Burn the Skies

by K. A. Wiggins

  Besides, the temptation to stay and do something about Liwan is at least partly out of fear of the barrier itself. It hurt. If the forest hadn’t pulled me out, I’m not sure I would have survived.

  I hesitate, hovering the barest breath away from one of the cracked, solid patches where Cadence has torn lives from the cursed dome. I might get trapped. I might get burned alive. And the most terrible of all horrors—I might join the lost ones, become yet one more tortured soul eternally decaying in its toxic embrace.

  I reach out, a quick tap against the hard surface. It stings on contact.

  Fluffy strokes my hand, concerned. Squishy rolls over to press its coolness against the slight burn. I curl around them, just for a moment, before disentangling Fluffy’s tendrils and slipping away from Squishy’s clinging wavelets.

  “Not for you. Stay here.”

  The moment I think I’ve pulled free, they grab hold once more. I should leave them behind, safe. On the other hand, the treespawn and—seaspawn, I guess?—have passed seemingly unscathed through every other landscape I’ve bumbled through, so maybe they can take care of themselves . . .

  And maybe I’m procrastinating because I really, really don’t want to touch—

  Pain.

  More than pain: Anguish. Suffering. Torment.

  But not just mine.

  Chapter 28: Shreds

  They’re not even people anymore, not really. They’re shreds of what was: a broken shriek, the gnawing of a bottomless hunger, the reflexive grasping of tendons long since severed.

  If I hadn’t run the undead gauntlet of the Mara’s prey before, this would be so much worse. But the edges of my own worlds have been bordered with the dead for so long now. At least these fragments are barely identifiable as human. They’re not waiting here to torture me; they’re simply lashing out in self-protection. The ground gold mixed into their undoing keeps them here, cementing them into place as they tear one another into continually lesser bits of wounded flesh and spirit.

  It doesn’t burn them, though, not like it would my kind. Not like it does me. This strange half-existence, or maybe my drone’s upbringing in Refuge, was supposed to have granted me some resistance to the gold, but I appear to be dreamwalker enough for this much of the powdered element to eat into me like acid.

  So I’m going to go out on a limb and guess there may be a time limit attached to this little experiment. Besides, you know, that whole great big, red, flashing countdown to the end of the world.

  I laugh, and wince, and dig my hands into the mass of shredded scraps of humanity, searching for a way into whatever remains of these, uh, remains’ inner life.

  It turns out there’s a threshold of pain and horror where you just kind of have to shrug and get on with it, ignoring the panic giggles, or lay down and die.

  And I’m not the only one who isn’t quite ready to die.

  The barrier’s muddy, sluggish current seems to be fuelled by the human scraps jostling for escape. And if there’s enough will left in them to fight after all these years, maybe there’s enough to grab hold of and—

  I reach for the dreamscape and nearly split apart. Hundreds of fragmented worlds open up before, and around, and through me. Too many.

  Squishy flows up, stretching to create a weightless bubble of protection around us. Fluffy unspools tendrils in every direction, pushing one reality aside while dragging us into the other.

  The resulting space is featureless: dim, and sluggish, and somehow thin, like a soap bubble about to pop. Squishy flows back into a compact ball. I focus. Spin my island of peace in place of the creature’s protection, taking a moment to review the essentials.

  At the moment, that means remembering I’m me, and Squishy is Squishy but also the sea, and Fluffy is Fluffy but also the forest, and whatever we’re in right now is . . .

  Uh. Well, it definitely is.

  It is only a scrap of once-life generating this reality, no longer even identifiable as human. But it’s still here. It’s still holding onto something important enough to give shape to this space. Which means it has a tenuous hold on at least one soul-deep longing or fear or—ah.

  There it is.

  Her spite pulls me into the shattered cavern of her deepest self. That’s really about all that’s left—darkness, and broken glass, and an amorphous sense of she and loathing and soul-deep desire for retribution.

