Labyrinth of Stars

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “Just bones,” I agreed quietly. “But you know it’s more than that.”

  Zee rubbed his sharp little cheek against my hand. “Still have us.”

  I swallowed hard. “Always.”

  Tracker made a rude sound. “I have no idea what we’re supposed to be killing, but if I have to watch one more second of this shit, I’ll murder myself.”

  Oturu yanked so hard on the man’s collar, he fell to his knees. For once, I didn’t protest. “Besides Grant, we’re also hunting an Aetar. A powerful one. Goes by the name of the Devourer.”

  Tracker started. “Are you out of your mind?”

  I ignored him. “Please,” I said to Oturu, holding up my right hand, with its armor gleaming.

  Tendrils of his hair slid around my forearm, caressing that rippling, silver artifact. “You are a daughter of the Labyrinth,” he replied, softly, as the bottom half of his face began to glow, as though bathed in moonlight. “You have your birthrights.”

  I stared at him. “I don’t know what that means.”

  Tracker grunted, grim and mocking amusement in his eyes. Zee rasped, “Means you want it, and door will open.”

  What I wanted was Grant, safe. I closed my eyes, focusing on him, on my need. It wasn’t like opening the void to hop from place to place—another mystery, as yet unexplainable. This, instead, felt bigger. A wider leap. I could feel a wall just beyond my thoughts, a barrier that I pushed against, and kept pushing.

  I thought of my mother—then Grant—and imagined a door.

  A door that opened.

  WHEN I could see again, I found myself in a forest.

  I was sprawled on my stomach. Moss cradled my body, and a snail oozed past my nose, less than an inch away. I glimpsed a massive fallen log, bursting with ferns and twisted saplings, and when I turned my head, just slightly, I was confronted with the base of a tree trunk so immense I could not see the end of it from where I lay. I was lost in roots the size of minivans, and the canopy was a distant cloud of green, far above my head.

  There are mysteries, and there are mysteries, and it’s all a bit like porn—you know it when you see it, and your mileage may vary.

  For me, there was no confusion about the Labyrinth. I didn’t know what the hell it was. I’d been in it before but never by intent—and then, only for such brief moments, I still wasn’t sure what I’d seen or done. If, even, it had all been just a dream.

  This felt like a dream.

  It was not dark—not exactly—but there was no bright sun to be glimpsed, either. An odd twilight, caught in shades of silver and heather. The boys were scattered around me, despite the light. I kissed Dek’s little cheek, then Mal, hugging them close. Their purrs were quiet, a bit broken and uncertain. Zee perched on a root, staring into the distance—while Raw and Aaz climbed the tree beside me. Teddy-bear backpacks, the kind small children wore, were strapped to their backs.

  I tried to stand. Took several attempts—my legs were weak—but I managed to grab hold of a massive root structure and haul myself up. I glimpsed more trees—scattered and impossibly massive—an endless number of them disappearing into the shadows. I craned my neck and still couldn’t see the top.

  I tried to find Tracker. Glimpsed movement, but when I looked up again, all I saw were dark birds, winging silently above my head. Ravens, perhaps. A soft breeze lifted my hair.

  “The Labyrinth has no wind,” said Tracker, just behind me.

  I managed not to flinch. “Then what did I just feel?”

  “Wind from another world.” He scrabbled on top of the root and perched there like a hawk. “Stolen through open doors. Same with the birds, or any life you find here. None of it is native.”

  “And the forest?”

  Tracker hesitated, rubbing his chest like it hurt. “I don’t know. I’ve never . . . been here before.”

  “So who taught you those other things?”

  A faint furrow gathered in his brow—rare sign of confusion—but he did not answer me. Just slid down the other side of the root and disappeared. I searched for Oturu and felt a tingle at the back of my neck. I looked up again, just in time to glimpse a shadow floating amongst the trees.

  I scrabbled down from my mossy nest, using the fat, coiled roots around me as a highway system, a forest sidewalk. I felt small as an ant compared to the trees, each of which seemed fat as an entire city block. Skyscrapers had never made me feel so insignificant—nor any man-made structure, mountain, or canyon. But this was different.

