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  Ariel comes back wet-haired, smelling strong like the flower perfume I found, tossed away half-empty in a curb-side box, for her birthday. “You have something?” I ask. There’s no hanging back on Sanctuary Night, not if you’re able. She wasn’t when she came down, so they let me take responsibility for her once, just that once. But it’s been eight months, and that won’t stand on Sanctuary Night.

  She holds out her hand. There’s a little stinger balanced on her palm, shiny-black with chitin and whatever bees sweat when they’re caught up with insect rage. “S’what I’m offering,” she says shy, like she never yelled or said she hated me in the sewers while she cried, and I lean down close to look, breath held so I don’t blow it away.

  Under her other arm is her big black writing book, and I know what that means. It’s all that stubborn inside her, hiding, wrapped tight under her fear and Sick. The tough I’ve always known was there; a spark of light caught in her eye. Her Curse, her secrets. Her Tale.

  It doesn’t matter anymore if Atticus said last time. Sanctuary’s a promise to keep Safe.

  It’s her promise not to go.

  “It’s good. A good offering,” I tell her, and smile; I can hardly breathe from the falling-down relief of it. But she don’t smile back; she looks away from me as we brush aside the long wing-curtains and open the door of the house.

  The path out to the center of Safe takes us through the middle houses, all cut-up concrete and salvaged metal and boards, the oldest houses in the whole cavern; far enough back to be private and not so far as to hit the cavern walls. Back when Safe was founded there were even less people than now, and nobody wanted to stray too far from the fire that burned all night in what turned into the kitchen and common and stores.

  It’s not like that anymore. Word got ’round, even Above; more people came down. Things got bigger. Now there’s electrics and a skinny pipe for clean water and no fires built inside for years, and the newest houses slope like subway tunnels against the rocky ceiling where it curves gentle down.

  The oldest of them all is Atticus’s, cemented-tight pieces of shattered slab that he took down with his own hard claws. The concrete’s snipped like fingernails, ragged-edged where he cut and then moved his claw and cut again. You can see the glow of his eyes through the cracks arcing slab to slab, and you know when to stay away. We come out past it to where all of Safe is fetched up waiting, gathered half-circle across the spiraled, soft-swept common.

  We’re late, near the last: Hide is already shuffling back-forth back-forth on his little patch of ground, and Heather’s fingers are tapping ’gainst the arm of her wheelchair, the one that used to belong to Reynard before he died and we put him in the ground. Seed’s hand’s caught her other, fingers tangled together, talking broad-smile low to Jiélì’s ma, Kimmie, while the little girl squirms and fidgets and makes her singing noises in her mama’s arms. I count heads: near the full forty-three people who shelter in Safe. Forty-three Tales in the back of my head; forty-three offerings to make a Tale of tonight.

  For now everything’s all chatter, the kind you get on special days; bits of bright new clothes first worn and washed-up hair. The tins of pears and sweets are lined up on the kitchen cabinet-top for the meal we’ll make together after, and the little refrigerator we use only a few days yearly ’cause it’s so much noise and strain for Jack is humming with cool cream inside. Everything’s ready, set for Atticus to begin.

  Except Atticus ain’t here yet.

  I look around for Whisper and she’s all the way to the back, cradling the old Polaroid camera she hoards in her velvet-and-redbrick house that’s more a museum than somewhere people live. There’s one picture of every Sanctuary Night, dim and slick-papered, on the inside back of her door: all the people of Safe growing older and bigger and more plentiful year to year.

  It’s for Violet’s sake they’re back there, back where the light don’t half reach. Violet’s behind her where it’s dim enough for her to bear, holding tight to Whisper’s free hand. Violet used to mend clothes, dust tabletops, separate the cans and packets that each supply duty brought down to make fair-share meals for the rest of us, but it’s been more than six full years since she could open a jar without dropping it or not stick herself with sewing needles from her twitch. Now Whisper speaks for her, and Whisper makes guarantee of her Sanctuary.

  “Teller,” she says formal when we make our way over. Not from any sort of trouble; tonight I’m Teller, calling back the Tales once Sanctuary’s given. She don’t give greeting to Ariel. People stopped after the first month, when she wouldn’t speak to them back.

