by S. M. Beiko
The compound was an anthill, and the tunnels and close corridors still looked nearly identical. Luckily, after Barton had been attacked, Sil had taught me about keen hunting senses I could use to find him. I’d use them now to find Ruo.
Ruo had reached out to touch me. The recollection of it slammed through me like a car impact, and I felt it again now as I paced through the mountain, felt her body inexplicably crash into mine — or the ghost of it — and I staggered around a corner.
Not ten feet away from me there was an open door, and I heard something heavy hurtle to the ground and smash.
“Be still!” someone grunted, and I soon found myself standing in the doorway, watching a man in a plain grey uniform holding his hands away from Ruo, who was crouched in the corner gripping a ceramic shard in front of her like a knife.
“Keep away from me,” she hissed. “You took my things. I want them back. I want to go home.”
I was at the man’s side in three paces. “Can I help?”
Ruo backed further into her corner, jabbing her shard outward. “Who else is there? Don’t come near me! Don’t stick me again!”
The man in grey took a step back and took me with him. “It’s dementia. She’s very confused. We can’t release her, either — she’s . . . she’s homeless.” He seemed apologetic. “She needs sedation. She’s a danger to herself.” I noticed then he had a needle primed and ready, likely to sedate her given her hysterics. I realized Ruo must be in her seventies if she was around Cecelia’s age . . . but she was still as fierce as if she were mine.
I took a tentative step forward, hands up, even though I knew she couldn’t see them. “Ruo? Do you remember me? We spoke at the Council meeting earlier.” The milky eyes shifted towards the approximate source of my voice. “It’s Roan. I’ve come to visit you.”
“Visit me? No one visits me. Everyone just leaves. Leaves.” The scars at the corners of her eyes hemmed them in bitterly. My heart stung.
“Do you want to sit with me awhile? Just the two of us. The needle is gone now. I think the nurse finally gave up.” I shot the man in the grey scrubs a look, and as quietly as possible he backed off. Ruo still hadn’t dropped the shard, which I realized had been picked up from a pile of what had recently been a huge stoneware bowl, now shattered in a pool of water.
Ruo’s mouth twitched a smile. “They always give up. They always leave.”
Then the smile fell, and I saw her nostrils flare, like a dog air-scenting. “What’s that? That warmth. And a voice . . . I could have sworn . . .”
I looked down and saw the stone doing something I hadn’t yet experienced. It was pulsing beneath my shirt, like a beacon. The voices were rising but in the merest whisper. When I glanced back up, Ruo’s arm had slackened and her eyes were distant, like someone was speaking to her.
When she took a step forward, hands sweeping in front of her, I stiffened, but she caught the edge of the nearest bed, guided herself onto it, and sat perfectly still, save for her hands running over the shard protectively. She was nodding, but the voices from the stone were fading now, then gone.
Had it been speaking to her?
I carefully lowered myself beside her. I didn’t know how far I would get, but I had to try. “Ruo? Do you remember Cecelia? Do you remember the last time you saw her?”
Before coming to find me, Cecelia had been gone from the world for fourteen years. Ruo may very well be the last living person to have spoken to her before Cecelia went down the Ancient rabbit hole.
Ruo’s breath whistled through her nose, the creases at her mouth flexing. A cloud passed over her face as I studied it. The burns told part of the tale, as if something had come at her, like an iron baseball bat wreathed in fire. The band stretched from one temple to another, making a mask, and I thought, Like a fox’s face.
My spirit eye showed nothing. She had been a Fox once, I knew that from the memories. But like Barton, there was only the ghostly impression of Denizen there. Her connection to Ancient had been severed.
Then Ruo smiled. “You remind me of my daughter,” she said. “We raised her all over the world. Had to, because of Cecelia’s position. But we lived here for the longest stretch, in Edinburgh. We had a flat.” She spoke as if she were still there. She couldn’t have known or understood we were almost on the other side of the country now, and maybe miles beneath it.
