CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

 

Rosenfeld and the Raconte girls had walked without pause through the night, chasing the dim light of dawn.

First, they'd circled the Frine Mountain. Rosenfeld had come in search of Kimberly Archer but the woman's presence was long gone, and Rosenfeld didn't need to make an offering or burn a pint of blood in a wooden bowl to know she'd crossed the border. First person to make it across the mountain range in years, as far as she knew.

Oh, there'd surely been others after Fitch and Gull. The edge of the world always held a particular fascination for regular folk. It was the same siren call that sent men on voyages over the horizon, sails billowing and hulls creaking in search of the waterfalls at the earth's terminal line. The people of Rustwood didn't know Rustwood had an edge. They were trained not to think about it. Their nature was to circle inside the hive, not go sniffing at the exits.

Even so, some broke the programming. Started wondering what lay beyond the tunnels, the highways, that cursed bridge out over the ocean. They asked the wrong questions. And, eventually, they found a path.

Brave bastards, every one. Shame most never recovered from what they saw. Like Fitch, bless his heart, who was chasing something bigger than revenge and had damaged himself in the process. Or Gull, who'd pulled back the curtains long enough to glimpse the real world behind the illusion the queens provided. Seen the truth of the machine and decided he wanted that same power for himself, no matter how many suffered and died to make it a reality.

And then there was Rosenfeld herself.

Years before, she'd seen the lines between the many Rustwoods, the divisions that marked all the clone towns full of clone people living almost-identical lives. The infinite streets repeating from one horizon to the other. She'd imagined all the other Rosenfelds standing along the same divisions, raising their hands and lowering them in time like synchronised swimmers.

Every Rustwood had a Rosenfeld, she figured. And if every Rosenfeld thought the same, acted the same, then they'd all be cooking the same soup at the same time. Walking the same paths. Raising the same dead.

What was the point in leaving, then? If she crossed the mountains in one direction, a different Rosenfeld would arrive from another. The town would go on, never knowing the difference.

So she'd turned her back on it all and returned to town. Too much work needed doing, after all.

Now, dripping cold and sliding through mud, the three women descended the Frine Mountain via a hiking trail and worked their way across the moors. No more of the pretender's servants got in their way. Maybe they'd smelled the ruin the Raconte twins had left behind and decided to about-face.

Rosenfeld allowed herself a moment of disappointment. Every one of the beast's servants she destroyed was one less that'd be getting in Fitch and Mrs Archer's way. Then again, those two would have to bare their teeth some day. Couldn't keep cleaning up their messes...

At the far end of the moors, the mouth of the mineshaft opened like a wound in the earth. Cairns on either side marked the entrance, tall towers of acid-white stones casting long shadows in the dawnlight. Each cairn was a foot taller than Rosenfeld but they didn't wobble in the wind. Planted solid, like the pillars plunged deep into the guts of the town.

Needles driven through the earth, she thought. New queen always did act theatrical. That was the nature of children. Always playing the fool, trying to earn their parents' attention. But in this case, the only way the pretender could think of to earn her mother's approval was to beat her at her own game. Wrest control of Rustwood away through force and blood.

Kids never thought about who they were hurting until it was too late. Or maybe they just didn't care. Nothing inside them but selfishness and pride.

The walls of the mineshaft were slick, like the earth itself was sweating. The cold faded the deeper Rosenfeld went, heat eking from the damp soil, until her back and legs were soaked with sweat and her breath became laboured.

It'd been a long time – not months or years but decades – since Rosenfeld had walked those corridors. She'd kept her distance for good reason. The pretender's call was everywhere in Rustwood, but strongest in the nest. When she locked up the Rosenfeld Mission each night she could still hear it, a quavering cry on the wind, but easy to ignore. Down here, in the depths...

It was a thudding in her ears, a vice grip around her temples. She was returning home, pushing up the umbilical. It opened to her, welcomed her in, and the familiarity was comforting. It stripped away her anxieties. Swaddled her in open arms.

She'd never had a real mother, a human mother, but she imagined the sensation was like stepping through the front door of the family home and being greeted by a threadbare Turkish rug, a portrait of the parents behind glass, the rich smell of fresh-baked bread. A helloooo! echoing from the kitchen. We missed you!

