Dead World

I | Ceremony-2

He held like that for several seconds, squeezing so hard his hands shook, then gently placed his palm on her head and just as gently pushed, saying, “Down,” until she was on her knees before him.

“Lift your veil.”

She lifted the veil.

“Good. Now, Shekalane of Jaskir, do—”

A great foghorn sounded in the blackness out over the river, a blackness so complete it might have marked the border of the world, and both he and Shekalane jerked. The distraction with Milkweed had put them behind schedule; regardless, no one was ever prepared to hear that sound, not if they’d attended a thousand such ceremonies.

At last the rector continued: “... do you, ah, if accepted as a bride to our Lucitor, whose bile is the bath of all things tarnished, promise to, to ...”

Shekalane was looking up at him from her hand—which was bleeding profusely—as if to say: Is this how it’s supposed to be?

In his eagerness to please the raven’s camera, he had cut her too deep. He fumblingly withdrew a cloth from his robes and handed it to her, his fingers trembling, which she quickly used to make a crude tourniquet. Then, his thoughts flustered, he withdrew a small, black book from an inner pocket and opened it to the mark.

“Very well. So, ah, do you, Shekalane of Jaskir, ah, promise to share all that He has bestowed upon you, including but not limited to your youth, your beauty, and your skills as a courtesan, and to support Him in all endeavors, big and small?”

The foghorn sounded again, as terrifyingly as the first. And although she knew it emanated from an earthly source—a dragger, one of the great and terrible ships from which the ferrymen launched their gondolas and which transported them upriver after they’d delivered their charges—it didn’t sound earthly. She could only liken it to the sound a tuba made at its lowest note, but then that note changed to one that was slightly higher ... and lingered there, as though the universe itself were brooding over some alien and inscrutable purpose. As a tutor, of course, she knew there could be no such thing as sound in a vacuum. But if there were such a thing, perhaps in a place where all the laws of physics had been turned upside-down, she felt certain that the other-worldly horn was what a black hole itself would sound like.

She heard something pattering softly against the carpet and glanced up to see the rector gripping the book tightly within his wounded hand, trying to slow his own bleeding.

“I do,” she said.

“And will you, if it is decided otherwise, and so that others shall not want for space or bread, submit to death by our Lucitor, whose enzymes and proteins are the building blocks for all Ursathrax, and do so without hesitation or recourse—”

The foghorn sounded again, as if angrily impatient. The signaling torches needed to be lit, yet she knew it was expressly f*******n to do so before the vows were completed. She also knew, as the second note faded back into whatever haunted realm it had come from, that there would be no fourth sounding. The ferryman was already on his way.

The rector tried to hurry things along: “... and do it without recourse to violence?”

“I do,” said Shekalane, then quickly corrected herself: “I will.”

“Then I now pronounce you one with the Lucitor, and forever estranged from those who are not. And what the Lucitor has torn asunder, may no man reconcile.” He made the sign of the inverted cross, then raised his bloodied fingers, flicking them once, twice, a third time, spotting her face with maroon. “Rise and replace your veil.”

The crowd shouted: “Benedictus Lucidus!”

She stood but gave pause, for amidst the chorus were the voices of children. Her children, she realized, seated right there in the front. The entire class was there, including round, red-headed Alana and mute, feral Lat, who had come to them out of nowhere—simply washed ashore one day—like a piece of beautiful driftwood. He sat slightly apart from the others as he always had, and seemed truly lost, just completely and utterly alone.

Shekalane glanced at old, bespectacled Mabellisa, unsure whether to love her of hate her for ignoring her edict; had she known the children were there, she would have given last words! Especially to poor Lat, who had no friends or family but Shekalane herself—for she had always bonded best with singular and unique personages, be they children or adults.

The music began again—a simple, transitional overture—as the great, gas torches built into the pier and along the top of the wide steps burst into blue-red flame; until, finally, an enormous gong was pounded three times, ending the music, and, save for the crackling of the flames, an eerie silence fell over everything.

How long it lasted would have been impossible to say. But at great length the dipping of an oar was heard—indistinct but growing amidst all the night and fog—almost as if some invisible person were walking slowly but purposefully toward them over the water.

“All rise,” said the rector. And with a great shuffling and creaking of pews, all rose.

“Servant, you will face the courier.”

Shekalane turned to face the long, pitchfork-like pier and the impenetrable river fog beyond it, and made a deliberate attempt to tamp down her heart rate, which had quickened at the sound of the oar. I will not fear you, ferryman. Although I know you will wish me to. Although I have heard the stories. Although you will be drunk with your power over me and over others—I will not fear you.

She fingered the scroll hidden in her shawl. What did he mean, “You will know what to do?” Did she dare hope that Valdus might marshal all his resources in an attempt to rescue her? Even were that so, could such an effort do anything but fail? No one had ever escaped the Lottery— save by death itself.

A shape emerged from the fog, a mere phantom at first, a ghost. But as it approached the dock’s terminus it became more corporeal, so that she could just make out a hooded figure in a serpentine boat, which entered the circlet at the edge of the cloud bank and came to a stop with its starboard side facing them.

