Come Tumbling Down (Wayward Children)

by Seanan McGuire

  “As I was saying,” said Jack. “Dr. Bleak is dead and I am his heir: technically, a challenge has begun. The other monsters of the flatland will be watching to see who comes out on top, and they won’t interfere. If the Master kills me and turns Jill, an imbalance will be established, and those same monsters will come to correct it. I’m sure that will lend some small measure of comfort to my loved ones.”

  Alexis glared at her.

  “So where are we going?” asked Christopher.

  “To the seashore,” said Jack. “The Drowned Gods have taken Cora. They’ve given us nothing in return. I want her back or, if they refuse, I want their help in setting things right.”

  “Now hold on,” said Christopher. “Cora’s not a bargaining chip. She’s not going to stay with these ‘Drowned Gods’ of yours, no matter what they say.”

  “You misunderstand,” said Jack. “The Drowned Gods are horrors beyond comprehension. We won’t approach them directly. We’ll be speaking with their High Priest, who can hopefully give aid to our cause—and return Cora to us unharmed.”

  “Unharmed, but not unscathed,” said Sumi. Jack and Christopher turned to look at her. She shrugged. “I listen to what you’re not saying. Water changes things.”

  “Yes,” said Jack. “It does.”

  “Just so you know,” said Sumi. “This sounds like a good way to not get anyone killed. Let’s do it.”

  “Anyone else,” said Jack.

  “What?”

  “We might be able to do this without getting anyone else killed,” said Jack. “Dr. Bleak is dead. Even if we’re able to undo it—and I can’t guarantee we will be; he died at least once before I came to the Moors—he will still have been killed. He will still have died for the sake of giving me, and Alexis, the chance to get away. We don’t get to ignore that.”

  “Alexis has died twice,” said Christopher. “She’s fine.”

  “I’m not, though,” said Alexis. She twisted her apron in her hands. “I have lightning where my heart should be. If it goes away, my body stops functioning. I love Jack more than I ever thought it was possible to love another person, but it wouldn’t matter if I stopped loving her, because I can never leave her. There’s not another windmill within three days’ ride. I wouldn’t make it to another table, another lightning array, before I collapsed, helpless, food for whatever monster might come along. I can never safely bear my own children. I can never have my own home. I’ll be in this windmill as long as I’m alive, and sometimes living hurts. So no, second resurrections aren’t the easy things people want to pretend they are. Actions have consequences.”

  Jack looked at her gloved fingers. “As my lovely lady so clearly states, we can’t count on bringing anyone back. It would be better if we could do this with a minimum of bloodshed.”

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Christopher. “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t. This isn’t your world. These aren’t the rules you learned to live by. We have certain advantages here that the world of my birth lacks—we have the lightning—but we must find a way to use them that serves us, and not the Master’s terrible goals.” She looked up again. “We’ll approach the acolytes of the Drowned Gods and ask their aid. If they’ll grant it to us, we may be able to end this.”

  “When?” asked Sumi. “Do we wait until morning?”

  Jack shook her head. “We leave at once. Dr. Bleak’s head lacks the scientific support I’ve given to his body. If he’s to have any chance to rise again, we must act quickly.”

  “Wait,” said Christopher. “You said no one with any sense would want to be caught outside when the sun went down.”

  “Yes, and now the sun is down, and the night creatures have stirred themselves to begin hunting. The danger of sunset is proximity to their dens and hidey-holes. They tend to be hungry when they wake, and no one ever sneered at a self-delivering meal.” Jack took Alexis’s hand. “Alexis will stay here to monitor Dr. Bleak’s condition and keep the doors barred against intrusion. Jill isn’t a vampire yet; the balance of power has yet to fully tip in the Master’s favor. He won’t come here again.”

  “This place is made of straw and stone and fizzy chemicals,” said Sumi. “I don’t understand why the Master didn’t just light a match. Oopsie, there goes my rival, up in flame and fireworks. It would have been easier.”

