by Martin Kee
“Sin,” said the archbishop, injecting himself into the conversation. “The Church believes that those shadows are… sin, for lack of a better word, damaged souls, demons even.”
John looked again at the same picture. Had the image changed? He couldn’t be sure. Something in the back of his mind said it had. He felt a prickle at the base of his neck.
“Sin,” said John.
“Well,” said Stintwell. “We aren’t really sure what they are, but that’s what—”
“The Vatican believes,” said Christopher, more to Stintwell than to John, “that these images are impurities of the soul… and they are everywhere. It is, in essence, all sin. The girl sees it and the machine cleanses it, stores it, produces energy.”
John turned to look at him, his face incredulous. “What, exactly… What do you plan on doing with that knowledge?”
It was Stintwell who began to answer, her words faster this time. “Well, aside from the obvious benefits, we hope that it might be a better way for us to understand—”
The archbishop interrupted again. “The most practical use, of course, would be to identify heretics, pagans, anyone who is hiding things from The Church. And it could be implemented in the court system as well. Murderers, thieves, any of their ilk would be easy to pick out. It’s much more humane than resorting to interrogations and inquisitions.”
“There is still a lot to work out, of course,” said Stintwell, trying to get a word in edgewise. “For one, we aren’t really sure that what we’re seeing is ‘sin’—as the archbishop puts it. And some of the test subjects haven’t responded well to the therapy.”
“Therapy?” said John. “What kind of therapy?”
“Well,” said Stintwell. “Our hands were directed by the obligations of The Church—”
“Nonsense,” said the archbishop. “The Vatican pays you Tinkerers to worry about making it work, not to share your theories. The Pope himself will decide what the results mean. Besides, the test subjects were awful people. Heretics of the highest order.”
“With all due respect, Father,” Stintwell was almost trembling. “I’ve worked closely with the subjects.”
“Too closely if you ask me—”
“And they are highly intelligent, kind people.”
“Yes, Ostermann told me about your budding friendship with the girl,” Christopher sneered. “I don’t approve, and neither will the Vatican when they see it in my report.”
Stintwell glared at the archbishop.
“What happened to them?” John yelled over the argument. There was a pause. John’s eyes shifted between the two of them. “What happened to them?” he asked again.
“They,” began Stintwell, “they were found to be unresponsive.”
“You mean it didn’t work.”
“I mean that they were unresponsive afterwards.”
“They died?” said John.
“Not exactly,” said the Tinkeress. “The dark energy is consumed and the overflow stored in fuel cells.”
“Consumed?” John’s face was one of shock. “How?”
“We… we don’t know,” she said. “This machine wasn’t made by us, we are just now figuring out how it even works again. But the engine is remarkable. It is a self-sustaining generator—”
“Who made it then?”
She paused. “Our earliest records date back to over three hundred years ago. But that’s just theory—”
“Three hundred…” John gasped. “What happened to them?”
She made the subtlest of glances over John’s shoulder. He turned slowly to look again at the picture. The shadow this time was noticeably different. He watched it carefully and saw that the man’s face, while tiny, was readable. He was screaming.
He turned back around, facing the two of them.
“That isn’t a picture at all, is it?”
Chapter 37
The ceiling of the black cathedral swirled with clouds of light, sending strange moving patterns along the walls. The three travelers stood in the center of the great hall, looking up at a child god on her throne. She stared back at them with analytical grace.
“How is she going to destroy us?” Melissa was shocked. “Skyla wouldn’t do that. We all love her.”
“It’s true,” said Dale.
“You had a strange way of showing it,” said Hel, pointing at Dale with a finger the color of coal. “You sold her out to The Church and a snake oil salesman. An entire city was slaughtered in its infancy because you wanted a few coins, a stroked ego, and a piece of tail—although, let’s be fair, she was pretty hot, wasn’t she?”
Hel winked. Dale flushed. She turned her gaze to Melissa. “And you, Missy, you not only tossed her out of your life as a friend, but you invited murderers into her home. They never would have found that house except through your invitation.”
Melissa looked away, and as she turned, Dale saw the mask of a corpse. Empty eye sockets cried bloody tears from beneath a black brush stroke of soggy hair. Then in an instant, she was Melissa again.
“It’s not that I don’t sympathize,” Hel added. “We all have our regrets, but…” She brushed a skeletal hand through her hair. “Oh, what a mess it’s made.”
“What does it matter now anyway?” said Melissa. “They killed me even after I told them.”
Hel stood and walked down from her throne. She extended a bony finger and poked Melissa hard in the chest.
“Ow!”
“You feel that?” Hel said. “Does that feel like being dead to you? Dale, did it feel like being dead when Marley flattened your brainpan?” She spun around dramatically, holding out her arms. “Does any of this feel dead?”
“But we aren’t alive,” said Dale.
“Life,” the goddess hissed, “is an illusion. All of it. It’s a surface fantasy. The only thing that makes it seem real is the sticky substance between your ears when you’re up there. Shift your perspective for a change, honey.”
