The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  “There is nothing great about me,” the woman said, her form still dark, opaque, but unmistakable.

  “No,” Eli croaked, “no.” The woman knelt before him, her hands cold on his stunned face. “It’s not you. It’s not real.”

  His mother’s face was a knot of grief. “Now we might both begin to know,” she whispered, “what is on the other side when we jump.”

  She grabbed hold of his skull like she would twist it off, pressing her insubstantial thumbs into his temples, and everything went dark.

  * * *

  Endless days of nothing. Dark Me followed at a distance, but she didn’t confront me. I knew that I was doing her work for her, wandering, stiffly, getting lost in strange landscapes, pressing myself into small corners to avoid shades, hiding from screams that may or may not have been my own. I didn’t go far from the lake, from the gnarled trees, looking out into the steppes and saying, “Maybe tomorrow,” every day. But I never went any farther. I walked in circles. I was losing it. Dark Me came closer. Day and night passed. It was always so cold.

  There was no sign of Eli. No sign of anyone. Shades circled above me like vultures, but I knew they were Owls. Same difference. It seemed like everything was just waiting until I gave up. Life must be so tempting to the dead. I hadn’t seen any Fox shades in a while. I was alone. And I would stay that way.

  I lay down in the dirt one night, and I dreamed of a golden tether around me, tugging.

  I could feel Eli close by, his own fear drawn to mine. I tried to take comfort in that, sent reassurance back across the line. “The thing about grief,” Eli’s voice said, “is it never really leaves you. We heal around it. We have to. The dark feeds on it. Don’t let it. We’re stronger than that.”

  Images. Shapes in the void. Memory crowding me but kept at bay by the gold, the warmth. My scarred arm tingled. “It feels safer in the dark,” I said.

  I still couldn’t see him. But I felt him across the tether. “I know,” he said. He felt it, too. He was struggling, same as me, wherever he was. “But we have work to do.”

  When I woke up, my mind felt a bit clearer, but I was still stuck here. Dark Me was huddled nearby, black eyes assessing.

  “Eli is alive,” I told her, triumphant, buzzing with it.

  She lifted a shoulder, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

  But it was enough for me, and I got up, dusted off my jeans. “Every choice that led me here was mine. Fine.” I started walking, waking up with every step. “Then I have to choose to keep wandering this blistering, monster-infested cesspit just to punish myself — or find some purpose to wake up for beyond peeing behind a bush.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Dark Me’s eyes narrowed.

  “I won’t let grief win,” I said to her. To me.

  “I don’t want that, either.”

  I couldn’t wipe the confusion off my face quick enough.

  She moved closer too quickly. “If you want the fire back, you’ll need to put away what’s stopping it. I can help you forget.”

  My fist tightened. This time I grabbed her by the throat, squeezing lightly. A promise.

  She vanished in black smoke. Gone, but not forever. It was fine. I was still strong somehow.

  I needed to move on from this place by the dead lake and the crooked trees and the hole in the roots over which I’d become landlord. So as dawn gave way into the red day, I picked a different direction, and marched. I had to choose to survive. Mostly out of spite. Eli would’ve liked that. Maybe.

  I had a weapon at least. I’d kept the bladeless hilt of Sil’s garnet sword close, even though I couldn’t summon any fire or any power to me. It was still a comfort. A tangible reminder of where I’d come from. As it was, I could use it as a bludgeon. On ghosts? Sure, great. If I wanted a blade for it, though, I was going to have to find fire some other way.

  I’d tried the two rocks thing. A childhood of Scouts (which I loathed at the time) had taught me enough to keep me going so far. Second Wolseley, that was our group’s name. MacGyver a stove out of a soda can. Chop wood properly with a child’s axe. Orienteer with nothing but the sun to guide you.

  Build a fire so you don’t die.

  But I was impatient, exhausted. I swore. I alternated the rocks and the two sticks. Fuck. I threw them both aside, kicking a tree and smashing my blistered fists into the ground. If you have enough energy for a tantrum then you can do a thing you thought was easy in seconds, Eli’s voice taunted. I was finding too much comfort in pretending he was here, talking to his ghost. I’m not dead yet, he replied. I replied. Yikes.

