by Carrie Ryan
It’s passion and need and worship as his hands tangle in her hair and she grabs for his shoulders.
It’s white-hot pain searing through me. He nibbles at her ear and she swats at him, laughing, and he grabs her hands and pulls her to him again. Pulls her fully against him. Over him and along him. I can’t hear the words he speaks to her, murmurs in her perfect ears, but I can feel the weight of them. Like they fill my hollow chest and drag me down.
He places his hands on either side of Abigail’s cheeks. His eyes eat every inch of her and he pulls her to him again, brushing his lips along her forehead and down her hairline. Over her ear and along the underside of her jaw until her mouth hovers over his.
I can’t breathe. Can’t move. Can’t feel anything in my body because everything’s numb—except for the broken pieces of my heart. I feel as if I’ve been turned to dust, ready to be blown apart and scattered far away.
I tell my legs to move but they won’t. I beg my eyes to close but they refuse. I plead for this all to be a mistake. For Elias to be somehow confused—that it’s really me he thinks he’s holding—but then his lips form the name: “Gabry.”
At first I don’t understand the sound’s coming from me—an impossibly loud wheezing sort of keening—but Catcher hears it, across the courtyard, Elias and my sister between us. He looks up at me through the window.
I realize that, like me, he’s been watching the lovers—a desperate look of repressed desire marring his features. He starts toward me and that’s when Abigail’s head snaps up and her gaze collides with mine.
Of all the times I dreamed that my sister could still be alive, all the nights I stayed awake wishing on stars and praying to any god that would listen that I would someday see her again—that she was safe and warm and loved—I never imagined it would be like this.
I spin around and run. My feet slide over the concrete floor as I careen down hallways, randomly turning left and right, not caring about the footsteps chasing me.
Finally, I find my way outside, the bitter cold hitting me like a wall. Images and memories hurtle through my head: flashes of Elias and my sister overlaying memories of Elias touching me the night before he joined the Recruiters, his hand on my cheek, his fingers finding every part of me.
His lips touching hers. My sister’s mouth so close to his.
And my sister. Myself. Alive and here and soft-looking and pretty. My sister, whose eyes glistened with so much joy at being by Elias’s side.
I don’t even know what I want anymore. I used to want Elias home. I used to want the promise of safety and security but the Sanctuary feels more like a prison. I used to want to know my sister was alive, but I never expected that she would be that part of me that no longer exists.
Snow’s begun to fall from the heavy clouds and it stings my eyes, swallowing the sound of my steps. The entrance to a low squat building rears up before me and I slam against it, almost falling inside into pure darkness. Blissfully, I let it consume me.
I fumble forward, not caring that I can’t see, not caring that my feet stumble over uneven ground. I just need to move. I can’t stop my teeth chattering. The cold air seeps around me but even so, sweat breaks out along the back of my neck.
Behind me the door creaks open, a shaft of light cutting into my solitude. A figure just like me in so many ways hesitates before slipping inside. I want to tell her to go away. I want to tell her to leave me alone. But this is my sister. This is myself—missing for so long.
She’s so perfect. She’s what I desperately wanted to see in my own reflection but never did.
She’s also the reason I’m here in this city. The reason Elias and I were lost in the woods. The reason I’ve been alone for so long. If she hadn’t let Elias convince us to go through the forbidden gates and explore the paths in the Forest. If she hadn’t skinned her knee and refused to go farther. If Elias hadn’t been so afraid of getting in trouble because she’d gotten hurt.
She’s always been the reason my life fell apart so long ago. Why I can’t even remember the sound of my father’s voice.
She steps in after me and I retreat deeper into the darkness, weaving from side to side as I push away from the walls. I just want to be home. I want to be surrounded by my things and the long-faded smell of Elias and the way everything was.
I need time to think and figure out what’s going on before I face her but she calls my name and even though I don’t want to, I stop. There’s a small click and then a whirring sound. A moan penetrates the darkness and Abigail’s footsteps falter. My heart lurches as hands grab and tug me back to the entrance. My sister trying to pull me away.
The metallic creaking noise grows louder, steady and rhythmic, and then a light struggles to life. I wince under the sudden glow, throwing up my hands to protect my eyes and stepping instinctively into the shadows. Tucked in an alcove just off to my left, a young Unconsecrated man reaches for me through the bars of a wheel. With each step he takes toward me, the wheel turns, keeping him in one place.
He’d walk forever toward me if he could but all it does is turn the wheel, which winds a crank that powers a small string of lights reaching along the hallway wall. It reflects off icicles dangling from the ceiling, making it feel like we’re caught in some sort of absurd ice castle.
“Just a wheel walker,” I murmur to my sister, slipping from her grip. The Protectorate used them to power lifts and lights. Instead of stocks or jails, they’d tie rule breakers to a chair in front of the wheels: temptation to keep the Unconsecrated walking. “They’re trapped—can’t hurt us.”
I shiver as his moans tremble around us. I can hear the sharp breaths of my sister behind me, the panic she’d felt at the Unconsecrated coming out with each puff of air.
