by N. D. Wilson
He could hear Antigone crying.
“All right,” Arachne said. “Antigone? Cyrus? You can stand up. Can you stand up?”
Cyrus didn’t move. Beside him, he heard Antigone sob. He turned his head and looked at his sister. She sat up slowly beside him, and then wiped tears off the side of her nose. Cyrus could see the questions in her eyes. Were you there? Was that real?
Cyrus nodded slightly, feeling the wet rug grind against his cheek.
“Cy,” Antigone said. “We were both there. But I woke up first. Cy, it was like you were dead.”
“How long?” Cyrus mumbled.
“You both slept overnight,” Arachne said.
That meant this was day three. Cyrus shut his eyes and tried to think. In that empty nothingness, he could have been gone for a year for all he knew. He was hungry enough.
Arachne’s voice was low. “But, Cyrus, when the morning came, you fought with me as I tried to pull you back. You’ve been gone most of the day. My thread almost broke. What was in that place for you?”
Cyrus opened his eyes and stared at his sister. She knew. But he hadn’t known that he was fighting. Antigone was wiping her face quickly on both shoulders. What had been there for him? His mother’s voice had been there. And she’d know what Cyrus had been doing. Or maybe Cyrus had simply dreamed it all. He looked at Antigone. It couldn’t be a dream if his sister had been there, too. Antigone shook her head at Cyrus, just a little. She didn’t want him to tell Arachne. Not yet. Cyrus nodded, and his sister turned to their trainer.
“What now?” Antigone asked.
Cyrus sniffed hard, climbed to his knees, and wiped his nose on the hem of his T-shirt before he looked back at Arachne’s curious face. He felt empty, and loose and taut at the same time. He felt like running. Alone. Until he dropped. Right after he ate something gigantic—like Leon, the car-size snapping turtle in the Crypto wing.
He wobbled, dizzy on his feet.
Arachne jumped forward and grabbed his arm, and her hand was midnight-cool. “You need to eat, Cyrus. And drink. Then we work.”
Arachne didn’t ask any more questions. It was obvious that whatever had happened, the Smiths weren’t going to tell her. Cyrus ate a loaf of toast and a slab of cheese, and then he drained a quart jar full of room-temperature water and collapsed into the armchair, sweating like he’d spent an afternoon fencing in the sun. He dozed, and then he slept.
This was real sleep. Normal sleep. Sleep with dreams.
Cyrus dreamed of the three heads—the dark-haired men, bearded, mustached, and clean-shaven. They sat motionless in a cold stone room, and Cyrus stood before them, and the one with the long mustache had a sharp sword resting across his knees. He’d seen that sword in his first dream. The samurai-style blade had a long twining dragon etched into the steel.
Cyrus was pleading with the men. No, he was trying to bully them. He was threatening them, promising their destruction. And then he was offering them protection, an alliance—but his voice wasn’t really his. And he was speaking in Latin.
His dream jumped. The three men were standing, and they had ripped open their shirts. A circular bloodred dragon stood out on each of their chests, nestled in hair. Not tattoos, something more, something real, and alive, and trapped. Each man touched the tip of the sword to the dragon on his chest, and each dragon shivered and squirmed beneath the skin as a drop of blood ran down the blade.
And then the man with the long mustache handed the sword to him, and Cyrus realized that his own chest was bare. He was supposed to do the same. But as his hand closed around the hilt of the sword, he knew that he wouldn’t. He knew that he would break his own Latin vows.
He knew that the dragon men in front of him were as good as dead.
The dream jumped again. He was back in Skelton’s old rooms, and the place smelled of paint. The men were there, painting everything yellow with fat rollers … but they had forgotten their heads.
Cyrus stretched and opened his eyes.
Arachne and Antigone stood in front of him with arms crossed. They were both flecked with yellow paint. The room behind them was completely yellow. Buckets and rollers were propped in the corner.
“You’ve had a harder time of it, but you’ve stopped sweating,” Arachne said. “Stand up. If you don’t throw up or pass out, it’s time to test my weaving.”