  “Easier, certainly, but it would have betrayed the balance, and the balance is everything,” said Jack. “If he’d burnt the building down around our ears, the other Masters, the other Doctors, they would have descended like all the demons of Hell itself coming for retribution. This is a challenge. The Master seeks complete dominion to hand to his newly minted daughter. That means he’ll seek to take things quickly and cleanly, and without violating any of the traditional rules.”

  “Body-snatching is in the traditional rules?” asked Christopher.

  Jack didn’t roll her eyes … quite. Christopher realized that she was wearing different glasses now, the frames a little rougher, the lenses a little thicker. They hadn’t been made by a modern optometrist. They’d been milled and crafted here, in this laboratory. “When Jill and I arrived in the Moors, Dr. Bleak convinced the Master to let me live by pointing out that I could be an endless supply of spare parts for my sister. Here, bodies are just another tool, to be stolen or traded as the people in power see fit. Burning down someone’s lab before they’ve been properly vanquished, on the other hand, is rude. Now ready yourselves. We’ve quite a way to go before we’ll see anything akin to safety.”

  She turned to Alexis, offering her hands. Alexis smiled and took them.

  “I wish you didn’t have to stay behind,” said Jack.

  “It’s better this way,” said Alexis. “I can hook myself up to the generators if I start fading, and if the windmill lights are on, the Master’s likely to think you’re holed up in here, trying to forge a new head for Dr. Bleak. Let me buy you time.”

  “If the Master returns, run.”

  “I promise,” said Alexis. She leaned down, and Jack leaned in, and two of them kissed like they were alone in the room, like no one else were watching.

  When Jack pulled away from Alexis and started for the windmill’s rear door, Sumi skipped over to walk beside her.

  “I always knew you were more sugar than you pretended to be,” she said blithely. “No one can go through life entirely spice. It wouldn’t taste very good.”

  “A person is not a piece of gingerbread,” said Jack.

  “Oh, you’re so wrong about that,” said Sumi.

  Outside the door was a wagon, half-filled with straw. Jack selected a pitchfork from an array of farming tools, handing it brusquely to Sumi.

  “Make yourself useful and fluff the hay,” she said. “Rats sometimes bed down in it during the day, and I would prefer no one get bitten. They carry disease, you know. Horrible vermin. Christopher, with me.”

  “What are we doing?” he asked, even as he was moving to join her.

  Jack smiled, terrible and thin. “We’re getting the horses. I think you’ll find them to your liking.” She turned and walked away, heading for a low, boxy outbuilding behind the main windmill. Christopher, as she had clearly anticipated, followed.

  “We didn’t have horses when I arrived here,” she said. “They were something of a journeyman project for me. I built the first before my tenure at the school, and the second after my return, once I realized how easily Alexis tires. Between the two of them, we can pull a wagon, and that has made all the difference for her in terms of freedom.”

  “You really love her, don’t you?” asked Christopher.

  “More than science itself,” Jack replied. “If she bade me to flee to the school and leave the Moors to rot in their own effluvia, I’d do it, so long as she agreed to come. I’d even do my best to learn how to live in this body, for all that I can barely resist the urge to flense its skin off with my fingernails in the vain hope that the tissues beneath would be cleaner. Fortunately
, she loves me with equal fervor, and would never ask such a thing of me.”

  Jack unlatched the stable door, paused, and looked at Christopher. “These are my horses, and are very dear to me,” she said. “Please do not scream.” Then she pushed the door open and went in, leaving Christopher with no choice but to follow.

  “Well, this is probably how I die,” he said, in a philosophical tone, and stepped inside.

  9 AND THEN THERE WERE HORSES

  JACK PAUSED JUST inside to light a small oil lamp. It illuminated the front of the stable, showing bales of hay and a few ratty blankets. The whole place felt like a fire trap. Christopher didn’t say anything. He had to assume Jack knew what she was doing, or this whole expedition would devolve into a nightmare.

  It sort of already had. Indoor lightning storms, resurrected girls, and giant, bloody moons were terrifying enough without throwing in headless corpses, vampire lords, and something called a “Drowned God.” Mariposa had never been anything like this.

