seeping.

“i’m not certain i believe in gods,” jonathan admitted — the first utterance of such an idea he had ever given another. he had played his mother’s game for a long while. he had played the part of an english boy, good and holy until he was not; he had played the part of forgetting his mother’s beliefs, of following her wishes, of thinking of concepts like the trailokya only when he was alone and safe. 

but now iskender was speaking of gods trapped in ice, and it rushed him — gods could not be imagined by the likes of them. when he said he was not certain of his belief, perhaps he only meant: those gods written about were pale imitations of the creatures that existed. “but i don’t think that matters anymore. it is here, in whatever form. and if it begins to spread, i suppose our questions will shift. i cannot think of that yet, i cannot. i can only think of what we saw. of this passage. of where it leads.” 

iskender knew him. iskender knew him before, and iskender knew him now. 

you will step through it, then?

“yes,” jonathan answered, with the same flushed cheeks of the first person who had ever answered temptation. the truth, at last. jonathan, stepping through the door. jonathan, meeting vladimir there. jonathan, suddenly lit up with all the knowledge he had ever sought. ( who was the snake, and who was the apple? ) yet the truth dimmed quickly, the cost making itself known. the door closing, him trapped there. could it be a trap when he asked for it, when it was all he wanted for so long? but who was on the other side of him? who was he leaving behind? jack fox, losing another. jack fox, brilliant, beautiful man, alone. and jonathan, without him too. what was knowledge worth? he faltered, “— maybe. oh, i don’t know.” he rubbed his hands down his face, took a breath. “i know that i would have. even just a few weeks ago. i think the knowledge is…too special to let go so easily. but now?” 

“iskender, i believe that love has caught me here. and i’m not sure where to fit all these things: grief and love and loss and the desire to understand it all. if they can all exist with each other.” 

or if a choice would have to be made again. the temptation played out. 

“would you step through then?”

Love has found me here. It sounds like a tavern song, sounds like a typescript line of poetry in the margins of some train ticket. Sounds like cheap opera; mouse kings, mountain crags, pipers. It also sounds like it’s the only thing that ever existed. The only thing that could ever be touched.

He doesn’t ask: who. No one who has been on that island would ask. He still remembers the soldier’s frozen expression; the deathly stillness on it, when he saw Jonathan walk down over the ice. When he saw what he was walking towards. And then the rousing to action, the impulse of it      the need to save so sharp through him it looked like a bolt of lighting. The younger corporal stopping it before it sprung. The culling of the fold. The mortal foot forward.

No, Iskender doesn’t ask.

He thinks of Elias Shaw, on his knees before him. Thinks of the way he cupped the boy’s cheek, a thumb over the curls, and the odd contrast it drew to his other hand, the hand that was prying his lips wider. Thinks of Elias, shouldering Pippa’s body in the morning glare. The snow blindness, the crackle of ice like coals. Thinks of Elias, shivering in Iskender’s bed, face wet in the crook of his arm. Iskender thinks love, and wants to scream.

Wants to tell Jonathan: you doubt my Gods, and I doubt yours. We both worship things the other doesn’t believe in, don’t we, old friend? Friend that never was; warmth that should have been.

He shakes his head. ❝You know what I’ve been working on; not in so many words, but we both hinted at it. You know what my last three, four years in Britain revolved around. It was this rumour, this hushed tale of an island where life recoils from. Where something else rears up. Jonathan, I think I was looking for this my whole life. At it, into it, who can tell? Who knows what side one is on, until the light starts pouring, until the angle is illuminated? Everything I am... everything I’ve ever been, tried to, tried not to be - it all comes here. And here it stops. So, yes. I suppose the answer is yes.❞

The confession catches him unaware; he feels it jump up in his throat like a wave of sickness.

❝I don’t believe it would’ve taken a trance for me to walk forward.❞

Like an afterthought, it strikes him that he hasn’t said something without planning it ahead, not in decades. Maybe not ever. But there it is. His hand curls on his thigh, a spasm. There’s a resolute hitch to his breath. He pinches the bridge of his nose as if there’s any way to stave the headache, the fog, the pelt of night on judgement.

