Beyond Oblivion

by Daryl Banner

  The very next instant, Ellena sits up and feels a cold chill of fear run through her. Three Sister listens, she reminds herself. Three Sister cannot be responsible for the actions of all her foolish children, the evil ones and the good ones alike. Yes, like the young woman from earlier, I believe in evil, too, and that evil took my sons from me.

  A vision of a boy’s body floating down the canals of the eighth floods her memory. Gabel was there that day, too, the day when she looked upon the face of that boy—that boy who was not her son—and she told the Guardian that it was. ‘That is my son,’ she had said, lying to protect his identity, lying without having a shred of proof that her son was okay. That boy is some other poor mother’s boy, adrift in the canals.

  Has she lost three sons? Is that third son, in fact, the one whose silent death she has been denying all this time?

  “Yes,” Ellena croaks suddenly. It’s the first word she’s uttered in hours. Her voice is hoarse and dry. “Let us pray.”

  To the floor the pair of them kneel, all of Gabel’s armor clinking heavily, and in silence, the two bow their heads.

  It’s a moment’s peace Ellena desperately, unknowingly needed.

  It’s only twenty minutes later that her son enters the house and stands at her door. “The Penlings want to offer their condolences, but don’t wish to burden upon you. Auna and her husband and daughter next door, too. As do the—”

  “Yes, yes, everyone on the street, I’m certain.” Ellena rises from the floor and gives Aleks a hug. While holding him, she says, “I’ll be sure to make the rounds. But I’m not so sure I can do it for very long. I think we should leave in the morning.”

  “Already?”

  “Yes.” Ellena pulls away to look her son in the face. “It was not a wise choice to come here. There’s only hurt and horror here. My life is in healing, now. Halves will need to be told. But …” She glances at the narrow stair, thinking on the golden-haired boy. “But I have one thing more I wish to do before we head off at first light.”

  Aleks rubs his mother reassuringly on her shoulder, then gives Gabel a glance and a nod before departing the house to address some of the neighbors. Ellena notices the Penlings standing on her lawn through the smudged, foggy window at the front, an idle thought of their new baby boy crossing her mind before she turns to the stairs to ascend them.

  At the door of Anwick’s room, she finds Athan seated by the window staring out of it. He sits there shirtless with the red hoodie of her son’s folded in his lap. The boy with the golden hair turns at the sound of Ellena, and a look between pain and pity crosses his soft, pretty face. No amount of muscle and scars and scratches can take away that pretty face of yours, she thinks with love.

  Ellena parts her lips. “I’m—”

  “You’re going in the morning,” Athan says first, cutting her off. “I heard.”

  She smiles ruefully. It comes out flat upon her exhausted face. “I forget how easily voices carry in this small house.”

  “You should stay another day, at least.” He takes a breath. “I can easily imagine your pain. Being around loved ones helps. It’ll never go away, of course, not truly, but it helps.”

  Ellena lets herself into the room and takes a seat by the window, her back leaned against the wall opposite of Athan. Anwick’s room is so little, even sitting opposite one another, their feet still touch. She idly notices that Wick’s mattress is missing, the room empty from its absence. “I know you lost your family. I heard some of your friends discussing a thing or two earlier. Ivy and Praddie.”

  “Pratty. Pratganth. Yes, he talks a lot.” Athan lets out one joyless little chuckle. “The worst part is, I don’t know who did it. I can’t even say with any certainty it wasn’t something to do with …” He looks to the window. “Never mind. I’m foolish. You’ve enough to manage.”

  Ellena reaches out and puts a hand on his knee. “Go ahead. Tell me.” Speaking with Athan is like sharing another moment with her son. The boy from the sky found a place instantly in her slumborn heart the day he turned up on her doorstep with her son by his side.

  Athan takes her hand, then stares at their half-entwined fingers, deep in thought. “I … had an experience. Just a day ago. I … I was … I was nearly facing the end at the hands of a few gold-hungry rogues.”

  “Oh, no.”

  He lifts his eyes to her. “But something happened. Inside me. I can’t say what it was. I’ve felt it before, and each time I feel it, people around me die, yet I don’t. I survive.” His voice begins to tremble as he speaks. “The man who was going to kill me … died instead.”

