by Kim Smejkal
“This is . . . not fun,” Zuni had said, panting as she ran.
The plague doctor agreed.
The ink sloshed dangerously inside the chest in Zuni’s arms, and Diavala kept shouting at Griffin that they couldn’t spill a drop.
Plus, he couldn’t tell if the house was booby-trapped or if it was another ink illusion, and that was driving him to distraction again.
By the time he’d figured out that the house was herding them where it wanted them to go, it was too late. Halcyon had emerged from his studio, and without thinking, the plague doctor had opened the closest door and pushed Zuni into the aviary.
They stumbled to the back, twisting around trees, shrubs, and angry nesting songbirds. Zuni put the chest down and sat on top of it, earning an affronted gasp from Diavala.
“This is the end, then,” Zuni said, trying to catch her breath. “I’m pissed that I’m with you, but happy to be with the birds.”
The door burst open, the cacophony of birdcalls dying all at once—not because Halcyon had silenced them, but because he’d killed them. They dropped from their perches and from the air, landing with soft thuds all around. The plague doctor tried to shield Zuni before any landed on her, but he was too late. A small sparrow, maybe even the same one she’d held in her hands earlier, landed in her lap, motionless legs up, beak open.
Zuni shrieked so loud she blasted the roof off the house.
Quite literally.
There was no longer a roof on the house.
Above them was overcast sky, the kind that didn't exist in Wisteria.
He swiveled toward Halcyon, trying to figure out what horror was lined up for them next. A rainfall of dead birds he understood, but why would he rip the roof from his own house? To what end? This would be when Obi the Giant made his appearance, and he would be no benevolent fool, tripping his way through life and learning valuable lessons. He would have the sharp teeth of a cannibal and seven glowing red eyes—
“Curse your imagination!” Diavala said.
No Obi appeared, and judging from the look on Halcyon’s face, he didn’t know what came next either. He looked just as surprised that the roof was gone as the plague doctor and Zuni.
The walls disappeared from around them.
“What are you doing?” Halcyon asked. His voice was full of panicked wonder, and for a moment the plague doctor enjoyed it. Quite flattering, that Halcyon could think he could do something like this.
He stopped enjoying it when Halcyon retaliated.
“Stop it immediately!” Halcyon demanded. Two long, wide strips of bark tore off the back of the tree closest to the plague doctor and wrapped around him, taking him into a rough embrace. Still connected at the trunk, the bark hugged him close, pulled him in tight. He struggled against it while the tree hugged him with two bark arms, squeezing his chest. Only his head and feet were visible, the rest of him wrapped in a shroud of rough hazelnut-colored bark, with lichen and moss accents. His eyes widened, panic setting in as thin, sharp branches headed toward the goggles of his mask. This would hurt.
“Zuni, you’d better be taking advantage of the new exit—” One small slice of bark ripped away and crept toward the plague doctor’s face; then, despite how he tried to twist away, it pressed down, like a palm slapped against his mouth, silencing him.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, could barely breathe. One of the slim branches had wedged under his mask at his jawline, and as it extended, the pressure increased until it would either be the mask or his face that ripped first. He put his money on his well-crafted mask surviving longer than his skin.
But he could see all the way to Celia and Lyric, because the rest of Halcyon’s lair had disappeared from around them.
Paintings, ornate floor, wall sconces, all gone. Trampled dirt was under their feet, and the breeze hit from all directions. No tunnel of wisteria, no red front door, no fountain or garden. If any of the ink birds had been alive, they would have flown away.
The door with the sunflower doorknob was the only thing left of Halcyon’s home. The door they needed to get the ink through.
The plague doctor mumbled at Zuni, loud, trying to get her attention over the people’s screams and the chaos of everything falling apart. He had no idea why the tree squeezing the life out of him hadn’t disappeared, since everything else in the room was gone, but that seemed to be about his luck.
“Zu-ni!” he said through closed, bark-kissed lips. Her dazed eyes met his as his mask was pushed up by the branch, and he pointedly looked in the direction of the door, then down at the chest, trying to say Take the chest to Celia, there’s the door, with only his eyeballs.
