Chapter 43
I take a deep breath. It smells like home.
Sweet and floral, the scent of hawthorn blossom and apple orchards fills the air, mixing with the earthy scent of decaying leaves and damp soil and moss. Far in the distance, so far I can barely be sure it’s real, is the salty tang of the ocean.
I open my eyes, pressing my fingers into the damp grass alight with morning dew. Pushing myself all the way to my feet, I gather my bearings. I’m in the forest Dae and I always met in. I break out into an all-out sprint, my legs propelling me faster and faster to the home I grew up in.
“Mum,” I shout. “Mum.”
I hope she’s in.
“Mum.”
I skid to a stop before our front door. It looks so small and inconsequential compared to the doors I’ve grown used to seeing. There are cracks in the wood from disrepair that Mum’s tried to patch up with pink and sparkly makeshift wallpaper and sticky tape. My smile widens as I bang on the door.
“Mum,” I shout again. I don’t think she’s in and I don’t have a key. It’s a good thing we’re so far out in the countryside so no one can hear me break into my own house.
I sprint round the side and jump up onto the conservatory roof, climbing up the wall I’ve scaled a million times after sneaking out to meet Dae in the middle of the night. Jigging open my window, I clamber inside and drop onto the puffy pink floor.
Everything is exactly as I left it, other than a bum shaped dent in my quilt. I sprint out of my bedroom door and run down the stairs, shouting for Mum over and over.
Okay, she’s really not here.
I don’t know how this happened, I don’t know what magic that abyss was, but I’m not letting it go to waste. The second Mum gets home, we’re going on the run, from Aberith and Dae.
I run back up the stairs and grab a big bag from Mum’s bedroom. Her bedroom is perfectly neat as well, which is odd, because Mum usually has at least one empty cup of half-drunk chamomile tea on her bedside table from the night before, if not several stacked up from many nights. She usually only takes them down when there’s no longer any space for a new one. Maybe the sickness left her so tired she didn’t want to drink her nightly tea anymore.
Riffling through her cupboards, I find a large suitcase and throw her clothes in. But just as I’m about to leave, I catch sight of the bedside table again and there lie three empty cups. I blink. I was sure there were none there. Maybe I’m the one who’s tired.
I follow the same procedure in my room, throwing as many clothes as I can into our joint suitcase before running back down the stairs and into the kitchen with a backpack pilfered from the cupboard under the stairs. I’m guessing Mum doesn’t have any money, at least, none that Dad won’t be able to track, so I’d better pack us lots of food.
I open the fridge. It is full of cartons, cans, and Tupperware boxes all labelled “food.” That’s…weird. The fridge is usually a sprawling mass of leftovers, half-eaten pizza, fruit and milk.
Between one blink and the next, almost the second I think about it, the “food“ is replaced with the usual contents of a fridge. Milk and fresh meat and microwave meals.
My mind must have cracked somewhere between Faerie and almost being sacrificed in Ellyllon, because I seem to have lost my marbles.
Two horns cast a shadow on the window. They quickly disappear. Dae is here. Rage and… something else… bubble inside me and I get ready to storm outside?—
But as I pass the living room, I stop and loosen a panicked breath.
A woman, if she can be called a woman, sits on my mother’s armchair.
Her hair is so black it sucks in any light surrounding it, it is a veil, a song composed of black ripples in time. Her skin is the grey of a decomposed skeleton. And her eyes, her eyes are an endless chasm at the bottom of a boundless inky hole.
The milky whites around her pupils swirl with souls I will never meet, captured beings trapped within. Death, that’s what lurks within her sclera. And surrounding her sockets, the red of dried blood stains her lids and under-eyes, falling in permanent drips down her cheekbones.
She meets my eyes and without blinking, says, “You won’t find him out there.”
Patterns in the same dark stained colour dance across her forehead, telling a story. The patterns move too quickly to catch on to. As soon as they settle into their story, as soon as an object can be made out, the stains move again, rearranging themselves into a new tale.
Her body sticks out in shards. Gaunt, bony, haggard. The skin around her wrists is ready to leap up and flee from the bones they sit on. Dressed in a simple black top and pair of linen trousers, she uncurls her bare feet and places them on the floor, each bone in her foot bursting through its tight skin.
Death. She can be nothing than death.
“Dabria?”
