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Season 14, Day 87, and the floodlights are bright under a prematurely dark sky at the Gleek Arena.
It's the top of the seventh, and things aren't looking good for the home team, with the visiting Magic coming up to bat already three runs up, but the Halifax crowd are still rooting for the Talkers, and spirits are high. A series of slightly apathetic pitches from the cardboard cutout standing on the mound put Chorby Short and Tiana Wheeler on base with a pair of easy singles, and the noise from the crowd is starting to show an edge of frustration. Eizabeth Elliott steps up to the plate, still loudly engaged in a conversation about whatever saliva-endemic bacteria there might be to find in the flooded stadium with the cryptid following her in the Yellowstone lineup.
"... and of course, there've been reports of long-term S. gordonii biofilms, which suggests that- oh shoot!"
Her attention snaps back to the game at hand as Greer’s next pitch suddenly whips through the air, a wicked smile on the cutout’s face that hadn’t been there before. She flails, and her bat makes contact late with a pitiful smack, sending the ball down the first-base line at a steep downward angle, and Eizabeth doesn’t even bother to run. The ball touches down just shy of first with an ugly sploosh, echoed from the other side of the field by the sound of Chorby swimming to third, and Cedric Spliff scoops it out of the thick spittle easily.
OUT, hisses the hot, grating voice of the ump, and Eizabeth shudders as she walks back to the dugout and Oscar squares up to the plate in her stead. But then, the same white-hot whisper rings out again, with words nobody was expecting, and though the sound comes from the home team’s dugout, every single person in the whole stadium hears it as clearly as if the ump was right behind them.
NOW, it screeches. OUR DORK. The ump standing guard over the Moist Talkers’ dugout rips off its mask, the ash-white glare of its eyes drowning out the floodlights, it turns to the young man waiting on the bench, a look of quiet resignation on his face, gunblade across his knees…
And time stops.
“No.” The rich, calm, Pacific-accented voice that rings through the stadium, now eerily silent, belongs to the tall, dark-skinned, beatifically smiling woman now standing at second base. “Not him.”
The ump turns to watch as she walks calmly across the deep spit of the infield, leaving sandy footprints in its surface, the only two things moving in the frozen air of the Gleek.
GO AWAY, ISLAND WOMAN, it screeches, somehow scoffing disdainfully despite keeping the same cracked monotone. THIS IS NOT YOUR DOMAIN.
“No,” she demurs, continuing to stroll across the submerged diamond. “And yet, here I am. So I say again: not him.”
THIS WAS THE BARGAIN, SAND-MOTHER. AS WAS SEALED WHEN THE BOOK WAS OPENED. HE PLAYS OUR GAME UNDER THE DARK SUN, AND HE IS OURS TO BURN.
“Do not talk to me of bargains, little nightmare. The blessing I gave is older by far than your foolish game, and I am here under its terms. The boy was born and raised in the light of my sun, and however far he may go from it, he is still under my protection. You will not take him from me. Not again.”
Tendrils of pink coral begin to creep up from the edges of the flooded field, making their way inexorably towards the dugout.
BOY? It takes a moment for Lady Friday to realise that the discordant crackle shrieking from the glowing void where the umps mask was is meant to be laughter. I SEE NO “BOY” HERE. YOUR BLESSING IS ALREADY GONE, SHELL-WITCH. BROKEN BY ONE GREATER THAN YOU.
“Yes, he left, and yes, time is catching up with him,” she answers, with a faint sadness in her voice. “But think, if you even can. How long ago was that? How long has he been waiting to play your ridiculous game again? And still,” Lady Friday continues, brushing past the searing howl of the ump to place a hand tenderly on York’s cheek, “he could be seventeen. Clearly, my blessing hasn’t left him completely. He is still mine, and always will be.”
