Never-Contented Things

by Sarah Porter

  “Sure. I mean, I suspected. But Lexi, knowing that you were in danger—I couldn’t just dick around anymore.” That’s going to have to be enough of a confession for right now. “Look, I really don’t see the point of talking about this. We’ve got to find Josh, and we’ve got to—I have no idea what it’s going to take to get out of here again. I don’t even know if it’s possible.”

  I turn to start searching, but the fact is that my face is blazing and sparks swim in my eyes. I don’t know why Lexi’s questions feel like needles stitching their way through my skin. And—it’s only now I realize it, but I’ve misplaced Kay. She isn’t clinging to my arm anymore. The vapor down here seems to be thinning, but it still feels like walking into oblivion. I stomp forward, feeling Lexi’s stare hammering at my back. Looking for Josh is a ridiculous pretense. I’m swinging my head at random, hoping for an oblique glimpse of him, but really—it’s that I can’t handle looking at Lexi right now.

  “Ksenia?”

  I just finished crying. I can’t break down again, and I can’t be that person who knots herself up to keep from lashing out, either. I feel my hands drawing into fists, tightening against my will. No matter how much I love Lexi, I need her to see that it’s time to back off.

  “Ksenia, we’ll find Josh. We’re not going anywhere without him, I promise. But first I want to tell you something, and I’d really appreciate it if you had the courage to look in my face while I do it.”

  A spasm flickers down my arm: the urge to raise my hand, to strike out, to scream at her to just leave me alone, already.

  And then—I don’t know how, but I let the spasm keep going. I let it shoot down my arm and leak out at my fingertips. My hands go limp and my shoulders fall and I’m able, though barely, to turn back to her. The purple mist has lifted enough that the distance between us isn’t much help, and I have to see how dark and acute her stare is.

  “Get it over with, Lexi.”

  “It’s just that—don’t underestimate how happy I am that you did that for me, Ksenia. I know how it must have killed you to have to call yourself Sennie.” I cringe, hearing that name on her lips, but she ignores it. “I want you to be very aware of how much it means to me, that you fought your way out for my sake. Because then you can keep the next thing I’m going to say in perspective.”

  I owe Lexi so much, and I know it. But I can’t help feeling like she’s claiming her debt in blood, making me listen to these things. “What’s that, Lex?”

  “That it would mean even more to me if you had done it for yourself.” Her lips bend up, but I wouldn’t call that a smile, exactly. “Do you understand why I’m saying this to you?”

  I understand more than I want to.

  “I don’t expect anything from you, Lexi.” Her not-smile wrenches into something fiercer; really, I knew she didn’t mean it like that. She probably feels insulted, that I would even imply she’s looking for an excuse not to owe me anything. “And I never could have abandoned Josh, anyway. So why would I put myself through that?”

  Lexi sighs; not wistfully, more of an aggravated huff. “You just made my point for me, Ksenia. Okay, let’s figure out where they’ve hidden Josh. I was feeling pretty done with him, honestly, but he came through at the last possible instant. He actually put up some serious resistance. I’m not saying I forgive him, because he did too much harm for that. But I can at least consider forgiveness as a possibility.”

  “I know he fought back,” I say. I’m not sure I want to know what she means by the rest of it. “Kay told me.”

  We’re walking side by side now, through a stony landscape blotted by the violet air. It takes the edge off, not having to confront her gaze, not seeing the things she’s seeing in me. We go slowly, which makes sense even if it’s maddening. I have to stifle the speed and wildness in my limbs at every step. But we’re more likely to stumble across Josh’s prison by ambling along, searching every inch of the gorge, than we would be if we went charging off like lunatics.

  “You met Kay,” she says. “So that’s what you meant, when you said you heard about the hat. Kay knew where to look for you; she could probably even sense that you were on your way, just as soon as you set foot on the staircase.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Lexi, we need to concentrate. I barely saw you back there. It’s amazing that I found you at all. Josh—you came here together, so he’s probably in the same kind of trap they stuck you in. And it looked like a knife’s edge in the air, kind of. That thin and hard to catch. Except with your face blurring past.”

