Beyond Oblivion

by Daryl Banner

  Then a most deadly comment is made by, of all people, the stoic, bald-headed Yoli: “I believe the Queen will know what to do.”

  All matter of discussion stops at once. Yoli, unaffected by his own words, simply stares ahead across the table at said Queen with a heavy-lidded look.

  “I believe she won’t,” barks Axel at once. “The stupid girl can sit there and say nothing at all for all I care. The stupid girl made a fool of all of us in that throne room.”

  “Only you,” Yoli mutters. “Otherwise, she had a good point.”

  Axel focuses her eyes on him scathingly.

  At once, Yoli’s eyes flap open and he punches himself in the face so hard, a crack is heard clear across the room, though Erana can’t be certain what, exactly, cracked.

  Yoli is out of his chair at once, furious, then inclines his head at Axel, who is instantly thrown off her feet and slammed into a wall by the mere potent leverage of his telekinetic Legacy.

  Axel shrieks out, clambers to her feet, and goes to make another move, teeth bared, but Dregor is in her way at once, both her hands grabbed. “CALM DOWN, BOTH OF YOU!” cries out Dregor.

  Axel tries to get around Dregor, but somehow, the scaly-bodied man acts as a sort of block or shield to her Legacy. She lets out a loud and visceral scream, then glares at Dregor with all her fury. “LET GO OF ME, YOU FUCKING REPTILE!”

  “If you unleash a new Madness on this room,” warns Dregor, at once calm again, “we will never see to the end of this.”

  “I’ll see to the end of HIM!” cries Axel. Then she turns her eyes toward Erana, who’s on her feet. “And HER!”

  “Axel. This isn’t how—” starts Dregor.

  But suddenly, and beyond all reason, Erana steps around the table. “Yoli has it right,” Erana states.

  At once, the confidence of a Queen rushes back into Erana’s veins, like a thirst quenched, like a craving eased, like a refreshment at the precise time an unfulfilled desire cripples the soul.

  “I was in control of that situation with our guest, Chole of the fifth, your childhood friend,” Erana goes on.

  All of the room listens, wide-eyed. No matter what the Posse may have thought of her before, they all take note of what she says now, like they regard her, like they truly subscribe to her passion.

  “But you?” Erana shakes her head. “You’re the one who made a fool of us all. You spoke out of turn, breaking the illusion that I am our Queen. For all we know, the Slum King has climbed down to the slums with the full understanding that we, in fact, are not a unified force in the sky. Our play was revealed … because of you.”

  Dregor’s hold on Axel has loosened, perhaps because the look on Axel’s face has turned from one of fury to one of bewilderment, as if Erana’s words have inspired a daze of doubt.

  “You placed me on the throne to serve a purpose, Axel,” Erana then says. “So allow me to fulfill that purpose—for all our good—by staying out of my way.”

  Erana watches the eyes of Axel as the woman slowly seems to calm down. Dregor, after a generous amount of time, then lets his grip on her go, and Axel merely stands there, posture broken, as she stares back at Erana.

  In this moment, perhaps for the first time truly, Erana feels like the rightful Queen of Atlas. She commands the true respect of every single person in this room.

  I am Erana Sparrow, Queen of Unity.

  Then, something occurs to Erana, something rather … fun. She turns and notices the tall, arched, glassless windows that line the wall next to the table where everyone is gathered. Just as suddenly, an overwhelming desire to overlook the Lifted City at night fills her. Erana, overcome by this great and exciting notion, rushes from the table and hurtles herself at the window. She doesn’t even hear the shouts from behind her, nor Dregor hollering out, nor the scrambling of others’ feet as they tumble from the table to chase her.

  Erana Sparrow only stops the moment she’s too far out the window to realize what she’s done.

  Erana lets out one throat-splitting scream as she twists her body and flings out her hands.

  She gains purchase on what might as well be an inch of smooth and slippery stone windowsill, fingertips digging, arm stretched to its limit.

  It’s her bad hand that found its grip.

  Erana screams, swinging from the window ledge as she clings on desperately, dangling like a morsel of food to the jaws of a very, very, very long fall.

