30. Fafnir
Doug’s mouth was no longer empty of teeth.
A new set had sprouted through bloody gums, vicious as an animal’s. They’d never been meant for a human mouth, and the sharp points seemed to fill it to bursting. Amidst their savagery, the gold tooth still winked slyly in the firelight.
If that had been the only alteration in his appearance, it would have been too much. But it was far from the worst.
The brown eyes I knew so well had gone yellow as a snake’s. His skin had a yellow, jaundiced hue, and had gone strangely rough in places, as though scales pressed against it from beneath.
The filthy rags of his union suit did little to hide his distorted body: stick thin, but abnormally long through the torso, as though he’d grown fresh vertebrae in his spine. His arms and legs were black from scurvy and frostbite, fingers and toes shriveled into dead sticks.
Except not dead, because his fingers curled around my arm with unnatural strength, stubby claws digging into my coat.
All the moisture was gone from my mouth, the air from my lungs. I wanted to scream, or to cry, but any reaction felt beyond me.
“Forget them,” Doug said. Calmly—reasonably, even. From his tone, we might have been sitting in our tiny apartment in Seattle. At the moment, I longed to be back there, more than I’d ever wanted anything else in my life. To go back, to undo everything, to have my brother as he’d been.
Doug smiled—his old, affable grin, now horribly distorted by the forest of teeth. “We don’t need them, brother. We have each other.”
He took a step in the direction of the mine shaft, dragging me along with him. I tried to pull free, but I would have had as much luck breaking loose from an iron shackle.
“Wh-what happened to you?” I finally managed.
“I’ve become what I—what we—were always meant to be.” He took another step back toward the mine, pulling me helplessly with him. “You know, it’s strange. Everything I ever did was to prove to Dad that he was wrong about us. I thought someday I’d go back and show off my tailored suit and my diamond cufflinks, photographs of my mansion. Then I’d laugh and walk away, leave him to rot in that little house we grew up in.”
“I know.” I tried to tug free, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I read what you wrote in the back of the guidebook.”
“Ah, but I’ve changed my mind since then.” Doug’s smile grew inhumanly wide as he took another step, and another. Closer and closer to the pit. “Where is the satisfaction in taunting someone so far beneath us? I might as well expect a toad to understand the value of a gold ring. But you, Colin…you never wanted that in the first place, did you?”
Would any answer convince him to let me go? “I…”
He didn’t give me a chance to continue. “I’m not stupid. I could see you wanted to settle down somewhere. And now you can. We both can. Right here.”
He sounded so calm, it made me feel as though I was the crazy one. “Let me go!” I tried to dig in my heels, but it did no good. “The cabin is on fire! We can’t live here without it!”
“Don’t be stupid; we aren’t going to live in that hovel.” Sparks flew in the breeze like snow, glowing around his face. The sound of coughing came from behind me—had Steve and Eleanor gotten out? They must have, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my brother. “Once those two are dead, we’ll take all the gold, all the bones, everything we mistakenly removed, and put it back down in the ground with us. We’ll live there, together, surrounded by all the gold we could ever want. Forever.”
He meant to throw me into the pit. And we’d almost reached its edge.
“No!” I dug in my heels. “Have you forgotten that thing is down there?”
“That’s all right. It wants what we want.” His serpent’s eyes glittered in the flames. “To sleep undisturbed in the darkness.”
God. I flung myself away from him, but only succeeded in nearly pulling my arm from the socket. “Can’t you hear yourself?” I begged. “We need to get you away from here, from it. Maybe—maybe you can recover, maybe none of this is permanent!”
Doug’s calm shattered, and his yellow eyes widened in fury. His blackened fingers tightened until my bones creaked beneath his grip. “Don’t you understand? This is our destiny! Clarke picked us out of the line for a reason. He was a thief, but the gold he stole let the guardian of this place see through his eyes. It chose us!”
