by Daryl Banner
Someone hand me an Oscar.
“What happened?” asks the girl quietly.
“I was put here,” I tell her. “There’s a … a wicked Crypter lady. She’s collecting people, I think. She threw me down here. I think … I think my leg’s broken.”
Other than feeling pain, I really haven’t lied to them yet. Really, I’m being quite truthful to these two sweet kids who’ve happened upon me and who very well hold my immediate future in their hands.
“If you can’t climb,” the boy says, less nicely, “then we can’t get you out anyway.”
“Rake!” The sister’s scolding him. Rake, I assume his name to be. Robin, hers.
“Please,” I beg them. All I need to do is get out of this pit and teach myself how to walk again. That’s all the help I need, and with or without them, I’ll be well on my way. “Can you throw something down? A rope? Anything? I’ll pull myself out. Please, please, before she comes back. I beg you.”
“Robin, where are you going?” The boy’s voice has turned frustrated. “Robin!”
“I’m going to help her. You can help too or just stand there and do nothing.”
“No! I said no!”
“We can’t just leave her!” she calls out, her voice growing more distant as she heads off.
The boy finally comes around the pit, emerging at the other ridge where I can see him properly. His figure looks to be the breadth of a twig, but he’s bundled himself up in a thick coat and a hood, which hangs off the back of his head. Tufts of messy blonde hair peek out of the top and sides of the large hood, shielding his ears like earmuffs. His eyes are huge and sharp and icy. For as severe as the boy’s expression is, he seems otherwise well-meaning. I’d almost say he seems sweet.
This might be my only chance. “I’m Winter,” I tell him, because I ought to.
He doesn’t respond. His icy eyes scan me, his nose wrinkling slightly as he surveys my situation. Perhaps I’m in a worse condition than I realize.
“I won’t bother you or your sister at all,” I tell him, inspiring his eyes to flash warily. “If you help me get out of this pit, I’ll just be on my way. Provided I can walk. Either way, you and your sister can … can proceed and pay me no mind, truly.”
“I may pay you no mind anyway,” he answers.
The actress in me is revived as I groan at a sudden pain in my abdomen. I grip it uncertainly, moaning and groaning at a pain that isn’t there. I really hate doing this. “Oh, oh … I’ve definitely broken something. Oh, no.”
“You’ll die,” he tells me.
Such a chipper one, this boy. “Why do you say that?”
“Even if we get you out,” he goes on. I have no idea how a boy with such icy, bright eyes can make them look so dark. “Then we leave you. Your leg will atrophy. Your shoulder too, by the look of it. Poison will run in your blood and your own infections will kill you.”
I wince. “Let us try for a bit of optimism,” I reply, wondering if the boy even knows what such big words like “atrophy” and “infection” mean in this world.
The girl, Robin, returns quite suddenly, crouching next to her brother. I’m surprised by the similarity in the two of them. Twins, if I had a guess. She’s just as petite, though her hair is a touch sandier and her eyes are hazel. She’s even dressed the same, thick coat and a hood.
More importantly, a dead branch rests by her, its tip peeking over the edge.
“Can you get to your feet?” the sister asks kindly.
“Let’s try that,” I answer perkily.
Hoping beyond hope that the act of standing doesn’t give away my whole act, I slowly let my knees bend. Remarkably, they do. I push into my left foot, my back sliding up the wall of the pit until I’ve lifted myself into a somewhat-jagged standing position. I slowly allow weight onto my right foot, then the left again.
“Am I good?” I ask, trying to sound pained. “Am I good? Is this good?”
“Can you reach this?” asks the girl, lowering her end of the branch.
She’s at the other end of the pit, which is only about four steps forward. Not caring to risk an embarrassing fall, I skirt the edge of the pit, keeping my back to the wall, until I’ve reached the other side. Carefully, I reach up with my right hand—which means my left hand goes—and I grip the branch firmly.
“I need you to pull now,” she says, “while my brother and I pull, and we’ll get you out. Okay? Tell me when you’re ready.”
