The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  For a second, terrible moment, her logic made sense. This wasn’t his Roan. But of course she was never “his” to begin with.

  Her mismatched eyes wavered, only slightly. Then she picked up his arm, pushed his sleeve back to show his most elegant scar. “We’re the same, you said.”

  The veins at his wrist tensed as her thumb pressed hard into them. “And you said we weren’t.”

  “Not the same. But alike. Somehow. An Owl can fly, but a Fox must stay on the ground.” She let his arm go, then undid the leather bracer covering her scar. “Where does your power come from?”

  Eli groaned like a busted pipe organ as reality crushed him. “You don’t even know who Deon is, do you?”

  A pause. She shook her head.

  “What about the Calamity Stones? Ancient? The Five Families? The Matriarchs? The Darklings? Winnipeg? Anything?”

  She didn’t blink.

  Eli swung from shining empathy to ridiculously pissy. “Harken, do you realize how trying it was to blast your impenetrable skull with expository the first time around? Stupidly hard. I don’t think I could stomach it a second time.”

  Roan’s open expression slammed closed like a fallout bunker, and she smashed her fist into the mossy ground. A massive ring of fire flashed around them, and Eli froze.

  Her anger settled into a wicked smile — from his expression or the display, he couldn’t tell. “I know power,” she said, settling back. “I know I can control mine. I need to know more about you before I throw you to the wilderness, because knowledge is another kind of power. And I want it.”

  “And you feel bad.”

  She balked. “What?”

  He tried to ignore the heat snapping at his heels. “For, you know, all the beatings and whatnot.”

  “I don’t feel bad about that.” Her eyes darted away from him. “I’m still evaluating the benefit of keeping you alive, anyway.”

  Eli felt himself going a tad crazy, but here it went, voice rising. “You far surpass me in power, but here’s my offer: I’ll provide you with every bit of knowledge I have, about this world, and about your powers and mine. You hereby have access to it all, and I’ll allow you to mould me to your backwoods intentions. I’m all in.”

  Roan’s body language affected boredom, but a subtle wave of something other than her heat came off her. Something like a thrill, or at least, the barest interest, leapt in her gaze.

  “And what’s the catch for such . . . voluntary submission?” she drawled, rolling her hand. Quid pro quo.

  Eli grabbed tight to it with both of his, grinning somewhat manically. “I don’t tell you what I know,” he said, “I get to show you.”

  And in that second that Roan let her guard down, Eli pulled her mind into his with bright golden barbs and didn’t let go.

  * * *

  It was a trick — a mean one, at that — he’d honed at the Rookery. He’d only returned to it recently, when Demelza’s shade had gone with him into his splintered memory to force him to repair it. Eli had had to face all the things he’d snipped away so he could manage every terrible choice that led him to value power over people.

  The game was this, and it was highly frowned upon by his instructors: distract your fellow Owl long enough to get through their mind barrier, change one of their less important memories, and have them try to guess which one it was. It was cruel, ultimately, and there was more than one incident of a student having to undergo psychic reconstruction therapy afterwards. That wasn’t Eli’s intention with Roan, though she was annoying the absolute hell out of him, and it was tempting.

  He wanted to show Roan his memories of her, hopefully resurrecting her own memories which she — or something else — had suppressed.

  He was still holding on to her when she finally opened her eyes in the blank mindscape he’d pulled them into, and, just as he suspected, she had a hard time struggling against this mental projection of him. Her physical body was strong, but her mind was as splintered as Eli’s had been. Roan had learned the trick of keeping an Owl’s psychic spear to her surface thoughts — likely her grandmother, Cecelia, had taught her that — and as a protective measure, her mind had obviously maintained that memory.

  But ego-stroking was usually the best way to find that one razor-thin entryway into someone’s waking subconscious. Roan’s own projection of herself here, meanwhile, was panicking, but Eli held tight. “What have you done to me? Where am I?” she asked.

