“It would have devastated as any disease, had it been given the chance,” I admitted. “But it wasn't. It wasn't given the chance. Because those darkskins – all darkskins – were shunned from the circles of the Darathians. Enslaved and given a wide berth, avoided like the plague for their inferiority. So what do you think was left for the disease to infect? The land. The houses. The country itself. This cruel, godforsaken country of barbaric hosts and hostesses.”
A cool wind washed in from the fields, stirring over the rubble. And Ombri, dear Ombri, grew ever colder there against me on that ground. Tanen's hair stirred over his eyes.
“Refugees, Tanen. Enslaved and tortured. What god wouldn't be angry with a people who demonstrated such unwarranted hostility toward another faction of equally god-breathed children? And one in need. Where they sought refuge they were punished. Granted hell instead of haven. The gods are angry with Darath. And so justice is playing out in the most poetic and chilling of ways. The Masters have quarantined themselves on their superior pedestals, but this land is dying. The mischief, the strangeness... It's all symptoms. Symptoms of destruction that are bringing everything the white man has built to its knees around him. Many, so very many of them, are becoming casualties to the turmoil. Countless more whiteskins than dark have been the victims of this age. The tables are turning. This strange disease will wreak havoc, catching the white man where he thought he had risen above other things on this earth, and the slaves will be the majority that's left.”
I knew all this, had felt all this, in the essence of the rubble that spoke itself to my insightful touch. I did not know why I had been granted the means for insight, why me, Avante of Manor Dorn, but – as I had learned from the rubble itself – higher influences had their ways about them. Who was I to question it?
“This illness that so many of us have suffered,” I continued. “The illness I have recovered from, Letta has recovered from, and you have been spared from... It's the disease, Tanen. It tests those of us it still manages to catch, and if we are worthy of living we come through. That is the extent of any punishment we have to receive, the extent of the price we have to pay. But we always come through with a scar. A mark. A stamp of approval. I have it. Victoria has it. You do not have it.” I was back to my accusing voice, circled around to the point I had gone off about. “You are here because I bartered for your life. With that wily temptress of a figure who runs the Ravine in the city. It's a death trap. She traps whiteskins there, Tanen, to await their reckoning. She is the Ambassador for the Angel of Death, and that ravine is Death Row. I know you know of the place and the woman that I speak. I saw you there. She traps unworthy whiteskins there and breaks them of their offensive stance toward the darkskins by seducing them, winning them over even though it's too late. And you're next. It's happening. It can't be stopped. I tried, but it can't be stopped.”
I did not know if I was regretful, or bitter, or speaking in an altogether punishing tone. I just knew that it was pouring out of me, hot as coals, not to be stopped. Bottled up and provoked and charged with mixed emotions to the point of erupting, here and now, for better or worse. So much more reckless and uncontainable than what I had whispered into the ear of the woman who sought guidance, recently, in the wake of what befell her fated neighbors.
And that, which I had whispered so simply, so concisely that day,
'Let your slaves go.'
It was not that easy, where Tanen was concerned. He was far more provoking where the entirety of the truth was concerned. I continued with it; “I tried to change you, but I can't. And now this...” I bent back over Ombri, raw with pain all over again. “This, because of the mischief meant to punish those like you.” I raised my eyes back to him, burning with blame and heartbreak. “Ombri was a saint. Do you realize? The rest of us, light and dark – we fight, and contend, killing to survive, resisting fate, jading ourselves... And she, nothing but a kind little light and self-sacrifice. While the rest of us fight to live, this girl – half light, half dark – sacrificed herself for another. Without a second thought. If anyone in this world deserves to be saved, it is the girl lying dead in my arms. The halfbreed.
“The best of us all.”
*
Tanen said nothing, after my revelations. The atmosphere I spun for him there on that broken hilltop was not a welcoming one, and following the accusations and explanations, his inclination to be there lost all traces of heart. He retreated rather into himself, taking his eyes from mine, and slowly withdrew from the proximity. I did not pay him much mind past that – my attention returned to Ombri, where I took my time arranging her curls about her face, memorizing her sweet features, ingraining the memory of her in the records that my fingertips kept.
