by S. M. Beiko
The chancellor looked between them, smirking as his hand dropped. “I’d expect better communication, but I can see there’s been a breakdown under your roof, Ms. Das.” He turned to Saskia, as if Phae was no longer there. “Have you given any further thought to my offer?”
Saskia didn’t look at Phae either, now. She stepped farther away, face flushed, jaw tight.
“Yes,” she said to the chancellor. “I have. And I’ll do it.”
The chancellor laughed. “Grand. In the interest of time, I’d like to have you picked up tomorrow morning, then, for Basic. If that’s agreeable to your guardian.”
“It is not agreeable!” Phae snapped. She grabbed Saskia by the forearm, wrenching her close. “Saskia, what’s going on? What have you just agreed to?”
“It’s my choice to make,” Saskia snapped. “I’m seventeen now. I can apply for the Task Guard with or without your permission.” Her eyes were fierce and wet and pleading, and Phae let her go and backed away, as if she wasn’t sure who she was looking at.
“That’s right!” The chancellor clapped. Phae started. “I’d seen your birthdate on your file last night. But with so much going on . . . Happy birthday, Saskia. We’ll try to turn this experience into a gift for you. For all of us.” His hand landed heavily on Saskia’s shoulder as he passed, and he glanced smugly at Phae.
Before he went he turned, jerking his head at Phae’s altar. “You could learn something from Saskia. Best to put your trust into something real and reliable, like the Task Guard. Something that will actually answer your prayers.”
After the chancellor was gone, Phae leaned heavily into the wall, as if she could barely stand. Saskia wanted to go to her, to try to explain, but Victor, Lily, and Jet came rushing out, swarming Saskia before she could move.
“What did you do?” Victor asked. “C’mon, Sask, spill it!”
“Are you okay?” Jet asked, pulling on Saskia’s jacket, insistent, still shivering.
Their chattering was too much to bear, and Phae surged at them. “Everyone. Out. Now.”
Saskia hadn’t moved, hadn’t raised her head from staring at the ground. The others backed away. “Brain,” Saskia said, and his head snapped up quickly. “Go next door, okay? Take the others.”
Jet nodded and grabbed Lily’s and Victor’s hands. Though the two were much older, they seemed too stunned to do anything more than follow him.
When the door clicked behind them, Phae was on Saskia, shaking her by the forearms. “Are you all right? Are you crazy?”
Saskia finally looked up at her, and though her eyes had been wet before, the tears were long dry now. “No. And yes.”
Phae looked like she wanted to yell and scream and tell her she was too young to know what she had done. But then something else crossed her face, and she gathered Saskia in tight instead.
“Talk to me,” she whispered into her charge’s wind-messed hair, trying to do what Barton might have.
Saskia stiffened, but she didn’t move away. Phae led her to the sofa, and Saskia perched at the edge of it, staring numbly at the living room carpet, not sure where to start.
Phae sighed above her. “I’ll make us some tea.” She went into the kitchen, and Saskia watched her go before turning back to the carpet. It was scuffed, cheap, and Phae tried to keep it clean. So did Saskia, when homework needed doing and she needed to avoid it. The truth of it was she had traced every synthetic strand in that floor, memorized like threads of infinite code, because this is usually where Phae did her major lectures, and Saskia had never been one for eye contact when she’d screwed up.
Which she had again, royally.
“There’s something I want to show you,” Phae said suddenly, crossing the living room and leaving behind their tea, as if it’d only been an excuse to collect herself in another room.
Saskia snapped out of her daze, frowning. “But don’t you want —”
Phae lifted a hand. “There’ll be time for that.”
Phae bent over her altar — a low table Saskia had pulled from a back lane during her many garbage-dives. The surface was incised with the face of a woman — Mucha style, Ella had said of it, though Saskia didn’t know much about art. Resting atop it was a slender bone of antler from the Assiniboine Forest. Then the incense. A lumpy candle. From her place on the couch, Saskia saw the chain around Phae’s neck, the pendant hanging heavy. Phae hesitated over the drawer under the table, touched the locket under her shirt, and smiled faintly.
