RIN HAD LEARNED ABOUT THE LAW of gravity from playing as a child in her old home, Abeokuta. Bread and Butter. That was the name she remembered. Two team leaders would choose to be either the bread or the butter. Then the other children would choose their teams.
“Bread and butter,
Gbaskelebe,
Ma jo gbono,
Gbaskelebe,
Ma jo tutu,
Gbaskelebe.
Omodeyi ki lo mu?”
Lanky arms linked around torsos. Each team would form a giant link of bodies. And then the team leaders at the front would grip hands.
Pull! Usually whoever had more children on their side would win the tugging battle, but that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes all it took to win was sheer will.
Regardless of who won, the result was always the same. One side tumbling to the ground. One child would fall and crash into another, who would fall and crash into another. A chain reaction that caused bodies to fall to the ground. Like lining up little tiles in a sequence and knocking them down. Each would collapse into a heaping, giggling mess.
There was nothing to laugh about now.
Every chain reaction needed a trigger—the first body to fall. It was Mary’s who fell, when Jacob of all people jumped to his feet in Uma’s apartment and rushed at her, screaming.
“Jacob, stop!” Hawkins screamed, grabbing him and holding him back, but it wasn’t an easy task. Jacob looked ready to commit murder. Henry’s instincts were right after all—he’d held up his arms to shield her.
“You betrayed us!” Jacob growled, his voice sounding too vicious for his usual demeanor. “Because you betrayed us, Cherice is dead!”
Mary peered over Henry’s shoulder. Her blue eyes immediately filled with tears of regret, but it didn’t deter Jacob.
“Adam killed Cherice,” he cried. “She’s dead! What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Get a hold of yourself!” Henry yelled, sweat dripping from his forehead. “We didn’t come here for this bunk!”
“Bunk? Oh, so what are you here for? To screw us over again?”
“Jacob!” Hawkins tried again, but the boy broke loose from him. He moved to tackle both Henry and Mary. But Lucille’s hand caught his shirt collar instead. With one tug, she threw Jacob back, and he crashed into Max and Berta on the floor.
Hawkins’s eyes were flaming with fury. “Bastard!” he cried, and dropping the bone lance, he punched Lucille in the face. “You have some bloody nerve—”
But Henry tackled him. The boy had grown taller and fiercer than Rin had remembered during the Tournament of Freaks.
The old woman, Lucille, opened her grinning mouth, surely ready to make an arrogant, unfunny quip. But the sounds that had come out of her mouth weren’t anything Rin had ever heard before. The words seemed to surprise her too, because Lucille clutched her throat in shock. Then she glared at Jacob. He’d managed to brush her throat before she’d thrown him aside.
Strawberry-blond Mary cowered like a wilted flower, just like she always had during the tournament, but there was a terrible darkness weighing her down now. When Hawkins and Henry began to punch each other, when Jacob launched off the floor and grabbed Henry’s hair, she backed up against the wall instead of joining the fray.
One body after another. A messy heap. Rin wished it were just a game.
“What the hell is going on here?” Berta cried, jumping to her feet and watching the boys fight with disgust. “Who the hell are you people? Max?”
She looked down at her brother, but Max didn’t move an inch. His dead eyes stared at the floor. He bit his lip as if holding himself back. The way his fists shook told her he wanted to hit something—or someone—too.
“Miss Rin.” Lulu ran up to Rin and tugged her sleeve. “They’re gonna kill each other!”
Rin sucked her teeth. “I know.”
It was time to end this mess. They didn’t notice her come over. They didn’t notice her pulling her sword from her chest. It was only when she pointed it at Jacob’s forehead that the scuffling group seemed to snap back to reality.
“This fight is over. Any more nonsense and I will kill you all.”
It was not an exaggeration. The group calmed. Straightening their vests, wiping their sweaty, bruised hands against their pants, and fixing their hair, they each cleared their throats and retreated into their respective corners. Rin stooped down and picked up the bone lance Hawkins had so carelessly let fall to the floor. Iris may have torn out Hiva’s heart, but as long as that heart existed, Hiva could regrow his body. Rin would have to keep this just in case he did.
