by Sarah Diemer
“Lottie, I…” She steps back from me, watching me with luminous eyes, wide in the darkness, in the soft light of the Wisps. “Whatever happens tonight…” She falters, shaking her head, raking a hand through her hair, head ducked, before she looks up at me again, fingers holding my hips, a gravity and force so strong and gentle, it makes my breath catch.
“Whatever happens tonight,” she repeats, licking her lips, leaning close, everything she is a warmth, a pulse, a mirror to my heartbeat, “I have loved you fiercely.”
I breathe out, heart surging within me. And then I put my arms around her neck and kiss her once more. Once more. Only once more. And I step away from her, my fingers still entwined with hers, and I bend my head, touching my lips to her palm, to her black lines, feel the heat of my breath unfurl in her hand.
“And I, you,” I whisper to the Nox beneath her skin, to the artificial pulse there, to all that is Charlie, and ever was.
And then, moving together, we run to the back of Mad House, past the countless jars of Wisps, past the Great Room that’s silent, vacant, like a haunted place, back into the hidden closet where this all began, that first night, the walls leaning far away from us, dark and unknowable.
We erupt through the walls into the forest.
It’s night, the shadows and darkness absolute, stretching away from us in sharp, black contours. The glow from the Bone Feast can still be seen over the imposing wall as I glance back, the voices of the Sleepers loud, even here.
“Come on,” Charlie whispers, taking up my hand, and we begin to run in the woods.
As we make our way through the darkness, past the bony trees, the hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and I glance over my shoulder. I can feel eyes on me. Or…perhaps not eyes but hollows where eyes should be—and are, beneath the Sixers' illusion. The Snatchers are here, even if I can’t see them. They're watching us, still waiting to find out what the rebel Sixer will do to set things right.
We run, angling through the forest, stretching always to our left.
There, up ahead of us, is a shadow darker than the smudges of dead trees, reaching upward, pointing to the sky: Bird’s church. Tonight, the windows are lightless, and as we reach the front steps, I glance inside the open maw of doors. The jars of Wisps are empty.
Bird set the Wisps free.
I stumble again, foot caught in one of the holes dug into the ground of the churchyard. Charlie catches me, and we leap over another hole together, and then I pause for a moment, snared in an abrupt memory.
I recognize them now—those holes. The Sixers built the illusion of Abeo City, shaping it to resemble, in all ways, a city, but a broken city, because that’s the only image a broken being can conjure. But they sewed together the illusion too well. In front of the weathered church, gravestones appeared of their own accord, the ultimate reminder of death to dead things. So they plucked out the gravestones and obliterated them, smashed them to bits in their clawed hands, but the silent holes the stones once filled remain, dark wounds in the earth that never healed.
I squeeze Charlie’s hand tighter, move quickly past the church, running fast as breath, as blood, as we move together beneath the clawing trees.
The shadow looms near, the hulking darkness of the Sixers' house. We reach the half-place: the church behind us blurring, the house ahead almost sharp enough to see. I do not hesitate this time. I know where my future lies, and I know what I must do.
And the house comes into focus, a hulking shadow of boarded-up windows and doors, a ragged porch that seems to fall forward toward us, as if drawn by our awaited presence.
Like the church, the house is dark, too, an unnatural darkness that seems to breathe as we race toward it. I try not to raise my eyes, try not to examine this house that we Sixers, we sisters, built together, this house that imprisoned me. I shudder as we draw close.
“The basement,” I tell Charlie, though I don't need to. She knows the plan; we've gone through it at least a dozen times. We run around the side of the house, and we’re at the basement door, a different door than the one I escaped from when I last left the Sixers' house. This door is made of cobbled-together boards, bound with a length of rusting iron chain. A chain that could keep no one out, and nothing in—save for the sapped Sleepers below, who lack the energy to walk up the steps and through the walls.
Without a thought, I curl my fingers beneath the links and yank at the metal. In my hands, because the chain was built by Sixers, because it is one of our illusions, it obeys me, snapping in two. I thread the length of it through the handles as the iron chain clinks to rest upon the earth.
