by Scott Hale
Felix noticed a thin, brown layer had formed around Audra in the tub. It was all the dirt and grime that she had been carrying with her these last few years. At last, it seemed, it was starting to finally come off.
He was dirty, too, on the inside, where no one could see. Sometimes, he could taste it, smell it—a kind of bitter odor, sweet and revolting. When god spoke to him, it went away, but only for a while. He had to get clean, too, like Audra. He had to spit it out; otherwise, it was going to fill him up, and if it did, how could anything holy inhabit him anymore?
“How did you know Samuel Turov was going to kidnap me?” Felix asked. Please don’t laugh at me, he thought, ready to share himself. Please don’t look at me funny.
“Alexander Blodworth bragged about it on the ride from Eldrus to Pyra. He told me everything. What he was going to use the Crossbreed for. How he and my brother were working together. How he was going to have the Exemplar of Restraint hide you. That piece of… He didn’t take me seriously. I was just a mirror to him. Something he could see and hear himself in. He knew I couldn’t stop him. And he was right.”
Weakly, Felix said, “Did he tell you what Samuel Turov was going to do with me?”
Audra shook her head. It only took a few seconds for her to put two and two together, and once she did, her face went dark and her eyes wide.
“Only god truly knows.” Felix gathered himself. He called on the strength of heaven, but it was from that mire of hate inside him he found fortitude. “I think the Mother Abbess does, too, but I never told her everything.”
Hands twitching like a broken clock’s hour, he pulled up his robe, to his knees, where the scars started. “He kept me drugged in the beginning. I remember there were a few soldiers, but one day they were gone. It wasn’t until we were in the South he stopped making me drink all those potions. I was so sick. Couldn’t stop throwing up.”
Keep going, god told him. You are doing the right thing, my son.
“I don’t know if he meant to keep going, but we eventually stopped in a forest. He found a small house. There was a family living there and… I don’t know what he did with them. But they didn’t come back.
“He never really explained to me what we were doing. I trusted him, though, because he had always been nice to me. After a week or two, something went wrong. He stopped being nice. He told me I was a liar. That there was another voice of god.”
Don’t cry. Felix rubbed his eyes, but the tears were already coming. A cold chill crept up his spine and his jaw started to shake.
“It’s okay,” Audra said. She touched his leg. “You don’t have—”
“He said I was a sinner,” Felix shouted. His voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “He said I was sinner who didn’t know sin, and that he was going to show me what sin was.”
Audra’s forehead glistened with sweat. She covered her mouth, almost covered her ears. She knew what was coming.
“He made me do every sin he could think of.” Large globs of spit gummed up Felix’s mouth. When he breathed, he made choking sounds. Where he touched, wet patches of perspiration were left. “I did them to him. He did them to me. We hit each other. Cut each other. We, he, we cursed god. Sometimes, we stole from travelers. We ate our own…” Felix leaned over and pinched the bridge of his nose. He drooled hot spit all over himself. “He touched me. Made me touch him. Even when I was so sore. He would wake me up and make me… do things for him.”
Wiping his mouth, he said, “I have to be a sinner, because sometimes I think I liked it.”
“No, Felix,” Audra said. This time, she didn’t try to touch him.
This time, he really wanted her to.
“No, you did absolutely nothing wrong. No, no, no.”
“But I did like it. Sometimes, sometimes I think I miss it.”
“No, Felix.”
“There is something wrong with me. Normal people aren’t like that.”
“Felix, he took advantage of you. What you felt, what you did… Felix, he used you. And I’m so, so, sorry. He was just as insane as Alexander Blodworth.”
“Are you sure?” he begged. “Why do I miss it? Why do I have these sinful feelings?” His eyes started to probe her slip. He quickly looked away. “I don’t always, but sometimes, they sneak up on me.”
“We all sin all the time,” Audra said. “Felix, look at me.”
He did.
