Archive of Our Own ^beta

My eyes opened to the sight of trees and sky. The pines were dark and foreboding as they stood over me, as though waiting for something. As my head spun, I struggled to remember where I was and what had happened. I had been on stage, a camera filming me, Charlie beside me. Then nothing but black.

I took in a sharp breath.

Charlie.

I rolled to my side and groaned, looking around for her familiar form. She had been right there. Now the only thing I could see was an empty wood in every direction.

My fingers scratched at a bed of grass. I sat up, seeing for the first time that I was lying on a woven bed of yellow fibers with a matching blanket to cover me.

Sunlight parted the clouds when I heard Charlie's voice. "Max? Are you okay?"

A figure dressed in white stepped through the trees with a bundle of wood in her arms, her dark hair pinned and hands covered in elbow-length gloves. I got to my feet and ran to her.

Something changed in Charlie's face. She dropped the bundle of wood, her face crumpling. In a moment we were in each other's arms. Charlie let out a shuddering breath into my jacket.

"I'm so glad you're awake. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if..."

"I'm here now," I said softly into her hair. "How long was I out?"

"A couple days. It looked like you were having a nightmare for half of it, tossing and turning. I couldn't do much besides hold your hand."

A chill ran through me. Two days of Charlie braving this strange wilderness, waiting for me to wake up, if ever. I held her tighter. "You've done wonderfully, my dear. I'm lucky to have someone like you to watch over me."

She pulled away and tried to smile, but it seemed difficult. Charlie pulled a handful of red berries from her pocket. "You've got to be hungry. I've been eating these. They remind me of the berries that grow up in British Columbia."

I took one and ate it, feeling the tart flavor wash through my mouth. My stomach ached. I felt weak on my feet and my head pounded. "I'm more famished than I realized."

"Sit down," she said.

I did as she asked, allowing her to lead me back to the straw bed. Charlie placed the berries in my hand and I ate them by the mouthful. The pounding in my head receded, but it wasn't nearly enough to fill me up completely.

I rubbed my face. Memories came back to me slowly. There was an accident... a shadowy hand engulfing my head, and the whole earth was shaking...

"Max? Are you okay?"

I shook my head to clear it. "What do you remember?"

"I can remember the last moments before we ended up here. It was that book." She said the word with venom. "Something came out of it and tried to pull you in. I think that may be what happened to us."

A thought came to me. My hand acted on its own as it searched the inside of my jacket and found the familiar ridge of a book. I pulled it out and was greeted with a black cover, a red M emblazoned on the front. Charlie recoiled from it. My hands tightened around the edges.

"Infernal book," I hissed. "Will I ever have peace from you?"

"Max." Charlie put a hand on my shoulder. "If you have the book, can you use it to get us out of here?"

"Perhaps. But where is here?" For the first time since waking, I truly examined our surroundings. The pine trees swayed in a gentle wind, but there was no underbrush, no insects or animals to speak of. Overhead the sun gave light but no heat. I could smell a faint woody pine smell, perhaps even the smell of dirt, but not much else. No moss, no water. It didn't feel like a forest as much as a simulacrum of one.

I opened the Codex and thumbed through the pages until I came to a page I had disregarded many times before. The translation had been odd, so I had taken it as an error on the author's part. There was a single drawing of a pine tree not unlike the ones before us.

Deep within the Constant is the source. Learn well from the king's mistakes.

I had no idea whom the book was referring to when it said the king, but the emphasis on the word constant made more sense. It was emphasized because it was a name. Constant felt like an accurate description for the strange false life he saw now--never moving or changing, but remaining in a strange stasis.

"You've seen more of this place than I have, Charlie. What have you seen?"

Charlie bit her lip. "If I'm honest, it doesn't look like anywhere on earth. There are creatures here, Max. I didn't go near them... I thought they were people at first. I saw a broken-down shack at the edge of a swamp, and there were these things there. They had scales and fins and... and I don't know what they were exactly, but I don't think they're the only monsters here."

It wasn't what I expected in the least. None of the folklore of demons or shadows had prepared me for this. What was the purpose of being in this strange wilderness, and why had the shadows tried so hard to bring us here?

"Something tells me there's more to this place than meets the eye," I said.

Charlie nodded slowly. "Max?"

"Yes?"

"Remember before the performance, when you said that the shadows wanted me?"

I felt a hollow pang in my chest at the memory of a shadow smiling. "Yes."

"Did they say what they wanted me for?"

I thought through every conversation I'd had with the shadows. They had hinted and taunted, but they had remained vague through all of it.

"No. But if they think they can take you from me, they're wrong."

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The lights of the torches flickered, but they gave no heat or color to the washed out room. Beyond the lights, there was only the darkness of a crumbling world. In the background there was an echo that could never quite be forgotten, the endless jaunty tune of ragtime played on the most long-lived phonograph in history...

I gasped and sat up, clutching at my straw blanket as though it were something that was trying to smother me. After a few panicked breaths, I managed to slow my heart rate. I rested on my back and stared up at the sky. The foreign constellations winked at me beside the strange pale sphere that hung in the sky. The night sky was darker here, as though the stars and the "moon" could not penetrate the fog of shadows and reach the ground.

"Bad dream?" said a voice from the direction of the fire.

"You could say that," I muttered.

