“Enough of that.” Cadence stomps. “Do I look like a child? What about this power that you want so much seems childish to you?”
Maryam reaches to pat her cheek. “Adorable. I can see why you indulge her, darling. But sooner or later, you’ll need to stop playing games and seize the reins. As endearing as children can be, it takes an iron will and a heart of stone to care for them. To provide. To stop the monsters at the gate and make a safe, healthy home.”
“Is that what you think you’re doing?” The words spill out too fast, goaded to fury despite myself. Despite the fact that she can’t hear my protests. “Providing for ‘the children?’ By slaughtering their families? Kidnapping them? Stealing their childhoods and their memories alike? Turning them into spiritless drones who can do nothing but obey? Is that what you were doing for me—us? Providing? Caring for us?”
Cadence trembles with fury. This is it. This is the turning point. I finally broke through the shield of her stubbornness, and now—
But the light in her eyes trickles away, her expression smoothed over by a dull, heavy blankness.
Something’s not right. It’s not like her. She shouldn’t be able to just switch her emotions off.
Even I can’t tamp them down that fast.
Maryam laughs and takes Cadence’s hand, guiding her step by step to the edge of the barrier. “That’s right, child. Just like that. There is no rush to grow up. No need to let the other one complicate things.”
And Cadence doesn’t resist, doesn’t recoil, as Maryam guides her hand to the barrier. Her fingers stutter on the broken patch from yesterday, skating off the hard surface until they reach its edge and dip below. Her fist closes. Her face knots with effort—but not disgust.
“Stop it!” I shriek. “What are you—”
The wriggling strands snap and crumble to dust.
Cadence totters, catches her balance, and reaches for the barrier again, this time without Maryam’s guiding hand. She shows no sign of revulsion or fear, only a dreadful exhaustion. She has changed, as if yesterday had never happened. Is Maryam meddling with her memories somehow?
“That’s right, dear,” Maryam coos. “Just like that. You’re doing the right thing. Completing your purpose. Saving us all, just like your parents wanted.”
The patch of still, cracked deadness on the surface of the barrier grows—a double handful, then twice that again. Maryam props Cadence up as her knees sag and her lips pale. It’s hurting her, draining her to damage the barrier like this—and that gives me hope.
Maybe there’s still time enough to stop this.
“I won’t let you,” Cadence groans, her hand slipping from the slick surface, this time without the strength to tear strands free. “You can’t stop me.”
“No one will stop you, child,” Maryam soothes. She lets Cadence slump to the floor and moves to summon the guards waiting around the corner. “You’ve done very well.”
And I’ve failed entirely.
I don't know what she’s done to Cadence or how. And without knowing, how can I hope to reach Cadence, to change her course? But there’s still some hope—the damaged barrier has not yet fallen. Everything rests on Ash, now.
“You might as well give the poor dear a break, darling,” Maryam says. It’s eerie the way she keeps addressing me while looking at Cadence. “You can’t change her mind—and this is hard enough on her without you making it worse. At least let her enjoy the time she has left.”
I don’t like the sound of that at all.
I would shout at the mayor, try to persuade even her to change her course, if she could only hear me. But with Cadence losing consciousness, there’s no one to give my words voice.
Fear and frustration boil inside me—and then outside, rippling the air with near-visible waves of pressure.
Am I imagining this? Hallucinating? Or, I don’t know, overlaying the dreamscape somehow?
But Maryam’s diaphanous layers of gold and glitter are fluttering in an impossible breeze. Her lips part around teeth bared in a predatory smile. She’s thrilled—or furious—but in either case, very much aware of my presence.
I scream, leaning into the rage. But the full force of my fury makes itself felt as little more than a breeze.
“Fantastic, darling.” Maryam beckons her suddenly jumpy guards to pick Cadence up off the floor. “I’m impressed. Truly. But be warned—I won’t allow any interference. You will permit me to put things to rights before I go.”
The air stills. Before she goes? Goes where?
