Grave

by Michelle Sagara

  It was warmth she needed now. She closed her eyes briefly before tightening that hand and squeezing Michael’s fingers. She didn’t know what the dead person felt, if they felt anything at all. Maybe they were just too afraid of falling to have room for anything else. Michael was just afraid for Emma.

  Petal nosed around them both; Emma opened her eyes to a face full of anxious rottweiler. The dog-breath she got anyway. But both seemed right, now. “Help me,” she whispered to Michael. “Help me pull them up.”

  And he did.

  Inch by inch, the hand that Emma had grasped so desperately became arm, wrist appearing first, and extending—agonizingly slowly—into elbow. She pulled, the force of her weight and Michael’s almost knocking her off her knees.

  “I can see an arm!” Michael said, loudly, in her ear. He had forgotten himself enough to speak loudly—his natural volume. Years of practice at lowering that volume deserted him, and Emma, ears ringing, didn’t care.

  “I can see it as well,” Ally said. “Chase—”

  Emma felt arms around her waist. Unfamiliar arms, in a very rough grip. Chase, she thought, surprised.

  “What? I’m being careful.”

  She wanted to weep, but these tears were not tears of despair or fear. He was stronger than either Michael or Emma; he pulled Emma back while Emma held on. The arm gave way to shoulder, to elongated neck, to a face. A face.

  Emma couldn’t tell whether it was a boy’s face or a girl’s; it was a young face. Older than Helmi but not yet the age of Emma and her friends, long and thin with wide cheekbones and gaunt cheeks. Emma knew the worst was almost over; Michael’s hands tightened—which shouldn’t have been possible—as the dead person at last pulled free.

  Her absence left an indent in the floor, not a hole, and she blinked rapidly, as if her eyes were real and she hadn’t seen light for most of her life. Her lips, both thin and wide, trembled as she looked, at last, at Emma.

  “Emma?” she whispered. Emma thought she was twelve or thirteen; she wasn’t dressed the way the rest of them were, but Emma couldn’t pinpoint her era from her clothing. Amy might have been able to, but Emma didn’t ask her; it wasn’t relevant.

  “Yes,” Emma told the girl. “I’m Emma. I’m sorry—I don’t know your name.”

  “Furiyama Tsuki,” the girl replied. “You speak my language.”

  Emma didn’t. She spoke English with a smattering of French—French with questionable pronunciation.

  “Dead is dead,” Helmi said, speaking for the first time. “If she can see you, she can understand you—if you want to be understood.” She glanced almost guiltily at Emma’s hand—the one she herself was holding.

  The girl stared at Helmi for a long, silent beat. “You . . . are dead?”

  “So are you.”

  And Emma remembered that the dead—some of the dead—couldn’t immediately see the others. She didn’t understand how vision worked for the dead. Now was not the time to ask, and even if it had been, what could this girl tell her?

  Helmi, to Emma’s surprise, surrendered her hand, and drifted to the far side of the room—closest to the open window, the absence of the dead.

  Emma, one hand free, began to shake. It was a mixture of rage and triumph and exhaustion—something had to give. But not now. Not now. She dropped her numb free hand to the top of her dog’s head and glanced gratefully at Michael, whose fingers were probably stiff, they’d held hers so tightly for what felt like so long. “We did it,” she told him. “Thank you.”

  Chase had released her waist the minute the girl had been pulled free. “No gratitude for me?” he asked, grinning. Before she could answer, he added, “It’s okay. I’ll get it from Allison.”

  Her brows rose—but so did the corners of her lips; they twitched. It felt as though it had been years since she’d actually smiled. Allison punched his shoulder, and that fixed the smile in place, allowing it to grow. Chase said ‘ouch’ in a deadpan tone.

  Emma thought: I love these people.

  “We’re going to need to eat,” Ernest said, before she could actually embarrass herself by saying anything out loud. “There’s water—drink that. If you feel tired or short of breath, it’s the altitude.”

  “Or raw terror,” Amy added, looking as if terror were as far from her as it was possible to get.

