by Daryl Banner
“Sweet Ru—Ruena.” His voice carries the fretting titter of a man losing grip of something important. “Please consider. Hands are used to strike people down.”
They reach the bottom of the countless stairs of Cloud Tower, and Ruena finds herself thinking of the thing Aunt Kael once told her about tools and servants, and she smiles, running a finger along the smooth chrome banister. Thank you, she thinks of it.
“Yes,” Ruena agrees. “They’re also used to help them up.”
0063 Wick
He opens his eyes. The dreams have abandoned him, too. With his father gone, he doesn’t seem to dream as intensely. The worries have taken with them my only escape. I’ll soon be as crazy as my dad. With a glance upward, he finds that too many hours have passed, as the room’s only light is a dim amber wash from the streetlamps. No father to wake me. Only streetlamps. Athan is by the window, staring wistfully into the night sky.
And him. Wick shifts himself to a seated-up position, leaning against the hard wall. Athan turns, smiling when he sees him. “Took yourself a nap?”
“A well-needed one.” Even the nap didn’t push away the problems far enough. He debates telling Athan the recent updates, wonders how he’ll word it. Athan did so like Rone’s sister, too.
Instead, an entirely different thing comes out of Wick’s mouth. “Do you miss your home?”
A look of unease crosses Athan’s face. “I’m … I’m not sure.”
“I imagine there’s more space up there,” Wick responds, looking for a smile.
Athan, for once, doesn’t. He seems troubled, wrapping his arms around his knees and hugging them in. His biceps bulge in the effort, pulling on the small grey t-shirt Wick lent him. “I knew what you were fighting for as members of Rain,” he explains. “I knew what your group did, hearing it from Yellow and … and the others. But I don’t think I realized until your … argument … with your brother Lionis how deep your hatred is for those above.”
“Athan,” he starts, feeling horrible. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, no, it’s okay.” Athan gives him a smile of reassurance, though it’s halfhearted. “It just makes me wonder, like … if you and I hadn’t met down here, circumstances aside, would that hate you carry for the Lifted City have included … me?”
Wick draws closer to Athan, shaking his head. “It isn’t so simple. You have so much up there in the Lifted City. I mean, you don’t need me to tell you that. You’ve been with us for weeks now, seen how little we have, what our prospects are … We cling to Legacies in hopes they’ll bring us fortunes and recognition, but they only seem to get us in trouble. Most the valuable things we make, we hand off to the sky, but where’s our comfort and joy? All of it is up there in the clouds, Athan. You’re born with it all. It’s not your fault,” he adds, feeling his stomach making a knot of itself, “but it’s the nature of things. You have it all.”
“Had.” Athan chuckles dryly, meeting Wick’s eyes. “And maybe we are different in some ways. Maybe I don’t see the King as all bad. Maybe I don’t see Sanctum as all evil.”
Wick sneers. “You think the King is good?”
“Have you met him?”
The two of them lock eyes, and Wick feels his insides flipping over. Is Athan defending Sanctum, now? Freed from the company of Rain, is he finding it easier now to come out with this horrid, pro-Sanctum, Kingship-is-good, Kingship-is-kind shit? “That King can make a thousand broadcasts, send a thousand people his good wishes, I’ll never be convinced of his goodness or his kindness until he’s screamed his last.” Wick’s temper is lost, the fury building in him so quickly he finds he can’t even look at Athan anymore, the teeth in his mouth rattling from his contempt.
“I know,” whispers Athan. “Living in the sky looking down, the world certainly looks very different than if you’re born on the ground and spend all your life looking up. In the sky, sure, I guess I had it all, in a way. So, Anwick, tell me why do I feel like I want more? Why do I feel like, even with everything in my grasp, I still have nothing?”
Wick takes his hand, reminding himself anew how soft the Sanctum boy’s skin is. He strokes the boy’s palm with a finger, idly tracing the veins of his hand, going up his forearm. “Don’t be a fool,” Wick finally says, quiet as a breath. “You know you’re the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“I have a really good talent at putting people in bad spirits, seems like.” Athan laughs when he sees the confused expression on Wick’s face. “It’s my family. I’m always ruining my mother’s day, or bothering my sister. I’m pretty convinced my Legacy is in wrecking people’s days. What does that make me? Mentalist?”
