by T. A. Pratt
“Okay.” Marla got out, followed by Zufi, and they went to the edge and looked down. Darkness below, except for strange stars that glowed red and festering green. “Shall we jump?”
“I put my trust in god,” Zufi said.
They held hands, and leapt off the edge.
Gravity worked strangely here, and despite being out of her element Marla possessed enough inherent power to ignore such forces anyway, so the two of them drifted down like seedpods. Zufi complained that her inner ear was spinning, and shut her eyes tight for the descent. Even Marla’s ears popped as reality shifted around them and they crossed a threshold to some other place. When they settled down on a dark gray, silty plain, she realized they were inside a huge sphere, even though she couldn’t say how they’d entered it.
The place was just as Pelham had described it: a sky of weeping wound-stars, and blackness all around. “Hey!” she shouted. “I need to talk to you!”
Zufi frowned. “Something wants to speak through me. Shall I allow it?”
Marla shrugged. “If you’re okay with that. I guess it’s good I brought you. Talking to myself would have felt kind of undignified.”
Zufi nodded, and in a deep and darkly amused voice, said, “Visitors from the ball of mud. How nice.”
“You’re the Inimical?”
“That... is a reasonable name for me, from your point of view. How strange. The last visitors from your world were psychic projections, but you are here in the flesh. Or... not flesh... what are you?”
“I’m the god of Death.”
“Ha. On your ball of teeming mud, perhaps you can claim such a title. I am the death of this universe. I am this universe.”
“Pretty small universe. Smelly, too. I just wanted you to know: your plan failed. That splinter of yourself lodged in my world? It was indeed shattered and scattered all over, and it did try to take over my planet, but I wasn’t having any of that. It’s gone now. You failed.”
Zufi yawned hugely and ostentatiously. “Alas, alack, you disposed of my toenail clippings, I am bereft. No bother. I’ll fill this meat sack you brought with more of myself and send you back home, hmm? We’ll just try again.” The silty earth shifted, and dark black grains squirmed to the surface and began creeping toward them from all directions like lines of ants.
“No. You’ll die.”
“You are not my death. This is not your world. You have no authority here.”
“No. But I do have this.” She opened her hands, and threw handfuls of pebbles at the approaching black sand. The pebbles struck, and flowed, and the Inimical howled.
“What are you doing?”
“You tried to xenoform my planet. I’m terraforming you.”
The pebbles struck, splashed into liquid, and flowed. Where the primordial chaos she’d brought with her passed, it left behind terrestrial soil, sprouting yellow and blue wildflowers. Soon Zufi was laughing and spinning and dancing in a growing meadow, even as the Inimical’s voice shouted through her mouth: “No, stop, you can’t do this, I am everything, I am the axiom and the foundation, you cannot—”
Once just over half the sphere had been converted to fields and plants, the voice stopped, and Zufi cocked her head. “No more talking,” she said. “It is sort of whimpering and moaning. I do not think it has much of a mind left.”
Marla looked around. “I think the rewilding process is self-sustaining at this point. Ah. It feels so good to smite your enemy, don’t you think? Smiting them with flowers is even more satisfying.”
“I like the flowers,” Zufi said. “They are not as pretty as anemones but nearly.”
Marla snorted, then walked to the nearest shadow. The two of them emerged back up on the edge of the cliff, where they found Darrin was snoring, reclined in the Wendigo’s passenger seat. Marla knocked on the glass and he started, then rolled down the window. “Done already?”
“I’m efficient,” Marla said, “and I’ve got shit to deal with at home. Take me back?”
“You can drop me off in an ocean,” Zufi said. She curled up in the back seat and promptly fell asleep.
Consorting
“Hurray, we saved the world from an alien threat,” Marla said. “Now we just have to save it from me. I still need a better half. Lauren is gone, and who can blame her. Jarrell is dead.” Marla sighed. “I never minded being single. Now all of a sudden my eschatological clock is ticking.”
“There’s always Cinnamon....” Pelham started, but then trailed off.
