Continued, The Debtor’s Game
I fall.
Wind rushes my clothes, my hair, tearing air from my lungs. It is short-lived.
My body slams into something soft. My hip cracks, pops, and then I am rolling.
I scrabble for purchase, slicing my hands along sharp edges and soft spots.
I am tumbling down a hill, but not sand.
I slam into a long, thin object, and it catches me.
The sky above me spins and spins until finally it stops.
The desert smells.
I did not expect it to smell like this.
Like trash.
Shaking my head, untwisting my body from the object behind me, I grasp a familiar feeling, the surface of a wooden table, turned on its side. I raise myself up and scan my surroundings.
Trash.
I am halfway down a mountain of garbage—from furniture to food to clothing. What is all this stuff? Where did it come from? Gingerly, carefully, I assess my injuries, the cuts and bruises, but my leg hurts less. I still wear only the king’s tunic and a pair of drawers.
Grasping a table leg, I haul myself up. Something glints in the sand at my feet, blinding me.
I dig it up.
The diamond dagger.
My grip tightens around my only connection to my home. I will not let go.
The trash pile leads down far below, several items tumbling over a cliff. Beyond the cliff is mile after mile of tan sand. The Amyria Desert that I must cross. There is no other choice. I pick my way down.
After an hour, I reach the bottom, sweat and dirt and oil streaking across already burning skin.
I could lie down right here, bake in the sun, shiver in the night until my body and brain have wasted away.
Yet glancing down at the king’s clothing I still wear, my cut and bleeding bare feet, my remaining debt, I think not.
I should like to don clothes meant just for me, not die in the tattered shirt of my torturer. I should like to watch my final four ringed tattoos disappear, and see once again those freckles and that birthmark. Hope feels hard to reach, so I clutch the dagger and summon my spite.
Picking through the trash, I salvage one boot too small, a sandal too big. I put them on. After some more digging, I manage a rucksack, a loaf of bread with only a little bit of mold on one end, so I tear that off. I search and search, but there’s no water.
With the mud and oil and rotting food, climbing the mountain to the top to see what’s on the other side proves impossible. Even if I could, I would still have my debt and wouldn’t be welcomed in the borderlands. I need to go east, across the desert.
I yank on the bent handle of a parasol, its gray lace ripped in some places. It looks like Kassandra’s.
“You’re kidding me.”
A half-ripped length of cloth also goes into the bag.
Still, no water. But there’s a canteen, warmed by the sun, that swishes. From the vinegar scent after I untwist the top, I guess it to be fae wine. Reluctantly, I take it.
Returning to the cliff’s edge, I watch the sunset in the far distance, the sand lighting up red, then orange and even purple, like the deepest flame. I move closer to the horizon.
The sands shift. I squint; must be a trick of the light.
The sands shift more, and then an animal, the largest I have ever seen, as large as Lucan’s Tree, breaches out of the sand, as if it were water. I yelp, stumbling back.
It breaches again, a low tittering noise.
The cliff gives out.
I scrabble back, but the cliff dissolves, spilling down, taking me with it. Suddenly there is no bedrock beneath me; I am below the remaining cliff, the sand sucking up my legs. I scrabble and wave my arms but only sink deeper.
I am drowning in sand.
I scratch and claw, the desert swallowing up my waist, then my chest. Rumbling, and I wonder if I can feel Maxian’s power from out here. A hard shelf rises from the sand, grains streaming off its edge, and I grab hold. The edge keeps rising, pulling my body out of the earth.
My feet land on something soft and I look down.
Scales.
I am standing on a carpet of scales. My heart almost gives out, but I clutch the surface above me. It is like a round, hard stump of some kind. A shell.
My gaze takes in the giant beast, my feet on one of its front legs, its shell offering shade and protection. I force myself not to panic, do not panic—for what do we do with a stinging insect? We swat it away. We kill it. And this might eat me. Don’t they eat faeries?
A giant sand turtle.
The creature swings its neck, its enormous reptilian eye meeting mine. My heart picks up, but I don’t dare move. The slitted pupil expands, encompassing the dark silhouette of a faerie.
Death said they only bother you if you bother them. Standing on the creature would count as bothering it, right?
I am mad, truly mad, for the only thing I can think to do is reach for my genius.
It is alive and full and flourishing, and it pushes my message along the plane.
Hello, I think. How are you?
The creature bellows, the scales vibrating beneath my soles. I cling on for life.
My foot grazes something rough, sharp.
So deeply embedded I thought it part of the animal’s skin is a thick piece of twine tangled around its leg. I bend down, and the twine bites into my hands. Still, I work my fingers under the rope and lift it just enough to stick the knife under.
The creature bellows again, vibrating. But I cut, gently, slowly, until something snaps free. The twine springs away, leaving a deep indent behind.
The creature titters, then starts spinning around.
“Whoa, wait—”
I reach for the shell, hauling myself over its edge. Broad and domed, the turtle’s shell is ringed in black. But it is not thick, heavy, disruptive like my tattoos. It has the ripples of age, and walking to its center, I gawk at the pattern—like a dozen tree stumps bound together.
It’s beautiful. So beautiful to see traces of years conquered, a life being lived.
