by S. M. Beiko
Eli stood firm despite his weak, shaking legs, and stepped towards the shade. He stood eye-to-eye with her, though his head swam and blood roared in his ears.
“It won anyway. The gods always do. And whatever you have to say to me — it’s too late.”
Eli spun, retreating, knowing she wouldn’t follow. Even his synapses burned. He hunkered down, shaking, until he let his head fall into his hands. What the hell was he supposed to do now? He had to get out of here before everything he’d shoved deep inside himself rose up, teeth snapping.
* * *
Failure breeds success, I kept telling myself. I undid the sling I’d made from huge palm leaves and stiff vines I’d ripped away from willing trees. My arm was still sore, but I could extend it now at least. My first real brush with one of those monsters, about the size of a Rottweiler, and I’d lost.
Bloodbeast, the shades had called it. One shade now came up to sniff my injury, then balked. A group of Fox shades had chased the beast off; all those roars and rumbles that I’d only heard in the distance seemed less ominous the farther I trekked across the Deadland landscape. But what happened the next time, when the shades weren’t there? There were stakes now. I couldn’t get to Eli if I’d been ripped to pieces first.
“I’m still alive, I guess,” I said out loud, rubbing my arm, more out of hope than certainty. The flesh wasn’t broken but the bruise was nasty. I glanced at the movement in my peripheral and bit the inside of my cheek. Dark Me was agitated today. I hadn’t seen her in a few days — what I thought were days — and had thought she’d given up on me. But she was another beast at the edge of my mind, prowling.
“You nearly got us killed,” she snapped. “If you’d let me help you, this wouldn’t happen. You need the garnet blade. You can’t make it work without the fire. Without me.”
I wasn’t about to answer her. I looked over at the Fox shades tailing me like an entourage. I wondered if they could see or hear my id lashing out.
Then a Fox shade snapped at my heels. “Alive, yes. But barely,” it said. Everyone was a critic.
“You’re one to talk,” I grumbled.
“You need to be faster,” another yipped, bounding off before I could kick it away. I’d gotten used to them following me, creeping up to my nightly fires, lying down around the crackling light with the tensed readiness of guard dogs.
What did they have to gain from my survival? The fire, probably, I guessed. They wanted it back as much as I did. But as wary as I was of the Foxes, I couldn’t ignore that they were right.
“I know,” I conceded, looking around again for threats — for the other me. She had wandered off somewhere down a bluff, though I could still faintly hear her muttering.
I pulled the bone hilt from my back, where I’d made a strap for it. I ran my thumb over the grooves, the round-ring pommel. The sword, when it was whole, which it wasn’t now, reflected me. When Sil gave it to me, it had been a short knife. When I needed to be strong, it became a sword. When I’d been infected by Seela, it turned black. And when I landed down here, it had gone cold. Maybe that was the end of it.
I inspected the empty slot, considering. When it had been a dagger, I’d cut away a part of myself, giving it to the fire, in order to learn what I was up against. Would I have to cut something else out to take my power back?
Another hand slid over mine on the sword. Dark Me had no expression on her face as she spoke. “Regret. Grief. Your mistakes. You can cut any of those out and let the fire through. Let me show you.”
Then she was gone, and only my hand held the bladeless hilt in front of me.
“I don’t want to pay the price of that,” I said to myself.
I let my bad arm with the useless weapon go limp at my side, then snapped it up, a forward lunge. Left foot ahead, right knee bent, body tight. I know what I needed to be, but it was just out of reach.
Cut, came her voice.
“No,” I said.
I held onto myself, my footing. I thought of a time when I knew even less than now, when I had someone to guide me. Sil — Cecelia — told me to listen for the drums. To dance. To use the movements of my body to balance and temper my fire, because if I couldn’t control it, it could destroy everything.
I listened for the drums now, even if they were just my heartbeat. I slid my feet, turned. The sword hilt may have been empty, but I wasn’t. I swung down, thrust out, wheeled. Dancing like this made me warmer. Made me feel like coming home, to a home I’d never had.
The other me said no more. I thought I’d tuned her out. I felt her smile when I thought of Sil, but something was happening, exploring these sensations attached to Sil. We were in the summoning chamber, training. Then there she was, fox warrior form punctured by Zabor’s thrashing tail. Then she was leaving me the Opal, and all her mistakes to clean up.
I did feel warm then. Warm and angry. I couldn’t help it. My movements became tighter, more erratic, and I sliced downward as I remembered myself taking that bloody stone, thinking I could solve everything, save everyone, and all I wanted to do was go back, and tell them all no —
Something inside me snapped.
A flash at the edge of the hilt. A little fire. I tripped over myself and dropped it, staring at my hands.
The Fox shades yipped, bounding and sniffing the empty hilt in the ferns just crushed by my feet. They looked up at me, and I was alarmed at the expectant wonder in their dead eyes.
I raised my hand. Warmth flickered inside my wrist, then wound around my index finger as a flame the size of a leaf. At the edge of the firelight, before it went out, was the other me. She was still smiling.
Then she was gone, and I knew, and somehow was afraid, that I wasn’t going to see her again.
