Going Under

by Justina Robson

  “Talk to who?” Malachi looked up suddenly.

  Lila showed him the eye. “Need a feather to make it work.” She shrugged and put the horrid thing away into the pocket that seemed to have grown itself for the purpose at the side of her armour, quite dainty, with a button top. She couldn’t stop staring at him. He was suddenly so massive, so enormously, solidly physical, which was unlike Malachi. He virtually filled the hut with his presence, and wherever the dark fell he seemed to be crammed into that too. At least it made her feel relatively cosy, knowing that what she couldn’t see was friendly here.

  “I’m… struggling with all this magical stuff,” she said into the silence that followed naturally from their updates. “I feel like nothing I could do would make a jot of difference.”

  “Yeah, and don’t forget all your thoughts are subject to Jack’s depression,” Thingamajig said. “I can see I’m gonna have to keep saying that until we’re all blue in the face here and forget who’s what.”

  “Mal,” Lila said, in an attempt to find a positive lead. “Do you have any idea why we came here particularly, when we did, and how we did?”

  “Show him what you’ve got on underneath,” Zal drawled. “It will have a bearing.”

  The tiger raised its brows, a not uncomical gesture, lifting as it did an impressive array of eyebrow whiskers. Lila stuck her tongue out at him and lifted her foul T-shirt halfway up to show the slightly crazy looking hotpants and lower part of the corsetry that was her armour.

  Malachi looked at it and then at Zal. “Your doing.”

  “Guilty.”

  “Fuck me,” the imp said. “That’s a serious bit of kit. Must have cost you…” He fell sideways as Zal’s foot connected surprisingly solidly with the end of a burning log and pushed him over.

  “Right,” Malachi said, garbling slightly around his teeth which seemed to have grown in the last few seconds. “Right. That, combined with the other thing, would probably equal some kind of very interesting noncoincidental activity. Who fenced you that armour, Zal?”

  “I bought it at the store.”

  “The Bathshebat outlet. Very interesting. I… Can I see it again for a moment?”

  Lila lifted the shirt, feeling like some kind of naughty schoolgirl caught wearing nonregulation clothes.

  Malachi looked for a long time, then licked his whiskers and settled down on his chest, all tiger again. He put his head down between his paws and gave a long, laboured sigh. “I knew I’d seen it before,” he said. “All that fabric. The colours. The symbols. I don’t know where the maker got hold of it but I bet it was some lucky find, some unexpected little windfall… oh a spare bolt of… look at this… rather interesting… who did you say gave it to you… must have had it in the back of the shop ages and forgot it…”

  “Stop rambling!” the imp snapped. “Cut to the chase.”

  “I don’t know how it got made into that,” Malachi said heavily, gouging the dirt around him with the tips of his two very singularly large sabre teeth. “But that there material used to be Tatterdemalion’s dress. I know it, because she was the only one who ever made magic fabrics, aside from the Three Themselves. And her personal magic was…

  “Tricky,” Zal said.

  Malachi growled an assent. “Answered your question. Now all that remains is to see how things turn,” he put a special emphasis on the last word. “I don’t doubt all our plans won’t make a jot of difference, if that helps.”

  “I don’t want to just sit here in someone else’s clothes waiting to die at the hour written in some storyline somewhere,” Lila blurted out suddenly. “I’m not saying we don’t all deserve it or anything like that, like I would’ve about Sorcha.” She paused and took a few deep breaths. “I mean, not deserve like being bad and deserving it but just being here uninvited doing stuff that we don’t have that much business doing. Although maybe we deserve it the other way too. That’s not important. I can’t just sit and wait for it. I can’t.” She found herself rubbing her arms as if she was cold. Her fingers shot up her sleeves to find the point at which she became human, and it was so high now. “Let’s do some thing now and finish it one way or the other. I don’t want to be here anymore. I have to get back. I have things I have to do.”

  She sounded desperate and at the same time Zal and Malachi moved to comfort her, Malachi stopping short as Zal leaned against her, his arm around her shoulders. The imp pushed a piece of burning wood a bit closer to her boots.

