I AM THE EARTH, AND THE EARTH is me.
I do not know when I came into existence.
When I was born, so too was the earth.
And I was given the power over life and death.
Three gifts guide the shape and structure of reality: The ability to act. The will to act.
And the greatest of all: imagination.
It is justice that must guide the fate of humanity.
But what is justice? One must choose what is right and what is wrong. And in my heart, I could not.
So I gave my heart to you.
And so you were born of it. You are Hiva. You are justice.
Iris couldn’t see. But she could feel her body, weightless in the dark. “Anne, is that you?”
That is not my name.
Iris’s fingers and toes twitched. Even in this endless space, her body ached. “Where are you?”
A beat of silence passed.
Find me.
And the darkness leeched away, revealing a wondrous field of crystal as far as her eye could see. Pinks, purples, and blues. Golden butterflies perched upon bulbous red flowers. Every color was a little off, a little too sharp to exist on earth.
But they were not on the earth. They were inside.
They were in the earth’s core. A space that existed outside reality.
Necron’s core.
Yes, Iris now remembered the name of the One who created her. She was not “Anne.”
She was Necron.
Here in the earth’s core, Iris was weightless, her body in the slip Necron had made from her out of the sky itself. She drifted in the still, sunset-colored air above a wonderland of crystal trees. She’d been here before. It had been her home whenever her missions had been completed. Whenever humanity had ended. Whenever her body returned to the ground, her soul would come here.
Tulips bigger than beasts of prey. Frosted blue vines twisting around silver trees like serpents. And a sky where she could see endless earths spanning across dimensions.
The other Hiva had come from one of those earths. So too had the invaders.
On one earth, humans have become enslaved by the machines they’ve built, Necron had told her while weaving her body anew. On another earth, four warriors battle in an endless cycle against creatures of nightmare that move like phantoms across the lands. On one earth, the diseases of bigotry, capitalist greed, and political strife have brought the planet and its billions of inhabitants to the brink of collapse.
And on another earth, they plot our destruction. Or rather, the destruction of humans. They heard the distortions of space and time echoing from our earth. And so they waited to strike and conquer. All they needed was for someone to open a door.
The Helios. The distortions of space and time had been produced by the Enlightenment Committee, fiddling with advanced technology they did not understand. What a great irony indeed. On this earth, the Enlighteners had planned their invasion, not knowing that they were another’s prey. Not knowing that their hubris would be their own downfall. Of course there were other earths with megalomaniacal conquerors, just as surely as there were other earths with Hivas. Would they still have been able to invade if humanity hadn’t been so obsessed with tearing holes in dimensions? If they hadn’t let their obsession with progress destroy them?
The worst deaths are brought about by one’s own hands.
Twisting out of the ground, the green stems as tall as Iris itself, was a flower she’d seen on earth. There it was called the calla lily. Its pure white spiraling petal folded itself into a single, elegant tube.
Here, there were fields of them. Each lily was a soul. Iris maneuvered around them, her feet so light, she barely felt their crystal edges. This place was a gathering of souls. She brought out her hand and let a blood-red butterfly land upon her finger. Every tension in her body fell away. The knots in her stomach unraveled. This was her home.
And yet she felt sorrow. The souls here, she could sense the anima of each. All of humanity had gathered here.
Where are you? she called out to her friends and family, her words echoing in the permanent sunset sky.
She knew how to find them.
Her feet did not hurt as she crossed the endless fields. Her legs did not grow tired. She followed their anima. One by one, she followed them.
When people die, their bodies return to the earth in some fashion or another. But their souls don’t disappear. They travel to the planet’s core, where they wait for rebirth.
Iris’s own words, during those wondrous and torturous days she had believed she was speaking to someone else.
“Jinn.” She let another butterfly rest upon her finger. “I want to see you again.” A tear dripped down her cheek.
Here in the earth’s core, in Necron’s core, souls were never lonely. They lived out their happiest fantasies until they were called back to the earth’s surface to live anew.
In that case, she would find them. Before she found Necron, she would find each of them. She came across the first soul. The calla lily trembled and swayed, though there was no wind. She touched it and let her mind wander deep into its dream.
“Brother!” A young woman burst out of the double doors of a grand cathedral, ran down the steps, and crashed through the black iron fence. “Okay, we did the prayer thing. So? Where should we go now?”
She was speaking Spanish, her brown curls flying about her face as she twisted around. Berta. The breeze here in the City of Oranges was fresh against her warm-toned skin.
