Scavenger of Souls

by Joshua David Bellin

  “It’s time, Querry,” she said, the laugh gone from her voice. “It’s time to wake up.”

  Her face hovered over me. A bleariness around her eyes made me think she’d been crying. But then I focused—or she did—and the look was gone, replaced by a tender expression I had thought I’d never see again.

  “Hey,” she said softly.

  “Hey.”

  “You’re getting to be quite a project,” she said, her lips curving into a smile. “Not a lot of girls would’ve stuck around this long.”

  I tried to smile back, but a wince sliced through the smile. My body was a wilderness of pain. “Mercy?”

  She laughed, just as she had in my dream. Its details had grown slippery, but the laugh I remembered. “That’s the name.”

  “Where are we?”

  “I’m thinking you’re not in shape for a bunch of coordinates. So I’ll just say we’re by the river. And a good long way from where we were.”

  I tried to sit. Mercy looked doubtful, but she helped me up. That’s when I saw that my hands, my arms, my legs were coated in bandages. The wrapping around my right foot was lumpy, misshapen, not like the contours of my foot at all. I reached down to undo the covering, but Mercy gripped my hand.

  “Let it heal,” she said.

  “What happened?”

  Her face hesitated, but she answered. “Whatever you did back at the altar burned you pretty bad. So bad the control cuff melted and fused with bone. Tyris had to take most of the foot off.”

  “Tyris is here?”

  “They’re all here,” she said. “Come on, let’s get you up.”

  Balancing against her, I stood and took a look around. I recognized the place instantly. It was the site where we’d laid Laman Genn to rest, back when I was a member of Survival Colony 9 and Aleka its new commander. His tombstone protruded from the soil, maybe tilted a little from what it had been. The inscription remained unchanged. We’d left this place in search of the mountains . . . how long ago? Days, weeks, months flowed into each other like dunes in the dusty ground.

  “How did we get here?” I asked.

  “Slowly. But surely.”

  “But—” I knew this was a stupid thing to say, but my mind was too tangled to say it any other way. “Did I die?”

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” she said. “Your heart stopped for a brief time, so I guess that counts.”

  “But now I’m . . .”

  “Alive.” She smiled. “Thanks to the staff, which seems to have given you the jump start you needed. And no one could be happier than me.”

  I looked away from her smile, so brilliant it almost hurt. I remembered something she’d said to me in the tunnels. I’m not sure I know what death means anymore. But I was pretty sure I did know. Aleka was dead, and Laman, and Korah, and Wali, and the little kids from Survival Colony 27, and so many people in my life. They were all gone. They were never coming back.

  “Mercy,” I said, my voice breaking.

  “Shh,” she said, and she held me while I cried.

  When it was done, the others drifted over. Bruised and ragged, with eyes that stared in exhaustion from gaunt faces. But alive. Tyris. Nekane. Adem. The kids. Ramos and the other guards. As in my dream, some of the children and warriors were those who’d once been Asunder’s, though their numbers weren’t as great as they’d been that final day at the altar. Nessa was there too, her uniform in tatters, her face and hands so blackened with grime it seemed to have sunk into her skin. Adem looked pretty much the same. Mercy whispered that the two of them had survived the blast at the compound by hiding in another tunnel, then clawing their way to the surface. They’d been met by Tyris’s team, which had set out across the impact zone in pursuit of Geller. Mercy told me that Geller had ambushed the others in the escape tunnel, using the staff to draw from Udain’s broken mind the final drone’s location. It didn’t surprise me when she revealed that Udain had hidden the drone in the part of the tunnels she and I had been trying to reach when the walls caved in. But when I asked her what had happened to her grandfather, her eyes grew teary again.

  “The staff was too much for him,” she said. “And there was no way to transport his body. It’s okay, Querry. It was his time.”