Post Mutiny Private Cabins For @arcancs​

The days passed.  Difficult to tell how many, difficult to remember how they were moved through at all. It wasn’t as though she was going through the motions, when everything about the voyage had been new and uncharted for her.  The days passed. And they skipped like rocks upon a calm sea. The dreaded weight of them bouncing off the surface. Leaving nothing noticeable behind at all.  She looked the same. Perhaps a bit bloody, a bit worn. No, not even that, not so anyone would realise. A day had passed? Yes. It must have done. A full day. There was enough within it to stand in evidence, to convey that hours must have rolled around, the sun, the moon, the sun again. No more neverending night. It should have been a relief.  The curse has lifted. The darkness is only for the recognition of light, of time, of sleeping hours. A curse has lifted. 

Finds herself outside Iskender’s door. Knows how she got there, but has truly no idea.  There isn’t time for it. There isn’t space for it. Nothing to be said, nothing to be questioned. The only pressing concern is the mutiny. Man, not menace. Man, not malevolence. Not yet. Not until. Only, she had made the trek to laundry. It could have been left. It could have been delivered by some steward or stranger. So why else does she carry his coat. Why else is she standing there. Shifts a glance to each end of the corridor, to every corner in sight. Checks that she hasn’t been followed. And truly it wouldn’t matter if she had. Shouldn’t. For she had dipped her head and danced around any trailing voyeurs. Taken to sleight of hand as always. Faking left then turning right.  Hates the notion of it, the nostalgia of it. Hates the way it’s used now, even without necessity. Just the oppression of the idea of it. 

Raps loudly against the door in rebellion. And it’s foolish, for more than one reason. Foolish for how her knuckles ache, act in reminder of why she’s there at all. The split of them, the rejected softness. The door opens. It surprises her. As though she hadn’t expected it, as though she hadn’t wanted it. She doesn’t. There isn’t time for it. There isn’t space for it. Nothing to be said, nothing to be questioned.  “Tell me why.” 

“I’m sorry, it smells of lemons.” Better than death, better than her. “I can air it out on the deck if you like, but I was already a bit late in getting it back to you.” 

This is not how he expected to see them again.

No, wrong tidings, wrong butchery of elsewhere and never. He had not expected to see them again. Even now, Iskender cannot actually look inside himself, cannot glimpse what it was that moved him to the island. That made him feel resolute about it, for all that he was cautious, too. What did he want to find? What does he always want to find?

Even now, nothing stares back at him from the murk. As if all of them had just swallowed the neverending night, rather than slice through it, foghorn silhouettes, overcast runaways. As if it boils inside him long after the sky cleared. Obscures motivation, yes, and motive, too. Obscures whatever hope he had from this place.

What has it been? Five years, since he caught word of it in England? A throwaway remark, peeled and defanged, deboned, ready for the taking? A bait that really was not much bait at all. And yet, how he had bitten. How it thrilled him; how it made the world feel like a newborn in the crook of his arm. The child, the non-child, the love, the non-love, that he had long come to terms with. The absences he had long accepted. The Arctic became all of them, and yet surpassed it, too; a river never once stepped into. He had spent one full year reading about it, scrounged all the libraries and private collections he could find in the Commonwealth. Stalked Dowling’s crew, who had been to the Arctic before, and never reached as far as Devon; stalked Ephraim, stalked the former quartermaster, now departed.

It roped him in. Not even obsession, not even grand design, but the annihilation of it. Furred the material, spun it around his eyes, and urged him on, on, all the way here, to this cabin. This piece of luxury neither wanted nor mourned. And this person, wide-eyed, haunted, now, too; a haunting that won’t stop the minute he leaves shore. A haunting he can’t catalogue, or cure, or account for. They both walked to that island hand in hand. They knew, they must’ve, that people will follow them. They wagered not only their lives, but the promise of another; they promised this place all of it, if only it gave them a key. Or maybe only he wanted a key. Maybe Ayla wanted softness, the soothing riverbed of sacrifice. Maybe Jaya wanted revenge, as Jon did knowledge. And perhaps Emma-Rose hungered only for answers; bones to grind, bones to unearth. But him? Soufian? The meaning of the name long buried, long burned inside the chest and furnace? Soufian wanted a key.

