by Natale Ghent
“Yes.”
The muscles jumped in his jaw. “No.”
“Then free yourself.” She lifted his chin with the gentlest motion. “It is a fanciful dream of mankind to live in peace. Peace exists only in the mind as the blade drives through the heart.”
“I killed someone to save another.”
“Then the best man won. The exchange was more than fair.” He frowned.
“Would you rather she’d died?” she asked.
“It’s a sin to murder—it destroys all we’ve worked for.”
“It’s a greater sin to give your life so freely.”
“I didn’t want to do it.”
“You had to. What good is resistance if one simply surrenders when pressed?” She took his hand and a wave of ecstasy rolled through her. “Do you want to die?”
“No.”
She moved closer. She could see eternity in his eyes. She wanted to stay like this forever. But the breeze picked up and the spell was broken.
“We have to go,” he said. “It isn’t safe to stay here any longer.” Skylark shadowed him through the woods. “Can I at least know what we’re running from?”
He pushed through the underbrush, holding branches so they wouldn’t whip back in her face. “Company men.”
“I’ve heard of them.”
He stopped dead. “What? How?”
“Stories,” she smoothly lied. “When I was a child. We thought they were only fairy tales to scare small children into behaving.”
“Well, they’re very real.”
“And you killed one.”
He nodded.
“How can it be wrong to defend yourself?”
He didn’t answer. They walked to a stone outcropping at the edge of the forest. He crisscrossed through the boulders, Skylark following closely.
“This is a good place to rest,” he said.
They sat together, backs against the rock. She let her vision travel far through the woods to where a meadow swayed around a small house that peeked out as bright as a polished bone from a hill. And beyond that, she could hear a waterfall. The pain in her wound flared, and she could sense Poe’s thoughts as his consciousness shifted. She had successfully planted a seed in his mind. Kill one man, kill them all. He was ready to hunt the hunter. She shivered with pleasure, and the Ephemeral shivered with her.
“I can help you,” she said.
He stared at his feet.
She reached over and touched his hand, lightly, and only at the fingertips. “I believe in your cause.”
He smiled to himself. “I don’t even know your name.”
Leaning in, their lips almost touching, she could feel the invisible tendrils between them taking hold. “I’m Skylark.”
“I’m Poe,” he said, his name an opiate to her soul. He closed his eyes. He looked so tired.
“Rest,” she said. “Sleep. I will keep watch.”
He lay back, his head on the blanket roll. She took the opportunity to inspect her wound. It was dark and alive, an ugly mouth. Its black ink had bled right through her armour. Pain gripped her shoulder. She could hear his voice so clearly now. Such loving whispers. Offering her the world. An image of Sebastian bobbed up in her mind and she was struck momentarily by another kind of pain, though fleeting. The bond between her and the mouse was fading. The whispers soothed, caressed. All is exactly as it should be … exactly … as it should be … Skylark curled around Poe, absorbing the warmth of his body, feeling his lifeblood coursing as she pressed into his dreams once again.
VENGEANCE
Skylark kept watch from her perch on the rock above Poe. She felt agile, powerful. Ready to fight.
“Can you feel them?” she said. “They’re close.”
He placed his hand over the mark on his arm. “Yes.”
Hopping down from the rock, she landed beside him, smooth as a panther, and grinned. “The hunt is on.”
Skylark lit out through the woods, Poe at her side, weaving between trees to the meadow she’d seen before. She dropped, crouching. Poe crouched beside her.
“My skin twitches,” she said. “They are closer still.” She searched the landscape, pointing to a spot in the field where the grass waved along a ragged hem of sky. “There!”
Poe squinted against the sun. “I can’t see anything.”
“Wait … there … see it?”
Cloud shadows scudded over the grass. The Company men emerged from the forest like ships from a fog, steaming toward the skull house where the Dreamers slept. Skylark stepped from the trees and swung the Ephemeral from her shoulder. In a motion as fluid as a river she drew an arrow and fired. It soared over the field, blackening as it whistled through the air. The Company man’s body rose with the impact and fell, the arrow piercing his chest clean through to the other side. The pain in her shoulder arced. She clasped her wound, eyes rolling back.
