Mud

“If the story is true.”

  “But—” All this new information. It sticks, catches, and tangles in my mind. “A necklace that causes love? What value could that have for Abazel? He doesn’t want love. He wants another Realm War.”

  The Hunter purses his lips. “I don’t know. But magic is always dangerous. I’ve learned this in my time with the Sworn. And if there’s any lesson to be learned in Calipher’s story, it’s that love can be an extremely dangerous, violent thing.”

  The sun is coming up and sparkling over the sea. The village will begin to stir any minute. I should be hiding in my cave’s shadows by now. By Rona’s side. But this is the first time I’ve gotten answers, and there’s so much more to know.

  “What is the Sworn? Why do you come for me? What do you hunt this box that you did not even know what it held?”

  The questions fly out of me like caged birds set free.

  The Hunter stretches his hand out to block himself from them.

  “Shael’s Sworn,” he says. “We are His warriors, giving our lives to fight His cause. We hunt down the magical remains from the Realm Wars and destroy them to restore the peace. We are a brotherhood, sworn and bound to this mission, and we will not rest until all is set right again.”

  This is why they look for me. Why they keep coming back. I remember the Hunters’ souls wandering in unrest through the Nethers. This is why. They won’t rest until it’s done, all the magic in Terath destroyed. They’ve been there for ages, will probably be there for ages more.

  “And the box?” I ask.

  “As I said, we trace the magic that does not belong to this realm. We can find it anywhere,” he says. “Well, anywhere in the realm. We knew it was powerful magic, and that it held something else even more powerful inside it. We knew it needed to be destroyed. But it seems we failed.”

  I shift the broken pieces of the box in my fist and lay the fragments out between us. “This is all that’s left of what you came for.”

  The Hunter leans forward over them, his brow knitted. “Is that a rune written around the border? There’s not much to go on anymore, but it might tell us—”

  I never find out what it might tell us.

  As he speaks, the Hunter reaches to pick up one of the splintered shards to look closer, and what happens unfolds before me as if in slow motion. As if in a dream. A nightmare.

  As the wooden shard rolls between his fingers, something else takes over and—no, no, no—my hands grip onto the sides of his head—stop, please, stop—a sharp snap whips the air as my hands twist his neck until his spine breaks. I am left with another corpse, another flat accusing pair of eyes that never saw it coming, another murdered Hunter, who never got the warning he should have.

  A cold deeper than the piercing chill of the Underworld overcomes me. My fingers, my hands, my entire body trembles.

  Why is the box’s magic still controlling me? The necklace is gone. It was supposed to be over.

  But the limp body before me says different.

  The old walls that boxed me in all the ages of my existence close in around me again. There is no end. No escape. I plummet through the darkness of this realization, a slow crash and burn as the sun creeps over the horizon, a pain so much greater than the bodily wounds I suffered days before. Too deep to bear.

  Answers. He had the answers I need. He helped me. And in my carelessness, I killed him. Why didn’t it occur to me the charm might still be on the box’s pieces?

  “Adem!”

  Two short syllables. They crash over me like being plunged into a frozen winter lake. I freeze in the shock of the voice behind me.

  Chapter 25

  THE VOICE REACHES out to me again.

  “Adem!”

  It is a voice I would know anywhere. In any time.

  It’s different now. Lower, stronger. But also the same. Still rich with the fresh innocence he had as a boy. Even just one word is enough to know him.

  Before me, the Hunter’s corpse. The box’s broken pieces. A death trap.

  My chest swells with eagerness, seizes with panic.

  I kneel and pick up the pieces at fast as I can.

  “Adem? Do you remember me?”

  He takes a hesitant step closer.

  “Stay back.”

  I take the last few scraps into my hand, my head still throbbing from the shock, picking the final one out from the Hunter’s still hand. I push them together tight in my fist and tuck them back into the pocket, make sure there’s not a single splinter stuck to my hand, no chance of anyone else touching any piece of the box.

