Chapter Twenty-Nine

[cityofthehand]

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Chapter Twenty-Nine




The knife missed completely.

Maira saw that much before her body hit the ground. She hit dirt with the back of her head and laid stunned until they grabbed for her. She squirmed and clawed at anything in reach and rolled onto her stomach when someone kicked her in the ribs. They hauled her up and punched her. A fist rammed the side of her face over and over again.

In the distance, the sounding of the call resumed.

Shrieking, flailing at the pain that came wildly and from all angles, never ending, Maira swallowed a bloodied breath. A scrawny pale skinned hand reached for her throat and shook her like a dog’s prey. She kicked and screamed helplessly, writhing.

“Maira!”

Strangled, she could not call back to Naran though she tried. Her attacker let go and something pulled them both backwards at the same moment. They went down together and she rolled free, then crawled away, stumbling even on hands and knees. She coughed and cried, blinking blood out of her eyes.

She tripped twice trying to stand, dizzy like she’d drunk too much wine. She rose a third time above the grass and saw Kei-zi, daggers slashing valiantly. Someone called her name, but in the confusion she couldn’t identify who or where they where. Her ears rang from the beating.

She turned in a clumsy circle, whirling and disoriented, still. The world spun even when she stopped and the machine shot its magic over and over again. Demon people stood at the wards edge, chanting in unison, in clean, terrifying rhythmic beats. These were not the mindless savages she’d been taught. No, she saw an organization, an intelligence in those too-pale, not-human faces. They, too, had their plans. Maira felt it in the prickle-tingle across her skin, the sick panic in her guts. She even smelled it in the air, a bad stench encroaching on them all.

“What do we do?” Yena cried out, pushing back two attackers as her rope darts whizzed through the air.

Naran screamed back, between strikes of green power and the metallic clash of blade on blade, “We need that device now! It’s going to come down any moment!”

“Delay for as long as you can, I will be with her!”

Graymere. Wings flapped hard above her head, he descended hard and fast. Maira bent double and reached into her breast binder for the paper to the spell. Naran would have to do it. Unfolding it, her hands trembled and she could not read the words for the blurring of her vision and the sticky, cooling blood that wouldn’t get out of her right eye. She got down on her hands and knees, spreading the paper out. Everything blurred before. She had practically memorized it, but couldn’t recall a single syllable now.

“Vharoi going for the wards, grab her! Prime, grab her!” Naran yelled and then he shrieked. Maira knew by the raw cry he’d been struck.

Maira looked up. Vharoi, cool as an autumn breeze, walked away, leaving the fight to her accomplices. No one gave chase, too busy defending themselves. Even Graymere had been pinned by battling his treacherous fellow Asna’isi in the air.

The air of the wards rippled harder, louder. Naran was right, it was on the edge of breaking and Vharoi was going to deliver the final, killing blow.

Maira held the paper tight and got to her feet, racing wildly towards the wards as well. She had no other plan than to get the device as close to the wards as possible and hope that somehow, someway this would be enough.

With each stride, she came closer. The lines of waiting demons - there must have been hundreds gathered there - drummed a war beat with their jagged-bladded spears and evil-twisted staffs of wood and bone. Maira focused on them, on their chanting and knew its meaning if not its translation: fall and die, fall and die.

Someone cried out to her, as she closed in on the wards, “No, stop! Stop!”

Then a hammer blow of agony struck her from behind. All the world lit up in rapid flashing colors - green, silver, gold, black, red, and white. Maira thought she’d been hit by an arrow or a talisman’s magic, but realized that she hadn’t fallen. She still ran. She looked down to check for blood and the pain exploded from inside her, as if her entire chest blew up and she stopped cold. Something - not herself - held her body upright and she looked down again. The center of her very being poured forth light and power so potent it hurt. The ringing in her ears pitched to deafening sharpness and whiteness blinded the edges of her vision, spreading towards the center.

She looked up and beheld the faces of the gray demons, showing uniform shock. Though they all had different bodies - some tall, some short, some fat, some slim, all genders and types - they gave the same expression. Then as one their lips all opened. They screamed but she couldn’t hear it. Then they turned in perfect harmony with each other and fled.

For a brief second, the ringing stopped and she heard them whisper a word - a demon word - before they disappeared completely.

