by Daryl Banner
“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” I don’t know who I’m trying to convince. “I died alone, too.”
“Did you?”
“Fell through the ice of a frozen lake. I doubt I was ever found.” I scratch her back. “Isn’t this such a pleasant conversation? I do hope it’s cheering you up.”
“It is,” she admits, grimacing. “Oh, what an awful way to go, what an awful way to go.”
I hug her and, peering over her shoulder, I beseech Jasmine and the others with my eyes. Isn’t anyone going to help me?
“I want my Second Life to mean something. I’ve so longed for a life of significance. My Old Life was such a terrible waste, Winter, such a terrible, terrible waste …”
“Nothing is wasted, Mari. You’ve helped bring many, many lost souls into this world,” I point out. “You’re the cheery face we all met and came to love. You gave me my Icecap Eyes and you fixed my body up and … and you made Winter. Your Second Life won’t be wasted.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“We’re already dead, sweetheart. We’re already dead. See? I’m not even using the Z-word.” My hand keeps running along her back, scratching and rubbing, and it’s all I can do to keep my own sanity and hers. The world is dark, the Whispers are endless, and the gloom must be kept at bay somehow.
Soon, we’re able to press on. I stay with Marigold and let John and the Chief keep lead, following the pieces of insect until, hours later, we seem to run out of spider parts to follow. The Whispers have yet to end and the gloom still suffocates us like a cold, dead memory.
“Just keep on forth,” I insist. “We’ll find them.”
Another hour later, we find the Whispers growing thinner and thinner. An hour more and a spread of trees can be seen through the foggy murk. I’m left to unhappily conclude that we have reached the official east end of The Scar. I worry this means our protection from the rain has ended and what remains of our journey will be spent depending each minute on John and sleepy-eyed Jimmy to read the skies above.
Within the woods, there are no crickets or stirring of things alive. I almost find comfort in the horrible deadness of the environment; seems a bit more like a home. The nearly-leafless trees connect far above us, joining in a sort of creepy, brambly canopy, like spider webs made of wood. The only sound is the clumsy, awkward footsteps of my companions as they walk over thick roots and fallen branches that threaten to steal away their balance with each ungainly step.
“Keep up your feet,” gripes Ann. “Every time you step down like that, Jimmy, you’re jostling my brain.”
“Sweetheart, we’ve … been through this … an hour ago.” He’s totally out of breath, fatigued and stumbling everywhere like a drunken fool. “You … don’t have … a brain, technically.”
“Yes, I do. It’s where all my Anima is stored, you big dumb clot.”
“I need … a drink,” Jimmy stammers, frustrated. “I need a … I need a drink.” He stops finally, pulling his backpack around to fish out a canister of water. “Thirsty. Thirsty,” he keeps repeating until finally the canister is in his hand and he’s kicked back his head, chugging.
“Save some of it,” Ann says, half-muffled in his arm. “Learn to sip. Ugh, you’re spilling it on me!”
“Sorry.” He thrusts the canister away and dabs at the drops that flecked onto Ann’s irritated face with a thumb. “I love you.” He plants a kiss on her while she squirms.
True love?
The old man trips over a root, grunting as he struggles to push himself back onto his feet. The teen girls help him to his feet as I’m reminded unsettlingly of a turtle on its back. Will regards the old man with half-opened, impatient eyelids. I think he officially checked out when his buddy Bill turned to dust. He doesn’t seem to care for anything anymore, all the life drained from his face.
Being quite tired of watching the backs of heads, I come to the front of the group to check progress. “Anything?” I quietly ask John and the Chief, who have been leading the way.
“We passed what might’ve been a pair of smallish spider legs,” John answers, keeping his voice down. “But they also might’ve just been, uh … twigs.” He bites his own lip and shrugs. His horned helmet hangs attached to something on his belt, making a tapping noise every other step. No one else’s bothered to put their helmets back on either, it seems.
“Do you think we have any better course?” I ask, trying to include the Chief in the discussion. “If we’ve lost track of the insects, do you think we … need to backtrack? Change our path?”
