“What do we really know about wraiths, anyway?” Chrissa said. She was grinding some kind of rock into fine powder in a tiny handheld mortar. “Jack shit. All our current spiritual knowledge is like, a grand total of twenty years old. We make it up as we go along. I bet that in ten years, Mirror Boy, you’re going to be the case study people cite when talking about wraiths.”
I thought about life ten years in the future and a blanket of exhaustion fell over me. I still had the gauntlet of the next ten days to go through. The next ten hours.
Mirror Boy leaned against me, shoulder to shoulder, the glass a thin and unbreakable barrier between our worlds. “Are you happy?” he whispered. “Is this the life that you wanted?”
“Heavy questions, kid,” Chrissa warned from her perch.
I didn’t know how to answer him. “It’s not a bad life,” I said. “It’s a bit dull. But it’s my life.”
“It sounds nice,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it more than I did.
I looked up at Chrissa, framed by the stacks of her grimoires, a figure of pure concentration, and was struck by envy, bone-deep. Chrissa looked like someone who was exactly where she was meant to be. Here was a person who hadn’t just fallen into the grooves of her life like a yellow coat of autumn leaves, but was growing bright and verdant from deep soil that suited her. And she was just sitting there, filled with innocent purpose, with no idea how lucky she was. I wished I had the same kind of untrammeled joy in my life as Chrissa did. I felt almost guilty I didn’t.
“I’m a pretender,” I said, knowing Mirror Boy was listening. “When I stop to think about my life I get the sense that I’m just borrowing someone else’s. So I don’t.” I shrugged. It was hard to put these sentiments into words. “Like I have all this stuff in my past I can’t talk about. I don’t know.” The events of the past few hours were finally catching up, like a tidal wave about to smother me. “I’m sorry I snapped when you came back. Because it’s like . . . I was being reminded that I’m only a pretender. Pretending to have this life that isn’t mine.”
“Your life is your life,” Chrissa said sharply, and when I looked up she was glaring at me over the rims of the bifocals she wore to do near-vision work. “Don’t say shit like that. People deserve to have nice things.”
“A borrowed life is better than none,” said Mirror Boy.
I pressed my fingertips to his against the cool glass and felt a smile pushing through my gloom. “I’m not going to argue with you.”
Exhaustion overtook me then, and I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke to Chrissa gripping me by the shoulders, her face inches from mine. “Did you ever drown?”
I blinked away half-ghosts and dream-fragments. “Yes, once.” I didn’t want to tell her about Alfous, about his cruel fingers or the little red tip of his tongue, or the way the blood bloomed across his neck when I cut it.
“Was this when you met the kid?”
“How did you know?”
“Come have a look.”
She sauntered to her desk, where a battle-scarred laptop sat whirring. I didn’t want to leave the safety of the charm circle, so I stayed put. Chrissa pointed to the screen. “I worked out your hunter’s name, and I scrubbed the web for it. Look. There we are. There’s your mirror boy.”
The screen was too far for me to read. I tried to swallow my disbelief. “Mirror Boy’s the hunter?”
“Kraken’s sake, no. Mirror boy drowned ten years ago. Here it is, in the news. The hunter’s his twin. There’s your motivation sorted out. He’s going after his brother’s wraith. I told you: an amateur.”
“I don’t have an older brother,” Mirror Boy said. He sounded confused. “I don’t remember him.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re not a spirit. Just loose energy from when someone died before their time, given shape and direction. How do you find your hosts, kid?”
Mirror Boy licked his lips. “In the water, on the verge of passing.”
“There, see? You’re following the path of that boy’s death.”
“But I’m not him,” Mirror Boy said. “I don’t know him. I’m not—”
“Doesn’t matter.” Chrissa clicked the laptop shut. “Look, obviously this guy is serious. Amateur hunters like him do it because they’re fanatics. You can’t reason with them. I know this too well.” She sighed and tangled her hands in her hair. “And there’s no known way to separate a wraith from its host. Once you infect a person, it’s permanent. No take-backsies.” She started pacing in a tiny circle, which she only did when she was frustrated. “That’s why hunters kill hosts. It’s cruel, but it’s better than letting the wraith spread, because most wraiths are legit nightmares. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve had to clean up before. When wraiths possess people, they turn into psychopaths. Like flesh-dungeon, cannibal-horror psychopaths.”
