by Libba Bray
“That’s quite enough,” the King of Crows said. He lifted an arm, shooting lightning into an edge of the rift. The dead stiffened from the energy being sucked from their ravaged bodies. The Diviners, too, felt some of the same pull, as if they’d all bitten down on a fork at once.
The breach burned with an unearthly glow. As the planes crossed the barrier, they burned to ash, leaving dark shadow impressions across the landscape.
The planes on the ground unloaded their soldiers, who marched across the land of the dead, guns at the ready.
“Company, halt!” a general commanded and the troops knelt, guns trained on the King of Crows. The general strode forward with certainty. “We claim this territory in the name of the United States of America.”
“Do you now,” the King of Crows said. “This will be fun.”
With a flick of his long finger, the King of Crows signaled his dead, and they raced toward the soldiers and their general like beetles skittering across a floor.
“As you can see, some people do not honor their treaties.” The King of Crows listened to the soldiers’ screams, watching with obvious pleasure as his Army of the Dead devoured the army of the living down to bones in a matter of minutes.
“You’re a monster!” Memphis shouted.
The King of Crows took note of Memphis and smiled his rictus grin. “Ahhhh, the Healer! Forgive me. No longer, yes? You gave away your power. How hasty. How foolish.”
“You tricked me out of it! Not the same thing at all. That’s what you do, you trick and you take and take some more,” Memphis said through tight teeth.
“I’ve taken nothing that people weren’t willing to give me. Out of greed. Out of anger. Out of fear.”
“You took my brother.”
“Wrong again!” the King of Crows thundered. “Sarah Beth Olson murdered your brother.”
“Because she wanted to please you. She thought you’d glorify her and make her your queen!”
“I never said that in so many words. She alone is responsible for her actions. As are you.”
“You broke us down, my family, till we didn’t have a choice.”
“You did have a choice. You made it. And now your healing power is mine. Of course, it works somewhat differently for me.”
The King of Crows reached over and touched his hand to Gabe’s wrist, infecting it with rot, which began to climb up Gabe’s arm. Memphis could feel traces of it in his own body, along with Gabe’s suffering. Gabe, dead for months, still felt pain. He cried out with it. So did the other dead.
New fury raged in Memphis. Tiny electrical sparks played along the tips of his fingers. His eyes still on the King of Crows, Memphis reached out and touched Gabe’s arm. He could feel the sickness, but still he held on. Light rippled across Gabe’s rotting flesh, reversing the damage done by the King of Crows.
The healing, delivered to Gabe, traveled to the others as well.
“Connected,” Ling murmured in awe.
“B-brother,” Gabe said. Two tears cut through the grave dust on his face. The King of Crows put his hand over Gabe’s mouth, and when he lifted it again, Gabe’s lips had been sealed shut.
“Impressive. But careful, Healer. Don’t want to use it all. How much do you have left, hmm? Enough to heal the breach?” The King of Crows gestured to the pulsing rift on the horizon. “Or maybe not quite enough?”
The King’s words stoked the old fear inside Memphis, dimming his nascent power. A moment ago, he’d been warm. Now he was cold.
“As I said, you made a choice. And I always honor my bargains,” the King of Crows said. “Look! The Eye has almost stabilized the portal.”
The breach was no longer in flux. The edges of it were solidifying.
“The cycle will begin again, twice more, and then my time will have come. A countdown to a new world that belongs to me, and to my dead. We will march into your world and take what we like.”
Evie looked toward the Eye, which was chugging away. “And what about my brother and all those soldiers trapped inside?”
The King shrugged. “Something must power our world.”
Evie’s heart felt as if it would burst. Only two more loops left, and then her brother would be trapped in that agonizing cycle forever. An eternity of suffering. She stuck her fingers through the empty eye sockets of a skull and held it aloft. “We’ll break it apart if we have to.”
“Will you? Are you sure you’d like to destroy such a magnificent machine?” the King said.
“Let me think.” Sam posed with his finger across his lips, as if pondering a deep dilemma. He dropped the pose and thumbed his nose at the King of Crows. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Let’s go,” Evie said.
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy!’” the King of Crows said in a loud voice. He opened one side of his coat, letting out its dizzying glow. What they saw there was a brilliant white light exploding across the horizon and rising up into a giant cloud. It was at once magnificent and horrifying.
“What is that?” Sam asked. He couldn’t look away from its devastation. Couldn’t even blink.
“Some of your Diviner kin’s borrowed talents allow me to glimpse possible futures. Or to help fashion them. Mr. Marlowe was only too happy to build toward one of those futures. All that uranium, wonderfully enhanced by more than a decade of Diviner power, further manipulated by industry into serum and joined to some rather impressive machinery—helped along by me, naturally.” He closed his coat. “That is what you will unleash if you destroy the core of the Eye.”