I picked up the hilt in the ferns. It was warm. I frowned at it, then at the shades.
“What was I saying?” I asked them. They cocked their heads, as if listening for some truth I’d let go of.
Orange light crept up through the cracks in the hilt, and flashing at the end of it was a purple blade, as long as my arm. A deadly shard of garnet.
“I’m still alive,” I repeated. The ground heaved, the shades hunkering down around me, snarling, protective. The fire was there inside me, and it felt closer to the surface. Whatever drums I’d heard had faded but weren’t gone. I felt renewed.
“What are you looking for out here?” one of the shades asked, looking for direction. They all were now.
“My friend,” I said, though I was mesmerized by my reflection in the blade. The absence of drums left words pounding in my skull.
Home. Home.
Stay focused, Harken, a voice said. A man’s voice. Someone I knew once . . . I took a long breath, standing tall, tightened, ready.
“Let’s go,” I said to the shades, breaking through them and knowing they would follow.
Find Eli, something weak inside ordered me.
The trouble was, even as I put one foot in front of the other, I was having a hard time holding onto who that was, exactly.
* * *
Eli went inside his own head but didn’t sleep. He wanted to understand.
There wasn’t peace there. He was skittering across time, leaping in and out of his memories in much the same way he had with Roan inside the Dragon Opal. He was a boy on a Scottish shore, screaming with grief into an empty horizon. The storm his grief had caused had nearly taken apart coastal villages. That was when Solomon arrived. That was when he’d been tricked.
“You’re special, Eli.” Suddenly Solomon was behind him in a mirror, his hands on Eli’s small shoulders, awkward in the uniform of the Rookery, the Owl boarding school and training grounds in the remote Eurasian mountains. Eli was nine. He’d barely said a word since he’d left Aunt Agathe, and Skye, long behind.
“Together we will do great things. We will find the Moonstone. We will change the w
orld. That is your mother’s legacy.”
Eli looked up at his father’s face. Really studied it at the mention of Demelza. When he looked back in the mirror, Eli was twenty-five, haggard, inches from death, and still reeling from the memory of his parents’ meeting. Bludgeoned by that force of their instant love.
He knew he’d never see his father again, the proud force of nature he’d always resented. Now he couldn’t even hold on to that rage, despite everything. Maybe his father had believed all along that finding the Moonstone would save them. Maybe he thought he could protect Demelza, too, before she took her own life.
“We did change the world,” Eli said to his father’s sad reflection, but now he was back within his present body, blinking up into the paralyzed sky.
He was stiff, aching, but he didn’t want to stand just yet. The rustle of wings confirmed the air was full of shades, wheeling here and there, but they didn’t attack him. Instead he watched as their spectral talons released berries and foreign-looking plants, wizened roots, beside him in a veritable cornucopia. A few whacked him in the face, probably on purpose, and he scowled.
Then they swooped away, towards a flickering outstretched hand. Demelza had her back to Eli, seated at the edge of the rock on the other side of their remote island in the sky. The shades seemed intent on paying her a gentle, respectful homage before vanishing to their hiding places.
She’d led him here for a reason. Neither of them was going anywhere anytime soon. They might as well talk.
“You control them,” Eli said, voice so gravelly he barely heard it himself. He nudged the shades’ leavings with his knuckle — food, he surmised — and plucked a berry to examine it, stomach tightening apprehensively at the prospect. Something about Persephone twigged at the place his education was stored, but he was already long doomed. He’d been eating whatever he could find already.
“There’s no control involved,” Demelza corrected. “Only respect. I’m a shade, just like them. But I refused the stone. They still remember that.”
Eli snorted, chewing the strange fruit carefully. “A feat indeed.”
His cruel words, unlike the fruit, were bitter, but he didn’t retract them. Demelza wasn’t better than him, or a saint, it turned out. When he swallowed, he noticed she had turned in profile, patting the space beside her.
Eli scooped up some roots, stood stiffly, and joined her.
“This world has changed,” Demelza said, as if picking up the threads of an abandoned conversation. “They all did. You succeeded, in a way.”
Eli’s forehead knit mid-chew on a root that was more like jerky. “This world isn’t exactly the one we were aiming for.”
“No,” she answered. “I’m not sure you can find what you’re looking for here, or go back to where you came from. There’s an imbalance now. Down there” — she pointed — “those realms haven’t been one since the world was young. This new world you’ve made is your only concern now. As for the Uplands, they’re lost to me, to all of the dead. Which means it’s lost to you.”
Eli stilled. “Define lost.”
She tilted her head at him, more Owl than woman. “You’ve seen it, below. The realms have shattered from the inside out. Remember how the realms work. What is the Veil?”
Eli rolled his eyes; as if he needed the lesson. “The Veil is the in-between. A threshold. You can access it through visions, through Paramount connections. But ultimately, it’s like a hallway between the living world and a Denizen’s ancestral resting place. If a spirit wishes to return to the Uplands for another life, they can use the same channel.”
He felt her nod. “Now take away the Veil. What happens?”
