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Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story.
There is no other version of this story.
– Richard Siken, The Worm King's Lullaby
I.
This is how it ends:
A ghost of a boy is trapped in the dark, so a girl falls to make him something more than the shell she sees below her.
He looks up at the girl on top of the mountain of rocks that could not save him, and wonders if the light itself took shape for him. He looks, and looks, and looks, waiting to see if this mirage disappears faster than he can bear.
The girl comes down, scratches on her elbows, gashes on her knees, knife in her hand.
Back then, he had not yet known what the word lost meant. Unused syllables of angel, god, light, safe are only vague imprints on his tongue, but in this moment, he thinks – at last.
At last.
My name is Rachel, the light is saying.
II.
Her mouth makes noises like his when he tried, but something different, something more – it is the wind when it comes howling down from the gap in his shallow sky, but louder than the ragged sound that drags itself out of his throat when tears spill from his eyes, unbidden. The way her mouth moves – the gaps and pauses when she takes in a breath – reminds him of the lilt of the constant beating thing in his chest.
You mean like this, she tells him some time later, smiling, when he learns how to speak faster than she had anticipated. She hums a lullaby for him as she plays with his hair, his head resting on her lap. There's an uneven cadence that slips into her voice when she runs out of breath, a slow lull in her wordless song that pulls him down to a stillness he does not fear. It's a depth that has him drifting somewhere warm – where the dark doesn’t feel as though it will swallow him whole and spit him out hollower than before.
He closes his eyes, and listens.
(Your hair is even longer than mine, she teases, gently tugging at the locks. I can cut it for you.
He looks at his hair coiled around her hand, dark locks tangled between her fingers – caught.
I don’t mind, Baam says.)
III.
In the eyes of a ghost of a boy, this is how it begins – even when she unravels right in front of him, and she has gone to a place too high and too strange for him to reach:
He is found.
What use does he have for any other reason (why did you leave why did you push me away why did you try to kill me please please come back), when that was all that ever mattered, all that he ever needed to live?
He doesn’t understand why he should want more than what he’s been given, when the world never bothered giving him anything else.
IV.
Rachel brings him apples, once.
“Baam, look at this. Isn’t it a pretty red?”
Baam turns away from the dark, distant eyes blinking slow at the sudden light from the top of the cave. He moves closer to face her, giving the same amount of restless curiosity to the apple in her hand as he does to everything she shows him.
“It’s the same color as that thing you’re wearing, Rachel.”
“My sash? It is.” She dangles the apple in front of him. “Do you want to taste it?”
He leans back a little, his brows furrowed. “That’s... food?”
Rachel grins. “Yes. Like this.” She takes a bite from the apple, and angles the unbitten side to his mouth.
He stares at it, eyes darting between her face and the apple in her hand.
“It’s very sweet,” she coaxes, brings it closer until the cool skin touches his lips. “I promise it’s good.”
His eyes fix on her, ever steady, blinding bright if only because she can see her own face clearly reflected in them – foreign, yet mirror images of herself.
“Okay,” he concedes after a pause. “I’ll taste it, Rachel.” He wraps his fingers around her wrist and – without taking his eyes off hers – takes a bite.
Rachel tries to ignore his grip on her, surprisingly warm. “How is it?”
He lets go, and wipes the excess from his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s... sweet. Just like you said.”
“I told you it was,” she says, and reaches for his hand. She places the apple on his palm in wordless urging. “Don’t you trust me?” The last part she says lightly, only meant to hear him tell her again that he does, in that soft, bare way he admits it, but this time he curls up, arms wrapped tight around his knees. The apple rolls across the shadowed ground, abandoned, two crescent shapes etched onto its flesh like wounds.
“You’re the only one I know how to trust,” Baam whispers, like it is a secret. Like she is not reminded of that whenever he looks at her, and still – she flinches. “Can’t you stay here a little longer, Rachel?”
“Baam,” she says, helpless. She places her palm on the top of his head, “you know I can’t do that. I already told you before, haven't I? There’s somewhere I need to go.”
“What’s so great about that? I don’t understand why you want... You told me they’re lights in the sky, but you don’t need the light to live, do you?”