“Do you feel that?” she said. “That’s the burn of victory.”
Skylark dashed down the slope, shooting as she ran, Poe running wildly after her.
The door to the skull house was flung open and the Dreamers poured out. They fled to the woods, the Company men unleashing their dogs for the attack. Skylark laughed at the challenge, drew four arrows and shot in quick succession, one after the other, until all the dogs lay dead, filaments of ice blanketing their fur. She fired again, slicing a Company man clean in half. Trotting over to the body, she took the man’s knife, its blade curved and gleaming, and put it in Poe’s hands.
“Do you like it?”
“It feels alive.”
“Use it,” she said. “Save your people. Write your name in blood.”
There was a scream and a Dreamer fell. Poe rushed the closest Company man, blade raised. The man faced him, an expressionless killer. Poe struck and they rolled to the ground. There was a sickening slash and Poe careened back, his arm bleeding. Skylark aimed at the man. But then Poe had the advantage. She lowered her bow and watched with satisfaction as his blade leapt back and forth in the sun. The man’s arms flailed like the arms of a marionette and fell to his sides, unstrung. Poe reeled to his feet, his hands dripping red. Skylark took him in, every particle in her being humming.
“Today, you saved your brethren,” she said. “You have secured your place in history.”
He stood before her, chest heaving, the slash on his arm seeping blood into his shirt. He nodded at the Ephemeral. “Your bow … I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s—”
“Special,” she said, finishing his sentence. “It was a gift.” She slung it over her shoulder. The bow wrapped itself around her and cloaked itself.
She smiled at him. How wondrous he was to her—as wondrous and mythical as the bow on her back. Her soul swelled with desire as she followed the trail of the Dreamers through the blood-stained grass, collecting her arrows from the corpses of her victims. Over the bodies of the vanquished Company men, shadows appeared and took form. The Nightshades had come to collect the bounty.
The surviving Dreamers cowered in the dank basement of an abandoned farmhouse. It was sheer luck they’d found it. They spoke in hushed voices.
Vengeance.
Murder.
Retribution.
The hand of God.
Caddy said nothing. She was sure she’d seen Poe in the meadow. Had he gone completely crazy? She feared the worst. Dozens of Company men had been killed. The Dreamers were terrified.
Someone shushed the room silent. Wooden footsteps tapped on the floor above. Who was coming?
April held on to Caddy. The basement door pushed open, the beam of a flashlight probing down the stairs.
“It’s Red and Hex,” someone said, and the Dreamers exhaled with relief. Except Caddy. Were they here because of Poe?
The Dreamers gathered around them like timid children. Caddy and April hung back. Hex stood at the base of the stairs, the glare of the flashlight reflected in her glasses. She was gunning for blood, Caddy could tell. Hex waited before she
spoke, raising the tension in the room like a hammer above a window pane. Just get it over with, Caddy bitterly thought.
“There have been developments,” Hex began. “Talk from the outside. The war between the nations has escalated.”
Horrified murmurs rose from the group. April grabbed Caddy’s hand. Caddy held her breath, counting heartbeats.
“There is more,” Hex said, drawing the hammer artfully back. “There is talk of a bomb.”
A cry of dread shattered the room. April doubled over as though stabbed, her body convulsing with sobs. Caddy held her close, comforting her. Was this another one of Hex’s ploys? she wondered. Another device to smash the group’s resolve to pieces? Hex called for quiet, April’s muffled weeping penetrating the silence.
“It’s what we feared most,” Hex said. “But we can not let anything get in the way of the Dream. We knew this time would come. It was foretold. We knew we would face challenges. Now, more than ever, as we walk the razor’s edge, we must remain united, determined, hopeful, strong.” She removed her glasses and looked at Caddy. “Dream well, my children.”
BLACK RAIN
Poe and Skylark moved through the woods. Between the trees and beneath the undergrowth, she caught glimpses of shadows moving. The shadows formed mouths and eyes, then entire faces.
“We’re being watched.”
Poe turned on his heels. “Company men?”
“Plant spirits. I met one before. Can you see them?” She didn’t need to ask. She knew he couldn’t. “They’re curious,” she said. “They are at the mercy of human activity.”
“What do they want?”