  “Or that, yes.” Ernest exhaled. “Margaret. Explain what just happened to someone who is too old and fixed in his ways to understand it.”

  Helmi snorted, but this time, Ernest couldn’t hear her. Just as well.

  “I’m not certain that I have an explanation. I think, judging by expression, Helmi does. But Emma looks exhausted, and I don’t think it’s a good idea for Helmi to talk to all of us at this time.” She looked at Tsuki and at Tsuki’s hand. Emma had not released it.

  She was almost afraid to do so. What would happen to the girl if she did? Would she somehow go back to being part of the floor? She looked toward that floor and froze.

  “Em?”

  What had been solid and flat beneath her feet—beneath all of their feet—no longer looked like floor. “Ally—what—what does the floor look like, to you?”

  Allison frowned. “The floor? It looks—it looks almost the same. I’d say there’s a slight warping, but I wouldn’t notice it if I hadn’t been here when you pulled Tsuki through it.”

  “I didn’t pull her through the floor,” Emma said, voice almost a whisper. “I pulled her out of it. She was part of the floor.”

  “Em, what do you see? What are you looking at?”

  “Hands,” she said, voice faint. “Just . . . hands and arms. It’s like they’re reaching up out of a dark pit. I can’t see anything else. No faces . . .” She closed her eyes. Swallowed. Michael squeezed her hand, but he said nothing before he let her pull away. He then turned to look at the floor, and Emma, out of habit, let her gaze follow him.

  The hands passed through Michael as he knelt; they grasped blindly at air. They were silent as they moved, the gestures of each individual and chaotic. Michael couldn’t see them, which was a mercy. Emma couldn’t unsee them, which wasn’t.

  But she hated it; she thought that Michael, of all people present, would grab each of the blindly grasping hands if he had the ability.

  “Is the whole city like this?” Emma asked Helmi.

  Helmi, like Emma, was looking at those hands; her own, she reflexively curled. “Probably. What you’re seeing now—it’s because of what you did. It’s not the way the city looks, even to the dead. Not—not normally.” She shook her head. “You want to help. But if you did—if you could—the entire structure would fray and disintegrate. While you—and your friends—are in it.”

  “But they—”

  “We’ve been like this for a long time,” Helmi continued. She wouldn’t meet Emma’s eyes.

  “You haven’t,” Emma countered.

  “. . . No. Not like this.” Helmi looked up. “I don’t love my sister,” she whispered. “I did, once. Sometimes I remember her as she was before—before they came to kill us. Before Eric died. When we were alive, she could never have done this. Before she met Eric, she would never have tried.” In a softer voice, she added, “That’s why I hate Eric.”

  “Eric didn’t ask her to do this,” Emma replied. It wasn’t a question.

  Helmi shrugged. “Does it matter, to the dead? If it weren’t for Eric, she wouldn’t have done it. That’s our truth.” She then looked at Emma. “You loved Nathan.”

  It was a blow, but it wasn’t the body blow it would have been a month ago. Or two. Emma said, clearly, “Yes. I loved Nathan.”

  “Would you have resurrected him if you knew how?”

  “If resurrection meant bringing him back, yes. Yes, I would have.” She expected Helmi to sneer, and was surprised when she didn’t.

  “And now?”


  Emma exhaled. “Now? I know the dead can’t come back to life. I don’t want to drag a pretty corpse beside me from here to eternity.” She turned away from the floor to the girl whose hand she still held. “I’m sorry,” she said, without thought, because social apology came as naturally as breath.

  “Your hand is warm.” The girl glanced around the room, her eyes wide and unblinking.

  “This is Michael. The girl near the window is Helmi; that’s Amy, Allison, Ernest, and Chase. Oh, and Margaret. And this,” Emma added, as her dog nudged her hand with his wet nose, “is Petal.”

  The girl was staring at Emma; her eyes were luminous. They were also uncomfortable to look at; there was a hunger in them that made Emma want to retrieve her hand permanently—even if she thought she understood it.