  They’d buried him where his headquarters had once stood. They’d buried my mother right here, beside an empty grave to mark Wali’s memory and a final grave containing the bone that was all that remained of Mercy’s older sister. Tyris had emptied Aleka’s body to preserve it for as long as possible—something Doctor Siva taught her, not the same as what the Skaldi did—but in the end they’d been unable to wait. I’d been unconscious, according to Mercy, for almost three weeks. I supposed it was better this way. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the wreck of my mother’s body in the pitiless desert light. Nekane led me to the grave, which she’d prettied up with a garland of pale pink flowers. The smoothed ground looked peaceful, vacant and still. I’d always thought of my mother’s face as a mask, and now the desert dust had taken its place. A mask over an emptiness, with no more secrets to hide.

  I stayed by the grave a long time. Mercy hovered nearby but let me be. Before I left, I took the ring I’d carried all this time from my pocket. It had melted in the drone’s fire, its shape twisting so it would no longer fit on a finger. I’d thought about burying it with Korah’s remains, but it seemed right to return it to its original owner. Or if not that—I had no idea who its actual owner was, someone who’d lived and loved and died in the time long before—at least to close the circle of life and death as much as I could. I dug a small hole in the ground beside my mother’s grave and buried the ring there. I thought I might cry, but I guess all my tears had already been shed.

  “Bye, Mom,” I said, and turned from the grave.

  Mercy came to help me. As we hobbled off, Nessa approached, her strides sharp and jerky. She walked right past us and fell to her knees beside Wali’s grave, and I’d have gone back to her if Mercy had let me.

  I never got a chance. Adem stepped over to where Nessa knelt, hesitantly reached out a hand, tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up at him, and I saw that she was crying, the tears cutting streaks through her grimed face. His long arms went around her, and she let herself be drawn in while she cried.

  “You don’t know the things I saw,” I heard her say. “In Asunder’s camp. The things Wali died to try to save me from. Sometimes—sometimes I can still hear Asunder calling my name.”

  She lowered her head to his shoulder and cried, while Adem’s calm voice spoke words in her ear I couldn’t hear.

  When night fell, the others wandered off, leaving Mercy and me alone. For once the sky was relatively clear, giving us a view of actual stars. We spread a blanket on the barren ground and lay back, side by side. She turned to me, her breath tickling my chin. I wouldn’t say it smelled sweet—no one’s breath did—but it was warm, and I felt comfortable lying there beside her, no pressure and no expectations.

  But then, with every breath, every heartbeat, she started inching closer, and I kept inching away. I sat up before it got to the point where there was nowhere left to inch.

  “You’re not scared?” I said.

  “Of you? Please.” She draped an arm across my chest to pull me back down. “I could kick your ass on a good day. And you’re obviously not having a very good day.”

  “But I’m—” I didn’t know what to say. “You saw what happened at the altar. You know what I can do. That doesn’t scare you?”

  Her eyes searched mine, black as the night around us. “I just told you,” she said. “I’m not scared of anything anymore.”

  I thought about that. I wondered if I could ever say it about myself.

  “Make the beam,” Mercy said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Snap your fingers or whatever, and show me some of that old-time Kenos religion.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Am I ever not serious?”

  I ro
lled onto an elbow, reached inside. I imagined circuits closing, cells communicating, energy bubbling up from somewhere deep in my blood or bones.

  But I knew right away I was wasting my time. There was an emptiness in me where there’d been something before. That part of me, at least, was dead. And I realized how glad I was to let it go.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “I suspected not. Whatever you did at the altar baked your biscuits for good. So no worries, right? I can get as close as I want.”

  “But—”

  “With you it’s always but,” she chided. “But I’m a human firecracker. But I’ll crisp your unmentionables. But I’m half-Skaldi.”

  “I—” I looked at her, stunned. “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew,” she said. “How do you think Aleka got into Athan’s private files in the first place? Turns out his ability to program voice-recognition software was a bit, shall we say, primitive in those days. All it took was a vocal resemblance—a family resemblance—and, open sesame!” She smiled. “Plus, you may have forgotten, but you kind of let your big ugly secret drop at the altar. With that whole ‘I am his brother’ speech. Very stirring.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So then you know why you and I—why we can’t . . .”