  This was breathless wonder. First twilight, first hush, a silence so expectant and pure that to make a sound, to even breathe, felt as though I was intruding upon the gestation of miracles. Ancient did not belong in this place, ancient was too young a word, but for every step I traveled, I felt more certain that I walked amongst immense and dreaming souls and that I was nothing but a dream, a fragment, an echo lost in the heart of eternity. I wondered if mankind had been born from trees, or if trees walked amongst men as their own dreams, born and born again.

  We are home, whispered a small voice inside my head. We are home in the heart of the endless wood.

  And the darkness, which had been silent all this time, murmured:

  It is in the blood.

  I found Tracker moving toward me through a clutch of large ferns, each frond nearly as large as his body. He rubbed his chest like it hurt—which was odd enough to make me stare. Tracker did not show pain. I had stabbed him in the foot once, and he’d practically asked for more.

  “What is it?” I asked him.

  Tracker faltered. “Nothing.”

  “I’ll take that as a something.”

  He balled his hand into a fist. I picked up my pace, passing a mossy knoll covered in small purple flowers, like bluebells, only tinier. “This isn’t what I expected.”

  “I’m surprised you had any expectations.”

  I hesitated. “I was in the Wasteland, remember?”

  A place where souls were thrown to be forgotten. I had walked the dark side of the Labyrinth, buried alive. Nothing but a heartbeat in the endless dark.

  I was the only person to ever escape the Wasteland. And though I knew that the Labyrinth was much more than that dark, endless hole, I could not help but associate one with the other. The Wasteland was the nightmare that never died.

  Tracker was silent a moment. “I’m sorry for that.”

  I shrugged, watching Zee prowl ahead of us, slinking over roots and through the ferns with a hushed, preternatural grace. Raw and Aaz were still in the trees, leaping from trunk to trunk, absolutely silent. I could only see them because of the little teddy bears dangling from their backs.

  “You’ve been here before?” I asked him.

  “No.” Pain flickered through his eyes as he looked through the trees, but when he turned his gaze on me it was flat, empty. “Oturu didn’t free me, then. But I felt this place around us.”

  “What is it like when you’re not free?” I asked him, impulsively. “When he has you . . . inside him?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s hell,” I told him. “I’m sorry.”

  Tracker pulled ahead. “You brought me here to help you, not be friends.”

  “Wait—”

  “I track,” he interrupted. “That’s what I am. When the Aetar made me, I got a skill. I can find anything.”

  “Yes,” I said, wishing I could take back my question.

  His jaw tightened. “Your husband is somewhere ahead of us, but I can’t tell you anything else except that he’s far away and alive.”

  I said nothing. Tracker ran ahead, little more than a lean shadow darting along wide root structures that tumbled and twisted between the massive trees. He looked as small as I felt, but far more graceful. I hurried to catch up, falling into a careless run that made me feel as though I were flying; helped by the boys, who fell down from the trees and raced alongside me—my wolves.

  A tingling sensation arced across my back, raising
goose pimples. I thought I was just cold. But the sensation intensified until it felt like a live wire was being threaded from the base of my neck, down between my shoulders. Dek and Mal made an alarmed trilling noise, tightening their hold on my neck.

  Zee skidded to a stop, looking back at me with his eyes wide, alarmed. From above, Oturu called out. I could barely hear him. I was still running, but my body felt strange, like it was being sucked sideways into a massive vacuum cleaner.

  Oh, shit, I thought, right before I went completely blind.

  I tumbled, upside down—jerked to the side—shaken like I was in some giant’s fist. I couldn’t see. My teeth rattled. Hot air washed over me with such violence and intensity, my skin felt singed. I reached for my first source of relief—the darkness inside me—but all it whispered was, Open your eyes.

  But I’d already started coughing. The air was bitter, searing my nostrils and eyes. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I glimpsed a dry, cracked plain in every direction, straight to the horizon. Nothing else. No life. Del and Mal clutched my ears with their little claws. Looming above us, blocking out a dark purple sky, were two huge moons. Pale and white as ice, and creased with gas clouds.

