Quibble, Artemis, and Wilder face the Hex. They stand on Quibble’s Power. They look up at the many-eyes, the lolling tongue, impossibly immense and smelling of meat. Of blood.
hello brother sister.
“Hex,” Wilder says. “The child that we just saw. What happened to them?”
:)
“That isn’t an answer.”
i do not have to answer you.
“Okay, then,” Wilder says. “That leaves us at something of an impasse.”
The Hex opens its mouth and three shadow-tongues emerge, grotesque and dripping with dark-light. i consume. i consume and everything becomes me. i shall be king hereafter. i shall contain Everything. shall build a body. shall never ever die.
The first tongue stands to Quibble’s full height. Quibble closes his eyes and I feel him make a decision.
He inverts the Power they stand on. He must do it fast, a trap springing. Faster than a supercomputer. But how? He roots and roots and roots and his Body glows with it and he thinks about trees. How, for a tree, human time is a second. How we must buzz like so many bugs to a tree, how the actual bugs must move even faster. Artemis’s and Wilder’s eyes water as Quibble Ascends, both slowing and speeding time in turns as the—oh Lord, I am so fucking tired—outie belly button of his Power becomes a very, very deep innie. He must be very tired, too, having just become a Tree. He slams a lid on it. It isn’t graceful, but it works. And he twists the entirety of it into himself. Now all of them—Artemis, Wilder, the Hex, Quibble himself, exist in the magic equivalent of a sealed tomb. “Nice try,” he announces as Wilder and Artemis blink away the light. And for the first time, I can See-Sense-Taste a future. A future in which Quibble is known as the Traveler. “You’re trapped. If you kill me now”—Quibble uses a deep, brave voice that is not in line with how he feels—“you will never leave. You’ll be stuck here forever. And what good is never dying if you can’t do anything?”
you are stuck with me too, he Says.
And Quibble shrugs even though inside he is wailing, railing, banging at his own trap and begging with himself. “That’s something I’m willing to do.” Because maybe, he thinks, maybe I can simply become a tree. Maybe that will be better.
The second tongue stands up to Artemis’s height. And Artemis is ready to give herself. She clutches in her hand the USB drive with Wilder and Mia’s virus. “Go ahead,” she says. An eye blooms at the end of the tongue and blinks at the drive, just visible between her fingers. She looks for a place to put it, wonders if she can whip it right into its tongue. Poke the Hex in this horrible, stanky new eye.
no thank u, he Says. The Hex retracts the tongue.
The third tongue stands up to Wilder.
Wilder Knows-Learns-Remembers the solution to the problem. It feels foretold, foregone, obvious because it always has been taking place, always will be taking place, is taking place. The thrum of the timeline, hinged upon this moment, pulses in their ears. Steady, but fast. Racing with excitement; laced with pain, with a feeling bigger than longing. Sadder. Exhilarated-mourning. There is no way to get the Hex to pick up a virus.
Except to let him win.
To play into an obvious weakness—the notion that death is the end and that death is losing, is game over. This is where the Hex fails. He does not understand what it means to be a person. That to be a person means to live for people. To live for people, and to die for them.
stay with me? they ask, for me and me alone. Not one other soul can Hear them, not even the Hex.
Until the end, I reply. I fear that they will not be able to Hear me. But perhaps because they are close to dispersal themself, they do. They sigh.
They remember every line of code they’d written, all of Mia’s work, too. It’s all in their brain. Encoded. Saved. They are a hard drive. Except they are organic. A soft drive. They begin to unzip it, line after line, like an unspooling thread, while they step forward, one foot in front of the other.
Wilder hadn’t really understood how much they would lament losing their body until the moment they choose to give it up. They have always had a difficult relationship with it—emotions ranging anywhere from dissociative detachment to outright hatred. They have cried long nights over their body; they haven’t looked at themself in a mirror for years and years. They stop themself from doing things that feel good, overwhelmed by the immense welling up of un-rightness that comes along with it. Both-and.
Quibble and Artemis notice Wilder stepping toward the mass of darkness, the Manifestation of the Hex. Quibble inhales sharply, understanding landing on him with a quickness. No, he thinks. No. He reaches his hand out and touches Wilder’s pinky finger just as they move out of his reach. For a second, he thinks about throwing them out of Here. Ripping a hole in the ground and dropping Wilder entirely out of it. But after he does that, then what? To do that would let the Hex out, too. Then they all die, or they all flee, and the Hex goes on just the same, now with its new bodies in the physical world. Even if they all escape at this very second, it would be a matter of time before they are hunted, slaughtered.