“She didn’t mind, though. Moving around. As long as there was somewhere she could plant flowers. Ravenna liked to plant things. She used to say her true love would be someone who could make anything grow. Cecelia was terrible at gardening. She didn’t like things that took patience. Didn’t like setting down roots. It’s a good thing we had only the one child.”
At first I thought she was descending back into delusion, but she dropped one thread and picked up another one. “I haven’t seen Ravenna in so long. She went to Canada, you know. Too cold for me.”
I felt a chill like the spring wind off the Assiniboine at Omand’s Creek. Though I was still here in the infirmary with Ruo, I could picture it clearly. The life Cecelia had wanted for the two of them. Two women raising a child in the ’60s . . . they’d been brave. But no matter how low Ruo had been brought now, that love was still there.
“Did you know Ravenna had a daughter, too?” I asked, swallowing. “She named her Roan.” Though I’d already introduced myself to her, it felt like we were communicating in a different dimension, and she didn’t seem bothered by connecting them. I wanted her to stay calm.
Ruo nodded. “Ravenna liked horses. I can see that.” She tilted her head. “I think . . . Cecelia did something. She wanted to help Roan and Ravenna. It’s hard to . . . remember.”
“She did it. She did help them.” I couldn’t speak for my mother, since now I’d never know what had happened to her when she fell into the Bloodlands. But when I felt the stone pulse again, I felt more a conduit than ever before. “I think Cecelia wanted me to meet you. I guess it might make you my second grandmother.”
Ruo had reached up with such a quiet grace, so innocent, that I couldn’t stop her before her hand was laid protectively over the stone. The pulse rose to meet her, stayed aglow, but didn’t do anything further. It wasn’t threatened. I felt the warmth spread through my synapses, and I wondered if Ruo could feel it, too.
Her smile now seemed like it held more than just wistful remembrance — more a touch of bitter irony. “She shouldn’t have gone, that night. The Stonebreakers were radicalizing. It was a trap. And Cecelia knew it. But she went anyway, to confront them. She was always trying to make them see reason, Denizens and the extremists. And if they didn’t, she negotiated with her fists.” Ruo’s jaw worked behind her sunken cheeks, and she clenched the stone with a claw. I suddenly felt a rush of cold and realized with sudden terror that I couldn’t move. The room was flashing, but I couldn’t shut my eyes. There was a reel clicking over inside me, flooding me with images and voices.
“She was always so rash. I didn’t want her taking unnecessary risks. So I went with her. The Stonebreakers were meeting in the South Bridge Vaults. Cecelia wanted to smoke them out. A show of force. But I could tell she needed to understand them, too. There was a fight — there always is. We cut through them easily enough, but the leader was an Owl. They had been planning to test a theory, to see what would happen if they separated a Paramount from their stone. They tried it on her. But I got in the way of the two of them. And that’s the last time I saw Cecelia.”
I had been there just now, watching for myself, paralyzed — underneath the city, fighting in close quarters, the flash of fire and air and then, suddenly, sharp iron fingers inside my mind, my insides, teasing out what made me me. The man, the Owl, was taking the core of me, the fire itself. The stone fought back, but this Owl was strong, his grip, though caustic, was intense.
Then I saw Ruo rush him from behind, put an arm around his neck, and jerk him back.
He twisted and that grip smashed into her, pulled back, and put her between the Owl and Cecelia, just as the Opal lashed out with a sickening surge of flame that scraped over Ruo’s face. The Owl had hit Ruo with what had been intended for Cecelia — a blast that ripped her Denizenship and her power from her in one fell swoop. And with Ruo’s own fire taken from her, so too was her imperviousness to it, and Cecelia’s own attack had been turned on her lover.
The vaults slipped away and the light of the infirmary came back by pinpricks. I was holding Ruo’s limp wrist in my grip like a drowning sailor to passing debris. Her face was still impassive, yet the smile lingered.
“I know it was an accident,” Ruo said quietly. “But Cecelia always had to do things her way. Whatever it cost the rest of us.” I dropped her hand, afraid I might burn her further than Cecelia had.
“So warm,” Ruo muttered, voice growing heavier, arms slowly coming up around herself to rub a chill away. “I’d forgotten what it felt like.”