Anger flares in her chest – a cruel, lonely thing, ready to lash out. She reigns it in. It would be useless to argue with him like this, when all that she wants to tell him is dwarfed by her own shadow. He is still learning, but sometimes, she wonders if it is enough – if all the pieces of herself she’s broken off and the stories from the only world she knows will ever be enough. The emptiness in him thrums like a caged wild thing; echoes of it reverberate in the darkness at times, yet he seems oblivious to it the way he is to anything but the space she can hold between her hands.
But for now, she puts those thoughts aside, and tries to understand him, as she has always done.
She sits beside him, lets her shoulder touch his as some small measure of comfort, and keeps herself from speaking until his breathing doesn’t come out ragged anymore.
“They may be just light to you,” she says as softly as only she knows how, pointing to the gap above them that spills faint light into the cave, “but to me, they’re the world – the mountains, the seas, the sun in the sky... all the places I’ve told you about. They’re everything.”
They’re freedom, she doesn’t tell him.
He rests his forehead against her shoulder, his hair a pool of shadow draping over her lap – she really has to cut that sometime soon.
“If you really want to see the stars that much, then... I’d like to see them, too, Rachel. With you.”
She stays very still.
His mouth curves into a smile, but his hand grasps tight at the sash on her waist. “I know I can’t. I’m not one of the chosen people, but – I still want to see you there. I want to see you in the light of that world.”
Rachel eyes him, and sighs. A spark of the earlier resentment lingers in her still, despite her attempts to smother it down.
“I need to go, Baam.”
She carefully disentangles herself from him, and bends down to tidy up the assortment of things she’s brought with her today: the crudely carved stones they use for games, a tattered black book with strange, archaic letters, and an old teacup with interlocking shell patterns on its handle. Another apple sits in the corner of the basket, a visceral slash of red beside her old, worn things. When she is done and no trace of her is left, she faces him, her back against the light from above.
He stares up at her, his eyes taking on that familiar distance, like he is trying to forget himself again until she returns.
“I’ll come back soon.”
She leans down, and presses a kiss on his forehead – once, twice, again. She tries not to think of his eyes, dull and listless in the dark.
“How long... how long do I have to wait?”
Rachel lets out a shaky laugh. “What do you mean?”
When she pulls away, he touches the tips of his fingers to his forehead. “You’re always gone for a long time when you do that, Rachel, but – it’s okay. You always come back. You’ll always come back.”
To me, he does not say, but she knows it all the same. Hears it in the way his voice wavers. Always come back to me.
She rummages around in her basket, tries to steady her hand. She holds out the apple to him.
He merely blinks up at her. “I already know what it tastes like.”
Rachel snorts. “It’s a promise,” she says, and tries not to linger on the way his gaze lights up. “I’ll come back before the skin turns black, alright? That’s not so long.”
He smiles. “Okay.”
She taps the tip of his nose with her forefinger, machinations of affection too easy to fall back to when her words won’t work the way she wants them to. “You can eat it if you want to. It’s going to be a waste if you don’t, anyway, and an apple as red as that is a bit hard to find.”
He hesitates before speaking. “We could eat it together - when you come back.”
(Once, she would've felt something other than guilt at how he always makes a space for her alone, but he can only give her so much of his hollow light before it, too, becomes too much to bear.
Even for her.)
"When I come back," she relents, but all she can think of is the heft of the rope in her hand.
V.
“Baam’s told me about you,” Androssi tells her the second time they run into each other.
Daylight slants on them, weightless. Evankhell’s horizon is laid open before them, an endless blue so vast that it looks close enough to touch.
The sudden wind almost pushes back Rachel’s hood, but she manages to keep it from slipping down her hair. She says nothing.
“He really is quite the martyr,” Androssi adds, tilting her head. The three-eyed insignia in her hair glints blood-red, a warning and promise both. “Makes me wonder if he’s chosen the right god to die for.”
“I’m not his god,” Rachel says, sharper than she intends. Her fingers clench tight around the balcony’s railings, knuckles turning white. “I never asked for this. I never asked for his–”
“For his devotion?”
Rachel doesn’t answer.