  One tiny glance over her shoulder, and the world grows even farther away from her feet, stretching and stretching away.

  She never appreciated how tall Cloud Tower is until now.

  Erana screams and screams until her throat breaks, until tears pour from her desperate eyes, until the trickle of piss races down her dangling legs.

  Faces appear at the window, and a score of hands and arms reach down to grab her. Not one of them seems enough, and too many hands and fingers slip from her hold, as if everything was suddenly made of butter and slime and sweat.

  Then, almost instantly, Erana is pulled over the edge and falls in a tumble of limbs and a soiled Queen’s gown on the safe, hard floor of the room.

  Erana pants and wheezes and cries. Tears spill down her face. She lost her glasses, she realizes as she slaps her own face. Her vision is made blurry twice over from her tears and her bad eyesight, and in front of her, all she sees are a hundred shapes that might be faces, a hundred gasps and shouts and protests exploding from them.

  Then there is silence, and one set of cold, striking footsteps.

  Erana swallows all her cries, and there is now only hisses and tiny blubbers and little gasps of breath from her quivering, wrinkled lips. She peers through the blurriness of tears, seeing little.

  Until a single, unfocused face stands tall over her. “Say it with me,” says the woman. “Say what you are, stupid girl. Erana, Queen of Shit, Queen of Lies, Queen of Nothing. My Puppet. Say it.”

  “I … I … I … I …” Erana bursts into tears again. Snot starts to bubble at her nose, mixed with the tears that have dripped upon her lips, salty and stinging.

  “That’s what I thought, Queen of Nothing Bitch.” The face comes closer. Erana withdraws from it, trembling. “The next time you defy me, you’re a dead Queen.” Axel’s stabbing footfalls fade off, the only thing Erana can hear through her jagged, breathy sobs.

  0288 Ellena

  Her best tack is to pretend it didn’t happen: I didn’t lose two sons.

  Then one night after healing a patient through the nine-nurse-disperse trick, Ellena bursts into tears and collapses onto the patient’s chest, who only stares at her, bewildered, and asks the other nurses, “Uh, is she okay? Did we break her? I’m fine now, by the way.”

  Her next best tack is to spend twice as much time in the temple downstairs praying to Three Goddess.

  Then one morning as she stands before that ugly mural, a horrid rage floods her mind, and after a shriek, a movement, and a very loud sound, one of the clay Sisters is missing a head, and Ellena is standing over it, breathing heavily, eyes full of rage.

  None of her tacks work for long.

  Then, worst of all, Ellena Lesser goes to the bedroom of Ennebal Flower, her not-quite-daughter-in-law-yet, and she decides that the one and only patient she’ll care for is this woman who carries her grandson in her belly. She did not realize the bomb she was about to detonate in herself.

  But first: “I’m angry with him,” the swollen-bellied Ennebal tells her from the bed. “I’m fucking angry with him and now I can’t even get out of this stupid fucking bed.”

  “Your son is going to curse so much,” murmurs Ellena.

  The woman doesn’t hear her. “And how could he leave us like this? When I’m ready to burst in just one month’s time? I’ll burst with his boy and he won’t even be here to see it. I’m sorry,” she says at once, turning her face to Ellena. “I’m speaking so ill of Halvesand. But he is an asshole.”

  “He is,” agrees Ellena with a nod, only to mollify
the angry girl.

  “A fucking, fucking asshole.” Ennebal takes a deep breath, then lets it all out over Ellena’s arm, who holds her hand. “You know, I … I never quite appreciated the complement of our Legacies. Halves’ and mine. He stops things. I can stop things with my skin … though it also makes me deaf.” She sighs. “I’ve noticed the older I get, the more effort it takes to keep myself hearing. The older I get, the more my body wishes to protect itself, closing off, hardening up into stone.”

  “It might just be your natural state when you’re at your most relaxed,” suggests Ellena lightly. “Your impervious skin.”