Wilson did not ask further. He was in his "science corner," a collection of machines that consisted of jury-rigged metal and wood that he had created himself. The machines whirred and hummed as he worked. It was his night to keep watch, so it only made sense he'd make it as productive as possible while the other survivors slept peacefully in their straw beds. He often complained about not having the quiet to think now that he'd brought all the survivors together across the Constant into one single world. As was typical, Wilson was the cause of his own problems.

Sleep eluded me, so I got to my feet and went to root around a chest by the fire. Among the junk, I found the strange dark sludge I had been looking for. It was slightly translucent and wriggled as though it were alive--nightmare fuel. I shoved the material in a nearby backpack.

"Getting an early start to the day?" Wilson asked.

"I can't sleep."

The scientist lifted his goggles, revealing dark circles. His always unruly dark hair seemed particularly messy. He rubbed his face, then squinted as he turned an object over in his hands. It was long and dark with a pale light flickering at one end, a strange ethereal smoke rising from it. I dimly acknowledged it, but if it was one of Wilson's experiments, I wanted nothing to do with it.

"Well, we're all survivors now, and we rely on each other," Wilson said. "But you... you don't talk about much, you know. A lot of things about you and this place are still a mystery to me."

Despite the awful situation I had put him in, Wilson didn't show me malice--a feat considering how I would've behaved if our roles were reversed. Instead he showed a persistent curiosity. Although he was often busy with helping the group survive, and as such we rarely spoke about anything that wasn't strictly survival-related,  every once in a while there was a small moment like this that reminded me of his kindness. He cared about the well-being of all the survivors. Or perhaps it was his rational mind that allowed him to see that it was better for everyone if I stayed alive.

"It was nothing of consequence," I said. "Just a bad memory. One I'm sure you could relate to."

Wilson paused in his examination, his eyes unfocusing. He let out a short breath and brought out a magnifying glass. "I get dreams about it too, sometimes. There are even moments I feel like I'm there again when I'm awake."

I didn't answer, instead choosing to root around in the chest for a moment longer than necessary. I passed by lumps of gold, random hats, and a log or two.

"Maxwell, the woman who set me free... you got a strange look on your face when I mentioned her."

I stopped rooting through the chest. "Oh?"

"Yeah. You didn't keep a very good poker face, for once." Wilson was staring at me now, whatever he had been examining forgotten. "You looked like your heart stopped."

Picking up the backpack, I turned away from Wilson and grabbed an axe that was stuck in the dirt.

"You know who she is, don't you?" he continued.

"I'm tired, Wilson. I'd prefer not to have this conversation."

"Just answer one question. Was she a victim like the rest of us?"

My teeth pressed together. A pressure built in my jaw. "Careful, Mr. Higgsbury. You should know by now that the answers to some questions are dangerous."

Grabbing a nearby discarded torch, I lit the charcoal and set off into the night, the halo of light protecting me from the darkness. The camp was an island in absolute black. I could see Wilson watching me leave, but before long he shook his head and returned to his science.

I was soon deep in the nearby forest when the sun peaked above the horizon.

Setting down my backpack, I found the nightmare fuel once more and set it on the ground. Pulling the Codex Umbra from my inside jacket pocket, I recited a summoning incantation. Two shadowy figures grew from the nightmare fuel, becoming my same height and build but only as featureless silhouettes. Taking two axes from my pack, I tossed them at the feet of the shadows.

"Get to work."

The shadows complied wordlessly. They picked up the axes and chopped at the nearby trees. They didn't hesitate or slow as they felled them. Although they were automatons, I could feel their presence in the back of my mind, occupying space in my thoughts. I knew that if I made too many I would become overwhelmed by the fracturing of my mind as it went in different directions, so I often stuck to only a few.

I sat on a nearby rock and pawed through the pages of the Codex Umbra, not looking for anything in particular as my mind went over Wilson's words. Leave it to him to irritate me. When will that scientist learn?

My anger faded as something softer and darker took its place. It had been so long since I'd seen Charlie face to face. The closest we'd come in years was once at night. I had dropped my torch while exploring. Soon I had been in the middle of the darkness. I could hear something approach me. I thought I heard a voice say my name. Soon all I could feel was pain as the shadows tore at me from the inside out, as though I had breathed them in and now they were trying to leave in the most violent way possible. I managed to find my torch before the shadows could take their full toll on me, but death had been close that night. When I had the sense to think I realized that the voice had been familiar--it had been her voice.

If Wilson's story was correct, then Charlie had taken the Nightmare Throne. At first the idea seemed horrific to me, but after seeing her small changes to the world, I realized that perhaps she wasn't like me. She made changes to the Constant sooner and with more complexity than I ever thought possible. Maybe rather than be a slave to the Nightmare Throne, she had found a way to thrive. I didn't know how that was possible, but if anyone could do it, it would be her.

Yet in all that time she made no effort to speak to either me or any of the other survivors. She must hate me now. I would too. I put my face in my hands and sighed. Of all my nightmares, our last moments together were the ones that haunted me the most. She was lost for so long in the darkness and I couldn't find her. It was all my fault. My hands curled into fists. With a shuddering breath, I returned my attention to the task at hand. My scarred memory often returned to me when I was alone. Keeping busy was one of the few antidotes.

Instead my mind lingered on the memory of just moments before, when Wilson had been turning over that unknown object in his hands. It had been skinny at one end with the other being wide and jagged like the jaws of a monster. A dim light glowed from within the jaws. At first I'd thought that it was some kind of magical rod he'd been experimenting with. With sudden clarity I remembered its shape. It was no magical rod, but something from antiquity--something from deep within the history of the Constant.

I got to my feet and sprinted back to camp.