Chapter 6: Around the Corners
Middle of the night.
Thought: How much speculative fiction have you read?
Gods stone dead, they were alive. Breathing, eyelids fluttering like hell below, the whole shebang. The shelves in their head rattling, pitching off little windup toys and paper dolls. They were held together by leather cinching and meat sack. They were held together by pain and grief and longing. But in them, a fleeting. The last fuck to give. Don't waste it.
They had been arranged into a vomit-colored sofa chair, their legs tucked under them like two freshly baked loaves of bread.
A face swam into Sadie Crane's vision, all cosines and pixels. They sank further into the puke chair and their head blistered with agony.
"Hey, still," this person said. "You got real banged up. Nose spurting blood all over the damn floor. You wanna pass out again?"
They put a name to the face. Viola.
Thought: HEAD. BAD. HURT.
"How many?" the anarchist queried. "Like, an army? Forty guys?"
Viola bent slightly down at her middle.
"You passed out," she said. "From--dunno, passing out."
Thought: Sounds very medical.
Sadie Crane had been undressed and put into something with less bloodstain. A comfortable silk gown with pretty yellow poppies on the front. Didn't this belong to White Doe? Was this not her favorite to wear around the house? Sadie Crane tried putting the history together, but flinched and came up short. Damn.
"Feels like rocks in my head," they sighed.
Thought: Ze carried you from the floor probably. That's what people do when they care. It's unfamiliar.
De'afi sat at the dining table reading through an issue of Deus Ex Punk. Hir attention caught on faded illustrations, of pale cornflower blue splatters and cheery pumpkin orange landscapes. All Creation rendered abstract. This issue featured all the Arcadian folk punk revival bands that absolutely slapped dick. The loudest screechiest Punks. Before the king died and suddenly all music was hot steaming zilch. The Astral Boys, Syd the Devil. What a time to be awake.
"Whatever happened to the Astral Boys?" queried the aviator.
Viola lowered porcelain teacups and a bowl of sugar onto the dining room table. The kettle let out a high-pitched keening plea for attention and she swung around back to it.
"Burned out, I reckon," the journalist said back. "Ain't that what happened to all of 'em?"
Thought: Once upon a time, fingers eased apart the pages of a magazine bound with love and care. Those same fingers will never sit between those pages. It was a love letter between writer and reader.
Viola dumped half the sugar bowl into her tea and chucked a spoonful into Sadie Crane's. De'afi took it straight.
Ze was quiet for a little while, blowing on hir tea. The tea had this fruity pop and zangy after, nothing like ze would have made it. Not that ze made tea. That was for grandparents and terminal homebodies.
"Sorry," ze said. "Sorry I got so damn angry about the patches. Bad of me. I don't mean nothing by it, honest. I didn't think it'd be this big a deal, right? Like you'd freak out and stuff. Real sorry. I know they would've--would've been there if you could find them."
The anarchist kept quiet at first. They wanted to be terse, to be rude and snarky. But that instinct withered back down their throat like it was embarrassed to even be there. There was time for being a colossal killjoy. But not right now, chief. Not right now. Please.
"You don't hafta be sorry," they said earnestly. "I don't think that's why I passed out."
De'afi sighed in relief. Gods alive, bones and breath. Please and thanks, peas and carrots. It was not hir fault.
Thought: The stage play in miniature.
"Sorry about springing that on you," said Viola. "The Spinners Club. I know we gotta go out far and all, but--thought it'd be a pretty good memorial."
Thought: To him. To our lives before.
"Yeah, it's gonna be sweet," the aviator crowed.
The journalist played her fingers on the dining table, in little whorls and skips.
You don't hafta go, you know," the journalist conceded. "I said we should get away, but if that's not your--if it's not how you want this to go, I'm all for it."
Sadie Crane shook their head furiously. They turned down--turned down--a research assistant position and came back home. They tossed away their first start over in years and motorbiked to this bum-dick nowhere town. Either they were the most self-flagellating know-nothing in All Creation or they couldn't let go of the past.
Thought: It's both, space cadet.
"You really think we can get away?" they asked. "Think that's all it's gonna take? For us podunks?"
Viola drank more of her sugar and water lightly seasoned with tea.
"I'm just telling you the score, what we're about," she squared. "You don't hafta come. You don't hafta be with us. We want you, we don't need you."
"Why do you want me so bad?" the anarchist puzzled.
De'afi slammed hir teacup on the table, liquid jumping up the sides and splattering the dining table.
"Cuz you're our friend, you big dumb stupid idiot!" ze replied in a loud affectionate voice.
Ze was telling the truth, the whole truth, nothing but. They might have grown apart after Sybil's passing, but--gods alive, who hadn't? O'anna for one, she'd turned into this big ball of thorns and grouch. Abakris thought he'd go out in a blaze or kill his past stone dead. Sadie Crane did not want those bad ends and De'afi loved them for it ten million times more than ze could ever love them for anything else under the sun.
