by Daryl Banner
“I WON’T PUT UP WITH THIS!” cries Willard suddenly, kicking up a curtain of dirt with his boot. “Not any of this! How can you stand in the presence of the Deathless King and do nothing?? John, you coward! Ash, I thought I had a friend in you. Oh, when I get back to New Trenton, I promise you this, the city will learn the truth.” His eyes burn Julianne, furious, shaking with rage. “You might escape your sins with these fools. You might consider yourself absolved or forever Damned, I don’t care, I will never absolve you. I will never forgive. They will learn.”
With that, he stomps toward the trees, sand kicking up with his every furious footfall.
They will learn, he said. And with their learning, they will also learn that Mayor Megan kept the secret. They will learn their leader lied to them. Their world will come apart, I realize. “Stop him,” I whisper, unheard.
Everyone seems like they’re just fine with him leaving and no one lifts a finger. But I start moving after him. My mom’s legacy can’t be destroyed. The hero cannot be ruined. The Undead there need a hope. The Living there need an idol. I cannot let him destroy her name.
“Stop, Willard, please,” I beg him. He doesn’t stop. “Willard! Please! Think about what you’re doing!” He doesn’t stop. Neither do I. “STOP!”
In my scream, Willard drops to his knees. His arms fall off his body and his head rolls backwards, drops to the earth and shatters into pieces. His clothes flutter in the wind, freed of a body, and the trees around him receive the dust and the ash.
I stare down at the stone in my hand, disbelieving. It glows the raging, furious color of liquid gold. I drop it, astonished, and back away from the vile weapon, collapsing to my own knees and covering my mouth.
What have I done?
“Winter.” It’s my mother’s voice. She’s crouched behind me, her arms coming around me at once. “Winter, it’s okay. Come, sweetheart. It’s okay.”
“What have I done?” The ash that’s become of Will gently blows and swirls in the distant wind, carrying off to wherever the wind’s headed. “What did I …?”
“It was an accident,” she whispers, kissing my cheek and bringing my head into her chest, sparing me the sight of anything else at all. My world’s plunged into darkness as she holds me, gently rocking me. “It was an accident. No one’s to blame, sweetheart. No one’s to blame.”
In the darkness with my eyes closed, I try to picture what the rest of our Second Life is going to be like. My mother the former Deathless King. My friends who just witnessed me destroy an innocent person. The man I love who’s lost his heartbeat. I sit here on my knees, leaning into my mother and I try to picture my Second Life.
The wind stirring in my ears, my white hair flinging all around me, I can’t picture a thing.
“It had to happen,” says Jasmine somewhere behind me, having crouched down to join us.
The gravelly voice of Lynx is heard, too. “There’s a price for all our futures. Think on that, Winter. There’s always a price to pay.”
“We’ve fought so much,” Marigold puts in, the usual cheeriness of her voice giving into a solemn sincerity that is quite becoming in her. “I’ve had my share of fun. I’ve had my share of … doubts and fear. We’ve all loved and lost, Winter.”
I pull from my mother’s chest to observe the faces of the others. I wonder how curious this picture looks, the daughter of the Deathless King in her mother’s arms.
“We will live in Old Trenton,” Jasmine decides, her eyes alight. “I’ve managed there despite the rains. We will build roofed walkways and we will grow our numbers. With the Anima stone, we’re strong again. With the Anima stone, we may even …” Her eyes are lost for a moment, caught in a curious notion.
Lynx finishes it. “We may even have Raises again.”
“Yes!” Marigold says, cheering. “And I’ll have WORK!”
I study her, a little smile finding my face. If there was ever a person in the world more overjoyed at being given work, it is dear, sweet Marigold. She could reopen the Refinery. We could take in Raises once again, building up our world, the Living Dead, the specks and the bones and the fettered and the fleshless, made beautiful.
I lift my eyes to Jasmine. “We’ll be neighbors again,” I tell her smilingly.