“Doug—”
“No one else has ever seen my true worth. And now that someone has, you want to ruin everything.” He yanked me toward him, until we were face-to-face, his knife-like teeth only inches from my skin. “I’ve done everything for you, you ungrateful weakling. I kept you alive; I got you out of Nebraska; I made sure we always had a roof over our heads! And this is how you repay me?”
A pickaxe buried itself in his skull.
* * *
I jerked as blood splattered over my face. Eleanor let go of the handle and backed away, as if horrified at what she’d done. Blood dripped from Doug’s temple, where the point of the pick had broken through the bone. He blinked, seeming confused, and his grip on my arm finally went slack.
I couldn’t flee, couldn’t move. “Doug…” I whispered, then stopped.
Somehow, he still stood upright. How, I couldn’t imagine, but he needed help. Our medical supplies—they’d been in Eleanor’s pack. Had she saved it from the flames?
“We need bandages,” I started.
Doug reached up and groped for the handle. Then, with a wince, he tore the pickaxe free of his skull.
Blood gushed, along with a lump of whitish-gray matter. But still he remained standing.
The gore-covered pickaxe hit the snow, and he turned slowly to Eleanor. “Do you really think that will keep me away from my gold?” he asked, as he reached for her with a gnarled, claw-tipped hand.
He’d kill her, then Steve. Probably me too, now that I’d angered him.
He was my brother, and I loved him. I always would, no matter what.
But I was done following after him.
I shoved him toward the pit as hard as I could. He staggered, heel hitting the edge. As he toppled back, he reached for me, withered fingers scraping across my face, tangling in the bandage over my forehead. It tore free, and the moment stretched as he fell backward, the bloody cloth useless in his hand. Our eyes met, and I saw only burning hatred in his yellow gaze.
Then he disappeared, swallowed up by the mouth of the mine.
* * *
All the strength left me, and I crumpled to my knees. Surely, if he could survive a pickaxe to the brain, Doug could probably survive a fall. Surely I hadn’t just murdered my own brother.
Maybe he wouldn’t die. Maybe he’d lay there in agony, limbs and back shattered, all because of me.
Everything he’d done for me over the years, all the good times we’d had…and I’d pushed him anyway.
Heat ran down my face, a mixture of blood from the uncovered wound and tears. A sob wracked my body, and I curled in on myself with a moan.
Eleanor dropped to her knees by me and put her arms around my shoulders. “You had no choice,” she murmured. “You saved my life.”
Steve had reached us; he carefully lowered himself, though his breath caught in pain. “I’m sorry,” he said, and embraced me as well. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I sobbed: for Doug, for Bessie, for myself. For Anna and Roland, Steve and Eleanor.
We should have stayed in Seattle. We had no business in this wild place; the land itself had been telling us that since Dyea. But we’d let ourselves be infected by gold fever and bolted north with a thousand other fools, like a herd of stampeding cattle.
The cabin burned beside us. The roof was well and truly in flames now, and one of the walls beginning to catch as well. Sparks floated free, almost beautiful against the darkness. The dancing light washed over the pole Doug had erected, seeming to give life to the empty eye sockets of the caribou skull I’d pulled free from the muck so long ago.
I dashed away my tears and tried to focus on what needed to be done now. “Our things…”
“We grabbed our packs when we realized the roof was on fire,” Steve said, loosening his hold on me. “At least we can try to get out again. The trap did work, didn’t it?”
“Yes, believe it or not.” I was going to add more, but Eleanor stiffened, peering in alarm in the direction of the mine.
“What was that sound?” she asked.
I held my breath, listening intently. At first I could hear only the snap and crackle of the fire, but then a second, duller sound intruded.
Bone on bone.
Beside the mine shaft, the discarded pile of ancient bones shuddered. A scrap of hide flapped, then bulged as something moved beneath it.
Before our horrified eyes, the bones began to rearrange themselves, adhering to one another as firmly as if bound with sinew. Spines joined, mismatched legs found their places, and a pair of mammoth tusks curved dangerously from its shoulders. The caribou skull juddered on its pole—then ripped free, flying through the air and crowning the rebuilt creature in antlers.
Its bony jaw opened, and it screamed in Bessie’s voice.