“Is that all your strength?”
My people sing, we dance, we love. That is our strength. But we also dig. And then we die. Seldom do we get to choose why. That choice is power. That choice has been our only weapon. But it is not enough.
They give me my last words. I call Dio up. Her eyes are bloodshot and swollen. She’s a fragile thing, so unlike her sister.
“What were Eo’s last words?” I ask her, though my mouth moves slowly, oddly.
She glances back to Mother, who finally followed but now shakes her head. There is something they are not telling me. Something they don’t want me to know. A secret held back even though I am about to die.
“She said she loved you.”
I don’t believe her, but I smile and kiss her forehead. She can’t handle more questions. And I’m dizzy. Hard to speak.
“I’ll tell her you say hello.”
I do not sing. I am made for other things.
My death is senseless. It is love.
But Eo was right, I don’t understand this. This is not my victory. This is selfish. She told me to live for more. She wanted me to fight. But here I am, dying despite what she wanted. Giving up because of the pain.
I panic as suicides do when they realize their folly.
Too late.
I feel the door beneath me open. My body falls. Rope flays my neck. My spine creaks. Needles lance my lumbar. Kieran stumbles forward. Uncle Narol shoves him away. With a wink, he touches my feet and pulls.
I hope they do not bury me.
Part II Reborn
There is a festival where we wear the faces of demons to ward evil spirits from our dead in the vale. Sometimes we fail.
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 woodfire 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 flowers 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 fills me. I cannot breathe, cannot move. The earth hugs me till finally 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 flare 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 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 flare, 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 figures 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 figure 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 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 flinches, while the woman’s eyes are mocking.
“And you’re Lazarus,” she says. I find 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 figure 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 stuff. At first 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 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 flashes 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?