“No,” she said firmly. “You will not be left behind with that man. Not by me nor any other.”
Though comforted by Chari’s promises of unity, and not doubting the truth in her words, Flynn’s fears were not wholly allayed. As they left the place where the so-called Aaron Limbs had ambushed them, his absence worried Flynn almost as much as the abruptness of their earlier encounter. While he had feared encountering some shade from his past in the World Between, he could not have anticipated it in such a form.
He worried most about where Aaron had gone.
*
While the others sometimes exchanged words, Poe didn’t deign to invest in conversation. These five were not friends, barely allies. As they spread behind him in a series of rotating cliques, Poe’s determined stride kept him at the fore. As such, his back was turned to them. If that wasn’t a token of trust, then he had none other to spare.
Purgatory emerged in the distance. Even from afar it appeared unchanged, and if he returned, Poe knew he would find his speculation confirmed: It was a timeless place. The only things in flux were those living within it—the sinners, the saints, and the ones just waiting to die. Any he’d known were all but certainly gone. Few reached adulthood. Only those with something precious, most often a loved one or someone held dear, denied the Call and lingered a few years more. Poe’s gaze drifted to the east, where he had taken the one thing that might have given some cause to stay. He stopped and placed his hand on a tree, glancing back at those trailing behind.
“We go around the village.”
They followed, but Poe was not deaf to their whispers.
“Who made him the fuckin’ boss?” the one in red asked.
“He knows the way.” Flynn wasted breath on the defensive courtesy. Guardian Poe didn’t need nor care for someone to vouch on his behalf—he knew how people saw him.
The gatherers in the forest, at least, were more honest. They scattered at the sight of him, keeping distant as the six traipsed through, and whispered among themselves. “Is that he?” and “The nightmare of the gates!” and other barbs, tiny and numerous. “Guardian” was the only utterance absent; a family name revered for an age and forgotten in a generation.
A valley of white bones, dust, and wind yawned ahead. The way was locked, barred to prevent wanderers, but any could enter knowingly, and all who did knew their destination. Unlike at Heaven’s gates, there was no guardian here. Only places of want must be protected. Less often so with places of need. Poe reached within the length of his glove as they neared. He had the key.
“It’s all … sand,” Zaja said, awed by the sight.
“Not sand. Bone, crushed to powder,” Poe corrected. Edlemin had shown them a key too; once coated in ivory, the shell half flaked away, revealing skeletal insides.
A skeleton key! Mack had mused upon seeing it. How punny.
Poe’s key was also skeletal, though nearly grown over with burnt and blackened metal. It had been tucked away among his things in the woods, where he had not thought to look at it for years. He lamented what he saw at drawing it. It reaffirmed what he already believed, but was still painful to see.
“In our youth, we find these keys and keep them with us until we hear the Call.” Poe spoke to the interest of his companions. “They are never meant to open more than two paths. For some, this is the only way they will ever walk … but nearly all born in the World Between Heaven and Hell will be drawn to the Dying Lands in time.”
The key unlatched the way without resistance. He had grown from boyhood knowing he would come this way eventually. It was returning that he had not accounted for. He clutched his key close, lest he lock them all inside.
*
At some point, very soon after crossing the threshold, the world washed away. The night sky faded to gray, until there was no distinction left between bright and dark. Whilst Heaven had felt timeless to the heart and body, the sensation here was entirely external. The world around Chari had dulled. She might have dismissed it as the nature of the place they had crossed into, but she also saw it in her companions, as well as herself. From the red of Jean’s coat and hair to the blue of Zaja’s skin to the violet of Poe’s worn cloak. When Chari looked upon herself, her wraps and skin seemed no exception. The only relief was that none seemed worse for the change—whatever was happening seemed perceptive and impermanent.
A more pressing irritant was the sand-like bone of the dunes: It had somehow become brighter, shifting slightly as the winds licked around them, reflecting some nonexistent light source. Chari found herself searching the sky to escape the distress. When she looked back to the others, she found that she had strayed from the group and ran to catch up.
