Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  He put the back of Hope's torso back into place, began to screw it back on. He was definitely going to have nightmares, he thought semi-hysterically, and forced himself to keep talking, keep moving as though this was normal. He projected a confidence he didn't feel, that this was just par for the course. "The memories are her true self. Of course she hopes for that. Right?"

  "Yes…" Survival said suspiciously.

  "But who she is, that's what surviving really is. It's not in having her body stick around. She's an Other, so survival is in her essence. Her memories are her surviving self. So you'd have the key." He finished tightening them, put the caps in place, patted Hope's side awkwardly. It felt like he'd just performed an operation. "Though I don't think I'd have realized that without getting a good look at Hope first anyway."

  Survival bristled. "You want to take me apart?!"

  "Yes," he said, and looked up at her nervously. "If you want her to ever really survive at all. Look, Hope's fine. So you know it won't damage you. Right?"

  "I'm fine," Hope agreed, and staggered upright. "We need to see inside you, Survival!"

  Survival seemed on the edge of retorting, but turned her grimacing face away. Without saying a word, she lowered herself, first kneeling, then reclining in front of him, changing places.

  He tried to make his exhalation as quiet as possible, still anxious. If the key wasn't in either of them, he'd have a problem for sure. Survival would lash out. Hope might give up.

  Wiping his hands off on his pants to dry his sweaty palms, he began to open Survival in the same way, finding the caps, popping them out, slowly unscrewing her back, then pulling the section free.

  And sure enough, hanging in the left side of her chest was a key. It was glowing with its own light, a bright lantern now that her back was off, shining out and sending the thick darkness to pile up in the corners, quivering.

  "Ah," he said, almost reverent, and drew it out slowly.

  Survival jerked under him. Keith froze, suddenly afraid he'd hurt her, but she just slowly turned her head.

  "So that's what it looks like," she said. She sounded calmer now, though her face was frozen in its grimace. "This room shouldn't have been like this at all, should it?"

  He swallowed around the sudden hammering of his heartbeat. He knew she meant the other parts of Marion she’d attacked.

  "Should and shouldn't is a big thing," he said cautiously. "You both were doing what you had to. And you… you don't remember what you are right now. So that key would take priority over protecting parts of you that don’t have any meaning to you yet."

  Survival closed her eyes. "Go through the door."

  "One moment first," he said, and put her back panel on again, securing it. "No reason to leave you worse than I found you."

  When he'd finished, he wrapped the cord for the key around a wrist and picked up the candle, carrying it in one hand. Survival rose, and wandered over to the pile of doll parts, looking down on it. "If I didn’t need to break these things," she wondered aloud, "can I repair them?"

  "I think… I think you can do whatever you think is necessary," Keith answered. It felt like a weak answer to him, a non-answer, but Survival half-turned, looking at him, then nodded.

  "Go through the door," she said again.

  He put the screwdriver back where he'd found it—no need to change anything carelessly—and nodded. "I will," he said. "Take care of things."

  "Don't worry!" Hope said lightly. "We've got everything under control out here."

  Well, she would say that. Despite the thought, he smiled at her, awkward, and headed to the door at the back of the room.

  The key fit. He turned it, heard the click, and took hold of the doorknob.

  chapter twelve

  It had looked like another, empty room was beyond the door, but once he stepped through, he was falling again, a sudden jerk and a drop that seemed to stretch for a dangerously long time. He closed his eyes instinctively, squeezing them tight.

  When Keith felt ground underfoot, it didn't come with any kind of impact. One moment he was falling, ungrounded, and the next he was standing on uneven rocky ground. He drew an unsteady breath in.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes again.

  He found himself standing in a narrow tunnel, the candle in his hand still. The tunnel was made of some kind of densely-packed smooth white rock, with occasional stalagmites rising from the ground, and came together in some kind of point overhead. It was so narrow that he could feel his shoulders brush either side as he breathed. He turned as best he could to glance behind himself, but the cave narrowed further immediately behind him, and it was clear that it would be impossible for him to go that way.

