by S. M. Beiko
As Barton’s hands changed again, hardening and growing outward at a speed no real tree could manage, and he pressed them to either side of the stone lodged in the septic bark, the Moonstone’s light fully diminished now.
“You may not be my favourite person,” Barton said under his breath, “but you don’t deserve to die.” And the roots that had been his fingers pierced the thorny bark, going deep.
The ground shook.
Barton was aware of the gathering calling out, but he grunted, hanging on. “C’mon,” he muttered, teeth set hard.
He felt fingers brush around his arm, supporting him. For another bleary moment he thought it was Phae, but it was Kita. “Keep going,” she said. Barton rooted down into his thighs, into the blades that dug for purchase in the shifting ground as it rippled around them.
Something let out a wail so fierce and ragged that it cut through Barton’s concentration. It was the kind of sound he’d heard last spring, when putting everything he had into keeping a Bloodgate open on the other side of the world. The things he’d heard from that dark pit would stay with him forever.
Then the wail became a roaring wind, so high and sudden it took the breath right out of Barton, but he managed to look down in time to see the Moonstone sparking, just before the grove erupted in a hurricane of light.
When the brightness cleared, and the wind died, Barton coughed. He was on the ground again, and he could hear the others behind him coming blearily back into awareness, into motion, as they recovered from the shockwave.
Someone gasped, and Barton jerked as the roots returned into his sore, trembling hands.
Standing before them all was Eli, his ragged eyes mercifully open and gazing out into the gathering like he’d just survived a shell blast.
His wings were bent above him at odd angles, until they snapped down and free from his body altogether, black feathers disintegrating before they touched the ground. The stone at his bare chest thrummed, then dimmed again, but it didn’t go out. His clear eyes fell to Barton, and he frowned.
“Took you long enough,” he managed to croak, before collapsing to his knees and falling flat on his face.
Barton turned his stiff neck towards a dumbstruck Commander Zhou, and the blank yet relieved Owl Council. Medics rushed towards Eli, turning him over and checking his vitals, confirming that he was alive, though unconscious. “He’s severely dehydrated,” Barton heard someone say, as Kita helped him back to his blades.
“Our Family owes you a great debt,” said the sharp-faced woman, extending her hand. “Alena Jahandar. I’ve been acting in Eli’s stead.”
Barton shook her hand stiffly, the feeling coming back in sharp pangs. He watched them take Eli away, then looked back at the utterly still grove of the dead.
Kita nudged him, holding up his glasses, which, miraculously, hadn’t been trampled in all the excitement. He put them on, pushing them back up his nose as he settled into the frame of mind to do it all again, however many times it took.
“Okay. Let’s see if there’s anyone else I can shake loose from the grave.”
She Wakes in Flames
I don’t think I’d ever known what it felt like to burn. Not before Zabor. Not after. The fire was a part of me. Fire cannot harm a Fox. I had felt cold, of course. There were limits to the human condition, and I was from Winnipeg, after all. Suffering and surviving the harsh winters were a point of pride. But they’d never had an effect on me.
Now if I were thrown headlong into a prairie wind, I’d probably pass out.
I don’t remember ever getting a fever, either. Burning from the inside with infection. But that’s what this was — like my cells were being sizzled to a crisp one by one. Here, in the dark, in the burning. It’s all I could leapfrog between. I was awake, and aware, and I didn’t want to be. I curled around myself, shaking. I was sick.
Well, in more ways than one. I rolled over painfully and vomited. I hadn’t eaten in so long, so there wasn’t much to it, but the bile heaved through me and I quivered with the effort of just holding my head up, keeping my face out of it.
“Here,” someone said, a cup manifesting by my face. “Drink.”
I snapped my arm up to bat it away, but that took too much effort, and I fell forward on my hands. Rough gravel bit into them as my fingers pressed like claws, as the dizziness subsided.
