by Daryl Banner
Jasmine pulls away from her glaring to take notice of it, her eyes bright. “Yes,” she confirms, admiring its hilt, then yanking it out of my sheath in an instant. “This one.”
And then she’s charging.
“JASMINE, NO!” I cry out, running after her.
The act does not go unnoticed. Collin and the dwarf, spotting us, are instantly on their feet, trying to make sense of the crazed green woman charging at them with a sword and howling Trenton’s greatest war cry. When recognition slowly dawns on the little Lock’s face, he makes a dive for underneath the stage just as Jasmine’s sword comes crashing down on the edge. The old man grunts with surprise, moving out of the way while Jasmine plunges for Lynx, crawling on her knees after him. I shout at her to stop, but my pleas go unheard.
Lynx emerges from under the side of the stage and hobbles across the Square hurriedly, the leash dragging behind him. Jasmine soon emerges too, clambering to her feet and tearing after him as fast as she can manage. Lynx makes a grab for the nearest door, finds it locked, grabs at the window, can’t open it, then ducks just as Jasmine swings the sword once more. It slices the window apart, raining shards of glass over the dwarf’s bowed head. He shrieks and parries to the left just as her sword recovers, swings once more, and comes down where he just stood. Sparks fly as sword kisses pavement and, with a guttural yelp of determination, Jasmine charges at him again.
“Relent! Relent! Relent!” screams Lynx as he races past me and toward the stage again, Jasmine hurrying after, lifting the sword.
Brains, still clueless as ever and sitting on the edge of the stage, sings: “I … am … not … death—” Jasmine’s sword comes down at the dwarf, but catches Brains right in the skull, chopping down to between her eyes. Jasmine lets go at once, horrified, the blade planted firmly in Brains’ soft head. Like an enormously long nose, my Raise looks to the left now—the entire sword swinging to the left with her, the hilt wiggling unsteadily—and she sings: “I … am … headache.”
Lynx thrusts himself behind me quite suddenly, and I feel his fingers dig into my waist under the armor. Jasmine turns from the horror of the head-sliced Brains and stares at me, her hands like two monster’s claws, and I wonder whether she means to wring a neck, break a bone, or knead dough. She could likely do all three.
“Jasmine, please, wait, listen, hold,” I say, apparently unable to settle on a single word.
“I WILL TURN HIM TO DUST!” she screams, her whole body shivering with such conviction, I fear she could literally explode. “I WILL PULL HIM APART AND TURN HIM INTO DUST!”
“Consider this,” the dwarf cries out from behind me. “If we keep wasting our time dancing in this town long enough, we will, all of us, turn to dust eventually.”
“Please, Jasmine, calm down. Please,” I beg her, not knowing how I can possibly appeal to her logic. If I were face-to-face with Grim, I might possibly explode in just the same way, and John, clueless as ever, would simply watch me and wonder the reason for my going bananas.
“Calm,” she says, her eyes like murder, her fingers still in the creepy, unsettling shape of claws. “Calm, yes. Won’t everyone be, in the end.”
“Jasmine?” I try again. It’s like she’s hallucinating, seeing the death of her daughter all over again. I saw it too—a glimpse of that girl with the black hair twisted in one long braid just before the gates of Trenton closed. John and I had just made it out alive. “J-Jasmine …?”
“Yes.” Her hands relax, the fingers loosened. Just as she relaxes, I feel Lynx’s clutch on my waist do the same. “Yes,” she agrees, then turns to observe Brains who, as peaceful as a lily pad, just watches on with the sword still stick halfway down her head. “I’m sorry, Helen.”
“We still call her Brains,” I explain unhelpfully. “I don’t think she understands names.”
“I’m sorry, Brains,” Jasmine says. She turns to me, her eyes full of twisted memories and anguish. “I’m sorry, Winter. I understand why he’s needed. I just want him to hurt. And I want him to hurt for centuries. And I want my daughter back and I will never have my daughter back.” She closes her eyes, unable to meet anyone’s suddenly. “I’ll go with you, Winter. I’ll go.”
“I … am … the headache,” says Brains sweetly.