But her family home was the dim and the damp, and she hated it. She hated how good it made her feel, to be back in the blackness. To give in so easily to old comforts.

"Ready, girls?"

The Raconte twins kept by her side. They had no real volition here. They weren't the new queen's puppets. They obeyed Rosenfeld. Had since birth. Would until death.

Sometimes Rosenfeld got guilty over that. Couldn't get angry at the two queens for enslaving their puppets when she did the same to the twins. Just because there wasn't anything behind their eyes didn't mean there couldn't be, one day. A little push, a tweak in the right direction, and there'd be as much person there as there was in the Archer woman, or Fitch.

Or herself.

She still remembered the twists and switchbacks. Mineshaft corridors looping, knotting, until any normal person would be hopelessly lost. Not Rosenfeld. To her the path was clear, and as she wound down toward the queen's home she felt a warmth suffusing her limbs. A glare in the distance, burning bright enough to spill daylight through the corridors.

One final turn. The halls opened before her.

"Rosenfeld. You came back." A purr of wings. The sawing tone of massive legs rubbing together like the summer night tunes of crickets in the cornfield. "Step closer, my little one."

It took effort to fight that command. A lifetime of running from the queen, living independent, was barely enough. Rosenfeld shielded her eyes with one hand as she took in the massive bulk of the pretender - a shape at the far end of a cathedral hall, barely glimpsed behind a nova of white light.

"You know that's not appropriate any more," Rosenfeld said "I haven't been your servant in a long time now. I only jump for me."

The new queen gave no sign that she had heard. Perhaps a flicker of a wing, and nothing more. Typical of royalty. They didn't allow themselves to be bothered by the protests of the rabble.

After a long pause, the voice continued in Rosenfeld's head. "Did you come here to return to the fold?"

The light was growing stronger. Not just bright but overwhelming, the sort of glare Rosenfeld could lose herself in. And oh, it was tempting. It was a light so thick you could wrap yourself in it. A warm light, comforting, glaring into dark places to burn away all your fears.

But light blinded, Rosenfeld reminded herself. Light was comforting, but comfort was an illusion. It obscured the truths.

That's why the new queen was only the pretender, after all. She gave no comfort. She had only come to destroy.

She braced herself against the wall and, trembling, wiped away sweat from her forehead. "Don't you have enough sycophants?" she managed. "If you're expecting a prayer, offering, or anything in between from me, you're mistaken."

This time the queen shuddered. A rippling of flesh carried from the tip of the queen's head to her plump, armoured abdomen.

In truth, the queen had no real shape. At least, nothing that Rosenfeld could fix on. It was a creature of a hundred geometries, insectile carapace and pink flesh and yawning teeth all twisted into knots.

The one part of the new queen that Rosenfeld could make sense of was her belly. A segmented series of fleshy barrels each the size of a minivan, hanging low in the dirt, swollen and dripping.

Pregnant again. Wasn't it always? Rosenfeld had come from that womb once, long ago, along with most of her colleagues. Not that the pretender made much of a mother. More a bitter spinster, lurking behind closed doors, waiting for her thousands of children to return in supplication.

"I missed you," the new queen said.

Rosenfeld tried to hold in her laughter, but it came out in a violent snort. "You miss me? You? Miss? Me?"

"We are family. We have always been family."

The laughter bubbled up, exploded, until Rosenfeld was clutching her ribs. The twins flanked her silently, unmoved, uncaring.

"You miss me?" It was, in its own way, blasphemous. For the queen to miss somebody as ordinary, as flexible, as replaceable, as Rosenfeld? "I was one out of a hundred. I was your garbage disposal. You sent me to kill and clean. And now you say you missed me?"

"We all miss you. The family is nothing without children."

"Time comes for every child to leave the nest." Rosenfeld hiccupped as her laughter faded. The light was dimming now, as if the pretender had lost a little of her confidence. "And maybe if you'd been less attached to all your children, we wouldn't have this problem."

The pretender queen flexed, dead-skin limbs rustling like dry autumn leaves. God help her, the creature was huge. The size of a twelve-wheeler, large enough to crush a house and everyone inside before swimming around in the shattered remains.

Rosenfeld trembled. True, the woman in the mirror-lens sunglasses had already hurt her as bad as anyone could be hurt. And true, she was already dead herself, and all the queen could really do was threaten to put her back in the ground where she belonged.

