Chapter 12 #2
As Sybil carried on with the steps, they sounded eerily familiar.
Not the same as what the cult dictated, but close.
The mark was the brand Kit and I bore on our chests.
The food offering was now human remains, the tea had become hemlock poison, and I imagined once I learned what the future Oaths were, the rest would line up, too.
Good acts turned to bad. Excuses to cause suffering and ruin.
“But if they’ve twisted it, if they’re doing the rituals wrong, then it won’t work?” It wasn’t entirely a question, but I almost hoped I was wrong. If all the Bone Men had done and were yet to do was for nothing, then Kit and I were also wasting our time trying to stop them.
Sybil took her teacup for a sip. “I’m not sure what exactly they’re doing, but it is calculated. Carefully considered. They’ve been striving toward it for some time.”
“Years,” I murmured.
During my time in Ashpoint, I hadn’t heard much talk about their ultimate goal, their mission or purpose.
And I hadn’t seen it, either, nothing beyond the bones brought in for the second Oath and spread on the altar in the Ossuary.
Wherever they went from there, I didn’t know.
I didn’t think Kit knew, either. Even the Vessel itself was hidden from sight.
I would have thought they’d be proud of the thing.
Erected it in the city square and let the people gather around.
A niggling part of me wondered if it existed at all.
“Why the bones, though?” I asked Sybil. “If all they need is one willing person, what good is it to rob graves and steal dead bodies?”
The Symbiarch hummed through her next swallow. “Living bodies are fragile, temporary things. They aren’t meant to hold a god for more than a brief visit. And a vessel still retains their own spirit, their own mind. From what I know of the Bone Men, they seek more control than that.”
Dead bodies because living ones would ruin their plans.
A willing, living vessel, one who had completed the correct rituals, could presumably sabotage the entire event.
None of the stolen cadavers had been willing, and that seemed to be a critical piece.
If Eeus was called down, he might well turn up his nose at the Bone Men’s creation.
I was willing. I already bore Eeus’s mark. And I was relatively certain I could accomplish the rest.
Grabbing my satchel, I shifted it into my lap and opened it to dig inside for my sketchbook and pencil. After Anders’s snooping, I was almost nervous to open it in front of Sybil and accidentally turn to the wrong page, so I went to the very last one and began scrawling furious notes.
Sybil leaned in to peer at the words I was putting down. “Have you been inspired, after all?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Tell me more.”
The Symbiarch chuckled into her cup. “Hmm,” she said. “Let me think.”
While she pondered, I numbered the list, filling in details before I forgot them. I was so mired in concentration that I jumped when Sybil spoke again.
“Did you know they’re lovers?”
I jerked up. “Who?”
“Paneus and Eeus,” she replied. “Two halves of a whole, though it’s often overlooked these days. Their union creates balance.”
She said it casually, as if it were common knowledge, but it wasn’t common to me.
For as much as my mother revered Paneus, Eeus was an unwelcome topic of conversation.
He was a threat to our way of life, often blamed for bringing blight and poor harvests.
Sybil’s acceptance of a deity who had been a scourge in my family’s eyes for as long as I could remember was surprising, but my focus stalled on her earlier statement.
“But they’re both…” I stammered. “I mean, aren’t they depicted as men?”
“Yes,” Sybil replied.
Tears stung my eyes, and I tried to blink them back. The Symbiarch looked almost amused by the flush of emotion overtaking my features and the way I stammered through my next question.
“And they’re… They love each other?”
She nodded and returned her cup to the table. “One cannot exist without the other. They need and love each other.”
Like Kit and me. Now that I had him, I couldn’t fathom living without him. I didn’t want to. On the heels of that revelation came a sort of bubbly feeling, levity that shoved off the weight of shame that had plagued me for so long. Maybe forever.
I squeezed my hands together on top of my open sketchbook, not minding if Sybil stared at my scars while my thoughts churned.
“I love a man too,” I murmured. “My parents never really approved. I thought…” I swallowed, fighting the feelings that threatened to silence me. “I always felt like I was failing them by being… different.”
The Symbiarch smiled sympathetically. “It’s not so different.”
My huffed breath sounded more like a sob. “It is where I’m from.”
“Penwell.” Sybil turned her knees toward me and rested her hands on top of mine.
I couldn’t hold her gaze. My eyes dropped to our fingers and stayed there.
“You are a blessing,” she said. “To your family, your community, to the man you love… And I’m certain Paneus himself looks on you with favor. It sounds like you have a lot in common.”
I’d started unveiling painful truths, and now I wasn’t ready to stop. I couldn’t abide the thought of stealing from this kind woman, from this town. I wanted to believe what she said was true, and it wouldn’t be if we went through with this.
I worked my jaw, trying to think of some way to come clean without dire consequence when the sound of glass breaking interrupted my thoughts. I leaped up, nearly dumping my sketchbook on the floor as I turned toward the sound. It was nearby, so close it was practically in the room with us.
Sybil stood, too, and we looked in unison toward her sleeping quarters.
Flames raced along the bottom of the curtain divider, eating up the fabric.
It spread impossibly fast, chasing the streams of what must have been oil along the wood floor.
Then I saw it: a broken lamp in the midst of the fire, leaking fluid that ran toward us like fingers stretching out, intending to grab hold.
