Chapter 14 #6
“Where the fuck are you going?” Jesstin sputtered. He pulled himself up from his knees in the mud and scooted back to his dry spot. He was... calmer somehow, even if nothing had changed. Gennady anchored him, as he always had. As Elloven had. Until that moment, he hadn’t made the connection.
“I used to think it was my anger keeping me here.” Gennady sat beside him. “That it was my duty to haunt you to the end of your miserable days.”
“And now?”
“It was you.” Gennady shook his head. “Your necromancy. And I guess you just needed me too much.”
“What?” Jesstin scoffed. “No.”
“You always were so cursed needy, always letting me fight your battles for you...” Gennady held up his fingers and started to count.
“Let’s see, there was the time at the armory when you were pissed out of your mind and couldn’t even count your coin, and I had to pay for the dagger myself.
Whew, and all the pub fights I broke up to keep you from spending a hard night in the brig.
Wait, wait, and how about when Scholar Barnwell threatened to visit Rhiain personally if you didn’t start turning your assignments in, so I did them for you. Shall I continue?”
“Whatever you need to tell yourself, you donkey.”
They shared the next laugh, and as it slowly passed into the easy silence of a lifelong bond, it was the first time Jesstin felt good since before he and Elloven had entered the spiral. “I’m sorry, Gen. I am truly so fucking sorry.”
Gennady nodded. “I know.”
“And I miss you more every bloody day that passes.”
“I know that too, mate.”
“The one good thing I’ve ever done was open that door in the netherworld. You picked a good time to leave.”
“Astonished you pulled it off. And without my help? A miracle,” Gennady said. “Could be why I’m not tethered anymore. You must have found some peace down there.”
Jesstin nodded at his bent knees. “Wasn’t mine to have.”
“The Jesstin Skylark I know wouldn’t let such a trifling point get in his way.”
“I don’t know who I am.” He held up his hands. “Not sure I ever did.”
“Time to figure it out, eh?”
Though Gennady was as solid as air, his presence soothed Jesstin, just as it always had, as they leaned together against the tree.
“I’m spent,” Jesstin declared and slapped his hands to his thighs. “I could sleep for a year.”
“Why not?”
“Yeah. Why not?” With the storm behind him, he could hardly keep his eyes open.
“Jess, if you do ever see my sister again...”
“Not bloody likely.”
“But if you do, ask her to repeat the second half of our mother’s message.”
“What second half?”
“You know I can’t tell you.”
“The odds of me seeing her again are on par with me growing a second head to curse you out.”
“Even if I could tell you, it won’t mean anything unless it comes from her.”
“Doesn’t mean anything then.” Jesstin’s head bobbed like an old man’s. “If I fall asleep...”
“What’s stopping you?” Gennady tilted his head back with a contented exhale. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay here until you fall asleep. Whatever you did in the netherworld, it’s not so hard for me to stay present here anymore.”
“Then we should say—”
“If the word ‘good-bye’ spews from your filthy mouth, I’ll punch it with my ghastly fists.”
“Damn. All right then,” Jesstin murmured as he drifted off. “Until the next?”
Gennady crossed his arms and cast his gaze into the marsh. “Until the next.”
Gennady made good on his promise and waited until Jesstin had fallen asleep.
He could have stayed longer... A part of him wanted to.
It wouldn’t have served either of them though.
It was unnatural, hanging around instead of moving on, and he’d been doing it for years.
He’d believed his anger would never cool, especially when Jesstin had started getting closer with Elloven, but when the fool had gone charging into the netherworld to save her, Gennady at last understood that all life and death was a matter of perspective.
There was no equity in either, and searching for it was useless and diverting.
Jesstin was a good man who’d made a terrible error, and deep down, Gennady hadn’t forgotten that, though not for lack of effort.
For all his anger and resentment, there was no one else he felt Elloven would be safer with than Jesstin.
And when Jesstin stormed through the afterlife to save her, Gennady finally saw that everything he was holding onto was meaningless in comparison.
Maybe that had been the point all along, to distract himself by reaching for the ephemeral to avoid the eternal.
When the end came, death was the only thing everyone shared. No one was born with a surety of anything, not the infant who failed to thrive and not the old woman who outlived everyone she’d loved.