I hug the branch so tenderly, like a friend, and brace myself against the wall of the pit. I hope for two things: that my kind is as light as I think we are, and that the two of them have the strength to get me out of this hell.
“Ready,” I groan.
And then we pull.
My foot grips the wall, climbing it slowly. Up, up.
They pull again. Up.
I’m almost up the wall. And then a second later I’m peering over the edge. A hand grabs my shoulder, another hand grabs my arm, and then I’m free from the pit.
“OUT!” I yell, overjoyed. “Oh my god, I can’t thank you two enough. Oh, thank you!”
First thing’s first, I shove myself far away from the pit, half-crawling, half-rolling, then maneuver my body into a somewhat natural sitting position. The girl is smiling. The boy is watching me warily. I may never win that one over. I may not need to, either.
“I’m Robin,” the girl blurts out, despite her brother’s piercing glare, “and this is my twin brother, Rake.”
“I’m Winter. And you two may have saved my life.”
The boy huffs. “Didn’t do a thing to save your legs. Or that.” He nods at my shoulder, which I can’t see.
Robin shoves at her brother. “Stop being so mean.” She comes up to my side, crouching down. “Let me have a look. Can I?”
“Of course,” I tell her.
Robin gently starts to examine my shoulder, though I have no idea what she’s actually doing. She pushes in one place, then prods in another. I feel something shift quite dramatically, and then both my hands flinch in response. I lift them up to examine them; they function as they ought to, now. “Fixed!” I exclaim.
Rake wrinkles his face. “That didn’t hurt?”
Oops. “I … have a very high tolerance for pain,” I spit back at him playfully. “Haven’t you been through a lot in your life? Not half as much as me.”
“Can I look at your leg?” Robin offers.
“Yes.”
My own personal tiny Human Marigold. She runs her fingers along my thigh, then my kneecap, examining. She pushes somewhere, shoves somewhere else, and we all hear a loud snapping sound.
That’s my cue. I grunt loudly. Robin lifts her hands, her hazel eyes blinking. “Sorry!” she exclaims.
“Quite alright,” I assure her, playing a convincing sort of groan into my voice. “It’s—It’s—It’s quite alright. I feel okay. Please, keep working your magic.”
And she does.
Rake is not done expressing his bitter suspicion of me, however. “Where are you from, Winter? Tell me.”
“I am from a city, somewhere that way.” I point. “The name is Trenton. My friends are all there. I really hope they’re okay. I have to get back. They’re likely worried about me.” You know, provided they’re still alive.
“Is there food there?” he fires at me.
“Not much. But enough.”
“What’s the last thing you ate?” He doesn’t hide the fact that this is an interrogation.
“Literally? An apple.”
“What are the names of your friends? All of them.”
Robin shoves somewhere near my hip, and we all hear another sisterhood of bones shuffling into place, cracking and snapping and crunching. I play my part and let out a dramatic yelp. “Sorry,” the sister says, and I smile and nod forgivingly at her.
“Names,” demands the boy.
Robin huffs at her hotheaded brother. “Rake, stop it with the questioning. She’s been through enough.”
Robin smiles. “Is John your husband?”
Now I’m the one with the wary expression. “What makes you say that?”
“It’s how you said his name. John. I can always tell.”
I smile. I say John’s name a certain way? I wonder if John himself has ever noticed. A sad, panicked bolt of longing sears through my body, thinking of him.
“So is he?” The question comes from the boy, Rake. He’s taken a somewhat lighter tone. “Husband?”
“Maybe someday,” I admit.
Someday.
“I think you’re okay to walk,” points out Robin, “but you will need to be very careful. I’d use this branch we got you as a walking stick, and—”
“How much food’s at your camp?” interrupts Rake.
“Not much,” I answer again. “I’ve already said.”
He hesitates before asking: “Enough for two more?”
