“Oh boy! A whole village of lobster people!” Mack became excited. “Shoulda brought some butter or somethin’.”
“I somehow don’t think we’re going to find something so far removed from ourselves,” Flynn replied, remembering the smattering of Earth-like animals they’d seen along the way. Whoever waited below was likely to be approachable at least.
“Hey, guys?” Zaja asked. “What’s that?”
She pointed to her right, where the land rose much higher than where they stood now, in a thick forest where the ethereal lights clustered in great numbers. Whatever the forest served to mask, a great pillar of light rose from it, looming so high that the daytime sky tapered to night where the light faded.
“I don’t know,” Chari said, “but I find it disquieting.”
As they began hiking down the other side of the hill, toward the lake, Flynn found himself preoccupied by the lands ahead. If the celestial pillar Zaja had noted was a “north star,” then they were coming from the east. West of the distant town, all seemed to fade and wither. For all that life flourished here, so too was it a place of death.
*
The lake-town became clearer with each step. It was indeed built atop the water, though “built” wasn’t quite accurate—the giant shells seemed to have been harpooned and tethered to the walk. Many were ancient and weathered, sporting large, visible cracks. Whatever aquatic creatures had once lived in them had died out long ago.
The locals were dull and monotone, in a very literal way. There was little vibrancy or color among them—they seemed as faded as the creatures that roamed the surrounding lands. They were a gray-skinned people—shifting between shades of softer whites to dimmer blacks—and showed little more variety in hair or clothing.
“Ain’t gonna cover yer peepers?” Jean asked Flynn as they drew near.
“What would be the point?”
Braided roots bridged the village together, making paths broad enough that two people could move side by side in most places. With a party of five, though, and numerous locals ferrying back and forth, the group had to be careful not to get knocked into the water, or bump another in turn. Most of the locals were too busy with their own affairs and discussions to pay five colorful strangers any real mind, and after several unsuccessful attempts to flag someone down, Mack took notice of a dour young man gripping a burnt key tightly in one hand as he followed a path leading south, out of the village.
“Scuse me,” Mack said, tugging on the man’s sleeve. The man paid no notice, but Mack would not let go, and was dragged along in a stuttering hop as he repeated, “scuse me, ‘scuse me, ‘scuse me.” Only when his momentum had slowed considerably did the listless man glance back and take notice of what was exactly slowing him down. Without missing a beat, Mack grinned and asked, “Hey, buddy! Where are we? And do ya know anyone named Poe?”
“A monster in the woods,” he replied vacantly. “Never above Purgatory, they told us. Always stay near Purgatory.”
Intrigued, Flynn moved in. “Purgatory? Is that this place?”
The man wound his arm away, managing to pull his sleeve loose from Mack’s grip. He shuffled off, murmuring, “There’s someplace I need to be.”
Mack just looked to Flynn and shrugged, as if the matter was settled. The name made enough sense, as this seemed to be the heart of the World Between Heaven and Hell. If that beacon of light to the north was Heaven, then it was not difficult to surmise the man’s destination.
What would motivate him to go there? Flynn asked himself. What purpose is there?
*
After some deliberation, the five agreed to split up and cover more ground. Volunteering to be the odd one out, Chari found herself wandering the rooted paths alone, enjoying the solitude. How strange my life has become, she considered. She had contented herself in holing up with books as lone recompense for the lie she’d had to live. That life of leisure had not been unpleasant at all, and at times she missed it. Not for the unending fear of being found out, but for doing so little work in lieu of so much comfort. Every day now was the journey and the mission. It was survival.
Kneeling by the pool, she dipped her hands and drank deep, not wanting to uncork her canteen arbitrarily. In the ripples of her reflection, she saw faint signs of wear: chapped lips; a minor split on her left jaw; lines under eyes that had never before known so little sleep. Still feeling raw from the lashing winds of Oma, she saw the price of beauty paid to get this far, and found it more than fair. It would have been naïve to think one could come through all this unchanged. Across the lake, a woman her own age sat by the pool, staring and searching for something in the hollow blue. Opting to join her, Chari crossed around and knelt close.