But the pretender had tricks. Pain worse than anything flesh could experience. Brains boiling. Screaming in your head that never stopped. Visions of crawling things in your lungs. She was cruel, Rosenfeld reminded herself. Cruel and sly.

The pretender was also easily provoked. You dare speak to me like that? You dare?

Rosenfeld pulled all the strength she had left into the lie: "You know I haven't been afraid of you in a long time." She hoped her mother couldn't see the sweat shining on her brow. Even with the girls by her side, she was nothing beneath the bulk of the new queen. It would take one hundred Rosenfelds to fight her. Maybe thousands. All she had was herself and two teenagers, and in her condition, the teenagers would put up more of a fight.

"I didn't come here to start a war," Rosenfeld said. "I came here to ask you to leave. Pack your bags, grab your shit, and get out of town. Whatever it takes."

Now it was the queen's turn to chatter and twist in indignation. The creature didn't speak, but voiced her fury as a rapid clattering of chitin, as a shudder of ugly beetle wings. It sounded like the chirping of one million cicadas. The air around Rosenfeld vibrated deep, ached in her eardrums.

"This is my land," the new queen said. "It is owed to me. I will not leave. I cannot leave."

The next part was the hardest. Rosenfeld swallowed, her heart rising to choke her throat. "Then you'll die."

"And who will kill me? You? You're not even a woman. You're just a tool."

Rosenfeld shuddered. Had the queen peeked inside her head? Or was only a coincidence that she'd picked out that particular word? That's what it was, after all. Not just a label, but an insult.

Tools didn't think. Tools were built to cut and hammer and crush. If she wasn't her own woman, everything she had done in the decades since her escape had still only been in service to the pretender queen. She didn't want to believe that.

"I'm only one lady," Mrs Rosenfeld said. "But Kimberly Archer is something else."

"The Archer woman is only flesh and bone."

"Maybe you don't know her like I do."

"I have never been afraid. Not of her or anyone."

"Then why are you hiding?"

She expected some sort of reaction. The twitch of a segmented limb perhaps, or the fluttering of a cluster of iridescent eyes.

Nothing. It was as if, she thought, she'd shocked the pretender into silence.

"I do not hide," the queen said finally. "I prepare."

"For what? For your mother to come knocking?"

"All matriarchs fall eventually."

"This is her world. She won't give it up so easily."

"She will fall," the new queen said. "And her world will fall too."

Mrs Rosenfeld shook her head. "You should've left. Built your own nest. that's what was supposed to happen. Children are supposed to leave."

"I am not ready."

"What queen was ever ready to take her throne?"

"She will doom us all. Something terrible is coming and she won't take responsibility." This time there was a definite quaver in the great beast's voice. Rosenfeld knew she could choose from the tone of any of her citizens, stealing voices from a hundred or a thousand at a time, just like her mother, but this time she'd chosen the tone of a woman holding back panic. The high pitched, barely contained screech of a mother who has turned around in a crowded street to find her youngest daughter vanished from her side.

"What's coming?" Rosenfeld asked.

"A time of hunger, or a time of isolation. There is no easy choice."

"You're gonna have to explain that one, sweetie."

But the new queen didn't explain. She only hummed, a multitude of iridescent wings flicking in and out of existence in a chorus that made Rosenfeld's teeth hurt.

A different approach, then. "We've had our differences," Rosenfeld said. "Differences I thought we could never resolve. And maybe that's true. You made me for a purpose I never wanted to understand, and I've spent what little life I've had trying to send that right. Don't know if I've made a lick of difference, truth be told. Too much pain out there for one woman... or one tool... to fix. but that doesn't mean I want you dead. I just know what'll happens if you take control."

"All will be well."

"Don't lie to me! You'll burn us all. Scour this land, for what? You hate your ma so much you're gonna destroy her creation out of revenge?"

The queen vibrated furiously, wet limbs slapping against the rock walls. "It is not my choice. The famine is coming, and if Rustwood remains, it will be a target. The old queen doesn't understand. She doesn't believe."

Famine? Rustwood was a town, not some hungry baby. Rosenfeld didn't understand the mechanisms that drove the town. She didn't want to. Not if she had to consider the possibility that Rustwood itself could starve. But then she thought about the role she'd been given, so many years ago. The creatures living in the old Pentacost Convent. The lives they drew through the gate.

