by Leo Hunt
“YOU WISH FOR BOTH OF US TO BE UNMADE? IS THAT WHAT YOU DESIRE? LET ME GO!”
“You don’t want to go into this star, do you?”
“IT WILL BE OUR END! WHAT MUST I DO TO CONVINCE YOU TO RELEASE ME? LUKE!”
He becomes Elza, beautiful, green eyes and freckles, hair done the way it was the first day we spoke to each other. She tears at my hands, trying to prize them away from the sword hilt.
“DON’T YOU WANT TO SEE HER AGAIN?” the false Elza screams. “UNHAND ME! WE BOTH CAN RETURN TO OUR HOMES AND FORGET THIS AFFAIR!”
“No,” I whisper. The star is singing to me as we fall, a beautiful high chiming noise, and I feel a growing coldness in my sigil ring. I know what I have to do. I need to unforge Berkley, destroy him with the same fire that created him. This is the moment.
I reach out with my left hand, toward the star, and will that power into me.
“YOU CANNOT! I DEFY YOU! I AM SPEAKER OF SECRETS! LUKE! I AM —”
A thread of fire rises from the surface of the star, so slender at first that I can barely see it, but as soon as it touches my sigil, it becomes a pulsing artery of white flame.
For one awful moment, the power is flowing through me, into my sigil, consuming it, trying to consume me, but I close my eyes and will it out into the black sword. It’s like forcing an ocean through a keyhole. I pour the star’s power into Berkley, sending it through the blade of my sword right into the core of him.
“I — AAAAAAIIIEEEEE!”
I can’t see a thing, can’t feel anything, I feel like I’m being broken down and rebuilt atom by atom
moment
by moment
is this
forever
no
i’m still here
i’m still
who
speaker of secrets
no
I’m floating. I’m floating in space. I’m — Am I alive? I don’t know.
Where did the star go?
There are points of light around me, constellations. I’m still inside the Shrouded Lake.
My sigil is gone. Whatever happened, it was too much for the ring to withstand.
Did I destroy Berkley as well?
I can’t see him.
Have I won?
“Luke,” a tiny voice says.
I’m still holding the sword, and I think the voice comes from there. I move the blade closer to my face and see that my weapon is stuck through something, a shape like a glob of oil that moves on its own. Living darkness. The glob grows arms the width of matchsticks, forms something like a head, a smudged remnant of a face.
“Luke,” it says again, trying and failing to pull itself off the blade.
“Berkley?”
“I want to say something,” the scrap of darkness whispers.
“It’s over,” I say. “This is the end. I won.”
“One last thing.”
“What?”
“I ate your brother, Luke.”
I don’t say anything.
“After you gave your Host to us. You sent them through my doorway. I had no use for the Innocent, so I ate it. A moment’s work.”
“Liar,” I say, but I know it’s true.
“A scrap, a tiny bite,” the blob whispers. “I want you to think about that.”
I reach out with my left hand, my four-fingered hand, and I pull the scrap of shadow from the point of my sword and crush it. I crush the life out of Mr. Berkley in my palm, and anything more he has to say is cut off. I crush him until I can feel that he’s gone, until all that’s left of the Speaker of Secrets is a pale pebble the size of my thumbnail, a pebble that looks a little like a goat. I put it inside my jacket, where the Book of Eight used to sit.
And then I drift.
The depths of the Shrouded Lake move around me. Constellations ebb and flow in the darkness. My sword has dulled, the flames and ice fading from its edge, the molten shadow stuff cooling into smooth dark metal. The power the Tree lent me seems to be used up. I drift, listening to the hum of the stars.
Berkley gone. Dad gone. The Book of Eight and my sigil are gone.
I’m still here.
What do I do now?
How do I get out of this place?
I should’ve asked the Tree that, but I had no time.
I remember the Shepherd and Ham falling into the Lake’s depths, and my instinctive knowledge that there was no way out. I suppose this was always a one-way trip. Is that the real reason the Tree told me to do this? It knew I wouldn’t be coming back.
Sorry, Elza.