The feeling was still only just coming back into my body — a completely new sensation, like this body wasn’t mine. A feeling that brought up almost too much dread for things to come.
Cecelia had lived in Edinburgh, had had a life here with Ruo and Ravenna — a family. A family divided, if Ravenna had come to Canada and left them both behind, and with what limited memory served and Cecelia’s letters, it was because of some schism — whether it was marrying my stepfather, Aaron Harken, or otherwise. But fourteen years ago Cecelia had gone on a solitary journey and so followed Ravenna to Canada eventually (well, her comatose body did), yet here was Ruo at the end of her life. Alone, her vision taken from her when trying to protect the woman she loved, trapped in the mire of her mind, cut off from her powersake . . .
At the core of that abandonment was Cecelia. The clearest culprit. The loudest voice haunting the stone she’d saddled me with was yet still an unreliable narrator.
No one visits me. Everyone just leaves.
“There she is,” said a voice at the door, and Ruo jerked towards it. I felt stiff and semi-cogent, so I saw the smile break across her face before I saw Killian passing me and taking Ruo’s outstretched hands.
“Are ye behaving, girlie, or are they giving ye the fun meds?” Killian sat on the bed next to the one we occupied, holding Ruo’s hands tenderly across the divide. “Och, yer cold as death. Too bad the Conclave doesna keep whisky.”
His eyes flicked to me, and I got up, moved to stand by the edge of the bed as I felt the stab of something cold beneath the Opal. A sort of kinship for his kindness towards me mingled with irritated suspicion. I’d gone out of my way to ditch him, and yet here he was anyway, again. Had he done as I had — waited around . . . then followed me?
“This is my granddaughter, Killian,” Ruo smiled. “She came to visit me.”
Killian looked genuinely surprised, even though he must have known Ruo couldn’t see his expression. “Oh, aye? Verra nice.” He nodded at me. “She’s the spitting image of Cecelia. But can’t say for sure whose eyes she got — they’re two different colours.”
I felt my face flush under his appraisal, then felt agitated that it had. But then I grasped the admission. “You knew Cecelia?”
He didn’t answer directly but didn’t disappoint. “I grew up with yer mother.”
At that moment the floor was suddenly no longer under me — it rippled and met my back in the wake of a massive thunderclap. Ruo shrieked, but Killian held onto her, keeping her on the bed.
“Christ,” he said when the fissure subsided. “The hell’s that?”
The nurse who had originally tried to sedate Ruo burst back into the infirmary, gasping. “Get up!” he shouted. “We have to evacuate!”
“What’s going on?” I pulled myself back up using the bedframe, but the ground was still vibrating under my feet. Then a concussive horn blast sounded. A warning.
“The cavern, it’s —” Then the floor gave way beneath us entirely, and the beds and our bodies followed the crumbling stone as it fell away. I watched it all like we were trapped in a transparent mire, every flickering neuron leading back to the stone, which flared outward its own shockwave. I shut my eyes and let it.
When I opened them again, sound and fury was abating. The representation of my body on this plane was no longer mine, the fox warrior’s body wrapped around me as armour. I lifted my heavy head and dragged the nine tails up to follow, sweeping debris from it with a crack. My arms were tight to me, the fire ebbing back inside me for the next round. When I winged them stiffly open, Killian coughed from under my left, but Ruo, in my right, was unconscious, a red mark forming on her brow where a falling rock had smashed it. It had all happened so fast, I’d barely registered catching them both and cleaving them close to me. At least Ruo was still breathing. I held onto her, but I let Killian go.
Both he and Ruo were covered in dust, which showered on us as the compound throbbed like a heartbeat. Sound came back into my field of awareness — that distant warning horn, screams from every corner of the once-bustling hive — and my vision, which made everything appear abrasive and enflamed, went back to something human as the rest of me did, shrinking down until I was holding Ruo in human arms.
Killian crawled back to my side. “Thank you,” he croaked, then he took Ruo from me and I collapsed backward onto my hands. “What in bloody Christ is going on ’round here?”
