The Night Country

by Melissa Albert

  When I said nothing, she fell back in disgust. She plucked the untouched waffle off my plate and slid out of the booth. “Thanks for breakfast.”

  I watched her go. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think of what to say. I sat there in the grainy diner light, breathing in the smell of hash browns and coffee and hot batter, thinking of the day I learned her tale. The day I learned she was deathless.

  * * *

  We were lying in Prospect Park in the shifting shade of a blackgum tree. It was one of those endless late fall afternoons, breezes mixing cool and cold, everything you could see stuck on the bright edge of dying. And I was happy. Really, uncomplicatedly happy. Watching the hours drift by with my friend, my first real friend, who wasn’t Finch or some kid briefly foisted on me by coincidence—same apartment complex, same lunch period, same need for protective social cover. I felt settled in my skin.

  “Dogs in strollers,” she was saying. “Dating people you met on a phone. Coupons.”

  She was naming Earthly shit that didn’t make sense to make me laugh. After about the twentieth thing (“Vending machine hamburgers. Why?”) she fell quiet a while, long enough that I thought she was asleep. Then she spoke.

  “I want to tell you something.”

  Her voice was so serious I started to sit up.

  “No. Just let me say it like this.”

  I lay back down. I listened to her fingers stripping fallen leaves, the wind imitating the ocean.

  “I want to tell you my tale. Of the time when I was called Ilsa, and the night I fell in love with Death.”

  I looked straight up into the tree’s skittish leaves, and the pieces of hard sky between them, and listened.

  18

  I was a girl born for bad luck. That’s what they told me, in the village where I grew up. Full of hard old men and harder women, and winters so lean you could see your bones through your skin by the end of them.

  I don’t know how it is for you, but I have memories of my tale from above and below. Do you know what I mean? I remember all the parts of it that the Spinner spun—my brothers dying one by one, my father long gone, my mother growing old in front of my eyes, old before she was thirty. I remember—everything that came after.

  But I remember other things, too. Little ones. Things the tale couldn’t have had any use for. Like shooting a rabbit right through the eye on my very first go—I wasn’t even aiming for it, I’d never have gotten within a mile if I’d tried. I cried and cried. One of my brothers painted pretty things for me, made a little doll I liked to carry around by its seedpod head. That can’t have been in your grandmother’s storybook, could it?

  That’s not important, though. What I meant to tell you about is Death. He’s a wily fucker, slippery as oil, and he’s been taunting me since I was old enough to know it. I caught him when I was small. I shouldn’t have seen him, only the dying ever do. And he was there for my father, not me. But I saw him, all right, and he knew it, and slipped away like a back-door man. Six times after that he came for my family—for all my six brothers, one by one—but he never had the nerve to let me see his face again.

  There were tricks you could use to catch him. To delay him, confuse him, turn him away—water and earth, copper and heartwood. I tried them all, but nothing worked.

  I grew up trying to catch Death, but Death never turned around and caught me. He let me get grown enough to marry, old enough to try to have my own family—to make more of the living I could fight Death to keep. But then the boy I meant to marry got sick, and I knew Death was on his way. That wicked old wolf, that’s what my mother called him. But I’d seen him, and she hadn’t, and she got it wrong. He had skin the color of chestnuts dug out of the coals and eyes like … like the shine of sun on rain, when they both come at once. Or like a cat’s eyes when you look at them from the side, that clear kind of silver. Eyes that see everything, and skin you so fine you don’t feel it till you’re already bleeding.

  By then I’d decided he would not take another thing from me. I grew up with nothing six brothers hadn’t gotten to first, I had to scrap with starving boys just to get my share. I wasn’t about to let that pale-eyed bastard take my husband before I could even marry him.

  I came to my betrothed’s sickbed with offerings: the soul of a songbird, songs to scatter ashes by. Then I crushed the offerings under my foot, because fuck Death. He can be killed, just like any man, and I’d be the one to do it if it came to that.