I hope the Tree keeps its word at least, lets Elza and everyone else in Dunbarrow go. That was the point of this.
What will happen to me? What happened to Ham and the Shepherd and the Widow when they fell into this place?
I want to go home.
I ate your brother.
You’re gone. You’re a figment. You were the one that was nothing, in the end.
I watch the sigils and magic marks forming in the darkness, a story without a beginning or end. Constellations spiral silently around me and then break apart.
Maybe I’ll become part of this place. Dissolve into the black space around me, like a grain of sugar into coffee. I think if I wanted to, I could. Let it all go and disappear. It wouldn’t be the worst end.
No.
Elza and Mum still need me. I need them. I have to find a way back.
I can’t tell which way is up or down, or how I could get back to the surface of the Lake, but I have to try. The problem is there’s nothing to fix on. The stars are moving all the time; you can’t use them to navigate by. Even if I try to head toward another point of light, it might just be leading me in circles.
In desperation, I choose a direction that at least feels like upward and move with a purpose.
I’m starting to accelerate, I think. The stars are streaks around me, threads of light rather than points.
I will myself faster, onward, imagining myself breaking the Lake’s misty surface and finding myself on that silver-lit shore, the same spot I fought against Ash and the Widow.
There’s something forming ahead of me, a darkness against the void that’s blocking out the stars.
I move toward the shape, losing it when it merges with the sable darkness, then finding it again as it obscures the constellations.
This thing, whatever it is, is enormous. I feel like I’m approaching a black planet.
Wait . . .
Is that a person?
The thing comes closer, and I want to stop but I can’t. I’m still accelerating.
That is a person, I think. It’s a human shape at least.
Every time I think this place can’t get weirder.
As it grows closer, approaching now at enormous speed, I can see the being more clearly in the chalky starlight. It looks like a child, or maybe an immeasurably old person, coiled in on itself, in a fetal position. It makes me think of a newborn, held inside a womb of immense darkness.
Is it asleep?
I can’t slow down. I’m going to hit it.
The being’s face fills the world: a hairless scalp the size of a planet, an ancient sleeping face, intermittently lit by the constellations shifting around us. I see the ridge of a nose, a tightly closed mouth. Skin that’s as dry and gray as moon dust.
I fall closer and closer, trying everything I can to slow down, but I can’t. The thing is drawing me in, I realize, although for what purpose I can’t imagine. The Shepherd spoke once about sleepers below the surface of the Shrouded Lake, I remember now. Is this what he was talking about?
The thing opens one eye, an eye that must be hundreds of miles across, and I fall into the darkness at the center.
I’m standing on a plain of pale stones, some just pebbles, others larger and streaked with dark flaws. Each one is smooth and edgeless, as though eroded over millennia by the tide. They rattle as I move my foot. Far above me I can see the stars of the Shrouded Lake moving i
n their silent patterns. There are curved black walls around me, and the starry sky is just a circle above. I’m at the bottom of a pit, a stone well hundreds of miles in diameter.
This doesn’t make sense.
Is this place inside the enormous being’s eye?
I look down at myself. I’m dressed in jeans, hiking boots, my raincoat. I still have two hands, nine fingers, a frayed woven belt. My coat and skin are the same gray, without hue or tone. I’m not casting a shadow. I slide the black sword through my belt and start to walk.
This plain has the feeling of a tomb, a place you’re not meant to be walking. There’s no sound but the dry scraping of the pebbles underneath my feet as I travel. There’s no way I’ll be able to climb the walls of the well — they’re smooth and flawless, unscalable. I can’t fly anymore. I’m stuck on the ground. Whatever power drew me down here, it doesn’t want me to leave. There’s something in the very middle of the plain of stones, a far-off domed shape. For lack of anywhere else to go, I decide to head toward it.
I have the same feeling as I walk that I had when I first looked at the Styx: of a place beyond time, a vastness beyond vastness.
The domed structure comes closer. It’s a building, made from gray stone, and I feel like it has a religious significance, a place of worship. I fell into the eye of a sleeping giant, and now I’ve found a temple inside it.
Of course I have.
