Land of the Beautiful Dead

by Smith, R. Lee

  “I will not armor nor arm my enemy,” he said. His fingers drummed once on her hip. “But I will give blankets. Cookware. Farming equipment.”

  “We have all that.”

  “But have you anything in Norwood that has not seen thirty years of use and repair?”

  “Are you seriously suggesting I sell myself for a garden fork just because it’s shinier than the ones we’ve got?”

  “Do not be so quick to dismiss the value of extravagance in a world of survival. When the scavengers come to your town, which of their wares sells for the highest price? Food and water? Or sweets and ribbons?”

  “If Elvie Peters wants a new ribbon in her hair, let her walk to Haven and ask for one.”

  “Ashcroft,” he corrected with a smile in his voice. “You only walked to Ashcroft.”

  “I could have walked all the way if it wasn’t for the Eaters.”

  “Yes, and you could have flown if you had wings.” His sigh stirred her hair. He combed it into place again with careful passes of his claws. “Never mind Norwood then. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What do you want? What, truly? There must be something.” He took a calming breath and hid the mounting frustration in his tone behind a low, cajoling growl. “Some long-held wish, fragile and a little foolish. Something you always knew you would never find in the low village of your birth, but which I can give you. Only I.”

  “There is, actually.”

  He sat up at once, looming over her like a vulture, one hand raised and hovering in the air above her, poised to seize hold. “Name it.”

  “End the Eaters.”

  He exhaled in a curt, coarse rush and lay back down. “You are the most obstinate human I have ever known.”

  “Tee hee,” said Lan, not bothering to open her eyes. “How you flatter me, sir.”

  “Do you think you are the first to ever stand before me and demand an end to the hungering dead? One month in my palace, at my table…in my bed…was enough to soften the resolve of all your predecessors. Yours has only grown. Why? Why do you keep asking when you know the answer will never change?”

  “I realize those are whatchits…those questions you only ask to sound all brooding and dramatic—”

  “Rhetorical.”

  “Right, those. But I don’t care. I’m going to answer anyway. How’s that for confidence?” She twisted around to look at him, to see his impassive face and the steady light of his eyes when she said, “What’s happened to the world is obscene. It has to end. It has to. And until it does, I will never stop asking.”

  “I have heard many ‘nevers’ in my time, child. I have outlived them all.”

  “Then this’ll be another first for you, won’t it?”

  He grunted and took his arm back, moving away from her on the bed, but not leaving it. Not yet. “I don’t know why I tolerate your insolence.”

  “Because I do that thing you like with my tongue,” she said, unruffled, and resettled herself.

  “That must be it.” He was quiet, albeit in a distinctly unquiet way, for several minutes more, long enough that she was nearly asleep in spite of her best intentions when he suddenly said, “Are you married?”

  She had to turn all the way over and look at him to make sure he’d really said that. Oddly, when she saw that he was indeed serious and expected an answer, her first impulse was to laugh.

  The glow from his eyes perceptibly brightened. “Why is that funny? Do they no longer marry in Norwood?”

  There was a hint of a sneer on the last word.

  “I’m not the kind of girl you marry,” she told him, turning back onto her side to sleep. “I’m the kind you fuck behind the smoking shed and hope your mates don’t find out.”

  “Is that why you came to me? In the hopes I would set you at my side for the whole of the world to see?”

  She snorted.

  “Apparently not. Is it a child then?”

  “Is what a child?”

  “The reason you came here.”

  “You know why I came here.”

  “I know what you came to do. Your motives yet confound me. If it isn’t a man or a child, who is it? Who has your love in Norwood?”

  That was definitely a sneer.

  “No one,” she said. “Norwood isn’t exactly known for its open arms when it comes to strangers. Hell, Timmus was just from Drybridges, three towns over, and he’s still ‘that foreigner’ after twenty years. Me? My mother was born in America. She was ‘that damned Yank’ until she died and I’ll be ‘that little Yank’ until I die.”

  “You were born there, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Your father was one of them, was he not?”

