“No!”
I’m still kneeling on the concrete floor of the candle factory, but now that I’m in Patchwork, there’s no Ivy bruised and chained to a pillar; there’s no Wyatt pinned beneath me.
There’s only the knife in my hand, my hesitating hand, jammed into the floor where Wyatt had been a moment earlier.
Wyatt—Osiris—knew that my attachment to my friends, my loyalty, would ultimately stay the blade. I thought I’d been through enough that I was prepared to kill Osiris, no matter who he was, no matter how big a part of my life he’d grown to be.
But when that mask came off and I saw that it was the same man I’d grown to admire, the same man I’d turned to in dark times, the same man I’d kissed, I couldn’t follow through. Even now, it’s impossible to accept that a guy who’d been such major figure in my recent life could also be an ancient assassin. That he’d potentially killed hundreds of innocents during his millennium-long killing spree. That the body he exists in now is just a rotting mortal vessel that Tantalus tethered him to.
I think back to the day Wyatt and I first met, last September, right after he’d transferred to Daedalus. How I was the one to approach him, to be his one-woman welcoming committee when I saw how lost and alone he looked, searching for his calculus classroom.
It had all just been some elaborate setup so that he could intimately crawl beneath my skin, so he could unravel my fears, so he could decipher the best ways to shatter my spirits before he hunted me down like he’d hunted so many phoenixes before.
As I peel my knees off the dusty, cold cement, I should feel defeated. I should feel broken. But what Wyatt doesn’t know is that I’d calculated the possibility of him escaping this time. I’d set a trap that wouldn’t be ready to spring until later. Now Wyatt will come back wounded, but feeling overly confident, cocky, braced for victory.
I’m going to capitalize on that arrogance.
I leave through the back of the factory, out onto the perch of a tall hill. When I first got to Patchwork, crashing against those harbor rocks, this volatile island of my memories was a labyrinth I never thought I’d be able to navigate.
But I’m changing, my phoenix powers emerging. Whereas this landscape had seemed a broken and orderless jumble of memories before, I find that as I reach out, I can feel the seams between them. There’s a strange order here, an interconnectivity. The way that one memory can lead you to another in your mind, so is the way here. I remember shopping at this candle factory years ago with my father, during my mother’s night shifts. We’d make a game of it to see how long we could stealthily sneak around the displays before Mom noticed we were there. And because the factory reminds me of my parents, it means that if I cut through the swath of trees ahead …
Sure enough, I pop out in the backyard of my home.
But it’s in flames.
The heat washes over me like I’m a clay pot baking in a kiln. I half-expect my skin to crack and shatter. As soon as I step over the seam between memories, the uneasy silence of the factory is replaced by the deafening roar of an inferno.
The fire consumes everything. It writhes over the house, from the foundation up to the shingles. Even the porch where dad always kept his little potted garden, the home-grown fresh herbs that mom used in her cooking, cracks and buckles as the flames chew through it. I’ve spent this entire year doing anything to get away from my old home and all the painful memories of my father it contained, but to see Patchwork burning it down now is agony.
I should have never left.
I’m frozen in place until something shifts in the flames. It’s the chimney, tilting toward me. Almost too late, I see the chunk of melting brick that’s fallen away at its base. Gravity takes control and the chimney collapses in my direction like a felled tree.
I dive to the side. The brick and mortar hammer down where I was standing, sending up a plume of dirt and molten rock.
When I dust myself off and follow the fence out to the street, I discover that my home isn’t the only victim of arson on our block. Every last house on the street is burning. Thick pillars of smoke and ash pour into the sky, blotting out Patchwork’s stars.
It gets so much worse, too.
Illuminated by the dancing red and tangerine, tiny dark figures crisscross the street in all directions. The monkey-sized imps gleefully scamper around, silhouettes against the molten backdrop. Wherever they go, they touch their torches to anything that will burn. Trees. Mailboxes. The family of wooden deer ornaments on our neighbor’s lawn. Across the street, at the Jones’s house, a whole crowd of them jump up and down, cheering silently, as two of their kind wrestle in the flames of the rooftop.