“And in our world,” Ash puts in, “Humans will have nothing to fear from us. We will be there for them as they live and there for them as they die. And … And they will Rise again and join our city.”
“A physical heaven on earth,” says my mom, her arms reaching around to squeeze me and I feel seven years old again, cuddled in my mother’s arms in the big cushy armchair that sat right next to the living room window in our condo by the sea. The memory strikes me so vividly, I’m transported, my eyes shut, and I feel my hands reach up to clasp with my mother’s. I am at home.
I am at home.
The one person who is not at home is the only one Living among us. Still in the cave, Jimmy has found himself something to serve as a pickaxe from our supplies. He has dug twenty-nine separate holes into the walls and the ceilings and the roofs of the cave. He’s digging his thirtieth when I find him, his fingers bloody and his face gross with sweat. Streaks of blood from his hands are across his forehead where he’s wiped his hair away. He swings the pickaxe mightily over and over, cutting into the walls wherever it looks soft, wherever it looks like a spider might’ve buried something. He cuts and he cuts, his every swing growing slower and slower as he tires.
I utter a word and he doesn’t hear it. I tell him another thing and it moves him not. I say kind words and his face retains a stoniness to match the untelling stone in the walls. Dopey-faced, oily-haired Jimmy swings and he swings and he swings … and I fear deep down he’ll be swinging until his dying breath.
“He will come when the time’s right,” Jasmine assures me, taking my hand.
“And what if the time is never right?” I ask.
She gives my hand a squeeze. “If not now, then in a hundred years. If not in a hundred years, then a thousand. Jimmy and Ann will find each other again.”
“In a thousand, Jimmy will be dead,” I point out.
“In a thousand, we’ll all be dead.”
The ugly yellow stone never leaves my clutch. I hold it to me like a newborn, like Shee’s newborn. The Anima Stone is a burden I’ve assumed. With it, our safety and our future. Literally, I hold our future in our hands.
We convene at the edge of the spider woods and, with no inch of danger to hang on our weary souls, we begin the long and timeless trek back to Old Trenton, our first and only home in this thriving, Living world.
I would be insane to say that the Anima Stone speaks to me, but as I hold it, a number of feelings seem to pass through my hollow mind. I feel hope. I feel endlessness that is staggering and scary—the potential of eternity before us, the potential of forever, the infinite. I feel my hands joining John’s, our faces peering into one another, and we never grow old. I feel a coldness and a warmth that is love, a coldness and a warmth that is pain.
“When we get back to Trenton,” John asks me, his hand within mine, as if we were taking a stroll in the woods, a lover’s date, “what are we going to do?”
“Find a better home,” I consider, leaning my head into his firm, muscular shoulder. I squeeze his hand, caressing it with my own. “I haven’t given it too much thought.”
“You think that stone’s protecting us?”
“In theory.”
We reach the far end of the Whispers, still quite a long way from home, and Ash and Jasmine have gotten into a deep, detailed discussion with Marigold about all the Raises they’re going to handle when the Harvesting Grounds start to produce Undead again. I listen to them with a strange sort of distance, pitying them somehow. How can they be so sure this ugly thing, just like that, is going to revive our kind? Who’s to say it’s going to do anything at all but sit here in my palm and get uglier?
Hope is a seductive and cruel thing, lifting us into dreams with n
o promise of fulfilling them.
“When I was alive,” John reflects, “I learned quickly the value of food. I watched my best friend get knifed by his brother when I was only eight, just for a chunk of stale bread. Our camp was able to provide so much, from bread to stew, and it was some stale piece of bread that got my friend killed. I couldn’t see the world differently after that. My sight had been stained, the hungry look in the eyes of my friend’s brother, the willingness to do anything to survive. It makes me wonder … is everything as selfish? Are birds that selfish? Even trees, growing so tall they suffocate the plants below? And … and what of us? The Undead? Are we selfish to even want to exist?”