“I’m not going anywhere until my prayer gets answered.” Max sat down upon the steps of the cathedral with an obstinate huff, crossing his arms. “How many times have I prayed and prayed, huh? Mom says if you want something, you pray. Well, I prayed, and now I want what’s due.” He slapped the back of his hand against his other palm and lay down against the cathedral steps. The other worshippers filing out of the church stepped around him, muttering to one another with irritation.
“Brother, come on, get up!” Berta’s cheeks turned a shade of red as she gripped the fence. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“Nope!” Max said loudly, and began his obnoxious whistling, crossing one leg over the other. “Not until I get what I prayed for. That’s how it works, isn’t it?”
“Ugh!” Berta groaned, stomping her feet and laying her head against the fence, apologizing quietly as the other churchgoers passed by her. “Okay, so what do you want?”
At this, Max sat up in one straight shot, a goofy grin on his face. “A girlfriend,” he said immediately.
Berta made a face. “What?”
“A really, really gorgeous one—you know, luscious dark skin, shiny brown eyes, and—” He waved his hands as if tracing the curves of his ideal body.
“Gross.”
“What’s gross about it?” Max shrugged. “What’s gross about wanting someone to, you know—”
“Cook for you and clean for you and—”
“No, no, trust me, I would do the cooking and the cleaning.” Max wagged his finger at her. “Just like I do at home. It’s what a man does. Right, Mom?”
The woman who stood on the steps above her son was shorter than all of them but must have seemed tall to Max, as he lay back and looked up into her face. He gave her a mischievous grin.
“Silly boy,” she said, and pulled him up from the steps. Max followed his mother dutifully. “You do cook and you do clean, but only because I taught you. I hope you don’t forget that when you get your pretty wife.”
Max blinked. “Are you jealous? You’re not jealous, are you, mami?” And he swept her up in a hug from behind, drawing a sweet little gasp from her. “Believe me, no one could ever replace you. Or you, sis.”
Berta blushed and turned away. “Ew, as if I care!”
But she did care. This was Berta’s dream. To be reunited with her family.
“Hey, you know what?” she said as her brother and mother passed the gate and traveled into the city core. “There are these girls I met in town. They’re visiting from other countries, and I kind of think they’re great.” She was blushing again, because making new friends didn’t come so easily to the aloof girl.
“Yeah?” said Max, his eyebrow arched with interest.
“Yeah. You guys should meet them. Their names are Lulu and Rin….”
Smiling sadly, Iris left Berta’s soul alone. As Iris continued down the crystal forest, she thought about how Berta would be in this dream for eternity until it was time to be reborn again. It was a kind of mercy given to her by Necron. But something about this mercy felt hollow.
Yards away, she found another soul. The flower bent from side to side. She touched it.
A large haunted house at the center of a mountaintop, isolated from the bustling city nearby. This was not just any house. Inside this gothic manor, a troop of expert hunters had been hired by the Bannerworths to hunt the bane of their lives: Sir Francis Varney. There was but one problem. Varney was not a normal lord. Rightfully so, this troop of hunters were not regular hunters.
They were vampire hunters.
“All right, then. Come on, lads, this vampire’s somewhere in this haunted house.” In the rotunda, under a grand chandelier, Max placed a wooden crossbow over his shoulder with a cavalier swagger and turned to his group. “Well then, who’s got the garlic? Come on, now, we don’t have all day.”
“I didn’t bring it.” In her brown buckled trousers, Cherice checked the holes in her belt and shrugged. “Nope. Don’t got it. What about you, boys?”
Jacob immediately threw a sack of tools on the Persian rug. “Holy water, stakes, some more penny bloods—hold on, why are these here?”
“Oh, some of those are mine.” Max pointed, squeezing his jaw sheepishly. “Must have gotten mixed up in there.”
“Some of those are definitely mine too.” Chadwick Winterbottom, with his bright ginger hair, slapped his hand against his forehead and leaned over Jacob’s shoulder. “Actually, I think I drew some of those.”
The door to the manor closed behind them with a creak and a slam. “Varney’s lot aren’t outside, which means they’ve definitely escaped into the manor—do you have the garlic?” Hawkins asked.
“We’re trying to find it!” Chadwick and Jacob said at the same time, and stared at each other awkwardly.
“I bet Jacob forgot it,” Cherice grumbled.
Jacob blushed and pouted. “I did not!”
“You always forget things! How are we supposed to make any good money if you keep forgetting the damn garlic?”
“Hold on, I drew this one too.” Chadwick was searching through the penny bloods in the sack of weapons while Hawkins yelled at them all to quiet down.
