That realization keeps both of our mouths shut. Scaring me to psychotic outbursts won't do anyone any good, and there's likely to be other times to talk. And I can't take any more attention off Iniga, lest I miss her failed jump and let her die again. I begin practicing a combination of my own, as we are wont to do in the background. So long as those actually rehearsing aren't distracted or impeded by it, they don't care.
I only have one chance at this. There's eight counts before the fateful leap, and I deliberately 'misjudge' my distance to her, and bump her as she works through the spins preceding the moment when her fate is sealed. She veers off balance, half torn between turning to me to ream me, and picking up the combination where she left off. But her indecision impedes her spacial awareness, and the edge of her skirt sweeps into the lamp, the fabric catching at a speed only marginally less abrupt than the old dresses our costumers are replacing, despite so many protests.
Muffled shouts go around, seeking the stage hand who is supposed to be monitoring for this exact scenario. But he's not close enough. I throw myself at Iniga, seek to put the flames out with my own hands. My own skirt, one of the older ones not yet replaced, goes up far faster. The heat of it cuts through my skin. Tomasso hauls me back, kicking and screaming, and puts out the flaming section. He holds me down to prevent me from setting the rest alight as well.
Two of the set designers in the background swear, and one mumbles, “I told them that investing in arclights would do more to protect the performers than replacing their clothes.”
I fight to scream at him, tell him that's not what happened here. But the pitying looks they direct at me show no comprehension.
The other dancers glare at me, blaming me for the moment of distraction that lured Iniga into the light.
Iniga's screams torment me. By the time the wayward assistant is located and other volunteers have returned with water, the damage is done. Iniga's breaths are choked and halting, her throat burned out. My own still aches, too, from what I swallowed before I transitioned here.
I shut my eyes and tell myself it's a bad dream, as her body turns to ash, spreads free through the world, corrupting the stage, the hall, and the dancers, burning them from the inside out.
I scream in pain as the flakes of decay approach me as well, and Han replaces the now unrecognizable and ineffective Tomasso, wrapping his arm around me and seeking to shield me with his own body.
I black out in his arms.
And then I wake up in our dormitory, Iniga's face above me, with Han's next to her. He looks at me, the fear and confusion in his face telling me he remembers everything.
Words linger in my head, from a voice that doesn't feel human. You can't change it.
So long as Iniga is here, I have another chance. Reassured that I'm awake, she turns away to finish her morning preparations, with the same injunction not to be late. While she is waiting for the shared looking-glass to fix her hair, I turn to Han.
Something is off. He's tenser than he should be. I put my arms around him as well, and he winces. I slide my fingers up to the portion of skin exposed above his collar, and my fingers come back with an ashy residue, still warm. His skin is mottled with burns, and I withdraw from him, not wanting to hurt him more.
This isn't an ordinary dream, and we can fuck this up. For ourselves, if not for Iniga.
Chapter Nine: Recollect
Han:
The whole thing seems entirely too surreal. My head hasn't stopped ringing with pain since I found Aletta on my floor, her mouth peeling and burned as though by acid, her eyes unseeing, and her body wracked with seizures.
The flashes beyond that that I remember are useless, obviously pain distortions. Looking at myself through her eyes, then out of both of our bodies at the same time, then seeing her melt into the floor, muscles pulling apart from themselves with eerie wiggles.
Voices, things crashing into a wood floor, and a world that I had no place in. Flashes of people around me, still unseeing. Then, the clearest thing was Aletta, dress in flames. Faced with the chance of being trapped in this world without her, I tried to protect her.
I'm sure she knows something about what's going on, but she hasn't responded to me. I have to follow, hope that eventually things become clearer.
I want to ask who her friend is, the one she knocked into the fire. Was her 'ghost' guilt, over her past actions? It's the only thing that makes sense, that Aletta is the center of this. There's no way I internalized enough of my history coursework to put together the detail of this scene. Some kind of shared hallucination or telepathy makes more sense than any of the alternatives. Hell, even some kind of a past-life or reincarnation thing.