  It was very, very tight.

  He leaned against the wall and tried to keep himself from breathing too quickly, counting on each inhale and exhale, an old trick his therapist had taught him to help calm his anxiety. It didn't feel like it was helping as much as he remembered, but, he reminded himself, it never did at the time, only after.

  Although usually, he wasn't in someone else's mind trying to unlock their secrets.

  He shook his head to himself, forcing himself to stop thinking about the ache in his chest as he pushed off the wall, moving forward carefully. It felt hard to find his footing, the stones trying to roll under his feet, and he had to keep one hand out on the wall. After the first fifteen feet, the path started to widen and the ground underfoot seemed to steady again, as if the stones were packed more tightly, and he noted they were taking on more irregular shapes, knobby, some drawn out into almost rod-like shapes, some discs—

  Bone, he realized abruptly. Like something out of pictures he'd seen of Paris's catacombs, the walls and floor were all made out of tightly packed bones.

  He couldn't stop moving, still stumbling forward, a chill running through his body from where his hands were brushing over the too-smooth knobby shapes on the wall. But almost as soon as he realized what he was touching, the ambient light started to get brighter.

  At first, he thought it was in reaction to his realization, that it wanted to expose more of the bones to him more clearly, but as he stepped forward again, he turned his eyes upward and realized the point the ceiling had come to was actually a slowly-widening crack, letting hints of sunlight in.

  He continued onward, trying not to look too closely at the bones, but watching that crack as it widened more and more, until he wasn't in a tunnel but instead was in a trench. It would still be impossible to climb out with how steep the walls were, but he could see a blue sky distantly above.

  The sudden sense of being out of confinement—even knowing it wasn't real, even knowing this was just still another area of her mind and memories—pushed him on, and he began to move faster, breaking into a jog as the trench wound on and on. The bones were much more stable here, and though he kept his initial unsteadiness in mind, none of these ones seemed to be turning under him.

  Following it blindly was fine when there was only one way to go, but he was brought up short as he reached a break in the path. There he had to pause, looking down both directions. They both seemed to go on for a while, one winding around a corner, the other seeming to split again some ways down. Neither had anything to recommend them over the other, and he kept looking back and forth. There had to be some hint, some clue. This wasn't physical space, after all.

  Movement flickered down the path that split again, and he jerked his gaze to that just as an adult stag staggered out of one of the ends of the junction, bloody and with its legs shaking, barely holding itself upright. It looked at him with sudden panic, freezing only for a few seconds before veering off down the other part of the junction.

  A stag.

  He didn't even try to think anything more than that, just took off running, following that path to the next split, then taking the leftmost path. The stag was out of sight already, but Keith followed the bloody trail to wherever it wanted to lead him.

  "Even if," he muttered aloud, mo
stly to hear some kind of sound in the unnaturally silent bone trench, "it doesn't look like he'll live long enough to lead me very far."

  He regretted saying it as soon as he did. The empty area seemed to be absorbing the sound of his voice, almost sucking it out of him. There was someone here to hear his horrible prediction, he reminded himself; he wasn't alone here, even if there was nobody in sight. He was surrounded by her.

  He had to be more careful about what he said.

  Keith followed the blood around a corner and found a widened nook built into the trench wall: benches made of bone set up with blankets, supplies. Abandoned military uniforms and helmets, gas masks, a medical kit. He grabbed the last at once. He wasn't sure how to patch up a deer, but since it was injured, having something was better than having nothing.

  He hesitated, then snagged the gas mask as well, sticking an arm through the straps and letting it dangle from an elbow for now. There was no battle going on that he could tell, trench or not, not with the silence outside the trench and the lack of people milling around in it, but he knew history, and knew what this sight meant. Better safe than sorry when it came to gas.

  Nothing else seemed of immediate interest in the nook, so he continued down the trench, but had only just rounded the next corner when he came across the stag lying on the ground.

