Scoffing: “Oh, cert. As though
that’d
do anyfing — ”
“Just
help
me, Ma, for the love of Christ Almighty! Thought you said you was a
hex
!”
He’d shouted it without forethought, almost in her face. And while the shame of showing such weakness swept him in a stove-blast, it still gave him a pleasurable little twist to see her wince, almost taken aback . . . hell, was that shame of a sort he saw echoing through
her
as well, disguised though it might be?
Whoever would’ve thought such a thing likely to happen, in Hell, or out of it?
I’ve asked you for so little
, he thought, knowing it for simple truth.
Less and less, as time went on; nothin’, after a point, if I could help it. And you — fact is, you
owe
me this. At the very least.
“English” Oona shook her head, as if trying to block the knowledge out; raked her hair back with both hands, eyes shut, letting Chess’s coat gap immodestly. Then hissed yet again, and shouldered her way in under his arm, knitting one hand in his: so small, yet so damn
strong
, too. Five fingers knit with five, to make a fist of ten.
“Let’s do it, then,” she said.
Two turns back, or maybe only one, the Dead Posse swept on, bellowing its hatred. But Chess Pargeter and his mother’s ghost struck hard together, up to the shoulder, backs wrenching — threw their free hands up at the same time, clawed spade-like, to tear great chunks of apparently solid granite away like old sugar, collapsing a support column they hadn’t known was there. The aftershock rippled from floor to ceiling; dusty plumes kicked up, making Chess’s eyes water. And through that haze, that widening crevice, he became almost positive that — the more he blinked — he could almost glimpse a dim array of stars shining down.
“Keep goin’,” he told her; Oona panted, and did. Once more. Twice. Dust like a storm. Feeling his own marrow shiver, arm all one ache, and knowing it must be twice as bad for her. The thought made him feel bad and good at once, like so much else.
A hoarse, hacking cough: “Don’t see — ”
“
I
can. Keep on.”
“Bloody
am
, but
where
? I don’t — ”
“
Damnit
, Ma, stop arguing with me, and
keep ON!
”
So close
, Jesus, behind
and
in front; he could almost feel that bastard Chilicothe’s breath on his nape — cold-stinking, where once it’d been hot. And with that, the last of Chess’s patience (never in great supply) snapped like a shot horse’s legs. One step back, and he simply flung them both headlong at the wall, crashing their combined full body weights through it like some luckless pair of drunks through a saloon window. He felt her skull smack against something as they went — one of the displaced blocks, maybe.
Passing through one more membrane, they fell soft on cold earth, dry and thick with sere, sharp grass, then rolled twice and came up gasping — Oona with her hair all in disarray, a bruise big as his palm coming up on her forehead. With a wordless scream, she slapped him ’cross the face, hard enough to rattle his teeth; he shrugged the pain off, then glanced past her back the way they’d come, and laughed out loud.
“You son of a bitch!” she raved at him, all uncaring how she was mainly insulting herself. “Piss-poor spawn of a clap-rid Lime’ouse gin-doll!”
“So you’ve told me, yeah. Want to see something?”
“I’ll give you ‘somefing,’ you bloody ball-less pillow-biter — ”
“
Oona
, Christ. Turn ’round, ’fore you give yourself a conniption.”
He could see her fairly strain not to, just to spite him. But temptation was far too strong — and when at last her head swung the way he’d indicated, he found himself at just the right angle to admire the way her jaw dropped.
Nothing there, no matter which way you looked: No wall, no rubble, no crack. Only empty air. Like none of it had ever even been.
The breach must’ve closed almost fast as they’d flown through it,. And maybe it was that realization which sent Oona wobbling back, forcing Chess to catch her — no great task, for she’d always been a tiny thing. He held her up a moment ’til her breathing slowed, faces pressed so uncomfortably close he could see her too-wide pupils start to contract once more, before carefully letting her back down again.
“Sorry for that,” he found he’d somehow already let slip, before he could think better.
“Don’t do it again,” was all she said in return, eventually. “Not wivout you bloody well warn me, first.”
“All right.”
He stood still a moment, trying to decide as he did if he found this odd protective urge toward her welling up inside him gratifying, or infuriating. Might be she felt the same, though; she sure was quick enough to pull away, twitching his coat yet closer.
“Cold,” she muttered, shuffling her bare feet.
