by Faith Hunter
But she does not die.
The doctors wail, sending him away.
* * *
The god-king calls him to an audience. “What do you remember?”
“Nothing.”
The chain is still cold. But two links now are weak, worn down so they will snap if he tugs against the metal.
The sun did not rise today. The court is silent. There are no whips and there is no wine.
“Can it be undone?” the god-king asks. “If it is unchained, can it be undone?”
“It is possible,” the advisors lie, as smooth as river eels.
The god-king throws his gold scepter and it strikes Zuaar in the face. Blood trickles from his jaw.
“Undo what you have done,” commands the god-king. “Undo this, Belruuvaw.”
And at the final word, he who is not Zuaar and who is not Raaushar feels the third link crack. The chain is undone.
* * *
The first thing he remembers: his name is Belruuvaw. Raaushar was his twin sister, the sun.
The second thing he remembers: he is the god of death. When the king slaughtered half the world to summon him from his kingdom below the river, he came. He is Belruuvaw, and such a sacrifice he could not ignore.
The third thing he remembers: he killed his sibling. She left him for the god-king of the land; none other than the life-bringer would speak to the bringer of death. Enraged, he fed her heart to the crocodiles, and so the sun faded until it can rise no longer.
He remembers the river where he fed the crocodiles his sister’s heart, where the king bound him as a slave. And so nothing left in the world could die; when he did not remember death, death did not exist.
The king wished Belruuvaw imprisoned for murdering the sun Raaushar. The king thought if Death did not remember her, his lover Raaushar would come back to him.
The mortal knows nothing.
Belruuvaw remembers all, now.
The chain, undone, snaps free from his neck. He surveys the trembling court. He remembers rage. He remembers the whips and the pain and the nights in his cage. He fingers the broken chain, its links crumbling into rust through his fingers. Even metal dies.
“We have done you wrong,” says the king. “We beg of you, restore the sun and let death come again.”
That was his other name: Hauushar, the bringer of mercy. But there are scars around his throat where a chain once clung, and they make it so easy to forget.
“No man nor woman can die, even when in agony or despair,” the king cries. “You murdered Raaushar, and now my wife lingers yet, undying. Must you deny her as you do so many?”
Belruuvaw remembers loneliness, but he will not restore his sister’s heart. The sun will never rise. Let the mortals know darkness eternal, as he does now that Raaushar has gone
“What will you do?” asks the king, who is only a man.
“Nothing,” he says, and he turns towards to the river, to the crocodiles.
Around him, the world pleads for release. For death and for the sun. Belruuvaw does not answer.
At the bank of the river, he watches the crocodiles. They whisper their greetings while they beg him to nourish them once more. If he does not allow death to return, they will always starve.
“Belruuvaw,” the queen says behind him.
He turns. She walks with liquid grace, and she has wrapped an asp around her shoulders. She strokes its head as she approaches him.
He does not call her sister even as he allows her near. She is not Raaushar.
She touches the beads wound about his ankle with her toes. “Remember, Belruuvaw. I opposed my lover.” Her skin is like fire against his flesh. “Do not punish the world for one man’s weakness.”
“Why should I not?”
She regards him with contempt. “Then you are no better than the god-king.”
He raises a hand, though he has no whip to hold, his fury checked by the scars. “Do not speak of him.”
“I will speak of whom I please.” She lifts her chin and lays a hand along the side of his throat. “You will continue this cycle, and for what purpose? Did you learn nothing?”
“Nothing,” he says bitterly, a word uttered too many times. Two crocodiles crawl onto the bank and lean against his legs, rough skin and smooth teeth pressed into his flesh. “Leave me.”
She smiles, a challenge. “You can do little, Belruuvaw, when you fetter your power so. I am not dead. What can you do to me?”
He places his fingers over hers, her flesh hot as the dawn against his scars. “I will give you release.”
“No.” She withdraws her hand, and her smile. “Unless you restore what you have taken, I will not come with you to your kingdom.” She uncoils the asp and lets it glide away. “Did you willingly forget compassion? You knew that once. I spoke with your sister Raaushar, you know. We were friends. I asked her not to forget you when she loved the king. I told you this, each night you came to me, but you could not remember. I grieved for her. I helped my husband plot your undoing, my rage unsated. But then you were mine, and she was still gone.”
Belruuvaw hates her words. He has no collar to blame. The beads grow cold around his ankle. She turns once more for the wailing court, and the despair of her people.
“Raaushar,” he says, and she does not answer. That is not her name, and she will not answer to a lie. “Wait. I would speak with you, my queen.”
She looks over one shoulder at him, all the chill of a desert night hardening her expression.
He remembers pain, rage, betrayal, but he has not forgotten what it is to please, or to love, as he loved Raaushar. He cannot abandon his children the crocodiles. They should feast, not starve. He can do nothing for only so long.
The first choice he makes: Belruuvaw reaches into the bellies of his crocodiles and withdraws his twin’s heart. He gives it to the woman who is not Raaushar.
“If you carry this heart, my queen,” he says. “You will burn unending.” But he will always remember her. “You will become the sun. You may light the world or burn it to ash, as you please.”