  And he showed. He came for the boy I loved, and I was there waiting for him. I was ready to die just to show him I meant it, just to prove you can’t take absolutely everything from a girl who’s got nothing.

  But what he took was my hand. In his. When he did it I forgot every little thing: the boy on the bed. The smell of sickness. My dead father and stolen brothers and my skin all sticky with sparrow’s blood. Death walked me right through the wall of the sickroom, and into another part of the world, a palace where a king lay dying. I watched him take the king’s life: it took the form of a little colored light. You could just look at it and know what kind of man he’d been, what kind of king.

  We traveled all over the Hinterland that night, taking lives away. I saw how heavily they weighed on Death, how he wasn’t a master but a servant. And I guess I fell a little in love with him. With his life: the freedom, the duty.

  I was different by morning. When Death dropped me back home, back into my tight fist of a life, he told me the boy I loved would live. That his life was a gift to me, for serving a night as Death’s companion. Like showing someone the entire sea, then giving them a thimble of salt to remember it by.

  After that night, I forgot the boy I loved. Thom, his name was, but I made myself forget that name. I waited for Death to return to me. I followed sickness like a plague wagon, and waited for accidents. You never had to wait long, in our village. But Death stayed away. He passed over our village for an entire season.

  I figured out then that he was as stubborn as I am, and I’d have to go find him myself. By then I knew I didn’t really love him, but I needed him to know he couldn’t do what he did. You can’t tease a girl with the whole of a world, then think she isn’t gonna come after you for another taste.

  I thought I’d set a trap for him. I’d bait the trap with one of the things he carried, in that canteen around his neck: all the little lives he peeled away, all those colored lights.

  It was an accident the first time. I killed someone who was trying to kill me. Not that I’m making excuses for it. I won’t make excuses for any of it. When that man’s shitty little flicker of a life didn’t draw Death in, I thought I’d try again. And again. I’d make myself Death’s rival, if he wouldn’t take me as his companion. I killed the worst kinds of folk at first. Then I stopped worrying so much. I’d kill anyone who struck me wrong, whose face I didn’t like. Without meaning to, Death had taught me the trick of it: a person’s life hides in their face, right there in plain sight. You can reach in and grab it if you’ve been taught how. I’d watched him all that night, I was a quick study. Before him I couldn’t even see their life-lights; after I couldn’t look away. They told you everything: who they’d been and would be. If they deserved what I was doing to them. If they didn’t.

  Death got wind of what I was doing eventually. I bet it made him mad. I still like to think about that, even though, I’m warning you now, this story doesn’t end so well for me.

  It wasn’t all bad. I saw all the corners of the world. I saw its shores and its mountains and its valleys and every town. But I knew it through the creatures that lived in it, most of them as miserable as I was, and I never managed to just settle. Live another kind of life. I guess I couldn’t have, not while the Spinner was watching, but like I said, I’m not making any excuses.

  Then there was the night I met a little old man who made me an offer so good I should’ve known the only thing to do was bury him and his offer at the bottom of the Hinterland Sea. But I was desperate. By then I had a canteen full of stol
en lives, and the weight of them was killing me. Sometimes I wish they’d finished the job.

  The old man showed me a way to enter the land of Death: he gave me something to drink, something that turned the world’s colors to gray, till all I could see against all that foggy nothing was a length of golden thread. Right there, at my fingertips. I pulled myself along it, hand over hand. I followed it through water, right down into the land of Death. I walked through his cold mineral forests, past lakes of frozen fire. The lives around my neck were whispering to me, as if they knew Death was close and thought he’d give them peace at last.

  I walked into his ugly palace, unafraid. Well, a little afraid. It was a trap, of course. Everyone I’d ever killed was waiting for me in Death’s hall. I thought they were there to kill me, too. When I saw the way Death looked at me—like I was nothing, like the life I’d turned over to finding him meant nothing—I think I wanted them to.

  But Death wanted to set the price I’d pay. He wouldn’t let them kill me.

  Instead he took something from me. Something so small you never think you’d miss it. The thing that hides behind your life-light: he took my death. Perfect punishment, right? Who knew Death was a poet?