  “I know nothing of the sort,” she said. “The only thing I know for sure is this.”

  She sat up, wrapped her arms around her knees, took a deep breath. I tried to take a breath of my own but couldn’t. My heart was pounding as if it had never stopped, and all the air seemed to have disappeared. Either that or it had rushed in to crush us in its grip.

  “My father and grandfather,” she said, “spent their whole lives fighting monsters from beyond the stars. All their lives, searching for the Scavenger of Souls, trying to predict the moment of his coming. But do you know where that got them? You know where they ended up?”

  I shook my head.

  “Back where they started,” she said. “Fighting monsters they built beneath their own feet, monsters they built inside their own hearts. The monsters were never beyond their reach. The only thing beyond their reach was the people they could have known, the people they could have loved. The people they could have been, if they’d only let themselves.”

  She pointed upward, and my eyes found the brightest star in the sky. A planet, maybe, or a vanished sun, its light reaching us long after it was dead and gone. And there it was, blinking in the dark emptiness of space, calling out to those who could read its message.

  “I know I’m here,” Mercy said. “I know this is where I want to be. And I know you’re who I want to be here with me. What else is there to know?”

  She put her hand on mine. She drew close to me, and her lips parted, and then she was kissing me, and I was kissing her back. The voice in my head that told me this was impossible was drowned out by the feel of her hands caressing my face, the warmth of her breath, the touch of her tongue tapping mine. Lightly, like a question. I pulled her down beside me and held her, kissing her, forgetting everything, remembering everything. She drew away for a moment to trace a single tear from my cheek, and I had no idea why I was crying. For us, maybe, or for them. For all the things I couldn’t remember, all the things I could but couldn’t change. For the end of the world, or the beginning.

  “This is our home, Querry,” she whispered. “This is where we belong. Let the monsters go back to Skaldi City. Stay with me here on Earth.”

  EPILOGUE

  EARTH

  When the past comes to haunt me, I remind myself we had to travel there to find our way here.

  We left our camp by the riverside with reluctance. The graves felt like our extended family, and I think we knew that if we moved on we’d never visit them again. But I had to make a decision, and the dream that had led me home tugged at me, wouldn’t let go. I felt sure the city I’d seen in my dream existed, and I was determined to find it. Of all the places we’d been, all the encampments we’d found or made, I was convinced this was the one where we could finally stop our running. The one we’d been searching for all along, but could never find so long as the creatures of our nightmares remained.

  For the first few weeks after we broke camp, we saw them from time to time, enough to make me believe they were the remnants of the army that had invaded Udain’s compound, or stray members of the underground colony that had found their way to the surface. But they were weak and listless, dragging themselves aimlessly across the desert with heads bowed and scars caved in to cover the emptiness inside, too feeble even to make their signature moan. They didn’t respond when we approached, didn’t look up, didn’t change course or prepare for the attack. Some we found motionless, on their backs, staring with empty faces at the bright blank vault of the sky. Others grew pale and flaked into dust as we watched. After a while we didn’t see them anymore. I sensed the relief that flowed through everyone in camp, and I shared it, though mine wasn’t quite the same. After all, these final survivors were my brothers too. I was glad to see them go, but just as glad to see them finally at peace. I suspected they were as weary of the fight as the rest of us.

  It was months before we found what I was looking for. Months for me to master the crutch Nekane carved, until I got so adept I could keep pace with everyone except Mercy. Months for Zataias to start an unexpected growth spurt and Keely to make that subtle shift where you knew he wasn’t looking at the world through a pure child’s eyes anymore. Months for Nessa and Adem to grow close—and for him to grow eloquent in her presence—until one morning I saw them walking behind everyone else, hand in hand, his face a shade of red even Asunder’s cloak couldn’t match. It was months for our supply of food, all of it filched from the ruins of the compound, to dwindle and fail, the pinch in our bellies to start again. No Skaldi, we learned, didn’t mean no hunger. For me and Mercy, it was months to discover each other, months to fall in love, which meant months to discover we already had. The vow she’d made my first night back she never broke: she wasn’t afraid of me, or of anything, anymore. No matter how many days passed, I still couldn’t say the same for myself. But when I was with her, I could believe a time might come when my fears would finally be laid to rest.