“It is that,” Chess agreed — and shivered, barely resisting the urge to hug himself. Wondering, as he did:
Where to now?
The ice plain War-Heaven they’d passed through had been more frigid, but there, they’d been driven by fear and amazement, like cattle before dogs. Here, however — in the empty silence of this dry flatland, everything dusk-coloured for ash, or stone, or coal — their travels’ exhaustion was suddenly that much harder to stave off, dull wind-chill leaching heat straight through the illusion of clothing. And for all the stars overhead were those Chess knew, their unnatural brightness and colourless light betrayed the truth. This was
not
the real world, still.
Jesus. How much further, exactly?
All directions looked alike, from where they stood. The grass was silver-grey, motionless even under a steady breeze, the soil it grew from black; Chess raised one hand to shade his eyes and scowled at his flesh’s flinty hue, far too much like a (truly) dead man’s for comfort.
“So now what?” he asked Oona, who shook her head.
“Still can’t see the trail — can’t see nothin’ else, neither, for that matter. You?”
Shrugging, he squinted hard into that bleak wind, felt it draw phantom tears. ’Til, vision clearing, he finally caught sight of a slight variance in the general scheme of grey on black. Saw how, though the light in the distance had much the same washed-out pallor as everything else, its wavering movement identified it as — a
campfire
, by Christ, flames shimmering pearlescent and oily black by turns, coldly insubstantial. A second later, Chess could just make out the black silhouette of a man sitting just before it, and tensed as that same man — square-set, face hidden by darkness and distance alike, yet with something distinctly familiar to his whole bearing — twisted in his seat to look back at them.
Who . . . ?
He knew far too many of this underworld’s denizens, it occurred to him, and not for the first time. Probably shouldn’t’ve gotten so damn many people killed, while Up Top.
As if cued by that thought, the man raised one arm and swept it back and forth, impatiently, the gesture plainly beckoning — like he knew full well who Chess was, and wasn’t too pleased by his tardiness.
Chess made a half-step forward, stumbling at first, then striding; Oona took off likewise, scrambling to keep up. “Where we goin’? ’Oo
is
that?”
“Friend, I think — close enough, anyhow. C’mon, woman.”
“Sure? You ain’t got all too many friends, from what I’ve
observed. . . .”
“You should talk. C’mon!”
He grabbed for her hand, and she came — learning to trust him, for once, or could be she was just too damn tired to fight. And thus they pulled up fireside, where the man was already getting to his feet, turning his bearded face Chess’s way, still seamed and burnt with weather that’d never touch him further. And grinning just a little bit, cheeks creasing further. “So
there
you are,” he said. “Took long enough.”
Kees Hosteen, as Chess didn’t live or breathe.
There was nothing to eat, naturally — not even a pretence of coffee boiling on that smokeless fire, which barely gave off light, let alone heat. Yet Chess felt a sentimental rush of homeliness nonetheless, just to be once more sharing a hearth with the old Hollander, the only former Confederate fellow soldier he’d been proud to travel with, saving Ash Rook himself. Not to mention a man he’d twitted and teased unmercifully, extorting weaponage and such from in return for small intimacies — but someone he’d always been able to depend on, who’d always had his best interests at heart, even when Chess himself couldn’t’ve named them if asked.
“I got you killed,” Chess found himself telling him, again without really meaning to — and hell, what
was
this? Like his mouth had slipped its bridle, leaving no brake at all between thought and speech. But thankfully, Hosteen didn’t seem to hold a grudge.
“Oh, as to that . . .” He shrugged. “Would’ve happened sometime anyhow, no matter what — wasn’t none of us gonna see old age, not the way we carried on. Then again, you always did say you didn’t expect to die any way but with a bullet . . . and look how
that
turned out.”
Silence in his chest, as always — but keener this time, a side-slipped knife, twisted. Chess pressed one hand to his breastbone, as though to keep whatever might be left under there firmly in, and nodded. “What’re you doing here, Kees?”
“Well, I
am
dead, but — chasin’ after you, mostly. Like usual.”
Chess snorted. “The hell for? Places I’ve been down here, you should be grateful you didn’t catch me up ’til now.” He glanced at Oona, then amended, before she could tell him to: “
Us
up.”
“Yeah, I was wondering ’bout that. Care to introduce me?”