“Ha! You have to live down here with me—you do not want her to be my consort. I need to find someone, though. I neglected the shit out of my duties while I dealt with the black sand—there were too many times I had to give all my attention to that problem. There are hurricanes brewing up, tectonic shifts happening... I need help, or it’s going to be fire, earthquakes, floods, supervolcanoes, tornadoes, crop failures, everything.”
“Perhaps we can replicate Cole’s algorithm?”
Marla began to pace back and forth. “Look, I’ve got nothing against online dating, you know? The equations of love work for a lot of people, and that’s all good. But I’m an analogue, old-fashioned type, and I should have been true to myself, instead of trying to outsource choosing a life partner. What do I need, really? Someone I can stand to live with, someone who’d enjoy the work, someone who has steel in their spine but love in their heart, someone who doesn’t back down, ever.”
“Who are your closest friends?” Pelham said. “Rondeau, I suppose, is not suitable....”
“I think the fact that he’s immortal and inhuman disqualifies him anyway. Otherwise... give him a decade, and maybe. He’s grown up a lot. Though I don’t want to have ritual sex with him. He’s too firmly in that psychological sibling-space for me.”
“Bradley was already unsuitable due to his connection to the overseer of the multiverse, and with that bargain you made....”
“Right. Magically speaking, I have to be completely hands-off with him. I doubt Hamil would want the job—he never even wanted to be chief sorcerer. Who else could I stand to—” She stopped. “Holy shit. I’m a moron.”
“You’ve had an epiphany?” Pelham said.
“It was a forest-for-the-trees thing. The right choice was staring me in the face all along. I’ll be back in a little while, Pelham. I have to go propose marriage to someone.”
Marla found the person she was looking for on one of the small, densely wooded islands off the coast of Felport. She was sitting high in the branches of a pine tree for some reason, so Marla clambered up the trunk and settled down on a branch across from her. They were way up above the treeline, and the views were stunning, the city twinkling on one side, the dark ocean stretching out on the other. “Hey,” Marla said.
“Hello,” Zufi said. “You are here in your true flesh. Are you not afraid of causing spontaneous breaks in reality?” She still looked tired from their ordeal, pale and drawn.
“I’m not going to be here very long,” Marla said. “You and me... we did some good work together, didn’t we?”
“I have always found you an excellent ally.”
“Same here. You’re really different from me, but we have a lot in common. Both of us believe in doing what needs to be done, we don’t give up, we’re not afraid to take big chances. You’re smart and formidable and badass. And at the same time... you fucking baffle me.”
“I am often baffled by people myself. I have grown accustomed to this. It no longer troubles me.”
“Have you ever thought about... changing jobs?”
The Bay Witch shrugged. “The ocean moves, and I move, too. I have served the world in various ways at various times. But now my time of service is nearly at an end.”
“What do you mean?”
As affectless as ever, Zufi said, “I am sick. Things are growing inside me. My lungs are failing. Healing magic does not help.”
“I—wait—you got cancer? From me?”
She patted Marla’s hand. �
�It is okay. It is not your fault. I made you come to me in your true form. I knew what I risked, and I have no regrets. I helped save the world, and my life is just a drop in that ocean. I came here to look across the breadth of the water one last time before I descend and let the sea use me as it will.”
Marla had been pretty sure before. Now she was entirely sure. Zufi’s willingness to sacrifice herself was proof of her suitability, and this was a way for Marla to make up for poisoning the Bay Witch with her carcinogenic divinity. “Zufi. I’m so sorry. But there’s another way. Would you be my bride, and rule the underworld with me?”
Zufi fell out of the tree.
Marla dropped down through the branches, and found the Bay Witch sprawled on her back, staring at the sky. “Are you okay?” Marla said. “Damn it, if you picked this moment to die on me—”
Zufi turned her head a fraction and looked at Marla. “I am uninjured. I was just very surprised. I am often surprised, but seldom so surprised that I fall out of trees. I... may I ask questions?”
“Sure.”
“I glimpsed an ocean when I visited the underworld with you. It is vast?”