Soufian wanted a home.

And now there they are. No opening. No turning back; he doesn’t regret it. What he misses is the other face of the coin: the dread that he must still go forward, and that this world, the darker limn of it, will never part itself to him. No other river. No other bend.

You would have died, Ayla, if you could have. There is no healing for that. But me? I would have done far worse things. Far worse, to reach the other end. There should be no healing.

He swallows, sighs, dissipation of breath. Feels his throat constrict with all the elements that are lacking, that have somehow condensed on the wrong side of the door. Ushers her in.

❝ I don’t mind lemons. They remind me of... I would say home. Only I don’t think it’s grieving you’re after. I think we both had enough of that. ❞

Without another word, he goes to the worktable at the far side of the cabin. Takes something out from a tin jar; leaves and spices, sundries and sages. He gave orders for tea to be brought some few minutes ago, because isn’t that what one does? Not just the British; he’s seen it everywhere. The boiling of water, the ritual of letting it stew, seep, the quiet supplication.

He doesn’t know if he can look Ayla in the eyes, or if he even should. He doesn’t know if he’s not making it worse just by reminding her that he was right; that you can give everything, the worst possible sacrifice, and it can still not be enough. That death is never noble, not even if you choose it. Where is the grail of the soldier’s death? Where is the holy order, the sword on shoulder, the laurels and gild? There’s a reason Galahad went mad. There’s a reason they had to drown their kings, back in the mist of it, the peat bogs and the lime tree. There’s a reason you had to promise a man a throne, before you could tighten the garrote. 

A sacrifice is only beautiful from without.

Do you see it, now, little doe? What I tried to teach you? What I myself never learned?

He presses down the leaves, spoon onto darkness. Culls down an inhale sharper than the rest.

❝ How are you holding up, with all the things happening in this world and the next? Feels like fate should pick one, hm? Decide its playground, once and for all. Not do it on both counts. ❞

elias jolts, full-body, at the promise, even as he knows, knows it can’t be real. he can’t have meant it. cruel of him to dangle it, though, knowing what he does– what he must. it’s not like elias has ever worn his heart anywhere but close to the skin, and khodja is nothing short of the observant type. even if eli hadn’t spent months of his life trying to get the man’s attention, it would be clear with a half-glance how much he goddamn wants it. and now, this piecemeal promise, this crumb of a future held out like a treat in the palm. elias looks down, away. his face burns. he doesn’t respond, even as he thinks, it’s cold water, to remove blood, actually. just nods.

but his silence earns him no reprieve, because then iskender is asking him about, well– the silence, of it all. the long stutter of elias’s pulse, of elias’s presence. of course he noticed. of course he’s not going to let it slide. elias bites his lip, and imagines what the hell to possibly say, to explain.

what he wants is to say something skittering, something evasive and charming. something accompanied with a soft little smile that might dim some of the lightning in the room. instead he clenches his fists over his thighs, bunching the fabric of his trousers, and swallows once. blinks, a beat or two too long, before responding honestly, because evasion is not a fucking option, is it? not here, not now. not with the professor’s eyes on him, all over him. not with his blood pressed into the lines of the professor’s fingerprints.

“it’s not about the wound. it’s the– fuck up, of it all.” he half-stutters over the word, even as he knows there’s no alternative to it. still, it feels– more illicit, here, in khodja’s quarters. like swearing in church. makes him wince, even as he has no choice but to say it. “i don’t make mistakes. not because i’m perfect– no, i have no delusions on the state of my own flaws. i just– i can’t.” he releases the fabric in his hands, runs the palms up and down his thighs roughly, like his skin is too tight. like his skin has gone to pinching. he is starting to drift, again, can feel it behind the eyes, and knows he has to get out his answer before he goes quiet with it, even as the act of telling sends him further away. “i know there’s nothing inherently worthwhile to me. i know where i’m from, and what i am. all i have is what i can do, so if i’m to do anything, i must do it well. otherwise, what’s the point?”

otherwise, what’s the point of me?

his eyes lurch to the other man, tracking his face like it holds an answer. like it holds a salvation, even as he feels skinned to the bone with this newest admission. the plain truth of the evening: he’s already bare, in flesh. bared in neck. what’s a moment’s more eye contact, to a man flayed open? what does he have left to lose?

he feels like he should be on his knees. feels like he’s begging, but what for? what for.

