Then she murmurs, “I was a quiet woman. If you can believe that. I was quiet and I was nice and I was lonely.”
“No, I don’t believe a bit of it.”
She lets out another small chuckle. “Well, I was, apparently. I had a job at the bakery. I kept to myself, rolling and kneading. My fingers were dry and gritty all the day long. I was poor but got along without complaint. I never married.” She runs a hand along the ground, sighing. “I don’t know what’s made me afraid of dirt in this life … I seemed so very comfortable with it in my First. I didn’t mind my small breadbox home or the absence of friends. I didn’t mind living alone. I didn’t mind that my life wasn’t amounting to anything great, and I hardly inspired to be any greater. I utterly wasted my life and my name was Anna.”
“Anna,” I mutter, trying to encourage her. “That’s a pretty name, you’re lucky to know it. Wish I knew mine.”
“I was nineteen, living on my own and working. Then I was twenty-seven, still alone, still working. I’d lost track of time, then died before my twenty-eighth birthday.”
She turns to me now. I try to refrain from showing anything on my face. The story of her little life is already over and she’s hardly said a thing.
“There is a moment … Most people won’t tell you this, but there is a moment of perfect clarity just before you let go of your life. It is a very brief moment in which you are completely lucid, free, and focused. It is a brief moment but it is your final moment and it will burn upon you for the rest of eternity, like a brand to your soul of the life you just lived. And in my moment, I knew that I’d been lying to myself, all my life. In this moment, I realized how badly I wanted to love, to have excitement, to be a person of great importance … but didn’t care enough to make it happen. I had been a fool … a happy fool, but one nonetheless. And in my little lucid moment, I formed a single thought … just before I let go. The thought was … If only I could do it all again. How differently it’d be.”
She goes quiet.
After a length of time, I finally let myself look at her. I’m surprised to find her smiling. The expression on her face … I’ve never seen Helena look so at peace. I hate even admitting this, but I want to reach through the bars and touch her shoulder, hug her, something. I’m not entirely confident Helena would welcome any of that.
“I don’t know a thing about my life,” I say instead. “Maybe someday it’ll come and I can share my experience with you too. Maybe I also lived … humbly.”
“Maybe,” she murmurs, still staring off.
I sigh. “I really wish I knew even just one thing about my Life.”
“You do.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I do?”
“You came from the earth young … like me. Twenty or so, if I had to guess. Could’ve been my younger sister on your first day.”
I still don’t follow. “What does that mean?”
“It means you know at least one thing about your Old Life.” She looks at me now. “You died young too.”
We both turn, our attention pulled once more by the dreadful sound of chains dragging along the earth. From the dusty distance comes a slightly more able-bodied yet equally-as-dilapidated-as-the-previous prison guard, except more than just chains drag behind him this time. It’s the teenage boy that escaped, dragging behind the guard with his hands and legs bound by chain.
The guard comes forth and, in one solid motion, tosses the boy back into the cage—the door still wide-open as it was left—swings the thing shut and locks it. The guard makes a short, tired glance at me, eyes flit over to Helena, then with a snort, departs. On and on until he’s faded into the distance.
“Like I said,” mutters Helena. But maybe there’s a hint in her voice that wishes she’d been wrong about the boy … Maybe she hoped he’d actually made it out.
“Do you think he’s Human?” I whisper, concerned.
“All this wind,” Helena grunts, “I couldn’t tell a heartbeat from a kettle drum. Not from over here.”
I creep up to the front of my cage. The teenager is housed just across from mine, a few yards away … only the width of the aisle between us. I can’t hear anything but the thrashing, chaotic air.
“Hey!” I call out. “Hey!—Are you alright?”
He opens his eyes. He doesn’t speak, he just stares up at nothing.
“What happened?” I call out. “Did you see anything? Did you discover anything?—or anyone? Did you—”
“Shut your hole,” he says dryly, still staring off.
Helena chortles. I shoot her a look, then face the teen again. “Listen. You were really brave to do what you did. And we all want to get out of here. So maybe if we exchange information, we can help each other.”
