Children of the Bloodlands

by S. M. Beiko

  However much Eli didn’t trust the man, he wanted to impress him. “Maintain order. Maintain the Narrative.”

  “And above all else?”

  “Keep all Denizens’ powers a secret, so that regular people don’t know about us. Or fear us.”

  “Or worse,” Solomon added, but he didn’t elaborate. “To accomplish this task, Phyr, our Matriarch, gave the Owls the ability to change people’s very thoughts. To take away a criminal Denizen’s power. We are Her justice in this world. It is a privilege and a challenge. The Tradewind Moonstone has not chosen a Paramount in some time, because to take on such a power would take a truly great mind. Some have said it was too much power. Some say we need a Paramount, now more than ever.”

  Solomon had paced the full circuit again and was now standing behind Eli’s chair. “The stone has hidden itself, waiting to be found by the one most worthy. Perhaps one day we will go looking for it, you and I.”

  Eli just stared at the drawing of the stones, and the longer he stared the more they seemed to glow. “And what happens if all the stones are brought together?”

  Solomon’s hand came around Eli, turning the page to an image of three massive shadows with gnashing, snarling faces. A dark moon above them, blotting out the sun. “Then it could open the door between this world and another. A dark world. And so the stones, and the Families, remain divided. They each have their own duties to perform in this world. If the Brilliant Dark were ever to open into our realm, it would change everything. For better or worse, we don’t yet know.” Solomon shut the book. “Luckily, the fifth keystone is not in this realm. Fia would never give up the Horned Quartz. So the gods keep us safe.”

  Eli twisted in his chair. Solomon was staring out the window of the tower now, to the great peaks of the mountain range beyond.

  “Solomon?” Eli asked. He was a man now, but he was still as frightened. “Can you tell me what’s going to happen?”

  Eli watched as Solomon’s skin crackled black. As the flesh blew away, mere ashes on the wind, his glowing eyes were sad. “Only you can know that now, my boy.” Then his father and the memory were gone.

  ~

  “So this is . . . highly illegal. And if I try to list all the reasons why, I’m sure I’ll miss more than half.” Phae pressed her back to the fridge, never taking her eyes off the two hulking polar bears who were, mercifully, preoccupied with the massive piles of fish that Natti had made Phae pick up on the way. Watching them consume the fish instead of her, she was grateful she’d erred on the side of buying the majority of the seafood aisle.

  “Yeah well. I didn’t have time for the law. That’s a job for the Owls, who will probably be here soon, if not the useless Mundane police.” Natti watched the bears warily, too, but more out of the corner of her eye from her place at the chipped Formica kitchen table. Now she looked up at Phae. “You wanna sit?”

  “I don’t want to make any sudden moves, thanks.” Phae folded her arms but still didn’t look away.

  Aunty was still in her recliner, which was only about ten inches away from the smorgasbord. Out of everyone, she seemed the least concerned. She coughed heavily, and one bear — the one that Natti had identified as the injured one — looked up at her and sniffed.

  Aunty finally sucked in a breath. “They ain’t interested in eating us. If it was people flesh they wanted, they woulda snacked on their damn zookeepers.”

  The bears smacked their lips, the strongest of the pair watching them with open curiosity. The bear with the dark stain around its throat ate more slowly, as if swallowing each morsel took its entire concentration.

  “Okay so . . . again I’m really not too sure why I’m here. Or why they’re here.” Phae used her eyes to point; she had been taking special note of those jaws as they worked on salmon flesh and bone.

  Even Natti seemed a bit unsure. “They were chattier before I busted them out. I was hoping they’d give me more to go on by now, and I figured the food would help loosen their tongues . . .”

  “They spoke to you?” Phae blurted, though at this point, and after everything, why should she be surprised? Sil, though gone, was not yet a distant memory.

  Natti shrugged. “Sort of. It was in my head. In the water. They needed help. I just went with my gut. We both know I’m not a thinker.”

  “Hey, you said it . . .” Aivik muttered from the corner, nursing coffee from an old plastic Blue Bombers tumbler. “So what are these guys? Some kind of Therion? But they’re, like, not seals. Don’t polar bears eat seals?”

