by Jake Halpern
A minute or so later, as they continued to tread water, Dorman’s body resurfaced. Now, he floated like the other dead that surrounded them. His mouth was open and his eyes were two glassy orbs.
“Alec!” she gasped. “We have to get out of here!”
Alec looked at the mist, the calm water, and the floating bodies around them. His face was pale. “I wish we could,” he said. “But I don’t know where to go.”
Alec was the first to spot the wooden raft.
It floated nearby, carrying the bodies of an elderly couple that were tied to it—and to each other—by a coil of frayed twine. It was an old Shadow tradition to bind a married couple in this manner when they died on the same day. Since it was considered unseemly for Suns to show interest in Shadow death rituals, Alec had never actually seen it done. He had only read about it.
The raft was made of a single slab of pine. That’s probably how it survived the falls. The splintered remains of other rafts floated nearby, along with countless bodies—those of Suns and Shadows.
“Any idea where we are?” asked Alec as he turned toward Wren. She was treading water quietly, right alongside him.
“You’d know more than me,” she said. “You’re the one who reads all those books.”
Alec didn’t reply. Instead, he shivered. The adrenaline from the encounter with Dorman had begun to wear off, and he was starting to get cold. He pumped his legs under the water, trying to keep his blood flowing.
“Call me crazy,” said Alec finally, “but I think we might be on the River of the Dead. It’s what takes you to the Purgatory Isles.”
“So much for meeting Crown at dawn,” said Wren.
“You might just be the most unlucky person I know,” said Alec. “No offense.”
Wren started to shiver as well. She could feel the water sucking the heat from her body. She began swimming toward the married couple’s raft.
“What are you doing?” Alec asked.
“I need to get out of the water.”
Alec looked at the raft, studying the old man and woman who were tied to it. “But they’re Shadows,” he protested.
She frowned at him. “So what? You think all those Edgeland rules apply down here? Well, I’m not standing on ceremony. Not anymore.” She pulled herself onto the raft. “Come on,” she said, gesturing for him to join her. “You’re cold, too.” She held out an arm. Alec took it and pulled himself up onto the raft. As he did this, he accidentally brushed the hand of the old woman. He was startled to feel that her skin was taut and almost warm.
“What is it?” asked Wren.
“Her skin …,” said Alec. “It’s still warm. It’s like … she just died.”
“Don’t touch her again,” said Wren.
“Why not?” asked Alec.
Wren went on to tell him about the child’s voice—the one that had told her to play dead because they were hunting for “breathers.”
“Who do you think the child was?” Alec asked.
“No idea,” replied Wren. She shook her head and felt a rivulet of cold water trickle down her neck. “We should probably get back in the water,” she said. “But I gotta warm up a bit first.”
Wren looked around, trying to discern where they’d come from, but it all looked the same now—an unbroken expanse of water and fog. She thought she heard the faint rumble of the Drain, but it was so distant that she wondered if her ears were playing tricks on her.
“We need to get back to the Drain,” said Wren. “When I came to, I could see a long ways up. On one side, near the waterfall, there were cliffs that looked climbable. It was hard to tell for sure, but if we had ropes, we might be able to—you know—make our way back.”
“It’d be a crazy climb,” said Alec.
“No crazier than anything else we’ve done,” said Wren. “I mean, didn’t we fall into the Drain and live?”
“I guess,” Alec said, frowning. “But we’d need a boat.”
“Look around,” said Wren. She waved her hand at all the debris in the water, including a great many wooden planks. “We could build something if we had to.”
Alec eased a little farther onto the raft, trying to get comfortable. “It still seems crazy,” he said. “If this is the River of the Dead, and we’re headed toward the Purgatory Isles, can we really just climb our way out?”
A sudden movement drew Alec’s attention. What he saw made him lurch forward, nearly toppling off the raft. It was the old woman next to him. The old, dead woman. Her hand was twitching—then jittering, faster and faster until her knuckles rapped against the wooden deck of the raft.