  “Hello, sweethearts,” said Jack, voice high and sweet and nothing like it normally was. “Who wants to go for a little trip?”

  “Is that how you’re supposed to talk to horses?” asked Christopher. “I always thought that was how you talked to—oh my God.”

  “Yes, well, horse brains in decent condition are harder to come by than you would think. Dog brains are substantially easier.” Jack stroked the velvety patchwork muzzle of the first horse, offering it a fond smile. “It made training somewhat complicated, but they’re generally eager to please.”

  “Uh … huh,” said Christopher.

  There were two horses in the pen. “Horses” was really the only word that could apply to them: while some other words might have been accurate, they were also, to a one, insulting, and Christopher was fairly sure Jack wouldn’t approve. The first horse, the one Jack was stroking, appeared to have started its existence as several horses. Several horses and possibly, going by the shape of its left haunch, some sort of cow. The pieces had been cunningly stitched together, and while there were thin ridges of scar tissue between them, they had all healed cleanly, leaving a single intact mare behind.

  It was impossible to tell whether the second horse was a mare, a stallion, or something else entirely, as it had no skin. No flesh, either; it was a tall skeleton, bones joined by loops of silver wire and complicated hooks. Dim lights gleamed in its eye sockets. It nosed at Christopher’s shoulder before snorting loudly. An impossible gust of hot air ruffled his hair.

  “How…?” he asked.

  “Science, for Pony,” said Jack, patting the patchwork horse’s shoulder. “Necromancy, for Bones. I had to ride all the way to the next village. It’s held by an old ally of Dr. Bleak’s, a woman who lives in constant conflict with a terrible monster of her own creation who haunts the nearby fens. Really, I prefer vampires. They’re tidier. Still, Pony requires more maintenance. Bits of her fall off all the time, and I wind up spending the evening sewing them back on.”

  “You named your horse ‘Pony.’” Christopher couldn’t take his eyes off Bones. The skeletal horse was the most beautiful thing he’d seen in … in …

  In a very long time.

  “In my defense, I was very young, and had no sense of showmanship. Although I’ll deny it if you tell anyone I said so, I’m glad I built her so early. ‘Pony’ is a much better name than ‘Corpseblossom,’ which is doubtless what she’d have been called if I’d put her together during my pretension and depressing poetry phase. Here.” She tossed him a bridle. “See if Bones will let you put this on. We need to get them hitched and be on our way.”

  “Sure,” said Christopher. He took the bridle and approached the bone horse, not warily, but reverently, like he couldn’t believe his luck. “Aren’t you beautiful? None of that messy skin to get in the way, oh, no, not for a horse as beautiful as you are…”

  “See, this is why I like you,” said Jack, quickly and expertly getting the bridle onto Pony. “You appreciate the finer things in life. Even Alexis had some issues with the fact that our new horse lacked skin. I tried pointing out that a lack of skin also meant a lack of hair, which meant substantially less shedding, but she remained unmoved.”

  “You’re still weird.” Christopher slipped the bridle onto Bones, smiling as the horse rubbed its naked skull against his hands. “I mean, cool, but weird.”

  “Aren’t we all?” asked Jack, and opened the stall door.

  Sumi, who had taken a seat atop the musty hay mounded in the wagon, cocked her head to the side.

  “Christopher, when you look at that horse, does it have skin?” she asked. “If no, good. If yes, I probably shouldn’t have eaten those tomatoes.”

  “My produce is not hallucinogenic,” said Jack, leading Pony to the front of the wagon. “Christopher, hitch Bones over here and climb into the wagon with Sumi, if you’d be so kind. We can reach the shore by midnight, which should impress the acolytes. They do so adore punctuality.”

  “That horse doesn’t have any skin,” said Sumi. “And that other horse has too many skins. I think one is the traditional number of skins for a horse. Isn’t it?”

  “Good of you to notice.” Jack climbed up onto the box seat, gathering the reins in her hand. Sumi scrambled over the board intended to support her back to join her. “Christopher, it appears you’ll be riding in the rear.”

  “Shotgun,” said Sumi unrepentantly.