  Help came from an unexpected quarter: Helmi. “You need to let go of her hand.”

  Tsuki’s hand tightened in response.

  “She’s here to help us,” Helmi continued. “But she needs to conserve her power.” When the girl failed to respond, she added, in a much sharper tone, “Let go of her hand.”

  This time, the girl obeyed. She didn’t fade from Emma’s sight; she did disappear from anyone else’s. Or anyone else who was alive.

  Petal whined.

  “I know,” Emma said, scratching behind his ears. “I find it hard, too.”

  Helmi grimaced. “Try being dead,” she snapped. When Emma failed to respond, she shook her head. “Sorry. You don’t deserve that. I have to go. Wait here, or as close to here as is safe.”

  Emma was too shocked at receiving an actual apology from Helmi to reply.

  “And I mean it—wait. Stay hidden.” She looked at Emma’s friends. “Tell them. Tell them what happens to people who don’t.” And she lifted a hand, and the hand was momentarily red with blood.

  • • •

  “Don’t be too angry with her,” Margaret said, when Helmi vanished.

  “Do the dead not change at all?” Emma asked her.

  “They change,” Margaret replied. “But death, in some ways, defines them. They don’t let go easily of the fears they felt at death. They learn to see them differently. They learn context. They have regrets—but those thoughts and feelings remain central to their existence on this side of death. Even if the way they view them shifts, the fact that they view them . . . doesn’t.

  “Helmi is no different.” Margaret smiled. Helmi rarely saw Margaret smile, and Emma wished, for just a moment, that the girl had remained. “She’s seen you, Emma. She understands what you might mean to all of us. But she died because she did not hide. Hiding is second nature to her.

  “She understands what your friends mean to you. She understands the event that made the Queen of the Dead. She is both fascinated and afraid of what you might become should you face the same losses. If the Queen finds you,” she added, “you will.” The smile saddened but did not leave her face. “You do not know what it means when you offer us your hand and we take it. It is costly—for you—but you do it, regardless.”

  Tsuki, who had not left, stared at Margaret and then at Emma. It was not entirely comfortable. She lifted her hand—the hand that Emma had clutched so desperately. “She is right,” the girl said, in the softest of voices. “What will you do?”

  “Eat,” Emma replied. “We’ll eat and we’ll discuss our possible options. Margaret, you know the citadel. Tell the rest of us as much as you can?”

  Margaret nodded.

  • • •

  Michael was not twitching; he was not walking in circles. But he might as well have been. His expression openly revealed what they were all feeling—but he had not yet shifted his focus. He was in an empty house that was built on—made of—the dead. He was afraid to sit on the floor; he felt guilty even standing on it.

  Emma sympathized. There was, however, no alternative.

  “I don’t understand why she would do this,” Michael said.

  Allison—and Amy, who defined the word pragmatic in emergencies—had hit the backpacks; there was a brief and desperate search for a can opener while under the hopeful supervision of a rottweiler who clearly had never been fed in his Entire Life. Ernest eventually intervened, but Ernest was not yet one of Petal’s people.

  “You are a really, really stupid dog, you know that?” Chase said.

  Petal wagged his tail.

  “I don’t understand it, either,” Emma told Michael. “I understand that we have to stop her.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re here, and there has to be something we can do. She’s just one person.”

  “And her Necromancers.”

  “We’ve got Chase and Eric.”

  “Eric’s not here.”

  “And Ernest. Michael—” Emma caught both of his hands. “We can do this.”

  Michael was silent.

  “The Queen has never been able to find—and capture—Eric. Eric wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t made that choice. It doesn’t matter how powerful the Queen or her Necromancers are. Eric doesn’t have any special powers. He’s normal, like we are.”

  “You mean, like the rest of us are?”

  Emma did not grimace; she did bite her lip. “Yes. Yes, that’s what I meant.” She rose.

  “Emma?” Michael rose as well, aware that he had said the wrong thing but unaware, at the moment, of why.

