The Bone Door, page 40
Hop pressed his forehead against the glass.
A ball of light hit Death square in the chest. All the air left his lungs. His body flew back, smashing into the hard edge of the cliff wall.
He throbbed. Something hot and sticky ran down his forehead. Blood.
Thistle’s boot slammed down on his chest.
‘Do it,’ Hop whispered against the window. ‘Kill him. Do it, Thistle.’
His eyes met Hop’s, light blooming in his palms.
A whimper left Death’s lips. ‘Please don’t, Thistle. I’m scared. I don’t want to die! Please! I want to see fireflies with you.’
Thistle’s breath caught. ‘Th-That’s not . . .’
‘Stop that!’ Hop slammed his hands against the glass. ‘Stop pretending to be me!’
‘Thistle!’ Death wailed. ‘Help me! It hurts! It hurts! Help me!’
‘STOP IT!’ Thistle yelled. But the light had already fallen from his hands. Instead, he was reaching for Hop. To hold. To comfort. A moment of softness. Of weakness. Death leaped upon it.
Thistle’s hand found Hop’s a moment before he died.
Hop felt the touch of it, even from his dark prison. He felt the warmth, then the way it went so very still. A blaze of blue and gold reflected in the dark pools of Thistle’s eyes as Death unhooked his soul from its mooring.
Hop crumpled to the ground, his chest so heavy he was sure he would never rise again.
‘A pity,’ Death said, running his fingertips over Thistle’s lips. ‘He would have been such a beautiful God. I always had a fondness for Darkness.’
‘He’s not Darkness,’ Hop whispered.
‘That’s right.’ Death flipped Thistle over so he lay face down in the sand. ‘He is nothing.’
‘Turn him around,’ Hop said. ‘He needs to see the stars.’
Death rose, looking away.
‘Turn him over.’
But the labyrinth was already pulsing. ‘One left.’
Amber was in a room that Hop recognized. Overloaded bookshelves, an untidy desk and rows of pot plants with trailing leaves.
She stood alone in Death’s bedroom. ‘So, Bear succeeded in summoning you. I suspected that’s why he was here. I thought he didn’t have it in him.’
Hop didn’t have the energy to speak. He simply pressed one hand against the window.
Death stepped towards her. ‘You had a hand in my being thrown in the Hollow Place, Providence?’
Death had called Amber Providence. Suddenly it occurred to Hop how strange it was that Amber could use her gifts before Providence was summoned. He would’ve assumed she was like Thistle, but Death seemed entirely surprised by Thistle’s ability to wield his God gifts, and not at all by Amber’s.
Her face was cold and unfeeling. ‘Yes. I saw no reality where the Vessels were not cast down here, even without my help. It seemed pointless to deny the Red Flame my aid.’
‘So you know how it ends,’ Death said. ‘Is that why you do not fight me? You know it to be foolish?’
Her face hardened. ‘What fight can a God of Providence put up against the God of Death?’
He laughed dryly. ‘You always were better suited to churches than battlefields, old friend.’
Her chin raised. ‘You are not my friend.’
‘It is of no importance.’
She swallowed hard. ‘The Red Flame aims for the extinction of God-folk. She intends to trap you down here, alone.’
‘I saw snippets of that,’ Death muttered. ‘In my Vessel’s head.’
‘But by killing us you’re playing into her scheme. Why?’
‘She was correct about many things. God-folk do not have a place in the mortal world. Sharing power amongst so many beings is messy. I have always said this, have I not? That power should sit with one?’
‘No. You have not always said that.’
He wafted her words aside. ‘But to attempt to entrap me here, of all places, was the Red Flame’s fatal mistake. It is my realm. I am its creator. The Hollow Place is not a cage that can contain me.’
‘So once you kill us all you will break free?’
‘It will be as easy as walking through a door. The Bone Door.’
Amber laughed dryly. ‘You truly remember nothing, do you? I wonder when you began to forget? When you gave in to the bloodlust? Or is it that you simply refuse to remember? Are you afraid?’
Afraid.
That word snaked around Death’s core. Hop shuddered as it reverberated through him.
‘I fear nothing!’ Death lied. ‘Memories are your domain. Power is mine. I will allow you a choice – do you wish to be sitting or standing as I end your life?’
‘I have another idea.’ She reached out. ‘Take my hand. I wish to feel the touch of another as I pass.’
Death sighed but placed his hand into Amber’s. Their fingers locked.
That terrible power swelled again. The scent of decay. Amber’s soul was not like his other friends’, blazing and loud and new. It was a crumbling building upon a hill that had weathered the lashes of time. It was ancient and beautiful.
Her hand squeezed his. A flash of a memory. Of two children in a garden. Amber still and silent and unmoving. And Hop wanting to do anything to make this strange girl smile. He knew she couldn’t see, so instead, he took her hand in his. Secret and hidden beneath the flowers so people could not see their flesh touching.
‘I lived a thousand lifetimes,’ she whispered in the present, ‘and only in two did you ever take my hand.’
Another life. Two hands linked. A surge of feeling.
Death yelled and dropped her hand as if it was on fire.