Androssi smiles. “Well, I won’t pretend to understand you two at all, but...” She pauses, as though feeling for the right shapes of the words to use, the right edges to aim for. “I don’t think he can help himself, really. What a waste.”
Rachel looks up at the sky. There are no clouds here, nor are there birds that sing little morning hymns; it is as empty as she has expected it to be. Here, there is only a half-dead grassland and a mockery of her dreams. Only a wind that brings with it the faint scent of blood.
"He'll forget me, eventually," Rachel says. In a lower tone, she murmurs, “he has to.”
The memory of something sickly-sweet blooms on her tongue.
VI.
She teaches him how to dance. Or, at least, she tries to.
“Left, right, left – no, no, that’s not where you put your – ow!”
“I-I don’t understand where I should...”
“This way,” she tells him. Her feet throbs from being trampled on repeatedly, but she pulls him towards her anyway and hums her little tune again, tries to get him to move in time with her motions. He manages to keep up with her for once, but his hand somehow slips from her grasp, his feet inevitably moving in to crush her toes, and it is, quite simply – a disaster.
Her body aches with the effort, yet she can’t stop laughing, a grin playing wide on her mouth as she twirls herself around a bemused Baam. She eventually ends up paying no heed to the rhythm she’s set at all. By the time she gives up on the endeavor completely, they’re lying side by side on the cool ground, sweat-slicked hair sticking to her face and neck.
“I don’t think," she huffs out between sparse lungfuls of breath, "this is going to work." She groans. “I can’t feel my legs anymore.”
He jerks upright. The next thing she knows, he’s leaning over her, horror evident in his eyes. “Did I hurt you? I’m so sorr–”
“I was joking,” she amends quickly, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear. He lays down beside her again. “Still, dancing is probably out of the question now.”
She hums, though it tapers off into a hurried sigh. "You already know how to speak, play games, and you can even read now. I wonder what else I could–”
"Why do you try so hard to teach me, Rachel?"
The question stills her racing thoughts, dulls the image of him in her mind standing tall and proud at the other end of a room, hands stretched out to her, for her.
“Would you rather be the same as before?"
He angles himself to his side to face her. "It's not that, but you don't have to do any of this. You don't have to teach me everything."
“It’s…” She sits up. “You shouldn’t have to live like this, Baam. You can’t live in the darkness forever.”
He smiles. “It’s not so bad anymore now that you’re with me, Rachel.”
VII.
Rachel does not know this, will never know it now, but her name is the first one Baam writes on the list without hesitation, each letter spelled out in ink with a careful, reverent grace.
VIII.
In Baam's dreams, the edge of a knife gleams sharp in her eyes, and she is telling him:
IX.
Never betray another person, Baam, especially a–
X.
The hell train lurches forward.
Rachel's eyes snap open.
Beneath her, phantom engines rumble and screech, the haunting noise a reminder of the train's inevitable shift from night to day.
She sits up from the makeshift bed, gasping. There’s a glimpse of blue from the corner of her eyes.
“Bad dreams?” Yura asks, the concern in her eyes shifting to bright curiosity.
“It’s nothing,” Rachel says. “Let’s go.”
XI.
He comes to her that night, just like she’s expected him to, and – there is no apple this time.
The light outside drapes across her bed in long, ghostly pillars, and Baam stares at her like she’s a dream he's waiting to wake up from. She leans in, presses her lips to his cheeks – once, twice, again, and she thinks: I’m sorry. She kisses him on each closed eyelid, below each corner of his eyes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be like this at all.
Whether she is apologizing to him or to herself, she does not linger on.
She makes one last lingering kiss on his cheek, and she’ll remember how his face is flushed when she pulls back, how his eyes dart to her mouth for the fleetest of moments, then gone. She’ll remember how his eyes are soft on her, wondering, perhaps curious to see if he is crossing another border closer to the heart of her – another sacred part of her that he will not hesitate to bite down on and claim for his own. It has always been this way, for them. She gives, and he takes away.
And now, she understands: nothing she can give him will ever be enough.
