by Anya Allyn
The serpent pulled back from the eye and the pedestal. Rising up, she let out a sound I’d never heard from her before—a high-pitched, ear-piercing note that reverberated through the air and into the cave. A victorious cry. A calling.
She raised her face upward. Baying sounds echoed through the darkening sky, rising up and growing distant. She had sent the other serpents forth, away from the earth.
It was done.
Over.
I allowed a lungful of air to escape.
My earth would no longer know the serpents. The tomb of ice would slowly melt away.
The empress would join her species on the crystal planet—and she would die alongside them.
Silently, I waited.
A wrenching pain wound through my body, a hollow pit forming at the center of my victory. Ethan was dead. I wouldn’t know him again in this life. His strength, his warmth, the way his sepia eyes held and comforted me in their gaze—all gone. A briny vomit hit the back of my throat at the thought of him lying there on Balthazar’s dungeon floor.
The empress tilted her head as though she’d heard something. Her massive head swooped down into the cave. I stilled my breaths, moving back so that I could no longer see her. Ethan wanted me to survive. His spirit had urged me to keep going. And so I would.
In the dollhouse, the serpent’s shadow couldn’t see us but it could sense us. It knew when we slept and when we were awake... by the pattern of our breathing. By our very heartbeats.
I had to run.
Wheeling around, I thrashed through the water toward the passage. A black presence swam through the water, rising up in front of me—a shadow snake readying itself to strike.
Gasping, I looked back over my shoulder.
The empress pushed her forehead back into the crystal—she would now see the trickery of the crystal planet’s calculations. An anguished fury rattled through her as she drew her head back and smashed the pedestal to pieces. She summoned her shadow to her, and vanished.
Instantly, I knew where she’d gone—to the crystal planet to discover the fate of her species. She would hover, in the atmosphere, watching her species annihilated in the boiling oceans there.
My breaths were bullets shooting through my chest. I pushed myself through the waist-deep water, desperate to reach the passage.
Something crashed into the ocean behind me, a huge wave hurling itself over me. Screaming, I was thrown underwater. I battled to my feet, jerking my head around. It was her. A light beyond fury glimmered in her silver eyes.
A roaring noise resounded in the cave as a wave rose in the ocean up as tall as a mountain. The wave moved with terrifying speed, pummeling me to the floor of the cave and dragging me along. I tried to reach out for the wooden planks of the ship, but the force of the water ripped me away. My body was flung like a rag doll through the cave and out to sea.
Panic rushed through my core.
I was in the ocean.
In her territory.
With flailing strokes, I struggled to swim back.
High above, tree roots broke through the walls of the castle and climbed upward. Like veins.
Breaking apart, an entire wall of stone blocks came tumbling down. The blocks crashed onto the body of the serpent. She was knocked back into the ocean. Dark blood rose to the surface, spreading like oil.
My fingers found the edge of the rock platform that led back into the cave.
I sensed a shadow rising behind me. I turned my head. The red sunset glinted around the massive neck and head of the serpent. She swooped on me, driving me down. Tumbling through the turbulent water, I descended further and further into the deep.
The only escape now was the cave beneath the ocean.
Her cave.
Frantically, I swam away from her. Without a light it was impossible to see.
Keep your mind steel.
Feeling along the vertical rock wall, I moved down lower and lower. The dim illumination of the cave appeared below me. My foot kicked into open space.
I swam inside and up, and burst through the surface. Taking rapid breaths, I scanned the cave. The refraction had to be close by. I couldn’t see it. Terror charged through me.
Keep your mind steel.
Taking a slow breath, I told myself to look, to see.
It was there—the barest shimmer of light. I stroked toward it.
I was going home. Home to where the blanket of white would be melting into the frozen soil. Home to where those who were left would start again. Home to a place that would never feel like home again. Not without Ethan. But Ethan had once told me Nabaasa’s words, When everything is gone, you will endure like a candle in darkness. I didn’t know if that were possible for me, but I had to hold onto those words.
