The Immortal City

by May Peterson

  My sobs became a laugh, tired and wretched. “Absolute last choice, right?”

  She laughed too, in the same broken way. “Absolute last choice.”

  I glanced up. Tamueji was spreading her wings, raising a new caw of war. Some of the crow-souls were crow-shaping. She would not give up. But this was the end, one way or another.

  Then I looked at Hei’s dead face. How innocent he looked, no matter what he had done. We had killed together. But we had also been ravaged by the same claws, our innocence strewn over the rueful earth.

  I kissed his forehead, then squeezed Kaiwan’s hand back. “I will try.”

  If it drowned me in despair, not much would change.

  Kaiwan made a noise of approval. In the next instant, the cavern faded and a blankness fell over me.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. If I would have sudden awareness of her mind, like her experiences being painted into my memory. If it would be like giving up blood, trading thoughts and impressions to each other.

  I hadn’t expected this sudden drop into emptiness. Like the moments between waking and dreaming, devoid of meaning but full of texture.

  She had said she could connect hearts with almost anyone. But in the darkness, it didn’t feel like her heart was touching mine. Instead, the physical details of her hand reemerged, as if we were locking fingers in the void. It felt like when Hei had held mine as we moved through her maze.

  That dark slammed over me with the weight of mountains. Hei’s hand would never close again. He had believed so nobly, so earnestly, that this was the way. My victory against Umber was meaningful, because it would protect others from the boundless thirst of his godhood. But we would die now, and our bones would carry none of our yearning or grace with them, nothing that could have redeemed us. Hei probably would have passed this test, because the faith he’d had in me—in the worth of his mortality, of my losses—had not failed, even at the end. Then he had gone out as easily as a candle flame, and nothing would ever light him again.

  I wanted him to be here. I wanted something more than the memory, decaying with me as the logic of Umber’s world took over.

  Then, out of the void, images emerged.

  They unfurled around me like a panorama, somehow both immersing and distant as preserved dreams.

  Better said—preserved nightmares.

  The images were of children, too many to be counted. So small I must be watching from far above, and the vista of an ancient city stretched out in all directions. They ran as if playing, breathless with joy. But it wasn’t joy. It was screaming. Because they fled from a growing tear in the earth. It made sense abruptly—an earthquake. The buildings were falling, debris piling up forever, and the ground rent like paper. Magma ruptured forth, and the children were falling in. Killed. Burned up.

  The shock had me reeling, but a new image appeared in the next moment. A tremendous fire swept across a horizon. Ragged heaps of rock seemed to rise up in the flames, but then I saw that the rocks were the corpses of trees, becoming mounds of ash. The shapes of villages, of homes and barns and peaceful towns, dotted the dry landscape. And the fire raged on, consuming it all.

  Another flash, and this time the image was close up, as if I were in the midst of it. A score of women faced down an army, all wielding what weapons they could scrounge from their farming supplies. Soldiers bore down on the women, who defended their homes brilliantly, passionately. But the sheer number of their foes overwhelmed them.

  I could not watch. But there was no way to cover my eyes. This wasn’t happening in front of me, but in me. Each new tragedy was a slash of color, of thousands of forms of evil, carnage, disease.

  “What—” My voice was raw, on the brink of a scream. “What is this?”

  Kaiwan spoke then, a feeling as much as a sound, all around me like a water bubble. The membrane of her presence was all that seemed to protect me from the onslaught of images.

  “It is my memory.”

  She appeared next to me, her hand firmly clasped in mine. It was the same woman, brave and grim and tired. But her face was different. No aura of solemnity, no unmovable grandeur, emanated from her now. She showed signs of sobbing, of gnashing teeth, of tearing her hair. As Kaiwan stared out into the procession of horrors, she looked like she wanted to die.

