by A J Hackwith
Like in the Unsaid Wing, the form of the text felt unnatural and wrong to him. Books should be friendly to the reader—an enticing voice, paper, or even a flat-screen. These tablets were the wrong sort and unfriendly to the core. Not many spoke to him here, and his head was filled with only a susurrus of whispers. The silence might have been what drew his attention back. It was the only reason he heard the slow, ponderous grind of footsteps.
It was enough of a grounding sound to alarm Hero into action. He hunkered down against a spill of clay, just grateful that he’d been here long enough that the dust had frosted even his bright hair and clothing to dullness. The steps grew nearer, and only at the last moment did he think to snatch up a heavy clod of stone that must have broken off some greater slab. It was more cudgel than sword, but Hero hefted it anyway.
There was no helpful shadow cast in the dark, but the whispers receded in their own kind of warning. A broad figure emerged from a gully in the ravine, making their way, Hero noted, with a purposeful kind of shuffle that was more surefooted than he’d managed. Hero could only track his movement by the way the dust shifted in his wake. He’d been here long enough for another living creature to feel foreign, and the thought struck an absurd panic in him. As soon as the figure moved under him, Hero leapt with the rock over his head.
It was not an elegant attack—Hero found himself embarrassed by the raw sound he made to ease his frayed mind—but Hero had enough experience in combat to be efficient. Which was why when a fist closed around his throat and the world inverted, his back hit the ground with a grunt of surprise.
He flung his knee up, catching his assailant in the gut. The grip on his collar didn’t loosen, but the curse he heard stopped his intentions of a follow-up move.
“Hell” was the word, and Hero had heard it said often enough with self-righteous judgment and disdain to place the voice.
“Rami?” He felt a subtle trace of feathers brush past his nose, and there was no containing his relief. His voice sounded cracked and thin as paper to his own ears and his eyes were alarmingly hot. “Ramiel?”
The hand at his throat let go and appeared to hesitate a moment before patting down his collar. “You’re a rather hard man to find,” Rami finally said.
The dim light shifted as Rami backed off of him, but Hero felt plastered to the ground. He entirely ignored the sharp point of rubble that was beginning to make inroads into his ribs. “How—you—what the hell are you doing here?”
“Are you injured?” Rami’s voice sounded sharp, and he’d ignored Hero’s sputtering entirely.
“Only my pride.” Hero allowed Rami to clasp his arm and pull him to sitting, relishing discovering the warmth of Rami’s hands all over again as they steadied him by the shoulder. He didn’t try to stand. “I thought—” He stopped, words clotted up in his throat like chalk. He hadn’t thought. He’d known he was alone, would be left alone, and had only survived by not thinking. His head was full of other people’s stories; his own felt distant. “This is the Dust Wing,” he said instead.
“Yes, I had begun to suspect as much,” Ramiel said with that straight-faced calm that he used when he was amused. Then he asked again, “Are you injured, Hero?”
“Me? No. I—” Hero paused, considered the fragment of his thoughts, then tried for something more honest. “I would be very glad to get out of here.” His voice came out smaller than he’d intended.
“That’s the plan.” Rami shifted to a crouch, and Hero briefly lost track of him in the gloom. A day ago, he would have ridiculed the panic that spiked up in his gut simply by losing contact with someone he knew logically would not leave him, but that didn’t stop him from gripping the feathers of Rami’s trench coat and not letting go when he found them again. “Claire and I split up, but I should be able to find her.”
The questions stacked up behind Hero’s tongue. He sputtered. “Claire’s here?” No one should be here. No one came to this place. No one came for these books, least of all him. He shook his head, trying to order his thoughts into a way this made sense. “How did you find me?”
“I tracked you,” Ramiel said with a curious kind of tone that made no sense to Hero. He moved on before Hero could question it. “I don’t think we’re alone in here.”
“We’re not,” Hero said with a vague gesture to the broken tablets.