She had a beautiful spirit. I glimpsed it, as I touched her face – felt it as I pulled her close and held her.
In hindsight, I could recall to my mind's eye the awareness of Tanen rousing Victoria and carrying her back down the road to Manor Dorn when he withdrew, so when I finally drew myself up from my grief to take care of Ombri, I found myself relieved of the duty of having to likewise see to Victoria.
I gathered Ombri's bird-like little body in my arms, stood from our resting place, and carried her down the back side of the slope. A memory akin to this very same likeness flitted through my mind – a memory of the first time I had met her, unconscious in her wintry prison, and carried her back to Manor Dorn. I had returned her to this life, and now I would return her to another.
It was heart-wrenching, carrying her back into the city, the life gone out of her. We had been so pleased when she pulled through and awoke from her dormant sleep on her cot in Manor Dorn. Now, having to return her...
I bit back an undignified whimper. I did not feel much like being strong, right then, but if I allowed myself to break down I would not be able to carry her the rest of the way, and I was determined to see her safely to some greater resting place.
Of course, I did not know where to find such a place, and so my feet took me to the only place I knew that dealt in celestial matters of death. I stopped at the edge of the Ravine, and knelt there, cradling Ombri at its precipice. With one hand I scraped up a fist-full of dust from the ground, and tossed it into the chasm. The heavy grains hissed as they rained into the the shadows, the lighter particles spreading into a golden pall and drifting down more slowly.
It was a summons. The Ambassador would feel the disturbance, I hoped, as surely as crumbs of dirt sprinkled over spider web, and she would come.
A stretch of silence and stillness was the only thing that responded, at first, but then there was a shift of motion at the corner of my eye, and I turned my head to see the Ambassador making her way down the channel toward my perched summons, her great golden gown an endless, rippling tide behind her. It looked heavier than ever, today, its folds many, its layers evolved from the last time.
She came to me, and stopped, and gazed up at me where I had brought someone to her.
“Avante,” she greeted. “One has never sought my presence as keenly as the habit you seem very much to be cultivating.”
I met her starry eyes gravely, and it seemed she had a slightly more empathetic slant in her gaze, today, suggesting she knew something of why I had come calling again. I did not suppose death really saddened her, though.
“I didn't know of anyone else to come to,” I confessed, and unfolded Ombri from my embrace so the Ambassador might see why I'd come. “She died in a shift, but should not have. It was in sacrifice for another. We could bury her, like so much skin and bones for the earth, but... She is of greater things. I hoped you might be authorized to take her. Somewhere...”
The Ambassador did not wilt with sympathy, but she didn't scoff, either. She turned her considering eyes to Ombri's form, and my heart swelled with hope that she was truly considering my request. When she came to a decision, it was simple;
“I can do as much.”
Relief spilled through me. “Where will she go?”
“I did not say I can reveal the secrets of the afterlife. But I will take her. She will indeed find a higher resting place. If that is what you seek for her, rest assured, Avante. That is all I can offer.”
I swallowed, and nodded. Stared down at Ombri's peaceful face and tucked a curly strand of hair tenderly behind her ear.
It was goodbye.
The Ambassador waved her hands in a few graceful motions, and baubles of rubble gathered before her as if by magic. They collected and piled one on top of another, creating stairs, and she ascended them until she was at a level to receive Ombri into her arms.
With painful resignation, I transferred the young girl to her care, and just like the Ambassador retreated into the Ravine with my Ombri against her chest. Goodbye, Ombri...