There, in Uma’s apartment, they faced one another. Henry, Mary, and Lucille on one side. The rest on the other. Each sitting, in their chairs or on the sofa or on the floor, except Rin, who stood between them both. She kept her sword in one hand and the bone lance in the other.
“You said we need to kill Iris,” Rin said to Hawkins, getting down to business. “What do you mean? When did you even see her?”
“I didn’t see her. They did,” he answered, and pointed to Henry’s group.
“Rather, I saw the death she left behind,” Mary whispered, her voice so low that Rin wondered if she were capable of sounding like anything other than a mouse. “In London a few days ago, I heard…”
Rin raised an eyebrow. “Heard what?”
“That an entire circus had been wiped out at Astley’s Amphitheatre. Everyone was dead.”
Wiped out? Frantically Rin searched her memories. Astley’s Amphitheatre. Yes, Iris had mentioned it before, once or twice during their travels. It was where her circus performed.
“Correction,” said Henry. “They weren’t just wiped out. They’d been turned to ashes. That’s the signature of Hiva, right? Just like at the music hall. Except we soon learned the other Hiva was already overseas in Europe, fighting on the war front. Unless there’s a third Hiva we don’t know about, who else could have done it but Iris?”
But her precious grandmother had worked at the circus too. Granny… Granny Marlow. Yes, Granny Marlow, the one who had doted on Iris like a mother.
Rin’s stomach dropped. Iris had told her all about the old woman. Wasn’t she like family? How could Iris have killed her? Rin wouldn’t believe it.
“How did you find these three, Hawkins?” Max asked, still sitting on the floor with Berta at his side. Leaning over his knee, he seemed cooler-headed than the others, though Rin wondered if it was just a façade.
“Seems like this one has a special relationship with Lily.” Hawkins flicked his head at Lucille. “She’s a return customer. And return customers tend to be very chatty.”
Rin wasn’t sure what he’d meant, but the red patches on Lucille’s old-woman face spoke volumes—volumes more than Lucille herself could, at any rate. When she tried to open her mouth to talk, only gibberish came out.
Henry gestured toward her. “When are you going to put her back to normal?”
“I don’t know.” Jacob shrugged, his tone as nasty as his scowl. “Maybe when you apologize for getting our friend killed.”
Despite Henry’s bravado, he seemed shaken by Jacob’s words. He was not a soldier. He was a boy in way over his head, trying to prove himself yet deathly scared of failing. Rin had seen it before. She could tell now by the way he shifted from foot to foot.
Sitting next to him on the couch, Hawkins placed a gentle hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “Before that, we need to talk about Iris’s whereabouts.”
Rin’s heart leaped into her throat. She gripped her weapons more tightly. “Whereabouts?”
“She’s in Europe,” Max answered before Hawkins could. “She found Hiva and me in Belgium. She tried to kill me but ended up getting Hiva instead. He’s gone now.”
“But Iris isn’t,” said Hawkins, and after he gestured toward Mary, the girl pulled a newspaper leaflet out from underneath her apron. “It’s all over the papers. Scores of people are disappearing across Europe. They think it’s a plague making its way west through France, but nobody could tell where it’d come from.”
“The Rapture, some claim.” Mary waved the paper. “People are saying it’s the end of days.”
Berta scoffed. “We’ve known for weeks that it’s the end of days, and we haven’t been able to do a damn thing about it!”
“We thought it was Hiva we’d have to deal with. But this is Iris,” Max whispered. “She was denied her complete revenge. She’s just killing indiscriminately now.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Rin hadn’t meant to speak. Her only role in this détente was to menace and threaten them into order. But when she thought of Iris sweeping through foreign lands… when she listened to this group of fools speaking about her while knowing nothing about her at all, her blood boiled.
A plague. The Rapture. Rin wanted to strike at them. But her words moved before her body could.