  “Relax,” he said. “We’re inside my mind.” The projection of his self let go of hers, and she staggered in the nothingness. “I can’t change these memories. I worked hard to rebuild and to ground them. And also, well, I don’t let just anyone in here. So consider it a gesture of trust. Something that didn’t come easy for either of us.”

  Eli felt his own panic ping through his mind like sonar, and when it struck her on the reverb, she sounded less startled and more curious. “Why did you let me into your mind?”

  Eli rocked backward on his heels, sorting himself. There was no way to avoid talk of the stones. At their chests, at the same time, two lights bloomed. His was golden white. Hers was crimson-green.

  “Because it’d take too long to explain,” he said, “how we are the same. We’ve made the same mistakes too many times. I’d barely earned your trust before, but I had it. I’m confident I can earn it again.” As fast as possible, he quipped, before realizing that Roan could hear his thoughts.

  She folded her arms. “And what if I’m not interested in being shown any of it?”

  Eli lifted his shoulder. “That’s fair. How about you let me show you one thing? A regret I will always carry, but one I can’t erase. Then you can decide if you want to know more. Or if you can trust me to show you more.”

  She moved closer to him. “A regret?”

  The light flooded outward from Eli’s feet with bright and blazing memory, and they were suddenly standing on the Osborne Street Bridge.

  “We only became friends because I was convinced you were my enemy,” he said. “Stupid, really.” He hoped it could work again.

  They were standing on the concrete traffic partition separating north- from southbound. The two of them were spectators in these events that, because of how much had happened, seemed decades ago. Eli was surprised at how young he looked, despite his painfully obvious snark-smirk and fashion choices. Roan looked even younger — her forearm ablaze as she stood atop an accident-ravaged car. Eli’s wings were huge and gaping. It was a comic book panel, the action trapped in a freeze-frame. Unreal and ridiculous. But it had happened. And not that long ago, either.

  The Roan of the wilderness beside him now was in awe. “Wow,” she said, “I didn’t think you could look more pretentious.”

  Eli cleared his throat, revelling in her insult. “Villainy requires a whole look, you see.”

  Roan pointed. “That’s . . . me?”

  Eli looked at her and his chest swelled with something like victory. “Yes.”

  “And you’re trying to kill me.”

  “Ah. Yes.”

  Around them, time switched back on, though it moved at a slow pace. Each punch thrown or blocked, each ragged flame hurled, every snapping whip of the wind was fluidly drawn out. Sparks and sharp words and the insistence that, from each side, they were in the right. Unstoppable fool meeting immovable moron.

  Then the bridge exploded, and suddenly memory-Eli seized memory-Roan around the neck, dangling her over the frozen river.

  Time stopped again, and now-Roan was walking into the destruction of the past to stand beside her defeated imprint.

  Eli followed at a grudging, guilty distance.

  “Is this how you remember me, then?” Roan frowned.

  Eli looked between the two Roans. “Yes, why?”

  She sneered. “You like to remember me as pretty and weak, a thing I’m not now.”


  Luckily, he was able to keep his psychic projection from flushing. “No. That’s not . . . you’re entirely missing my point here.” Eli stared at his past-self: golden eyes pinprick-sharp and consumed in a different kind of victory than the one he’d just felt. A terrible, dark one he never wanted to feel again.

  “I hurt you,” Eli said. “I hurt many people on the road to you. I blamed the Moonstone, at first. It had its influences. But the truth of it is, I wanted you, and everyone else in my way, to feel the abject emptiness I’d always been made to feel. Killing you was justification for my own pain. It was wrong.”

  The humour died from Roan’s face then. He hadn’t wanted that; Eli had missed her humour, too, so he smiled.

  “You were never weak. You were always stronger in a way I couldn’t be. I tried to rewrite this encounter a lot.”

  Roan cocked her head. “You wanted it to go differently?”