His hands rest on top of her knees, palms up as though offering them, yet they anchor her in place. It hits her, then, how vulnerable he is at this moment, light flooding against his face, even though she is the one surrounded by him. And oh, how easy it would be to crack him open and see if anything had ended up growing inside after such a short time, but – she will not deal cruelty to him right now. She can afford him this kindness, this one small thing. The cruelty can wait.
That will have to come later.
“Rachel–” he begins. Pauses. Touches her wrists with his fingertips. She surprises herself when she looks down to find that her hands are trembling. She pulls away.
“Are you...”
“I’m just tired,” she whispers, but her heart thuds hard and heavy, caged.
He edges closer. Rachel fights back the urge to flinch. To scramble away and run. She keeps her toes from curling beneath the covers.
“You don’t – you don’t have to be afraid, Rachel. I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”
It is wrong, she thinks, hearing his voice break, as if he is struggling for something to give to her – any part of him without frayed edges that once belonged to her. The light casts itself across his face in a way that turns him into some kind of wide-eyed sculpture, golden eyes pale and hollow in their brightness. She can’t see herself reflected in them, can’t see any trace of her, and it almost sends her into a panic before she remembers what is about to happen. What she is about to do.
She takes in a stuttering breath.
“I’ll come with you anywhere, Rachel, just – don’t leave me again.”
"Baam," she says.
"Yes?" He stills, hands clenching and unclenching on empty air.
There’s a beat of silence. And then – a sharp intake of breath, as if he’s bracing for a blow, the sudden flash of a knife.
Don't betray –
She sighs. "You should get some rest. It's been a long day."
"Everyone will help us tomorrow," he says, and smiles as if to assure her that he's resolute on the path he’s chosen. He gets up. "You don't have to worry about anything."
Rachel leans back against the headboard, her legs aching to move.
"Make sure you brush your teeth before you sleep, okay?"
She can't see it clearly, but she is sure his face is flushed red as an apple right now. "W-what? I can take care of myself now, Rachel."
"Really? You take a bath every day, too?"
"That's – stop teasing me!"
Then she's laughing, the light crisscrossing over them like silver wounds. If her laughter sounds too high and too brittle for it to be bright enough for posterity, Baam makes no note of it at all. Instead, when her laughter has died down, Baam leans down and places a feather-light kiss on her brow, warm breath brushing her hair, and there it is again – an ache in her chest that she will not name. He rests his forehead against hers.
I missed you, he whispers against her skin. His fingers curl around her neck.
Rachel blinks in the dark. When her vision blurs at the edges, she will say it is only exhaustion, and not something that almost stings like–
She clutches the sheets.
No. She cannot afford those kind of stray thoughts right now. Not now. Not yet.
Those, too, will have to come later.
XII.
In the eyes of a girl haunted by stars, this is how it ends:
She is found.
We were happy there, he tells her, his conviction that their happiness was shared a suffocating hold on her throat she still has not learned how to shape into something that is hers alone.
We were happy, and she kneels before the fairy of the tower again, the floor cold and unyielding beneath her palms. Unwelcome. Unchosen. Unholy.
What an ugly nasty girl you are, it tells her, and this story is wrong – it is broken glass slippers and clouded mirrors, pages too jagged for her to dream in. Here, there is no place for girls with soft, soft hearts. Only monsters. Only gods.
Little girl, Headon says, ageless and beckoning, do you want to make a deal with me?
(If that’s what it takes, she tells Yu Han Sung with a smile that matches his own: all edges, all sharp teeth.)
XIII.
This is how it begins:
A slip of a girl is trapped in the dark, so a boy falls to make her something more than what the story wants her to be.
She looks down at the boy who thinks he could keep her, and wonders if the blood on his outstretched hand would feel warm against her palm if she reaches out. She looks, and looks, and looks, waiting to see if this mirage of a promise stays longer than she can bear.
The boy comes down, desperation in his eyes, violence in his power, blood on his hand.
Back then, she had not yet known what freedom would taste like on her untried tongue. She had not yet learned that it would taste so bittersweet like apples picked long past their season, but at this moment, the promise of more trembles in her until it is all she can see, and she thinks – at last.
At last.
Wherever you want to go, the night is saying.