“there is very little space for error, when you’re clawing your way up from nothing. and so much more space to fall. so i try, mister khodja. i try so hard.”

Rarely did he see it laid out like this. So clearly. So starkly defined against the black and the blue. Oh, his life had moved slow enough to hold on: he had designed it so, had brokered the harness with his teeth. Since early on, so early, he had set up the bends in the road, and when he could not, he appraised them from afar. Few changes had ever come in a landslide. What an admission, is it not, for a man in love with the exceptional? The gallery of unpredictable, unspeakable facts? Yet it was the edge of the coin, the side it never falls on: he only chased event because he could not tolerate it. Not truly, not the way it should be done: met head on, met violently. Accepted for the price it gives you.

What were legends, down to the sinew? Legends were a surrogate for blood pouring out. Blood pouring in, another kind. Another one. A locum; designated form. He would take a story, a haunting, needle pinned through the heart, and press it inside the dossier. Then: to the map. Finger on the axis, nail pressed over meridian. Then: to the path he had already laid on the blueprint. Then: to things that touch people, and yet had moved away, safely away, by the time he arrived to call them home. By the time he arrived to look them in the eyes.

He was jaded, wasn’t he? He had been born already time-worn with it all. And because of it, inside it, his life had trickled at a steady pace. Light to follow. Light to avoid. One that he could stall or spur at will, at the beckon of necessity, and always, always, just below the threshold of risk. But even in this tar pit, even in this crucible of formation, he had so rarely been given the chance to watch a crossroad coming into birth. To watch the cropping of a choice.

There it was, tearing itself from the ether. Manifest, manifold. As man-made as anything ever was, and yet, well, not at all. Somewhere, a fundamental force sneered at them both. Somewhere, a road warped, and furred, and fell through the map. It opened its mouth to laugh at his shock. There it was, the choice. How nice of it to let him have it. How it curled inside his stomach as if it were a kiln. Green wood, dark glaze; how it pressed against the walls of it.

The choice. He could say, ah, fuck, almost says it: I know you do. It’s all good; I know you try.

If he were a lesser man, a happier man, he’d pretend the only reason he doesn’t say it is because it will not be believed. If he were a lesser man, he’ll pretend this is not desire, not decision, that there is only something patently domestic about it all. This thing blinks and he wants to feel it against his chest. The flutter of it, the way the soft lashes give. The bite of shadow on the edge of his plexus. This thing opens its mouth and he wants his fist in it. He was so close to stepping away. Again, again. How did it happen? When did he get to stand before the steward? Wasn’t he at the other end of the room? Just now, just now.

He blinks and it happens, a motion possessed by the last second and the next. A motion bunched under the weight of the rest of them.

His hand traces the outline of Elias’ face. The cup of it below his chin, the idea of friction rather than the clasp of it. Hovers, holds it still. Another finger on the brow; there, he presses in. Swipes over the eyelid, the forehead, until the boy’s head tips back. And still he pushes.

The choice. Of course. He’s known it all along. Has Elias ever been here before?

Has Iskender?

jonathan let the words, the glimpse of softness, sit between them for a long moment. his head remained turned toward his notebook, the tip of ink finally coming to rest on parchment. quietly, in some form of defiance, “that’s not the only thing we learned.” 

on the page, he finally wrote: it stays with us all. 

“we learned how the trances take root, that they build upon themselves, that they have deliberate purpose. ours led us to a circle. ours led us to a doorway.” meticulous, like reading the listing on the side of a medicine bottle. “this doorway — we did not know that, before. we could not even have guessed.” 

ah, the waver finally hit his voice. tears wet his eyes, but it felt like failing vladimir and pippa all over again to let them fall. no, he must pursue this to the end. 