  “Shut up,” I sighed. I hunkered back down, picked up the rocks, and went at it above a small bundle of dried grass. I kept glancing at the empty hilt of the sword I’d come to rely on. Remember where you came from. It was proof I could survive.

  Finally some smoke, sparks. When I at last managed a small, withering flame, I became aware I was sobbing only when the flame bowed backward with my shaking breath.

  It was the brightest, warmest thing I’d seen or felt for days. It was more than beautiful. I banked up the kindling. I reached for the fire with my bare shaking hand, knowing I had to take this test, and when I threaded my fingers through the flames unharmed, I finally felt like I was going to be okay.

  But when I looked up, I wasn’t alone anymore.

  They had crept up, making no sound in the bleak underbrush of the ridge where I’d taken refuge tonight. Their fox bodies were dark, near-silent, and their empty eyes seemed golden as they stared into the fire. Huge dark tails switched.

  Had they been following me all this time, since they’d first come after me in the Den? My hilt wasn’t even in reach. And what could I do to the already-dead, who seemed to be doing better than I was?

  I calmed down, finally realizing they weren’t even looking at me at all. The fire was all they focused on. So I did the same.

  My body relaxed in the halo of the warmth, and my mind went back to a time, in a hidden chamber beneath Cecelia’s house, when the fire danced alive in a circle around me, and I felt like I belonged somewhere for the first time. I’d known so little, but gods, had I ever needed that warmth.

  I glanced from the fire to the Fox shades. They all looked so similar, as if their souls had been cast from the same mould. Maybe that’s what my spirit looked like when my body’s shell had been sloughed off. The thought was less morbid than it sounded.

  A voice from amongst them hissed, “Deon.”

  “Deon,” answered another, with a baleful moan.

  I steeled myself, became rigid again. I’d been alone so long, talking to invisible friends and enemies. I needed to talk, to ask.

  “What happened to her?”

  My pulse quickened as they flicked their piercing gazes upon me.

  “You should know,” answered the one nearest the fire, directly across from me. It wasn’t a threat or an accusation even. Maybe they wanted answers as much as I did.

  I gazed into the flames, recalled the last time I had seen Deon herself. Deep in the Opal, partway in my own mind. She was weak and desperate and had asked me for help.

  The Opal cracked so loudly in my memory it jolted me, and the shades yipped as if they’d heard it, too, scattering back into the shadows they’d crawled out of. I was alone again with only their sorrow left in their wake. One shade paused, though, turned and looked at me straight on — or at the fire, it was hard to tell. It looked for a long moment before it vanished with the others.

  I shut my eyes and let the fire warm me while I still had a body to appreciate it.

  A River Frozen Still

  The problem with using the Cold Road, a path Natti hadn’t taken in years, was that it would be almost too expedient. Sure, it was a means of travel that even the Elemental Task Guard or the traitorous Owls couldn’t detect. Yet for all the years she’d delayed going back to W
innipeg, going home, she thought bitterly, she was still in no rush.

  But she’d have to be. Time was running out. The Darkling Moon had moved two weeks ago. She’d dragged her feet long enough and had carried so much guilt for it even longer.

  She thought of the two bears, Siku and Maujaq. Messengers of Ryk, the First Matriarch of all Seals, Empress of the Sea. She went over those myths a lot lately, trying to find either truth or comfort in them. Natti’s own life had become a myth, a weird story. But she still couldn’t figure out how it’d end.

  The bear claw around her neck hung on a strand of leather, which she tugged at now, the cord snapping. She grasped it tensely in her large mitten, standing on the precipice overlooking the icy sea, a landscape that brought her something separate from comfort — a blithe emptiness, a knowledge that she could step into freezing endless waves and disappear for a while.