She grabbed Dale by the shoulders with fingers so cold the ice could be felt through his clothes. She spun him around. Shadows flared from behind him, fanning out against the wall, a nightmare tangle of tentacles and gristle, twisting and writhing like worms pulled from the ground.
“Those things,” said Hel, her eyes deep and ancient. “Those are just a part of who you are. If you don’t learn to live with them, channel them, they consume you, determine your reality for you.” She looked at Melissa. “You seem to have figured that out somewhat. You’re better at it than most. Do you think you would have betrayed Skyla, had you known what was at stake? Would you have betrayed her knowing that nothing truly dies?”
“But doesn’t Skyla have a choice in all this?” asked Dale.
“None of us have a choice anymore,” she said.
Hel walked to a window that hadn’t been there a moment ago, beckoning them. They looked out over the cafeteria. A sea of people meandered around, carrying their trays. The crowd stretched forever.
“Watch,” said Hel.
“I don’t see—” Melissa began, but was cut off when an inmate flickered and vanished. She would have missed it completely, except that they just happened to be staring at the right spot at the right time. It was like catching a glimpse of a falling star.
“Where did they go?” asked Dale.
“They’re gone,” said Hel. “Forever.”
“But, this is the afterlife,” said Melissa. “We’re all dead.”
“That is not death,” said Hel. “Death is just a doorway to get you here. Now, that”—she pointed to the hole where the inmate had been—“that person is gone. They will never become anything. They will never move on from here. They are beyond dead. They are removed from existence.”
Another patron further in the distance vanished like a candle being blown out. Melissa gasped. “But… how?”
“Skyla is erasing them,” said Hel gravely. “She may not even know she is because she is being used.”
“I don’t under
stand,” said Melissa. “How is she doing that?”
Another soul flickered and vanished in a puff of dust. The other patrons seemed to not even notice.
“There is a machine in Rhinewall,” said Hel. “It feeds off dark matter, souls or—if you are The Church—you would call it sin. It produces energy for the city and in return, they let it feed. What they can’t realize is that it’s feeding on both the living and the dead. There is no way for them to know the damage it’s doing here.”
“How?”
“What I said before,” said Hel. “Those demons… You don’t see them when you are alive, but they are there all the same. The shadows under your feet, the feeling you are being watched in an empty street, the guilt you carry with you. The Church is using that machine to try and cleanse them, ‘exorcise’ them.”
“But,” said Melissa. “It’s not cleansing them, it’s...”
“Eating them?” Hel gave her a grim smile. The ring in her lower lip quivered. “Instead, it is consuming the very thing that makes us conscious.”
“How do you know this? I mean, I know you’re a goddess, but how do you know so much about the living world?” asked Melissa.
“Because she used to run the machine,” Marley said, looking at the teenage god in her throne.
Hel gave him a solemn, withered look as a black shape tumbled from the ceiling. As it passed through the air, the color drained from its feathers, peeled away until it was completely white. It spread its wings just before perching on her shoulder. She reached up a hand and scratched Orrin’s head.
“Melissa,” said Marley. “Meet Skyla’s aunt. Say hello, Rhia.”
It was Orrin who answered. “Hello, Rhia.”
Rhia shushed him. “What did I say about being cheeky?”
Melissa and Dale gaped at Hel—now Rhia—with open mouths. Marley on the other hand was looking pleased with himself. Rhia gave him a respectful, defeated look.
“That was a good guess. How did you know?” she asked him. She seemed only mildly curious.
“I knew you were dead,” he said.
“How?” she asked. “Lyle?”
“The preacher? No. But I did have a conversation with the general in Lassimir. He and Lyle Summers had something of a partnership. Lyle told him and I made Perlandine tell me.”
Rhia nodded. “Lyle was there when I died. He is one of the people who funds the facility, keeps it running. You have to give the man credit, he certainly has conviction.”
“I also knew that Skyla was on her way to see you.”
Rhia only nodded.
Orrin opened his beak. “Hello, Marley.”
Nothing really surprised Marley anymore, but he did blink at this. “I guess you left when you realized she wouldn’t be following you.”
“There’s only so much I can do in a physical form up there,” Orrin said. “Speaking isn’t easy in a raven’s body and Skyla is growing out of her ability to understand me. She wasn’t going to make it to Rhinewall in time, so I had to find other options, and other people who would listen to me. I may have found a candidate.”
Rhia cocked her head, giving Orrin a curious smile.
“Why not just make yourself into a human?” Melissa asked. “Just walk up to Skyla and tell her what’s going on, what to do.”
“That isn’t the way it works,” said Orrin. “Your concept of gods has been skewed from ages upon ages of misinformation. Just because people might be considered gods doesn’t make them all powerful up there, just here.” He pointed the tip of a wing at Rhia.
“Where did you go then?” Dale asked.
“Here mostly,” Orrin said.
Rhia interjected. “And to woo the ladies apparently.”
Dale laughed. “I was joking when I told Skyla you probably ran off to find a nice lady raven.”
The stark-white raven looked at Dale. If there was humor there, he couldn’t see it. “Skyla is going to need a lot of help soon, and I can’t stay up there indefinitely. The older gods are growing impatient with this machine she’s hooked up to. They want to see it destroyed.”
