Darkest Light

by Hiromi Goto

  Gee closed his eyes. He swallowed. The aftertaste of wet rat fur and blood thick upon his tongue. The path he must take was clear.

  He twisted around to slide his arms around Ilanna’s cold waist. “And so you shall take me to them, Ilanna, as you have tried for so long,” he said loudly. “My thoughts have been confused by my time in the Realm of Flesh. No more.”

  Ilanna’s laughter vibrated with triumph. “I knew you couldn’t hold out against me, against your very nature! Come!” her voice rang. “Rats aren’t enough to sustain you. You will eat of your little friend, and then we shall come full circle, and return you to your parents.”

  “No!” Gee shouted. “No,” he said, more deliberately. “My need to see my parents immediately presses upon me. We’ll leave Cracker here, with Karu to hold her until our return. You and I will go now, without them, and return later. To celebrate.” Gee let his hair sweep over the doubt in his eyes. This was the gamble he was forced to take. He had to believe Karu spoke the truth when he said he would take Cracker back to the Realm of Flesh on his own. She was at greater risk near Ilanna.

  He was at greater risk near Ilanna. And White Cat, gone. Let me do the right thing, Gee thought. While I still can.

  “Oh, Gee.” Cracker’s small voice was barely audible.

  “Shhhrrrrrrrr,” Rilla hissed suspiciously. She rose up to gaze into her mistress’s eyes.

  “We leave, now,” Gee demanded.

  “Ooooh,” Ilanna purred. “I love it when you’re so forceful. Karu!” she cried. “You will keep the girl, unharmed, until our return, you hear! If you start eating without us I’m afraid we’ll be having chicken for dinner!”

  The bird man made a rasping sound. He drew Cracker back into the house, and she did not resist him. The door was closed.

  Something wet trailed down Gee’s cheek. He hadn’t said goodbye…. The wetness dried quickly, pinching his skin. He brushed it off and it fell from his face like a piece of dried wax.

  “Idiot bird,” Ilanna hissed. “He’s stopped eating. Maybe we should eat him first, before he fades back to the start of his idiot cycle!”

  Gee’s heart bloomed. Maybe Karu had been speaking the truth. And if he was, he would take Cracker back, before her Life was completely leached. Gee could go see his parents, and then return to Popo on his own. He would not have failed his friend.

  “Take me to my parents,” Gee said.

  Ilanna nestled her wet head underneath his chin.

  Her cold was sinking into his body, and Gee’s neck grew stiff even as hunger howled from his belly. “You better stand to the side. Your cold is making it difficult for me to move.”

  Ilanna clicked her eel tongue, but pulled away from him. “It’s not far,” she clipped. “Nothing is far in Half World, unless you’ve forgotten. You’re lucky that I remember!” she spat. So volatile. So vicious. So exciting….

  Gee shook his head. He caught a brief glance of Lilla before she ducked silently back into the bin. Even Lilla didn’t want to stay with her former mistress. And if her long-time eel companion feared and rejected her….

  Gee linked his elbow around the remains of Lilla’s eel tail that still dangled uselessly from Ilanna’s left shoulder. “Lead me to them now, and I’ll follow,” he whispered into her ear.

  Rilla strained once more toward the composter. Ilanna slung her shoulder in the opposite direction and began striding toward the back fence, pulling Gee along with her.

  “Finally,” she gloated. “Full circle. To rip asunder and start anew….” She gestured imperiously at the gate. Gee opened the latch and pushed it outward.

  Their footsteps crunched upon the gravel. Gee didn’t look back to see whether Cracker watched them.

  As the opaque darkness began to thicken, the crunch, crunch, crunch began to sound like something being chewed by enormous teeth. Gee fought back an urge to giggle. He was giddy with hunger. And desire….

  And if he were honest, it felt strangely liberating to walk away from Cracker—away from responsibility. From obligation. The only person he had to worry about was himself. A bubble of curiosity, even eagerness, began to expand inside Gee’s chest.

  His parents…. He would finally meet them. What were they like? Maybe they were rich! Maybe they were important people. Were they self-aware, like Ilanna and Karu, or were they still trapped in their cycle of death, like Klara…?