And greenness shattered the world. She fell into darkness before she even touched the ground.



#

At last, she had her wish. Maira flew.

She woke to awareness, summoned by the glorious sensation of air and lightness. Once she understood that, she understood her own lack of pain and the pleasure that infused every fiber of her being. She flew, all on her own. She whipped around freely, twirling and tossing in the air. Reveling, she wanted to sing something, some hymn of praise to the top of the sky and the bottom of the blue, blue sea and the width of the world. How beautiful was the world, was everyone, everything.

The dawn came in full, and the sun peaked a sunny head above the curve of the earth. The force of her desire propelled her. She wanted and she had, everything became that simple. She rose and drank the taste of cold morning air, sweeter than wine, honey, or fruit. Higher and higher she willed herself, meeting the painted sky like a lover. Nothing below mattered or existed. All was sky, all was the velvety night curtain pulled away and the colors of coming day bathing her in red, orange, yellow, and blue. She twirled like a child’s toy, stopping only when a bright flash caught her attention. She stopped, hesitated, turned.

A column of light bright enough to rival the sun rose from the ground like a stone pillar, reaching so far into the sky Maira could not track it. It twisted like a funnel cloud and roared as fiercely. Tiny gray forms fled beneath the canopy of eternal, unreal green. A wave of pressure and power rippled the air at their backs. Some fell, knocked down and throw like feathers on the wind.

Then the trees swayed at the edge of the wards. Their green leaves melted into soft golden yellow, as tame trees did before winter. No wild tree ever lost it’s green, no matter it’s type. Now these did and their gold leaves shook loose in the wind, rattling and flying free.

She turned at the keen of a harrowing whine behind her. A whirling wheel exploded and rained glass and metal shrapnel in a cloud of green smoke down on those in forest and field alike. The people in the field ducked and covered their heads until the last piece had fallen.

Then the column vanished, evaporating as if it had never existed at all.

Maira didn’t know if this was good or not, nor did she know why she was interested. She was, however, so she sailed over the scene.

Beneath her, the air turned bitter, hot, and sharp. Maira peered down and a piercing cry rose up, rattling her in the air. She scanned around for its source. It was not Naran, busy with striking down the last of Vharoi’s accomplices, hacking wildly with his sword.

Lightning, more natural than Vharoi’s, struck the ground three times while he chopped at his now dead enemy - one who’s skull lay splattered open like a dropped gourd, eyes bulging and chest flayed. An arm dangled by nothing but strands of muscle and tendon.

The cry sounded again, she searched harder. It was not Vharoi, bound and broken-winged. Yena stood over her with the rope dart wound around her throat like a dog’s leash.

“Naran!” Yena shouted, without taking even her eyes away from Vharoi, like her stare was what trapped the councilor. “They’re dead. That’s enough.”

Still, lightning struck. The impact of that much power touching the ground echoed through Maira’s very soul.

Kei-zi was not the source either. He made his way to his partner, only one dagger in hand. The other was on his hips. He lowered his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “Gods fuck everything. Just…fuck everything,” he mumbled and then ran a hands through his hair and looked ready to weep.

The clear blue morning produced lightning and still the wail sounded. Maira could not shut it out or ignore it though she wanted to. From the south west, a tight formation of winged Asna’isi approached, carrying people in harnesses. The lightning stopped.

Well, they’re going to have shit all to do, she thought and with the frightening noise and sensation gone, she grinned at the air. She suspected she was forgetting something, but didn’t care as she pushed upward, crowing in victorious happiness. She launched upward only to be cut short by another bolt slashing the air right in front of her nose. She pushed back in shock, startled.

Determined to find the source of it, she drifted lower to the ground and followed above Naran as he ran through the grass, dripping blood and holding his arm strangely. He approahed something she had a hard time seeing, a space her eyes couldn’t linger on very long.

“Let me see her!” he demanded. “Is she still breathing?”

Maira followed Naran’s line of sight. There, Graymere sat on the ground, wings pulled around something he held as he rocked back and forth on his knees. She saw only a pair of boots peaking out past his flight feathers. He raised his head and wailed piteously to the sky. And lightning crashed.

So it was him.

She floated closer, curious to know what he was holding and how it could cause him so much agony.

