A Different Kind of Despair

by Nicole Martinsen

  How appropriate.

  He kissed me with a ferocity I didn't know he had in him. I coiled my tail around one of his legs, moaning into his mouth as I grew weepy-eyed. We struggled to catch our breaths, fighting to stay afloat, fighting to stay connected. I wanted this man as I wanted nothing else my entire life. I would kill for him, die for him, give him anything as long as this moment could last.

  Marvin was unlike any person I'd ever met. He saw the souls of people with a clarity I, a Shaman, couldn't fathom. Age, race, gender -none of it mattered in his eyes. I could be a demon on a battlefield, caked in blood and howling with berserker rage, and Marvin, for better or worse, would see me as Miraj. His Miraj and none other.

  "Two years?" I whined.

  "Two," he sounded upset, as though he were trying to convince himself. "Years."

  "One and a half."

  "Six months."

  I blinked incredulously. He seemed to remember himself, made a mental note, and backtracked.

  "One and a half is fine."

  "Six months?" I swam him against the wall, running my tail up his thigh. "You said six months just now."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Bullshit.

  You know you screwed up when a demon agrees with the opposite party.

  "That condition was made when I was still human. Now that I'm a demon I'm sure the same rules don't apply. You said so yourself underwater-" I gave his leg a less-than-friendly squeeze. "-let's handle this like adults, shall we?"

  Technically, anyone less than two hundred is an infant in Hell.

  My face twitched a little at that. The devil's in the details -figures. But Marvin didn't know that.

  "As an adult, I'm standing my ground."

  "How convenient that your feet aren't touching it."

  His brow knotted. "Miraj," he sounded exhausted, like a man who had just fought a great battle against himself. "Please don't do this. I'm trying so hard to be a good man right now."

  "Good for whom, exactly?" I asked, irked. "We've been dodging the shadow of Death for the past week, we have a horde of mouths to feed, we don't know where we're going, and you still have an extraordinarily powerful demon after your soul. And here you have a wife who loves you, would give you the world itself if she could, and you deny her?"

  "I'm already your husband, Miraj. I mean it. What else could you possibly want?"

  I released him, casting my eyes to the water. "You're the cruel one, Marvin. I have my pride as a Hikari, as Shaman, but my pride as a woman is greater than both. You have no idea how much you wound me."

  "How am I hurting your pride?"

  "Do you really expect me to spell it out for you?" I went red in the face. "I want you, Marvin. All of you. For months now, I-" I bit my lip, forgetting the sharpness of their edge and blood. "I can't believe you made me say it."

  The water bubbled loudly before Marvin could respond.

  Jiki's head appeared between us as she grabbed me by the arm.

  "C-come with me."

  And we disappeared a second later.

  Marvin was left alone in the caverns, releasing a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding in. He pulled himself along the edge of the pool, Miraj's words replaying in his mind like a song he couldn't get out of his head.

  "Marv!" Leo came in, bearing a basket of unleavened bread. He stopped when he spotted his friend in the water. "Um, you might wanna get out. We can't afford to have you get sick, Marv."

  Marvin covered his mouth, hanging his head.

  "Marv?"

  "Six months."

  "I'm not letting you stay in there for six months, dumbass. Woah." Leo noticed how red his face was. "You alright, Marv?"

  Marvin looked at his friend with uncertainty. "Is it still doing the right thing if you're regretting it?"

  "Uhh…" Leo scratched his head. "Depends on how much you regret it, I guess." He set the basket on the cavern floor, shrugging. "But I try not to think too hard before I make decisions. Follow your gut and instinct will almost never steer you wrong. Did that help?"

  Marvin groaned into his hands. "I'm an idiot."

  Leo laughed at him. "I coulda told you that much!"

