The Midnight Before Me

by Elizabeth Lo

  Once again, I give a nod so small I doubt my head even moved.

  “Yeah.” I focus on a point on the ground to try and cool my burning face.

  So he knew already. That’s a bit embarrassing.

  “You’re pretty recognizable. With that hair and those eyes being a visual confirmation all on their own.”

  “Oh… yeah.”

  He doesn’t say any more.

  “But you know…” I continue, refilling the empty air. “The demonstration wasn’t as simple as a one-day event for me. A few days after it had happened, my brother died. Just like that. Gone. Right in front of my eyes. Right in front of everyone’s eyes.

  “Everyone started pitying me. They would tell me things like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ or ‘I’ll be there for you. I care for you.’ But did they?

  “Soon everyone went back to their normal selves. The world has moved on from that day even if I haven’t. Maybe at the time, it was comforting to hear these words. But then, it started morphing into something else. Pity turned into whispers behind my back. People stopped seeing me as ‘me’ but as ‘the cursed girl.’ Some of them became scared of me. They saw me as a monster. Which… I don’t blame them for. That’s small-town life. They would believe you if you told them the Royal Nuagepanthère was actually green.

  “So eventually, those rumors turned into people being unnecessarily scared of me… sending me death threats… I was once hunted down by some people trying to prove my curse was real.” I draw my feet together at the memory. “The rumors started to evolve into pure nonsense and isolated me from the world. And of course… not all of it was complete lunacy. I started to shut myself in my own house… Until I became the me now… a scared, useless girl who couldn’t even save her brother.”

  My breath catches in my chest. A knot has formed in my throat—a tight knot that makes me feel like choking. My hands are cold, but my cheeks have turned into stovetops. The words just spilled out of my mouth, overflowing as if they had been waiting to be spoken.

  “Everyone’s absorbed in their own little worlds, it seems,” I say mostly to myself. “Control over life is an illusion. And that’s the most frustrating part about it.”

  Lafayette’s magic seems to still for a split second.

  “How so?” he asks in a voice as quiet as a hush in the wind. His hands rest on the latch of a box. “In what way is it an illusion?”

  “Because… At one point, you have to realize… that…” My voice breaks. “Even the smallest things we take for granted… like air. Clothing. Food. Water… Happiness. All of it can be taken in the blink of an eye. Without a second thought. ‘So that’s why,’” I quote, “‘you need to learn to… find peace in the illusion sometimes, before you’re forced out of it for good.’”

  “Who taught you that?” he says quietly, though there’s a genuine question in his voice.

  “My brother.”

  “Ah, the dead one.”

  I flinch, and a slight sly smile takes form on his lips.

  “What happens,” he says, “when the illusion disappears?”

  Pensive quiet passes. Because both of us seem to know the answer.

  “Can I help you pack?” I ask, instead. “You still haven’t answered my question about our destination, you know.”

  He stiffens a little.

  “Get a bag for yourself ready,” he says woodenly. “They come with a basic supply checklist in case an idiot forgets the protocol, or a civilian such as yourself might need it. As for where we’re going… Well, let’s just say that there won’t be a ‘we’ for long.”

  Instead of asking the obvious question of where I should go, I ask, “Where are you going?”

  He spins around and walks across the small space to gather some other things, then drops a bag in front of me. It takes a few seconds for me to register the first item on the list as I wait for his response.

  “What was your brother like?” he asks instead, ignoring my question.

  “Hmm…” Fair enough. I shouldn’t pry. “Bla—My brother liked math. Everyone always assumed he was just a magician, but he actually preferred to study math and physics. But… I always thought he would have made a good philosopher, too.”

  “I see. Quite the scholar.”

  “Indeed, indeed. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, no… You just seem to admire him a lot.”

  “I do,” I say, a small smile sneaking its way onto my face.

  I finally take the time to get a good look around the cave as I go from box to box for different things.

