XLIX
What Good Is a Herald for the Dead
MATILDA I began at the beginning.
I began with my emergence into the world, drenched in ichor and wailing in protest. How I was the daughter of fire, winter, and cunning.
How Bade, of all gods, had been the first to hold me close to his heart. How he had granted me my name—mighty in battle—and how I yearned to be his offspring, even as I was not. My blood was both the under realm and the sky. I belonged to each by half but could not claim either fully.
A bone on the scale.
I told her of the alliance my mother had once been a part of. How I would eavesdrop during their nightly meetings, a cupbearer, a mere child with soft skin and countless wonders. How Alva lent me dream scrolls that I
devoured in secret.
Another bone.
I spoke of the first dream that had caught my interest. One of a dark- headed boy, chasing after his elder brothers, desperate to fight for the Poet Queen. How he drowned, until the night he dreamt of me and I pulled him
from the rapids.
Yet another bone.
The Gatekeeper lapped up my stories as if they were sweetened cream.
Her eye brimmed with light, keen for more, more, like I had snapped open a femur and dribbled marrow onto her tongue. At my side, Nathaniel stared at me, just as transfixed. I was telling him pieces that I had never dared to say to another. I was giving them up for him, and in some ways my heart felt
wrenched by the offering. In others, I felt as if I would only grow stronger for surrendering these fragments, for they would make space for new tales.
I was pruning a tree, feeling its bareness. I was running my fingers through pearls of sap, awaiting new growth.
I had reached the moment when Warin lent me the river shoes. When I was preparing to cross by riverbed and climb a tower to reach Vincent.
The Gatekeeper tossed another bone. This time, it was heavy enough to bring the scale down. It bumped the ground with a chime, and I stopped, mid-sentence.
“Go on,” she prompted me, unaware of what she had just done.
“Another time,” I said, indicating the scales that had tipped in Nathaniel’s favor.
Displeasure rippled across her countenance. I thought she would knock it over and scatter all the bones Nathaniel and I had painstakingly earned, but she only snorted. I was almost flattered that she should be so invested in my past, but then again, my kind has always watched love between divines and mortals with a note of thrill and horror. It is impossible to look away from.
“You will have me for seven years,” I reminded her. “There will be
plenty of time for stories then.”
This mollified her.
“You are right,” she said after a long moment. “He may pass into the mists. I deem him worthy, unless you want to escort him elsewhere.”
I could have slid to my knees, weak with relief. Instead, I turned to face Nathaniel.
I had failed to keep him alive in his realm, but I had ensured he would find rest in paradise. He would not wander, lonely. He would have a good place to dwell in the afterlife.
“Will you carry a message for me?” he asked, a tremor in his voice. “It happened so swiftly. I … I did not have time to say goodbye to my brother, and there is more … that I want to tell him.”
His request gave me pause. Not because I did not want to carry his words, but because I had never thought that I would one day be the herald
for the dead. Soul-bearer, Adria had called me. Was this what she had seen in me?
I wanted there to be more. The thought of carrying Nathaniel’s dead words back to Vincent, uttering them with my voice, made me stagger.
But I nodded.
“Yes,” I replied, tears welling in my throat. “Yes. I will carry your words back to him.”
Again, imagining it made me feel as if I had outgrown my skin. That when I took a step, it would split open. Everything within me would spill forth, like a breached dam.
“Tell him that I love him,” Nathaniel began. “Tell him that he will be a good lord to our people, as much as he doubts it. Tell him that—”
I held up my hand, halting him. “Wait,” I panted.
He fell quiet, troubled. But beyond him the Gatekeeper was grinning, as if pleased to drink our anguish. She had outplayed me, because she knew something I did not. There was more, I was certain of it. If I belonged to a twelve-point constellation such as Adria had drawn, then I should push my magic to its brink. How would I know its limits if I did not test them? If I did not defy the meek mold I had first cast myself into?
“Do you want to return?” I asked him. “Instead of carrying your words, I will carry your soul there. I know the way back to your realm.”
Nathaniel froze, staring at me. He was now so pale he was almost translucent, his blood dried and cracked like parched earth over his breastplate. But light winked in his eyes, stirred by my question.
“I want to go home,” he said at last. “But how?”
