The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  The silence stretched long. “You’re not one of them, Miss Das. Though perhaps you wish to be. At least, you wish to help Denizens, don’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  Grant could see that latent anger was still threaded there amidst her confusion. He flicked the console, and the raging fire god faded to black. Recalling how close he’d already come once before, he frowned. “Barton Allen wanted to help Denizens, too. But he wouldn’t listen to reason.”

  Saskia grit her teeth. “So you executed him for it?”

  His head swivelled towards her like a bird of prey’s. “Executed? Is that what you think happened?”

  She was shaking. “All I know is . . . is that he came into this compound willingly and never came out again.”

  “Hm.” Grant made his face blank. “And perhaps that is all you’ll know. Unless you consider my offer.”

  The scared girl was wiped away. Saskia Allen Das looked ready to leap up from the table and put her hands around his throat. The tension in her legs was visible.

  Then she froze. She was still looking at him, but her eyes went wide, mouth parted slightly. No, not at him — past him. The back of his neck prickled, and he whipped around, but there was nothing there save black, empty screens, and his and Saskia’s reflections.

  When he looked back, her body had gone slack in her chair, her gaze inward, the moment gone. She whispered something.

  He leaned in, perhaps too close. “What was that?”

  “I’ll consider your offer,” she said, only slightly louder. Whatever she had seen just then, it had prevented her from immediately rejecting him.

  For what he planned, what he needed, he’d take it.

  He tapped in his security code, and the door in the back of the room opened. The original escort guards came back in, and Saskia stood, head bowed. She was just a scared kid again.

  “See that she makes it home safely,” Grant said with a smile. “You’re free to go, but I’ll check in. Don’t worry about your friends. We have it well in hand. We’ll talk more soon, Miss Das.”

  When the girl and the guards were gone, Grant hesitated only a moment before turning the screens back on, replaying the image of the great god on its rampage, bringing down a garnet blade with the force of everything Grant had always wanted.

  His hand flexed, as though the blade was in it, and it felt closer than it ever had.

  The Dark Eye

  “It was as you predicted,” the woman at the head of the gathering said, head lowered. “The attack failed.”

  They were gathered in a dark place, as had become their custom. They had waited all this time, and so long, but it had been worth it. The beginning of the end. The moon had moved.

  Beyond the woman who had spoken stood the man they called the priest. A man once shamed, brought now to the forefront of their movement. One who inspired hope in the hopeless, Denizen and Mundane alike.

  The priest folded his hands, contemplating. “Nothing is certain,” he said, after a pause, considering things long behind him, and the undetermined ahead.

  Murmuring amongst the gathering. Dissent and hesitation and fear, always fear. But a pulse, subtle and electric. He spoke over it. “Soon, the darkness will speak. The signal will come. It is the receiver for which we must be vigilant. We must still wait, yes, but not too much longer. I have a feeling it will come to us, and our way into the compound will be clear.” He turned, jerked his head, and two men came forward.

  No matter what they did now, it was in motion. The moon would track towards the sun. The eclipse would come. And soon, the final act.

  “Bring me the Fox girl, Ella,” he said. The men nodded and left.

  The man leaned forward on the table and contemplated what was spread out before him. Scriptures in various languages. Pictograms. Semiotics to describe the indescribable.

  A red ring around the dark moon. A moth. And rising beneath them, the godhead they’d all been waiting for.

  “The door will be opened,” the man muttered to himself, “and we will all have to make our choices.”

  * * *

  Saskia perched at the edge of her bed, watching the faint line of dawn breaking over Winnipeg through the high-rise window. She’d heard Phae get up. She turned down the analog radio that went on at seven a.m. every morning in lieu of an alarm, even though the broadcast had made her unable to move at all — until Phae had stirred in the hallway.

  The scent of incense was bright in Saskia’s nose as her guardian lit the taper, muttering the proper prayers as if there were anyone in the void still listening. Saskia turned her head, saw the flicker of blue beneath her door. Smiled a bit, imagining Phae’s glowing antlers woven from her long black hair. The image made the radio’s message dull for just a second.

  They weren’t afforded much privacy in the cramped, hastily rebuilt building, but Saskia was always mindful of Phae’s need for it. She was an inward person. Had always been that way since Saskia had known her, and before that, Barton had told her. But Phae had become even more stoic, probably because of the things she’d seen in another world. These things had made it harder to penetrate the heart that Barton had fallen in love with — he remained the only one who could.

  That last part he hadn’t told her. Saskia had just felt it, observed it, from the first time she’d seen them together, in a faraway hospital in Newfoundland.

  “That’s your gift,” Phae had said to Saskia once. “You can know people before even they do. You’re a bit like an Owl that way. You just need to remember to keep certain things to yourself.”

  But Saskia wasn’t an Owl. She was nothing.

  Your gift. It was a backhanded compliment, even back then. Saskia would never be one of them, and Phae knew it. And it certainly didn’t stop her arguing with Phae about it constantly. Like last night, which had been particularly bad, given the circumstances. At least the others hadn’t been up, though likely they’d been woken, for all the yelling and sharp barbs that Saskia couldn’t take back, even though all of this was her fault. She’d barely slept afterwards. With the radio’s grim newscast about the world Saskia was waking up to, she didn’t know if she’d sleep again for a long while.

