Authors: Anna Waggener
“Souls are sad creatures, Erika â the only parts of humans that matter but the only parts that they don't understand. Human feelings and memories and selves are all wrapped up in their souls, but they're so afraid of letting go of their bodies. They stay here, in Limbo, eating because they think they must eat, bleeding because they think they must bleed, feeling because they think they must feel, when their skins aren't even real anymore. Not here. And when they can finally face that, they can set themselves free.”
“Free into what?”
“Well, that's the problem,” said Jeremiah. “To die in one of the Kingdoms is, as far as we know, to die forever. It's a thought that even frightens seraphs, so there's no reason why it shouldn't terrify humans, who come here and believe that they've found immortality.” He stared at the window, out of the city so filled up with souls that he had ferried in. “That's why rogues exist. To be soulless, since the rest can't be.” He smirked, and then grew serious again. “They â¦
We
are not supposed to feel. At least not for ourselves. We identify with those who
can
feel. We appear as they wish us to appear, speak as they wish us to speak. We cannot lie, but we do what we can to make our charges comfortable because
that
, above all, is what everyone wants, whether they are seraphs or souls.”
“You are what you're made out to be,” Erika said, her eyes darting to the pocket where he kept his pocketknife. She was thinking of the first time he'd showed it to her.
“Exactly,” Jeremiah said. “And because we cannot feel, we cannot love.” He glanced sideways at Erika, but she didn't seem to notice. She stared at her hands now, her bottom lip between her teeth as she concentrated on a thought that Jeremiah couldn't read. “We're made by the seraphs,” he went on, “from the earth of the road and the shells left by souls who've moved on. There are only ever supposed to be male rogues,” he said, “but sometimes ⦠sometimes there are mistakes. Martha was a mistake. My mother was one too.”
Erika pulled her feet from the floor and tucked them under her legs. Jeremiah handed her the quilt that lay folded at the foot of the bed and went on.
“They put my mother into service at the palace,” he said. “As a handmaid to the queen. They shouldn't have. My father became enchanted with her. He wanted her. And what was she to do? It wasn't her choice. It wasn't even her choice to make.
“He fell in love, and because he wanted love, she gave it to him. And because he wanted a child, she gave it to him. Before that, no one knew that it was even possible. Rogues are supposed to be sterile.” He clasped his hands together as he said that, and looked up and out through the bedroom window, as if he were speaking to thin air and the shattered city beyond.
“The queen wanted her gone, but the king refused. It tore my mother apart, those conflicting desires. She lost herself in childbirth. He had her entombed in the royal crypt, thinking nothing of it, and hoped that he could bring me up as his own, as a last promise to her.
“The funny thing, I guess, is that he put that promise on her lips. Because he wanted her to be able to love, even to love an unborn child. He needed to know that she could do that, and so she said that she could.” Jeremiah paused, and Erika waited for him to push through that private pain.
“I lived like that,” he went on, “without knowing, for a long time. Rogues don't live for long, but seraphs hardly age at all. My father wanted me to be like my brothers, so I compensated, never realizing what was happening to me. Once I looked about their age, I slowed down. Everyone noticed, but they were afraid to mention it aloud. They said that I was an early bloomer.” He shook his head.
“In the end, my father was wrong about a lot of things. The queen could never love me, for one, and, for another, I didn't take it very well when they finally sent me away. How was I to take it? I still don't know what he expected.
“He gave me my mother's home, his sixth house. It was the one that he'd built for her to live in while she came to term. He gave me Martha, my mother's old maid, and Simon, the gardener. It was more than was his duty, I know, and it made the queen sick, but that was nothing, compared to her children. Boys will be boys, they say, but human children don't have the power behind the king of the dead. He had to call for legislation to protect me. I can't be killed as long as I'm in Limbo. The problem is that I'm still a rogue. I'm still a guide. I'm expected to work, and so I have to. Whenever I go back to Earth, my brothers follow me. I've been endangering more souls than I've helped. And now,” Jeremiah said, taking the letter from his pocket, “they want me exiled. My father is passing his crown to my eldest brother, and it would seem that I'm a complication. They had my mother taken from the crypt, but I've always been an official heir. And, as they say,” â he folded over the letter and read from the last clause â “âthe renouncement of said title shall strike the standing Sixth Prince from the record of the Council, establishing him as neither blood nor charge and so revoking his right to reside within the boundaries of the protectorate.' Rogues don't live in the Kingdom if they don't serve the throne. I'll be sent to the Colonies. And then my brothers will break me.” He tried to force a smile.