  A hard, thin face tried to come into focus, bringing with it the phantom smell of hot tea and wet dog. Lan grimly pushed it all away. She was sleeping. “So?” she said again, with a bit of an edge. “It’s not like I knew who he was. I’m not even sure if she knew. I was nothing to them.”

  “Then let them go.” He caressed her shoulder and, when that had no effect, gripped it suddenly and pulled her onto her back, looming over her with his face too close and his eyes too bright. “You owe them nothing. They can give you nothing. What can it profit you to play this childish game? Leave them to their fate.” His voice softened, roughened. “Give yourself to me and I will give you all the world.”

  “I don’t want a dead world.” She put her hand over his before he could take it back and held it there. After a few false starts, she said the rest of it: “But I will stay with you, if—”

  “Yes, I know how this song ends.” He shook his head, almost but not quite smiling. “And how long do you propose to remain my prisoner, if I were to agree? I will not,” he added. “But you make me curious. How do you balance your company against my hungering dead? Shall you give one hour for each corpse that lies down sensibly dead? One month for each village freed from their predation? One year for each year this world has known them? However shall you make it seem convincingly equivalent to me?”

  “If you give it all, so will I.”

  “And this means what, exactly?”

  Lan took a bracing breath and sat up. She reached out and took his hand. He let her lift it, unresisting, and watched without speaking as she kissed it and placed it on her neck. She shivered, but only once. She waited.

  Azrael was no longer smiling. His eyes, dim and playful only moments ago, were now almost too bright to meet. “And this means what,” he said, without a trace of humor or curiosity, “exactly?”

  “It means…It means you can keep me,” she said. His slack hand on her neck was cold and heavy, and holding it there was starting to feel a bit ridiculous. Lan let go of him and pulled the blanket up, pretending it needed all of her attention so she wouldn’t have to meet his burning stare. “If you end them, you can keep me.”

  “Keep you,” he echoed. “How coy. One wonders how sincere the offer can possibly be, when you do not dare to speak it aloud.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes. I do. But do you?” Between one breath and the next, the dry distance of his tone closed and his face was right there before her, all sharp teeth and freezing heat. “Say it. Say it, if you mean it.”

  The words he wanted rose as far as her throat and stuck there. “Raise me up,” she said instead. “Tonight, if you want. I’m ready.”

  He stared at her, his chest moving harder and harder with his breaths, but making no sound. Throwing back the blanket suddenly, he got up, keeping his broad back to her as he gathered his clothes.

  “Where are you going?” Lan crawled to the edge of the bed, watching as he dressed, searching out one last coin in her empty purse, anything with glimmer enough to hold him just one more minute. She found none. “I said I’m ready!”

  He cinched his belt tight, kicked his golden collar out of the way and picked up his mask.

  “It’s all right!” she insisted. “I know
you don’t want another…another…” His unexpected rage made it difficult to remember the right word. “…sick elephant. I get that. I do. But I won’t be one, Azrael! You don’t have to take my memories away to make me stay with you. When you raise me up, it’ll be the real me!”

  He turned on her with his eyes blazing, throwing the shadows of the bedcurtains at crazy angles so that the whole room seemed to spin around her. “And that’s all that’s stopping me, is it? The thought that I would create another mindless, tittering fool for my dead court? Were it not for that, I would have raised you up long ago, for surely I kill all my bedmates who provide me pleasant enough sport!”

  “What? No! I didn’t mean…” Her voice failed and would not come all the way back in. “I thought…I thought this was what you wanted.”

  His head rocked back as from a slap. “You what?”

  “You just said to give—”

  “Not your life! I’ll own no part of that! That is entirely your foolishness!”

  “Foolishness?”

  “You think you can buy the world with the promise of your body! How shall you not be a fool?”

  “At least I’m buying it dear,” she shot back. “You’re the one selling the world for sex, so who’s the fool here?”

  His mask was unchanging, but the tendons in his opened throat creaked ominously.

  Lan rolled her eyes and raked a hand through her hair. “I didn’t mean that. Look, can’t we just…I’m ready to die for you here!”

  “Not for me,” he sneered. “For your cause.”