“Good,” Jasmine agrees, patting Brains’ armored thigh. “Good, very good.” Tiredly, Jasmine moves toward the Refinery, her feet dragging, and then the door shuts softly behind her.
A moment and a half later, the sword is gently removed from Helen’s head by Collin’s and John’s steady hands. I watch as my Raise smiles lamely, unsure what is happening to her as Collin attempts to right her half-split-open head. Lynx sits on the other end of the stage some distance away staring pensively at the ground, his face wrinkled in concentration. I stare at him a while, curious what dark thoughts are clouding his mind.
When Marigold at last emerges from the Refinery, Jimmy is carrying in his arms the head of Ann, still devoid of a body. Jasmine follows behind, silent and slumping.
I’m about to ask what’s happened when, as Jimmy draws closer, I notice Ann’s eyes are open, her mouth curved into one of her signature smirks. A few metal pipes jut out from her severed neck, giving the impression that she were some robot head that’s been torn off. “Well, well,” she mumbles. “That was a botched experiment, if I ever saw one.”
“Couldn’t get a body to work?” I ask, looking up imploringly at Marigold’s face.
“Indeed not,” answers Marigold, shrugging her big shoulders. “I did try, oh yes, but everything’s been taken to New Trenton! Silly of us. Very little is left here that could serve as a body. We tried many things.”
Jimmy quietly says something to Ann, and she only scoffs loudly, saying, “We are not going back home. Not for a body, not for anything. Time’s ticking for us all and Empress Shee is out there.” Ann’s eyes grow dark. “I know there’s some joke about irony and calling me Headless Ann when, now, all I am is a head, but forgive me if the humor’s lost.”
“Forgiven,” says Marigold, even though Ann was directing that jape at me.
Jimmy cradles Ann, his mottled face scrunching up into a dopey smile. “I still love you, Ann. I’m gonna take really good care of you.”
“Sure, sure,” says Ann, rolling her eyes. “I’m sure you’re gonna take—”
Jimmy interrupts her with a deep kiss. She tries talking through it, but Jimmy won’t let her, pressing his lips into her head. And really, being that she is only a head, she has no means by which to pull away from him. Not a fair kiss, if you ask me. And no one’s asking me.
When the kiss is over, Ann blurts out, “For the love of the Dead, warn me next time you’re gonna do that!”
“I still love you,” he repeats dumbly.
“I think we should have last names,” I say suddenly.
Jasmine and Ann and Jimmy and Marigold stare at me, confused by my seemingly random interjection.
“Helena had a last name,” I point out. “It always struck me as peculiar. I thought, well, maybe she’s just unique. Maybe ‘Trim’ is some strange family name from her First Life.” I smile, thinking on Helena.
“My full name is Jimmy Norde,” he volunteers with a shaky smile.
“Ann Norde,” groans Ann, trying it out. “That sounds horrible. We can never marry.”
“Jasmine Ellis,” Jasmine throws in with a dry giggle. “That’d be, if I took my First Life last name. Oh, my. What a strange feeling …” She puts a hand to her cheek and shakes her head, amused by her memories.
I’m caught in my own memories quite suddenly, thinking on Claire and whether or not I’d ever dare embrace her last name. Winter Westbrook. Has a little bit of a musicality to it, but the thought of attaching my real last name to Winter makes my stomach turn. I imagine myself in a room with Claire … bratty, snobby, selfish girl that she is, sitting on the floor in her giant room in her giant palace, brushing the hair of one of her two-hundred-dollar dolls. I imagine Claire’s eyes meeting mine,
and I wonder how she’d greet me. With contempt? With curiosity? With disgust?
“Winter?”
My eyes meet Marigold’s, even though it was Jasmine who’d uttered my name. Marigold’s face is much changed from earlier. Ever since I brought up last names, her face seems worried, withdrawn, her eyes clouded over. It’s a look I’ve never before seen on the likes of the ever-cheery, enthusiastic Marigold.
Jasmine puts a hand on my shoulder and I jump, turning my eyes to her. “Winter,” she tries again. “You alright? Your mind went somewhere. I just asked what your last name would be.”