“Fuck you, let me see her!” Naran screamed again. He held his sword in his good arm and raised it. “I swear I will kill you!”

In an instant, owly wings unfurled and knocked Naran to ground, but Graymere made no other movement. He cradled the thing that hurt him like it was precious, gasping for air between the shrieks of pain he let out. Naran picked himself up, sword abandoned, and came around. One look and the same grief that infected Graymere infected him, too. He dropped to his knees so hard it must have hurt and he stared with eyes that saw nothing.

Frustrated, Maira forced herself to stare until she saw what they saw.

Graymere held a body.

Her body.

No, it couldn’t be. Not the wrong thing with those unmoving, glassy eyes bulged out, whites turned green, fixed with a look of terror. Green fluid leaked from her nose, ears, and gaping bloody mouth with teeth colored pink by blood. Disgust and denial shot through her. This false, untrue thing offended her.

“It was inside her. It was inside her all the time, that’s why she knew, that’s why she ran, it was in her…” Naran whispered like he didn’t believe a single word.

From a distance, Vharoi’s cackling laughter interrupted him. “So it is dead then?” A prickly, terrible sensation followed the sound. Maira pushed up and away to avoid it and the sight of that wrong thing.

Graymere stilled utterly and let his wings down. He looked over his shoulder at the wicked, satisfied sneer Vharoi flashed him. Very carefully he lowered the wrong, ruined body to the ground with a look of agreement traded between he and Naran. Naran bent to touch his forehead to the body’s forehead and lay the hands carefully on the stomach with tender caution. Tears fell out of his eyes, but his sobs remained silent.

Graymere rose and stalked through the grass with wings at full extension. Warily, Yena tugged on the rope around Vharoi’s neck, but it did little to silence her. “How will you tell Lord Shadow that I killed it and you let me? Worse yet, how will you tell your lord that he lost his play thing for nothing? Do you think that taking me means anything? I knew I would die for this, and I am not ashamed.”

“Captain, move away,” Graymere said. His calm spooked Maira, and obviously spooked Yena and Kei-zi. Slowly, Kei-zi turned the dagger in his hand. Yena pulled the rope tighter and stepped back.

“Prime, please,” she said, matching him for evenness but not creepiness. “She wants you to kill her quickly and eliminate all chance of finding the others in this conspiracy or understanding their plan. This is only the beginning of something. You and I know this. We are too wise not to see that it is only one part. She is goading you. Do not let her.”

Graymere drew his long sword from his side. His face was a perfect mask, but each breath came to him a little harder, a little faster. Vharoi smirked and chuckled deep in her thraot. She licked blood from the corners of her mouth with relish.

“I shouldn’t worry, captain,” she said, using Yena’s rank as a reminder of who was above who. “Whether or not you understand, you will know soon enough that you took the wrong side. I did what was needed.”

Graymere’s sword sliced through the air and the blade stopped a hair’s width from Vharoi’s throat. “Why? What could possibly be necessary about this?” he stopped as short as his blade had.

And still, Vharoi laughed. “So pathetic. Lord Shadow rummages through trash to find his agents as well, apparently. How do you fly so far above the world and yet manage not to see the shape of it?”

Maira flinched above, expecting blood when Graymere removed the blade. Instead, he stepped back as though he truly had calmed. “Soon enough, you’ll wish you had died at birth, and you will not get that wish. You will wish to die, and I will make sure that you wait a long time to get that.”

“Do you think I didn’t expect this? Do as you want. At least I won’t squeal like a pig the way it did when it died. Shall I tell you all about that?”

“If you are so eager, you may now tell Lord Shadow,” Graymere said and pointed behind her. In the distance, Asna’isi were landing in the field, close to the bridge. At the head of the v-formation was Shadow.

Disregarding her as if she ceased to be important, Graymere left Vharoi - who only now had silenced and dropped her smirk - to meet Shadow.

Shadow. Though he walked unhurried, bearing himself with all stoicism, he frowned too deep for true neutrality when he met Graymere’s eyes.

“Prime,” he said, in a strained voice. Maira came low to listen better to the conversation.