“But why?” Erika asked. “Why go that far? If you give up your birthright, then you give up your claim to the throne.”
“If it were only Uri, it would be that easy. But to Michael, the second prince, I will always be a threat to his claim to the throne and to his family's purity. I'm still half seraph, and he's terrified that I'll have children of my own. And then what? The War of the Roses, but without British etiquette. If I were like my mother, then I suppose it wouldn't matter, but I'm not. I follow her in a lot of ways, but not in this. I'm so afraid to lose, Erika,” Jeremiah said, “because I don't know what's waiting there. At least I've seen what death means.”
Erika clambered out of her chair and sat down beside Jeremiah on the bed, putting a wing of blanket around his shoulders and tucking her head beneath his chin. Jeremiah wanted to resist her, but he felt too fragile and her presence was too powerful. He didn't know whether he was drawn to her because of her own wishes calling out to him, or whether there was some of his father in him, capable of loving all on its own. When he rested his cheek against Erika's hair and held her, his own body shifting with her steady breathing, he wondered whether it mattered. Humans and seraphs couldn't explain why romantic love happened the way it did, and could hardly describe what it felt like, so who was he to judge? Maybe this, whatever it was, was enough. It was probably as close as he would ever get.
“This will work out for you,” Erika whispered. “I promise.”
Jeremiah knew that she was only hoping, but he didn't argue. He only wished that she were right.
The young man opened the cottage door and looked at his visitor. A grin spread across his face. “Highness?” he said. “Welcome. How long has it been since you last ventured the Woods? I thought that you had given us up.”
The king pulled back the hood of his cloak. “Don't chide the Sickle,” he said. “They call you West?”
“They do,” the young man said, amused. “West of the Woods.”
“I need to speak with your sister.”
West's smile faded. “Of course, Highness,” he said eventually, taking a lantern from the wall. At his touch, a flame blossomed inside the glass flute.
The pair followed the stone path past a line of statues, to the black edge of the lake.
“Your knife?” West asked.
The king took a pearl-handled pocketknife from the depths of his robes. He handed it to West.
The man turned it over in his hands.
“Your crest will have to be remade.”
“That is why I come.”
“Then I hope you brought more than your name, Highness,” West said. “It barters less credit than before.”
The king turned to the lake without answering.
West held his work-worn palm over the water and flicked the knife blade across it. “Blood calls blood,” he said, kneeling. He slipped his hand into the water.
They waited.
A thin line of air crept down the surface of the lake. As it funneled in, deeper and wider, water rushed to fill it.
West pulled his hand from the whirlpool and a woman came with him, hair clinging like seaweed down her shining back. Her dress, tied around her neck and waist, was a worn and filthy gray, frayed and speckled with sticks and river beetles. Over her shoulder, the lake continued to shudder until a stairway appeared, cut in stone and painted with dark algae. She smiled, revealing rows of thin fish teeth. Air whispered through the spaces as she spoke, and to make her words clear, she said them slowly, as if puzzling out each one.
“Brother,” she murmured. “Too long away.” She dropped his hand, leaving a film of slime on his skin. “You never did much love the cold and hungry South. Or are you still afraid of me?”
When her brother said nothing, South turned away and took the king's arm. Down the steps they went, their footsteps heavy in the dark. West stayed behind and watched as the water tumbled in around their feet and swallowed them alive.
Â
Baba Laza cracked his knuckles before he took the clay platter into his spotted, wrinkled hands and carried it to the table in the next room. The children were already seated, with mugs of herbal tea, and he took his place at the table's head. He watched without comment as Shawn loaded plates for Rebecca and Megan and guided their hands to the food. Laza waited for Shawn to take some for himself, but the boy only folded his hands over his wooden plate and looked down the length of the table into the old man's face.
“How can I get their eyes back?”
Laza's laugh came out sharp, like a dog's bark. “You think you can? So arrogant now. Like your mother.”
Shawn hesitated, struck silent. His sisters also stopped moving; Rebecca's hand hovered in midair, a piece of flatbread halfway to her mouth.
“You know our mother?” Shawn asked.
