Chapter 20: First Damage
Sadie Crane loved dreaming. Used to anyhow. Not so much these days. They weren't grounding nations or slaying kings, they were stuck reiterating trauma for an audience of one.
Tonight they were strapped in a rocking chair. Had this knitting project for some godforsaken year-end festival, Alcoast. Always got another festival up these parts. The knitting needles were made of some sharp metal or glass. Pricked their fingers, swore mighty, started from top again and again and again and again. But that scarf wasn't getting any longer, any more done. Might take another five million years. Cripes. Gag them softly with a spoon.
Thought: You're dreaming, shitbug.
So dreaming. They were goddamn dreaming. They tried to wake themself up, nothing happened. Figured it wouldn't. Never that simple, space cadet.
"Am I dead?" they asked for perhaps the billionth time in the last month.
Their cheeks sheened with dried tears and bloodied from wiping cut fingers. No answer, of course there wouldn't be.
Thought: This is it. Where all things stop. You held out long as anyone could.
The anarchist put down their knitting. Cripes. This was a fine how-do-you-get-dead.
Thought: You knew it was gonna stop. It ain't so bad, when it stops.
"Hey, can you shut up?" they snapped.
Sadie Crane rose from their chair and got to walking. Figured there had to be something in this eternal nothing. And if not? Better than sitting waiting for oblivion.
In the furthest distance, they heard waves lapping at the shore. A faucet left on, drip drip drip. The sloshing of liquid against the hard ends of a clay basin. They felt the pockets of their denim jacket and kept walking.
Thought: Not dead not dead not dead. Cripes.
The anarchist peeled themself up off the dirt like a flower off sticking paper, to where they could sit and look around. They were edged up to the barn again, to this place called Cradle. Alone, far as they could tell. Decayed creature heaps of furniture piled outside, shredded couches and falling apart chair things. Where'd all this come from anyhow?
Thought: You dreamed a place like this.
They ran up from the ground. So did they sleepwalk? Did the Cradle sing at them? This dresser drawer graveyard? Or was this another piece of their head they were never gonna understand?
Thought: Why'd no one stop you? Why does no one ever stop you?
Their feet and arms and legs hurt. Like they maybe jumped from a window. Did they jump out the window while De'afi and Viola were downstairs? Gods, yeah. Definitely felt like they jumped from a window. Awesome. Just what they needed today.
Least it was nearing sunbreak. They could almost make out the trees.
Awful quiet round this place. They walked between furniture heaps, struggling shoeless on the path. They remembered the woods out back Alcoast, where they camped. Where Sybil Basalt-Eislane breathed his loudest and last.
Thought: You've been dying since you were born, space cadet.
"What even are you?" they said finally. "This thing that's in my head? You a spirit? Or just like--my head?"
Thought: You've always known who I am.
They knew better than to expect a straight answer, still tried. It was the voice they'd been hearing since Sybil passed. It was the voice that drove them to leave Sparrow and Finch, their last and least earned freedom.
The Thing with Antlers. Lurking outta sight, a stream of coal-dark writhing middle-distance. They didn't look at It. They never should have looked at It. What started this whole damn ride.
Thought: The hole sucking you in. Drawing you back. You can never leave this place.
They came up to the pond. Stood out clean, among the shredded chairs and ragged sitting cushions and decayed sofas. Fenced within broken off table legs, the femurs of old chairs, the teeth and ribcage of a discarded piano. Nature's tomb.
Sadie Crane footstepped over broken dishware, over animal bones. The coal-dark smear out corner of their eye took form, grew and stretched.
Thought: I've been thinking, what's it all for?
The pond gaped like a toothless mouth. Pitch dark, all the way down deep. It might go down forever. What then, if it went down forever? What then?
Thought: Sucks it all in. The light. Our memories. You won't have to live here anymore. With me.
The anarchist stuck a hand into the water. Their fingers broke the surface easy, their palm, their wrist. It took them like a coal-dark slit, swallowing them from tips to wrist. They didn't pull back. They'd lost the will to pull back, ages ago. When Sybil Basalt-Eislane looked them full face and said
Thought: I was just always the hole. The thing people were attracted to. And I took things. I loved taking things.
Thought: I died the day I was born. I ever say that?
They were afloat in nothing. The world had perhaps ceased to exist.
"Yeah, you said that," they replied. "Cuz you were all down about stickers or something? And you were crying. Day we met, sad and wet out. You were crying about stickers. Ain't seen you cry like that since."
Thought: Damn. Heavy thing for a kid to say.
"Where am I?" Sadie Crane asked.
Thought: The Above and Below. The Between.
"Dead?" they said calmly.
Thought: If you want to be.
They were nowhere. They were nowhere at all. It was nice. Being nowhere at all.
"The woods--that night--," Sadie Crane tried their hardest to square.
Thought: I wasn't sorry. I was never sorry about anything. And then It came and. You know the rest.
"I don't know anything," they complained. "Like, what does any of this mean? Right now? What is this right now?"
Thought: The End.
"That don't tell me shit and you know it," the anarchist said, tears in their eyes. "Why are you like this? Why can't you just be--why could you never be, like--my friend? Why were you never my friend? All I got and you weren't even my friend. Fuck you."
No fire in that fuck you, not even a smolder. So damn tired of being angry.
Thought: You're never gonna leave that place. It's in you.
