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the world will take its last, inexorable gasp and choke and we will bear the burden of its end
--
Chapter One
Leah Rilke was lying on a bed of stones and did not find this unusual. They were broad, sea-polished and jabbing awkwardly into her hip and her cheek. Were they warm or was she warm? Where her senses should have been was a wad of cotton, so this didn’t signal as unfamiliar or unsafe. Just something that needed addressing before she tweaked her back or something, left a mark.
Rolling over, Leah regretted her decision almost immediately. Light drilled down from above, breaking past the shelter of her eyelids with little regard for the nap she’d intended to return to. Her eyes were watering even as she furrowed her brow and tried to press her lids even tighter together. It was unholy. Unsanctimonious even. Leah had never been particularly religious but wherever the light came from was clearly an affront to any sort of contentment. It was absolutely intruding.
And then she opened her eyes with a curiosity that surprised her. Apparently, these details where enough to raise questions and she wanted them answered. The world replied, with enough fire to make her gasp. She slapped her hands to her eyes and watched as new blindspots dance.
‘You’re awake.’
Leah recoiled, shrinking back like a shell-touched snail and peaking out from under her palms. A woman sat on a boulder, perched like a siren with one leg kicked over the other. Loaded with an empty cartridge, Leah couldn’t digest this with any real rationality. In fact the first detail she picked out was the bead of moisture that scurried from the woman’s nape to her collar; the second was a yellow handkerchief tied around her left wrist, and the third was nothing to do with her at all. It was the boulder, glistening blue and purple and green like an oil slick all bound up in stone. Was it strange? She couldn’t place it, but it was beautiful.
The woman stretched, arms high and woven together, wrists bent like a heron’s beak, and sat up straight. She slid from the rock more cautiously than Leah anticipated and then strode over to her with contrasting confidence. Leah’s head was swimming. She should get up. The woman loomed above her, caught featureless under the blazing light, and held out a hand.
With little else inspiring her, Leah took it. She was pulled into the woman’s arms.
‘Never again,’ the woman said. Leah was baffled to find she was crying; they both were. She clutched at this stranger under the harrowing light and found herself still, uncomprehending, numb. Craving a cup of recyc coffee for some reason. But her eyes were full and her heart was empty and something was definitely off about all this.
‘Um, hey,’ she began, slowly prying herself out of the woman’s death grip. She held her at arms length and now that she was standing the woman was hers to appraise; she was dark eyed and seeking and mine and beautiful. An angel caught and moulded into human form. A hundred sensations hit Leah like her systems had finally decided to boot and she smiled awkwardly and bit her lip and wrinkled her brow and found that nope, the answers didn’t make themselves. She shrugged and threw caution to the wind. ‘Who are you?’
The woman’s jaw dropped. She flinched, tugging her fingers away from Leah’s arms and pulling them to her lips. All those fresh sensations morphed into guilt and Leah panicked.
‘You don’t know?’ the woman whispered.
Leah was holding her hands up (was she warding? Surrendering?) She felt seriously out of her depth. Her thoughts, muggy as they were, began to thrash. ‘Should I? Oh my god, I should know who you are. Okay look, I don’t think I’ve entirely caught up yet and I’m probably like, still half asleep so if you give me a moment I’m sure I’ll figure it out.’
‘You don’t know me,’ the woman repeated, firmer this time. Something receded in her eyes, shutting away. Leah wasn’t sure she wanted to know what had left.
This time, she felt a prickle that urged her to retaliate. Why the hell should she know who this person was? She couldn’t tell if the woman was on Leah’s beach or if Leah was on hers, but she definitely knew they hadn’t crossed paths before. She was doing perfectly fine on her bed of (dis)contentment until she turned up. ‘You know what? No, I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before in my life. Even if I did know you, you definitely weren’t important, because until like five seconds ago you’d been deleted from my brain and I was doing pretty okay for it.’
‘Hold up, what the actual fuck.’