“The same thing we want. Only they are powerless to acquire it. They must depend on us to fulfill their deepest desire, to bring peace to the world.”
He stopped cold and looked at her. “What are you?” he asked.
“I am what I am,” she said. This only confounded him. “Let me make this easier for you.” Rearranging her particles, Skylark morphed into Meg, matching her features exactly, except for her soft grey eyes. Those she could not reproduce. She laughed at the look of disbelief on his face.
“H-how can this be?” he said.
“I am no ghost, I assure you.” She touched the makeshift bandage on his arm where the Company man’s blade had slashed him. “Does it hurt?”
“Meg,” he whispered. “I don’t understand …”
Skylark sidled closer. She could feel his breath on her lips. “Poe. I will never leave you again.”
They fell together, mouths and hair and hands, kissing in the forest beneath the eyes of the plant spirits. The Ephemeral swirled on her back. Skylark wanted to consume him, to drink him in. For eons she’d held his memory in her soul.
There was a bright flash. Francis and Kenji appeared. Kenji strode over to Poe and touched him on the shoulder. Poe sank to the ground, unconscious. Skylark dropped protectively over him. “Leave us alone!”
“Skylark, honey, you need to come with us,” Francis said. He went to take her hand. She blasted into the air, landing on top of a stone outcropping.
Francis and Kenji jumped behind her.
“Come back with us, Skylark,” Francis said.
“Why should I?”
“The Speaker has poisoned your blood. You’re not yourself.”
“I’ve never felt better.”
“What you’re doing is wrong and you know it,” Kenji said.
She sneered. Who was he to tell her anything? “Does Francis know your little secret, Kenji?”
He responded by firing a beam of light at her. Skylark easily avoided it, laughing mockingly. He would have to try harder than that if he wanted to catch her.
Francis barked at him. “Put your guns away!”
Skylark wagged her finger at Kenji. “Shame, shame, double shame, now we know your girlfriend’s name.”
“What’s she talking about?” the cowboy asked.
Skylark looked at her nails. “Do you want to know where Kenji goes when you can’t find him, Francis? He’s got a girl in Japan. She’s so pretty, he just can’t let her go.”
Kenji charged. She jumped, landing on Mount Fuji, Francis and Kenji streaking in her wake.
“Get away from me,” she warned.
Francis stared at her shoulder. Skylark covered her wound with her hand. The black ink was bleeding through her shirt.
“You need help, honey,” Francis said. “You’re not well. Come back with us so we can get you fixed up.”
How tiresome, she thought. Why didn’t he give it a rest? “Save your breath, old man.”
“You can’t stay with him,” Kenji said. “You know you can’t.”
“And you can’t go around killing people either,” Francis added.
She threw her head back, defiant. “I can do whatever I want.”
Francis stepped toward her. “No, Skylark. There are terrible consequences to your actions.”
“Ha!” she jeered. “That’s not my problem. Free will and all that, remember, Fran?”
“That doesn’t really apply here, darling.”
“Doesn’t it? Did it apply when you turned me into this?” Skylark raised her bound arm. “I had no say in any of this. I didn’t ask for it. You took me away from the one thing I wanted in the world.” She prepared to jump, and a magnetic force jolted through her body. The Speaker’s words poured into her mouth. When she spoke again, it was in his demonic voice.
“Who are you to stand in the way of love?”
Francis and Kenji recoiled.
“It’s him,” Francis said. “He’s taken possession of her.”
Kenji fired a scorching volley. Skylark skipped over it, the bolts ricocheting off the mountain in a shower of dirt and rocks.
“Too late, too late, will be the cry,” she taunted.
“Let her go,” Francis ordered the demon. “She isn’t yours to play with.”
“Ah, Francis, ever the bleeding heart. Your paternal dust leaves my mouth dry, old man.”
“Then have a sip of this,” Kenji said, blazing another shot.
Skylark’s hands flew to the Ephemeral and she fired, deflecting the beam to the top of the mountain. The peak exploded, snow and ice hailing down. Francis and Kenji jumped, and with a violent spasm, the Speaker left her body. She was alone on the mountain. Closing her eyes, Skylark traced Francis and Kenji’s energetic trajectory with her mind. She tuned in. She could see and hear them perfectly. They were in Timon’s office, taking an earful. Over the city, black clouds as thick as birds’ nests had gathered.