Beside me, Charlie nods once, panting, eyes hooded in the dark. I throw open the doors, the grim creak of them loud in the stillness, and hand in hand, we descend.
Though it was dark in the woods, that darkness can’t compare to the creeping black of the basement. We stumble down the rough-hewn steps, and it takes a heartbeat or two for my eyes to adjust, even though there is a single jar of Wisps in the center of the earthen room. After a moment, I can see pale mounds clustered around the jar. The emaciated, shimmering forms of the almost-gone Sleepers take shape as they raise their heads slowly, as they glance up at us in surprise. Charlie stares with wide eyes at them as they stare back at us.
“Arthur?” Charlie whispers, after a long moment, moving forward. She approaches an old man huddled on the far side of the space, his mustache drooping, his face caving in slowly. He raises milky eyes to her, and they’re suddenly tear-filled as he totters forward on rotting legs, gripping the earthen wall with a curving hand of bone.
“Charlie,” he whispers, and she gingerly gathers him up into an embrace. The others Sleepers begin to hobble forward, pressing gently up against one another to get nearer to the two of us, expectant, breathless and silent.
“We’re leaving,” I whisper, leaning forward, pressing a finger against my lips. “But you must be quiet, or the Sixers will sense you. We’re going to go to Abeo City together, because the other Sleepers, when they see you, when they see what the Sixers have done to you... They'll believe me when I tell them the truth about the Sixers and the Snatchers, and that we must all get Snatched in order to escape Abeo City. And then…" I swallow. "Then we’re all going to get Snatched…” I trail off as the Sleepers watch me, as my own plan passes over my lips again, unspoken except to Charlie and Edgar and Violet, now voiced to Sleepers that the Sixers have tortured, Sleepers so weak they could fade into nothingness at any moment, Sleepers taught for far longer than most of the Sleepers in Abeo City that you must avoid the Snatchers, the monsters, at all costs.
To expect them to make the journey to Abeo City, even though it’s not so very far, when they can hardly move, have hardly moved in who knows how long, seems an impossible request. As I stand there, as I watch them, curled up around the edges of the floor, hardly standing, leaning against the wooden beams in the basement, I wonder if the Sleepers would take my word alone as proof enough. If I ran back, leaving Charlie here with them, so that she could help them out of the basement, have them all wait for me here, maybe I could—
“I’ll come with you,” says the old man that Charlie called Arthur. He steps forward, wobbling, as Charlie hooks his bony arm around her shoulder.
“Well, we can’t stay here,” says another Sleeper, a shriveled woman who glances up at me with brightly flashing eyes, though the rest of her has nearly worn away to nothingness. “We’ll come with you." She frowns. "As best as we can.”
The others chorus agreement, though some eye me with trepidation, some with fear. I am a Sixer, after all. To follow me, to put faith in me, is a tremendous show of bravery on their part. I flush, feeling a rush of shame.
But I shake it off, rub my hands together, my cool palms pressing against one another, creating a spark. “Thank you,” I murmur, backing away. Charlie gives me a meaningful glance, then helps Arthur toward the steps leading to the forest. I leave the Sleepers and Charlie for a moment, edging back t
oward the other door at the end of the earthen room. I venture through it, holding my breath. I don’t know what I’ll see on the other side, in the hall that used to contain the Nox and the Snatcher.
I didn’t realize how large the room was before, probably because it was filled floor to ceiling with crates of Nox. The crates are gone now, taken to the Bone Feast, most likely. But there, in the far corner of the room, like before, is the cage, and lying broken at the bottom of it is the Snatcher.
It watches me with hollow eyes, resting on its side, curled up like a dead body, but I know its heart beats still. It shifts its bones, reaches a claw toward me, but then, as if its strength is gone, its arm falls limp. I cross the wide, echoing space between us, and the Snatcher shudders as I near it, quaking in a tremor and then resuming its stillness. I know, standing beyond the iron bars, touching their cold, rough metal with my fingers, why the Sixers captured two new Snatchers to parade around at the Bone Feast, and why they left this one behind. He looks pathetic, sad, so broken, and the Sixers need to keep up the illusion that the Snatchers are fearsome beasts to be terrified of, that they vanquished monsters in order to bring Nox to the Sleepers, that the Sixers should be revered and feared because of this favor.
