37. Penny
Penny
The breeze smelled like wildflowers. Sweet and fresh and nothing like the dank musty cavern I’d left behind. I could still see it, though, between blinks. The real world now inhabited the darkness behind my eyelids, intermittent and fleeting.
It was prettier here. Peaceful. I sat barefoot in the dirt with tall grass swaying all around.
The bright blue sky stretched overhead, crowded with clouds that were as fluffy as sheep wool.
I couldn’t touch them, but my hand was caught in something equally soft.
Kit’s curls wove between my fingers as his head rested in my lap.
He was gone, but not far. Just resting. We both were.
Beside me, another figure wore my face. He gazed toward the distant horizon where a flock of sparrows swooped and dipped.
Paneus.
“It’s almost time now,” he said. He looked like me, but he didn’t sound like it. “You've done well.”
I glanced up at him. At the image of myself standing in this same meadow. It was the one at the back of our family property, that bright sunny clearing where we buried my father. I imagined, if I looked hard enough, I could find the place we’d hidden him.
But I didn’t look or even stand. I stayed where I was, combing Kit’s hair with my fingers.
Paneus gazed through it. What I saw with eyes closed, he could view with eyes open, and he scrutinized.
The people of Ashpoint. The Vessel made of bone.
Merrick pinned beneath my friends and still trying to lord over it all from his back.
I wasn’t sure what the god thought of it, but I felt certain of one thing.
A smile lifted my lips.
“The Symbiarch said you would like me.”
He hadn’t said as much but, from the moment he came into my mind and freed me from that cold stone altar, I knew. He gave me the peace his worshippers always talked about. This serene feeling. He brought me somewhere safe and beautiful, removed from pain and danger.
He tilted his head, eyes glowing as green as the grass stretching all around. “Most people do,” he mused.
I stroked my hand over Kit’s face. The sensations came and went. Soft hair tucked behind his ears, stubble that scratched my cheeks when we kissed, and the worry lines etched in deep.
I recalled what Paneus had said before, though it was hard to concentrate. Thoughts were like wisps here, like dandelion fluff drifting away, but I’d caught this one, and I held it close.
“Almost time for what?” I asked.
“The end.”
“Of the Bone Men?”
“Of imbalance. We’re here to put it right.”
“We?” I echoed. “You and Eeus?”
Another nod. “He will do his work, and I will do mine.”
“And then it’s done.”
The ground beneath me quivered, the smallest shake. I glanced down at it. The dirt, the grass, the flowers dotted across the landscape.
“Stay here,” Paneus urged, and I wondered if I had a choice. “Just a moment longer.”
Another shudder, and I squeezed my eyes shut, wondering what was happening in the real world to disturb the stillness here.
But rather than sight, I found feeling. A levity the likes of which I’d never known.
A release, an outpouring, and I looked up at Paneus with arms outstretched, bathed in golden sun.
From the fields around us came new motion—not a tremble, but a rush.
The thunder of wingbeats preceded a flock of birds taking flight.
There must have been hundreds, speckling the blue sky with blurs of brown, red, and yellow.
They stirred up a breeze, enough to gust over my cheeks and ruffle my hair as I watched them ascend.
They were souls.
Those bound to the Vessel were being freed, escaping the prison of bone and the burden of a false curse.
I watched them swirl and dart about, moving in joyous unison and always up, up, up, and I knew my father’s spirit was among them.
The assurance tugged sharply on my heart.
Like there had been a thorn stuck in me all this time, and it was finally removed.
I succeeded. I came to save him, and I did. We did. Kit and I.
“Look,” I whispered, still stroking Kit’s cheek. “Look, darling, do you see?”
I watched them climb, freer than anything, and I felt lighter too. Relieved, and similarly unburdened, and it was then I realized Kit was gone. No longer in my lap. No longer here at all.
A cold flush of panic washed over me, and I turned to Paneus who stood by, now holding out a hand.
“I’ll take you to him,” he said.
Without question, I took his hand and he lifted me out of that world and into my own.
We were in the cavern again, surrounded by what was left of our community. It seemed to be about an equal divide between those standing and those strewn about as lifeless corpses on the stone floor.
The sight didn’t shock me as much as it should have. Perhaps some of Paneus’s peace still lingered, or maybe I understood more than I realized. The souls that had been unleashed weren’t only from the Vessel, but from this gathering, too.
