Julia Unbound

by Catherine Egan

  Shey. Shey made the deal with the shadows in Kahge, giving them form and feeling. Ragg Rock told me about that witch before, but I didn’t know who it was. Why? What does Shey want with Kahge?

  “Did you tell them where Theo went?”

  “Of course not.” Her muddy hand closes around my arm. “Why haven’t they come back?”

  “Tell me where they are. I’ll see if they’re safe.”

  Our hurry to rebuild her has left her face lumpy and misshapen, making her expression of despair all the more terrible. “A farm near Spira City. He said a friend of Och Farya’s lived there. He said they would come back. They don’t need Silver Moya, I told him to write to me himself, to write that they are ready to come back, but he hasn’t done it. You have to bring my boy back.”

  “Yes, all right, yes, but you need to take me there.”

  I’d promise her anything right now.

  “It’s my fault,” she mutters. “I should never have let her come that first time. Her grief was like a whirlwind. I got lost in it.”

  “You mean Shey? What did she want?”

  “The first time, she wanted some of the essence from the shadows—enough to animate a body, give life back to the child she lost, or life of some kind. I didn’t see the harm in it at the time, but it didn’t turn out like she wanted. It never does. When she tried to come back later, there was so much rage, I was frightened. I wouldn’t let her back.”

  It all comes sharply together at last. Her little boy drowned, and Shey could not accept it. She came to Ragg Rock and met with the shadows from Kahge, those shadows longing for life. She gave them bodies and so much more. In return they gave her enough of their magical essence to resurrect her child. I remember what Ragg Rock told me about the newly embodied shadows and their deal with a witch she did not name—They can love and feel pain, they can sleep and even eat. Agoston Horthy cannot feel pain or love, he does not taste or sleep. She took all that away from him and gave it to the shadows, the price for his brother’s life. But of course it didn’t work, and she made monsters of both her children. Ragg Rock wouldn’t let her back to undo it. Is that why she has yoked herself to Casimir? Because he can bring Kahge into the world, and then she can undo what she did?

  “Will I ever see my boy again?” Ragg Rock wails.

  “If it’s safe, he can visit, but I have to get him safe.”

  “Visit?” It comes out a terrible hiss. She shoves me onto my back. Muddy tentacles burst out of the ground, wrapping around my arms and legs, pinning me. One of them snakes around my throat and squeezes.

  “I’ll bring him,” I gasp.

  “Liar,” she snarls.

  And yes, I am lying, lying desperately. I won’t die here, strangled by mud, after everything. “I mean it!” I cry. “You know he isn’t safe in the world, they’re looking for him, he needs to be here, he needs you!”

  She bends over me, whispering: “There are flowers growing here now. Flowers, like in the world. Real ones. You should see it. There are creatures getting closer and closer to flesh and blood. I feel”—she knocks on her chest with a muddy fist—“a heartbeat sometimes, when he is near. This place is coming to life. I understand it now, everybody who has come here suffering, talking about love. I understand it. He has no mother, and this place, me…it is turning into a mother. The air is changing. It is transforming itself for him. Becoming a garden where he can be safe, where he can be happy. I am becoming…I am changed…I…”

  “I’ll bring him back,” I rasp. The mud tentacle tightens its grip on my throat. Her voice veers between mine, Frederick’s, other voices I don’t recognize.

  “I’ve watched it for thousands of years. Mothers and their children. Now I have a child. My own child, my own dear boy. This is his home. You must bring him, but I don’t trust you. I know you want to take him away from me. You are using me. You want my help and my protection, but you want to leave me behind as soon as you can. I know.” She makes a sound like a sob. “It was wrong, but I helped those poor shadows because they only wanted to live. Lidari, all of them. So desperate to live, to feel. Marike, who refused to die, who wanted to rule the world, I understand. Nothing is ever enough. The witches come here for more magic, the shadows want more life, people want more love, more power, more of what they have and some of what they don’t, but what have I ever wanted? I never knew how to want, how to love, until he came and brought this place to life. The heart beating inside the hill. Do you hear? Flowers growing, here!”

  “They’re going to kill him,” I beg her. “You can’t go to the world to help him. I have to do that. If you love him, let me save him.”

  A growl comes from deep inside her chest. “If you don’t bring him back, I will unleash havoc. I’ll bring down all the boundaries. I’ll let the witches and the shadows come together like they did in Marike’s time and let them do as they will. Let chaos reign. Do you hear? He is my son!”

  “I’ll bring him.”

  Because what else can I say? What can I do?

  The muddy tentacles fall away from my limbs and my neck. I scramble to my feet, gasping. The rabbit, George, hops out from behind a bush, nose twitching, and I feel absurdly relieved that he survived the ruin of Ragg Rock. She picks him up, tucking him under one arm, and walks me to the ash ring surrounding this outpost between the world and its shadow. Gaslit Spira City tilts below us for a moment and then flits away, the land rushing past, dark rolling fields, what might be wheat but who can say by moonlight, and then: the shadow of a farmhouse.

  “There,” she says, pointing. Pebble eyes glinting. “Remember what I said.”