  “I don’t mind.” Christopher secured Bones, kissed the horse on the side of the skull, and walked around to hop up into the back. “As long as I can help you stable them later, I don’t mind anything right now.”

  Jack flicked the reins and the horses plodded forward, slowly gathering speed, until they were moving at a brisk trot. The benefits of undead horses became quickly apparent: once the horses hit their stride, they neither slowed nor stumbled, but continued moving forward at a steady, measured pace. The wagon fairly flew across the uneven ground. There was no road, no path, only the scrub, and the holes left by the creatures that lived there.

  The Moon seemed to have grown closer while they were inside the windmill. It loomed low and crimson and terrible, like a vast infected eye looking down from above. Sumi stared up at it like she was issuing a challenge, or maybe like she was answering one. If the Moon noticed, it gave no sign, and perhaps that was the greatest mercy the Moors had yet to show.

  “This is a horror movie,” she said, in a dreamy, thoughtful tone. “Did you know? We walked into a horror movie on purpose, and not everybody makes it out alive.”

  “Jill won’t.” Jack’s voice was soft and implacable. She didn’t take her eyes off the fields ahead of them. “I can’t leave her alive, not if I want to have any confidence in waking up each morning in the shell of my own skin. She’s the one who decided to escalate our conflicts into a war, not me. This isn’t my fault.”

  “That sounds like a little bit of lying to yourself,” said Sumi.

  “It sounds like making certain I’ll be able to sleep at night—something which is not, at present, guaranteed,” said Jack. “Ah, well. The best scientists have grappled with insomnia.”

  “Couldn’t you just … banish her?” asked Christopher. “The way Dr. Bleak did, when you both wound up at the school?”

  “Banishment, of course,” said Jack. “Remind me, how many people did she kill? How many more would she have slaughtered in her effort to reclaim what she thought was hers by right? I could send her back to the world of our birth, and when she carved a path through the bodies of its innocents, looking for a door to bring her home, would that blood be on her hands or my own? I have trouble enough staying clean. I would prefer not to make things worse.”

  Silence fell over the wagon, broken by the rattle of wheels against the ground, the hammering of hooves, and Pony—only Pony, not Bones—breathing. Finally, Sumi leaned over and patted Jack on the shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll still love you after you kill your sister.”

  “
How delightful for me,” said Jack, and urged the horses on.

  The smell of the sea reached the wagon moments before the sound of the water itself crashing against the unseen beach. It drowned out the thudding of the horses’ hooves, growing louder with every passing second.

  “A few ground rules, if you don’t mind.” Jack’s voice was a razor, slicing across the crashing of the waves. “The villagers who live in the shadow of the Drowned Gods are pleasant folk, but they have strange appetites, and stranger ideas about hospitality. Accept nothing they offer. Assume that any pleasantry comes with attached strings, and ask yourself how many fingers you need before you return it in kind. They won’t harm you if not given permission, but they may take simple courtesy as permission, and they are always, always hungry. Mind you”—amusement crept into her tone—“the one time a group of them came to meet with Dr. Bleak in the village, I heard their leader giving much the same warning about those who live in the shadow of a vampire lord, so it’s entirely possible there’s no strangeness here at all, merely a few small cultural differences and a great whopping dash of xenophobia.”

  “Don’t you mean racism?” asked Christopher.

  “’S’not the same thing,” said Sumi.

  “Much of the population of the Moors is made up of the descendants of travelers whose doors opened all over the world. In this case, I mean xenophobia,” said Jack, voice surprisingly pleasant. “Were we attempting to parlay with the gargoyle kings, who detest and fear anyone not made at least partially of stone, I would mean racism. Regardless, I must ask you to be on your best behavior, at least until we reach the abbey. If you wish to offend them, do so with my blessing. I’ll be standing at a safe remove, watching to see how far the entrails fly. Do we have an understanding, or must I provide details?”

  “We understand,” said Christopher hurriedly. “Please don’t provide details.”

  “Excellent.” Jack gave the reins a snap. The horses slowed. “We’re here.”