The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  * * *

  Eli watched Roan look down at her chest, the place where the Opal once nested, the place where her heart was contained between her fragile ribcage. Watched her face contort in confusion, like she couldn’t understand how such a sharp, devastating spike of black could be there now. He couldn’t tell if she felt the pain of it yet.

  She choked, and something hot that wasn’t the fire dripped down her chin. Her feet weren’t on the ground anymore. Eli screamed with every step as he flew towards her.

  * * *

  The Task Guard support met Phae, Natti, and their prize with a MEDVAC. Barton was taken out of Phae’s hands, but she followed doggedly, getting in their way when they put the oxygen mask over his face, the blood pressure cuff around his arm. She touched him. He was real. Someone said he wasn’t breathing. Someone tried to move her away, but she was vaguely aware of sending them back with a blue electric wave, and no one tried to remove her again.

  Rushing feet, soldiers everywhere down here, in the abandoned section of the City Walk that had been hollowed out then shored up like a bunker. The entire place shook with every blast above. Yet for all that, Phae didn’t look away from Barton, her hands covering him and throwing every bit of the Grace she’d been given, the Deer powers she had chosen, into him.

  Don’t you remember when I saved you the first time? she begged and pleaded with any god left alive to listen. She would blast the Moth Queen back, too, if she came. Come back to me. Come back.

  She held tight to him, and he was still.

  Barton’s chest swelled and his eyes shot open, and Phae was already far beyond crying. She just breathed, fast, like she could breathe for him, like she was still running.

  Barton stared at her. Seemed to stare beyond her. He was shaking. She held him close, feeling the stuttering twitches of his arms before they came around her. More shouts. Explosions and earthquakes. But they held onto each other.

  “No,” Barton said.

  Phae pulled away, dust settling in her hair. “What? What is it?”

  Barton was still looking past Phae to Saskia, who stood in front of the bank of screens near the ruined stairwell of their impromptu bunker. The room was quiet, then, and yet everything inside Saskia was noise. A calm that was nothing more than the windup.

  Saskia fell to her knees.

  * * *

  The hurricane was high. Thunderbolts and sparks collided and came down, and all of the branches that had come for Eli exploded backward with his anguished howl. Infernal splinters rained down but didn’t stop him. He went running straight to Roan, as he always would. The tree pulled away from him, retreating as it defended from a new Mundane onslaught. The world was still for Eli, at least, for that last moment.

  He staggered to a halt in front of her, not knowing where to put his hands. The root had pierced Roan through her chest, her blood pouring out down her stomach and pooling at her feet.

  “No, no,” he said to her, disagreeing, in every way, with what he saw. “No, you can’t.”

  Roan reached out, shaking with the effort, and grabbed Eli’s forearms and pulled him gently to her, careful that he wouldn’t be pierced, too.

  “Good thing you’re here — to —” Every word was an effort, so was the smile. “— to tell me what to do.”

  Eli was crying like a child. Roan had seen him cry before, and it had always been over her.

  “We still have too much to do together,” he said. “Snap out of it.” His hands passed over hers, then up her arms. He would pull her free, and take her to Phae, and —

  Her fingers dug into his skin. “Get out of here now. Help the others. Help Saskia.”

  She’d asked him to do this before, and he’d obeyed. But not this time.

  He could feel the ground beneath them moving again. Eli watched those evil cables shoot up, slapping the next air-strike team clean out of the sky and sending them hurtling as far as St. Boniface. Their explosions just became part of the scenery. Eli didn’t hear them at all.

  As if the Heartwood’s roots could see both Roan and Eli, the cables turned towards them, rising like a tidal wave about to smother them both.

  Eli looked at Roan through the screen of his tears. “I’m not leaving you. When will you get that through your thick skull?”

  Roan showed her teeth, the blood foaming pink at the back of her jaw as she laughed. “We always have to do everything together.”

  He could see the light going out of her eyes. The fire, the last of it, flickering out. He pulled her very close, pressing her head to his. He whispered, “Don’t let go of me.”

  Without the Moonstone, he had no wings to carry her away. Without the Opal, she wasn’t the Fox warrior that could cut them a path out of here. It didn’t matter. They were, at least, themselves. Roan brought up the last of the fire, and it consumed them both. Eli sent it higher, higher, the updraft of his last scream building the inferno tall as their ambitions had been once. The twisting column of it was as big as their love had become.

  The ground heaved. The Heartwood crashed down and there was a shockwave.

  There was nothing left of Roan and Eli when the smoke cleared.

  Last Stand of the Dead

  Before the screens had cut out, before that last, devastating crash that they’d all believed would bring the concourse down on their heads, they’d seen it.

  Natti had been the one to scream. Roan had only looked away for a second, cavalier, and that’s all it took. It didn’t seem real, or possible. Eli had gone to her. They had both gone down together.

  All was silent. Saskia still hadn’t looked away from the black, cracked screen, even though it only showed her face, winced tight and streaming with tears. No one there, none of the soldiers or Mi-Ja or anyone who’d survived this wave, had to look outside to know that the tree was still there, but it had stalled. Roan and Eli had seen to that. It wouldn’t stall for long, though, even with an attack like that. An attack that had finally stopped Roan and Eli, two immovable forces, larger than any realm.

