My beautiful, broken twin sits upon a throne carved of tungsten, the same rigid and unforgiving stone used to bolster the Goblin King’s palace walls. Behind the dilated pupils of her empty gray gaze, orange lights flash where electrified coils—those connecting her temples, wrists, and ankles to openings in the floor— short-circuit.
In an ironic and heartbreaking tribute, the lark tattoo that escaped from my flesh has found its way under the tarp and is perched on its namesake. As if spooked by the unveiling, the inky bird flutters into the shadows, only visible by the sparks running through its outline—having absorbed some of my sister’s erratic electrical currents.
Lark wears a gown of black vinyl, as shimmery as a puddle reflecting a starless sky. A crown of tangled copper wires—alive with snapping sparks—sits upon her head: a mangled queen presiding over a gruesome world of metal, rust, and scrambled circuitry. Her pitch-dark skirt sweeps all the way to the floor, curling beyond the throne’s frame and enveloping every inch of her, all but the tips of her bared toes and glimpses of her ankles.
Her pale face, though tinged with a gray pallor, mirrors my own, and her black hair is slicked back from her temples and forehead with the crown to showcase white eyebrows and freckles along with the lack of a widow’s peak.
Her mouth, hanging slightly open, displays the gap between her central incisors. It’s the only confirmation I need that my twin never died … if anyone could call this living.
Her head slumps against the throne’s back and she stares up at me with a hollow expression. What I wouldn’t give to see that angry, accusatory expression that has taunted me in mirrors since I lost her. All that time, she must’ve been trying to reach out to me, to keep me from coming here.
Her hair, grown far beyond her waist now, has been swept into a side braid that hangs thick and shiny over the left edge of her jagged seat, and her long neck and collarbones skim a graceful V-shaped trail to her brimming décolleté, held up by a bustier and spaghetti straps. She’s aged and filled out over the past few years, just as I have, even while trapped here. Which means she’s been given the nutrition she needs somehow.
The same sparks that race behind her eyes also skitter through her veins—rolling balls of light moving to and fro beneath her skin like luminous superhighways—spilling in and out across the circuitry that disappears into the floor and connects her to the soil beneath the surface of the world. These links must be how she feeds the terrain and everything living upon it, and how it sustains her in return, while siphoning away any waste her body emits. It’s demented, parasitic, and cruel.
An agonized yowl pierces my eardrums and grates along my throat. It echoes through the chamber, underpinning the manufactured whirs and bleeps of the surroundings, a visceral reaction to a twisted and grim situation.
Seeing Perish’s shadow loom behind me, I glare up at him. “How could you just trap her here? Paralyzed? How could you do that to anyone?” Fury boils my blood, but I resist the urge to attack him; I don’t dare leave my sister’s side even for a second.
“This is not the organic exchange our progenitors agreed upon,” Perish answers in his deep rumbling timbre. Having discarded the bulky smoke-emitting apparatus strapped to his back, he appears more svelte and graceful, despite his musculature. “Fey are respectful of the elements. Obeisant, even. Because we were born of the old ways … put here as guardians to the natural world, and guides to humanity’s relationship with it. The orchard you drew, that is what the land of Faerie should look like.”
That’s why he put his palace there, where it was safe from my sister. Because that particular element wasn’t poisoned since it came from me.
“There was never a Motherboard among us until now,” he continues. “This hive-mind lair”—he waves all around us—“is not natural. Every other Architect has had the ability to walk and live in our midst, a reciprocity that aids in the bonding process. They’re connected to Mystiquiel’s framework by nature—vines, flowers, leaves, roots act as living links that adhere to them yet are as flexible as a change of clothing, allowing them to refill our emotional wells as they get depleted, while still giving the Architects their freedom.”
I remember the vinelike and floral scars I saw upon Laura in the tunnels … the ones upon my mother—images fed to me at Lark’s own hand. They substantiate Perish’s claim.
“I don’t understand.” I rub my gloved palms against my thighs, restraining myself from reaching out to tug at the coils protruding from Lark’s temples. Those lethal beads of electricity rolling through her body hold me back. She would have to be unplugged first, and I’m not sure what that entails. If it’s even possible. “What went wrong?”
“She chose to set herself up as judge and executioner. To entrench herself within the very core so her imaginings could warp Mystiquiel and usher in an artificial age, in opposition to our sworn symbiosis with nature—so she could dominate everything, to poison not only the terrain but us as well. To graft us with metal, wires, cords, and electronics … in hopes of assimilating us. Make us mindless, synthetic robots that she could corrupt, then switch off at will with her hive mind.”
