Endless Water, Starless Sky

  “But—”

  “Mahyanai Runajo.” Juliet stared her down. “You owe me a life. Many more than one, in fact. So consider this my vengeance: you will not go with me. You will live, and do what you can to protect our peoples.”

  Runajo’s face was very pale, her hands clenched into fists. For a moment, Juliet thought she was going to protest again. Then her breath sighed out as her shoulders slumped.

  “I don’t have the right to tell you no,” she said.

  You could forbid me, thought Juliet, but—with a sort of dazed wonder—she realized that until now, it hadn’t even occurred to her that Runajo might.

  Then she felt the sudden stab of Runajo’s guilt, and realized that she had let that thought pass through the bond between them.

  “But I trust you won’t,” she said out loud.

  Runajo smiled faintly. “You were always stupid,” she said, but gave her no orders.

  Runajo insisted that they go to the Mouth of Death.

  “I thought it dried up,” said Juliet.

  “Yes,” said Runajo. “But it’s still the place where somebody succeeded three thousand years ago. It might help you now. And I can get you there. The High Priestess owes me a favor.”

  Romeo had not needed to go there before he walked into death. But then, he had not succeeded in ending the Ruining. And Juliet thought that Runajo needed to do something to help her. So she followed her back to the Cloister, and finally saw the spot where Runajo had once saved her, when her attempt to make Romeo her Guardian had gone wrong, and she had nearly been dragged into the land of the dead.

  The Cloister sat at the very top of the city spire, and the Mouth of Death sat above the rest of the Cloister, in a tiny round valley of smooth, dark rock. The Ancients had been the first to make it a shrine, and they had inlaid glowing green glyphs around the rim of the walls. Juliet recognized none of the glyphs—Runajo told her that nobody knew what they meant anymore—but some of them looked hauntingly familiar.

  At the far end of the little valley was a small, round dent in the ground.

  “That’s it?” asked Juliet.

  “Yes.” Runajo’s voice was very quiet, her eyes distant. “That was the Mouth of Death.”

  Juliet approached it slowly. She knelt and pressed her palm against the bottom. The stone felt cool; prickles ran up her arm, but perhaps that was only because she knew what she was touching.

  Once, this little dent in the earth had been a bottomless pit of inky-black water that flowed straight from the land of the dead. Juliet had heard about it all her life; Runajo had seen it, when she sat vigil one night months ago, and dragged Juliet out of the procession of dead souls.

  She stood, and turned to face Runajo. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m ready now. You can go.”

  Runajo’s lips pressed together. Then, with an ungraceful thump, she sat on the ground.

  “No,” she said.

  Juliet took a step forward. “You are not coming with me—”

  “No.” Runajo shook her head. “I will obey you. I will stay alive. But I will sit vigil for you until you come back.”

  “That won’t be any help to me,” said Juliet. “And I likely won’t return. You’ll be sitting here forever.”

  Runajo glared at her from the ground. “Then you’ll just have to drag yourself back, won’t you?”

  And Juliet couldn’t help it: she smiled, one final time.

  Then she drew her knife and cut a tiny line into her wrist. Blood welled up and dripped to the ground.

  She heard a deep, noiseless ringing: the gates of death opening.

  She thought, I am the key. Let me in.

  She heard the song of death, murmuring with many voices.

  She saw dark, endless water, and dark, starless sky.

  She thought of Romeo and Runajo, of everything she had lost and was about to lose. She thought of the chants of the Catresou magi and the Mahyanai poems that Romeo had whispered to her. She thought of sunlight and hot tea and the mangy little cats wandering the Lower City.

  And she walked forward, across the water. She followed Romeo into death.

  Part III

  Unless This Miracle Have Might

  30

  AT THE END OF ALL things, there was dark, endless water and dark, starless sky.

  Beneath Juliet’s feet, the surface of the water was cool and firm. In her ears, the song of death echoed over and over: a chorus like the rippling of many waves, insistent with meaning like a thousand voices.