Thought: Good. Don't look.
They saw it out the corner of their eye first. A coal-dark streak sprinted across their peripheral, leaving a smear in Sadie Crane's vision. A searing tendril of after-motion. October in Arcadia felt suddenly dead cold. They knew for sure something had been tailing them since the woods that night. Forest spirits don't take kindly to those who break the rules. And in that moment, Sadie Crane was sure they'd done something unforgivable.
They held the front of their gown and their breathing lurched in a desperate throaty pitch. Their heartbeat rabbited in their chest. Dazzling star systems collected in their sight and their fingers dented harder into the fabric of their gown. It didn't strike like a heart attack. It struck like a heart war.
Thought: Don't look at It.
The anarchist gasped and their heartbeat slowed. They fattened their mind with banana stickers and sundae parties.
Thought: Don't look at Him.
Sadie Crane gritted their teeth. They lifted their head up. If there was ever a reason to die, it was Sybil. If there was ever a reason to live, it was banana stickers and sundae parties and Viola and De'afi and this whole damn beautiful world.
Thought: Don't look at Them.
Viola came stumbling to their side, skipping forward on her feet. Her back hunched with concern.
"You good, space cadet?" said Viola. "Gonna throw up?"
De'afi brought hir canteen over and pushed it into their hands. Hir mouth tightened with stress.
"I think I'm being followed," they admitted quietly.
"Is it Sybil?" asked Viola.
She saw him in crowds, like an afterimage. She didn't hate him, gods alive she could never hate. But he was one of the meanest people she'd ever met. And he was sad, all the time sad. His honesty hurt like devils but at least the hurt was something to feel.
"I dunno," they said back. "It's--something. It's something in my head. Real bad trouble."
The aviator turned from them both, hir shoulders up straight.
"You know we love you, right?" ze asked. "You know we love you? Love you real hard?"
"Love you more," they said back with a faint smile.
Thought: Every moment he's gone, you make more of yourself out of his passing. It's all you can be.
Viola finished her tea and put the cup down with a pitched clatter.
"You find all your stuff?" she queried. "That's kinda--uh--ya know, what we got out here for?"
"Don't think so," they admitted.
Thought: As it ever was.
Sadie Crane took a couple of things from the storage trunk. An old journal, the last they'd kept. It had the turbulent middle half of their nineteenth year on All Creation. All the shit leading into and away from Sybil's death. Hardly a pleasant read.
Thought: Don't trust your head. It's all here, written. A record.
Viola clutched at Sadie Crane's shoulder, other hand touched her throat and her mouth edged up at the corners.
"Can't shut that door, space cadet," the journalist said. "Once you got it open."
The aviator came away from the dining table.
"Sure we can," ze objected. "That's how doors work."
Sadie Crane worried at their bottom lip a few brief ticks.
"I been seeing this thing since, like--since the woods," they said reluctantly. "In my dreams. And when I'm all wide awake too. And this fox. I been seeing this coal-dark fox too, all in my dreams."
Thought: It sounds stupid out loud. Stop saying things.
"Huh, oh yeah?" De'afi mused. "That's sorta like--a familiar spirit? The fox? Like--your guiding spirit and that?"
Sadie Crane's eyebrows came up their forehead at skeptical peaks.
"Wait, those are real?" they asked.
Swallowing her throat clear, Viola answered the question before her friend's mouth could open.
"Uh, no, that's all some big bull," the insufferable know-everything said.
Thought: Whatever. It's not here. It's in The Past.
They stuck their journal on the dining table. Black Sparrow gave it to them, said it was good to keep record. They didn't keep the sorry thing every day. Fifty pages of shorthand flavored with hot chocolate stains and sticky nose mush.
They flipped to the last four pages. The entries became shakier and less poetic. They stopped using expensive words like intoned and wretched.
A drawing in smudged charcoal on the last page. Deer skull. Antlers. A long sprawl of black cloak like a chimney trail of smoke. Hooves poked out bottom of the sprawl, a detail they did not remember. The Thing with Antlers. The thing that snuffed out a life right in front of them. Some kinda old forest spirit or creature, long lived in the soil. It wanted something from them and it couldn't be good.
It didn't befall them, it crushed them into a fine powder. What gave life the right to be this damn hard?
Thought: You knew those woods like the back of your hand. Why couldn't you run faster? Why is everything wrong with me wrong with you too?
"I'm sorry, this is--I'm sorry," said Viola.
Thought: Yeah, everyone's sorry.
De'afi put hir hands on the table, a tremble in hir that came first to heart and then to lungs and finally to some hollow drum in hir chest. It wasn't meant to be so tragic and inescapable. Ze wanted a life that absolutely banged. Not a life that hurt, not a life that made hot tears.