“Steel,” I mutter, playing with John’s steel ring that still spins on my finger. “Winter Steel, you can call me. Why not.” My eyes wander to the stage where John waits patiently, talking to Brains and Collin. They seem to be chatting lightly, casually, the three of them with smiles. Further down the stage, the little Lock still sits, brooding, locked in his own web of dark thoughts, I suppose. “Cold and strong,” I add. “The slayer of millions of Deathless.”
Jasmine nods approvingly. Ann squints with curiosity and Jimmy just stares at the head of his lover, wordless.
When the seventeen of us have reconvened at the Town Hall, we ensure that we are, each of us, properly armored before heading for the North Gate. John takes the Lock’s leash this time. Jasmine walks in the back with Marigold, keeping safe emotional and physical distance from the little Lock. We pass through the North Gate, and the tall, wrought-iron posts become just another thing behind us. The forest floor crunches and snaps under our heavy, Dead footfalls. When the woods open to the Whispers, I feel a chill of recognition snake its way through me, and I do not stop.
The Whispers whisper nothing, even when the fog becomes so thick I can’t see more than five steps ahead. My foot knocks into a thing on the ground that oughtn’t be there. When I pick up the thing, a coy smile teases my lips.
“Where are we headed?” someone calls from the back with a strained voice. It’s Ash who’s spoken up.
I lift the thing up high, a giant spider’s leg. “To where the trail of insect carcasses takes us.”
C H A P T E R – T H I R T E E N
S C A R
The Whispers, sometimes also referred to as The Scar in addition to its many, many names, is a big stretch of dead, horrible nothing. Geographically it is quite narrow, but The Scar extends immeasurably to the east and the west. One golden nugget of information that Megan lent me back at the city was: the rain never seems to touch here. As we follow the endless length of the Whispers, happening periodically on a stray spider leg or a cricket leg or some unidentifiable insect wing or long antennae, we know we are safe from Mother Nature’s murderous breath and tears.
“It’s very dark,” mutters John to me. “Even the sky.”
“I’m sure the sun’s due to rise soon. The night can’t last forever … not even in the Whispers.” I shiver, wishing the surroundings could be less gloomy for our journey. There isn’t even any conversations happening behind me; everyone’s marching so sullenly, you’d think we were headed to a funeral. Maybe we kinda are.
“I can picture us living in that little house.”
I try to smile, but the heaviness in my chest won’t seem to let me. “You weren’t always so kind. Sometimes you were kind of mean. You were a very brooding person when you were alive.”
John chuckles. “Brooding. Maybe I was in a bad mood because I was hungry all the time.”
I laugh, the smile coming more naturally now. “I don’t remember what being hungry feels like,” I say. Then I’m considering whether Claire even knew hunger. Whenever she wanted something, she got it.
The thought is a depressing one. Have I ever known hunger? Do I even understand the concept of starving? Of wanting and not having? Of craving and never being sated? In a way, I might imagine I do. Even the sordidly rich and spoiled know the agony of not getting what they want, in their own way. Claire demanded and demanded and demanded, but the things she truly needed—a friend, a companion, a lover—these things never graced her short, horrible life.
“I’d live in a tiny house like that with you,” says John, drawing me out of my darkness.
I turn my head, noticing Jasmine. She’s come closer now, daring herself within proximity of the little Lock who, ever since we left Old Trenton, has not uttered one syllable of speech. “Hey, Jazz.”
She nods. “You are wise, Winter Steel.” She gives a papery wink. “Following the pieces of insect.”
“A true detective,” I agree with a snort. “Do you remember After’s Hold?”
“Of course, rabbit.”
“That city was massive,” I point out. “Full of people, granted most of them turned into Grim’s Green Army. But I wonder … Why didn’t everyone go there instead of the place-of-nightmares Necropolis?”
Jasmine shakes her head with pity. “After’s Hold is no better than Old Trenton, I’m afraid. It’s been cracked by nature, broken and crumpled. A jungle of cement and tall trees, if you can imagine it. It rains there the most frequent. We’ve had Humans report to us.” She shrugs, then sighs. “The planet’s claiming it all back, I’m certain. I wonder if the world isn’t also trying to wash away the Living, sometimes. Some Humans have drowned in it.”
“That’s horrible,” John remarks, chiming in. I find his eyebrows creased with concern. “Even Humans?”