  “It did go differently — than I wanted it to. Which is exactly how it should have gone. If I’d gotten what I wanted, you’d be dead, and I’d still be a prisoner of my own mistakes.”

  Roan considered the scene one last time, then turned to go back over the wrecked bridge, the sequence of the fight moving in slow, careful rewind. Explosions were sucked back into their detonations. The wind put Eli’s Therion back together. Roan stopped and watched herself strolling down that sidewalk, backward, as twilight fell, amongst her friends, a fox at her feet — a living one. Her memory’s smile was blithe, momentary. The ruined Roan of now looked at that scene a long while.

  Then it faded back into a blackness beneath them.

  “We’ve done this before,” she said after a while, walking endlessly into nothing.

  Eli followed close beside her. “The fighting? Oh yes. From bickering to brawling, we’ve fairly done it all.”

  “Not that,” she said, stopping so short that Eli stumbled over her. She was gesturing in the space around them. “We’ve walked in these types of places before. In memories. The sensation is . . . familiar.” She looked hard at him. “I remember how things felt more than the things themselves.”

  She touched her chest, and the crimson light there flared again. At Eli’s sternum, the white gold glowed in answer.

  “All of it’s a long story,” he promised. “But I’m willing to tell it a second time.”

  She was quiet. Then, “I want to be back in my own mind now.”

  Eli snapped his fingers, and they were back in the ring of fire like they’d never left. The ring flashed outward once, like a ray, then went out.

  Roan, and the woodland around them, was quiet.

  “Are you . . . okay?” Eli prompted. Maybe this, like every other attempt of his so far to get through to her, had backfired utterly.

  “We were dancing,” she blurted.

  “When?”

  “On that bridge,” Roan insisted, waving her hand around her head. “Back then, I mean. You were stronger, like you said. So much was different. If it was true.” She touched her chest in the place where the Dragon Opal once hung, ruining her life.

  Eli suddenly regretted this. Did he really want to make Roan relive all the pain that had brought her here? Her parents. Her grandmother. Zabor. Her father turned darkling. The darkness that had consumed her, too. Forgetting it all could mean a fresh start.

  She got up and turned away from him. Her body was rigid.

  “I’m not convinced,” she said. “Not yet.”

  Eli opened his hand, spread the fingers, closed it. “I see.”

  She shot him a look over her shoulder. “Eat something. And bathe, you’re making my eyes water.” Then she started out into the trees, towards a ridge. “I need to think.”

  Eli nodded even though she wasn’t looking at him at all. His skin itched from the inside out. This felt like a mistake, but it also felt like something Eli couldn’t turn away from now. Instead, he turned back towards the cavern.

  The Osborne Bridge had been the beginning. He couldn’t see how it would end. But something he’d already known was creeping to the surface, something he couldn’t keep shoving down: he cared about Roan Harken, and he was about to hurt her again.

  Wind Dancer

  Another day, another story, the pieces coming together. But Saskia was far too aware of time. Seven years, a hundred years. How many would pass by the time she got back — if she ever did?

  Roan had begun to trust her, and as much as she liked, and looked forward to, spending time with Baskar, Saskia needed to be alone sometimes. Hounds watched her closely but didn’t stop her when she walked around the edges of the Emberdom, the borders between it and the wild, Bloodbeast-plagued country beyond. Roan went out into it often, and apparently so did Eli, but of course they could. They didn’t have limits. They were undying gods. Saskia scoffed.

  They were still humans. My love, Eli had called Roan. Obviously there was still something between them, something eternal, or they would’ve killed each other by now. She imagined Roan dancing. Is that all this was to her, a dance? Why were they keeping it going? And why was any talk of Ancient, their reason for being here, forbidden?

  Saskia had to see it for herself, this thing that was keeping Roan and Eli apart. The Heartwood.