“You’ve been watching intently for a while.”
“I want a child,” the woman replied simply. “I’ve waited for some time and I think I’m ready for one.”
Chari was unsure what to say, having always been diligent in avoiding motherhood herself. Struggling to conjure up some piece of advice, she fell back on ingrained words. “If you want and believe hard enough, the Goddess—”
She stopped herself short. She didn’t have to do this anymore—and did these people even have a goddess? There weren’t any signs of church or faith around here. In fact, there was little sign of community in general. It seemed more that they all just happened to live in the same place.
“Wanting and believing aren’t enough,” the woman replied. “A child came my friend Callum’s way just last week, and he wasn’t even looking for one!”
She sounded flustered, and Chari was confused.
“Do you see anything?” the woman asked, but Chari didn’t.
So they sat and waited. Chari tried to be efficient, querying passersby about Poe, but there were none who knew the name. She considered getting up and regrouping when something finally happened. Her companion leaned forward. Something moved in the water. Distant. Deep. It was little more than a patch of darkness at first, too far off to make out, but it transfixed Chari’s companion, who appeared ready to dive in after it. As the thing ascended and the sunlight offered some perspective, appendages could be seen struggling, climbing. Whatever was down there, it swam badly, the buoyancy of the water and the air in its lungs doing more to lift it up. It was only then that Chari realized what she was watching: a human child. Rising, she was now ready to dive in. “That boy will drown before reaching the surface!”
“Shush!” the woman scolded, never taking her eyes off the child. “Drown? How could he?”
The little boy rising up in the water was only a few years of age, and naked as the day he was born. Before Chari could finish unraveling her beads to dive in and save him, she saw the child’s face. It was stoic, peaceful. This was not a youth struggling for breath or afraid of dying. He was merely making his way up to the sun and the wind. Chari’s companion, realizing that the little boy was not going to surface closely, scrambled to her feet and rushed along the pathway, over to the far side where he looked to come up. Curious in the face of surreality, Chari pulled her canteen from her satchel, opening it. She tilted her head back and breathed deep as she drank, and felt no conflict between the water and her lungs. Emptying her canteen without strain, she understood what was so out of the ordinary about the water, and suspected one could swim for hours and not drown. It was the stuff of life, the womb for the new children of the World Between.
On the other side, the woman she’d waited with was raging and cursing and stomping her feet. Another who’d been passing by had scooped the little boy up and carried him off in her arms.
“Fucking hell! What the fuck?!” the woman raged. “What does it take?!”
Blind luck, apparently, Chari reasoned.
*
Questions had done little good and Zaja wanted out of Purgatory, not entirely thrilled with what she saw. As she and Flynn walked along the lake’s edge, she took care not to slip. However warm things were, ending up in soaking wet clothes would be trou
ble. What occupied her mind more was the town, poised over the lake like a cyst.
“So, Purgatory … do you think it’s the real thing?” she asked, “Like, lives up to its name? Is this an afterlife?”
“It …” Flynn faltered, furrowing his brow.
“Because if it is, how can we be here?” Zaja went on. “What does this mean for us? Are we dead? When we jumped on Oma, did we maybe not land here? Maybe we just … landed?”
“We came through.” He spoke with certainty.
Having never moved between worlds before, she had to take his word. He was the expert. Still, Zaja was afraid to linger. When it was time to die, she wanted it to be quick and painless. She wanted to be buried and done when it had to happen, and not leave something behind for someone else to deal with.
“Even if we’re not dead, these people … they are, aren’t they?”
“They breathe,” Flynn replied. “Their hearts beat. If we cut one, they’d likely bleed. I’m certain they could be killed too.”