“No, I mean—” Rami gave a helpless shrug. “We should get moving.”
Hero wasn’t about to argue that point. Rami pulled him to his feet, and if he noticed how Hero clung a little too tightly to the back of his coat as they skirted their way down the embankment, he was circumspect enough to not say so.
They had nearly made their way out of the clay tablet canyons—Hero could see scrolls and wood panels encroaching, like sedimentary layers of an archaeological dig—when they heard a third pair of footsteps up ahead.
Rami held a hand up, though it was really unnecessary with Hero inelegantly clinging to his side. He took a tentative step into what seemed to impossibly be a darker puddle of darkness. “Claire?”
Rami kept his voice pitched low. There was no response, but the footsteps didn’t slow or increase. Hero felt a chill prickle over his neck. Rami tried again. “Claire? Brevity?”
Brevity’s here too? Impossible. This was an impossible place to be in the first place, let alone by choice, and certainly not for Hero’s sake. Hero wanted to ask, but he bit his lips instead to keep quiet. The footsteps were not heavy, but as they got closer Hero could make out a messy slurry with each step. As if something was scrabbling through paper and scrolls.
It grew closer, skittering around the corner. Hero felt Rami lean forward, squinting into the darkness. He jerked hard enough to throw Hero backward into a stumble. The sound of the sword clearing its sheath reached him, and the igniting of the blade threw light into the darkness like a grenade. Hero was momentarily blinded and paralyzed as he blinked away the stars.
Rami’s broad shoulders were silhouetted by a white fire. It set each feather on his coat in contrast and for just a moment, Hero swore he could have seen wings. “Rami?” His voice was dry as paper.
“Stay back, Hero.” Muscles twitched under Hero’s fingers and tension sung through Rami’s shoulders, translating down to the arm that held a sword pointed steady. Hero leaned around him and had to hold a hand up to block the light in order to see what threat had caused such a change.
He almost missed her. So pale she was almost drowned out by the light of Rami’s sword, the girl hunkered just outside the brightest radius. Her shoulders were clenched up to her ears, one strap of her bleached clothes hanging off. Hero recognized the scrappy, eclectic kind of fashion mayhem. Brevity wore clothes like that.
He jolted forward. “Rami, that’s a muse—”
“No, it’s not,” Rami said as Hero grabbed his forearm, and really, his blade didn’t even waver. It really was unfair, angels in general. Hero latched onto the trivial thought, because it was easier than what his eyes were trying to tell him was in front of him.
The girl did look like a muse of an indiscernible age. But muses were full of color—even serious, intense Probity was painted in mint and sunshine colors. But this one was pale as bone, and just as sharp and thin. The light flickered over her and it almost seemed to pass through her, as if Hero could make out smudged impressions on the other side. That was impossible, but then so was the face she revealed when her head tilted up. Beneath ivory straw hair she had a blank expression, grayscale eyes glazed with a hunger-pang gloss. Her mouth was the only contrast when a snarl pulled back her lips to reveal rows—rows—of black, jagged teeth.
“Stay back,” Rami warned with a sway of his blade.
The creature paused, glassily considered the sword point, and slowly closed her hand around it. The holy light leapt from the blade to her knuckles, but instead of burning, it danced over her bleached skin before twining up her w
rist. The muse’s razor-tipped smile widened.
Hero wasn’t written to curse—his author had probably thought it too lowbrow—but what slipped out as the white muse stepped forward was a very heartfelt, fervent “Shit.”
Rami’s grip on his arm tightened. “Run.”
They ran. Dust-dry scrolls crumbled beneath their feet as they scrambled. Rami’s lit sword made shadows jump and frenzy around them with every step. They heard the muse’s steps lurch into a ragged run behind them. The thought hit him that they had no way of knowing whether she was alone. Hero remembered the predator behavior of the lion Furies in Elysium. Every wild flinch of dark shadows could be another one of those things springing a trap. The image hit Hero hard: a white demon launching itself at Rami, black razor teeth tearing feathers and closing around his unprotected throat.