Max sighed and rubbed the back of his head. But he smiled. This was his crew. He was still deciding on the name. The Phantom Troop, perhaps. The Vampire Hunters. Something cool like that. He didn’t want to steal “The Fanciful Freaks” from Chadwick, but he may just have to. Hmm… He’d ask Berta and Lily when they got back home. They were always good with that sort of thing.
“All right, Varney, you vampire.” Max stroked his crossbow lovingly. “You’re not getting the best of us.” And he turned to the others. “I’ll be off! You guys make sure to find the garlic.”
“Just remember, Maxey, there’s a pure-hearted maiden trapped in the dungeon,” Cherice called out. “Gotta save her first. Those are the rules.”
“Of course, of course. Damsels in distress, you think I don’t read?” Max ran off through the mansion and down the twisting stairs into the basement.
He took a flaming torch from the wall and let it light his way through the basement until he came to the cellar.
A shadow moved.
“Varney!”
Max could see the vampire from the light that slipped through the little window bars. The monster was skin and bones, his face barely that of a man. A long red bedsheet was draped over his body, and in his arms—
Max gasped. In his arms was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. A woman with luscious dark skin and glittering brown eyes, in a fluttering white nightdress. Her braids fell over the arms of the vampire who held her.
“You will never take her from me,” Varney the Vampire promised as he moved to begin his feast of blood.
Stirred by the maiden’s beauty, Max aimed: one swift blow to the chest. But it missed his heart. Varney twisted in agony. Shrieking, he ripped the bars off the window and slipped through, fleeing into the night.
The battle against Varney would continue. But for now he’d saved an innocent soul. For Max, that was enough.
He scooped the maiden up in his arms, his heart pounding at the sight of her. “You’re all right now,” he whispered when she struggled a bit in his embrace, a little frightened. He waited for that fear to subside. “My name is Max. Maximo Morales. I’m the leader of the—” He bit his lip. “Fanciful… Phantom Troop.” He’d really have to work on the name. “What’s your name?”
The girl’s smile made his heart skip a beat. “My name is Iris….”
Iris smiled as she left Max’s fantasy. Of course a boy who’d spent so much of his childhood indulging in the stories of penny dreadfuls would want to live in one. A silly boy indeed. Iris wiped the wet corners of her eyes and continued down the field.
She met many others like him. Jacob. His dream was a peaceful one, visiting his Inuit family in Labrador. Speaking his native language as he ate and laughed with them. He’d traveled the world and come back to live. But he promised them that he’d let them meet someone special. Someone he’d met. Someone he loved.
In Hawkins’s fantasy, he lay on a bed of incense and flower petals—the most expensive room in all of Paris. There he, Jacob, and Chadwick Winterbottom fulfilled their love and carnal passions without restraint, drinking the most expensive champagne the hotel had to offer them.
She saw Henry’s too—such a simple dream. He was an adult, running Whittle’s toy shop with his grandfather and his forever-fretting wife, Mary. Between the talent of the Whittle men and Mary’s business sense, the three of them brought joy to children around the world. And it touched Iris more than she could say when she reached Mary’s soul and realized that the two shared the exact same dream.
Lucille would not be bound by the laws of marriage. In her dream she sailed the high seas, standing upon the mast with one woman on each arm, adventuring through the earth, doing as she pleased, singing her operas and fleeing the police while she gathered up the world’s wealth.
And Uma. Uma’s schools across the earth made geniuses out of women like them, women from the countries men pillaged. Geniuses who moved the evolution of man forward with their intellect and scientific prowess. There was no need for world governments. Politicians around the world had given up their power to these women of science, for it was they who deserved the power to create policy and infrastructure, to build cities and systems of health and wealth. The entire British Parliament bowed at her feet, as well as the Queen of England and her countless children.
Fantasies were so strange, Iris thought as she passed through souls—some whom she cherished, some she didn’t. The deepest desires of humans were sometimes not so pure. Many desired wealth and power but didn’t have the means to gain it. Others would give anything to destroy the lives of those they deemed inferior but had no power to achieve it. Everyone wanted happiness, but what was happiness for some was hell for others. And when they eventually were reborn onto the earth, they would certainly seek to attain it if they could—some regardless of the cost.
Perhaps that was why Hiva had been created. To sort out these dreams. To determine what was just and what wasn’t.
In her mind, the delineation of right and wrong was already forming. Indeed, some dreams shouldn’t come true. For some, their dreams coming true meant the pain and murder of others. Who am I to decide? Iris thought for a moment, letting her hands slide along the prickly crystal vines, until another thought, bold and daring, replaced it.
Why shouldn’t I be the one to decide?
What kind of world would she want if she could make it? Iris stroked her chin. She came to two nearby flowers that she thought would tell her the answer. She sucked in a breath.