  Part Three: The Lost Verse

  Before the Beginning, there were two sisters

  Control and Chaos were theirs to give

  Neith, the Weaver of Mortal Fate

  And Ayasha, of those Free to Live

  The Weaver's ambition knew no bounds

  So she wove a plot as she did best

  And tricked Ayasha in a bet

  To place their rivalry to rest

  Human became the second sister, her spirit bound to mortal make

  And as mortals fell in Neith's jurisdiction, the Weaver wove her mortal fate

  In fourths her soul was siphoned off

  To her offspring they would take

  For in the Beginning, there was Ayasha

  And from Her womb sprang daughters four…

  -The Lost Prologue to the Tale of the Four Tribes

  13: For Formosa

  Purilo, as it turned out, was a tiny and decidedly vicious little man. He balked and bellowed as his guests swelled to the hundreds. He waved a golden middle finger in the air and ranted for a full hour upon their arrival.

  In the end, it was all just a show to get his hands on coveted research notes, as it seemed he was more than equipped to deal with the sudden influx of refugees. The necromancers grumbled as they set to work transcribing years of knowledge onto stacks of parchment, with younger children making a fuss of Purilo's inventions scattered about the section of the caverns he called home.

  Jiki had me dressed in traditional Hikari garb, clothing she had painstakingly acquired after years of effort. While the designs were dated, I was glad at their familiarity. I could still smell the sunshine upon their colored thread.

  I shied away from the people as they fought for Marvin's attention. His mother was a well respected leader whose actions resulted in their escape from Nethermountain. As the son of such a person, and the Inheritor, is was only natural that their sights fell on him.

  I watched him flounder under this sudden responsibility. If rumor held true then Marvin did more to avoid any and everyone from his time in Nethermountain. He was more elusive than a shadow in the thick of night, and now it was costing him dearly.

  Will, a force of intimidation if there ever was one, kept the eager in line with a cutthroat glare. He and Marvin had a unique sort of relationship. While I wouldn't call them friends, there seemed to be a reluctant mutual understanding at play. They were necessary evils to one another, evils that, for whatever reason, had to coexist.

  Jiki finished braiding my damp hair, pinning it to the base of my neck in a spiraling bun. She glanced at the kauna on my thighs.

  "S-so Formosa is dead."

  I didn't deny it.

  "You must hurry, Miraj." Her voice ran with an undercurrent of gravity. "You no longer have the luxury of time."

  I made a face at her foreboding, standing up to meet her gaze.

  "What are you going on about this time?"

  "Your bond with Koronos has not s-saved you. It has only s-staved off your death for a later date. We are not meant to hold more than one s-soul in our bodies, Miraj."

  I glared into empty space, speaking to Koronos. "You couldn't have mentioned this before?"

  Death could either be immediate or delayed. Why bother arguing semantics?

  I shook my head with a frown.

  "So what am I supposed to do, Jiki?" I asked the drowned woman. "It seems we're short of everything these days."

  "Formosa told you to s-seek out the Ice Empress."

  "The Ice Empress?" asked Marvin.

  He, Leo and Will came up to me. By the grave looks I could tell they heard about my circumstances.

  "She's all the rage in the East," said Leo. "You know how the High Cities are all autonomous? Somehow she has claims to most of them. Rumor h
as it she wiped out an entire army overnight."

  "And how exactly can she help Miraj?" he asked pointedly.

  "Because s-she's a Ghostwalker."

  "Ghostwalker," Will scoffed. "I can't help but notice that the word seems to pop up everywhere we go these days."

  "What exactly is a Ghostwalker?" I wondered, having heard the word myself. "The Crone said that Inval was a Ghostwalker too."

  Jiki swept a hand through her damp locks of hair. It seemed this wasn't a pleasant topic.

  "I'm not well versed in the particulars," she admitted. "Those you will have to learn from the Ice Empress herself. What I c-can tell you is that Ghostwalkers also have more than one s-soul within them. The Ice Empress is the first to find a way to s-survive with her condition."

  "And you think," Will furthered, "that she can help Miraj do the same."

  "Formosa thought of it first," Jiki confessed. "S-she only told me to instruct you if Miraj did indeed fuse with Koronos."

  Our eyes fell as a group.

  Despite her cold and unrelenting demeanor, Formosa was every bit a Shaman Mother her Tribe could be proud of. It was wrong of me to assume she had abandoned our ways to the laws of necromancers. She had simply found a manner to coexist while being true to both sides of her heritage.