Cyrus stood slowly, and the dream fog slipped off him. He felt light and quick. His eyes were sharp, his breath slow and even. He couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face.
“You feel good, don’t you?” Antigone asked. Her eyes were wide. “I feel great.”
Arachne sighed with relief. “You worried me, Cyrus.”
Cyrus grinned. “That’s what I do.” He glanced at the web-sealed windows. “What’s been going on outside?”
“Nothing good,” Arachne said. “But outside doesn’t exist for us right now. Do you need more rest? More food? I doubt you feel ready for physical exertion.”
Cyrus laughed and looked at his sister. “The way I feel right now, if I don’t do something physical, I think I might explode. Tigs?”
Antigone nodded in agreement.
“Terrific,” Arachne said. “To work, then. We’re behind.”
For the first few hours, she ran them through a grueling set of balance and endurance tests. Some less normal than others.
“We must see which gives out first,” Arachne said. “The body or the mind.” And she gave no more explanation than that.
First, Cyrus and Antigone stood in the center of the room, with arms extended straight out from their sides—palms down, fingers spread.
Arachne balanced two books on the back of each hand. Over time, she added books to the shaking stacks. Cyrus couldn’t help laughing, at least at first. The titles Arachne had picked out of the Book Dump hadn’t been meant for study at all. She’d chosen them for size and weight.
With his burdened arms sticking out, Cyrus’s shoulders burned and quaked, but he had no intention of losing to his smaller sister. And yet he did. They repeated the exercise again and again, and each time, Cyrus lost. But he was surprised that his shoulders seemed to get stronger—or he got better at ignoring their screams. Finally, Antigone’s books toppled first.
Antigone smiled. “Throw the dog a bone,” she said.
Cyrus snorted. “Yeah, right. Bring it, Tigger.”
Arachne forced them to hold one-legged poses, balancing book stacks on their knees, on their feet, on their shoulders and heads. Books tumbled and tossed and cartwheeled across the floor so often, Cyrus actually felt a little guilty. A whole flock of pages flew out of The Neverwhere Voyages of Timothy Maggot. And Soils and Salts lost its back cover. But sometimes, usually right before they moved on to a new exercise, the books perched perfectly. They sat easily on his raised knee or foot or shin or shoulder or elbows, while his muscles shrieked and sweat dripped off his face and eternity passed. And then he heard the word good, spoken simply, the books were taken off, and he and his sister were molded into new positions. And in each of those new positions—seated on an invisible bench against the wall with one leg raised, or in a push-up position with the soles of their feet high on the wall, or leaning stiffly to one side with first one leg extended and then the other—they quivered and shook and fell to the floor. And then did it again and again and again, until Arachne was happy with how long they’d lasted.
Cyrus knew that nothing he was doing was actually required for him to move up to Explorer. But he didn’t care. He was training, and he’d never enjoyed a burn in his muscles so much.
After too many failures and too little improvement, Arachne knocked Cyrus out again to rebraid something in his back. But this time, she didn’t send his consciousness nearly as deep, and she didn’t keep him gone for more than twenty minutes. When he came to, the muscles in his back were tingling and Antigone was waiting, eyes wide, curious. He shook his head. He’d seen nothing and heard nothing of their mother. It hadn’t even f
elt like the same place.
Later, Arachne did the same thing to Antigone, focusing on her ankles and calves. Cyrus watched his unconscious sister shiver on the floor, her calves dancing and quaking beneath the skin under Arachne’s slightest touch.
When Antigone rolled back over, he only needed to see her disappointed eyes to know that the same had been true for her.
Cyrus was flat on his back staring at the grubby ceiling. His arms were splayed out to his sides, and his feet were up on the armchair. Somewhere close by, he knew Antigone was doing something similar.
His empty stomach roared. He didn’t know how long their break would be, but he knew it wouldn’t be long enough. His exhaustion was total. He had no idea what time it was or even what day it was. He only knew that he was still in Skelton’s old rooms, and Arachne wasn’t done with them yet. He was starving to the point of dizziness, but if someone had set a plate of food just out of his reach, he didn’t think he would be able to make himself roll over for it. He wouldn’t want to.
