Afterworlds

by Scott Westerfeld

  What was she supposed to do? Discuss the importance of theme? Of setting? She suddenly hated Standerson and Imogen with all her heart. How dare they make this a contest?

  And with that thought, the answer was obvious.

  Darcy stood up and crossed the stage to where the sunglasses lay. She rolled her eyes at them, and there was a smattering of laughter. This might work.

  “How many of you woke up this morning worrying about which of the five elements of a story was most important?”

  There was a little bit of laughter, and two or three hands went up.

  “Right, no one cares. But for some reason you’re all waiting to hear what I have to say. You know why? Because at some point this became a competition.”

  She turned to look at the other two. Standerson was leaning back in his chair, smiling. He’d figured her out already.

  “You want to see who wins,” Darcy continued. “It’s like with reality shows. Millions of people watch contestants who can’t sing, just to see who sings the least badly. Or those survival shows, where you watch total strangers competing over who can eat the most ants. You never cared about ant eating before. But suddenly it’s important, because you want to know who wins.”

  She knelt and picked up the sunglasses, and handed them back to Standerson.

  “Which is why conflict always wins,” Darcy said. “Because conflict makes it a story.”

  She crossed back to her chair and sat down. Her heart was racing, her body electric with a full flight-or-fight response. But the audience didn’t hate her. They weren’t applauding or laughing, but they all wanted to know what would happened next, like readers who had to turn the page.

  We’ve got the juice, Darcy thought.

  “Well, okay then,” the librarian said. “Three different answers, all very interesting. Who’s got the next question?”

  CHAPTER 28

  HIS HEAT PRECEDED HIM, ALONG with the smell of burning grass. A swarm of sparks streamed from the darkness to whirl around me, dancing on the invisible eddies and currents of the river.

  And then the beautiful sound of his voice. “Lizzie, what happened?”

  He was coming toward me, fire and warmth in the darkness.

  “The man in the patched coat, he came back.” My voice still trembled from my panic in the closet. “He took Mindy away.”

  Yama came to a halt, close enough that I could feel his heat. “I’m sorry, Lizzie.”

  “We have to find her!”

  He didn’t answer at first, and for a moment I thought he would tell me it was for the best. That the last thing I needed was a little ghost dragging me into the arms of the afterworld.

  But he said, “Do you know where he took her?”

  I could only shake my head.

  Yama turned, surveying the emptiness around us. “So they could be anywhere. Predators are hard to track.”

  “But there must be some way to follow him. He found us, and we were thousands of miles from home!”

  “Then he has a bond with you.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  Yama took a step closer, his voice calm. “The river is made from memories of the dead, but the bonds of the living tie it together.” He reached up and touched my tear-shaped scar. “That’s why I can hear when you call me. We’re connected.”

  I pulled back, needing to think. “But I didn’t call that old man, and I’m not connected to him. I don’t even know his name!”

  “He must know yours,” Yama said. “Names have power here, Lizzie.”

  I remembered the first time he’d followed me home. Mindy might have said my name in the schoolhouse, or in my room. “Maybe.”

  “But it’s not just your name. He feels something for you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “He wants something, badly enough that the river carried him to you.” Yama put his hands on my shoulders. “Tell me everything he said.”

  I looked into his eyes. We hadn’t seen each other since the fight, and Yama didn’t know I’d gone to see the old man again.

  “He wanted me to kill someone.”

  “To kill someone? Who?”

  “The bad man.”

  It took Yama a moment to figure it out. “When did he tell you this?”

  My arms crossed, covering me. “I went to find him, to see if he could help with the bad man. This is all my fault.”

  “No, it isn’t. This is his obsession, not yours. Which means he doesn’t want Mindy. He wants you.”

  My breath caught, and the darkness of the river closed in around me, as if I were trapped in my father’s closet again. A psychopomp stalker. Perfect.