‘I’m going to lie down now.’
‘No, what? Leah, what the fuck.’
Leah, halfway to lying back down, froze. ‘How do you know my name?’
The woman rolled her eyes. Dramatically, too, like she’d done so a thousand times before. Of course she had, she probably judged people for a living. Wait--Maybe she did judge people for a living. Oh god, am I dead?
‘Yeah, you are,’ the woman panned. ‘Halle-fuckin-lujah. Welcome to the Garden and all its eternal glory. Now get the fuck up, I need your help.’
--
Leah had gotten up, because what else was she supposed to do. It forced her to take in her surroundings, so she itemised. Stone beach, misty ocean. There wasn’t really water, just a whole load of mist that was kinda like a cloud but way less corporeal, if clouds could even be considered corporeal. And on the other side, green. Lots of green. Something tickled under her skin, like something was missing. It was an itch she couldn’t scratch if she tried. The green was made up of leafy vegetation big and small, scaping up a mountain that peaked beyond the furthest reaches. It felt unruly. Uncaged.
Fatin had introduced herself as her guide. That definitely didn’t sit right but Leah didn’t have it in her to argue, not yet anyway. Not when Fatin could teach her things. While Leah had woken up with a hole in her head, Fatin seemed to have no such problem. Leah would just have to keep an eye on her until she could work out her motives.
‘Top of that mountain is a pool,’ Fatin explained, ‘called the cradle of souls. Something up there is out of whack and we need to fix it.’
‘Why?’ Leah asked, and maybe she was being intentionally obtuse. But it wasn’t fair some stranger was asking her to do shit when she felt like only 10% of a person anyway.
‘Because it’s broken,’ said Fatin.
‘That’s not good enough.’
‘Like you’ve got anything better to do.’
‘I do, actually,’ Leah said.
Fatin snorts. ‘You’re dead, we’re in the wilderness and Gretchen forgot to boot you up with a brain. As if you’re busy.’
‘I’ll count rocks. Sunbathe. Write a book.’
Pain flickered across Fatin’s face. Leah studiously ignored it.
‘Who’s Gretchen?’
‘Your mom. Come on,’ Fatin groaned, pulling at Leah’s arm. ‘There’s literally no-one here but us and I’m not climbing a mountain on my own.’
‘You could ask nicely.’
Fatin turned, raised her eyebrows sweetly. ‘Please will you admit you’ve got nothing better to do than me?’
‘Than help you,’ Leah corrected, frowning.
‘That’s what I said.’
Leah let herself be pulled across the beach to the first leering fronds with a lack of enthusiasm. ‘I just don’t understand what the point is,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask to be here. I don’t even have any particular feelings about it. Why are you even bothering?’
Fatin didn’t reply immediately. When she did, her words were stilted. ‘Someone had to do it and I volunteered. We were supposed to do it together.’ Somewhere in there was a deeper confession, one Leah couldn’t quite wrap her head around. Fatin waved a hand dismissively and the levity was lost. ‘But you’re half-baked and it’s all on me. But I got you, girl. These bad boys are capable of carrying the weight of the world and more besides.’
Her smile was crooked. Leah didn’t know how to take it.
‘Fine,’ she said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, I’ll come with you. But the moment it gets weird I’m out.’
‘You and me both, babe. You and me both.’
--
The lowest region of the mountain was a dense forest with waxy leaves and fibrous tree trunks. A gentle mist, not unlike the mist beyond the beach, settled between the roots and rock formations like a death shroud. For a while at least, they hiked in silence. Leah knew why she was quiet; something about Fatin drew her eyes time and time again, tracing her every outline as if doing so would cause her to unravel and reveal her secrets. If Leah wasn’t dead, and this wasn’t some kind of surreal phantom made up of her brain’s last sparks, she’d admit that something stirred in her belly of apathy when she watched her. It was familiar and traitorous all at once, and it was easiest to shove the feeling back as deep as possible. She had enough on her plate already.