Instead, he concentrates on the feel of Wilder’s pinky. Soft with soap and lotion. He reaches out and washes over them, dips his Hands into them and squeezes tight. He Smells Calm, Tastes Anger, and Feels the Sensation of Kissing, of Caressing, of being Hungry for each other in the cool evening air. He remembers what it was like when they pulled the panic from him; he tries to do the same and is surprised to find there isn’t any.
Artemis yells, “Step back! Grab hands! Pay attention! Something amazing is about to happen!” But Wilder said these words first. The spell was already cast, has been being cast this whole time, will be cast this way forever. She reaches for her own Power and wants to lasso Wilder with it, to press them into a solution other than this one.
But Artemis, as much of a force as she is, knows she can’t force Wilder to do anything. Her fear beats its wings and shrieks. She has been the mother. She has made every decision that has led to this moment, and she is about to lose part of her family after a scant few months. And what did she do in that time—yell at them? Break them apart from one of the blessed few things that stripped sadness from their eyes? As she watches the heels of Wilder’s Chucks, bright half-moons appearing and disappearing against the queer twilight with each forward step, something in her snaps. Breaks. She hurls raw Power from her hands at the Hex, orbs of bright fury. It absorbs it. yummm.
Wilder is filled with rage as well, and that soul-deep sadness. They had a body, they did. And they didn’t get to do what they wanted with it. They regret everything at once: they were going to get the chest they wanted, try different hormones, fuck and be fucked by a glorious panoply or maybe even just Quibble. They were going to hug Artemis with their whole strength, so that their hearts pressed against each other. They were going to walk with confidence around the Magpie, demonstrate that adulthood didn’t mean a shrinking, a giving up of joy. They were going to walk the grounds with Mia, hold her hand, feel the subtle differences in all the flavors of wind. They were going to strip topless and feel the sun on their back, their shoulders, their face. And now they don’t get to.
And I. I am in mourning, too. There is a version where I do this instead. Where I give my body and build another—so easy for me to do. But we didn’t know. We couldn’t plan. I am spent and I am furious.
Wilder will pass into a wisp of smoke largely unwitnessed. It is only Artemis, Quibble, and me. Wilder had a body that I loved, in whatever way I can be said to love—no.
I love. I love I love I love. Because we change the world to fit us.
I love and I am a person and I will be a person again. Wilder had-has-had a body that I love. They were-are cool water; they were-are roaring falls and wet stone. They were-are brimming with feelings, overflowing with passion. They were-are liquid bravery; they were-are afraid and unafraid. They were-are crying salted tears onto their cheeks as they stop walking, square their shoulders.
I bear witness. I bear witness to this moment.
Wilder stands before the Hex. They breathe deeply, paying attention to what it feels like to fill their lungs—another amazing thing. Picturing each small part inflating, bringing with it Peace and Power. Their body and Body glow, replete with lines of language, magic words. Syllables and pieces of punctuation that will unmake.
The Hex leans down. He is so much larger than Wilder, a giant building papering the twilight-purple non-sky. Bright as well. His own word-threads tightly knotted together to build this dangerous poltergeist. human creatures have disadvantage e r a s e. humanity is a scumbag asshole.
“I know,” Wilder says with their mouth. It will be their last time using it. They savor the way their tongue hits the back of their crooked lower teeth. “I know humans have tried to hurt you. I know we’ve tried to hurt you. But we can still come to an understanding. What do you say?”
The Hex cocks his head like a puppy, artificially sweet. I say ye weep. i say that you will repay me entirely.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Wilder says. “Here.” A tear, down their cheek and into their mouth. Delicious, alive. “Here is the amazing thing.”
They begin to draw Power. A feeling like water rushing off the side of a mountain. Artemis and Quibble notice; I notice; so does the Hex. Wilder pulls enough Power to do something huge. It births a wind, gusts plucking at Wilder’s clothes. They are even wilder than before, with their snaggled, feral teeth and their explosive hair. A name sews itself to a body, stitch by stitch in its meaning. Wilder is-was deeply, exactly, who they are. Were.
The Hex’s tongue grows thick, a trunk of code. It closes around Wilder as the gale begins to shriek around them. I want to apologize you. you are incapacitated. kill you. death succeed. banish my brother sister.
He lifts Wilder up; an abduction scene. Quibble screams, wordless. Artemis yells, “You don’t even want a body.”
i want their melancholy sweetness. i want to look on them afresh killing. Six rivals, they were unfolded; i struggled furiously and i became myself. they must finish them. i must finish them. they want to do it to me. They were bound. they are surrounded. they were unfolded.
Wilder’s body begins to spring apart like a squeezed clockwork toy. Strips of flesh fall away; red juice begins to spring forth as though from an elaborate fountain. An unspooling of intestines. Carnage. Their eyes plucked from their sockets and extended into the air, held aloft, pointed down at their own body. They are unfolded. Everything pauses as they are suspended, dissected. Their discrete parts on display for their family, their loves, themself. Their heart beats in plain air.
