A Tree of Bones

by Gemma Files

  Oona slid one small hand out from under his cuff, considering her fingernails as though they were little horn mirrors, nonchalant. “Oh, I could be, wiv the right incentive. ’Sides which,” jabbing a thumb skyward, “them lot upstairs been droppin’ lines for weeks, trawlin’ for your attention, and you can’t even see ’em. Can ya?”

  Christ, how Chess loathed this feeling of being just a step behind, that glee some so-called “smart” people took in changing subjects too fast for him to follow: Oona, Songbird, the Enemy. Hell, even Ash Rook’d talked down to him at first, though — give the big bastard his due — he’d also been the one person ever tried to break himself of that habit, if for no other reason than Chess had told him to either do so, or get reacquainted with his own right hand.

  “Seems not,” he said, between clenched teeth. “Can’t even say I know which ‘lot’ you’re talkin’ on, unless — ” But here memory broke past anger. “Yancey,” he breathed.

  “That’s her name, then, Miss Table-tapper?” He nodded. “Well, la di da. Strong little missus, ain’t she? She’s been yammerin’ away at you for donkey’s years, wiv never a bit o’ joy. Which might be why she’s suddenly decided t’talk t’me, instead.”

  Chess’s hackles rose. “Right now?”

  “Says ’er friends are layin’ a trail for you, to take you up an’ out. Which makes sense — this place’s been flush wiv silver, the last few days. But you don’t know why that is, do ya? ’Scuse me again, for not rememberin’ you don’t know nothin’.”

  “And whose damn fault is that?”

  “Patience, boyo. The way a call from Up Over looks down ’ere, it’s like a silver thread you catch ’old of, then tug at it t’follow it up.” She plucked something from the air alongside the dial-column, traced it, as though running her fingers up an invisible wire. “And that’s where you’ll need me, to show you the way. The show you where any one of ’em is.”

  “You been’ . . . seein’ these call-threads. All the time. Since I got here.”

  “That’s when they started, yeah.”

  “And you never told me.”

  “Didn’t fink you’d be amenable. Was I wrong?”

  “More like ’cause you already tried to tug on one yourself and didn’t get nowhere, is what I’d guess.”

  Oona let her eyes drop. “’Course,” she admitted. “Can’t expect you to trust me now, though, can I? Not when I always did leave you to pay the butcher’s bill whenever I could, ’cause on the pipe, it’s take what you can and keep it, wiv barely any room for anything else. No changing it now. But I never did nothin’ to you I wouldn’t’ve took myself.”

  “Oh, no doubt. And that’s what taught me to reckon my own price higher.”

  Oona nodded, face rigid, silver gleam of the rain-drenched streets reflected in her downcast eyes. They stood there a moment, long and longer. Chess would’ve reckoned it by heartbeats, if either of ’em had had one.

  “Maybe it’s that I ’ad to be like I was,” she offered, at last. “So you’d turn out like you are. Like you ’ad to be.”

  Raw as he was feeling, the guffaw that burst out of Chess at this last piece of ridiculousness caught him by surprise, but he was grateful for it all the same.

  “Oh, fuck that horse-crap,” he said. “You ‘had’ to ruin your life just to ruin mine, ’cause soft don’t win the race? Makes it sound like Rook’s Book without the poesy. At least that Hell-whore Ixchel and the Enemy got a bit of patter to go with their craziness, even if it’s all in some palaver I can’t speak. So apologize or don’t, but save the excuses, ’cause I don’t want none.”

  “Little boy. You don’t want none of nothin’ . . . never did.” Oona shook her head once more, half rueful, half malicious. “But you’re gonna get it.”

  Then, catching hold of what Chess could only assume was that phantom cord again, she reached out for him, fingers flickering impatiently. “Now — shall we?”

  Chess let out his breath, more than half minded to say No, just to see the look on her face. Then thought, amazed: But my friends are waiting. And wasn’t it sadly strange how easy that word came to his lips now, as if he’d had friends all his life, ’stead of only learning what that meant a tad too late to be worth the education?

  Even natural perversity wasn’t enough to keep him here, though.

  “Let’s,” he said, shortly. And took her proffered hand.