  I tried to take a breath, but the air couldn’t seem to reach my lungs; and it burned, it burned.

  But I almost forgot that because when I looked down, covering my mouth, I glimpsed a splash of red at the corner of my eyes.

  Bodies. Ten feet away on my left, skin crimson and peeling.

  Yorana. Demons.

  CHAPTER 27

  I tried calling out Grant’s name, but the air was killing me. I grabbed my right hand, feeling the armor flow beneath my grip. Dek and Mal were keening in my ear.

  Help, I thought, choking. It must have been night on this planet. No tattoos on my skin, no boys—who could have breathed for me.

  A dark blur slammed into the dirt, cracking the earth. I stumbled backward from the shock wave of the impact, which sounded like a tree breaking. Glimpsed bladed feet, long and straight, just before a sheet of darkness billowed and heaved in the still air, whipping about with such violence it could have been hit with the winds of a hurricane. Shadows filled those folds, bottomless, endless. Reaching for me.

  I fell forward into that embrace, and was swallowed.

  It wasn’t the void, and it wasn’t a dream, but what surrounded me for those brief moments was alive, crawling over me, into me, through my mouth and ears, pressing against my eyes. Hands grabbed my wrists, then let go, only to be replaced by grasping fingers tugging my hair, and the scrape of something sharp, like teeth, against my leg. I couldn’t see what was touching me. I couldn’t fight.

  Below my heart, the darkness tightened its coils, rising to look through my eyes.

  You dare, came its slow whisper, and the crawling sensation stopped: Those hands and teeth fled from my skin. Strength flooded my limbs, washing through me like a cleansing, dark fire.

  And then I was free, on my knees, vomiting into a fern. Cool air surrounded me, but the slow burn remained beneath my skin—power, skimming through me, making the hairs on my arms stand straight up. I closed my eyes, listening to that night fire, listening to its absence of light, which felt like another kind of star—falling, falling, inside me.

  This is what waits, whispered the darkness. It is freedom.

  And the hunger? I asked. Your hunger destroys.

  Hunter. That is beautiful, too.

  Dek and Mal chirped. I opened my eyes, vision blurred with tears. Zee knelt in front of me, so close his nose rubbed mine. Raw and Aaz were pressed on either side of him.

  “Maxine,” he rasped.

  “What happened?” I croaked.

  “Fell through a door.” Tracker knelt, tilting back my head and peering into my eyes. “You hit another world.”

  “Dead world.” I pushed his hands away but started coughing. “Dead Yorana were there.”

  “But not your man. He’s not there.”

  Zee rammed his claws through a fern, agitated. “But came this way.”

  Yes, and some of his demons had fallen through that door, just like I had. And died there. I didn’t want to think about the same thing happening to Grant. But maybe his ability to see fields of energy would save him. I’d felt a tingle, right before the fall—that had to be something that would alert him as well.

  Oturu loomed. I turned, peering up at him. His mouth was set in a hard line, and the shadows beneath the brim of his hat were especially dark.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Tendrils of his hair reached for my hands. But before Oturu could touch me, Tracker placed himself between us—grabbing my waist and helping me rise.

  “Be more careful,” he said in a gruff voice, steering me away from the tall demon. “You might not survive the next drop.”

  I stared at him, remembering the assault of hands and teeth inside Oturu’s cloak, wondering if that was what Tracker had to endure—and if so, how he could survive that impossible prison.

  I looked back at Oturu, who stood perfectly still in the twilight shadows of the Labyrinth forest, watching us. Even his cloak did not move.

  Raw tugged on my hand and pulled a bottle of water from his teddy-bear backpack—along with a small packet of M&M’s. I took both, grateful. My throat still hurt from breathing the air on that planet. Aaz was hugging his own teddy bear, giving me a mournful look. I stopped, dropped into a crouch, and hugged him as tight as I could. I needed to, more badly than I could admit.

  “It’s okay,” I said, feeling those mountain-crushing arms hug me back, very gently. Raw pushed close, as well. Zee leaned against us, ears pressed flat against his head, eyes squeezed shut. Dek and Mal licked his brow.

