Darkest Light

by Hiromi Goto

  Mr. Glueskin focused only on what he had to do. Lovely Cracker first, and then he’d be free to deal with his father…. He retracted his elongated arms as he gently lowered Cracker onto the ground before him. His white hands around her throat were taut, like rope.

  She didn’t have energy left to struggle. But her eyes…. She was not frightened.

  Her eyes were brilliant with furious Life. And in her eyes still, faith and hope shone as gold as honey.

  Stinging. His face…. Streaming from his eyes, the moisture seeped into his lips and the taste of salt bloomed upon his tongue.

  Salt. Tears…. He was weeping human tears….

  Mr. Glueskin shook his head, but the mortal tears fell and fell, streaming down his face, filling his mouth, as he’d never cried before. Why now? Why now?

  Something was wrong. What was it? WHAT?

  “Kill her!” Ilanna cried desperately. “Finish her off, and then kill your father!”

  Mr. Glueskin slowly turned his face toward her. Ilanna was held, immobile, in Karu’s taut arms. Lilla and Rilla had torn each other so ragged that they lay upon the dirt floor, strands of exposed bones, black skin, white flesh, twitching.

  “Not long ago, you asked me what the point was in ‘being good’ when everyone ultimately ended up in Half World.” White Cat’s voice was dry, measured. He sat calmly beside Cracker’s head, his tail curled composedly around his paws. The cat stared at Mr. Glueskin’s fingers wrapped around his friend’s neck.

  Cracker gazed up at Mr. Glueskin’s face. Fearless. She followed the flow of living tears that streamed down his childish white cheeks.

  In the cycling of the Realms, where everyone passed through Half World, there was no reward for being a good person. Mr. Glueskin had seen the truth of that in his passage through this Realm. There was no angelic chorus for behaving well. No reward for not inflicting hurt upon others.

  “It’s not just what we choose to do,” White Cat intoned, “but why.”

  Mr. Glueskin’s hands were still.

  “Why we choose what we do….” Mr. Glueskin repeated. His voice lowered to a childish whisper. “Not for a reward. Not for redemption….”

  His little voice was as brilliant as a winter star in the darkest night. “Even after having chosen to harm. When the choice is before me again—choosing not to harm over harming … makes me human,” Gee whispered.

  His breath shuddered through him.

  Such relief. As if the weight of a million years had been lifted from his shoulders.

  Let him float away.

  His fingers fell from Cracker’s neck.

  “No!” Ilanna wailed. “The cat lies! Choosing power over weakness makes you human! Choosing our lives, on our own terms, makes us real!” She struggled to break out of Karu’s hold, but the bird man held her tightly. “We don’t have to be victims, trapped. Look at your pathetic parents! Look at their humanity!” she snarled. “Is that what you choose? That’s no choice! It’s failure!”

  Gee’s childish skinny arms hung loosely at his sides. Cracker’s eyes were closed. A terrible red bruise around her pale neck. And she was very still.

  A ragged cry escaped Gee’s lips. What had he done!

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Salt tears burned his face, filling the back of his mouth. Gee placed a tentative hand on Cracker’s bony shoulder and gave a little shake. Please. It hadn’t been him. Not him….

  “I am so pissed off at you, Gee,” Cracker said hoarsely.

  Gee’s voice snagged in his throat, halfway between a sob and laughter. And his heart … his heart felt a joy so sweet it pierced him to the core. It was going to be okay. He wasn’t a monster.

  A grotesque crack.

  His mother—her head tilted at a terrible angle. His father was staring, as if confused, at the palms of his hands. He had killed her again. As he’d done uncountable times before.

  Gee shuddered. How could this suffering continue for so very long? How could such suffering be borne? His mother whom he did not know, whom he’d never know. Her horrendous cycle of pain. How torturous their Half Lives. How grotesque that they’d cycled through this for so long, trapped in suffering. And he’d almost joined them back in Half World. If he’d killed his father he would have returned, the son who killed his killer father, and become the monster that Ilanna wanted him to be. Powerful, cruel, yet trapped to kill and feed for eternity.

  Eternity….

  Cycles. Broken. Unbroken. Something … something not quite right. Gee frowned, confused, as unease began forming, growing inside him like a dark tumour.