Among the dead were Matina and Fletcher, and just beside the altar, Merrick sprawled, body still and glassy eyes fixed on a distant nothing. It chilled me to see him like that, or maybe that was the air in the room, tainted by death and absence.
In the middle of it all, the Vessel laid in ruin. The bone bricks that had been so carefully mortared were broken apart, and the thing looked quite dead itself. A slain beast.
With so much to see, it took longer than I liked to find Kit.
He stood near the altar, a few feet away.
The bloody knife lay at his feet. The knife Paneus and I had pushed on him, because he needed to be a willing sacrifice, too.
And even though I’d known then what that meant, I was still alarmed at the blood soaking his clothes, radiating out from a hole in his shirt.
I sprang into motion, reaching him in seconds and grabbing for the wound on his chest that I knew had to be grievous.
When my fingers pressed the area, the skin was smooth but for a single raised scar.
Blood slicked my skin, and I fought the urge to recoil, realizing it was senseless since I was equally bathed in the stuff.
I was still checking him, hand fully inside his shirt and feeling for an injury that was no longer there, when he stirred. He’d been awake before, but elsewhere. Maybe lost in his mind like I had been.
He sucked a sharp breath, and his hand flew up to catch my wrist. I met his eyes just as they flashed with a dull glow, then returned to the usual dark, bottomless brown.
He blinked, and I did too, scattering tears I hadn’t felt building.
“Pen?” he rasped. His fingers tightened around my arm. “Is it you?”
My chin barely dipped before Kit threw himself against me hard enough to knock my breath loose. He clung so tightly my ribs creaked, and his fingertips dug into my back. Desperately clutching me while his chest heaved with stifled sobs.
I hugged him back, relishing the warmth of his body in the too-cool room. The peace of Paneus was beginning to wane, making room for a flood of worse feelings. Memories of pain and fear, holding Kit’s hand as tightly as he held me now, watching the world grow dark.
“Kit…” His name left me as a gasp, and he drew back.
His hands roamed over me like mine had him.
Tentative at first, across my belly and over my ribs, mingling his blood and mine.
When he didn’t quickly find the injuries he sought, he yanked up the hem of my shirt to expose my middle.
I looked down while he stared at the new jagged scar across my stomach, and the second further up that was a twin to his own.
They were both stained with red, but I could easily see the extent of the damage Merrick had done to me, healed over by the mercy of the gods.
I stood, still and speechless, as Kit traced the scars with trembling hands.
He looked so sad.
I could barely think but to grab his hands and pull them away from it all, letting my shirt hem fall and hide the evidence of an event we weren’t yet prepared to face. I clasped his hands in mine, our skin sticking together as we jointly scanned the small crowd of survivors.
A few dozen people remained, watching, wide-eyed and stricken. A cursory glance informed me the members of our resistance were among those left alive, including Isla, who broke the silence before it became crushing.
“What just happened?” she asked.
My gaze strayed to Merrick again, torn between feelings of disbelief and bone-deep sorrow.
“It’s over,” Kit murmured from beside me. “Eeus has come and gone.”
“And Paneus with him,” I added.
Kit didn’t release me, but he did turn and glance at the remnants of the Vessel piled on the floor.
He hated working here, building that abomination, and I was fairly sure he didn’t want to be here now.
I didn’t. A night of imprisonment in these depths had made it unbearable even before it was my temporary grave.
Kit would want to clean it up, bury the bodies; I wanted to close it off. Fill it with rocks and forget it was ever here. Entomb every memory of what had happened. For now, I would settle for getting away from it.
I tugged on Kit’s hand, drawing his notice. “Can we go, too?” I asked.
He seemed distant still, but he would never deny me, and certainly not now.
“Of course.”
Further questions passed as whispers among our friends and neighbors as we began a slow trudge toward the mouth of the cavern and fresh air.
The daylight outside blinded me. I squinted against it at where the wall separating the caves from the rest of Ashpoint had been partially dismantled, the new opening creating a passage back toward town. I was glad not to need to squeeze back through the tunnel to the Ossuary to get there.
It still took time to walk the long path back to Ashpoint proper. By the time we made it to the square and the smithy, Kit and I were both a bit unsteady, burdened with new scars both physical and emotional. He drew me to a stop to let the others continue on without us.