The sick fear kicked Hero forward, pulling him ahead as the scrolls crumbled and gave way to the canyon of clay tablets again. They fled past the spot where Rami had found Hero, and were running blind.
Broken piles of shards rose around them, like menacing walls of teeth. Teeth behind them, teeth to either side. There was no time to consider their route. Hero didn’t remember this path through the slate canyon, and he worried that at any moment the terrain would drop off or close in entirely.
Almost as he thought it, the teeth on either side of them began to draw closer, closing like a maw. The path beneath them began to slope up. The clay pieces were precariously balanced, and Rami with his heavier feet and frame was slowing down. Hero had to grab his shoulder as he stumbled. Clay shards clattered down the slope and momentarily masked the sound of the muse in pursuit. Hero’s pulse wedged itself between his ribs for a nice panic attack.
“Climb, you great, dull bastard,” Hero muttered, dragging on Rami’s coat. The angel took another step and a cascade of clay dislodged beneath them, dragging them both down.
Rami arrested their slide by planting his sword. “It’s too steep.”
“Then sprout some goddamned wings and fly,” Hero growled. “I don’t think that creature behind us is coming to give us a boost.”
“I keep telling you, not—” Rami winced as he stumbled hard to one knee. “Not that kind of angel.” He pressed to his feet and glanced above them. The blade lit them from beneath and threw his eyes into complete shadow. “It narrows and levels out up ahead. Make it over the crest and there’s enough space to lose her.”
“Fantastic. After you, then—”
“It’s too steep,” Rami repeated grimly. Hero couldn’t see his eyes. Why wouldn’t Rami move so he could see his goddamned eyes? “You go up that way. I’ll find a different way around.”
Rami had never endeavored to be a believable liar, and in Hero’s opinion it was far too late to start now. He scoffed, but the sound was buried in the loud crunch of clay. The bleached muse came into view at the bottom of the rise. Hero had a moment of hope. “Perhaps she’ll have the same difficulty—”
The phantom girl scrambled again, then launched herself into the air. She cleared several meters, grabbed a ledge of clay jutting from the cliff side, and hung there like a gargoyle. A feral, hungry growl filled the air.
“. . . or not,” Hero finished.
“You should go,” Rami said. There was a cracking sound. The tablets appeared to start to disintegrate and wither everywhere the muse touched. Hero shuddered and had to suppress the memory of black ink rotting him from the inside, how it felt to melt away like that. The muse tracked him hungrily. Her perch wouldn’t hold for long, and she was already eyeing the distance between them.
First the bridge, now this. The tumult of fear in his chest boiled over into a desperate kind of anger. He grabbed the lapel of Rami’s coat and hauled him an inch from his face. “Listen here, you noble idiot, I don’t have time to argue with you. You are an angel and angels do not sacrifice themselves for shitty characters of a broken book that is a dime a dozen anyway.”
Rami’s face was close enough that Hero could feel the warmth coming off his breath as he huffed. “We can’t both make it—”
“Maybe not. But angels do not give up and die in filthy trash heaps like the Dust Wing.” Hero hesitated, and it felt like a sudden narrowing. The stories he’d let pass through him had left him hollowed, clean. Nothing mattered but the shadows of the second in focus, as if everything else had been a slow blur turning on this decision. Here. Now. Hero became aware of the breath he took, drawing in the air as it left Rami’s mouth. Even that was warm. “Angels don’t do that. But books do.”
Rami’s mouth dropped open. “What—”
Hell with it. Hero chased that breath and sealed Rami’s lips with his own. He swallowed the words, swallowed the questions, swallowed the consequences and anything but the hot relief of finally, finally feeling right outside his story. Rami’s lips were shock-stiff for half a second before turning supple, all-encompassing, and giving as infinity. Soft. Soft! Hero marveled. Such a stony, hard face, to have such soft lips.
