The Nethers

by M. E. Parker

  “Git, Myron,” Lalana yelled.

  Behind him, Lalana moved in front of the head ghost as he pulled the trigger. Lalana took the ghost’s bullet and collapsed on the ground. “Lalana!” Myron ran for Chimney, both hands tugging Saul behind him.

  He climbed on the mule. Saul’s weight tugged at his foot. When Saul tried to pull him down with the chain, Myron kicked him in the head and then dug his heels into the mule. “Go, Chimney!” he yelled. “Go, Chimney!”

  The mule brayed with a kick and loped toward the western horizon, dragging Saul with them followed by a cloud of dust.

  Chimney loped through a draw and dashed over a hill as though a specter were nipping at his heels. Myron struggled to keep Saul’s weight from pulling them both to the ground. The dust cloud that dragging Saul left gave the pursuing ghosts an easy way to track them.

  Myron wrapped one arm around Chimney’s neck and with the other he hauled Saul onto the mule’s haunches. Saul’s head draped over one side, his mouth gaping open. His feet dangled over the other side. Myron couldn’t tell if the blows from the rocks the Chimney had dragged him across had killed Saul or just left him addled in mind darkness.

  Chimney reared at the sight of a ravine, dodging an outcropping and flying down the steep slope, unable to keep his footing. The mule stumbled and brayed, moaning more in agony than in reaction to Myron’s kick. Myron and Saul rolled off the mule as the jagged hills rose to meet them in the settling dust.

  Chimney brayed again. Myron spotted the mule’s hoof wedged in a crevice, the bone in the hock broken.

  “Shhhh,” Myron whispered, stroking the mule’s nose, scratching behind his ears. “Please. Shhhh.” He knelt beside Chimney and worked the hoof free. The mule limped forward and collapsed.

  A steam truck engine groaned from the other side of the hill, followed by a hiss of steam as it came to a stop. Then the only sound was a gust of wind whipping through the ravine. Myron watched Chimney’s flanks rise and fall with shallow breaths, praying he wouldn’t bray. Saul’s chest also showed signs of breath.

  Myron heard footsteps on the ridge above him. He tugged Saul under the cover of an overhanging rock formation, but he could do nothing about Chimney, sprawled out at the bottom of the ravine. Myron rolled Saul out of the way, their tethered legs separating them by no more than three feet. Voices muted by wind chattered atop the ridge. Saul stirred, letting out a faint moan. Myron held his breath.

  “Wha—” Saul muttered before Myron slapped his hand over his mouth.

  Chimney rolled, trying to stand, and brayed.

  “There’s the mule,” a ghost said. “Must be around here somewhere.”

  Myron hoisted Saul over his shoulder and stumbled in the shadow of the ridge in the opposite direction of the ghosts’ voices, toward the Nethers, where the ghosts wouldn’t go. Myron’s feet landed on stones and twigs. Drops of blood dripped from Saul’s head with each step, leaving a trail of blood into the Nethers.

  Chapter Three

  At the intersection of every bridge, in the stalls of the market, carried by the breeze, and with each groaning turn of the windmill, Sindra heard her baby’s cry, a delicate caw, leaving so many more questions than answers.

  Pinky had told her the baby didn’t make it. According to Somerville, her baby needed medical attention. Dromon said that the Great Above had taken her baby home.

  Sindra had heard the cry. She’d seen the faces in the room, no shock or concern, all looking at a healthy baby. Her longing to hold her child made her chest ache.

  Nico entered the room with a bowl of stew and fresh water. He sat down beside Sindra’s bed and wiped her tears with a rag. “I’m sorry, Sindra.”

  “Not hungry.” She pushed the bowl away.

  “I…” Nico placed the bowl on the floor. “I…think it’s wrong.”

  “What?”

  “That the presbyters didn’t let you see your baby.”

  “Fifty-fifty. I knew there was a risk my baby wouldn’t survive.” Sindra sat up in bed. “I thought I’d have a better chance here than out there somewhere.” She nodded in the direction of the Nethers. “Got no reason to stay now. Unlock the door.”

  “It only unlocks from the outside.” Nico rattled the door handle. “Dromon will open it soon.”

