by Sarah Chorn
“In my barrow, I can stand against anyone,” the smiling stranger replied. Taub had her pinned, fingers digging into her skin. She watched as the skin on his hand faded away to bone, and then back to skin. He was flashing between forms like he couldn’t control himself.
“You know what you need to do?” The stranger asked him.
“I have a…” Taub’s voice trailed off thoughtfully. “Need, I suppose it could be called. I cannot understand it, but I see the shape of it, and I know what must happen, and soon.”
“You will do it, Bone Lord?”
“I have come so far. I am ready.”
Mouse screamed. She tried to release herself from the earth’s hold, but it was useless. She gave up with a gasp, her body going limp.
The journey down to this room had been fast, and rather shocking. The Bone Lord had kept a hand on her the whole way, as though he’d been afraid she’d run from him, and she might have. Looking for that tunnel entrance was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Some part of her knew once she found it, there would be no going back. The finality of it frightened her. But she couldn’t deny him. She was tied to him. He was the center of her world, and she was stuck to him like glue. If he told her to turn left, she’d feel an aching, almost painful yearning to do just that. He could command her to do anything, absolutely anything, and while she might rail and spit at him for it, she was powerless to say no to him.
She’d come down here, knowing she’d never go back up again. She’d never emerge from this musty, hidden world and breathe fresh air. She’d never see the stars, or look up at the moon. She’d never lay on her back in some random field with Neryan and tell outrageous stories until they both fell asleep. She’d never listen to him pester and annoy her. She’d never see him smile again.
He was gone and soon, she would be too.
“Relax,” Taub whispered in her ear. “Calm down.”
And she did, because she could do nothing else. All her fight and fire fled and her body eased.
The stranger crouched down in front of her, and she glanced up. His eyes were an uncanny shade of green and his brow was furrowed into a serious, considered frown. His skin was pale, with almost a green tinge to it. He was unlike anyone she’d ever seen. He looked young, no lines on his face, no scars or marks on his hands. He was fresh as a babe, but he wore his age in his eyes. He’d seen lifetimes. Generations. Horrors she couldn’t even imagine. For a moment, he let her see just how marked he truly was.
The scars that cannot be seen are always the ones that have cut deepest.
She shuddered and gasped, averting her eyes. It was too much—all that time, all those things seen by one man, all the sorrow in that gaze. It was the loneliness that really tore into her soul. He was the loneliest person she’d ever seen, like he’d spent his life crying out for someone, anyone. It must have been a terrible thing to break his silence, just to scream and still not be heard.
Mouse shook, and a tear slipped from her eye, rolling down her cheek. He cupped her face, his thumb wiping away her sorrow.
“What you see in this room is horrible,” he whispered softly, “but trust me, it is for the best.”
“How can you say that?” she asked. “How can that be true?”
A hand on the back of her neck. The world dragging her down. A stranger wiping away her tears. A dead father. A belly full of souls seeking a way out. She was overwhelmed.
“How can one person hold so much sorrow?” she whispered, looking deep into his eyes. He smiled a little, one side of his mouth ticking up at the edge.
“Sometimes there is no choice, little bird. Sometimes the jug must be filled. My water is heavy. I am ready to share it with others.” He looked around the room, eyeing Vadden, Taub, and the two dead men. “You are sacrificing so much, Mousumi. You are giving up everything. I want you to know that I see that. I want the mother of the world to know that she is seen.”
She never asked how he knew her name. It didn’t matter. Not really.
“You see me,” she whispered, leaning into his hand. His touch was comforting, and now she was crying for another reason entirely. He saw her. What a gift it was to be seen. It was the only thing she’d ever really wanted, to stand in the center of the world and have people actually see her. Not just see a street rat, or some kid, another mouth to feed, or girl with no home and no place. But actually see her. Neryan had, but this man was different. He transformed her with his understanding.
“Yes,” he said, and now his fathomless eyes that had seen eons come and go were full of gratitude. “And you are going to make all of this work. When it happens, it will not hurt.”