  “No one wants to be seen as an outsider among their friends.” It was Chase, unexpectedly, who intervened. Emma drew one sharp breath. “And no one wants to be seen as the only possible salvation—it’s a lot of pressure. You’re probably the only person here who won’t—or can’t—understand that Emma somehow thinks this is all her fault.”

  Michael frowned. It was the frown with which everyone in the room was most familiar. “How could it be Emma’s fault?”

  Chase rolled his eyes and ran one hand through his much shorter hair. To Emma’s surprise—and growing concern—Chase tried to answer. “Try to see it the way I’ve seen it. Emma is a Necromancer. Emma—in theory, and given the rest of you, it’s a pretty crap theory—could be the Queen of the Dead if she had the time. She could be taught. Or teach herself. She could do what the Queen has done.” He held up a hand as Michael opened his mouth.

  “I told you, it’s a crap theory. I believed it when I first met her. But even I can’t hold onto that belief. The Queen, however, will. She won’t see anything else. The Necromancers will. They won’t see Emma, and they don’t know her as well as the rest of you do. Emma is thinking that the Necromancers wouldn’t have come for her if she didn’t have this power. And she’s right.

  “But neither Eric or I would be here, either. If we weren’t here, you wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t have the chance to somehow fix things or end things. I didn’t see it that way when I met Emma, but I see it now. I’ve been fighting the Queen of the Dead—or her minions—for most of my adult life. This is the first time I’ve ever thought we actually have a chance.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Emma is powerful. And Emma can do things that even the Necromancers would have said are impossible. She doesn’t think the way they do. She doesn’t—luckily for her—think the way Eric or I do. None of you do. And maybe that’s what’s needed. If we had the time, Emma could take the entire city apart without lifting a gun or shedding blood.

  “And I think—I think she can open the door permanently. I think she can free the dead.”

  “Why?” Michael asked, again.

  Amy, busy with food she would never have eaten unless she were camping, said, “Because she’s already done it once. She almost died saving Andrew Copis. She didn’t. Andrew Copis is wherever the dead are supposed to be. And frankly, I’m more than a little tired of all this, and we don’t get to go back to real life if she doesn’t.” When Michael did not immediately nod,
Amy added—with less patience than Chase had shown, “She’s already proven that she can do it once—with just as little information or education on her part.

  “I believe she can do it again, for real this time.”

  LONGLAND CAN’T SWEAT. If he could, he would. The gun he carries appears welded to his hand. He is pale. Ernest and Chase don’t trust Longland. They don’t quite understand why Eric does. But neither of them are dead. Hurt, yes. Scarred, definitely. But they exist, persist, among the living.

  Being dead has not inured Eric to the fact of death, the fact of loss. He does not want them to die. He has never wanted any of his comrades to die. But want or no, they all have.

  Only Reyna is perpetual.

  It has been so long since he’s seen her. So long since he has dreamed of anything about her but her death, the death she avoided, the death that would free the dead, that would free Eric himself. He can’t remember loving her, but he knows that he once did.

  He stands in a small room composed of four walls and no windows. There is a door; it is closed. He faces it, Longland by his side. He looks for Helmi. He has often looked for Helmi; she is a flag, a warning that death is coming—but not for Eric. Never for Eric.

  He wishes—as he has wished for centuries—that he had never met Reyna. He wishes that she had never loved him. He might have loved her at a distance; he might have felt the pain of rejection, of things one-sided, unfinished. But that pain would be better than this pain.

  Can you kill her?

  Yes. Yes, Helmi. That belief has been the pillar of his existence for so long that life itself seems the greater dream. He has never questioned it. Here, in the world Reyna created by dint of will and terror, it is the only way he can atone.

  But as the door opens, as he sees the angry, stiff faces of the Queen’s knights, he wonders: atone for what? He was a young man, barely more than a boy. She was a young woman—young, slightly wild, always open. Her smile was radiant. Small things delighted her: sunlight on the lake, shadows beneath the boughs of the tree that served as their meeting place, wildflowers. Toads. She liked toads. He remembers because the first time he saw her involuntary smile, he said, I see. This is why you like me.