  Just as I needed to do with mine.

  "Jiki," I said. "Did her kauna transfer to me because she didn't have a daughter?"

  "Formosa did have a daughter." I lifted my head, alarmed. "A daughter-in-law. The totem marked her s-son as your husband, so it provided the necessary c-channel to transfer. And, failing that, the kauna would go to the nearest female descendant of Ayasha."

  "Has this ever happened before?"

  "No."

  "Then how do you know for sure?"

  "Formosa and I c-could guess, based on the Lost Verse."

  At our quizzical glances, Jiki turned around. She led us through Purilo's caverns, to a rock formation somewhere on the surface. The only reason I knew that was because I saw streams of sunlight coming from cracks in the ceiling.

  Engraved on the far wall was a poem I knew by heart… but then I examined it closer. It was too long. There was another stanza.

  Marvin read the story aloud.

  "Before the Beginning, there were two sisters

  Control and Chaos were theirs to give

  Neith, the Weaver of Mortal Fate

  And Ayasha, of those Free to Live-"

  Sisters? There was nothing in Tribal lore about Ayasha having a sister. I searched Jiki's face for answers, but she provided none as Marvin continued to read.

  "The Weaver's ambition knew no bounds

  So she wove a plot as she did best

  And tricked Ayasha in a bet

  To place their rivalry to rest

  Human became the second sister, her spirit bound to mortal make

  And as mortals fell in Neith's jurisdiction, the Weaver wove her mortal fate-"

  I gasped.

  "In fourths her soul was siphoned off

  To her offspring they would take

  For in the Beginning, there was Ayasha

  And from Her womb sprang daughters four

  Kurai of the Shadow Font

  Hikari, Child of Light

  Akatsuki of the Morning Sun and

  Shinya of the Night

  Kurai conquered the northern slopes, thick with serpents as they lay

  Hikari danced upon the plains to better bask in the noonday

  Akatsuki sought solace in the sands, and shifted swiftly upon their dunes

  And then there was the daughter fourth, who found Her home beneath the moon."

  We stood there, mulling over the text now that it altered the meaning of everything I'd been taught. I looked to Jiki, wondering why she didn't show me this back when she gave me my kauna.

  She must've understood my silent inquiry, for she answered it a moment later.

  "This was the lore I was taught as a c-child, hundreds of years ago, when the Weaver's name was s-still a whisper on the s-sands. The Shinya were among the necromancers by the hour of my death. I s-shared this knowledge with them, and they have guarded it ever s-since. I was to tell you nothing unless Formosa's prediction c-came to pass. As it has, now you know."

  I opened and closed my mouth to her explanation. If Marvin was unaware of all of this then I could only guess the reality before us.

  "Formosa was last of the Shinya, wasn't she?"

  "The C-Crone devised an accident in which to s-slaughter them twenty-eight years ago. As Formosa was thick with c-child at the time, she was away, s-safe from the c-carnage."

  Marvin's expression sagged.

  "It was not immediately apparent," Jiki went on, "that Marvin was Inval's reincarnation. Not until his phobia was c-created, unusual and identical to Inval's own. Formosa s-sought to hide Marvin, pulling him from lessons. Making excuses. Becoming more terrifying than death c-could ever be to her s-son."

  "She used to be so proud of Marvin before the accident," Leo commented. "So that's why she changed. She wanted to throw the Crone off his scent."

  Jiki nodded to his reasoning.

  "S-sadly, once Marvin opened Diana's coffin, a coffin s-sealed to all but Inval himself, he was outted. Nothing was truly c-coincidence. I did not have your armor ready by c-chance," she said, eyeing Marvin and Leo. "Formosa knew s-spirits. S-she knew me, and through me, s-she knew Diana. S-she already guessed you would c-come through Krisenburg. S-she asked that I watch you while you were here."

  Will huffed, "Clever old bird."