  Ellena gives a short gasp, despite herself.

  “It scares me,” Athan goes on. “Am I some kind of … shield? Do I know when Death is curling her bony fingers about my soul … and how to free myself from it? Is that my power? I have no idea. All I know is that I don’t know.”

  Ellena brings her other hand forward and starts to rub his. The story is unsettling, but she chooses to be strong for him. “You think your Legacy caused that to happen? Are you sure?”

  “No. I don’t know what it is. Wick and I used to joke that it was luck. Or that it was survival, that I can survive anything. But if that’s true, then he should have survived that day in the throne room. He would be here right now if that was my true power.”

  Ellena doesn’t quite follow. “Why would he have survived?” She sets her emotions aside; enough tears have fallen from her weary face this day. She desperately needs something else to put all of her purpose into. “I don’t understand.”

  That’s when Athan’s eyes flash, meeting hers. “Oh. You … You don’t know …”

  “I don’t know what?”

  “Anwick’s Legacy. Anwick’s true Legacy.”

  “Sleeping. Dreaming. Of course I do.”

  “No. That isn’t it. Oh, Ellena. It was extraordinary. Your son … he could borrow others’ Legacies.”

  Ellena stares, her expression frozen in place.

  This bit of news, she was not expecting.

  “He could do what others could do,” Athan elaborates. “Wick … He could reach his mind into you and be able to heal others, like you do. He could reach into Lionis and his hands would start to sweat. In fact, they had a few fights because Wick used Lionis’s Legacy better than Lionis could.” Athan’s face lights up from all the memories, a handsome, dashing smile breaking across it revealing a dimple. “Oh, that drove Lionis so mad. You know how he gets.” Athan lets out a chuckle. The memory has carried him away. “It was incredible. He could reach—with a bit of effort—into an enemy and use their own Legacy against them, provided he could find it. Some Legacies were more difficult than others. He’d been using his Legacy all his life and didn’t even know. Oh, the stories he shared. He told me of so many instances in which he was using others’ abilities and didn’t know. Even a time he gripped something near Link and then it … it turned dark.” Athan is practically giggling as he shares the stories, so excited by them, so thrilled to be freed from the burden of his agony, even just for this fleeting moment. “It was such a wonder to witness …”

  Ellena feeds off of his excitement, her heart swelling with warm love. Athan was completely enamored with my son. He would have done anything in the world to protect him. He gave him a great last few months of his life, I do know. “You will learn your Legacy someday. It takes longer for others, and you’re still so young, sweetie.”

  “I’m a man grown. Eighteen, now.”

  “Precisely. Young,” she repeats with a lift of her eyebrows.

  Athan chuckles lightly. Then a dim cloud passes over his bright eyes. “It is so frustrating, to have many pieces of your own Legacy … evidence, moments, occurrences, strange behaviors … and yet to not know the full nature of it. Whatever it is, Wick touched it that day in the tower. I know he did. I know he did. And … it didn’t save him. My Legacy … it can’t be survival.”

  “Don’t beat yourself upon the matter.” Then, on a
usual whim of hers, Ellena brings a hand up to touch Athan’s soft cheek. She barely feels a thing when she pulls from him his bruises and scrapes, the ones she can see, at least. Only a tiny grunt and a microscopic wince are evidence of her feeling the wounds. “These bruises and cuts … Athan, who’s fighting you?”

  His face flushes. “I go to the pits in the eighth. I go and—”

  “Pits? What pits?”

  “People place wagers. There’s a reward each match. I was trying to provide for the ninth.” He smirks. “But I guess I’ve won too many matches and made too many enemies. I’m … not going anymore. Did you just do something to me?” he asks suddenly, oblivious to all the wounds that just left his body.

  It’s her turn to smirk. “It’s the least I can do, only able to take physical wounds as I am.”

  “You’ve done more than that,” he assures her.

  The pair of them stare at one another, smiles on their faces. She gives him a playful flick of his nose, and Athan chuckles. “Legacies … they need their time,” she assures him. “Yours, too. I know it.”

  “I wish we could have reunited under better circumstances. I am so sorry, Lady Less—” He clears his throat. “Sorry. Old habits.”