I am not sure, I thought, but only held out my hand. “Take hold of me.
You must not let go. Not until we pass through the wasted door.”
Nathaniel did as I asked. His hand touched mine. There was no skin, no warmth. All I felt was a bitter coldness. It sent an ache up my arm that made me shiver.
“At last the herald decides to bear something other than words,” the Gatekeeper drawled, watching us closely. “I wondered when you would attempt it.”
“Then it is possible?” I asked. “I can guide his soul away from here? I can ferry him home?”
“You will have to try it and see if you are strong enough. Do not stray from the path. No matter what greets you, the two of you must go through it together. He must not look behind when he reaches the wasted threshold.
And if you let him go along the way, or he lets go of you … he will be lost to the wastes. You must choose now if that is worth it to him.”
I looked at Nathaniel, expecting to find doubt. But he was radiant with the thought of returning.
“I will not let go of you,” he said. And then fainter, as if the hope was sharp edged, “Take me home.”
I did not know what to expect.
At first, the path seemed easy to walk and just as I remembered, like a line on my palm. We left the Gatekeeper and the misty arch behind as we traveled over the hills. My hand ached from the cold of Nathaniel’s fingers, but I did not loosen my grip.
“What shall we tell my brother when we return?” Nathaniel asked.
I pondered it a moment as we climbed another foothill.
“I do not know,” I confessed. “But you must swear to me that you will not tell anyone beyond Vincent what has occurred here.”
Nathaniel was quiet.
I glanced at him, dread knotting in my chest. I had not considered the danger this choice would put me in until now. How rumors and gossip would spread across the mortal realm like thistledown, eventually finding its way to divine courts. And if I was successful in bringing back a soul, defying Orphia and Rowena alike … then who might slay me for such power?
“I will not speak a word to anyone else,” Nathaniel reassured me. “Only Vincent.”
I had to trust him, as much as that went against the grain of my immortality, and I nodded, pulling him along the road. I wanted us to move faster. I could sense someone was watching us, a prickling awareness that
made me tense, as if the burls of the trees had become faces. But Nathaniel was weakening. He stumbled to his knees, panting.
“Forgive me,” he rasped. “I have never felt a thirst like this before.”
I continued to hold his hand, waiting for him to recover. He was longing for the mists, and it would only grow worse the farther we traveled from the arch.
“You can drink your fill when we are home,” I told him, drawing him back up to his feet. “An entire river’s worth of water. Come, your brother is
waiting for us.”
We walked onward.
I could only wonder how much time had passed in the mortal realm.
How long had we been here? Would Nathaniel’s body be rotten by the time we returned? Buried? Burned?
I had not thought of these possibilities. We had squandered time, doling out our stories for bones. I should have realized my power of soul-bearing sooner. And while I was tempted to reach for my sun and lunar disks, dangling on their chains from my belt, I resisted. My focus remained firmly ahead, seeking the wasted door.
Soon, I realized what the Gatekeeper had alluded to.
An archway made of gleaming obsidian sprung up on the path, blocking our way. I came to a halt, Nathaniel close at my side, and we stared into its
darkened maw.
“Should we go around it?” he asked.
“No. We cannot leave the path. We must go through it.”
“But where does it lead?”
I had passed through one of these arches in the wastes before. I knew where it would take us, and I tightened my hold on his hand, feeling the cold of his death burn like ice into my bones.
“Do not let go of me,” I warned him.
Nathaniel nodded.
I stepped through the arch first, into the vast scape of his nightmare.
It was mercilessly dark.
Beneath me, the ground was smooth like marble. Somewhere nearby, water dripped continuously. When we moved, our footfalls echoed, as if we were trapped in a cave. I strained my eyes, but I could not see anything save for the faintest of lights in the far distance. A gleam of a beacon that marked
the way out.
I set our path to follow it.
“I know this place,” Nathaniel said, awestruck. “I have been here before.”
“Yes, in dreams.” I paused, wondering if it was only the dark he had been afraid of, or if there was more I should prepare for.
No sooner had I thought this than water began to quickly gather on the floor, stirring around our ankles.
“Hurry,” Nathaniel panted. “It will rise, and we—”
A roar drowned out his voice. Water began to pour into the cave like a waterfall, nearly wrenching his hand from mine. I clung to his fingers, pulling him to me, but soon even I lost my footing. We bobbed through the churning salt water, our breaths sharp.