  The few tatters of memory and hope for an unreachable future are wispy and colourless, but I capture and lace one after another through my fingers, ignoring the way they slice my skin, and then turn them back on themselves, working the scraps into the tiniest of webs, finding fine, translucent threads to add each time I’m sure I’ve finished.

  By the end, she’s still hardly more than a sliver of being.

  I don’t know her name. I don’t know what she looked like, who she loved or hated, what she feared or longed for. But I know that she was, that she lived and died and has remained trapped here for years upon years.

  There’s not enough left of her to bring her back to the fullness of the person she once was. There is no healing what she has become. But there’s a softening of her desperation and anger, a rounding-off of the grasping, grating edges of her.

  And when I pull back from her innermost self to her dreamscape—and then back further, into the shocking anguish of the barrier itself—I catch the grateful brush of her before she’s sucked into the churning mass. The other shards of once-life can’t hurt her now, and she won’t hurt them.

  Which . . . is exactly the opposite of what I’m here to accomplish. To strengthen the barrier, to help it stand against whatever Nine Peaks or Maryam can throw at it, Cadence included, I should be sharpening its components, stoking their desperation, not soothing it.

  The barrier’s dead zone—that is what I need to “heal.” Those scraps Cadence tore apart need to be stirred up again or replaced, and I’m not about to feed it new sacrifices—though I wouldn’t say no to Cadence bleeding on it again if she happened along.

  Squishy gives me a nudge to let me know it’s ready for another round. Fluffy rumbles agreement. I set my teeth and dive in once more. The dreamscape—any dreamscape—is harder to reach this time. The sea envelops me, protection against being pulled apart by the immeasurable force of too many worlds opening up at once. The forest reaches out to guide me into just one. But even cocooned in my island of safety, the pressure is crushing. It’s as if time itself moves differently. Each breath is an eternity, each blink a struggle against immense forces, even before I let my bubble collapse and immerse myself in the overwhelming inertia.

  I search for echoes of hate, resentment, jealousy, even, and come up short. But this place exists—which means the someone it’s tied to still exists in some form, beyond their own death, and the further destruction of whatever remained of them in the barrier.

  I don’t expect the thread that finally snags at my fingertips to speak of love, but it is unmistakeable. This scrap of humanity once loved so fiercely and so deeply it still echoes throughout the final vestiges of their soul.

  I follow that tarnished cord into the deepest recesses of his being. At first, there is nothing else. Even this one, solitary strand is indistinct and fraying. But when I twist it back on itself and go to tie off the end in a knot, another strand brushes against me, and another. Enough to braid together once and then again, remembering, as the light of his renewed fabric grows, to leave a few ends straggling. It won’t do to revive him but make her inert. Not yet.

  I leave him with a promise to come back and finish the job one day if I can.

  I barely have the energy left to claw my way from the barrier. The patch of cracked stillness on its churning surface—did it shrink? Does the sick lambency of the thing seem more vivid, the churning less sluggish?

  Fluffy squirms encouragingly, which is as close as I’m going to get to an answer before I drag myself into the safety of my own dreamscape and pass out.

  THE NOTES ARE LOW A
ND winding. Thrumming, almost. A lilting tune voiced but wordless, or else of some flowing language I don’t recognize. Soothing, yet desolate.

  “I thought you couldn’t come here.” I sit up, her hand falling from my head.

  The crooning stops.

  “I found a way.” Susan runs a work-roughened thumb across my cheek where the imprint of her skirt is slow to fade. “The forest has little respect for walls.”

  Fluffy chuckles and rolls around us, darting in to nudge her knee affectionately before resuming its joyous loops.

  “So? What is it this time?” I sweep the ground up into hard, straight-edged chairs, the kind you can’t stand to sit in for long. Squishy bobs to keep its balance on my knee and burbles a scolding.

  Susan searches my face, her own heavy with a sadness that hardens, after a moment, to flint. “Your childish insistence on getting your own way isn’t just hurting you, granddaughter. Don’t you go snapping at me when you’re the one who ran away from home.”