  “The minute that door opens, I’m gone.”

  “You can’t leave.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They won’t allow it.”

  “I don’t care what they allow.” Sindra charged at the door. She shook the handle, banged the door, punched and pushed. The heavy timber of the doorframe absorbed her blows. “Let me out of here!”

  Nico grabbed her shoulders from behind. Sindra swung, missing his head. She reached for the bowl of stew and hurled it at him. He dodged the blow from the bowl, but chunks of sinew and wild onion dripped from his face. “You’re just like them. I only stayed shut up in this dungeon ’cause of my baby’s health.” She groped for the bowl, picked it up again, and this time connected with Nico’s head.

  “I know you’re angry—”

  “Angry?” Sindra wrapped her hands around his throat. “If you see me angry, it will be the last thing you see.”

  Nico swatted her hands away and backed up against the wall. “I—well, I know where they took her.”

  “Her? My baby? She was a her?” Sindra imagined the face that would produce such a fragile cry. “Sam,” she whispered.

  “That’s right.” Nico pressed into the corner as Sindra edged closer, her hands on his chest.

  “Where is she? I have to see her.” Sindra had heard legends that coastal villages buried their dead by putting them in boats that leaked and setting them out to sea. “What sort of burial do you folks do around here?”

  Nico lowered his eyes. “I shouldn’t tell you this. They told you she died but sh—”

  “She’s not dead, is she?” Sindra ran at the door again, charging with her shoulder. She backed up and rammed it again, and a third time, screaming, “Where’s my baby?” She slid down to the floor, sobbing. “Where is she?”

  “She’s all right. She’s healthy.”

  “When will they let me see her?”

  “I don’t know. She’s with Orkin now.”

  “Where is Orkin?”

  Nico helped Sindra to her feet. “I don’t know where Orkin lives. On an island, I think. That way.” He pointed to the southwest. “He only shows up for festivals and rituals and such.”

  The lock clicked. Sindra wedged into the opening as the door creaked open.

  “What’s going on in here?” Dromon blocked Sindra’s path.

  “You stole my baby.” Sindra pounded Dromon in the chest as he wrapped her in his arms. She kicked at his bull eggs, landing instead on his shins. Coming up from behind him, two men pushed her to the ground on her stomach, one of the men resting his knee in the middle of her back. Sindra tried to wiggle free, but the other man’s hands were as strong as a vise.

  Dromon nodded toward a woman who kneeled beside Sindra. Another man clutched Sindra’s bicep, choking off the blood to her forearm. The woman stuck a needle into Sindra’s arm, plunging a murky liquid into her body. Within seconds, the medicine snuffed the sounds of the ocean and pulled a velvet curtain between Sindra and her world. Her arms, so heavy she couldn’t budge them, tingled until she could no longer feel them. Dromon spoke to her, but she could only smell his words, not hear them. For minutes or hours or seconds, a numb weight sat on her chest, her breath so slight that it conjured images of snowflakes drifting against a pale sky.

  Her legs would not move, so they carried her on a stretcher. The sky moved above her. Bursts of blackness shrouded her vision. Her heart thumped. She floated, as though death had claimed her, but instead of leading her on a pleasant journey to the Great Above, her custodian spirit was escorting her straight to the fires of the Chasm. When she stopped, a speaking man loomed over her. His voice flamed from his mouth.

  “I am Orkin.
”

  Dromon lifted Sindra’s face to look at Orkin.

  “The choice is yours. Absolve your unclean spirit in death,” Orkin raised the palms of his hands skyward, “as an offering to the Great Above—or undergo the purity ritual and join with Nico.

  “What will it be?” Orkin placed his hand on Sindra’s head. “Live in the word, or die?”

  Sindra shook her head, trying to focus, her vision blurry as the faces in the room spun into a fuzzy collage of flesh and scowls. She opened her mouth to speak. No words came out, only a string of drool. Her double vision produced an extra Nico, kneeling beside her with his head bowed.

  “Lif.” Her tongue, as though it were three times too big for her mouth, pushed the word out ahead of a mist of spit. “Live.” Sindra lowered her head and closed her eyes.