I watched until the tail end of that golden gown dragged away across the bottom of the canyon, and then I made myself rise from that edge and trail back toward home. I let the edge of the Ravine guide me for the beginning of the trek, wandering down its length, where I came upon the bridge that had declared its significance in days past. I stopped when I saw it, numb but still sensitive to its noteworthiness, for it was almost complete, now. It spanned the entire Ravine, and only just failed to touch down on this side. I wondered over the significance of such, for a moment, but I was not of a mind to care about making further connections in the mischief, that day.
So I left it be.
I left it be and wandered back toward home, devoid of the heart I had come to feel in recent times yet also mildly comforted by the things that I knew that were greater than us, now, in what small way those could counter grief and how we mortals were still meant to experience it, in all its wise cruelty and melancholy glory.
F o r t y - O n e –
Rain
When I returned to Manor Dorn, Tanen was gone.
"He just...left, minda," Letta told me, a deep sadness in her eyes, where she was tending Victoria on a stool in the kitchen. The girl seemed to be suffering from an array of minor cuts and bruises.
The sadness in Letta's eyes was too deep to be merely about Tanen leaving, and so I concluded that she knew about Ombri. Victoria looked positively miserable as well – in a way that went far past the misery of a few cuts and bruises. She stared at the cabinets, unseeing, as Letta dabbed at a puckered scrape on her collarbone.
"I just wanted to see for myself..." she murmured, and in her voice I heard the same numb brokenness that I had felt myself.
"And no one can blame you for that," Letta assured her gently "You'd been smothered in this old house too long, hearing the rumors, your imagination encouraged to run wild. That will drive a person mad. There is nothing you could have done about the shift. The city will shift when and how it pleases, and there is nothing to be done by anyone. Avante can attest to that." She glanced at me as she said this, prompting my confirmation.
For Victoria's sake, I gave it; "She's right. No one can anticipate such things, or thwart them once in motion." No one except the girl who was dead and gone to us, who could ride a shift any day, when she wasn't diving into the midst of one to save another's life.
Feeling so very old and tired in the wake of my wracking grief, I turned away slowly, numb again, and went to lay down on my pallet. It was strange, lying on it in the daytime; I had never rested, except in the case of being sick, when light still shone outdoors. There was always too much to be done. We worked all day and slept at night. It was just the undying way of things.
But today – today was different. I lay there, feeling like everything had stopped. Like it didn't matter if we picked vegetables today or tomorrow. After all, they would still be there tomorrow. But some things...some things wouldn't. And because of that, I had little appetite anyway. I didn't imagine any of us would be all that eager to dine this day.
*
Tanen did not return that night, and no one spoke of him. We didn't speak of anything, really. We gathered at the end of the day on our pallets, everyone solemn and in his own separate world of coping. I lay awake, as I'm sure the others did too, and let my mind wander back and forth between numbness and relapses of silent grief.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm sure the thought occurred to me that all hope of saving Tanen was gone with him, but I no longer had the heart to fight for that cause anyway. It was just gone – all drive sapped out of me on that front. I could not think of him, when Ombri was dead.
Both of them were dead to me, now.
Sometime, in the wee hours of the morning, I drifted off into a head-achy sleep at last. And in my dreams: nothing. Pure oblivion, a product of soul-tired weariness.
And when I awoke – it was raining.
It hadn't rained in years.
*
I stood on the porch, sheltered by the second story eaves, as the sky cried around us – watching it all come down as if it had been pent-up all this time. My breath fogged into the cold, humid air, as the moisture of the heavens pelted the land. It fell in thick, straight sheets; all you could see, that morning, was rain.
Rain.
Rain.
Rain.
It whispered, and pattered, and applauded – a steady rush that didn't let up.
It was enrapturing, this novelty we had been deprived of for so long, suddenly letting loose, the floodgates opened. It would have been a disregard to my nature to stay on that porch for long, when I could be out in it.
I was soaked in an instant, one step away from the house. It hammered me with saturation, blankets of icy downpour that ran in rivulets down my body, sticking my clothes to my skin. I even felt it in my corset, seeping between brace and flesh.