The people in Purgatory lived and lingered. Into the woods they came and went with basins made of cracked shell, overflowing with food. They did not have to build shelter or hunt to survive, for the land gave them everything they needed. They had no artisans. Nothing they did was for a better tomorrow. Being around it made Zaja feel hollow inside. No one here knew hardship or had stories of tougher times in generations past. As Zaja watched the masses, she noticed Flynn’s gaze flitting from person to person, studying the individuals. Intently, as though looking for someone he didn’t want to find.
“So who is it? The one you’re looking for?”
“No one in particular,” he replied. “Familiar faces. I’m worried what it means if you’re right.”
“Not a loved one, then?” Zaja asked. In the comforts of Quema, she had never known such a loss, though she had been raised on stories of what it was like outside and how lucky she had it.
“Loved one?” Flynn barked out a dry laugh, but seeing Zaja’s face, he softened, apologetic for his unrestrained response. “No, I’ve never had a loved one,” he told her. “What I’m afraid of, in a place like this, is finding someone who remembers me.”
“Why?” Zaja teased. “Did you kill someone?”
She hadn’t meant anything by it, and tried to come off playfully. Yet when Flynn gave her a look suggesting that he had, she recoiled. She had an urge just then to drift back to the village, find safety in numbers.
“Not exactly,” Flynn clarified. “I … I’ve pushed people into taking their own lives. During the days when I was a less reputable person.”
There had been a few passing references to “Earth” and the things Flynn had done there. No one seemed to want to talk about it, but she had noticed the way Jean sometimes looked at Flynn, like she wasn’t sure if she could trust him. She seemed to put it aside every time, but Zaja imagined now that these things were related.
“I guess that would be kind of cruel, huh?” she asked, trying to understand. “Having to see those people again and remember what you did to them?”
“What would be cruel is the chance that they would see me and themselves remember what I did to them,” he replied. “Once a job was done, I took care never to cross the same path twice. After leaving Earth, I thought that at least one part of my past would never haunt me again. Here, in this place, it could.”
Conflicted, Zaja’s first instinct was to comfort a friend who was feeling down, another human being in pain—take action to making him feel better. But they both understood what he was saying and what he had done, and she found herself at odds about whether or not he deserved such kindness.
*
Mack had expected the house to smell more molluskish. There were no dead crustacean parts anywhere, though something smelled a little funky. Dark as it was inside, Mack guessed that no one in town knew what a candle was, and strained his one good eye to see. Jean very impolitely covered her face by the door. She took one look at the lady inside and decided they were wasting their time.
“Hiya!”
The gray woman huddled in rags looked slowly up at him. Not that anyone in Purgatory was well dressed, but her clothes looked particularly worn. Her gray hair (a natural color around here, Mack had noticed) was long and frazzled. She looked like she hadn’t washed in a long time, and was little doubt the source of the rank aroma permeating the air. She cradled herself with her only arm; what remained of the other was covered by her garments. One disturbed eye trembled on Mack as she whispered, “Who are you?”
“I’m the guy who’s here to talk to you!” Mack declared proudly.
Rocking back and forth against the wall, she whispered, “No one seeks Regalian Sahra anymore. She stays here, forgotten. Unable to live, unwilling to die.”
“I seeks you,” Mack replied. “I mean, I didn’t start seeking you, but the thing is—” Where to start? “So I talked to these kids spittin’ seeds in the water. They didn’t know. Found this pretty girl weaving blankets by the shore. She didn’t know.” Mack glanced back at Jean with polite disapproval. “Then she got gropey with me, and Jeannie punched her.”
“Eh,” Jean shrugged.
“Buuuut then I found this one guy comin’ back from the woods who told me to talk to the meditatin’ lady in the southern shell who had a brother who knew a guy who knew another guy whose lady friend heard a story once from her older sister and said you might know.”
Sahra, befuddled, shook her head, and went back to ignoring him.
“Sooo … do ya?”
Sahra didn’t bother looking at Mack, caught up in her own problems. “The Call,” she murmured, stressed. “Must sear the Call out of my mind.”