Oh. Robin lifts her eyebrows at me. Rake awaits my answer, his eyes screwed onto me with such intensity, I suddenly feel so guilty for deceiving them at all. Even if it was innocent, well-meant deception. Because the truth is, I don’t know if there’s even a city left to return to.
But I am in their debt. That much I cannot deny. “I’m sure if there’s food, we’d happily share,” I answer back, though my voice carries no heart in it.
“Try to get on your feet?” the girl suggests.
“Alright.” I take the stick, push it into the rocky earth, and pull myself up. I am literally astonished at Robin’s work on my joints and bones—whatever she managed to do. My neck still has trouble turning from side to side, but my legs feel almost normal and my bones seem right.
“Can you walk?” Robin’s got a hand on my back.
To keep up appearances, I pretend to rely on the stick to hold me up. “I think so. I’m really, really sore, but I think … I think I can manage just fine.”
The boy’s back to business. “Can we follow you?”
It’s so dangerous. How can I express that without seeming ungrateful and awful to these two kids who just helped me immensely? I’m in their debt and they know it, though the boy seems far more keen on cashing in said debt than the girl.
On the other hand, if we were somehow victorious and overcame the spiders and the Army Of Fire, then there is, in fact, a wonderful, beautiful place these two kids could stay. Food. Shelter. More than they could ask for out here in the wilderness.
But first … “What happened to your camp?”
The twins exchange a look. Then the girl says, “We don’t have a camp.”
“But you two surely came from somewhere?”
“We don’t have a camp … anymore,” she amends.
“Our dad,” the boy begins, swallows, then tries again: “Our dad was all we had left, and he was fighting off a pair of Crypters, and told my sister and I to run.”
“Is he still—Is he still alive?” How else can I ask?
“Yes,” Robin answers proudly, optimistically.
“We don’t know,” the boy answers instead, offering me the more sobering reality. “But we can’t find him. So we’re on our own and we’re … we’re in need of …”
“Of course.” We have to get out of here, and fast. “Yes, then. Come with me. Trenton will welcome you with open arms. We have to hurry, though.” I begin to move as fast as I can manage, keeping up the façade of my Humanness and my so-called injuries. I limp and grunt only subtly, so as not to overdo.
“How far is it?” asks Robin as we make progress across the dusty, cracked terrain.
“Not too much farther.”
In truth, I don’t know. As we steadily walk, I worry whether we’re even headed in the right direction. It’s just another estimate, from the orientation of my body in the pit and the direction in which the Shee-thing was headed. I presume this way is where Trenton ought to be.
Let us hope as much.
The twins are silent for a long while, even after we break into the woods. The air feels foul and thick, or perhaps it’s just the panic that’s settling into my chest. I wonder if I’ll ever find John, if I’ll ever see Megan and the others. It’s amazing how so many days had gone by with no incident at all, calm as ever, only for all of our peace to be undone in an instant. One very bug-infested instant.
“The old camp was in a deep basin where a lake used to be,” Robin tells me. “All that was left were ponds and pools. And there were bushes full of berries, and another bigger tree that had nuts. We even had squirrels.”
“No, we didn’t. And if we did, it was just one,” the brother says, annoyed. “Probably the last in existence.”
“Whatever, Rake. I’d eat about anything right now.”
Conversation’s all we have, so I don’t figure my next question could hurt. “Have either of you heard of a place called Garden?”
“No such thing,” says the brother tiredly.
Robin just shrugs, maybe having been discouraged to answer optimistically because of her brother’s response. I don’t push the subject any further.
Suddenly I find us in a familiar place in the woods. I can’t say it’s anywhere near Trenton, but it certainly feels like somewhere I’ve been before. The sound of snapping twigs and crunching dead terrain echoes around us as we progress. I have no idea how much time we’ve spent traveling, but I realize that no matter how much of this world I see, it all starts to look the same. Dead this. Dying that. Decaying this. Withering that. It’s all the same.