“We are all sinners, and shadows of our sins. What Samuel Turov did to you was disgusting. But your feelings are not. They’re just confused. That’s all. We just have to make sense of them. Listen.” She scooted forward, her legs outside his. She tightened them and took his wrists. “I created a plant that was responsible for killing thousands upon thousands. I wanted to use it for good, but someone used it for evil, instead. Does that make me evil?”
Felix shook his head. “You didn’t know.”
“You are good. You are a good kid. Our bodies are what they are. They don’t read Helminth’s Way. They are like my plants. Creatures of biology. Sometimes, they can tell when things are bad, yucky, but sometimes they get confused. What you felt was okay. What he did wasn’t.” She touched his cheeks, held his face. “You are good. There is nothing wrong with you. He showed you things you shouldn’t have seen, and no one was there to make sense of them. You are good, Felix.”
Swallowing hard, he nodded and said, “I wish you didn’t have to leave Pyra.”
She sniffled her nose. “How did you get away from Samuel Turov?”
“One day, we saw a Night Terror at the edge of the forest. He thought she was hunting us. He said he was going to kill her. He said we were going to eat her. It was a sin we hadn’t tried yet.” Felix’s face brightened several shades of the sun. “The Night Terror killed him so fast. She tore out his heart. I was happy, but angry, too. Scared. I was getting used to him. I didn’t know. I thought maybe the Night Terror would be worse. I had heard so many bad stories. Samuel Turov was awful, but he took care of me.
“The Night Terror was nice, though. Her name was… Vrana. She saved me from a monster and took me to Cadence. After that, I guess someone recognized me and soldiers brought me home.”
“Now, that’s a happy ending,” Audra said. She nudged a laugh out of him. “You’re good at turning it off and on, aren’t you?”
Felix cocked his head, confused.
“The good and bad thoughts.”
“Oh. Yeah.” It was true; already, he could feel the filth inside him breaking free, breaking apart.
“Me, too. People like us, we have to be.”
Felix didn’t understand what she meant, so he just said, “I guess so.”
Audra finally let go of his wrists and scooted back to her dirtied spot. It was time to change the subject. “You know, my brother, Vincent, was obsessed with Night Terrors.”
Vrana, Felix thought. Vrana, I’m so sorry I forgot about you.
“Some of them wear the skulls or shells or whatever of animal lords. Vincent tried to catalogue them and figure out where they had come from.”
“Uh, huh.” Felix’s thoughts had become twisted, a disturbing helix of the mutated Vrana and the last, depraved days of his time with Turov.
“He said there was an animal lord in the Ossuary, that great, big desert in the south. He said it was maggot lord with a kingdom of little maggots. Imagine the Night Terror who finally slays that…” Audra wiggled her leg until she had his attention. “What’s the matter, Felix?”
“Will you still help me?” he blurted out.
“Help you?” Audra rested her elbows on the edge of the bathtub. “I have to be going soon. Help you with what?”
Gloomily, he said, “Never mind.”
“No, wait.” Audra stood and stepped out of the bath. Her nasty slip trailed behind her like the maggot lord she had mentioned. “I remember. You said you had a friend. You said you had a friend trapped in the Membrane. You wanted me to use the shadows to find her. I thought maybe you were… but you really do
need my help.”
A few lights dimmed in his bedroom. The candles were getting low, drowning in their own wax.
“It’s the Night Terror. Vrana.” Felix stood, too, and stepped out of the bath. “I don’t know what’s happened to her. But she’s trapped somewhere. She came into my room, out of my dreams, one night, begging me to free her. She saved me from Samuel Turov. I just feel like I need to return the favor.”
“You saved me, Felix,” Audra said, nodding. “Whether or not I get caught or killed tonight, you still saved me. You have no idea how good it feels to be out of that cell. For that alone, I owe you. Her name’s Vrana? I owe her, too, because without her, I wouldn’t have met you. Night Terror or not, she deserves our help.”
“I see her in my dreams. Do you think the shadows can… go into my dreams?”
“You were there when I talked to Isla Taggart through the shadows on the wall? That took a long time for me to pull off. But they can project themselves into different places. If you can dream about your friend, where she is, I think they’ll be able to go there, through you, and tell us how we can get in, too.”