  She holds the rabbit to her chest, and I leave her there, a lonely sentinel in her ruined post, as I make my way down the stairway to the world.

  Something is coming from the west. Like great dark sails in the sky, or some vast bird. Not a bird. No bird is that big.

  The stairway from Ragg Rock disappears behind me as soon as I step onto the path leading to the farmhouse door, and something rises up out of the ground in front of me, hissing. A snake. Two more uncoil on either side of me. They raise their hooded heads, tongues flicking in the moonlight, each one as thick as my arm. The first draws back its head as if to strike. I vanish, leaving the snakes twisting on the path, and pull back for a view of the house. The curtains are drawn shut over all the windows so I can’t just put myself inside, but then I see a little window at the top without curtains and aim myself for that. In the dark I can see only more darkness through the glass, but I focus on it, anyway, returning to my body in a low-ceilinged room—a storage attic, I reckon. There are boxes all around me, dust and cobwebs, the sound of small, scuttling creatures. I crawl around in the dark until I find a trapdoor, but it opens from the outside. There is no way out of this bleeding cupboard. I bang on the trapdoor recklessly until it falls open and the barrel of a rifle is pointed into my face. A lantern flares and blinds me.

  “What by all the bleeding holies are you?” asks a gruff female voice with a northern accent.

  “Don’t shoot,” I gasp, sliding through the opening and landing with a thump at her feet. The lantern and the barrel of the gun swing down, still pointing at me.

  “How did you get into my attic?”

  “Is Theo here?” I ask.

  “Ah.” She moves the lantern to the side a bit, and I squint up into a black-eyed, big-jowled face topped with hair curlers. “You must be her, then. Up on your feet. No sudden moves.”

  I go in front of her down the hall. She raps on a door and out comes Frederick in ill-fitting nightclothes, leaning on a cane.

  “Frederick!”

  “Hush, you’ll wake the wee one,” snaps the woman.

  “Thank the Nameless you’re all right,” he whispers. “Come downstairs.”

  Dawn is lightening the house already. Frederick looks such a scarecrow, his sk
in and hair faded, his limbs loose and twig-thin. But his smile is the same. Half a dozen lean cats are perched around the kitchen, some of them winding about the witch’s legs and mewing hopefully as she bustles around preparing food. Frederick introduces her as Olivia, but she spares me barely a nod. I am ravenous, devouring everything she puts in front of me, bread and butter and eggs and goose liver and thick milk. Frederick and I are in the middle of telling each other everything when I hear a dear, familiar little voice from the stairs: “Lala!”

  Theo comes hurtling into my arms.

  * * *

  Theo eats nearly as much as I do, climbing onto my lap and off again, running circles around the table in excitement, followed by a shaggy barking dog. He pauses for huge bites of breakfast, which he shares with the animals, and then demands more. Olivia never stops moving, laying out more food.

  “Knew she was trouble. Told the professor I wasn’t getting involved.” She is talking about Lady Laroche. “Mrs. Och always said she was power-hungry, that one.”

  I bite back everything I might say about Mrs. Och.

  “Why did you come here?” I ask Frederick. “Casimir and Shey are in the city now!”

  “I can’t protect Theo,” he says. “Olivia’s farm has been a haven for a long time. She took in other witches fleeing the city and never once failed to protect them or send them safely on their way.”

  “A right mess, a right mess,” mutters Olivia, banging into the scullery with the dirty dishes. The dog follows her. Theo is under the table playing with two of the cats now.

  “I have to go back to Spira City,” I say.

  “Don’t you think you ought to get some sleep first?” says Frederick gently.

  “I’ll sleep after.” I’m so tired that I’m dizzy, but the food has restored me somewhat. I can do this.

  “After what?” he asks me.

  I reach into my pocket for the little picture frame.

  “Great stars,” he whispers when I open it. “Is that Agoston Horthy as a little boy?”

  “And Shey. Casimir’s witch.”

  “She’s his mother?”

  “Yes. And I’m going to make a deal with her.”

  I find them in our rooms at the West Spira Grand Hotel. Pia is on the floor, her mouth bloody, Casimir’s boot on her neck. Shey is watching them from a chair, those doughy hands that can reshape the world folded placidly in her lap.

  “After everything I’ve done for you, you worthless maggot!” Casimir is roaring. “Do you remember the noise? The one that drove you mad, that chattering inside your head?”

  “No, please,” Pia rasps between bleeding lips.

  “I have some more of those little eggs,” he says. “I am going to put them inside your ear and let them hatch and watch you go mad for a month or two and then we will see if you come to heel again.”

  “No. No. No!” It rises to a piercing shriek, a horrible, animal wail.

  “I remember how you tried to smash your head open the last time,” he says. “We’ll bind you fast, put you back in that padded hole, feed you with tubes, sweet thing, and break your will all over again, since it appears it needs to be done.”

  I return to myself behind him so that Shey will not see me. This is not the moment for a chat with her. I need to get Pia out of here, and if Casimir sees me it will be over before I have a chance to explain anything. I reappear just long enough to dive between his legs and grab Pia by the ankle. As soon as I have a hand on her, I vanish.