  Gee didn’t know which was better. Maybe, if their death hadn’t been so awful, a recurring Half Life wouldn’t be so bad….

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  Maybe, maybe not. Yes, no, maybe so….

  The other children had chanted the refrain when he’d asked if he could play with them. They’d run away, laughing. The mantra rang inside his head as they stepped deeper into the darkness. Gee didn’t know where the memory came from. He’d forgotten all about it…. That made me sad, he remembered. When those classmates had run away.

  “‘The time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to talk of many things,’” Gee softly quoted. He began to giggle as a residual bubble of giddiness expanded inside him.

  “What’s so amusing, darling?” Ilanna asked carelessly.

  The swishing of her wet dress sounded so cold Gee couldn’t help but shiver.

  “I’m thinking about oysters.” Gee gulped at the saliva pooling in the back of his mouth. “Stupid oysters are just as delicious as clever ones….”

  “Don’t talk to me about oysters,” Ilanna snarled. “I was so long tormented in the ocean, I would gladly tear out my own eyes before seeing it again!”

  Rilla rose up to stroke her mistress’s cheek, hissing sympathetically.

  How awful, Gee thought, to have to give up seafood…. He giggled again.

  So dark. The streetlights had gone out, or had disappeared. The lights from apartment buildings and mansions, the flash of distant explosions. “Who turned off the lights?” Gee tittered.

  “Shhhhhht!”

  Gee didn’t know if it was Ilanna or her eel.

  When had the city grown so dark? He couldn’t say when it had shifted, only—

  The air gave, like moist fabric. Gee stumbled—and pitched forward to the ground that was farther than he’d expected.

  He stumbled. Into a space stinking bitter with smoke, pungent with the odour of burnt rancid fat, scorched bread. The oily sweetness of dirty animal fur. The gravel had turned into a hard-packed dirt floor. In the centre of the smoky space was a small pit glowing with a low fire that was turning to embers. Above the fire, suspended from a tripod, was a worn cauldron. Gee looked up. The peak of the circular roof had been left with a gap to let the smoke out, but much of it still pressed heavily upon them. The crumbling wattles were black with years of smoke. Along the dark edges of the roundhouse he could see baskets, mostly empty, a few clay pots. A sleeping area, slightly raised, covered with what looked like animal hides.

  “Welcome home, darling….” Ilanna’s voice quivered with laughter.

  Gee’s heartbeat thudded slow and heavy inside his head. “This is it?” His voice was hoarse. Incredulous. The home was nothing but a stinking, disgusting hovel.

  “Rather modest, shall we say,” Ilanna sneered. “It’s no wonder you felt compelled to go out on your own. From such humble beginnings…,” she cooed, Rilla hissing with her. “But you must know that your parents have been dying to see you.”

  Stumping footsteps, heavy and careless, drew toward them. A hunched form entered through an opening Gee hadn’t noticed before. Something small fluttered inside his chest. I’m just excited, he thought. Nervous. What did Cracker call this feeling? Nervousing….

  All was silent, except for the rustling of the person who had returned, hanging something up on the wall. Too far away from the dim glow of the low fire, Gee couldn’t see the person’s face. The fluttering rose from his chest to the base of his throat.

  Ilanna, as if sensing his agitation, stepped on his foot with her barnacle-encrusted heel. “Just wait
!” she whispered.

  The figure, a woman, stumped toward the fire. Though Gee and Ilanna stood inside the circle of the dim, pale glow, the woman didn’t seem to see them. She crouched beside the fire and laid several sticks of wood on top of the embers. Flames flickered upward, bringing more light into the roundhouse. Shadows licked the walls.

  She was dressed in a rough tunic, her feet wrapped in pieces of hide. Posture bent, as if she’d spent her entire life carrying buckets filled with stones. Her sharp nose was like a blade upon her face. Dirty creases lined her black eyes and her cheeks were gaunt, rendering her face almost skull-like. Her dark hair was tangled, an oily mess.

  One of her arms was curved beneath her belly.

  Gee didn’t know he was shaking his head.

  “Behold.” Ilanna swept out her arm dramatically. “Say hello to your mommy!”