“But he’s not like that,” I said. “You know he’s not like that. He’s not.”
“I know. He . . . loves you. I think that’s the difference.” She looked between the two of us, helpless. “Honey, I’m sorry. This is out of my depth. I’m out of ideas. I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s not good enough. We have to do something.” I looked at Mirror Boy, trapped in his bubble of a world. I’d spent the last ten years scraping this life I had together, but he couldn’t leave the glass-bound existence he was chained to. So maybe my life wasn’t perfect, maybe it was dull and not a hundred percent what I would have hoped for. But it was mine. And it was more than he had. It wasn’t fair. He deserved better. We deserved better.
“We have to do something,” I repeated.
• • • •
THE HUNTER
Leviathan forgive me. I stand here in Your eternal sight, a sinner beyond redemption, my hands stained as Kraken’s ink and my heart cold and dead as Kraken’s eyes. Ten years ago the greater part of my soul drowned in the water with my brother. It was my fault that those men mistook him for me, and a stain upon my being that I was not there to stop it from happening. But it will be over soon. Tonight, or tomorrow, or sometime this week, I will kill the last of his hosts, and then it will be done. This job will be done, and I can fade away.
The girl has corralled herself in the building where the witch lives. I don’t know if they’re friends, but the scry lies heavy and dormant in my hand. Something protects her and hides her from my sight. The knife weighs my belt down, waiting and patient. It has tasted the blood of seven, and it wants more. I detest it. I detest its heft, its hunger. I regret the day I had it forged. But it’s too late. If I stop now, at this one last step I need to end this wraith, then all the death that came before will be for nothing.
In the old days this would be easier. You’d dig up the grave, salt the bones, then burn them. But the sea is my brother’s grave, and it has thickened his bones with salt, and no fire shall ever touch them.
It was Leviathan who guided me. It was They who sent Bastian to me. Sweet Bastian, with his soft cheeks and honeyed lips. He spoke of the year his reflection showed someone else, dark haired and dark eyed, skin warm as almond husks. He said: “At first, I thought you were him. You look exactly alike.” I told him about my dead twin, the drowned boy, and between our tellings the events that had followed my brother’s death became clear. By then I had spent years in penance, knees pressed to the cold temple floors, hot blood dripping into sacrificial chalices, praying for my sins to be cleansed by the stringent purity of saltwater. For the mercy of Leviathan to pass through me and leave me bleached and bare. That night, I knew that I was beyond the redemption of even the Great Finned One, but They had blessed me still with a chance to atone for the life I had led.
From there everything unraveled: the nights combing through the mausoleums of old libraries, the days spent pulling secrets out of witches and priests. And then the knowledge, and then the knife, and then the first of the blood. The old woman who lived alone in a coffin box, among stacks of decaying photographs and the flat
faces of mirrors.
Until then, I didn’t think I could do it. Until the moment the knife punctured her chest I believed I would fail on the path Leviathan had set me upon. But the old woman died and I was baptized in her blood, reborn as Leviathan’s blade. Great Leviathan, I am Your will and Your flesh in the realm of mortals, doing Your bidding as I may. I stain myself in Your name. I condemn myself so that I may bring peace to Your domain.
Yesterday it was Bastian’s turn. The smell of his blood lingers on my collar where his hands touched it, his questing fingers tightening, then losing their grip. I dread the thought of washing my shirt. It’s all I have left of him.
The scry comes to life, the coral glowing with bioluminescence. The urchin-spike needle spins. The girl has emerged from her den of safety.
Soon it will be over.
By the time I park the boat and enter the building, her footsteps are echoing on the steps several floors above me. I take my shoes off. Barefoot and silent, I slip upwards, the knife ready in my hand.