  She heard the front door click as Phae made her way out to do her rounds. Off to visit with the neighbours, who gratefully accepted her into their apartments, like she was some kind of prophet. The last prophet.

  Saskia shuffled into the kitchen, filled the kettle, turned on the electric stove. She timed it on her watch. Resources were already scarce and highly regulated in the city; electricity had been switched mostly to solar and water, what with the Pipeline Disturbances. They’d dug too greedily and too deep. Saskia grinned. She used to read The Lord of the Rings and wonder if they weren’t living it now. When Canada built those oil lines, they probably hadn’t factored in possible underground monster attacks that would bottom out the economy. Denizens, most of all, were afforded less and less of what was left to go around. Generator time was the least of it.

  The kettle boiled and she snatched it from the element before it could squeal. She shut off the stove, checked her watch. Good — Miyala would have enough electricity to heat up breakfast for the others later. If they ran out of generator time by day’s end, she was sure Ella would do them a good turn and cook something for the kids come dinner. They always loved her trick of cooking an egg in her bare hand —

  Saskia’s whole body tightened and she closed her eyes. The thought about Ella had been so automatic, like she’d woken up and everything that had happened last night was just a terrible dream. Saskia would get ready, like she always did, and she and Ella would walk the first leg to school together, before splitting up to be with their own “kind.” They’d go into their separate school buildings. They’d learn two distinctly different curriculums, the Denizens learning how grateful they should be that they’re allowed to participate in
society, separated by a concrete partition, while Saskia’s side was taught that the kids on the other side weren’t to be trusted. Then, when it was all over, the girls would meet by the Maryland Bridge and walk the mile or so back to One Evergreen together, reliving all the stories of Roan Harken they’d grown up on. It made the wall more bearable.

  But today was not yesterday.

  Saskia pulled out a rag, absently running it over the countertop. The only reason she and Ella had become friends, so long ago, was because Phae had healed Ella’s mother when she’d taken a tumble down the stairs that the building superintendent had refused to fix. And anyone in this apartment complex would do anything for Phae, knowing her rare power, knowing the deep places she’d been and had come back from. Saskia grimaced, wondering what that was like, that reverence.

  She felt a prickle at the back of her neck and turned, pushing away the strange message she’d had thrust at her last night. Pushing it deep down so no one, not even her little broken family, would know. Maybe she’d get some real answers today. Until then, she’d smile like nothing was wrong.

  “Hey, Brain,” she said to the little presence behind her. “You want some tea?”

  Saskia poured it into her Thermos, waited a beat. Then the little boy came sauntering out from hiding, accepting he’d been discovered. “Okay,” he said.

  Saskia poured him half into a chipped mug, filled the rest with a bit of milk. Damn, they were getting low on milk. She’d have to trade a laundry token for a dairy card . . .

  The little boy that she called Brain — but who was really named Jet — took the tea, inhaled. “It’s your birthday today.”

  Saskia had connected with Jet pretty quickly when he’d come to live in their apartment at One Evergreen, overlooking the Osborne Bridge. He reminded her of herself — an impression of who she’d been, all those years ago, when all this first started. Touched by something that she didn’t quite understand but was paying for now.

  “That’s right,” she said. “Just another day, though. Gotta go to school then take care of you guys.”

  “Too early for school . . .” Jet muttered, but he didn’t challenge Saskia further, staring into his mug. He never misses a thing, she thought. She was giving herself extra time so she could go to the Old Leg grounds, see what the radio had promised with her own eyes, even though she’d only just escaped from there last night.

  It was daylight she needed to see it by.

  “School,” Jet went on. “I wish I could go to school.”

  Jet, like all the other Owl kids, wouldn’t be allowed to go to a regular school until he’d reached the age of fourteen, when he could register and take the Complicity Exam, which had recently been revised under the updated Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Complicity meant either employing their telepathy for the Task Guard, or . . .

  Saskia bent down, zipped up Brain’s hoodie, passed him a Kleenex. “Wipe your nose,” she said. “Phae teaches you lots. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to go to school anyway. It’s pretty boring.” And dangerous, in its own way.

  He narrowed his pale eyes up at her over his tea, shuffling into a chair at the kitchen table. “You’re just saying that so I don’t feel bad. About being different.”

  “Stop that,” Saskia said. “You can’t go reading people’s minds without their permission, remember?”

  His eyes fell. “Sorry.”

  She tousled his hair, picked up her bag, and stuffed the Thermos into it. “See you after, Brain. Be good.”

  “You, too,” he said. He must have heard everything last night. She felt a pang of regret in her chest at his too-young, seen-too-much eyes, red-rimmed with sleeplessness. She thought of Chancellor Grant, everything she held dear that he threatened, and the pang became protective anger.

  She kissed Brain on the top of his head, hugged him tightly, and went out the door, the smell of incense clinging to her denim jacket. She’d press her nose into her collar, later, inhaling deeply, taking strength from Phae, despite their many arguments.