Eli looked out past the brink. Into nothing. There was no wind. “The dead can’t get here or reincarnate,” he said quietly, remembering the former Paramount who had confronted him on the way up here. “So not even the Moth Queen can do anything about this?”
“No.” Demelza spread her hand over the ruined, faraway land beneath them. “When the Bloodlands rose and the Darklings broke free, they cauterized the world behind them. It happened when the stones came together. When they broke. And with the gods gone, it’s anyone’s country.”
The root Eli had chewed went down like a piece of glass. No way out. A wrench shoved in the spokes of what all the lore called “the wheel.” The Narrative. The unmoving stars above made some sense now. Eli slid a star-shaped leaf between his teeth and tried to silence the inner screaming.
“Well,” he said. “Sometimes the only way out is through.”
Demelza smiled. “You may look like Solomon, but you’re as reckless as I was.”
“I was never a patient person.” Eli swung his legs over the ledge, admiring the thrill of the emptiness flaring into his knees. He wondered if Roan had figured out any of this yet. He’d have to bother her about it, when he found her. “It’s a long way down.”
“Without wings, it’s an eternity,” she agreed, glancing sidelong at him. “I know you’re worried about the girl. And you should be.”
Eli curled his lip. “Stay out of my head. You’re still a stranger.”
“Proving my point.” Demelza lifted a shoulder. “The dead have very little power left to them. If I can easily read you, you’ll be dead, too, before you jump.”
Eli’s temper rose, and he fought to keep his hand clenched beside him; it still hurt. “The Moonstone is gone. It took my power with it.”
The cool touch of Demelza’s spectral hand made him flinch, but it freed him from the mental briar in which he was tangled. “You had power before the stone,” she reminded him. “So did she, your Fox friend. And she’s down there now, fighting with what she has at hand to survive.” Demelza’s face lacked true clarity, though Eli couldn’t help but think she looked perplexed. “Finding you is the singular purpose keeping her going, but she’s . . . slipping.”
Eli’s eyes stung, but he wouldn’t look at her. “Then I can’t stay here any longer.”
Demelza peered at him, into him, and he couldn’t keep her out. “How will you help her like this? How will you help anyone? A lifetime of grief and guilt is preventing both of you from moving forward. You’ll have to meet your mistakes head on if you’re going to finish what you started. I can show you how. You remember what I showed you once?”
Eli looked down below again. Her hand had reached for him again, then dropped.
“I remember,” he admitted after a while. Before Demelza had become so ill, she’d go into Eli’s mind as a child, when he was frightened, when he was unsure, and she would send him a thread of golden reassurance. He’d shown Roan this. She was the only one he’d shown.
He felt Demelza smile, and it annoyed him like she’d invaded his room. “You’re partway there. But there’s more to healing than a Band-Aid solution.”
“I don’t have time for faux soul-searching.” Eli stood up abruptly, no matter that it pained him, and felt his vertebrae pop like corn kernels. “I’ve been accused of killing gods and making that mess down there. And I’m tired of this view.”
Demelza became blurry around the edges. “Fine.”
“Fine what?”
Suddenly she was flickering, then beside him, her voice biting. “Jump then. If you’re so sure you’ll make it.”
Eli glanced down, took a step to prove he was serious. But he scrambled for purchase when Demelza’s frigid hand found the back of his neck, clamped tight and pushing.
“Go on,” she said.
Eli’s feet caught, and he pushed back against her. “What are you —”
“It’s easy,” she said in his ear, a calming hiss. “Just jump, and you can forget everything that brought you here. You’ll be free from your obligations, your failures. Your guilt.”
Just as he felt his feet slip over the edge, his heart plummeting in near-death panic, she yanked him back and threw him skid
ding to level ground.
“What the hell do you want from me!” Eli screamed, staggering to stand, to charge, but her shade was fierce and slammed into him like a battering ram.
“The only person holding you back is yourself,” she roared, and Eli pressed his hands to his ears, crying out. “You have to clear it all away. It’s the only way ahead for both of you. If you deny yourself peace, you have none for anyone else.”
Demelza’s voice was a gale, and a rush of sensations, images, flashed in front of Eli like warning lights — the storm on Skye, his inability to save his mother, the Zephyr Trials where he first learned how to betray anyone in his way to power. The finding of the Moonstone. The battle of Zabor. The shattering of the Calamity Stones.
And his hand, on the back of Roan Harken’s neck, holding her defeated body over the Assiniboine River.
It was too much. He had ruined too many things. Eli shook his head violently, refusing to fall again, solid on his feet. He willed the images to go away, because he knew he couldn’t change them, that they never would truly be gone. And with that recognition, they folded themselves up neatly, sliding into drawers that had their locks busted off. Drawers that were meant, sometimes, to be opened.
His vision cleared. He took a breath. Something wet was on the front of his face, getting into his mouth. His fingers came away red, and he scowled.
“Good,” Demelza said, and Eli turned. She was smiling, tapping her temple, and sitting cross-legged with her back to the great emptiness. “You have the insight, Eli. You don’t want grief to hunt you. But you have to do the work.”
Eli wiped his nose on his sleeve, partially heartened that he still had blood inside him. “And then what?”
