Chapter Text
She wakes up blindfolded. Rose sits, and feels the world rock, a little. When she scrambles for steadiness, her hand slides off something wooden and land in freezing water.
“Oh, no,” Maryam says. “No, it’s best if you don’t move.”
“Where are we?” And then: “Why am I blindfolded?”
“There was a fire on the bridge. I stole a boat.” That, really, explains everything. Rose is full of both affection and exasperation. “I was worried your remaining eye might be have been damaged by the smoke, so I thought it’d be best to cover it as well. You are free to remove the blindfold, if you’d like.”
She slides it off. Beneath the blindfold, Maryam has taped her empty socket shut. The soporine must still be in effect, because everything feels just a touch unreal. Rose half-expects the water to turn into a vat of acid. Behind them is a burning bridge. Maryam is rowing the boat, though Rose doesn’t know to where. When she asks, Maryam replies, “With the captain and all the trolls pursuing me dead, I thought we could return to your hive. But there is a good deal of people converging at the crater, and I was beginning to draw undue attention. So I left for the town nearby.”
“’Nearby’?” Rose can’t see a thing at the moment, nothing more than a dark night sky and fuzzy outlines of clouds. Even so, she still has the impression of being far from any sort of bearing or ground. “How long have you been at this?”
“Yes, angrily accuse the troll who grew up in a desert for being a poor rower. I’m trying.”
“I would give you some pointers, but this is honestly the most physical exertion I’ve done since my school banned sports from being played in gym classes.”
“One more example of how primitive your human culture is,” Maryam says. “You do not schoolfeed your young, but ‘teach’ them. Absurd. How can they be expected to drop the braingrubs into their own thinkpans?”
“Is there anything in your culture that can be done without using dead babies?” Rose tilts her head back, and winces. It hurts. She’s still running that fever.
The splashing stops. The boat tilts, worryingly, backwards. For a moment, she’s afraid the boat will capsize; but then Maryam settles back and the rocking subsides. Maryam’s hand rests, momentarily, on Rose’s cheek. “Did you have any interesting hallucinations?”
“I don’t remember.”
“That’s good. You may be one of the few humans for whom soporine acts as intended.”
Rose stares up at the stars. She can’t move her eye to the side or up and down; when she does, the muscles where her other eye used to be twitch, and then ache, and then threaten to bleed even more. Her neck hurts, too—wait a second. She feels for her artery. “You bit me?”
“Rainbow drinker venom can have desirable clotting and healing effects. You would have bled out without it. Also, I have checked my watch and it has been four hours since your initial soporine dose, so I will recommend that you take another pill.”
She stops rowing. Rose hears Maryam shuffling about, then feels the boat tilt precariously as Maryam presses a small, green pill into Rose’s palm. Rose raises the pill up, stares at it, then pops it into her mouth.
*
They’ve left her, satisfied to leave her dazed and confused in the gloom. Slowly, the memories slide back into place: Dave, John, Jade, the trolls, her consorts. Their guardians. Her memories stop at the Green Sun. From the looks of it, she came to her swift and thoroughly pointless death there. Her only regret is bringing Dave down with her. After that, she went to the dream bubbles. And she’s been here ever since: a floating consciousness, tormented by the horrorterrors for daring to drop dead in their service.
She has no idea how long she’s been here. It could have been days. Worse, months or years. Ages spent being puppeted around by them. This could be the first time, or the hundredth. Who knows how time works here?
Still. It doesn’t seem right. So many strange features of the dream world. Kanaya, for one. The way she entered and sent the whole thing on a tailspin. If the gods truly wanted to leave her to marinade in regrets, then why cast Kanaya in the role of a mythological undead creature? A truly bizarre decision. Rainbow drinkers have never come up during their discussions. It must be a symbol of some kind, or an interruption. Kanaya’s white wizard working in opposition to her, reaching in
If she can grab Kanaya by the horns, so to speak, and set her straight—
*
(“Lalonde human, what is the meaning of existence?”
“Elephant stampedes. Brecht. I’d say Shakespeare, but it’s the expected answer. Kit Marlowe.”
“Yes, excellent.”)
*
She feels a kick in her brain, sees a bunch of rainbows and maybe a clown, and wakes up in the same dark spot she was in before.
She can’t believe it. She has been ejected from her own consciousness by a soporine-induced hallucination. Rose could just scream. Somewhere, someone is laughing at her. A literal someone and a literal laugh.
