The Beautiful Dead (16 page)

“Human? … It
takes—?”

I peer down at
the platter in my hand, sick.

“Don’t be
afraid,” she says to me, perhaps reading the expression of horror that is
spreading across my face. “Don’t be afraid, because it is they who should be
afraid. They asked for this, dear child.”

“This,” I
whisper, barely able to make the words, “is not … This is …”

“Human,” she
corrects me kindly. “With a pinch of nutmeg, if I’m not mistaken.”

I set the
plate onto the floor in an instant as though the thing had become scalding hot.
The fact that I didn’t simply drop it in disgust, that surprises me. My
reaction, perhaps, is affected by the fact that I’m still tasting blood in my
mouth … that I’m still seeing blue in the sky … that I’m, in this brief moment,
almost alive.

“I’ve deceived
you,” the Queen confesses, somberly shaking her head. “I had to, or you
wouldn’t have tried it, I’m sure. But you must know the important things your
devious Pretenders would never dare tell you. This is the reason they banish
Humans and other Livings from your little town … They know the power that rests
in the minutest bite of living being. It is paramount.”

Still
overwhelmed with the sights and the tastes and the aroma caught in and around
my face, I can’t yet respond. I just stare at her in a silent stupor,
listening.

“They don’t
wish you to know the joyous side-effect of eating such things: Life. They don’t
wish you to remember … They encourage you to forget. But I, dear child, I show
you the truth of this world.”

“Whose—?” I
half-ask, finally. “Whose—? Who … Who is that?” Delayed, I point at the tiny
platter.

“When you are
among us, you are without name. It is the Deathless way. Your experience now,
my child, is but a tiny fraction of what the Human Heart bestows. I wouldn’t
dare offer you the real thing, not yet. That experience would be far too much
for a soul like yours.”

“Heart?” I
exclaim, hardly able to contain my outrage. “Eating a Human Heart does … does
even more than this? How—How can—??” My eyes still lost in the sky, my tongue
nearly hanging out of my mouth with the overwhelming awareness of my taste
buds, I can’t form my thoughts fast enough to express them.

“Just say the
words,” she murmurs, clearly satisfied with the effect that little bite of her
“Fruit of Life” is having on me. “Just say you’ll join us, the Deathless, one
among the many of united soul, united Anima, bearing pride in our undeath, who
needn’t mend wounds or restore spoiled appendages to mask the beauty in death.”
She offers her skeletal hand, awaiting the soft touch of my own. “Embrace the
dead,” she urges me.

Already, the
blue sky has started to fade, the silvery grey forever returning to the world,
hiding the sun that, I’m sure, is only a moment’s moment away from rising. The
sun, which I’ve forever yet to truly see in this life. The taste, no matter how
offensive, now departing my tongue like it were never there.

I nearly miss
it already, the foul taste of unwelcome blood in my teeth.

Dead again,
inside and out.

From nowhere
in particular, or maybe it was that moment of sunlight I’d been granted, I find
myself thinking about the Human in my house. John, the one I told I’d be back
by morning. But as I saw just a moment ago, morning has come, and back I’m not.

These
Deathless, they would eat John’s heart straight from his warm chest if they’d
the chance.

Peering at the
tiny platter I’d set down, I murmur, “The only way to survive … is to surrender
to you?”

The Queen
glides to the double doors, taps her fingernails on it in a little rhythm. “In,
come! The girl is ready!”

The giant
doors swing open, and two decaying flesh-dripping guards reel into the room
bearing knives. What they mean to do with them, I’ve only to fear.

“I knew you
were special,” the Queen tells me. “I could just feel it. You’re the one I’ve
been waiting for. You’re the missing progeny.”

The
flesh-dripping monstrosities hand the knives to the Deathless King-Queen, who
accepts them with a short bow, like this were some ritual to her. The guards
then stand at the head of the table where Helena is still fastened. Her face,
steeled with resolve, like she knew her fate from the start and already accepts
what’s to come.

But I’ve even
yet to deduce what’s to come.

“What do you
want me to do?” I ask so quietly the breeze from the balcony could drown me
out.

“You will
shatter your death mother, of course.”

I stare down
at Helena, helpless Helena. I feel my inner tenacity dissolving like smoke.

“And once she
is in six or seven parts,” the King goes on, “we will place them into a linen
bag which will then be taken to the granary posthaste. Then, piece by piece,
her parts will be grinded to bone meal.”

I don’t say
anything. The room is silent except for the whistling of wind behind us,
swirling into the tower and dancing its way back out, tossing my hair around.
If only my spirits were so playful, I wouldn’t be traumatized as I am.

Too soon, the
Queen offers a long serrated knife. “Your tool,” she tells me. “Begin as you
please.”

Helena just
lies there, waiting, lifeless.

I close my
eyes, no longer able to stomach the sight of Helena bound to that table. All
our arguments before, all the animosity between us … Had I known they were ever
to lead to this, I might’ve chosen different words.

The Queen
leans into my ear. “If you’d like, I could make the first—”

Suddenly
overcome with a madness, I grip the knife and press it against Helena’s
shoulder, determined, bracing myself for the first incision. Channeling
whatever amount of crazy I need, whatever amount of anger, whatever amount of
whatever to get the sharp edge to pass through one side of Helena’s body to the
other.

“Oh just get
on with it,” Helena herself groans.

I shut my
eyes, grit my teeth, and pull.

I pull and I
push and I pull and I push.

And I scream.
I can’t bear to hear the sound of her skin breaking apart anymore, so I scream.
Even physically painless as this may be for her, an unfeeling Undead, it is
absolute mental anguish for me. I scream to cover up the sound of the tiny teeth
eating flesh, fake or not. I scream and I yell and I cry out.