The girl comes to a stop at midlevel, leaning by the gangway to the next building. She’s slender and fashionable, an ocean of curls resting on her shoulders. In another time, I might have offered her something else: a drink, a taste of salt. Her shaking hands fumble with a lighter and cigarette. In the end, it’s our vices that will lead to our downfall. I creep up from behind.
Soon it will be over.
Something creaks. She turns, catches sight of me, and recoils in fear. I spring forward, but she is already fleeing down the gangway into the waiting night.
I give chase. The girl shines like a deer in the woods, a memory from the time I was too small to know speech. She vanishes into the shelter of the next building, which exists as a dismal wreck, boarded-up and empty even of squatters. The midlevel floor, formerly a studio or warehouse, challenges me with a maze of metal cabinets, heaving with rotting boxes and bloated white tins.
The girl slips between the cabinets, her breathing harsh. I trip over a metal rod jutting between two shelves and land palm-first in the dust. As I scramble to get up I hear a deep crash, then another. A chorus of deadly groans—metallic, ringing. The girl. She’s pushed a shelf over and now they’re all coming down, an army of avenging dominoes.
The floor doesn’t hold. Eaten through with mold and termites, it ruptures under the weight of the falling shelves. Wood and metal plunge towards the waiting water, meeting their doom with dull sounds. I barely escape the devouring chasm in time. I watch a whole cabinet tip to its death, its insides spilling like butchered intestines.
A skittering sound to my left. It’s the girl, leaping over rubble and ruin. I realize I’ve dropped the knife and it’s nowhere to be found.
The girl has it. She’s run to the far end of the room, and the knife glints in a shard of moonlight as she holds it up. I speak to the wraith of my brother who resides in her: “Are you going to do it for me, Vincent?” I ask. “Will you end your own life? End this torment?”
“I’m not him,” she says, in a voice high and clear as a songbird’s. “I’m not your dead brother. No one is.” She cuts into her palm; blood runs over her wrist and down her elbow. “Look. I bleed red. I’m human.”
I shake my head. None of the other hosts bled wraith-black either. Sometimes the literature is wrong. But now the girl has put obstacles between us. She is clever; I have to be careful.
“Look,” she says. “You seem like a nice man. It doesn’t have to be like this. We could be friends. I want to be your friend. Don’t you want to know your brother?”
Her eyes are luminous, the way I remember deer eyes reflected the light. The shape of her legs shows under her shift, and I imagine the warmth between them and the soft places I can sink into. I imagine taking her down by the neck and having her right here, on the dying floorboards of a dying building. I imagine killing her as she comes, my brother’s wraith spilling like black vomit from her lips.
A shiver passes through me, and I know at once that this is Kraken’s corruption. Kraken with Its tentacles that turn flesh to temptation and minds to ruin. Kraken who lives to frustrate the will of Leviathan. No. I cannot be fooled. I will not be thwarted.
I seize a metal rod from the ground, its end a series of ragged points. The knife is only a tool; anything will work as well. “Don’t try to trick me, you witch.”
The girl runs.
By Leviathan’s grace I cross the room without falling through. The girl has vanished up the concrete stairwell with roof access, but that’s a mistake. This building is too short to connect to rooflevel, so she’ll be trapped. I burst through the door to find her standing at the roof edge, staring across the blank space of the canal, elbows tight to her waist.
“There’s nowhere to run,” I say, as the door claps shut behind me. “You might as well give up. It’ll be easier on both of us.”
“I don’t want to die,” she says.
“I know. I’m sorry.” And I mean it. She is lovely, and I am truly sorry that she has to die. “But to live, a wraith needs a body to inhabit.”
She looks over her shoulder at me. “I know,” she says sadly.
Then she spins on her heel, her arm thrown out. Something strikes me hard and I go crashing against the door. The knife’s handle protrudes from my chest. As I watch fluid trickle down my jacket my knees lose coherence, as though their tendons have been cut. I see. The girl is clever, and I have allowed her to trick me. This is the end. My metal rod clatters to the ground.