“It’ll be like a bomb beyond any bomb you could imagine,” Ling said to the others, as the full scope began to take shape in her mind. “The explosion would be devastating. The radiation would poison everything—people, livestock, crops. The consequences would be catastrophic.”
“We’ll stop it somehow,” Evie said, but her voice sounded small to her ears. She was out of ideas.
“Ticktock, ticktock. Forgive me, but I’ve an army to ready and a world to invade.” The King of Crows turned and walked away.
Out on the clearing, the Eye was sitting right there, but the soldiers didn’t see it. Wouldn’t see it until it was too late. There they were simply going about their everyday business. Shaving. Dancing to a record. Laughing. And all the while, it was there, watching. Ready to devour them. Somehow, they had to break the cycle.
“I’m going to help James, even if it means I’ll be trapped here,” Evie said.
“Whither thou goest, I will go,” Sam said, taking Evie’s hand.
Evie kissed Sam’s cheek. “Leave it to you to quote Shakespeare at a time like this.”
Sam looked to Memphis. “Don’t tell her.”
Evie stared up at the Eye. It ran on pain and suffering and stolen life. Evie watched, helpless, as James and the other soldiers took their positions to play out the same awful moment. Again, the explosion. Again, the men—her brother—screaming in agony, being ripped apart as they were sucked up toward the sky and into the heart of the Eye, to become its fuel. She knew that despite what Marlowe had promised about this horror show ending once they’d stabilized the breach, it would never end. It would only get worse. She put a hand over her ears to block their screams echoing through all time, creating new universes. Everything went quiet. The world wobbled, went sideways for several seconds. The Eye stopped clanging, and then, like a watch that’s been wound, started up again. The One-Forty-Four blinked back into existence, ready to go through the same terrible motions.
“Say, what’s this mission the department’s got us on, anyway?” James asked. Same inflection. Same bemused smile.
“I won’t let this happen to you again.” Evie marched over to the tree stump. “I hate that song,” she growled, and lifted the needle from the record on the Victrola. But the soldier kept dancing beside it. Even without the record, he sang along, “Smile, smile, smile!”
The field phone rang. The sergean
t answered. “The time is now!” he yelled.
“How can I get him to stop?” Evie pleaded.
“I don’t think we can,” Henry said. “I think… they’re the only ones who can stop it.”
“James, you’ve got to listen to me,” Evie pleaded. “We’ve got to stop this madness, all right? You’re all caught in a terrible loop of time and trauma. We want to free you. But I need you to listen to me. Just do one thing differently. One thing. You’ll muck up the Eye’s works and give old Jake Marlowe, the Founders Club with their lousy eugenics nonsense, and those awful Shadow Men a stick in the eye! Just make one change. That’s all it takes. Just one change.”
“Say, O’Neill, what card am I holding?” the soldier asked.
“Eight of hearts,” Sam answered.
“The eight of hearts,” James said.
Evie wanted to scream. This was it—their last chance to save James. How could she get him to listen? How could she…
“Henry,” Evie said. “You talk to people in dreams all the time. You make suggestions. Get him to listen. Please? Please, try?”
All this time, Henry had thought his dream walking wasn’t terribly useful, not compared to the others’ powers. But he’d always been able to talk to people.
“James,” he said now. “The phone is going to ring. You mustn’t pick it up. Don’t pick up that phone.”
On cue, the field phone trilled. The soldiers reacted exactly as they had every time since that fateful day during the war.
“Doll, if this is the last cycle, we gotta heal that breach and get outta here,” Sam said. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, Sarge,” James said suddenly. “Don’t pick up that phone.”
The sergeant’s hand stopped mid-reach. He looked at James. “What’s that, O’Neill?”
“I said: Don’t pick up that phone.”
It rang again.
“We have our orders, soldier,” the sergeant said.
“The orders are bad. Don’t pick up the phone.”
The phone rang and rang and rang. The record sped up, slowed down. And then, all at once, the Eye’s clanging heart skipped a beat. It began to wheeze. One tiny piece of golden machinery came loose and spun to the ground. Just one thing. A chain reaction of change set in motion.
The soldiers were gathering, looking up at the Eye, having just noticed it for the first time. The dancing soldier had stopped. He cupped a hand over his eyes and stared at the Eye, beginning to change. “Say, what is that thing?” he asked.
Luther Clayton was coming toward them.
“There you are!” James said, and Evie could hear the love in it, could see her brother’s eyes shining. This was a moment that had happened, was happening, but what had happened before would not happen in the same way again. No longer were they tied to Marlowe’s machine. They were free of the agonizing wheel. They were free.
“Hey!” The sergeant held up a glimmering hand.
Evie gasped. James was silhouetted by a fiery glow. Released at last from his pain, her beautiful brother shone.
“It’s over,” James said, smiling.