“It won’t?”
“No, my darling. It won’t. It will be like breathing and then you will be…” his voice trailed off. He got to his feet and stepped away. “Free.”
In the corner of her eye she saw Vadden but he didn’t seem to know what was going on. He was still rocking the corpse, whispering things over it that no one could hear. His lightning had faded. She’d never seen a person look so ruined. He wasn’t a man but a being severed from himself. He was contained, but barely, probably just because of where they were. What would that be like, to love so fully that one person could destroy another so completely?
“I’m ready,” Taub said from behind her. The earth braced her legs tighter, covering them up to the knees with soil.
He was ready, and she was full, so full she ached. Painfully full. Ready to be done. Exhausted. She wanted to stop hurting.
She’d lived an exciting life. She’d laughed a lot. She’d loved. She’d been a child and had a family. She’d been one of the lucky ones but now fate held a knife against her neck and all of that was history.
She was grieving for herself. For the world.
Odd how grief felt so much like fear.
She wanted to live. She wanted to go on into a bright, glorious future, set her feet on the hard ground, and feel the sun on her one last time; but she didn’t get to choose how she’d end, or when, and here she was kneeling on the edge of a cliff that tumbled down into the unknown, just an instant shy of falling. No sunlight. No standing. She’d go bravely, kneeling, feasting her eyes on the man she’d loved like a father, and filling her heart with knowledge that she’d been seen, once, by someone who mattered.
There would be no tomorrow. Not for her.
The souls in her belly roiled. They began tearing her apart from the inside.
Taub toyed with her hair. “Are you ready?” he asked.
She shuddered. “Yes.”
And she was. She didn’t have to know what came next to know this had been her destination from the moment she drew her first breath of life.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered.
“You won’t,” Taub replied.
“Seraphina is coming,” the stranger said, standing suddenly. The hard, transparent wall of his barrow seemed to shimmer in the corner of her eye. It looked like it was melting, heat pouring into the space. Everyone tensed, anxious silence filling the room. Seraphina’s screams suddenly cut off, and somehow the silence was worse than her endless cries.
Mouse saw a flash of orange, heard the crackle of flame and then—
The knife was sharp, fast, and true.
Mouse gasped, her eyes going wide. In a flash, she understood. She knew who she was, and why. She grasped why this little death of hers was so very, very important. Everything made such perfect sense. She exhaled and felt all those souls she’d sucked up being released from the prison of her body. It was a relief so exquisite it blocked out any pain. She heard Taub howl behind her. Felt her skin fade. Disappear. She was Becoming…
Transforming…
Dying…
Disappearing…
Being born…
The earth pulled her under. Taub roared out his agony. The world trembled. The air filled with souls. She was blessedly empty, so very, very empty. Finally, she was nobody but Mouse and she had done what she’d been bo
rn to do. Life would continue on. People would keep on living after this. They’d all enter a new era, and they wouldn’t be alone. No, not after all the souls she’d been carrying around inside of her found the bodies the Bone Lord had been saving up, just for this moment.
And then…
He was right. Dying was a lot like breathing.
Vadden
Everything in him snapped when he saw Eyad breathe his last.
He’d spent so long both loving and hating this man. He’d been torn down, and lifted up. He’d run both toward and away from him. Not an hour ago, he’d been holding a knife against the flesh over his husband’s heart with every intention of piercing it. The world was a better place without Eyad directing events.
But when Eyad blew the last of his life out between pale lips, opened his eyes, and stared at nothing, Vadden had stood helplessly, hopelessly above him. He knew other things were happening. Something was going on with Mouse. A man was with her that he’d never seen before. Neryan was dead. Seraphina was coming to destroy them all.
He should care, but he didn’t.
It took this one, final loss for him to realize just how much he’d loved this man he’d also profoundly hated.
