TODAY A crisp wind comes from the east. The doctress is dressed in her heavy wool coat. It bunches around her throat and makes her look as if she has no neck, but it was a gift from Hegart years ago on one of those rare occasions when he still thought to give them. No matter. The wind still bites.
The sinners lined up in front of the hospital are not as warmly dressed as she. Rebelling is hard work. It builds up a sweat. But once the moment of revolution is gone, one is left in the cold, naked and vulnerable. If these poor fools would just do as they were asked by GOD, they might have simpler lives. They might never be sent to the ninth ring. It is their own doing, really, the fools. They might never… they might… might…
Her thoughts are elsewhere as she looks over these new apostates. She sees their stubborn faces, each one looking her in the eye, but their pride means nothing to her. They are bound, every one, hands tied, and all show signs of being beaten, some more severely than others. She does not inspect them as thoroughly as she normally would. She simply rattles off where each is to be sent. It is random assigning at best. She sees only two who will make nurses. The rest will be sent to the Factory… in one form or another. She has her orders to have most of them “prepared.” This means nothing to her.
She believes the lies she tells herself now.
Gran was supposed to be “prepared” as well. In fact, the old thing should be long gone by now. Deirdre watches her sometimes when Duncan has left for the Factory. Gran sleeps quite a bit, but she will open her eyes occasionally and even smile. Smile! A smile in the ninth ring is rare indeed.
Once Deirdre even sat beside the bed, and the old woman reached for her hand. They remained like that for some time. They didn’t speak, but the feeling, the sensation of being touched, was glorious and familiar. Like a rush of nostalgia that broke Deirdre’s heart. Yet she was grateful for it. For so long, she has been afraid she has no more heart to break.
The doctress is jarred back to the now by the face in front of her, like a solid emerging from a shape in a cloud. This is a young man she knows, or rather, knew in another life. Her jaw remains set, but her good eye is wide in shock. The young man looks at her in much the same manner, though his eyes are certainly wider. He always had such abnormally large eyes. Hegart has sent her his brother. Hegart has sent her Tully.
“What have you done?” she whispers. “What have you done?”
And she knows what Hegart expects her to do. It is her job, after all. She has to play executioner and have this gentle young man killed.
THEY CROSS the River Hung warily at midnight. Night is blinding, but the ferrymen can see just as well in the dark.
The orphans have led Gemma, Rossa, and the sinners to another of the abandoned districts of the fourth ring. The river cuts through it like a blade with no bridge to span it. The orphans use rafts instead. They are old and look dilapidated, but they are the only way across. The water is cold, dark, and deep, and large things swim in its depths. They coil about the legs and slowly drag one down until one is planted in the mud, and the corpse is a standing smorgasbord.
The crossing is slow going with two rafts and near forty fools to cross, along with frightened horses and the giant hound. Madden seems anxious to get to the forested other side of the river. He jumps into the current with Two and Eight on his back, and he paddles quickly across. The sinners watch with bated breath until they are safely on the other side. The hound and the children wait for the others.
The past two days have not been without incident. Since arriving in the fourth ring, they have been spotted by the Kingdom Guards or their informants. They have been chased and nearly caught more than once. Sary Cledes has begun to show signs of mental decline. She raves at the ferrymen and guards, daring them to follow her, daring them to come for her. She spends the days muttering and raging, her eyes darting to and fro. At night, she slashes and jabs at anyone who comes too near.
The small march now on the other side of the River Hung, they disappear into the thick, ancient foliage. It will be easier now to hide from GOD. The trees are tall, thick, and gnarled. Their roots resemble the knuckles of giants. They have grown close to one another, affording cover for wild animal or phantom man. The sounds of the forest are what have given the place its name. Not Ring Four, District 17, but the Howling Woods. Ghosts live here. It is known.
They have made camp deep in the woods on a hill. Rossa and Royce are keeping watch. Madden keeps Royce company, as Claire does the same for Rossa. Gemma is unable to sleep. She walks around the camp, taking in her haunted surroundings and the resting marchers. She settles on a slope of hill and sits. She cannot see beyond the dense forest and the dark, but the lamp bugs give light and make the world slightly less ominous. She is not frightened. She is in wonder. The earthy smells of dew on leaves relaxes her, and though it is chilly, she feels no desire to bundle up. She has nothing to bundle up with anyway.
She sees a blue glow to her left. Too large to be a lamp bug, it was faint at first, but then it intensified. For an instant, Abrythnia is walking naked up the hill toward her. Then she changes and becomes Usker Lance, the Great Sinner, naked and grinning. His muscles are etched and deepened by the light he is exuding, and his manhood swings mightily from side to side. Gemma notices he now has two eyes.