Maryam laughs, sends her guards on ahead with Cadence, and turns back to the barrier. I remain, watching. Cadence is out of reach for the moment. I can’t do anything to change her mind while she’s unconscious. Her dreams, if she even has them now, are closed to me. But Maryam . . .
I’m curious. However devious and manipulative Ravel might be, he’s clearly nothing compared to the lethal intellect of the woman who made him.
“I’m not dying, if that’s what you hope.” She casually reaches out to stroke the cracked patch where Cadence has ripped life away from the barrier. “But I am old. You’ve seen it, I think? The ritual? The Mara, draining and renewing this form, along with our contract? I could have sworn I felt you there with me, darling.
“But perhaps you have not yet realized what is to come. I have raised and sheltered generations at unimaginable cost. I have made sacrifices you can’t even begin to imagine. And now, at long last, my suffering is so very nearly at an end.”
She falls silent, seemingly mesmerized by the sickly churning of the still-living portion of the wall. It’s horrible. I can’t imagine spending a moment longer near it than necessary . . . but I don’t leave.
I should. Cadence is still unconscious, so there’s no real point in waiting around. I need to check in with Ash. And, although I don’t need to sleep, exactly, the dreamscape seems to offer a sort of rest. Too long away and I feel its pull. It’s getting harder to think clearly, harder to focus, to care, even.
Still, I wait, hovering in the nowhere-that-is-everywhere, narrowing the bulk of my attention to this one terrible spot in case this mother of lies does or says something I can’t afford to miss. And my forbearance is rewarded.
Chapter 8: History
“Have you gone, darling? Will you not stay and listen to an old woman’s sad tale?” Maryam’s voice drops to a clipped whisper. “Quickly now, and plainly, before we attract the wrong kind of attention. This barrier is coming down. I will not allow you or your little friends to stop that. But when the monsters finally go, it is all but inevitable that I will, too.
“If you are listening, if you have any power, any way to communicate, any way to outlast the end of this city and regain what you have lost, use it to help the ones who are left. Believe me or don’t, but I’ve protected as many as I could for as long as I could in the only way that I could. I think you know we’ve reached the tipping point. Passed it. The cost of survival keeps going up, the lives saved fewer by the day.
“Before there is no one left, I must break what I have built. But the children who make it to the other side will need a leader to guide them, to provide shelter and sustain them. Stay out of my way until I’ve done what must be done, and then send for help if you can. If it comes to that, even my dissolute and irresponsible Ravel could be of use.
“Understand, I do not ask this as a favour. Hate me if you like. Fight if you must, knowing it will only increase the suffering in the end. But give the innocents what help you can, when it is over. Don’t let my sacrifices be wasted.”
She raps the dead patch, sighs, and turns her back on the barrier. I watch her go, speechless at the audacity.
She expects me to clean up her mess? To wait in the shadows while she breaks everything she can get her hands on, and then pick up the pieces?
And the worst of it is: of course I would. I’d do anything I could for the survivors—except there won’t be any. She doesn’t realize, or doesn’t understand, that br
inging down the barrier will only make things worse. Instead of just her tower, her city being wiped out by monsters, it’ll be the world.
Maybe it’s not just Cadence I need to break through to . . .
I hesitate on the edge of reality, ghosts or nightmares trembling at the verge of my awareness, and peer through the phantom walls and floors as the golden woman ascends. She’s human, though it’s an easy fact to forget. Maybe she does care in her own twisted way.
And maybe that’s the problem. Maryam cares too much and too narrowly. She cares only about those she calls her ‘children,’ the helpless, mindless drones trapped in here with her, suffocating under the weight of her rules and regulations. She has stolen so much from them. From me, come to that. And for those weighed down by the burden of her repressive love, she’ll sacrifice the whole world. Whether that is a metaphorical or a literal sacrifice doesn’t seem to matter to her in the slightest. And, insanely, Cadence has chosen to be on this madwoman’s side.