“It might even be infinite. A whole primordial sea. Full of little bubbles of individual afterlives, with a spring at the bottom bubbling up the stuff of raw reality, and all kinds of depths. There are monsters there, and temples, and ruined cities, and I don’t even know what.”
“I would like to explore such a sea. Another question. Would you and I have sex together?”
Marla wasn’t the blushing type, but it was a near thing. Zufi was just so matter-of-fact. “There are certain, ah, rituals that help ensure a fruitful growing season, but they can be pretty abstract if you prefer. It’s hard to explain until you’re a god, but we’re pretty much creatures of energy so bodies are optional and conceptual and mostly for convenience—”
“I have often wondered what it would be like to have sex with you. I would like to do so, if you would like to do so.”
Marla blinked. “That’s, I mean, yeah, that’s definitely something we can look into and explore, for sure.”
“Another question. Are you in love with me? Have you been secretly in love with me all this time? Have you carried torches and crushed crushes?”
“Zufi, I’ve known you for a long time, and I like you, and you fascinate me, and you frustrate me, and you confuse me. But, no, I don’t love you. If that’s important—”
She looked at the sky again, and a smile touched the corners of her lips. “I am glad. I do not know how to talk to people who are in love with me. They leak water from their eyes and moan and talk about their feelings. Those are not feelings I have ever felt. Affection, respect, sexual attraction, yes, often, but this other thing... no. People often seem to feel romantically toward me, even though I never reciprocate. It is very strange.”
Marla snorted. “Zufi, you’re the platonic ideal of the hot surfer girl, your wetsuit is usually unzipped halfway down your chest, you’re almost always soaking wet, and you’re incredibly aloof. Of course people fall in love with you.”
“Hmm. Perhaps we can discuss human psychology further. I am sure you have many insights.”
Marla started to protest—she’d been accused of ignoring and dismissing the feelings of others her entire life, and her theory of the mind was mostly “people just do stuff, and make up reasons why they did it after the fact”—but compared to Zufi, she probably did have a nuanced and sophisticated grasp of people. Good. She oughta bring something to the relationship. “We can talk about whatever you like.”
“A final question: will we have a wedding? My mother has always wanted me to have a wedding.”
Whoa. Marla was going to have a mother-in-law. That was new. “Pelham really wants to plan one, yeah.”
“We can both wear dresses? My mother... she will insist on a dress. I will fight monsters but I do not wish to fight my mother.”
Marla laughed. “Sure, if you want. Pelham has been wanting to get my ass into a gown for years.”
The Bay Witch sat up. “One other question. Are you doing this only because you gave me cancer? Because I will not be chosen due to guilt. I am not afraid to die. Dying would be fine. I would dwell forever in a bubble of the sea in your afterlife, yes?”
“If that’s what you want, absolutely. But, no, Zufi. The whole reason I came here in the first place was to propose to you, before I even realized you were sick.”
She reached across and took Marla’s hand. “Then I accept your proposal. I will be your wife. Should we kiss now?”
“It’s worth a try,” Marla said.
It worked pretty well.
“That’s, uh, quite a dress,” Rondeau said. He was, for once, dressed in a classic black-and-white tuxedo instead of some weird blue velvet nightmare from a thrift store. He held a glass of scotch in his hand, and looked entirely too amused.
Marla didn’t turn away from the full-length mirror she’d conjured in her dressing room, but instead addressed his reflection. “Pelham picked it out. I didn’t have the heart to say no. He died in my service, and he kept right on working for me afterward, didn’t even take a personal day. If that means he gets to put me in a giant poofy gown for one day... I can bear it. Just be glad you aren’t in a bridesmaid’s dress, Mr. Maid of Honor.”
“That’s ‘Dude of Honor,’ please. I’m still pissed you didn’t let me throw you a bachelorette party. It would have been epic. I literally own strip clubs, Marla.”
“Your whole life is a bachelorette party, Rondeau.”
Someone knocked at the door, and Rondeau said, “Come in, if you aren’t the bride!”
Marzi entered, also dressed in a tux, and then stopped short. “Whoa.
That’s... a lot of dress.”