  “Sometimes,” came a deep voice like thunder from the living room, “but there are tastier meats as the sea is wide.”

  Natti got carefully to her feet; Aivik stayed put, but Phae didn’t know what to do. The room fell silent.

  Aunty let out a low, rumbling laugh. “Good thing for us, then. Though for Phae, not so much. Most of the Families take Deer for prey at the best of times.” She raised her hand towards the bear nearest her, and he sniffed it.

  “Grandmother —” he nodded after his assessment “— I see what ails you is the same blackness that takes my brother in its fist.”

  Aunty broke into another cough and so couldn’t answer right away, but Natti had begun a tentative approach. “What do you mean, blackness?”

  The bear turned his impassive eyes on her, dark as the subarctic night when the sun has fled for weeks. The chill she felt was not a natural one, and in that brief glance she inhabited a vast and unforgiving tundra.

  The eyes flicked past her, and Natti followed them. Phae straightened.

  “You brought a Deer. Canny to have summoned a Healer. We were wise to have waited for you. Though Maujaq was getting closer to sinking to the bottom of his tank and never emerging as the days wore on.”

  Phae joined Natti warily. “Your brother . . .” Her eyes cut to the silent polar bear, Maujaq, who had turned away from not only his food but their conversation, nipping at his arm. “He’s ill?”

  “In his spirit.” The first bear dipped its head. “The hurt is deep. And if he founders, I cannot make it back. We must return together or not at all. I will be trapped here for all time, however much longer that might be.” The bear rolled its mighty shoulders, getting up and moving suddenly to the other bear, cuffing with his snout.

  “Up now,” he said, not unkindly. “Help has finally come.”

  Maujaq served them all a dangerous look. “Humans will not help us. We must make this journey on our own.” This bear’s voice was the sharp edge of an icy shore, unforgiving and pitiless. The grimace became a snarl. “It is because of them we are here in the first place, Siku!” The bear spat and stood up on its hind feet, its head brushing the ceiling. Natti brought an arm across Phae, but the first bear’s mighty paw came down and so did Maujaq.

  “If I can bring you low with half the effort, we will not make it far.” Maujaq’s teeth were still exposed but not for challenging his brother. Phae could feel it across the room — a pain like it was in the air, prickling her skin. Siku nudged him back to sitting. “This is not our world,” he said, “and we have relied on humans to survive. We must do it a while longer.” The bear’s head came back around to Phae and Natti. “Will you look at my brother, Healer? Will you help him?”

  Phae’s jaw tightened. “I’m not sure if I can. But I’ll try.” And she came forward, each step a prayer not to be eaten.

  “Don’t you recognize them, Nattiq?” Aunty pulled her recliner back to its upright position, stretching her neck. “Or maybe all that soft zoo living has made their chosen bodies impenetrable to the truth.”

  Maujaq sneered. “Be careful, Grandmother. You are still a Seal. And when the ice breaks up, one of you could feed us for a week.”

  The first bear was in front of Natti scarily quick, its head towering over hers even though it was on all fours.

  “You’re Inua, aren’t you?” Natti
guessed.

  There was a flashing cloud of silver sparks, and Siku turned back towards Phae and his brother before he might answer. Phae’s hair curved off her neck, weaving into antlers as the power took hold, her hands hovering over the dark stain in Maujaq’s yellowed fur.

  Her eyes were white, turned inward. “This pain, this injury . . . it’s . . . familiar.” Her brow knotted. “It’s deep inside. In the blood. Coming to the surface. Like a parasite.” Maujaq shut his eyes, the menace in them extinguished when Phae sank her hands into the fur, into the black. Her elbows juddered, antlers crackling. She grunted and pushed, and Maujaq convulsed.

  “You’re hurting him!” Siku cried, and on impulse Natti reached out to his powerful flank.

  His head twisted back around, lips peeled over a black and sandy maw as big as her head, but she held fast. “Wait,” she said.

  In a moment it was over. Both Phae and Maujaq pulled away from one another, breathing hard. Natti went to her friend, pulled her up and away from both bears as Siku came forward to nuzzle his now relaxed brother.

  The black stain remained.