“Keep focused on the way ahead,” Poe ordered, glancing back. “More than a few souls have lost their way here. Look long enough and you’ll begin to see them. Fall astray, and you may join them.”
Chari listened begrudgingly. She disdained the man, but that did not make his insight any less valid. While the others shielded their eyes, drifting at times only to be brought back by another, Flynn had done as she expected and donned the spectacles she had gifted him. The sight of them surfaced thoughts of Chari’s mother. Had she died with content? Were there any regrets in that bloody end when her instruments of inquisition were turned swiftly against her?
To the distant right, Chari saw one of the apparitions Poe had warned of, and she wondered whether her mother had come this way. It was difficult not to contemplate the repercussions of death in this bleak expanse. If the sands of bone and the ever-present name—the Dying Lands—were not reminder enough, there were also the occasional skeletons, half devoured by the dunes, ground down by the winds. And not all of the bones were human. Some were much, much bigger.
The endless walk without distinction or destination was taking its toll. Though an ignorant observer might take this land as mere desert, it was something more oppressive. It was neither swelteringly hot nor crushingly cold; even the wind made no sound and was only felt, seen. If the moon still loomed or the sun had yet risen, Chari could not tell—this place was apart from the cycles of day or night. Oma’s solar cycle had been deeply protracted, but it was still clearly and damningly there. For the first time, Chari missed it.
“Hey, can we rest?” Mack asked at one point.
“No,” Poe flatly denied him.
They carried on.
“My dogs are fuckin’ killin’ me,” Jean groused a little later.
“It’s not best here.”
What squabbles Jean had died in her parched throat, and she opted instead to drain a flask of water.
In time, Chari moved nearer to Flynn. “You spoke of this Unamia’s will being in a seashell?”
“Something like it. Almost the size of my hand.”
“There’s neither shell nor tide to be seen,” she protested. “What promise remains that we might find what is sought?”
“None,” Poe snapped back, hearing her. “We have no assurances. Were you deaf to the librarian’s words?”
“I was not!” she protested. “Yet this place is boundless, and what we seek is needlelike!”
“If it remains, there is only one place where it would be given form,” Poe replied. “Apparitions do not loose what they hold. There is a place here, however, where the still-dying might.”
“What would it look like?” Flynn asked.
Poe shook his head at this query. “I know of none who can say. Those who brave this place don’t do so with intent to return.” The Guardian stopped in his tracks at the sight of something distant—large and bleached.
“Is that it?” Chari asked. “Have we found it?”
“We rest there for a few hours,” Poe replied. “We continue onward after.”
Chari’s heart sank, but her bones and muscles were thankful. Though the landmark was distant, it felt closer than anything else. She had lost sight of the entrance countless hours ago. It was only when they reached it that Chari recognized the
nature of their impromptu campsite.
While Zaja insisted it was “Some sort of colossal amphibian,” and Mack proclaimed it to be “A dinosaur!” it was Chari who knew what it really was.
“It was a dragon,” she said, resting her hands on the bones of its wings. They had gone extinct on TseTsu long before she was alive. She felt pity for it, to see something of such weight and power brought low by time and death.
*
Zaja couldn’t sleep. At arriving on the World Between, she had adapted easily, for the rise and fall of temperature between day and night cued her body when it was time to slumber. Here, in the Dying Lands, the stale climate disrupted her internal functions, too warm to lull her to rest, yet not enough to invigorate her for the journey remaining.
Unable to sleep and bored with faking it, she opted to take second watch with Mack, hoping exhaustion might net her a little genuine shut-eye before the journey resumed. They sat side by side, three eyes between them, watching for dangers that would not surface. There was an unspoken understanding that no harm waited out here and that the shifts were little more than formality. The only thing either was meant to watch and warn the others of was Guardian Poe himself. Down below, he slept against a massive rib, Dark Sword in hand, plunged into the sand. His head was bowed, his eyes closed. He seemed peaceful.