  Lexi stops. “To me, it was just a hole. I couldn’t see anything at all before you started talking to me. Ksenia, the bizarre thing? I didn’t actually hear your voice, not at the beginning. But I saw images; I can’t begin to describe them. They were like colored shadows cast by your emotions, and I recognized you instantly. I couldn’t hear the actual words you were saying, but I could read the colors like they were a new kind of script. And it was entirely obvious that you were very close, and that you’d come for me.”

  “That actually sounds beautiful.” It does; I wish Lexi would stop saying things that hurt so much. “But Lexi, we have to keep going.”

  I turn to move on, but she catches my hand. “Wait.” Her head tilts; she’s close enough that I feel the soft disturbance of her breath. “I bet Josh can sense us the same way. Ksenia, we should go back.”

  “Back where?”

  “Exactly where I was. As nearly as we can identify the spot.”

  I almost snap at her; something stupid, mean; something to buy myself a little distance from everything I’m feeling. But then I don’t. “You—what? You have an intuition about it?”

  Lexi shakes her head. One thing she never is, is at a loss for words, but for once in her life Lexi is thinking something she can’t instantly smack down in a perfect sentence.

  “I think Josh was there. I think he was listening to you along with me. They somehow arranged it so that he and I were in the same space, but without being able to perceive each other.”

  It’s no crazier than anything else that’s happened. And it should be the best news possible. So why do I find myself not wanting to believe her?

  “Okay,” I say, because anything else would be too screwed up, even for me. “Okay, we’ll go look.”

  I know why I’d prefer it if Lexi was wrong, actually. Because what must Josh have felt, if he heard me spilling my guts to Lexi like that? He was already getting jealous. And the way she glances at me now, as she starts heading back: I could swear she knows exactly what I’m thinking. She throws her mind out like a net, and it falls through me as if I were water. How did Lexi and I come to know each other so much more deeply, by spending so long apart?

  She tosses her head again. Shaking off a thought. “I know I shouldn’t tell you what to feel, Ksenia. But seriously, Josh kidnapped you. He tore you right out of the world. And I can almost understand why you would keep loving him anyway. Or even if I don’t understand, I can respect it. Love like yours is worth honoring.”

  “I’ve never asked anyone to understand me,” I tell her; it sounds harsher than I intended. One thing for sure, no one ever thought of honoring anything I felt before, and I know I should be thankful. “It would be a complete waste of time if I did.”

  It’s a lie, though, and Lexi probably knows it. What’s grating on me is that she does understand me, just in ways I can’t handle.

  Retracing our steps looks exactly the same as forging ahead did. The futility is getting to me again. Futility is violet and hazy and slurs on and on like a horizon. Wherever Josh is, we’ll miss him. We’ll wander back and forth for an eternity, until Prince comes for us, or until we die from thirst.

  “The part I’m struggling with, is that you still seem to feel like you have an obligation to him. You don’t. Not after the way he violated your right to make your own choices.” Now Lexi’s the one who’s having trouble looking at me. Her head hangs, like the dust at our feet requires her full att
ention. “You owe Josh nothing.”

  That’s not true, I think, but I don’t say it. Memory sweeps over me, grasping me inside my twelve-year-old self; how rigid I stood in that drab living room, my social worker fussing at my back. How I deliberately fixed my gaze on an electric outlet in the corner, so I wouldn’t have to see my new foster parents shooting each other concerned looks. How my breathing was labored, and the garbage bag containing all my possessions was still slung over my back.

  And then how Josh came up beside me and took my free hand in perfect silence. I hadn’t said so much as hello to him at that point. He had no reason to expect anything from me but cruelty. In spite of myself, I felt the bravery of what he was doing. I still refused to turn in his direction, but I didn’t yank my hand away either. Instead I watched him out of the corner of my eye. A slim band of sunlight swayed, very softly, across his wavy dark hair.

  After five minutes of his warm presence I dropped the bag, even though it sickened me to hear the adults murmuring their approval. Isn’t that precious? Josh is working his magic. No, no, don’t say anything.

  Owe him nothing? That band of sunlight. The unspeaking tenderness of his ten-year-old hand. How can everything become nothing, just because someone did something wrong?