“it can’t have been for nothing.” a crack in his voice, the first tear. ( he can hear the tip in vladya’s tone as he reaches the peak of his argument; he can see the mischief in pippa’s gaze as she decides her next course. he tries to channel their boldness, their rebellion, but he has never been brave. he has only ever been curious. ) push on, dear doctor, push on. “and so i continue to think. it’s the only thing i can give, i’m afraid. because listen, my friend, listen — this island does not just host a monster. it hosts a bridge to another world filled with them, didn’t you see?” he closed the notebook, set it aside. “my mother sometimes spoke of the trailokya, the triple world. earth, sky, and heaven composing the universe — three circles laid on top of one another. but what of the spots where the circles touch, where you are neither fully on earth or in the heavens? what might a place like that be like?” 

he turned toward the man, more himself and less. “it’s in us now, isn’t it? part of us. we can go a world away, and we’ll still think of it. dream of it.” they had done what they said they would not do: they partook in the fruit. “tell me what to do instead, iskender. tell me what to do, and i’ll do it. i have too much to care for to lose myself to this.” 

He nods, as if it means anything. Nods, yes, the slip inside the wolf fur, the donning of the professor’s blazer. His purchase shifts on the desk, straightens up: as if they can make it mean something. Jonathan, Gods bless him, still thinks in duplicate.

He is a thing seizing up between heart and head. A thing on the scalpel, a thing on the feather tip, fraught with the dichotomy of it all. Iskender has no words to explain: it was for nothing, and yet it wasn’t. We now know more, and yet, oh, how much less. And oh, how lesser we are for it. How lesser we’ll be, with this bargain we made. How it will never leave us.

The language of sacrifice is not one of dichotomies. It is not transaction, and not transcription, either. The language is a wound. You find it, and from that moment on, you go to bed inside it. But that is a confession too wide for grief. In his anguish, Jonathan needs the pinprick, the hook and line of continuity. Needs to conceive that there is a future. A future, and a tally, too. Some Linnaeus square they might draw, and underneath it scribble: it was not for nothing.

There will come a point        no, he will have to walk Jonathan to a point, and show him. Tell him, yes, that Iskender too has stood there, with the trowel, the cutting stone, the block where the head lays, and pressed down. That the blood, too, had brought him nothing, and yet made him who he was. A creature that can survive this. A creature that needs no tally.

❝ Settle down, Jonathan. Let’s take it bit by bit. Yes, I do imagine it’s a bridge. My initial theory, or the gist I could still flesh out, was that this thing is a God. A lost God, a dead one, maybe: trapped in the ice. And where else? If there was any place untouched enough to let Gods to sleep, a place where They have not yet been beaten, or scared, or sold out of... then, surely, it would be this one. But now... no, now I think you are correct. It’s a passage torn asunder. A thing that never should have been. Not here, not in this world. So, first point: why did it appear? What had gone wrong? How long ago? And, finally, the big fish: is it recurrent? Will it spread inland? Will doorways like this once stretch all the way to the continent, and us still speechless, still dazed as to the why and how of it? ❞

Throughout the question, Iskender seeks to meet his eyes. To ground them, maybe; counter their pacing from page to page with some stability. The professor registers what Jon is asking, what Jon isn’t. His mouth closes, sighs. A mark like an understanding.

Oh, he could play along, the naive swing of phrase and theories, but it’s only a tail-chase. Comparative symbolism, the name of the trade. It will get them nowhere: this, too, he knows, and cannot tell Jon. Futility must be reached at one’s own pace; it had taken him years to admit that his knowledge, most of it, was nothing but a sequence that kept on turning in the same barren corner. In the same place from which all things worth knowing, all things worth chasing, have long left. The trailokya, the circles woven by proto-Celtic tribes, the charts of Babylon. Repetitive, down to the last link; down to the last question hauled, and howled, from the ancients to today. From the Armenian khachkar, to the wrought spirals in the mihrab, all cultures shared it. Spirals interlinked. Knots and suspended angles. All who have lived, and dreamed, did so under the promise of continuity. And all of them, inside it, had the same question: what happens where the circles touch? What happens where they open?

