Chapter Text
After it all blows over, she heads back to Michael. It takes all of her courage, all of her guts, to set foot in that church again. But if anyone knows the workings of death, it would be him. So she steels herself, makes her spirit iron, and she asks.
And he tells her. Not the answers she seeks, but at least a heading, a waypoint, the place to find just one of them.
She sets out the next day, Uncle Oni beside her as the paddy wagon trundles alongside the gleaming track. They’re headed north, away from Dry River and her newfound companions. They can get on without her for a time, and this isn’t theirs to know yet. Because she’s heading back, to where some things ended and others began. She’s headed back along the gleaming tracks through Guadalupe Territory, back to Yerba Buena, following the shine of the rails and the shine of something else.
How do you find a dead boy? Well, you follow the ghosts.
And few regions are as full of ghosts as Guadalupe Territory. The forests gleam with them, glistening shadows under starlight. Ghosts of soldiers, victims of the clashes between nations. Ghosts of settlers who lost their way, and ghosts of those forced out or killed by the same settlers. Ghosts of those who were here long before any settlers even dreamed of coming.
And ghosts upon ghosts of those who worked on the railroad line.
Gandy keeps her head down, keeps the spirits in her periphery, never daring to look straight at them. Many are as crisp as Augustus, clear and coherent, just people, really. But many are not - ragged shadows of what once was, whispers of lost and empty voices. And as she travels, as she clatters along the rails, her paddy wagon stowed in the boxcar of a steam train for the treacherous mountain crossings, she shuts her eyes. She doesn’t know if her parents are ghosts. She doesn’t know if they’d be the solid kind, the real kind, or just fragments. And she doesn’t know which would be worse.
So she shuts her eyes, nails embedded in clenched fists, until the train crests the last slope and the rail opens onto verdant plains. The railroad sails through orchards, farmsteads, bustling with life and activity. The iron rail means business and prosperity to so many along its path, not the mix of pain and joy and remembrance it means to Gandy. But she can’t begrudge them this, not when it’s changed their lives in such different ways than it changed hers.
She steps off the train in Santissimo, leaving as soon as she can get the paddy wagon unloaded. This is where so much of her history lies, where she has so many memories both fond and tragic. But any answers here have already been found, and all that’s left are more painful questions.
She refuses to look at the railyard as she leaves. She still sees the explosion, the iron shrapnel, the blood-soaked dirt in her memory anyway.
The paddy wagon carries her as far west as it can go, to the point where land drops away to a sparkling sea. And before this sea stands a sprawl of houses and businesses and brick-cobbled roads, old and established and still being built all the while. This is the city of Yerba Buena, and this is where her single answer lies.
She dawdles a bit. She wanders the wharfs, sees the sights of bustling industry and quaintly painted houses. Because finding her answers means first facing what she fears to be pain and heartbreak.
But she’s no stranger to either, at this point.
Yerba Buena is aware of their dead, of the enormous cemeteries that now swathe the city. They don’t want them; they’re hazards, nuisances, wastes of developable land. And privately, Gandy can relate. But those cemeteries are not her purpose here. She takes a cable car, newfangled and rickety, up away from the waterfront and into the city. The track leads her up through homes, restaurants, a vibrant mixing of cultures of immigrants on display. And through cemeteries, lonely and windswept and too full of headstones. But her focus stays ahead, always ahead, until she comes to an empty block, bare dirt scattered with wooden boards and bricks just waiting to be built into something new.
And on one of these stacks of bricks sits a boy.
He’s not a ghost, not translucent and grey and floating. Nor does he seem to be were or vampire or any other magically inclined being. He’s just a boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen, in the scuffed and grease-stained attire of a railyard worker and the same bright eyes as five years prior.
“Hey, Gandy,” he says easily. “Gotta say, I wasn’t really expecting to see you yet.”
“Hey, Kravitz,” she whispers. At his gesture, she sits down beside him. There’s not much else to do.
They sit for a moment, quiet and awkward. What do you say to your best friend, the one who bled out in your arms half a decade ago? When you’ve grown older, show the weight of those years in your frame, your face, and he looks just the same as the day he died? That hangup seems to be Gandy’s alone, though, for he sits relaxed and easy next to her stiff form.
“You know,” Kravitz says conversationally, “one day these will all be gone?” He waves a hand out at the vista of graves.