  I glanced up, found Tracker watching with all the sharp scrutiny of a hawk.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “But we’re having a moment.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. He stepped onto a gnarled, massive tree root, balancing there on the balls of his feet, and looked back down at us.

  “It’s good to have moments,” he said, with what could have been menace—or wistfulness. “Life is nothing without them.”

  I don’t know how long we walked, but the light never changed, and neither did the forest. And even though I was here, with the ground solid beneath my feet—even though I had fallen through another door—it was still difficult to imagine that this was the maze. A forest as the crossroad between here and there: a place of possibilities that was a world unto itself.

  “The Labyrinth reflects the heart of its god,” said Oturu, floating past me, tendrils of his hair stroking the deep, cavernous creases of tree bark, so large my hand could fit inside. I heard the high trill of a bird, but nothing answered that lonely call. “The god who is your father, Hunter.”

  I felt uneasy hearing him say that. My father was something I still hadn’t dealt with. I didn’t know how. But that hadn’t stopped me from sending out a silent call to him from the first second I’d fallen into the Labyrinth. He hadn’t answered. But then, I almost didn’t expect him to. It was easier on me that way. Less disappointing.

  “Did you ever meet him?” I asked.

  Oturu tilted his chin toward me. His silence was long.

  “We do not know,” he said; and then, very softly, “Our embrace made you afraid.”

  I was wondering when he’d bring that up. “Who are they, inside you?”

  His mouth tightened into a hard line. “We told you once, Hunter. We are the last of our kind.”

  “Yes,” I said, gently. “I’m sorry. But what does that have to do with those creatures?”

  “We are the last,” he repeated, and I realized he wasn’t just talking about himself. I stared, trying to make sense of it—but all I could think about were those hands and teeth on my skin. Lives, lost in darkness. Lives, hidden away. Who were they, and what? And how long had they been trapped inside the demon who floated beside me?

  “But why are you . . . containing them?” I asked,
confused—but also a little horrified.

  “So they might live.” Oturu’s cloak flared, and I saw those faces and hands surging against the wall of darkness; fleeting glimpses, pressing out and receding. A gruesome dance. “Their worlds are gone. No others will sustain them. And so we are together, and together we hunt, and we are not alone.”

  Not alone. My heart broke for him. For all of us. Not alone.

  How fundamental that was beginning to seem. From Aetar to demon, to human—all of us suffered from being alone. Solitude was different. Meditative, even. But loneliness . . . that was the curse and killer.

  Zee made a low, growling sound. He was perched on the side of a tree, claws digging in like hooks. Moments later, Tracker appeared.

  “Come on,” he said. “There are dead demons up ahead.”

  More Yorana, but this time they hadn’t died on another world. Their bodies had been tucked within the roots of a tree, half-covered in ferns. A quick burial, it seemed.

  “Don’t go near them,” I told Tracker and Oturu. “They were sick.”

  “Clearly.” Tracker kept a wide berth. “It’s been years since I’ve seen their kind. I’d almost forgotten what they looked like.”

  “You fought them?”

  “Briefly. The Wardens were created prior to the Reaper Kings being imprisoned on your ancestor. The Yorana were difficult because they could charm, make you feel relaxed, sluggish, with just a look. It was easier to kill them from a distance.”

  “Does this mean Grant is close?” I asked Zee.

  Raw crept near the bodies, and his lips peeled back with disgust. Aaz prowled on the other side, head tilted, ears slick against his head. He made a chittering sound. Zee glanced at him and shook his head. “Old dead, not new. We came fast, but time already stretched. Week, maybe two, for Grant.”

  “A week ahead of us? Or two?” What a horrifying thought. I stared out at the forest, which was not a forest—hoping by some miracle I’d catch a glimpse of him.

  And I did. Only it wasn’t him. I saw movement far from us, between the trees. Only for a split second, but it was human-shaped, and that was alarming. Especially because it wasn’t shaped like my husband. I’d know his shoulders anywhere.