by Jenny Trout
“He’s smarter than you give him credit for, your highness,” Veroandi told Hamlet with a nasty sneer.
“So how do we find the location of these keys?” Juliet asked.
“We just told you their locations!” scolded Wyrd. “If you didn’t listen, that’s not our fault.”
Skuld lifted her ancient head and sniffed the wind. “Two will call to their missing sister, but on their own they are powerless. Join them, and you will command the veil between worlds.”
“But know this!” The three spoke as one again. “Many have tried and many have failed. The guardians of the veil are fierce.”
Romeo blinked, certain his eyes were fooling him, but the three women changed to wisps of smoke, each curl taking a shape. One a curvaceous female warrior holding a spear aloft. The other a snarling, snapping beast. The third, the raging berserker. When the visions had all but faded, the voices of the Norns drifted to them from far away. “They will show you no mercy.”
Juliet’s grip tightened on his hand. The guardians would show them no mercy? Nothing in the Afterjord had been particularly merciful so far. How much worse would their future trials be?
Chapter Fourteen
There were others like him. Hamlet’s head practically swam with the thought. There were other poor bastards out there who were just like him, cursed to see and hear and speak with the dead. Some of them had been in the Afterjord and lived to tell the tale.
Romeo and Juliet walked beside him in silence. Between them, their conjoined hands swung merrily. It was all well and good that they’d found each other, really, but Hamlet was a bit more concerned with the news that he wasn’t alone, in this world or the next. He’d often wondered if others like him existed, but he’d never sought them out. How did one begin such a conversation? The magicians who’d come to court to dazzle with their trickery were eager enough to have people believe them capable of commanding dark forces, but Hamlet knew that anyone cursed as he was would not advertise their affliction. Such exposure ran the risk of excommunication, accusations, and the flames. He’d given up on ever finding another soul like him. Now, he walked in their footsteps.
How odd that it had been Romeo, of all people, to have discovered such an astonishing fact for him.
Hamlet stared at his boots as they kicked up dust with each step. His kind had walked this way before, and they…
Well, at the moment it appeared they had all been reduced to piles of screaming skulls that littered the gray, baked clay ground.
But that wasn’t the point. There were others, and when he returned to Midgard, he would seek them out and find them.
“So the keys will travel to each other, but only if just one is missing,” Juliet repeated, holding their single key up and twisted it this way and that. “Is that what they meant?”
“It seems so,” Hamlet answered, more interested in his thoughts of the travelers who’d gone before him.
I am not a prince. I am a seer. There is a word for what I am.
“What I don’t understand,” he thought aloud, though he knew one of the others would answer him, “is why they came to you. If I’m the seer, why did they come to you, who has done nothing of note?”
“I did travel the world in search of an egress to the realm of the dead and found it.” Romeo reminded him. The sarcasm in the declaration was a strange comfort to Hamlet. “So you must recognize I have some merit, perhaps as much or more than you. All you’ve been able to do so far is speak to the dead, and only because you were born cursed. Juliet just died—”
“Excuse me!” Juliet stopped abruptly. “I didn’t ‘just’ die. I faked my own death, then woke up in a tomb with my beloved’s dead body, at which point I took the last shred of courage and sanity remaining to me and gutted myself on my bier. Maybe it’s not traveling the world and making friends with princes, but I did do something.”
“Yes, we’re all very impressed at your suicide.” Hamlet hoped he had not overstepped the bounds of good humor, yet a part of him wanted to have caused offense. It was unkind and childish to mock her death, and he saw it for the destruction it would cause. They needed to be united now more than ever, but a sick urge in him wanted to destroy any possibility of working together. He wanted to push to see how far they could go, though he despaired of the results. There was a strangely certain doubt in him, an entrenched belief that no matter how loyal a friend someone was, they would eventually see the broken, twisted parts of him, and their rejection was inevitable.
His words had changed the mood, no matter how he might have wanted it to be otherwise. Romeo’s smile faded into something unsettling and stern. “You let her kill me, in the hall of mirrors you found yourself in. Why?”