  We paced the river beyond the impact zone, past the rock city and into the canyon. There we found green vegetation clinging to the walls and carpeting the floor, cooler-than-usual air, a wholesome smell breathing from the clear-flowing river, which widened and deepened as it unfurled toward the north. We came upon a green pool, so bright it glowed like a second sky shaming the brown sky above, with ranks of tall tufted grass blooming in the muddy shallows. Tyris dabbed her tongue in the water, tasted it on her lips, and pronounced it safe for bathing—which we did, splashing and shrieking like the little kids, emerging as clean as any of us had been in our entire lives. To our great surprise, when we exited the pond we were met by the women of Asunder’s colony, free from his power now that he and his staff were gone. Our surprise was even greater when they led us to Grava Bracha and we found the old woman there, seated in ragged splendor on the stalagmite that had once been Asunder’s throne. The women had nursed her back to health with the aid of Melan, who vanished shortly after we arrived, hiking to the east to fulfill whatever destiny was his. Now she presided over the women as a sort of grandmother, if not a guru. At night, we’d sit with her under the deep purple canopy of the sky, our campfire etching shadows into her puckered face, crowning her pure white hair with gold. Her tales of the time before held us all spellbound.

  “It’s a beautiful night,” she always began.

  “A storytelling night,” Nekane would respond, and then the old woman would smile and tell another of her tales.

  Her name, she told us, was Chelle.

  We lived with her community for a month, learning what they had to teach us, before moving on again—all of us except Nekane and Asunder’s children, who chose to stay. Deeper into the canyon the vegetation grew wilder, bushes and river reeds springing up in chaotic profusio
n. The buzz of insects and the sweet scent of decay led us to groves of trees—not the stunted, leafless trees that grew in the desert, but trees twenty feet tall, their branches forming a shady canopy, their foliage sprinkled with brighter green orbs. These Tyris proclaimed safe to eat, and we stuffed ourselves, biting through soft pockmarked rinds to savor the fleshy fruit beneath. We did find evidence of Asunder’s raids—in particular, an enormous ditch gouged into the canyon floor, as broad as the green pool was long and filled to overflowing with heaps of blackened metal. When we stood at its lip, we saw dented fuel drums, tires, wire-mesh screens, vehicle grates and fenders, aluminum doors and window frames, flashlights, lanterns, propane tanks, camp stoves, tent frames, pots and pans, truck batteries, rearview mirrors. It was hard to tell with so much junk littering the top, but I thought I saw the roofs of convoy trucks lining the bed beneath. And there were weapons, enough to supply an army, plus the other army it was fighting. Near the surface lay the tanks of flamethrowers, the spray-painted 9 identifying them as ours. The galling smell of oil and baked plastic hung heavily in the air.

  The sheer waste of it tightened my throat with anger. I considered climbing into the pit to search the tarred trash for Aleka’s stolen pistol and my red-handled pocketknife, but Mercy talked me out of it.

  “Let it go, Beam Boy,” she said. “Let it go.”

  We stayed just long enough to say a prayer for the dead, then left. I walked away with Mercy’s hand in mine, but not without taking a long look back.

  And then, one morning, we came to a part of the canyon where the walls fell away to reveal miles of open land and the city sparkling in the sunlight beside the unspoiled riverbank. Strange sounds filled the air: high-pitched, quivering, full of clicks and beeps and crackles. They seemed to come from somewhere far up on the canyon walls, and not from one place but from lots of places all at once. At first we tensed nervously, but then Tyris told us not to worry.