Wren gasped and slid away until she teetered on the very edge of the raft.
Alec had been around enough dead bodies to know that they sometimes spasmed. Fingers could twitch. But like this?
A second later, the woman sat up.
Alec grabbed Wren and pulled them both into the water. They quickly surfaced and discovered the old woman staring at them.
She blinked owlishly and licked her lips with a thick white tongue. “Jonas!” she rasped. “Where’s my Jonas?” Her eyes darted about, and she rotated her neck until it cracked loudly. “Jonas!”
The old man next to her began to twist and squirm. “No need to shout, woman,” he groaned. “I’m next to you.” He struggled to sit. Stringy locks of hair hung over his face. He opened his mouth and yawned, revealing a set of crooked jack-o’-lantern teeth. “Guess we’re still together.”
“Thank the Shadow,” said the old woman.
“Don’t thank ’em yet,” said the old man. “This ain’t no moonlit beach, filled with food and drink and pretty people. We still got purgatory ahead of us, woman. I’ll have to pretend to be good.”
“Quit yer blasphemy, fool.” The woman worked to loosen the twine that bound them. Suddenly, the twine snapped. The woman looked around as if searching for something she had misplaced. When she saw Alec and Wren floating in the water next to the raft, she nodded with satisfaction.
“There they are! Bless the dear Shade—we ain’t the first to wake after passin’ through th’ Drain,” she said. “These two are just cuddlin’ together, sweet as can be.” She eyed their silver robes. “How’d you die, little Shadows?”
The woman studied their faces, as if divining their stories. “Oh, I see … a sudden death. A lovers’ quarrel turnt bad?”
Her husband frowned. “A lovers’ quarrel,” he said, in a voice so deep it sounded like it came from the bottom of a well. “Bad things come from a lovers’ quarrel. But you’d know that now, wouldn’t you?” he said to Alec.
Wren frowned. “We’re not …”
The old man stood, causing the raft to tilt dangerously. “You’ve undone our ropes,” he said. “Marjorie, why’d you do that?”
Marjorie pursed her lips. “I don’t plan on stickin’ around in purgatory for long,” she said. “But you … with yer drinkin’ and yellin’ and startin’ fights. You’ll be there a while, Jonas. A good long while. Until you’re ready for the Moonlit Beach.”
“That ain’t true!” yelled Jonas. “It’s your fault we died! Or d’ya not remember that? I always said not to drive th’ wagon so fast, but you’re as stubborn as a mule and ya got us killed!”
They kept shouting at each other, ignoring Wren and Alec.
Wren watched them bicker for another few seconds.
Alec nodded toward the water.
They swam away from the raft. Soon they came upon the body of a middle-aged woman lying faceup in the water. Her neck was beginning to spasm, causing her head to wobble. Alec and Wren swam away, but bumped into a teenage boy whose teeth were chattering so loudly that they sounded like a woodpecker hammering away at a tree. All around them, bodies were beginning to jitter and convulse.
Alec and Wren had nowhere to go. Finally, they stopped swimming and treaded water, their backs to each other, and stared mutely as the dead woke up.
All around them, people began to call out.
“Get off me!”
“Help!”
“Where are we?”
Then in the distance, as if answering these questions, came the sound of a girl, singing in a loud voice that cut through the discord:
The town of Bliss leaves nothing to chance,
They pack their bags and have a dance.
The townsfolk leave when the sun goes down,
The island’s there, with no one around.
I should take a peek at night, they say
But the town of Bliss is far away.
As the voice drew closer, and became louder, everyone fell silent—mesmerized by the song. Then a canoe emerged from the mist. Sitting in it was a small grayling in tattered, ashen-colored robes.
“Let the river take you,” chirped the grayling. She had a pinched face, with a thin nose and narrow eyes. “Be calm and follow the current. Purgatory awaits you.”
Alec and Wren were both staring at the canoe.