“My lord, we won the fight, but we have lost -” Graymere replied, and saying that much broke him. A sucked back sob escaped his gritted teeth. Tears fell quickly, one after another. His face showed everything - shame, grief, heartbreak, and sick shock. He looked up to the sky, but did not see Maira though he looked right at her as she hovered. Curious at this, she realized they spoke Asna and she understood it perfectly.

Tilting in curiosity, she studied Shadow as he whispered, “Oh, Graymere, my heart,” and pulled his prime into his embrace, wrapping those gorgeous, dark wings around him completely. In full now, Graymere let out a sob. Maira feared lightning in it’s emergence, but none came. Shadow blocked those powers with his own so Graymere might vent his grief in the way that Shadow could not.

Maira did not know where that knowledge sprang from. The thought disturbed her as did the scene below, so full of solemnity and crying eyes, frowning faces, and that untrue body. Curiosity abandoned her and she looked to the sky - a haven of purity from this chaos.

As she prepared for a mighty upward launch, a voice drifted on the wind in song. The tune wrapped around her and rendered her unable to think of anything but the perfection in its notes. She reveled even in captivity at the self-same harmony until, stunned, she found it.

Where Naran kept vigil over the false corpse, Reva stood. Propelling herself on a breeze, Maira went to her and to Naran. Perhaps it was time she told them that the body they saw was a lie. She waited and waited for Naran to acknowledge the two of them there, but he never did.

“He does not see us, precious one,” Reva said, flashing a smile of lips that were now sparkling blue. “To him, you are already long lost.”

Maira remembered that she had a voice and asked. “Lost?”

“I forget that you must be confused still. You are dead and have died.”

The shock clanged like metal and glass crashing, vibrating unpleasantly through her. She pulled back from the scene, even from Reva. Death? Dead? Lost? No. Wrong. Bad.

Reva reached out and grabbed her, anchoring her to the earth near her body before she could take flight.

“Let go! I want to fly, I want to be free. I don’t want this anymore.”
“Believe me, I understand.”

“Can we go somewhere else? Your house? I want to see the ocean, let’s go away from here, let’s see the ocean, let’s go to your house on the island,” Maira begged and drew closer to her for the comfort of seeing her sand-colored eyes and her perfect dark skin. Reva smelled of ocean and earth, warm sand and cool water. “I’ll sing again and we can have another play feast, I know so many more foods and tastes and smells now. Or let’s go to the river, do you remember the river?”

“Do you?” Reva challenged.

More confusion, more dislike of that confusion. She did not remember or know why she had even said those things. “Please, let’s leave. I want to go! Why does it matter?” Frustration banged loud inside Maira and too solid, like something inside expanding, stretching her farther than she could go.

“Do you even, truly, know who I am? Who they are? See the marks - do you know why you were marked?” Reva asked and pointed to Lord Shadow and Graymere as they approached the body. Darkness fell over the dead thing - shadow - Shadow blocking out the morning sun.

“The device was inside of her,” Naran explained with a heavy sigh, not even looking up. He held a dirty, crumpled piece of paper in his hands. “Andaric hid it inside her. She didn’t know what to do. She must have tried to figure it out on her own, but once she was that close…it was too much. No one could survive that.”

“And the ambergreen?” Shadow asked.

“Still inside her. This is just blood, the spell turned it green. The device is intact. Her body -” He covered his bloodied face with bloodied hands. “Her body protected it.”

“Can it be removed?” he asked.

“I don’t think I can.”

“Mr. al-Shahd, please.”

The soft words made everything worse. Maira rebelled, drawing back as far as Reva’s hold allowed. “No! I don’t want to be here anymore. Let’s just go, please. Anywhere, anywhere at all. The ocean, the sky, anywhere. What does it matter if I understand? Please, I just want to leave and be with you and be happy again. Please!”

“And you still don’t understand.”

“I don’t want to. I just want to fly and go to the ocean and be with you.”

“No, precious one. It is not time for this yet. You must remember the time, you must keep it.”

“No! Just stop. I’m tired of this!” Maira screamed like a child having a fit.

Reva got frustrated, too. “What, exactly, are you tired of? Do you even know, can you even name it?”

“Shut up,” she mumbled, because it was true, and that made the weariness all the worse.

“Are you so ready to surrender that you would be destroyed before you finish what you began?” Reva asked, gently. “I am here to help you, but I cannot do much until you remember. And the dead have no memories at all.”