  Orkin raised both arms.

  “Ba—ba—baby?” Sindra coughed. “Where?”

  “Nico is the only man of joining age.”

  “He—he’s a kid,” Sindra whispered.

  “I’m twelve.”

  “Enough.” Orkin gestured for his presbyters to bring Sindra and Nico to the altar. “You will join with Nico, whose complete name is Nico Somerville. You will be known from this point forward as Somerville.”

  Sindra’s head rolled toward her shoulder as she protested. “Already,” she said between breaths, “a Somerville in village.”

  “There are four, to be exact. You will be the fifth.” Orkin received a torch from a hooded presbyter.

  “I can’t join with her. She’ll kill me.” Nico walked on his knees toward Orkin. “Please. Somebody else.”

  “You are the only unattached male old enough to consummate a proper joining.”

  Though Sindra did not know the meaning of the word consummate for sure, she had a good idea what it meant. Ghosts, admins, E’sters, Orkinites—all had it in their heads to ravage her like a carpie. One way or the other, wrapped in dressing or said outright, consummate would mean the same thing as what the ghosts had done to her.

  Regaining her lucidity in brief chunks, Sindra stood up and fell back to her knees. She pushed the matted hair from her eyes, so that Orkin could see the resolve in them. “He’s right. I will kill him.”

  The rest of the ceremony occurred with her still in a mental haze as thick as the smoke over Jonesbridge. On the hillside across the water, a long procession of chanting Orkinites carried torches that snaked in a line. Men in black robes hummed while women in blue sang an eerie tune as they strode in a circle around Sindra and Nico. Their voices resembled the sound wind makes when it howls against a pane of glass, and their figures cast long shadows that waved as the flames of the torches danced.

  Sindra had dreamed of joining with Myron someday. He’d promised to help her raise her baby. She’d risked everything, lost Myron and her baby, trading one prison for another. In Jonesbridge she’d had the satisfaction of her work, salvaging and repurposing, glimpsing bits of the past. When she lay on her cot at the end of the day, her fatigue had plummeted her into sleep. Here, she held no worth as a productive worker. She only sat and waited, so much so that she’d grown afraid her muscles would turn to jelly. Now, according to Orkin’s pronouncement, she and Nico were married.

  After the ceremony, the Orkin’s Landing village council assigned to Sindra and Nico, as their first dwelling, a wedding hut on the outskirts of town, a one-room hovel with one cot, one basin, a stove, and a rack of wooden plates and cups. Sindra and Nico stood opposite each other, Nico’s eyes on the floor, Sindra staring out the window, studying the bridges for the quickest way out of Orkin’s Landing.

  “What do we do now?” Nico sat on the cot and looked up at Sindra.

  “I don’t really care what you do. I’m going to find my baby.” Sindra pushed on the door.

  “No, you aren’t.” Four presbyters entered the tiny wedding shanty with a pack of chains, straps, and heavy fabric.

  “You, Somerville, are Nico’s wife.” One of the presbyters uncoiled a leather strap that resembled a harness.

  “My name is not Somerville!”

  The hooded figure who had taken Sindra’s baby followed the presbyters into the room.

  “You!” Sindra leaped toward the man and yanked down his hood. She groped in her pocket for the star Myron had made for her in Jonesbridge as a token of his affection, something that had gotten her out of more than one jam. She held the jagged point of Sindra’s star to his throat. “I want my bab—” Pain shot from the top of her head to her teeth. She bit her tongue and collapsed in darkness.

  When the faces came into focus above her, Sindra tried to rub her head, but, as she moved her arm, Nico’s arm moved with it, draped in fabric. She lifted both of her arms over her head, pulling both of Nico’s arms along for the ride. She yanked her foot back, and Nico’s came with it.

  “What is this?” She stood up, her limbs flailing in all directions but hampered by the pull of Nico’s limbs in the opposite direction. Her upper arm was chained to Nico’s upper arm, forearm to forearm, wrist to wrist, waist, legs, ankles, and neck tethered together with Nico’s.

  “That is a unity binding.” Dromon tapped the locking mechanism around Sindra’s wrist, one of fourteen different locks. “Only used in extreme cases. But once you have sanctified your marriage, we will undo the binding.”