“We could take it,” whispered Wren. “We could knock her into the water. It’d be two on one.”
“Then what?” asked Alec. “We have no ropes. How do we get up the cliffs?”
Wren was about to respond that they should try anyway, but four more graylings arrived, each in their own canoe. Some had traces of red in their hair, an indication that they’d once been child servants in the bone houses of Edgeland.
Wren waited and watched to see how people reacted. Would a mob of grown-ups really take orders from graylings? It certainly wouldn’t happen on Edgeland. And yet there was something about how the graylings moved—as stealthily as the fog itself—that had a chilling and silencing effect.
“Did you see any breathers?” the grayling with the pinched face asked the ones who’d just arrived. They shook their heads. “Well, I’m gonna circle back—make sure we didn’t miss any.” She paddled into the mist.
Wren swam close to Alec, grabbed his shoulder, and whispered directly into his ear, “I think they’re looking for us—we’re the breathers.”
Alec looked uncertain. “Should we say something?”
“No,” Wren replied. “Let’s do what we were told.” She glanced furtively at the dead around them. Now that they’d woken up, they didn’t really look dead at all. In Edgeland, it was often hard to beautify or dress up a corpse—especially if their deaths had been physically traumatic, like being burned in a fire or falling from a roof. Here the dead all looked … rather well. Even Marjorie and Jonas—who had, apparently, died in a road accident—were undamaged. No gaping wounds or missing limbs. The process of awakening seemed to make the dead whole.
Gradually, the current whisked this sprawling flotilla, bodies and canoes alike, downstream. They drifted for many hours—though it was impossible to say exactly how long. After the initial panic, a dreamlike calm settled over everyone. They bobbed along placidly, like so many pieces of driftwood.
Eventually, an island appeared on the horizon. As they drew nearer, Wren and Alec could see docks jutting from the shores and buildings covering the landscape. The island’s tallest and most prominent feature, however, was a massive stone wall that ran down its center and made the surrounding buildings look small.
“Where’s the second island?” asked Alec. “There are supposed to be two Purgatory Isles.”
Wren shrugged. She’d never studied the Common Book, but she knew the basics: The Purgatory Isles were where the dead stayed—for decades, centuries, even millennia—until they were ready to enter heaven. So how many dead were here?
While wiping her face, Wren noticed that her bracelet was gone. She looked up and down her arm, and then whirled around in the water, hoping to see it floating in front of her. An awful, sinking feeling filled her stomach. Probably it had been ripped off during the fight with Dorman. Or maybe she’d lost it as she was catapulted into the Drain. In light of everything she’d been through, this hardly seemed like it should matter.
And yet it did.
The wooden carving was a physical connection with her mother. It tied her to the part of her life that had been good. Now it was gone; suddenly everything seemed lost. But then, ever so slowly, an idea began to form in Wren’s mind. Is my mother down here? It was such a strange and unsettling notion that she stopped treading water and let her body descend for a moment.
When she resurfaced, she considered the possibility again.
She imagined meeting her mother, but quickly realized that Alinka might not even recognize her. The last time they’d seen each other, Wren was only eight years old. Wren remembered sitting in her mother’s lap, at night, by the fire. Alinka used to love staring at the burning logs and telling Wren stories. In those moments, Wren remembered feeling safe. But had it really been like that? Or had Wren simply wished it to be true? Sometimes Wren thought her mother had become more of an imaginary friend than a real person from the past.
Reluctantly, Wren forced these thoughts out of her head. Stay focused, she told herself. What matters now is returning to the Drain. And finding a way back up.
Alec watched the island grow larger. What emerged was a monotone landscape covered with windowless stone buildings. But most of all, his attention was drawn to the enormous stone wall that bisected the island, running across it in an unbroken line that curved and squiggled. Near the island’s center the wall seemed to bulge on both sides, like a snake with a mouse in its belly.