It was a shame his death would always be between Elloven and Jesstin, but they didn’t yet possess the wisdom of the departed.
“Thank you for letting me go, Jess.” Gennady kissed the top of his friend’s head and stood.
He said good-bye to the world as he took in the swamp—the songs and buzzes of the beasts and bugs, the earthy scent of the bog.
Leaving the only world he’d known had been a terrifying prospect when he’d first died, but he was optimistic for what awaited him.
Because of Jesstin, he had somewhere incredible to go. “And for bringing my sister home.”
It was time. He was ready. “Until the next.”
Elloven ran because she would not, absolutely could not, chance getting pulled into the Night Soul. The possibility that their link was permanent left her with an infuriating depth of helplessness. How could she ever sleep again, wondering if he’d be there?
When she was a little girl, before her father was fully infatuated with the drink and Taven was just a boy who’d helped around the house, Elloven loved to race the other children in the village.
The Hermitage had the perfect lane for it, one of the few roads not dangerously pitted, and it was straight and clear as far as the gaze could travel.
The rules were simple: when the race started, they ran until they couldn’t anymore.
That was the part that spoke to Elloven: until you can’t.
Until her feet blistered and her breath gave out.
Dozens of kids had had their turn over the years, but there were three boys and two girls who came the most often, and one in particular, Kevan, actually matched her endurance.
The others surrendered around the time the dirt path approached the Haywood homestead, but Kevan had the same fire in his veins as she did.
They’d almost be in the town square by the time they ran out of energy.
He rarely won, but it never bothered her when he did because they shared something else too.
In him, she saw what her own reflection expressed; the primal urge to push the limits and venture into the wide unknown.
Her childhood had been mostly happy and worry-free to that point, but once the restlessness set in, she couldn’t turn it off, and the only way to exorcise it was to run until she couldn’t anymore.
One particularly sweltering springtide afternoon, so hot it had locals insisting midsummer would return as a season, Elloven kept going when she hit the square.
She glanced back and saw Kevan doubled over near the fountain, shaking his head at her, and she waved at him before darting into an alleyway and exiting into an open field beyond. Never had she gone so far.
She remembered only pieces of what happened after. Lying in a wheat field, overcome by the sun’s harsh light. Bobbing in her father’s arms as he vented his fear through his winded breaths. Coming in and out of sleep on the sofa, her mother’s favorite quilt tucked over her shoulders.
Gushed, troubled words exchanged between Esme and Wilder occasionally broke through. Esme, this is serious. This girl is trying to outrun the sun itself. And who could tell her she’s wrong, that she would listen?
Outrun the sun, outrun the thoughts, she remembered thinking, proud instead of humbled by her father’s concern. Outrun it all.
Don’t think.
Don’t stop.
Outrun it all.
Elloven had forgotten the rush of freedom, the way hitting speed carried her boots off the ground. It was like aerialism in a way, because they came from the same part of her.
She ran past Sesto and Daire’s croft, then past a dozen more, each slam of her boots spreading fresh vitality through her body.
She felt herself climb the air, just as she had in the Odeon of the Heavens.
That night had taught her not about the solidarity of a team but the importance of solitude.
Only alone could she ever truly command the skies.
Only alone could she ever outrun it all.
There was no Fabrien. No Taven. No dead brother to mourn a second time. No Rivenholde or Infinita Mori. No lies. No secrets.
No Jesstin.
As a child, she’d been buoyed by youth and dexterity, but twenty-seven-year-old Elloven had chaos at her bidding.
She was no longer afraid of her inimitable gift.
When thoughts of the strength and safety of Jesstin’s arms, the thoughtfulness he’d expressed in his lovemaking, or the ring of his boyish laugh pervaded her mind, her chaos whispered instead about the cravenness in his voice when he’d revealed he’d been lying to her the whole time.
A man tending to some goats gaped at her, slack-jawed, as she soared by his home. A mother nursing a fussy child yelled at her, but she was already too far ahead to hear what she’d said.
When she reached the village, she slowed for the merchants beginning their day ahead of the light, but she wasn’t thinking about them. She wasn’t thinking about anything that could dim her radiance, not anymore.
Not ever, ever again.
Elloven realized something remarkable. It was so utterly obvious, she could only laugh.