She swallowed as a nervous tremor went through the crowd, and the figure attached a hooked cable to an iron arm upon the pier before slowly turning to face them. She could just barely make out the bottom half of his face beneath the hood—although it wasn’t his true face at all but an oddly stoic-looking skull, which she knew to be a mask, and which knowledge she used to try to comfort herself. And she was partially successful; she had seen all this before, had she not? What could instill any new fear in a woman who had lost everything—first her husband, then her son, then a lover, and now herself and the friendships she had formed and her beloved school children and even her familiar, Milkweed, who was either dead or lost in the miasma?

She jumped as the raven cawed suddenly and leapt from its perch, batting its wings furiously before gliding the remaining distance to the ferryman and alighting upon his shoulder. He leaned against his oar with a strange kind of grace as a group of robed figures emerged from the crowd and began prodding her forward with their cruelly-configured pikes.

She pivoted suddenly and faced the crowd—more specifically, the children—Lat, in particular, and said, “I have something to say to my pupils!”

“Silence and speak not,” ordered the rector. “The time for last words has passed. Sentries!”

The sentries pressed forward, backing her onto the pier. The raven’s red eye gleamed.

“It is only this ...” She looked directly at Lat as the red dot of the raven’s camera fell wavering upon her hair and her shoulder, which she glanced over quickly to see the ferryman stirring behind her, abandoning his oar and placing a high, black boot on the bow. But he did not leave his boat.

“We spoke frequently of black holes and white fountains, did we not? Well, know then that though I go into a black hole now, I will re-emerge in a white fountain. As above, so below. Death is but rebirth! We will see each other again!”

One of the sentries reversed his polearm and shoved her hard with its butt, causing her to stumble backward as the barrier spikes rose quickly from the floor—separating them decisively—as well as along both sides of the pier. She stepped forward again almost instantly, gripping the bars and making direct eye contact with Lat; but he did not seem to acknowledge her, none of them did, and it occurred to her in a flash of horror that perhaps they had been drugged.

She allowed her hands to slide from the bars. It was over and done with, all of it. Everything she had ever known ... just gone.

She turned to face the ferryman. He just stared back at her stoically, as if in perfect stasis, as cold and serpentine as his boat. She began moving toward him slowly.

The music began playing again, causing her to look back at the departing crowd over her shoulder, and she saw Petrus, Paulus, and Magdalene in a pool of light next to Harianna, the two balding men strumming their citterns while blonde, beautiful Magdalene swayed and hummed. Petrus began singing, “He is now to be among you ...”

She saw, or thought she saw, the ferryman unhook something from his belt and cast it to the deck, after which a cloud of smoke bubbled up rapidly and completely obscured the landing platform. She paused hesitantly, but then continued walking, repeating to herself, I will not fear you, ferryman. Although I know you wish me to—I will not fear you.

She looked once more over her shoulder at the players and the crowds filing out—numbed almost comatose by the perverse contrast of it, the harmony of the music and the horror of what lay before her, until she entered the expanding cloud of smoke and all was lost in a swirling gray void.

She could not even be certain that she had cleared the corridor of spikes when she glimpsed a tall, indistinct figure standing amidst the smoke and the fog, a figure which had pushed back its hooded cloak and whose lanky but muscular form could now be discerned, especially his long arms, which were savagely sculpted as if from years of manual labor—one of which unhooked a thick handle from his belt and seemed to squeeze, causing a great, curved blade to flash out with the ringing of steel.

She stopped dead in her tracks, her heart starting to beat faster. Was this the truth of it? Was the Lottery and the pomp and circumstance surrounding it an even bigger sham than she had suspected? Is this what had become of her husband and her son? Had they simply walked into the gloom to be butchered like animals?

She took several tentative steps to her right, considering finding the edge of the platform and perhaps leaping into the water—but he merely countered her, striding confidently to stand before her and to prevent her from continuing any further. She froze again as she looked at his mask and into his eyes, the irises of which caught the light reflecting off his scythe and gleamed a sickly yellow. He stepped closer, calmly, in perfect control, and though she tried to tear her eyes from his impenetrable gaze, she found, at least momentarily, that she could not. Then she shrunk away in a rush of terror and hurried for the edge of the platform, which was just visible in the dissipating smoke, and he strode rapidly after her and blocked her yet again, but this time he gripped her wrist and wrenched her away, causing her to tumble to the boards in the direction from which she’d come.

She pushed herself up, her rich, brown hair having come undone and fallen over her face, and looked at him angrily, her heart pounding, all the pain and sense of loss smoldering now, but he only glared back at her intently, his own chest heaving, as though he might smite her with his weapon at any moment. Then her dark eyes flared and she launched at him in fury, colliding with him and beating on his chest with both her arms, again and again, until he hugged her savagely, preventing her from striking him any further, and scooped her up in his own arms. Immediately something fell to the boards, and Shekalane feared at first that it was Valdus’ ring, but it wasn’t—it was her tiny copy of The Chrysanthemum Cage, which she had used to inform her herself spiritually (as well as her students) since losing her son.