“Iris knew she was a danger to humankind,” Rin said, staring at the smooth bone lance in her hands. “And that’s why she tried so hard to find a way to change herself. All you needed to do was to trust her. But you each refused. That night Club Uriel burned. Inside the Coral Temple with Hiva at your side. Each time you denied her humanity, you tore away a piece of her soul until she had nothing left. And now you act surprised?”
As her bottom lip trembled, Rin looked up from her sword and stared down every person in the room, her heart thumping hard against her chest as the blood rushed through her.
“What could you have done to stop her?” Rin felt her eyes prickle as she thought of Iris’s determined face, which couldn’t hide her fear of the unknown any more than it could banish her hope. “Believe in her. Why couldn’t you believe in her just once?”
Her words dissipated in the air. Silence stretched across the room.
“You’re right,” said Max, running his hand through her hair. “You are bloody right. I was wrong. We were wrong.” And he looked at Jacob and Hawkins. “We were wrong.”
Hearing him say that softened the painful lump in Rin’s chest, if only a little.
“We were,” said Hawkins solemnly. “We did this to her. We’re to blame.”
Jacob and Mary lowered their heads. Henry and Lucille fidgeted with their clothes.
“Still,” Hawkins continued, “it doesn’t change the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are dying. Iris isn’t stopping. There’s no telling who’s next. What Hiva promised to do in that Coral Temple, Iris is now the one carrying it out. We’ve got to stop her.”
“That’s why we’re here,” said Henry, rolling up his sleeves, either because he wasn’t used to West African weather or because he was trying to show his determination. “Hawkins asked for our help, and, well…” He bit his lip. “We figured we owed him.”
“Stop her with what?” Max stood, pulling himself away from Berta. “With that?” He pointed at the bone lance in Rin’s hand. “You made that from Hiva’s arm, right? In that case, it won’t work. Only Iris’s own bones can kill her.”
“We went to the museum,” Jacob said, gripping the fabric of his pants anxiously. “The exhibit where her skeleton was—it’s been burned down. Not a shred remains.”
Rin couldn’t think of anyone other than Adam who would do such a thing. This one time, then, she had to thank him.
“Well, that’s that, then,” said Max with a shrug. “Only Iris’s own bones can kill her for good. Some other bloke’s bones won’t work.”
“You don’t know that!” Hawkins stood too. “He’s not just some other bloke—he’s a Hiva, just like her! You don’t know, maybe they share some spiritual or blood connection. It could work! We just have to find a way to trap her. We’ll need all the manpower we can get.”
“What if you try it and it doesn’t work?” Henry asked. The boy had begun pacing.
“Then we’ll try again.”
“Be real, Lawrence. You can’t make a shot like that twice. Come on, man, our families are at stake!” Henry shot a quick glance at Mary behind him before blushing.
“Look!” When Hawkins screamed, his blond hair flew about his face. “I’m not an expert at god-killing, but we’ve got to do something. We can’t let Iris live!”
But Hawkins shut his mouth quickly once Rin pointed the bone lance at him. “Even if it did work, why should I stand here and let you kill her? Do you really think I will?”
Carefully, quietly, Hawkins sat back down.
“Iris isn’t the same Iris. She’s gone now,” Henry said, and Lucille nodded in agreement. “Killing her may be our only choice to save the people we love.”
“Bloody hell!” Max stomped his foot. “Don’t you see, we’re making the same mistakes over and over again? Rin is right. We have to believe in Iris.”
“Believe in her? Max… I understand how you feel, but this isn’t one of Chadwick’s penny bloods,” Jacob said, in a tone that seemed to better suit his gentle features than the rage he’d shown earlier. “The Fanciful Freaks could solve any problem with the power of their friendship. I want to believe that’s true, but…”
Jacob went silent. Max didn’t look at him. He was staring at the floor, gritting his teeth.
“But you don’t understand how I feel, Jacob,” he said. “None of you do.” And he turned to his friends, resolute. “I’ve wasted enough time wallowing in misery. Now that I’ve seen Iris again… and like that.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I won’t betray Iris again. Never again.”
Rin relaxed her shoulders. Finally somebody understood. Finally somebody cared about that poor girl, who was trapped and fighting a losing battle against a cruel destiny.
