Elizabeth Hand - Winterlong

Because now there is a thrumming in the air, a sound like wind in the leaves or something else, a sound I have never heard, not in Waking; only perhaps in dreams. The sound of waves returning to some distant shore, the sound of voices chanting. Gradually their words become clear:

We came upon Baal

Stricken on the ground:

Mot had slain him. We cried,

“ Puissant Baal is dead,

The Prince, Lord of Earth, is perished.”

Our lamentation wakes Anat.

She descends from the throne,

Pours’ dust of mourning on her head.

In her face she cuts a gash with a stone,

She gashes her cheeks and her chin,

She plows her breast like a garden,

Harrows her back like a plain. She lifts up her voice and cries:

“ Baal’s dead!—what becomes of our people?

What becomes of the earth?

After Baal I’ll descend into earth.”

Anat goes and wanders

Every mount to the heart of the earth,

Every hill to the earth’s very bowels.

She comes to the Wasteland

To the horror of Mot’s field.

She comes upon Baal

Stricken on the ground.

Then weeps she her fill of weeping;

Deep she drinks tears, like wine.

Loudly she calls

Unto the Mother above.

“ Lift Puissant Baal, I pray,

Onto me.”

The Mother wakes.

She picks up Puissant Baal,

Sets him upon his sister’s shoulder.

Anat lifts up her voice and cries:

“ Now will I sit and rest,

And my soul be at ease in my breast.

For alive is Puissant Baal,

My brother, king of the earth.”

When I open my eyes once more I see him above me, his hands tight about my shoulders as he thrusts against me, grunting, his face contorted into a mask of such despair and terror that I try to turn my head so as not to see it, not to see him, my own face there above me in the throes of such torment as I can no longer imagine, a horror even worse than mine at being ravaged by him.

But He is too strong; I cannot look away…

And suddenly they are there with me, all of them: Morgan Yates with her face pressed against a bloodstained window, Emma Harrow staring as her brother’s body twists slowly from a leather belt, Jane Alopex recoiling as He turns to her and extends His hand, Fabian a gray wraith twisting in the night. Just as suddenly they are gone. I am alone. It is me there, for one moment my own face hangs above me in the darkness, not Raphael but Wendy. Then he tosses back his head and cries out: a scream that echoes from the walls and is taken up by those who watch, until the air is filled with it: a shriek of such horror and misery and loathing that it deafens me, and I shut my eyes so as not to see the anguished face that would make such a sound.

It is over. He rolls from me and lies prostrate upon the blackened earth. I turn onto my side to stare at him, reach to touch him: my consort, my enemy, my brother. He does not move; he lies there as though dead.

A shadow falls across his face. Dimly I become aware of other sounds; cries and the sound of fighting, metal against metal, granite crushing bone. There is a smell of burning, of flesh. Above me stands the Aviator. Blood slicks his arm and hand, and he holds a piece of metal like a bloodied scythe.

“Kill him!” a voice shrilled. I twisted to see Oleander hanging from a spike beside the ladder, his face contorted as his arms flailed. Blood frothed from his mouth as he strove to free himself. “ The missiles — he will destroy us all—kill him!”

His hand flopped against his side. With his last bit of strength he pulled a knife from the folds of his trousers and tossed it. It skittered across the floor and halted beside my brother’s body.

With a roar Tast’annin leaped from where he swayed above me. Stumbling against the ladder he raised his arm, the light blazing crimson from his scythe as it struck at the boy’s neck. For one instant Oleander’s mouth mirrored Tast’annin’s own, a frozen mask of loathing and horror; then with a rush of blood his head toppled from his shoulders.

“Kill him?” shouted Tast’annin. But no one seemed to hear him but me. Everywhere lazars ran blindly, scrabbling at ropes and ladders, kicking as they fought to climb the walls of the pit. “Kill him? No one can kill him! It is the Final Ascension: he will rise again!” His voice rose to a scream, bubbling from his twisted mouth so that I could not be certain what words I heard and what I only imagined in my delirium. “He is not dead, he doth but sleep—”

Then there was a flash of light. The generator exploded with a hollow sound, showering me with sparks. Tast’annin disappeared in the shadows. There was only torchlight and a few sullen candles glowing fitfully above the melee.

I turned dully to stare at the stricken form on the ground in front of me: so like myself I might have aligned my body beside his, the two of us forming twin curves of a human arabesque, gray eyes deadened, tawny hair a wasted wave upon this bleak shingle, our broken limbs entwined cold and unmoving. Raphael Miramar. Neither god nor Gaping One: only my brother given to the dark.

“ Kill him,” another Voice whispered. I lifted my head; but Tast’annin had forgotten me. I heard him growling as he lunged and struck at something in the dark.

— Kill him, Wendy.

The yellow points of the lazars’ torches guttered and went out. With them it seemed the very voices of the lazars died. A terrible silence encloaked me, although I could still see the wraithlike figures of the damned children soundlessly spinning about the abyss, contorted like insects trapped in a lamp. Even the pounding of my heart stilled. For a moment I thought, We are all dead.

Then, from the charred ground in front of me a brilliant white flame leaped up like a fountain, a flame with neither heat nor color besides that painful argent. The stench of rotting flesh arose with it. I blinked and shielded my eyes and mouth.

— Oh, Wendy, the flame sighed. The brilliant light danced and faded to a harsher yellow, then began to shape itself into a more substantial form. Slowly it rose and fell, as though trying to draw strength from the freezing air.

— Poor Wendy! Alone now, you are truly alone —

—But I can still hear you, Small Voice, I said in surprise. If I am alone you must be gone—

— No. I am still here, for the moment. Kill him, Wendy. He is an abomination; you cannot both live. Kill Raphael.

With difficulty I turned from the flame; it seemed to will me to stare at it, be consumed by it. But I looked back down at the boy lying there. So frail now, and white. His eyes were closed but I knew that even if he opened them there would be no light there, no reflected glory to mad’den me, no maenad’s Dionysus there now but only a broken shell.

— Kill him, hissed the flame. There is a knife, take it and kill him!

I nodded and reached for the knife Oleander had thrown: a golden knife with a curved blade, so keen the light refracted from its edge in dazzling waves of blue and white. I held it a long time. It seemed to have no weight at all in my hand.

— Kill him, the flame repeated. Kill him, Wendy. Each time it leaped higher beside me.

—Be quiet, I commanded it. I was trying to remember something, something the Boy had told me at the Zoo:

We will meet again … but you may not remember my names. Although perhaps by then you will recall your own …