Zaja looked to Mack. Stitches in his eye, and all along his clothes. A big one on his shirt, front and back. A mess somewhere between boy and man, poorly bound together. It wasn’t that Zaja didn’t like Mack, just that she didn’t like looking at him. He was broken outside the way she felt within.
“How can you be around him?” she asked. “After what he did?”
“It’s pretty easy,” Mack admitted. “Mostly ‘cause he didn’t kill me.”
Zaja winced. She hadn’t meant to be taken so literally.
“No, I meant—”
“Had to do it before,” Mack tapped his eye, stitched and red. “Screwdriver. Flathead.”
Zaja didn’t follow.
“Locked in a room for a year,” Mack explained. “Tried to brainstorm ways out. Crafty ways. Clever ways. Ways that went bad. One for one. Couldn’t fool no one.” Pausing, he thoughtfully concluded, “Mostly got on their nerves.”
“For how long?”
“Oh, that was just the first month!” Mack was almost jovial. Then his smile dimmed, became melancholy. “Tried to make sick—get them to open the door. Guy who brought my food every day got fed up, faked like he fell for me. Opened the door! Came at me with the first thing in his belt. Stabbed. Again. And again.”
Zaja instinctively brought her hand to her own left eye. It hurt to think of, to imagine experiencing.
“The first stab hurt. Buried the pain right away. Had to. But it scared me, feeling the sliding metal in my eyeball, the wetness of it.” Leaning forward, Mack looked down on Poe and chuckled. “I could spit on him from here.” Withdrawing, he looked at Zaja. “Poesy,” he clarified, “I could spit on Poesy.”
Zaja leaned over, looking as well, and realized something new about herself. “I’d want revenge.”
“You know I saw the guy that did it, every day, for months?” Mack asked. “They didn’t rotate him out or nothin’. Just kept bringing my food, looking in sometimes if he had a lamp on him. Took a couple days before he put the needle and thread on my plate.” Mack pointed at the threadwork running through his eyelids, holding them shut. Zaja wondered what would be waiting underneath if the threads were cut. She felt sick and it showed in her grimacing lips. “Said he’d need ‘em back, or the other eye would match. Guy was gone long before I ever got out. Wasn’t worth holding onto, bein’ angry for.”
Then, just as quickly, he changed the subject. “So how about you? Poesy tried to kill you too, y’know.”
Poe shifted below. Just for a moment. Both looked, watched, neither knowing what it meant. Whether their companion might be listening, letting contempt roll off his back, or if they were unwittingly pushing him one step closer to snapping—picking up where he left off.
“I know,” she replied. “But … it was dark. I couldn’t really see him … or anything he did. And besides … I’ll be gone soon anyway.”
Mack let out a small murmur of pity. He rubbed her back, and she appreciated the shared warmth as they sat in the tepid weather. Only later did she realize the likely misunderstanding. Given her medical condition, she should have clarified that she still intended to leave the group at the first good opportunity.
*
They did not arrive right away. The next figurative day’s walk went on longer than the first. The food and water they’d brought was near short supply. Then, without glimmer or warning, the tedium broke. Amidst the skeletal sea, in the rolling dunes of sand borne of wind-ground bodies, the earth yawned into a spiral, winding, pulling, tightening, crushing. Living bodies were trapped in its fold; those who had made the journey before them were docile in their fates as the spiral slowly drew them in.
When asked what they had come upon, Poe answered simply, “It is the way to the Beyond. A final conduit through which life does not return.”
“This pit is where we go when we die?” Zaja asked.
“This is but an avenue,” Poe replied. “If one’s iniquity does not see them reborn in this world, then they would never see this conduit.”
Zaja knelt and watched, entranced. Flynn walked a short distance around the very large circumference, peering in. Here and there, he spied shells, caught deep within the folds. Even the closest ones were many body-lengths away, too far to risk climbing in.
“You see ‘em too, huh?”
Flynn glanced back. Jean had followed him.
“I do. There’s no way to get to them, though,” he replied. “Never mind knowing which one is the right one … if any.”
Cracking her knuckles, Jean crossed in front of Flynn to kneel on the edge. “I’ve got this nailed.”