I remember how aimless the creatures all seemed upon my arrival to Mystiquiel’s streets. How they appeared so lost. I assumed it was because I’d stopped drawing them, yet it went so much deeper.
“Ironically,” Perish continues, “in so doing, your sister became entangled in her own twisted attempts. Now, she’s a biomechanical being in her own right and can’t be removed from the circuit board she created, lest she die. She did that to herself.” His white-bright pupils mimic the electrical storm zigzagging through the prongs of his crown. The currents seem to reroute through me, a shared regret that pulses between us.
I can’t blame him for his anger, but I do hold him responsible for his manipulations … for using me to destroy her. I fall to my knees at her feet, just inches away from the cords running from her ankles into the floor. Oil and blood ooze out everywhere the cords connect to her skin. My fingers itch inside my gloves, aching to help.
I study the swarms of magic and electricity spreading out from her as if she’s a living CPU. Removing her would kill her. Yet she’s going to die if she stays connected. I’ve healed others on this journey, broken them from their synthetic bonds. Why would I be given such power, if not to use it on my sister? I have to at least try. What do any of us have to lose at this point?
Absolutely nothing.
I remove my gloves. Perish holds my gaze as I do it.
“It was supposed to be me,” I mumble. The explanation is for Uncle and Clarey, so they’ll understand my responsibility.
“Yes,” the Goblin King says, that thundering motor-revving voice now quiet and humming like an engine idling in neutral. If I didn’t know better, I’d call it gentle. “I couldn’t undo it once it was done. One daughter chosen per generation. We tried to coexist with her, move forward. But her rage … her vengeance. It was untenable. She withheld every positive emotion from us; pumping our populace with only vitriol and misery, throwing off the balance of the world, making such a mess of things, we couldn’t heal or recover.”
“So you brought me here,” I murmur, “forced me to rip her apart, so I’d have to volunteer to save her.”
“Oh, I haven’t forced you to do anything.”
I grit my teeth, wanting to pound that smug smirk off his face. His sharp metal fangs hold me at bay.
“All along,” he continues, “you’ve made your own choices. Each one driven by your artistic pride, by your jealous love of this world.”
I ignore the taunt, because the truth is so much bigger than that, and he knows it.
A rustle of clothes and muffled grumbles drift from the lower level. I don’t have to look to know that Uncle and Clarey aren’t having any luck in their efforts to get past the knights.
My attention returns to my sister. “Lark, can you hear me?” I push the question past the dread clogging my throat, but she doesn’t answer. Other than my heart feeling as if it’s torn in half, I no longer sense the connection between us. I must’ve severed it with every cord I cut. “We have to unplug her.”
Perish’s opalescent fingers curl over my jacket at the elbow. The silvery sheen of his metallic forearm peers from the cuff of his shirt and reflects the sparks around us. “I can shut off the power holding her in its thrall for a few moments. Perhaps just enough time for you to restructure her. But Mystiquiel won’t truly release your sister, so long as she’s living, unless it has an acceptable replacement. You’ve all the tools you need to convince our world that you belong here.”
I don’t ask what he means, don’t even bother to shake him off. He’s referring to the seeds that Angorla encouraged me to pocket, and the vial of blood at my neck that I thought it was my own idea to collect. Now I know the truth. Perish said the blood would bind me to him, his magic. And Angorla said that to swallow the seeds and blood simultaneously would call the roots of the world to me—the roots that follow the Architect. This must be how one becomes inundated, connected to the world.
It was all part of the setup. Angorla was following a script laid out by Perish to get back into his good graces.
“Once she’s free,” I tell Perish, “and only if she survives, I’ll do whatever you want.”
He shakes his head, his ombre hair loose and long now, so the waves rustle across his back with the gesture. “You must do it first, so the world will release her. And remember, it’s not simply what I want, Architect. It’s what we both need. Let’s be clear on that point.”
“No, Nix!” It’s Clarey’s voice. “Don’t do this!” He’s finally broken free and rushes toward the first stair step, but no sooner does he lift a foot than he’s captured again.
“You can’t make this sacrifice!” Uncle takes up Clarey’s plea during the distraction, before a boggle intervenes by gripping his shoulder. He stiffens under the knight’s touch. “There are only two acceptable options here. The Goblin King can either send all of us back, including your sister, or we’ll die together alongside him and his world, to stop this deplorable practice.”