  Not my home. Not your grandchild. But we’ve been over that before. “If you think I’m going to apologize for being the only one who cared enough to try to help these people—”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing, granddaughter? Helping people? Because from what I hear, you’re about do more harm than we’ve seen in generations.”

  Ah. So she has been talking to Ash. Or maybe she’s back on speaking terms with the council in Nine Peaks. “I’m taking responsibility for my actions. Tell me, were you on the council already when they sent your child and grandchild off to die? At what point did you decide you were done ‘wasting’ people on trying to save innocents?”

  She draws a sharp breath. But instead of striking back, she reaches for Fluffy, running her fingers over its whorls absently. “I’m not here to discuss the past. I’m here for you. You don’t know what you’re doing. But you need to stop, before it’s too late.”

  “The only one who needs to stop is your council. Here I am trying to save the literal world, and you all decide the best thing to do isn’t to send backup but to blow us up?”

  “I’m not here to undermine the council’s rulings. Right or wrong, they’ve chosen their path. I am here to help you.”

  “Great—so you’ll stop the elders’ attack tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you have a way to stop Cadence directly?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve found a way for me to fight the Mara and end the threat that way, then?”

  “There is no fighting back, granddaughter. I’m here to help you survive what will come.”

  “Then stop wasting my time and stay out of my way.” I turn on my heel and head for the horizon.

  “Stay.” Her voice takes on a strange sort of echo. When I peer back over my shoulder, she’s not alone. A taller, younger woman stands beside her. I’ve seen her face before. Or rather, Ravel has. Cadence has. And I through them.

  Susan takes my mother’s hand and reaches out her other to the equally unfamiliar man who steps out of thin air to take it as easily as—oh. “They’re not real. You’re just dreaming them, like Ash dreams dancing flowers and fuzzy marching bands in and out of existence.”

  “They’re as real as you want them to be. I can give them back to you—if you stay.”

  My nails cut into my palm, the fist so tight my knuckles ache. “Who do you think I am? I don’t know these people. I don’t care.”

  She looks back coolly and nods. Ash flickers into existence, and Ange, and Lily, and—and then Cass. My hands fall slack at my sides. She continues bringing memories to life, one after another, familiar faces from Refuge and Nine Peaks alike. The last is Liwan, who gives me a smirk and a wave.

  “You’ll have everything you need. Everyone you want, as long as you or I remember them. Forever.” Sweat beads her forehead, but she stands tall at the side of her phantoms.

  This time, it’s a struggle to say, “I can’t stay. I have to go back. I’m running out of time.”

  “Time isn’t all you’re running out of.” Susan snags my wrist and pulls, twisting my elbow to turn my palm up. “Look.”

  The light shines through. Must be a side effect of exhaustion. If I focus on dreaming myself solid again—

  “You’re giving too much away,” Susan says without relaxing her grip. “You’re not trained. You shouldn’t even be able to heal. But you’ve been pushing yourself without safeguards or limits. You’re reaching well beyond the edges of your patients, drawing on your own reserves. It has to stop. You are not enough. You can’t save the world on your own, and if you keep trying, you’ll only destroy yourself before it ends. But it is ending—so rest now and find peace and safety here. There is no need to keep fighting.”

  I make a fist again, hiding the weakening of my existence from both of us, and yank free. I’ve faced temptation before. This time it isn’t even all that compelling. Run away and live in a fantasy while the world burns? Is that what she thinks I really want? “Did Ash put you up to this? I already said no.”

  I dive for the waking world before she can get a word out. But perhaps Susan isn’t so willing to let me go without a fight after all because the seam between realities is full of all too many of the faces I’ve just turned back from. The father, flesh peeling from bone, the mother, needle teeth gnashing, Liwan, eyes oozing darkness, and even Cass, reverted to the broken shell he’d been before I healed him.

  I push through, forcing my way through the illusion she has created to get to the real ghosts in the void between worlds but pop through into the waking world. No more an illusion than usual, then. All that effort I spent healing Cass, wasted. Did I screw up, somehow, or is that the way it is with ghosts?