With a tremendous shatter of water, the serpent rose before me.
Through the water, the empress’s shadow streamed toward me. It clung around me. Its dark grip invaded my mind and I could hear its whisper. “Why do you always seek me?”
I tried to push the shadow away from me. “I never sought you.”
“But you are here...”
The voice of the shadow surrounded me in vibrating waves.
“Because you invaded my world—you and your kind,” I cried. “What else could I do but try to stop you?”
“You always forget. Every time, you are like a babe in a human womb trying to make sense of your mother’s heartbeat.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you cannot understand. Because you do not remember. I knew who you were the first time I saw you. You are the one. In almost every universe that you and I exist, you find a way to kill every last one of my species.”
“That isn’t true. You’re trying to twist my mind.”
Keep your mind steel. I tried to block out the swarming presence of the shadow, empty my head of all thought. All was quiet but for the rush of the waterfall and the boom of the underground river. I pushed out my own presence, trying to surround hers, trying to absorb her shadow into me.
The shadow resisted. She was too strong—I felt her turn my effort back onto myself. My mind began to shatter and break apart.
I broke away from her, drawing air into my lungs in gasping breaths.
Her shadow streamed out through the water around me, resting.
“How would you know what is true, human?”
I gazed at her with hate. “I know the truth of what you and your kind do. You travel from planet to planet, seeking life forms to plunder. That is all we are to you—food.”
“You would deny us food? You would deny us life? We do not seek humans for food. You seek us.”
“How do we seek you?”
She swam through the water, drawing herself up near me.
“You always forget. You humans die and you drink from the river of forgetfulness. You forget everything and you start again, as infants, with unmarked minds. Except for ones like you, who remember in their dreams. I have lived through the ages. I cannot escape. I cannot be reborn and start again as an innocent. I am doomed to replicate myself over and over. I must drink from the pool of memory—Mnemosyne—and every sharp memory is as a sword plunged into my mind. An infinite number of swords plunged into my mind, forever. I despise you humans who can live and live and live again, each time reborn.”
“I don’t know what you speak of—the river of forgetfulness, the pool of memory. How can such things exist?”
“You should. You humans named them. Centuries ago, humans named this pool after Mnemosyne, wife of Zeus, and they named the river Lethe—see the river that enters the cave as a waterfall?”
I stared upward at the cascading water.
“And this cave they named as the entrance to Hades. And you, they named Calliope, the eldest daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne.”
“My name is not Calliope.”
“Not on this earth, perhaps. But there are earths like grains of sand scattered on the wind. Beyond count, beyond reason.”
/> I shivered uncontrollably in the chill water, her words piercing my mind like metal barbs. I remembered the books in Jessamine’s library in the dollhouse—filled with Greek Gods and legends. And the picture of her—the serpent. “Such things cannot be real.”
“Anything you can imagine is real, at some point, at some place. You have barely traveled between universes, on a few parallel earths, yet you claim to know what is out there?”
The mocking sound of her voice filled my ears, filled every space in the cave—echoing between the crystal columns and deep dark recesses.
I tried to still myself. I needed to find a moment of calm. But her words penetrated every part of me.
Her eyes grew cold. “Each time that you are born, you are an innocent, knowing nothing. Except in your dreams. When you die, it happens over and over that you drink from where the River Lethe meets the pool of Mnemosyne—and you both forget and remember. You remember me and the universes only in your dreams. And in countless versions of your life, on countless earths, your path leads you to me and my kind, and you destroy us as though we are the enemy.”
Rage boiled inside me. “You are the enemy,” I screamed. “You killed millions of humans.”
“Yet you killed every last one of us.”
“You gave me no choice. Why didn’t you just leave us alone? Stay away from the earths of the universes.”