Her hand trembles when she accepts it.
The second choice: he undoes the beaded string from around his ankle, the gift the queen gave him. He does not need the beads to remember, now. He killed his twin because he watched her fall in love with the king of the land; he watched her abandon her place in the sky. He will not stand by and merely watch.
The queen examines the sun’s heart, then swallows it whole and smiles at him one last time. She burns and she rises against the darkened sky.
Crocodiles splash in the cold river as he sends them to fetch the dead—all those who should have died while he forgot. His children will bring him the souls and they will suffer no more undying.
The third choice: he must return to his kingdom, allow the world to balance itself once again, and so he throws himself into the waters—cold, silty, full of salt—and crocodiles devour him.
CHARNEL HOUSE
Ville Meriläinen
The wasteland opened before us, cold and bleak like we’d stepped inside a predator’s eye. Blue Girl sat on Huntress’ back, shoulders drooping, the hem of her dress ripped at the knees. She’d be fine tomorrow. Until then, the wolf would gladly ease her burden.
Blue Girl had a smile to cut glass and enough heartache to kill a man, but we liked each other well enough and were useful to one another, so we journeyed together. Huntress and I cared for little else but staying alive. She had lost her cubs when escaping the fire that took her mountain and now wandered the earth looking for them. My reason was more selfish: I simply enjoyed living, even when there was nothing to live for. Blue Girl helped by letting us eat her arms before we lay to sleep, knowing the flesh would regrow by the morning. In return, I had promised to bring her to Charnel House, the one place where she might find the end of her own search: Blue Girl wanted to die.
“I see nothing but burnt earth for days to come,” Huntress said. Our paws raised clouds of dust and a
sh with every step, but to the omnipresent smell of smoke clung an undernote of a coming storm from the clouds at horizon’s edge. “Are you sure this is the way?”
“Positive,” I replied. “I can feel it in my bones.”
Huntress hummed, a growl deep in her throat that never failed to make me uneasy. The great wolf was a kind creature, but murder remained etched deep in the grooves of her face.
“I think I can walk now,” Blue Girl said. Her voice was hollow, legs crusted with dry blood. She’d cut them coming down the mountain and bled so much I’d fretted a rock would give her the surcease we could not.
“You stay where you are,” Huntress said. “Maybe you can walk, but it doesn’t mean you should.”
“Won’t you carry me as well?” I said. “I could sit on her lap. I’m far smaller than she.”
Huntress returned a sideways leer. “Careful, fox. If you’re so lazy, I could carry you with my teeth.”
I bared mine into a grin, though her comment nearly coaxed a whimper out of me. “I thought it a sensible suggestion. Your stride is longer than mine, and swifter without me slowing you down.”
“Were that a problem, I’d sooner leave you behind.”
“Now, now. How would you find Charnel House without me?”
“I’m not convinced we’ll find it with you. You might as well be making us run in circles to keep getting fed.”
“Don’t be wicked, Huntress,” Blue Girl said.
“She’s only teasing, dear. We’ve grown inseparable, she and I.”
Huntress snorted at that. “I’m more attached to her than to you. We’ll part ways at the House as agreed.”
“Don’t be wicked,” Blue Girl said, more firmly. “Promise me you won’t abandon him when I’m gone.”
“I’ve not given up on my cubs, girl. I doubt he wants to join my search once he has no feeding hand to bite.”
Huntress glanced at me, as though expecting a remark, but I saw no reason to antagonize her. She was certain the cubs lived, could feel their closeness in her marrow the same way a murmur in my own pulled me towards the demise the girl yearned for.
It was ironic that, out of the three of us, I was the one drawn to Charnel House. I would have been thrilled to be deathless like Blue Girl, but she wanted nothing more than to escape. Huntress and I had found her after she jumped off a cliff so high she’d been a dot atop it. She came down like a falling star with a tail of silk, but got up from the crater as though she’d only tripped.
She spoke in her sleep sometimes, blaming herself for the way the world was, but that was an absurd notion to entertain. How could someone who’d gained the trust of two wild beasts through the virtue of her kindness have caused a calamity this vast?
I gave the girl a look from the corner of my eye. She met it with a wan smile, cutting through fur for a pluck at my heartstrings. I refused to believe she was guilty for the way the world was, but the child had seen something that had broken the spirit within an unbreakable body. When she smiled, none of the defeat lacing her bearing showed.
Wind drove along the drifts of ash around us, and as we climbed a mound, I noticed the broken ribcage of a small beast poking out of it. For a moment, I felt sorry for Huntress. I was sure her cubs were gone, starved by now even if they’d somehow lived through the end of the world. I caught her glimpsing the bones as well, and set my gaze ahead when our eyes met and I saw the bared pain in them.
“Fox,” said Blue Girl, interrupting my musing. “Would you tell me more about Charnel House?”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to hear you speak. It’s too quiet.”
“Hmm. Have I told you how grand and beautiful it is?”
“You have.”
“What about the lands surrounding it?”
Blue Girl tapped her lip in thought. “You say there’s still grass and that the milk on the leaves makes you forget your worries.”
“Then what of the people who used to live there?”
