Chapter 5: No Better Place

It was an old story. Of gods ripping a hole in All Creation, from which came spirits and beasts and the ghosts of those long dead. And the gods, clever and curious as they were, slipped from their mortal bodies to explore places far beyond. What was left grew trees, the seeds from which humankind came to root. The animals, birds and foxes and wolves and bears, gathered one by one to close the hole the gods had made. But, even as they offered up bundles of wheat and what was left of that year's harvest, cracks began to appear in the sky. From which things not of this world traveled between. The animals taught humankind rituals of appeasement, but they couldn't do anything about what slipped in through the cracks.

Many different cultures had a word for this place. The Between. Somewhere Far. The Land of Strangers. The Arcadians referred to it as The Above and Below.

They woke up in bed.

A smear of coal retreated fast out of their peripheral vision like a furl of smoke. By the time they turned their head, it was long gone. A ghost or a spirit. A lingering shade. They learned to ignore it, for their sanity mostly.

They remembered their dream, which told them it wasn't. They'd actually traveled to the Above and Below and spoken to their familiar spirit as if they were old friends. They almost laughed. It seemed like just a day ago they'd experienced their first target practice and a day before they'd played runaround and go-hide with Sybil.

They pulled from their deerskin pack a leather-bound notepad where they'd endeavored to remember the date. Year of the Calf, Month of Harvest, Day Second. Harvest, Calf, Second.

Sadie Crane got dressed, then swung the pack over their shoulders. First, they had to know if the black fox was telling the truth. And if so, what were they going to do about it? If Passerine had provided them with such little respite, what hope did they have? Was it not better, more rational, to stay in one place and try to live a simple honest happy life among people they knew?

They trudged to the first floor cafe. Oanna was at the front counter again, strangling a cloth she was using to wipe the counter. Sadie Crane decided to leave her alone, at least for time being.

A woman hunched over one of the cafe tables. She wore a dark cloak the color of a dried bloodstain tied over her black pants and leather workman's boots, giving her the appearance of an off duty Baudelaire officer.

They made a beeline for the tables.

"Viola?" they said.

The woman jerked her head up, graphite pencil clattering onto the table. For a split second, she resembled a cornered feline.

"I don't like strangers," said Viola.

Her voice was more full-bodied and melodic than it had been the last time Sadie Crane talked to her.

"I'm not a stranger, sunshine," they said. "Name's Sadie Crane. You know that."

A timid smile broke on her face.

"Viola M'et-Sepirot-Keita," she replied. "But you know that."

She said the whole thing with the implied hyphens. In Ladezi, where her guardians wanted her to attend university, the upper classes spoke Romantic and the lower classes spoke Old Romantic. She suspected this was what her guardians had in mind when they named her Viola, a Romantic name. She was never going to understand how some Arcadians fantasized about going overseas to join the Baudelaire or set up their children to do it.

Her fingers moved in nervous patterns. Three of the five fingernails on her left hand were chewed down to skin, a fading smear of milky yellow polish faintly visible on the nail of her left thumb. The fingers of her right hand showed signs of a recent manicure, the light edges of her nails smoothed down to a curve. Mama M'et kept her fingernails long and painted them red like the war queens in those old Eudorian stories, something Viola promised herself she'd never do.

On the right side of her chair lay a brown leather rucksack full of writing utensils, a jam sandwich wrapped in paper, and a canteen of water.

"What are you doing back, space cadet?" Viola asked.

Sadie Crane sat down at the cafe table. Sensing Oanna's eyes drilling into the back of their head, they turned their head around and made a slashing gesture across their throat. She made one back, just so they were on equal footing.

"Don't," Viola begged.

They sank all the way back into their chair. Resentment like that doesn't go away, Black Sparrow once said. It festers. This was what they both wanted. To feed maggots into this open wound until they forgot what pain felt like.

"I got some business," they said. "Just for the day, then I'm wind."

Viola picked up what was left of her hotcake and took a big bite, savoring the taste. Still averting her eyes.

"I'm not gonna ask you to stay, if that's what you're thinking," she said. "I know you don't--don't want that. Leastways not from me."

"It's fine," Sadie Crane said back with a curve of their shoulders. "I know you fucking hate me. Everybody else does."

Viola nibbled on what was left of her meal.

"You think I hate you?" she said. "I mean, maybe I do. A little. I swear I was gonna write, I just. What was I supposed to say?"

Her head lifted, but she still didn't make eye contact. She hadn't talked to Sadie Crane since the wake, when she held the urn and said a prayer to Mother Gaia. She remembered very little of what came after. Jaia leaving halfway through another song, stumbling off to his bed with a mumbled curse against Sadie Crane's entire family left in his path. Basalt crying, shaking White Doe's hand off his shoulder when she tried to offer comfort.

"Well I wish you would have anyway," Sadie Crane replied. "I got lonely, in case you couldn't tell. Even with other people, I just felt like. Like I was supposed to be somewhere else. I didn't know how to be without you and De and Sybil. I still don't. Shit."

Viola pushed her chair back and got up.

"You eat yet?" she asked.

The two made quick to the staying house and then to the basement.

De'afi Kota-Kyah-Osi-Ori-De'ali sat at Viola's desk. Ze wore the names of hir birthgiver, hir birthgiver's birthgiver, and so on, as did most in hir village.

"Damn, you really did drag your dumb ass back here," ze said.

A grin pushed up Sadie Crane's cheeks.

"You look good, De," they said. "You keeping yourself fed?"