I think about all the selfish things I’ve done. I think about all the lives I’ve taken whether at my own hands or indirectly through an action of mine, Living and Undead. I wonder who’s to blame.
“I wonder who’s to blame,” I say, voicing the thought.
He seems pained before answering, “No one, really.”
The wind is dead here in the Whispers. I take in the sight of lifeless trees along its perimeter. I scan the horizon of an endless stretch of gloom. The mist and the nothingness hold me like an old friend. I did spend twelve years in this place, to be fair. This is the last mark of the Undeathly touch on this world, the Scar, and if this stone in my hand promises our continuation, we can return the world back to how it used to be … if we’re lucky.
If we’re lucky?
“I think the only one left to blame is …” But I can’t figure out how to finish that sentence anymore.
C H A P T E R – T W E N T Y
A L M O S T A L I V E
The city of Old Trenton, which I will gently refer to as simply Trenton, appears just the same as we’d left it. The wrecked buildings are silent as tombs and the bent-open doors appear more like mouths of great, toothy beasts than they do homes.
And here we are to feed them. “Welcome home,” announces my mother, the hero, and the rest of the Undead seem to celebrate. Together we move through the streets, observing the green glow of the vines and the moss that still swallow this city like a blanket. The weeds that poke through the cobblestone …
I stop in my tracks, staring down. Only John seems to notice, stopping with me as the others continue ahead. He follows my eyes and stares down with me, peering at the road. He sees what I see.
“John …”
“It’s a natural price,” he replies, his voice deep and certain, the word ‘price’ resonating within me.
At my feet—indeed, all around me—the weeds have shriveled up and died. As if in reaction, the stone in my hand seems to glow hungrily. I turn and witness a trail of death I just left, simply by entering the city with this stone. I didn’t even notice what effect I might’ve had on the thriving woods that led into the city.
“The Undead is returning,” I say markedly.
“The Undead is coming back,” he agrees, and we both stare at the path of ruin behind me and I wonder what either of us can make of this.
Everything has a price.
The city is scavenged carefully for anything of which we might find a use. Marigold returns with a few interesting items from the Refinery and a storage space next door. Lynx makes himself useful with John, and they decide to fix up our little cul-de-sac at the west end of town, starting with my old rickety house. Jasmine finds herself inspired by the project—though also somewhat amused—and, with my mother’s aid, they set themselves to the task of renovating the other houses.
I drag massive rolls of material from a warehouse in the adjacent quarter with Ash’s help, watched by a curiously attentive Brains who rests on Jasmine’s porch, still legless and missing half an arm. Jasmine had been the one to carry her all the way from the spider woods, and the two of them seem to have bonded with one another. Ash and I work to attach the material from roof to roof of each of the houses. She climbs to the top of one, affixes the tent-like material to the top with nails and spikes and splinters of wood, while I run the material along to the neighboring house. We continue in a sort of juggling of the endless material, running it along the circle of houses until, quite literally, we have ourselves a giant tent of sorts covering the entire cul-de-sac. My mother joins in with a few tricks of her own, repairing the holes and tears and seams in our makeshift tent, and I’m reminded, to my amusement, of her mending an enormous prom dress.
All the while, the stone rests on Jasmine’s porch, right next to Brains on a little table. And the fact that all the vines and the greenery that had seasoned the cul-de-sac are shriveled up and gone is not lost on me.
“Our house, Winter.”
I’m standing next to John now, looking at my house. It’s been repaired, all of its walls and even the porch. As I ascend its steps, they no longer creak in protest. I almost wish they would. The door opens properly and the inside … well, we’ll need to invest some time in new furniture, but it’s a good start.
“It’s just how I remember it,” John remarks. “Except I’m … considerably less hungry.”
“Side effect,” I jest.
“Being alive is so inconvenient.”
“So very.”
“I must’ve been such a thorn in Jasmine’s ass.” He finds that funny, snickering dryly. “Y’know, maybe we could start up a business or something. A hobby.”
“You could become a smith again.”