“Just mental,” Wick japes, and suddenly they’re hugging each other again. And the thought of Athan’s mystery Legacy makes Wick think on the puzzle of his own. What’s mine?
Then their lips meet, their hands find each other’s bodies, and it doesn’t anymore matter what the fuck either of their Legacies are. They push out of his room, fall into the bathroom, and their clothes are off before the bathroom door even shuts. Wick turns on the shower and an ice cold jet of water plays across their bodies, shocking them. They laugh as one, then press their bodies together to make warmth. Wick’s hands trace every muscle on Athan’s body, all exposed and present and available to him. I’ve never done this before. Show me what you want. Soap finds a palm, and then their bodies turn slippery as he lets it lather on the Sanctum boy’s flawless form, the suds slithering down his every contour. Wick’s foam-covered hands spread across Athan’s chest, slide down his thick shoulders to his biceps, then slip to his back where they continue, discovering all the muscles that lead like firm, fleshy paths to his tight ass. When he gives it a squeeze, Athan laughs, his voice rattling against the small space. The cold water’s become hot, and when steam fills the air between them, Wick adds even more with a kiss that starts at Athan’s neck and ends somewhere beneath his waist. He hears Athan grip the shower walls, gasping, and he knows he’s got it right.
When he comes back up to look on his brightened face, the steam threatening them from all directions, he gives Athan’s ear a bite—Athan responds with a grunt of what he takes to be pleasure. Then he hears Athan say: “Do you want to?”
Athan is clutching Wick so tightly, their swollen cocks pressed unapologetically against one another and their bodies bearing no more secrets. Wick whispers into his ear: “You’d be my first.”
“Mine too,” Athan confesses just as well. “Wick. You’re the only one I … Wick, you’re the only one I’d ever …” Please say my name again, Wick thinks, listening to that boy’s velvety voice. The two of them breathe heavy, their bodies slick, their muscles playing upon one another. He whispers, “Do you want to? Wick …”
He turns Athan around right there, presses him with his chest against the cold tiles of the shower wall. Do you want to? He lets the hard breathing inspire him. A gentle gasp. The velvety voice that keeps saying his name. Wick … Wick … Do you want to? The back of Athan’s blue-green head squirms as Wick gently enters him, showing the Sanctum boy just how badly he’s wanted to.
0064 Kid
The ladies of the Kindred Abbey seem a lazy lot, for they leave the windows of the main room open as if to invite all the cats. Kid is one such cat, and as she carefully sidesteps the perimeter of the room, her eyes catch Aryl across the way, and she stupidly remembers once again that in her new friend Aryl’s presence, she is never unseen.
“Hey,” says Aryl when Kid draws close enough. “It is kinda fun having a friend who looks like fire.”
“Is that what I look like?” Kid giggles, then proceeds to race around the room, reckless and fearless. Her foot kicks into a boy’s side, inspiring a loud yelp from him. Another swing of her toe brings down a stacked tower of blocks. Her hand tickles a paper ornament hanging from the ceiling, then plays across a girl’s hair, flipping her braid in the back—much to her chagrin. “Fun, fun, fun!” She returns to Aryl’s side, and the tw
o of them cackle.
“That boy, right there.” Aryl points. “The one you tried to hit over the head with a rock when we first met.”
The boy is huge for his age, always seeming to fixate on the smaller kids. Even now, he’s standing over a boy making a laugh about something. “Ya,” Kid agrees, excited by her choice.
With no plan at all, the two of them rush up to the boy. Aryl, the only visible one between them, folds her arms defiantly. “You, there. You. Leave him alone.”
The big boy gives half a look at Aryl, then guffaws. He’s about to say something, but invisible Kid’s come up behind him, yanking down his pants. Witnessing children cry with laughter.
As the boy’s desperately pulling them back up, Kid spots one of the Kindred Abbey ladies watching them. She shows great alarm in her eyes at the scene she’d just witnessed. Quite soon, she’s departed the room. With a sick feeling in her gut, Kid has a suspicion who she’s going off to inform.
“Do it again,” Aryl murmurs quietly to Kid.
“Aryl …”
“Now!”