Neither were complex dreams. The first was quite simple, really. They all sat on a tree log eating mangoes. Iris, Granny, and Rin. Rin’s parents. Lulu and Berta. Lulu’s brother and parents. In Abeokuta, they sat and talked and laughed like the family that they were. Iris saw herself laughing, shoving a piece of melon in Rin’s mouth. Rin’s two eyes, bright and beautiful, blinked rapidly as she giggled, pushing the fruit into her mouth and adjusting her wrap.
“There’s one story I’d love to tell you,” said Granny. “About the time I saw a witch in the well.”
“Not a witch!” Rin covered her mouth before feeling embarrassed at her outburst of fear.
While Iris gave her a teasing slap on the back, Granny clucked her tongue. “Listen carefully, ọmọ—there are some things you should know before you go out to the well at night….”
That was Rin’s dream. Granny’s dream was so incredibly similar, it made Iris’s heart smile. But this time they were youths. Adelola, the younger sister, and Adebisi, the older sister. They played together in the town streets with Iris carrying a bucket of water upon her head and Rin chopping wood with a machete, while Egg squawked near a gaggle of chickens. The air of tranquility here was unmatched.
Lulu’s dream was even simpler. Inside the girl’s fantasy, everyone held hands. Everyone. No one was left out. No one was deemed superior to anyone else. It didn’t matter who they were or how they were born. Across the beautiful earth, people held hands and were good to each other. Iris liked that dream.
What if some people had the power to create the world they wanted? It was already the case with humankind. The powerful dreamed up a world and brought it to fruition through the tools they had in their possession. But what about worlds like this?
The last flower came close to the end of the field. Iris did not want to touch it. And yet the longing was too strong. She wanted to see him. The real him. And the world he wished for…
She touched his flower.
And suddenly she was on a stage. The hall was spacious and luxuriously designed with red curtains stretched around the golden-plated walls. The seats of the audience were empty. The spotlight above was on one man standing upon the tightrope. In the first circus tights Granny had ever made for him, he reached out his hand to her.
“Iris!” he called.
Iris didn’t waste any time. She climbed up the ladder to her platform. It was only when her feet touched the surface that she realized her clothes had changed into a light, moss-green dress that brushed her thighs. The first outfit that Granny had ever made her.
With the brightest laugh, she flipped onto the tightrope and let him catch her. The bedazzling young man with brown skin and fierce catlike eyes clutched the rope with his toes, expert precision keeping him in place even as he held her up in the sky. There were feathers in her braids, green to match her dress. Yes, just like back then. Their first performance together.
They wheeled their bodies sideways. He gripped her hands and tossed her up in the air. She flipped, breathing in the freedom of the breeze rushing past her skin. And when he caught her, he twirled her around. It was as if they were dancing across a ballroom.
Forever. She could dance with him forever like this.
Jinn drew her into him, squeezing her tightly, her back against his chest. “Iris,” he whispered. “What do you think of me?”
He’d asked her once before. This time she answered without hesitation.
“I love you,” she said, touching his face.
“You do?” His voice sounded so youthful and bright, so hopeful and joyful. She’d always thought of Jinn as a cantankerous geezer in a young man’s body, but now he really was just like a boy, brimming with love and excitement. He tossed her up in the air, flipping her, catching her with his strong arms before letting her back down onto the rope.
“But I don’t know your name,” Iris said.
“Didn’t I tell you? It’s Emin. Emin Ibrahim.”
“Emin…” With a finger, Iris wiped a tear from her eyes. “Should I still call you Jinn?”
“You can call me whatever you want,” Jinn said. “As long as you stay with me.”
They kissed. His warm lips felt like home.
Love. Family. Peace. Warmth. Goodness. Health. Togetherness. Equality. Friendship.
Iris didn’t care what anyone said. This is how the world should be. This was it.
It was with that conviction that she left the dream of Jinn’s soul as she came to the end of the field.
There, “Anne” was waiting for her.
No, not Anne—Necron. As Iris approached, Necron waited for her in Anne’s form, a little Black girl who held out a coin in front of her. There, in Necron’s core, under the sky of eternal sunset, the two stood in the middle of the flower field of souls and faced each other. A cosmos of memories. After eons of cataclysms, the two faced each other again.
It is time once again, the god said. A familiar phrase.
She already knew the coin without seeing it. She’d seen it so many lifetimes before. On one side of the coin was night, and on the other, day. Life and death. She would make the choice. She would be the one to judge the fate of humankind, because the One who’d created her had been too cowardly to do so herself.