“Everything hurts,” Maira whined, out of a blade-sharp fear of returning to that body, that place. Everything hurt and was so hard to do and she couldn’t even fly. The unbearable indignity - flightlessness! Her whole being rebelled. “It’s all garbage, I hate it! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!”

“No, you don’t. You love it more than you can bear,” Reva laughed gently, like a parent amused by a child’s tempestuous protestations. Maira remembered something, briefly, sparked by that laugh. It was like sand running between fingers. She was laying, things were warm, her head was in Reva’s lap and Reva, again, was laughing (when had that happened? It never happened, didn’t it?). It was gone quickly, but it was true. It was memory.

“I’m scared.” That was also true. The most true thing, in fact. All of this was based on a quaking, jittery, gray-blue sour feeling. Fear. Of returning and what waited for her when she did.
“Yes,” Reva replied, both gentle and foreboding all at once. “That’s the point. That is why all of this is happening.”

“What?”

“Look, precious one, look.”

Reva turned her around. The pure blue sky above them disappeared into creeping, flat grayness that devoured it inch by inch. Maira jumped at the sight of it, looking around. No one else noticed it, in the way they did not notice her or Reva. “This is what will happen if you do not keep the time. You must understand that, in some part of you. Look at it, look deep. Why is it gray, precious one?”

Maira screamed ineffectually, clinging to Reva. “I don’t know!”

“You do. Tell me. Why is it gray?”

“I can’t remember! Please, tell me. What is it? What happens if it reaches us?”

“Then the time is lost. And it takes you. And things remain until they can’t.”

“And then?”

Reva shrugged and her silence was ominous enough. The grayness approached, gaining slowly but steadily.

Maira pulled in closer to Reva, as if wrapping around and burrowing into her skin would protect her from all things. “I want to stay with you and go to the ocean and talk to the cliffs and have play feasts. You’ll go away.”

“I’ve gone away before.”

“You won’t come back this time. I know you won’t. You’re cruel. You don’t really love me.”

Reva embraced her with arms that were as all encompassing as crashing waves. “I love you as the land and the sea love each other. Even when you think I go away, I am always with you - above, below, around, inside. I’m not the only one. What about Shadow and the others? They sought you for a reason. Try to remember it.”

Maira stretched her mind, guiding herself with the words, searching through all she could know or remember for anything. She glimpsed rolling farms and long vineyards, green hills, then dim light through high, dirty windows and trees and a great howling and feathers. She shuddered them away in terror. “I can’t.”

“You will.”

“How?”

“Go and be bold,” Reva said and gave her a shove, a hard one that pushed her far back from the comfort of those enfolding arms. The distance forced Maira to look again at the body and those gathered around it.

Graymere now traded grief for blankness and Naran still cried quietly. Yena alone retained composure as she spoke to Kei-zi, who had a face like a stone, standing on the opposite side of the corpse. They had taken off her jacket and her shirt, cut through her breast binder so that her chest and belly laid bare.

Disturbed, she looked up, expecting to find Reva, but she’d gone and left Maira alone with the gray doom and no idea how to return to that body.

“Is there anything else I need to know?” Yena asked Naran in careful, soft tones.

“No, you’ll feel it,” he replied, hoarsely. “I’m sorry, I would do this, but I can’t.”
“I understand,” she said, so infinitely graceful that Maira, for a moment, missed her intensely.
In that moment, she wanted to go back.

Yena studied the paper laid by Maira’s head, and began to read. In death, Maira understood the sorcerer’s language perfectly, “Heart that has guarded a treasure greater than life, made a space in between the space, return to me that which was placed with no harm to the brave vessel. I speak by the authority of name and blood and spirit. I command the space between space, the air between air, the world between the worlds to open. What was kept, now will be given back.”

Wincing despite herself, Yena put her hand on Maira’s naked chest. Her hand slowly sunk in. Graymere coughed to suppress a gag. Kei-zi turned around a moment later, bent double and wheezing.

Space between space, Maira thought. Perhaps there would be room for her there, where the device one rested. Perhaps when Yena pulled it out, Maira could go back in.