“Could it really be so simple? I told you that you humans seek us. The first book of your Speculum Nemus gives instructions on how to summon us, and we cannot refuse it—that is the power of the summoning. The second book gives instructions on how to bind us to you, how to use us mercilessly in order to cross time and space. In the end, we become your servants. You humans want everything, like demanding infants.”
I felt her fury unleash through her shadow. Her shadow curled and tightened around me. Endless centuries of her pain and defeat blinded my mind.
“Yes,” she hissed. “Your kind uses us relentlessly, cruelly.”
My ribs crushed in, all breath squeezing from my lungs. “Why... why didn’t... you... kill me? In the dollhouse... why didn’t your shadow just kill... me?”
The effort and strain of working her shadow against me showed in her silver eyes. “You are my enemy. And my hope. If you found the second book and used it to stop the castle, my kind and I could leave the earth and escape the bonds of the castle. Because of you, the book was destroyed—yes—which meant we could leave. But you used the knowledge of the book against us. As you always do.”
Pain seared my mind as my breath was choked from my chest. “You keep my sister bound to you... in that tower above. Forever bound to you.”
“Yes, that much is true. We have always needed human sight. But we have only ever taken a few of you. Never have we bound all of you in our service. That kind of cruelty is reserved for humans.”
Her breaths deepened, coarsened. Her massive head bowed as though it was an effort to hold it up.
Her shadow released itself from me.
I sucked in a lungful of air. Oxygen shot through my head. But not enough. The air in the cave was different to the air in the human world. Like being at the tip of a high mountain—the oxygen was too thin. I needed to get out of here. Without moving my head, I sought out the refraction. It was no more than ten feet away. If I could somehow reach it, she couldn’t stop me from leaving.
On the surface of the water below the refraction, a dark liquid spread—a liquid that was not the shadow, for the shadow hung close to the serpent now.
Confused, I eyed the empress again. The faint silver glow in her eyes faded and died.
The thick, dark liquid fanned out in all directions.
Her blood.
She was dying.
I tensed my muscles, ready to stroke toward the refraction.
Her gaze drifted over me, as though she could no longer see me, even at this close range. “I will make you drink from the pool of Mnemosyne. I will crush you into its depths. And when you return, as a babe, you will remember the horror for a time, but you will suffer alone—unable to speak it. And in all the years afterwards, you will dream the horror.”
It was time to go. Splashing through the freezing water, I swam toward my escape.
She lunged toward me, her weight crushing me. Black water entombed me. I was sent spiraling down. Down to a place where the darkness was so complete, my mind began to scatter.
Keep your mind steel.
I swam away from her, into a space of my own, into a place she could no longer reach me. Light exploded in my head. No breath, no oxygen. My lungs burned with a raw intensity.
The empress’s body crashed into me again, but with a dull, floating pressure. Her body spun away. I knew she was dead.
In the churning black of the water, I no longer knew which way was up. Furiously, I stroked one way and then the other. But I couldn’t find my way out. I couldn’t find it. Terror flashed in bright white lights in my head.
A hand reached for mine. I turned and Ethan was there. I could see him. His hair drifted around his serene face. His eyes gazed into mine, eyes that were without fear. He didn’t speak, but he didn’t need to. I understood his message—something that was beyond words, even beyond love. I held onto his hand... until I no longer needed to....
I floated away... away... away....
The water warmed around me. Warm and peaceful. A warmth to lull me to sleep. All pain was gone. All need was gone.
Death was beautiful. In all the human fight and struggle to stay alive, I'd never understood that.
I felt myself enclosed somewhere that felt safer than anywhere I’d ever been before. I felt myself enclosed in a music box, a music box that was safe and warm and soft and beautiful. The sweet, sad melody drifted away, replaced by a stronger music.
Sounds pulsed somewhere in the darkness...
Like a drum...
Like a heartbeat....
~.~ END ~.~
Epilogue
14 YEARS LATER
These endless carousels
tell of love and every loss,
of every nuance of light and shade
Did you live your life as a masquerade?
or live every second, every moment in bloom?