I yelped and stumbled backward into the table while Sybil rushed to the kitchen sink. She snatched the kettle off the stove and thrust it under the faucet while working the pump with her free hand, beginning to fill it while thick, black smoke clouded the air.
“No!” I shouted at her. Water on an oil fire was an explosive combination, and her kettle couldn’t possibly hold enough to battle what was quickly becoming an inferno.
She kept at it, bent over the sink with her hands shaking so badly she could barely hold the kettle. I stuffed my sketchbook back into my satchel and called to her again. I wanted to run, far and fast, but I couldn’t abandon her to the blaze.
The straw bed was consumed, and tongues of fire licked up the papered walls.
Getting closer, smoke increasingly black and tarry.
I could feel it invading my lungs. The stench of charred, ruined things.
My hands twinged, remembering these smells and sights far too well.
This wasn’t the barn, and Sybil wasn’t Sayla, but no amount of reasoning could quell the panic that swelled inside me until I burst.
“Sayla, please!” The words ripped up my throat.
It wasn’t the right name, and the Symbiarch didn’t respond to it. Instead, she spun toward the fire, flinging the water and the kettle along with it. The flames hissed and sputtered, then raged back stronger, and I finally broke free of the terror that paralyzed me.
Racing forward, I caught Sybil by the arm. She looked at me with her eyes wide and teary.
“What’s happened?” she asked. “Who would do this?”
I shook my head and pulled, determined to drag her if I had to. I wasn’t a scrawny nine-year-old this time, and the fire hadn’t touched me yet. It wouldn’t. I would get us both out of here.
The Symbiarch stumbled after me, tethered by my bruising grip, as I turned us toward the door. Before I reached it, it burst inward to reveal Kit in the frame. His eyes were wild, and dark curls were plastered to his face. He surveyed the scene before locking his gaze onto mine.
Behind him, the sound of shattering glass barely registered over my relief.
It took all my composure not to release Sybil and throw myself at him. But, on the heels of relief at the idea of help was the fear of him being close to the uncontrolled fire.
“Go, Kit!” I shouted, sounding more angry than scared as I bolted forward with Sybil in tow.
He backpedaled out of the way, and the three of us burst into the main room of the mission, where Kit turned toward the front door but stopped short.
I’d expected the fire to be contained to Sybil’s living quarters, but it was here, too.
A second lantern lay in the entry, pooling oil and fire that spread just as quickly as it had in the bedroom.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Sybil wailed.
My hands throbbed from holding on so tight. I must have been hurting her, too, but my muscles were locked up, tensed to the point of trembling. Kit hadn’t gone far, and he reached out and caught my wrist.
“The infirmary!” he called out and pointed to the open door and, just beyond it, the long windows overlooking the row of beds.
Kit took the lead then, charging toward the infirmary while towing Sybil and me.
His fingers cinched down, too, unwilling to chance a slip, and I found small comfort in the pressure.
I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t hurt and bawling for Father and Mother while I watched my sister burn. This wasn’t the barn. It wasn’t.
But, as much as I wanted to run, my legs felt weak and wobbly, and every gasp at the smoky air choked me. I made it to the infirmary in a blur of watery eyes and coughs that drove breath out more quickly than I could get it in. But I held onto Sybil, and Kit held onto me.
Until he didn’t.
He broke free, and I called after him, wasting precious air.
I didn’t have time to give chase before I saw his intention. There was a wooden chair positioned at the nearest bedside, and he hefted it up, then turned it toward the window. I flinched aside to shield my eyes and Sybil’s seconds before I heard the glass pop.
“You first, Pen,” Kit said, grabbing my elbow this time. “You'll need to catch her.”
I didn't fully understand, only half thinking and stumbling as Kit urged me onto the bed, standing so I could climb through the short, wide window.
Breaths came, shallow and hurried and not bringing in near enough air, and my head felt light. When I stood and leaned toward the window frame, I didn't even notice the shards sticking up until they bit into my palms.
Pain joined the miserable cacophony as I struggled to get myself and my satchel through the opening. With the world spinning around me, I could barely get my hands up to brace my fall. I tumbled face-first into the snow and rolled over just in time to see Sybil scrambling out after me.
She collapsed on top of me, and the impact of her weight drove the last bit of air from my lungs. I sprawled in the snow, rapidly melting against my back, trying to inhale and failing while Sybil worked her way upright and Kit clambered into the open.
He hit the ground beside us in a tumble, and when I turned toward him, I saw the closed cellar doors and gray clouds of smoke billowing from underneath them.
Everyone was standing then but me, and they looked impossibly tall.
Like trees in the forest blacking out the sun.
Everything was blacker, darker, as if the smoke was even in my eyes.
I blinked and swallowed and finally breathed, just as Kit looped his arms under mine and hauled me up.
I was barely aware of him dragging me. My boot heels cut tracks in the snow as we moved away from the mission, away from the fire.
Toward what, I didn’t care, as long as he kept going.
I squeezed my eyes shut because the mission looked too much like the barn as the fire finally reached the thatched roof.
My hands throbbed. They burned, and I was afraid to look. Worried I would see my flesh melting, or hear Sayla screaming, or feel Father and Mother pulling us apart.
In the cold.
In the snow.
In flames.