  Going away had always been tempting, but she felt most herself when she turned away from that impulse. This was the place where the glacier had risen. Where the Sapphire had revealed itself. If we’d left it down at the bottom of the sea, this wouldn’t have happened. But that wasn’t true, either. Seela would’ve found a way. She was comforted that they’d fought on their own terms, even though it hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped.

  Siku, before he had given up his spirit power, had passed it along to Natti. Had promised that he wasn’t really gone — something of the Inua was inside her now. Even something of Maujaq, who had fallen in the fight against Seela. Natti felt like it was time she took up the mantle they’d left her, not only bridging the gap between worlds but leading the fight for what their Matriarch had believed in.

  Life. The inevitability of the sea. And Natti had to admit that she didn’t want to leap into the fray again alone.

  You are made strong by the love of your friends, Siku had said. She hoped she still had that love, because she had pushed it away with a rage that had consumed her deeper these seven years. She’d buried it under a placid face, unreadable beneath brown skin and blue tattoos lining her eyes, cheeks, mouth.

  She figured now was the time to make it right. Say your goodbyes while you’ve got someone you can say goodbye to.

  “Feh,” she said aloud. She wasn’t usually so maudlin. She’d say goodbye when it came to that, but until then, she’d make damn sure she’d fight. To the bitter end.

  So Natti turned the bear claw over and over in her hand, until the world changed around her into a deep blizzard rushing past, aurora spooling out bright and alive above her, blocking the black moon that always seemed to watch her. The Cold Road opened at her feet, and she stepped onto it. Alone, but not for much longer.

  * * *

  It took no time at all. When the snow parted, the Seal’s air of the Veil faded. The aurora dimmed, and Natti was standing in the Forks Market, where the two rivers met. A homeless man startled, squinted at her, then went back to muttering to himself.

  She took off her mitts, stuffed them in her pack. She had shed more than her heavy-duty winter gear when she left the other Seals behind, in Aivik’s hands. Take care of them, she’d said, and by the time you hear from me again, be ready.

  Her mother had hugged her closely and fiercely. “Whatever you decide to do,” she said, “we will follow you. We will still fight in Ryk’s name, though she can no longer hear our prayers.”

  Natti had prayed anyway.

  She started walking, heading for Main, then Broadway, and squinting up at the tall buildings of the downtown core. The overcast autumn sky roared with air traffic, making her wince. The sidewalks were still busy, but the usual urban crowds seemed thin in comparison to the uniformed guards patrolling beyond Waterfront Drive. Everything was bizarre.

  Bizarre, but that was home. Point Douglas, where she was born and raised, likely had crumbled even further under the boot of the Elemental Task Guard. The situation now had less to do with race, and yet more to do with it than ever before, but regardless the poor always suffered more. Everyone was scared, as they should be. But Natti couldn’t help anyone in the North End if the world was going to hell first.

  The chancellor wouldn’t know yet that she was here, though it was only a matter of time. He had summoned her enough times, tried to make inroads with Natti and the Seals as a political move, tried to do it in the name of sense and reason, the benefits to all involved. But the messages had moved beyond cordiality. If she refused again, she assumed he’d come for the whole Seal Family. He’d call them impertinent. He’d nuke the ice cap right out from under them — though the rest of the planet was already destroying the permafrost quickly enough on its own.

  Best Natti confront the chancellor now, when his guard was down. But she had to gather some intel first. She might need someone to have her back . . . even though she really didn’t deserve that. If she had to go against the entire ETG alone, so be it.

  Crossing Main, she moved towards Assiniboine, as if her thick boots couldn’t be guided any other way. It had less to do with her feet, and more with her blood, coursing red rivers beneath flesh. There was another river she needed to see.

  Needed to find out if it, too, had changed.

  The walkway curved downward, beneath the steps of the Old Leg, beneath the statue of Louis Riel, whose Tyndall stone podium had a sheet draped over it. Glancing about, Natti pulled the moisture from the cool air, casting a layer of mist that lasted long enough for her to lift the corner of the sheet, unseen.