  But with that trickle of panic in my veins, I saw why the old man had taken Mindy in New York, and not in my home, where I felt strong and safe. He’d chosen that moment in the closet because he wanted me scared.

  This wasn’t about Mindy at all.

  I pushed the thought away, let myself feel the warmth of Yama’s hands on my shoulders, his current on my skin. This was a real connection. How did that crumpled old predator dare to think there was anything like this between me and him?

  “He said he was going to put her in his pockets.”

  Yama’s hands tightened. “It’s only a threat. Taking her was a way to get your attention.”

  “He has it. So what do we do?”

  “Nothing. He’ll come for you when he wants to talk again.”

  “Can’t the river take me to Mindy right now?” I closed my eyes and thought of her face, but Yama gently pulled me closer, breaking my concentration.

  “You can’t follow a ghost, Lizzie. The river is made of them.”

  I opened my eyes. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  “You have to wait. He’ll test your will, maybe for a long time. But I’ll stay here as long as you need.”

  “Thank you.” My voice sounded so earnest in my ears, I had to make a joke of it. “You aren’t afraid of getting death all over me?”

  Yama tried to hide his smile. “I’m afraid for you sometimes. But that didn’t stop me coming when you called.”

  A shudder of relief went through me. Since our fight, part of me had been afraid that he would stop answering.

  I pulled him close, needing his heat on my lips, his body against mine. My palms slid down his back, searching for the ripple of muscle beneath silk. As his scent filled my lungs, the river’s current surged around us, and my hair whipped and tangled.

  When our lips parted, we were silent for a long time. I wondered if we could stand there forever in the River Vaitarna’s embrace, never getting hungry, never tiring, never growing old. In the end forgetting ourselves and fading, becoming part of the river.

  Even here in his arms, my thoughts were so grim.

  “What if it’s too scary?” I asked.

  “Then we’ll go to my island,” he said simply.

  “But what if it’s all too much? Ghosts, predators, the dead in every stone. What if one little stretch of sand isn’t enough?”

  “Then we’ll find somewhere else. Somewhere you feel safe.”

  My heart faltered a little as I realized what Yama had said. After a thousand years searching for his island, he’d just offered to set it aside and find another place for me.

  Yama came closer, his voice a whisper. “This is all happening so quickly, Lizzie. I wish I could slow it down.”

  “I just wish I could fall asleep.” The thin edge of panic was still in my voice. “The old man said I didn’t have to anymore, because sleep is a slice of death. So I stopped, and now I can’t.”

  “Ah. That happens sometimes.” He put his arms around me. “Take me home, and I’ll show you a little trick.”

  * * *

  It was strange seeing Yama in my room. I’d been with him in a bloody terrorist attack, in a river made of dead memories and the places it had carried us, but never anywhere so mundane, so much a part of my real life.

  Thankfully, I’d cl
eaned up the mess on my bed, not wanting my mother to see piles of research about serial killers and missing children.

  “Here we are,” I said, wishing I’d also shoved the school clothes hanging across my chair into the laundry hamper.

  Yama was gazing at the pictures over my desk. “You have so many friends.”

  I sighed. “Not these days. Since Dallas, not everyone gets me anymore.”

  “Death shows you who’s real,” he said simply, and turned to me. “This works better in the overworld.”

  “What does?”

  A smile flickered on his face. “Sleeping.”

  “Oh. Right.” If you couldn’t get tired or hungry on the flipside, then sleeping there would be pointless as well.

  I was already nervous having him here, so a few quick breaths was all it took to throw myself back into the real world. The streetlights coming through the windows showed color spilling across the room.

  Yama closed his eyes and took a slow breath, as if savoring the air.

  I reached out and touched his face. He felt solid, not like a ghost.

  “Wait,” I whispered. “You’re here too? I thought you never left the afterworld.”

  His eyes opened. “Call this an extravagance.”

  I looked at my bedroom door. “But my mother . . .”