“You’re only partly right,” Perish answers, seemingly unfazed. “This world won’t release Lark without a replacement. And as for all of you staying, well, it won’t have quite the ending you’re hoping for. Yes, as mortals, you won’t survive once the emptiness breaches these walls. But your four lives will be martyred in vain, because I’ll still live, as will my subjects. We’ve already been purged of the plague put upon us, with Phoenix’s help. Soon enough, our metal deformities will fade without the Motherboard’s vicious mental grasp. My kingdom will survive in limbo until next All Hallows’ Eve. We’ve managed before. And since you’ll all be gone, leaving me with no tie to your ancestors, I’ll no longer be held to the confines of the contract. The Goblin Market will be reinstated; we’ll go back to the old ways, which means more human souls will be collected at each turn of every year. More families losing their precious children, more broken hearts and suffering.” He shrugs his massive shoulders. “We had a good run, until Imogen decided to cross us, merely because she couldn’t bear for her precious daughters to grow up without each other. Such a selfish act.”
“You know there was more to it than that,” Uncle snarls. “You know what your father was planning for them … what he’d already attempted before they were even born!”
“Enough.” Perish nods to the knight restraining Uncle, and the boggle slaps a stony gray hand over his mouth to silence him. “Another word out of either of you, and I’ll cast you back into the Somatic Realm without the dog.”
Clarey, standing between two boggles, holds on to Flannie and opts for silence, but the expression wrinkling his latex features lays bare the fear and frustration he’s battling.
The knights tighten their circle around my loved ones, once more making it difficult to see them. It’s better this way, because I’d have misgivings about my decision at the reminders of what I’m going to be leaving behind, of the dear people I’ll never be with again.
Perish crouches beside me, his powerful form blotting out the blinking lights in the chamber, so the only flashes radiate from his crown and eyes. “Your sister never had the love for us that you do,” he says, low and hypnotic. “Of course, one could argue that developed from your time drawing us, learning about our world. It evolved to an ownership she lacked. Perhaps then, I didn’t make a mistake after all. Imogen made the mistake, by taking you both away so you felt like aliens here. As a result, my error of judgment became the solution. For it gave you time to grow into the mother of Mystiquiel. The true Architect.”
The true Architect … Angorla’s phrase at last comes full circle.
“I’m not your mother,” I seethe.
Pressing a fist against the floor, he leans over me so I’m curtained by his long hair, unable to escape his scent: man, beast, and machine. “Oh no, I’d never think of you as such.” His antlers curl so close to my temples they could be protruding from my own head. He fills my line of vision with every graceful contour and hardened angle of his terrifying beauty. “I was referring to them.” With his strong chin, he gestures to the screen on the wall that has shifted at some point to my—the—eldritch creatures afloat in an empty void outside. “As for what you are to me, we have your lifetime to figure that out.” He taps the zippers on my face, one by one, and they fall away, each hitting the floor with a ping.
I ease back from his touch, all my hairs standing on end at the shocking current that runs between us. Rubbing my thumb along my skin, I find it’s smooth and normal again.
But for how long? What am I to become once this is done and over? I shake off the question. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that my sister lives. I once thought I let her die. I’ve just been given a second chance to save her. This time I’ll be strong enough.
“You’re sure we can free her?” I ask Perish.
“Together, we can,” he answers. He lifts the vial at my neck and unstops the cork so the liquid turns a pearly white.
I glance at Clarey and Uncle. They both duck then stretch to toe tips behind the wall of boggles, as if seeking a glimpse through the branches in a dense forest, the kind of forest where this warped nightmare originally began. I allow myself one final memory of Uncle’s kindnesses all my life, of his paternal care; then, of Clarey’s kiss, and how amazing it felt in that moment, to truly believe we had a chance to grow into something rare and new, after all our years together as friends.
My chest gives an agonized twist, because several of those years were stolen from him and Lark. It’s only right I give them back, although imagining him getting over me and moving on feels like I’m ripping my own guts out.
“You’ll see them safely across the veil—all of them together,” I press Perish for one last assurance.
“I will,” he answers.
Scooping the seeds from my pocket, I toss them into my throat and tip the vial up, letting the royal blood wash everything down. Somewhere in the distance, I hear the striking of midnight, tied magically to my father’s watch. I struggle not to look directly at the Goblin King, for fear he’ll pull me into that intense gaze just to sample every torturous emotion hacking away at my insides.