  Nothing could ever be the same after last night, so she’d hold onto what she still had.

  * * *

  One Evergreen was a high-rise overlooking the Assiniboine River and Osborne Village. Once upon a time, the entire thing had been knocked down in a cataclysm caused by a river demon — long story. It had been hastily rebuilt in the aftermath. But Saskia thought about it every day, how when they rebuilt it, they couldn’t have predicted it’d be deemed Denizen Housing within a couple of years — part of the Restoration Project after Dark Day. Denizens had to live together, separate from everyone else, pushed out of their homes and corralled into apartment blocks like this one.

  That was just the beginning.

  From the wide window in the third-floor stairwell of her building, she squinted up at the smudge in the sky, like someone had put a cigarette out in the lightening grey. Even when it was overcast, and the sun vanished behind the clouds, the Darkling Moon was still there. Waiting.

  Had the world really changed that much? Saskia now lived amongst Denizens, had grown into herself with them. Their struggles had been her own, but she was outside, always. She’d been touched by something else but it wasn’t Ancient. And it wasn’t their mystical gods or the enchanted thing that bound them together. Truth was, she hadn’t felt connected to anything for a long time, no matter how hard she’d tried, or how Phae had included her in her patchwork family of lost children. Even Saskia’s privilege of staying with Denizens, and not being put into the foster system to grow up with other Mundanes, was because of Barton’s contribution to saving Mundane lives from all the Hope Trees he’d undone. Even if, in the end, he couldn’t save his own.

  But the one word to describe Saskia was disconnected. Except, maybe, from that smudge above her head, and everyone else’s heads, which had sat in the same place in the sky for seven years. Saskia had been a fundamental part of hanging that darkness in the sky. Very few people knew about that who were still around to tell the story.

  But Chancellor Lochlan Grant knew something, and that had scared her.

  The building was coming alive with smells and noises and voices. Sometimes the busyness was unbearable, but leaving this early often helped. She didn’t run into Phae after all; that was just as well. Saskia seemed unable to keep what was on her mind off her face the older she got. And she didn’t want anyone wishing her a happy birthday. She didn’t want to fake-smile at them like she was happy to be seventeen.

  She walked up Osborne through the neighbourhood. This city had never been home to that many Denizens, even before Zabor. But now they’d all been squeezed into close quarters — those who didn’t disappear for months at a time for government inquiries. It was early in the day yet, and the only people on the streets were the Elemental Task Guards, keeping watch for dissension. For Denizens without their registration cards. Their eyes skated over Saskia as she passed. They weren’t interested in her this morning. After last night, she felt like she’d painted a target on her own back, but one conflict must have blended into another. Besides, she’d heard the reports. They had bigger fish to fry.

  It had been a slow transition in the beginning of all this; when it all came out that, yes, there were people who could manipulate the elements — an entire culture of magic users living alongside regular folk — it was chaos. And not only that, but actual monsters were popping out of the woodwork, too. Not from one source, but all over. Denizens were blamed for making these monsters, for calling them up, even though it was Denizens who, in the beginning, were the ones fighting the monsters. Saving people.

  It didn’t matter. Bloodbeasts were a Denizen problem. And when Mundanes got hurt by Denizens who were tired of shouldering the blame, Denizens became the real monsters.

  As for who was to blame, you could lay that on only a handful of Denizens, really. Maybe only a red-haired girl Saskia had known for the bri
efest time, and the man who walked with her, the one with dark wings . . . but they’d been gone as long as that moon had hung in the sky. They were just legends now.

  And they’d failed.

  Saskia bit her lip. Didn’t want to think about it. Yes, things had changed. People lost their jobs. Denizen licensing became mandatory in Canada and the rest of the world — now that the Moonstone wasn’t hiding them any longer, they were unmasked. Seen by all since Seela corrupted the stone, then Roan and Eli took it with them on their nether-realm dive. What they left behind was a world of element-manipulators who were punished if they didn’t comply. Register yourself like registering a firearm. Except the weapons were people. And humans didn’t trust other humans on the basis of faith alone at the best of times. How were they ever going to cope with people who had powers?

  The back of her neck prickled as it had with Jet, and she stood aside on the sidewalk, a contingent of the Task Guard coming by in their grey and white uniforms, scrutinizing her, but she met their eyes, each of them, and they looked away. She had nothing to hide.

  One guard kicked the last one in line and the girl staggered. She had a mark on the front of her uniform — a pair of wings. She was an Owl, then. And she looked miserable. Saskia threw up her mental walls, just as one of Phae’s friends, Jordan Seneca, had taught her.

  The Owl ignored Saskia. She was obviously too concerned with trying to keep up with her unit, anyway. They passed, and Saskia crossed the road, continuing on to the Old Legislative Building, heart in her throat.

  Saskia always thought about Jet on her morning walks, because he got up every morning, no matter how early, to say goodbye to her on her way to school. And that was all well and good, but Saskia didn’t want him poking around in her head and picking up things he couldn’t understand. Things she was about to get herself into if she went along with Grant’s offer. Or, if she didn’t, Jet might get hurt. They all might. Saskia had put them in that position. She had to make it right.