  Then I turn.

  Facing me is a lean and muscled young man. Loose waves of fiery red blow around his head in the breeze. The same easy smile graces his lips.

  I feel my own face pulling into something similar, despite what I have just done.

  “Jordan.”

  He leaps forward and wraps his arms around me. How can he be so unreserved? Didn’t he see what I did to the Hunter? He must have. A thick pulsing floods my ears. I grope for some way to explain.

  But he speaks first. “You are just the same,” he exclaims into my shoulder, “Just as large as I remember.”

  My arm wraps around him too, before I can think.

  “And you are all grown,” I say. My fist is pressed against his back, a fist that just seconds ago snapped the Hunter’s neck. I pull it back.

  “You should stay away.”

  Jordan’s smile drops away and his lips pull into a thin line, some of the light falls from his face. “You are just the same. In every way.”

  “I’m dangerous. This man, he didn’t deserve this.” I need him to understand.

  His eyes drop to the Hunter’s body, then back. “I remember the burdens you’re trapped with,” he says. “I remember all of it.”

  I fumble for words, trying to tell him again to stay away, but he cuts me off.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks. His voice is straining toward joy, confusion, anger, a thousand different directions. “Where have you been all these years?”

  It’s too much to explain all over again. Too much to relive.

  My thumb taps compulsively against my leg, idle, restless, and uneasy.

  I search for something, anything else to say. “How did you know I was here?”

  He stands a little straighter. “I’m the leader of Haven now.”

  The other children always followed him in Epoh. He stood up for them. It’s easy to imagine the others in Haven doing the same.

  “I’ve been gone to speak with another village nearby. But I felt something change. I felt your magic was back.” He holds out his hands to me as he did in the wasteland, feeling around me as if for warmth from a fire. “When I came back, they said the bucket for the well was taken. I followed the tracks down here.” A gentle smile. “I thought you had no need for water.”

  “I have a human with me.” His eyes drift back to the Hunter’s corpse. “Not him. A girl. She is… not well. She needs water. I had no other way to bring it to her. I was going to put it back.”

  He nods, his eyebrows pulling together. “What’s wrong with her?”

  I don’t know where to begin. “She… needs time. Rest.”

  I hope it’s true. Either way, there’s nothing Jordan can do for her.

  “But what village have you been to? There is nothing else out there. Just wasteland.” I keep talking just to take the focus off me.

  “No, but there is!” His eyes charge with energy, wide like a child’s. “There’s a lot of us now, all along the water. Getting back to the old ways, back to the Three. Preparing for the Final Realm War.”

  It’s just like Miriam said. He’s already leading the way, and he doesn’t even know what fate slotted him for. I wish I could tell her, wish she could see him.

  A vague hollowness in my chest—I miss her.

  “I had to visit another village nearby. Just a few days’ walk. I brought them some supplies. And I talked to a prophet there
who had a message for all our allied groups.”

  His eyes flick to the Hunter’s corpse again. A frown flickers over his face.

  I can’t take it anymore, the way he looks at it.

  “I didn’t want to,” the words burst from me like water from a broken dam. “The box. It wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. I didn’t think—”

  Jordan gives me a weak smile. “I remember, my friend.” He clears this throat and looks away, out to the horizon.

  Heat closes in around my neck. He’s so been so accepting, always. But this, the corpse at our feet, I fear this is his limit. But to lose him too, on top of all the rest that is falling apart, I can’t bear it.

  Just when I think he’ll turn away and leave, he clears his throat and speaks. “The prophet in the other village, he said the signs are changing, the realms are shifting. Something is different in the Underworld and the Third War is coming. Soon.”

  He steps toward me again. His eyes push with gentle force.

  “Where were you, Adem? Did it have to do with this? Anything you might be able to tell us could help.”

  Where to start. Too much to tell. It rumbles through me in quivering waves, breaks apart, and crumbles at the junctures of my mind like an earthquake.

  “My fault,” I mumble to the sand. “It’s my fault.”