The creature slides toward the fading sun, the great expanse of desert I am supposed to walk.
“Oh!” As it begins its journey, I wonder if it will keep its shell above sand. I hope it does. Bracing on bare feet, I ask: “Is this all right?”
It doesn’t reply.
Slowly, finally, I sit on the center of the shell, leaning against my rucksack. The sun slips away, and as the air cools, I take out that torn cloth. With little choice, I sip the wine, preserving it as much as possible. I nibble on the bread, but my throat is already scratchy.
When the sun comes up, I use the measly umbrella to avoid burning.
It does little. Still, the turtle swims, and I wait, and the wind blows and the sun drops again.
The turtle swims for days, I think, while I eat stale bread and drink fae wine.
When the canteen is done, I collect and choke down my urine.
I lose count of the moons and sun, and even figures seem to flit across my vision in the searing heat and deadly cold.
Although it is not a Walk, I feel like I am dying.
—
I jolt awake, shivering, lips cracked, skin raw, eyes burning. The turtle grumbles. Before me is another soaring cliff.
“I can’t climb that,” I rasp, but the turtle is sinking, lowering, so I roll off the edge of its shell, down its leg, and tumble onto the dry clay of the cliff. Turning, I watch the turtle start to sink.
“Wait!” I call. The turtle titters one last time, then disappears into the dunes once again. I turn, surveying the cliff. Impossible.
Reaching forward, I touch the facade. It hums with energy. This is not just a cliff, this feels like life. Swiping my hand across the surface, I find a vine. I tug and it stays.
Just highly improbable, then. My head pounds and my vision swims and my bones ache and my organs pulse with pain. But there is nowhere else to go. Nowhere but up. If I can make it. So, after adjusting my rucksack, I hold the vines as ropes.
Painfully, slowly, carefully, I rise.
It is hard, so very hard. It feels pointless, but to look back is to fall. I am already here, on this cliff. I may as well keep going. And going. And going.
When I cannot climb anymore, I push out my genius to the plants, one last time. They cradle me, dragging me up and over the lip of the cliff. The sun is starting to set, the air cooling off. I collapse, gasping. The empty canteen skitters away from me.
Panting, chest heaving, I try to gather my strength.
It doesn’t come. I have nothing left. Nothing left to give myself or anyone else.
The Desert Walk will claim me, as it has done so many others.
At least I can hold the knowledge that my family is free as my eyes droop closed.
Death or debt, those have always been our choices, and today my body chooses for me.
I drift away.
“Congratulations on your Walk,” a voice says. “You wandered well.”
Death came so swiftly; I almost missed it.
“Thanks,” I rasp, a shadow falling over me, blocking out the fading sun.
A figure before me, one I cannot discern. They crouch by my side, picking up a limp, burned arm, my tattoos barely noticeable under the dirt and filth.
“What are you…”
My sentence disintegrates as they pull out a black feather. A creditor’s quill. I huff a laugh, for even in Death my mind will not let me escape this system. It has twisted my passing into some exchange with a teller.
The nib does not nick the skin, barely even touches it.
My mouth is so dry, my head so fuzzy, my body pulsing with pain.
This will be a relief, a rest, even if it means my tattoos will go to my closest relative, no matter who that is.
At least that relative and Benji and my friends can now benefit from that account.
Then the strangest sensation happens along my arm.
Not pain, no. Instead, I feel what a child once explained as tickling.
The two tattoos on my right arm tickle, then my left, as they thin and thin and thin.
They swallow themselves up and are no more.
I gaze at the familiar and unfamiliar body of scars and cuts and freckles and wasted muscles and bloodied feet and no debt.
With time and care, the cuts could have sealed, the burns faded, the muscles grown anew, but that doesn’t matter.
It is perfect, all of it so painfully perfect, for it is mine.
And now it always will be.
“It’s gone,” I croak.
“Yes, Wanderer.”
Dry lips crack into a smile. The celestial plane is so peaceful, and I am ready see my mother and Jeremee again. I can finally, finally rest.
Until hands slide under my back and knees, and someone hauls me up. The figure, pressing me to a flat chest, carries me away. We are moving, crunching over hard-packed dirt, and the distant sound of life wafts toward us.
“What’s happening?” I gasp, squirming, but the figure holds me tighter. The voice rumbles in the chest, against my cheek.
“You made it, Wanderer. You’re alive.”
“Made it where?” I rasp.
“Why, the House of Death, of course.”
I’m alive, I marvel, and it is not a question this time, but a statement.
And on the breeze that slips over my unmarked skin is the strangest sound and scent. A hushing of water, the caw of some unknown bird, the smell of salt.
“What is that?” I manage, words slurring again.
“You call it the Amyrian Desert, but here it goes by another name. The Great Beach.”
“Beach? I don’t know this.”
Their chuckle rumbles my cheek. “Those of the valley know little, but it is no matter, for you will have plenty of time to learn.”
Darkness tugs at me like a child on my arm. Exhausted, I turn to it as the figure speaks one last time: “Welcome to banishment, Avery.”
I meet their green eyes and wonder if this is home.
Then inky freedom embraces me, and I embrace it.