Stealing closer to Naran’s side, she waited through the painfully tense seconds until Yena’s arm sunk half way to her elbow. No one even breathed until she pulled back. Maira gave a last side glance to the encroaching evil in the sky. Why is it gray? Reva’s voice echoed.

“We’ll meet again,” she vowed to it, then turned her concentration to the body. When the first tip of the device appeared, Maira hovered just over the body and dove as if from a great height, aiming head first.

She fell into darkness, timelessness. Down, down, down until she existence itself exploded into pure light, shattering her awareness into uncountable pieces.


#


The body put her together, and a tug in her heart woke her.

Maira’s entire body clenched and muscles spasmed around the intrusion inside her. She arched her back and opened her mouth, drawing in a first hideous, loud wheeze of a breath as her eyes shot open. Everyone and everything around her screamed and drew back in horror, shock, surprise. Yena yanked the device free and fell onto her back side, clutching it tightly.

She breathed again and again, each inhale uneasy but inevitable. She kicked and flailed, grunting helpless to control her body. Life hurt, breathing hurt, and yet she could not desist from either. Too many things bombarded her awareness, a million sensations - dirt and grass under her body, clothes against skin, cuts and bruises, blood and tears, eyes stinging, chest burning, moving, muscles aching, throat scratchy. She thrashed in response but that only caused more feelings, more life. Closing her eyes brought darkness but not oblivion. Even darkness was a feeling.

Loud, sharp voices crowded the air above her and filled her head with memories, words, recognition. She pulled up rough, dry grass in her fist and twisted her back as she tossed her head, fighting the overload of being.

“Gods, she’s breathing! She’s alive!”

“What the in the fucking hells just fucking happened?”

“Hold her, hold her!”

So many hands, strong and heavy, pressed her down to stop her thrashing. More sensation: skin to skin and then with her eyes open she saw faces and other eyes - blue, brown, green, orange. A pair of giant, warm palms steadied her head, forcing her to gaze up at the too blue, too beautiful sky and one face in particular.

That was worse than the sky, there was too much being there - eyes, tears, expressions, feeling, memories. And so many emotion about that face: Graymere.

“Did we do this? Did removing the device cause this?”

Laughter. “Who cares, she’s alive!”

Too much. She screamed. Feeling her throat expand with the sound, hearing it in her head and outside her head hurt. Blackness crossed her vision and she welcomed it as she succumbed to the weight and stopped moving. Her body relaxed, the world stepped back to a bearable distance.

“No! You must stay with us. Fight this. Stay with me, I beg you!” Graymere slapped her cheeks but the darkness rolled in, hardly delayed at all by his efforts.

“We have to get her to a healer. Who’s your best? She needs -”

“We must not move her. She will remain here.” Oh that voice. Shadow.

“Are you not listening? She needs a healer.”

“And I have said no. She bears my mark still and you will not interfere. Let go of her, all of you, step away.”

“Fuck you, I don’t care what you’re lord of, you’ll kill her all over again!” Naran screamed. He rose, went away. Then Graymere let go of her as well. She turned her head to the side and watched as they faced each other. Graymere grabbed Naran by his jacket and shook him. Maira arched, tried to reach for them and screamed but could form no words. She screamed again to beg them to stop. The chaos in her head got worse. screaming, trying to beg

“Let go of me, Graymere, or I swear I will end you, I will!”

“You do not possess that - ah!”

Too much chaos. Colors blurred with motion and angry faces make screams, yells, curses. Naran struck, Graymere struck. Feathers and light tangled. Flesh impacted flesh and the wrongness of it felt like dying all over again.

“Lord Shadow, do something!”

“Enough!” Shadow demanded. The boom of his voice brought silence, stillness. Oh thank you, Maira thought. Tears of gratitude and relief fell from the sides of her eyes, salty and stinging. “She isn’t safe.”

“From you!”

“You misunderstand. We are not safe from her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We must be sure that what we see is the person we hope it to be.”

“That makes no sense!”

“There are things you do not know about her, Mr. al-Shahd. This is right, and she would want it if she could tell us that. We will wait until we certain it is her. Then, I promise, she will be given the best care. But only then.”

Who else would I be? Maira wondered. She suspected it was part of what she was supposed to remember, but had no time to contemplate further as the darkness swept in and took away the pain of being for a while.