Silence

by Tyler Vance

  Emili...

  It felt right.

  She tried to nod, but the movement dragged her skin against the harsh, stone ground and turned her assent into a wince at the sudden, searing pain. Her eyes welled with tears and she bit her lip, instinctively trying to hide the horrible pain from the boy. Still, a whimper escaped her. She saw the blurry outline of the boy take a hurried half step back, as though disgusted at the sight of her weakness. She didn’t blame him.

  The other one, the older man that Emili hadn’t paid any attention to, held out a hand over her midriff. His eyes flickered blue and all of blinding pain across her skin washed away as though by a soothing shower. She looked at the man curiously.

  He was middle-aged, she could tell by the streaks of grey in his long hair, tied back in a ponytail. Stubble shadowed his chin like overgrown weeds. His weather worn face was something of a backdrop to his pair of glowing, blue eyes. As her eyes cleared of tears, Emili watched his unnaturally blue eyes flicker to a more natural shade of the color surrounded with white. A word rose to her lips.

  “Celestial..?” Emili wondered.

  “Indeed I am,” the Celestial answered majestically. Emili felt a blush rise to her cheeks. She hadn’t intended to voice the thought. “You may call me Camillio Tyche.”

  Emili glanced over at the other boy, floating warily by a stone archway, and then back at Camillio. She felt the boy’s name on the tip of her tongue, but it was just infuriatingly out of reach. She thought back to when he’d said ‘Emili’ and suddenly found herself longing for the low sound of his voice.

  “…What happened to me?” Emili asked Camillio in a crackly voice. “Why did it hurt so much?”

  From the corner of her eye, she saw the boy wince. Then Camillio’s voice sounded.

  “You were possessed by a nasty Sycrarian named Khryzt,” the Celestial explained. “I bound him beneath a multitude of blood runes though; I doubt that he’ll ever threaten you. But he might be able to communicate-

  “Is this really the best time to be getting into all of this?” interrupted Sheikoh coldly. He glanced over Emili, and his sharp eyes softened. “She’s gone through enough already.”

  “It matters because there’s a chance, however slim, that the Sycrarian might break my seals” Camillio retorted with a glare. “She needs to be fully appraised so she can come to me if anything-

  “What, so you’re saying that that foolproof plan you told me about isn’t all that foolproof at all?” the adolescent spat. His words were harsh against Emili’s ears. “You know what, mate? I think you just like watching people get cut up.”

  “You are being ridiculous, Sheikoh,” Camillio hissed, every line of his face cold and hard. “None of this is certain; this is a never-before-attempted experiment.”

  Sheikoh! That was it! That was the name that she’d been trying to think of!

  “Experiment?” Sheikoh demanded harshly. “I seem to recall your last experiment involved cutting that mark of imperial restraint out of yourself. Another cut up. Maybe you take after your Zul.”

  Camillio Tyche’s expression froze dangerously. There was a long pause. Emili could see that something Sheikoh had said had crossed some line within the Celestial. Beneath his flat expression,

  Camillio seemed to radiate a murderous chill.

  “All you are is an experiment,” the Celestial said coldly. “That’s the reason why Dorothi cries when she sees the real you. That’s the reason why you wrap yourself in fake skin, because you’re a failure. A half-breed. You have spent your life hiding from the world. And you presume to tell me what I can and cannot do? You’re a coward.”

  Sheikoh’s face was suddenly all sharp lines and brooding intensity. The shadows of his corner bagged his eyes. Emili saw his right hand flicker with a sudden pistol. And then she saw his right hand. She saw the skeletal arm, the insect hand that held the gun. The pulsating wires that ran through the blacksteel like worms. The lumps of sludgy, pale sacks that hung from what looked like burned bone. She let out a horrified gasp.

  Sheikoh turned and then followed her gaze to his exposed arm. His expression was rent with pain. He swung to face the Celestial, his eyes filling with dark fury.

  “Say that again,” Sheikoh hissed dangerously.

  The teenager pointed the pistol between the Celestial’s eyes. One of the floating balls of blue light through his zombiesque limb into sharp relief. The Celestial’s eyes flickered with blue light. Twin sapphire nexuses sprung around his clawed hands.

  “Coward,” Camillio murmured, his voice low and dangerous.

  Something seemed to explode inside of Emili’s chest.

  “STOP!” she ordered them desperately.

  Glares of bleached white light streamed from something behind Emili, its glimmering streaks coloring both Sheikoh and Camillio pale. The two of them paused mid-punch, watching her with wide, fearful eyes. Then the Celestial’s, Camillio’s, face broke into a strange smile. Emili followed their eyes downwards and gasped in shock.