  Rilla frothed gleefully, twitching, jerking with delight.

  Gee took a faltering step backward. He found himself pressed against crumbling wattle and daub. No. He shook his head. Not her…. His real mother was lovely. His real mother was clean. His real mother would know her son as soon as he entered a room. Not her. Not garbage….

  Popo had said he was special…. Popo was a LIAR!

  His hands were clenched so tightly that gluey flesh began dripping from his fists, hanging in long thin strands, platting upon the filthy floor.

  “Stop that!” Ilanna banged him with her shoulder.

  “Her!” the voice inside him seethed. “She!”

  The woman turned away from the fire. She shuffled to the baskets and picked up a clay pot, then carried it to the fire and poured something into the cauldron. When the liquid hit the sides of the hot metal it whooshed in a dense wet cloud. The reek of watery old bones billowed upward. The stink of onions gone bad. The woman picked up a wooden spoon and stirred the contents.

  The woman—she was younger than he’d thought. Scars, upon her face; they shone in the flickering light, a pucker of tissue distorting her cheek, rucking it upward toward her ear. She kept turning toward the entranceway as if she was waiting for someone.

  The room was bright enough that she ought to have seen them. But her eyes slid over their forms as if they were no more than shadows in a perpetually shadowed place. Just like the lady in the pillbox hat, Gee thought. She hadn’t seen them either. She saw only the quintuplets she murdered in her tight little cycle of violence.

  Gee shook his head. This person before him—he had no feelings for her. She was nothing to him. The word “mother” meant nothing.

  A dull thud from outside the walls of the hovel.

  The woman jerked.

  Thud! Thud! Something was being struck. Or kicked.

  Gee’s stomach turned. It sounded like it was a body…. An animal bleated with pain. Gee prayed it was an animal.

  The woman raised both arms to cover the back of her head.

  Run away! the small boy inside of Gee pleaded. Before it’s too late.

  And go where, do what? Return to Popo, only to draw Ilanna back to fetch him? Live on with the unbearable knowledge of his disgusting tongue? Continue with his life knowing that every day he would fight the compulsion to consume his best friend?

  You know you want to, his nasty voice whispered. You know you will.

  Gee’s shoulders slumped forward as he loosened his clenched fists. He closed his eyes.

  “It’s already too late,” he whispered. The truth of his words, spoken aloud, bloomed like reeking night flowers. He slowly nodded his head. “It’s always been too late. For some people, there’s no second chance. For some people, there was never a chance.”

  He smiled a small sad smile.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  A tremendous thud! Dust, soot drifted down from the roof. The ragged woman moaned.

  Scraping, slapping at the entrance.

  “So close,” Ilanna whispered, excitement throbbing in her voice. “Very soon, my saviour. My hero monster.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Gee asked.

  “Your destiny.” Ilanna’s voice was sweeter than ambergris. “And with your destiny lies mine….”

  The thing outside bellowed, a roar of rage. He had to bend to step through the doorway. Lean, hard, reeking acrid.

  Gee’s hand crept up to cover his lips. This man—he was so familiar and unfamiliar…. Like the face of someone he knew but whose name he could not recall. Shivers prickled up the back of Gee’s neck. Fluttered next to his heart.

  The woman uttered a low moan. She clamped her arms around her middle as if cradling something precious. Her dark, sunken eyes were as expressionless as stones.

  Ilanna began to laugh, her voice throbbing with exultant glee. “Behold!” she cried. “The child has returned!” She pushed Gee toward the open doorway. “They, your parents. Your true family of origin. Your legacy.” She laughed and laughed, triumphant and malicious.

  Gee scarcely heard her. He took one faltering step toward them. They were so poor. Wretched, filthy and ugly…. His mobile lips twisted with distaste. How could he come from them? Sour phlegm fluttered in the back of Gee’s throat. He swallowed the mass down. But if it were true, he thought. He would finally truly belong…. His feelings were disgusting. Writhing, one entwined atop another, like a mound of worms.

  Conflicted, just as Cracker had said….

  He wanted to see their faces, up close. Would he see himself in their features? He boldly took one more step, and the firelight flickered upon them. Gee stretched out his long, thin fingers. “Mother.” His voice did not quaver. “Father.”