“But you might be caught if you do this.”
“If I do this for you, I’ll happily be caught. This is Penance, and I’ve a lot of penance to do for the things I’ve done.”
“But you said it. You said you’re not evil.”
Audra smiled a liar’s smile and said, “Let’s get started.”
CHAPTER X
“I don’t know if I want devils in my head,” Felix said as he lay in bed, nursing a cup of Reprieve.
“We all have devils in our head,” Audra said, sitting beside him. “At least you’ll know where these devils came from.”
Felix polished off the drink, cringed, and said, “Crap. I should have waited until the shadows came. This stuff makes me so tired.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“But I have to help you get out!”
Audra patted his knee through the blankets. “Not so loud. Avery and… Mackenzie? They are probably still out there.”
“They’re supposed to be.” His eyelids went up and down, one after the other. “I’ve—” he yawned into his pillow, “—I’ve sneaked out a few times around three in the morning. They’re always gone by then.”
“It’s a little after midnight, now.” Audra got off the bed. “What about the other guards?”
“There aren’t a lot of guards in Pyra. The Mother Abbess said she didn’t want this place to feel like prison.”
Audra curled her lip and laughed.
“But there’s usually always a few people running around. Everyone is supposed to keep an eye on everyone. Can you—” he rubbed his eyes and propped himself against the headboard, “—use the shadows to get around?”
“If they’ll let me.” Audra went through the room. She gathered up candle after candle, placed them all around Felix’s bed. “The shadows are cold, though. Like that Vein Rot potion, being in them drains you. I could do it for a little bit. But I need a disguise, too. Something warm, preferably.”
Felix pointed to his closet. “There’s a bunch of girl stuff in there. Some of it is Mackenzie’s.”
Audra placed the last candle next to the headboard. “Oh?”
“They’re for my special missions. I need disguises to do them. There’re some coats, too. A lot of it is too big. I was saving it for later.”
“Oh.” Audra tongued her canines. “You dress up like a girl to get around Pyra unnoticed?”
Felix’s nodded, and started to nod off.
“Anyone ever recognize you?”
“Huh? Yeah, but I think they just pretend not to.”
Audra started moving the candles she’d set near Felix’s bed, strategically creating shadows here and there. “Hey, Felix, you don’t happen to have a weapon do you?”
Squinting, as though he were looking straight at the sun, he mumbled, “What?”
“A dagger. A sword.”
She had created a trail of candles, running from the foot of the bed, to the center of the room. They seemed to form some sort of symbol, but Felix’s vision was too blurry to make sense of it.
“To be honest, I don’t know where I’m going to go,” she continued. “But I need to be able to defend myself. I’ll keep in contact, though, I promise. I’ll get better at talking through the shadows, like with Isla.”
“Okay,” Felix chirped. His cheeks were too numb to smile. “There’s, um.” It took everything Felix had to move. He slumped over, dug under his mattress. This is where he kept his journal, and where he kept his knife. “Here.” He slid it out and held it up. “I stole it from the sacristy.”
The knife was a ceremonial tool used in baptism and contrition. Long and twisted, the blue blade had only one purpose: to cut Corruption, to symbolize the bleeding of sin from a new member’s body. Felix had taken it after his ordeal with Samuel Turov, to protect himself. But the longer he had it, and the dirtier he felt on the inside, the more he used it. Not on his right arm, that would have been too obvious, but on his thighs—the true seat of his corruption.
Audra took the knife from Felix and said, “That’ll do. Have you ever had to use it?”
He ignored her. “Go back to the hidden place. Come out in the cloister. Use the second floor sleeping quarters to get to the main terminal. The Lyceum is below that. There’s maintenance tunnels down there. A few of them lead outside. It’ll be really cold. Sometimes, they have food in the Lyceum for meetings. You could steal some. Maybe if we wait until the morning, I can go with you and—”
She cut him off. “You’ve done enough. Get comfortable, Holy Child.” Audra’s eyes rolled back in her head. “U’cha, ma’zil.” Her body started to twitch. “Ih’ya, ih’ya.”