  "Oh…" He hardly noticed himself moving. One moment he was at the bend, the next his knees were aching from having slid in next to the animal. It was alive, lifting its head to eye him warily, and he put his candle down on a nearby skull and passed a hand over its bloodied side. It looked as if it had been whipped, long lacerations across its flank and ribs, but not too deep. Hopefully if the blood loss was stemmed, it—he—would be fine. "You poor thing. Does she remember you—is she, is she the bone girl? Are you supposed to be some representation of the horned—of Hiraeth?"

  The stag froze and a strange sound filled the air in an instant. He realized after a heartbeat that it was wind wailing through the trench. He couldn't feel anything, not even a breeze, but that was the only thing that could be making that wailing whistle.

  Keith shivered, despite the lack of chill.

  "You are," he said. "Some memory of him, or some thought of him…"

  The stag blinked at him slowly, almost docilely—or rather, sleepily, and Keith abruptly remembered the injury. "Right," he said. "Sorry. Seriously sorry. Let me get this treated."

  He opened the medical kit he'd found. Not much was inside, apparently having been picked over already, but there were at least lengths of gauze. Better that than letting him bleed everywhere, Keith figured. "Here," he said. "I have to get you upright to get this around you. Bear with it, will you?"

  The stag gave a shudder, then forced himself onto his knees without Keith having to pull him up, trembling with effort. He didn't stand, but the change in position at least made enough of a space that Keith could pass the gauze around his body.

  "All right," he muttered. "Sorry for having to press on this—it's going to hurt. You understand me, right?"

  He began to wrap the stag's middle with the gauze, passing it around and around, pulling it as tight as he dared to in the hope of putting pressure on the wound. "Wish right now that I'd taken some kind of first aid course," he muttered, and the deer eyed him askance. "Yeah, I know, not comforting to hear, huh. But I'm pretty sure that pressure on it will make it bleed less. Pressure and elevation, but we can't exactly lift your side over your heart…"

  The stag seemed to roll its eyes.

  Keith snorted a weak laugh despite himself. "If I hadn't already guessed you were supposed to be Hiraeth," he said with exhausted humor, "I'd have figured it out there. Wow. I don't know what I'm doing here, you know? I know I'm supposed to be navigating her mind and memories, and everything's appearing in symbols like we expected, but it's not like I really know her. I don't know what this represents. A real war? Or just some kind of conflicting feeling? Entrenched in bone, sure, but why or how—"

  The stag didn't reply, breathing shallowly. Keith got a sense that it was deliberate, to keep the wrappings from being tied on too loosely.

  "I don't know what to do with this image I'm seeing. How do I make this part of her past accessible to her? Or have I already, just by unlocking the door earlier? But if that's true, why am I still here? How do I get out of here? When do I know when I'm done?"

  He finished with the gauze, running out at around the same time as the wound seemed as covered as it was going to get. The coincidence was at least reassuring that he was doing the right thing, solving whatever he was meant to do here.

  "Okay," he said, closing the medical kit and tucking it down out of the way at the side of the trench, since there was nothing left in it he could use. He picked up the candle again. "Hope that helps."

  The stag swayed, then staggered to his feet. He shifted from foot to foot, as if testing how he felt, then turned, lowering his head.

  Feeling a little awkward, Keith put his hand on it. "Uh… now what?"

  Shaking his head, the stag bumped his antlers into Keith's hands. Unable to see what else he could do, he closed his hands around them obligingly, candle still in one, pressed between the horns and his palm. "Is this—"

  Without warning, the stag swung his head. He was strong, much stronger than Keith had anticipated, and the movement lifted him off his feet, slamming him halfway onto the stag's back. Keith let out a breathless swear as the stag's bony spine hit him hard in his inner thigh, just barely avoiding it being much more painful. He flung an arm around the stag's neck as he righted himself on the animal's back.