I move carefully through the neighborhood, expecting the little bastards to run up and ignite me. But they don’t even notice my presence as they dart here and there, leaving a breadcrumb trail of fire. When I tune out the flames, I realize that my heightened senses can perceive something else. I’m no longer just feeling where and how all the eclectic pieces of Patchwork come together.
I can feel the next memory out there, waiting for me.
Daring me.
Calling to me like a lonesome siren.
Every year in October, on the Friday night before Halloween, Daedalus hosts “Harvestfest” at one of the local apple orchards. Since all this murder began at a high school function, it only makes sense that it should end at one, too. Everybody congregated in one place, beneath the apple trees, oblivious to the danger headed their way. All this time, I’d learned to avoid those large crowds of people, so Osiris wouldn’t get what he wanted.
In order to catch him—in order to kill him—I’m going to have to walk right into the very memory that Osiris may have been lusting for.
I keep my knife at the ready as I move down my street, through the living furnace. When I come to the end of my neighborhood, the arsonist imps are the least of my problems.
Patchwork has, quite literally, been torn apart at the seams. The road ends in an unexpected gash, like an earthquake ripped the ground apart along a fault line. The perforated end of the earth here leads to nothing. Looking down, there’s only oblivion.
A lot of oblivion. Because in the distance, nearly a football field away, I see the other craggy edge of Patchwork, where the Daedalus campus lies. From this far away, the clock tower looks like it’s about the size of a thimble.
The sole path between me and my destination is a rickety rope bridge. It consists of two parallel ropes with wooden planks haphazardly lain across them. The bridge looks like a broken zipper, a gap-toothed Cheshire smile stretched over the darkness below.
It’s not some random bridge either—it’s one from my memory.
Sort of.
When I was twelve, my parents took me to the Alps, where our tour guide led us across a glacier. I was having the time of my life … until we came to the bridge. It spanned a football field from one side of the vast glacial ravine to the other, a few hundred yards above the lake below. At the time, I was so terrified of heights that I only made it a quarter of the way across. I couldn’t tear my eyes off the startling blue of the lake below. The surface of the water looked still from that height, and I pictured myself slipping through the ropes, tumbling through the air, and shattering like a broken bottle when I hit the lake. So I made the guide turn around and take us back.
Years later when I went back and revisited pictures of the bridge online, it didn’t look one tenth as scary as I remembered. There were nets on the side where I thought there had been only handrails before. The footpath was narrow but stable with no gaps to fall through.
This, however, is the bridge from my nightmares. Fear and time have stripped it down to something even more sinister and treacherous. The handrails look thread-thin.
I step out onto the bridge and stare through the gaps between planks. There’s no ground below. Just the twisted, stormy mass of cumulonimbus clouds from hell, writhing into infinity. If I dropped, maybe I would fall forever, never to land.
Maybe the universe would just repossess me.
At first the going is somewhat easy, but soon the spaces between the wooden planks widen. The farther out I go, the more it sways with every little movement. After a while, I tuck the knife into my belt and use both hands to hold the rails, which feel ready to snap at any moment.
Almost halfway across, a red bullet plummets down from the sky.
The impact has a seesaw effect. Where the projectile strikes, the bridge buckles down, and as a result my section of the bridge bounces skyward. The feel of the boards beneath my feet disappears, replaced only by the horrifying hollowness of the air.
I land flat on my back. My spine throbs as I stand up uncertainly, trying my best not to fall between the planks into the yawning vastness below.
When I get to my feet, Thanatos stands before me, but not as I remember him. Not as a monster.
Nor as a man, for that matter.