  He had stopped himself from returning to that cycle! I’m not going to be that thing! I chose! Gee implored. But the dread continued to swell inside him like rotten fruit.

  White Cat caught his eyes. The cat’s gaze was piercing, as if he could see every little secret Gee held dear to his heart.

  Please! Nothing else! Because how much more could he bear?

  “No!” Ilanna’s voice was thick with pain and denial.

  Rilla, and Lilla, in tatters upon the filthy ground, were beginning to lose solidity. Too broken, energy spent, they were beginning to fade.

  “I need you!” Ilanna screamed. “I hate you! Feed them something! Feed them so they stay here with me!”

  Rilla, completely lifeless, faded away before their eyes, the pools of black blood evaporating with her.

  “Lilla, thank you!” Gee cried. He didn’t know if the eel heard him before she disappeared.

  Gee’s father, still compelled by his own terrible pattern, rose to his feet and lurched outside. Toward the remainder of his cycle, until his own Half Death, to return to murder his wife once more.

  Gee had nothing to say. Only a small frown etched into his childish forehead.

  His mother. Her body began fading. Gee stretched his hand toward her hair. Just once … to touch the mother he’d never known. “Mother,” he whispered. She dissolved before his eyes, and his fingers slid through empty air. Gone. To return to the start of her terrible Half World cycle.

  But not me! Gee thought. Not me!

  Ilanna wailed with rage. She writhed inside Karu’s hold, flip-flopping like a frenzied fish, her fury so great it would burst out from inside her skin.

  Gee slipped his arms beneath Cracker’s armpits and pulled up so that they could sit, shoulder to shoulder. The effort had them both panting.

  Karu. Something was happening to him. Gee blinked and blinked to rid his eyes of tears.

  The bird man seemed to flicker with golden flames. Gee rubbed his forearm across his eyes.

  With a triumphant cry, Ilanna writhed herself out of Karu’s weakening grip and rolled onto her side. Armless, she sought the wall for leverage so that she could rise to her feet.

  “Yesssss.” Karu’s voice was a throaty purr. He sounded almost like a cat. The bird man’s perpetually taut muscles were loose, relaxed. He opened his eyes. They flickered like orange firelight. “I never thought it could happen to me….” The feathers on his head ruffled, soft, then lay down slowly. He turned his head toward Cracker. “Your presence, your actions reminded me of my brother. And I remembered it all—my awful death, how my brother came to seek me in Half World. My monstrous betrayal of his love. But most importantly, I remembered what it means to love…. Little Sister. Live,” he said, as if bestowing a benediction.

  Growling, Ilanna propped herself against the wall, using her back to inch her way upward, to stand upright once more.

  Karu made no attempts to stop her. He remained seated. But he was full of calm as he gazed upon Ilanna. His matter was beginning to break apart. He wasn’t fading, as the others had…. It was as if his flesh was turning to motes of orange light. Warm, the colour of flames, the flecks of light held the form of the bird man.

  Oh, the Spirits welcome me! Karu’s voice rang inside their heads.

  The orange motes began to rise.

  Our cycles. We must accept our cycles, Karu’s voice rang. Ilanna,
even you…. I’m free!

  The tiny motes expanded, filling the dirty hovel with a brilliant orange light. The sparks swirled wildly, though the air was motionless, and converged to form one glowing orb the size of a heart.

  The hinotama floated weightlessly above their heads before it slowly bobbed down to gently alight on Cracker’s forehead. The light glowed upon her face, warm and kind.

  Some of Cracker’s weariness lifted. And she looked more like a teenage girl.

  Karu’s Spirit shot up through the ceiling and disappeared.

  “He is free,” White Cat said, surprise tingeing his voice. “Not bad for a bird.” He lifted his front paw and began chewing off chunks of dirt caught in the fur between his pads.

  “Fool! Traitor! Coward!” Spittle sprayed from Ilanna’s lips, her black seal eyes enormous in her maddened face. She kept her back pressed against the wall as she circled the room, her eyes fixed on Gee. “Karu is an idiot,” she hissed. “Weak and stupid! He has betrayed our vision. Only we are left to return Half World to its glory. To spill into the other Realms, to turn them all to Half World. We, the powerful. We, the depraved. We, who are not bound by conscience and humanity! Half Life for eternity!”