  “Or the Sisters’ way of fucking me yet again. I’ll be permanently deaf by the time I’m forty. But hey, at least I’ll never know a razor’s cut when I shave my legs. I should have been kinder to Halves.” She wrinkles up her wide lips in a most unattractive way, a tear pushing out of her left eye. “I wish I hadn’t exploded on him like that.”

  “It’s your body, Ennebal, sweetheart. You’re feeling many things and your body isn’t quite your own. It’s also your son’s.”

  “So you’re implying my unborn son’s Legacy is that he’s hyper-fucking-dramatic?” Ennebal takes another breath. “Sorry. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Ellena strokes the woman’s forehead.

  “I asked him to marry me.”

  Ellena lifts her eyebrows, her hand stopping in place.

  “He said no.” Ennebal frowns. “He said no with his hands and then he left me. He left me and our son.”

  At the door behind them comes a soft knock. When the women turn, they find Aleksand standing there. He’s half-armored, greaves on his legs and a helmet under his arm, but he’s just in a loose t-shirt on top that looks stretched too much at the neck.

  “Enne,” he says for a greeting. “Mom.”

  Ellena gives the girl’s hand a squeeze. “It’s late. I’ll be down at the cafeteria. Do you need anything, sweetheart?”

  “Halves’ head,” she answers pleasantly.

  “Only if it’s on the menu,” Ellena answers as smoothly, then nods at her son as she departs the room. The soft murmurs of Aleks’s and Ennebal’s voices are all she hears as she makes her way.

  Sitting in the large cafeteria, which always seems to be so empty whenever she chooses to eat, she is left alone with her thoughts. And that is a most dangerous thing as of late.

  There’s so many uncomfortable things to think of when one’s mind is left unattended.

  Things like: Anwick is dead, and you let him die.

  Things like: Lionis is dead, and you let him die.

  Things like: Link is probably dead, and you probably let him die.

  Things like: Your husband is probably dead, too.

  Things like: You can’t keep your hands off Gabel Wayward.

  Ellena can’t even eat the small dish of food she got herself. She leaves it untouched, props her elbows up on the table, and buries her face in her hands with a sigh. There’s no tears in her eyes today, so all she does is listen to herself breathe. Some light is buzzing high above her head. Two nurses are quietly talking in the far corner of the room. One lone Guardian is eating a meal two tables over, the noise of his scraping fork all she can hear.

  And then: “Sweet sister.”

  Ellena pretends not to hear Cilla’s voice. She has been fixedly avoiding the insufferable woman ever since she returned from the ninth. She doesn’t want to hear Cilla’s criticism, or her emotion, or her admonishing, or whatever other fuckery she wants to cast upon her. All Ellena wants to do is be left totally alone. Possibly forever. That doesn’t sound too bad at the moment.

  “Sweet sister,” Cilla tries again, this time her voice coming from the other side, followed by the soft thump of her sitting down in the seat next to her. “You’re not touching your meal.”

  “Nor is it touching me,” mumbles Ellena into her palms.

  Cilla sighs, then says nothing for a while.

  Sisters be good. Is she actually obliging my unspoken desire to be spared her annoying voice?

  Then Cilla says: “The first—and the only—thing that you must know, sweet sister, is that none of this … none of this … is your fault.”

  Ellena doesn’t move nor respond. She’s waiting for her sister’s words to turn into a trap. They always, always do. Without fail.

  “Your boys … they always had a mind of their own. But they … they also had spirit. And good intentions. And fire in their eyes, yes. I remember my visit to your house, long ago. Long, long ago, before all the first trouble with Hale, before I heard Forge put a hand on … well, never mind that. It was before Link was born. I saw how … how careful little Lionis treated his younger brother Anwick. Oh, it was just … so precious … so, so, so precious to witness.”

  Ellena still doesn’t move or respond, but tears form in her eyes, still hidden behind her hands.

  “You are going to be alright, dear sister. I’m here. Mom and dad may not be, Sisters look after them. But I’ll always be here for you. Me and Hale, we will. And Aleksand, your strong, strong oldest. He cares so much about you, sweet thing.”

  As Ellena secretly cries behind her hands, even still, after so many kind words, she waits for her sister to turn nasty. She waits for the sweetness to turn into a knife. It always does, she still swears.