Against the odd sensations beginning to stir in my innards, like foreign objects taking root and altering my very DNA, I stand up, bolstering my muscles despite their tremors. Then I lift my hands to catch Lark when she falls from her throne, so my touch—and our pinkies tightly linked—will be the first thing she feels, so I can heal her and set things right.
“Do it now,” I command the king. “Unplug her.”
The clock strikes twelve, and we know we failed. We lost. All our work, discarded for dross. Our eye in the sky grows dim. Our ears deafen. Our tendons, once stretched into the deep—snap free and fray at the edges, sparks fizz and sibilate. We wither, we waste. Our heart groans and careens, a ship caught on the waves. It collides and fractures, smashed upon a reef. We weep without eyes, shed rust for tears, shout without voices. We hurt. We fear. We feel.
We feel. We … feel?
We … me …
I.
I hurt. Muscles reawakening, a twitch and a needling tracery of flame across nerves too long dormant. Lungs stretching, brimming. A vacuous void filled to capacity. I cough.
My eyes blink open, and warm moisture seeps from the edges. My eyes … and only mine.
I recognize her, this face looking back—a mirror that slices me through. She’s my other half. My sister. The one I love above all others. The one who envied everything I once was.
Her hands hold me tight, fingers linked with mine and pulling me against her, cheek to cheek. I block out her apologetic thoughts and drain her instead, my skin drinking from hers, starving for what she has, for what I’ve so long been deprived of.
Individuality … separation … nonconformity.
The barbed hooks circuited through my heart, the wires that skewered my will to this parasitic realm, release with shivery snaps like ropes being cut, fortifying my bones and enriching my marrow. The immense multitude of heartbeats, too many pulsations to count, grows singular, rhapsodic. One beat … one beautiful strumming tumble to carry my breath and feed my needs. My cells reassemble, my veins swollen with red, iron-rich plasma. My skin pinkens and warms, drizzles of red blood leaking from open puncture marks where my connections have severed.
As I take and take, my sister weakens. Yet she gives, and gives, until I’m me again. Whole, at last. Then Nix turns me loose.
My legs and arms feel heavy, unwieldy and awkward. They’ve forgotten how to move. I fall backward into another set of hands, those that once held mine as I learned to toddle, first steps building to skipping hopscotch and springing runs. He holds me up now again, my muscles too weak to work alone, and helps me walk toward an opening …
He’s everything good: family, warmth, security. Kindness and gentleness. Hero.
Uncle.
I glance behind one last time. Uncle pauses, guiding me over the threshold, and my ears hear their first sound: his gasping sob at the burst of light spindling from my twin’s flesh like rays of sun … too searing for my unseasoned sight. I wince as electrical cords become green, leafy vines, as they wind through her hair, sink into her scalp, massaging … caressing. More sympathetic in their gentle suction than my drilling, puncturing connectors. Buds, moss, and petals bloom, wrapping her like a soothing ground cover. My cold, jagged throne, my circuit board, my lair, they all fold up and disappear. She’s now the heart, and from her flesh bursts a vision of flowers, roots, and vines, in every color and texture. They spread out, plunging into the ground like my copper coils once did, shifting the world from a cold and grayscale industrial nightmare to a verdant paradise, radiant and prismatic—worthy of a fairy tale.
My optics blur, weaving in and out of focus, as two birds swoop by—one the tiny, flat, black tattoo set free from its anchor of my sister’s skin. It now houses the scant remains of my broken circuitry, and lands upon Nix’s upheld palm, its dark form shifting in lightning-strike flashes.
The other, an owl of purest white feathers tipped in rusty red, with no electric eyes or circuitry anywhere, inside or out. Nothing synthetic, purely real. Filigree lands on the Goblin King’s shoulder just as Perish discards his own metal parts and transforms to his radiantly brutal flesh-and-blood form. The way he first looked when I saw him being crowned.
“Goodbye, Lark of the Somatic Realm,” he says, white fangs glistening in a smirk. “Game well played.”
A competitive flame kindles inside me at the smugness of his words, at the innuendo only I intuit, but I stifle the blaze until it’s an ember. It was just a gut reaction; I’ll learn to forget. I’ll learn to tamp the regret. But I will never forgive my sister for forcing me to play. For letting him take me to begin with. She was awake when he stole me away; I saw her peering under the sheets.
At the horrible memory, I shut my eyes and fall through the veil with my uncle holding me tight. Something cushioned softens our fall. I dig my fingers and toes into the damp, gritty depth.
Sand.