“If we’ve lost one of our own,” the Chief responds, his voice so low I almost can’t hear him, “do you think we need to backtrack in time? Change our path?”
I don’t follow. Is he talking about Lena? About Bill? “What do you mean, Chief?”
“Of course,” he mutters simply. “We can’t backtrack.”
Confused, I just nod slowly. “Right,” I agree, not totally certain with what I’m agreeing. “It would … waste too much time. That’s why we can’t backtrack.”
“It’s impossible to go back,” the Chief says. “Because if I could go back, I would’ve taken a completely different path and maybe I would’ve turned to dust, too. Maybe none of us would’ve turned to dust. Maybe I would’ve killed Shee, ending her existence twelve years ago when we first found her crippled form on the bank of that moat. I didn’t even know who she was, my First Life’s memory stolen as it was.”
He speaks in quiet, hushed breaths. The group, after such a long stretch of walking, has spread out so far that the nearest to us are many strides behind—Ash, Will, and Jimmy. They can’t hear any of this.
“No one knew what she’d do.” I’m trying to convince him, ignoring the stony doubt of everything in his eyes. “No one took her seriously. No one knew it would lead to this. Chief, there’s no one to blame but—” I cut off my own sentence, hearing it spoken in someone else’s voice. The. Only. One. Left. To. Blame. Is.
“We can’t go back, because if I could go back,” the Chief says, “then I’d tell Helena I loved her.”
I keep my gaze ahead, minding not to look at him, despite how solidly his words have struck me. Now, all the pieces fit. I realize the weight he’s been dragging along this whole time, the reason for his melancholy. Helena. I’m stupid not to have realized sooner.
“You two must’ve grown close over the years,” I say. “You and her trained Megan to be Mayor. You, former Chief … Her, former Judge …”
“I should’ve told her I loved her,” he repeats glumly.
What can I say? “I’m sure she knew, Chief.”
“I’m sure she didn’t,” he spits back. I’m about to say something else, but quite suddenly lose my nerve, and that’s how we leave the conversation about the Chief’s unspoken and possibly unrequited love for my Reaper. The unanswered question sticks in my throat and I’m left to wonder, even if they had the pleasure of more time together, would the Chief still have held his tongue, or would he truly have confessed his feelings? What more do us foolish Living or Dead do with our time but waste it?
I hear a smash of armor and turn to find the Human has stumbled over a mischievous root, planting his face in the forest floor. Ann’s shouts of exasperation are muffled beneath his struggling, clumsy form. Jasmine and Collin get him back to his feet, Jasmine caring to the head of Ann—who is now cursing and utterly fed-up with her fumbling, exhausted Human. “Calm, calm,” Jasmine tries, soothing Ann. When Jimmy is finally back on his feet, he insists to go on, insisting he is fine over and over, but Collin quietly tells him he needs rest. “You’re not like the rest of us,” Collin gently explains. “Perhaps one of us can carry you. There is no shame in that.”
“I don’t need to be c-c-c-carried,” Jimmy finally manages to say, his eyelids so heavy they’re hardly opened. His words are slurred to the point where I wonder, exactly, when was the last time he slept. “I’m not a baby.”
“No, you’re a Human,” re
sponds Collin quite simply, speaking to Jimmy as though he were a baby. “Humans need rest. We will move along quicker if you accept our help. I’m certain Ann may agree. Don’t you agree, Ann?”
“Please, anything, yes,” she mutters from Jazz’s arm.
Jimmy leans one way, leans the other way, finally catches his balance with a nearby tree. He pulls off his gloves and mashes his unwashed fingers into his eyes, frustrated, rubbing them raw.
“Come here, baby,” someone else says, drawing up to the swaying slump of a figure of Jimmy and volunteering her enormous arms. “You can piggyback, can’t you?” Marigold smiles broadly, plants herself in front of Jimmy. “Come, climb aboard the Marigold Train, yes, yes. Next destination: Empress Shee and her Spider Empire, yes, yes, two-way ticket, I do hope.” She doesn’t give him the chance to object, sweeping his legs up from under his thighs and pulling him over her back. Helplessly he throws his arms around her neck, clinging on.