  Roan and Eli had only made way for the last stand.

  Saskia went to Barton, and he put his arms around both her and Phae, Natti covering the other side. They were numb. It was barely a comfort to feel each other breathing. They held on as long as they could before Saskia peeled herself off, willing herself to move.

  Phae wanted to reach for her, but she knew it was time to let go. She just watched, unable to speak, loss cresting over her again and again, the sensation of Roan’s kiss on her forehead still fresh.

  “Keep holding on to each other,” Saskia said to them all. Baskar went with her, past Mi-ja, whose face was blank as she sank to the floor, tucking her legs under her.

  The hall, filled with what was left of the Task Guard soldiers, echoed with the clatter of weapons being placed on the ground as they all watched Saskia leave. One by one the soldiers went down to the floor, some of them kneeling, some of them closing their eyes, all of them quiet, waiting for the end to come over them all. Saskia went up the frozen escalators, and found her way back out into the street, as if she was going out to meet a friend in the Exchange District.

  The darkness outside was almost complete, the Heartwood still intent, despite its damage, in going up, touching space, because Saskia could see it reaching still, trying to get back to the way things had been before Ancient had dreamed up humanity.

  Above what was left of the city skyline, there was heat lightning. There was wind. Clouds gathered and thunder finally rumbled and soon there would be rain. The tree shivered. One last element remained. Saskia pressed the Onyx in her hand to her heart, and Baskar’s shell collapsed beside her as their shade went into the stone.

  Where Baskar had just been, the Moth Queen now hovered.

  Saskia couldn’t look anywhere but ahead. “Roan and Eli —”

  The Moth Queen shivered her papery wings. “W
ith the others.”

  The air snapped and the wind whipped around the Heartwood. Bolts slithered around the tree. The eclipse above seemed to burn.

  Saskia let the Onyx inside her, let the song pulse through it, through her. Let it amplify in the centre of the cataclysm happening right in front of her, and she felt Baskar with her, at least. I’ll finish it for you, she sent out into the ether, imagining that Roan and Eli were somewhere close by, and still able to hear it.

  Saskia walked forward and told herself one more story.

  “Once upon a time, the dead were no longer able to cross over, and so they remained in the world, restless.”

  The Onyx strobed out at the Heartwood, lashing a whip into its bark. Bloodbeasts, the world over, shivered and the corrupted shades vacated their husks, and the dead went marching.

  “The Moth Queen, Death itself, wanted to repair this rift. And the dead wanted this, too. They wanted peace for themselves. For the living. For the future.” She was running now, the tree crackling in front of her as the stone inside her hand shot hot spears of energy ahead of her, into it. The eclipse was growing brighter as the tree began to reach again, pulling the moon down towards the earth. The dark expanded.

  “The heart of Spirit had made the Darklings, but the dark was not the enemy. The dark was not the end.”

  The bark split open and Saskia passed into Ancient’s great, infinite mind.

  * * *

  The dead came when the Onyx called them. The dead that had been brought up from the underworld when Ancient had dragged them here. The Denizen dead who couldn’t cross over into their promised afterworld when the realms shattered. The Moth Queen expanded, big as the world, and called them to her. To Saskia.

  Above, the Darkling Moon shivered. Then, like an apple, it fell towards the world, towards the Heartwood that was Ancient.

  And the dead, a thunderhead of manifold souls, rose up to meet it.

  * * *

  Chaos. Harm.

  Then Silence.

  Saskia was inside the Onyx. No, the Quartz. No, she was standing before a creature with three swivelling faces crowned with triple horns. Their reflection beneath them was another triple creature, a snake woman, a beautiful man, a horse with no mouth. Saskia wasn’t in her body. She didn’t need it holding her down. Baskar was behind her, holding her up, holding her together. Ancient was above, spreading, and there was something bright piercing it. A golden tether. An Owl, a Fox, holding tight to the line.

  Saskia was inside of the moment and outside of it.

  This is what is meant to be, Ancient said. This is the Narrative. This is the end.

  “For you, maybe,” Saskia said. Fia opened their hands, and Saskia put the Onyx into them. Death rose from the black stone and put her arms around the universe’s consciousness. Ancient tried to expand.

  “The dead are more invested in life than Creation is,” the Moth Queen said. Saskia said. Fia said. All at once.

  “In the beginning,” Fia intoned, and Saskia felt the red sigils beneath her firing off in a wave. Going backward. Turning gold. Then, as soon as the wave came, slowly fading into nothing, it was gone. “There was darkness.”

  “But that was only the beginning,” Roan and Eli said together, and the other dead echoed.

  Saskia felt their golden tether slipping around her spirit. The Moth Queen held on to them all.

  You cannot undo me, Ancient bellowed. I am where this world comes from, I am where it goes to end!

  “You gave this world to us, and it is ours, and we will protect it,” they all said. “The end may be inevitable, but it’s not coming today.”