  She dropped it just as quickly and stalked away. Underneath it was a graffitied symbol, much debated amongst Seals, but likely somewhat of a call to arms here. It made her chest burn all over again with the same anger, the old bruise. Roan Harken’s face. JOIN THE FIRE FIGHT. Other iterations had We Are the Flame. Not everyone had the whole story. Not everyone understood the cost of good intentions. Natti, for one, still battled with them.

  An exhale to let it go, as her mother and the other ice summoners had tried to teach her. Send it to the sea, where it will sink, where it will become food. Don’t let it become an angry spirit inside you.

  She then went down to the river.

  She could only go so far. The river had once been an open promenade, inviting to tourists and urban daytrippers, but no longer. A black fence had been erected on either bank, preventing people from going too close. Criss-crossing gates rose out of the water, like sewer traps. The water moved around it, leaving detritus behind — trash, Coke bottles, pamphlets. She saw a flyer encouraging ETG sign-up. She saw a poster with MISSING typed across the top in bulging letters. And another one. And another. Pleas for help.

  She thought for a moment she saw the flash of red eyes above a clicking gash mouth, but when she looked again, it was gone.

  Her head tilted west, towards the source of this brown and green and unknowable river. It had its own voice like all bodies of water, but it carried the same despair Natti did. If she spoke, the river would reply. But Natti was never one for talk.

  A cold wind flung her hair about her mouth and shattered the river’s surface until it looked like scales. A serpent’s tail. But that serpent was long gone, cast into the sky with its siblings. Natti didn’t need to look up to feel the Darkling Moon; she saw its reflection in the water. The Earth’s moon affected tides, though it was part of the Owls’ power and purview. So Natti imagined the dark moon must be hers, her curse, her burden to bear. And it was. And it wasn’t. It was all of theirs. Roan’s, Eli’s, Barton’s, Phae’s. All the Denizens who had let this happen. All the Mundanes who hurt Denizens. All the people who hurt each other.

  The Darklings were the inevitable consequence of any of them thinking this world was a thing to be possessed.

  Natti didn’t know how long she stayed there, staring at the river, even when it began to rain. She could have redirected it off her easily, subtly, even though the Old Leg grounds were crawling with ETG guards. But she let it soak her to the bone
to feel the knife of the cold, because though they had failed, at least they’d done it together. At least they’d had each other.

  Until Natti had pushed them all away.

  * * *

  SEVEN YEARS AGO

  Phae knocked lightly on the hospital door with a knuckle. She didn’t wait long before pushing in, startled when she saw Natti racing around the room, gathering up her belongings, hospital gown covered partially with a too-big sweatshirt likely yanked from the lost and found.

  Aivik held his hands up, his face a mosaic rainbow of bruises. “Natti, just stop, okay? Neither of us is ready to travel.” He twisted when he saw Phae. “Talk some sense into her, eh?”

  Natti froze, hands clutching the bedrail. “Phae,” she croaked. Even with the room between them, Phae could see how tiny Natti’s pupils were.

  Phae went immediately to her friend and put her arms gently around her. Natti was shaking. “Let’s sit down a second, okay?”

  Natti gruffly pushed her off. “Can’t. We’re getting out of here.”

  Phae’s hands felt numb, and she was at a loss for what to do with them. “But you’re hurt. Barton said you fractured a lot of things pretty badly. I thought I could —”

  “Don’t think about it,” Natti snapped. “I don’t want you touching me. I want to feel the pain. I deserve it. We all do. None of you get it.”

  Phae moved back to the other side of the room, looking pleadingly at Aivik, who shrugged. “You can heal me up, Phae. I’m not too proud to admit I’m a wuss.”

  She smiled at him, patting his arm. “I will in a bit. Why don’t you go find Barton for me, okay?”

  He nodded, taking one last pitying look at his sister before lumbering out of the room on his crutch. Phae would’ve healed Aivik right then, but she’d barely been able to get out of bed herself. Offering to heal either of them had been mostly a bluff to get Natti to calm down.