Seraphina was finally arriving, the room heating up with her approach. What had taken her so long? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He had to get control of himself. Vadden rubbed the tight skin over his heart, felt part of it shatter. He could mourn Eyad, mourn all they had been to each other. Mourn what they could have been. Mourn their lost dreams and their massacred hopes. Later. He’d do it later.
Right now, however, Mouse was here and Seraphina was coming and he felt all the parts of him churning and turning. He was changing, and it hurt. It actually physically hurt. His lightning was burning him up. His storm was destroying him. He crouched down beside the body of his husband, not really seeing him anymore. He wrapped himself in silence, but there was a cyclone inside of him, eating away at that fragile bond he still had with the dregs of his humanity. He’d thought he’d already broken, but now he realized that he hadn’t broken, not all the way. Some part of him had stayed a man. He was losing that part now, and it was torture.
The last part of Vadden buried down deep in his soul, that fleshy mortal with all his moral qualms, the heart he needed to beat, and the soul that ceaselessly yearned. He was still there, hidden away, suffocating under all that the Storm Lord was. Just enough of him to make this moment an acute agony.
Vadden was dying his final death.
He picked up the body of his husband, held it in his arms, and pressed his lips to its forehead. When he’d been alive, Eyad’s body had been Eyad. Now he was dead, and his body had suddenly transformed to an it. It was a thing, a weight, a load pulling at the soft flesh of Vadden’s soul, threatening to drown him.
It was time to say goodbye. To Eyad. To the man he had been.
“I loved you,” he whispered into his husband’s hair, “as the moon loved the night.” He pressed his lips to Eyad’s forehead again, felt tears slip from his cheeks, land on his face.
He looked up in time to see the stranger with Mouse draw a knife across her throat and the blood pour out of her, Lyall crouching beside her, whispering as she died. She was held fast, earth locked around her ankles. She didn’t struggle. Her eyes were wide, fixed on Neryan’s corpse.
The air suddenly felt full. Thick and ripe, but also full of something he couldn’t understand, like he was in a crowded room full of people he couldn’t see. The air moved, grew thicker and fuller until it wasn’t just the few of them in this cavern, but a world of people and none of them visible. Then, in a blink, they were gone.
Mouse sighed her last breath from her torn throat and the ground drank up her blood, carrying it down so not even a red blemish remained on the soil. She paled and collapsed. She began to disappear into the earth, the world sucking her body in, pulling her under. Then she was gone, scrubbed from the world like a blemish. Vadden would carry her memory. She would not be forgotten, he vowed to himself.
Another ache. Another scar on his soul. More weight for him to carry. She’d been just a girl. A girl. She’d been vibrant and young, full of possibility with those big black eyes, and that impossibly curly hair. She’d loved fiercely and lived just as hard. She’d survived when so many others hadn’t, just to die down here on the edge of a stranger’s knife, and then disappear into the soil like she was part of it.
All this death. How could one man hold it all?
Dimly he was aware of the man who had slit Mouse’s throat wailing, his arms buried in the soil up to his elbows, his body shifting from skin to bones and back again in flashes of light that nearly left him blind. The earth shook, the ground rumbling.
He wondered if this was what it was to go insane. He’d cracked just enough when Amiti died; but now Mouse, Eyad, and Neryan were dead and what was there to hold onto anymore? The rip in his sanity was there, wide and deep. It had pulled him apart. His river of grief carved out a canyon of anguish, and now it was swallowing him whole.
Vadden watched the stranger flash between forms with wide, horrified eyes as Lyall crossed to him, his footsteps slow and measured. “It will be all right,” he said, his hand resting on Vadden’s arm. “It will be—”
“Nothing will ever be all right again,” Vadden hissed.
With a voice laced with excitement and fervor, he said, “Explode, Vadden. Crumble. Become dust. Embrace the darkness and conquer it with a burst of madness. Shred your soul and rip yourself apart. For when the dust settles you will find yourself reborn.” There was a weighty pause. “The brightest things are created by intense pressure.”