❝ You will step through it, then? If we find it again? ❞

It was not an easy thing, to slip out of bed. Harder, still, to walk down the deck, traverse the corridors that seemed to lead into gaping maws. A door made his skin crawl, now.

And yet, shaking out from his lair, shaking his head at whomever was asking if he needed something, the professor still carried it all throughout. The realization: there is nothing he would have done differently. Not on the island, and not before it. All the changes could be rooted in semantics: less people, more supplies, a shawl over the head. That’s nothing. Trite little footnotes, which, in the gore-mire of it all, hardly hold their own candle.

No, no. Something inside him, heart or stomach, rears its head. Refuses it. The adamant rejection, calcified into a knowledge that could bear no dispute. And would allow none, either. So he admits it, if only to himself: he would’ve stopped the girl from dying.

He would’ve killed the soldiers instead.

It’s a difficult thought to conceal. A difficult truth to paint over, even if he had much to stand on, in the way of guile and duplicity      which always failed him soon into the tale. Perhaps this is why the sailor mentions Iles Xu to him. Perhaps he had simply seen Iskender as a lonely thing, an animal wounded in his underbelly, the abdomen of ideals. The abdomen of hope, too. Perhaps the sailor had simply meant to do him a good one. What happened instead, with the touching velocity of preordained things, was this: he had begun to watch the hesperus. Trace their passing through the sky, through the promethean’s bowels.

Now, when their usual time for leaving to mess ticks on, Iskender is ready. His leg juts out, catches the open doorway, and pries it as wide as it can go. When his head tilts, it scratches the frame of it.

❝ Good afternoon, Professor Xu. One might say we almost caught this creature before I caught you from up close. Always with the cards up, and never on your own. What was it you said, back in Wallachia? That that was the last job you’d take on, and then it’s a book lender’s life for you? ❞ His chin bobs up, smile sliding into place. It’s stretched about as thin as the hinges of the doorway, the hinges of their bones. He pushes on, because there are moments when you beg pardon, and moments when you beg the past to let up.

He snaps his fingers and she moves. It seems almost reflexive, although it can not be, for his words appear in her vision before the flame does. He snaps his fingers and she tilts the lantern, knocks it from the table. A shattering of glass and a flame without cage. Lifts her foot and drives it down on both. Smoke rises from the hem of her dress, as she remains unblinking. 

In her head she looks like her mother, impulsive and wanton, unconcerned with the scene around her. “Armut agacin dibine duser.” It’s something her grandparents used to say when they would say anything at all to her. And she’s loathe to think of it, especially when they meant her father (they didn’t know), and she means her mother. Is living her worst nightmare already, to believe the woman represented in Ayla, to believe the woman at all. 

“My only rarity is I am a lanet, fléau, mallacht, curse, Iskender.” All of it, despite the language, constrained and reshaped for an accent of French, an adaptation she made once to try and belong, just the same as her careful slowing of words for the English now. She’s not special, she doesn’t want rarity, she wants the opposite, and she doesn’t- wants no one to judge her at all, to impose their will upon her. “I can not be beautiful, and the only thing I fear is being selfish; risking a return from that island only to prove the woman right.”  There’s a moment where she lets the remaining flame be free. Wonders whether Iskender will kill her for the confession, if she should save him the job, just burn up in this limbo of a room. The place that has seen the dead and soothed the living, where hope is lost or returned. A cleansing, a purifying, for it might seem sacrilege to him to bring corruption to the island, to bring a curse or be brought by one. Only that would derail from her point. And she’s suddenly so dramatic, so reminiscent. The difference between them is this; she would not let the ship burn in pursuit of a reveal, would not let the world burn either, certainly not Iskender, only herself. The fire was always confined to her dress, a careful tactic, a sleight of hand she would have died for. Sacrifice. And there it is. 