“They were as grand and beautiful as the house, but turned it into a home to death, and now only an old crow dwells there.”
I smacked my mouth. “Sounds like you know as much as my stories do.”
“Oh.” She fell quiet for a minute, then asked, “Would you like to play a game?”
“Are you after my name again?” I chuckled. It was a difficult sound to produce, but it made her smile a little brighter. “Go on, then.”
“Is it…Redtail?”
“No.”
“Whitepaw?”
“No.”
“Firefur?”
“You’ve tried that.”
“Nuisance?” offered Huntress. She earned only a flat stare for it.
Blue Girl went on to fill the silence with her guesses, but I rejected them all. Truth was I didn’t have a name, never knew I was supposed to until I met her. With only the three of us, “fox” was just as good, but I had decided to claim she’d guessed correctly once she landed on one that sounded nice in my ears. I thought she’d done the same; we’d started calling her Blue Girl because she was a girl and her dress was blue, but Huntress had told me it wasn’t a proper name.
I suppose I understood some of her desire to learn mine, as names seemed to have power of which I hadn’t known either. It was only after we named her that we learned to understand her, though we had walked together for some time by then.
“One of these days,” she huffed, after her tone reached the peak of vexation, “I’m going to learn it, you know.”
“I’m sure you will,” I said with a chuckle. Annoyance lingered on her features, turning the ensuing smile impish.
We came to the bank of a dry river. A stream still ran through the bottom, but if we went down, the sides would be too steep to climb back up. Even so, Huntress leapt off the ledge without hesitation, padded to the stream and lapped from it with such vigor she might’ve been trying to drain it altogether. I hopped after her, and once we’d drunk, looked around for a way out.
“Should we spend the night here?” Blue Girl suggested. “I’m tired and you could drink as much as you want.”
Huntress said, “A sound plan. I’m parched.”
“Well then,” I said with a yawn, “make us a fire, dear. I can do with some shuteye.”
She headed off to gather scattered pieces of wood. The wood was charred, violently splintered; the wasteland’s birth had created a storm unlike any before, and fire and lightning had decimated the lush forests once ruling the lowlands. Everywhere we went, we found nothing but gray earth, as though it had been sucked dry to the last drops of life. We had passed no other beasts on our way, only skeletons so fragile they turned to dust when we tried to gnaw on them.
Left to her own devices, a somber air soon overcame Blue Girl. Huntress noted it as well and went to join her, tattling about this and that to pull her out of her thoughts. I sat on my haunches, watching them pick up and pile the wood.
Once she was warm, Blue Girl would let us eat. I wasn’t hungry enough for it not to sicken me, and so I watched them in brooding silence. What did it say about us, helping her towards a fate neither felt she deserved, using her body as sustenance on the way? Yes, the limbs would regrow—but that only meant we fed on her pain.
These thoughts passed as the flame grew and drowsiness settled in, as they did every night. I was a firm believer in one’s own freedom, and so it was not my place to deny her any choice concerning herself. Huntress felt much the same. Besides, we could do nothing but follow her: finding no one else meant we had none to rely on but each other, and the wolf’s kindness wasn’t limitless.
Thus, in order to help each other for another day, we ripped the flesh of Blue Girl’s arms until she passed out, and when they were picked clean, nestled against her in an effort to balance the suffering we inflicted with affection.
I woke up to raindrops pummeling my nose. Blue Girl was still asleep, mended hands folded under her head. I stretched out of the nook of he
r bent knees, jowls shaking with a yawn. Huntress was gone. Blue Girl was easily upset if we weren’t here when she woke up, so the wolf often used the early hours for scouting and returned at dawn. I suspected she’d left to look for a way up.
I returned to Blue Girl after drinking. The rain had washed her feet; the dress had mended with the skin, dampened from periwinkle to a deeper shade. She shuddered when I lay beside her.
“Forgive me,” she whispered, still asleep. “I have mothered ruin.”
I reared my head for a look at her. Poor dear. She was too young to have mothered anything, much less anything this awful.
She might’ve cried in her sleep, or maybe it was rain. I didn’t dare lick her face for the risk of waking her, and so I only nuzzled against her throat for some more rest. It was always strange to be so close to her; her body looked as soft as a child’s was meant to be, but her meat was sinewy and her stomach taut with muscle. She pulled me closer and cradled me in her arms until I dozed off.
My dream took me to Charnel House. Mist hung over pale grassland, where the house sat amidst a copse of skeletal trees. I had overstated its beauty. Maybe it had been a place of splendor in the past, but now it was like its lone inhabitant, scraggly and diseased, so far as a house could look diseased. Cracks ran over windows like cataracts in the crow’s eyes, pillars were chipped and thin like his legs, murals on the walls had faded as his feathers had lost their luster. It was where dead things went to die, so the story said, so why not Blue Girl?
“Hello. Are you bringing a visitor?” cawed the crow when I approached. He perched atop the open door. It was too dark to see what was inside.
The crow’s familiar tone seemed odd, but, being fully aware I was dreaming, I decided to pay no mind to little lapses in logic. “I don’t think I should.”
“Your task is only to guide her here. She will decide whether to enter or not.”
“She is misguided.”