It all comes down to her.
I turn my back on the girls as they go about their routine. Aletta might not care about changing while I'm here, but it doesn't make me feel any less awkward about it. Maybe it's that her face is significantly more youthful, less mature, than the woman I know. Softer, maybe. Even her mannerisms are different from the woman I slept with. It makes me uneasy, makes me distrust her. Which is even more jarring since she's obviously still a child.
My neck and back ache. I may not have a reflection to see the damage, but I know it's there. The scabbing cracks when I move, a discomfiting sensation. The unburned skin still itches as though from a severe sunburn, but the discomfort is nothing compared to the pain lacing my back and nape.
Their rehearsal starts today, same as last time, but this time, Aletta seizes the dead girl's arm, tells her to watch her leap because there's water on the stage. The other girl shrugs, and promises to watch out for it.
I'm an interloper. There's an intimacy to Aletta's stretches that is hypnotic, as though each movement was her taking a piece of herself and holding it up for public inspection. Aletta purses her lips as she practices holding a pose, her leg extended to the side well beyond waist height. Her toe trembles slightly from the effort of holding it, and the other girl puts her hand at the lowest point of Aletta's heel, to force Aletta to raise it higher.
Given the past few days of my life, the routine seems even more surreal. I'm adrift, waiting for something to happen, or for something to change.
I watch Aletta's posture, noting the tension building as the other girl stands to begin dancing under her supervision. I can almost feel it vibrating through the walls. But she seems to have heeded Aletta's caution, and is further upstage than yesterday. Aletta's face shifts, cycling between barely concealed fear, affection and sadness, and then, as the girl lands a particularly gravity defying jump, elation.
She turns to me, meets my eyes with a smile. I only have a moment to savor it, not just for its feeling, but for the rare bit of recognition, under the circumstances. There's the sound of wood splintering, accompanied by a loud crack, and it takes a moment for the source to become clear. A piece of rigging has come loose and fallen, trapping the other girl underneath.
I shiver, the smell of blood in my nose as a trail leaks underneath it.
But this says something. It's not Aletta. It never was. It's the other girl.
Aletta is calmer this time, almost in shock. She hangs back from the other dancers and stage hands clustering around the destroyed rigging, as I position myself between her and the view of the catastrophe. I squeeze her shoulder, and she looks up at me, hate and anger shadowing those eyes to a rich brown. And then she runs through the side door. I have nothing to do but follow, and put my arms around her when she collapses in the courtyard outside.
She whispers, barely loud enough to be heard, “I can't change it.” She meets my gaze, eyes wild and lost, a child playing dressup in a role she can't comprehend. My mind strays to the last time she felt this trapped, in another courtyard, in another world. A silky dress riding up her thighs, not the stiffened layers of her costume. I have no clue what I might say to her, what might help. But I have to say something. Anything to erase the violence in her eyes.
I give her the same advice I did then. “Stop tryin
g, then.”
“What?”
“If it's supposed to happen, it's supposed to happen. Stop trying.”
Her eyes are desperate. She wants to fight. She always wants to fight. Because accepting this, it isn't just accepting coming out the loser in a bad dream, and waking up in a cold sweat. It means accepting that the other girl is dead.
Aletta:
He holds me through the night. The world changes around us, ripples, the courtyard unmaking itself around us and remaking itself as the exact bed I woke up in that morning. He eventually dozes, fingers in my hair, but I cannot.
My bones ache. They have ever since it happened. I felt it before I saw it. Felt a massive pressure caving the back of my skull, felt bones straining and shattering. The more we retry this, the more it erodes us. Han's burns, my bruising and pain. Who knows how addled my thoughts will become? I have no idea how many more attempts we could have, anyways. It hurts to put weight on my right hip, and to breathe.
I may not be able to save Iniga, but I also may not have to kill us.