  And if fully intact ghosts can’t be healed, at least not for long, not without reverting, what does that mean for the shredded souls of the barrier?

  Chapter 29: Captured

  Ash is calling for me.

  I need to check on the barrier, but he sounds desperate. When I reach him, he’s one of the last left standing. Refuge Force have him backed into a corner in the remains of Freedom’s blue hall. He won’t pull blades on humans, but his hand-to-hand skills have clearly benefitted from better training than the enforcers’. It takes a half dozen of them rushing him all at once, and even then, they don’t bring him down unscathed.

  “Oh, do shut up, lover,” Cadence says from behind a wall of enforcers in the center of the room.

  “Do you even know what that means, dead girl?” Ravel’s bloody nose and swollen lip mangle the words, but he manages a supercilious look despite the gleeful enforcers ensuring he doesn’t get up off his knees.

  Cadence darts a quick glance at Maryam for approval, gets the nod, and kicks him in the stomach. “Shut it, loser.”

  She giggles as if this is clever. How far she has fallen. At least when she was the ghost, she was actually funny. Sometimes. Actually, in hindsight, she was always pretty childish. But I’m letting her antics distract me from what I should be paying attention to, as usual.

  “Don’t react. I’m here,” I whisper.

  Ash coughs from under his own pile of enforcers, which is a reaction, but they don’t seem to be worried now that he’s safely pinned. Ravel chuckles, apparently assuming I’m talking to him, and then moans, spitting red.

  I roll my eyes. “I won’t ask what happened. Just, if you can, tell me what you need.”

  “—late,” Ash gasps.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “He means it’s too late, flame,” Ravel mutters. “All my fault, I’m afraid. Not that I won’t be happy to share the blame for the next couple hours or so. Plenty to go around.”

  “I take it you’ve been elsewhere, darling,” Maryam croons, overhearing. “Do I have you to thank for this one’s rebelliousness? And here I was thinking his painstaking upbringing was finally paying off. I do so hate being disappointed.”

  She leans down and tips Ravel’s chin up with one long nail.
He smiles blearily—and spits in her face. His keepers gasp, stumbling over themselves to babble apologies while wrestling him back from her. Maryam merely smiles, wiping off blood-laced saliva with deliberate care.

  “Perhaps his training was deficient. Such a waste. We’ll have to start over.” She turns to Cadence. “You play messenger instead, dear.”

  Cadence looks longingly at Ravel, clearly wishing for the opportunity to get another kick in, but he’s already being dragged away. Apparently, their working relationship in Refuge hasn’t endeared him to her.

  “He’s a creep, Cole. What do you expect?” she says. “I told you that from the start, but you never listen. Not that it matters anymore.”

  “I understand this was all your work, darling?” Maryam interrupts, addressing me directly. “I can’t imagine these good children could have found cause for complaint on their own. Not that going through a rebellious phase is unnatural, of course, but I hardly see a reason to let nature take its course when there are much superior alternatives. Wouldn’t you agree? You really were such a good little girl until just recently. Such a shame.”

  But I’m too busy chasing enforcers down the hallway to listen to her taunting. I have no idea what’s going on, and clueless is not the right position to be in when dealing with Maryam. “What happened?”

  “Things got a little out of hand,” Ravel whispers back. “We were trying to get people stirred up, you know? Jostle them out of complacency; convince them to run. Amy’s sob story worked a little too well—a lot of drones have brushed up against the unfairness of regulation a time or two. Not to mention, the desire to cut loose on occasion is pretty much universal. That kid you were trying to save, Liwan?”

  “The one you fed to the Mara to get into mommy’s good books?”

  He huffs. “Turns out he was kind of popular, too. You start talking about attacks from unknown enemies and the end of the world, maybe a few people get curious, but most cover their ears. But you start telling tales of kids getting killed and corruption from inside? Especially when there’ve been whispers of rebellion for a while now? Things start happening.”