Twixt

by Sarah Diemer

  One by one, they nod their heads.

  "Okay. Together,” I whisper, and turn back to the wall. I press my hand against it, weakening the illusion for a moment, so that the thin, shimmering Sleepers can pass through the stone (not stone at all, not anything) more easily.

  We move into Abeo City.

  Charlie placed us perfectly. We are at the end of the street that runs past Mad House, and before us spreads the Bone Feast. The lanterns and jars, dangling in long lines, dazzle, brightening the night. The Sleepers beneath them move as if dancing, but I know they’re not dancing. Nox flutters from hand to hand, the black feathers trembling beneath Wisp light. A Sleeper drops, even as we watch, little scissors flashing, as more people place Nox along the palms of their hands.

  There are Sleepers Memming everywhere—it’s hard to walk without stepping on someone. The people who are not Memming seem to shift as we watch. They move restlessly amongst themselves, and gradually, one after the other, they turn to gaze down toward the end of the street, sensing something amiss.

  And when they look, they see us, and they stop.

  I walk forward, Charlie beside me, the Sleepers behind, straggling along, breathing hard, limping, but standing strong as I stop, watching the Sleepers watching us.

  “They’ve been lying to you,” I say, but my voice isn't loud enough; it shakes. I clear my throat and repeat, growling the words into the night, “The Sixers have been lying to you.”

  They turn from me, the Sleepers, glance up to the top of the rubble heap, and there next to the cage of Snatchers the Sixers loom. Their hoods are back, and through the thick manes of black, I know they’re staring down at me, scowling at me as if I’m a troublesome insect they wish to grind into dust under their palms.

  “The Sixers are not who you think they are,” I say then, stepping forward, pulling my gaze from my sisters' shadows. “They built Abeo City so that they could devour souls. You. Your souls. They built this city to devour you. You’re not Sleepers. You’re not sleeping." I glance to Charlie, and she squeezes my hand. With a deep breath, I say, "You’re dead.”

  The words echo around me, whirled away, moving through the Sleepers, from one pair of ears to the next, their eyes widening, looking from me to the Sixers, back to me again. My hands are curled into fists, my fingernails pressing along my black lines, and I can feel them pulsing, surging, those lines that hold within them the feathers of my relations.

  There’s no going back now.

  “Behind me,” I say, gesturing back to include all of the broken Sleepers, “are some Sleepers who Faded. But they didn't Fade, really. Fading's a myth. When you Fade, you appear in the Sixers’ house, and then the Sixers bleed you dry. These are the only ones who remain of all of the people who have Faded since Abeo City was created. All of the others’ souls were devoured." I curl my hands into fists. "They no longer exist. They are nothingness. Gone.”

  There is a quiet murmur beginning to build, whispers that sound like wind between stones, a hush, but a hush with great power behind it. I stand firm, feet apart, watching the Sixers carefully out of the corner of my eye. They have not moved.

  “These Sleepers are my proof that all the Sixers have done is lie. They sell you Nox for hair, but every bit of hair you give them is a part of yourself, your soul, that you sell." I lick my lips. "You're selling your souls to the Sixers,” I say, breathing out, raising up my hand as the murmuring reaches a crescendo pitch. “But there’s a way to get out of this, all of this,” I tell them, taking one step forward. “The Snatchers have been—”

  But when I say the word Snatcher, the murmur builds to a roar, an angry hiss of sound, and my words are swallowed whole.

  And then the eldest Sixer, my sister, laughs. She tilts back her head, and she breathes a wickedly sharp, clawed sound into being, and the crowd grows quiet again, intimidated to silence.

  “Why don’t you tell them, Lottie, how you know all of this? Why don’t you tell them what you are?” she asks, voice stabbing through my ears like a threaded needle. I breathe out, feel my heart beating, knocking against my ribs, begging to be released from its cage of bones. But I breathe in and out again, cherishing Charlie's steady warmth beside me.

  “I know this,” I tell the crowd, the deathly silent crowd who watches only me now, “because I am the third Sixer.”