“There’s talk of war on earth,” Timon said, his pipe held against his teeth. “Guides are reporting an all-time low in human morale. It seems hope is a rare commodity these days. The Council is very concerned. They’re discussing the possibility of an intervention. Never before has such a thing been considered.” He drew on his pipe, sucked air, plucked it from his mouth and scowled at the cold bowl. “And then there’s you.”
Francis squirmed in his chair like a schoolchild. He cleared his throat. “The Speaker is getting bold.”
“He’s been emboldened,” Timon clipped back. He sighed, fumbling a match from the box next to the smoked glass ashtray by his chair and striking it. Holding the flame to the bowl, he puffed vigorously, shook the match out and dropped it into the ashtray. “We truly have no recourse. We can only hope the humans will figure this one out for themselves. Free will, and all that.”
“Yeah, we’ve been hearing a lot of that lately,” Kenji said.
“What?” Timon fixed an irritated eye on him.
Kenji muttered something incomprehensible in reply. Francis fidgeted in his seat.
“The problem is, there’s no tracking the guy anymore,” he said. “He shows up where and when he wants. He’s more powerful than ever.”
Timon nodded through his pipe smoke. “And growing more powerful by the minute. I’m afraid our hand has been tipped. The grey souls are no longer forthcoming. They’re aware of their
advantage. The first death was a shock—they were caught off guard. They’ve recovered nicely. Apparently, they’re choosing obliteration over interment now. They’re dying in droves, thanks to Skylark. Over two dozen in a single encounter. I shudder to think of her with the Elusive Ephemeral in her hands. With the mouse gone, she’s without a moral compass.” He contemplated the darkening sky. “I’m counting on you to figure this one out,” he said to the clouds. “I don’t care how. Be creative. Do whatever it takes. I don’t even want to hear what you have in mind. But if you fail …” He puffed plumes of smoke toward the window.
Francis stood. Kenji pulled himself up from his seat. Timon didn’t turn to see them off.
In the street, the temperature dipped. Dark drops as thick as oil plucked a tentative rhythm on the ground. Viscous starbursts the size of quarters stained buildings and cobbles. The sky broke open and the rain fell in a seamless curtain, the rivers and fountains of the city running black with it.
Skylark sharpened her focus, tracking Francis and Kenji to their headquarters. Francis was pacing back and forth. Kenji was leaning against the window ledge, brooding. He wiped a black smear of rain from his sleeve, rubbing it between his fingertips.
“I’m not gonna ask why,” Francis started in. “Or who or how. Just fix this mess with the woman, PDQ, and that will be the end of it.”
Kenji said nothing.
“I mean it, Kenji. I want this to end. Whatever human has you messed up, just cut it off—now—and nothing more will be said. But if I find out you’re still mooning over some woman, I’m going straight to Timon.” He continued to pace for the longest time, the black rain pounding on the window.
Kenji finally spoke. “I have an idea.”
Francis turned to him like a dog following a tennis ball. “Lay it on me.”
“We can protect the grey men.”
“What?” Francis tipped back on his heels. “They’re not the ones that need protecting.”
Kenji faced him. “Think about it. All of this started with the human that kid Skylark is so hung up on—he drew first blood.”
“No,” Francis said. “You can’t blame the boy for this. It’s my fault. If I’d taken you instead of Skylark, none of this would have happened. I exposed her to the Speaker. For all we know, that was his plan all along—to get us to bring her somewhere so he could get his hooks into her.” He pushed his hat to the back of his head. “Have you ever wondered why he didn’t take her soul and put it in a little glass vial for his collection when he had the chance? He let her come here and transform into some kind of super-frequency. He wanted her to evolve. Somehow he knew what she was and we didn’t. He wanted to take her at just the right moment and make her his own. And I walked right into it. I handed her to him with one of the most powerful weapons in the universe on her back. Now she’s out there with the Ephemeral, picking grey men off like fish in a barrel. The Speaker’s stronger than ever with her at his side. I’m the one to blame. It started because of me.”