“This hill had a great lookout tower once upon a time, it did,” he says as he sits down beside her. He is a massive man.
She is smiling and crying. “Here?”
“Aye. This very spot. But that was centuries ago. Things change. Nothin’ ever looks the same all its long existence.”
“Are you truly him? Because if you are truly Usker Lance, I would like to say how sorry I am to have gotten you killed.” Her eyes are pools. “But you’re not him, are you? You’re Abrythnia or Brochnol or some other god. You’re not truly Usker Lance.”
He looks at her aghast. “I am so, ye daft bitch!” he says. “Well, I am and I amn’t. I’m more Usker Lance than I ever was, in fact. I’m back in the fold, ye see. I know the secrets. But I can be Abrythnia again if ye want, if it’ll make ye more comfortable.”
“No. Please don’t go.”
“All right, then. Good. Because, honestly, I like being Usker Lance. I like walking around nekkid and havin’ a wee.” He gestures to his groin. “And look at this wee! Magnificent, eh? No wonder Hegart wanted it so bad. I gots the balls of a bull and the cock of mastiff pony. I’ve always been blessed like this.”
Gemma laughs. “It’s very nice. Colm Archer must have surely appreciated it.”
“Aye, and he does still.”
She gives him a questioning stare.
“Well, he’s here as well, in the fold with me, with Abrythnia, with our soul family. Me and Colm, I always told the cocksucker we was one soul. He didn’t truly believe me until he left his form. Then he gets here and he’s all, ‘Well, what do ya know?’ and I was all, ‘I told ye so, ye ass bandit.’ He always had a thick head on him.”
“We’re all one soul, then?”
“Not all of us. There are three hundred true souls and we all have a home in one of them folds. Until we get the chance to move on and adventure again, that is. Then, after a time, we come home once more. ’Tis a cycle and it never ends.”
“I cannot believe Senator General Hegart has a soul home anywhere.”
“And you’d be right there, soul sister. But that be from his own doing. Some souls rot away, but the senator had what tiny bit of soul he had forcibly removed. When a soul is taken like that, it can’t never find a new home. It floats, is all. It floats on forever and becomes an angry story parents tell their children.”
Gemma looses a tear. “Like my father.”
“Aye. Like yer dad.”
“So, what am I doing?” Gemma says. “Why am I on this march, Usker?”
“Ye need to save your souls, lass, and your souls will save ye.”
Gemma hears movement below amongst the trees. Usker Lance vanishes. She stands, ready to run back to the others in the camp. If the ferrymen have found them in the forest, things could turn confusing very fast.
But it is not a ferryman. It is an orphan boy. Behind him is another, and behind that one is a grown man and an older woman. More and more appear, dressed in tatters and surrounded by lamp bugs. They look at her with the same confusion she bestows on them.
“Who are you?” Gemma asks quietly.
“We’re the Ghosts of the Howling Woods,” an older man comes forward and says. “And if you be Gemma Kerr, we want to march with you.”
DUNCAN MINDS the mixer, but he will not look into it. He does his job, but he refuses to see it being done. Madness waits for him in the corners of his mind, and it is soaked in red, bruised violet, sickly white, and a gooey peach. He must not think on what he is doing. He tries to think only of Lawl’s face. That and that alone will keep him from falling over into the mixer himself.
The smell was the first thing he noticed. How can it be missed? It is the smell of rotting flesh, death, and chemicals. He did not know what sort of chemicals until he was inside. Then he realized it was acidic, to strip the muscle from the bone. The window frames of the Factory have no glass, allowing the stench to escape rather than be trapped inside with the workers.
The Factory is a tall building far from the hospital. One must ride many miles on a rickety wagon with other workers to reach it. Some of these looked like the nurses, walking dead; some twitched and shook; some seemed as if they had given up. But others looked as scared as he.
“I don’t want to go in,” a frightened woman said to Duncan as they rode past fields of dried dead things. She rocked back and forth like the child he and Gran rode with on the way to the ninth ring. “I don’t want to go in.” Her voice was brittle, and what color she once had was now leeched from her face.
They went into the Factory in a line. Once Duncan was inside, the smell was overwhelming. The frightened woman retched. Duncan nearly followed suit. He saw workers in strange dirty yellow leather uniforms, which covered their entire forms and made each person seem twice as thick as they were. They wore hideous hoods that resembled evil birds, each with a long yellow beak and two large black holes for eyes. The whole place was devoid of any emotion. Duncan was given a uniform by a listless worker and told to put it on. He discovered the hood helped defeat some of the smell as it was laced with floral scent inside.