  "C-clever, wise," Jiki added. She looked at me. "You are S-Shaman to two Tribes. Shinya and Hikari. Night and Light. I don't think it was c-coincidence that you took to Koronos as well as you have, Miraj. There is darkness within you, and it s-speaks to the darkness in devils. But remember that you are also a Child of Light. No matter how great the temptation of shadow, never forget that in you is the s-strength to resist it. Live for Suna. Live for Formosa. Live for Ayasha."

  "For Ayasha," I intoned.

  Jiki slipped through the cracks in the earth. I took a deep breath, feeling at peace for the first time that I could recall.

  "Leo, Will. I'll be needing your help with something." My tone was authoritative, but respectful, a tone I'd been trying to emulate from my mother all my life; an act I've failed time and again till now.

  With curt nods in my direction, the Doll and my Kurai cousin started out of the room.

  I left Marvin alone so he could stare at the Lost Verse of our history. He needed time to gather his thoughts. If ever he wished to share them then I'd be there to listen, but now was not that time.

  Will set about fetching a series of candles. Leo helped spread the word among the necromancers at my side. Together he helped me place names to their many pale faces, and they finally saw the human behind my demonic skin.

  Hours passed, and the day eventually turned to night. Marvin emerged from his solitude to look upon an empty hall.

  I stood at the center, waiting for him.

  "Miraj?" he asked. "Where is everyone?"

  "Waiting for you," I replied. "Take my hand, Marvin. Let's go outside."

  "Outside?" The surprise was evident. And while I'd expected it, it still made me smile. Necromancers were a notoriously cloistered bunch. Many had never been to the surface.

  We made our way through one of the exits, emerging at an oasis. The sound of insects buzzed softly in the background. Many of these pallid children were seeing the stars for the very first time.

  Everyone held a candle out before them, even Purilo, who had the courtesy to hide his gilded insult in his long sleeves. Marvin opened and closed his mouth. He couldn't find the words, but fortunately for him, he didn't have to.

  "You do not know me," I began. "I am a stranger among your numbers. A foreigner who, until recently, thought she knew your ways and judged you unfairly as a result of my ignorance."

  They blinked at the unexpected apology, clea
rly finding nothing wrong with their ways or the fact that others thought wrongly of them. It brought a smile to my face, that there existed such a group who truly could care less about the world so long as they were allowed their place within it.

  "But everyone here knew Formosa of House Thanos."

  I watched as their expressions grew somber, as though someone had snuffed out the light in their hearts. Murmurs fell to a stiff silence. Fidgeting gave way to heavy stillness.

  "I did not know her as well as I would have liked," I confessed to the group. "But I owe her much. The man I love, and whom I now have the pleasure of calling my husband, as a start." Everyone looked at Marvin. "It's thanks to him that my ignorance regarding necromancers was dispelled. He came to my Tribe, the Hikari, knowing nothing, but wishing to learn. We showed him that barbarians were not barbaric at all. He taught me that necromancers were not madmen, but misunderstood intellectuals. People whose practice was not born of malice, but of the noble desire to save lives."

  Respect, something I tried obtaining through my lineage in loud declarations as a child, finally fell on my skin like rain. I blushed as I recalled, not so long ago, how I expected everyone to fall in line just because I was the only child of our Tribe Shaman.

  Only now, through trial and suffering did I see that a wounded pride would not kill me. That sometimes one had to reject what they took for fact in order to see a different side to the same story.

  That barbarians, necromancers, and even demons were not always the monsters we first think them to be.

  "Marvin once told me," I said, my eyes drifting to the past, to days of sweet, childish ignorance in his yurt. "that an arrow leaves a wound different from an axe or club. And that love is a lot like that. Only it's just a different kind of deadly."

  I couldn't bear to look at him now, for fear I'd forget everything I wanted to say, so I pressed on.

  "I didn't understand it back then, but I do now. As people who spend their time studying life you know about death better than anyone. You understand futility. Finality. Every minute is more precious. Every memory a priceless treasure. Necromancers are people capable of a greater, deeper love that few in this world could ever comprehend… which is why there was a need for House Thanos. In fact, I would guess that's the reason you started reanimating the dead in the first place." My gaze softened. "It literally kills you to have to say goodbye."