“I think this creature is your lover, your partner, your pet, your obsession. I think, for it, you would be death. For the island too. Not a crossroads devil but a happy author of Jon’s demise, or Emma’s, Jaya’s, Philippa’s. Whoever it takes for you to look upon it. And the trouble with that, is that I intend to kiss death on the mouth,” Steps closer to him again, removes the distance placed between them before the fire,  skims right up in indecent frame, “so it can look away when it is meant to take one of them. So even death has a choice. For even death abides by rules, yet out here it struggles with them. Why is that? Half-life, half-freedom, half-return, the in-between crawling and flying.”  Reaches for his hand then, between them, beneath her view. The one that had dictated her vision just moments before, the focal point of where she had harmed him. And it’s swift, feather-light but compelling, it has to be, it has to happen. She raises it half and dips half to meet it, for she will not bow, will not stoop. Presses her lips against that reminder of what has been done by her. The same as the glass behind her, the singed material. Soft again, but it boils beneath the shell, is evident as she lifts her head in defiance. “Does my softness soothe you?” Drifts away with his hand caught in hers, arms stretched between them, like a rope, like a thread. “It does not undo what is done. How I hurt you. The lantern will not return to how it was.” I can not go back to when the island was mentioned, to when it all started, when I learned a boat needed more than one to lower it.

“That is why I could not bear your kindness. I am not trying to prove anything. I’d quite like the opposite, at the end of it all.” He is not Jack, so she does not fold back on the turn, as though they are dancing. Simply steps there, arms dropping in increments to allow for the proximity, to bend instead of break. “To not die in evidence that ancient civilisations of men were right.”

“That they will be rewarded for never touching the sacrifice, and she will be punished for never having a choice, for only being a vessel for their needs, for their rules, and not actually living.” How else would she know to look upon everything and offer trust, offer faith, offer hope, give them one moment of peace where they are not defined by their actions, imagined to have been led there by the rules of men, the control of other people, origin and circumstance. Malachy Dowling gave her that, looked upon a curse and took her hand. She’ll do the same for le silencieux, either way remain on that island so the others might have a chance. 

Looks him straight in the eye for it, the same task, the same offering, “So here it is, blanket permission you do not need. You have a choice. Take your turn or take your leave. Find something better than an infinite loop with me. For I don’t want you to go.” To the island. To death. 

The words are pellets, the words are a pelt. Behind them, Iskender can no longer see her, and indeed perhaps he never had. This was what it was all about, no? The vicissitude of sight: it’s always what you first make of it. And always, quite always, the last thing you’d make.

His Gaelic is rusty, and the sharpness to her voice doesn’t help—it cuts through the accent like a scythe in a burrow of briars. All he feels is the rasp of it on his cheek, and the way pain is sound and sound is defanged, the way it lands above the sphenoid bone. He’d almost lift a finger to test the cut, if he didn’t know better. Rust or not, what he hears is curse. What he hears is her desperation, her purchase for purpose. Take light away from its name sake and what’s left of it? Take a soft thing away from a creature, and it will ferret inside the first cove it finds. Hers was this notion, then, that she bears some dark, unspeakable letter. That her soul has grown around it, rather than the other way up.

Were he to offer more softness, she’d just mesh herself in it. A tangle and a throttle.

And it’s not to be forgotten, oh, no, it bears at least as much honesty as the hurt it took to get it out: she is also right. This creature is his obsession, has been ever since England split into half and new worlds began to crawl out. Worlds it conquered, yes, worlds it ruined. Most of them. But also worlds that could defy it. This is what this place is, this is what this force means to him: the last citadel. The stronghold in the fog. It would escape England forevermore. It would escape them all. Perhaps even now he knows it; even now he comes to terms with what will wait on that island, which is to say, nothing at all. Death or more defiance. More elision.

He’ll take even that. He’ll damn this whole ship just to find one trace of it; just to catch the tail, the wisp, the convoy of smoke, as it slips away from his grasp.

Is he possessed with it?

Is she offering herself to save him from it?