  “It did not work. You did not heal him,” Siku murmured, disappointment mingling with anger.

  “No.” Maujaq lifted his head, rose, shook himself. “But I feel as if I can face tomorrow, Siku. I feel restored . . . for now.” He turned to Phae, bowed. “Thank you, Healer. I know these things are not so simple.”

  Natti steadied Phae, but Phae pushed her off. “I’m fine,” she lied, still looking at the bears. “You two. You’re not really bears, are you. You’re . . . like Sil. Some kind of spirit inside an animal’s body. But you’re not human, either.”

  “We are Inua,” Siku confirmed. “Spirits of this Earth. These bodies were given to us from the great glacier so that we may walk here on behalf of the Abyss. We are messengers.”

  “Messengers?” Natti interjected. “Wait. Back at the zoo, you told me you knew I would come. Are you saying you have a message for . . . me?”

  Siku bowed his head. “It is why we have been sent to this world, this strange land of stone and glass that moves too quickly. Our watch was a long one. And now we can make the journey back. Now that we have found you.”

  “Back up.” This time Aivik decided to join in. “You two are from the zoo? Weren’t you guys, like, brought here from Churchill? Separated from your mother as cubs, or something; taken into captivity. For conservation.” The entire room seemed to stare at him. “What? I read the news! You’ve been here a few years. But now you’re suddenly Ryk’s messenger boys? You’re, like, a city-owned science project.”

  The bears turned to Aivik as one, twin pairs of eyes as severe as the underside of an iceberg.

  Aivik sat back down and closed his mouth.

  “Yes. We came from the north together. And this was our purpose.” Siku looked between Phae and Natti. “You are to come back with us. To unleash the Sapphire. To bring the Empress up.”

  “The world is as sick as me,” Maujaq said, nodding. “But the Empress. She will defend it with her sisters. She will help cleanse the black water with her own, before the world is plunged in shadow.”

  “Great,” Natti said. “It’d be a dull life if animals weren’t dropping in to deliver apocalypse missions and prophecies.”

  “Who’s the Empress?” Phae looked between Natti and Aunty. “And the Sapphire?”

  “He means Ryk,” Aunty croaked. “First Matriarch of the Seals. The Abyssal Sapphire is her Calamity Stone. It is kept beneath the sea except in times of war. Like the Deer, we don’t keep a Paramount because we Seals know that kind of power can’t be carried around lightly. If these boys are here to bring it up out of the ice, then it ain’t good.” Aunty’s own gaze seemed to go inward as she clutched her housecoat tight at the thigh. “The water has changed. It’s gone dark. The water and the world.”

  Siku scented the air, as if that darkness was in the room with them. “There isn’t much time.”

  “There never is, is there?” Natti started pacing, looking like a caged bear herself. “Zabor wasn’t the end of this. Just the beginning.”

  Phae shook her head, looking to Maujaq. “When I was trying to heal you, it felt like when the river hunters infected Barton. This illness, this virus, I could hear it. It’s alive.”

  “A plague of ash,” Siku growled low. “It comes from below.”

  Natti whirled. “You mean the Cinder Plague? The one from the news?” She met Aunty’s eyes, dull in the already poor living room lamplight. “I thought Denizens were immune. I thought we were safe.”

  “It is a sickness that evolves,” Maujaq sighed, seeming less restless now, more alert, focused like his brother but still with the edge. “I feel it growing, trying to find its way to the heart of me. It grows stronger as its master does.”

  “And who’s this master?” Aivik asked.

  “The child of the Bloodlands,” Siku said. “It has risen. And so we must go north, with you. As it was foretold.”

  Siku was in front of Natti now, stopping her in what had become a frantic back-and-forth over the worn carpet. “But why me? I don’t —”

  “Not just you,” Siku corrected, rising back on his legs to mimic her stance, spreading his paw. “All of you.”

  Aunty did not cough this time, but her breath rattled in her chest as she struggled to get up. Aivik went to help her, but she batted him off. “Leave it,” she muttered. “It’s about time we got outta Dodge. And sitting around here ain’t doing anything for me.” Aunty was getting more cogent the longer the bears were here. “When an Inua comes to your door and summons you, you go. Still waters run deep, but you never go against a tsunami.”