Corpses hung from hooks from the ceiling like beef. Rows and rows of the dead, most of them upside down, their arms reaching for the floor and mouths wide and gaping. The yellow carrion indifferently pushed around bins full of stray arms and legs and decapitated heads. There were babies… there were babies… That was when Duncan decided not to look, to keep his eyes to the floor as much as he could, to stave off the insanity as long as he was able. It would get him in the end. He knew this. But he would fight until Gran passed.
“Do ye know what they’re doin’ with everyone?” the frightened woman asked him a few days later as they rode once again to the Factory. Her voice trembled and made her stutter. “D-do ye know what they do with all the dead folk? They’re bein’ reused, reincarnated.” She giggled. “They’re GOD’s food now.”
“GOD’s food?”
“Num num,” she said, making a quick, greedy eating gesture with her hands to her mouth that caused Duncan’s heart to race. “GOD eats people right up.”
“Why would GOD eat people?”
She leaned in closer and whispered in his ear, “Because He lost His soul and wants all of ours. Soul is in the bones, ye see. It’s in the flesh and blood too, but mostly in the bones. And He wants it.”
“But a soul leaves the body at the moment of death.”
“Does it?” She became agitated and angry and pushed herself away from him. “How do ye know? Ye don’t know! Ye don’t know anything t’all!”
The dead weighty eyes of the mindless workers were on him. They stared at him for the rest of the ride that day.
“It’s not all bad,” the frightened woman said. “I gots to meet Colm Archer. Aye, the Great Sinner himself. He was dead, but I still gots to meet ’im. I shook his hand, and then I took his hand.” She laughed. “It’s funny. Heroes blend in the mixer just the same as orphans and whores. You’d think there’d be a difference. And GOD is gracious, too. Why, he shares his food with the whole of the Immortal City.”
Duncan felt a surge of disgust run through him. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been sharin’ His dinner with us for years. He puts it in the gruel and bread mixes. There’s more than enough extra soul to go around.”
He couldn’t breathe for a moment after hearing that.
Now he simply stands at the mixer. Things have not improved since those first days. He hopes he never feels as apathetic as some of the other workers. But which is worse? Apathy or insanity?
Just don’t look at the bodies. Don’t look at the mixing. Don’t watch those who have been prepared.
The frightened woman is with him at the mixer, a large bowl in the floor run by GOD’s Power. She has been staring into it for a while, her great yellow beak pointed down, down, down. Something is in the air. Duncan tries to get her attention, but she does not respond. She seems too interested in the blades as they mulch flesh and bone. She is too close to the edge. Much, much too close. But before Duncan can get to her, she is already gone. She screams briefly, and then he hears a great crunch followed by a silence. Duncan dares not look.
CAYDEN CLIMBS the ancient steps in the Howling Woods to get a good look at Gemma Kerr. Her marchers are making decent time, their number so small getting through the dense woods is more easily done than he expected. The stairway on which Cayden now travels must once have been an elegant procession up the hill between old homes and businesses. Now, it is covered with thick black vines and bright green moss. Instead of architecture, the stairs are crowded by trees with limbs that block the midday sun as they embrace one another overhead. Below his feet, the fibrous roots threaten to dig up the heavy stone steps.
Losing the Kingdom Guards assigned to him on the other side of the River Hung was an easy feat. They are probably only now realizing he is gone. They are worthless drones and easily deceived. Cayden cut his hair short and changed into a tan tunic and brown pants, but he is not certain that was even necessary. The change in his eyes would have been enough. If he simply holds himself differently, back straight and eyes forward, he has discovered no one suspects a thing. The master of disguise has learned a new trick. To look human.
Cayden wants to see the girl eye to eye. He has seen her in his dreams, these new and disturbing nighttime wanderings, but he wants to see the heroine herself. He’s heard rumors in the Immortal City that she is ten foot tall and wields an axe made from the bones of ferrymen. This, of course, is ridiculous, but Cayden’s curiosity has gotten the best of him anyway. He wonders if he ever felt like this as a child.
So, he has watched the orphans. He has watched any movement in the night that might lead him to Gemma and her sinners. He is the best tracker in the Immortal City, and he blends well. Colm Archer is evidence of that. But in the end—and this is a truth that eats at him—his tracking abilities have not helped him find the sinners. It is the dreams. More specifically, it is Father in his dreams, smiling gently and leading him through the woods on the very trail he now climbs. And he emerges, just as in the dream, onto an ancient ruined plaza in the middle of the Howling Woods.