  Life is all that’s left to me now, much good it does me.

  19

  I sat alone in an all-night diner, no idea where to go next.

  I read the rest of my book. I ordered toast and ate it, after Sophia’s picked-over feast had been cleared away. I drank my coffee; it’d have to do me for sleep. When I couldn’t put off leaving any longer, I stood, dropping a tip big enough to cover the hours I’d spent squatting.

  Outside the air was a soft blue-gray and the birds were testing their voices. I let my fingers close around my pocketknife as I watched a few cars go by. A man on a bike with a radio lashed to its handlebars, scattering timpani. A woman in a cleaner’s uniform, shouldering a heavy purse. In a bus shelter across the street, a little girl in a hooded sweatshirt leaned against the dirty plastic, looking down at her feet. I watched her a while, but she never looked up.

  And all the time I was worrying at a riddle: Where do you go when you have nowhere to go?

  If you’re Hinterland, you go to the Hell Hotel.

  Maybe it was a bad idea to get any closer to Daphne and our bloody-fingered brethren right then, but I had the thought that it would be better to embed myself among them than to always wonder where they were. Or maybe I was just out of ideas, and incredibly tired.

  This time, the lobby was empty. Nobody sat behind the desk, or came when I rang the bell. I waited, impatient, the duffel bag I’d stuffed the night before slung over my shoulder. There was a board of keys hanging behind the bellhop’s desk, more keys than empty spaces. When nobody showed after a few minutes, I chose the first three digits of Ella’s phone number—room 549—and headed to the fifth floor.

  If I’d stayed in this room when I was eight, just after reading A Little Princess, I might’ve loved it. It felt much higher than it was, like a garret tucked away into the eaves. Or a pigeon’s nest. Decades of smoke had baked the walls as yellow as teeth, and a single painting hung on them like a poppy seed: a tiny, intense portrait of a mermaid sunning herself, her hair layered on with a paint knife.

  There was a tuft chair and a dresser and a desk with a Bible in it, half-hidden under an age-stiffened issue of TV Guide. The bed was lumpy, the bathroom not to be spoken of. I made a mental note to pick up Clorox wipes. I set my toothpaste and face wash next to the sink and drank a mugful of water. There was no reason for it to taste different here than at home, but it did.

  When I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I lay down and looked out the window. From my bed I could see the gray face of the apartment building across the street, and a sliver of sky. Somewhere, someone was listening to music. You couldn’t tell from which direction the bass was sneaking in. I had to work later, I remembered dimly, though it was hard to believe any part of my life might remain the same. I felt much farther than a few miles from home.

  I drifted off around eight a.m. and woke up gasping. I’d been dreaming something. It had the deep-water texture of a hotel dream, anonymous and heavy. Inside it, someone had been speaking to me. I could feel their words inside my ears, but I couldn’t recall them.

  Before I left Brooklyn, I’d sent Ella a text to confirm I was alive, then turned off my phone. When I turned it on to check the time, it jittered with notifications I didn’t want to read. I looked up the nearest reputable hotel on Google Maps and texted her a link.

  Here’s where I’m staying. Just for a little while. I’m safe and I’m sorry and I love you.

  Seconds after I sent it, the phone began to ring. I held it to my chest, letting it vibrate through my sternum. After it stopped, a text came through.

  Come home.

  I turned it off again.

  It was already past three, and I had to be at work in an hour. I headed down to the lobby, figuring I’d find somewhere to eat before heading to the bookstore. Felix was back behind the desk; when he saw me he beckoned me over.

  “Hey,” I said. “I should tell you, I took a—”

  “Room 549?” His eyes were flat. They gave nothing away.

  “Oh. Yeah. You weren’t here, so I just…”

  “It’s not a problem. Daphne told me you were coming.”

  I frowned. I’d decided that morning to come here. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Sophia. “Daphne said I was coming? Are you sure?”

  He was writing my name and room number in a red leather–covered book, pretending he was too busy to hear me. “Check your mailbox, by the way. It looks like you’ve got something.”