“Because I saw through the illusion for the test it was.” Hamlet hoped he would understand. “It wasn’t personal. I didn’t want you to die. I wanted to find you again, or find out what had happened to you.”
“He couldn’t have known,” Juliet said quietly. “You weren’t there to see it.”
“I must have been,” Romeo said with a hollow laugh. “You killed me there.”
“It wasn’t you. It was a false you,” she reminded him gently. “I thought it was the only way to pass the test.”
“She didn’t have an easy time of it.” Hamlet wished Romeo could have seen Juliet’s struggle. Though she’d tried to hide her terror, her hands had trembled as she’d held the dagger.
“I can’t imagine that she did.” Romeo’s small, sad smile was unconvincing, but it was clear from his tone that they weren’t meant to notice.
Hamlet considered what Ophelia’s opinion might have been, if she’d known that he’d stood by passively while Juliet had drowned her. Perhaps he could understand Romeo’s discomfort, no matter how illogical it was.
“Have the two of you noticed there are more skulls than before?” Juliet asked, a hint of nervousness in her voice. “I only mention it because any amount of disembodied head lying around gives me a bit of a fright.”
Whatever discussion they’d been having dissolved in the face of what appeared around them. There were more skulls. Hamlet hadn’t been paying enough attention, or he would have seen them. There were scads of them now, not just lying in heaps, but lining a very definite path across the waste.
A path that Hamlet realized they had begun to follow mindlessly.
“Are we going the same direction we were when we set out from the Norns?” he asked, giving one rotted bone sphere a nudge with the toe of his boot. “Or have we changed?”
“Do you think it’s another trick?” Romeo asked, not so quick to hold a grudge as he was at the beginning of the journey. He was learning, then.
“It’s the same, because look, those mountains in the distance.” Juliet pointed ahead, to the hulking shape of the mountains belching sulfur and fire into the sky.
“I suppose that’s meant to terrify us?” Hamlet said, to cover his fear. He had heard of such mountains, the fire in them. They existed off the coast of his father’s kingdom, on tiny islands full of monsters, surrounded by sea serpents. They had been drawn on every map in the king’s study.
“These must be the bones of those who tried to make the journey before and perished.” Hamlet scooped up one skull, tilted it this way and that, holding it at arms’ length to examine it.
“It would make sense,” Romeo began solemnly. “If these were all mortals seeking to find the keys for their own gain, and they died crossing the waste, I suppose their bones would just rest here.”
“But there aren’t bones.” Hamlet wasn’t counting the numerous detached jaws lying about. “Only skulls. Which means someone or something took the rest of the bodies.”
“That is almost too horrible.” Juliet pressed her hand to her chest as though she might be sick.
“After all we’ve seen, this is what bothers you?” Hamlet dropped the skull to the hard packed ground. “But where are the ghosts. If these were seers—and mortals—they should be haunting the ar
ea where their remains are buried. It’s one of the favorite pastimes of the dead.”
“Unless some force is preventing them from returning,” Romeo mused, crouching to inspect the other side of the path. “Maybe the skulls were chosen for their aesthetic.”
“Nothing quite perks up a dull and barren waste like a few heads tossed about like decorative cushions.” Hamlet dropped the skull and straightened, wiping his hands. For a moment, he thought he might have grown faint, for his body seemed to tremble all over. Then he saw the skulls jumping against the ground, and he realized that the very dirt beneath their feet moved. There was a distant roar, and Romeo predictably reached for his sword.
“Earthquake?” he asked.
A distant roar raised the hairs on the back of Hamlet’s neck.
“A ravening beast,” Juliet suggested, raising an eyebrow.
“She’s right, let’s move.” Hamlet was glad he’d suggested it, for almost as soon as they’d sprinted in the direction of the monstrous bellow, the clay they’d stood upon cracked and separated, and steaming hot gas erupted from the fissure. He measured his pace; it would do them no good if he raced ahead of them, for if he was too far from them he couldn’t help if one or both tumbled into one of the steaming cracks.