“She came through with the Small Queen's boy. Thought she knew everything. Stole his knife while he was sleeping. It must be you who she was looking after. He forgives her. Fool of a boy. Just like his fool father and fool brothers. In that blood, I think.”
“When did they come through?”
“I could never tell you. It all runs together after a while. Not too long ago.”
Rebecca opened up her blank eyes and turned to Laza. “How was she?”
“Dead.” He shrugged. “How is anybody who comes over the lake? You're the first three I've ever seen to cross alive, and the girls might as well be dead.” Laza smiled when Shawn threw him a sharp look. “I won't lie for my benefit,” he said. “So why should I lie for yours? You aren't any better than a rogue who comes through after giving up their eyes instead of their tongues, and I certainly would not lie on their behalf. I don't know what you were thinking.”
“That's enough,” Shawn said.
“Snap, snap, snap. Learn better manners before you open your mouth.” Laza took a piece of sesame candy from the plate and pointed at Megan. “Her,” he said. “I think that I can help the little one. Alecto cannot use four eyes.” At that, Rebecca perked up. “But she can use two,” he said, giving her a knowing look, “so it is absolutely no go to get both pairs.” He popped the candy into his mouth and shook his head, gesturing now at Rebecca. “She doesn't belong here,” he said. “None of you do. You'll lose more than your eyes on your way to the Kingdom.”
“We've made it this far,” Shawn said.
“Barely. And if you think that this is far, then you truly will be dead before you make it out. There's only one road through here, and it is never marked.”
“I'm sure we'll be fine,” Shawn replied.
“You're a liar if you say you're sure of anything, but have your way about it.”
“Can we sleep here for the night?”
“Sleep wherever you want,” Laza said, waving his hands above his head. “But if by ânight' you mean âdark,' then you'll have a time. The sun never sets on this side. But windows shut, and there are sheets in the cupboard. I am working outside if you need someone to bother.” He pushed himself to his feet and tottered out of the house, moving on joints that seemed to have stiffened just from holding still.
The passageway led to a stone room at the heart of the lake. Shelves lined the curved walls, each stuffed with books and glass bottles. The air smelled of moldering leaves and damp parchment, and the only light seeped, cold and green, from the fishing net suspended across the ceiling. Near the far wall was a cauldron on a bed of dying coals. In the middle of the floor, a shallow silver bowl sat on a wooden podium. South brought the king to this table and let go of his hand. As she walked away, she tapped the bowl with her knuckles and turned her yellow eyes back on him.
“And what does the Reaper King come to ask of South?”
He felt his pockets for coins.
By the time he found one, South was already at one of her shelves, shuffling through the crowded vials. She paused to appraise the clatter of his offered gold.
“Shall I guess?” she asked, her voice echoing softly back against the stone. “Five sons there have always been in the house of middling kings. No inheritance, then, for the unlucky sixth?”
“No.”
South slid over to the cauldron and sunk her arm, nearly to the shoulder, into the simmering broth. She came up covered in what looked like mud, thick and gray-brown, and, holding her arm away from her body, padded back to the king. When she opened her hand above his, a baby bird tumbled out, warm and shuddering; he could feel, beneath the sticky feathers, its heart pounding against its chest.
South watched it flounder against the nest of the king's palm. “A rogue must learn to see the dead for what they really are.”
“A Caladrius?”
She turned away. “A promise parting,” she told him, “which says that, by some, the boy will not be forgotten. In life, the eyes of death, and, in death, those of life. So tells fate.”
The king tucked the bird into his pocket. “And my wife â”
South's glance cut him. The bowl clicked as he laid down another coin, and she softened.
“The slighted queen will live unhappy while her greatest shame lives at all. So it must be.”
“But he â”
Another look, another coin.
Water dripped from the walls and ceiling, pattering against the shelves and floor. “Jeremiah, king's son,” South cried, as if announcing the name to a full court. “Child of myth.” She slit her eyes coyly at the king and dropped her voice. “The boy who never feels wanted.”
She turned away, seemingly finished, and wiped the cauldron's mud onto her dress. The last of it, she licked from her fingers.
“Bitter,” she whispered, and then paused again. “Your last child is stronger than you, Highness. He will fly, like his gift, until they pin him to the wall.” She shook her head and turned back to the king. Looked him dead in the eyes. “But passion breeds passion,” she went on, “and so your son will burn. You, great Reaper King, have condemned that boy to a life consumed by fire.”