  Her body was floating above the ground.

  “Well,” mused Camillio, his eyes back to normal. Sheikoh looked over at him. “Everything seems to have worked out perfectly.”

  Then the Celestial smiled at her. Beside him, Sheikoh’s face twisted with horror. Emili let herself fall to the floor. Her chest burned with a flare of resentment. The brooding boy’s look of enmity seemed to have engraved itself into her mind. She turned and stalked out of the room, trying to shake Sheikoh’s disgust out of her head. Who was he to judge her? What gave him the right to hide things from her? Things about herself!

  What was so wrong with flying?

  Emili bolted down the winding stairs outside of the circle door. The night’s darkness was only broken by the magical green glow of the fronds in the tank beside her. The plants drifted in slow motion with the water’s currents. They looked like families, all of them fluttering in relation to one another.

  Emili stopped descending and stared back at them. Her earlier fury drained out of her as though it’d never been. She suddenly felt so alone. Why couldn’t she remember anything? What was wrong with her? She raised a hand to the cool glass and stared deep within the water. She jumped back; a strange creature stared back at her.

  Dark, magical symbols twisted all throughout the pale skin of its face, dancing softly with gentle waves. Its clothing was made up with ripped and burned bandages. A ratty nest of hair tangled around its face. Its burning expression flashed with shock at the sight of her. Her reflection, she suddenly.

  Emili’s shock crumpled into despair. She looked closely at herself, at her chipped tooth, her unnatural silver eyes, the horrible winding scars of blood runes. She was a freak. A monster. Her hand rose to push back the tangled clumps of hair and she eyed the pentacle runes scarred into her forehead with repugnance before she let the hair fall back over her face. Then she leaned against the glass and let frustrated tears fall down her face. Why was all of this happening to her? Where did she come from?

  A moment later she felt a tentative hand glance over her shoulder.

  “Emili… are you okay?” came the boy’s voice. Sheikoh’s. It was soft and worried, not dangerous like before.

  She fought the urge to slap his hand away.

  “Who is Emili supposed to be?” she asked listlessly, not turning around to look at him. Her voice was steady even as tears streamed down her cheeks. She felt him pull his hand back.

  “You’re Emili,” he whispered. “You’re the girl who saved my life. Who taught me how to read.”

  She could hear a smile in his voice.

  “Who could always repair my old Trinity in about twelve seconds.”

  She didn’t know what a Trinity was.

  “Dorothi’s older sister. Surely you remember Dorothi?” Sheikoh pressed.

  Dorothi..?

  Emili closed her eyes and concentrated as hard as she could. Nothing. The seconds stretched along the night.

  “Emili..?” Sheiko
h wondered desperately.

  “I think you have the wrong person,” Emili whispered underneath a sob.

  The boy gently raised his hand to cradle her tear-streaked cheek. There was minute recoil as his fingers glanced against the water, but he pulled her around all the same. Sheikoh held her eyes with his own dark ones that glittered with resolute promise. The dancing, green light played with the shadows of his high cheekbones. She held onto Sheikoh’s intense eyes like a child clutching at a lifeline. Sheikoh brushed her tangled hair over an ear. His normally sly features were desperately sincere and open.

  “You are Emili Wray. It doesn’t matter what you remember,” Sheikoh whispered with conviction. “All that matters is that we have you back.”

  And then Sheikoh wrapped her in his arms, one human and one mechanical. Emili leaned against his warm body and closed her eyes. She basked in the comfort of his embrace, wishing that she could lay there forever. His acceptance seemed to banish her nagging worries. All except for one. She pulled away so she could see his dark eyes.

  “Why am I like this?” Emili asked hesitantly. “Why is there a demon inside of me? Where did I come from?”

  Sheikoh looked to the side, his expression uncertain. He bit a lip.

  “All that matters is that you’re here now,” he told her softly.

  Emili felt her earlier frustration flare up.

  “That’s all that matters,” Emili demanded. Sheikoh retreated half a step at her tone. “You come to me, expecting some other Emili, full of memories and thoughts that I don’t have, but when I ask you anything, all you want to do is keep things from me? Maybe I should go ask Camillio.”

  Sheikoh held up his hands reassuringly.

  “Can we at least talk about this sometime when it isn’t the middle of the night?” he asked her in a small voice.

  In answer, Emili stepped up the stairs to talk to Camillio. Sheikoh sighed and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Okay,” he murmured in defeat. “You… died… four and a half years ago. You could say that I brought you back to life.”

  All of the breath whooshed out of Emili’s chest. Her mouth hung open, stunned.

  That couldn’t be true. There was no way. People don’t come back from death.