  It still intrigues me to be in this little hideout. Who knew the military actually had secret caves hiding in the woods with reinforcements.

  But even more intriguing, is that mass of mottled black clothes practically soaked in a stiff darkness, off to the side, laying conspicuously atop one of the boxes. I still don’t know why there was so much blood on his clothing. At this point, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my or Lafayette’s blood since it seems we both only got lots of bruises and a few minor scratches. Which then leads to the question of what Lafayette was doing in the first place before we crossed paths…

  He notices me staring immediately.

  “Curious?”

  “Are you going to explain what happened to your clothes yet?” I ask cautiously, nodding at the pile.

  He opens his mouth to answer, but then closes it to rethink.

  “A dragon spit on me,” is what he decides on saying. He zips and buckles his finished pack and goes on to polish his silver pistol.

  “What?” I laugh.

  He shrugs.

  “Yeah. You know. Got mad at me for stepping on its territory and then… Splat.”

  Though I continue to laugh, he just smiles.

  So it wasn’t a joke.

  I comb a few fingers through my hair again. “Fearsome dragon, then?”

  “You could say I was a knight that interrupted the dragon on its daily business just to slaughter it for fun. So thus, I have this lovely garment left as evidence of my not-so-heroic feat.”

  I just nod, not sure what else to say. I guess in his own way, he’s answered my question.

  “So,” he starts, regaining his composure. “Do you have a dragon?”

  “Hmm… I guess I do. But it’s a dragon I know I’ll lose the fight against.”

  He raises an eyebrow at me.

  “Hmmm? Go on.”

  “It… it’s hard to put into words right now… I guess my dragon is just… too strong?”

  “Oh?”

  “I mean… I know what I have to do to defeat it… But I think it will take me down with it when I do.” Smile. Smile, Midnight, as if it’s just a joke. “It sounds so exaggerated, doesn’t it? Never mind.”

  His eyes soften for a moment, but being in the dark, it might just be my imagination.

  “I see,” he says so quietly I can barely hear him. “But maybe all dragons are like that, don’t you agree?”

  “Indeed, indeed.” I snag a water filter from a box. “Dragons, am I right? They can just never mind their own business.”

  From the corner of my eye, I catch a smile from him. At least that’s one victory I can attain. For such a cold person, he has a surprisingly warm smile.

  “So…” he starts, sitting down after finishing his pack. “Are you ready to fully explain to me why you were flying around Galviton yesterday?”

  It takes me a moment to register his question.

  “Nope,” I say. “Probably won’t be for a while. But… regardless of my reason, it doesn’t really make much of a difference to you, does it? Since you’re not going to turn me in or anything.”

  I know I’m prodding the bear a bit, but I have a sneaking suspicion that something’s off with Lafayette.

  His eyes gaze at me with an unreadable expression.

  He shrugs. “It’s a pain, that’s all. And there’s no one to turn you in to anyway.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “Hmmm… I gues
s you could say it’s because the military is having some internal problems at the moment so they can’t really afford to care about other things.”

  “Oh, okay.” I think his movements are getting more robotic. “So then… what does that make you? You talk almost as if you’re a separate entity from the military.”

  “Ah… Well… I guess I’m just so skilled they sent me out on my own.” He smiles as if that incomplete answer could satisfy me.

  “That’s not the case, is it,” I say. “It doesn’t make sense why they have someone as skilled as yourself patrolling while we’re at peace if they’re short of numbers like you say.”

  “So?” He’s still trying to lie.

  I sigh, feeling a bit bad for cornering him like this.

  “So why are you really here, Mr. Lafayette Falcon? You’re not on a solo mission or a patrol, are you.”

  His eyes are already a distinctly golden color separating him from the majority of Falcons, but now those eyes seem to hone in on me with scarily detached cold-bloodedness.

  “Well… Looks who’s being the clever one.” He crosses his arms and leans back. No more jokes, I see. “Do you really want to know?”