  “So why are you looking for Josh?” I say. “If you think he’s so not worth it?”

  “I didn’t say that. And I think there are extenuating circumstances. But Ksenia, you don’t know everything he did.” Lexi gives me a quick, sidelong look. Evaluating me. Maybe trying to suss out how much I can stand to hear without freaking out. “I don’t know where to draw the line: what he’s responsible for, and what he isn’t, if that makes sense. But I do think he deserves a chance at redemption.”

  “Josh hasn’t been right since he met them,” I say. Defensively, even though I’m shaking inside at the thought of everything Josh might have done. What happened after he rode up the tiled wall at that vile party, and out through the ceiling? “They got in his head.”

  “And by not right,” Lexi says, scuffing at the dirt, her eyes studiously averted, “I assume you mean enchanted.”

  I do mean that. My vision smears from the shock of hearing Lexi say it, because I didn’t know I meant it. I can’t help but notice the strangeness of it, too. The most obvious explanation is the exact one my mind repelled, persistently, stubbornly. The wind swells, pecking our cheeks with grit, and in it I hear a kind of humming, or chattering, or the wordless rags of a voice with all the meaning shredded out.

  Lexi is right, but I can’t shake the impression that she shouldn’t have come out and said it.

  And then the wind’s cries break through their senseless moaning, and resolve into two definite sounds.

  Josh’s voice, sliced razor fine. Where he is, it’s too thin to let a word through, but wide enough to let a stuttering, intermittent note escape. A howl, divided and divided again, broken up by gaps of silence.

  The other sound? It’s the beat of hooves.

  i paid our rent

  Echoes splash through the air, drowning our ears in the clatter of horses. Lexi grabs my elbow and we both twist around, chasing the sounds that come out of every facet in the rocks. Above us the mist thickens into solidified dusk, and I can’t make out where they are, or how many. But one thing I can tell: there are a lot of them.

  “Ksenia! There!” Lexi points, and now I see it. There’s a thickening in the shadows that becomes twenty horses, twenty riders, coming straight down the vertical rock face at a gallop. And I know they’ll be on top of us before I can reach Josh, I know it. But I still pull away from Lexi and leap forward, clawing at the emptiness. Wherever he is, whatever slash in the world is hiding him, I’ll rip it open and send him tumbling into the dust. And then Lexi and I will grab his hands and we’ll run, even if we’re only running into nothingness.

  But now I can’t hear his voice, not even in that sad, staggered way. The hoofbeats fracture and multiply until every speck of dust jumps with them. “Josh,” I yell. “Josh, keep shouting! I’m so close!”

  I see Unselle first, rounding on me in midair with her horse’s legs at the level of my head. The bloody writing, the phosphor burn of her lace and skin. The mink cackling on her chest.

  “Hatless it is now, the poppling. Hatless and helpless! All the way home, how I licked the scent of your blood, Ksenia. Sucked you out of air! Poor sweetling, to think so prettily that you might snatch what we own.” She grins, the bright, ragged row of her teeth careening in her face. “You could not even snatch yourself from us, could you? No matter what your eatings.”

  I’m trying to think up a decent comeback when her horse pirouettes and its cloudy hooves lash into space, with a noise like shattering glass.

  And out of the sound, Josh reels and falls to his knees, just ten feet away from me. He rolls into a ball and rocks back and forth, sobbing so hard that I don’t know if he even sees me.

  I start to lunge forward, to seize him in my arms. But the horse is there, blocking my way. And then Lexi is next to me, close enough that I can feel her vitality like a warm shadow along my side. Somehow her nearness is enough to remind me that I can’t just throw myself at Unselle like some impetuous idiot. I need to be strategic. Take some time evaluating, so I can understand what we need to do.

  “Try and take,” Unselle sneers. “It will be our pleasure to watch you try! He is bound into our world. Stuff him with the eatings of your world like a pig for the banquet, Ksenia. His skin will still be ours, and his teeth, and the soft marrow slinking in his bones, and the dreams that live like worms, gnawing the pulp of his mind. Joshua bound himself here, and cannot be free.”