  BOOK TWO: SAVAGE WEAPONS

  November 13, 1867

  Month Fourteen, Day Six Crocodile

  Festival: Still Quecholli, or Treasured Feather

  Day Cipactli (Crocodile) is governed by Tonactecuhtli, Lord of Nurturance, as its provider of tonalli or Shadow Soul life energy. Cipactli is an auspicious day, ruled by energetic work signifying advancement and honour, good for beginnings. But this trecena, which starts with day Cozcacuauhtli (Vulture), is ruled by Xolotl, god of fire and bad luck, who sometimes aids the dead on their journey to Mictlan. It therefore signifies the wisdom and freedom of old age, representing the path of the setting sun — and while the way of the warrior points to the primal relationship between predator and prey, this sign points to the Third Way, which is neither.

  Accordingly, these thirteen days are set aside to perfect the Way of the Scavenger. While the young heart must strategize between offence and defence, the old heart floats like the clouds, stooping to earth only to take what no one else wants. These are good days for disengaging; bad days for participating.

  By the Mayan Long Count calendar, today is governed by Piltzintecuhtli the Youthful Lord, who is the planet Mercury — the sun’s little brother, that planet visible just before sunrise, or just after sunset. His wife is Tlazteotl, filth-eater, who redeems through lust and may be invoked during childbirth. He is the third Lord of the Night.

  SEVEN DIALS: THREE

  This is where the gods killed themselves to make the sun and the moon come up.

  Down here in the dark, in the house of dust. Down under the black water, deep and deeper. At the very farthest point, the great taproot, where the crack in all worlds begins. This is where a thousand catastrophes lurk, waiting to be rediscovered — where a million apocalypses slumber, waiting to be recalled. Where the end of all things lies fallow, hoping to be summoned, to fulfill its purpose: to complete itself, and everything else.

  In truth, there is no denying that all of our ancestors knew that just as the world began, the world must end; on this point, there is never any debate. The only valid consideration is neither if, nor when — but how.

  For the Mexica, first came Nahui-Ocelotl, the Jaguar Sun, whose inhabitants were devoured by wild beasts. Then Nahui-Ehécatl, the Wind Sun, whose inhabitants were destroyed by hurricanes; Nahui-Quiahuitl, the Rain Sun, whose inhabitants were washed away in a rain of fire; and Nahui-Atl, the Water Sun, whose inhabitants died by flood — except for those who became fish, as well as that single man and woman who escaped alive, only to be transformed into dogs.

  After Nahui-Atl, Quetzalcoatl himself went down to Mictlan and stole the bones of all previous races from Mictantecuhtli, skeleton lord of death’s kingdom. These he then pulverized and used to create clay, blending it with divine blood shed from a wound in his own divine penis, through which he had threaded a penitent rope of thorns. And from this clay was moulded the current world’s population, baked to life in a furnace powered by Quetzalcoatl’s heart, the glorious morning star.

  This, therefore, is why we mutilate ourselves, give all we can afford (and more) in our worshippers’ service, improving their too-brief lives on the assumption that they then will be glad to die — perfect, happy, knowing themselves loved — for us, in our stead.

  To keep this pain-born orrery we all occupy turning.

  Throughout the last phase of his short life, Chess had seen wonders enough to flatter himself whatever miracle might manifest now as he gripped his mother’s hand, reduced by circumstance to childish dependency, he’d take it in stride. Mind-wrenching shifts, vertig
o and displacement, convulsive transfigurations of earth and sky with everything washed away under foot — he’d endured all that, and more. Nothing could surprise him.

  What would it be like, though, this time, when the world around him peeled back to let whatever lay behind unshuck itself? Couldn’t be worse than here, he’d’ve snarled, once — but experience suggested otherwise.

  But I’ve fought my way clear of Hell before, Chess thought.

  Oona smiled — and yanked hard on the unseen line of tension in her other hand, twanging it bowstring sharp. The recoil pulled ’em first skyward, predictably, as a hooked fish’s tug will set the line whipping. But they didn’t go too far in that direction, instead finding themselves dragged headlong a bare few feet up off the wet black street, kicking up slime and trash; Oona went first, red hair flapping like a torn flag in a windstorm, her grip on Chess’s hand just hard enough to haul him in her wake.