  “She is one of us!” crows the eldest, throwing back her head again. “She is not innocent…” She draws out the word, picking at its syllables with her angry tongue. “How can you believe her if she’s exactly what she cries out against?” She takes one step over the rubble, and then another, back arched like an angry animal, claws curving as she advances slowly toward me.

  “You murdered me!” I scream at her, taking another step forward. The Sleepers fall silent, standing still as stone as they watch my two sisters and me. “You murdered me because I would no longer do what you did. Because I threatened to tell everyone the truth!”

  “Our youngest is addled in the head,” says the eldest, hissing out the words as she covers the rubble, moving faster now, her hair dragged out behind her like a last dying breath. “You are ruining our beloved Bone Feast, my dear,” she says, voice wheedling.

  “To get out of Abeo City, you must be Snatched,” I shout to the Sleepers, voice wavering but still strong. “If you want to be free, follow us into the forest! You’ll see!” Charlie and I turn to go, Edgar and Violet detaching from the crowd, moving along the edge of the buildings like shadows, following us. They approach quickly, hand in hand.

  I see Isabel at the edge of the crowd then. She stands unmoving, watching, her hands curled into fists at the sides of her too-clean dress. As I walk past her, I see her eyes fill with tears as Charlie takes my hand, threading her fingers through mine, squeezing tightly.

  Please come with us, I think, but I’m moving too fast to speak, already past her, though I turn and glance over my shoulder, my eyes catching Isabel's. I can't stop; the Sixers are almost to the bottom of the rubble pile, picking up speed as they follow us, hissing, drawing out air in a slicing, severed sound.

  We are nearly before the wall when I look over my shoulder again. The crowd has drawn apart as if it were cut down the middle—sliced by a shining pair of shears. Half of the assembled Sleepers have begun to follow us down the street, toward the wall and the woods and what comes after that. They move slowly, cautiously, still watching the Sixers out of the corners of their eyes, the Sixers who have stopped at the edge of the rubble, watching the Sleepers move without a single sound.

  But half of the Sleepers remain behind, clustered around the people Memming, the people that I can’t reach, no matter how much I shout, not until they come out of their trance. The other lagging Sleepers hold Nox in their hands, hold the shears over their hearts, as if considering. But then, one by one, they slice their palms; they lay in the Nox, their heads bowed, turning away.

  Too many, I think. Too many left behind. Half! Mourning, I hit the wall running and move through it into darkness. My last sight of the streets of Abeo City is of the people whispering amongst each other, Sleepers Memming in the streets, and Isabel: in a fleeting glimpse, I see her slit her palm open, dropping a black feather into the open wound with a grimace.

  I pause on the other side of the wall, watching the Sleepers come through, Charlie beside me, and Edgar and Violet hovering nearby. We begin to run, trotting as slowly as we can, glancing over our shoulders as more and more Sleepers appear through the stone, as Abeo City looms behind us, glowing dimly.

  The Sixers are nowhere in sight. Fear drags at my belly as Arthur’s arm pulls at my neck. I try to help him over the frozen, rutted ground. All around me, the Sleepers are working together, the Sleepers from Abeo helping the ones from the Sixers’ house, carrying the ones who can't walk any farther.

  But we’re not moving fast enough. I know this deeply, and the knowledge cuts me, burning, souring my stomach. “They’ll be after us,” I whisper, my voice rising in the dark,
but the Sleepers don't need me to urge them on.

  They know fear intimately.

  It’s at that exact moment that I glance back again, toward Abeo City, and I see movement at the wall. Through the stone, the blackened shadows of the Sixers crawl on all fours like spiders, dragging their hair behind them, but even as I watch, they dissolve into the darkness of the woods, like a stolen breath. I knew them on sight like I know my own shadow, knew how they moved, crawling after us. Hunting us.

  They’ve merged with the black of the woods, and I can no longer see them, but I feel them there, following, and fear is slick on my tongue as I help Arthur over a tree trunk, look over my shoulder at the straggling Sleepers behind us.

  Charlie looks to me, glancing up, biting her lip. Her hands are shaking.

  Above us, there is not a Snatcher in the sky.