The forest has taken over, but once it was a great place. He can see stone walls evidenced through the vines and foliage, crumbled heaps of blocks and stone and the sad remains of a well in the center. A large oak tree chokes it now. He does not see Gemma, but the plaza is crowded with near one hundred marchers. Much more than Cayden initially thought. This does not dismay him, though. In fact, he finds the march even more impressive for this fact. He hides in the shadows behind one of the larger trees as he espies the camp of marchers: orphans, sinners, revolutionaries, and nonconformists.
“I know you,” comes a voice from behind.
This startles Cayden, for it seems his shadow god has betrayed him. No one has ever come upon him unaware before. He turns and sees Gemma Kerr. He cannot help but notice the serenity in her deep blue eyes and how her tranquility is made only lovelier by the smudges of dirt on her face.
“I know you from my dreams,” she says. She is holding an armful of fruit from foraging. “I was told to listen to you. What is your name?”
With all the warmth he can muster, he says, “Cayden.” The moment is becoming strange for him. The dreams themselves cause him great distress, but even more disturbing, she has them as well. She sees him in her dreams. No one is supposed to see him. He has an oath with the shadows.
She is at ease now and steps closer to him. “You are of the forest people. Do you see Abrythnia in your dreams?”
“No,” he responds. Gemma is making him nervous, though not in a manner he is familiar with. This feels more like a caress.
“Abrythnia told me I should listen to you when we meet. But you don’t talk much, do you?”
Listen to him? Why would Gemma be told to listen to him, even in a dream?
“Your dream goddess is mistaken,” he says. “I am a weak conversationalist. I have nothing to say to you.”
“Which only means what you do say is important, right?”
He is caught in her eyes. She is right in front of him. He could end this march right now with a snap of her neck. But…
Gemma hears a commotion in the plaza. Royce and Sary Cledes are bringing in two new faces. Kingdom Guards. The crowd gasps, and the marchers are on alert, grabbing what weapons they can find. Madden’s hairs bristle. Cayden pulls Gemma behind the tree with him as they watch. Cayden listens closely.
Rossa approaches the guards as regal as a warrior queen. “What’s this?”
“We caught ’em sniffin’ around the woods,” says Royce. “There may be more. These two say they want to join up with us.”
“It’s a trick!” Sary is shrill. She is hanging on by a thread. “They mean to kill us.”
Royce hands Rossa the guards’ swords. “They handed these over when we found ’em.”
Rossa studies the two guards. Both of them are young and nervous. “What say you? Is this true? You want to be a sinner?”
“Y-yes, miss,” the short, portly one says. He does not look her in the eyes.
“Why?”
“Because we’ve had enough. Because GOD… He’s killing us, every one. Because we are ordered to slaughter babes and grandmothers and people that ain’t done nothin’ to us. The Immortal City is full of rot, miss.”
Rossa laughs. “This one is smart,” she says to a slow mumble of agreement from the marchers. She turns to the other, a sad-looking man with no hair. “And you? What say you?”
This one is looking her in the eyes. Good, thinks Cayden.
“I was there… I was part of the guard when my mother and father were arrested and sent to the ninth ring. They never done nothin’ wrong. They weren’t even sick. I couldna help ’em. The last I saw of me ma was her lookin’ at me, pleadin’ with me to help them, right before they was put in a death wagon and wheeled off.”
“Tricksters!” Sary Cledes shouts. “They’re tryin’ to trick us. Let me kill ’em like they killed Usker.”
“That wasn’t us,” the portly one defends. “The Senator General, he’s gone insane. He does things to people that…”
“One guard is the same as another.” Sary raises her sword.
“Enough, Sary!” Rossa yells, holding out her arm. “These men are under my watch and my protection now. They may be able to help us on our way to the ninth.”
“You can’t be serious, miss. We should do ’em like they done us.”
“We should, aye,” Rossa says. “But then we’d be no better than they. If they cross me, you can be assured I’ll run ’em through meself.”
The argument continues, but Cayden needs hear no more.
The ninth. That is where they are headed. The realization strikes Cayden as a given, yet it is slightly surprising as well. He pulls away slowly from the tree and Gemma. The girl hero is still listening to what is happening before her. Enrapt, she is. Cayden is tempted to tell her she needs to be in the midst of the marchers, not collecting fruit. She is not safe, even in the Howling Woods. He is proof of that. But he says nothing more to her. He steals a final glance at her, wishing he could get a last look into those eyes, feeling that pull, and then once again, he fades into the shadows.