Why Fatin was quiet was unknown. She’d seemed chatty enough beforehand but now they were moving she had fallen into contemplative silence. Her shoulders were laced with tension. Leah knew this because she’d stared, following Fatin like a shadow at her back, and the line of her shoulders had steadily risen to a hunch. She wasn’t sure if she should check in. Decided it really wasn’t her place to do so.
They hobbled across a stream and then skirted around the pond it fed from. The ground had become mulchy, tender. The sun was graciously filtered. Most curiously, there wasn’t a single sound besides the trickle of water and hush of leaves. No drones, no insects, no birds. Leah was honestly glad she remembered what drones and insects and birds were. When she mentioned this, Fatin snorted.
‘Point one to Rilke,’ she said.
Leah wrinkled her nose. ‘Drones and insects and birds is three points.’
‘Since when did you get to decide?’
‘Since you were clearly wrong. Three things is three points, cough up.’
Fatin leapt to a fallen trunk in a leggy stride. Her shoes seemed flimsy, soaked through from the moisture already. ‘Can you name a bug?’
Leah’s shoes weren’t much better. A crack cut straight across the sole of her right and she knew this because her sock was soggy and unpleasant. They didn’t seem prepared, which on her part was understandable and on Fatin’s was not. ‘Fly,’ she said shortly.
‘A drone.’
The game was dumb, but it kept Leah’s mind active. Every answer unlocked another piece of herself, coming together like shattered glass rewound. ‘Class two-eighty-four.’
‘Damn, look at you,’ Fatin said in a surprised croon. ‘Since when did you brush up on drone codes?’
‘Since…’ Leah couldn’t place it. She frowned, jumping off the trunk with a huff. ‘Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Duck.’
Fatin ducked, slipped, and flailed to the ground in a heap. In their serious context it was objectively hilarious. Leah burst out laughing, folding over as she shook even as Fatin slapped her calf in admonishment.
‘I hate you,’ she said concisely.
‘A duck is a bird,’ Leah gasped between breaths. She was grinning. ‘I want my three points now.’
‘Fine, help me up.’
Fatin tried to brush herself off but it was futile. The ground wasn’t muddy but it was damp enough to smear when she knocked off the leaf litter and gathered her bearings. Leah watched statically, neither offering to help nor moving away.
‘What did you mean when you said you’d volunteered?’ she blurted.
It was a dick move, asking the tough questions when Fatin was looking goofy and vulnerable.
Fatin pulled herself upright and sighed. She cocked her hip when she stood still, Leah noticed, and it badgered her like a question mark. ‘You’ve been conscious for what, an hour? Do you really want the whole spiel?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘I’m going to sound crazy.’
Leah held her arms wide and cracked a smile. ‘Try me.’
Rolling her eyes, Fatin began to pick her way through the undergrowth again. She didn’t seem to be following any particular path but was committed to moving forward. ‘A long time ago, people used to live until they were seventy years old. They spent their time poking around the universe with tin-can spacecraft that they probably thought were hot shit but were really just death traps ready to spring. But they didn’t know any better, and brought humanity to the hundreds of planets we call home.’
‘This doesn’t sound like an answer.’
Fatin flapped a hand. ‘Fuckin’ chill. Let me get there.’ She took a breath.
‘Lots of planets meant lots of people, and all those people fucked up our cradle of souls.’
‘I don’t see how that’s my problem.’
‘Oh my god, how do people do this? Mouth shut, Fatin’s talking.’ She shoved a bundle of leaves aside and let Leah through ahead of her. There were flowers here. Yellow.
Leah shrugged. Fatin took this as a concession.
‘Cradle’s fucked, people barely make thirty nowadays and society’s collapsing. We’re probably doomed to go under completely in like, a decade or something. No going back. Some corporation thought they’d make a last ditch go of it and sent us here to fix it.’
‘I literally couldn’t care less.’