I don't bother going through the routines. They happen anyways. I burst into tears at Iniga's excitable smile, but she doesn't register them. She doesn't see me as I am, only me as I was in the original memory.
She's a placeholder, not really the girl I called my sister.
I can't stop the trembles, the closer the moment comes. I reflect on how so much is right with her, and yet wrong. There's little tells to her mannerisms, things that aren't as fluid as they should be. She's a fine imitation of Iniga—I doubt any succubus could do better—but she isn't my friend.
At least, that's what I tell myself so that I can let her die again, hopefully for the last time. For something I barely remembered for so long, it consumes me now.
I brace myself, wait for the crux of this moment. I shut my eyes as Iniga's first foot leaves the ground, plug my ears before the first foot lands, and thankfully miss the sickening pop as my nightmare starts all over again. I count as long as I can until the curiosity and terror gets the better of me.
I open my eyes just in time to see her fall from the stage. Amid the flurry of dancers, I walk down to sit with her corpse. I couldn't save her, but at least I can keep her company. As she wheezes her last breath, I take her hand, oblivious to the performers milling around us. Han puts a hand on my shoulder, and my eyes widen.
There, in her rapidly dulling eyes, that same flash of black. The one that greets me in every mirror.
She's still alive, exactly like me.
I abandon my mental connection with Han to cling to her, to bind her to me.
This is what she wanted. For someone to carry her spirit to Limbo. The same way someone once did me. They'll remove the body soon, attempt to get on with rehearsal as planned; too much money goes into these productions to let seeds lie fallow. They'll take her away from me, and she'll lose her last chance at rebirth, or peace, or whatever might await her outside of her own last day.
I bend forward, throw her misshapen torso over my shoulder, and stumble out of the concert hall. I have to get her away from here.
Han:
I can't touch Aletta, can't make her slow down. She doesn't even seem to see me anymore. That loss devastates me more than her eyes, golden-bright with a luster that speaks of impulse, destruction, and desperation. I should fear what she might do, what she is doing. But none of that can compare to the prospect of a lifetime completely unseen. I can't risk being trapped here. For better or worse, I have to stick with her.
I shiver, and try not to look at the way the corpse's legs knock into Aletta's stomach. Truthfully, I'm impressed she can carry the girl, and at that speed. Aletta glances over her shoulder, and I stumble. Her eyes have changed, overwhelmed by a fierce darkness, one spreading through her form like an infection, forcing her muscles to develop more bulk, her bones more height, her silhouette to change. I struggle to keep up.
I finally manage to reach her side, eye level with the corpse. But the girl's dim eyes have changed too, echoing Aletta's darkness.
This is a nightmare. Nothing more. I focus on the last clear memories I have: Aletta outside my door, kissing me with urgency. What the fuck is even happening?
And I catch her hand as her body dissolves. My grip on her pulls me through some unseen fabric. Once again, pain roars through me as I see through her eyes, then through neither of ours, and I black out.
Chapter Ten: Crossed Wires
Aletta:
Soft skin, unburned, greets me as I come to. Something about that doesn't sit well with me. But it tells me that we pushed through, that we are now back in normal dream, not in Iniga's hellish flashback. I test that theory, force my form back into its youthful contours, rather than the powerful, mature shape I developed to escape with Iniga.
Iniga—shit. Shit, shit. I look around for her body frantically, ignoring Han stirring beneath me. Some part of me is relieved that his burns have faded back into his flesh like the bad dream. But I can't spare him more than that. I cast around in the sand, and find a small doll: bedecked with Iniga's tutu, blond hair, green eyes, and morbidly enough, askew and broken limbs. I look for that telltale shadow in her eyes, and upon finding it, clutch her to me.
Inside the doll, something is living. I feel it breathing. I feel its pain. Its presence is dense, now, so much denser than disbursed through her fragile body.