“Cy,” Antigone said.
“Yeah?” Cyrus asked. He didn’t look for her. Water was running in the bathroom. Arachne was out of the room.
“Cy,” Antigone said. “What’s going on with Mom?”
Cyrus grunted. He hadn’t had much time to think about it. They’d been doing this forever. He tried to breathe evenly. Muscle fibers throughout his body were still twitching—in his legs, his abs, his arms. He licked sweat off his lips while Antigone continued.
“I mean, she’s in a coma. But Mom knew about us. She said she’d watched us. Do you think she’s wandering around out of her body?”
“Maybe,” said Cyrus. What else could he say?
“That scared me,” Antigone said. “Hearing her talk, having her voice out of her body. Do you think she’s dying?”
Cyrus didn’t answer. He heard the bathroom door open, and a moment later, Arachne was standing over him holding two large plastic buckets full of water.
“You have done well,” Arachne said. “Rupert will be pleased.”
“I’m broken,” Cyrus said. “Feed me something, and then bury me by the lake, please.”
Antigone managed to snort out a pained laugh.
“I am serious,” Arachne said. “Human musculature is incredibly intricate in its artistry and potential, but badly governed. Muscles are fired with imprecision, and people are rarely capable of using half, let alone all of their fibers at once. With my help, now you two are approaching that ability—your sinews and fibers are awake and obedient. I did a lot of weaving to prepare your bodies for these tests, but I know they still hurt. Fighting through hurt is all strength of mind. And there’s little I can do to help you with that.” She set her buckets down next to each other. “This is your last test. Finish this and we will eat.”
Cyrus groaned. Through some strange magic, Antigone managed to sit up.
“This is about teamwork and controlling panic,” Arachne said. She laughed a little. “And obviously strength and concentration and disorientation and blind balance.”
“What is it?” Antigone asked.
Arachne’s eyebrows climbed. “You’re going to do handstands with your backs together and your heads over buckets of water.” She seemed apologetic. “Rupert didn’t think you’d even be able to try until the end of the day tomorrow. But you’ve gotten through everything else on the list.”
Cyrus managed to sit up. He looked at the big plastic buckets next to him. “Back to back?” He looked at Antigone. “We can do it.”
“How long?” Antigone asked.
“For ten minutes,” Arachne said. “If one of you falls, the clock starts again.”
“Ten minutes in a handstand?” Cyrus shook his head.
“Or a headstand,” said Arachne. “But your heads go in the buckets. And you’ll need to move in unison or you’ll fall.”
Antigone laughed in disbelief.
Cyrus climbed to one knee, then both knees; one foot, then both feet. He reached down for his sister’s hands, but when she pulled on him to stand up, he nearly fell onto her.
Cyrus wiped his forearm across his head. “Let’s do it, Tigs.”
At first, it seemed like getting into the back-to-back handstands would be the hard part. They fell sideways. And sideways. And sideways. Then Antigone fell on Cyrus, and Cyrus fell on Antigone. Finally, they were up, but they’d missed the buckets.
“Um, help?” Cyrus said. Blood was already pounding in his head. This couldn’t be healthy.
Arachne slid the buckets under their heads and stepped back. The bucket’s lip pressed against Cyrus’s forehead, and he could feel the water tickling his scalp. Antigone’s hair had to be all the way in the water.
“So …,” Antigone said. She was already wobbling against Cyrus’s back. “Should we hook feet or something?”
Cyrus answered with his feet. They hooked bare ankle against bare ankle, and he suddenly felt a little more solid. Less than three minutes later, their arms were shaking.
“Cy?” Antigone said.
“Right,” said Cyrus. “Try to hold your breath for two minutes, but I’ll come up if you do. Ready? And … down …”
Cyrus felt the water flow into his ears and down his nostrils, flooding his sinuses. Wobbling slightly, he let his head rest on the bottom of the bucket, and he began to count. A sharp plastic bump on the bottom dug into his scalp, but he ignored it. He tried to pretend he was somewhere else, somewhere that wasn’t dark and tight and wobbly and upside down, someplace where he had decided to hold his breath and count slowly to one hundred and twenty just because he wanted to.