“The rain is not always so brief,” explains Jasmine. “Sometimes it can flood, even in New Trenton. That is why the Humans run for protection, too. The rain is hard and heavy and very unlike the kind we might’ve been used to in our First Lives.”
“Definitely not,” says Jimmy, grunting under the heavy helm he’s chosen to wear. “That rain tore at my backside, just for the brief moment I’d gone out in it. That rain hurts. Hundreds of daggers to your body, feels like.” He squeezes Ann’s head protectively at those words, inspiring a grunt of annoyance from her.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
The group stops, everyone turning in an instant to witness Marigold with her hands flattened to her face, her mouth stretched and a strange sort of scream-yell-holler emitting from it. When everyone pays mind to the dust and pieces of armor at her feet, gasps chorus through the lot of us.
“Bill,” mutters one of the teen girls, the one with blue hair. A hand moves to her mouth. “Oh, no.”
The ash swirls in the playful winds of the Whispers, carrying the bits of Bill around in twisty dust devils until every speck of him is lost to the wind, only a long metal spine, a breastplate and a pair of rubber boots remain.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
I rush up to Marigold, gripping her hands and taking on the full assault of her screaming to my face. “Marigold! Quiet down, please! Marigold!”
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
I cough, gagging on a stray swirl of Bill’s dust that must still be in the air. Squinting my eyes, I implore Marigold to stop screaming. “Please, you’re panicking the younger ones. Marigold, pull yourself together.”
Her screaming stops in an instant and is regrettably replaced by a strange sort of vocal heaving—sucking in air, rasping, sucking in air, rasping—until I’m certain she will hyperventilate. When I dumbly realize she is literally incapable of hyperventilating, I place two firm hands on her shoulders. “Marigold …”
“I don’t want to die,” she says suddenly, then repeats it. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”
“You’re already dead,” I say gently.
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE YET!” she screams. “PLEASE! DON’T LET IT HAPPEN TO ME! OH, I HAVE SO MUCH LEFT I WANT TO DO AND SEE AND DOOOO!”
“I understand, Marigold. We all feel that way.” Won’t anyone help me calm her down? “None of us want to die. We’re going to steal back our immortality, you got it? All we need to do is follow these bug parts and, well, theoretically we ought to find Shee at the end of them. Don’t you think?”
“Empress,” sh
e squeaks.
“Empress Shee,” I say, annoyed. “Please, Marigold. Will you stay calm? We’re in this together, all of us. You’re not alone.”
“Bill,” the blue-haired girl says again, her voice shaky, and she buries her face into the chest of the other teen girl, Sara, who brings around her arms.
“Okay,” Marigold finally says, despite her eyes looking like she’d just peeked into a nightmare factory. Her eyes look like she’s still in that nightmare. “Okay. Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.” She giggles, but it seems more like a giggle of terror than it does of joy. “Yes. Yes. Okay.”
The teen girls, gripping one another consolingly, march at the back while the group continues on. The one whose name might be William or Wilson or Willie seems especially stirred by the very sudden loss of Bill. He starts quietly talking to the Chief who only grunts and nods in response. The darkness of mood is creeping into all of us, taking permanent hold of all our happy thoughts and making plain the one, simple fact we are all trying so foolishly to avoid.
The fact that there is a countdown on all our heads.
“I’ve lied,” whispers Marigold quietly.
My arm is still around her consolingly. “What about?” I ask, encouraging her to speak.
“I was not a product of this age. I was not created here. I had a First Life. This is my Second Life, not my First. I had a First Life and it was so, so long ago, Winter. It was so long ago and I’m not ready to say goodbye to this world. Oh, Winter. I’ve so, so, so lied.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, rubbing her back. “I’m certain you’re not the first who’s lied or otherwise concealed their First Life. It’s likely far more common than you think.”
“My First Life was so useless,” she moans, her voice sounding more like a ghost’s sad attempt at singing than it does actual speech. “Ooh, Winter, ooh, I was such a sad and quiet nobody. I had no friends and I amounted to nothing, Winter. My life was for nothing. I lived alone and I never married and I choked on the first bite of a TV dinner.” She moans, quivering, aghast. “I died alone.”