  My hand was on his arm before I knew what I was doing, grabbing up a fistful of sleeve.

  “I’ve got a letter?”

  Whip quick, he peeled my hand away. “Watch yourself, ice queen,” he growled. The thing that sparked in his eyes might’ve been anger, or it might’ve been fear. He jerked his chin toward the elevator. “Mail’s that way.”

  An archway to the left of the elevator opened onto a corridor lit by a single orange-shaded bulb, honeycombed on either side with wooden mailboxes. I traced my way to box 549. Inside it was a heavy ivory envelope, unaddressed. I teased out the trifolded page and read it standing up.

  Dear Alice,

  It’s hard not to think of these letters like I’m writing in a diary when I don’t know if you’re reading them, or if they’re really just for me. I had a therapist once who made me keep a diary, except she wanted me to bring it in each week and read it to her. So mainly I just used it to write Dragon Age fanfic. I won’t do that to you.

  Instead I’ll tell you a thing I can’t stop thinking about. When I was little my mom used to make me pray, and I’d always pray for magic to be real. And when I wished on stars or at 11:11 or blew on a dandelion I’d say it in my head: let magic be real. But ever since I found out it’s very very real, I don’t wish anymore. I don’t pray. I want things, but I don’t wish them. I don’t know what to think about that. I don’t know that I really have a point. I’m just thinking about it because the world keeps getting bigger, so much bigger than I thought it could be even when I was wishing. I’m using world as a euphemism, of course. I just realized I’ve seen almost as many worlds now as I’ve seen states in the U.S. My dad would hate that. He always acted like life ended outside of New York. I’ve thought about writing to him, too, but I wouldn’t know where to begin. It’s better writing to you. I like pretending I’m talking to you. I like imagining you making your don’t-waste-my-time face when I do it. That was a good face. Generally speaking, you’ve got a good face. Now I’m just rambling.

  Maybe I should tell you more. About where I am. Why I am. What I’m doing.

  I left the Hinterland. Did I tell you that? It’s hard to remember what I’ve written and what I’ve just thought about. I’m talking to you all the time in my head now. When I go to sleep and when I wake up.

  Days run togethe
r, but I guess it’s been a couple of months since you left. In my head you’re in New York now, and it’s May. You’re sitting in Washington Square Park eating a paleta from a cart and you’re wearing what you were wearing that time I saw you in Central Park, those jeans with the holes in the knees and that striped shirt. You’re using my letters as bookmarks.

  I want you to know that, all promises aside, I’m going to write to you again.

  It took me a while to see anything but the letter, hear anything but my own breath.

  A couple of months. As the days counted down on my side of the divide, just two months had passed in the Hinterland. Finch was seeing me through the haze of sixty days, while out here, nearly two years had gone.

  I hid a while in the cool of the corridor, hearing the words in his voice. Unsure if I was even remembering it right. How did the magic work? Could I write back to him somehow? I turned the letter over and dug a pen out of my bag, pressing the page against a bare patch of wall.

  What would I say if I was sure he would read it?

  I forgive you.

  Do you forgive me?

  I talk to you all the time in my head, too.

  Maybe I’d pick up somewhere in the middle, wherever we’d left off. He’d always done more of the talking. It was a minefield for me, making conversation. I’d spent too much time with people who forgave me my conversational sins: Ella, who loved me anyway; Sophia, living by the arcane rules of another world; Edgar, so deeply eccentric he wouldn’t know inappropriate if it jumped out of a first edition and bit him.

  Finch was different. We’d wanted things from each other, we’d been using each other. He seemed stable enough to steel me when Ella’s disappearance left me entirely alone, and I thought I was trespassing on his kindness, his curiosity, and, yeah, his crush, but the terrain between us was more complicated than that. When I learned he’d been using me for my magic—for my proximity to magic, my ability to pull him into the whirlpool of Althea’s worlds, which looked a whole lot prettier from the outside—I might’ve shut the door on him.