  “Thus I offer this only as a resort more final than any other.” Somehow, her voice remained flat, smooth as glass. New moments of destruction were flowing like icebergs, appearing and disappearing faster than I could perceive them all. Human bodies, beheaded and stripped naked, decorating blasted hills. Tidal waves devouring coastal cities. And above it all, a wildfire that seemed to cross the whole of the earth, escalating as her memories mounted.

  She gestured with her free hand. It trembled. “What you see now is an archive. Of every doom I have undone. Kingdoms that fell, villages destroyed, beloved lives eviscerated. Each of these represents a moment in which I said no. I forced time to obey me, to spare them. Some I tried, and tried, and tried, and in each cycle a new doom arose. Some meant the fall of whole nations. I had to give up on many of them.”

  A blunt thought slid under my shock. If she had prevented every catastrophe, history would have been idyllic. Maybe Tamueji was right, in that some wounds should not heal. Surely that was true of Umber.

  When she looked up at me, I wanted to weep. Her eyes in this place looked like Hei’s. Warm and shining and crushed. “This is the test, Ari. Your memories will enter this stream too. And we must withstand it.”

  Yes. The simplicity of it staggered me. If she had to face this in her memories, then the weight of it must be so much worse whenever she mended time. The cost of her magic, forcing her to view the tapestry she had helped weave. I could help her by sharing my strength through the link, infusing her with the hopes of my own life and experience. But only if I could endure it too. Only if there was strength left to share.

  “Now you see the truth.” A shudder wracked her. “Nothing in existence is ever truly gone. No moment is ever fully erased. Its consequences may be changed, a new course may be chosen—but the timelines I unweave do not become dreams. They still exist. In some form, whether in an alternate plane of our world, or only in my heart. The weight of them piles up. And each time I spin a new one, the former takes its place in the line. Eventually I will break, and be unable to hold all the lives I have walked. Unless I find a new answer.”

  It was eons of trauma, all inscribed viciously into the interior of her soul. Had she read about this in history tomes, intellectualized it, it may not be so heavy. But these memories were like marks in flesh. There must come a time when they were too much to heal. When no skin remained to take more brutality.

  Hei’s image flashed by then, wide-eyed with death, motionless and shattered and small. I couldn’t tell if it was my memory or hers—maybe that was the magic of the link, that it blurred. But something bent about the image, like a painting being revised without transition. Hei was still dead, but lying differently, a different wound. This had to be Kaiwan’s memory of how Hei had died before. Then, I appeared. Staring emptily at his corpse, face naked and numb. Umber loomed over me, and I did nothing. The Ari in that version probably didn’t even remember the Hei who was dead in front of him.

  So Kaiwan had turned back the clock. Added another doom to the count. Her determination sung through the link—she could not do it. Even after thousands of years, she could not permit this evil. She could not allow it in order to spare her power. She had to give up causes because she was still human in spite of it all. But not this.

  Then, a new memory—young women and men, carried in by crews of crow-souls, emptied by Umber’s power. Youths lured in through enticement, brought to darkened rooms and hollowed out. Kaiwan caught it in glimpses, like the ripples of a diviner’s pool. She could have blasted Umber from the moorings of time—and yet she’d stayed her hand. He had l
ived for so long. Had he been a mortal man, she might have done it. But one who had dealt such harm as him, for so many centuries, was like a thread impossible to trace. And so many dooms she was already unspinning, seeking to outmaneuver him for a better future. She had not been enough, not by herself. This cause she had given up.

  “You were right, Ari.” Her faced was turned away now, covered by her other hand. “I made this place a graveyard. For all the versions of the world that are still dead. For all the lives I could not save, no matter how I undid time. For all the lives fading right now. For you. For me.”

  The wildfire was roaring up, a live thing with fangs, threatening to flood the cosmos. Scores of nightmares now sprang into being, boring into me. I heard myself sobbing again, when I had not believed any tears remained. An array of dead children, soldiers whose faces had been burned off, thousands of tender blooms wiped from the earth.