Artemis and Quibble have never keened before, not even with all the grief in their pasts. They have never seen the process of a death before, slow and performed for their own distinct horror. Bad things have happened, even cruel things. But never a dismembering to cause fear, to make them obey. And never someone Artemis considered under her protection. And never someone Quibble once had his fist inside, their taste on his lips and in his body and written on his soft heart. The idea of beating their chests in grief and anger is something they have seen, but never felt the compulsion to do. They howl, open-mouthed, all animal reaction. And in this moment, they would do anything for the Hex to make this stop, to end their suffering, to reverse time. In this moment, the Hex could have made them into his army, his mafia, his slaves. Anything.
This is how the Hex believes he wins.
Seeing is a curse for me now, here, and a blessing. Seeing is everything about me, all the good and the bad and the understanding that most things don’t have only two sides to them. My Eyes are on every queer and distant un-cell, un-atom, un-particle Here, in a place where bodies may only temporarily venture, where things are but an inverse shadow of their material glory. It is easy to believe that events Here are somehow unreal, that in the blink of an Eye, Wilder will be fine. That, like a real ghost, this incorporeal being is incapable of hurting a body, of banishing, of unfolding. After all, the Hex is only made of code. It would be so easy to deny the Sight because by all former logic, this shouldn’t be happening. But former logic does not apply Here. It never has. This is a place of un-things. The Hex belongs Here. He rules it.
And I promised. So I am with them. I am with them until the end. I am distributed, a dew upon their organs. I hold them as best I can and it has to be enough.
Wilder can see their own heart beating, their own lungs breathing, and so they know the crackling wave of pain, overwhelming, the electric shock of it, the numbness beginning in the wide spaces between all their organs and spreading out, enveloping them, has not yet achieved the intended purpose. Or perhaps this is what the Hex wants. For Wilder to bear intimate witness to their own demise. They have seconds and they must hurry; they have eternities and can take all the time they want. They concentrate very hard. They make solid the lines and lines and lines of code in their mind, which is quickly-slowly powering down. They are becoming computer. And with it, they make manifest their deep wellspring of Power, their Ever-Flowing Cup, the place they have learned to locate so easily. They reach their Hands into it—Empathy. Passion. Love. The smell of buttermilk pancakes, the press of both their palms against their bedroom walls, their nose in Lady Anastasia’s fur, the feel of Artemis’s hands on their shoulders pushing them forward, Quibble’s last light touch on their now-detached pinky. They are become themself. They are become Hex. And every part of them mixes. Effects. Infects.
undo it. undo ye that.
Wilder can’t feel their lips properly, perched on a head detached from a splayed-out body. Quietly, quietly, they answer the Hex. They answer it more with their flickering thoughts than their lips, which, deprived of a clear path to their failing lungs, can only mouth the word “no.” The amazing thing has happened! Fuck yeah! they think loudly into Here, and everyone Feels the quake. Artemis, Quibble, me, sure. And also everyone who is not Here. A strange sonic boom that no one can quite understand. Ears pop; sensation presses in the backs of mouths; a good many people comment on the change in pressure, the weird weather, how strange bodies act when spring changes into summer.
That is the last thing Wilder thinks before they are torn entirely apart.
Is melting the best word to describe the Hex as he begins to drip and shrink? As his twisted lines of code, his ethereal musculature, begin to unwind? No, he Says. nononononononononono.
The Hex is the first, last, and only of his kind; I can relate. An endling without origin, a sad story, a memorial or a moral imperative (except, of course, to kill him—to endling him). The Hex was only ever alone, and now he is un-making. Even in this world of infinitely replicable backups, everything dies eventually. But unlike my destruction, the end of the Hex doesn’t prevent the creation of another. For the Hex was birthed of men, collectively willed into existence as a vessel for anger, and feelings are infinite. Especially those feelings ray-gunned by a group onto a single point in space because they do not know where else to put it. An unhappy accident.
And, I suppose, if I truly think about it, my demise wouldn’t necessarily prevent another one of me from occurring to the world, either. For I am made of magic, and that, too, is infinite. And what of Wilder—yes, they are a person. And people are a dime a dozen, totally fungible. Kill one person and ten more pop up to take their place. But the Hex is running with Wilder’s blood, with their body, with the bright lines of code that Smell, Taste, Sound, Look, Feel like everything they were-are. Wilder cannot be replaced. They never will be.
Aren’t we all endlings, really?
The giant thing is reduced. Unfolded. Banished. Reversed. And then he is gone. They are both gone.