Kid grabs at the boy’s pants, thrusting them down once more, and the whole of the room erupts into laughter all over again. Even Aryl is cackling, pointing, and the big boy doesn’t bother pulling them up; he merely crouches down, confused and glaring at the faces of everyone around him.
“Aryl.”
The children all draw quiet. The voice was unmistakable. Aryl turns, her black spunky hair waving as if in a wind. “Yes, Lady Maram?”
The wiry-haired woman looms over them. Even from across the room, her shadow seems impossibly long, cast over half the children. “Let’s have a trip to my office, shall we?”
“It was him,” she says, defensive already. “He was picking on us, and he—”
“I won’t ask again.” Head Lady Maram’s eyes shine sharp as a silver blade, and it seems Aryl realizes this is not a fight to win.
Kid silently follows as her friend is escorted to the Head Lady’s office. In the corner on a bookshelf, there still sits one of the paper spiders. Either they missed it, or the Head Lady has taken a sense of humor, keeping one of them for a souvenir. The door softly closes behind them, and the Head Lady stands over Aryl, her eyes bleeding with cruel suspicion.
“You’ve been using your powers again, Aryl.”
“No, I haven’t.” Aryl nervously eyes Kid.
“There was something else amiss in this office that day,” Maram declares. “Something you’re not telling me. Something unseen. Something there, and something not.”
“No, there isn’t,” Aryl retorts too quickly.
Kid rolls her invisible eyes, frustrated. Aryl’s giving it away too fast. Such a bad liar, she thinks, then feels a strange pang for a boy she used to know. Liar, liar, liar. She thought she hated liars once. Wasn’t it the worst thing in the world?
“Have it your way, little girl. If there was nothing amiss, then I simply have no choice but to conclude that you, indeed, have dangerous powers, and must be put away.” She leans over, bringing her wrinkled face close to Aryl’s. “Do you know where little girls with dangerous powers go?”
With that, she snatches Aryl’s tiny hand and proceeds to drag her screaming out of the office, around a corner, and into a tiny closet. Tossing Aryl into the pitch dark, Head Lady Maram shuts it and twists the key. Kid, at the foot of the Head Lady, cannot reach the key, as she stows it away somewhere between her breasts. With Aryl screaming and beating the closet door from inside, the Head Lady strolls away, leaving her be.
Kid rushes up to the door. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here, I’m heeeeere.” The screaming stops, only to be replaced by tiny sniffles. “Aryl? … Aryl?”
“Go away.”
Kid stares at the door, brokenhearted. She looks back at where the Head Lady had gone. Do you know where little girls with dangerous powers go? Kid follows a sudden instinct, her insides turning, and she rushes around the corner and back to the Head Lady’s office, finding her stooped over a phone.
“Yes,” the Head Lady’s saying into it, high and melodic. “That is what I said, yes. A girl with dangerous powers. She has a very dark Legacy and is no longer fit for this orphanage.”
Kid clutches the doorframe, listening with fears and tears pressing against the backs of her eyeballs.
“She commits acts through things unseen. She has a play with invisible hands that seem to move objects on their own. Yes, I’ve seen it. Good. The sooner, the better.” She hangs up, then sits at a chair before her desk and proceeds to scribble onto paper.
Kid rushes back to the closet door. “Aryl,” she says quietly. “I won’t let the mean woman hurt ya. I … I won’t let anything hurt ya. I’m gonna put an end to her, I promise.”
There is no response. I’ve maked her mad. She’s mad at me and I didn’t even do anything. Kid sighs, sits down with her back leaned against the door and waits.
It’s likely half an hour’s past before Aryl finally says, “Were you serious?”
Kid turns her head, still on the floor. “About what?”
“That we could live on our own? Be free? Do what we want?”
“Ya, ya, and ya,” Kid answers, almost annoyed. “Did ya thought I maked that up?” Then a moment of brilliance strikes her. “Hey, hey. I want to try something.” Kid places her hand on the door, focusing.
A large hole in the door begins to appear, twice the size of her little spread of fingers. Aryl, who can now see through the part of the door that was just rendered invisible, gapes at her friend’s talent. “I see you!”