  It seems I got it exactly right.

  “No, actually.” I grin at him. “Your response gave me all I needed to know.”

  “Which was?”

  “I just wanted to make sure the military isn’t involved, that’s all. I don’t quite like the idea of wearing a necklace of rope. You know?”

  His face relaxes.

  “Fair enough.”

  “But…” I say, laughing. “You really have an intense glare. It made me nervous for a second there.”

  “Yeah? I’ve heard that before. People liked to call me the ‘King of Snakes’ because of it.”

  “Oh, I have a nickname too—‘Demon Eyes.’”

  “Doesn’t the name make it all the more fun?”

  “Hmmm… sometimes.”

  He grins.

  “Oh. You know what…” He pushes himself off of the box and grabs something from another. There’s a packet of something in his hand and a strange capsule of some sort in the other.

  After soaking the packets in the capsule, which I realize holds heated water, he hands me a packet and rips open one for himself.

  Ah, food…

  When’s the last time I ate?

  “Good?” he asks.

  “It’s heaven,” I say on behalf of my stomach.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “Huh. Now that’s a first.”

  I chuckle and eat.

  “Push a nuagepanthère skyward with just wind, and you would probably think so too.” And unfortunately, it seems that though my two bodies share a magic supply, they’re most definitely not sharing a food supply.

  “Makes me glad I’m not a magician,” he says.

  “But then how did you survive the fall—”

  “Man,” he cuts in suddenly. “I haven’t had a casual conversation with someone like this in so long…”

  “Aw… why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess people get easily scared off by things like position when that’s the only thing they can see about you.”

  “…What was your position, by the way?”

  He pauses.

  “Lieutenant colonel. The one who tells the company what to do.”

  “Aren’t you… a little young for that sort of position?”

  He grins at me.

  “Well, you’re looking at the youngest lieutenant colonel in Galvitonian history… so yeah, I’d say I’m a little young for it.”

  “How’d you get to that position so fast?”

  “Lots of brownie points.”

  “Oh? Is that a good thing? Being… promoted so quickly?”

  “Nope. Not at all. It’s a pretty…” He stops to take a breath. “Pretty boring position.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. No more infantry. Well, I suppose it’s not as bad as being General of War. The previous general was so bored he hung criminals whenever he got the chance. It just goes to show how a position can be worthy of fear—especially considering the fact that the late guy got his daughter to be queen of the country.”

  “Is the General now any better?”

  “Nope, not really. I mean, how do you think I climbed so fast? New Mr. General thought it would be a good idea to promote me to keep my retired old man hush hush about the whole hangings ordeal. Well… it also helps that I’ve been to war… twice, technically. Literally born into the military. Got a bunch of commendations. Apparently, it all justified slapping me as head of an entire unit.”

  “Do you at least enjoy some of your job?”

  “So many questions, so many questions…” he says. “But, no. There are some things in life that you do only because you’re used to doing them.”

  “I see.” I finish up my meal and go to search for the chocolate bars. “I’m just wondering… But about your soldiers’ strange behavior that you mentioned. Was it perhaps because of the Memento Mori curse?”

  He takes our trash and puts it away in a little container.

  “Probably.”

  “Do you think they’re suffering because of it?”

  There’s yet another ripple in his aura. A momentary glitch in his movements.

  “It’s that bad, isn’t it?” I read from his expression.

  As much as I want to pretend like maybe this isn’t as big a deal as Sucre and Phelix are making it… I guess I can’t assume that, can I.

  “No… Yes, well…” he stammers in the background.

  I feel a bit sick now. Knowing there’s nothing I can do to go around this. The walls of the cave are starting to close in too. They tend to do that when I feel complicated.

  Lafayette leaves his answer hanging and focuses on his packing.

  “Um… I’m going to step out for a moment for a breath of air. I’ll finish packing in a second,” I say, putting on that polite smile again and stepping out.