  “But if it was for you, that would make a difference?” she demanded. “If it saves lives or takes even one step toward cleaning up the colossal mess you’ve made of the world, well, fuck that, but if it’s for you, only you, then you’d consider it?”

  His eyes faded, flickered and burned out savagely bright. “You twist my meaning.”

  “The hell I do! You want me! I know you want me! What is all this pointless horseshit about, all the reading and napkins and that, if not for keeping me? Why muck around with seeds and…and bloody blankets for a month at a go, when I can be forever for you?”

  “Forever. What do you know of forever?” he asked with undisguised contempt. “What do you know of death?”

  He was baiting her to evade the question. Funny, how she could recognize that and still jump right up and bite.

  “I’ve seen death my whole life, thanks to you!”

  He laughed at her, if that harsh slap of sound could be called a laugh. “Seeing is not understanding, child.”

  “Yeah? Well, at least I have seen it. I didn’t throw it out there in the world and then lock myself up where I never had to look at it again, unless it was pretty. I had to see what death looks like when it’s rotting on its feet. I had to smell it burning. I had to hear it eating!” she shouted. “You know what I’ve never seen? I’ve never seen it lie down and bloody die! And if that means I don’t really understand what death is, then it’s your fault!”

  “Would you?” he inquired. The very quiet of his tone should have been a warning. “Would you understand death better? Would you know the value of the bauble you offer me? This trinket, imperfect and tarnished though it be, whose worth you still hold equal to all the hungering dead of this Earth?”

  “I still mean it, if that’s what you’re asking,” Lan shot back. “I’m not afraid of you!”

  He held out his hand, silent.

  She looked at it, realized she was hesitating, and threw back her shielding blankets. Naked in his eyelight, she went to him. She took the hand he offered, kissed it again, defiantly, and brought it to her neck.

  “Breathe,” he told her, taking firm hold of her throat. He inhaled to show her how, silver rings tinkled merrily as his broad chest expanded, then exhaled just as deeply, nodding as she obeyed. “Again,” he said, and, “Again,” and, “Once more,” and when she had breathed out all there was, his hand abruptly tightened.

  She knew it would. Why then, did she flinch back, her hands flying up to grip uselessly at his immoveable arm? Why did it take so long—a second at least, maybe two or even three—to notice that she was still breathing? Not as deeply or as easily, but breathing all the same.

  “You said you were ready,” Azrael said with a clear note of disapproval.

  “I am.”

  “You don’t appear to be certain.”

  “I am!”

  “Then hush now. We have limited time. Gentle asphyxiation—and I am gentle, Lan. I’ll not let you fall before your time—renders one unconscious in less than a minute, if you fight. So be still. Remember you are not afraid.”

  And then there was no air. There was no sense of choking, no sense even of a fight. There simply was no air. Her mouth worked, chewing uselessly on nothing. Her chest heaved, but there was nothing for her lungs to pull against. Her hands slapped and slid along his arms as he spun her around and slammed her back against the door, knocking the last cough out of her with nothing, nothing to replace it.

  Panic took her in spite of her best intentions, but after the first few seconds, she could barely lift her arms to push at his, barely move her legs to kick.

  “They’re getting heavy, aren’t they?” he remarked, watching her. “With all the death you’ve seen, you’ve never guessed at the weight death has when it first creeps in. And that is your first lesson, child. Death is not something you see. Or smell. Or hear. Death is personal, intimate. Death knows you from the inside out. Feel, then, your lungs growing denser with every breath you cannot take. Your heart, heavy as it races and heavier still as it begins to slow. Soon, it will stop.”

  Her flagging struggles renewed, but only for a moment, and they left her hanging even weaker than before.

  “Hush,” he said again, softly, like a lover. “You are not afraid. You are Lan of Norwood, who walked alone into my world of hungering dead, and you are not afraid. Yes, your heart will stop and when it does, you will hear it. You will feel it. It will hurt, but you are prepared for this. You think that will be the end, that death will follow shortly.” He leaned close, filling her sight with his eyes and the terrible color that hid behind their blinding light. “It. Won’t.”