“Shut up. You’re a brides... person. You’re supposed to encourage me.”
Since Bradley was magically incapable of coming to the underworld, Marzi was here as his proxy, and was discreetly streaming the proceedings to him on a magically souped-up smartphone. She held up the phone so Marla could see the screen, and Bradley waved at Marla jauntily from his office in San Francisco. He was a wearing a tux, too, in solidarity. “Marla!” he said. “You look, um. That’s quite a dress.”
“I am radiant, B.”
“Yes,” he said. “The god of Death, in a dress like that? It’s actually even more frightening than if you were wearing a winding shroud of mummy bandages.”
“Sorry you can’t be here. For magical purposes, we have to do the ceremony in the actual underworld, you know—”
“Don’t sweat it. I’m busy trying to put the world back together up here anyway.”
“How’s life as king of San Francisco?”
“Weird. I wasn’t ready to be chief sorcerer, but all the locals see me as Cole’s natural heir, so, here I am. I was always more of an East Bay guy. It feels kind of traitorous to Oakland for me to be in charge of San Francisco.”
“I’m sure you’ll learn to cope.” She turned to Rondeau. “How’s the crowd out there?”
Rondeau shrugged. “Pretty good. Zufi’s mortal family members are all illusioned-up, so they think we’re in the Hamptons. Nobody’s getting too rowdy or anything. Though I can’t believe you invited Nicolette.”
Marla shook her head. “Would you rather she crashed the party? I was inviting half the other sorcerers in Felport, so she would have heard about it, and then she would have done some horrible necromantic ritual to tear a hole in reality and slither down here. Believe me, it’s better to have her invited and mollified than uninvited and vengeful. I have some demons keeping an eye on her, though. How’s Zufi?”
“I tried to swing by her dressing room,” Marzi said, “and the wave-mages from her old pod just shooed me off and told me she was busy getting ready.”
“Hmm. Why am I nervous?”
“It’s a wedding,” Rondeau said. “And you don’t even have the option of divorce. It would be weirder if you weren’t nervous.”
Pelham ducked his head in. “Are you ready, Majesty? All is in readiness.” He beamed. This was his day as much as hers, practically.
“Let’s do this thing,” Marla said.
The pianist played Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” which was a pretty conservative choice, but improved somewhat by the fact that Pelham had brought the composer himself out of his afterlife to play it.
Rondeau walked Zufi’s maid of honor up the aisle, and Marzi walked her other bridesperson. Marla herself came next, walking alone. She’d considered asking Hamil to walk her down the aisle, but it felt strange, after she’d offered that to Cole. It wasn’t like she needed to be given away anyway: she was, always, her own. She nodded and smiled at the guests, the living and the dead intermingled, all seated in white folding chairs in the shadow of a palace of ice and metal flowers, by the shores of the primordial sea: Zufi was all about getting married close to the water.
The spirit of Marla’s mother sat beside her living and very uncomfortable-looking brother Jason in the front row. Elsie Jarrow sat on Jason’s other side, wearing a tight dress the color of arterial spurt; Marla hadn’t bothered to invite Elsie, but she’d shown up anyway, of course, as Marla had assumed she would. Hamil was also in front, and the re-weaver Genevieve, accompanied by the ghost of her friends Mr. Zealand and St. John Austen. Pelham and Bradley’s apprentice Marzi rounded out the first rank on Marla’s side. There were more of the dead on day-passes from the afterlife behind them: her first love Daniel, her old friend Jenny Click, her colleague Ernesto, her first teacher Artie Mann, and others. Really, most of her friends were dead at this point. That wasn’t going to change as time went on, especially with her vastly extended lifespan.
Zufi’s dazed parents, who were apparently under the impression she was a marine biologist, sat on the other side, along with her various wave-mage and jellyfish witch friends, and a smattering of Zufi’s colleagues from Felport.
The shade of Marla’s old teacher Lao Tsung was serving as officiant, and he nodded as she took her place on the dais. He wore a white silk shirt buttoned up to the neck, and his face was kindly and amused. “That’s quite a dress.”
