by Sarah Diemer
I pull my hands into my lap, watch them as if I'm afraid they might change again, right before my eyes.
Because over that gray line, they looked like… They were…
Claws.
I scrabble to my feet, turn around, and I run. Past the Red Line, past the Harming Tree. I’m afraid, and I don’t know why I’m afraid, but there’s something deeper and darker coursing through me.
I’m angry.
Past that gray line, my hands became claws, became ugly, curving, sharpened things that did not resemble my hands—anyone's hands—at all. It makes no sense. None of this makes any sense. Those weren’t my hands. Why can’t I Mem, and why did I appear in the wrong time and place, and why didn’t the Snatcher Snatch me?
Why am I here?
A sob catches in my throat, and I swallow it, gritting my teeth as I run through the trees, glancing over my shoulder at the towering tree that draws farther and farther back behind me, growing smaller as I move faster through the darkening woods.
The darkening woods.
My breath catches as I watch the shadows lengthen in front of me—too fast, in a heartbeat; no, less—as the sky turns a brilliant crimson, like blood. Like that first time, when Charlie found me lost by the stream. And I see the stream as I'm running, but I can't stop, can't stop for anything, because the sun is setting, and I’m not going to make it back to Abeo in time.
Which I always knew would be the outcome of this undertaking, deep down.
I knew I wouldn’t make it back.
The Snatchers are going to come, and I’m going to find out, once and for all, if they’ll take me. Maybe the Snatcher in the courtyard was only tired. Maybe it had grown bored of our game.
But I don't think that was it, and no one else who was there seemed to think it was as simple as that, either.
I need to know the truth.
There’s a resolution in that, though terror slips through my belly like a fish, dark and shining and small. A Snatcher didn’t want me last night. Here, in the open woods, will the Snatchers want me now?
I breathe in and out steadily as I run, as the shadows stretch to their longest lengths, as the red begins to disappear from the world, replaced with inky black and gray.
And darkness.
Darkness covers the sky and swallows the woods and me in a single gulp. I falter, the steady rhythm of my boots missing a beat, and I trip and tumble to the ground, snow grinding into my palms as I propel myself upward, looking back over my shoulder.
There are white shadows up high, high in the trees. Crouched. Poised. Watching me.
A host of Snatchers.
I gulp down air, blood coursing through me, my whole body a heartbeat, as I run toward the city.
I hear the sound of their wings clicking open, unfurling, beautiful black feathers shielding their monstrous forms. They launch as one. How many are there? Ten, twenty? They open their mouths, and they scream, a thin, hot wail that buries itself beneath my skin, turning and turning like a screw. I cover my ears with my black-lined palms, gritting my teeth as I’m surrounded by that intolerable sound.
I run through the woods as they chase me.
The Snatchers chase me.
They’re after me. I don’t know what this means. Will they catch me? Will they Snatch me up?
I run, gulping breath, and they fly behind me, shredding the air with their great black wings. After the first chorus of screams, they fall silent. I turn to look behind me and almost trip again.
A Snatcher has pulled up on my right.
I veer to the left.
I run, and they follow, run and they follow. Perhaps I’ve moved beyond fear to that still, small space inside of it, because the terror that licked through my bones, over my skin, is numbed now. I am running, and they are flying with me. It’s a strange sensation, these monsters all around me, above and on either side…
It feels, after a thousand heartbeats, a thousand footsteps, as if my life has always been this way: the running, the chasing…
But then a Snatcher moves, and it’s not on my right anymore but on my left, swooping near. I veer right, gasping.
And that’s when I begin to realize something.
If they had wanted to Snatch me, they could have done it a hundred times over.
I don't think they want to Snatch me.
I think they’re herding me, pushing me toward a specific location.
The understanding hits me hard. Maybe I'm wrong, though. How can I guess at the motivations of monsters?
I decide to test it. I dart back to my left, and the Snatcher swoops down, dangerously close to me, and opens its great bird jaws and screams. The sound slices through the air, cutting my inner ears, and I run back to the right.
They are. They’re directing me.
But why?
In the darkness, I’ve lost all sense of space. I don't know which way Abeo lies, which way I’ve come from. I can’t see the Harming Tree, can’t see the wall surrounding Abeo City. Perhaps I’ll run all night with the Snatchers just a hairsbreadth behind me. The fear is waking up again, beginning to prick at my neck, stinging, but then, out of the nothingness of darkness up ahead, there appears between the blackened, dead trunks of the trees…a building.
It’s tall, pointing upward like the Harming Tree, with a roof that upholds a small tower ending in narrow sharpness, like a needle's point. Even in the dark, the bright, vivid colors of its high, arching windows are visible, because within the building is light.
A word comes to my mind, though I didn’t know it, never thought it before this heartbeat.
A church.
That’s what the building is. A church.
Suddenly, everything feels strange, like a dream—though I can't dream, can't sleep. Or…Charlie said I'm asleep now, a Sleeper.
Have I ever dreamed?
I grit my teeth, and I make the decision in an instant. I slow down. I stop running. I slow to a trot, and then a walk. And then I stop, completely, abrupt.