Rose, slowly, turns to the sound. It’s her own silhouette, emerging from the shade. The other girl is swathed in a tangible shadow. Her eyes are white and hollow. Not grimdark—her hair and skin are their original colors—but something like it. Rose sees the other self, and understands, instinctively, that this is the Speaker of the Horrorterrors, the very role that once was supposed to be hers.
The silence between them is strangely opaque. Rose likes to think she knows every part of herself; but now, staring at the Speaker, she keeps finding details that are correct, but don’t match. A scar on her lip from an encounter with the coffee table when they were three. Left fingers slightly longer than the right, from years of violin playing; but the Speaker’s calluses are fresher than hers. Rose is taller than the Speaker, just by an inch or so. And her hair is longer, by an inch or so. And they are wearing different clothes: Rose decked in the outfit she had in the dream, the Speaker in the velvet dress Rose wore before meeting Kanaya. Little differences. They matter.
“You’re dead,” Rose says.
“Well observed,” the Speaker says. Her voice echoes, fills the dark space. Rose sees, at the very edges of her vision, a suggestion of eyes. “Though I see that you’re not.”
“You're mistaken.”
“How could I be?” the Speaker says. “You can still be hurt.” There’s a long moment. The Speaker says, “Let me take you back to my home.”
*
The Speaker lives in a blackened mimic of their house. There is no light. Rose knows where everything is nonetheless. They go up to her mother’s study. There are chains on the wall made of mute, tortured ghosts. There are no chairs. They stand on either side of the table, half for symmetry’s sake, half because Rose doesn’t trust the Speaker to not blindside her.
“Jung,” Rose says, finally. “The shadow self.”
“I was thinking of Jung, too,” the Speaker says. “But the animus.”
“Palamoun and Arcita.”
“Tom Canty and Prince Edward.”
“Do you think our rightful positions have been switched?”
“I thought we were playing word association,” the Speaker says. “I could say in turn that you think we should duel for Maryam’s hand in marriage. I’d win, but fall off my horse and die shortly afterwards. Maryam would collapse, weeping into your waiting arms, a virgin widow. I hope it’s like kissing a corpse, by the way.”
“I doubt it. She’s a good kisser.”
“Please. I didn’t need to know.” They’ve started circling each other around the desk. The only thing Rose can see with any clarity is the still-glowing ghost light in the Speaker’s eyes. It’s unsettling. It’s fascinating.
“You’re from Davesprite’s universe,” Rose says. “The one who merged with my dreamself.”
“We unmerged when your consciousness moved into the dreamself,” the Speaker says. “Leaving me here. I appreciate it.”
“The entire time I was in the other world,” Rose says, “I heard two voices in the back of my head. One was them. The other was yours.”
“Yes. I, from my lofty prison in the deep reaches of the Furthest Ring, was pulling all of the strings. It was me. I am the mastermind. All I did was set the table. You were the one who sat down and ate it, without once questioning why there were mice legs in your pudding. Didn’t you ever think it was strange that you knew Maryam had turned into a rainbow drinker, though you had supposedly died in the Green Sun? Or that your mother was alive?”
“Would you have wanted to wake up from a dream where she was?” The Speaker says nothing. Rose presses on. “If these are the dream bubbles, then what is that place?”
“Right now, you’re traveling on an asteroid, destination unknown,” the Speaker says. “You’re at the very edges of the Furthest Ring. The Horrorterrors never forgave you for abandoning them; but at the same time, their hold on you is weaker than ever. They can’t touch your physical body, but they can play with your dreaming self. They stuff your dreamself into other universes and watch you thrash around.”
“I don’t have a dreamself anymore.”
“I know. That’s why you’ve been in a coma on the asteroid for the last month.”
This just gets worse and worse. Not so much a train wreck. More like finding out that the Large Hadron Collider has produced a black hole, and the entire solar system is going to be contained in a giant void, located in the general vicinity of Switzerland. The ultimate Swiss bank. Rose takes a moment to absorb this, before saying, “And you were okay with this?”
“I am the Speaker of the Horrorterrors. Do you think I have a choice? Even if I were to let you go, your consciousness wouldn’t be able to return to your body until the horrorterrors put it back. The best thing to do is to wait until you’re far enough that they lose their power over you entirely. It won’t be long. Only a few more months.”
“I’m certain I’ll be able to find my own body again.”
“How? You will be kicked out of your present universe and set loose into nothingness. You will be lost in the Furthest Ring with no propulsion, no oxygen, no light. How will you find your way back?”
When she puts it that way, the task sounds far, far more daunting. Rose, for a moment, hesitates. Then she says, “So you can do it.”
“It’s pointless.”
