by S. M. Beiko
“What is it?” Natti asked. Phae didn’t answer right away, just crossed the room to the television, flicked it on, and passed through channels until she hit on the news.
“The City of London is reeling today after the attack, though it has been twenty-four hours and no known terrorist group has claimed it. Speculation continues as to whether or not this is some kind of film promotion publicity stunt, given the pageantry and perhaps the sophisticated special effects, as there can be no other explanation for what we are about to show you here this evening.”
The footage revealed an exploding street, a towering creature scuttling on spidery legs, black flames and burning children, and those trees, those demonic trees they left behind, the ones Barton had talked about and now they’d seen firsthand.
Then there were the three leads in this dance — the man with the great black wings and a girl with mismatched eyes. Both were yanked into the abyss in the embrace of the hideous monster that had precipitated the attack in the first place.
The news went on to note the injury count, the damages, but no lives were lost. If only they knew what the trees really were.
“How in the hell,” Aivik cried, “is this even on the news? Isn’t this, like, the Owls’ one major job? How many people have seen this?” He whipped his phone out to Google it.
Phae had beat him to it. “Barton says it’s everywhere. Facebook. YouTube.” Cellphone footage and hashtags and the human world was chattering; the curtain was lifted.
“Seela,” Siku shouted, ramming his head so hard into the television that it teetered. Natti swooped in and caught it before it could crash to the floor.
“Easy,” she said. “You’re not gonna reach him through this thing.” Not that she’d want to, after seeing the image of him up close and personal. And they’d had it put right before their eyes: Roan being ripped away back into its fold, and Eli had been too late.
“This is all happening without us,” Maujaq moaned. “We are running out of time. We must wake the Empress.”
“The Ice Road may be our only way there.” Siku looked up at Natti. “Seela is seeking an even playing field. It wants to turn the world against Denizens. What precious anonymity we once enjoyed is unwinding.”
“Tagging along with a bunch of bears hasn’t done us any favours in that arena.” Natti paced, unable to shake what she’d seen.
“What’s this Ice Road?” Phae hazarded. “Is it, like, some means of faster travel?”
Siku nodded. “But like all things, it comes at a cost.”
Maujaq reared. “I won’t let you give up the compass for it. I won’t!”
“That is not your choice to make,” Siku said.
“Enough!” Natti was at her feet in front of them, tired of the bickering. “No one is dying here. I know what you two are capable of. I saw it at the tar sands. But you came to us asking our help, and we’ll give it to you. You just have to ask.”
No one in the room spoke or moved — except Aunty.
She had barely contributed even the thinnest sardonic comment in the last few days. She’d spent the long hours staring out windows into the distance, haunted by what was out there. Now she had pulled herself up, waving Aivik away, as she stood in front of the bears.
“I’ve held onto it long enough,” she said. “It’s time to use it.”
Natti stilled. “What the hell is this now?”
“Hold your tongue, Nattiq,” Aunty barked, and she turned back to the bears. “I know where the Shore Clan have gathered. The summoning is going to start soon. Your priestess is ready to bring the glacier back up. I can point you and the Ice Road there.”
She opened her hands and showed something Natti hadn’t seen in years — the necklace her mother had worn every day except the day she’d gone missing.
Siku pulled himself to his hind legs, proud and strong, and even though he was a bear, he held himself like a man. Maujaq followed suit, though it came with greater effort, and suddenly the room was filled with an icy white gale, and their yellowed fur whipped in the frenzy.
“You have any idea what this is about?” Phae cried over the gust, grabbing hold of Natti to stop from either falling over or being buried in snow.
“Not a damn one,” she hollered back, “but I really don’t like it.”
Siku pressed his head into Maujaq’s, his brother’s face twisted in grief. Natti felt like a sacrifice was about to be made, and Siku dropped his paw onto the charm that Aunty held aloft.
Somewhere close by, a pipe burst, and the room filled with an impossible volume of water called there by the bears, or by Aunty, and Natti grabbed hold of Phae, who flashed a shield around them all in time for the water around them to shiver into clear, hard-cut ice.
Aunty’s hair was cast around her like a great net. The bauble shone, the light engulfing Siku and pulling him away from Maujaq — pulling them all away, through the ice, into the light that the pendant cast, and they were gone.
~
“But what’s it for?”
Natti’s small hand wound in the chain, thumb smoothing out the sea glass pendant incised with three gold rings and a jagged pointing arrow.
Her mother’s hand eclipsed hers, pressed Natti’s fingers to her mouth in a kiss, then tucked the pendant back into her work shirt. “It will bring me back to you. If I ever get lost.”
Natti could feel her eyes growing heavy, but something nagged at the back of her mind. A voice, maybe hers, begging her to stay awake, to hear this clearly. “Are you going somewhere, Ma?”
Back then, little Natti wouldn’t have noticed. But through the lens of time she did. Her mother’s eyes, still so young, constricting. “Get some sleep,” she’d said, then left the room, the door cracked open and spilling light and voices from the hall.
“You need to keep it safe,” her mother was saying, voice low.