  “That thing about another player. I get it, I was thinking,” she started, not entirely coherently. “I was thinking who could be more powerful than Jack and it’s obvious. The person who’s free to come and go when nobody else is. His wife. She has to be free to make him anew. But that makes her stronger.”

  Malachi growled unhappily. “It crossed my mind. But the lock isn’t her doing. It was a great decree, made by everyone. If she’s the power, it’s a useless thing beyond these borders.”

  “What’s needed to undo the lock?”

  “I assumed it must be part of the process here,” Malachi said. “Midnight on the solstice, Jack dies at the Twisting Stones and they turn to point in two directions, the past and future ..

  “Okay, so we don’t undo it,” Lila said. “There are other ways. What say we pick it?”

  “Lila, you’re missing the obvious,” Malachi said and stared fixedly at her neck.

  She put her hand up and found the necklace. “I tried it,” she admitted. “But nothing happens.”

  “What d’you mean, you tried it?”

  “I thought about it working but it didn’t. I touched it and…” she felt stupid suddenly. “That’s not how it works anyway, is it?”

  “It ain’t the fuckin’ ruby shoes,” Thingamajig agreed gloomily.

  Lila got up suddenly, rubbing her hands on her T-shirt. She looked around them, at the floor, the walls, the roof. “Okay, Jack,” she said. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. I know you’re in there somewhere. It’s been nice pretending we’re alone but I keep feeling some thing missing from this conversation.” As she did so she was aware of Malachi moving from relaxed to taut in less than half a second. But Zal wasn’t affected, and he sat with his arms around his drawn-up knees just waiting. The imp jumped to his feet and backed even further into the fire.

  “I really don’t think this is a good…” Malachi began with difficulty around his huge teeth.

  “What?” she said angrily, stretching to her full height, chest out, shoulders back. “What’s not a good idea? Talking to the only person who can get us out of here? Trying to keep a secret when every word, hell, every thought is open to eavesdropping?!” She gestured wildly around at the room itself and then in the direction of Zal’s head. “Think we’ve got secrets? Think they’re worth anything?” She turned around, her arms open wide. “Come on Jack, come on everyone, join us. A few hours until sunset, a few more until midnight. Not like any of us have anything better to do!”

  There was a pause at the end of her call, a long pause in which it seemed that nothing was going to happen and no answer come. Bit by bit Malachi began to relax, the imp settled down to his haunches. Zal kept looking at Lila, his expression one of quiet care. Lila remained in her pose of appeal. A hint of a smell like singeing lemon peel touched the air.

  Then every surface and every edge began to flow and bleed light.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The world turned upon every point where one thing met another, tumblers revolving until new contacts were made. The one point of stillness was the ticking seconds of passing time, regular in their ordinary pitches. Everything else sheared from its round. Lila saw this, but not with her eyes to which it appeared only as blurring light. She saw magic, and knew it to be perfect science, activated by an intent and forces that she had no command over. She saw Jack’s will come into being, and the way that he made himself in that faery tradition, from the threads of almost nothing.

  He was the new-made cave on the hills
ide that had always been there, the boy in the mouth of it standing to look at the sun falling over the lip of the world on the evening that was his first alone. He was the traces of self-doubt in his father, the pride of his mother, the hesitation and wonder of every man, woman, and child in his village and their nervous and certain conviction that there was better, and could be, must be more than what they could see and hear with their ordinary bodies. He was the wind in the shutters and the falling snow that silenced, the frost that slaved silently in the dark, the strange pressure on the chest at night that wakes the sleeper in panic and steals their breath. The gasp of fear, the cold clutch of dread, the death that stalks and the one that sweeps in without warning, every notion that dogs the spirit, every fatal turn of the mind, there was Jack, watching the sun set on his own.

  “The real question in this case is why I am named Giantkiller,” Jack said, the man’s voice gone and in its place only the boy, thin and grubby and resolute, defiant with his cracking vocal chords and his anger. “We have fallen to particulars since the first day, imp.”