  Her nerve, such as it was, broke. It was over. She was done and later, she would be humiliated, but right now, she wanted air. She shook her head, not in denial, but as a horse will when it fights the bit. She hit the door, not just once but over and over. There was blood in her mouth, blood she could neither swallow nor spit out. The taste of it filled her skull, like the sound of her head beating on the door and her heart beating on her ribs.

  “I’ve heard it said one’s entire life is replayed in these last moments,” Azrael mused, slipping his left hand behind her head to keep her from battering herself unconscious. “I’ve never found it so, but there is time enough, isn’t there? There is no beauty in that final night, no flights of angels come to comfort you, no welcoming light to guide your way, but there is…oh, so much time. Your senses may recede, your eyes go blind and your ears deaf, but you will feel and you will go on feeling for what will seem to be hours. Your bowels will empty and you will lie powerless in your spilled shit while your body, your meat, begins the processes of decay and every nerve screams and still it does not end and will not until your stubborn brain’s last cell sparks and fails.”

  His face swam out of focus—was she crying? Were those tears?—and the shadows crept in to conceal him. Only his eyes remained, growing larger and brighter until they joined together into a deep tunnel of white light, just like some folk said there was, but even as she watched, their perfect brilliance broke apart behind a thousand tiny dots of darkness, and it was the darkness that took her in.

  Through the pain and the fear and the panic, came peace. It fell over her, soft as a blanket, warm as her mother’s hand reaching down out of some forgotten night to cup her face and tell her she was safe now, safe, and could sleep.

  And then Azrael came—not the angel or the
devil, but the whole of him, unmasked, eternal. He shattered the darkness, supplanted it, became it. She felt him close with exquisite clarity on her and in her and all around her, ripping her out of that half-grasped promise of rest and filling it instead with his own infinite and awful reality. Her life was there and her death and between them, her soul, caught on the points of his claws.

  Stillness. Not silence. The air itself had a sound that was almost her name, deafening and inaudible. Every hair on her body spiked outward, making her skin hum with an almost electric charge. Her nipples tightened painfully. Her womb cramped. The ache of her airless lungs was still there, the way the stars were still there when the sun came up, utterly eclipsed by a much greater light. She was a body made of a million nerves and no thought, no awareness of any world beyond him.

  “This is death, you ignorant child,” his voice roared, no longer on her ears but in her head, her bones. “This is what you cast before me like so many shiny beads or bottled water to buy my will. This is death and you do fear it, don’t you? You fear it and you are right to fear it, for where it ends, I begin!”

  His hand opened. Air drove into her, solid as flesh, scraping her throat as it invaded, pumping color and sound and sensation into the muffling black that almost had her and was still reluctant to let go. She collapsed, scratching futilely at the door as she fought to stay upright and ending up on the floor anyway, her bare legs sprawled at broken angles and her hot cheek pressed to the rough stone, rocking slightly with the force of breathing, just breathing.

  “No, it is not gentle, is it, to be saved?” he murmured, far above her. “But then, no one comes through that veil save that they are torn. And when it is done, I shall have these tatters to mend together into your eternal form. Hm.” He began to walk around her where she lay, circling slowly, inspecting every twitch and shudder with an assessing eye. “You say you wish to be raised up as you are, with all your mind and memory intact? So be it, but you will find memory is not a comfort to the dead. Every new day will bring you a thousand fresh reminders of how diminished your days have become. You will cut your hair and it will never grow again. You’ll never be hungry, but you may eat out of habit, only to find even lemon cake turns sour when it rots in your stomach. So you’ll stop, except on those rare occasions when you find yourself wondering what it tasted like and why you ever wanted it at all. Because you’ll forget, Lan. I can make you over in my image, but I can never make you as I am. Your flesh may be preserved as it was at the hour of your death, but your mind will remain mortal. Year by year, the hard edges that separate then from now will wear soft away and you’ll wonder…were they peaches I picked, or apples? Were there ever really Eaters or were they only monsters from a dream I had once, when I used to dream? In time, you will forget how it felt to be alive and remember only that you were…until I took it from you. And you will hate me.”