He just sighs and says, “There’s no helping us.”
“Well, not with that attitude.”
“Save your words, lady.” He finally turns his head to me. “We’re gonna be here for the long haul.”
His eyes defy his youth, which for some reason tells me in an instant that this boy is Undead, like us. He has messy matted dark hair and a bronzed complexion. Despite his fifteen-or-sixteen-year-old appearance, I would believe it if he told me he was a hundred years old.
“They didn’t seem to bind you very tightly,” I note. “You could squirm out of those … Get up on your feet.”
“What feet?”
I take another look at him and realize, to my horror, that his legs now end at the knees. “They—They took your—” I clap a hand over my mouth.
“Yeah, big deal.” He shrugs, looks away.
I collapse to my own knees, gripping the bars and feeling utterly, unpardonably sad. Like a thief at the bazaar, he broke the law and tried to escape. His legs, cut off for punishment.
So here we are. No more closer to being freed than before. Only time is our companion … ticking on and on, and an uncaring and patient companion it is.
“I’m Winter,” I say, having nothing else at all to say.
Little disjointed choking sounds escape his cell, but it’s unmistakable what they are, even turned away as he is. Through the wind, his little breathy sobs penetrate. I don’t care how Undead-old he is … I want to hold him like a younger brother and tell him it’ll be alright.
Even without legs. “Hey,” I murmur. “Where are you from? Tell me about your home.”
His sobbing stops. He doesn’t turn my way, but at least I know he heard me by his silence.
“Go ahead,” I urge him.
“The Deathless can have my body,” he finally says, “but never my soul. They can try to keep me here forever, but I’ll never be one of them. Not ever.”
“That’s for damn sure,” I agree, encouraging him.
“I’m gonna be the first Undead in history to escape the Necropolis alive,” he says. “I was … gonna be a legend.”
I smile. “You still can be.”
“Legends need legs.”
Helena chortles again. A sigh escapes my lips, my eyes rolling. “The incorrigible lady in the cell next to me is Helena, and she is my regretful death mother, Reaper, whatever you call it.”
“Your First Hand,” the teenager says. “That’s what we call them. The First Hand you touch … The First Hand you know, even before your own. You should appreciate yours. Mine was slain.”
“How—How was yours slain?” I ask sensitively.
“He was captured. Wandered too far. First thing when I was brought here, I’m made to witness him being grinded to nothing before my eyes … Nothing but dust now. He doesn’t any longer exist, that’s what it means.”
I shudder, turning to look at Helena for her reaction. Of course she remains stoic. Even the emotional heart-to-heart her and I shared not a moment ago doesn’t sensitize her to this boy’s story.
“If we get out of here,” I finally say, “we’re taking you home with us, and getting you a new pair of legs.”
“I want my old ones. I liked my old ones.”
I tu
rn to Helena. “We’re going to find the others. We can’t give up hope, not now. We’re going to see Trenton again and everyone we’ve left behind.”
Helena, still unruffled, asks, “Before or after our legs are taken too?”
“Think on it this way,” the teenager offers, regaining his spirit instantly and losing the sourness, somehow. “We are Undead. We don’t bleed, no matter if they take our legs or our arms or gouge us with knives. But most importantly, we feel no pain. The only anguish we experience is mental … psychological … and if you can conquer that, you will always win—even if you lose.”
In a distant aisle, I see a guard hauling a woman from her cage and, by only the hair, dragging her away.
I tell the teen, “You’re a wise one for your age.”
“I’m not as young as I look,” he says back, and I hear the smile in his words.
Him saying that makes me think it, so I bother to ask. “Have you had your Dream yet?”
“My what?”
“Your Waking Dream … Death Dream or whatever. Have you recalled your Old Life?”
Closing his eyes, he shakes his head no. “That’s the worst of it all. Dying here without knowing who I was.”
“I share a similar fear.”