When the carnival closes and the music ends
you think it has all come too soon
But everything will come again,
like the phases of the moon.
I snatch up the piece of paper that's fallen from my sister's treasured notebook. Yet another poem. And I can't hold back a sharp sigh. "Prudence, you have to stop it."
From the front seat of the car, Mom cranes her head around. "We're almost there, girls." She glances at the crumpled paper in my hand. "Cassie, we've talked about this. She likes to write down what's on her mind."
"She's eleven," I tell Mom. "She should be writing about a boy she's crushing on at school. Not this weird stuff."
Dad steers the car from the asphalt road onto a dusty, dirt track. "Boys? Not until she's thirty, at least." I see his eye crinkle as he winks at Prudence in the rear vision mirror.
Prudence gives him a small smile, then closes her eyes and pretends to sleep. I cross my arms and lean my head back, tuning out.
Outside the car window, a damp mist drifts in the December air. Every mile takes me further away from everything I’d known. Clawing vines hang like nooses, suffocating the trees. The forests seem choked with death, as though the vines will soon pull the trees—and the people—deep underground.
It’s supposed to be summer in Australia, but the sky looks like an old bed sheet bleached of color. There should be a law against your parents moving you to another country when you’re fourteen. As usual, I’m last on the list when it comes to family decisions. Mom’s been offered the job of her dreams here and Dad’s dreaming of trout fishing here, and Prudence... well Prudence is just dreaming as usual.
Prudence can’t help the way she is, Mom tells me. She’s just different. As th
ough catching on that I was thinking about her, Prudence stirs from her fake sleep and looks my way, grinning. The smile is so innocent, which is one of the most frustrating things about her. Though super-smart for her age, she really is so trusting and innocent. It scares me how easily she could get hurt. I want to protect her and help her become a bit more like other kids. But at the same time, I have the sense she knows exactly where she’s going. Prudence often says that people are magnets and they get pulled toward things without realizing. She knows things that other people don’t know, like when she knew the exact day our grandma was going to die. At age eleven, Prudence has just had a growing spurt—her legs lanky and awkward like a baby deer. She’s got Dad’s fairer skin and green eyes, but like me, she’s got Mom’s features and dark hair. If I were to describe my sister, I’d say she’s like a leaf caught in a breeze—beautiful and kind of dreamy to watch but caught up in something invisible to the eye.
"Cassie, what color should we paint our new bedroom?" says Prudence in her sing-song voice.
Exhaling noisily, I drum my fingers against the glass pane. "As if! I'm having my own bedroom."
Mom turns her head, her expression wry. "Sorry girls, I forgot to tell you—there's three bedrooms, but I really need one of those for a home office. But the bedrooms are huge—you can each have your own space."
I open my mouth to say something, but choose to sulk in silence instead.
Dad turns down another road. In the distance, the mountains are so high and never-ending that the sun gives up and slips behind them. Shadows speed across the land. A shiver passes through me. Maybe there’s some giant magnet hidden out there in the mountains, reeling us in like fish.
A bungalow-like house comes into view, at the end of the dirt road we’re traveling on. The road doesn’t continue. Prudence and I exchange glances. This has to be our new home. But it doesn’t look like home. It doesn’t feel like home.
Dad pulls up in the driveway and I jump out. Every step I take seems like a step away from my old house. I tuck my hands into my sleeves and wrap my arms around my middle. Who was I kidding? We’d only been at the old house in Miami for eight months—it wasn’t like I was going to miss it. Eight months ago, Prudence and I had even changed schools—not that it had helped things. Prudence couldn’t help being who she was, but kids could be cruel. When you’re known as a freaky psychic, things get downright mean. I didn’t escape the taunts either. Dealing with middle school was hard enough, but when your sister makes the news for predicting the future, there's no escape anywhere.