The darkness made him dizzy. The blood in his head made his pulse thunder. He was counting too slowly for some reason. He had to be. Twenty should have been a long time ago. He should be at forty.
He felt himself drifting away, but his sister’s legs tugged him back. Thirty-four … thirty-five …
Antigone wobbled; she was tipping away from him. Cyrus adjusted his hands on the floor and leaned against her, pulling her legs with his.
Bubbles leaked out of his nostrils as he strained, but his pulling worked. They were vertical again.
His pulse had quickened. The pain in the top of his head was intense. He released the last of his air and knew, as the bubbles skidded up out of his nostrils, that that had been a mistake. He should have nursed that air, his lungs were empty now, and he’d completely lost count. How long did he have to last?
He started over, counting from one. His lungs wanted air—even old air. They wanted something, anything, maybe even water. They needed to expand, and because Cyrus wouldn’t let them, they lit themselves on fire.
When his blood ran out of oxygen, then his brain would run out of oxygen and he would pass out. Then he would fall, and the buckets would spill. He wouldn’t drown, but he would have to start over.
Antigone was tapping him with her heel. Then Cyrus felt her body begin to slide up.
Slowly, arms shaking, wrists and shoulders screaming, Cyrus pressed himself back up into a handstand. Wobbling, his chin rose out of the bucket, and then his mouth, his nose, his eyes.
Antigone was coughing, and her whole body shook.
Cyrus gulped a breath through his mouth. His sinuses were full of water; any breath through his nose would send him hacking like his sister. He blew hard out of his nose, sending snot and water fountaining around his face. He blinked, but the room was still out of focus. Too much blood in his eyes, in his head.
Arachne’s blurry shape knelt in front of him.
“You’re doing well,” she said. “Halfway there.”
Antigone coughed.
“Tigs?” Cyrus said. “You okay?”
“Wonder”—she hacked and spat—“ful.”
“Lock your elbows,” Cyrus said. “Let’s not do that again.”
He felt Antigone’s height shift in his back.
“Have to,” Antigone said. “I can’t hold this for five more.”
&n
bsp; Rupert Greeves strode across the green, weaving through the tents. He was wearing long trousers tucked into high, glistening boots. A thick belt held a holster—and a long-barreled revolver—on one hip and a wide-bladed jungle sword on the other. At the small of his back, a small but heavy glass ball bounced in a pouch. He was carrying a dinner tray covered with a napkin.
The Acolytes were all eating and talking at their tent flaps. Some still laughed or sang, but most had quiet, somber faces, far more subdued than the previous nights. Having the transmortals around was like having a pride of lions as houseguests. And these kids were in tents. All eyes followed Rupert as he passed.
It hadn’t been a good week, not for anyone. The hospital wing was filling up quickly. The injuries were small enough thus far—broken bones, concussions, damaged joints—and they had all been caused by inexplicable accidents. Oiled stairs, broken chains on flying bikes, bursting blimps—the causes were varied. But if things didn’t improve around Ashtown, the injuries wouldn’t remain small, and there wouldn’t be accidents to blame.
And tonight’s assembly wasn’t likely to improve anything. Quite the opposite. Regardless, it was time to lean into the anger before it blew the Order over. It was time for the Smiths to be seen.
Rupert could hear two more airplanes circling, preparing for descent, late arrivals no doubt carrying two more loads of transmortal trouble.
“Mr. Greeves,” a girl said, “how many of them are there? People are saying the treaties—”
“You’ll hear more soon,” Rupert said without slowing down. His night was just beginning.
Once again bubbling in the bucket, Cyrus felt Arachne tap his leg. He didn’t bother to attempt a dignified dismount. Unhooking his ankle from his sister’s, he fell to the floor. His legs and stomach slammed to the ground, and water sloshed down around his shoulders and soaked beneath him.
His head was still in the bucket, but the bucket was empty now. He could breathe.
“Impressive.” Rupert’s voice echoed through the plastic.