A part of me wants to turn around and comfort her but I don’t. I’m not used to people getting through my barriers. Usually I just lash out, force them away. But I can’t do that with her. And I’m not ready to let her see my scars up close. To let her see the resentment I feel, which makes me even more petty and horrible.
Her shadow falls against the wall and I watch her raise a hand toward my back. Watch her fingers hover near my shoulder and then fall away.
“Annah?” My name’s a whisper. There’s no judgment or malice in her voice and it makes me feel even more selfish and cold.
I close my eyes. She used to be my other half but now she only makes me think of the worst parts of myself and I’m too wretchedly ashamed to face her. I left her alone in the Forest. I blamed her for being weak rather than blaming myself for being selfish—that’s what makes it even worse.
“Annah,” she says, her voice a little stronger. “It’s … it’s me.” She draws a breath. “It’s your sister.”
As if I wouldn’t know her.
“Please, Annah, please look at me.”
The Unconsecrated man moans and reaches, chains around his wrists rattling against the steel bars of the wheel he’s trapped inside. The lights connected to the turning gears hover and buzz, growing bright and dim and blazing back to life again as he lurches forward.
I wish he’d stop. I wish it would all stop. That the dead could just give up. Turn around and go back to their homes and leave us all alone. Then I could stay huddled here in the darkness and I’d never have to face my sister—would never have to see her expression when she sees my face.
I open my mouth to say her name but I freeze, suddenly unsure what to say. Gabry doesn’t feel right—she’s always been Abigail to me. “I don’t know what to call you,” I whisper awkwardly and I glance down at my hands, at the shadows they make, and heat crawls up my chest and along my throat.
“Call me your sister,” she says. And then I can hear the smile crossing her face, feel it brightening the hall behind me. “Your big sister.”
And I can’t help but laugh because it feels so like my hidden memories of her. I’d forgotten that as kids she’d lorded her superior age over me, even though it could only be counted in minu
tes.
She laughs too and I drop my chin to my chest, covering my face with my hands as my laughter turns to tears. All the guilt and shame and anger too much for me as my shoulders hitch with sobs.
She doesn’t hesitate but pulls me to her, taking my head and pushing it into her shoulder, her arms circling my back. I weave my arms around her and it’s like nothing’s changed.
We still fit together—two mirrored halves.
I close my eyes against the twisted joy and pain and try to control my breathing and swallow my sobs but I can tell that she’s shaking too. I can feel her tears trailing over my skin.
Finally, she pulls away, her fingers tight around mine. She’s staring at my hands and she traces a thumb over my scars. I stay utterly still and hold my breath, waiting for her to say something. She finally looks up at me, her eyes following the fissures across my face. “Elias never mentioned …” She trails off and I look back at our hands. At how smooth and perfect her skin is. Especially against mine that’s so marred.
It’s strange to hear her say Elias’s name. To think about them talking about me. For so long it’s felt like he’s belonged only to me—a desire so intense and hot burns inside me to know what they said. To know how Elias spoke about me.
I want to know why he didn’t mention my scars. Is he just so used to them that he doesn’t see them anymore? Or is he ashamed? Suddenly I’m hyperaware of each line along my face and down my neck, trailing over my arms, hip and thigh. Twisting around my knee and ankle.
“What happened?” she asks softly. It’s a question I’ve gotten so many times before and I always brush it away. But with my sister, I don’t hear the horror in her voice. I hear only the sadness that something so painful could have happened to her twin.
I swallow a few times—I’m not used to anyone but Elias caring about me like that. Not sure how to handle it.
And then I tell her about Elias and me. About where we went after we left her on the path—how we got lost and couldn’t find our way back to the village and eventually discovered a way out of the Forest and to the Dark City. How I fell into a patch of barbed wire when I was exploring the tunnels for artifacts and how Elias refused to let me go down into them ever again.
But I don’t tell her why he left me. I don’t mention the night he made me feel so beautiful and so ugly at once. Because I feel like to voice those words is to make them belong to someone other than me. Is to let them go into the world and never have the chance to get them back again.
My sister’s eyes glisten as I talk, and sometimes she can’t hold back the tears. And when I’m done she’s silent and finally she says, “I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been so scared when we went on the path …” And then her face crumples and I pull her to me.
“We were children,” I tell her. “We were barely even five.” But I’m not trying to give her absolution, I’m trying to give it to myself. Because I’m the one who left her behind to almost die.
She shakes her head, pushing closer to me. “It’s my fault, Annah,” she says. “I forgot about all of it. I wandered for so long that I was almost dead and I forgot about it. I grew up never remembering—never knowing. Even when something did spark a memory my mother—Mary—she’d tell me it must have been a dream. I didn’t even know about you until I met Elias. All this time and I never knew.”
“It’s all right,” I tell her, testing the words in my mouth to feel if they’re true. I pull back and place my palms on her cheeks, staring at her face. At what mine would look like if I weren’t so scarred. I can’t help but wonder what it was like for Elias to see her for the first time.
To wonder if he saw me. And I wonder if that’s why he didn’t come home to me. Because he found something better.
The Unconsecrated moans and reaches for us, stumbling around and around in his little caged wheel. I stare at his legs that will never stop so long as he senses human flesh.