We were lucky — the beautiful order of the Conclave’s sanctuary had been gutted, now looking like an alien planet of plinths and shattered stone and collapsed pillars. The impact seemed to have taken out only our immediate area, but the hysteria carried through the caves as another distant quake came rippling towards us. Aftershock? Or the fist reeling back to finish the one-two?
I got to my feet, looked around. “I doubt it was an actual earthquake. That’d be too easy.” And it didn’t seem likely that the clever Foxes would fill a barracks with young trainees on a fault line. I thought about those fragile children from this morning’s lesson and felt sick. “I don’t smell explosives, either. It couldn’t have been a bomb. There’s no smoke . . .”
“We’ll puzzle it out later.” Killian had Ruo in his arms; he was stronger than he looked, and more decisive. “We need to find Mala, get Ruo out with the rest for the evacuation. And if it is an attack, then we’ve got to get you to the front line.” His smile was grave. “Ah, I bet you thought I’d say, Let’s get you to safety, but if yer Cecelia’s granddaughter, I know I’d be wasting my time.”
Another shower of dust came down on us, but I slashed my arm down and lit it up, staying close to his side as he led the way.
We came out into the clear moments after, the system of stairs leading down to the bowl sanctum now shattered like pottery. Killian held Ruo tight, picking down each step carefully, but another tremor stabbed through and he slipped. I grabbed him hard, going rigid as the stone falling around us, and he didn’t fall or drop Ruo’s dead weight.
We made it to the landing, and the dust cleared, showing figures rushing, voices closer. “Roan!” someone called from the next set of stairs down. The speaker’s eyes were wide, mouth forming a warning I couldn’t hear over the emergency horn.
“It’s Mala,” I said, and I surged forward to go down to her, but behind me Killian cried, “Wait!” and a boulder broke free of the landing above, knifing through the remaining stairs to the bowl as if they were made of butter. One more step and I would’ve been taken down with it. There was a black pit at my feet now where the steps had been.
The Opal perceived the oncoming threat, and I grew as the heat inside me did, the blade in my hand a dark arc over my head as it cleaved through the next bombardment of rubble, and the next. I’d transformed again quicker this time, and through the fox warrior’s eyes I watched the rocks vanish into that dark oblivion below. I’d have to carry Killian and Ruo over that chasm, hoping we didn’t get crushed while I
tried it.
“We have to go another way!” Killian shouted above the din, and I spun at the sound of his voice. He took off down a corridor and I rushed after, letting the fox warrior’s power stream through me.
I stayed close, the fiery glow of my body lighting the way through the dark. Many of the torches that normally kept the space lit had been thrown from their moorings as the world beneath us cracked and groaned.
“It’s the Serenity Emerald,” Killian grunted, face blood-red from the exertion. “Has to be. Yer right, this wasn’t an explosion of any kind. I’ll bet ye anything it’s that Seela shite leading that army of brats.” Killian staggered, catching himself on the wall.
I swung around to him, reaching, but yanked away to avoid burning Ruo. “It’s all right,” he smirked, sweat cutting down his jawline. “Just an old man out of shape. Need to catch my breath.” He looked to my hand, which was Deon’s hand. “Can’t say I’ve ever had a god come to my aid, so at least I can die having that pleasure.”
“I’m not a god. And we aren’t going to die,” I replied, the voice remote in my ears and far too mighty for how I felt inside. “I can carry her awhile if you lead.”
“Better not.” Killian straightened again, adjusted Ruo’s body in his grip. “There’s nothing to protect her from ye if things go sideways. Which they just may.” Though Ruo’s face was slack with unconsciousness, those burn scars were an expression all their own. I put as much distance between us as I could in the narrow tunnel, which seemed to stretch into dark infinity.
We climbed uphill for a while in silence. Seela. I couldn’t picture the monster that apparently led an army of burning, snapping children to do its bidding. With the Emerald, the stone of the Rabbits who could control rock and earth, it wouldn’t be a long shot that it could split a mountain in half. To get to me. More people put in danger, more lives lost. What could I have done to stop it?