  “And Halvesand … he’s no exception. He has a mind of his own, and he has spirit. Fire in his eyes. He went on his way, but you and I, we will be there for his son. That son, he’s going to have uncles, and one very crazy great aunt.” Cilla’s voice giggles, and then at once, the giggles become a burst of sobbing, and then tears.

  Ellena lifts her face out of her hands at the sound of them. She stares at her sister, Cilla, who breaks down into the worst, ugliest blubbering she’s ever seen. For a while, she doesn’t even know what to do with her sister. Console her? Watch her? Ignore her?

  Instead, Ellena just goes, “What the hell is wrong with you …?”

  “I’m just so fucking sad, Ellena, I’m so fucking sad!” she cries out so loudly, the Guardian a few tables over flinches and drops his fork, staring wide-eyed at the two of them. “Why is everything going to shit? Why is our whole world we knew and loved falling apart? Why doesn’t Hale love me anymore? Why are you losing all your sons? Why is some stupid girl sitting on the throne instead of Greymyn? Why isn’t everything just peaceful and sweet and FUCKING WONDERFUL LIKE IT USED TO BE??”

  Cilla is full-on wailing now, tears bursting over her hands as she slaps them to her own face. Ellena quickly wraps her sister in her own arms, now being the one to do the consoling for some reason. Ellena isn’t sure if she’s trying to console her, or suffocate the noise of her embarrassing overdramatic wailing. “There, there,” says Ellena over her sister’s shoulder. “Come, stop crying. There, there.”

  “OH GODDESS THREE, OH GODDESS THREE …” she wails.

  “There, there, sister.”

  This goes on for the better part of ten minutes. Ellena literally watches two Guardian enter the cafeteria to get food, take one look at the pair of them, and then turn around and leave.

  Cilla is nothing if she isn’t the center of everyone’s attention.

  Finally, the woman gets it together. “I’m so sorry,” Cilla starts, wiping away and flicking tears from her eyes, just like Ellena does. “Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so, so sorry. You are the one who’s grieving. And I’m the one—oh, goodness, I’m such a mess.”

  Ellena gives her sister a squeeze which, with her sister’s bony shoulders, hurts to give. Still, she gives it with love, whispers a few gentle words into her ear, and then Cilla decides to share Ellena’s plate with her. For the first time in over a decade, the sisters do not fight, and over one single plate of cold cafeteria food, they talk about nothing of importance, and even share a light laugh.

  Strangely, it’s exactly what Ellena needed.

  From the last source she ever expected to get it from.
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br />   After Cilla takes off to see about her “silly husband” on one of the upper floor waiting rooms, Ellena decides to bring Ennebal back an apple from the cafeteria, figuring it will be welcomed.

  Along the way, Ellena passes a certain handsome Guardian.

  This is a stop she wasn’t planning to make.

  Of course, he stops at once and looks her way. “Ellena.”

  “Gabel,” she greets him simply.

  He tries to follow her. “I … I was …” He trips over his feet, then rights himself quickly. “Would you slow down? I—”

  “I am taking my not-daughter-in-law an apple,” responds Ellena briskly, markedly forcing her eyes straight ahead so as not to fall into the beautiful, handsome cesspool of depravity that is the former Sky Guard and Lifted citizen Gabel Wayward.

  “Please. Ellena.” He gives up his pursuit and stops, left ditched halfway down the hall. “Ellena.”

  She turns the corner, proud of herself, then arrives at Ennebal’s room.

  When she pushes open the door, she sees a man’s naked ass by Ennebal’s bed.

  Ellena’s eyes flick up.

  The back of Aleks’s head. Ennebal’s arms around him. One of her hands on Aleks’s left ass cheek. A jagged breath and a moan. The back of Aleks’s head as it rocks backward with a sigh.

  It’s all too much and it’s all too quick and it’s all at once burned upon Ellena’s blinking eyes.

  She’s out of the room. The apple drops to the floor, forgotten. She instantly refers to her very first tack of the week, like some sort of desperate, automatic response: pretend it didn’t happen.