“I wonder how she feels,” Mary said. Everyone turned, surprised, as if a mouse had suddenly scurried out of a crack in the wall. “I wonder if she’s happy… or if she’s sad.”
“She’s sad,” Max and Rin said at the same time, and then exchanged meaningful glances.
“I know she is,” Max told them without taking his gaze from Rin. “Just before Hawkins rescued me from Belgium, I looked in her eyes, and I just knew.”
“It’s the same for me,” Rin said, remembering the teardrop on the floor of the Naacalian facility. “She’s not gone. We can change her.”
“How?” Hawkins scoffed. “Through kind words?”
Rin grunted. What was wrong with a kind word? But they had something stronger. “With Jinn,” she said.
Max’s arms fell to his sides. He stared at her, eyes wide as if he’d seen a ghost. “Wh-what did you say?”
Right, he doesn’t know. Rin swallowed. “You didn’t kill Jinn, Maximo,” she said. “You almost did. But Uma managed to keep him just barely alive. This is her apartment. Now, as we speak, she’s operating on him to try to bring him back to full health.”
Rin could hear Max’s heavy inhale from where he stood. As silence filled the room, he stared into the distance for a moment. Then he swiveled on his feet.
“You can’t go!” Rin said, stopping him in his tracks just before he could spring to the basement. “The operation is delicate. One wrong move and we could lose him forever.” She lowered her head, frowning. “Uma and her assistant are doing all they can, but in the end, it’s difficult to bring a man back from the brink of death. We’re not even sure if it’ll work.”
“Why should we hinge our plan on a miracle operation you’re not sure will work?” Henry asked, shaking his head as if he’d heard pure nonsense.
Rin cursed underneath her breath. The rude little smartass. But it didn’t matter. Iris could come back. She knew it in her heart. “We just need to believe in her!” she begged them.
“I’m sorry, I don’t.” Henry shook his head. Rubbing her throat, Lucille nodded in agreement.
“Neither do I.” Hawkins crossed his arms over his chest. Rin scoffed. If he were so sure, then why couldn’t he look anyone in the eye? “We have to find a way to get rid of her. If Hiva’s bones won’t work…”
“Then… then the Titans might.”
It was Berta who’d spoken. Shocked, Rin held her breath. Berta hung her head and glanced up at Rin, an apology in her eyes, before she stood.
Next to his sister, Max raised an eyebrow. “Berta?”
“Berta!” Rin took an urgent step toward her, but the girl shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Rin, but we need to tell them,” she whispered. “The stakes are too high.”
Rin looked from a surprised Lulu to solemn Berta, panicked. But Berta had already begun.
“There are ancient weapons the Naacal made—the civilization Iris destroyed millions of years ago,” Berta explained. “They’ve got more firepower than a thousand bombs. Maybe… maybe they can even vaporize a god.”
“Berta,” Rin pleaded, her emotions thrown into disarray.
“Rin, Lulu, and I found the device that works it. It’s funny—looks like one of those stone tablets from an Egyptian pyramid or something. At any rate, if we use it—”
“We destroyed it,” Rin growled.
“Maybe Uma can make another one. Isn’t she a genius or something?”
“Even if she did and we used it, what would happen?” Rin shot Berta a furious look. “We’d end up killing hundreds of thousands of people while trying to ‘vaporize’ one god.”
“I’m not saying I want to,” Berta said. “I’m saying it’s an option.”
“We traveled the world to make sure it would never be an option.”
“That’s before you whispered something to Iris and sent her on a berserk killing spree.”
“What I said to her wasn’t all that complicated.” Rin grinned. She felt spiteful now, and since her need for revenge trumped her senses, she let the words fly. “I told her your brother killed her and her lover, Jinn. I don’t think she’d realized it. After all, her back had been to the murderer. But once she knew, I reckon she went straight to your murderous brother to gather his head.”
Berta’s breath hitched. Her face flushed hot with anger. “You said… what?”
“You heard me. And I won’t apologize. She deserved to know the truth.” Rin shifted her challenging gaze to Max. “And he deserved to pay for what he did.”