  She didn’t realize that she’d said that out loud.

  “I guess that isn’t completely true. See, the Sycrarian inside of you, Khryzt, he… helped,” Sheikoh ventured, rubbing the back of his head.

  “So you made some kind of deal with a demon?” asked Emili incredulously.

  “No!” Sheikoh exclaimed. “I mean, I did, but it wasn’t like that at all! In the Transcendent Plane-

  “The Transcendent Plane?” Emili asked him scathingly.

  “That was where the d- the Sycrarian was trapped,” Sheikoh murmured, looking off into the distance.

  “So you offered the Sycrarian my body in exchange for bringing me back to life?” Emili guessed. “What was the point of that trade?”

  “No! Would you please just listen for a second?” Sheikoh balled his hands and tapped at his temples in frustration. “Okay. Everything happened when Camillio hired me to go steal a codex from another Celestial. He gave me this amulet so I could survive the job.”

  Sheikoh flicked a dull, silver medallion hanging just below his throat. Emili noticed that he did so with his normal hand and angled his body to hide his mechanical arm.

  “This amulet makes magic useless,” Sheikoh explained. “But that’s not all it does. When I put it into the Transcendental Codex, I went to the Transcendent Plane. You came out of my memories.”

  “I came out of your memories,” Emili repeated, nodding slowly. Sheikoh was crazy.

  “Then the Sycrarian came. He possessed you and told me that he’d be willing to help us get back to the real world if I forgave him of an ancient crime. We got back. He came inside of you,” Sheikoh explained with a shiver. “Me, Indigo, and Ghost managed to get the amulet around your… his… your neck. That knocked the two of you out. Then Camillio figured out how to lock the demon inside of you and here we are.”

  “So I’m like… fake Emili?” Emili asked slowly.

  “No-

  “A memory that you couldn’t give up?”

  “That’s not-

  “Is any part of me real at all?” Emili demanded of him.

  He opened his mouth with a crinkle between his eyes, but she pushed away from him and trotted down the stairs. She suddenly desperately wanted to be alone. At the same time though, she never wanted to be alone again.

  What was happening to her?

  Emili wandered down the vaulted corridors, past the uncountable artworks and paintings that looked like cross-sections of dreams, sliding her fingers on the shadowed white of the wall paper as she went. The rooms she looked into were wildly varied, with colors ranging from pale and earth colored to explosive reds and brilliant yellows that hurt her eyes even in the dark.

  She was lost in a world of piercing thoughts. If she wasn’t real, what did that mean? Did that give the Sycrarian more claim to her own body than she did? What if she was the aggressor rather than the victim?

  She kept walking the winding halls, legs aching and eyelids drooping. When she passed a cavernous sitting room opening out to expose a long, leather couch that resembled some kind of tongue, she realized that she’d passed that room before. And then the white-washed, silver kitchen, then the pillar covered with little patches of glowing leaves. She kept on walking though, counting door-knobs to keep from thinking.

  Then Emili came to a door that wasn’t quite closed all the way, and she stopped. Her tired mind fought through quick confusion, trying to figure out whether there was some kind of relevance in this fact. But of course there wasn’t; it was simply an open door, alone among a hundred closed ones of its fellows. There was a sigh inside, then a rustling sound. Emili peeked inside and caught sight of a blob of sheets shoved around the darkness.

  Then a child with a mass of curly, tangled hair hopped out of bed and walked towards Emili, rubbing her eyes. Emili stood there, paralyzed. Her heart leapt, and she felt that same peculiar draw she’d felt with that angry, obstinate boy, that Sheikoh. For some reason she wanted to laugh, but, paradoxically the corners of her mouth were tight and immobile.

  The yawning girl drew ever closer, and then finally, the door swung outwards, spilling shadows onto the wall. Emili stood face-to-face with the girl, staring into a young, face that was staring back at her with shock. Her chest lurched forward, forcing her a stumbling, hesitant step towards those silver-blue eyes. Then Emili drew back, sure that she wasn’t behaving appropriately, that something was wrong here and the girl was staring up at her with fear. She remembered her reflection and shivered with disgust.

  Right as she did so, the girl flung herself at Emili, knocking her back against the wall. Emili unconsciously drew this small, dear girl into a tight hug, as they crashed back against the wall. She suddenly realized that the girl was crying. And then Emili tasted salty tears and realized she was crying too. They lay there and rested in the soothing embrace of another for a while, half sobbing in a way that felt absolutely right.

  “Emili…” the young girl whispered into Emili’s chest. “You… You’re back.”

  Emili stared down at the girl, her sight blurry with thick tears.

  She was back..?

  She was back.