Felix wasn’t so tired anymore. Covers up to his chin, he said, “Is it… is it always like this?”
She took the knife, slashed her palm. “Fuh’zil. Ka’li’ya.” And smeared the wound all over her face.
“The shadows are coming,” she said, gripping her slip in her hand.
The candles flared and flickered, flared and flickered. On the ceiling, scabby holes opened. Out of them, shafts of sand poured, snuffing out the lights of each of the candles Audra had placed.
“The shadows are coming.” She held out her hand and pointed her dripping finger at Felix. “Make him sleep.” Her voice wasn’t one but many; an agonizing chorus singing the only song they knew.
“Make him sleep,” she said. Six shadows rose out of the ground around her, forming as the others had formed, one limb at a time. “Make him sleep, so we may see.”
Fully completed, the shadows surged forwards and climbed onto the bed. Felix kicked off his blankets. Before he could sit up, the creatures piled onto him and held him in place. Their scissor-like fingers clamped down over his ankles, his knees; they wrapped around his wrists, pressed hard against his shoulders. The shadows put their weight into him, forcing the air out of his lungs, so he couldn’t speak or scream. They were simultaneously as heavy as boulders and as ephemeral as ghosts. Sometimes, they slipped into him. When they did, it was like nails were being pounded into his bones. It hurt so bad it made him cry. But before the tears could leave his eyes, the shadows were already there, drinking them off his lids.
“Audra,” he wheezed. Two shadows were hovering over him, running their claws across his face. “Please, I don’t want to do this anymore!”
“Felix, please, be quiet,” Audra said. “Tell them her name.”
“V-Vrana,” he stammered. “She’s a—” A shadow drilled its claw directly into his forehead. “—A Night Terror!”
Agitated, Audra said, “Cover his mouth!”
As the shadow stirred the contents of Felix’s skull, a second shadow covered his mouth and held his jaw shut. Audra started chanting again, but at this point, he had lost the ability to make sense of most anything. Consciousness came and went without concern for his safety. The shore of sleep wasn’t far off n
ow, either. He could hear it calling to him, promising a place to rest.
This is what I wanted. He closed his eyes and gave in to the pain his trust had bought him. This is what I deserve.
Felix may have been asleep for hours, but the dreams started immediately. Like a tapestry of memories, they came to him, one after the other, in quick succession. He dreamt of Audra, in his room, not as a friend, but as a sister. He dreamt of Justine and the Demagogue, his hand up her dress, her tongue in his mouth. He dreamt of the Bloodless, rising high above Penance, people lining up to feed themselves to it. He dreamt of the kindergarten he couldn’t possibly remember attending. There were soldiers, and a woman, and someone was beating at the door, crying, screaming, begging, “Not him! Take the other, but not him!”
The dream was quickly dispelled, and others followed in its place. It was a dizzying display of experience and interpretations that left him disorientated. But as they came and went, he began to realize what was happening to him. The shadows. Like flipping through a book, they were turning the pages of his mind, searching for what they had been brought here to find.
Vrana. The Void. And the Witch who kept her there. Almost every night for the last month and a half, he’d had recurring nightmares of the place. And now that he actually wanted to go back, the doors were shut to him?
Vrana. The Void. And the Witch who kept her there. Felix focused as hard as he could on those three things.
He thought about Vrana, in the South, with that raven’s head and ax of hers, and when they had sat beside the lake. Though he would be attacked moments later, it had been the first time since Samuel Turov had kidnapped him that he felt safe.
He thought about the Void, that dark and gray place, with the plummeting pits and whining winds. He remembered the unrelenting blackness that surrounded the wasteland, the greedy Abyss that gave no quarter when it came to light or life.
And finally, he thought about the Witch, of whom he knew little, and who terrified him on an almost instinctual level. That disgusting woman, with her pale, wet skin and ragged dress. That night she and Vrana had come to him, the Witch had crawled like a spider out of thin air and claimed the Raven. Who was she? What was she? How could anything do something like that?