  The song drew her forward. It wasn’t like the last time, when she hadn’t understood what was happening, when she’d been helpless to escape her fate. Now, she knew what the song meant, why it felt so familiar and inevitable. Now, she stepped forward freely.

  Then her foot sank into the water, up to the ankle.

  Though she was walking into death, her heart could still pound with terrible, mortal fear. This was farther than she had gone before.

  Juliet thought, Romeo braved this too.

  And if she did not follow him, then all of Viyara would die. They would rend each other apart, first in sacrifices and then in panic, and then the Ruining would roll into the city and kill the last few survivors.

  She could not allow it. The Juliet could not allow it.

  So she walked forward. The song of death was in her ears, humming through the air in her throat, and there was water up to her knees and then her hips. Her chest, her shoulders, her chin.

  The cold water kissed her lips. It slid between her teeth. She was sinking, she was drowning, and the song was gone as she slid down into the darkness, clutching the sword to her chest.

  Juliet sank forever.

  Down, and down, through the dark waters, and she began to fear that death was only this: forever sinking, forever falling, the memories of life growing fainter and fainter, until she dissolved into the water and was nothing but darkness and currents. Until she was nameless, and hopeless, and could not love or protect anyone.

  The water began to change. It was warmer now, softer somehow. She saw bubbles: no, tiny floating lights all around her, like unborn stars in the womb of the sky.

  She drew a breath of sudden wonder and realized that she was breathing air again. That she could think and remember herself again, and her heart flooded with sudden hope. I have not failed yet, she thought.

  And then she settled on her feet.

  In the land of the dead.

  She could not see far. She could see this: she stood on a hill that sloped away downward before her. The ground was moss and pebbles at her feet, and thin, threadlike vines studded with little bell-shaped white flowers. Farther down the slope were thickets and low, twisted trees. The sky was black as night, but there were no stars overhead; the light came from the multitude of tiny glowing points floating in the air, shivering slightly as if stirred by a breeze, though the air was still against her cheeks.

  It was a beautiful place. And yet fear wove itself through her ribs, because this was not the death she had learned about as a child, sitting beside her mother. It was not the Paths of Light that good Catresou were supposed to walk in joy and peace. It was not the howling, ghost-filled darkness that was supposed to take all outsiders (and the Juliet).

  She could have faced that darkness with courage and with honor.

  But this gentle, flowering slope?

  It meant the lore of her people was wrong. That the prayers she had learned as a child were useless to defend her. That any danger could await her.

  All she knew for sure were the words of the last woman to speak with Death, three thousand years ago: Death will parley with those who unlock the gate, pass the reapers, and come to meet her.

  Juliet had killed reapers in the world above. But what kind of power might they have here, in Death’s own kingdom?

  She thought of Romeo walking into this silent realm, with not even Catresou lore to guide him. She thought of Runajo waiting for her in the world outside, despairing and yet fai
thful. She thought of the crowds huddled in the Upper City, with no hope but the bloody sacrifices of the Sisters, which could not protect them for long.

  The fear ebbed a little. She had nothing to rely upon except what she’d always had: the people she needed to protect.

  Juliet drew her sword. She took a deep breath. And she called out, “I have come to speak with Death. I want to make a bargain.”

  She waited, heart thudding. But the slope remained gentle and empty and still. No reapers formed themselves out of the dark air to attack her. No revenants crawled out of the ground to devour her—

  And Juliet’s breath huffed out in almost-laughter, as she realized there was one danger that could not exist here.

  In the land of the dead, she was safe from the Ruining.

  And if the reapers would not come to her, then she would have to find them.

  So Juliet began to walk down the slope.

  And she walked.

  She walked.