He gestured between Oona and their rescuer. “Oona, this is an old war buddy of mine, Kees Hosteen. Kees . . . this is ‘English’ Oona Pargeter. My mother.”
Hosteen’s jaw dropped; he looked Oona up and down. “Ho-lee shit,” he blurted, then flushed. “Uh — sorry, ma’am, but — you’re not — um, you don’t look like, uh . . .”
“Like I’m dying of poppy-smoke underneath some Chink brothel?” finished Oona, acidly. “Not any more, I ain’t.”
“Well, I wasn’t gonna — ”
“Why not?” said Chess. “Go ’head, she’s heard worse.”
“You shut yer gob.”
“Make me.”
Hosteen looked back and forth between them, grey brows hiking. “Oh yeah,” he said, at last. “I definitely see it now.”
That seemed to defuse things, at least; Oona huffed, shrugged his coat closer and folded herself down into a cross-legged squat, while Chess gave a snort, and followed her.
“It was the Rev started it,” Hosteen told him. “Had him a lock of my hair in a bottle, or some-such; called me up, sent me off t’spy on the Pinks. Leastways, he said that’s all he wanted — asked me to look for you, too; tried to make out like it was just an afterthought, but . . .”
He shook his head. “I did find you, once. Watched you for a bit.” He paused. “Never could tell if you knew or not.”
Chess grimaced, not sure what irked him more: the thought of Ash pretending not to care, or the thought of him
truly
not caring. “No. I . . . suspected it, but I never knew.” A sharp, sidelong look: “How’d you get away, then?”
“You think I’m still on his leash?” Hosteen glowered at him.
“I think nothin’ down here’s what it seems, Kees, and I’m through with bein’ the idjit never asks questions ’til it’s too late.”
Hosteen slumped, staring into the pale fire. “Hell, I can understand that. Truth is, he kept his word after all; broke the bottle and freed me, once I’d told him all I saw. Which I guess was how I ended up here.”
“No Heaven for you either, huh?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t tell me it was Rook sent you
this
time, too,” Chess said.
“Naw, that’d be that
other
female of your acquaintance: Miss Experiance herself. Got hold of me like she did with your Ma, or so’s I heard tell, though I don’t think she ever spoke to her quite
so
direct.”
Oona huffed again. “
Fought
there was somebody puttin’ ideas in my ’ead! But seein’ ’ow she never knew me, ’cept by whatever she gleaned from
you
— ” a nod Chess’s way “ — then maybe that’s what explains ’ow she went about it.”
“Makes sense,” Chess allowed.
“I’ll take your word,” Hosteen said. “Still and all, can’t say it wasn’t off-putting — she’s hellish strong, that girl is, considerin’ she ain’t even a hex.”
“I know it. So . . . why’d she send you, anyhow?”
A raised eyebrow: “You sayin’ you
don’t
need help?”
Again, it struck Chess that not so long previous, even if he’d known himself in such deep and desperate straits that only an offered hand would save him, he’d’ve thrown such a demand right back in the questioner’s face, hard enough to break noses. So it was curious — continued to
be
curious — how he found himself more grateful than resentful that anyone gave enough of a damn to want to extricate him from this hole he’d dug for himself, let alone
two
people . . . both of whom he’d wronged, in their own ways, and one of whom wasn’t even here, to boot.
“Don’t think anybody’s saying that,” he told Hosteen, quietly. And saw the older man’s shade smile, slight yet genuine. Felt it lift his missing heart’s hollow like it’d been hooked.
“Okay, then. You two better come with me.”
Worlds, like gods and babies, are born in blood; for this reason alone is the first dawn’s light so blinding, the first drawn breath’s cry such joy to hear — not that we may forget the agonies of their making, but that those agonies may be accepted, made worthwhile. Though life be bought with death, joy with sorrow and creation with destruction, yet they are life, joy, creation; if the price must always be paid, it is never paid for nothing. In the moment of birth, when Time awakes, all things are possible.
It is in the silence after dawn, as the light’s sharpest edge slowly softens to day, that the weight of an altogether different price is felt: a price which terrifies not for what it demands, but for what it does not. For time, once awoken, cannot be stopped. And even newborn gods may know confusion and fear, look upon their fresh-forged world and think, as moments trickle irretrievably away: What now? What next?