  “We’ll…we’ll just have to get past the Gray Line,” I whisper to Charlie. If we get past the Gray Line, we’re beyond the power of the Sixers, and though they can still hunt and devour us, surely the Snatchers will be there, past the Gray Line, will swoop and save as many of us as they can. Surely we will be Snatched there.

  Charlie nods at me, agreeing as she helps a waif of a girl over a rut. She's so small in Charlie’s hands, small as Florence was.

  Florence, who was Snatched.

  Where are the Snatchers?

  We run through the woods, the Sleepers straggling out behind us in a wavering line of desperation. They’re moving as quickly as they can, hobbling and hurrying along.

  I feel eyes on me, then, and I glance up at the trees, heart surging with hope. If it’s the Snatchers, we are safe and saved, and, yes, I see movement, and for one single heartbeat, though the shadows are wrong, all wrong, I still wonder and hope that it’s the Snatchers descending through the dark toward us.

  But it's not. And the constant, sickening fear roars up, a devouring of terror that swells over me, swallowing me whole as I watch the Sixers darkening the trees. They blur in my sight as they leap from one trunk to the other, clinging to the bark with claw hands and moving on to the next so quickly, I can hardly follow their movements with my eyes. They are as fast as thought, as breath, their hair streaming out behind them, and they’re angling closer to us, descending down toward us, claws aimed at us with such fury. And I know, then, they are so angry that I will not live to tell tales again.

  There is so much hopelessness in me as I pause, gaping up at the trees, up at the stalking Sixers who descend, their prey scented and sighted, who will reach us and devour us, all of us, plucking us up from the forest floor as easily as acorns. I think of what they’ll do to me, their sister who betrayed them, their sister that they killed once before. They'll make certain I stay dead this time.

  Soon, I'll be gone.

  I won't exist.

  I think of the Sleepers we’ve left behind, who didn’t believe me or didn’t want to believe me or didn’t want to take the chance. I think of all the broken Sleepers around us who went all the way to Abeo City, and then pushed themselves to venture toward the Gray Line. I think of all the Sleepers who believed me, despite everything, who came with us. I think of Edgar and Violet, who I can barely see out of the corner of my eye, running through the woods with us, arms linked. I think of Isabel, Memming back in Abeo because she did love Charlie, truly did, no matter what she’d said or done.

  And I think of Charlie beside me, who glances over at me with wide, fearless eyes. She's afraid, I know—must be afraid—but she's swallowed it down; she's determined to be strong for me, so that I can feel that strength in her, even when I cannot feel it in myself, as it leeches into the earth beneath me, flowing away and almost gone, as my hopelessness takes root.

  Charlie squeezes my hand again, swallowing, nose toward the Gray Line as she continues to run.

  And I move with her.

  As if the night has parted, a door opening in the darkness, there is another shadow that moves through the darkness then, beside me. Bird. She smiles at me, mouth tipping up at the corners, eyes shining, and she says nothing, but points ahead of us.

  I know how close we are, then. I can taste it, freedom, possibility, an end to Twixt and Abeo and all the lies and darkness. I don’t know what will happen to me once I’m past the Gray Line. I don’t know if the Sixers will take me as the other Sleepers get Snatched. If they’ll kill me again. But as I race quietly, quickly, through the last stretch of Abeo’s forest, Charlie’s hand in mine, I breathe in and out, and I feel strong, and I feel courageous, and I glance sideways at Charlie, whose eyes glitter in the darkness.

  And I am not afraid.

  We move past the Gray Line, the Sleepers, the Sixers who screech, who dive for me and Charlie and Bird and all the Sleepers, claws extended. But as we race past the Gray Line, there’s a flare of light, and light and light and light everywhere.

  Charlie presses her lips to my hand, and there is light and white wings and the powerful wind beneath wingbeats as I see the Snatchers, not the Snatchers, but our relations, beautiful and glowing as they angle through a red sky, descending toward us.

  The Sleepers ascend, borne on white wings. Charlie is lifted, floating, flying... With a choking sob, I watch her go, grateful and mournful all at once, my hands reaching up.

  I feel a swelling as Bird soars above my head, laughing, waving down at me.