“You took out your own heart and made me from it,” Iris said. “I was born from your inability to choose. And yet you ask me to choose. I won’t.”
Iris slapped Necron’s hand. The coin flew from her palm and landed in a patch of twisted green crystal vines.
I have watched humanity die again and again, Necron said. The power to create a better world resides in me. But what world do I create? What world could I mold that would bring humanity to eternal peace? What is the perfect world? You’ve walked among them for eons. Should you not know the answer by now, my child?
Iris felt her blood pumping in her head as she clenched her teeth. Her mind spun with everything but an answer. But she bluffed anyway. “Show me your true face. Then I’ll tell you.”
Very well.
The body of Anne Marlow, the little girl who had died pointlessly in Gorton Zoo, disappeared into white mist.
And out of the mist grew a figure of white crystal. It gathered and formed many legs, as tall as the skies. A long head bigger than the sun, sharp like the point of a shard of glass. Its hollow blank eyes were an endless void from which life and death danced in endless harmony.
The creature towered above her. A god of white crystal as old as the planet itself.
This was Necron.
What will you do? Necron asked, and as she brought her head close to the ground, the crystal flower field trembled. The shades of pinks and blues, yellows and oranges. The bloodred butterflies that fluttered past Necron’s eyes. All in the earth’s core, Necron’s core, seemed to spring to life at the appearance of her true form.
And suddenly the answer came to Iris, as clear as if it had been there all along.
“I want your job.”
Necron twisted her head to the side but waited patiently for Iris’s elaboration.
“You said it yourself. You created reality with three gifts: The ability to act. The will to act. And imagination. Well, I hate to say it, but your imagination is truly horrid. Maybe that’s why things keep going bad. You never trusted yourself to make real decisions concerning this earth. Of course you wouldn’t trust yourself to imagine something better.”
Iris closed her eyes and remembered the Atlanteans and the Naacal. The Europeans. The slaves and the destitute. Those pushed to the dregs of society and transformed into the wastes of modernity. It was always the same. In every lifetime, it was always the same.
“I want a different world.”
One without pain? But pain is a fact of human life. So is greed. So is oppression.
“Not in my world. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.” Iris gritted her teeth and remembered the lovely warmth of Lulu’s dream.
Perhaps it isn’t possible.
“Stop saying that! It is if we imagine it!” Iris yelled, remembering the goodness in their hearts: Rin, Jinn, Berta, Lulu, Max, Granny, and the others. The love that had moved them in the worst of circumstances.
And you trust yourself to decide this?
“Other people have gotten to decide how the world should be. Now it’s my turn.” Iris stretched out her hand. “Give me your gifts. Power over life and death. The ability to act. The will to act. I’ve already decided what my justice is, and with my imagination, I will create a better world—one that never has to be destroyed.”
Such an audacious thing to say.
“Yeah.” Iris gave her a crooked smile. “It’s daring for girls like me to dream, isn’t it?”
Necron stretched out her body, becoming so big that she would have put the Titans to shame. After a time, under the eternal sunset, Necron said this:
I will grant you this power. But with this power comes untold responsibility. And there is another who desires this dream. I cannot choose between the two of you. So you will decide among yourselves which of your visions for the world will come to fruition.
“Another?” Iris furrowed her brows. What kind of nonsense was this? She searched Necron’s eyes but could find nothing there but the vast eternity of the cosmos.
His footsteps were so quiet. Iris did not hear him approach her. Did not sense his anima until his hand was on her shoulder.
She turned around, and her blood chilled.
Adam Temple’s body had become pure bronze. His black hair had grown down to his waist, but there were no flowers there—no. For although Hiva’s crystal heart beat inside his chest, this was not Hiva. It was not Adam either. Not truly. The atoms had been mixed together in some sort of terrible experiment, gone horribly wrong.
Or perfectly right.
It was Adam’s form, his young and handsome face, his voice that said her name. “Iris.” A whisper, with the same obsessive lilt. It was Adam’s cruelty and disregard for human life, only this time given Hiva’s immortal power.
But inside his blood pumped an emotion that was quite heinous. A hatred Iris knew. One that wanted to tear her skin from her flesh. It belonged to that man. Doctor Seymour Pratt. His hatred took physical form—a single black angel wing that sprang from behind his left shoulder blade. Still, Iris knew the old man himself lay somewhere in Adam’s consciousness, spurring him to kill her.
“Adam…,” Iris whispered, truly horrified to the greatest depths of her. “What have you done?”
Adam squeezed her shoulder. “Iris. Come see the world I envisioned.”
Inside the earth’s core, Adam Temple pulled Iris into his dream.