There would be another gate on the other side of the dream, I thought.
We just needed to reach it before the nightmare exhausted us or ripped us apart. We needed to reach that distant light.
“Matilda,” Nathaniel panted. I could feel him sinking, fatigued. “I cannot—”
“You must,” I insisted. “There is no choice but to make it to the other side. Come, think of it as a mere swim.”
I had to split my strength, keeping myself afloat as well as him, guiding us across darkness so deep it felt like it was smothering me. But I should not have been surprised that Vincent’s brother would also dream of drowning. That he would dream of being trapped in a cave with rising water
and no way out.
The worst was still to come.
We were not alone in the water.
Something slashed my calf, drawing blood. It felt like a claw and I winced, pausing only a beat before I continued to kick my way forward.
Another creature wrapped cloying, kelpy fingers around my ankle, yanking.
Again, I kicked, but it clung to me, trailing behind me like a banner. I had no way to tear them from my skin; with one hand I cut through water, pulling us forward, and with the other I held on to Nathaniel. Nothing would break my hold on him. No burning salt in my eyes. No flood and no creature of the deep. No aching cold of Death’s sting up my arm.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped.
I realized the water’s creatures were not hurting him. Only me—but he was dead and I was living, wasn’t I? They took delight in scoring me with their teeth and claws. In feeling my flesh bend and break. They licked my blood with their icy tongues, drinking it down until the water smelled sweet.
There was no time here in a dream. It felt like we swam for seasons. For years.
But I had always been good at determining my course. At connecting two points. A starting place to an ending. Distance was not something that daunted me, so long as I could visualize where I wanted to be.
I kept my eyes on that flickering light. Soon, I could discern the gate’s arch. We were almost there, and I stirred the last of my strength to swim the
remaining distance.
My head brushed the top of the cave.
Nathaniel did not need the air, but I did. And Warin’s river shoes held no power here.
I gasped in as much air as my lungs would hold, and I eased us down below the surface. The creatures swarmed thick around me, cutting my face, yanking my hair. Still, they could not stop my course. We were almost there. I could see the light of the wasteland again, the remaining stretch of
path we needed to take … Nathaniel jerked in the water.
His hand began to slip from mine. I felt it with a twist of my heart. How the cold shade of him was fading away.
And all I could hear was Vincent’s voice. A deep baritone in my ear.
Remain at my brother’s side.
I clung to his icy fingertips, teeth bared, desperate. I let the creatures gather and teem around me. They set their fangs and their claws into my
body, deep to the bone, but I did not let go of him, not even as the pain turned incandescent, unbearable.
I ached as Death’s chill returned with a vengeance. My right arm had gone numb from it, my fingers stiff. I nearly wondered if I had died here and not realized it, but Nathaniel held to me as I held to him, and I dragged us, lungs smoldering, through the nightmare’s gate.
It spilled us onto the road.
We sprawled boneless, drenched and gasping.
I was still bleeding. Close to me, a sob broke the quiet. Nathaniel laid his head on the ground, his shoulders shuddering.
I did not know if I could walk the rest of the way. I had never felt so tired, and my wounds seemed slow to heal. I wondered if they would leave half-moon scars behind; I envisioned myself as Bade, a goddess marked by the years and my own recklessness.
For what sort of divine would risk their strength, their beauty, their power for mortal kind?
I held Nathaniel’s hand, even though I could no longer feel my own. But then I roused what little strength I had to look ahead, blinking away the sting of salt water, the pressing memory of darkness.
And there, as if it had moved to greet us, eager to see us home, was the wasted door. Before I could encourage him with its nearness, Nathaniel spoke.
“Do you remember when I asked you why you chose Vincent’s
dreams?”
“Yes,” I said. “I remember.”
“Well, I realize now that I was wrong.”
“In what way?”
“Because you were also in mine. I dreamt that nightmare a hundred times as a child. I had nearly forgotten about it until just now, but once, I dreamt that I was not alone. Someone was holding my hand, pulling me through the water.” Nathaniel opened his eyes to look at me. He was so faint I thought he might evanescence, until he smiled. “It was you.”