The pleased glow on Marigold’s face says it all. Feeling important seems to be an addiction to her. Or, perhaps I should say, feeling needed. And when Jimmy’s eyes close at last, it’s apparent to everyone that what the Human needed desperately, he is finally now allowing himself.
“Good riddance,” I hear Ann mumbling from the fold of Jasmine’s arm. To that, Jasmine chuckles merrily, then mutters something about young love and stubborn Humans. Ann grunts in accord.
“Gross,” says the blue-haired girl, drawing everyone’s attention to something she’s found a bit off the path. She turns around, her face wrinkled in revulsion. “Spiders have been here,” she announces, lifting her left hand to show a web it’s apparently caught itself in. “Gross.”
“Gross?” This comes from Sara, the bony one, and she rushes up to her friend. “Kaela, that’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
“I know, but …” She tries to wipe her hands off.
“This way,” the Chief abruptly announces, the loudest two words he’s uttered half his Undead life, I’m certain, then bolts hurriedly in the direction of the spider webs. The tall girl stays behind for a moment to help free her blue-haired friend Kaela’s hand from the web. Marigold brings up the rear, a bobbly-headed Jimmy still slumped over her back. Jasmine and Collin flank her.
Encouraged now, everyone’s faces are bright with awareness and curiosity. Hope, that’s what we needed. A little morsel of hope. In this tiny, icky discovery of a web, the morale has all but been refueled to the max, everyone marching with energetic determination, following Chief Brock. John is second nearest him, Lynx hurrying as fast as he can manage with the binding chains of the leash rattling. Ash and Will move stealthily, the young boy behind them and the strange old man and Brains keeping up further back.
The crunching of dead leaves and the slapping of boots against dry mud is all that can be heard.
The next spider web catches John by surprise when he nearly walks into it: an enormous net of semitransparent goo hanging between two inward-bent grey trees. He guides us around the sticky obstacle, only to find another tree that’s similarly thwarting. “Should we go under?” he asks, crouching to judge the clearance.
“Better idea,” I say, coming forward and unsheathing the Judge’s sword from my back. With a clean downward slice, I sever the web. “Onward, upward,” I mutter, pressing on. Another web appears and I strike it down too, thankful that these foes do not fight back. John grins at my fervor, I notice, so I return his enthusiasm with a cocky smirk of my own as I slash apart another web.
Seven webs later, my sword’s acquired an ungainly slimy sheen. Not daring to wipe it off with my hands or clothes, I scrape the blunt edges along a tree over and over to no avail; the damned stuff won’t come off.
With the group pressing on, I give up my attempts and keep my feet moving, catching up to John. He gives me a sideways smile. “Were you this brave, always?”
“Not always.” I smile back. “Though, I’m not sure you can call this bravery just yet. I’m only hacking away at webs. I’m not too great with the actual spiders.”
“I think you’re amazing.” He giggles. “It might sound crazy to you, but … sometimes I get this feeling inside me that says that I’ve known you forever. Do you ever get that? I mean …” He goes on, not caring for me to answer, nor paying mind to my taken expression. “I know I don’t remember my First Life and won’t for some time yet, but I feel like I’ve known you forever. Like … we knew each other in a previous Life. And a previous Life before that and before that and—Web.”
I hack it down. “Go on?”
“And another Life before that and … What I’m trying to ask is, do you believe in past lives?”
“I sure hope I do,” I murmur teasingly. “After all, I’ve had one.”
“But I mean, what about a Life before your First Life?” He peers upward, searching the sky for his next words. “What if this Life is actually your Sixtieth Life? Sixty-First? What if you and I have been … trying to find each other a million times in history, over and over and over? Do you believe in soul mates, Winter?”
“I don’t know.” I mindlessly hack down yet another web before us, clearing the way, hardly paying attention.
“What I’m thinking is,” he goes on, inspired, “that the planet itself is filled with Anima, like the Warlock said. And maybe, like, the Anima is where all life comes from, right? I mean, you can call it anything. Life Force. Spirit. Whatever you want. We just call it Anima. And maybe when we die, our Anima’s returned to the planet where someday it might, you know … come back or whatever.”