The graylings continued to circle about in their canoes, herding everyone into a small harbor, where wide steps led up out of the water. Alec was several inches taller than Wren, and his feet touched bottom first. He was mildly surprised to realize that the Drain hadn’t torn off his sandals. He and Wren emerged sluggishly from the water and began to climb the stairs.
“You there—Shadow—what’s your name?” croaked a voice.
Alec and Wren looked up, startled. An old man in a black robe had come down several steps and was now standing in front of them, with a pen and a small leather-bound book in his hands. He looked impossibly old. His skin was slack as a blanket on a bed that hadn’t been made properly, and his eyes were almost entirely white—two small hard-boiled eggs with the faintest trace of pupils. A dozen other old men like him were arrayed across the width of the stairs, posing similar questions to other people emerging from the water.
“Full name, Shadow. Hurry now—there’s other people behind you,” said the man, waving his pen at Wren.
Wren was so caught off guard that she answered honestly. “Wren Brell.”
He nodded. “The names of your parents?”
At this point, Wren considered lying, but it seemed pointless now that she’d told him who she really was.
“Isaac and Alinka,” she replied.
“When did they pass?” asked the man.
“Mom died four years ago,” replied Wren.
“Your father?”
Wren hesitated. “Still alive,” she said.
The man wrote this information down. “Dead brothers or sisters?”
Wren shook her head. The man finished writing, then turned to Alec to pose the same questions. Alec answered him quickly and—having no skill at lying—he, too, replied honestly.
“That was stupid,” said Wren as they continued walking up the stairs. “We should’ve made something up.”
“I don’t know,” whispered Alec. “It seems like the least of our problems.”
They paused at the top of the staircase and stared into a large courtyard. A tall wooden fence—made of recycled funeral rafts—enclosed the space. Alec felt as though he were entering a cattle pen. Several urns, resting on tall pedestals, burned brightly within the courtyard. On the far side stood the great wall itself, looming over them. Directly below the wall, built into the wooden fence, were two closed doors. These were the only two exits from the courtyard—and each led to a different side of the wall.
Nearly a hundred graylings stood along the courtyard’s perimeter, their eyes as glassy as paperweights. One of them, standing nearby, fi
dgeted with something beneath his tattered robe. In the dim light, Alec saw a glint of polished metal. He’s holding a knife. Do they all have knives? Alec quickly looked away.
They shuffled into the center of the courtyard and stood close to one of the urns, enjoying its heat. At first, there were only a few people around them, but gradually others arrived, filling the space.
“It was the wine,” rasped a young woman nearby. A tattered Sun robe was plastered to her body, covering a dripping bridal gown.
An older woman, wrapped in a waterlogged woolen shawl, shook her head mournfully. “I think you’re right—he poisoned us for the dowry, my dear.”
“But why’re Suns and Shadows mixed together?” asked the bride, her voice quavering. “The Common Book says there are two islands.”
“Hush now,” said the mother. “I’m sure everything will be sorted out soon.” She closed her eyes and uttered a silent, fervent prayer. “We need to trust in the Sun.”
The last person to leave the water was an old woman with a severely curved back. She climbed the stairs slowly, wobbling along like a tortoise. When she finally joined the crowd, the graylings formed a line at the top of the stairs, effectively sealing off the courtyard.
Then the graylings began to chant.
Their high-pitched voices rang out like a children’s choir:
Shadows to the left! Suns to the right!
Shadows to the left! Suns to the right!
“What’s going on here?” a man called out, his voice rising harshly above the chanting. He was in the middle of the crowd, near Wren and Alec, waving his hand to get attention. “Why are graylings telling us what to do?”
Others began to protest as well.
As if on cue, the two doors by the wall swung open.
A man’s voice rang out: “Silence!”
Wren moved to get a better look at the speaker. She caught a glimpse of a tall man, clad in silver robes, walking through the doorway on the left. At the same time, a woman in a shimmering gold robe emerged from the one on the right. Wren stood on her tiptoes so she could see them both.