"Oh, yeah, I figured," the anarchist snapped. "Tell me something new. Tell me how I get rid of this black spot inside me, tell me why this is happening to me."
Thought: Not because you're special. Because you were there. I'm sorry you had to be there.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save you," they sighed. "Sorry I didn't ask about your folks more. Sorry you were like, best friends with pile of trash me. But I'm not sorry too. I'm sick of sorry, you know?"
The resentment edged out of their voice.
Thought: I love you.
"Nah, you don't," they shrugged. "You don't. You couldn't. Whatever. I loved you. Love you. It's whatever. I'm glad you're okay."
Thought: I'm sorry this happened.
"You're not," they continued. "You don't gotta be sorry. Your fault, yeah, but you don't gotta be sorry. I'm damn sick of sorry."
They would have said more. About how the first time they made love was the last time Sadie Crane wanted to die. However much a hole he'd been, they loved him. And if he didn't love them back, he was damn good faking. That wasn't true, of course it wasn't true. But it felt true in the moment, as the world around them pulled at their clothes.
They wanted to say he was wrong about Viola, that she was never a loathsome know-everything. She was actually the most beautiful person on All Creation. She was moon and fat beautiful stars. She knew everything there was to know. She was scared of the dark, scared of trains, scared of living. But Sadie Crane wanted her to live.
Hands came around their shoulders. Then their torso. Black pops in their vision. They heard sobbing to their right, hysterical and pitched high. Their name being screamed. Delicate fingers pushing hair off their forehead, the crying grew ever more hysterical.
Thought: She was always a crybaby.
Sadie Crane pushed their head into Viola's chest. The coal-dark gathered left of their vision, heavy ooze and splatter. They pushed their head in more, until they were feeling Viola's skin through her sopped shirt. Until they realized the voice calling their name was De'afi's.
The smatter of coal-dark, bit by bit, came apart into ravines. The ravines into vacancy. Piece by piece, the coal-dark discontinued Itself. They were sad to see it go.
They pretended the first damage they ever took was losing him. But the first damage they ever took was falling in love with him. Writing their life story around his. And when he died, they wrote more of themself out of his passing.
Sadie Crane stopped their charcoal sketching. Legs crossed on the floor, lit by the spirited glow of lantern. They pinched the charcoal in their fist, gritted their eyes closed. Four days since Whalefall, the Cradle. Four days since they came home. It was gonna be hell. But it was gonna be theirs.
The last days of October came and went. Before Sadie Crane could blink twice, it was middle of November.
They returned to Alcoast one last time. Because it wasn't over yet, not in Sadie Crane's head. Three Punks ventured into the woods, buried the jackalope's foot. The aviator dug, the journalist hoisted her light. They marked the. The grave, they decided. They marked the grave with a small pile of smooth white pebbles. Sadie Crane sobbed their eyes out all the way home, so did Viola and so did De'afi. Not crying for Sybil, but for the lives they'd buried with him.
The weather chilled, snow almost powdering the ground. The house in La Mort stocked with food and drink, lanterns, a fireplace, and books to read. Ready for the cold months.
Viola slept nights and read mornings. She devoured whole every book she could get hands on, about rituals and forest spirits. She took notes in graphite pencil, wore out her old notebooks and P'mil bound her more. She got in and out of biting her nails, she ate stew and fried vegetables from the garden and drank rice milk. When the traveling merchants came to La Mort, she would ask for hot chocolate and never coffee.
Sadie Crane tended the garden and helped the aviators. On hot evenings, they killed time working on their motorbike. Places to be.
The coal-dark totally up and vanished, but they didn't sleep well. Their head talked less. Kinda lonely in there. But they could take this kinda lonely. Maybe.
Viola and De'afi went to pick black strawberries, soon as it got cold enough. Maso made them strawberry soup. They were giddy rest of the night, but pocketfuls of story too.
The flying machine was looking good. Another year, they might get that beast off the ground. Make history. Sadie Crane didn't care much about history-making, being real. Got enough of history.
The new year came and went. They attended La Mort's yearly feast in the square, inhaled towers of harvest and Merrick drank herself half to death. They were all red and rosy-cheeked by end of night, falling into the house. Maso and Sadie Crane and De'afi and P'mil made love in the barn, passed out in a heap of naked. Happy fucking New Year.
Two months into the year, fresh outta Bygone and into Secun. Sadie Crane sat on the porch with tea and a book, Viola came out in her thin fur wrap with a stack of journals.
"We should do a thing about Spinners," Sadie Crane said.
"What thing?" the journalist asked.
"Think we can do the memorial," the anarchist said back. "Cuz who else is gonna?"
Months ago, they would have said this was for Sybil. But that would have been a lie. Nothing they did was for Sybil. His ghost perhaps. This gap where he should be. But never actually for him. He didn't want things done for him. If you were doing a thing for him or about him, you already lost.
"Who else is gonna?" Viola agreed.
They were right. Nobody else was gonna care squat about that old building, probably let it go full rot if nobody did a thing about it. Might as well be three dumb punks from Alcoast, huh?
De'afi came onto the porch with fresh mugs of tea.
"Weather's getting ants," ze announced.
"Antsy," Viola corrected out of habit.
Ze paid hir no mind. The weather could be ants if it wanted to, ze reckoned. The weather could be flies or bees or even moths.
End of Part One