  “Good habits.” She straightens up and gives him a quirky shake of her head. “Maybe someday I will be Lady Lesser, with a big estate in the sky and riches pouring out of my ears.”

  To that, the pair of them suddenly laugh. The laughter dies too quickly, and then Athan lifts the red sleeveless jacket from his lap with a sudden thought. “You should have this. It was his. It’s all of him that’s left.”

  Her eyes drift to the hoodie. A rush of emotions pour into her just from his offer of it. She pictures a hundred different mornings when Wick came barreling down the narrow stairs, moody from yet another short night of sleep—always sleeping, yet always not sleeping enough—and heading off to school with Link or Lionis or both. She recalls even the day that she, Link, Anwick, and Halvesand went to a certain store in the heart of the ninth, right where all the markets and shops are clustered up and noisy. Twice she thought Link had run off, and her heart gave a jump until she found the boy at some other kiosk poking through toys. Aleksand had taken Lionis to the library and her sweet Forge was at the metalshops, so she used her day off to take the kids to the market and spend a little of her extra money, despite it not being very much. Two crinkled fives, one of which would get them lunch on the way home. Link found nothing, busying himself with another pair of kids as they ran circles around the market. Halvesand insisted not to spend any money.

  And Anwick found a particular jacket in a pile of cheap clothes: a red hooded jacket, two long sleeves, and two white drawstrings. Ellena smiled down at him, couldn’t say no, and slapped down one of her fives for it.

  On the way home, one of the jacket’s sleeves snagged upon the door to the eight-south train. A huge hole had been ripped and half the sleeve was lost. ‘It’s okay, sweetie. I’ll fix it when we get home.’

  Of course, she discovered that she hadn’t the thread appropriate to fix the jacket, and no material to replace the missing half-sleeve. Each time she sewed up the hole, it looked worse and worse.

  ‘You know what? Who needs sleeves?’ Then Ellena tore the rest of the sleeve off. Anwick watched. Then she tore off the other sleeve. It might have been the absurdity of the situation or the way in which she did it, but suddenly the pair of them couldn’t stop laughing.

  The next morning—and after a night of cleaning and stitching up the shoulders where she tore the sleeves and loose threads hung—Anwick came down the narrow stair to find his hoodie awaiting him, and it had no sleeves. Ellena surprised herself in how well a job she did; it nearly looked as if it was made that way.

  For a moment, she feared he would hate it. The next moment, he put it on, and practically hadn’t taken it off ever since.

  Her heart swelling, Ellena puts a hand on the jacket, then gently pushes the soft, familiar thing back to Athan’s chest. It’s a decision she does not take lightly. Sweet Anwick … “It’s yours, dear.”

  “Are you sure? I—”

  “He would have wanted you to have it.” She takes the hoodie right then, leans forward, and flings it about his shoulders. “And you look rather fine in it, if I do say. Very fine.”

  Athan smiles at her. “Please stay. Just another day.”

  “I’m sorry, Athan.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just stay. It’s only one day. One day can’t hurt, surely. What’s stopping you from staying just one tiny day?”

  “Because I have the opposite proposal.” Ellena meets his eyes importantly. “Come back with me to Eleven Wings. There, it is safe, and you can keep me company along with Anwick’s two older brothers, Halvesand and Aleksand. You’ve now met one of them, you can meet the other, and then you’ll have met nearly all of his brothers. He would like that, I’m sure of it. With as much time as you’ve spent with two of them, you’re practically a Lesser now.”

  Athan looks like he might burst into tears again, but he gives a shake of his head. “I’m grateful for your offer, Ellena. Really, I am, but … I can’t go. I am here for a reason, I feel it in my gut. There will come time for a very important mission here, and I want to be behind it. I’m ready. All this time, I’ve trained for something, and soon, I’ll know what it is. Atlas is being reborn before our eyes.”

  The answer worries Ellena. “Please … Please don’t do anything rash, Athan.”

  “No, of course not. I won’t be rash. I’ll be sensible. Wick would have wanted that, and I’m certain he’d say the same. Ellena, please reconsider staying.”

  “Please reconsider going,” she counters with a nervous titter.