  And Hei. Hei everywhere. Hei under my body, his warmth on my skin, his breath, his smile, the softness of his hair. Touches of him bloomed in rings around me, as if forming a guard against Kaiwan’s memories. Against the tide of flame.

  It could not be enough. My fragile, wasted love could not inspire hope in the face of this ruin.

  Then, something strange happened. A memory of Hei leaned over us, as if he was gazing into a face under an amber sky. My face. I tried to place when this had been. But it struck me.

  It wasn’t Serenity’s sky.

  Wait. My heart paused for a beat.

  The memory changed scope, revealed the pink-streaked horizon, a skyline full of buildings both foreign and familiar. A street I surely had never seen. A bed by a window, on which lay Hei, cupping my cheek. It was in little more than a hovel. A dusty floor, bare walls, few possessions. Yet it was softer than paradise as Hei whispered sweet promises to me.

  I will never forget you.

  I could not possibly know this place, but a name sprouted: Vermagna. The city in which Hei and I had grown up. Where we’d learned to hold each other in the cold, where we’d won our battles, dancing in the tide, dreaming our someday-dreams. This must have been our home, where we had lived together.

  My heart hummed with light. This must not be Kaiwan’s memory. It had to be mine. Heartbreak, confusion, and awe broke over me. How could I remember this?

  Then the image changed again. Hei and I, in the flow of the streets. Dirt clouds swirled around us, our limbs kissed by the afternoon sun. I had been alive, mortal, then. Bare to our waists, the sight of Hei’s supple body, his beautiful arms, warmed my face. Dancing, practicing, sparring with each other until we fell in a tangle to the ground. Laughing, just wanting to touch each other. So we’d tucked ourselves in the shade, held each other, and watched the city go by.

  This wasn’t simply an image. I remembered this. It arose as if from nothing, moments I had not been able to call back before. And yet...this had happened.

  Kaiwan gasped. “By the power of Heaven. Then there is a way to reverse the drowning godhood. It was not through drinking his blood, nor simply killing him. You consumed his heart. All of your memories had flowed through it. Ari! You and Tamueji—in all the times I have undone this story, this had not happened. You found the answer to the godhood!”

  Maybe it wasn’t merely that. We had not only taken his heart, but poured our grief into his destruction. We had both been ready to die as we took back what once was given. Blood for blood, memory for memory.

  Tears made my vision swim, and yet the memories shone with clarity all the same. They carved out space in the dark, spots of brightness against the devastation. Each one I knew. One by one, it was like a hundred candles in my heart, sparking back to life.

  I would remember him.

  Then, a cluttered yet cheerful building. Its buckling sprawl was too small to hold all the children that seemed to live in it. Children that were whole, alive. Laughing, horseplaying, napping together in beams of evening. Women swathed in blue habits, bathing the little ones, cooking, standing in front of rooms of tiny faces, reading aloud from books.

  The orphanage.

  I was among them. And so was Hei. So small he looked like a doll-like reimagining of himself, with a rounded head, soft brown hair, wide eyes the color of sweet earth. His playful grin, little hands in mine, curled up next to me in our bed.

  And, in flashes, dozens of other children. Children I knew. Some of them had disappeared quickly, but others had remained a part of my life. Children who’d grown into adults I respected, cared for. Who had done as I’d done, stayed to tend the new orphans in turn. Hei, growing older, his precious little face becoming more distinct with age, but losing none of its wry softness. His rounded head became the shape I’d see next to me on the pillow, his slim shoulders what I’d wind my arms around at night.

  None of us had been truly safe. Poor and orphaned in a broken city, we’d had no ground under us solid enough to withstand the tide for long. But in the salvaged place we’d called home, a happiness had bloomed. It had been vivid, tangible, and life-giving, a space for joy and hope and gentle promises. A space that had grown, and grown, even as times had worsened. When the crows had come, when food had become sparse, when the sisters had begun growing old, when there weren’t enough places to house the children. When we’d had no money. Even with all of us grown children rallying to save the orphanage, we’d spent days without food. I had woken up day after day, with Hei’s breathing slow and measured in my ear. His body accessible to me, to touch and be touched, to remind me we were together. The promising and hoping and loving only gained intensity. Hei had sworn that one day we would travel the world. We’d start our own home for children. One that could bear all the weight of its hopes, that could turn the tide aside.