  I settle against one of the large boulders just outside the cave. The trees sway slightly in the chilly wind, yet the sun still shines down and warms my new dark clothing. It should be a tranquil setting. And yet my mind has suddenly become so chaotic it kind of scares me.

  I have received one of the most terrifying requests of all: To willingly die forever.

  And it seems this is the one I also can’t refuse.

  No… Just calm yourself, Midnight. What would Black do in this situation?

  He would probably say something along the lines of, “Think about this logically.”

  But if I do… then that would mean that I agree with everyone. Logically, it’s a fair trade. A life for a life, like Artemis said. To save people like Lafayette’s soldiers.

  Now, I just have to study the mechanics of this mysterious “spell” and then wait until someone says “jump” so I can ask them how far.

  Until then, what do I do with this body? Sucre seems set on me getting rid of this body… but honestly… I’m sure I’ll be able to kill it later when I need to, but for now, I’m not ready.

  Oh… How about that? He did tell me that Glorieux is in Hanbury right now. Since I have the means to, I should go find her. I should confirm how far gone she is with my own eyes instead of always taking Sucre’s word for it. Confirm she’s even alive.

  Lafayette pokes his head out of the cave. “What’re you doing out here?”

  Some of the leaves stuck in the camo cloth covering the cave entrance fall on his head as he fully emerges, wearing a long brown coat with lots of pockets and a bag in his left hand.

  “What’re you doing?” I ask back. “Leaving already?”

  He shrugs.

  “Yeah. I think I should be getting going now.”

  “Oh, okay.” No, wait. He’s leaving already? “Hey, is it okay if I go with you?”

  He raises his eyebrow at me.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “I mean, just until we get to a t
own or something. I… kind of don’t know where we are at the moment.”

  “Ah. …Right.” He stares down at the ground for a prolonged second, his mind trailing off somewhere. “Yeah. You can come along. You can. But… you ought to know something first… before you decide.”

  “Okay…?” I prepare to stand up, but he stops me.

  Instead of walking to the forest, he just sits back on the left of me, aligning his back perpendicular to mine against the rock.

  “But. Before I go on my long regale, is there something bothering you?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, but we can both tell I’m lying.

  I made it too obvious.

  “You seem to be concerned with my soldiers quite a bit.” He takes a swig of water from a canteen.

  “Well… I mean… yes. It seems to have affected you a lot. The curse.”

  He huffs, leans his head back, and stares up at the sky.

  “I suppose it did.”

  I use a stick to doodle swirls in the dirt.

  “If you had the chance,” I say quietly. “Would you help them if you could? Take out the dead spirits in their mind?”

  He tilts his head from side to side, debating.

  “Maybe. It would’ve been nice if the last I saw of them was themselves and not the echoes of themselves, I guess.”

  My hand tightens.

  “I see.”

  “Does this have something to do with your dragon?”

  “Maybe. Just a little bit.”

  Something about his sigh sounds heavy.

  “Got it. Though… you’ve made an error in your assumptions.”

  “Hmm? What?”

  “You assumed I actually cared about them.” He glances back at me, and I can see him raising his hand to run it through his hair again. “This is what I wanted to talk about. I should have told you this earlier, and you know, you probably won’t want to travel with me after this…”

  “You don’t know that,” I say, but his change in tone makes me fidget a little more.

  He takes a deep breath.

  “You know that tension in the soldiers I was talking about before? Well, I was the one who finally pushed them over the edge. I set off all the dominoes. By myself.” He runs a hand through his hair again. “It wasn’t by accident either. I wanted to, really. I wanted to break out of that monotony. And so I… kind of… the gun… I… you know. They all… just snapped when they heard a gunshot. And then… it all went downhill from there. Granted, they all thought they were possessed by some dead people and were all slightly insane, but… you know.” He looks down at his hands. “It was a massacre. It really was a massacre.”