“I’ll make you a new sword.” His eyes smolder me and he runs a rough, weatherworn hand through my hair. It’s so strange, to look into the eyes of John and, in all honesty, not being able to tell alive from dead, dead from alive … I’ve been in this changed world so long, it makes so little difference anymore.
I unstrap the sheathed sword from my body, tossing it carelessly onto the floor. It lands with a softer-than-expected thump.
“I don’t need a sword anymore.”
He answers my declaration with his lips. His hand still tangled in my hair, he decides to trap his other one there as well, and as the muscular body of John overwhelms me once again, I find myself pressed against the wall of my rickety house in the first quarter, west end, imprisoned by the mighty arms and the brutish mouth of John, and I don’t want to ever be free.
The evening falls and we’ve set up a circle of chairs around a fire, which glows with the infinite colors that only us Undead can see. The ugly stone rests on a chair as though it were just someone’s purse, or a volleyball, or a six-pack of soda that everyone’s forgotten about. Seated in John’s lap and enjoying the company of my friends, I find I’ve forgotten about it too until it’s staring me in the face.
Ash and Marigold are dancing with one another, laughing as they try to sing a tune together. There’s no telling what song they’re attempting to perform, whether original or something remembered from a past life. Brains rests happily on the chair next to me, her wide eyes never abandoning the colors of the bonfire. Jasmine and my mother are engaged in a discussion about how life was like in Trenton during the time of the old Mayor. Hearing them chat after my reminiscing on the time in that rickety house when John was alive and needed to be fed and cared for seems to fill me with darkness. Or maybe it’s that ugly stone, staring at me from the chair on the other side of the fire.
“Is this what you pictured peace to be like?” Lynx asks me, curled up by the fire like some weird, ugly cat.
The colors are shimmering before me, John has gone off to fetch more of the wood splinters from behind the house, and I’m lost in the memories and tortures of my recent past. I shake my head.
“The reason you’re confused is, it’s not peace.” The little Lock sits up, scratches his nose and reels his drowsy, droopy eyes on me. “Time is what we all want, and it’s what we all waste. Oh, the things we could do, Winter.”
I’m already annoyed with him. “What’s your point?”
“My point is the world needs people like you and me.” His eyes are like two storm clouds. “Without us roughing it up, there is no progress. Think the
Humans would’ve evolved without the horrors your mother did to them? The world needs people like her, too. Without struggle, there is no movement. Without hearts, there is no blood. Without death—”
“There is no life,” I finish, staring at the Lock-stone, my mind wrestling with something.
“When you have it all …” he starts to say.
“You have nothing,” I finish, cutting him off, though I’m not certain that’s what he meant to say. I’m thinking of Claire now, thinking of everything I had. The riches. The limitlessness. The privilege and the height and the command. “I had nothing,” I realize, lost in the colors of the fire. “I was dead already.”
When John returns, he adds the wood to the fire and it grows, glowing with a wonder that is both furious and beautiful. We cut a hole in the center of our enormous makeshift covering for the smoke to escape, and I watch as the billowing pillows of grey twist their way into the endless grey above.
“Will you tell us when it’s morning?” I ask John as he sits in the chair next to me. His hand finds mine and he doesn’t answer, leaning back in the chair and paying no mind to the world or the flames at our feet. “John?”
“I can’t,” he answers.
I sit up, confused. “What do you mean?” He doesn’t answer, staring glumly at the floating ceiling, which flaps lazily in the calm night breeze. “John?”
“I can’t.”
The words send a chill through my bones. For a while, I think he’s meaning it metaphorically. Then I think he’s meaning it literally because we’re underneath a massive covering, our view of the sky blocked except for the hole directly above the bonfire. The pain in his face seems to suggest something else entirely.
“You mean …” I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to say it and for him to make it true. “You mean … you can’t see the sun anymore? The sky? The … light?”
He turns his head, his ominous brown eyes resting on mine, and I know the answer already.