What was that? A flash of a memory that was not Hop’s or this version of Death’s. Amber must have put it there. Why? Was she trying to tell him something?
‘Silence!’ Death’s voice cracked. ‘Do not speak again. Do not touch me. It is time to end it.’
Unlike the others’ souls, hers was well rooted. Embedded so strongly Death skidded as he tried to wrench it free. But she did not fight him; that made it easier. She closed her eyes and willingly gave it to him.
Hop pressed his hand to the window. ‘Amber.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and her words were not for Death, but him. ‘For taking my hand again.’
44 Behind the Window
The snow fell but Hop did not feel the chill of it. He curled up in the darkness of this empty place.
He was stuck here, behind the window, without a true body. Death was right – he did not possess power. There was nowhere for him to go. Nothing he could do. He’d failed every single person he loved. He’d promised he would help his friends. Instead, he had led every single one to their deaths.
He drove his thumbnail into his palm, but the sweet release of pain didn’t come. Even that door was closed. He had nowhere to escape to.
He hugged his knees to his chest.
He wished he was more like Thistle. He had faced his monsters head on, no matter how much they scared him; and Darkness had not overcome Thistle, the way Death so easily had with Hop.
But Hop had never really confronted anything terrifying or terrible. The only thing he was good at was escaping. And that had led him here, to the end of all things. Alone. He was alone.
‘You’re not alone.’
Hop sat up. ‘Skully?’
‘I’m here, Bunny.’ Their voice echoed around him.
‘You should leave me while you can,’ he whispered.
‘Never.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t remember at first. The memories were fuzzy. Then they started to come. Let me show you.’
Hop trembled. ‘Will you leave, after you do?’
‘Not until you’re ready.’
‘I need to touch you,’ Hop whispered.
‘There’s a piece of me in your pocket.’
That’s right, Death had crushed Skully. But he’d retained a shard. He’d put it in Hop’s pocket.
Hop’s body stood still, looking down at Amber’s lifeless form, but he focused on his pocket and the shard of Skully within it. He could not raise his hands to touch it. But he could feel it pressing against his leg, the sharp edge of it digging into his skin. He concentrated on the pressure against his thigh.
Skully’s soul did not cry out or scream its presence like the others. It was a whisper. If the Red Flame had burned like a furnace, then Skully was the brush of a snowflake grazing his cheek in its descent.
‘This is going to hurt, isn’t it?’ Hop whispered.
‘Yes, little love. But good things often do.’
Hop leaned into that whisper, into the soul still somehow clinging to a shard of bone. It embraced him like a long-lost friend.
You have always known beauty. Not the fleeting shallow beauty of small noses and plump lips, but the beauty of the ordinary. In the meticulous engineering of a spider’s web. In the roundness of your mother’s stomach, from carrying all your siblings. You see it in the scar across your hand, earned from saving an ungrateful cat from a river.
Your father feeds this thirst for beauty. He spends all his earnings on paint and brushes, and you try to capture a shard of that beauty within canvas.
You see the world in colours. You see purple in the hobbling gait of an old woman, gold in freshly baked loaves, red in the passion of crowds.
You do not see the beauty that men tell your father of, the beauty they follow to your door. You ask why they find you beautiful. Their answers are boring. Golden curls and pink cheeks.
But it is for these things that you are chosen, that you are plucked with other girls who have been told they are beautiful. They do not pick the kind girls, or the strong ones. They pick only the beautiful ones.
Death sweeps the line, examining every possible imperfection, anything that could taint his heritage.
Beauty is the mask he wears. He understands the power of it.
He examines your face as if it is a fine sword he is considering purchasing. You have tried very hard to not look beautiful today. That is perhaps your mistake. The lack of lipstick and blush makes you look younger than your sixteen years.
He chooses you, and you hold back a scream.
You tell yourself that it will not be that bad, that there is goodness to be found, even here. Even in him. You pack your paints and brushes. When he finds them, he tears your paintings and casts the pieces into the fire.
He cares for your beauty, only that. It’s surprising that the God of something so permanent as Death would care so deeply for something so transient.
You try to resist him. Your body operates on instinct, reacting to the great wrongness of it. You know of the act; you have heard the beauty of it immortalized in song. What he does to you is not beautiful. He does not see that he is destroying the very part of you he craves. Your beauty is torn away, piece by piece, night by night.
It does not work the first time. Or the second. Or the third. It takes a month before they are sure.
‘Death’s consort is with child.’
You are with child.
It does not surprise you – there is room for it to grow in the places he has hollowed out within you.
You try to get rid of it. This parasite. This plague beneath your skin, leeching your life force. It is his. Only his. Every movement of his spawn is a further violation of your body.
But it is impossible – all your actions are watched. Your food is controlled and tested for poison. You cannot sleep, cannot even urinate without their eyes upon you.
At night, you squeeze your belly, you lie on it, wondering if you can smother his spawn in the womb. But then they strap you to the bed so you cannot move.
You forget the feel of a paintbrush. You stop seeing the hidden colours of the world. Everything is black and grey. You are the shell of an egg, ready to be cracked when the chick tears its way out, beak first.