The Snatchers land in the trees around me, pumping their wings open, screaming at one another, and then peering down at me with their hollows for eyes.
Silence descends as the trees still, as the Snatchers settle and stare.
Watching me.
It’s eerie, how they turn their heads as one. The flashing sharpness of their beaks—all of their beaks, dozens of them—point toward the church.
And then one Snatcher spreads its wings with a snap of finality. And it leaps from the tree, down to the ground. The earth shakes beneath my feet, and I almost fall as the Snatcher begins to crawl over the snow, toward me, its claws crunching against the ice. It’s unnatural, how this human-like skeleton moves on all fours, the wings arched overhead, but that’s when I notice it…
The right wing is a little crooked.
"I know you," I whisper, frightening myself.
This is the Snatcher from last night.
Though my heart feels as if it will beat out of the cage of my ribs, though my breath comes too fast, though I feel like my legs will buckle at any moment, I stand my ground. I don’t know why or how, but I don't run, don't even step back as the Snatcher moves toward me, pausing close enough for me to reach out and touch a finger to a cold, slick bone.
But I don’t.
We stare at one another, the monster towering over me, a giant hewn of sharpness, all angles and white and black. The feathers on its wings stand up, at attention, pointing in all different directions, and, this close, I am astonished to see that there’s a luminousness to the spaces where the creature’s eyes should be. If I stare into those cavities, if it’s almost as if, far below, in the void, there’s something—someone—staring back.
The Snatcher clacks open its beak, and then it unhinges its jaws, and right into my face, it roars.
My resolve melts, and I turn, and I walk. I do not run. I walk slowly, stiffly, toward the church, the place the Snatchers want me to go.
But why would they want
anything? Don’t they take people, Sleepers, instinctively? Isn't their purpose for existing terror and nothing more?
I feel the hollows of their eyes against my back, watching me, as the angled church rises ahead, closer, closer.
I trip, sprawling again, but not on a tree root or a branch this time. My foot is stuck in a hole—an oddly shaped one, like a long, thin rectangle. I struggle to my feet, wrenching my boot out of the hole, and I see, then, that there are many holes just like this one, each about a body’s length apart. Many of the holes are flanked by urns full of wilted flowers, or only dirt.
I walk on.
Colored glass fills the arching church windows—more color than I have seen anywhere else in Twixt. My heart aches a little at the sight.
And then my hand is on the doorknob of the great entrance, and I take a deep breath, and I turn and look back.
The Snatchers are gone.
Gone.
And without a sound.
I exhale, close my eyes, listen to my heartbeat pulsing.
And I hear, inside…a voice?
I shove my shoulder against the door, and I push.
Chapter Five: Bird
“Momma sold my soul for a penny…” comes a singsong voice, a girl’s voice, lilting somewhere nearby. “My soul was bought and sold!”
I shut the door behind me, leaning against it, panting, eyes closed.
There’s a scrabbling sound, and the pile of debris along the wall, sloping down toward the benches—pews, I remember they're called—slides a little further as the girl trots down the hill of books and splintered wood, crouching at the bottom and considering me.
She has long black hair and is draped in layers of clothes: cloaks and skirts and pants and furs, and her hair is all matted, sticking up around her head in spikes, making her pale skin look whiter, unnaturally white. Her eyes are bottomless, the kind of blue that makes me think of gray, and they’re wide and wild as she stares at me and back to the door and then at me again, her mouth drawn into a lopsided frown.
“You’ve come,” she says then, with no introduction. She scurries forward on all fours, and she rises next to me, poking at my shoulder with one dirty finger. “I thought you’d be here before now, long before the holiday,” she’s saying, frown deepening. “You’ve kept the uglies waiting.”
“I’m sorry. I…” I begin, but she’s shaking her head too fast, stamping her foot.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she says then, covering her ears with her hands, pressing down and crouching down, rocking back onto her heels as she squats in the rubble.
There’s no place for me to go but back out into the woods, back to the Snatchers, so I stare at the girl, breathing in and out as I consider my choices.
I kneel down beside her, biting my lip.
“Are you all right?” I murmur softly.
She shakes her head, staring at me, eyes wide. “It’s all wrong,” she says miserably, holding her hands out. I stare down at them, at the dirty palms, palms that bear no black lines. She's never taken Nox.
I hold out my own hands, and she snatches them up, turning them over and over as she shakes her head violently again. “It’s all wrong,” she repeats and huffs out, dropping my hands, almost throwing them down.
“I’m Lottie…” I begin, but she’s shaking her head again, tapping her chest, eyes growing wider.
“You’re not,” she tells me, covering her ears with her hands as she breathes out in a whimper. “Oh, it’s not working…” she says after a long, tense moment, as I kneel, confused, beside her. She takes a hand tentatively from her ear and then leans close, plucking at my shoulders with her long fingers.
“We’re too close to the bad house,” she breathes into my face. Around her eyes are red rings, as if she’s wept for days. “They can hear us if I talk, so I can’t. They’ll find us.”
“I don’t understand,” I begin, but she rises quickly, drawing the back of her hand over her mouth.
“You don’t,” she says shortly, a statement, not a question. And then she points up to the rafters.
I stare up.