  “Where’s Atticus?” I ask, giving them the greeting back: a nod of the head to fuzzy white-haired Whisper in her beads and layers, to greyer, faded Violet with her crooked jaw.

  “N-n-n-not,” Violet manages, and pulls a rueful face between the lip-smacks and twitches and tangles. Today it’s bad. Whisper will have to give her Tale too. “Not-out,” she rushes in one breath, and sighs.

  Under the sounds that are nighttime in Safe is always the ticking, steady and strong, of seventy-one hanging clocks. The nearest one says ten to the hour, and Atticus is never, never late. “Should be out,” I say, silly and obvious.

  Whisper’s hand catches at her skirts and skirts and skirts, showing green and red and tatter-brown even in Jack’s dimmer nighttime light. “He should,” she says. There’s a scrap of frown, pulling down her face just so. “Matthew,” — and not Teller — “go fetch him out?”

  Me, and not Whisper. Not ’cause Whisper’s scared of Atticus, like some. She’s more than useful; she’s a founder of Safe too and has the ghost-talk and knows halfway all of Above, and she’s the one Atticus talks to besides when something’s tough or tricky. But I’m the Teller and lived foster to Atticus for six long years, and I can interrupt him in the middle of something important without causing a giant public row that’d spill out and blight our Sanctuary Night.

  “Ma’am,” I say, proper like you talk to Whisper, and turn for Atticus’s great stone doorway. Even though Whisper didn’t say nothing ’bout Ariel she trails along behind me, book balanced ’gainst her waist and her right hand careful closed, walking in my footsteps so’s to leave no mark. We round the corner, onto the path, and shuffle-walk to the door.

  There’s red light spilling through the doorframe on the dirt. There’s red light and voices, and I can’t help it, even though I got taught by the first year I could talk that eavesdropping’s a grave wrong. I can’t help softening my footsteps, looking back warning at Ariel, leaning down low where the door hangs bad and you can see right in if you crouch just right. To listen.

  And: “What do you want?” Atticus says, eyes on fire, brighter red than any paint I could get and hot enough to give off sparks. But he’s not looking at me; he’s looking at someone long and too-skinny, long and pale and tattered. Someone I can’t number in the forty-three Tales of Safe I carry ’bout in my head.

  “Sanctuary,” whispers a dry boy-girl voice, and my gut chills like the worst winter night in the history of Above, because I remember that voice. What color were Atticus’s eyes when he exiled the first Beast from Safe? it whispered in my ear with a finger over my eye, sharp and poised for scratching.

  Ariel remembers it too, because she freezes. But not before she pulls me down. I stuff my hand in my mouth so I don’t shout — it tastes like stone and old soap and wood shavings — and go down quiet as I can. The ground outside the doorway presses nubbly against my belly. Ariel’s face is cold and her eyes are cold and she’s leaning forward ’gainst the ground, she’s listening so hard. Listening with every inch.

  “Denied,” Atticus says, and steps back, claws ready to snap and slice.

  “I’m Beast,” says the darkness, and it follows him. It’s nothing but a silhouette against the bright of Atticus’s eyes: a hand, a sleeve, a bony worn-thin hip. Atticus turns to the corner, back again, tracking it with one claw. “Beasts get Sanctuary.”

  “We sho
uld get fire,” I whisper. We should get fire, Jack, Whisper, everyone. I don’t dare look away for a reply.

  “You were exiled. Killers don’t get Sanctuary.” Atticus’s eyes are changing colors so fast I can’t keep track: anger-fear-rage-grief-pain-memory, orange-red-yellow-cooldown brown.

  “Never Killer,” it says, rough and odd, and Atticus bares his teeth.

  “Don’t lie,” he answers poison-hard. “Don’t lie to me.”

  The quiet between them is terrifying.

  “What’s you anymore?” it backtalks right in front of us, and that thin, starve-jointed hand reaches out, hesitates. And though it don’t move, Atticus yanks his arm back, claw flailing high, and for a second I swear his eyes are golden. “What’s me?”

  “I won’t have Killers in Safe,” Atticus’s voice stutters. His claw draws in, hugs to his chest; scrapes soft against the armor of his other arm.