  By the time he’d recovered, nonplussed, they were halfway down a narrow crevice between buildings previously near-invisible in the gloom, staring at a blank, crumbling brick wall. Rancid puddles pooled between the flagstones, mud squelching beneath Chess’s boots. Oona bit one dirty knuckle and considered the wall, as if she hadn’t expected it.

  “What’s the deal?” he demanded. “Thought we were goin’ up, not side-a-ways.”

  “Well, I fought the same,” she snapped back, “so if I knew, I’d damn well say. The thread, it definitely goes in ’ere, after all that; right dead-centre of this brick I’m pointin’ at, neat as a whistle. But — ” She stepped forward and began to probe the wall, hands spidering lightly over the bricks; her brows knotted, peering still closer. “ — after that, I dunno.”

  “No way through?”

  “Not as I can ken.”

  “And I’m s’posed to just take your word for it, am I?”

  “’Ow many other choices you got?”

  She had a point, there. But hell if it didn’t scrape Chess’s craw to have to rely on her sense of something so completely invisible, ’specially when she didn’t appear to be doing anything with it.

  “Step aside,” he told her, shortly. And moved close enough to the brick to think he could taste his own no-breath, reminding him how long it’d been since he’d even pretended to eat.

  “Punch our way through, maybe,” he said, more to himself than anything else. “Or — blow it down? The two of us together, should be easy.”

  “Fink so, wouldn’t you?”

  Chess swung ’round, immediately on guard, with steam beginning to wisp upward through his tight-clenched knuckles. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  “Means ‘I don’t bloody know,’ is all. This place ain’t a shooting gallery — it was, you’d’ve already flown the coop long since, without any ’elp from me. So maybe each step of the way out’s less about ’oo’s got the sand to pound ’ard as it is gettin’ answers; finding the right path, not just the easiest.”

  Her tone, surprisingly, rang convincing enough to make Chess flatten his palms against the wall, close his eyes and lean his head down, the stone rough but damply soothing ’gainst his throbbing forehead.

  I’m no good with this shit, he wanted to say. Ain’t no book-smart intriguer like Rook, or even a Pinkerton-trained puzzle-solver, the way Ed had to be; my grand ideas at Hoffstedt’s Hoard came straight from little Miss Yancey’s brainpan, and they all went south quick enough, once Sheriff Love got involved. Shoot it if it stands and cut it if it runs, that’s my strategy’s extent. I can barely plan out my morning meals, let alone solve a Goddamn riddle designed to keep them that’s Hell-locked from making their escape. . . .

  “I don’t know either,” he found himself admitting, at last, as despair lapped up over him.

  To which she sniffed, and replied: “Then give up, why don’t you? Just like a bloody Adam! Well, it’s like I always said — ”

  That phrase alone, however, was enough to sweep him away, borne off on a dirty tide of similarly bad advice. The wisdom of a life spent facedown, with only your own blood left to spit at the world that’d kicked you; Oona Pargeter’s rule-book, each chapter beginning exactly like the last, with these same, cheerless words: My Ma always said —

  — Get the fawney up front. Never dish out what you can’t take. Don’t never beg; rave and curse, go down fightin’, ’cause them that folds easy gets the boot. Now get out o’ here, you skin-waste, and sing for our bloody supper. My Ma always said: What are you, a ponce? A bloody molly-coddle? Go cry to ’eaven and see ’oo answers, you flamin’ soft-arse nancy. My Ma always said: Nothin’ comes for nothin’ in this world, boy. Sell for as much as they’ll pay, and charge more, if you can. And if they won’t fork over, then do the only fing makes you different from me . . . and kill ’em. . . .

  I loved her a good long time, missy, he remembered snarling at Yancey Kloves, when she’d pressed him. And then I learned better.

  But he knew now, oh, how he knew — that he never really had.

  “’Cause all men are dogs, huh?” he asked Oona now, out loud, voice deceptively even.

  She nodded. “And pigs, and rats — vermin of all descriptions.” Then paused, eyes softening slightly: “But then, you ain’t really a man at all, are you? No matter ’ow you look.”

  He almost thought she might’ve meant it for a compliment, of a sort. But even so, it made him snap upright once more, too angry to even reply ’til he’d took a deep breath, blew it out.