  His mother was shaking, her arms still clutching her middle. She stared past Gee, her eyes flat and unseeing.

  Gee frowned. Beneath the grime, beneath the scars and the suffering, the woman was still young…. Surely not old enough to be his mother. He turned his gaze to his father.

  The thin and reeking man, covered in tattered clothing, had a face ravaged by bitterness, poverty, rage. He glared past Gee, down at his wife. Why, he’s not old either, Gee thought. A balloon of relief expanded inside his chest. “They’re not my parents,” he said wonderingly. “They’re not old enough to be my parents. You’ve made a mistake,” he chided Ilanna. “I’m displeased.” For some reason he couldn’t stop smiling.

  The man didn’t seem to hear him, didn’t seem to see him. As if the strangers inside the house were only shadows cast by the flames.

  Gee stuck out his tongue. He plunged his thumbs into his ears and waggled his fingers beside his head. “Booga, booga, booga!” he shouted. But the man and woman looked through him as if he weren’t there.

  “You’re the one who misunderstands,” Ilanna hissed from behind. “You’ve been living time in the Realm of Flesh, but Half World turns in cycles. Your mother and father are the age they were when they suffered their greatest trauma. And you should be part of that trauma, but they’ve been cycling without you.”

  “What….” Gee’s voice faded. Rilla slowly stroked his back, gliding up and down. Gee didn’t know if Rilla was doing it to goad him, or if Ilanna was trying to be kind….

  Gee’s father raised his fist above his head. His mother curled around her middle, instinctively tucking her chin into her chest, turning her shoulder slightly.

  “Don’t you look away from me!” Spittle flew from his father’s mouth.

  “Your mother,” Ilanna whispered. “Your mother who does not see you—she was pregnant with you.”

  The woman, unable to control her fear, turned even more so that her back faced the trembling man.

  “You make me do this!” his father screamed. His raised fist dropped hard upon the crown of her head. She was felled to her knees.

  “She was giving birth to you when your father killed her.” Ilanna’s voice might have been sad.

  “And after he finished murdering her, he murdered you.”

  “No—”

  Gee couldn’t breathe. A blow. As if he’d been struck with an axe. Clove
n in two. He suddenly folded in half and gagged. White, elastic, like heated mozzarella, he vomited his tongue because there was nothing in his stomach. But as he continued retching it kept on pouring outward, each convulsion triggering more until a white mound began forming at his feet and his body began shrinking.

  I’m going to vomit myself inside out, he thought. I’m going to vomit myself empty. And still he retched, unable to make it stop.

  “Stop it!” he heard Ilanna screech, but she sounded very far away. Or maybe she sounded too close … he couldn’t say. He felt so very weak. Insubstantial….

  Rilla, a crackling luminescence. She snapped her jaws and her rows of glinting needle teeth sank through his extended tongue. She snapped and slashed, ripping the thick white strand in two.

  Gee gagged once more, and the small stump retracted into his gullet like an elastic band. Grit, rubbish dug into his palms, his knees. His arms and legs lost inside his clothing. The floor stank of urine and rancid oil.

  In the background, dull thuds of a body being struck. Cries of pain.

  Between Gee’s hands was a mound of steaming white glue.

  “Take it back in!” Ilanna shrieked. “Don’t waste yourself!”

  Gee nudged a new tongue into shape inside his mouth, even as he stared at the part of himself that he’d vomited onto the filthy floor. He shuddered, almost on the verge of retching once more. The thought of taking it all back inside him was repulsive.

  “Do it!” Ilanna screamed. “Don’t you realize how many centuries went into growing your potential? How many people you inhaled to leach their power? Don’t waste it! Look at yourself!”

  Gee struggled to his feet. When he stood upright the room spun for a moment, and he held out both arms for balance. His eyes slowly regained focus.

  What—

  The room … it had grown larger, Ilanna taller. His eyes were at the level of her enraged lips, and his clothing hung off his smaller frame. His jeans barely stayed on his hips, and the hems puddled around his feet. His ripped T-shirt oversized and loose.

  He was no bigger than a twelve-year-old child.