  His eyebrows pull together. “What is?”

  “The war. The Underworld. I’m the reason the Gods’ enemies can get out.” The Hunter made me understand. And now I have to confess all over again. It doesn’t have the same rush of relief this time. This time every word builds inside my core, cold and heavy like iron.

  He shakes his head. “That’s impossible.”

  “No,” I growl. “It’s the truth. I passed through the barrier that keeps them in and I broke it, and they tried, they tried to tell me, I could have stopped it, but I didn’t realize, I came back anyway, and now they can get out—”

  Jordan reaches out and grips my arm. “No, Adem. Stop—you’re not making sense. It’s not possible.”

  “It is.”

  I take a deep breath. I have to tell him. Everything. Now that I’ve started the fierce waves are pounding at the gate of my mind, must be released. “There’s more.”

  He stops and looks back at me, the brightness on his face fading, the corners of his mouth drifting down.

  “More?”

  I pull air into my lungs, trying to figure out where to start.

  But before I can a piercing scream bursts from the cave.

  Chapter 26

  THE SCREAM GOES and goes and it doesn’t stop. It jams my ears, grates down my spine, and rattles my skull. Jordan’s eyes pull open wide and he turns to the cave. They hear it in the village, I’m sure of it, and it’s not stopping.

  Rona. I’ve left her too long. Sand kicks up around me as I turn my back to the swelling daylight and run to her. She lays there, still unconscious, screaming. Her body tenses and her back archs up like a bridge, pressing her head hard against the rock beneath her.

  “Rona!” I lift her carefully.

  It has to stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

  “Rona!”

  How long can she go without taking a breath?

  “Wake up!” I am shaking her now, but she remains stiff and unconscious. “Stop!”

  It’s not working. Her scream buzzes in the air around me. I can’t think. It has to stop.

  Jordan rushes past me. Lifts the bucket and throws the water over her.

  Rona’s body drops limp across the slate of rock. Sweet silence sets in. The air loosens in relief; my fingers relax from their fists. But the relief doesn’t last. Quick tension fills the vacuum as Jordan takes in Rona’s depleted form.

  “Adem?” He sounds just as he did as a child. “Who is this?”

  “I… ”

  I want to explain. I want to unburden myself of all that’s happened.

  But Rona is awake.

  She pushes herself with her wasted arms, wet, shivering, heaving, sucking in the air, looking all around like a hunted animal. She looks up to me and peers into my eyes through wild hair.

  “He’s coming. We have to go,” she says.

  I am so relieved the piercing scream is gone, so shocked to see her fully conscious, I can’t think. I blink down at her. She pushes herself onto weak legs, stumbles and falls forward. I catch her and try to guide her back to read on the rock.

  “No,” she tries to fling my arms off from around her shoulders. “I have to get away from here. We have to go.”

  I reach out my arms to lend her support, get her off her shaking legs. Jordan stands with his back pressed to the cave wall, confusion in every crease of his face.

  I grope for words, any words. “What do you mean? Why?”

  “He’s coming.” Her wound still grows smaller and smaller, but it is flooding red again. She beats weak fists into my chest. “You’re wasting time.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  She narrows her eyes. “Kythiel.”

  “Kythiel!” It springs out of me with relief. “Yes. He’s coming. He sent me for you. To save you. So you can be together again.” And then I will get my soul, and I will be human, and this will be over, all of it.

  I wait for it to sink in. For her to remember, relax.

  She crumples into a desperate pile on the sand and curls into a trembling ball.

  I try to make her understand.

  “I brought you back. You’re alive again. You’re safe.”

  She’s rocking now. A terrible trembling force, her eyes hollow and desperate. She pulls her legs up and into herself, wraps her arms tightly around them, as if to keep herself from falling to pieces.

  I try again. “Kythiel never stopped trying to bring you back. He found me and sent me to save you. You’ll be together again soon.”