  “Yes, I damn well am,” he told her.

  “All right, then. Do what a man does, supposedly — look, and see. Your Pa was a bastard, but ’e knew ’is works, by God. So fink on it, ’cause it’s you this Call’s meant for, not me; might be it’s you needs to take a gander, wivout all your jaw, and ponder it through in ways I can’t. Bloody fink, for once!”

  Chess’s hand throbbed, a literal phantom pain. He squinted down at the raw-scraped smear it left behind on the wall — only to watch light bloom from his palm. Oona’s shadow leaped up, towering on the bricks behind her with a sizzling power-crackle. And framing it, visible now under Chess’s personal footlight, three rough lines sketched out a brick rectangle, some open door backlit by the sun beyond.

  At shoulder level, the red ghost of Chess’s blood still shone, the only true colour in this entire pocket world.

  With more gentleness than he’d intended, Chess pushed Oona out of the way, stepping into her place; his glory-hand’s light faded, plunging the alley back into darkness. But now that Chess had seen the cracks, he couldn’t unsee them. He drove fingers along their length, scrabbling for the hidden catch or trip-switch, tearing his own no-nails. The pain galvanized him to punch brick over and over again, hooking it from left to right and back to left once more, as if trying to bust nonexistent hinges. His knuckles shredded, dripping blood hot enough to steam, which the fissures drank up in turn. And again and again he struck, smearing that blood along every inch, to what damn end he couldn’t’ve begun to reckon, even if you’d asked him.

  Without warning, the wall’s blood-delineated portion simply disintegrated, collapsing with an outward-bellying whoof of dust and mica. Chess and Oona jerked back, shielding their eyes, and lowered their hands to see — nothing. A gap of absolute black, not even reflecting the chill gleam of Seven Dials’ rain. Yet Chess knew that darkness, down in his gut. Had glimpsed it before, inside the Enemy’s empty ribcage and the bottom of Her Goddamn Rainbow Ladyship’s grinning black eyes, as she stared down into his while riding him: the darkness of a crack in the world, the place where the light bled out.

  Oona seized him by one hand, blood notwithstanding, and didn’t leave go. Chess’s throat felt like sand and glass when he finally spoke. “So . . . it’s in there, I guess, or stay here. Forever.”

  Beside him, his mother’s too-young shape only nodded; didn’t need to turn to see it, not at all. Not with her shoulder’s muscle popping slightly and their no-pulses hammering in unison: her dead heart, his long-gone one.

>   Chess closed his eyes, and groaned.

  “Fuck it,” he said, finally. And leaped, pulling Oona with him.

  Gravity seemed to slow. They stepped through, touched down over the threshold, the lintel between. And just as promised by that first glance, all that rose to meet them was nothing: an absence, delicious in its way, airless and sere.

  There was something under their feet, though, if noiseless and unforgiving — something making bleak walls on either side, too, with scarce enough room for Chess’s shoulders to pass between, his arm turning in its socket to lead Oona through in turn. He felt a wrench of panic at the idea that they might forge forward only to find themselves trapped in a gradually narrowing space, eventually lodging too fast to go either way, and for a bare second, the still-open portal back into Mictlan-Seven Dials shone like sanctuary.

  Oona’s fingers clutched at his palm, waxy-cold, sticky with sweat. Not looking so much to comfort her as simply to hurry her up a bit, he shifted his grip to her thin wrist and pulled, hard enough to feel the bones grate.

  “Let’s get a move on, old woman,” he told her, not looking back. And set his teeth, stepping straightaway into a blast of pressure that blew neither hot nor cold but horizontally, bruisingly stiff. Yet though the force of it rattled his teeth, flapped his lips askew and numbed his tongue, he bladed through setting heel to toe, heel to toe, snarling soundless, indomitable. Dragging his mother along with him until they broke free with an audible snap, a broke-pelvis crunch, into someplace entirely other yet again.

  Dust on dust, a wilderness of it, buff and granular. And light, too, for all Chess couldn’t tell where it came from — sifting down or welling up, extruding through the walls’ pores, slicking everything with distinction. On either side, a doubled fall of what might be curtains receded, muslin-thin, static, aside from those shadows flickering intermittently behind.

  “Chess — ” Oona began, pressing against him.