  But he grabs her when we’re half gone. He comes with us. Out the window, over the city. I bring us back to our bodies in midair, above the buildings. We go plunging down toward West Spira’s streets fast.

  “Get him off!” I shout at Pia. “I can’t touch him!” Past the rooftop of the hotel, down, down, the street hurtling to meet us. “Hurry!”

  Pia turns like an eel in midair, me clinging to her ankle, and with the other booted foot she strikes Casimir full in the face. He falls, and we vanish again.

  * * *

  “Did he put them in? Did he do it?” Pia is raking at her ears.

  “He didn’t get anything into you,” I promise her, and hope I’m right. I drag her down the hall of the planetary studies building, bang on the door.

  Gennady opens it, pointing a pistol right at Pia.

  “She’s in this state because she didn’t blow you to smithereens,” I say. “Stop pointing that thing at her!”

  He lowers the gun.

  “He’ll find me!” Pia screams.

  “No,” I say. “He won’t. You’re safe here.”

  “But you are not safe from me,” she hisses, pushing me up against the wall by the door. “I can’t fight him, Julia. You should kill me now while I’m willing. I can’t do this anymore.”

  “You can,” I say. “You wouldn’t still be alive if you didn’t want to live. You wouldn’t have survived everything he’s done to you. I know that much. It’s the way we’re most alike, I think—how badly we want to stay alive.”

  “Blasted survivor’s spirit,” she spits, doubling over.

  “Let’s get you patched up.”

  Bells are pealing all over the city again. It’s coronation day. Revolution day. Dek, Zara, the professor, and Mrs. Freeley are gone. Little Strig is still here, chasing dust motes.

  “I’ve just seen Theo,” I tell Gennady. “He’s safe for now.”

  “I’m glad,” he says, and adds a moment later: “Thank you.”

  Angry words rise up in my throat, but I squash them down.

  “No need to be completely useless,” I tell him unkindly. “Help me.”

  There is a bathroom with a porcelain tub down the hall of the professor’s chambers. We fill it with warm water, Gennady carrying copper pots from the stove. He sits outside the door with his gun, and I help Pia out of her clothes, which are stiff with blood.

  Seeing her naked is shocking. She is long and muscled and terribly white, with metal all twisted through her. Bolts and screws in her spine. Wires at her joints. When I wash her hair, I can feel the plates in her head, metal fused with bone. I wipe the dust and blood from her goggles. She heaves herself out of the bath, and I don’t know if it is more unsettling to see the hard parts of her, made of metal and wire, or the ordinary softness of her breasts and belly, the ways in which she has a woman’s body. I hand her a towel.

  “Thank you,” she croaks. She dries herself slowly, like it hurts to move.

  I rinse her bloodied clothes as best I can in the bathwater and then hang them by the stove in the other room. I find a blanket to wrap around her and bring her to sit by the stove.

  “You are not safe from me,” she says again. “You are right—I want to live. I can’t kill myself. I am begging you to do it.”

  “Suppose we lock you up and Gennady keeps guard?”

  “I’ve broken out of stronger prisons than this one,” she says, gesturing around the room.

  “I have sleeping serum. I could knock you out.”

  “That might work for a short time. But then what?”

  “I’ve got a plan,” I say. “Do you know why Shey works for Casimir?”

  “No.”

  “Because she wants to get to Kahge. She wants to undo a spell she did. He hasn’t told her that I can cross over, has he?”

  “In his fortress, he told me to keep you away from her,” she says. “He was angry when I brought you to the room while she was there. That was my first small disobedience, enacted almost without thinking.”

  “I’m going to make a deal with her. She can stop him for us.”

  “He will not let you near her. And he needs only a second to break you.”

  “I’ll manage something. Trust me.”

  “I do,” she says. “But why are you helping me?”

  “I asked y
ou the same thing. You told me that you weren’t helping me. That you were betting on me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I’m betting on you too.”

  Something goes slack around her mouth at that. She leans forward, and an odd sound comes out of her throat.

  “Are you all right?” I grab her shoulder. The odd sound keeps coming. It takes me a moment to realize she’s weeping. She folds herself onto a chair, trying to strangle the sound.

  “What you said, about us being alike, do you remember?”

  “I was wrong.”

  “No, you were right,” I tell her. “I could have been like you if there’d been nobody on my side.”

  That’s where I’ve been lucky. I’ve always had people on my side. My mother and Dek. Esme and our gang of thieves. I’ve always had a family, in one form or another. I’ve always been loved, and loved properly. I don’t think Pia had anyone to show her she was worth something in herself, that nobody had the right to treat her like their dog. I wonder if it’s the kind of lesson you need to learn young to believe it in your bones, like I do. If it’s too late for her to learn it. I hope not.

  “I’m your friend,” I tell her, and I mean it. “If anybody ever tries to hurt you again, I’ll kill them. And I’m not letting Casimir near you again either. I’m going to end him. You and I are going to survive this and we’re going to be free.”