Kid smiles. She’d made her body visible, and a hand’s breadth in the door invisible. “This is what I look like.” Kid offers her a sorry smile. “Are you still gonna call me Red?”
Aryl giggles, poking at the invisible spot in the door as though it were a real hole, her finger hitting it over and over. “No. I’ll call you Pink now, because you’re more Pink than Red.”
Kid’s eyes detach. Pink … I knew a Pink once. “Call me Red,” she decides with a sickened smirk. “I like it better.”
A strange sound blares down the hall. It sounds like a scream that’s been cut off half a second after it starts. Kid stares after it, searching for the source. The hairs prickle on the back of her neck and the little bumps shiver up her arms, and she feels her legs shaking.
Aryl slaps a hand against the invisible part of the door, her eyes searching too. “Red, what was that??”
When Kid turns to look the other way down the hall, it’s too late. Her foot is snatched by a length of wire that suddenly retracts, yanking her feet from under her and dragging her down the hall. Her hand slips from the closet, plunging her friend back into darkness, and Kid screams, kicking at the wire but unable to break free. Even as she wrestles between the worlds of seen things and unseen things, she’s still helplessly dragged just the same.
A man suddenly appears around the corner, the other end of the wire coming out from his palm. A man wearing a mask.
“Mask men, mask men!” screams Kid, kicking fruitlessly.
And he is not alone. Several others, countless others, they rush through the halls. When Kid’s lifted off the ground, tied up with the length of wire, she watches Aryl being carried by a masked man whose eyes shine bright and yellow as gold. They gotted her too! Kid screams, a new energy rushing through her as she throws fists and feet, but the wires dig into her skin and she cannot wrestle free. She realizes the masked men have captured many others. The girl with curly blue-black hair, the big bully boy, the little boy he was bullying, another girl with a tiny nose, they are all bound or chained or wired or roped up helplessly.
“Oh my,” murmurs Head Lady Maram who’s come into view, seeing Kid for the first time. As Kid shifts, twists, flashes in and out of the visible plane, the Lady gapes as though she were shown stars of the sky in the palm of one’s hand. “True, pure invisibility. I haven’t in my days … What dark power …”
“This isn’
t her,” a masked man announces, lifting Aryl into the air by her foot like some dirty shoe he found in a box.
“That’s the one with the dangerous powers,” another one says, his voice grumbly and low. “Take her in. Dispose of all the others. Make a move.”
All the men begin flooding toward the exit of the building, and Kid still thrashes, unable to give up, not after all she’s been through, not after all she’s avoided. She screams words of fury. She cries out for help. She shouts every obscenity she ever in all her eight-or-nine-or-ten years of life learned, but all her shouting is simply drowned by the cries and hollers and screams of the other children. The men carrying Aryl and Kid bring up the rear of the madness, and a very concerned Head Lady Maram follows, hungry for their heels.
“I understand you work for Sanctum, I wouldn’t dare question, of course,” the Head Lady is saying to the one carrying Kid, “but why all these children? If only it were the one with—?”
“Tell me,” responds the man, stopping. Kid takes it for an opportunity to thrash about and try to break free … to no avail. “Are you good at keeping secrets?”
Lady Maram lifts her chin high as her pride. “There are no secrets at the Kindred Abbey.”
The man makes a movement so quick, Kid doesn’t see it. For once in all her life, she doesn’t see something, and the wire that comes from his palm went through Head Lady Maram’s neck so quickly, so easily, it’s taken it clean off.
“There are now,” he says.
As Kid’s drawn through the front doors of the Kindred Abbey for the last time, she stares as the headless body of Lady Maram dropping to the floor. Her severed head lays eerily on the tile, eyes glassy and white and scared, watching them leave.
No hand can stop death.
The storm of men moves down the street, and Kid watches through the side of her face in horror as the masked men, one by one, off the children they do not need. The little bullied boy, he’s first to go, his body turning into nothing but a loose bag of skin, red pouring at the man’s boots as they march on, careless, the blood clinging to the masked man’s robes like tiny bugs and flecking across his mask. The girl with the tiny nose suddenly discovers she no longer has a nose, then no longer eyes, then no longer a tongue, and then where once there was a girl, now there’s many parts of a girl strewn along the cracked pavement.