but what about Zoe? What about himself?

  Regent turned away from the circle, annoyed at the interruption. X got a glimpse of Dervish through the other lords, though their bodies were thick as trees. Dervish had stopped screaming. He sat on the ground in shock, rocking back and forth like a terrified child.

  “What is it?” said Regent. “Speak.”

  Abashed, X spoke only four words.

  “What becomes of us?”

  Regent’s expression cooled.

  “Zoe will be freed,” he said. “As for yourself, I cannot claim to know. We have not even determined what becomes of Dervish. There are some here who believe this gold band should be returned to him.”

  “That would be madness,” said X.

  “We agree on that point, you and I,” said Regent. “Now go. Do not squander your time wondering what is to come. Give Zoe and Sylvie the whole of your attention. One of them—I don’t know which—you shall never see again.”

  Regent turned his back, and once again the circle was a wall through which no light shone.

  Nearby, the Cockney and the other guards were making bets about what the lords would decide—happily flinging rings and hats and weapons in a pile on the ground.

  X couldn’t bear to watch.

  His eyes found Zoe and the others, who sat by one of the rivers. Maud was tending to Sylvie’s and the Ukrainian’s injuries. Vesuvius was climbing bossily all over everyone, looking to nest. He settled at last on Sylvie’s lap, remembering her even after 20 years. The two of them playfully butted heads. X saw Tree watching longingly from a distance, as if everyone’s affection for one another was a fire he wished he could warm himself by.

  X approached Zoe, and whispered for her to follow him.

  He led her under the archway, away from the guards and the lords, away from the Screaming Man, who seemed to know everything, see everything, feel everything. He pressed Zoe against the tunnel wall, and kissed her. As he did, she released a breath into his mouth—a sigh—that made him shiver.

  Zoe smiled, put a hand on X’s chest, and thrust him at the opposite wall. X all but left the ground as he flew backward. He’d forgotten that she had powers, too. He began to speak but Zoe strode toward him, and kissed him twice—once softly and with cool, parted lips, and once so forcefully that she seemed to want to find a way inside his body.

  “Which kiss did you like more?” she said.

  Dazed, X said only, “Yes.”

  She dipped her hands just below his waistband, and took hold of his hips. He was aware of every fingertip on his skin.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” she said.

  “Please,” he said.

  “I like these powers. I kinda want to keep them.”

  “I do not think it will be possible.”

  “What if I promise to only use them for little stuff—like helping people open jars?”

  X laughed.

  “You are in a playful mood,” he said. “I did not expect it.”

  She kissed him all the way down his throat. His body felt like a fuse that had been lit.

  “I’m going to take you home with me,” said Zoe. “I’m going to show you everything—everything good, everything the world’s got.”

  “I pray that you can,” said X.

  Zoe heard the uncertainty in his voice. She pulled back.

  “You don’t believe you’re going to get out of here?”

  “I want it far too much to believe it.”

  Voices crept in from the stadium, and the moment unraveled. X and Zoe left the tunnel hand in hand. The lords had disbanded. Everyone in the stadium had moved closer to Dervish. He didn’t bother standing, but seemed more in command of himself now. He glared at them all from the ground.

  Regent addressed the unlikely crowd.

  “It is Dervish’s own doing that we are gathered in the wilds of the Lowlands, where law and morality are but ghosts,” he said. “As such, it is his own fault that he shall not have the benefit of a true trial, nor have the right of redress.”

  “Prattle, prattle, prattle!” said Dervish. “Is my punishment being bored to death?”

  Regent ignored him.

  “It saddens—and sickens—me to announce that the lords are not in agreement about Dervish or the fate of this gold band,” he said. “We shall hear arguments for and against him. But first I think it only right that two more of Dervish’s victims be allowed to bear witness to this process. I call them to us now.”

  X and Zoe exchanged a confused look.

  Regent lifted his arm, and pointed at two cells on the second level of the stadium. One cell door sprang open, then the other. The metallic groans drifted down. X stood frozen, waiting to see who emerged from the first cell.

  It was a woman. Not many of the others recognized her because she was wearing a new gown.

  Ripper descended as if she had just been announced at a ball.

  X was stunned to see her again. He thought he’d lost her forever.