She doesn’t answer me as her black eyes assess and weigh.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, hoping Mum doesn’t come home in the next few minutes. Dabria sounds much sweeter in a story hidden away with the knockers. In real life, she’s not someone I want around the people I love.
She raises one bony shoulder. “Saying hello, you’re the first one to make it through.”
“Through what?”
Dabria smiles slightly, the light of an anglerfish dancing in those pitch black eyes. “You know there can’t be two gods of the same thing at the same time, right?”
I narrow my eyes and take a deep breath. The magically appearing tea cups, the food in the fridge, the empty feeling of this world, as though it’s hollow. “I’m not really in Devon, am I?”
“No, you’re inside the heart,” Dabria says. I arch an eyebrow. “The Source, Gaia, the True God, whatever you wanna call her. She’ll want you to stay. She’s finally managed to get a new god to adulthood, someone to replace Aberith. She’ll make it very comfortable in here for you, if you do decide to stay. She’ll try to keep you in here until your father dies without risking your life. She’ll probably even be able to recreate your mother and lover, maybe a few NPCs for you to feel more at home.”
“You’ve spent time on Earth?”
“Who hasn’t? The longer she keeps you here, the weaker Aberith will grow. You may even be able to bring life back to area he’s stripped it of from within here.”
“I’m the God of Life?” The words sound ridiculous as they fall from my lips.
“Not really. That’s just what idiots call us. God of Life, God of Death, God of the Between. We’re all just servants of Gaia. Or, we’re supposed to be. As you can see, your father’s taken his role in a slightly different direction.”
“So,” I stutter a little, “so I stay? Here?” There’s something empty about the thought of that, but then, there’s also a part of me that can’t resist living somewhere so safe.
“If you want.” Her voice is slow, devoid of any emotion.
“But that’s not what you think I should do?”
She pauses, the silence stretching out between us. “No.”
“Why?”
“It’s not real. She’s been pushed by five hundred years of darkness, of imbalance, into making a rash decision. She’s afraid she won’t be able to get another one of you to adulthood again. Aberith has been relentless. With you alive in here, Aberith is weakened and can be be killed, she’s hoping someone else will do the job. But it’s your responsibility.”
Despite everything, despite him trying to kill me, I can’t help but think of the moments spent in front of the TV, drinking hot chocolate, or in walks out in the forest. Of the way he made Mum laugh and would always apologise when he was wrong. Despite what I said to Dae and to the demons and to myself, I could never really bring myself to end his life.
“I’m not killing my dad.”
“We’ll see.”
Maybe The Heart is right. Maybe I should stay in this cocoon and wait for this all to blow over. But then who will watch out for Mum? “If I decide to leave, how do I get out?”
“We’re her children. She would never bind or control us. You only have to ask.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“What can I say? I’m a sucker for a dead father.”
And just like that, she’s gone. No shadows, no disappearing act, she’s just there one minute and gone the next.
I slowly take a seat on the sofa and lean back. I can almost smell my mother’s vanilla and raspberry hair shampoo. I couldn’t smell that when I first got here. The Heart must be learning. And it sounds like she’ll continue learning until I’m wrapped up in Mum’s arms with Dae waiting for me outside.
Maybe I can ask her to create a Dae that never killed Obi. One that will love me for me, not for the crown I can give him. One who doesn’t hide things from me while claiming to love me.
And maybe she can make a mother I never put in a coma. One who doesn’t occasionally flinch when I move to quickly. One who hasn’t been zapped into submission by my father who can’t “control himself.”
Maybe we can travel, roam across the earth, all three of us. Over time, I wonder if she could create more people. Give it a hundred years, I bet the whole of earth would look just like I left it, but Dae could come along, and he wouldn’t have to hide his horns.
We could go to uni. I could study art and he could study…anything he wants. The Heart would figure it out, maybe some of sort of course that would suit his interests. Who knows? Maybe we could actually get married one day. A proper marriage, the one I thought he wanted when he proposed, not one laced with betrayal and control.
We could even have kids. I never wanted kids, on account of thinking I was going to die soon. But we’d have forever, or at least, until someone stuck a dagger in my father’s heart. Someone who isn’t me.
I’d be lying if I said it isn’t tempting.
But this isn’t real.
And I’m sick of living a lie.
With a deep sigh, I uncurl my legs.
“Thank you, but I’d like to go home, please.”