by A. E. Shaw
Selina does her best to answer both questions, and it takes them far into the morning.
Kit sits outside in the Caracaras, wishing, repeatedly, for all to be well.
Ali isn’t surprised by Selina’s story, not by Eliza’s part in it, at least. They sit in the corridor in front of a tapestry illustrating someone’s great battle against someone else. It is not the most calming of backdrops.
Selina is surprised still more when she tells Alej and Ali of Tabatha’s words, and both agree with them.
“Some of us only serve,” Alej says, “but you lead me through many things better than Aiden might have. And you tell me that he was supposed to have been chosen?”
“But Eliza…” Selina says, realising she cannot see that topic through without dealing with the far more pressing one. “What should we do?”
“I have an idea,” Ali says. “I don’t know if I like it, but I think it is perhaps the only thing that can be done.”
Selina frowns.
“Tell me more.”
Eliza is brought to them on the arms of strong guards. She clearly hasn’t slept. She is drawn and her eyes are red all around. When she sees Alej, she rails against the guards but cannot break free. She spits at him, but it does not reach him. He shudders, and moves away.
He does not need to be here for this. He doesn’t understand anything about who or why Eliza is, and if she started the fire, as Selina says she did, then that is unforgivable. He does not want to see her again. It seems as if he will not have to, once Selina and Ali have had their way.
He crosses the hall and takes a left, unbothered by anyone else. He walks down the long, stone corridor, his hand tracing his path on the wall, grateful for the dry solidity of a real building once more.
A little further, a right. A small flight of perfectly-carved stairs. A door at the top. There is a wooden engraving upon it. He recognises it from the handles of his tools, back from so very long ago. How strange.
He can’t help but open the door. After all, the engraving is practically his calling.
He finds himself in his father’s laboratory, although he does not know that’s what it is, only that it is a room full of things he understands. Some things are broken: there is glass on the floor, and a blue liquid here, a red crystal crushed over there. These things should be tidied. Alej busies himself doing exactly the kind of thing he does best.
“You can’t stay here,” Selina says, her voice gentle and low. “I know why you killed him. I understand.”
“I did what you’re too weak to do.”
“No. I’m not so weak, Eliza. I know what you think of me.”
“He deserved it.”
“But we did not.”
Eliza narrows her eyes. “You would have found a place for the man who committed uncountable murders in your cosy new order?”
“It isn’t mine.”
“Then why are you telling me where I can and can’t be? Why are you commanding these guards who, maybe I need to remind you, let those murders happen, why are you defending them, and forcing me out?”
“You’re a survivor, that’s why. You’re never going to forget the old ways, and that’s important. But if you stay here, you’ll become…people will never be able to separate what you did from everything else.”
“But they can do it for these guards.”
“Firstly, how do you know these are the same guards? Secondly, you told me what happened. Don’t forget, you told me that even you, with all your knowledge and experience, even you felt the words of Den Huo lull you…”
“A little!”
Selina holds up her hands, palms forward-facing, defensive. “People here grew up like Aiden, like Alej, they don’t know…anything, some of them. We have no idea how much they know about the world. We don’t know what we don’t know about their world.”
Eliza rolls her eyes, which only convinces Selina more that she’s doing the right thing. Eliza has such rage for these chosen people. Such hatred for them, even. Selina senses that if she could, Eliza would gladly turn the Pulse inside here, and truly wipe them all out. That she wouldn’t be happy in this land until it was only her, and her pain here, alone, forever. But Eliza does not deserve that. The people here, they certainly don’t.
Selina continues, her voice purposefully pleading, dramatic. “Look, please. It’s best for you. If you want to feel that you’ve done what no-one else could, and if you want to believe that it’s what was best for here, then I’m not going to stop you from feeling that. I’m just…”
“Exiling me.”
“Yes.”
“You. You?” Eliza rattlesnakes a laugh, chill and sly. “I could kill you in a heartbeat.”
“But you haven’t. Not yet. I don’t doubt you would. That’s why I don’t want to be near you again. You and I both understand distance, Eliza, and it’s the only weapon I wish to employ against you.”
“You haven’t the authority to send me anywhere.”
“As if authority meant anything to you.”
Eliza swallows, and something changes in her expression. “How far?” she asks, softly.
“How far?” Selina repeats.
“How far will you send me? How will you take me? I have walked more miles than you can dream of, little girl, and I will walk them again right now and then run them back just to take you out.”
Selina only smiles - she does it to condescend and to pity, a trick she has well learnt from Aiden. She is pleased when it switches on the fury in Eliza’s eyes. Eliza is far easier to appreciate when she is fire than when she is ice.