“You… you traitor!”
Berta lunged for her, and with a blade in each hand, Rin was ready. Shockingly, it was Max who held Berta back, grabbing his sister’s collar and pulling her to his side.
“Max!” Berta whined, looking up at him, confused.
“She’s right,” Max said. “She did deserve to know the truth. And I deserved her fury. There’s nothing to fight about.”
Berta struggled a little in her brother’s grip before giving up with an angry groan and stomp of her foot. Lucille giggled. It was an odd moment, considering the tension. She didn’t try to hide her youthful voice, either. Berta scrunched her face in disgust, looking back at the old woman.
“This is all messed up,” Berta muttered, and for once Rin agreed. Everything was knotted and upside down. She couldn’t make sense of anything except her own anger and the hint of fear growing inside of her.
Rin stared at the bone lance in her hand and felt like crying.
“At the end of the day,” Jacob began, in as measured a tone as he could muster, “it all comes down to choice. Iris is killing, and she won’t stop until all of humanity is gone. That’s simply reality. We can try to change her back into who she used to be.”
Rin’s thoughts turned to Jinn, lying beneath their feet in Uma’s underground lab.
“Or we can kill her, even if it means sacrificing others.”
“S-sacrificing others?” Mary repeated.
“To save all of humanity for generations to come.” Henry turned to her and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “To protect our futures.”
“And what about Iris’s future?” Rin whispered.
“Let’s vote on it.”
Lulu. She had been hiding by the bookshelf, watching all this unfold from the safety of her little corner. How foolish they all must have looked to a child’s eyes. Rin felt embarrassed, but more so than that, she was surprised.
“Vote?” she asked Lulu.
“Yeah. You vote, and the majority wins. Not that I would know,” she added with a shrug. “People like me aren’t allowed to vote, where I’m from.”
Mary, Lucille, Henry. Jacob, Hawkins, Max. Rin and Berta. They all exchanged glances, sizing each other up. Waiting for the first one to speak, to dismiss Lulu’s suggestion as a childish waste of time. Except nobody did, because it wasn’t. It was the only solution any of them could see. The clearer that became, the more Rin felt her stomach sink.
“It’ll be an anonymous vote,” Jacob said. “So nobody has to feel guilty.”
Rin scoffed. “We all live with our sins.”
He didn’t answer. It took a few minutes of rummaging through Uma’s cabinets to find what they needed. Some paper, which Lulu tore up. A fountain pen and inkwell. A jar of flowers on the windowsill, which they emptied to place the votes in.
“Adults only!” Hawkins said when Lulu reached out her little hand for a piece of torn paper in his hand.
“No,” Rin said with a not-so-subtle threatening tone. “The girl votes. She’s earned her right to have a say.”
Lulu beamed at her.
Should we kill Iris for good? Yes or no?
That was the question for the vote.
So barbaric, Rin thought to herself as she wrote no in clear letters several times on her torn piece of paper. It felt like the kind of barbarity that had landed Iris in a zoo and then on an operating table. And then in a museum. Hasn’t she suffered enough?
She’d often wondered while fighting with the Dahomey military women: How much suffering could one endure? When she thought about her family, when she’d killed and participated in raids, when her right eye had been cut and then burned out of its socket by Hiva: How much suffering could one human endure?
And what if humans didn’t have to suffer? It was a question that reminded her of her conversation with Lulu and Berta on the train while they were searching for the Solar Jumps. What kind of a world would Rin have wanted to live in if she’d had her way? She remembered Lulu’s answer as clearly as if it were yesterday: A world where nobody hurts each other. Alas, such a world didn’t exist. Not for Rin.
Not for Iris, either.
“Five votes to four.” Jacob laid them all out on the floor so everyone could see.
Five yeses. Their past mistakes didn’t matter. Iris’s pain didn’t matter. They were going to kill Iris. No matter the cost.
“If saving the world requires sacrifices, then I’ll gladly pay it,” Hawkins whispered.
Dropping the bone lance, Rin stormed out of the apartment in anger and sorrow.