  Yama pressed close, until he was near enough to whisper, “Don’t worry, Lizzie. We’ll be very quiet.”

  His breath brushed my ear with fingertips of air, and a little shudder went through me. For a moment, nothing pierced the sound of the blood rushing in my veins.

  A little dizzy, I sat down on my bed. Yama settled beside me, and I leaned against him. Here in the overworld he wasn’t sparks and fire dancing on the wind, but he was still warmer than anyone I’d ever held.

  I turned. “Okay. What now?”

  “Do you usually sleep in a jacket?” His voice was still a whisper, sharpening every word.

  “Oh.” I unzipped it, let it fall from my shoulders.

  Of course, I didn’t sleep in sneakers either. I pulled off my shoes and socks. And I never slept in jeans. I stood up and let them slip onto the floor. Then I crossed the room and drew the curtains tighter.

  In the darkness, the psychopomp shine on our skin seemed to grow stronger. The night air felt cool on my arms and legs.

  I settled back onto the bed, stretching out beside where Yama sat, basking in his warmth.

  “Somehow this doesn’t feel very . . . sleepy.” There was a quaver in my voice.

  “There’s no rush.” He was looking down at me, his brown eyes glittering in the dark.

  I reached up and touched his right eyebrow, the little crook of it warm beneath my fingertip. I traced the curve of his shoulder, the hardness of bone and muscle beneath silk. My fingers prized open his top button, widening the triangle of luminous brown skin.

  In one supple motion, he slipped the still-buttoned shirt off over his head.

  My breath caught. I’d never been with him in the real world before, without the soft gray light of the flipside, or the fire and spark of the river’s currents. There was no light except the shine of our skin, as if nothing existed beyond the edges of us.

  He leaned forward and held his lips against mine with an impossible stillness, as if the moment had frozen, time itself unraveling. The only thing moving in the world was the breath between our lips. Suspended in that perfect instant, I ached for more.

  He brushed a fingertip feather-light against the side of my neck, and I felt my own pulse rise up to meet his heat. My heartbeat gradually steadied in that long, still kiss.

  When finally our lips parted, my breath shuddered a little. He stayed close, his eyes locked with mine, and for a moment the spell was too intense. I had to break it with a whisper.

  “Do you ever sleep, Yama?”

  “Sometimes.”

  I swallowed. “What do you dream about?”

  “This,” he said.

  A soft cry stuttered out of me. It felt as if his fingers had found a loose thread inside me, and were pulling, making me fray and unravel. The leftover nervous energy from all those sleepless nights went scattering across my skin.

  My hands reached up, my fingers deep in the thick waves of his black hair. I held him there, his eyes meshed with mine, his gaze sinking deeper into me every time a sigh trembled in my lungs.

  Soon the loose thread had tangled into a knot, which Yama drew slowly tighter and tighter. The fear that had wound itself into my muscles was burning away at last, turning to something bright and sharp and hungry. The weight of all those undreamt dreams pounded in my head, crashing and breaking apart, my whole body arching against him.

  In the end I nearly came apart, and for a moment all of me was lost, shattering into countless pieces like the memories of a ghost on the river. And I didn’t care if I’d been born cursed, sullied and marked by death, because it had brought me here into Yama’s arms.

  He showed me how to sleep again, like Prince Charming in reverse, though back in the airport he had woken me with a kiss as well.

  Maybe his lips cured everything.

  CHAPTER 29

  THERE WAS ANOTHER PRESENTATION AT Avalon High, and then another at a different school ten miles away, the entrance of which was also tricky to find. So it was late afternoon when Anton drove the three of them back to the hotel for a rest before the bookstore event that night.

  Perhaps it was jet lag, or the adulthood-lag of having been in high schools all day, but when Darcy reached the hotel room she fell onto the bed, fully clothed.

  It was a solid hour later that she awoke to find Imogen beside her, stripped down to a tank top and boxers and banging away at her laptop.