Birds. Crows. Perched in the rafters, staring down at us a little too like the Snatchers, shifting their small, slight bodies and ruffling their wings with softly clicking beaks.
I stand, gazing at them, mouth open.
Birds. Animals.
I haven't seen any animals in Twixt, not any, until now.
The realization is bright and hot as it burns its way through me. I don't know what it means, what anything means.
I stare at the girl before me, who’s sitting back on the pile of garbage, elbows on her knees, watching me, head tilted, just like a bird.
“Who are you?” I ask her, and she shakes her head, pointing up.
“I’m feathered and foul with a blackened heart.” She leans back on the garbage, her smile too wide and disjointed to be genuine. “It’s from a poem,” she continues, bending forward. “The humans write poems. We thought it was one of the most beautiful things about them.”
I stare at her as she gets up, begins to pace across the confines of the once lovely floor. It was blue, but now it’s dirty and smeared with dust, only the suggestion of blue.
"What’s your name?” I ask, considering, for a moment, the closed door behind me. I could leave, take my chances with the Snatchers… But I watch the girl turn quickly, muttering to herself under her breath, and there’s something so familiar about her movements… I feel like I’ve seen her before. But I haven’t. I would have remembered her.
I watch her turn again, come back to me, reach out and grip my arms tightly.
“I’m Bird,” she says then, as if she’s decided to trust me with the word. She searches my eyes. “You don’t remember?”
I shake my head slowly. “I don’t remember anything.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she whispers, voice dropping down to a breathless sort of cry. “They’ll know. They know everything. So you’ve got to find out yourself.”
“I don’t understand,” I repeat, but she shakes her head, puts a finger to her mouth.
“They’re so close,” she whispers, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Who? Who’s close?” I whisper back. Her eyes are wide, unblinking as she leans closer, lips to my ear.
“Sixers,” she breathes, and shudders against me. I shudder, too, my body, for a heartbeat, not my own as it responds to that word.
“What about them?” I try, but she’s shaking her head, dropping her forehead to my shoulder, an intimate gesture but one I don’t mind, almost expected. So strange...
“The bad house, their house, is too close to here. I didn’t know that when I came here. I wish I’d known. But I knew you’d be coming, so I couldn’t leave. I had to stay until you came,” she says, locking eyes with me.
“The Sixers…they live near here?” Saying the word makes my mouth hurt; my tongue cuts against it. But I feel a bizarre fascination with it, too. As if the syllables themselves are tugging at the strings of my heart.
The girl, Bird, watches me, pulls her fingers through her hair, worrying at a thick, ink-black knot. “The uglies will get you, if you’re not careful,” she breathes out, tugging hard at the knot. “They always get you.”
I stare at her as she pulls on her hair, pulls and pulls until the knot comes out in her hand, her face slick with pain. She throws the hair into the garbage pile, sinking back on her heels, head in her hands. “It’s not working like it should…” she whispers, rocking back on her heels. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“Like what? What wasn’t supposed to be like this?” I ask her, frustration sharpening my words, but she’s standing, shaking her head, as she takes my wrist, plucking it.
And then she’s dragging me toward the door. The night. The Snatchers.
“What are you doing?” I cry as she yanks the door open, the misshapen thing groaning beneath her hand as it swings to the side. Out we
go. I dig my heels, but she's too strong for me. She’s just a wisp herself… How can she possibly have so much strength?
And then we’re standing at the foot of the stone steps, the light from the jars of the Wisps inside the church illuminating the ground around us, but not that much. Bird holds my wrist tightly, watching me, eyes wide, and then she looks out to the woods.
I follow her gaze, my heart pounding. Are there Snatchers there?
But no. There’s…light.
As we watch, tiny glowing spheres begin to peek out from the trunks of trees, beneath fallen twigs, descending from clawing branches overhead. The forest floor begins to pulse with tiny embers of light, glowing orange and golden in the darkness.
“When the relations aren’t around, they come out,” whispers Bird. “Do you remember now?”
I stare at the glowing orbs, and back to Bird, shaking my head.
She lets go of my wrist, dropping it softly, quietly, so that it falls against my thigh. Then she steps forward, crouching, like a predator searching for prey. She straightens after a heartbeat, an orb floating closer to her.
Bird reaches out with a long first finger and touches it gently.
There’s a flare of light.
Now, against her finger, a butterfly opens and closes its wings, thrumming with light, with life. I gasp, suddenly so weak, I can’t breathe, can’t see. I sink to my knees in the snow as this dizzying crescendo of light pulses around us.
Bird drops her hand, and—as suddenly as it came—the light disappears. The butterfly is gone. Lazy and slow, the Wisp bumbles over a fallen branch and disappears behind a crowd of trees.
“What just happened?” I whisper, clutching Bird’s wrist. She crouches beside me, searching my face.
“You don’t remember,” she murmurs then, eyes downcast after a long moment. I want to shake her, I’m so frustrated. What just happened? A butterfly? She takes my hand, uncurls my fingers and presses her palm to mine. There’s a slight tingle, and she holds up our hands, her right and my left together. Our hands look the same in the darkness, and she stares at me, breathing out, eyes wide, hopeful.