Halcyon had abandoned the empty aviary and was in damage control mode, trying to put everything back just as fast as Celia took it down and yelling at his people to stay calm. They didn’t listen.
Shouting above the townspeople’s screams, Lyric was giving Celia updates about what she’d managed to make disappear. “The oak trees along the main street,” they yelled. “The bakery, the grocer.”
“How a-bout this tree, Ce-lee-ah!” the plague doctor mumbled at her. There was no way she could have heard him, but Zuni did, and she happened to have pocketed his folding knife earlier when she’d gone through his coat. As she started sawing at the bark, he’d never been so happy to have been robbed.
He liked Zuni.
Final verdict.
He pushed out as she sliced, helping her, ignoring the few times she accidentally cut into his arm instead of bark, and he pulled away from the tree with a final riiiip.
His poor, incredible plague doctor mask hung like a macabre decoration against the bark, the goggles impaled on the branch, where, moments ago, his face had been.
“Don’t you dare salute,” Zuni said, grabbing his hand.
But it had been a most excellent mask . . .
He shook his head and looked at Zuni. “Grab the chest!” he yelled.
“You’re welcome!” Zuni yelled back.
And the plague doctor managed a laugh as they ran through the swirling chaos toward the one who was creating it.
Chapter 31
Halcyon was trying to put it all back, but Celia had had a good head start, and she simply undid everything all over again. Maybe this would be her purgatory—forever battling an immortal ink-person who’d died a thousand years ago—because that seemed to be about her luck.
“We have the ink!” Zuni called. Then, “Oh no,” Zuni whispered, staring into Celia’s eyes, then looking away, then looking back, as if she were peering at a fascinating yet grotesque curiosity behind glass.
Griffin was more direct. He looked at Celia so strangely, roaming her eyes, her skin, but she thought he was the strange one: a maskless plague doctor with such pretty, kissable lips.
Leaning closer, he cupped his hands at the sides of her face, creating a tunnel between them, blocking out the rest of the world. Just Celia and Griffin, forehead to forehead. The scent of cloves and lemon hit her, and that familiar tug of want came with it. “Oh, Celia.” One of his fingers traced a light path by her eye.
Are they black and swirly like his? Celia wanted to ask, but she already had the answer in the way they both stared.
“Does it hurt?” he asked. His hands moved from her upper arms to her hand, cupping it and turning it over. Black streaks like lightning stained it, disappearing under her shirtsleeve. She stared in wonder as the streaks pulsed and throbbed. It didn’t hurt. Not yet. But giving it away on the other side would. Even a complicated tattoo caused exhaustion, and the amount of ink given away was minimal. This would be everything. All of it inside her.
Celia didn’t expect to survive.
“Focus, Celia!” Lyric yelled. Their hair whipped around their face as they moved with Zuni toward the door, keeping a close eye on Halcyon as he worked ferociously trying to restore his town. His efforts had slowed, as if he were beginning to realize that casting illusions was more difficult than erasing them, and he wouldn
’t win this battle.
With the town gone, people were running everywhere, staring up at the sky and at the dirt under their feet. Xinto flew from one person to the next, making confused pips and squeaks. No wisteria, no buildings and homes, no main square. One soul in a bright red suit clutched her dog tight in her arms—so tight the poor thing yipped and struggled—as if she were scared it would disappear.
Celia watched everything as a spectator—undoing anything Halcyon did without thinking, disembodied and weak already. She was ink, and she had to go home. The drive within her was becoming all-consuming. She imagined the sunflower doorknob warm in her hand, turning, pushing the door open: over and over, the same fantasy.
So close to the threshold, she buzzed with need.
With his town in ruins and his people defecting, Halcyon set his gaze on the door.
Just like a river lobster.
Then his gaze moved to Celia.