DO YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE HIM, WOMAN? CAN YOU STAND AGAINST US, AND THE ONES WE SERVE, SO FAR FROM YOUR HOME? A screech of twisting metal and breaking bone cuts through the stillness of the park as the head of every single ump, eyes still dark behind their masks, turns to look at her.
“Against you?” Her voice is still soft and soothing, still filling the stadium while barely rising above a whisper. “Of course. I am old enough to remember when your kind were happy to lurk in the shadows where the campfires met the night, and with that age comes strength. And “those you serve”? The balance? The sentry? The mouthpiece? Perhaps not.” She calmly stands and turns to face the ump, arms spread wide in the floodlit glare that is also somehow the amber glow of the setting sun over the sea. “If they are here, then, let them strike me down.”
Silence falls throughout the arena, and after a tense moment, Our Lady of Perpetual Friday smiles.
“I thought not.”
The ump’s growl sounds like needles and splinters.
She raises a tanned hand, cutting the noise off. “Now, while I could simply take him, I know that there are rules, and that kind of action would only lead to worse consequences down the road. And do you know what they say?” She gestures towards the pink-and-yellow uniforms in the opposing dugout. “‘As above, so below’. Reciprocity. So I propose a deal. You burn the blaseball player, as is indeed your right. Take the star batter, the eternal child, the Super Idol, the MVP, the survivor of a god’s cruel game. But York Silk is mine.”
The growl returns, issuing from every black-clad figure in the stadium, gravel and static and knives against stone.
“Now, do you accept,” and as she clenches a fist, she is illuminated by a ray of golden sunlight lancing down from the edge of the eclipse, “or do I have to break your little game and Take. Him. Home?” Where the ump’s anger roared with the flames of industry and malice, hers bristles with the venom of spiders and the power of sharks.
The ump pauses, then speaks one word to her.
The white glare fades.
The woman is no longer there, if she ever was.
A pile of ash floats to the floor of the dugout, settling on the warped fragments of a shattered gunblade.
A plain wooden door that was not there before opens, and Lucien Patchwork steps through with a look of commiseration and shame.
Fragments of dead, bleached coral float silently on the diamond.
A collective howl of grief and horror fills the Gleek.
York Silk is dead.
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Later that day, on Hawai’i, Mrs Silk is weeping. Her wife, fresh off an express trip from Boston, sits next to her on the couch, one rough-shelled arm around her, while the other, human hand gently strokes her hair.
“He can’t be, he just can’t be gone, it was bad enough last time, but he came back from that and he was okay, he has to be okay, please, he can’t just be…” Her words dissolve into tears as she buries her face into her wife’s shoulder.
“Shh, I know it’s hard, honey, but I’m here, I’ve got you, it’ll be okay,” Nagomi murmurs, her soothing words a calm reflection of her fingers running softly through the other woman’s hair. “I’ve got you, we’re together, and we can… What the hell?” This last comes as the doorbell rings, its buzz cutting across her words like the sudden intrusion of an unbearable truth. “I’ll tell them to go away, hon, you just stay there, it’s probably just someone wanting to check on you.”
“No, it’s… it’s okay,” Mrs Silk replies, sniffing back tears. “Of course people will want to come see us. I’ll come too.”
When the two of them open the door, standing in the yellow glow of the porch light, shoulders slumped with fear and relief, is a man in his twenties neither woman has seen before, although something about him seems strangely familiar.
“Thanks for coming, but it’s really not the best time, can I-” Nagomi’s words are cut off as the man raises his head to look at them, familiar emerald eyes sparkling through tears, and when he speaks, his voice is rougher, older, more worn by the world, but there’s only one person it could belong to.
“Hi, moms,” he says, before the two women lock him in a tight embrace, a family finally reunited in the twilight of the setting Hawai’i sun.
Just beyond the edge of the light, a woman smiles, satisfied, before turning and disappearing into the night.
Nagomi is crying salt tears, but for once, when they touch her lips, all any part of her thinks about is love.
York Silk is home.