“You seem so together for a person who hasn’t yet learned their False Self.” He smiles coyly. “You could be the next Mad Malory for all we know.”
“Oh, so you’ve heard of her too?”
“Everyone has.” He laughs, turns his face to me. “Or I could be the next … I’d only be so lucky. I’m Benjamin.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You too, Mad Winter. Wild Winter.”
“Bonkers Benny.”
The two of us laugh. Helena huffs, crawling to the opposite end of her cage and curling up as if to sleep. I glance at her, still affected by her telling me the story of her Old Life. Even through her sulkiness, I see a woman who wants—needs my support and friendship more than anything. Even with all our quarrels considered, I see someone I can, with no irony intended, trust.
“No matter your moods,” I tell her backside, “or what you think of me, I’ll always admire you for your strength. I’ll be forevermore your proudest Raise, I promise that.”
She doesn’t respond.
“Be ready,” Benjamin tells me, drawing my attention back to him. “Next time they open my cage, I’m going to make bones out of them. Legs or no. It’ll be time for us to fight for our lives.”
And then I see something that drops my gut through the ground. “Here comes your chance.”
For in the distance, another prison guard approaches. As he draws near, it’s quite clear this time which of us he’s come for. And it isn’t Benjamin.
And it isn’t me either.
“Helena,” I breathe. “Wake up. Helena!”
Helena groans: “Wake up, she says … Wake up. Since when do the dead sleep?”
The guard stops in front of her cage and begins examining his length of chain for the proper key.
I can’t stand for this, not at all. “Take me,” I bark at the guard. “Take me, not her! Take me! She doesn’t deserve this—I do! I deserve this!”
“Save your breath,” Helena grunts, pushing herself up to her feet. “I’m bored of this scenery anyway.”
But I can’t help myself. I face the guard, my voice turning nasty. “Need help with that?” He doesn’t react, still patiently thumbing through his keys. “My eyes are Icecap Blue. Good for finding keys. Take me instead!”
Helena’s gaze meets mine, eyes cold and tired. At the sight, all the fight drops from my body. I know there’s no use to my shouting.
The guard has located the right key, twisting it into her lock and swinging open the cage.
“Care to tell me where we’re off to?” Helena asks the guard, her stony gaze still on me.
“To … the … Black Tower,” he manages, his every quivery word an effort. I’m surprised to hear the thing talk for the first time. I wasn’t until now certain whether or not it could.
“Is that where I die?” she goes on. “The Black Tower? The Deathless chamber of torture? Where you pull apart my body like a puzzle for your amusement? Where I meet my end, stranded from everyone I know? Degraded and alone? Punished for all eternity?”
He responds in a bored, languid drone: “It is … the throne of … the Deathless King. The King wants … to speak … to you.”
All of us—Ben, me, her—turn to the guard with bafflement in our eyes.
“Oh,” says Helena.
C H A P T E R – E L E V E N
T H E O L D W O R L D
“This is our chance,” Ben cheers on, excited, eager.
Hours have gone by since Helena’s taking. Or days.
“I can’t begin to imagine what they’re doing to her.” I’m sulking in the corner, back pressed uncomfortably against the bars. Listen to me, talking like we Undead can feel discomfort. What a fool.
“Imagine the worst. And it’ll be even worse yet.”
“Thank you,” I retort, annoyed as ever. “So helpful you are with your imagery.”
“Don’t you see the tool in this?” He attempts to shift his field of view to include me, on his back and bound and legless as he is. “Helena is with the King now. She … She might be preparing an upper hand for us. Leverage. A means by which to get us out of this hellhole!”
“Wishful thinking.” I roll my eyes and look away. “But it does still pose the question … What does this King person want with her? This is awfully strange.”
“The King only speaks to persons of great interest. It’s unheard of to be summoned by the King.”
“Great interest? What ‘great interest’ does she possibly have? I’m the one they bowed to, not her.”
“Bowed to? Who bowed?—What do you mean?”
“Never mind.” I poke at my fingernails. Another one pops off. “We really need a way to be more durable.”