I walk closer still. The temple is a low octagonal building with a domed roof. The stone it’s built from is the gray of cold ashes. There are no decorations or carvings on the temple walls: it’s very simple, almost like something that was abandoned before it was completed. There’s a round black doorway in the side facing me, although I can’t be certain it was there a moment before.
Something luminous emerges from the blackness, like a miniature constellation, a being constructed from tiny points of white light that shift and swirl as the creature bounds toward me. The thing is sinuous and strange, running across the expanse of gray stones with lunging strides. I don’t know whether I should be scared or not. I draw my sword regardless, but I don’t feel like it would do me any good in this place.
Hello, boy, the star creature says. I hear its voice in my mind, like I heard the Tree’s.
A tail made from stars lashes wildly behind it.
Good boy. Hello hello.
“. . . Ham?”
Of all the things I expected to meet down here, this wasn’t it.
Yes yes. Am Ham.
The star creature rears up and places its front paws on my shoulders. Its glimmering flesh shifts and swirls before my eyes, a fog of white light. There’s no face exactly, but now that I know what I’m looking at, the outline of my dog is easy to make out. I break into a grin.
“What are you doing here, Ham?”
Sleep.
“You’re sleeping?”
Many sleep. Big sleep.
“I don’t understand.”
Follow boy. Follow follow.
Ham drops back onto all fours and trots away, back toward the gray temple. This is so bizarre. What happened to him when he fell into this Lake? Is this what’ll happen to me as well?
Good boy. Follow follow.
I follow him across the stones. He doesn’t seem to have become much better at stringing words together. Not knowing what else to do, I walk into the temple, through the dark doorway.
The temple interior seems much larger than it was from outside; a high vaulted space with floors the color of dust and gently curving walls that stretch high overhead. Ham’s shape lights the way in front of me, gentle milky star glow. The floor is smooth stone, a single unbroken surface without cracks or seams or signs of tiles being put down. This place seems like it could’ve grown out of the rock. I can’t see the ceiling overhead. Ham leads me deeper into the cavelike building, and I see another source of light glimmering in the darkness, something bright and white.
We come closer. Ham’s starry paws make no sound against the stone. The light is cast from a stone bowl set on the floor, an enormous gray basin whose rim is higher than my waist. I could climb inside it easily and still have room for more people to sit in there with me. There’s something like white fire held inside it, a shifting radiance that ebbs and flows within the bowl.
“What is this?” I ask the star-fleshed creature.
Allwell.
“I don’t understand you.”
Allwell. Old place.
“This is old magic?”
First spell.
I rest my hands on the rim of the bowl of flame. I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do here. Why did Ham — the thing that wants me to think it’s Ham, at least — bring me here? Now I look closer, the substance held in the basin reminds me of the stars floating in the depths of the Lake; it’s the same pale fire.
I glance down between my hands, at the bowl’s thick rim, and I notice that there’s a mark engraved in the gray stone, a small sigil. I recognize this mark. I’ve seen it before, carved into the edge of the shrine in Deadside that juts out over the edge of the Shrouded Lake. It’s a special kind of mark, a word that can mean anything the person speaking to you wants it to mean.
At the moment the mark means WELCOME. I can understand it like I’m reading English.
“Hello?” I say, projecting my voice into the darkness around us. I’m still not exactly sure what I’m speaking to. Is it the sleeping creature whose eye I fell into? Is it the fire in the bowl? Is it something else entirely?
The mark’s meaning hasn’t changed.
“Why am I here?” I ask the blackness. There’s no echo to my voice, which feels strange. A huge empty building like this should reverberate with sound. I suppose there aren’t sound waves in this place; I don’t even know if there’s air to breathe. Different rules apply. The white fire churns in its container. Ham sits beside me.
The mark cut into the stone now means this: YOU HAVE DESTROYED THE SPEAKER OF SECRETS.
“I did.”
DO YOU CLAIM THAT POWER?
“I . . . no. What?”
A SPEAKER OF SECRETS MUST EXIST.
“You’re asking if I want to take his place?”