  Corner. I bite my lip to keep from yelling that dirty name across the cavern into the cheerful, chatty crowd. I grope for Ari’s hand — get fire — but she doesn’t know what I mean or ignores me, doesn’t care.

  “That’s how you tell my name, then. Killer?” The voice sharpens, deepens down, and the muscles down in my back get thick with true, real scared. “No more founder? No more lover —”

  “Out,” growls Atticus, and all the murmuring on the common dies dead.

  “You can’t do that,” it says, dangerous and shattered. The hand flicks up, and Atticus squirms back, chest and then shoulders and neck. He clacks his claws when it reaches his throat. “You lock one thing out and then it’ll be another, and another, and you won’t be any better than they were.”

  “I stopped,” Atticus rasps, stone on stone. “It’s not me who doesn’t know when to stop.”

  “Oh, Atticus,” it says soft, and the softness is scarier than the rest in its sorrow. “I’d have done anything you asked. I’d have been your sea and sky.”

  Ariel’s shaking. She’s shaking and her jaw is closed tight, fists hard like I’ve never seen them before. The back of her shirt bulges and I squeeze her arm tighter, whisper “No, Ari, no,” as clear as I dare, as clear as I can be without letting Corner know we’re out here.

  It’s in looking at her that I miss it. I take a moment to look away, and that’s when the knife slips under Atticus’s raised arm.

  Finds home inside his throat.

  I was wrong, I realize, as the claws go up, claws that can’t hold his own good blood in. Atticus’s eyes in anger weren’t the reddest thing I’ve ever seen. He falls, ankle-twisted, to the floor. The light of his eyes turns golden, yellow like sunshine. Goes out.

  And: “Fire!” I finally scream, choking, scrambling to my feet. “Fire to Atticus’s door!”

  There’s a shout, and it’s not others taking up the call. It’s Jack, booming out louder than he’s ever done, “Arms to the big door now!” Ariel’s up in a flash, flailing, running, wings humped and unfolding, streaking toward the big door.

  “Ari!” I yell and set off after her, tripping around the corner through the darkness.

  The door is open. The big door is open and the Pactbridge is swaying, stuffed full with shadows, all two arms two legs and a head dark as your third wrong turn at midnight. More shadows than we’ve ever seen, more than I thought the old sewers and new could hold. They howl empty on the Pactbridge and shake it with their stomping feet. And between them and me is Jack Flash, hands sputtering light, burning from nothing but the lightning in his bones.

  Corner’s brought them, I realize, sudden and sick. Corner’s come for Safe.

  “Arms!” I call, and scramble to the kitchen for something that’ll burn.

  The brands are in storage, lined up careful on our shelving beside food, gear, clothes, everything else we smuggle in from Above; tucked away tight against prying hands. They’re not close by for an emergency. There’s never meant to be emergencies in Safe. I shove through boxes and bags and rows of rope and empty bottles before I find them, a stack of split wood and old fabric, and yank down as many as I can carry to the door.

  Fire in Safe is dangerous. There’s not a lot of air where we are, even with the tunnels and vents that the founders dug night after night to funnel good air down from Above. But I burst into the common and nobody hesitates. Nobody stops Seed from grabbing a brand from my cradled arms and readying a match.

  Every clock in Safe strikes the hour, cacophonous hour, and the shadows burn darkness through the door.

  I’ve never seen shadows straight on before. Nobody’s ever seen more than a foot, a finger in the tunnels, or couldn’t describe more than that after, not even for a Teller and a whole stack of founders doing their level best to ask the right questions instead of thinking monsters. Seen straight on they’re tall and spindling-thin, muscled even stronger than Heather’s wheelchair arms, and darker than nighttime, darker than sleep. They’ve got no eyes, just dips and dents where the eyes should be; no wrinkles or creases or hairs or bumps all down the chest and into their tough runner’s legs. They run compact like rats and just as nasty, and puddles drip into their footsteps, slicking the ground deadly.

  I drop the brands, all except one, and kick them back behind me. Seed’s match flares for a moment against the shadows, iridescent, and I swing.

  My unlit brand passes right through the first body.