Ali steps forward, drawing close enough to Eliza to see that she’s still got blood spatters at her collarbone. Oh, Eliza, she whispers to herself, I knew you were meant for something, but…why did it have to be this?
“There’s something we never told you.”
Eliza spits at her and Ali fights back everything inside her not to return the foul gesture with a slap, because, she’s tightroping her way along the high ground right now and it’s not a place she’s used to.
“I think you’ll like it. Please. I know this all sounds like we don’t understand, and we’re cutting you off, but…there are other worlds, you know.”
“There are no other worlds. I never bought your stories. I never believed you for a second.”
“Look, you’re going to see the proof of it all pretty soon, so, how about some grace?” To Selina, Ali says, frustrated, “Why does it have to be that it’s Eliza who gets this? Why must we take her?”
Then, as soon as Ali starts to treat it as something maybe Eliza doesn’t deserve, as if this kicked the easiest response gauge of all in, Eliza began to settle. She doesn’t pull at her restraints. She is listening. Maybe there is a truth. What else has been hidden from her?
“I can’t help you any more, Eliza…” Selina is saying, wishing it weren’t so. Eliza could have a place here. She could’ve helped the others understand. She could’ve explained to them what she’s seen, what they don’t know…but there is no point in wishing, Selina. No point. You don’t have the world you need to even begin to deal with Eliza, and Eliza does not want to be dealt with, and whilst we, here, might debate the worth of exile for the dangerous, the troubled, the lost, Selina has no-one to debate with, and no power to work with. A new world - this is the best she thing she can imagine. If Eliza could only open her eyes, perhaps, perhaps she might be grateful. A part of Selina, the smallest and most confused part of her, wants to hide with Kit and Ali in their machine and flee with them to the strange and distant unimaginability that is anywhere but this land mass, but she never would. She never could. She travelled here on nothing but duty and hope, and even if hope has not come good, duty remains strong.
Eliza doesn’t argue any more. She doesn’t look up. She lets herself be taken, dragged, hauled like so much meat. The inside of her mind is a cold, dead, blank. Not now. It isn’t time, now.
She barely sees the Caracaras when she’s pushed
up into it, stuffed like the cargo she is into the gap behind the seats, fastened tight, tight, with still more rope, this time looped into the backs of the seats, to try to keep her in one place, her back turned to the seat backs, so there’s no chance she’ll be able to see out, nor to concoct any kind of escape.
Kit and Ali take their places, and their own moment, before they leave: in spite of their passenger, this is the moment they’ve hoped for for so long. The chance to leave. The goings on of this small, small land are not their business, and the chance to leave them behind is so welcome it hurts, tense with excitement as Ali fires up the craft.
There’s something about Eliza’s presence - even if she’s still silent, she can’t help but be very much present - that seems appropriate. After all, would they have lasted as long as they have here without her? Neither of them could deny her strength, her prowess. With things as they are, it’s hard to work out why it was that Eliza was so good to them. If she could have come here alone, if she had a resolution so near, yet so far, all along, then…well. Maybe they’ll have a chance to ask her, some time, somewhere else. Maybe.
The question of where to go - and where to leave Eliza - is one for the journey. The Caracaras hums, gently, generating its own energy just as it always used to. It raises, nose first, then tail, and Selina is there, below, stunned still and silent. She doesn’t wave. The gesture doesn’t exist to her, but even if it did, it wouldn’t occur to her, so surprised is she by the Caracaras.
Alej holds his hands in the air, though. It isn’t, perhaps, a wave, so much as an expression of his goodwill. He’s glad not to have to go in that thing again, but at the same time, the machinery was so beautiful, so familiar, in such a specific way, there’s a sense of loss at its departure. There’s nothing like that here. Perhaps he can build something.
He wonders how he would start. He forgets Kit, Ali, and Eliza, even before they’ve gone. He’s all but surprised when Selina speaks to him that she’s still there, too.
“Do you think we’ll see them again?”
Alej cocks his head to the side, and then rights it again. He doesn’t say a word.
Selina smiles, as if he had.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The New Order
Aiden takes a last look at his room. It’s been a good room. A pleasant room. Its gold and jewels are magnificent. But he cannot stay. Already, he wishes he was gone, didn’t have to go through the tiresome process of saying farewell. However, now he knows he’ll miss nothing in his absence, he feels it important to leave in the right way. Impressively, bravely, graciously.
He leaves a single, tiny ruby, jammed into the seam of the windowledge. It is the kindest thing he knows how to do, and the closest he could come to leaving his mark on the building.