“Are you okay?” I ask my sister, dreading the answer. “I saw them take you on the bridge. I was afraid they’d hurt you.”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m fine. They just threw me in a room to …” She doesn’t add that she was the bait for Catcher, and I don’t press her.
“So, you and Elias, huh?” I try not to let the strain I’m feeling fill my voice.
The smile that stretches over her face is brighter than the lights lining the darkness. “I’m in love with him, Annah,” she says.
I smile. Inside I feel ill. Sick at the memory of them together and sick at my own selfishness. I shouldn’t have asked her about him. It was like sticking my fist into a wasps’ nest: I knew what the result would be.
“And you grew up with Catcher?” I ask. I think about him standing in the middle of the Unconsecrated as if he were one of them. I think about the heat of him burning against my chest and thighs as he carried me through the dark tunnel.
I want to know more about him. I want to understand him.
She nods. “He was …” Her eyes lose focus for a moment and then she blinks fast. “He was my best friend’s older brother.” She walks closer to the Unconsecrated man. She’s staring at him as if trying to figure something out, trying to see the person he’d once been.
“He changed after he was bitten.” She laughs a little self-consciously. “I mean, of course he changed—he was infected and thought he’d die, but …”
I remember the moment I thought I’d been bitten when we were running from the horde in the Neverlands. The dread that all those years of fighting and struggling were suddenly worthless.
“How?” My voice comes out raw and I swallow before I continue. “How did he change? What was he like before?” It’s cold in the darkness and I cross my arms tightly over my chest, trying to keep in the heat.
My sister reaches out a finger, pressing it to the metal wheel containing the Unconsecrated, letting its dull rim turn under her flesh. “He was happy before.” She says it with such finality, as if his happiness existed in a past that is lost forever.
I frown. Hearing this makes me sad—more than sad, angry. Suddenly I realize how important his happiness is to me, which throws me off balance. “You don’t think he can be happy again?”
She presses her hand harder against the metal wheel, causing it to jerk and stop, the lights around us dimming. I want to grab her arm and pull her away but she seems so focused that I don’t move.
“I’m not sure anyone can,” she finally says. “Not anymore.”
I let out a strained laugh. “I saw you and Elias just now. You can’t tell me that’s not happiness.”
The Unconsecrated man moans and reaches for my sister, the chains holding him in the wheel rattling. I can almost smell the metal burning away the flesh of her palm, and I’m just starting to reach for her when she steps away and the wheel jerks forward, the Unconsecrated stumbling and falling.
The lights go out and we’re dipped into pure darkness for a moment. “I’m the one who woke the horde,” my sister says softly. She takes a deep shuddering breath and I don’t know what to say, what to tell her.
Slowly, the wheel starts to move again as the Unconsecrated finds his footing. There’s wheezing and creaking before the lights hum and begin to burn again with a low buzz. My sister holds one hand in the other, the palm red and smooth. In the dull light she turns to me, her eyes appearing hollow. “It’s my fault they’re coming to the City. I brought them here. I’m the reason the entire island across the river is gone. Dead.”
I frown. What she’s saying doesn’t make sense and I shake my head, wishing I knew how to respond but unable to stop staring at her red palm.
It’s as if she needs to confess. “Catcher and I were trying to escape and we crossed a bridge and the horde was in the valley and it was my blood …” She pauses and swallows. Turning back to the Unconsecrated, she says, “If I hadn’t been there—if we hadn’t escaped, they couldn’t have followed us out.”
In my mind I see the bridge she’s talk
ing about. I remember crossing it with Elias during the storm, the bodies littering the ground so far below. “It doesn’t matter,” I finally tell her. I wish I could say something better, something she wants to hear. “They would have come eventually.”
“All those people.” Her face is white, lips colorless. “They’re all dying because of me.” She looks at me, almost desperate. “How can I be happy finally being with Elias again when I’ve killed so many people?”
I stare at the dead man, who will always keep walking. So long as there are living he can sense, he’ll be struggling for us. They’ll push and push and drive us in retreat to the smallest places left in the world.
My sister trembles, tears trailing down her perfect cheeks. “We’re all dying,” I whisper. “Whether the Unconsecrated are in this world or not—we’ll still be dying.”
She looks at the ground, the flickering lights along the wall making the water dripping from her jaw glisten and sparkle.
Tentatively, I reach a hand out and grab her fingertips. I think of what I’ve had to do to get to this moment: the struggles as I figured out how to live alone in the Dark City without Elias. How I’d decided to fight rather than cower in the face of so much that frightened me.
“What matters is what we do with the life we have,” I tell her. “We can’t spend our days in fear.”
“What if the Mudo take the Sanctuary?” Her voice warbles.
“Then we have to be thankful for the days we’ve had,” I hesitate and smile, trying to make her think I believe my own words. “And then we run,” I add, grinning wider.
She laughs then, and it’s like a bright spark of joy spiraling around us. She’s still laughing when the door opens and Catcher strides in. He glances between us, his steps uncertain.
“I was worried when you ran off and didn’t come back.” I can’t tell which one of us he’s talking to. I tug on the ragged ends of my hair, pulling it over my face like a curtain.