The journalist flipped back to front, skimming over parties and leaf hunting expeditions and Scout badges. A sepia photograph detached and peeled like dead skin from one of the pages. Viola stole it from the air mid-twirl.
Sybil was young in the photograph, hair wove into a chunky braid. Sybil's arms were straight up against his sides, his right and left shoulders tensed to a point. His guardians on either side, each extending a firm hand to keep their kid in place. De'afi thought their names were Belle-Marie Eislane on his left and Reola Basalt on his right. The three were standing in front of the old Basalt-Eislane homestead, that gloomy place further off the beaten path.
"You think his old house is still here?" Sadie Crane asked. "Or it got torn down?"
Sybil always planned to show them the old house if he lived long. Never made good on that promise--didn't live long.
"Think so, yeah, probably?" Viola said back.
Thought: He stays with you.
She walked herself to the porch. The hour was late. Big fat stars hung to the cosmic blanket. She smiled. She could forget the impulse, forget wanting to throw herself backwards into the nearest body of water.
Sadie Crane came to the porch, headphones dangled around their neck. A folksy bit of guitar wafted from them.
They both looked up into this marvel, this wide open sky teeming stars above All Creation.
"Lonely," said Viola. "All of creation. Just us out here."
Thought: You've hated it since you were born. The loneliness.
"Not lonely, sunshine," they said back. "It's pretty."
Thought: She smiles when she says "lonely". She's joyful. That real kinda joy you haven't felt since he got dead.
Viola threw her head to stars and pulled a smile. She was bliss, she was insatiably bliss. The night belonged to her now.
"Ain't that nothing but the pits, space cadet?" she asked joyfully.
She'd spent her formative years poring through paperbacks of lurid detective fictionals and knowing she wanted to fight crime. She daydreamed in sepia of becoming the melancholy detective.
She hit her late teens and realized she was human, her fingernails bitten to skin. She was not a detective in training, she was another dot on the map. She was sick of leaving and getting left behind.
The journalist leaned forward, face pressed to her hands. Gods be damned.
It rocked into Sadie Crane's chest. That feeling. Starry tear trails and razor blades. In front of the bathroom mirror, palms out to wipe steam from the glass. The warped abstract of their image, distorted and deeply deeply alien. The gods were dead, but they were alive. What did they ever believe in, if not the gods?
Thought: You believe in things. You believe in Punk. You believe in the forest. And..
Their hand darted out to hold Viola's, they squeezed and she squeezed back.
"My folks are kinda awful," said the journalist.
She was unmarried, unlike her sister Yvette. She'd never cared for whiskey like her mothers. Her sisters Millennia and Yvette had both gone into the local faci academy like good little drones. At least Fareed had the brass to get out when they were old enough. And Viola had always been more gradient than solid. She liked sticking to places where she wanted. And she was no longer wanted in Alcoast, that was for damn sure.
"Never one of them, I guess," said Viola. "Ain't tough, never tough. I jump at fireworks. I don't like blood. And--guess I got some good empathy."
She would have made a terrible faci. But a damn good detective.
"I dreamed about him," said the anarchist. "Like--I dreamed I found his guitar. At his old house. Dreamed we went back and he was alive there. Playing on the porch."
It was the last dream they had before leaving Sparrow and Finch. If dreams could mean something, that one certainly did.
Viola said nothing back. She shut her eyes and thought about Sybil.?
De'afi came out with a bottle of unknown rice beverage ze'd gotten from bottom of the dressing box.
"WINE!" the aviator belled.
Viola took the bottle from De'afi's hand. Oh by the gods-- This was some kind of barely fermented probably in there too long bad for you concoction. You'd die if you drank that--you'd just die.
"Volume control," she requested meekly.
De'afi wanted to drink the unknown maybe poison beverage ze got from the bottom of the dressing box. Viola would not let hir drink the unknown maybe poison beverage ze got from the bottom of the dressing box. They glared each other down daggers.
Sadie Crane swiped the bottle and gave it a big old chug.
And that was the worst idea ever, thank you very much. They'd never vomited so hard their whole life, splatters of cement gray and yellow puke on the front porch.
End of Chapter 6
There are fourteen months in a year. They say grieving takes about five of those fourteen. Bygone for shock, Secun for denial, Titus for isolation, Feoworth for rage, and finally Deltane for acceptance. I promise that A'a'dahl is for saying your last goodbyes and Julius is for your saying your real goodbyes. But what about Ahtoda? When I still cried every day, from Ahtoda to September and October and through to November? And then through to December, to Saturnalia, and finally to Momentus and then to another Bygone after that? When I ended and started my year in isolation? The grieving does not stop. It has never stopped for me and it won't for anyone on All Creation. It hurts that I'm not grieving a person or a thing, but a concept. I am grieving the person I could have been. Forever I am grieving. When does it stop?
--Excerpt from "Life, Death, and Where We Go to Die" by Girl Wonder Sunset