He takes with him the silk from his bed, just as he did when the fire came. He takes the knife, because he needed a knife once before, and he already has a good idea that he’ll have a use for one on his journey. He takes a pail to carry his belongings in. This one is even more beautiful than the old, tarnished, smoke-black one he brought down from the castle.
He turns his father’s rings on his fingers, absently. He has given this place all the time he can. That’s enough, now. That’s enough.
In the atrium, he finds Tabatha, and orders her to take him to Selina.
Selina is standing in front of the long mirror in her room. How can I be the one? She asks herself this repeatedly. And yet, the more she asks it of herself, the more easily the answers come.
She will explain everything as best she can, and if the people will listen, if they will tell her everything they know…if they will believe that they can do this together…there are so few of them, if they can somehow, together, be wise, then maybe, maybe they can remember and honour those who came before, straighten the misconceptions of Outside and spread this little society back out there once more. Humanity has room to breathe, to eat, to grow, yes, and there will be those amongst the people here who appreciate that and do not understand the price paid for it. Thanks must never be given to Den Huo, but his story will be told. As much of it as can be told. And it will be told alongside all the stories Selina has ever heard and all those that the people here have to tell.
There has been no uproar. No storming of the building. No demanding accountability, no insistence that the newcomers should be trialled or examined. The people here do not want to have their world thrown up about them.
That’s the strange thing about this place. It was built with such unpleasantry, such arrogance, such terrible design. And yet the people here are just like the people she knew, albeit in a very different way. They are good people. They are quiet and kind and wise. They are not interested in the business of others, only in the happiness and existence of their families. They should not be punished. Just as Alej should not be punished for being born, it is not their fault.
This is her starting point.
There is a knock on her door.
Even as she opens it and sees him there, there is a sink in her heart. She knows what he has come to tell her. And she is sad, so sad, that she has not been able to fix whatever it was that broke, up there on the mountain.
Aiden embraces her, and he feels completely different from the way he used to. Where he was bones and sinew, a touch so light it was hardly present, now he’s definite and shaped and his grip on her exists.
“I know you will lead well.” His smile is not a real one, but Selina knows that even those fake smiles are not something Aiden gives lightly. He means her to appreciate it.
“It should be you,” she says, one last concession to her own nerves, “it should always have been you. This is why you learned all those things, this is what you were taught for. They need your knowledge.”
But Aiden is shaking his head. “No, Selina. This is why I came to you, on those days. This is why I told you stories. This is why you lived outside, and inside. You know luxury and poverty, and the things that were great and those that were terrible and are your people. They aren’t mine.”
He doesn’t say, I don’t want them. They are nothing to me. They don’t worship me. They see only my father. I have a higher calling than them.
He doesn’t say: I’m going to find the stars.
He doesn’t say that at all.
Selina is still trying. “This is a better time. We can do it…together. We could lead together.”
Aiden laughs, a laugh as fake as his smile. “There is no-one better. You, and Alej, you are like these people. You have much you could achieve with them.”
“But you could help. We can find a way. You could tell them stories, just as you told me them.”
“I could.” He doesn’t need to explain that he won’t.
Selina kisses him on the cheek, and he wipes at the residual sensation her lips leave, as if trying to capture it, rather than to remove it.
“I’m so happy for you,” he says, an old line from an old tale. It fits nicely.
“For all three of us,” Selina says, trying to assert that this is a happy ending for him, too.
“For all three of us.” Aiden needs no such assertion, but is pleased with the words’ finality.
He smiles like it’s the truth, and she smiles because it is her truth, and he leaves the room, and she does not follow. It’s time for him to leave. To find the place that truly is his, that has not been shaped and scarred and ruined by someone whose image he does not fit into.
He slips out of the complex a few moments later, gone as easily as that. He allows himself to sour his opinion of one and all whilst he leaves, and in those first few steps away, he makes promises to himself that he will never return to this land. He will leave and sink gladly, into whatever awaits. He will make his own land, because he can. Land will form for him. That he underestimated the part his now-ex-companions would play in his life is not his fault, no, it illustrates the grand complexity created only for him.
Selina has been stretching and shaping her
self into the most comforting of movements for some time when Alej finally arrives at her door. He is dishevelled, has spent half a night in the laboratory, sorting things, labelling things, learning things. He, too, is dressed in clothes made for Aiden, but the shirt won’t button over his chest, and the trousers are tight at his thighs. It would be comic, were the apparition not sad, given that Aiden is now gone.
“He isn’t here, Alej,” Selina says, dropping her position as soon as she sees him.
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Aiden. He’s gone.”
Alej shrugs. It looks a cruel gesture.
“But…don’t you care?”
“Should I? Selina, I am tired, I am so, so very tired. What would Aiden stay here for?”