And Helena’s
right arm falls to the floor.

“Good job,”
the Queen sings, encouraging me.

I scream
again, pressing the knife to Helena’s other arm. My voice breaking, I saw
forward and back, a dance of blade and bawling, until the whole thing drops with
a thud near my feet.

Shaking, my
eyes cast around the room. I wonder if I could outmaneuver the guards and bolt
through the door. Maybe I could pull the remainder of Helena off the table,
make a mad dash. Maybe I could actually get away.

These thoughts
are Benjamin’s fault, of course. I know better than to hope. I’ll never be free
from this place, or the ghosts of the evils committed here.

I’m forever
haunted. Forever shattered within.

“The only way
free,” the Queen sings, her voice like silk, “from the binds of death, is by
severing yourself from the one who brought you here. I see the doubt in your
eyes, young Winter. Just press down your little hand. Break free from this
woman, my child. Break free.”

Break free,
she says.

“Winter,” I
hear Helena whisper.

I turn my head
quickly, startled to hear her speak. The knife trembles in my hand, despite
having no nerves.

“I can’t do
this,” I breathe, looking into my maker’s eyes. “I just can’t do this to you. I
can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”

“Don’t speak
to your death mother,” the Queen sings. “Speak to your Deathless mother. And
listen to me. If you cannot finish the task, I will happily do it for you. But
it must be done. There is no choice.”

And I notice
the very, very long blade at the Queen’s side now—a tool of her own she must’ve
acquired when I wasn’t paying attention. I guess Helena’s appendages are coming
off, whether by my own hand or another’s.

“Winter,”
Helena rasps. “L-Listen … to me …”

“When you
remove the head,” the Queen instructs me, her voice sweet and light, “be sure
you cut at the top of the neck … She won’t be needing her voice hereafter.”

“Winter … When
you—When you see the Mayor—”

“On with it.”

“When you see
him,” Helena urges me, “and you’re free, tell him who she is. Tell him!”

“ON WITH IT!”

“Tell
him!!—The Deathless King is M—”

And quicker
than a flash of light, the Queen’s lopped off Helena’s head. It rolls along the
floor, stops halfway to the balcony silent as a stone.

Helena’s last
words, now trapped within her forever.

I stare,
aghast at the sight. The tool gripped so firmly in my hand, it’s a wonder the
thing doesn’t break. I feel my lips move, and it isn’t for a long while that I
realize the words I’m silently making:
I’m so sorry
, to Helena over and
over.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry
…

Over and over.

“And that’s
how you quiet a mother,” says the Queen, setting the blade on the table. “Will
you aid me in putting her dead arms into this bag, sweetheart?”

The bag rests
at the end of the table, waiting for me to take it. Now, at the precipice of
the Black Tower, I find myself in a similar situation to the one I was in my
first day as an Undead. The bones of the Deathless Queen’s cheek jutting out
like cliffs of her own, she’s tilted her decayed head to the side, those
wide-set ghoulish eyeballs patiently watching me, waiting for my surrender,
expecting it, willing it. She beckons me from the cliff I stand upon, just as
Grim did to save my life.

But she is not
Grim.

Before it even
registers that I’ve done a thing at all, the tool I bear in my hand thrusts
forth and, with more ease than I anticipated, lodges itself into the abdomen of
the Deathless King.

Slowly, she
peers down at me, neither affected nor startled by my action. As though she
were expecting it.

“Was that,”
she asks evenly, “satisfying?”

I’m still
holding the handle of the little blade.

Calm as a
cloud in the sky, she whispers, “Would you be kind enough to pull it back out?”

After a moment
of uncertainty, I just let go and take three steps back, the thing still
most-way in her.

As if drawing
a pen from its inkwell, she delicately moves a hand to the tool in her stomach.
With one little motion, she slides it out, then drops it.

The clang it
makes against the floor rattles my teeth.

My eyes just
follow the tool as it crashes to her feet. Its serrated edge still bears the
scraps of flesh and bone from its successful job on Helena.

The. Only.
One. Left. To. Blame. Is. You.

“This should
be needless to say, but there isn’t an inch of steel in this city.” She smiles.
“Not one little scrap. And we care not of appearances, stabbed or lacerated or
burnt or disfigured as many of us are. This wound you’ve given me … it is
beautiful. My sweetheart, I will proudly wear it as a symbol of our unity.”

She’s playing
with me. I can’t stand the teasing, not after what she made me do to Helena,
the first person I knew in this affected, afflicted world.

“Come, child.
You are ready,” she tells me, reaching out to take my hand into her skeletal
one.

Despite my
terror, confusion, and uncharacteristic emotion, another feeling overcomes me
entirely: Forfeit. There’s nothing left I can possibly do.

With great and
terrible reluctance, I allow my small hand into hers.

And then she
screams.

She backs
halfway across the room, staggering and yelping out like a banshee. Clasping
desperately her palm where I’d touched her, she screams on and on, wailing with
an agony I cannot possibly justify.

“I’m—I’m
sorry!” I shout reflexively, with no idea what I’ve done at all, no idea what
I’m apologizing for.

I look down at
my hand, uncomprehending.

Six or seven
more guards burst into the room at once to witness Her Dead Majesty bent over
like I’d just thrown a sledgehammer into her gut. I notice a strange sort of
steam or smoke issuing from her hands where I’d touched her … as though they
were dowsed in acid.

“I don’t
know!” I cry out, answering a question no one asked. “I—I don’t know! I didn’t
do anything!”

Then the six
or seven—no, it’s nine—guards turn their ghoulish gazes on me. The combination
of each of their decrepit faces, some missing jaws, some missing ears and
noses, devoid of patches of flesh that ought to be covering insides I’d rather
not see, is enough to induce fear in the steeliest of souls.