The fissures spread beneath their feet as they ran, putrid vapors filling the air all around them. They ran without direction, unable to change the course they had started upon until the ground opened before them in a wide arc. Boiling water sloshed in a river that surrounded them, cutting them off from escape.
“What in the seven circles of hell is that?” Romeo asked, and Hamlet was about to point out that Dante’s interpretation of hell seemed rather lacking in the face of all they had already seen, but he never got the chance to speak.
Towering over them, stepping easily over the river, came a creature that was vaguely man-shaped, with square arms and legs and head. Made of roaring flame and dripping lava, the monster left great, scorched imprints in the clay where he walked.
“I think I preferred the Frost Giant to this one,” Romeo said, putting himself before Hamlet and Juliet, arms outstretched as they slowly backed away.
“Mind the water!” Hamlet advised, looking over his shoulder.
Water. Good heavens, it was that easy. “Romeo! Hold him back if you can! I’ll find something to carry the water!”
“If I can?” he called, outraged.
“He’s a Fire Giant. What stops fire?” Hamlet snapped. “You hold him, we’ll water him.”
Juliet sprinted beside him to the edge of the river. “It’s boiling.”
“Try scooping it up with your hands,” he told her, and when she balked, he rolled his eyes. “You’re already dead. It might cause you a moment of pain, but it won’t hurt you permanently.”
She screwed up her face and plunged her hands in, and immediately jerked them out. Then, with a deep breath and determination, she scooped up two handfuls of the water. By the time she had turned to run, all of it had trickled from her hands and onto her gown.
The Fire Giant took a swipe at Romeo, knocking him back. A tendril of smoke rose from the scorched cloth the giant had grazed with his massive fist.
“Hurry!” Romeo called, scrabbling backward as a burning glob of magma splashed beside him.
The air grew unbearably hot, the choking stench of brimstone everywhere. They didn’t have much time, Hamlet realized, his mind working feverishly. Soon, they would be cooked alive or strangled by the vapors.
When working over a particularly difficult mental puzzle, sometimes Hamlet saw clues, histories and solutions that he could not form in words. A flash of some long ago passage in a dusty book would spring to his mind with an answer, or the incidental words of a companion would float to the front of his brain. They came as a constant onslaught of repeated images that froze his body and seized his thoughts completely. Now he saw the skulls, the thousands of them stretching across the waste. He remembered the words of the Norns, and his own words only moments before. You’re already dead.
“No!” he shouted to Juliet as she plunged her hands desperately into the boiling river. He grabbed her wrist, cursing at the splash of hot water that fell on his hand. “I need you. I need you to trust me!”
“What?” she stammered as he propelled her into the river. Her gown was heavy. It dragged her down.
He saw Ophelia.
He pushed Juliet under.
“What are you doing?” Romeo bellowed as he swung at the Fire Giant’s descending arm with a wild swipe of his blade.
Hamlet paid him no mind, and cursed at the water that burned his hands as he hauled Juliet out. She was unburned, unharmed, but sputtering in mortal reflex, and dripping. Her hair and gown were completely sodden.
Hamlet steered her straight toward the giant. His fiery left foot descended as if to crush them, and Hamlet pulled Juliet out of the way just in time.
Then she understood, and she embraced the molten monster, shouting in surprise and pain. Steam hissed up from her clothing, and the giant bellowed.
“No!” Romeo ran at Hamlet, sword poised to cleave his head off. There was no time to explain. In Juliet’s watery embrace, the giant’s limb cooled to stone. Juliet staggered back and fell, steam rising from her limp body.
“Wait!” Hamlet shouted, drawing his own sword. “Look!”
He deflected Romeo’s first swing easily. A man in the grips of madness and mourning could not fight half so well against an opponent trained to be dispassionate and cunning in battle. Still, Romeo had killed before and Hamlet had not, and he remained cautiously aware of this as they circled each other.