  White Cat, paw half-raised, turned his gaze between Ilanna and Gee.

  The lingering taste of tears was salty upon Gee’s tongue. To think that Karu could attain Spirit. After all that time. Gee hadn’t noticed that he’d risen, that his hand was outstretched toward Karu’s last golden light.

  “My darling love,” Ilanna whispered with terrible desperation. “My beloved Glueskin. Come away with me, and we can build our power once more. I will show you the most wondrous creatures to eat. The most delicious, nutritious babies and children.” She giggled playfully. Desperately. “The best ones are the freshly arrived, the ones who’ve just come over, still reeking of Life.” She began to slaver, ever hugging the walls. “We’ll begin by feasting on your false friend and your evil cat. Their Life will feed your transformation. We’ll squeeze the last living juices out of them—”

  “No.” Gee’s childish voice rang.

  Ilanna froze.

  White Cat closed his eyes. Cracker began to smile.

  “I will never eat again in Half World,” Gee said. A wave of weakness washed over him, dark, heavy. The hunger was still there. Despite his resolve. The sudden squeeze of screaming need almost had him howling. He fell to his knees, then to all fours. His white hair flopped over his face as he panted through the spasm, like a woman struggling through labour. His breathing slowly calmed. “I will not,” he whispered.

  Weariness pressed upon him, the weight of ten thousand years. The face of a child, the hair of an ancient….

  Cracker reached to stroke Gee’s cheek with tenderness.

  “Let’s go home,” Gee said in a small voice. “I’m ready to go home.”

  “Yes,” Cracker said gently.

  Gee could feel someone staring. The cat, he thought. That shrewd, unrelenting, demanding cat…. With great effort, Gee opened his eyes.

  Ilanna began laughing. From deep in her belly, low and awful, growing louder even as the pitch veered into a terrible shriek. She pelted toward them, her leg swinging back to kick Cracker with a killing blow to the head.

  Gee only had time to extend one hand, palm outward. His arm shot out, looped once around Ilanna’s leg. He yanked upward and she crashed to the ground, hard.

  She began shrieking, flipping, twisting, jerking like a maddened eel.

  Gee looped the length of his elongated arm around and around both her legs, binding them together, immobile. She hissed, enraged, frothing with spit and fury.

  Gee sealed the binding and pinched off his arm. His energy spent, the distended limb fell to the ground like a limp garden hose. He couldn’t even keep it raised. Gee slowly dragged it back to his side, across the rough ground. With great effort he reshaped himself a new hand. It scarcely held its form, and the white skin was smudged and lustreless.

  Glumly, he stared down at his chest. He was even smaller than before. Every time he cast off his flesh, he became smaller.

  Ilanna’s shrieks of rage turned to sobbing.

  “Come on, Gee,” Cracker said. They helped each other to their feet. Gee tottered with weakness.

  Some of Cracker’s vigour had returned since Karu’s Spirit had touched her. Her hands were firm. Steady. She stared down upon Gee with dismay. He was almost a head shorter than she was.

  “What’s happening to you?” she cried.

  “I think it could fall under ‘regressing,’” Gee muttered.

  Cracker, unable to help herself, giggled.

  “I have to leave,” Gee said. “Before I have to see my mother return.”

  Cracker, blinking hard, nodded fiercely. They turned toward the opening, White Cat following behind them.

  “Wait!” Ilanna cried. “Don’t leave me here like this! How will I eat? I have no eels to aid me!” She flipped-flopped wildly, like a grub. Unable to break the white binding around her legs, tears of rage and fear began streaming down her face. “Do you understand what will happen to me?” she screamed. “I am thrown into the sea, alive! I am ripped apart, consumed, alive, by creatures in the deeps! I am betrayed by my love, by my own family, to this nightmare. And you will send me back again!”

  Feelings writhed inside Gee, so mixed he couldn’t begin to untangle them. To leave her, to leave her suffering, felt monstrous. He gasped, the edges of his Half World fading, as his own hunger washed over him again. He swallowed hard, panting, until the awful need faded into a bruised ache.