Then we reach a break in the woods where I get a solid view of the horizon, and my heart sinks. There in the distance is a skyline I’ve only seen one other time in my Second Life. The ridges of industrial towers and the pipes of dead factories poking into the silver sky.
“Why’d you stop?” asks Robin.
It’s the Necropolis.
“No reason,” I say, my voice bitter, even the thought of what transpired here tastes like stomach acid in the back of my throat. There is no sense of nostalgia for this wretched place, even considering it’s where I met Megan and Benjamin. And my mother. Before I knew she was my mother. “But I know the way home, now.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” With the Necropolis as a guide, I can send us in the right direction. Marigold, an old Undead man, and a bag full of the old Judge’s body parts accompanied me last time. Twin Humans will have to do this time.
“Robin!”
I spin around—albeit carefully because of my neck—and find a ghoul of a person-thing limping toward us. He has no nose and half his chest is sunken in. A tie hangs loosely around his neck with only a sad strip of a white shirt hanging around his waist. Death’s tech support. I had always wondered what became of the stray Deathless after the Queen’s reign had come to an abrupt end.
Suddenly, I feel quite stupid leaning on this stick. So in an instant, I call off my fake-Human act, brandish my walking stick like a baseball bat and charge forward.
Then the thing grunts a single word at me.
I stop, frozen, ready to unleash a mighty swing, but the word has caught me.
And then it repeats the word: “W-Winter.”
Its voice is garbled, phlegmy, grotesque. It’s stopped advancing, simply standing there, arms limp, gooey eyes staring at me.
“What?” I ask.
The thing grunts a few times, then moans the words: “P-Pleeeease forgiiiive me. W-Wuh … Winter …”
It’s Grim. He’s communicating to me through this half-dead thing, communicating from afar. He must’ve maintained control of the Deathless after the fall of the Deathless Queen; I know no other explanation. This zombie is acting as a remote talking device of sorts.
“I … waaaant to … saaaave you.”
There is something awful about looking into a pair of half-melted eyes,
gooey with decay, and somehow seeing the soul of the man you thought you loved, Grimsky, far, far away … so far away.
“P-P-Pleeeease … J-Join meee … R-Ruh-Ruuule the world at my siiiiide. P-Pleeeease un-understaaaaand …”
And then I’m swinging the stick because I can’t hear another word, bashing the tech support over his head. It detaches upon impact with an unnecessarily gross splat. His body drops to the ground, its head landing elsewhere, the rest of Grim’s pleas sealed within them.
Homerun.
“Winter?”
I face the twins. They look as wary of me as they were of the Deathless thing I just slayed. “No more grunty thing,” I mutter. “Trenton is this way.” I begin walking.
“Winter!”
I turn around. To my utter disappointment, I realize the ghoul was not alone. The rest of his friends apparently would like to invite themselves to our reunion party as well, likely carrying a hundred more messages from Grimsky. Across the way, I spot more shapes that stagger, grunt, and limp. I am so, so finished with shapes that stagger, grunt, and limp.
“We have to run,” I tell the twins, “and I know you both are very tired.”
“It’s getting dark,” Robin points out, trembling. “We’ll get lost in the woods. They’ll overrun us.”
“No,” I say. “They won’t.”
Suddenly I have a twin’s coat gripped by either hand and, carrying them with the ease of two light suitcases, I bolt into the forest.
“Put me down!” shouts the boy.
“What are you doing!” cries the girl.
With a roll of my eyes—which is more of a sweet homage to Helena, whom I hope to see again soon—I tell them, “Why, I’m saving your lives, of course.”
I run and I run, praying that my legs don’t suddenly decide to snap in half again. I carry the two of them evenly, careful not to jostle them around. Though I ought to be a professional at carrying Humans by now, these two happen to be my most fragile and, after the girl was so kind as to fix my bones, it’d be an awful way to repay her by breaking all of hers.
Soon, there are no pursuing grunters or growlers or limpers behind us, but I’m still hurrying on. I’m hurrying because the quicker I get to Trenton, the sooner I will know if my friends are alive.