“You have to drink.” The cup was put down next to me by a small hand, blistered with black and enflamed at the edges. I lifted my head. It was that little girl, the one I’d seen in the Meadows, the same one who had been in the woods . . .
Her black eyes caught me off guard — the coal-fire at the centre of them instead of a pupil. Ruo’s eyes, before the end. Before she’d killed Mala and turned into . . .
I dry heaved.
“I know it hurts at first. It always does.” The little girl sat down beside me, drawing her knees up in her skinny bare arms, splotchy and crackled with black marks. “Eventually your body gets used to it, I think. Eventually you won’t have to eat or drink, but . . . maybe you’ll be different. Because of the stone.”
I sat back on my haunches, willing my head to cease pounding. I’d taken the water, drank it all desperately. I was getting tired of being tired. “The stone?” For a second I had to really process her words. Then I looked down at my chest, at the Dragon Opal that had grown heavier and heavier as the months passed, that had kept me up nights and put me in danger and had made me hurt people.
The stone was dead.
I touched it, and it was as cold as me — cold as any rock or gem pulled from the earth. Still beautiful, with a lustre of the uncanny. But it was silent. No voices raged to tear me limb from limb. No searing comet of fire blasted out to defend itself. The core of it, bright like the sun, was dim, the corona edges dull.
But my skin around the stone was black, like the markings on the little girl, and the breath I’d tried to catch just now came out in quick, desperate gasps.
“What did you do to it? To me?” I looked at my hands — they, too, had dark splotches, but for now they were like pinprick freckles. Nothing like Ruo’s infection had been. Nothing like the spread of it over this little girl in front of me.
Not yet.
“It’s all right!” the girl crawled towards me, but I scuttled backward, holding my hands up. “You’re with us now. You’re safe.”
“You fucking infected me!” I snarled, rubbing my hands on my dirty jeans, as if I could wipe the black off. “No. This isn’t . . . It can’t hurt me. Can’t hurt Denizens.” But the black was still there, and I felt younger than the kid in front of me, face contorting under the sob I couldn’t control. Most of all, I’d trusted that the stone could protect me, but it hadn’t.
The little girl didn’t respond right away. She was staring at the ground, kneeling in front of me. There was something different about her; the cinder kids I’d come across had a sort of mania to them, a breathless, mindless loyalty to whatever it was they served. This girl seemed to be considering her words very carefully.
“I think the sickness is getting smarter,” she said. “It’s feeding off everyone’s fear. Off the pain of the world. And the world should be afraid. Because Seela and Urka will not stop. Not until they have what they want.” Her strange eyes lifted to mine, and they were miserable. “It’s okay if you’re afraid. I am, too.”
I rubbed my eyes hard, then immediately stopped, terrified I’d spread the black by further touching my skin. I couldn’t wallow; panic was surging through me like a drug, and I staggered to my feet. “I’m getting out of here,” I told her, told myself. I didn’t care anymore.
She didn’t get up to stop me. “It’s no use.”
“Where the hell are we?” There was a shaft of light coming down above us, but all around the walls were made of rough rock and stone. The air was slightly damp, like there was water somewhere nearby
— and when I quieted my ragged breaths I heard it — rushing. Were we underground? I scaled the jutting rocks as high as I could, but the opening was still too far to reach. I started feeling around for footholds, handholds, anything . . .
This was too familiar. And my spirit-eye was happy to oblige just how familiar it was by sending a shocking briar of memory piking through my vision. Suddenly the moisture in the air was replaced by ash, and I was deep in a pit of another kind. A kind where the ground was made of glistening worms.
The scene was clear as if I were there, back in the Bloodlands, and when I looked down to my arm, a thin golden chain bound me to another.
Eli. He was right there, right beside me. We stared at each other.
“Harken?”
I counted heartbeats. “What’s happening?”
The hands of our bound arms were close, pressing into the wall of the pit. His fingers twitched, but they didn’t reach for mine.