I’m desperate for some good news—but when I move to step across the boundary between real and other, the air thickens as if dozens of reaching hands snatch at me, pressing, warding me off. I struggle against my ghosts, careful not to look into their faces, helpless not to. Their features waver, despairingly human one moment, distorted and empty-eyed the next.
Ange has not yet joined them, and that gives me both comfort and the strength to shoulder the nightmares aside and drop into my field of wildflowers, snow-capped mountain peaks springing up to hide the horizon. Instead of the ocean, a clear pool. Instead of trees, reeds rustling in a gentle breeze. Warmth and peace and . . . no Ash.
Still, he is on the road and has every excuse not to be here yet.
There is much to love about the dreamscape, not least of which is the absolute control it affords me. It’s easier to bend it to my will when I am alone, when it is simply a matter of creation and not a contradiction of another’s will. I quiet my racing heart and even out my ragged breath with no more than a thought. When a golden flower catches my eye, I merely blink and it is blue, or pink, or gone in a satisfying puff of petals. I frown at my reflection in the water and change it, making the skin even, the eyes wider, the hair longer, shinier.
After the infuriating helplessness of the waking world, it’s refreshing to spend time in a place where every whim is instantly fulfilled. When the gentle loveliness of my sheltered meadow becomes dull, I replace it with a storm at sea, the waves crashing around and then over me. When the noise becomes too much, I sink below the surface and whirl dizzily on the currents. After a time, the press of the water is suffocating, so I dismiss it, walking through the weightless fronds and past a very surprised octopus squirming in midair.
But the ocean is alien at the best of times, and without Ash, it only brings back unsettling memories, so I wipe the slate clean and loll around on candy-coloured clouds in a comfortably featureless space, toying with transparent models of turbines and irrigation lines, solar cells and planting rods, wondering if I’ve understood the function well enough from those brief glimpses in Under and Nine Peaks to tweak the forms with any success.
Maryam’s words are still worming their way under my skin. Just suppose we stop her—dismantle her whole toxic system—how will we survive? What will it take to clothe and house and feed whoever’s left? Do we try to march them all through the mountains to Nine Peaks and turn them over to the elders? Maybe send them on ships to the mysterious island Ash hopes holds his long-lost parents? Or—if the threat of the Mara is removed, the barrier broken—what would it look like to start over right here?
It may be crumbling and toxic and flooded and monster-overrun, but it’s home. And if I feel that way, maybe other survivors will, too. So I shift the fabric of reality, weaving a city out of sand and twigs, fitting together simple devices from the imaginary rubble to churn water from the streets and warm the patched and rebuilt towers.
The occasional surprised-looking seagull coasts through with a disgruntled squawk to let me know I’m doing creation wrong, but after a time I reach that slow, empty point between yesterday and tomorrow where I am renewed. It’s like sleeping with my eyes open. Everything goes pale and insubstantial.
And then I’m back at sea. Or—not quite. Standing on a tree-lined bluff overlooking a rocky shore, peering out over a dark, angry sea—and a ship tossed in a storm.
“Finally,” a girl says from behind me. “He said I had to stay behind since we couldn’t reach you. Ghost, I mean. We didn’t expect it to happen so fast, but he said there was no time to waste. That you needed to know we found them. He insisted.”
Her voice is faint, the vision slipping in and out of focus. These waves aren’t nearly as tall as the ones I conjured on the other side for my own amusement, but they’re ten times as terrifying. That fragile-looking shell they toss so easily is all that provides scant shelter to Ash and, presumably, his other friends.
“Is this enough?” the girl pants, her face strained but vaguely familiar. “This sort of thing isn’t my strong suit. We weren’t even sure I would be able to reach you through this forest. But Hatif thought it could be connected, even though we’ve come so far. He said it’s all one forest.”