  “If this kid lays a hand on me, he’s dead.” She jerked on the binding that resembled a chain straitjacket built for two.

  “So be it. If you kill him, then that only proves he isn’t a man suited for the world we live in.”

  Nico’s eyes widened. “But I’m not a man. I’m just a kid.”

  “Oh, now you’re a kid?” Sindra scoffed. “In that case, if this kid touches me, I’m coming for you.” She pointed at Dromon and then at the hooded man who’d taken her baby. Sindra flinched as they surrounded her, afraid someone would coldcock her again.

  The chemist entered the room carrying the same needle that had sent Sindra into the heart of the Chasm. “No! No!” Sindra whipped her head back and forth, flailing, pulling Nico with her as she rolled on the floor.

  The presbyters sat on her as the chemist administered the concoction into her arm. The walls, faces, and furniture kaleidoscoped into a blurry mess while her lungs searched for air.

  “Now, she’s not killing anyone.” Dromon stepped aside as the room emptied, leaving only Sindra and Nico. “I’m sure you will have her complete cooperation. I will return in the morning.”

  The unity binding forced Nico and Sindra to face each other, their eyes locking unless they made constant effort to adjust their gaze. With this dose of drugs, some of her fear abated. She closed her eyes and forgot. Missing Myron, the loss of her baby, the discomfort of the binding all slipped away into a stream that trickled out of sight until she awoke.

  • • •

  She opened her eyes to see Nico staring at her, and her memory of the unity binding made her wish for the drugs to make her forget again. “Well, I suppose this marriage has been consummated by now.” She was relieved that she’d gotten to sleep through being ravaged this time.

  Nico lifted his head and tried to stand, pulling Sindra with him. “No.” He avoided eye contact with her. “I—I couldn’t do that—force myself on someone. And…even if I was of a mind to do such a thing—which I’m not—I don’t know the first thing about consummating. You know? What goes where and when.”

  Sindra burst into laughter. “Now that’s something new.”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “No reason.” Sindra yawned. “How are we supposed to eat or take a squat in this thing?”

  “Dromon’ll come back and quiz us about last night. If we’re official-like, they’ll take this contraption off. If not, they’ll leave it on until—”

  “Just tell them we did it and be done with it.”

  Nico rubbed his forehead as though it hurt. “Didn’t you listen to any of what I read to you from the holy books? Lying is an abominatio
n. Except, according to the book of Vogue 1967, in the case of telling a woman she doesn’t look fat in a dress or lying about whether the lobster bisque has no taste.”

  “And tying people together for a forced sexing isn’t an abo—a bad thing?”

  “Not between joined-up people.”

  “We are not joined up.” Sindra gathered her hair and pinned it behind her ears. Nico’s hands followed her moves, his knuckles hitting her in the face.

  “Orkin joined us in the eyes of Judas and the Great Above.”

  “I don’t care. Orkin is a baby stealer.”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “Make me.” They tumbled to the floor. Restrained by the unity harness, they could manage no more than a scuffle with straps and limbs getting tangled in the fracas. As they struggled to gain footing, their bodies slammed against the only shelf in the room, toppling a pair of wooden cups and a bowl to the ground.

  The door unlocked. Dromon strolled in accompanied by three other presbyters. “Have you, in the eyes of the Great Above, made your union whole?” He glared at Nico, who bowed his head.

  “No, sir, we have not.”

  Sindra shoved Nico.

  Dromon turned on his heel, the way Rolf used to when he set out to investigate shittery on the salvage line. Pinky dropped a waterskin and followed the procession out of the room.

  “Hey, what about food?” Sindra grabbed the water. Nico’s hands rose to meet her face as she put it to her lips. Her hands then met Nico’s face when he wrested the water from her mouth and took a swig himself.

  “I have to drain.” Nico squirmed in the binding.

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “But I can’t help it.”

  They worked their way to their feet and made for the door, which was locked. The window, too, was locked. “We work together. Okay?” Sindra led them to the corner, to the squat hole in floor. “You go first. Then we’ll turn around and I’ll go.”