She shifted her focus to him, her eyes pulsing bright. She needed his ink before she could answer the call of the door and finish this. It was one thing to take the ink from the illusions that had built a town, another thing entirely to take it from someone who’d been steeping in it for a thousand years. How could she get him through the door? Celia’s hands twitched at her sides, ready to reach for a sword and begin the inevitable duel.
Halcyon staggered as he walked toward her, listing dangerously, as if he’d had too much to drink. The ground rose up to meet him, and he fell on all fours, his head hanging.
A low, guttural moan, as if he were praying to the earth. Beseeching. Apologizing.
Celia hesitated.
Suddenly this didn’t feel like a win.
“Don’t you dare stop,” Zuni said. Her hands gripped the sides of Halcyon’s Chest Majestic, and she looked as if she was debating throwing it through the open door.
Celia’s veins pulsed harder, the fat, inky lines spreading farther. The ink inside her believed she would lead it home, and it didn’t appreciate the delay.
But still, Halcyon looked utterly wrecked. His world had been so finely crafted; now he crouched in its dust. In the space where a beautiful town once stood were now only a door, trampled ground made of moss and mud, a cloudy sky, frantic, confused people, and one thick-trunked oak tree that had once stood in his aviary but now had the whole field to itself.
“Celia?” he whispered. One word, entirely made of questions. You’ve ruined us. How could you do this? Why did you do this?
Halcyon’s gaze came up and pierced her, his despair battling with anger. It looked as if he were playing out all the ways he could take his revenge on her, the one who was supposed to be his ally, and trying to land on the right one.
But he also fought to contain his hurt. “You had so much promise,” he said. “Why would you do this to us?”
“You need to go back,” Celia said. At the moment of desolation, perhaps he could be reasoned with. “Martina will welcome you if you do the right thing.”
Halcyon began laughing, deep and full-bellied. “You still claim to have spoken with her? What a marvelous thing! Tell me, in detail, all the things my beloved said.”
He stood slowly, and she put her hand out as if to ward him off. If he physically attacked, she had three people who could help her, but if he did something inklike—expand his body to the size of a giant or throw a flurry of knives—she would have no choice but to unleash her own ink attack, and the entire point of this was to bring all the ink home, not release more.
“Martina is full of regret, Halcyon,” Celia said. “And she’s lived for centuries in that same stark world that you’ve condemned everyone else to. Think about that for a moment: when you stole from the afterlife, you stole from Martina. If you love her, why wouldn’t you want to make things right for her? I’m doing this out of love for the people I’ve lost, for the people yet to meet their inevitable fate. You should do the same for her.”
“I suppose,” he said slowly, “you are simply a better person than I.” His eyes swirled as he stepped ever closer, and desperate, Celia glanced at Griffin for help. She should have known reason wouldn’t work with Halcyon. He was too far gone. Too lost.
He was such a good liar, he was even able to deceive himself.
Then, beside her, someone started screaming. She knew the voice, and she recognized that sound.
She whirled.
Griffin had fallen to his knees, clutching his head and shredding his beautiful megaphone-amplified voice. She’d heard it before, when Vincent fell. She knew that it ended when mistico with daggers descended. But all the mistico were gone and daggerless now that Profeta was dead, so would the sound go on forever? Lyric was the only one who didn’t recognize it, who didn’t know what it meant, and so they were the only one on their knees beside Griffin, ineffectually trying to help.
“What’s happening?” Lyric said, their voice rising. “What’s wrong with him?”
In that moment, surrounded by a wall of screams coming from the one person she’d been trying to protect all this time, Celia regretted every choice she’d made. She shouldn’t have trusted Diavala at all, shouldn’t have let Diavala manipulate her again. If it was destined to lead her here anyway, to the one thing Celia had been desperate to avoid, she should have done more to destroy Diavala along the way.
Where was Diavala now? The only options were Lyric or Zuni, so her heart shattered in a million pieces.
“Griffin, shhh, it’ll be okay.” Celia wrapped her arms around him. He babbled loud: screaming nonsense and whispering nonsense. Up and down his voice waxed and waned.