‘Of course you don’t, you didn’t choose to be here.’
Leah stopped so abruptly Fatin bumped into her. Her veins iced, culminating in trembling fingers, and she turned to face her guide. ‘What?’
‘Forget it.’ Fatin’s voice was shaky. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘No.’ The dense cotton of Leah’s mind smoked and set alight with a hungry lick of fury. She stepped forward and Fatin stepped back. ‘No take backs. What do you mean I didn’t choose to be here?’
‘Leah…’
‘Did you do this to me?’ she pressed. Her voice was raising and she let it, letting the anger fill the space where the rest of her couldn’t. ‘You signed up to some self-sacrificing bullshit and dragged me along with you. That’s fucked up. That’s so fucked up, I can’t even-- I can’t begin to describe how fucking stupid that is.’
Fatin grabbed her by the arm, eyes wide. ‘Lee--’
‘What right did you have?’ Wrenching away, Leah moved to put some distance between them. Six feet, ten. Twenty. Enough that the air, thick with tension, became breathable. Her eyes were darting, seeking answers (threats, enemies) in the shadows.
‘I didn’t drag you anywhere,’ Fatin said.
Leah scoffed. ‘Look around us. I might not know what home is but this isn’t it. I’m dead; you said so. And you volunteered.’
Something shifted in Fatin, a change in gear from patience to frustration. ‘You know jack shit so don’t talk to me like you know what’s going on.’
‘Because you’re not telling me!’
‘You’re not listening,’ Fatin snapped, advancing. Leah flinched. Her hand came up in warning.
‘Don’t come closer.’
Arguing with quite possibly the only other living(?) and breathing person in a strange empty place probably wasn't the way to go about things, but Leah's state of mind was rapidly deteriorating. The contentment she'd woken up with had soured with every step they took from the beach. What had she done to deserve this? Shouldn't death be the incomparable peace, the night's sleep after a lifetime of toil?
‘Morbid much? Peace is for quitters. Come on, it's just one party. I'll owe you.’
Blurry-eyed, Leah startled. ‘What did you say?’
Fatin threw up her hands. ‘Literally nothing. Girl, I get that you don't like being in the dark but I need you to trust me.’
‘No.’
‘Well fuck. Suit yourself.’ Fatin turned around and traipsed away through the vegetation. She wasn’t leaving, was she? As Leah watched, it didn't take long for her guide to disappear out of sight, dense as their surroundings were. A sluggish moment went by before she realised: she was watching her go.
This, Leah knew immediately, was not what she wanted.
‘Wait,’ she mumbled, then cleared her throat. ‘Wait!’
In a thoughtless scramble, Leah forged after Fatin. And then like the afterlife itself was conspiring to keep them apart, she tripped. The ground rose her to meet her, hard and unexpected. Beyond the thicket, somebody screamed.
‘Fatin!’ Leah bellowed. She clawed at the ground. No, no. Leah wasn’t ready to let this woman go. Even in a world like this one, where nothing really made sense and Leah was the very definition of directionless, she wasn’t ready to let go. She didn’t give a shit about the summit, or the cradle of souls or whatever any of it meant but this woman knew something and damnit, Leah needed to know. Like really know.
‘Do I know you?’
‘Uh, obviously. You scratched up my car in the lanes and I sold you out to your boss.’
‘You did what?’
‘My baby needed four days at the garage!’
‘Fatin!’
Leah pushed herself to her feet, only to fall again. A vine had wrapped around her ankle, vice-like and constricting. She tore at it, frantic hands, neck craned in the direction Fatin had headed. Her mind was already conjuring a hundred possibilities. What if she had fallen? Cracked her head? Been eaten by a bear? This garden was so artificially quiet, the quiet must surely be a lie. How could it even the afterlife? Who was she to trust what Fatin had told her? Who was she to trust what Fatin had been told? Her fingertips scratched and bled as she pried the vine from her leg and scrambled back to her feet.