“Here,” she said, turning to Saskia, offering her a folded slip of paper.
Saskia got up, approached cautiously, as if it were a trap, but Phae aimed the smile at her — a worn-out facsimile that was supposed to reassure her — and Saskia took the paper, unfolded it.
It was a photo that Saskia hadn’t seen before. “Is this . . . ?”
Phae’s finger hovered over each person as she named them: “Me, Roan, Barton, Natti. And the scowler back there is Eli, obviously.”
Saskia’s heart, already overwrought from the day’s misadventures, took an excited misstep. The picture was taken sometime in the spring, on the grounds of the legislative building, before there were perimeter fences and prison cells beneath it. The river was behind the group, the trees blooming. It was a picture from another world, almost.
At the forefront of the shot was Roan, a companionable arm around a Phae who seemed so different than the one now kneeling on the carpet at Saskia’s shoulder. Hopeful. The Phae in the photo was half-bowled over by her friend’s embrace, while Barton, smiling from his wheelchair, held Phae in his lap with one strong arm and looked at risk of falling over himself.
Saskia’s chest squeezed.
On Roan’s other side was an Inuit girl, one elbow up on Roan’s shoulder, while the other hand was clenched in a superhero fist under a wink. She looked powerful, as if she had swagger to match Roan’s. Saskia had only met Natti Fontaine once, before she’d retreated North, and it hadn’t exactly been under good circumstances.
Slightly apart from the group was a taller guy, dark hair, furious grey eyes that would make you regret crossing him. Saskia knew that look well, despite only having spent a couple of days under its scrutiny. Eli Rathgar had saved her life, too, in his way.
Here he seemed tense, arms crossed, not looking directly at the camera, head tilted at the other four, as if he couldn’t figure out how to join them — or if he wanted to.
“This was right after Zabor,” Phae said after a while. “There was a sort of commemoration for us held by the Owl Council, when it was still here. A begrudging thanks.” She shook her head at the memory, half amused, half grieving for days long gone.
Saskia hadn’t looked up, trying to memorize their faces. Trying to understand all of them and what led them to each other, these disparate strangers and the new family they’d made.
“I think this is the only picture of all five of us,” Phae said, her eyes pinching. “I think it’s the last time we were all truly together.”
That’s not true, Saskia wanted to say, but she kept her mouth shut, nodded. These five had all been in the same place seven years ago, when the monster Seela brought everything to bear over the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland. Phae had just emerged from another world, and everything had seemed like it must have after the battle of Zabor — victory assured, the big boss brought down with their united wills alone.
But fairy tales only got them so far.
“When I look at this picture, I see a group of kids who didn’t have a hot clue what they were doing. Yet they succeeded. Mostly by fluke.” Her smile was utterly gone, as if her face hadn’t been built to hold it. Saskia knew that look all too well. “I see a bunch of kids who had potential. And it’s gone now.”
Phae got up stiffly but left the picture with Saskia. “I see five heroes,” Saskia mumbled, smoothing the creases.
That’s
when Phae spun. “There’s nothing heroic about reckless decisions,” she snapped. “That’s what gets people killed these days. This isn’t a comic book. It never was.”
Saskia felt the anger inside her rising. “You don’t know —”
“But I do know. Better than you ever will.” Phae continued to pace, her expression a rictus of shifting despair, anger, exhaustion. “What you did at the Old Leg. That’s definitely something Roan would have done. And she would’ve been proud. But I’m not Roan. Even she recognized that. I was always her sober second thought.” She stopped, twisted. “What did you think you’d achieve, aligning yourself with that reptile Chancellor Grant?”
Saskia’s fists were bunched on her knees, so much she wanted to say piling up in her mouth, but she just couldn’t hit the release valve. “I don’t know.”
“Have you seen the Moth Queen? Don’t lie to me, Saskia.”