“Looks like you’re at the bottom of another pit,” he said, looking up, then back to me. “I suppose you want me to tell you to do it again. But I think I’ve got my own pit to climb out of.”
And then Eli was gone, and so was the ashy chasm of months ago, and I collapsed backward.
“Are you okay?” The little girl had rushed to my side, clinging to my arm. When the daze passed, I flung her off.
“Get away!” I tried to move aside, but I didn’t get far. I grabbed my head. What was happening? There was déjà vu, but this was different. A sensory overload. Eli had been here, here, and I’d felt him. It had been real . . . but then again, so had most of these visions that had plagued my every moment — conscious or unconscious.
I pushed up the sleeve of my torn hoodie, exposing my pale skin and the chain-shaped scar that wound around it. The black hadn’t reached it yet. This part of me was still safe. Ever since that day, Eli and I had been connected. True, we had barely spoken. He wasn’t the text-to-see-how-you’re-doing type. Definitely never the dating type. When the hell did I have time for that, anyway?
But I had thought about him often, even before Phae had suggested I call him. Now it might be too late. He was missing — maybe worse. But he had gone through what I had, with the stone, struggling to stay in control. Somehow he was reaching out to me. Or was I reaching out to him? It didn’t matter. I glanced up at the light filtering down on the little girl and me. Yeah, Eli had tried to kill me. But now I understood why. The voices. The demands. Losing yourself entirely. Even if the stone was dead, how far away was I from that?
I wished he was here. I wished any of them were here. I’d pushed them all away . . . Phae, Barton, Natti, my aunt and uncle. And now I was a prisoner. Now I had no one. And it was very likely I wouldn’t see any of them ever again.
“It’s okay,” the little girl said again, drawing away to a distance and taking a seat on a jagged rock, tucking stray uncombed hair behind her ears. “He’ll come back for you.”
I snapped to face her; she wasn’t a Denizen, how could she know what I was thinking? “Who?”
The girl didn’t look at me, just the ground. Always the ground. “Your father.”
My jaw locked. That knowledge came back all too quickly, and I felt sick again. “Killian is not my father.”
“Maybe not yet, in your heart. But he will try to be. He will try very hard.” The girl shrugged. “Better to have a father you don’t like than none at all.”
“I sincerely doubt that, and I’d know,” I retorted bitterly, pulling myself up on a rock to take stock of things. I didn’t know how long I’d been down here or how much longer I’d have to wait for answers. To confront Killian, the real mastermind behind everything that had sent the Five Families scrambling. Killian . . . Seela . . . How could they be the same person?
I was trapped down here with this little girl. That was the only thing I had control over right now. So I best make the most of it.
“What’s your name?”
The little girl lifted her head slowly, as if I was the first person to ask her that in a long while. Her face was slack as she searched mine, as if she’d find the answer there. “Saskia.”
I nodded. “Roan.” Even though I don’t feel like Roan, I thought. I had too many questions, but I figured I’d get more out of some more personal ones. “What about your parents? Do they know you’re out here? Wouldn’t you rather be with them than . . . wherever it is we are?” She may be down here with me, but I bet she was no prisoner. Was she here by orders to watch me? Or was it something else?
I didn’t know how far I’d get with this, but it didn’t matter. I clearly wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Saskia dropped her head. “I don’t know where my real daddy is now. Maybe he is looking for us. Maybe he gave up and decided to have a different life. Maybe that’s for the best.” Her mouth twisted, but she didn’t cry. “I did this all for Albert, to bring him back. But even he’s gone now. For good, I think. You can’t bring the trees back. I know that now.” She swiped an arm over her eyes. “This is the only family I have. Seela is the only daddy any of us have. And Urka . . .” But she stopped herself, looking around as if maybe she’d said too much.
Then that hadn’t been a dream. Urka was really here, in our world, primed to wreak havoc for its masters.
I leapt up and scrabbled over to her so quickly that Saskia jumped. “How did Urka get here? What did it do to me?” I touched the stone, tried to will it to come to life and threaten her, but it was still so cold.