  “You didn’t sleep?”

  Imogen’s fingers kept moving. “Are you kidding? Book birthday. Must blog. Must tweet.”

  “Oh, right.” With all her morning’s labors, Darcy had somehow forgotten that Pyromancer was sweeping into the world today. “You’re in print, Gen! You are a legit published and printed author.”

  “I know, right? Can’t quite believe it.” At last Imogen’s typing paused. “I mean, there were those copies at the schools today. But do you really think there are thousands of them sitting on bookstore shelves? What if there was some kind of glitch? What if it isn’t really happening?”

  Darcy put a hand on Imogen’s bare shoulder. “It’s real, Gen.”

  “But how do I know?”

  “Um, because your publishing company told you? And they have this, like, huge building in Manhattan.”

  “Good point. That building is pretty big.” Imogen pushed a stray strand of hair out of her face and looked up at Darcy. “It’s probably just a passing case of impostor syndrome.”

  “Is that a real thing?”

  “Of course.” Imogen typed a few keystrokes and spun her screen around. Among the clutter of a dozen open windows was a Wikipedia article.

  Darcy scanned the first few paragraphs. Impostor syndrome was pretty much what it sounded like—believing that everything you’d accomplished was luck, or cheating, or fraud. Dreading that it would all be taken away once your fakery had been revealed.

  “Crap. This isn’t you, Gen. It’s me!”

  “It’s every writer.” Imogen turned the laptop toward herself again and stared at the screen. “Okay, reading this was a bad idea. Can you get a syndrome just from looking it up?”

  “This one, you can.” Darcy reached out and gently pushed the laptop closed. “But the cure is to go onstage in front of a hundred rabid Stanley David Anderson fans. They don’t let impostors do that.”

  Imogen nodded at this simple wisdom. “After all, how bad can a roomful of Standerson fans be?”

  “Never bad.” Darcy pulled Imogen closer to kiss her, and whispered in her ear, “Just intense.”

  “Oh, Stanley texted while you were asleep. He wants to meet for an early dinner downstairs.”

  Darcy looked at her own phone. Nisha had texted with
the message: Hope you’re having a good tour—364 days till publication!

  She sighed and jumped up from the bed. Her clothes felt sticky from having been slept in. “I’ll shower first.”

  They cleaned up and dressed, Imogen in a crisp white shirt and leather jacket, lots of metal on her fingers. Darcy lofted onto her toes to straighten the shirt’s collar, which had crumpled in the suitcase. She wore her little black dress, the one she’d been given the night they’d met. Surely there was some good luck left in it still.

  * * *

  The hotel restaurant was decidedly nonillustrious. TVs hung from the ceiling, blaring sports in all directions. The vinyl seat of the booth squeaked like a baby seal as Darcy slid into it, and the menu was full of dishes grandiose and generic, like “the International Cheese Experience.” This phrase, Standerson pointed out, was more than half a haiku.

  After they’d ordered the least greasy food they could find, he asked, “Had either of you ever done a school visit before?”

  Imogen laughed. “I never thought I’d be in a high school again, and Darcy’s barely out of one.”

  “Well, I salute you both.”

  “Much as I love praise,” Darcy said, “I’m still mad at you for volunteering me.”

  Standerson held up his hands. “That was your publicist! You think she emailed the librarian by accident?”

  “I can be mad at you both equally,” Darcy said. “But it was fun, kind of. I liked the battle of the story elements.”

  “Because you won,” Standerson said.

  Darcy made a pfft noise. “You got way more applause.”

  “Nobody won,” Imogen said. “Because the victory didn’t go to plot, or character, or conflict. It was all about setting.”

  The other two stared at her.

  “High school,” Imogen explained. “Where else would the interlocking, interdependent elements of narrative be reduced to adversarial comparisons, when in practice they rely on each other to make a coherent whole?”

  Darcy shrugged. “In every love triangle ever?”