“Water hurts so much more than I could have imagined!” he screamed.
“It’s not real,” he whispered.
“Are snowdrops sad or happy flowers? I’ve never been able to tell!” he yelled, then followed it with a high-pitched laugh.
“Diversion,” he whispered.
Celia and Griffin locked eyes. And Celia understood.
Love hadn’t worked to get Halcyon through the door.
Maybe hate would.
“Get in character, Devil,” Griffin said, disguising it as low, nonsense mumbles. “I’ll be right behind you with the chest.”
Celia had felt herself inching toward death lately. Working with the ink and Halcyon had always felt temporary, even after she’d promised to do it forever. But she still wanted Griffin safe, alive. It had been her only goal for so long; it was supposed to be her redemption. But hers would be a one-way journey. If he followed, his would be too.
And he knew it.
Not only did he know what was coming, he actually seemed happy about it.
Griffin had told her once that he’d spoken words about the afterlife aloud, and how wrong it had felt. That those words didn’t belong in the land of the living, that by unleashing them, he’d upset a balance. And now she understood it: He didn’t want anyone else to live with that fear of what comes next.
The prison of the afterlife was terrible in its vastness and its blankness. Its nothingness. No wonder he couldn’t talk about it—it was the kind of thing that would make you go mad, knowing that was waiting for you just on the horizon.
But she understood him a little better now. She’d accused him, once, of trying too hard, and she’d been both right and unfair.
Maybe trying too hard in life was the point.
Tears spiked in her eyes, and she didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t fair that in the middle of him pretending to have the Touch, she had to say goodbye to him. Once they went through the door, it would be over. Given that the afterlife was infinite, they would never see each other again. Celia tenderly kissed his cheek.
“You’re ruining my curtain call,” he whispered with a small smile. “Again.”
Celia grabbed Griffin under the arm and hauled him to his feet. Devil’s hell, he could be so loud. Right in her ear, he wailed, reveling in the performance of the tortured soul. Zuni had clued in—she’d heard the wails of the Touch just as much a
s Celia had. Lyric and Halcyon, however, were fooled. Lyric had taken the opportunity to unleash years of rage on Halcyon, taunting him with the fact that the town was gone, that he poisoned everything he touched and he deserved this fall.
There was nothing left of Wisteria except for a lone oak tree with an impaled plague doctor mask hanging from it; their horse, Aaro, galloping away in the distance, his hitching post gone; and an assortment of mundane items the townfolk needed to survive: food, clothing, and personal items strewn around like litter. Most of the people had collapsed to wailing or silent shock.
But in those few moments where Griffin and Celia said goodbye and Lyric began their yelling, Halcyon had put some things together.
With five long steps, he was in front of Zuni, forcing the chest from her hands so it tumbled to the ground and grabbing her in a tight hold. “You,” he raged. “You dared return here?!”
Celia swallowed the lump in her throat. “Tell Lyric and Zuni to destroy that doorknob,” she said to Griffin in the lulls of his performance. It was the most important thing, the link between this place and that place. It had taken the unraveling of everything to find the real-world tether that everything had started from, but it was so obvious now: that sunflower doorknob was the weakest spot and the strongest spot. Every illusion Halcyon had created had been tied to it. “If they don’t, Halcyon can walk out and start all over.”
Then Celia stood and squared her stance.
And laughed.
This would have to be her best performance yet: taking on the role of the Divine and facing down her curse for the last time.
“I am so glad to be free of that one,” she said, looking at Griffin. She shook out her shoulders and smiled at Halcyon, who was holding Zuni. “With how long you’ve haunted me, I’m amazed you still can’t recognize me!”
He pushed Zuni aside. “Diavala,” he said.
“You’re pathetic, Halcyon.” Celia forced her lips to curl into a satisfied sneer. “A thousand years of torturing me, and in the end, I get the satisfaction of watching everything around you crumble. Beyond that door is my happy ending, and I can’t thank this foolish inkling enough for doing all the work for me.”