The Beautiful Dead (25 page)

“The hell you
are,” John blurts, his voice forceful and his eyes fierce. “I won’t let you.”

“Yes, you
will.” I can’t look at him. “Ever since I came into this world, everyone’s
peace has been jeopardized. I befriended the enemy my first day. They took
lives at the tavern. I gave them my first Raise, like some sick offering I
hadn’t meant to offer. Now, the whole of Trenton and all these innocent Humans
here—I can’t take it. I’m not going to take it. No more lives, do you hear me?
That’s my ultimatum. No more lives.” I glare at John finally, whose expression
has noticeably faltered. “I should’ve left myself at the Necropolis to rot in
their cages. Escaping, claiming my own freedom … That was my mistake.”

“It was not a
mistake,” someone behind us calls out.

We turn, the
three of us, to find the little figure of Megan standing there with a bag
hanging from her fist.

“If you had
not escaped,” Megan goes on, “I’d be dead. Eaten alive, maybe. The others, too.
And you broke John out of the Trenton dungeons. You saved many lives already,
Winter. And you’re gonna save a lot more when we break into your town and hack
down that King!”

“Please,” I
tell Megan. “No more lives.”

“I’m coming
whether you like it or not,” she insists, “because this thing is about more
than just you.”

She doesn’t
have to say it. I know the Deathless took her brother from her. Indeed, the
dead have taken the world. What place can a living-anything claim that won’t by
time’s devices soon expire anyway? It is everything’s final destination, no
matter which paths are taken.

“I have
something to contribute,” she says. On quick feet, she rushes back into the
camp and straight for the giant anvil that rests near a tree. She unburies
something with her bare hands, replaces the dirt, and quickly returns with a
small wooden box. Clicking it open, she reveals three jagged jewels. I can’t
quite tell what they are … precious stones, or just three shards of glass.

“What are
these?” I ask, running my finger along one of them. The color seems to react to
my touch, strangest thing, appearing almost green for a moment. I’m taken by
how pretty they are, how sharp.

“I found them
in the woods after my brother was taken,” she explains. “They seem to shine
whenever one of them is nearby.”

“One of them?”

“One of …
them
,”
she emphasizes, her whole face turning dark. “I think it belongs to them. Maybe
it’s valuable. Maybe we could bribe them with it.”

“Then chop off
their heads,” I agree sweetly. The color of the glass … it has an unfortunate
resemblance to the Warlock’s emerald eye. I remember it well. “I’ll keep these,
if you don’t mind. I’d rather not a thing of value be risked in your
possession, if a value it holds.”

“I’ll leave a
note for my mama,” Megan whispers.

With the blunt
point of a pencil, she leaves her parents a message written on tree bark. I
don’t know what she writes, but it crushes my heart to think the sickening
possibility that she’s written her final farewell to them. No one that young
should be telling anyone goodbye forever. I consider ways of tricking her into
staying, short of tying her to the tent, or knocking her out—yes I’ve even
considered that. I wonder twenty ways to keep her here, to keep her safe.

Sad fact is,
nowhere is safe.

I fetch a belt
to which a few knives go, as well as a small sheath for my sword. I fasten
Megan’s box of jewels to the belt, small enough as it is. After the others are
armed with steel blades and a short axe stolen from the arsenal, Megan chooses
this moment to ask a question. “Why do they eat people?”

Checking that
the box of jewels is fastened to my belt properly, I distractedly address her.
“What do you mean?”

“There’s a
reason they eat the living,” she says. “I know there is. So what is it?”

I don’t know
how to answer this. “Well …”

“Does it give
them special powers?”

“Not exactly.”
I suddenly find my belt to be very engrossing, double-checking everything
fastened to it. “They do a lot of things they shouldn’t. They’re bad people,
Megan.”

“But they have
to have a reason,” she presses on.

“They have
little reason,” I say. I’m fidgeting with the knives I’ve placed at my hip. Not
looking her in the eye. “They took me for no reason. They took H-Helena and,
and, and you, and … and for no reason, and—”

“Do they turn
back alive when they eat us?”

I close my
eyes, gripping the side of my belt tightly, squeezing, clutching. I mumble, “Not
… completely.”

“So you
do
know?”

I take a short
breath. A very short, very fake, habit-of-my-old-dead-life breath and say, “It
makes you partly alive. It makes you see the sun and the sky. It makes you feel
and taste and … and almost alive. That’s why.”

Innocently,
quietly, she asks, “How do you know?”

When I face
her, I realize she’s not the only one paying attention. Jasmine is watching,
the action of securing a blade to her back paused. John’s stopped in the middle
of weighing the short axe in his palm, his eyes on me intently, awaiting my
answer.

I could lie. I
could say the Deathless King told me what eating Human does. I could say
anything, but …

“Because I’ve eaten
some before,” I say instead.

Jasmine covers
her mouth, and the sight of it kills me. John, he has no reaction, as if still
listening, as if still awaiting my answer.

“I … didn’t
know,” I explain to them, already seeing the damage I’ve done in telling the
truth. “The King fed me a piece of … a piece of … I swear, I didn’t know.”

Megan smiles
finally, grips the small dagger in her hand and says, “I believe you.”

Those little
words, they would mean so much to me right now if it weren’t for how Jasmine is
still covering her mouth, horrified … If it weren’t for John’s stony stare.

“You didn’t
know,” John says finally. I dare to meet his eyes. “Someone puts a person in
front of you, and you don’t know what you’re eating?”

“It was a
piece!” I say, raising my voice, frustrated. “Just a little piece! I couldn’t
identify it. I thought it was some sort of … fruit. I don’t know!—I had no idea
it was a person!”

“Of course you
did!” John retorts. “I know what you want, what you’ve always wanted since I
met you. You want to be alive. You want to taste, to … to see the sun!”