“It is not meant for me! If you take it off, you know what will happen. The protection will be lost.”
“Yes, I know. But it is my time to be tested. The Empress has called me back. I have to complete the journey. I don’t know how long . . .” Her mother’s voice caught, and she swallowed. “The water is sick. I must go north. I know that whatever happens, you will take care of them.” A rustling, as if an embrace, a grunt of knowing.
“Be careful,” Aunty said. “There are worse things than darklings on those roads, looking for women like us.”
The bedroom of her childhood faded, the last time she’d seen her mother slipping through Natti’s fingers, no matter how desperately she tried to hold on.
~
Natti groaned. The snow-speckled wind scoured her face. She tried to cover herself but even her windbreaker wasn’t going to cut it.
All around her was a whiteout. A blistering blizzard and a flat plain of snow stretching infinitely. Getting to her knees was a trial, for the icy blast wasn’t interested in seeing her move.
So she crawled. And, bit by bit, a figure, a shadow, resolved out of the white. A person, sitting upright and calm, spine stiff, staring into the distance.
“Hey!” Natti shouted, and she saw the person incline their head only slightly, and with that dip the air froze, the snow shivering to the ground in a breath, and all around them was clear and silent.
The person stood and turned fully. It was a man, his face lined with dark tattoos stretching from his eyes to his mouth. His long white hair cascaded down his back in a braid, his furs and hide stark yellow. His eyes were a fathomless sea.
Natti got to her shaking legs on her own, since the man didn’t seem inclined to help. She grunted. “Where are the others?”
The man lifted an eyebrow. “So you know me, then?”
Natti walked past him, staring out into the tundra. The sky was pink, the sun a caustic jewel ahead. The sounds could have been from an alien world. There was nothing to smell. In
the distance, sharp peaks rose, but beyond that Natti felt something she never had — an eternity, filling her blood. The unfettered call of the sea.
The cold was intense, and she rubbed her chest with her fist. “This is all happening so fast, Siku.”
“And it must,” Siku said, joining her side. “Maujaq is with the others. But I wanted to speak to you, first.”
Natti appraised him from the corner of her eye. In this form, Siku still had all the same devastating bearing he had as a polar bear, yet he seemed diminished somehow. “You aren’t going with us, are you?”
At that, Siku smiled. “It was canny of Aunty to use the compass. She knew she would have to eventually. But she’d need power to do it. Power she doesn’t have any longer. She carries the same corruption that my brother does. We view death differently, and you know that, too. I’m not really going — we will be reunited soon.”
The day seemed to pass impossibly fast before them, because it was suddenly dark, and the sky lit with ribbons of dancing green. Natti didn’t bother asking where they might be or how this might be happening. This could be the Veil. Some place in between. But it didn’t matter. She started when Siku took her hand and placed something in it — a single large bear claw.
“A fight is coming,” he said, closing her fingers around it. “You have not just power but a will to help. That is as good a weapon as any. The Empress must be called back up by her messengers. She will lead you all into battle.”
Natti stared at the sharp claw, kept on a leather strap. “And what if the Empress —”
“Chooses you?” Siku finished for her. “She already has, in some way. You have come far to deliver us. You have risked much. Even when there has not been much left to risk.”
Natti frowned. “So what? You’re spent, now? And you’re passing the torch to me? What if I can’t carry it? Phae and I would’ve died if you and Maujaq hadn’t intervened. I don’t have that kind of power. I’m not Roan. I can’t lead anyone.”
The day was turning again, and the sky was getting so bright it was hard to see. She could feel Siku’s hands on her shoulders, becoming the huge paws of the bear, and the sea calling, the glacier looming large in her memory as the wind screamed through her and the blizzard returned.
“You are made strong by the love of your friends. You have already carried so much. And you must be stronger still — if you are to make it back to your mother.”
Natti startled. “My —”
But the wind and the tundra took her, and she knew no further promises beyond the cold.
~
Phae had expected a warmer welcome than this — though she wasn’t sure if she’d ever feel warm again, despite the furs and hides they’d been given.
Maujaq had been silent since they’d reappeared in the frozen north with little bearing. Natti was still unconscious, and Siku was gone. Aunty still wore the sea glass around her neck, and she rocked back and forth under Aivik’s second blanket, coughing all the while.
“How long do you think they’ll keep us here?” Phae asked, sidling up closer to the both of them. They had all come to in a vast emptiness, but there had been the lights of a settlement on the horizon, by the coast. Maujaq had led the way bitterly, and it had been an exhausting journey on foot, in the cold, barely prepared. The summoning, Aunty had called it, an impromptu gathering of Seals at this glacial bay to bring the Sapphire, kept hidden at the bottom of the sea, to the surface in order to unleash the tide of war.
They were being kept in a hut with a floor of snow and ice retreating from the central firepit. The wind battered the hides as if scads of monsters were trying to claw their way in, but the structure held firm.
“They’ll keep us here as long as they like.” Aunty sniffed, taking a huge breath as Phae pulled her blue-sparking hand away. “These are troubled times. Even coming here with an Inua could be a trap. They’ve got to take our measure.” She glanced towards Natti, who was still prone by the fire, completely still save for her flickering eyelids. “It has been a taxing journey for us all.”