I’m aware of what it is without even looking; in fact, I choose not to see, but instead let my other senses flood over me—as I’ve been without them for so long. My ears fill with the cries of seabirds and splashing wavelets. The scent of salt and fish pulls a stitch in my stomach and triggers a hollow growl. At last, I’m hungry for something other than destruction. I’m hungry to live.
Another scent then: petrichor. Earth, saturated and nurtured by rain. And my hunger grows. I listen as the voices surrounding me no longer blend to animalistic snarls and vicious, bestial complaints. These are familiar, kind, beloved sounds.
“Lark. Come on, little songbird. Open those eyes. Let me know you’re in there.”
I squeeze my uncle’s proffered hand and blink my lashes open, caught between bliss and disbelief at the vision around us. The sands glitter as a brilliant, winking light on the horizon gilds the ocean’s froth and the white clouds with a pinkish haze. The palest carnation blush blending to silvery blues. Pink used to be my favorite shade in the world. Until Perish and his iridescent complexion overtook my every thought.
Yet I can’t deny that I’ve missed dawn, just like I’ve missed breathing. Living. So I embrace the moment and the clarity of color. I’m back … on Cannon Beach. It’s really over.
A yipping bark makes me jolt, worried it’s an eldritch creature come to force me across the veil again. The vinyl of my gown squeaks and stiffens as I move, an intolerable grating against my ears and skin. I ache to be free of it, of all memory of that world.
Then I see a common dog, a bundle of fur and energy, and release a relieved breath. Her back leg clicks into view and I recognize the resemblance to my robotic designs, too strong to be a coincidence. My invention, stolen and altered to another’s specifications. I’m not sure how I feel about pieces of my life being parceled out, as if I was never coming back to claim them.
“It’s okay, it’s just Flannie.” A boy leans over me, peeling orange pumpkin skin away from his features, revealing a brown complexion and bright, two-toned eyes. White curls flop down over his forehead, covering a scar that shouldn’t be there. “Lark … I—I can’t believe it. All this time … three whole years thinking you were—”
He stops himself as my uncle pats his shoulder and hands him Dad’s duffel for the mask. I swallow a knot from my throat and glance at the parts of my body I can see: my ankles, my arms, my wrists … the puncture marks there, still raw and open, waiting to heal.
Three years. Was I truly attached to Mystiquiel for so long?
I focus on the boy again, now that the face covering is gone. I know him. That’s why he seemed familiar in Mystiquiel. With my free hand, I reach up to touch his tear-wet cheek, another needling activation of muscles and nerves that remained comatose until now. He presses his fingers over mine and says my name again. His voice is deeper than I remember, yet comfortable and nostalgic, as if from another lifetime. A lifetime that to me was only yesterday.
Clarey.
His name melts the ice around my heart, replacing it with a gentle, happy glow. I can’t bring myself to speak aloud yet, so I rest in silence, observing them both, touching them both, loving them both. So grateful just to be with them again.
“We can’t leave Nix there.” Clarey disrupts my blissful peace by prying his cheek from my grasp and glancing toward Haystack Rock. There are fresh tears on his face. “We have to get her back. I have to—”
Watching him, sensing the misery behind his plea, I’m slammed with the memory of how he and Nix looked at each other just before being dropped into the orchard. I saw what was there. A spark being born; something unexpected and rare.
Something that once belonged to me.
My uncle shakes his head and looks in the opposite direction, off in the distance where red and orange carnival tents are being taken down. “There’s no way Perish will open the veil for us now that he has her. But by the law of nature, it thins on its own every Halloween. That gives us twelve months to make a plan. And we already have our key to walk through.”
“Back at the bakery,” Clarey says. “Shipments of squid ink.”
Their talk of a bakery feels out of reach, just as this place and time feel foreign to me now. They feel foreign to me. I feel foreign to myself.
Because of her. Because the goblins took me instead, and she made everything hers while I was gone.
How do I make it mine again? How do I reclaim that time?
Then, I know. I’ll start from the beginning—pretend to be the same girl I was when I left. The one who loved pink; the one who lived to tinker; the one who wasn’t afraid of anything. Doesn’t matter that it’s all a lie. That no one could participate in such a game and be unchanged.
I weave my fingers through my uncle’s and struggle to sit up. He helps steady me as Clarey puts an arm behind my back.
Looking into their concerned faces, I rasp the first words I’ve spoken aloud since the night I woke up a captive in the land of Mystiquiel: “Unca-thunk, take me home, please.”