If they’d brought this Snatcher before the assembled Sleepers at the Bone Feast, I wonder if they would have thrown stones, still. I wonder if the Sleepers would have laughed and jeered, or if they would have paused for a moment, looking over its broken, misshapen form, crumpled in the center of the cage like a shattered doll, and dropped the stones and bricks at their feet, pity putting out the fire of their fury.
I don't know, can't guess.
But pity moves through my own heart now. I try to swallow it down. I don’t want to pity this Snatcher, this relation. It wouldn’t want my pity. Especially not mine. I feel the solidity of the iron beneath my black-lined palms, and I curl my fingers around the bars and pull with all my might.
Like the chain outside, this cage was built by Sixers, and it bends beneath my hands. The metal groans, and the door swings open, creaking like a half-choked scream.
The Snatcher raises its head, half of its upper beak broken off, the hollows sunken into its skull, and it angles its empty gaze toward me.
“You… You’re free." My voice sounds dull, flat. I swallow. "It’s happening tonight,” I breathe, but then I step forward, because I wonder if it can even move, and I kneel down beside its white, clattering bulk. Even broken apart as it is, the Snatcher, like all Snatchers, is monstrously huge, bone wings devoid of feathers taking up the entire span of the large cage, coiling around me as it twitches them, trying to shift before falling back against the bottom bars of the floor.
I know I can’t lift the weight of this Snatcher, but I try to, anyway, moving one of its wickedly sharp-edged arms around my neck, its claws dragging on the ground as I help it to its feet, heaving with all of my might, pushing off from the ground.
The Snatcher tries to push off the ground, too, but after a tortured collection of heartbeats, it sags again, slumping down like a marionette with cut strings. I sprawl beside it, swallow, panting, running my fingers through my hair, heart aching.
“Please get up,” I beg it, reaching my hands out to it, propping up its broken skull. I drag it into my lap, and it lets me as I run a palm over its smooth bone head, warm to the touch, not cold like I’d imagined. This close, it’s not so very monstrous. As I watch it, as I watch its head trembling against me, I feel a surge of pain move through me, a great aching sadness.
“Please…” I whisper again, stroking its head. “You need to escape. You can get out of here, and then you can pass the Gray Line, and the other Snatchers—they’ll help you, I’m sure of it.”
It watches me, silent, and after a long, weighted pause, it shakes its great head against me, almost imperceptibly. Weakly.
No.
“Please,” I try again, but a knock sounds from the other side of the wooden door, startling me.
“Lottie, we have to go. There’s not enough time.” Charlie’s voice is muffled as she speaks through the door. I know she’s right—the unpredictable span of night might not be long enough, anyway, and we need the Snatchers, and the Snatchers only come out at night. I glance over my shoulder at the door and kneel once more, try once more.
“Please,” I repeat, but the Snatcher lets its skull roll to the side, against the iron bars, and it won’t look at me.
Before my eyes, it seems to grow smaller, spindlier. The iron of the bars seems to grow darker, and I feel the energy shifting beneath me, feel the Sixers drawing upon its energy from elsewhere, though I could never say how I feel it. It’s like water over the skin, or under it, that sensation. But then the Snatcher fades away to nothingness before my eyes: there one moment, and then absolutely not the next.
Devoured. Lost.
Somewhere, I feel the Sixers grow stronger. Here and now, the breath is knocked out of me as I fall against the bars, staring at the spot the Snatcher used to fill.
And yet, even as I stare, a cold little voice asks me, Why are you so shocked, Lottie? You have seen this countless times before, participated in the destruction of souls countless times—willingly, hungrily.
The bitter taste in my mouth makes me spit out, and I rub at my eyes with the heels of my hands.