She pressed her hands down; they sank into the sand. The ground along the way had been uncertain, and finding purchase for one’s feet had been a labor. Flynn had serious doubts as to how much solid ground Jean could find when—
A cloud of bone erupted, blowing a small crater around Jean’s hands, which she held aloft for a moment as the puff wafted and blew away. “I fuckin’ hate this place.”
Taking a few steps further along the circumference, Flynn studied the lip of the vortex for some pathway that might slip safely in and out, some place to at least reach in and grab something. If a sun had been present, he might have spied it sooner. Almost certainly, he should have seen it before the vortex came into view.
A house—better still, a manor—stood on the far side. It was white, nearly as bone white as the terrain itself. Pillars held an awning that extended generously into the barren landscape. He tagged Jean, then hurried to rejoin the others. Had it been closer, he might have let curiosity lead: wandered over, taken a first look. But the chasm dividing him from it was vast, and it would have been hard to slip away unnoticed.
“What sort of person do you suppose lives there?” Zaja asked. “You know, assuming there’s anyone at all.”
“I cannot imagine,” replied a mystified Poe. “Stories of this land have been sparse, but the sinkhole seems mundane compared to that … structure.”
There was no difficulty in reaching a consensus to investigate, and they approached the manor without diversion. Along the way, it became evident that the terrain tapered off as the land simply ended. Though they didn’t draw so near as to learn what waited beyond the precipice, it seemed the estate they were rapidly approaching had been built at the very edge of it. They stepped onto the porch, which they found broad and welcoming. It was clean, save for a little powder that had wafted up from the ground below. The owner kept a broom by the railing, and there was little doubt that it had been maintained. The black curtains were drawn, obscuring the inside. A gray door loomed taller than any of them.
Flynn was unsettled by the scene. It
was more than the out-of-place house, removed from not just the terrain but the very world it was a part of. Its placement was uncanny, the outcome to an arduous journey of uncertain days. Something tugged at him, a feeling he felt he’d known before yet was unable to place. After encountering Aaron, such familiarity left him ill at ease.
“Yo, Flynn?”
Everyone was waiting. He snapped out of it, shook it off, unable to discern anything more from the outside. Twisting the knob, he opened the way and led them into darkness.
There was a gust, strange and inopportune. The door slammed shut behind them.
*
Nothing greeted them but the sound of running water. The manor slept. A single light emanated from the fountain opposite of the entrance, projecting ripples on the distant ceiling. Faint illumination came from passageways atop symmetrical stairways. They walked cautiously in, hushed by their surroundings. As they slowed, Flynn knelt and placed a hand on the slated floor. It was cold, offering little but the expected assurance that others had not passed recently through.
“Looks like nobody’s home.”
“ANYBODY HOME?!” Jean suddenly bellowed, as if cued by Mack’s comment. Footsteps skittered on the floor behind them, followed by a soft thud.
“Ow …” Zaja muttered, startled by Jean’s yell.
Something to the side caught Flynn’s eye. It was thin and tall, a little more so than he. Reaching out, he grasped a metal pole that held something aloft—a candelabra.
“Guess not,” Jean chuckled after the long silence. “You know, we could crash here before headin’ back if it weren’t so fuckin’ dark.”
“This place is asylum to something older and greater than any of us,” Poe responded. His voice moved away as he neared the fountain. “We should not linger.”
“You wanna snooze outside and get bone shards up yer nose, be my guest,” Jean retorted. “If they got beds here, I’m takin’ one.”
Riffling through his pockets in the dark, Flynn eventually found flint and steel. He struck three times before the first candle lit. He pulled the wax shaft free and pressed its flame to the other two in turn. The darkness peeled away, and so did the faded tones that had strained his eyes during the long way through the Dying Lands. Whatever afflicted the world outside did not reach within, and Flynn was not the only one to notice. Jean, Mack, Chari, and Zaja all examined themselves after realizing the others appeared vibrant again.
Outcasts of the Worlds Page 36
