The sand beneath my feet opened up and swallowed me whole.
And I fell towards black water.
And fell fast. There was no wind at my sides, just a wash of heat running away from the waters below, shooting back up towards the crack of light through which I’d fallen. I wanted to cry out, but my voice didn’t listen, as it was already riding the heat up and away. I grasped, desperate fingers swimming through stifling air, but the harder I pushed, the harder my hands struggled against thick silence.
I suddenly hit the surface below, waves parting gently. Saltiness splashed into my mouth, and I knew this river. I let my hands glide over the surface, recognizing the waters; they’d poured out of my eyes and a hundred thousand others, and I could feel the current of tears beneath me churning. Instead of drowning, though, I was dragged forward, riding the cool black bubbles of memory into unending shadow. It was a strange realization when I discovered that there was no pain any more. I’d left pain far away, back in the world.
The river was wide, but its flow was gentle, and I let my head tilt slowly back as I watched the light being sucked into the distant split in the sky above. I was thirsty so I cupped a bit of the water into my mouth, and I tasted things of the past. Like the time I’d tinkered that little catapult for Matty to shoot pebbles against the barracks’ wall. And when Abb showed me the loose panel in his quarters.
Suddenly I realized that these tears had Cold in them. Not like the Draft in the bucket of Cold, but enough to make me curious. Were the glimmering beads raining into the river behind me, or into the dark cavern which I was being swept towards? Was the cool feeling blooming or fading, or eternal?
I knew I was coming to the place where the river ended. I was aware the current would plunge to somewhere different, somewhere I wasn’t quite prepared to go. I drank more of the waters, hoping that I might be able to carry some of the memories with me, and my head flooded with gentle visions of Mother Bev trying to free tangles in her daughter’s hair with the combs I kept having to make her, and the most evocative answers of ‘whatsit’ that Moussa concocted, and the time Jardin kissed me on the cheek when I first lent her a crank-fan.
Shilah and Cam were there, but most of all I felt my memories of Abb trickle into my heart, and spread out with a deep sense of comfort. I could feel his powerful hands at my back as he sewed together a deep gash, and the time he’d accidentally triggered my Colour Wheel, laughing together until our throats burned as we tried to scrub the dyes off his face.
The current speeded up, and some instinct in me knew I was closing in on the edge.
The end.
I didn’t feel the need to panic. I’d left that above too. The river felt as natural as breathing. The tears were calm and cool, and mostly I just wondered what Matty had been thinking as he rode these waters not so long ago. I hoped he’d thought of me kindly as the precipice came closer.
The current increased to impossible speeds, rocking up and down, and I felt my body surge into open air. Tumbling through emptiness. I didn’t feel dizzy, or upset, or even properly sad. Life undressed itself from my shoulders, and my dreams of things left un-invented gently strained through the tiny holes in my mind, and my essence dissolved into the beautiful black nothing.
And then peace.
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‘Where are you?’
The words came from everywhere at once.
It had been an eternity since I’d had to communicate, so I closed my soul again and rested.
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‘Where are you?’
A pinpoint of golden light burst into the dark. The spot was tiny, but against the black it was everything.
It came closer, not in a straight line, but as if blindly searching for me. I tried to curl back into the darkness, like a pinch of sand tucking itself back into the bottom of a dune, but the light continued its annoying search, hurting what were once my eyes.
‘Where are you?’ the light asked. ‘I can’t see you. They put it in the ground.’
I remembered someone who used to say something along those lines, but I didn’t care enough to throw off the blanket, and I pulled death more tightly around my body, tucking in the edges.
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‘Please,’ the voice said after another hundred lifetimes. ‘It’s not supposed to be this way. I’m sorry. I’ve been ready for so long.’
I sighed, peeking out and trying not to wince against the harsh light.
‘How?’ I asked. ‘How can I help you, so you might leave me alone?’
‘The whole thing is a lie,’ it said.
‘Well, who was the one who told it?’ I asked, annoyed, pushing myself back under.
Silence.
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‘You’re a Jadan,’ the light said. ‘I need a Jadan.’
‘Yes. I was a Jadan.’ My voice sounded odd, muffled through eternity.
‘I’ve been waiting so long. I suffer too, you know. Where are you? They put something in the ground.’
‘What did they put in the ground?’ I asked with a sigh.
‘I don’t know,’ it said. ‘The end?’
I shook what was once my head.
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‘Where are you?’
It was interesting to smile again after so long, but the movement didn’t come back easily. ‘You’re not going to let me rest, are you?’ I asked.