"Trying," De'afi replied. "You know how hard it is to get good alcohol around here."

Hanging from Viola's chair was a large basket with leather straps for carrying one's belongings, small interconnected stars woven from bloodroot. Ze made it hirself.

"I burned a lot of my shit from back then, but I still got my notebooks," ze said. "About the only thing I couldn't get rid of all the way."

"Are you okay?" Sadie Crane asked.

"I'm alive," ze replied.

Ze gestured hir foot at the desk, casting hir eyes around to Viola and pushing hir cheeks up in a grin.

"You dance?" ze asked.

"No," Viola said back, flatly.

Viola refused to say more. Not that she had to. She'd worked on that dress for the better half of a whirlwind year. She practiced, learning each step as one might a sonnet. It was her body, not her mind, that rebelled. Some people just weren't cut out to be dancers.

De'afi got them roasted potatoes, hotcakes, and fresh nut bread from the kitchen to eat. As Kota used to say, everything felt better on a stomach that was no longer empty.

"Space cadet," Viola said quietly. "You have to be real with us. What happened that night? And don't say you don't remember."

De'afi leaned into the desk and nodded hir head, biting off a portion of hotcake. Ze only remembered bits and pieces, stories passed along on wagging tongues. Of how Sadie Crane and Sybil ventured into the woods that night and only one came back alive. White Doe wouldn't tell hir anything even when ze asked. Black Sparrow didn't leave the farmhouse, not even to trade pelts at the day market. Adel came by the market once a week, but kept his lips tight. She Follows spoke in riddles.

"Just tell us," ze insisted. "Tell us or I leave right now and never come back."

"Its been six fucking years," Viola said, voice rising with anger. "You don't think we deserve the truth?"

Tears stung her eyes and she didn't even try to wipe them away.

"They said you killed him, space cadet," she wobbled. "And I don't wanna believe that, but--shit, what if he just. Just went all crazy and you--I don't know, you--you hit his head open with a rock? Or you pushed him and he fell some way he shouldn't?"

"You should have heard what Oanna was saying," ze said stonily. "I didn't wanna believe it, but you weren't talking so guess I kinda ended up thinking--what if she was right, leastways about some of it? Like the part where you and Sybil got into a fight, cuz you was always doing that--remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," they replied with a grim smile.

Sadie Crane started from the beginning. There was no better place.

They never asked what drove Sybil to the farmhouse that night, his face made of stone and a big rucksack slung over his shoulder. As they'd always, they followed him without question.

The rest unfolded like a story Black Sparrow once told. Something coming out of the trees, seven feet tall wearing the head of a skinned deer. Its antlers were pale brown and it was covered in a dark gray robe from the neck down. There was no wind to speak of, but the robe wisped and shifted as if alive. Looking at it for too long made Sadie Crane feel like their head was going to explode.

The Thing with Antlers, they called it. For what is a living creature without a name?

It emerged from the trees behind Sybil, its robe flowing along the dirt like water. They opened their mouth to scream, but nothing came out. And Sybil didn't turn his head, even when a long veiny hand snarled like a twig appeared from within that robe and touched the back of his skull. He didn't make a sound when it happened, just toppled over and never moved again.

Sadie Crane wondered for years after. What would have happened if they'd screamed? If they'd picked up a rock and thrown it? If they'd hauled a short arrow into their bow and fired? If they'd done anything at all? They didn't even know what they saw--spirit or ghost. They suspected it was an old old spirit, something attracted to fire and the blood in their veins. Perhaps they would have survived if they camped anywhere else.

The Thing with Antlers retreated into as if it had never been. Sadie Crane remained with Sybil's body for hours straight, long after the fire had burned low. They waited for him to get up again, for this to be another of his pranks. When they rolled him over onto his back, his eyes were looking up at the sky glassy. They felt sick deep in their stomach. He should have died charging into a bear or falling into a ravine, the ways he'd wanted to.

And then morning came. They packed up their things and went back into town.

Nobody believed their story, no matter which way they told it. Words like murderer and monster flew between tongues. Seers attract misfortune was a popular refrain. Even the town elders refused to defend them.

Black Sparrow alone believed what Sadie Crane told her. She offered up the conjure bag and the jackalope's foot to protect them from wayward spirits and anything else that slipped through the filaments.

Viola sucked on her teeth, believing every word.

"That's--shit, that's gotta be the saddest thing I've heard today," De'afi said.

They heaved in a long breath.

"And there's something else," they said. "Something from last night."

They told Viola and De'afi about their dream with the black fox.

"It said I need to go and find my other auntie," they finished. "It said she can help me."

They hesitated at this part. There was no going back.

"And I want you to go with me," they said. "Cuz whatever's out there? It's better than getting found dead in Alcoast. I have to believe that. I just have to."

De'afi thought of hir dreams, handsome and skybound. Made of stories, as all good things were. But out there, who knows? If one traveled far enough, even the strangest of tales could become real. Intangible no more.

Ze raised hir fists in the air, hir face coming alive with blinding positive energy.

"Got nothing to lose, do we?" ze said.

Viola slid down in her chair, heaving out a great big sigh. In the deepest part of her chest, she knew they were right. She'd waited years, nearing but not quite seven, to feel like she had purpose again. To be the dancer. But the dancer lay in a crumpled heap under her desk, a fleeting moment of aspiration. She needed to come back to herself, the spectacle chaser and the journalist.

"You better not get me killed," she said.

All things considered, that was a promise Sadie Crane endeavored to keep.