The girl canters over and pulls the knife from my heart, and the blood it held back spills over my shirt. “Once upon a time, I used to be a circus girl,” she says. “Once upon a time, I used to throw knives and juggle and spin fire.”
The girl’s eyes glitter in the moonlight as though they were a distant conflagration. A forest burning. “He’s taken you,” I say. The taste of hot copper fills my mouth.
“No,” she says. “He’s never taken me. He doesn’t follow his nature. He chose not to. That’s why I decided to save him.” She squats over me. “To live, a wraith needs a body to inhabit. You understand, don’t you?”
I do, and yet I do not. The world is fading around me. In this half-twilight my brother stands behind the circus girl. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him, I’ve forgotten what he looks like. He’s so beautiful. We used to be so beautiful. I had forgotten.
I flick my gaze back to the circus girl, trying to understand before my time on this watery earth runs out. “You’ll . . . take care of him?”
“No, hunter,” she says. “He’ll take care of you.” She runs her fingers softly through my hair. “A borrowed life is better than none.”
A borrowed life is better than none. Is that something I used to say? Or my brother? Maybe it was our mother, long dead and gone. My memories swim into one another and I lose them to the dark. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter anymore.
Forgive me, Leviathan. I know not if I have failed You, only that I have tried my best. I am light as a child floating on the surface of a clear blue sea. O Great Finned One, take me into Your infinite depths, away from this salt-bitten world. I see brother’s face one last time, framed over the circus girl’s shoulder. He is smiling.
• • • •
MIRROR BOY
I smell the sea on the air. It’s a smell I don’t remember, because I remember nothing. But a month from now, or maybe a year later, I will look back on this day and I will.
I feel the sun upon the skin of the man who used to be my brother. It’s warm. It’s pleasant. It could burn me, if it wasn’t winter. It is my skin now, and I belong to it, as it belongs to me.
I hear the sounds of life around me. So many notes I can hardly believe it, after so long spent hearing only one voice at a time. There’s the arguments of sea birds, the wash of water against walls, the song of boat motors, and the soft humming of someone experiencing happiness.
I see Circus Girl perched on the roof edge, her ankles freely dangling, her h
air soft and loose. The tune she hums is one her mother used to sing her to sleep with. I realize I am seeing for the first time the shape of her back, the geography of her spine.
I taste grit in my mouth, clay and ashes and bone. Chrissa tells me it will take a few days for it to go away. A few days for my heart to settle into its new home.
I want to tell Circus Girl how grateful I am. For hosting me. For teaching me about life. For saving me when I needed it. I want to tell her how terrified I am, now that I have been given all this, and I can do anything I want with it. I want to tell her about this happiness I feel, how new and delightful it is to me.
Instead I say, “I think I’m hungry. Let’s go downstairs and eat.”
* * *
JY Neon Yang (they/them) is queer, non-binary, and the author of the Tensorate series of novellas from Tor.Com Publishing (The Black Tides of Heaven, The Red Threads of Fortune, The Descent of Monsters, The Ascent to Godhood). Their work has been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy and Lambda Literary awards. A Clarion West alum, they graduated from the University of East Anglia with an MA in Creative Writing and currently live in Singapore.
Deriving Life
By Elizabeth Bear
Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Sometime later; maybe tomorrow
My name is Marq Tames, I’m a mathematician, and I’m planning suicide.
Until today, I wasn’t planning. You couldn’t say I was planning. Because I know perfectly well that it would be the grossest of irresponsibility to plan my exit . . . at least until Tamar didn’t need me anymore.
You don’t do that to people you love.
You don’t do that to people who love you.
• • • •
Now
“Stop taking your oxy,” Tamar says, skeletal hand on my wrist. There’s not much left of them. Their skin crackles against the back of my fingers when I touch their cheek. Their limbs are withered, but their torso is drum-taut, swollen-seeming. I don’t look. Death—and especially transitional death—is so much prettier in the dramas.
The Long List Anthology Volume 6 Page 19