Saskia’s eyes ripped up from the carpet. “What?”
Phae folded her arms. “Jet told me. He’s worried about you, too. We all are. But if the Moth Queen is coming to you . . . why didn’t you tell me?”
Saskia felt sicker with every breath. “That’s just it. I don’t want you to worry about me! I can handle this! I can fix this.”
“Fix what?” Now Phae was shouting; Saskia was glad she’d sent the others next door. “You think getting involved with the Task Guard is going to help you? Is the Moth Queen making you do these stupid things?”
“No one’s making me do anything!” Saskia leapt up, nerves burning. “What can I do? I’m not a Denizen! I can’t fight like any of you! But I . . . I can make things. I can sneak around, gather information. I can find out what they did to Barton, I can —”
“That’s enough!” Phae cut in, expression dark. “This isn’t a game, Saskia. Look what happened to Ella. She’s still missing, but Clare and Damien were found. Their families were also detained, and Ella’s aunt has been frantic all day, with the Task Guard coming and going in this building. That’s why Grant was here, checking in on her, on you. He is not your friend and he is not your ticket to saving the day. He’s dangerous. And the Moth Queen? She is literally death itself. Is that what you want?” She was closer suddenly and pointing at the photo. “I had friends once. But we all made impulsive choices we can’t take back. And I’m so tired of . . .” Her voice hitched. “I’m tired of losing the people I love.”
Saskia had been ready to defend herself with cutting rage, but it emptied out of her as if a cork had been pulled from her back. Phae was a lot of things, but she was not vulnerable in front of anyone, least of all Saskia.
“I can’t make any choices for you,” Phae said finally, and her cool hand was on Saskia’s cheek. “You’re your own person. But if you want to make adult choices, then you have to stop being so childish. There are consequences. Not just for you, but the people who care about you.”
Saskia’s gaze fell. “I loved Barton, too, you know.” Phae’s eyes swam, and Saskia stepped out of her guardian’s grasp. “Even a bad decision,” she said, “is better than making no decision at all.”
Once upon a time, those words had been Barton’s. Some of his last. Phae was a brick wall. “Saskia —”
“I’m tired,” she said, and she made for her room. Once inside, she held tightly onto the doorknob until she knew Phae wasn’t going to come in after her. Then she took one more look at the photo still clutched in her hand.
I had friends once, Phae had said.
Sidestepping her cache of old laptops, milk crates of abandoned motherboards, and full functioning monitors streaming C-DOS code, Saskia tipped into her bed, curling up around the photo. Her mind raced, and she needed to be alone.
Most of all, she didn’t want Phae to see her cry.
* * *
Saskia didn’t dream — not really — because she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she sunk deep down into a numb sort of blankness, and let it pull her away, for a little while, from the pain her pounding heart had pulsed into her whole body. Ella, Phae, even Barton. All the people she’d let down. She was just trying to do what she figured was right, or good. Why did it always have to be so hard? And what if she just kept letting everyone down until she had no one left?
She had grown accustomed to spending sleepless nights with the blue glare of her monitors on her face, some of them spooling neon-coloured code as she ran little program experiments, self-made modules, or went about defragging systems as if raking a Zen garden. Comfort in patterns. The screens often lulled her into some kind of slumber that was, absolutely and blissfully, dreamless.
But Saskia’s mind had slipped in a few bits of key binary lines that allowed her to function without falling apart. Stress can do that, she’d be the first to admit, especially since so much had been compressed into less than twenty-four hours and was crushing her even now.
When she was younger, every night for so many years seemed consumed by nonstop nightmares. She had her means of coping, getting through the days, pressing onwards, trying not to dread the nighttime. She sought respite in logic, in numbers that allowed her to slip past nightly horrors. It was rooting herself to reason that had allowed her to survive this long.
And it was Barton who had given her her first computer.