Hero might have closed his eyes and died like this, but he caught a blur of movement as the muse launched herself at them, pale hands like claws. Hero already had Rami off-balance and by the lapels, so the turn felt natural. He waited until the last minute to shove him away, clear of the claws and teeth that descended on Hero’s shoulder.
Hero fell backward, and his ears were filled with snarls as the muse grappled with him. Teeth needled his shoulder, and something trickled under his skin, worse than blood or ink. Rami gave a hoarse cry from somewhere in the dark, but Hero and the muse creature were made of lighter things. He ducked and threw her off, leaping for an outcropping of slippery shards that led her farther and farther up the cliff wall.
Away from Ramiel.
The monster took the bait. It snarled and spurred after him until Hero ran out of options. The ledge was an isolated jut, and the accumulated clay began disintegrating to sand the moment the muse touched down. Past her feet, Hero could see light flickering like a will-o’-the-wisp through the dark as Rami tried to reach them.
“Nasty thing, aren’t you?” Hero touched the wound at his shoulder. He slowly backed up until his back hit the cliff face. He watched as the muse grew from her crouch, a bit of clay melting in her hand. She brought the sandy remains to her lips. The pieces clicked together for him. “Or just hungry?”
Slowly, Hero reached into his vest pocket and withdrew his book. Every limb in the muse went rigid when the green cover of his book came into view. Hero held it to his chest warily. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Hungry for a good story. But the dried-up old bones in this place aren’t satisfying your appetite, are they? No, you want something juicy and fresh.”
He stepped to the left, then the right, and the muse tracked the book like it was mesmerized. It made a parched, hungry little keen. Hero sighed. “Pathetic, aren’t you? I—”
This was Hero’s revelation; it was really atrociously rude when the muse interrupted. She snarled and lunged, clearing the distance. She slammed Hero against the jagged cliff face, and claws scissored down on his throat.
The world became oblivion and black teeth as Hero grappled to keep hold of his book. Ink was filling his throat instead of air. He could smell the fast decay of leather and glue. The fight was inelegant; it was messy; it was stupid and ugly and contrary to every forgotten story that coursed, like fire, through Hero’s veins.
He wrenched the book over his head. It startled the muse just enough to loosen her grasp on his throat, and Hero gagged a breath as he swung his arm down. “Choke on it.”
He swung for her face and punched the spine of his book straight into her open teeth. The scream that filled the air was thin and felt as if it went on forever. Hero couldn’t say in the moment if it was the muse’s or his own. Her weight was off his chest as she rolled away.
Numbness crept across his skin, from shoulder to throat wound. It f
elt colder than blood or ink or even ice. He couldn’t move from where he fell. The Dust Wing’s stories surged and seared through his fading pulse. Lurching sounds of ripping, tearing, and ragged, wet swallows came from somewhere nearby as his book, his world, his life, his essence, was gnashed between rot-black teeth. And Hero stared, in his last moments, at his empty hands cupping the dark.
31
RAMI
What is a story without want, without need?
Moreover, what is want, what is need, without a story?
Librarian Gregor Henry, 1896 CE
RAMI HAD LOST HIS wings in the fall. They all had, all the Watchers that had been cast out. Lucifer, when he’d rebelled, had been allowed to keep his wings. Rami had never thought that was very fair. But Watchers had cast their lot in with humankind, sympathetic to their plights. It was some kind of divine justice, he supposed, that they be earthbound with them.
It felt like a sin, then, that he would trade every human on Earth for the wings he needed to reach Hero right now.
He saw them clash and saw the open way Hero welcomed the attack. He saw the struggle, hands locked over the book, before they fell beyond sight of the ledge. There were horrible ripping sounds, and then there was silence, which was even worse.
And Rami couldn’t fly, couldn’t even leap with the agility and grace that Hero had. He could only claw, one bleeding hand over the other, up a cliff of broken words with his heart held in his mouth.