7
Other Things
I do not see Eo in death. My kin believe we see our loved ones when
we pass on. They wait for us in a green vale where woodre smoke
and the scent of stews thicken the air. It is the Waiting Place. There
is an Old Man with dew on his cap who makes safe the vale, and he
stands with our kin waiting for us along a stone road beside which
sheep graze. They say the mist there is fresh and the owers sweet,
and those who are buried pass along the stone road faster.
But I do not see my love. I do not see the vale. I see nothing but
phantom lights in darkness. I feel pressure, and I know, as would
any miner, that I am buried beneath the earth. I loose a soundless
scream. Dirt enters my mouth. Panic lls me. I cannot breathe,
cannot move. The earth hugs me till nally I claw my way free, feel
air, gasp oxygen, pant and spit dirt.
It is minutes before I look up from my knees. I crouch in an
abandoned mine, an old tunnel long deserted but still connected to
the ventilation system. It smells of dirt. A single are burns beside
my grave, splaying weird shadows over the walls. It singes my sight
like the sun did as it rose over Eo’s grave.
I’m not dead. The realization takes longer in coming than I
thought it would. But there’s a bloody wound around my neck
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where the rope cut the skin. My spine hurts so bad I can’t look
sideways without moving my torso. And there’s dirt in the lashes on
my back.
Still, I’m not dead.
Uncle Narol didn’t pull my feet hard enough. But surely the
Tinpots would have checked, unless they were lazy. Not a stretch to
think that, but something else is at play. I was too woozy when I
walked to the gallows. I feel something in my veins even now, a
lethargy as though I’ve been drugged. Narol did this. He drugged
me. He buried me. But why? And how would he escape being
caught when he pulled my body down?
When a low rumbling comes from the darkness beyond the are, I
know I will have answers. A tumbler, like a metal beetle on six
wheels, crawls over the crest of a long tunnel. Its front grille hisses
steam as it comes to a stop in front of me. Eighteen lights singe my
vision; shapes exit the sides of the vehicle, cutting across the glare
of the headlights to grab me. I’m too stunned to resist. Their hands
are calloused like miners’ and their faces are covered with
Octobernacht demon masks. Yet they move me gently, guiding
instead of forcing me into the tumbler’s hatch.
Inside the tumbler, the globe light is red and bloody. I sit in a
worn metal bucket seat across from the two gures that fetched me
from my grave. The female’s mask is pale white and horned like a
cacodemon. Her eyes glitter darkly out from the eyeholes. The other
gure is a timid man. He’s willowy and quiet, seemingly frightened
of me. His snarling batface mask can’t conceal his shy glances or the
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way in which he hides his hands—a trait of the frightened, as Uncle
Narol always claimed when he taught me to dance.
“You’re Sons of Ares, aren’t you?” I guess.
The weakling inches, while the woman’s eyes are mocking.
“And you’re Lazarus,” she says. I nd her voice cold, lazy; it plays
with the ears as a cat plays with a caught mouse.
“I am Darrow.”
“Oh, we know who you are.”
“Don’t tell him anything, Harmony!” the weakling gibbers.
“Dancer didn’t tell us to discuss anything with him till we get
home.”
“Thank you, Ralph.” Harmony sighs at the weakling and shakes
her head.
Another masked gure drives the tumbler through the abandoned
tunnels. The interior shakes and rattles as we roll down a jagged
run. After realizing his error, the weakling shifts uncomfortably in
his bucket seat, but I’ve stopped paying him any mind. Here, the
woman is king. Unlike the weakling’s, her mask is made of a digital
material. It shifts and could as easily mimick the face of a man or
woman as it does a demon. Fancy stu. At rst it reminded me of a
story I’d once heard of the pale demons in the deep, forgotten
tunnels of Mars; now it is like that of an old crone, one of the
witches of Earth’s fallen cities who made soup from the marrow of
children’s bones.
“You’re a mess.” Harmony reaches to touch my neck. I grab her
hand and squeeze. Her bones are brittle as hollow plastic in a
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Helldiver’s hand. The weakling reaches for his thumper, but
Harmony motions him to calm down.
“Why am I not dead?” I ask. After the hanging, my voice is like
gravel dragged over metal.
“Because Ares has a mission for you, little Helldiver.”
She winces as I squeeze her hand.
“Ares …” My mind ashes to images of bomb blasts, disembodied
limbs, chaos. Ares. I know what sort of mission he’ll want. I’m too
numb to even know what I’ll say when he asks. My mind is on Eo,
not this life. I am a shell. Why could I not have stayed in the
ground?
“May I have my hand back now?” Harmony asks.
“If you take o your mask. Otherwise, I’m keeping it.”
She laughs and strips away her mask. Her face is day and night—
the right side a ragged and distended mess of skin running and
folding together in smooth scar rivers. A steam burn. A familiar
sight, but not on women. Rare for a woman to be on a drillteam.
Yet it is the unburned side of her face that startles. She is
beautiful, more beautiful even than Eo. Skin soft, pale as milk,
bones prominent and delicate. Yet she looks so cold, so angry and
cruel. Her bottom teeth are uneven and her nails poorly maintained.
She has knives in her boots. I can tell by the way she inched down
when I grabbed her hand.
The weakling, Ralph, is unremarkably ugly—dark face like a
hatchet, teeth all ajar and grimy like the tubes in the Flush. He
stares out the tumbler’s window hatch as we rattle and roll through
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abandoned tunnels till we reach lit paved tunnelroads meant for fast
driving. I do not know these Reds, and though they have the Red
Sigil emblazoned on their hands, I do not trust them. They are not
of Lambda or Lykos. Might as well be Silvers.
Eventually I glimpse other utility vehicles and tumblers out the
hatch. I don’t know where we are, yet that bothers me less than the
swelling sadness in my chest. The further we ride and the more time
I’m given to my thoughts, the worse the pain becomes. I nger my
wedding band. Eo is still dead. She’s not waiting for me at the end
of this ride. Why did I survive when she did not? Why did I pull her
feet so hard? Could she have lived too? My guts feel like a black
hole. A terrible weight compresses my chest, and I ache to just jump
from the tumbler into the path of a utility vehicle. Death is easy
when you’ve already tried to nd it. But I don’t jump; I sit with
Harmony and Ralph. Eo wanted more for me. She died so I could be
more than another martyr, and then I killed myself. Or tried. The
shame eats at me. I clench the scarlet headband in my st.
The tunnelroad widens slightly when we come to a checkpoint
manned by dirty Tinpots in worndown gear. The electric gate isn’t
even charged. They let the tumbler ahead of us through after
scanning a panel on its side. Then it’s our turn and I’m shifting
uncomfortably in my seat right along with Ralph. Harmony chuckles
disdainfully as the grey hairedTinpot scans the side of the tumbler
and waves us through the gate.
“We have a passcode. There’s no brains in slaves. Mine Tinpots
are idiots. It’s the Grey elites, or the Obsidian monsters you watch
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out for. But they don’t waste their time down here.”
I am trying to convince myself that this all is not some Gold trick,
that Harmony and Ralph are not enemies, when we pull o the
main tunnelroad into a cul-de-sac of utility warehouses not much
larger than the Common. Harsh sulfur lights hang down from utility
xtures. Half the bulbs are burned out. One ickers on and o
above a garage near a warehouse marked with a queer symbol done
in strange paint. We steer into the garage. The door closes and
Harmony motions for me to get out of the tumbler.
“Home sweet home,” she says. “Now time to meet Dancer.”
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