“You’re forgetting that I’m a god.”
The shadows around the Speaker clench, tight, around her body. She says, “I have no faith in such things.”
“I know.” She reaches out, and cover the Speaker’s hand with her own. The Speaker’s face is a terrible, pained thing. Rose knows. She’s been there before. It’s the look of blank, crushing despair; the look of someone who doesn’t even have a timeline to go back to. She knows.
*
(When she comes to again, she’s sitting on a pier. Someone has draped heavy blankets on her. Rose blinks, slowly.
“Where are we?” she says.
“We’ve reached the town,” Maryam says. “You were high.”
“Slander.”
“We were conversing about the meaning of life, existence, and God.”
“I daresay I impressed you so greatly that the only way you could salvage your pride was to impugne me with unfound accusations of drug abuse. I need my phone.”
“I’ve already contacted your mother. It was a simple matter of calling everyone on your contacts list until I reached someone who could speak Alternian. Your mother says she’s on her way now.”
“How did she—never mind. GPS tracker.” To the west, bridge is still on fire. To the east, it’s dawn. Light slowly growing on one side of the world, and on the other, the complete chaos of fire. It’s a nice image. A bit trite. She blames the medicine.
Maryam, next to her, is a faint, white light. She yawns.
“You can sleep, you know,” Rose says. “Unless you think I will pluck your eye out and fit it into my own socket in a fit of trauma-induced rage.”
“You don’t have requisite strength to open my eyelid,” Maryam says. “I am not at all worried.” But she curls up next to Rose, resting her head near Rose’s thigh. Rose, carefully, places palm on the side of Maryam’s head, near the horns, and then curls her fingers into her corvid-black hair. It’s not long before she relaxes in Rose’s grip. Not long before she falls asleep.
She’s a good troll. A good person. Loyal and kind and sometimes vicious. Rose is going to have to contact Vantas later to tell him that she’s found his friend. And then—and then what? She is an agent of the monstrous undead, a creature of the light. Even the troll colonies won’t have her. And that blood-drinking habit. It’s problematic, to say the least. So what now? Rose doesn’t know. Rose will probably go to the hospital. Maryam will return to the lab, or maybe her mother will host Maryam at their house—no, Rose will request for her mother to host Maryam at their house. And then what?
There is a certain amount of allowable ambiguity in situations like these. The words feel familiar, though she’s certain she’s never said them. And allowable ambiguity—what does that even mean? She strokes Maryam’s hair a few more times. A part of her—her missing eye, her sore, iron-rusted throat—aches when she looks at her. Another part of her positively wrenches itself out of position. She is very fond of this troll. Very, very fond. And, against all logic, she trusts Maryam with her life; would allow Maryam to ferry her unconscious body from one end of the Atlantic to another, if it were to come to that. Disgustingly sentimental. Frivolous and witlessly romantic. No one must ever know.
The world trembles, a little, at the edges, and everything)
*
—changes.
Rose looks up, then around. She casts aside her blanket. Yes, she knows where she is, what this is. She has the feeling she could have stayed here for a long time, if she wanted to. But she can’t. Kanaya grunts, and jerks awake.
“We should get back in the boat,” Rose says.
“Lalonde human, you are still under the effects of the soporine.”
“Maybe I just want some quality time on a leaky boat in the middle of the St Laurence River. The traffic is likely still bad. We’ll have time to sit there and talk.”
“I detest rowing,” Kanaya grumbles.
“Humor a sick half-blind girl, Maryam.” Rose has never once called Kanaya this with any amount of sincerity, but it’d be jarring, she thinks, to change now. “It’s the polite thing to do.”
So back in the boat they go. Rose can feel the Speaker in the long distance, letting the last threads of the story go. The bridge burns bright, hot, and steady. The river runs black and icy around their vessel. Rose has Kanaya row towards the sun. They talk, a little. Kanaya doesn’t seem to notice the river or the scenery behind them, falling away in chunks and pieces. Nor does she notice that the day is not growing any brighter; and she, herself, is vanishing into space. And soon it is just Rose and the quiet of the edge of the world.
Rose peels off the bandage and tape covering her eye, and lets them fall. She is beginning to learn that part of growing up is learning to accumulate regrets and hold them, bitterly, to her heart, to be reassured by the sting and the hurt of it, to think of those things as proof that she has lived and will continue living. And what kind of life, exactly, is it? Still. Still. There is another part of growing up that has nothing to do with old hurts and old pains, and nothing to do with settling.
In the darkness of the Furthest Rings, Rose spies a bright, orange rock, coming for her.