  Her face drains of color. “I thought you were saving me from him,” she whispers. A tear rolls down her cheek.

  “What?”

  Nothing is fitting. The pieces splay out without any way to bring them together. She can’t mean what I think she means. “Save you from whom? I will protect you. I promised Kythiel. Nothing will harm you. You are safe here, and soon Kythiel will come for you.”

  “Kythiel is after me!” she screams. Her eyes are big and black, fully dilated even in the cave’s shadows. Her words tremble in rhythm with her body, a force all its own.

  Her words hang in the space between us and suddenly the cave feels much too small and the walls are pushing in on my brain and I can’t think, I can’t breathe.

  “Oh Gods. We’re back in Terath?” Her shaking hands clutch fistfuls of tangled hair. “No. I can’t be. I’m dead. I’m safe.” Her voice rises, hysterical. Echoes off the cave. “This is impossible.”

  “Hard. Not impossible,” I mutter. “You are. You’re in Terath. I brought you back.”

  I have to fight a growing lump in my throat to get the words out. Staring down at my feet, I make sure they’re still on the ground, because I can’t feel anything anymore. It doesn’t make sense.

  But no. She’s not right. The trauma of coming back was too much for her. This has never been done before. Who knows what damage was done in bringing her back. What awful things happened to her mind in the warp of the Underworld. It isn’t, it can’t be true.

  She starts shaking her head like she can’t understand. Or doesn’t want to.

  Jordan finally moves. He steps over and sits next to her. Wraps an arm around her. No hesitation from the rotting stench, the skeletal frame, the blood.

  “It’s okay; it’s okay,” he soothes. “We want to help you. But you have to tell us what happened. Help me understand.”

  Jordan’s palm brushes back and forth across her back and shoulders. His other arm reaches across him and sits reassuringly on her knee. She takes a deep breath. Her shaking eases. Jordan cracks a smile, the same smile he had as a child, the one that makes everyone else smile too. Rona gives him a quick smile through tigh
t, cracked lips. Already her eyes are closed and her breathing is slower and deeper. But her hand clutches onto his, a tight fist on top of her knee. His fingers are going white at the tips, but he just smiles at her. Now that Rona’s calmed, the waves rise to my ears again. I stare at Jordan tending to her, so sure, so easy. I’m still trying to unwind what’s happening into something I can understand.

  “He said—Kythiel—he said he loved you. That you loved him… that… ” Should I tell her his whole story? Will that help her remember? I gather it all together to the front of my mind.

  “I did,” she sighs. “Things changed. He changed.”

  She takes a deep breath.

  “I can imagine what he might have said to you,” she says. Every word bites, sparks like it is on fire. “But he didn’t tell you everything.”

  Her voice fills the cave, crashes inside me.

  Jordan keeps his voice low. “Help us understand. We want to help. Tell us what happened.”

  “Okay,” she whispers. She pulls herself up with Jordan’s hand and sits on the rock’s side. She lets go of him to push the wild strands away from her face. I step closer. Her hands grip the sides of the rock on either side of her and she stares down blankly, her eyes fixed on the rocks.

  But suddenly my soul feels farther away, almost out of reach. I scratch and claw to keep it close. I’m not sure I want to understand anymore.

  “Whatever he said, it wasn’t all lies. It just wasn’t all the truth.”

  She closes her eyes.

  “This starts at the Beginning.”

  Chapter 27

  JORDAN AND I wait for Rona to continue, sitting as still as the rocks around us.

  She shuts her eyes tighter and sighs, then opens them.

  “At the Beginning it was wonderful, probably just what Kythiel told you. When he was called back to the Host, I would have given anything to keep him with me. I didn’t know what it would do to him.”

  She stares down at the sand, avoids our curious gazes, fidgeting with her fingers.

  “After he left, a great emptiness overcame me. The longer I was without him, the worse it became. Finally my father arranged a marriage for me, hoping to make me happy again, or shock me back to myself, or at least to keep me too busy to be so miserable.”