Then the child comes.
You almost do not look. You almost lie there, eyes upon the ceiling, waiting for the death you know is your fate. All mothers of Vessels are killed once they have fulfilled their purpose. It is too risky, they say; she may develop some emotion, some feeling of ownership over the child. The thought almost makes you laugh.
But then you look. And he is you. He is all you. Blond curls and green eyes and round cheeks. You see your mother in his eyes, your brother in the curve of his lip. But most of all, you see you. He is none of Death.
Tiny hands cling to you. He must be protected. Not with armed guards and patrols, but from everyone who will not see the core of him – that he matters. Not that thing inside him, that one measly piece of Death hijacking his body as he did yours.
‘We matter,’ you whisper as he feeds at your breast. ‘We are not vessels housing more important things.’
It must be you. It has to be you. Nobody else will do it.
They take him from you without a word. For the first time in nine months, you are alone. You have fulfilled your duty. Outstayed your welcome.
They have been careless to leave you. They do not believe, even for a second, that you have any fight left. Until this moment, neither did you.
You have minutes.
The snow is thick outside the window. Death planned this – that his child, his next Vessel, would be born with the dying of the world. But no depth of snow can hide this spring-child’s nature. He is not cold and decay. He is green sprouts and life. But Death’s arrogance has saved you. You open the window, and jump.
For years the Church hunt you, demanding your capture. They track your shadow through alleyways and taverns. But as the years pass their chase slows. They assume you dead. They do not understand the strength that fuels mothers.
You enter oblivion. You become a whisper in the wind. You clean the houses of cruel men and vanish when lustful gazes turn suspicious. You live a thousand lives in the space of months. You finally find purpose in the last one.
The house you rent is in the shaded part of town that does not catch the light, even when the sun is high. Yours is the business of desperate souls who have nowhere else to turn. You take away their burdens with a herb, a blade and a promise. You wash their blood from the sheets in the river at night, and burn the tiny, unformed bodies in the fireplace. You give them the choice you were never offered.
You commit the ‘murders’ Death has forbidden. But you are saving lives, not taking them.
For all those years you watch your son from afar. You bide your time. You stand in the cover of the crowd as they parade him through the streets. You stand silent as he sobs, holding a blood-slicked blade. How did they ever expect your spring-child to do this?
Then you notice him – the man at your child’s side. You know the cruelty of the Scythe. It was he who plucked you for his master’s pleasure.
But artist eyes notice the things others miss. Like the way his gaze never leaves your child. How his gloved hands steady him when he stumbles. The way he clasps the blade for him. Others assume this is an act of cruelty, but you know the truth – the boy is his world. After all, you know what it is for your world to become one person. So you risk everything on that cruel man’s heart.
You go to him in the dead of night. You alight walls to find him.
Your bet pays off. The Scythe agrees. You do not know why. You do not question why, other than to believe that there is some good to be found, even here, where they prepare children for devastation.
You meet them in a secluded courtyard every year on your son’s birthday, when the snow blankets the ground. The Scythe gave you matching bells, to call out to each other and signal your arrival. You ring yours and theirs answers; it says: I am a friend.
The Scythe is horrified when you take your child into your arms and bestow his brow with kisses.
You know their doctrine. No touching.
You also do not care. You need him to know the tender touch of another, that he is loved. You break all their cruel rules one by one. You teach him his mother tongue. You give him just enough so he can learn by listening to the common people. You cradle him in your arms and sing to him, the same songs your mother sang to you; tales of the earth and the ocean. Songs that are not hymns or testaments to his glory.
You treat him with love, not because it may soften the thing within him, lying dormant. But because he is a person and he deserves happiness. That is all you can give him – one day of happiness every year.
What he will become is irrelevant. All that is important is this moment – who he is now.
He has no name, so you call him as he should be known. Not cold winters and the twilight of the world. He is life and love and springtime. He is a rabbit, peeking out of its burrow at the dawning of the year. You cry, ‘My little bunny!’ as he leaps into your arms.
The Scythe watches you like an experiment. He beholds your son’s easy smile with fascination, as if it is a thing to be studied. As though you have performed some kind of miracle by summoning it. He is a man of facts and numbers and concepts. He does not understand.
You think that smile is the only reason he keeps bringing him to you.
One winter he does not come. You stand in the snow, and you ring your bell, but only silence answers.
You do not realize until you return home that the city is on fire. You know what that fire means – your clients talk.
The rebels have acted. The Red Flame will tear down the Gods, and the Church with them.
Your child must be scared. That fear powers your limbs as you climb the monastery for the second time. You leap through his garden and put yourself between him and her – the Red Flame. That name makes her sound like a monster, but when you look upon her all you see is grief. You know the anguish of mothers.
You plead for his life. She does not listen. The pain comes fast. It is merciful compared to the slow death you faced at Death’s hand. You are surprised there is still so much left of you to bleed out.
Your bunny is inconsolable, but he holds you softly as you die. He touches your hair and strokes your face.
Thank goodness. It’s with relief that you breathe your last. Because he is not Death. He is good and soft and sweet. You gave him that. That was you.