The little Lock chuckles dryly, his cynical tone providing an unwelcomed contrast to John’s warm, enthused one. “A communal cesspool of Anima juice,” he mutters mockingly. “Brilliant notion.”
“No one asked you,” I retort, reaching over and giving the leash John holds an unkind tug. Lynx only chuckles once more in response, the chain at his neck rattling.
“Well, I don’t know if I really believe in it,” amends John, shrugging, “but I thought it was a pleasant idea.”
“Do you think we’re about to die?” I ask him, trying not to sound too morbid. Though, asking that morbid question in the cheery, curious way I just did makes me feel eerily like Marigold.
“I’m ready for the end no matter,” he admits with a mild shrug. “I’ve died before, apparently. How bad could it be again?” He smiles at that, then plunges in to kiss me.
The kiss catches me so off-guard, I drop the sword and find myself backing into a tree. He does not relent, thrusting forward to keep his lips connected to mine. I feel a rush of pleasure, throwing my arms around him and, for one horrible, wonderful second I forget the world. His lips are just as warm and perfect as they were when he was alive, maybe even more so. How is that possible? John is here and he’s more present than he’s ever been. I love him. I love this John more than the last.
When he pulls apart, I breathe the words: “I love you.” My imaginary heart racing its imaginary race, my nonexistent life’s blood pumping through a nonexistent network of not-there nerves … I feel my head spinning as I stare into the handsome, inviting face of John. To my words, his smile grows and grows, all the pretty whites of his teeth flashing. “I love you, John,” I repeat again, overcome. “I love you and I’ll say it a hundred times.”
“Maybe say it a hundred times after we find Shee,” grunts the dwarf with a derisive snort.
I pull from John, only to find that the entire group has stopped to watch with a mix of reactions our sudden, unplanned display of affection. Embarrassed, I crouch down to reclaim my sword, nod and mutter a silent word of apology to my friends, then push ahead to resume the lead. Jasmine and Marigold giggle, touched or amused or whatever, and I fight a sudden urge to snarl.
John’s free hand wraps around my waist, pulling me into him as we walk. Suddenly the hunt for Empress Shee feels a lot more like a stroll through the woods with my prom date or something. I almost have to laugh at the sudden change in mood. I’v
e gone from feeling horrified to feeling lost and gloomy to feeling elated and in love, all in the space of one crowded hour.
“Web,” he whispers into my ear.
I swing the sword. It sticks on contact, caught in the goo. I frown, pulling and tugging on the blade before finally wrenching it free. I try again, this time with both hands, and the sword makes just as little progress, hardly cutting the web at all, stuck. I have to pull twice as hard this time to yank it free.
Then Will screams out like a banshee.
Everyone turns to find a spider half the size of a person on his head. Will has two of its legs in his grasp, but it doesn’t save him from the other six that work wonders, a web forming around his face and neck as he screams.
The moment I dare to challenge the spider with my sword, three more have descended from the web of branches above us. One lands on Marigold’s back, inspiring Jimmy to jerk awake screaming, and another lands on the blue-haired girl Kaela, who opts to start running away maniacally instead of scream.
Then quite suddenly I can’t help them as a spider descends on me. I fight to bring my sword arm up, but the spider’s skillfully wrapped my arm somehow, binding it to my torso. I struggle, throwing myself against the nearest tree and grunting horribly. In an instant, John’s thrown himself on the spider in some desperate attempt to free me. He grips the spider by its body and pulls, groaning nastily in the effort.
All I hear is screaming and the crunching of dead things beneath our shuffling feet and the tittering activity of spindly spider legs at work.
I hear a muffled scream and a spider is darting past me with what appears to be a big cotton ball—possibly Ann’s head that was just stolen out of Jasmine’s grasp.
John’s pried the spider off me, wrestling with it now on his own, but my arms are still trapped at my sides by the spider’s silk and I’m struggling to break free. In my struggle, I watch the Chief fend off another spider with an axe he’s magically brandished, and somewhere in the distance, the little Lock has taken off running.