  But there was something that hideous mock-Josh said to me, while we were plummeting from the cliff. It told me there was just one way Josh could be free. That it wasn’t something I could do for him. But a way is a way.

  “And then, Ksenia, it is a chain, our havings. Through Joshua we have you; through you we claim Alexandra. All ours, forever, for whatever games might ease our tedium. You think you leave, oh, so pleased with yourself! But it is a false leaving. Because straight back you came, to nestle in our world like a teeny mouse!” Her leer is growing, pitching in her cheeks. Too many damn teeth inside that scarlet ripple of lip. Her mink yawns and rolls its tongue at me. Completely obscene.

  “Your fake world is useless to me,” I snap. “I only came for them.”

  While Unselle has been prattling on, the rest of the freak cavalry has come riding in. We’re surrounded by billowing horse-forms, snickering inhuman riders. I don’t see any of the changelings now. Just our captors, whatever they are, in their vile finery.

  “As Alexandra came back for you,” a voice says. Reedy and agitating. “That was precisely what Unselle just explained to you, Ksenia. Each of you is bound to the one before. You would have no peace if you abandoned dear Joshua here. Every night your betrayal would sweat through all your pores, until you raced back to us, desperate for relief. No more could Alexandra leave you to such a fate; only a bit of patience, and she would surely return. Ah, all Alexandra’s insolence, and her touching belief that she could rescue you! All she did was to bait the trap herself—although, of course, it still behooved me to punish her intention. But what would we be, my darling Ksenia, if we could not spin love into webs far stronger than spider silk?”

  Prince. Maybe he’s partly lying, but there are strands of vicious truth twisted in with the deceit. I just told Lexi that I never would have saved myself if it meant leaving Josh here, and there’s no way I can deny that now. Of course, of course, they’ve used what’s best in us as a weapon to bring us down.

  But the suggestion that he was never afraid of what Lexi might do, what I might do, that we were always just helpless pawns—in that, I hear a distinct undertone of bullshit. There’s something he’s trying to obscure. A possibility, a chance. Something he wants to stop us from recognizing.

  I don’t look at him on principle, though he’s sidling
up just to my left, while Lexi covers my right. Doesn’t stop him from stroking my jaw, of course. He’d love it if I lost control and tried to bite his poisonous green eyes right out of their sockets. He’s thrilled by my disgust too, but that’s more than I can conceal.

  Lexi doesn’t have the same compunction I do about staring the creep in the face. She steps around me so deftly I don’t realize what’s happening until she’s right in front of him—though since at the moment he’s, like, two feet taller than she is, she has to crane her neck to blast him with attitude.

  I expect her to give Prince hell. But she doesn’t address him at all, except with her gaze. It’s enough.

  “Joshua?” Lexi calls, loudly, but into Prince’s face. “You heard him. Each of us is bound to the one who came here before. But they didn’t say anything about you.” She pauses. “And they didn’t mention any of the kids you stole, either.”

  “Josh?” I say. “He had nothing to do with that, Lexi!”

  And then Josh comes forward. Actually crawling straight beneath Unselle’s horse, as if its legs were a bridge. He looks terrible, sickly pale and battered, his old-lady sweater dangling shredded pink-sequin stars.

  Kay is riding on the back of his neck: a parody of all the horsemen around us. She waves to me, her paper-doll hand jerking, and points to Josh’s head. Then she folds herself up like a fan and ducks down the back of Josh’s sweater. The whole thing was so quick that I’m not certain anyone else saw it.

  My black bowler hat slants on Josh’s snarled hair. Unselle gives a quiet hiss when she sees it. Like I thought, then. He stops a few feet from her horse and huddles in the dirt—and all at once I know that I can’t just rush to him, wrap him in my arms, absorb all his pain. He’s feeling things he has to feel, at least for now. No matter how much they hurt.

  “Josh?” Lexi says again, more gently this time. She finally turns and looks at him. The trails of his tears have sucked up the dust, so his face is scored with mud. Green glitter flings back motes of light when his weight shifts. “You owe me for Xand, and you know it. What are you bound to? From everything they’ve said, that’s the start of the chain. But I don’t see how it could have been a specific person who was already here. Not unless there are things I really don’t know.”