Vadden didn’t reply. He could feel the explosion starting. It was low down right now, a simmering rumble in the darkest part of his soul, but it was spreading out. Soon he’d erupt like a volcano and all that lava would melt away the last of his humanity.
“Some things demand to be felt, so feel,” Lyall said.
He was feeling. He was so overwhelmed by feeling he could hardly move, hardly think, hardly talk. He couldn’t breathe. His heart hurt. His soul was fractured. There was light spilling out of him. He had lightning in his mouth and thunder in his ears. He had no body. He didn’t need one. There was too much in him, all of it yearning to pour out and something down low, deep down, was changing, still changing. Wasn’t he done with this yet? All this changing, churning and turning.
Death. So much death.
He just wanted to feel settled again.
Lyall watched him, eyes fixed on him, waiting for him to make a move, to do something, say something. But he had no words left. Words were meaningless. He couldn’t do anything with them. He couldn’t fashion them into a sword and stab them into Lyall’s chest. He couldn’t use them to bring back Neryan, or call Mouse up from the earth, or fill Eyad with life. Words couldn’t turn back time and place, and words certainly couldn’t bridge that chasm inside of him, that rift that was boiling with madness.
Seraphina would ravage. Who could ever hope to stand against fire? That stranger, the man who had come with Mouse, had his hands in the ground. He was still screaming, though it was cutting off now. He was growing slow and tired, waning.
“Seraphina is coming,” Vadden said. “And something is waking up in the east.” He finally looked at Lyall, fixed him with his eyes. “What is happening?”
“You are ascending.”
“Enough with this mysterious shit. Tell me what is happening. I deserve to know. If I am meant to survive this with any ounce of sanity left, you need to give me something to hold onto. I am not like Neryan. I do not like to drown. It is not my nature. I cause floods. I am not the flood.”
There was a long beat of silence, and then Lyall seemed to reach a decision.
“The heart of the world is dying,” he finally said. “The heart is what keeps the world alive. It pumps out life and magic. Without it, everyone dies. We are ascending so we can heal it. The world has chosen all of
us to be her conduits, her blood, and soul. We are here so that life may go on.”
“She has chosen some horrible vessels to carry this out. None of us are whole, Lyall. We are all broken.”
“Yes, but if you weren’t broken, how would the light get in?”
The man across the room stopped howling, and Lyall got up and walked over to him, bent down and started whispering. Mouse was gone now, completely submerged, and when he looked at the wall where he’d entered the cavern, he saw a flash of orange, felt a burst of fire, and realized that Seraphina was here.
Seraphina. Beautiful, impossible, untamable Seraphina.
For a creature made of fire, she had a grace that surprised him. She didn’t burn her way into the room, rather quietly entered it, her body hovering somewhere above the earth, toes barely dragging on its surface, head held high, eyes wide, seeing everything. She looked like a goddess now, a woman with fire for skin and an inferno for a soul. Anger lined her features, made her hard. The flame that made up her body, its constantly shifting tones of orange and yellow, made her hard to look at for long. Her entrance was all the more dramatic for the quiet nature of it. She spoke not a word. She did not immediately set to rending and burning, the way Vadden was sure he would have. She just flowed into the barrow, all that fire and might carefully controlled, the strands of flame that made up her hair shifting in a chaotic halo around her, carried by a wind that only she could feel.
On her back was a pair of gorgeous, unbelievably beautiful wings that burned and fluttered, rising up above her head, and trailing low on the ground, like the wings of a moth, decorated by constantly-burning whorls of flame, moving slowly, keeping her hovering where she was.
Belatedly, Vadden realized her right leg still seemed to be twisted. She held a cane of fire in her left hand. Apparently ascending had not healed her. He wondered how she felt about that.
She didn’t seem to see anyone in the room, just scanned it for some time, eyes flicking from wall to wall, slowly, as though she was saving her brother’s corpse for last, gathering her courage to face what she already knew had happened to him. Lyall noticed her, and stood. He looked both nervous and excited, and waited.