Saskia looked from me to the Opal, touched it herself. “Pretty,” she said, her eyes far away, like she was any little girl pining for a treasure. “No wonder Seela wants these stones. They are like magic.”
I pulled away. “Seela. You all keep calling Killian that. Why?”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Because that is his name. Maybe Killian was his name, from before. But that man is dead. There is only the creature who is the one true child. And he wants what we all want. His family.”
Suddenly something heavy slammed open — or shut — above us. A door? I lurched up, tried to scale the rocks and slipped, landing hard on the jagged edges and cutting my hands, scabbing my knees.
“Careful now,” came a soft voice above me — soft and strange. “Wouldn’t want to damage the goods.”
I jerked back and pressed myself to the wall of the pit, grimacing. The light filtering down on us came through a grate, and I couldn’t tell if the thing on the other side of it was a man or woman. But it was alive. It looked like a hope tree, gangrenous-seeming flesh all gnarled and nasty and shaped into a mockery of a person. It wore ragged clothes, and it hooked a large, blunt limb into the grate, yanking back until the door swung open on rusted, dripping hinges.
I felt Saskia beside me. She frowned up at our monstrous jailer. “Corgan,” she said, “you’ve been gone a long while.”
The creature inclined its head. “Master went far afield. There is news on the wind. Our path ahead has changed, the Moonstone reclaimed by our enemies.” If the thing had eyes I couldn’t see them. But it did have a mouth, working around a crushed palate as if each word was a moist, rotting morsel. It reached its crooked appendages through the grate. “Up now.”
“No, don’t!” The warning was automatic, but Saskia just served me with a blank expression, held out her arms, and let the monster called Corgan pull her up and out of sight.
For a second I couldn’t see them, heard heavy steps of retreat. Panicked, I grabbed for any rock I could, trying to scramble out — maybe this was my chance —
I lost my hold when that massive, eyeless head jerked back into the space. It snapped out for me but I flattened out of the way.
“You next,” it said gruffly.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I snarled, and as fast as I could without splitting my head open, I scrambled back down into the bottom of the pit. I could still hear dista
nt water; maybe there was another way out. It was time to call the fire up, but I was exhausted, weak, so when I tried it was like flicking a lighter low on fluid.
But I didn’t get more of a chance to try, because Corgan pushed itself through the opening above, landing heavily in front of me.
“My master bids you to come,” it said, rising back to its full height. Its neck was thick and long, the head hanging from it like the tip of a shepherd’s hook. “And I will take you to him.”
I didn’t know if I had it in me to fight, but I’d have to find it. “Come and get me then,” I said, feet sliding apart in the practised stance that Sil — Cecelia — had taught me.
Something black shot towards me with the force of a harpoon. I barely dodged with a slide, grunting. It had separated from Corgan’s body and stabbed through the stone behind me, shivering with the impact.
“Crap.”
Another shot out in quick succession and caught my sleeve, nailing it to the rock. I ripped free just as the monster came at me like a bear; I scampered out of the warpath on all fours.
Corgan growled, but underneath it was a hideous laugh. “Just like vermin, crawling away.” I got back up, fists in front of me. This thing was huge but it was fast. I flexed, heaving through my nose. C’mon, fire. I tried to build up the pyre within, but there was a pit inside me yawning wider than this one. At the bottom of it were white, spent ashes.
Corgan lunged, this time with its entire arm smashing into the ground where I’d just been moments before. I had been backed into the other side of the pit, and I watched as the monster struggled to remove the arm, a mass of black, shuddering cables.
I had to do something. I shut my eyes, trying to call the fire again. I muttered under my breath, “Deon, Cecelia, Ancient, anyone . . . please. Put your power on my name.” I had never felt the need to beg, had always been able to trust myself and my abilities as they grew. But the stone was still quiet, and the power I’d had before seemed gone. Was it exhaustion? Or was it the infection Urka had put on me like a curse?