The familiar whorls of the forest’s gift shift under my hands like threads. There’s an eerie sensation of being caught in a web, gossamer threads spanning out to form a massive, intricate fabric spread across more land than my mind can encompass; grand trunks and knotted roots the elephantine beacons of a vast city, brilliant with the churn of life; the tiny organisms in the soil beneath infinitesimally tiny, mere pinpoints in the web, but every part of it dancing with the secret language of the trees. All one forest indeed.
I shake the overwhelming vision off. “You’re one of Ash’s squad.”
She frowns. “Aleya of Spectre. Or—you’d better call me Min. Ghost says you’re not her, not Cady. Not one of us.”
Am I supposed to be bothered by that? She seems like she’s focusing too hard to be snide, but maybe she’s just gifted. She looks a little like Ange, now that I think of it—and feels just as reassuringly dauntless.
I don’t usually like people on instinct, but in less fraught circumstances, and assuming she didn’t mean to sound quite as dismissive as she had, I might enjoy spending time around this razor-sharp girl. I tear my gaze from her back to the ship. “How long?”
“I can’t hear you. Pull from your end, or—” Sweat beads on her forehead.
The landscape around us wavers, flickering in and out. I press both hands into the satiny surface of the forest’s gift, wrapping my fingers around the anchor to strengthen the unseen bridge between us, drawing on the vast forest’s energy.
Rain lashes down, though I don’t feel its sting. The wind whips the trees and hurls spray deep inland. Lightning splits the sky. A hollow roar shakes the very air around us.
“How long will it take him to return?” I shout.
She winces. “Too loud. I can hear you fine now. Crossing shouldn’t have taken long. Storm came up out of nowhere.”
The rain seems to move in sheets, snatching the ship from sight one moment, parting around it in a glimpse of surging waves and dipping mast the next.
“They’ll be alright. It’s a boat.” Boats are meant to go on water, right? It’s lasted this long. Min’s—oh, forget it. If Ash called her Aleya, I will too. Aleya’s long, dark eyes are narrowed against the storm, strands torn from her tight knot whipping in the tempest. She makes a low noise that I choose to interpret as agreement because the alternative is unthinkable.
“You’re really ahead of schedule, finding the ship so quickly. You can’t have spent hardly any time searching. And if the crossing was supposed to have been fast, then even with the storm, they can’t have far left to go, right?” I’m babbling as if I can drown out the storm with just words. “Plus, it’s an island. That means there can only be so much land on the other side before you hit more water. So they’ll be back by tomorrow, probably. A
nd then you’ll need some time to travel south. But if your gear is in good condition, that’s, what, only a few days tops?”
“No. There’s no way we can keep up this pace. They will reach the island today.” She swallows hard. “They will. It’s not far from the mainland here. If it were clear, you could see the opposite shore. Even with the storm . . .”
I nod encouragingly, stomach churning with sick fear at the way her voice has gone low and cold.
She continues, “The island is vast. They will have to travel for some time on the other side. It could take a few days, maybe more. It wasn’t possible to load the bikes, send them over. Putting aside whatever time it takes to petition for help—and assuming Ghost can even convince them to send anyone—that’s up to a week before we can expect to hear anything. And from here, it’s another few days’ travel at least to reach you. We’ll have to work our way back east to the main route before we can head south and then back out to the coast.”
She tears her gaze from the sea, fierce. “You stall for a week at least. Could be two, maybe three. You hold it together until then. Understand?”
“That’s too long. The barrier—it’s already dying. They’re killing it, inch by inch. I don’t know how long we have—”
She turns back to the storm, teeth gritted against its force, forehead knotted. “So slow them down. We’ll help, but there’s only so much—”
The rain parts, but the surface of the waves still boil. The ship tips up at an impossible angle, a dark mass clinging like tangled seaweed to the opposite end. A strand whips up, coiling. The clean line of the hull buckles.
Aleya spits a low string of curses and pulls power from the forest, fraying our connection. It pools in her free hand, flame-bright as she takes aim at the attacking sea-monster—and the storm closes in.
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