“John, I swear
to you, on my life, I didn’t know.”

“You have no
life to swear on,” he spits back.

With the
crunch of slow footfalls at my back, I turn. People from the camp have stirred
awake and witness this exchange. Including the chief himself, crossbow in one
hand, torch in the other.

“I swear it,”
I whisper, I squeak so quietly I can barely hear my own voice in the pitch dead
of the woods.

They all know,
now.

“This is so
unfair,” I say, turning back on John. “I’m being punished, over and over, for
things I can’t control. John, I can’t help what I am. I can’t help that the
King of the Deathless lied to me and fed me something that—had I known—I
wouldn’t have—”

“Can you be so
sure …?” he asks quietly, the short axe hanging heavy in his hand. “That had
you known, you would’ve turned down the chance to be alive again.”

“Almost
alive,” I mumble. “It isn’t the same. It’s so, so not the same.”

The chief
watching with dark eyes, studying me. The people of the camp, all of them
returned to the state they were in the first moment they saw me … Huddled,
armed, scared, hateful.

And John.

“Fine,” I say,
my tone changing. “This is how you felt about me the first day we met. A
blood-hungry monster. Have it your way. I’ll be dead soon anyway. The real
kind.” I give John the most scorching glare. “Better stay out of my way, just
in case I’ve an
appetite
.”

I shove past
him shoulder against shoulder in my departure. He doesn’t move to get out of my
way, and I’m gone. One foot after the other, I leave behind the camp and the
Humans and something else I can’t name.

YOU DID THIS
TO YOURSELF.

Maybe I leave
behind my humanity.

Something I
can’t name.

And into the
darkness of the woods I go, until the shadows and the night swallow me whole. I
don’t look back. I’m just ready to throw away all I’ve done, to put this unlife
to a meaningless and necessary end. Nothing was meant to endure this long,
heartbeat or not. My time’s long come and gone.

“Wait up,
rabbit,” I hear her call out behind me.

“Don’t
bother,” I shout, marching forth.

“You’re mad if
you think you’re returning to Trenton alone!” Jasmine insists, catching up to
my side. “And I don’t care what vile things the Deathless King made you do, I
won’t leave your side.”

“You’re a
fool,” I tell her.

“And I’m about
to be a free fool.” She wrenches the blade from the sheath on her back. “Be
ready for anything, my little rabbit. We’ve got a little Human with us, by the
way.”

I glance at my
side, realizing Megan’s caught up to us too. Her eyes are full of tears, but
she looks absolutely determined, her mouth pursed with conviction.

“Megan, you
shouldn’t come.”

“You are not
one of them,” she says, not meeting my eyes. Dagger gripped tightly in her
hand, she adds, “No matter what you tasted or felt or saw. And all I want to
taste or feel or see is a Deathless dying at the end of my steel blade.”

“But really,”
Jasmine interjects, “a sweet girl your age shouldn’t be talking like that.”

Megan smiles
darkly, I suspect taking Jasmine’s remark as a compliment.

For the rest
of the way, our little party of three pass through darkness in silence,
creeping as shadows creep. Through the woods until they are no longer woods.

Until the wet
banks of the lake turn into the dry, dirty plains of sparse trees and deadwood.

Until the
Whispers are upon us, vacant of its usual noise, quiet as death itself.

Until the town
of Trenton looms far away, then closer, then closer still.

“Is that
it?—Is that your home?” Megan says, her equal parts curious and frightened eyes
gazing at the distant walls of Trenton.

“Not yet,” I
mutter.

We’re coming
at the city from an angle I’ve never seen. In fact, it is the far east side of
town, a side that I hadn’t had the time to visit, and neither Grimsky the desire
to show, even all our outings considered. Jasmine thought it the best way into
the city, seeing as this small part of Trenton burned down long ago and was
never again touched by the city. It’s abandoned, left to memory and dust. I
suppose that’s consistent with the Trenton way: Toward anything unpleasant,
turn the other cheek.

Something
inside me stings, wishing John were here with me.

Then I scowl
the thought away, huffing, and step through an enormous hole in the wall. We
come upon a ring of homes—much like the little neighborhood I lived in—all of
them burned up, hardly standing upon their own wooden legs. One house in
particular seems to be the source of the fire, as though it were the setting
for a great bomb. The one most blackened, even after all this time … Its roof
and door bent out like an exploded heart, nothing within but splinters, shadow
and death.

“This is where
she lived,” Jasmine whispers. “Malory, the magnificent. Malory, the magical.”

Megan stumbles
over the burnt remnants of furniture. I couldn’t possibly guess what these
things once were … so burned beyond recognition as everything is. I want to
pass through these houses quickly to get into the city, but a shiny thing
catches my attention. I crouch down and pull it out from under a stone slab … It
is a photograph. The rubble protected it somehow. Like the picture was meant to
be found … Like it meant to endure. The face it shows, I’ve seen her before,
but not sure where. Her beautiful face. Full lips and an unapologetic
half-smile that seems both wickedly playful and innocent. I know this woman,
this beautiful woman in the picture.

“Malory,” I suddenly
whisper.

The woman
whose Waking Dream set her afire, set her house and her neighbors and nearly
her city afire. The woman who, in a rage, tore off her own face and fled the
city like a fireball. Knowing now what fire looks of, I cannot imagine the
terror of a sight she must’ve been in her frantic fleeing … The most beautiful,
and terrifying sight anyone had ever seen …

Why am I
thinking of Helena suddenly, in such a time as this? Why do my final moments
with Helena return to mind right now? Is there something …

“Malory,” I
repeat, staring deeper into the picture and staring and staring and staring.
“Mad Malory …”

“We have to
keep moving,” Jasmine whispers, urging me. “Come on.”