‘Only a Jadan can help me.’
I grumbled, but then realized the light was pure and wonderful, and for a moment I didn’t know why I’d been pushing it away. It was so grand that darkness itself quaked underneath.
‘You can invent it,’ it said.
‘Invent what?’ I asked.
‘Where are you?’
I waved my arms, but then I realized that that movement could only happen in the past, so I stopped. ‘Invent what?’
‘Langria.’
‘Langria? What’s that?’
‘Freedom. Life. Everything. Put it back to how it was. How I made it the first time.’
I tasted the tears again, like a rash from chains. ‘I thought Langria was already real.’
‘You have to make it real.’
‘Then I can rest?’ I asked.
Silence.
‘How do I make Langria?’ I asked.
‘Aren’t you an Inventor?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘Was I?’
The light pulsed, golden hues knocking at my door. I shrugged what were once my shoulders and it came in.
Then the most spectacular thing.
Ice.
Ice only existed in legends; the old, alive version of me never understanding what it could possibly feel like. But at a single touch I understood. This was what the Crier was made of, what He’d been trying to give our people for so long. Ice, that lived in the deep darkness; Ice was forever. I remembered certain things: an idea. Two ideas. About Cold in the sky and the stars.
‘You think I can reach them?’ I gasped.
‘You’re an Inventor.’
‘Come with me,’ I said, my edges still crackling with Cold. ‘Come back and help me.’
‘You’ll have help. But I can’t.’
That was when I finally felt how trapped the voice was. The gold couldn’t be lifted from the darkness unless from the other side. I heard the river in the distance, splashing in my direction. I let out my eternal sigh, breathing away the last of my non-existence.
‘Build it,’ the light said as the waters found me. ‘My Jadan Inventor.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said.
‘Promise.’
‘I promise.’
‘Where are you?
The wool was peeled from my head and I gasped as the street came back into view, the fading Sunlight nearly breaking my eyes. The intense smell of salts ambushed my mind, keeping me afloat.
‘Where are you?’ the Vicaress asked, waving the vial under my nose.
Life was too vivid and I wanted to scream, but a piece of boilweed had been shoved into my mouth to keep me from doing just that. All the thirst and aches and pain from fresh wounds returned at once, all the things she’d done to get me to talk, and I closed my eyes, desperate to return to that blackness. My shoulders were on fire, arms still locked above my head, chains taut and keeping me from the ground.
I once again felt the sears on my ribcage where the fiery blade had pierced me. And the missing bits of flesh on my knuckles. And the stiffness of the dried blood on my calves, and the bruises driven deep into the bones of my forearms.
But I hadn’t broken. Shilah was still safe. The Jadan Garden was still safe.
‘Welcome back, Spout. Don’t think you’re done yet,’ the Vicaress said, tossing a cup of water at my side and throwing in a Wisp.
‘Maybe he doesn’t know her,’ Thoth said gently. ‘Perhaps this Moussa was mistaken?’
The Vicaress looked at him, a curious tilt of her head. ‘Does the Crier speak to you too? Are you a holy now, Jadanmaster?’
It was curious to see Thoth standing up for me, and it made me wonder how pitiful my body must have looked. I’d never felt so thirsty in my life, even after Abb had walked me to the banks of the Kiln.
‘Apologies, Highness.’ Thoth bowed, low and deep. ‘I just meant your time is most valuable. I can take over for you if you like? I’ve memorized the Compendium myself, and—’
The Vicaress held up her gloved hand for silence. ‘This is my work.’
Thoth bowed once more, stepping back and letting her return to my torture.
I was tempted to dismiss everything that had happened as a hallucination, just a bunch of visions firing in my mind as it was ripped apart, but something told me the voice couldn’t be ignored. I could still hear the words in my ears, could still feel the touch of golden Ice at my core.
I’d spoken with the Crier.
A presence that needed me to live.
I just had to get through the next bouts of torture until they got bored. I’d scream and scream, give the Vicaress every agonizing sound she wanted, stretch my threshold to the limits.
But secretly my mind would be elsewhere.
The wool had drained me of water, but now there was something different running through my veins.
If the Vicaress killed me, fine.
If not, I had my own work to do. And Shilah and Cam were going to help me.
The Vicaress yanked the piece of boilweed from my mouth and I spat out a mouthful of blood to the stones at my feet. She gave me a delighted look, picking up another cup of water and forcing it down my throat.
Then she pulled the wool back over my eyes, the heat returning.
‘Gather your screams,’ her voice said, close to my ear. ‘We’ll try again in a few hours.’