“Who are the older gods?” Dale asked.
Rhia ignored the question. “Orrin has been watching all of you,” she said. “He believes that you all might be able to help, although he doesn’t like sharing his plans. I guess I should tell you the whole story. Have a seat.”
“Aren’t we in a hurry?” Melissa asked.
“Time flows differently here, as you’ve probably noticed,” said Rhia. “This will only take a moment.” The room flickered.
One moment they were in the hall. The next, they sat atop a hill overlooking a city similar to Bollingbrook. Rhia began her story as they looked down on the circular city-state, now a model of itself. It was no city any of them knew. This one was nestled in a landscape of humid green jungle.
The room went black, as if a theater play was about to begin.
*
Rhia’s story:
Lynn and my childhoods were similar to Skyla’s. We were tormented and ostracized because we, like Skyla, could see the blights on people’s souls. It made them feel naked and exposed. It was the sort of thing that people would rather not know about. Forced self-reflection doesn’t make one popular.
(As Rhia spoke, the view shifted. Sunlight filled the space around them. They were looking at a tall wide colonial house surrounded by green. Willow trees brushed the sides of the walls and swayed in front of its tall, white columns. Two tiny girls stood at the front door. They were very young with matching brown hair. They held hands as the house loomed over them.)
We were orphans, raised in the meager facilities that governments provide for the unfortunate. The taunting and harassing was easier for the two of us than for Skyla because we had each other.
A man appeared one day, a preacher. He ran the local churches, huge mega-churches where people cried out and rolled on the floor. He had made his fortune building such churches across the eastern section of the continent.
(The scene shifted to the interior of the house. The front door opened and a man stood outside, backlit by the bright outdoors. He held his white hat over his chest. His hair was still gray, rather than stark white. His face was obscured in shadow except for a humorless grin. He needed no introduction.)
He had come across us by way of a church member who claimed we were witches. I had read the shadows of one of our instructors. She was an ugly person who killed animals by skinning them alive and then selling their fur.
(The woman appeared as if seen through the slit in a door. The fox screamed, bleeding from its stomach. Melissa covered her eyes and the scene was gone.)
I had said some things. She had gotten mad and punished me. In the end, I’d say I punished her more.
(Rhia gave them a dry smile as the same woman trembled in the corner behind a couch. She was curled in a fetal position; hands over her ears, eyes squeezed shut. Dale had a feeling the woman had been that way for a long time and would continue to be that way for longer.)
As popular as witch-hunts were in some regions, it was not as popular to kill young children. However, it was believed that we might be cured. Lyle Summers knew of a lab in the Western Territories that was experimenting with technology he believed would cure us, two poor wretched girls. And if it didn’t, so what? It would remove the problem from his hands anyway.
(A boat pulled into a harbor, its long metal hull gliding through the fog. The twins walked down the gangway with The Reverend Summers behind them. Off in the distance was a dome on a hill. Something long and twisted protruded from one side of it.)
We were delivered to Rhinewall, where we were to help focus a machine, built untold generations ago. Previous disasters had rendered it… difficult to manage. You see, without a person to focus the machine, it would strike out randomly. The result is what you saw in the cafeteria.
(They were inside a dark, concrete-walled building, much darker than the modern version Skyla knew. The two girls, slightly older
, were talking with some Tinkerers. Walls of instruments buzzed and ticked in the background. Rusty benches lined a wall near an array of pipes.)
We began to teach the scientists about how they were going about it all wrong. For a collection of the smartest minds in the world, they really didn’t get it. They probably still don’t. To us, what the Tinkerers were trying to do for almost a century came easily. What was a breakthrough to them was child’s play to us. Lynn and I would laugh about how they walked around with their shadows hanging out, completely unaware of it.
This caught the attention of The Church, who had been funding the project with mild interest. After we arrived, funding doubled. We lived in the labs, assisting the Tinkerers and living as willing prisoners. At least Lynn was willing.
(A young Rhia was sitting in a chair wearing a pair of goggles that looked familiar to Dale and Marley. In another room sat an elderly man.)
I was the first to realize the damage that was actually being done. They had brought in a man accused of heresy. He was a kindly older man with a beautiful soul. I couldn’t stop looking at it, in fact. I watched as his eyes glazed over and his mouth hung open. There was nothing there after that. And I helped destroy it. The machine consumed him.
(She held up a hand.)
Now before you ask, yes I looked for him here when I died. It was one of the first things I did. But he was gone. Erased. When I realized what they were making us do, I planned an escape. It was… ill-conceived. I tried to convince Lynn to go with me. We had gotten to the door before we were captured.
(A group of guards hauled a young Rhia off into the hall. Lynn stood at a doorway, crying.)
What they had planned for me was much worse than shooting me. They decided to make me a subject. I remember Lynn sitting in that oversized chair. She was looking at me through the window, completely unaware of what she was about to do.
Now, consider this: we never really read each other’s shadow, out of respect. We did when we were younger, the way children will sometimes look at each other in the bathtub. It was curiosity, very innocent. But as older children, we respected each other’s demons. It seemed impolite to do otherwise.