I am no better than my sisters.
Despair begins to click slowly up my spine, bone by bone, aiming for my heart.
“Lottie, please,” murmurs Charlie through the door again, and I shudder, shake myself, push off from the iron bars. And I rise, for the Sleepers and the Snatchers.
This—all of this—stops tonight.
“Coming,” I whisper, pacing down the hall quickly. I pause only once, hand on the door, glancing back at the empty iron cage, the room taking my panting breath away and echoing through the space until it’s gone.
I move back through the door soundlessly and descend the steps into the room of Sleepers, heart aching, hands pressed against a wall at my back, as if it can hold me up.
“Come on,” says Charlie quietly, taking up one of my hands, threading her fingers through mine. She squeezes once, eyes searching my face, but I can’t look at her, won't be able to look at her for a while yet.
I cross to the center of the room with Charlie, pluck up the jar of Wisps with my other hand.
I clear my throat, raise my head. “Follow me, if you choose,” I tell the Sleepers quietly, and together, we begin to move out of the basement. Charlie and I must carry most of the Sleepers up the stone stairs, and our progress is achingly slow. But finally, everyone stands together upon the forest floor, in the shadow of the house of the Sixers, the house that imprisoned Sleepers and a Snatcher and a Sixer and a hundred thousand secrets.
The gathering of thin faces watches me, eyes bright and milky or hollow in the darkness.
I open the jar of Wisps, twisting off the creaking lid with shaking fingers. I drop the lid to the forest floor, hold up the jar.
The Wisps bump against the glass for a moment, for a heartbeat. But then, suddenly, triumphantly, they rise, floating out of the jar, their prison, upwards and upwards, up into the sky, bright orbs that burn in the coal black night like stars.
I drop the jar, breathe out. The Sleepers still watch me, but they breathe deeper now, more evenly. Some tilt their heads back to gaze at the Wisps so high. Free.
“We have to move quickly,” I tell the Sleepers, voice soft, “if we’re going to get to Abeo City and back out here, to the woods, before morning comes. And we must get to the woods before morning comes, because we might have to run all the way to the Gray Line to escape. There are so many Sleepers, and only so many Snatchers,” I whisper. “And if the Snatchers don’t get us, the Sixers will. And then…it’ll all be for nothing.”
All for nothing. I breathe out, glance around us, at Charlie beside me, at the Sleepers looking uncertain and wide-eyed.
Still no sign of Bird.
My stomach
twists. Has something happened to her? I try not to think about it as we turn and begin moving through the woods, everyone shuffling along as quickly as they’re able, Charlie and I helping some of the weaker ones step over fallen trees and the jagged underbrush.
My skin pricks as we move closer to the long, low wall of Abeo City.
Chapter Ten: Truth
As we move through the trees, limping, half-running, Charlie and I helping the Sleepers along, I keep glancing up at the broken branches over our heads, clawing at the sky. There are still no Snatchers in the trees, and it drives a bolt of fear through my heart. Without Snatchers, this plan falls to dust.
The Sixers promise that, during the Bone Feast, no Snatcher will come to Abeo City—and after witnessing the torture of the Snatchers in the cage, it's obvious why that happens. The Sixers make it “safe” for the Sleepers to stay out after dark: hence, the atmosphere of revelry.
But the forest is a different matter. The Sixers never promised that there would be no Snatchers in the woods on Bone Feast night.
I think something’s wrong, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Something is off; something feels strange, making my skin crawl as we angle closer and closer to the wall of Abeo City, its monstrous shadow, and the light drifting over it, a yellow glow.
Charlie leads the way, keeps glancing up at the buildings and wall as we edge closer and closer. She changes direction only once, and then, only a little. When we reach the wall, we pause. Even through the stone, or over it, we can hear voices and laughter still, the Bone Feast in full swing. I glance at Charlie, who nods once, Arthur’s arm looped around her shoulder. I look over the faces of the Sleepers around me.
"Are you up for this?" I ask them. "I know you're weak, but there's no other way…"