  It was that or falling down, but he wasn't entirely sure that he'd picked the right one of the two options. "Are you okay?!" His thigh was brushing the stag's injured side, which couldn't be comfortable.

  The stag let out an impatient huff, and suddenly was moving, legs pumping under Keith, dashing down along the trench.

  Keith was abruptly very grateful that he'd already been leaning forward. He clung to the stag's neck with a desperate embrace, keeping his body low, almost plastered to the animal's back. The stag smelled familiar, desperately familiar, wet leaves and wilderness. Wax dripped backward from the candle onto his hand, burning.

  He wanted out, he wanted to wake up, he wanted to go back to his own body. Maybe Hiraeth had finished researching already and was leaning over him, and Keith was smelling him in real life too. Maybe it was just the bone girl recognizing the familiar smell in the bedroom and filling this symbol out more.

  Even knowing the stag was meant to be 'Hiraeth' in the symbolic landscape wasn't enough. This was just an image, a representation. The real one was out there, and Keith was lonely, wanted to rest, wanted the company.

  But he didn't wake up.

  The stag picked up unnatural speed, then sprang, launching itself onto a narrow bone shelf, finding another across the way, up and up until it leapt completely out of the trench.

  And suddenly the silence made sense.

  The sky had seemed blue inside the trench. Outside, he realized those were strips of color that only perfectly lined up with the trenches themselves. Around them, dark clouds like the underside of a stormy sea roiled and shuddered, the blue strips of sky cracks in the clouds just as the trenches were cracks in the ground.

  And it wasn't ground the same way that the bones hadn't been rock: The battlefield was nothing but corpses.

  Male, female, old, young, thin, fat, and those that fell between or couldn't be identified. Some were shot, others burned, others with foam on their lips as if they'd been ill. Yet more had been bisected, ripped limb from limb, spilling guts everywhere. They did not smell, thankfully, nor did they make any sound as the stag galloped across them, but Keith could feel the stag's footholds rolling and pitching underfoot, too realistically. There was no field underneath the bodies from what he could tell. The entire area appeared to be made of bodies piled on top of each other, as if they had replaced the ground itself.

 
His fingers went numb and clammy. He couldn't stop himself, had to lean over off the side of the stag and throw up. He barely kept his grip, but the stag didn't slow down. If anything, he went faster, as if realizing that it was only a matter of time before Keith fell off entirely, and not wanting him to fall into the corpses.

  Keith was grateful for that, at least.

  Once he'd emptied his stomach, he closed his eyes tight and just leaned on the stag's back, hoping he could keep his grip, trying to wipe the image from his mind and think of nothing but the stag's familiar smell. He entered what felt almost like a trance, just thinking of wilderness, nature, returning home.

  And abruptly, the stag stopped.

  Keith whimpered. He didn't want to open his eyes, didn't want to see, but as long seconds ticked on and the stag wasn't moving, he realized there wasn't going to be another option.

  He forced his eyelids apart.

  The corpse battlefield was gone. The deer stood at the opening to a forest, facing it. Mist floated around, a thick fog that seemed to be a wall filling all the spaces between the trees. Keith didn't look behind them, just in case.

  "Thank you," he said, mouth sour with bile. "Thanks for… for making that quick."

  What would have happened, he wondered, if he hadn't gone after the stag, if he'd climbed out of the trench himself somehow, or if he had taken another path? Would he have had to cross that field on his own, slowly, feeling it underfoot himself?

  "Thanks," he said again.

  The stag snorted, and lowered his head. He wasn't moving any further, so Keith took that as a sign to dismount, climbing off him unsteadily.

  "In there?" Keith asked. The stag bobbed his head, so Keith shuddered, hating how his legs were aching, weak, didn't want to hold him, and started toward the foggy path.

  The stag let out a noise, almost a yell, and stepped in front of him. Keith jerked backward, staggering. "What? But I thought…"

  A quick shake of his head, and then the deer nudged at Keith's arm, the gas mask he had almost forgotten.