“Happy birthday, kiddo,” he’d grunted, hefting a heavy-backed monitor onto Saskia’s desk in her room. This was when they’d started their uneasy life together at Barton’s parents’ house, in Wolseley, a few months after the hospital in Newfoundland. Winnipeg was as foreign a place to Saskia as any, since she’d barely left Scotland her short life. The Allens had been kind to take them all in, especially since Phae’s parents weren’t exactly interested in welcoming her back with open arms.
It was supposed to be a new beginning for all of them, and for a while it was, before all the houses that had bore summoning chambers were seized, before the Allens had to go away for their own protection.
The monitor rattled the collection of odd rocks and sticks and slices of bark Saskia had picked up in her wanderings around the neighbourhood.
“I’d forgotten,” she’d said to Barton at the time, about her birthday. A lie, for sure. She figured Phae and Barton had enough to worry about. She didn’t want to burden them, and she didn’t want to be disappointed, either. But she couldn’t help feeling just a little bit excited now, so she pinched her mouth to hide it.
Barton had crawled under the desk, connecting a huge CPU tower, rummaging for cords. When he started to stand up, he misjudged where the table was and cracked his head.
Saskia muffled her snicker in her sleeve.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m a chucklefest,” Barton mumbled, coming back up for air. “I want to show you something.”
He pulled out a keyboard, blew on it aggressively to dislodge the dust caught between the blocky squares. “This was my old computer from middle school. It’s pretty basic, but I had fun with it. I figured we could, too.”
Saskia was skeptical.
“It’s okay,” she lied again. “You didn’t have to get me anything. I don’t need it.”
“Nice try,” Barton replied, patting the desk chair. “C’mere, kiddo.”
Saskia watched Barton’s fingers fly across the keyboard, text showing up on the black field in pixellated green. This computer wasn’t at all like the one her brother, Albert, had had — even recalling their old room in Durness made her feel queasy, with the outdated pink-coloured iMac they often fought over. For one, there were no program icons on Barton’s computer, no regular desktop to see anywhere. In order to do things, Barton had to type out commands.
“I used to have nightmares, too, Saskia. They scared me, mostly because I couldn’t control them. At least, I thought I couldn’t.” He was looking squarely at her, as he always did. He always made her feel seen.
Barton tapped the monitor. “Sometimes, we have to treat our brains like comp
uters, because that’s what they are.” He smiled, his teeth pearly. “I used to stay up late, messing around with this computer, when the nightmares would get bad. And I used to think, I’m going to type a command in my head to make myself sleep, or I’m going to write out code in the air like counting sheep, or I’ll order my thoughts like files on a floppy drive. I don’t know if it’ll work for you, too, but it’s worth a try.”
Code? Floppy drive? Saskia’s hands twisted in her lap; she didn’t want to have the nightmares anymore, didn’t want to see Albert’s bedsheet-wrapped face dragged through a shadowy forest, or a megalith monster with axes for arms chasing her.
Most of all, she didn’t want to see Barton, who, then, was tangible and real right in front of her, falling down into a pit that she could never quite pull him out of. That nightmare was new, and it scared her the most.
In that moment, all Saskia wanted was to make Barton happy, because that’s all he’d ever done for her. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll try it.”
Soon after that birthday, Saskia clung to HTML, C+, and basic C-DOS prompts like a security blanket. At night, the territory behind her eyelids became a formless static void, comfortable. Reliable as the code.
But tonight, that same monitor Barton had given Saskia years ago, dormant in the sentimental-but-strip-for-parts pile, flashed on without prompting. It chirped, a sonic canary in the mineshaft. Behind it, a whining chord that was already becoming too familiar.
Saskia’s eyes fluttered open, groggy from floating between sleep and memory, and she felt the monitor’s light strobing against her vision.
“What?” She sat up, rubbed her face. The monitor was blocked by a few other machines, and she crawled down to the floor under her desk to reach it, pulling it to her lap.
The screen flickered, scrolling green text, symbols, and wingdings that meant virtually nothing. “How is . . .” She hefted the yellowed box, turning it over, fingers going for the power port.