  And I turn and watch my sisters scream, claws outstretched as they reach me, hooking into the front of a dress that was bought for me with a bit of soul.

  But then I—I—am lifted, too, by a relation with a beautiful ragged right wing.

  Everything is light is ascending is magnificent as Twixt falls away beneath me, devoured by the darkness at my feet and the endlessness of light overhead.

  And I am not afraid.

  *

  I open my eyes.

  Fin

  The following is an excerpt from Sarah Diemer’s novel The Dark Wife, the YA, lesbian retelling of the Persephone myth. The Dark Wife is available wherever you purchase your eBooks, and in print format.

  It was not sudden, how the room behind me grew dark, throwing long shadows from the torchlight upon the balcony floor. It was a gradual thing, and I almost failed to notice it, but for the silence. No one laughed or spoke; there was no clink of goblet or twang of lyre. Everything, everything fell to a silence that crawled into my ears and roared.

  I shook my head, straightened, peered again around the column at the great room. All throughout the palace, a deep quiet crept, cold as a chill. I saw the gods and goddesses shudder, and then the darkness fell like a curtain, became complete. The stars themselves were blotted out for three terrible heartbeats.

  There was the sound of footsteps upon the marble, and the light returned.

  “Hades has come.” I heard the whisper—Athena’s whisper—and I started. Hades? I stood on the tips of my toes, trying to catch a glimpse.

  All of us there had been touched by Zeus’ cruelty, in some form or another. We were meaningless to him, toys to be played with and tossed. But the story of Zeus’s ultimate betrayal was well known.

  Zeus and Poseidon and Hades were created from the earth in the time before time—the time of the Titans. They cast lots to determine which of them would rule the kingdom of the sea, the kingdom of the dead, and the kingdom of the sky. Poseidon and Zeus chose the longest straws, so Hades was left with no choice but to reign over the kingdom of the dead, the Underworld.

  It did not come to light until later that Zeus had fixed the proceedings to make certain he would get his way—to become ruler of the greatest kingdom, as well as all of the gods. He would never have risked a fair game of chance. Could never have hidden away his splendor in that world of endless darkness.

  I shivered, wrapping my arms about my middle. Hades rarely appeared at Olympus, choosing to spend his time, instead, sequestered away in that place of shadows, alone.

  My eyes searched the murmuring crowd. Though I was uncertain as to Hades’ app
earance, I assumed I would recognize the god of the Underworld when I saw him.

  But where was he? Over there were Poseidon and Athena, whispering behind their hands. I saw Artemis and Apollo break apart as Zeus moved between them, climbed several high steps and staggered into his towering throne, hefting his goblet of ambrosia aloft.

  “Persephone.” I jumped, heart racing, and Hermes grinned down at me, his face a handbreadth from my own.

  “You have a habit of startling me,” I whispered to him, but he shook his head, pressed a finger to his lips. My brow furrowed as he took my hand and led me out onto the floor of the great room, to linger again amidst the gods. I felt naked, misplaced, but Hermes stood behind me and elbowed me forward. I yielded and stumbled a step, two steps. Finally, my frustration rising, I turned to admonish him but paused mid-motion because—I had run into someone.

  Life slowed, slowed, slowed. I muttered, “Excuse me,” looked up at the woman I did not recognize, had never before seen, my heart slack until it thundered in one gigantic leap against my bones.

  Everything stopped.

  Her eyes were black, every part of them, her skin pale, like milk. Her hair dropped to the small of her back, night-colored curls that shone, smooth and liquid, as she cocked her head, as she gazed down at me without a change of expression. She wasn’t beautiful—the lines of her jaw, her nose, were too proud, too sharp and straight. But she was mesmerizing, like a whirlpool of dark water, where secrets lurked.

  I looked up at her, and I was lost in the black of her eyes, and I did not see her take my hand, but I felt her hold it, as if it were meant to be in the cage of her fingers, gently cradled.

  “Hello,” she said, her voice softer than a whisper. I blinked once, twice, trying to shake the feeling I had heard her speak before—perhaps in a dream.

  And then, “I am Hades,” she said.

  My world fell away.

  Hades…Hades, the lord of the underworld…was a woman.