YES. A NEW SPEAKER MUST BE BORN. DO YOU OFFER YOURSELF?
“No. I want to go home.”
THERE MUST BE A SPEAKER OF SECRETS.
“Why? Berkley was a monster.”
THAT IS NOT FOR YOU TO JUDGE.
“Why do you want a new Speaker?”
THERE MUST ALWAYS BE A SPEAKER OF SECRETS. IT IS NOT ABOUT WANTS.
“So make a new one, then.”
WE REQUIRE A SOURCE. DO YOU OFFER YOURSELF?
“No! I want to go back to Dunbarrow.”
VERY WELL. BUT A SPEAKER MUST BE BORN.
“How can I help you? I don’t understand what you want.”
YOU DESTROYED THE SPEAKER OF SECRETS. The sigil can’t communicate tone, but I detect a twinge of exasperation on the part of whatever’s speaking to me. THEREFORE IT IS YOUR DUTY TO OFFER THE KERNEL OF THE NEW.
“A kernel?”
I am absolutely lost. I feel like I walked onstage halfway through a play and everyone’s expecting me to know my lines. I have no idea what this thing is talking about. What does it mean by kernel? Isn’t that like a seed? At a loss, I reach into my pocket and bring out the pale stone that Berkley became when I crushed the life out of him. The small white stone that looks a little bit like a goat. I hold it out to the basin of fire.
“Is this . . . ?”
THIS WILL SUFFICE. IF IT IS YOUR WILL.
“What will this do?” I ask, still holding the white stone.
BIRTH A NEW SPEAKER.
“Do you mean Berkley will come back if I give you this?”
THE SAME PATTERN WILL NOT BE REPEATED. THE SPEAKER WILL BEGIN ANEW.
“I won’t be in its debt? It won’t come after me?”
YOU WILL BE ITS ARCHITECT. HOW COULD YOU OWE IT A DEBT?
I hesitate. I
still don’t understand this. I think I’m being asked to assist in creating a new great spirit. However horrible I found him, Berkley must’ve performed some role that was vital to the spirit world; or at least, that’s what the being talking to me through this stone sigil thinks. I want to go home, and I feel like I don’t have enough of a grasp on what’s happening to argue a case against doing what it wants me to do.
I lower the white stone into the pool. The flames rise in silent surge and swallow the stone. My hand is left empty, unburnt. Pale fire swirls undisturbed in the basin. Ham nuzzles his starry snout against my thigh.
Good boy, he says.
“What’s Ham doing here?” I ask the dark temple.
HE CAME TO US. HE HAS A PLEASING FORM. THE YOUNG ONES ARE FOND OF HIM.
“The young ones?”
YES.
“What is this place?”
A PLACE OF RENEWAL.
“Are you the sleepers?”
NO. WE SPEAK FOR THEM. WE TEND TO THEIR AFFAIRS WHILE THEY DREAM.
“What are you?”
No answer.
“What happens when the sleepers wake up?”
ALL THINGS WILL CHANGE.
“Will it happen soon?”
THERE IS NO REASON TO THINK SO.
I don’t know what to say to that. Even though it’s easy to understand the words the being wants me to understand, the meaning behind them is anything but simple.
“Can I go home now?” I ask the dark, empty temple.
YOU MAY.
Follow follow, Ham says, prancing in the blackness. Follow boy.
I turn away from the sigil, the stone basin filled with silent fire. Whatever this place is, I feel like I’ve gone deeper into the mysteries of the spirit world than Dad or the Shepherd ever managed. I feel like I’ve seen something almost nobody, living or dead, has ever caught a glimpse of. Back on the banks of the Styx, Holiday said that she felt like we’d gone behind the scenes, seen things we weren’t meant to see. I think that’s a good way of putting it.
Whatever power is speaking through the mark on the edge of the bowl makes no good-byes. Ham, a luminous constellation, lights the path deeper into the darkness. I follow him, the bowl of flame receding behind us. He leads me to a staircase that spirals downward below the floor of the temple. The light of the basin is lost. There’s only blackness, and the faint glow of Ham’s stars.