  It was easy going, but weariness began to drag at her. There was no tracking time in this eternal midnight, but it felt as if she had been walking for days. No matter how she tried to keep in mind her duty, her desperation—even her fear—slowly the weariness drained them away. The tiny lights drifted about her, and she kept pausing to stare at them, entranced by the tiny, gentle movements.

  Her eyelids felt heavy.

  I cannot rest, she thought. Runajo is waiting for me. Paris and Romeo trusted me. My people need me.

  Slowly, the undergrowth had become heavier. There were thickets all around her now; she no longer walked an open slope, but followed a path. Here and there to the sides, she saw lone, crooked little trees.

  Before her lay a forest.

  The trees grew close, branches twisting together. The path she was on ran right through the center, and she paused. There was something ominous in the way the trees huddled together, and she wondered what might hide in their shadows.

  But the lights still drifted ahead of her, glimmering against the slick, knobby bark. And she had a mission.

  She stepped beneath the leaves.

  It was just as silent outside the forest. But here the air was closer, warmer, almost thicker; it tasted of dust and spices. She kept feeling little gusts of air, almost like breaths against the back of her neck, but there was no one with her and the leaves did not stir.

  The path twisted again, and then there was a wide, round clearing.

  At the other side sat a woman clothed in white. Her back was turned; her dark hair flowed to the ground and wound away among the fallen leaves.

  Fear chilled the back of Juliet’s neck, lifted the weariness from her eyelids. Because she had expected the land of the dead to be filled with dead souls, but it was not; and if she could not see other dead souls here, then this woman had never been alive; and perhaps that meant that already, without having faced the reapers, Juliet had found—

  “I have come to speak with Death,” she said. “I need to make a bargain.”

  She had pitched her voice to carry, trying to sound brave, but in the close hush of the wood, her voice was small and muffled.

  “Death wears the face of whoever comes to her,” said the woman. Her voice was low and sweet, but there was a strange, alien note to its music.

  Then she rose and turned. “Do I look like you, little girl?”

  Juliet flinched back, hand dropping to her sword.

  “No,” she whispered.

  There were seven eyes in the woman’s forehead, each a different color. In each of her palms gaped a wide, red mouth, lined with little pointed white teeth.

  And Juliet recognized her.

  “You’re the Eyes and the Teeth,” she said.

  The Catresou magi told stories of many monsters who roamed the land of the dead, hungry for anyone who had not yet found the Paths of Light. The most fearsome of them all was the Eyes and the Teeth, who entranced dead souls with lullabies before she ate them. Not even good Catresou could escape her unless they knew one particular spell, and Juliet had never been taught. It was not considered fit for her to learn, when she had no real name, and would turn into a mewling ghost regardless.

  Juliet knew this, and yet she was still a little comforted. Because her people had known at least one thing. In this strange, dark world of death, there was one creature that might follow rules she understood.

  “Look,” said the Eyes and the Teeth.

  And Juliet saw.

  There were people in the forest. The people were the forest. Their bodies were tangled among the roots, half covered in dust and moss; they were wound into the trunks, eyes and mouths blindly gaping among the tree knots; branches and twigs grew in and out of stretching hands and fingers.

  Juliet had grown up hearing tales of the nameless ghosts who forgot they had ever been human. She had never imagined anything so horrible as this.

  “Don’t be afraid,” said the Eyes and the Teeth. “They long for this rest. Don’t you feel it?”

  And Juliet did. The forest was not silent now: there was a soft, droning song in the air, like a hundred thousand sleepers humming, and her heart began to slow and beat in time to the gentle thrum.

  Here there was no more striving. No more weeping, no more waking. An end to hate and anger, an end to fear and pain. To laughter and to longing, to love itself and all the chaos it could bring.

  She was on her knees. Her palms pressed against the soft, soft earth. Her lips felt numb. She knew that she was not supposed to sleep, but it was hard to remember why.

  “Can they be woken?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Oh,” laughed the Eyes and the Teeth, “you are not the first to hope that.”