“What?” Gandy asks, voice squeaking a little. “The cemeteries?”
“Yeah, here,” he says, clasping her hand and pulling her to his feet. “Take a look.”
He waves a hand, and time speeds up in a blinding shimmer. Gandy watches in shock as the streets around her blur with action, transparent people and carts and animals moving by at tremendous speeds. She sees buildings grow, and others fall, and the skyline take shape before her eyes.
“People don’t like the dead being here,” he says. “In about fifteen years, the city will make it illegal to bury new bodies within its limits. Twenty years later, the existing cemeteries will go too. But this will stay.”
He holds his hands open as around the pair, a translucent building emerges. It’s shaped like nothing Gandy has ever seen before, high reaching walls and a sweeping and crystalline domed roof, all glowing like projected light. Stained-glass windows gleam amidst ornate carvings of a style entirely unfamiliar to the rustic Crescent Territory. And lining the walls are hundreds, if not thousands, of niches. And as she watches, one by one the niches fill with urns, with small wooden cases, with ornate plaques and some stranger items, like paint cans. And hundreds of names along with them. This is a cathedral of the dead.
“Welcome to the Columbarium,” Kravitz says proudly. “It’s one of the few places in this city where I still have enough power to manifest.”
Gandy finds her voice. “Kravitz… what the hell are you? What do you mean, manifest?” She’s more than a little freaked out.
Kravitz smiles, and some distant part of her realizes that he looks older, now, as old as her. “Well, er, I’m dead,” he says awkwardly. “That hasn’t changed.”
“But you’re not… I know ghosts,” Gandy says, certain, “and you are not a ghost.”
“No, I’m not. I’m not exactly… I’m not part of this world, anymore.” He waves a hand. “You want to know about death.”
“You know I do,” Gandy says, a slight glare in her eyes. “If you’re really Kravitz, you’d know that we’ve had this discussion hundreds of times. And you’d know it goes further than that.”
“Yes, sorry. That was an oversimplification,” he apologizes. “But as far as one part of that goes, what happens after death, well, one of those answers is me.”
“One of?” Gandy asks, interrogatively. She wants answers, not riddles.
“So… there are different worlds, sort of,” Kravitz hedges. “I was part of this one. Now I’m part of another. And in that world, there’s a goddess of death. The Raven Queen.”
Heart beating hard, Gandy says, “In that world. Not this one.”
“Yes,” Kravitz agrees. “She has no power here; I can barely visit here at all. This world has… something else, and I’m sorry, but I’m not at liberty to say. And I can’t… I can’t help you with what you want, Gandy.” Black energy crackles around him, and a gleaming scythe appears in his hand as a cloak of pitch-black feathers settles over his shoulders. “In my new world, I’m an agent of the Queen. A Reaper. And my job is to find and capture those who’d escape death.”
“Why did you meet me here?” Gandy asks, heart aching. “You can’t stop me. You know why I’m doing this, fucking hell, you are part of why I’m doing this! If you’re here to- to arrest me, I can’t let that happen.” Her hand reaches for a wand, a knife, anything, but she’s left them back with Uncle Oni, out on the wharf.
Kravitz’s eyes go dark and sad. “I know. I can’t agree with what you’re doing, but I won’t stop you. I don’t… I know you hoped for more than this. For explanations, for that particular answer. And I can’t give you that. But I thought maybe… maybe I could give you some amount of closure.”
“Closure,” she echoes. “Closure in the knowledge that my friend, my one real friend, stands at odds with everything I ever hope to do.”
She turns to Kravitz, pulling him into a tight hug. He’s warm and solid under the feathers.
“I’m glad you’re… at peace,” she says. “But I don’t think we’ll be seeing each other again. Take care, Kravitz. I won’t follow your path.”
He nods, a sad smile on his face. “To wish otherwise is to wish your death, and I refuse to do that. I hope you find your answers, somewhere.”
Gandy nods once, not trusting her voice, and turns to leave the Columbarium. Outside, brick and dirt streets have turned to gleaming black, with homes and shops replaced by towers shimmering to unimaginable heights. But as she steps out, they begin to dissolve, floating apart like glittering sand in swirling currents of wind. When she reaches the road, it’s cobbles again, and behind her she knows she’d see a boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen, sitting on a stack of bricks.
But she doesn’t look back.