  “Whatever that means!” Aivik threw up his hands. “I have a job, you know! Not to mention how we’re gonna go anywhere with TWO POLAR BEARS.”

  “Calm down.” Natti waved him off. “You’ll blow a gasket.” She folded her arms, surveying the brothers. “You still didn’t answer me: why us?”

  As Natti looked deeper into Siku’s eyes, she realized they were not black — they were the blue of midnight, and clear, and fathomless; the longer she looked, she thought she saw, shimmering at the bottom, the crest of the northern lights that she’d only seen in photographs. And the glacier and the sea she had seen when they’d begged her help. A glacier with a glowing core, and a sea cracked wide.

  “We are only messengers,” Maujaq said. “We were sent from the Abyss to take you back to it. Back to our Matriarch. And we cannot go home without you.”

  “And where is home?” Phae was still trying to process all this, her hair gently sparking as she rubbed the feeling back into her fingers.

  “North,” the bears said together, as if that covered it.

  “God . . .” Aivik sighed, burying his face in his hands.

  “Where ice meets sea,” Siku said. “There are Seals there waiting to call the glacier up. To open the Abyss, to commit a Paramount to the cause. The child of the Bloodlands is already moving. It seeks to open its own gateway, to unleash its sires back upon this world. The world will crack, the sea will rise. We feel it as you do. It is the sacred duty of all to protect this fragile world with what power there is left in it. You have already proven you are capable of it.” At this, Siku bowed its head. “You did not suffer Zabor lightly. She and her siblings cannot attain purchase here, as they have attempted to since the Narrative began.”

  Aunty already had her coat on and a bursting carpet bag at her feet. “Well? Let’s get a move on.”

  Voices raised in protest fought for a foothold, and Phae raised her hands up, the loudest of them all. “I can’t do this!”

  “Oh c’mon, girlie, you heard the bears.” Aunty flapped her arm, thumbing at Maujaq, who seemed bemused. “This one might not make it if you’re not there to fix him up.”

  But Natti came forward in her defense. “We
can’t go dragging Phae into this. It sounds like Seal business,” she qualified. “And Phae has a family here, Aunty. And a boyfriend. She can’t just —”

  “Barton’s leaving, too,” Phae blurted. “The Rabbits . . . Something took the Serenity Emerald. And the same thing is after Eli’s stone. And maybe Roan’s.” Her face flushed at Natti’s open mouth. “Well! Barton only told me like an hour ago, and then you called! He’s going to a Rabbit gathering, in Russia. There’s a coalition forming. It seems like all the Families are preparing to fight.”

  Aunty’s fists were up, and she seemed thirty years younger. “About time.”

  Natti looked between them. “So this is really happening. Again. But we’ll all be scattered on the map this time.” She raised an eyebrow at Phae. “Lemme guess. Barton asked you to go with him, and you turned him down.”

  Phae flushed deeper. “I . . .” Then the words finally found their way out of her. “It didn’t seem like my place. Neither does this. But honestly, I don’t know where my place is anymore. The Deer Family is different. There’s none of . . . this.” The bears, Aivik, Natti, and Aunty were all part of something, a deeper bond. And Phae felt like she’d always be on the other side of the force field. “I don’t have anyone to turn to. I don’t know what to do.”

  Then a soft, enormous head was underneath her hand, pressing. Phae startled but didn’t jump away. Maujaq was being gentle, but he could still tear her apart if the mood shifted.

  “Our mother will know,” he said, and Phae’s heart twisted, wanting to believe. “She will help you find your way. Can you help us with ours?”

  Phae let out a breath. She’d already taken an enormous leap of faith last winter, when Roan had begged her to. That’s where all of this started. But what if Roan needed her, too? And Barton? Or Eli? Too many tethers, too many choices ahead, with the darkness, like a mouth, closing in . . .

  “Okay, okay, hero party —” Aivik said. “Logistics, people. Two giant bears. The four of us. Heading to some place up north. How? I mean, this is all fine and whatever, but I’ve got a long haul to Alberta tomorrow and —”