Behind him, the unit stood at ease. She and her friends had freed them. But Evie knew her supernatural connection to her brother was over as well. He was letting her know that it was time to let him go for good. It was past time to bury the dead. Poppies sprang from the barren field. They leaned their sweet red petals toward the radiance of the soldiers and threaded themselves around their ankles and trouser cuffs, which began to soften with rot.
James raised a hand in farewell. Already the edges of him had begun to fuzz into pale gold. He turned toward his waiting unit. The field was a riot of color now. A bright red sea of poppies. The golden brilliance brightened and brightened again until it consumed James, until he was the light itself and the light was everywhere.
A loud boom shook the ground, pitching the Diviners sideways. Steam shot up from the top of Jake Marlowe’s golden machine. Rivets popped loose, sailing down like bullets. The Eye was wildly unstable.
“Something has to contain it,” Ling said.
“We’ve got to go,” Sam said.
“We can’t leave it like that,” Ling insisted. “There’s no telling what it could do.”
They were connected. That was the one true beauty of Jake Marlowe’s awful machine, and Marlowe never even saw it. They were connected, and so Evie knew what was in Jericho’s heart before he said a word.
“Jericho, no.”
“Someone has to, Evie.” Jericho held out his hand. He squeezed his fingers, but try as he might, they would not close. “I can’t make a fist.”
“No. Jericho. We’ll find another way.”
“This is the way, Evie.” He looked down at his trembling hand. “Look at that. I’m scared. Guess I’m mostly human after all.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Evie kept insisting.
“Ling,” Jericho said. “Ling, will you tell Lupe…” He swallowed hard. “Will you…”
Ling nodded. “I will.”
“Evie,” Jericho said.
“Yes?” She was crying.
“Don’t waste it. Make a good life.”
“Jericho!” Evie grabbed for him, but already he was running toward the Eye.
The land of the dead had fused with Ling and Henry’s dreamscape. It was changing rapidly, atoms realigning and realities folding in on themselves.
“Hen! Make it stop!” Theta screamed.
“I can’t! It has a will of its own now. We’re connected to it. We’ve got to get out of here!”
“Memphis. The time is now,” Theta said.
Memphis faced the great wound between worlds. It was so big. How could he possibly hope to heal such a rift? The King of Crows’s words played in Memphis’s head, stealing away his hope: You gave away your power.
And suddenly, Memphis realized: He had given away his power. Willingly. But not to the King of Crows. He’d given his power to Bessie Timmons to cure her typhoid, and to the Widow DeVille for her bad arm. To the Washingtons’ baby with the croup, and to John Booker’s broken leg. To Dutch Schultz’s men and to his mother. And to Evie and Bill and Theta and Isaiah and all those hopeful faces showing up at the storefront church years before when he was the Harlem Healer. The King of Crows hoarded power; Memphis had shared it, and now, when he had need of it, that harvest had come up strong and fine inside him. This was his strength. All those people were within him—their atoms had become his atoms, a whole community carried forward, coming together now to heal the healer. He had not come here alone, and he had not come unarmed. He felt something new stirring within, rising up. Like standing in that wheat field the day the rains came, or in the wings of the Hotsy Totsy when the band was on fire. The healing power was coming on strong—stronger than before. Memphis was incandescent with energy. He burned as brightly as the Eye itself. Like the King of Crows, electrical sparks played at his fingertips, golden, bright, alive.
He placed his hands on the edge of the portal and felt it soften under his touch. Then he stood back and watched as his work took hold, spreading.
Healing.
THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE
As Jericho ran toward the rapidly devolving Eye, he heard whispers. It was like an ancestral memory playing out. As if all the stories collected here feared being obliterated, too. They were rising up around him, talking to him. Letting him know they were there.
How many times had Jericho read Nietzsche’s passage on the eternal recurrence?
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The etern
al hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.” If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
Jericho had reflected on that passage so many times. It had seemed to him a rebuke to any religious notion of living not for this world, but for the idea of the one after, a paradise that rejected all that was human: no strife or greed or want. No discovery or sudden joy. But if you abandoned the idea that such a paradise awaited you, and believed that you would live this life over and over again, would you not live the life you had more thoughtfully? Would you not think carefully about your choices? Would you not love with abandon—love and love and love some more?
Sergeant Leonard fell into step beside Jericho. He grinned. “Let’s see how far we can take this ride, kid.”
What makes a man? His choices. That was at the heart of an argument Jericho had been having with himself for many years.
The soldiers were gone, but the record still spun around and around on the Victrola, endless revolutions. It spun so fast that the song was lost to a whine. The Eye was breaking open, releasing all it held. Around Jericho, beautiful chaos unfolded. Atoms splitting, absorbing and releasing, throwing off particles. Jericho was in the middle of it. The machine had split apart and was re-forming around him. Jericho was inside the Eye and he was the Eye and he and the Eye were in decay, transforming, becoming energy.