  She walked up and out of the canyon where Cinder Town lay. Baskar said that she would come upon a cliff where she could see the Heartwood clearly. They’d said she’d know it when she saw it. Baskar had looked worried, offered to go with her, but demurred when she’d refused.

  “I will be here when you return,” they said shyly, going back to their work in the archive. Saskia smiled, remembering it.

  The Heartwood was, of course, beyond the Emberdom. It was in contested territory, closer to the cliffs of the Roost.

  The tremors of Roan and Eli’s arrival had sent up obelisks, a few of which Saskia had noted on her walks. There hadn’t been so many tremors lately, but there had been a great one when the Heartwood appeared. It had to coincide with Barton’s appearance. She’d brought her tablet, and the Onyx was already on her head. She was willing to turn it on to find out.

  Roan and Eli had lost themselves to this place, that was all. Eli had, truly, tried to bring Roan back. It obviously hadn’t worked. Both Roan and Eli had their Calamity Stones again, but Saskia’s understanding was they had to find them and purposefully use them . . . Baskar hadn’t gotten to that part of the story yet. Saskia guessed it wasn’t a happy part. But Roan and Eli were connected. That couldn’t be erased. Saskia could work with that.

  Baskar had noticed the black obelisks, too, spent many long hours staring at them and wondering where they came from, but not daring to find out.

  Or, considering the forbidden story, maybe Baskar had found out.

  “The Heartwood is like these spikes, I think,” Baskar had posited, telling her of the day the tree appeared. “One day, there was a quake that made me fear the realms were going to shatter apart again. Many other Rabbits would tell me later they were sure it was Heen. A few went to find out but did not come back. Or they did, perhaps as Bloodbeasts.”

  “Maybe the Emerald is there,” Saskia puzzled. That’s all this situation was, a puzzle, and most times when she thought she found a missing piece, it didn’t fit right.

  She climbed a rise, getting closer to the cliff Baskar had mentioned then stopped. All at once, the horizon was filled with branches, taller than anything, reaching into the wide open sky.

  It looked like a Hope Tree, but even from this distance Saskia could see it was a gnarled amalgam of cords. It looked like it was wide as a mountain. Beyond it was the Abyss, the dark and fathomless sea that belonged to Ryk. The Sapphire was out there somewhere. Saskia didn’t want to think about having to go looking for it. The stones all coming together had forced the realms back together, creating a new order. Imagine what they could do if they came together again, down here, and with
the Onyx so changed.

  Maybe it could unbind Ancient from whatever was holding it back.

  Maybe that’s what this tree was trying to prevent. Too many gods-damned maybes for her liking.

  A foreign sound came from the inside of her jacket, and her hand shot into it and pulled out the tablet, its screen scrolling with code. She flicked on the Onyx, and every sensation she hated about it filled her head.

  She pointed the tablet at the Heartwood, and the screen cracked.

  YOU ARE CLOSE NOW. The message was inside her blood. YOU HAVE COME AND I AM AWAKE AND THE DARK HAS COME WITH YOU.

  She dropped the tablet. This was a new voice. It made her lose her footing. “Barton?”

  For a moment, she saw his face pushing through a knot of black roots. She looked into his eyes, which were bright. He was there. He was alive.

  She slammed the Onyx’s switch off and threw up. Bile, berries, what little she’d been eating. She curled up on the ground and Baskar’s words came back to her.

  “Before the tree, a gate opened. Then came the great quake, and all of the dead held their breath. It felt like something was going to change, but instead there was only the tree, growing very slowly up. Like a —”

  “Hope Tree,” Saskia finished. The Rabbit dead had thought it was Heen, mover of the earth, whose ears were roots, and whose divine connection turned Barton’s arms into them . . .

  Saskia got back up, running, even though she had no stomach for it. She was running headlong for the archive, blowing past Hounds who looked up but didn’t follow her.

  She burst into the archive, startling Baskar as she grabbed hold of them. “The Heartwood,” Saskia said. “We have to go there. You’re going to help me.”