  It had been enough. Oh, god, it had been enough. I had died in that life, and it’d been stripped from me. But it had been enough.

  Kaiwan was clutching my arm now, leaning into me. These images, too, faded. I stood with her and let the remains of my life fall like rain.

  I saw long days full of yearning, sweat and fear and barely held hopes. I saw making love in the shade, Hei and I murmuring our quiet daydreams to each other. Then, like beats in between my memories, Kaiwan’s memories—people I had never seen before. Then those people lying dead, some by violence, others serene in coffins. People that held her, were held by her in return. An endless number of hands in hers like mine was now. Handprints ingrained as deep as brands, numbering the passage of days.

  Thus Kaiwan had made her long journey through the wasteland, every love eventually passing into the distance. Some faces loomed larger than the others, unfamiliar eyes full of warmth, of regret. Kaiwan’s march had continued on. She had wished herself immune to time, and yet time had gone on wearing her down anyway. Infinite stars fell from heaven like tears, faster than she could put them back up. Soon, the sky had become dark.

  I had no way to refuse her despair. The lessons of a life as long as hers were beyond me. But I saw why this consumed her so—it was not that these dooms had happened, and that she’d had to intervene. It was that so many stretched on in all directions, in spite of a power as magnificent as hers. Her heart had once burned perhaps brighter than any other, rebuking the forces of loss. Yet she too had been defeated. Worst of all, it had driven her into loneliness, stripping away all the lights that had stood with her. She was alone in the throat of the mountain. How could she possibly bear it?

  I could not bear it. Hei was gone. The other people I’d loved when I was alive might still be there. But how could I come back as this, a lantern with no light? There was no hope I could give Kaiwan that this was not all there was.

  Then, through her shared memories, mine emerged again. The fire at the edge of the darkness was growing, threatening to devour us. Hei’s image materialized before me, but this time, it was not simply an image. He seemed to fill physical space, a living presence. He reached for my fr
ee hand, clasped it and kissed it gently. And the touch was real. His heat and scent and weight surrounded me, became a cocoon as he slid into my arms.

  “Hei.” My voice broke with sorrow. “I failed you. I let you die.”

  He shook his head, sad smile glowing on his face. “Stay with me. Stay with me.”

  And the memory of him crying this out while we faced Kadzuhikhan whipped by, a bright streak of emotion. Stay with me! I need you! Oh, Hei. It was I who’d needed him. More than blood, air, or water, more than my armor of darkness. Drowning in the river of my loss, I would have faded to nothing, had not Hei come to pluck me out.

  Dozens of Heis took shape in the haze. Sparks of his joy, his courage, his care and tenderness. His pain, fury, desperation. Each a moment of his life with me. They took on solidity, surrounding me and Kaiwan, an army of fearsome youths who believed.

  What appeared then was not a memory, but an imagining. How it might have looked had I been there, that hour when Hei set foot on the tundra. I had died, and the entire world had lain between us, circumstances that surely no mere mortal could surmount.

  He had. With borrowed weapons, with blessings bought with tears. With the skills we’d learned from the girls of our youth, who’d shared the sun-browned streets with us. With little more than fur and resolve between him and the snow, he had set out on his own long journey to challenge Serenity, challenge time itself. Until he found me again.

  This had carried him over the wasteland. We had lost almost everything before, but instead of losing our strength, we had only grown. Hei had grown. He had held his flame in his hands, trusting it not to die in the wind. Because it had never died. Not really, not for long. With the gifts and belief and promises of our friends, our family, our whole lives. They had never failed him before. So he’d entrusted his fate to them one more time.