Phae’s mouth twisted. “Do you think the stone will choose Natti? To lead whatever this . . . onslaught is against Seela.”
Aunty shrugged. “Natti is a fighter. So is Ryk. She will want her best on the charge. But the girl is young. Hasn’t even had a chance at her own life. Spent it taking care of everyone else’s.” She glanced up at Phae. “Think you know how that feels.”
Phae sniffed — she was too tired to deflect or deny it. In the small space, Maujaq’s heaving back, turned on them, was difficult to ignore. “Siku gave up his power, then. To see us here safely.” She thought of a Deer, long ago, who had done the same for her.
Aunty sighed. “That he did. But he saw as well as I did that time’s running short. For all of us.”
All Phae could think about were the tar sands. The monsters that had crawled out of that dark, dead place, that horrible twisted tree that had been a man only moments before. What was happening? And had it been happening all along? Phae watched the tethered entryway, shadows moving past it, voices coming and going. No matter what happened now, there might not be any going back — for her, for Natti, for any of them.
Phae’s hands were empty, but beneath her skin the power sizzled. She wanted to be useful. She didn’t want to be idle any longer. She wished, most of all, that she could tell Barton he was right.
Natti groaned in her sleep, but before Phae could go to her, the tent flap moved, and Natti bolted upright, eyes wide. She took a bleary look around, a fist clenched in front of her face. She was trembling.
A man had come, flanked by two women, each with similar facial tattoos and fur-drawn hoods. They stared at Natti in silence, then surveyed the rest of them. Maujaq shifted, levelling them all with his dark, miserable stare.
The man nodded. “Come,” he said. “The summoner will see you now. It is time to open the Abyss.”
Natti’s fingers uncurled, one by one, and Maujaq scented the air, coming closer.
Phae helped Aunty up, and Aivik aided her out of the tent, while Phae went to Natti’s side. “Are you okay?”
The two of them stared at the bear claw in Natti’s hand — almost as long as a knife. Natti said nothing, simply slipped the tether over her head and pulled the hair away.
“Guess I have to be,” she muttered, gaze landing on Maujaq, whose sorrow seemed to be edging away when he nodded. “Time to do the hero thing.”
~
They were led into open ground, into the bright and desolate night. The encampment was on a bay, and the wind off the water was biting. Maujaq walked beside Natti, his progress slow. Natti was in no rush; it could’ve been a death march. She wasn’t ready to take on the burden, but there was no other choice.
“My brother would not bestow his trust idly,” Maujaq finally said. His voice seemed weaker, each word speared on his teeth. “He has given you the blessing of an Inua.”
Natti grunted. “Here’s hoping it was worth it.”
“To say such would besmirch his sacrifice,” Maujaq snarled, but when he looked up at Natti he seemed to balk. He must have seen the dread there. She wasn’t going to hide it.
“It’s not him I’m unsure about,” she said.
Natti tripped and didn’t realize it was Maujaq holding her back until she looked up and saw the man he’d become, so similar to his brother, holding bone-breakingly tight to her wrist. He staggered for the effort of the transformation, the black mark so ugly against the pristine white of his coat, his hair, his eyes.
“Remember,” he said gravely, “you brought us here, and with little knowledge as to what for or why. You are willing to give up your future to see this world has one. You saw what lies ahead, and you did not shy.” Was that a smile at the corner of his mouth? “And I don’t admit such things easily.”
Natti glanced down at Maujaq’s hand, which let
her go, and he flexed the fingers, staring at them.
“Not used to a human body?” she hazarded. After all, the Inua were spirits; intervening in human affairs was probably more than an inconvenience.
The fingers made a fist. “Not used to this human world.” He surveyed the scene in front of them; they were being led up a path to a ledge of rock and snow, overlooking the water and lit by the curtained northern lights. If the apocalypse hadn’t been imminent, the sky’s beauty would have stopped them in their tracks.
“Once the Sapphire is brought up,” he said, “once the Empress is called, all of us will answer. I will stay by your side, in gratitude for your end of the bargain. And out of loyalty to my brother.” He stood aside, and Natti nodded, following the track.
~
It was a ceremony. It was pageantry. It was nothing that Phae had yet seen. Men and women dancing in cadence to drums. The sky awake and shouting its colours down. A procession of bodies, a prayer, a petition.
“They have been at this for days,” Phae heard Aunty whisper, as they all watched from the outskirts of the revels. They were interlopers, yet at least it had been decided they were a part of this, even as spectators. “The fasting, the dancing.”
The sea whipped beneath them in time to the drums. Then, beneath the dancers’ feet, the three gold rings rose to light, and the drumming stopped.
A woman stepped into the three rings. She wore a costume of delicately hewn blue-dyed trailing fur. Her tattoos cut three lines down her chin, across her brow. Her headdress was mighty, made of fine ivory spikes and threaded with beads. Maybe this was the summoner they’d mentioned?