  Fingers stroked through Juliet’s hair; she shivered, but then leaned into the touch. When she had still been a child, but her mother was already dead, she had longed so often for someone to touch her hair again, to hold her with gentleness.

  “Consider the two who lie beside you,” said the Eyes and the Teeth, and through dimming eyes, Juliet saw them: two ridges of roots and arms and legs, braided together in an endless embrace. “Once they were both alive, and then only one of them was.”

  And as the Eyes and the Teeth spoke, Juliet saw the story, as if it were a dream:

  There was a girl and there was a boy, and they loved each other as everyone does: as no one else has loved before. But the girl died and the boy, he was lost and good as nameless without her. So he sought and he learned and he found secret ways, and at last he walked into death while still alive, his heart pulsing with mortal blood and hope.

  And he found her, here in the grove where seeking ends: her lovely limbs tangled with the earth and roots, her fair face cradled by the leaves and dirt. He called to her and wept for her and he begged her. But she did not wake, and he would not leave her.

  At last he sang to her, a song of all his love and longing. “Wake, my love, I came so far to find you, I cannot rest without you.” Oh, there was never such a song in this land before.

  And her eyes did not open but her lips did part, and she sang to him: “I am dead, I am silent, I am still. I will never wake again.”

  He sang, “But kiss me once, and then I’ll be content to go.”

  She sang, “Kiss me but once, and you’ll lie here with me forever.”

  So he pressed his face to the earth and kissed her sleeping mouth, and he took root, and fell asleep. And now he lies beside her, who sought so long to find her, and he knows her not, nor loves her, and though they lie here for eternity, he will never kiss her once again.

  Juliet could see no longer. She was cradled by the earth, lulled by the fingers in her hair. All about her, the forest hummed with endless peace.

  This was death. This was the whole of death: the silence and forgetting. There was no use trying to save Viyara with bargains. No one had ever bargained with Death and won, because to bargain was to sleep, and to sleep was to forget.

  Here in the grove, where all seeking came to an e
nd.

  But the fingers were gentle in her hair, and they were like her mother’s: her mother who was long, long dead, but once stroked her hair as she lay drowsing.

  Her mother, who once whispered charms that she should not have wasted on a girl without a name: In darkness, may thy feet not fail thee. In silence, may thy name not desert thee. In death, may the Eyes and the Teeth not find thee.

  Juliet forced her eyes open. She wasted two breaths, puffing them out between numb lips, before she was able to move her tongue and ask, “Then what . . . are you?”

  If death was nothing but sleep, what need had the grove for a guardian?

  The Eyes and the Teeth laughed, low in her throat. She took away her hand, and Juliet shuddered as feeling crashed back into her body. She raised herself back to her knees, gasping still and trembling.

  I nearly gave up, she thought. I nearly gave up and betrayed everyone.

  “I am the eater of names,” said the Eyes and the Teeth. “Those who bury themselves here, who send roots into the silence, they bear fruit. Look.”

  She reached a languid hand toward one of the nearby bodies: a young man, mostly buried, whose head tilted back over a thick lump of root, his dark hair trailing among the leaves. She stroked his face, and he did not wake, but his mouth dropped open, and inside—something like a little round fruit, crimson and glowing bright.

  The Eyes and the Teeth plucked the red globe, rolled it down her fingers and around the rim of her palm, before letting it slide into the hand’s mouth. She made a fist, and all her eyes closed at once.

  Then she opened them and smiled at Juliet.

  Already, bark had grown over the man’s face.

  “What did you do to him?” Juliet asked, revolted.

  “I ate his name.”

  Juliet, who had lived all her life without a name, and known how it doomed her, felt nauseated.

  “It would be kinder if you had—” she said, then stopped.

  The Eyes and the Teeth smiled. “If I had killed him?” she asked mockingly. “That is already done.”

  Again Juliet felt the terror of this alien place, with its unknown laws and prices. Here in the land of the dead, there was no death to limit anything.