  Athan’s smile is her answer. She knows what that smile means, and knows the boy from the sky must follow his noble heart, just as passionately and just as stubbornly as Anwick would have.

  Maybe there’s solace in that very fact.

  “You are a brave soul, Athan. That is so rare in a Lifted boy, if I might be so bold to say.” Ellena eyes him. “We have helped many, many refugees from the Lifted City. Each of them is scared. Each of them ran. Not one of them dared to brave the Madness as you did, Athan Broadmore. You’ve a brave, strong soul.”

  Athan clasps her hand with both of his, warmly. Perhaps it’s just what he needed to hear. Perhaps it’s just what she needed to say. Perhaps it is something else entirely—something Ellena can’t simply pull with her Legacy—that heals in this moment between them.

  0253 Mercy

  I am blood and bone and poison in the shape of …

  A washrag. Mercy grimaces as she tries to wipe clean the farthest corner of the inside of a cabinet. The dizzying stench of citrus cleaner fluid has put circles and dots in her eyes. If she didn’t have the luxury of being immune to poison, she’s sure she’d be flat-dead by now.

  It’s fortunate she’s only here temporarily, and for a very specific purpose that doesn’t involve cleaning at all. She only needs to keep up the act until she gets a signal through the window from the others, or until there’s a knock at the door, or until the moon is at high, whichever of those three comes first.

  Until then: the stench of citrus cleaner fluid fills her nostrils.

  How do actual housekeepers do this shit?

  “Excuse me. Girl? Um, excuse me …?”

  And then there’s this bitch. Mercy slowly pulls her head out of the cabinet and forces a dainty smile. “Yes, my Lady?” she calls back.

  “Where are you, girl? Where … Where are you?”

  It’s a sweet old woman’s voice. Well, a sweet and slightly Lifted and annoyingly entitled voice, to be precise. “I’m here in the kitchen,” Mercy answers just as sweetly, “and I’m almost done with my task.”

  Indeed. Almost done with the “task”.

  “Oh, finally. You sure work slowly enough.” The woman stops behind Mercy, peering over her, perhaps to inspect her work. “Yes, okay. Every corner, did you
? Really, it doesn’t do well to live here in the sixth when it’s just as bad as any slum nightmare I’ve been told. It’s smelly. Is it supposed to be smelly? They lied to me, they did.”

  Mercy rises from her hands and knees, which are reddened by all her efforts on the ground, and smiles at the woman. “I sympathize with your plight. It must be ever difficult to adjust to your life down here in the sixth.” Mercy’s every word is sweetened like the sugars from the seventh ward Greens. “It will only be a brief matter of time before you are returned to the sky where you belong.”

  “Yes, yes, brief, I do hope.” The woman sighs. “Did you do up?”

  Mercy lifts her chin. “Up?” She glances at the chandelier over her head. “Why, yes, I believe I did. I dusted—”

  “Upstairs, girl! Up! Upstairs!” clarifies the woman. “I have only seen you down the whole time you’ve been here. I do have a room on the up that needs attention. I believe there are slum stains on the chairs. Slum stains on the countertops of the bathroom, too.”

  Slum stains. As if the Lifted make no smudges when they touch glass. As if the Lifted never carry a particle of dirt beneath their nails. As if the Lifted don’t sweat, cough, fart, or shit.

  “Of course,” Mercy sings with a spread and curl of her lips. “I’ll be happy to observe your up.” These fucking displaced Lifted and their stupid words. “Is there anything else?”

  “And a kettle of hot water,” the woman demands. “Please. Do it quickly. I’m weary and ever ready for this Madness to end.”

  It’s long since ended, Mercy might say, had she the leverage. An all new Madness has settled upon the slums, and it’s one that does not do you slum-bound Lifted any favors. “I’ll start a kettle of hot water,” murmurs Mercy, now the kitchen servant and the housekeeper. She turns toward the cabinets and fetches a kettle.

  And as she lets the water heat, she glances out the big kitchen window for any sign of the others. What’s taking them so damn long? She grits her teeth and glares, wondering if something’s gone wrong and the others simply have no way to notify her. If I have to, I’ll kill this old Lifted bitch and we can find ourselves a new target. I will take plenty of delight in snatching her apple.