“Why?” Romeo screamed, his face drawn in anguish. He slashed erratically with his blade, and Hamlet jerked back. The point of the blade narrowly missed his eyes.
Beside them, the Fire Giant roared in fury, both feet stuck to the ground, turning to stone all the way to its waist. It twisted, swiping at the air, a rain of brimstone falling around Hamlet and Romeo.
Romeo lunged, catching Hamlet’s sleeve. “I trusted you!”
Pain exploded through Hamlet’s arm. The blade had bit him, not deeply, but in a long gouge that mimicked the tear in his tunic. “Calm down! I didn’t hurt her!”
“Romeo, please listen to him!”
Juliet’s voice brought Romeo up short. He turned, disbelieving.
Her gown still smoldered, burned through in some places, but she was unharmed., Juliet staggered toward Romeo. “He couldn’t kill me. I’m already dead.”
Romeo’s sword dropped to the scorched dirt, and he caught her up in his arms.
“My love, my wife,” he murmured as he frantically kissed every inch of her face, her head held between his hands.
“It was the only way to stop it.” Hamlet leaned over, his hands braced on his thighs as he panted from exertion. “That’s why the others failed. They were alone. This place…I can’t escape it alone. I need you. Both of you.”
Romeo stumbled and tried to lean on Juliet for support. She sagged beneath his weight, for withered though he was, Romeo was still taller and far broader than she. “Hamlet, help me hold him up!”
Ignoring the pain of his own wound, Hamlet hurried to them and slipped Romeo’s arm over his shoulder. “Come on. He’s fading. We need to find the other keys and get him back to Midgard.”
“A fine trick that will be,” a voice called in a peculiar squawk.
“Did you say that?” Juliet looked to Hamlet and Romeo. “Did one of you speak?”
“Maybe it was him,” Hamlet suggested, looking up at the Fire Giant, who still raged impotently beside them.
A lump of magma had landed in the boiling river and turned to steaming rock. It was tricky work, but they managed to navigate it and cross to the other side, leaving the giant alone and howling.
“I need to rest,” Romeo said, sounding embarrassed to admit it.
Hamlet scanned the horizon. A single, sickly black tree rose from the dead ground. “Let
’s take him there.”
“Ooh, look at them, just lying down where ever they please.” Another voice clucked disapprovingly. “It’s not even their tree.”
“Who is saying that?” If Juliet hadn’t heard it as well, Hamlet would have thought he’d gone mad. He looked up, to the two giant black birds perched in the gnarled branches above them.
One of the ravens twisted its head and clucked in disapproval. “Who else could have said it? We’re the only ones here.”
…
“Excuse me, but did you just speak?” Juliet asked the bird, who tilted his head so far to one side it seemed it would fall off.
“As well as you can. Don’t look so surprised.” He nudged the raven beside him with one wing. “Did you hear the cheek of this one?”
“That’s the trouble with humans, ain’t it really?” The second raven clucked deep in his chest. “They’re always on some quest for deeper understanding, without ever taking the first step of simply assuming other creatures could be on the same level as them. From a metaphysical, purely mental and logical sense, that is.”
“I don’t think you two could be considered the average raven,” Hamlet observed. The only one of them, Juliet realized, who could handily ignore the fact that he was talking to a bird long enough to carry on a conversation.
“Ignore him.” The raven with the missing eye pecked at his companion. “He gets carried away. Human beings excite him.”
“Only because they’re fascinating,” the other raven put in. “It isn’t as though I have some bizarre obsession with spoons or bits of string, is it? I’m interested in these creatures that can think and feel and empathize with each other on a very primal, animal level, and who have shut that bit off so they can indulge their depraved lusts for flesh, murder, and greed. It’s brilliant!”
“Who are you?” Juliet couldn’t help her disbelieving laugh.
“Just a pair of birds,” said the other, imitating a perfect nonchalant whistle. “You know how birds are.”