“Our existence is the mere definition of being durable,” he says with half a chuckle. “The very essence of what we are is enduring.”
“What is a Deathless anyway?”
Benjamin convulses out of the blue, struggling and thrashing about madly against his binds. In just as quick an instant, he gives up, sighs, then addresses my question. “They are just like you, just like me. Undead. Not a speck different from us, except in philosophy. We believe in masking our deathliness—pretty clothes, nice skin, all four limbs. They believe in embracing it. Making themselves as rotted, as disfigured, as embodying of death as they can.”
“So what’s with the Humans?” I ask, thinking uneasily on the girl that not so long ago was contained next to me. “My hometown Trenton demands we act as though they never existed. Anything Living is outlawed.”
“The Deathless eat them.”
I sigh, not wanting to have heard it. Where once my stomach was filled with fear, I’m only feeling a vile rage now. I’m so angry at the sudden turn my life—unlife, whatever—has made in this short a time. I would give anything to be back home.
I wish Grimsky were by my side, telling me how silly these people are, relieving me of all this terror. I want to be lying next to him in a field of grass, tulips by our ears. I want to ascend the creaky steps of my porch again, singing my little tune for John to let me in.
Oh … John. I’d nearly forgotten about the man with a heartbeat, still waiting for me at home.
Assuming he’s still waiting. He could very well have lost his patience by now. I have no understanding of how much time has actually passed … Hours, days, weeks. He could’ve given up on me by now, taken off on his own. Or died there on the floorboards of my house, starved and wasted away …
I’m completely lost here. Body, soul and time.
“Will I ever see Helena again?” I bother to ask.
“Come to think of it,” he replies quietly, “I haven’t again seen anyone who’s come back from the King.”
“So she’s gone
then. Forever.”
“It’s a possibility. Not yet a fact.”
“How do you know so much about everything anyway?”
“I’ve been held in many cages.” He smiles wanly at the grey and greyer sky. “I’ve been here longer than most. At least I like to say I have … It will give greater weight to my feat of having at last escaped this place.”
Maybe John’s getting along perfectly. Maybe it was only for my own selfish desires that I kept a Human around … Secretly enjoying his presence, his aliveness, his warmth. Maybe it’s time I see that the people you think you can’t live without can, in fact, live without you. That’s the lesson everyone learns whether alive or not … Nothing lasts.
“Do you not believe me?” the teenager asks.
“I don’t know what I believe.”
He turns his head slightly. “There is a hole in the city, a great big, unfathomably deep pit in which the chopped-up body parts of Undead are thrown, including heads. They’re all still animated, as you and I are now, only their parts are all mixed up. No one knows who belongs to what. And when your head’s pulled from your body—”
“I know,” I say, shutting him up.
“Anyway. They call it the Well.” He shudders, I hear his binds rattling. “And then there’s the Mausoleum where, after being bound, disobedient Undead are buried deep. Some of them in tombs, some of them in the ground outside. Think of it like the cages we’re in now, only smaller. Much smaller.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m deciding which of them I’m going to trap the Deathless King in when I revolt.” He laughs. “Do you think His Highness would prefer a coffin, a gravesite, or a giant pit full of his own punished peasants?”
“I’d rather just kill the bastard.” I clutch my knees.
“Nice ring,” he says, lifting his brows. “Married?”
“Hardly.” I spin the clunky thing around my finger … My one and only keepsake.
“If you promise to keep me alive long enough to know my False Self,” he murmurs, his voice gone soft and dreamy, “I’ll do the same for you.”
“Deal.”
And all too soon, the shuffling of chains draws forth. I perk up, my eyes going wide. The guard stumbles down the rows. Everyone recoils to the backs of their cages, trembling, gasping, scuttling away like cockroaches in the light. He almost seems to march, his every footfall a terrible effort. He turns onto our row, then stops right in front of our cages, fumbling through his inventory of keys one by one. No mistaking it … This thing is here for either me or Ben.
The Beautiful Dead Page 13