‘Fatin!’
Barrelling through the foliage, Leah nearly stepped off a rockface and into a river. It flowed quick and white, a terror of nature that didn’t roar but hushed, disconcertingly quiet despite its intensity. Her stomach dropped. Fatin had fallen in, there was no way it could have been anything else. She had fallen in and been swept away and took all of her potential answers with her and Leah--
Leah was alone. Oh god. Dead and alone, left to do what exactly? Sit and rot? Fade out of existence? Climb the damn mountain and hope some answer revealed itself? She didn’t expect much. It was broken and so was she.
It was all becoming too much. Leah dropped to her knees, unmindful of the way the rock grazed, and stared listlessly at the water. She’d thought she’d have longer to come to terms with what was happening. She’d needled Fatin, pushed at her, used her to feel alive, because she’d assumed they’d have more time. That she could ask the bigger questions later. But there was no later anymore and Leah was responsible for fucking it up.
‘Are you done?’ called a strained voice.
Leah nearly pitched over into the water. She looked up, squinting against the cloudy light. Fatin was hanging by the ankles, hauled up by a vine from the trees above. She blinked as she processed what she was seeing.
‘What?’ she said articulately.
Fatin’s eyes darted, scanning the ground and the trees lining the river’s edge. ‘Could be worse,’ she said, sounding a little queasy. ‘I’ve definitely been caught in more compromising positions--’
‘Okay, stop. I thought you were dead. This isn’t funny.’
‘It’s not but if I don’t make a joke about it I think I’m going to puke.’
‘Do not,’ Leah said, holding up a palm. ‘Do not.’
‘Are you going to get me down or not?’
Getting Fatin down ended up being considerably more complicated than expected. The vine - traitorous and strangely mobile - had hoiked Fatin more than 10 feet off the ground and dangled her above the rock. Eventually Leah had managed to climb the tree and pull Fatin to a branch to cling to, and beyond that was some incredibly awkward trial and error. Physically awkward, loosing the vine, not emotionally-- although there was a new tension between them now. Not like before, where their tension was founded in the expanse that loitered between them like a murky haze. Now it was something known: that Leah, when faced with loss, would chase after it. That she didn’t want to be alone. That, in an wholly selfish way, Fatin was valued despite how Leah had shoved her away.
When they had both finally made it to the ground, they sat with their backs to the cursed tree, sweating and grimed. Fatin sucked in a deep breath.
‘Say nothing,’ Leah started, unready for whatever threatened to come next.
‘I was going to say thank you, bitch.’
Leah snorted. ‘Fine.’
‘Fine.’
A tingle washed over Leah as Fatin slumped. The woman (her guide, her judge, my-- ) tilted her head back against the bark and closed her eyes. She looked like somebody else, like this. Worn, genuine. Carrying something beyond what she was comfortable with. It was unlike the scheming architect that Leah had admittedly considered casting her as amongst other speculations. Who was Fatin?
‘All yours, baby. You know that.’
Leah ripped her gaze away and wheezed. Her chest bound tight, heart leaping into a desperate run that pushed her to get up and move. ‘We should probably get away from the murder tree,’ she said, turning back towards the forest. If her voice cracked, there were plenty of rational reasons for that. She didn’t need to explain.
But her expression wouldn’t be so easily justified. If it was wracked with anything like her heart was - confused, fractured, yearning - she couldn’t let Fatin see it. That would give away so much more than Leah could handle, to someone who’d proven nothing everything to her. She had to look away. She wasn’t ready.
‘You coming?’ she called back breezily. Moving onwards was a hell of lot easier than talking, even if it meant repeating the same mistakes.
The rustle of Fatin getting up to join her was a relief. Leah hadn’t realised how much she’d been hoping they would return to whatever they had been before their argument. With the promise of company, her desperation began to recede.
‘Cradle calls,’ Fatin quipped and just like that, the door between them closed once again.