  “The hunger is terrible, Ilanna. Almost unbearable.” Gee’s voice was dull. “I’m sorry. The only way to move beyond the cycles of suffering in Half World is to not eat. And to accept your cycle. As Karu did.”

  Did White Cat emit a soft purr? Gee wasn’t sure.

  “How dare you!” Ilanna screamed. “Telling me what to do! Do you think you’re better than me? You’re nothing! You’re an abomination. Who are you to tell me to accept my cycle! What about your own? You unwanted git! I’ll make you pay! I’m coming back for you! I’ll never forget. And you’ll be sorry! Because I’ll start with your grandmother first. I’ll make it last a long, long time. My eels. They’ll eat her alive, they’ll make it last for years! Years! And you will watch her. And you will turn back to me, and eat your grandmother with me! Do you hear!”

  “Let’s go.” Cracker’s voice was firm. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  Wearily, Gee followed his friend out of the terrible place.

  They trudged away into the darkness as Ilanna alternated between screams of rage and uncontrollable sobbing.

  “Untie me! Don’t leave me! I’ll devour you! I’ll flay your ugly little friend! I’m coming to get you both! You’ll be sorry!”

  They could hear her for a very long time.

  They didn’t turn back.

  WHEN HER VOICE finally faded Gee felt dirty, guilty and relieved at the same time. Some part of him still wanted Ilanna. A part of him felt sorry for her. Maybe he had done her a wrong, in his own way. But he couldn’t undo what had been done. And he couldn’t give her what she wanted. Soon exhaustion overcame thought, and he could concentrate only on placing one foot in front of the other.

  White Cat bounded before them.

  Sometimes the cat sat, waiting, until they caught up, before bounding ahead once again.

  “Are you cold?” Cracker asked, glancing down at Gee’s bare legs, exposed beneath the hem of his torn T-shirt. His bare feet. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  Gee shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, I still have my underwear on.” He managed a faint smile.

  Cracker grinned in return.

  “I want to get out of here.” He looked about anxiously at the grey dregs of Half World. The rubbled streets, the mounds of smouldering, stinking fires. The press of rounded shadows that suggested forests, or fallen clouds. Darkness was heavy upon them. They could hear
the rustle and click of small claws, beaks, the sound of something enormous being dragged over pebbles. The uncanny laughter of too many children dead before they’d had time to live.

  They caught up to White Cat once more.

  “Do you know the way home?” Cracker asked him. Her voice had gone hoarse again. She still needed water, Gee thought grimly.

  “Melanie returned by taking the elevator at the Mirages Hotel,” the cat stated.

  “Is there any other way?” Gee asked. “A faster way?”

  White Cat sniffed. “Maybe for cats,” he said, as if they were the only people who didn’t know. “But not for the likes of you.” White Cat bounded into the greater darkness.

  “How insufferable,” Cracker muttered.

  Gee almost grinned.

  They struggled after the cat.

  Gee and Cracker walked the nightmare distance that seemed to unravel before them with no end. With no change of light, no measures of time, they could only continue as best they could, trusting the cat’s guidance.

  In the stretch and pull of space and time, Gee sometimes wondered if they were still alive. Maybe they had died altogether and were actually reliving their Half Lives, thinking that they needed to go back to the Realm of Flesh. What if their Half Life was this?

  I should feel happy, Gee thought. I’m not a monster. I’m going home. But something churned deep inside of him. A small worm gnawed.

  Something still undone…. Gee vehemently shook his head. No! It was done! He had passed the test. He had chosen to be human, after all. Please….

  Gee was glad that White Cat walked in the lead, so that he didn’t have to feel his eyes so cool and weighty upon him.

  Gee’s scalp prickled.

  Cracker’s bright eyes widened.

  Something ill, powerful … the air vibrated with it. They both looked back.

  In the distance, movement. A swell of darkness was moving toward them, and as it drew nearer the noise began to grow. At first, like the sound of water, it trickled and murmured.

  The noise began to roar.

  Giggling, weeping children, the howl of crazed feral dogs, leapfrogging shadows, bounding ever closer. Laughter, the sound deep and liquid. Tinged with monstrous power. Ringing wider, farther, expanding until it engulfed them.