Chapter 11
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Barefoot. Cool, dark earth presses up between my toes. Wind curries over the distant river and across my vast fields, bending the flowers. Asphodel catches its spindly fingers in my hem.
The wind blows again, louder. A howl shakes my stars, hard enough my long-ago hoard trembles in their moorings.
Formless shapes stir in the tufted grass.
My sweet straw-deaths, gone bleary-eyed and vague with long rest, now clamber to their feet.
In the distant garden, new-grown souls cry out in fear.
My chest clenches. My exposed ribs ache. What is going on?
I lift my hand to the sky—too late. Lightning blows the shattering cracks wide. Boiling water in a frozen glass. One after another, my stars shoot past my reaching fingers, searing my flesh and bones, shattering in the burning grass. My field of flowers aflame.
My names carry on the shrieking wind, deep and desperate.
I turn. My severed half sprints across the field, his essential duty abandoned, the river swollen into a rearing ocean at his back, fathomless and angry.
My fear reflects in his face, his name in my mouth, his distant reaching hand too far to help me though I run.
I run so fast and far our fingers almost touch before the ground splits—
the sky gapes wide—
the ocean crashes down—
and we are wrenched apart. Sundered. A strange, cruel magic spirits me far away, somewhere inside out and above. A room of cold iron and flashing machines, a tinny song playing dreamy counterpoint to horror—someone crooning they wish I was here.
“She’s breathing!” a woman shouts. “Oh my god, she’s breathing.”
I cannot move. Spun down like a frail bobbin, the thread of me trails off into the ether and I cannot gather it back. I cannot move. I cannot unmake myself or reshape this terrible place. I scream for my severed half, his name in every language known and forgotten—
A baby wails and I cannot make myself heard over its din. I cannot shape the words. I cannot catch the magic in my flailing, useless hands.
“Something’s not right. The readings are spiking.”
“This must be part of the process.”
“EM fluctuations 6.9 and steadily rising. Green, these are seismic predictors. We have to shut it down.”
“Don’t you dare. Her eyes are opening.” Harsh, snapped; voice softening. “Hey there, peanut. Welcome back.”
“EM 7.5. Richter at 3 and climbing fast.”
“This is some Pet Sematary bullshit, Chloe.” A new voice, mean and male. Booted feet cross a hard floor. “That is not your daughter. Shut it down.”
“You’re a glorified bodyguard; you have no authority here.”
“I have the authority of the United States government and I am ordering you to shut it down—”
The sky swallows. The ground chokes. The ceiling cracks open, a rotten egg spilling asbestos. A machine wails and catches fire. Humans scream. Metal explodes. Several bodies hit the floor. One body claws to its feet, eyes gone black and furious, hair swiftly turning gray.
I know him. I’d know him anywhere, in any body, any language—
I am forgetting language. I have already forgotten his name.
Gunfire erupts.
Gunfire and grief. A heavy body hits the ground. Another rises. Another is cut down. I weep and thrash and curse their bones, their family lines—
But only a baby cries.