  Only the fire remained the same. Now they stood in a large cavern. Close by them Jack the boy stood, a sling hanging from his hand, ragged dark hair falling over his face. Behind him a little way off a shambling form, half bear and half man, stood on all fours, swaying side to side—Moguskul. Further back others suddenly crowded in to the edges of the light, small and tall, fat and thin, all shapes imaginable… the thousands that Jack had taken over the ages. They waited, as if Jack were now their only voice.

  “You killed yerself,” the imp said immediately into the waiting moment. “They meant to put all that fear in you and drive you to die in the winter, scapegoat, so’s they didn’t have to. But you were stronger. You killed yourself and you walked out free. Am I right?”

  “And I slayed them all, though they lived on without harm,” he agreed, swinging the sling lightly. “And they became the living dead. That is my question. That is my answer. It is my mystery. But only one who is truly alive can lift my burden here. And that isn’t you, liar, cheater, coward. Is it?”

  The imp shrank back down, his head hanging. “No,” he said. “Though I…” but under Jack’s straight stare he simply repeated no.

  “And you,” Jack turned suddenly to Zal. “Shade of Ruinous Intent… do you know why the faeries call your kind that name? Shall I tell you?”

  “I know,” Zal said, by contrast his voice as deep and powerful as a resonant drum. “I found the spirits of the Ruined, in Zoomenon. They told the story. We are the result of a long-ago hate made real. But we are not hate.”

  “Not all of you,” Jack said with wry satisfaction. “I’ll warrant you never met the ones that were. And the outcasts who died—those you speak of—will never tell you of what was made then, because they were killed before they could know it. Truly the sorry dream that spawned you ran its course and died a long time past. But did you never think there was anything more than your flawed races scattered throughout Alfheim, cursed and reviled, trying to live two lives, vampire and farmer at once, monster and monster-keeper? You were merely the weaklings that the makers let live, so that their opposition would think the entire effort a terrible failure, and never keep looking for the ones they succeeded in manufacturing. In time perhaps the remaining few who knew the truth have forgot it.” He shrugged, a hard and unsympathetic shedding of any vestige of compassion. His face became narrower, meaner. “Forgetting is easy when it’s assisted. We faeries like to help. So, girl,” he turned to Lila, “when you wondered what power my wife held and her doubt about what lies under us… you had the right. It would be wisdom to doubt the wisdom of using what you have there and unlocking the Faery Hoard and all its Halls.”

  Zal was standing openmouthed. If Jack’s hatred had affected him he showed no sign of it. He was entirely focused on a single thought. “Wait. You’re saying that the Shadowkin weren’t the intended result of the experiment?”

  “Look at you! Of course they weren’t,” Jack scoffed, flinging his hair out of his eyes and coming forward to jab at the fire, poking the imp and smirking as it dodged among the embers. “They were merely the abortions of it.”

  Zal pondered a moment, “How do you know?”

  “It was of my time,” Jack said, hunkering down onto his heels. The rough clothes he wore were full of holes and coated in filth; dark and scarred skin showed through the gaps. There wasn’t a piece of him that wasn’t covered in fine dark purple lines of shining healed wounds. “And in my time we walked your world as easily as our own. The others too.”

  “And the successes are down there?” Lila asked, pointing at the floor. Zal’s detachment from Jack’s anger helped clear her head. Her chest ached, though she thought it was probably just the cold air.

  Jack the boy looked up at her and grinned. “I’d bet so. Though even the lovely Mad won’t know for sure. When the lock was made we lost contact with all of Under, and over time we forgot most everything we knew. Like every other faery. And now nobody wants to know again in case the lesson’s bad, though faery’s less than half of what it was and less than a fraction of what it could be. Undo the lock and who knows what’ll come out? Who knows what we’ll remember and then, what become? Maybe the mystery of the Queen’s magic will at last be answered. Perhaps we shut the world down to save ourselves, as the cowards believe.” He glanced backwards in the direction of the clustered and silent groups of fey. “Or maybe it’ll all be revealed a silly game over nothing, a bet lost, a card trick whose forfeit was owned by the Hoodoo and couldn’t be undone. Either is as likely. But the fact is that I don’t care about the consequences. I’ll have the lock undone and be free and anyone who stands before me be damned.” He looked at her with complete directness and then, with unmistakable meaning, back at those behind him. Then he turned to Zal. “You might once have had a shot at me,” he said. “But not now. You’ve lost your demon heart.”