"What feeds the town? Lives?"

"Lives, yes. Memories. Experiences. When we draw people through the doors, the town feeds on their thoughts. It builds itself from their histories. Every brick, every tree is something remembered. Every child. We need them. We need more."

"There are always more. Whole worlds you can plunder."

"Not for long," the pretender said. "The darkness is coming. Something that will devour us all. The old queen's children. My children."

"Run, then! Create another world!"

"I will. When the time is right. I will take my inheritance and use this world as a lure for the darkness. It will arrive, and once the darkness has sunk its teeth into Rustwood, I will ignite everything and burn it alive. Then I will escape into the black."

Mrs Rosenfeld reached up one hand to shield her vision. The glare of the new queen ate into her eyes. It hurt her teeth, vibrated in her bones. It made all the oil and muscle and steel knitting her together turn hot.

Not for the first time, she wondered if what she was seeing - the creature that was the new queen, bloated and pendulous and fluttering - was only a mirage. They said the old queen was everywhere, was everything. Why would her daughter be any different?

And god, what was this darkness? Something so terrible even the pretender was spooked? Well, there were always bigger fish roaming out in the black. Even sharks feared things lurking in ocean crevasses.

"There's still a chance for you." She dared step closer. The pain began in her fingertips and radiated outward through her spine. She knew every inch she walked would make the pain grow worse - to reach the new queen would be so painful that she'd bend and wither inside her own skin.

She pressed on. The pain flared. She could feel herself igniting from the inside, lead turning to steam in her manufactured bones. The twins were still beside her. They followed even into the fire.

Rosenfeld wished she could tell them how comforting it was to have them with her. They would never know. There wasn't enough in their heads to understand such concepts, but she decided that if she made out of the mines alive, she'd make them each a bowl of soup greater than anything she'd cooked before. It was the only way she knew how to say thank you. It would have to do.

"You dare speak to me like-"

"One chance." An inch further was all she could stand. She turned her face toward the light and forced herself to look. Beyond the nova, the new queen scrabbled against the walls of the mineshaft with tree trunk legs, blinked wetly with countless eyes. "Leave before they kill you. This isn't a threat. It's a warning, from daughter to mother. There are other worlds than these."

"This is my birthright! I will do with it as I will!"

A weight lifted from Rosenfeld's heart. The decision had been made for her. No guilt, not any more.

"Then die," she said, and turned away.

The pretender screeched as Rosenfeld and the Raconte twins retreated into the mineshaft. "Come back!"

"Been a long time since you could command me."

"Come back!"

Mrs Rosenfeld walked away. It took effort: she could feel the new queen's command in her bones, tugging her toward the light. Sweat ran down her brow and across her cheeks as she forced herself to walk, one foot in front of the other, toward the smell of fresh air at the end of the mines.

"I demand you come back!"

It was that word, demand, that broke the spell. True regents didn't demand. True regents commanded through respect. The new queen...

Just a whiny child aspiring to her mother's throne.

Mrs Rosenfeld felt the weight fall away as she stumbled toward the exit. The Raconte twins caught her arms without being asked, carried her the last few steps. The sweat sheening her face was a blessing – it cooled the thudding in her temples, the anger building inside her. How had she followed for so long? Let such a pathetic creature tell her where to go, what to burn, who to kill?

Behind her, the great light that was the pretender said, "What are you doing?"

"Got things to take care of," Mrs Rosenfeld said. "This town's getting ragged around the edges. Couple of sores need bandaging. Couple tumours need cutting out."

"Who?"

"Way I see it, all of this started with Gull. Told you long ago, we needed to prune him."

"You'd kill him for me?"

"Not doing anything for you any more." Mrs Rosenfeld leaned against the cool wall of the mineshaft, mud running between her fingers. Every yard she gained on the new queen was a blessing, but still, she knew that vice-grip around her throat wouldn't ease until she was free of the mines altogether, safe inside the Rosenfeld Mission.

"Then who?"

"Maybe me. Maybe Mrs Archer." She sighed. "Maybe this whole damned town. And when he's gone, we'll keep pruning. The way Mrs Archer thinks, you'll be next in line."

Her mother's cries followed Rosenfeld all the way out.