That nudges memories loose. A well-dressed stranger—too well-dressed to belong here—holding my hand despite my obvious disease. His eyes flash black, but I shut my eyes, imagining it to be another fever dream. “The next part hurts most of all,” he tells me. I haven't the foggiest idea who he is, but I can't muster the energy to shriek, call in an attendant. “All I can promise you is that when the pain fades, you'll be reborn.”
As I fall asleep for the last time, his hand tightens on mine, and sharp pains radiate from it into me, as though he were sinking hooks into me, and binding me to him like some sickening marionette.
I fight to move, to scream, but my body is his. He's nowhere to be seen, but he's inside me, jerking my limbs along some path I don't want to travel. I do my best to thrash, but I can't so much as twitch a finger. I scream, a primal cry I didn't know I had in me, the fears and indignities of my illness, knowledge of my own insanity rising to the top of my mind, drowning me. He flinches. “None of that, child. If you distract me, we might both die.”
To prove his point, he hesitates, and the world shudders around him, the earth forming jaws to swallow us. A flood of energy passes through me, from him, and the jaws fall back into lifeless hills of dust.
“We are not meant to exist here, and the world itself will fight us. Only by cooperation can you and I survive this, and only by cooperation have our kind survived this trail, again and again.”
I look for landmarks, but there are none. Only my weakened spirit, held in thrall by a man with the devil's eyes.
Tears form, and I brush them aside, smooth the remembered pains off of my skin.
I look around, eyes tracing beaches, a lush forest, and a stone labyrinth and cliff. But as I test for the deepest portion of the fabric, the part that I can most likely build a door with, the world pushes back.
A series of visions disorient me. Han looking up at me. The doll looking at the fabric of my dress as I press her to my breast. And a thousand dreamers, all exerting their own pull over this landscape. My muscles spasm as each of them imprints in me, unconsciously tugging at my limbs. A waterfall of images crushing me, fighting to carry little pieces of me away as though it were brainmatter dashed on rocks at the bottom. I block them out, wrapping my substance around myself tighter, trying to take up less space.
I have to get some distance, get some isolation. I stand, and start walking. I feel fear, though whether it's mine or Iniga's I can't tell, and I hasten to reassure her. Still, it chokes me, tightening my throat and making it harder to breathe.
“Don't worry, love. Just means we have to walk back. I think th
ey said something about this. I'm not strong enough pull both of us. But we'll get you there, and the librarian will know what to do.”
“Who's the librarian?” Han's voice is cutting, even though it comes to me distant and tinny.
The word touches loose the entire world's response, a tsunami of images and ideas that force me to my knees. I growl, block them out, and stand. I don't dare answer, not knowing whether that'll unleash another torrent.
“Aletta? Please?”
I pull hard on the particles in this reality, suck them into me to insulate me from its inhabitants. It helps, and the voices subside.
Han:
I shiver as the ground slowly warps around Aletta, pushing toward her in little ripples and somehow vanishing into those familiar curves. The sky pulls in, too, and I speed up my steps. I don't want to see if it will start taking my legs next.
I memorize the world erasing itself, try to commit every detail to memory, as though it will somehow make it real again.
It's familiar. I've seen it before, in a half-remembered dream. A beautiful woman with golden eyes, running through a stone maze, her limbs encrusted with sand from the beach we made love on.
A puzzle piece clicks into place. “That was you?”
This can't be real. She doesn't answer.
“I—I think I dreamed about you before we met.” It sounds too creepy to articulate. I want this to be the slightly crazy girl who showed me how to lift her. Not some dream-bitch dragging me through hellfire.
No answer. I might as well have stayed with the dancers. She brushes the doll's hair back with a tenderness that's frankly unsettling. I'm not one with a doll phobia, I swear. Maybe it's the odd angle of the doll's neck, or its dented skull. Or the lumpiness of its ribcage. I bite back nausea, remembering the corpse that bore those wounds. And at least the doll is easier to carry. It makes about as much sense as anything from the past few days has.
Beyond The Veil: A Paranormal & Magical Romance Boxed Set Page 59