  Together — even the Darkling reflections beneath Fia — they pushed at the writhing godhead, no different from any of them, pushed it back to the dark from whence it’d come beneath the horizon of the light.

  “You slept. You turned away. And the world still turned,” Saskia intoned.

  The last of the sigils dissolved. The Narrative was gone. The Darkling Moon and the Heartwood tree collided, folded in on themselves, and were gone, too.

  * * *

  The world, whose axis had been halted, let out a breath.

  It turned.

  * * *

  “Saskia.”

  She’d had her arms over her face. She lowered them now, and standing before her was a person. Not a shade. Their eyes were keen and kind. Everything around them both was humming, golden light.

  “Baskar?”

  They smiled. Their features were hazy, imperfect, the forehead high, shoulders narrow. Saskia glanced past them, into infinity, and there were others. Weaving in and out of these many faces, all gazing into the flickering gold, were little moths. Some smiled as the little wings tickled cheeks, brushed past eyes, closing slowly. Saskia knew, without having to guess, that these were the dead that had only just helped her. And they were going home.

  Each of them was a star in a constellation she couldn’t recognize when she had been in the Deadlands, but she didn’t need to. There were hundreds of thousands of billions of them. When a moth touched them, they winked out of the gold zeroscape.

  Saskia reached for Baskar suddenly, and they held on to her, surprised. “Are you . . . are you going?” she asked. It wasn’t her right to beg them to stay. Baskar needed peace. They both did. “If you are —”

  “Do not say you’ll come with me.” Baskar shook their head. “Besides, I promised to be a part of your story until the end. I hope you remember that.”

  Baskar slid an arm around her, and she felt utterly calm. They watched, together, as each of the trapped Denizen spirits went ahead into another realm, or back into the world, or just made their own choice of where their energy might go next. Flickering fireflies, each choosing their own peace.

  Saskia glanced away from this procession, thinking she saw a man with black hair and a redheaded girl, moving together and away, but it was only for an instant, and they were gone, too.

  “What will happen? To the dead? To the realms?”

  Baskar smiled beside her. “They’ll make their own stories. I imagine it will be a new realm. A new country. Perhaps some new gods will emerge. To manage it.”

  Saskia felt her spirit warming. “I think I’ve heard that story before.”

  Soon the golden light was getting dimmer, as each spirit went away. The moths remained behind, and came together, and the Moth Queen was a singing gold as Saskia had never seen her before.

  When the Moth Queen turned, Saskia knew that she, too, had changed. Colour radiated at her chest — the memory of five matriachs, whatever shards were left of them. All of the mothers, one being.

  Death smiled, and this strange in-between place began dissolving, Saskia and Baskar along with it.

  * * *

  The soldiers went tentatively into the road, many hours later. They had all fallen asleep, it seemed, and woken to absolute wreckage, but somehow they were glad about it. Some of them didn’t understand why. The sun shone above, the last of a snowstorm moving away as the light dipped into the west. The sky was clear. Clear as it hadn’t been in seven years. Bright with possibility.

  There would be a tomorrow.

  Barton, Phae, and Natti looked out into the sunset, more than surprised they’d lived to see it.

  Somewhere in the crater at Portage Avenue and Main Street, Saskia woke back in her body, by herself, though she didn’t feel alone. She raised her right hand to her face, the palm clear but for a fading mark that looked like it’d always been there. Somehow, it made her think of rabbit ears. She closed her hand and put it to her heart, shut her eyes.

  And breathed.

  The Fox and the Owl

  Myth and memory are as changeable as the world. They must be, and some stories survive cataclysms. People told them and told them again, and they changed, and it was good.

  Dreams are the miracles that t
ake us back to those places, those first, uncharted landscapes, deep beneath the reality we’ve been taught can be felt only with empirical evidence. Interpreted by five senses. Or five elements.

  But there must be something on the other side of the twilight. Such things have been dreamed of before even Creation dreamed. Energy can never be destroyed. Only changed, like the story.

  A myth is only a dream that has been recorded and retold. A narrative is not a plan, but an expression. The last dream is this — that darkness is not an enemy. It is the start of all things. It is the end of all things. It is the wheel, flashing, telling us something. Something that can be retold while we are still here to tell it.

  There is a splinter of gold there, in the depths of that brilliant darkness. Someday, slipping through that crack may be as easy as dreaming for you. On the other side of that last dream is a rich place where grief can do us no harm when we take it into us. It is a place beyond what we know.

  Here is a story, but it won’t be the last: in this great beyond there is a fox, and she is accompanied by an owl, minding the infinite threads of the story that came before, and the story to come, and the possibility that the story is not over, even when it is. Saskia always imagined they’d be there together, in that wild new country, minding those who passed through or sought to return to the world again. She couldn’t imagine it any other way.

  Nothing is certain. Nothing is meant to be known. The gods, what little was left of them, dreamed. The Darklings, the promise of the other side of day, dreamed. Saskia dreams now, many years after, at the end of her long life, well-lived for all its jagged edges. What mattered was the love she had, the people she knew, the stories she was a part of. And it was good.