  Banger materialized from the second cell, looking sleepy and unkempt. The purple cowboy shirt X had given him once was only half-tucked into his jeans. Amazed that he was allowed to leave his cell, Banger looked down at the crowd, and shouted, “For the reals? Coolio!”

  “He’s a good guy,” Zoe whispered to X. “But he should be in the Lowlands just for crimes against slang.”

  When Ripper and Banger arrived on the stadium floor, they caught sight of Zoe, and stopped short. X waved his hands, trying to communicate that it was okay, that she was okay. Beside him, Zoe pounded her chest with a fist: I’m alive.

  X pointed to where Dervish sat crumpled and diminished. Ripper and Banger saw him now, too. Another shock. Ripper streamed at Dervish, scowling. Her feet were not visible beneath her dress, so she seemed to glide through the air.

  “You MAY NOT harm me, you harpy,” said Dervish when he saw Ripper bearing down on him. “I am defenseless and have ALL THE RIGHTS of a citizen of the Lowlands!”

  Ripper turned to Regent for clarification. Regent shrugged indifferently: Do what you like.

  Even without powers, Ripper had no trouble pulling up Dervish’s frail body. She punched him in the mouth three times in succession. When he fell, she clasped her hands, and brought them down on his head like a hammer striking an anvil.

  “Did you ENJOY that?” Dervish hissed when he could speak again.

  “I think you know I did,” said Ripper.

  Regent called the crowd back to order. He informed them that Dervish would be allowed to speak, but that first, they would hear from someone whose life he had taken upon himself to destroy.

  Sylvie stepped forward. She looked strong to X. Resolute.

  X caught Ripper’s eye.

  With a proud look, he told her: That’s my mother.

  “When I was a lord—when I was ‘Versailles’—I never understood why the Higher Power seemed to sleep through our most trying times,” Sylvie began. “Why allow Dervish to wreak havoc so long? Why not put a stop to it sooner? Was it because the Higher Power was disgusted by us, and had given us up for lost?” She paused. “I had twenty years to think about those questions when my son was taken from me, and Dervish chained me up in the Cave of Swords.”

  Sylvie stopped agai
n, and X feared that she wouldn’t be able to go on, that the memories of losing him would be too much. He felt a flash of panic, not just because she was his mother, but because she alone now stood between Dervish and freedom.

  “Do you want to hear what I realized after twenty years?” said Sylvie at last.

  X exhaled in relief. Zoe looped her arm around his waist.

  “I realized that when I was alive we asked the same kind of things about god,” Sylvie continued. “Maybe the people in your time did, too. Why is there evil in the world? Why is there suffering? We know that there’s a method to god’s ways, even if we can’t always divine it. So maybe there’s a method to the Higher Power’s ways, too. Maybe, like those poor fools up in the world, we’re supposed to find the path forward ourselves—to define for ourselves what’s right and what’s wrong. And we have an advantage down here, don’t we? We were all damned for being murderous, for being selfish and inhumane. Surely that’s a sign that we should try something else?”

  Zoe leaned into X, and whispered: “I had to give a eulogy for the Wallaces. It wasn’t this good.”

  “Dervish will never try anything else,” Sylvie went on. “He’ll continue to carve his self-loathing into a weapon, and he’ll continue to savage the prisoners of the Lowlands with it until the last clock in the universe stops. When it’s his turn to speak, I’m sure he will tell you the same thing. Dervish must be stopped for good—in both senses of the word. The lords and the guards aren’t supposed to beat the prisoners, or engage in any of the treacheries that Dervish is so fond of. Why? Because the true punishment here is psychic, not physical. It’s making a soul who’s been damned sit in the dark and contemplate his sins until his insides boil with regret. There’s no pain worse than that. You all know it because you’ve all felt it. Probably you feel it still.”

  Sylvie pointed to the stone statue screaming in terror.

  “That’s the face of a soul being ripped apart by guilt,” she said. “It’s not the face of a soul being beaten just because some crazed lord finds it amusing. If you have any doubts about what to do with Dervish—or with Zoe and my son, for that matter—think about the fact that the Higher Power allowed Zoe to come here and challenge Dervish. Think about the fact that the Higher Power allowed my son to tear the gold band from Dervish’s neck. You shouldn’t need any more evidence to do what’s right. Remember that the power that rules us is awake—and watching.”