  There’s no trail of dark, no drag following my swing; the tendons of the shadow’s neck just go paler, translucent, and swallow the brand like black water. The shadow laughs like metal cutting into bone: It’s fingernails dragging down a million chalkboards, across an eyelid, down my spine. The color leaks back into it like ink into water, turns the curves of its face and fingers solid again. It looks down at me, weighty, heavy, and raises its hand.

  “You need fire!” Seed shouts over the noise that’s suddenly everywhere, and touches his lit brand to mine. I swing up into the shadow-fist, trail the smoking beginnings of fire through its chest and neck.

  There’s a smell of damp things burning. The shadow stumbles back, bats at its smoldering, vanishing arm.

  The laughing stops.

  “Thanks,” I say faint, and Seed jogs my elbow: C’mon. Let’s go.

  “Form a line!” Jack hollers, his voice a pop and crackle, but it’s too late: The shadows are across the Pactbridge. They tread like giants across the kitchen cabinets, knock down jars and cans and heads that all smash the same, shatter clunk smack. They lean quivering into the concrete, somebody’s throat between the rag-ends of their fingernails.

  “C’mon,” Seed presses, and we scoop up the fallen brands. I shove them into any hand I see, any hand that’s skin and bone and not variable dark. Behind us come the gouts of smoke, bloody firelight. Shadow-screams.

  “Where’s Atticus?” Mercy shouts, hoarse and coughing in front of the Sanctuary Night canopy, five feet or a million years or the end of the world away. I’m out of brands and can hardly see; there’s too much smoke in the air, too much unpeeled dark.

  Gone, I think, and stab fire into another shadow until its lean belly catches and burns. Gone. Corner’s killed him. It’s not one second before another, broken black teeth and giggling murder, pushes forward to take its place. There’s hundreds of them. There’s more of them than us.

  “Teller!” Seed calls, and I turn just in time to see him sprawled flat on his back on the churned-up common floor. The shadow above him has delicate, long-fingered hands. It would make a good carver, I think, as it raises one black rope-muscled foot and kicks Seed in the belly. Seed is looking at that foot. There’s blood on his mouth. He’s looking at me.

  “Hey!” I call, turning heads elsewhere, every head but the one I need to: the one craned down intent like the fastening of a strap. “Hey, shadow!” I choke, and stumble toward it with my brand out like a flag.

  It watches me one full second, whuffing and trembling with held-back power, before it brings the foot down.

  Seed’s head breaks below the horns.
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br />   He makes a noise, a terrible strangled noise as his skull hits floor, bounces, and hangs broken in a way it never ought to be. The second stamp breaks the horns in half, blood coming everywhere and painting the floor terrible bright colors, and then he don’t make no noise at all.

  My scream comes raw, a formless nothing next to those bent toes and slick arches and the ankle flexed to kick. The shadow looks up as I rush it, screaming hard and wild and wrong, and shove the torch into its fat grinning mouth. It ducks and pales, trying to disappear, but I shove it there and hold it ’til the fire takes its wicked head clean off.

  “Seed?” I croak when it’s collapsed into ash — no, into nothing, a tidy stack of nothing and I’ve got no time to think about that now. I ground my brand in the gravel and kneel down close, feeling automatic for pulse, for the rise and fall of the chest just like Atticus taught us. Wet soaks through the knees of my pants. “Seed?”

  His eyes aren’t brown no more, but big and stained bloody. He don’t breathe, and he don’t answer. My brand tips over, totters onto the floor and smokes out.

  Heather, I think as its smoke blobs and thins. She’s strong but she can’t fight fast, not from her chair; not heavy with Seed’s half-orphan child. I’ve got to find Heather.

  I’ve got to find Ari.

  Seed’s fallen brand sputters high as I stand up, look around. There’s fighting around the common and to the door, between the banged-up metal storage shelves, on the Pactbridge where the smoke is pouring out. A shadow bursts into flame, wailing train-squeal high, and the Sanctuary Night canopy steams and catches. I can’t see Heather anywhere, and I can’t see —

  The hand ’cross my throat brings me down before my tearing eyes even track it.

  I hit the ground hard, back and ankles and the back of my head, everything gone bright white for one second too long. The brand bounces out of my hand, and when my eyes clear up, the last thing in the whole Tale of my life I see is an outstretched arm, five delicate carver-long fingers, a pair of shadow-eyes, terrible and sparking and sad —