Into the obscured field I wandered, closing my eyes to let the droplets race off my lashes, extending my arms palm-up, letting that rain pour through my fingers.
I felt more in that rain than I could ever put into mortal words.
It was gods shedding tears (in their own way). It was a current of cleansing. It was a quenching drink for a thirsty land. It was sadness, and newness, and pureness. Liquid miracle. New lifeblood to everything shriveled. Old sadness finally let go. It was spring, and winter, and another season – a new season – that didn't have a name. It was all the tears I had ever wanted to cry, even those I hadn't been aware of, shed by the gods so I didn't have to, poured out to wash me, to rinse the land of its bad taste. To make new things grow. To purge fresh the stale air. To soften the hardened, jaded ground.
It rained, and rained, and rained.
And I sat out beneath that cloudburst, and drank it up – half-drowned, and elated, and renewed. Sullied and muddied and cleansed.
F o r t y – T w o –
Avante, Bridge Builder
I was walking by the window in the front room when I saw her through the gap in the curtain, standing outside – the Ambassador. A double-take seized me, and I stopped, looking again. Thinking at first my mind had surely played a trick on me.
But the woman herself indeed stood there, a ways shy of the porch, looking at the door as if in consideration. Her golden train was gathered and shortened for the trip, somehow supernaturally hemmed up to contain its endless folds.
I put my basket of laundry down on a shelf and went, bemused, to the door. As it creaked open she looked in at me, and I wandered out onto the porch to address her. Or allow her to address me. Whichever it was, or perhaps neither at all, for I could not imagine why she had come – especially fully visible and politely waiting outside as she was, rather than spiriting herself in and out at will as she had the last time, authorized to run whatever secret errands in people's houses that she pleased.
"Ambassador," I greeted her first this time, my gaze quizzical.
And she actually smiled at me. It was subtle, still, but used to her more dominant nature, I recognized it for what it was.
"What are you doing here?"
The smile was replaced by a businesslike manner, and she acquiesced and spoke her piece: "I am here because your two
months are up."
Oh. There was that, wasn't there? I had given up on Tanen for good when he failed to return over the course of another few days, but that didn't mean my deal with Death was resolved as quickly. The deadline had still stood, and all the time leading up to it.
I was not certain what I felt, reminded of the reality of that deadline and knowing my time was officially up. Truthfully, I was not sure I wanted to explore those feelings.
"I understand," I said, looking down. "I did what I could."
The Ambassador gave me a moment, and then piped back up. "Well," she said. "The rain has flooded my ravine – restored it to a brimming thing of life. So I'll be off, now."
My head came back up. "You're...leaving?"
"I am not some sea-serpent, Avante," she pointed out, as if it were obvious she was loyal only to the handful of forms I had witnessed her take. Horse, yes; snake, that too – but never some creature of the depths. "No, it is a station much more befitted to an Ambassador of Calypso, now, I dare say. I'll be moving on."
"Where to?" Somehow, I had never imagined that that Ravine would ever not belong to the Ambassador for the Angel of Death. I supposed if she was only there for a purpose, eventually that purpose would be fulfilled, but still... It seemed a place that would ever be haunted by her. She was such a vital part of its essence.
But it was flooded, now, and evidently such could really change things.
"Wherever I am required next," she replied.
"And – the others?" I wanted to know, remembering the mysterious and nameless ambassador I had encountered in that fortress on the far outskirts of the city's soul. How many others were there? Had the rain changed things far and wide, for everyone?
"The Great Butterfly will be moving on as well. Lesser keepers may stay behind, for a time, but none that you have had the pleasure of encountering thus far, so they needn't be worried about."
I recalled the butterfly effect that had built the fortress on behalf of my unknowing, page-turning fingers, where I had felt it in the walls of the place. "The Great Butterfly... Was that ashen keeper his ambassador? Is that who I encountered when I retrieved Bailin from the edges of the city?"
A Mischief in the Woodwork Page 31