  Lila looked at Zal, waiting for the rebuttal, but instead she saw him look down and away. “What?”

  “I didn’t like to say…” Thingamajig piped up from among the logs.

  Lila kicked the fire and sent him sprawling across the bare rock amid a shower of cinders and sparks. “What?” She looked questioningly at Zal who met her gaze with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Tell her,” Jack suggested, grinning hugely. “Tell her why we ain’t brothers no more.”

  “Since Sorcha…” Zal began with difficulty. “Remember I told you I knew who was to blame?”

  “But that…” Lila touched her chest, feeling the dense, silent weight of Tath start to stir. In fact as she turned her attention to him she found the most peculiar sensation of heaviness around her heart. It was almost choking.

  He meant himself, Tath said and suddenly, with his speaking, an awareness of him flooded her. His agitation and fear were so palpable she staggered and fell onto her knees. Lila, something is happening to me. Since we came here. I feel as if I am no longer able to stay here. I have to leave.

  Zal frowned, “Are you all right? I didn’t think it would…”

  “It’s not you,” she gasped, hand on her chest hard pressing, as if that would help. “And it’s not your fault… you said so… no demon would ever take the responsibility for it…”

  “Saying and feeling ent the same,” the imp put in, backing away quickly on his bottom and feet among the ashes.

  “Since then,” Zal said, continuing to stare at Lila with concern, moving closer to her. “I feel like ..

  “Like you want to die, in spite of all the demon fire inside you,” Jack said. His smile was wicked. “And so the bad spirit enters in. Corrupted. So you won’t be trading places with me or cutting my heart out on the cold, cold rocks of liberation now, will you?”

  Zal stared at him with honest hatred. “No.”

  “Which brings us to what troubles our little girl here,” Jack said, looking at Lila and licking his lips softly. “Our pretty little thing in her pretty tattered dress
holding her heart out in her hands and asking us to love her love her…” he held his own hands out with a plaintive, pitiful look on his face, mocking her. “Our girl with the unshakeable imp who’d have us believe she’s just two steps from freedom but always manages never to tell the useful thing that might let her take those steps, selfless little being that he is. How she loves to believe in all your innocence—even mine—as if we had good intent and that is all that mattered. Our tin soldier with the wall eyes. Come on, show us what you’re hiding there…”

  Malachi, who’d been silent and still throughout all of this, suddenly was on his feet, growling at Jack. His teeth flashed white, shining. Instantly Moguskul came barrelling forwards. Within a moment the two huge fey were tumbling around each other in a fight, close locked, huge jaws open, claws out.

  Zal could only stare at Lila however, trying desperately to touch her, but able to do nothing at all, as in front of him she began to struggle for breath, clawing at her chest and throat. She fell forward onto one hand, mouth open, gagging for breath, eyes wide as the fire reflected perfectly in their mirror surfaces. Beneath the snarling of the beast fight her choking moments were all but lost.

  Then Malachi broke free of Moguskul’s grip and cowered, accepting a submissive position so he could watch and see Lila rather than try to keep fighting. The bear snarled over him but their conflict was suspended.

  “What the hell is going on?” snapped the imp, his curiosity overcoming his worries. He danced forwards, peering at Lila. Then he looked at Jack.

  The boy Jack was sitting with a smug smile on his face. He’d put down his sling and in one hand he held a small bowl, rough and ready, that looked like it had been beaten out of a single piece of metal by a smith in training. His was rubbing the inside of the bowl with his fingers and muttering under his breath, all the while looking at them with knowing amusement. All over his skin the hideous scars began to ooze tiny droplets of blood.