“Out of her mind is right,” Jean grumbled as she entered, holding her nose against the stench. “We’re just looking for some guy named Poe, then we’ll—”
“I hear it singing, like a hook my ears,” Sahra spoke faintly. “So many years … I’ve drowned it for so many years. I beat it. I have a trick, you see. I remember the devil child at Heaven’s gates.”
Definitely a crazy woman.
“Go on,” Mack urged.
“I remember that day, every day,” Sahra told with trembling words. “Kaldin ran ahead, you see. Tried to tell him to slow himself. I’d tired so easily while climbing that hill.”
“Think she means the big fucking beacon we saw this mornin’?” Jean leaned in to ask. Mack quickly covered her mouth so Sahra would keep speaking, fully expecting to get socked for that one later.
“He told us to go, told us to go,” the woman carried on. “But ‘Oh, no! You misunderstand! Heaven wants us here!’ Kaldin told the boy, who told us, ‘Heaven doesn’t want any. None at all.’ And he …” Sahra’s tremor turned to a cackle of mania. “… he didn’t ask again. He carried a twisted blade, nearly tall as himself, and he swung and cut and pieces of Kaldin fell and fell and rolled away.”
Back in Civilis, Mack had liked to think there were better places, other worlds where people didn’t suffer like they’d suffered on Earth. It was wishful thinking, but just thinking it had been enough. Scratching the nails of her one remaining hand bloody against the flaking shell wall, Regalian Sahra was bitter proof that people could break anywhere.
“I don’t remember turning. I don’t remember running. I don’t remember how his blade cut my arm free. I just remember waking somewhere far away, rolling in my own blood like a sow.” She reached over, touching the stump below her shoulder with her bloody fingertips. “And the wound was cold. So cold.”
Rubbing her stump with fresh blood, Sahra reiterated “so cold, so cold” again and again. There was no reaching her without drawing up a deeper wound.
“Think that kiddo she mentioned is our Poe-guy?” Mack asked.
“Question I’ve got, is that kid she mentioned still a kid?” Jean replied. “And if he is such a scary motherfucker, don’t know why someone else here wouldn’t know him.”
Beyond help, Regalian Sahra was le
ft alone in her prison of shadows. She returned to cradling herself, and a pair of ivory keys she kept close to her chest, each stained with a mingling of old and new blood.
*
It was midafternoon when they left Purgatory. A few gatherers drifted through the hills to the north, plucking fruit from the vines that hugged the tree trunks, but the farther the path climbed, the more it was avoided—like a mockery of bad omens, the path turned dark as the foliage thickened overhead. Fitting, Flynn considered, that they advanced into a shrouded place in search of an equally shrouded man, the youthful slaughterer from Mack’s lead.
As they walked the shadowed way, only Mack seemed comfortable skipping ahead, the terrain conforming more and more into a path as they went. The roots in this path seemed to be dying, draining color and turning pale.
“Did I do good, Jeannie?” Mack asked as he strode backward with a spring in every step.
“Ya did good, buddy,” she replied with a friendly pat on the back.
Chari, meanwhile, gazed ahead with solemn determination. She gripped the strap of the rifle on her back tensely.
“You might finally have to use that,” Flynn commented.
“On another person? I have practiced on beasts and immobile targets, but I am uncertain if I am ready to aim this at a fellow being.”
“We might not have a choice,” Flynn replied. “That boy Sahra mentioned might not still be a boy. And if he’s as bloodthirsty as her story says—”
“And if he is Poe?” Chari interrupted.
Flynn had considered that. Had they crossed worlds only to find someone who might well kill them for trespassing on sacred ground?
“Just … let me talk to him first. And keep your distance.”
The terrain hadn’t lost any of its firmness, but it was now almost white, remaining straight and climbing. As they departed from Purgatory entirely, the ethereal lights came out to dance, turning the darkness within the forest back to day. As Flynn saw how the road ahead captured the lights, he began to realize that it was not paled by the absence of life, but as a marker that all those climbing to Heaven might never doubt their way. Flynn savored the moment, knowing that no matter how much good he did, it was likely a road he would never walk again, in this life or any that might follow.
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