Thanatos looks like me, only with several key differences. Her skin is a violent shade of crimson. My blonde hair has been replaced with a mane of dark spikes, styled with blood instead of hair spray. Where I have the knife tucked into my belt, Thanatos holds a samurai sword in each hand.
She flips the swords around in a reverse grip and steps one plank closer. “Miss me, Renata?” she asks, her voice a hoarse perversion of my own.
“Achingly so.” My hand settles on the knife tucked in my belt.
She drags the edge of her blades along both of the hand ropes in a scratchy whisper, frayed threads springing up behind them like a trail of weeds. “What is it that you think will come from all of this? Do you really believe that you’ll defeat an assassin who’s been doing this for hundreds of years?”
I take a step back. I misgauge the distance and my foot nearly slips off the plank. “I’m still alive, aren’t I? And now I know what to look for. Who to look for.”
Thanatos sneers. “Knowing what someone looks like doesn’t do you much good when they sneak up behind you and slip a knife into your heart. Just ask Troy.” She purses her lips. “Sorry—too soon?”
“I don’t care what you say,” I tell her, “or what you threaten. I’ve come too far to let some lipstick-colored fear monster wave a few swords at me and tell me to give up.” I point at her skin. “That’s last year’s red, by the way. Pick up a copy of Vogue sometime.”
“Am I fear?” Thanatos asks. “Maybe I’m the voice of reason, the clearly articulated truth your mind only dares to whisper: You are doomed. You have been from the outset. You’ve survived so much, and won so many little battles—but ultimately, Osiris will take everything from you. And this time, when he kills you, your friends and everyone you love will stay dead—for good.”
Even as I try to deny what she’s saying, I can feel a breeze blowing downward, through the slats, into oblivion. The death clouds below slowly rise toward us the more Thanatos speaks. It’s almost as if the dark mass is inhaling, trying to breathe me in …
“On the other hand,” Thanatos continues, “you wouldn’t have to watch Osiris kill your friends if you were to let go and peacefully embrace your death now.” She runs a finger along one of her blades and then holds it out. I watch the droplets of blood fall from her finger, a slow, mesmerizing drip-drip-drip, like a leaky faucet. “One easy leap of faith and serenity is yours. You know that expression, ‘If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?’ Well if you jump off this bridge, maybe your friends won’t be ruthlessly butchered. Not as catchy, I know.”
I sway the bridge to either side, hoping to knock Thanatos off-balance, but I nearly pitch myself over the edge instead, while she remains poised. “And what are you going to do if I don’t jump?” I ask. “Give me a helping push?”
She doesn’t approach me. Instead, the darkness in her eyes swirls, and all too late, I realize that once again, I’m getting sucked into a tragic memory that—
Front pew of the church. Mom sits quaking next to me, her eyes fixed on the open casket and her hand squeezing mine so tight that I’ve lost feeling in my fingers.
Then again, I’ve lost feeling in everything. That’s the nature of numbness, isn’t it? They always prepare you for the pain you’ll experience when someone close to you dies, but they never prepare you for the deadness you’ll feel inside.
So I tune out the pastor altogether, and let one of the stained glass windows transform into a swimming kaleidoscope of colors through my bleary eyes. I’m busy pushing my spine deeper into the hard, unforgiving wood of the pew, praying for one pain to distract me from another, when the pastor calls my name. Mom releases my hand finally and gives me the slightest of nudges.
He clears his throat. “And now,” he repeats, “Walter’s beloved daughter Renata will share with us some heartfelt stories of her father, so we can revisit the joy he brought to those around him.”
I fumble for the handwritten eulogy on the bench beside me and stand up. I try to keep my body on autopilot as I cross toward the altar, but I can feel the eyes of the funeral attendees following me. My clammy fingers tighten around the eulogy, smudging the ink.
I never make it to the pulpit. I stop in front of the projector, the one playing the slideshow of my father that we had to throw together yesterday. My body forms an eclipse on the screen. Almost all the pictures playing are old yellowed Kodaks from the musty photo albums under my parents’ bed. I could only find a handful from recent years.
Did we stop taking pictures? I wonder. Or did I get too busy for you, Dad? Was that why I felt like I had a million stories to share from when I was younger, but I struggled to come up with something memorable about these last few years?
Everyone’s watching me now. All the moisture has left my throat completely.
I cast one last look at my shadow on the screen, blotting out an image of my dad cradling me as a newborn. Then I let the eulogy flutter away and run down the aisle toward the back row of the—
I’m screaming now. My hands are wound around the handrails so tightly that when I pull them away, my palms are bloody. “Enough!” I shriek.
“I’m not done with you yet!” Thanatos snarls.
I wipe the blood onto my shirt and straighten up as tall as I can. “Even after I sent you over the edge the last time,” I say, “you still came back, still clung to life like some nasty weed. And I know that no matter how many times I think I’ve eluded or conquered you, fear will never completely leave me.”
Thanatos smile lasciviously. She closes her eyes, prepping another guilty memory to torture me with. I feel my mind being whisked away to The Harbor Ghost where this all began, and for a moment I’m—
—standing over Troy, who’s kneeling on the deck of the ship with the ring box trembling in his hand. “I’m asking you to marry me. Not right now. Maybe not even for a long time. But I need you to know that I’m always going to be there for you.”
“No, Troy,” I say. The words that spill out of my mouth next are ones that I know I’ll regret, but they leak out into the space between us before I can stay my tongue: “You’re only doing this because you’re afraid I’m not always going to be there for—”
I erupt from the memory with a roar, letting my anger shatter the mirage. And before Thanatos can react, I free the knife from my belt, relinquish my fear, and charge toward her, taking the bridge two planks at a time.
Thanatos staggers back, unprepared, and makes a desperate swing for my neck with one of her samurai swords.
I duck under the blade, which sings as it narrowly misses my scalp. When I rise, I bring the point of my dagger right up into Thanatos’s stomach.
The swords fall from each of her hands as her muscles go slack. She looks down at the wound in her belly, then up into my eyes. Blood bubbles out of her mouth as she rasps, “You’ll never be rid of me.”
I keep my fingers around the handle of the dagger and twist. “I know,” I reply. “But for now, I’m going to send you on a little vacation.”
Then I grab her by the should
ers and push her backward. Her body flips over the handrail, and with her limbs flailing limply around her, she tumbles into the oblivion below. Where her body disappears into the obsidian clouds, the lightning flashes like a gunshot in a closet.
I cross the remainder of the bridge, and when I reach the solid ground of the floating island, I give myself a minute to breathe deeply. Then I pass under the ponderous shadow of the Daedalus clock tower and cut a course for the academic building. I’m about to enter its dungeon-like doors, but I pause when I notice a splash of vibrant yellow. The ivy growing over the brick exterior is infested with the poisonous dart frogs.
As I watch the little creatures defying gravity against the vertical wall, I entertain a strange thought. All this time, I thought the frogs were just another deadly feature of Patchwork, trying to instill fear in me or stop me from leaving. But what if there was more to them than that? What if they were here to help me? What if they’re a subtle message from my subconscious, waiting to be decoded?
I smile when I throw open the imposing doors. My body is broken, my mind exhausted, but somewhere beneath the mental fog and shards of pain, there is a strange and electric confidence.
Because I know where it all has to end.
Because I know what I have to do.
And because I just realized how I can use those yellow frogs.
Forbidden Fruit
Osiris’s Book of Riddles, 2016 A.D.
So you think you’ve got
it all figured out
you little bitch?
Well, it’s just like a human
to confuse illusion with reality and
ignorance with omnipotence
What began at your silly prom
will now end in an orchard
Where the apples hang
ripe for the plucking
like your filthy phoenix soul
How fitting that your story should end
in a garden like Eden
Because when you bite into
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