Ration, reason, mount up for the contrary. The logical tingle of it, the crystal clinking, the pen-tip against the ink bottle, disprove it. They provide: of course not, you silly fledgling. We have no proof this creature accepts, or indeed even longs for sacrifices. Maybe the hurt it means to cause, the hurt it wishes to tear out of us and force us to call it by name, is pointless if it’s intentional. Pointless if we submit to it. How strange, that it’s just the opposite of how he does it. How he prefers his own hurting to be delivered, his own marks inside a lover’s skin. What a thought that should not be thought at all. Even in the constant alchemy of their personal spaces, even as he has to curve his body just to accommodate her onslaught, he thinks of the captain’s steward. Perhaps especially because of it: how Elias Shaw had not shied from him.

Damn this whole ship? If it were Ayla asking him that, instead of his own voice, that endless soapbox he steps on for the benefit of no one at all, save ancestors, save self-respect, save the grand charade of a man trying to uphold morality even as he’s hunting what feeds on them       if it were her saying it, he’d be lost. He’d have to admit: no. Perhaps not.

Did that make him a poor devotee? A Judas of any other name? Did that make him already so quick to betray the grand design, or just a fool, a wistful man who couldn’t choose between his ideals? There are no other answers in the surgeon’s quarters. No other answers in the hold.

He takes Ayla’s hand again. It’s hardly a command; Gods, anything but. She has had so many of them, and he has done it for so long, the drudgery of it, the drug of it.

On what may be their last night, he will have no more of commanding.

watching the man’s movements is the only think that keeps edward’s eyes open; his eyelids ought to be pried apart these days, he’ll take anything, a loud crack, something falling to the ground and shattering, someone shouting a little too loud. the noises feel like pins being stuck into his head but they keep him alert. he’ll take any help he can get—nothing seems to chase the nightmares away but something’s bound to help keep him up, for as long as he’s able. and he needs it.

“isn’t there anyone? not a single—well, friend?” the word rolls off his tongue cautiously—the very same way he approaches new friendships in his own life. edward boarded the ship alongside people he considers family and he never really thought the promethean to be a place where new bonds can be forged, or old could be deepened. but then snow comes to mind, and the ease with which he got edward to bare his soul, in riddles most of the time, but there was always some truth woven into them; even elias comes to mind, whose pestering he’s grown to somewhat enjoy. close quarters, it’s hard to keep to oneself. “there must be some company. even if just a single person.”

he wants to laugh, really. it’s a far cry from how he feels like right now. he appreciates the sentiment nonetheless. “this is probably the kindest thing anyone has said to me in weeks.” a laugh never comes, but the corner of his lips turns upwards for a moment. he can almost hear ayla’s voice inside his head, a loud protest, because she’s always got something nice to say about him, even when he doesn’t deserve it. “kind, but misguided, i think. bravery is the last thing i posses right now.” edward’s eyes venture around the room, anywhere but the man he’s speaking to, easier to refute the words like this. “you have caught me at a time when i’m filled with nothing but fear. of so many things. my own mind included.”

“have you ever been afraid of yourself? or has detachment saved you from such dread?”

                                                      ⁎⁎⁎

He laughs a little, something good in nature and nuance      something toothless. Gods know Edward Boyne could use less teeth around his soft tissue, less laceration. Friend? The word is said tentatively, as if he’d take offense. As if it’s commonplace, between serious men, to take the presumption to heart. Far from it, perish the thought: he’d like to tell Edward, oh, I’d have been flattered a few years back, for folks to think friendship of me. Think belonging.

The Professor settles back in the armchair. He decides to pay the purser a small mercy, on top of the licenses already taken, the free rein at warmth, and moves against examining the statement. That tell, there, in the middle: of victimhood not assumed, not ascertained. A pity that is both repressed and reflexive      but not reflexive enough. No, he won’t drag it under the light: the kindest thing anyone’s said in weeks. Surely that’s not true, Mr. Boyne, he would chastise. Surely kindness abounds throughout you, around you, if you’d only thought to ask.

Iskender temples his hands on his chest.

❝ No, no, we’re rushing into it. What brandy coven is this, where we’re digging up woes from both our trenches? A pair’s gotta pick a side: in conversation, as well as warfare. Tonight will be about your company, not mine, for all that I think they’re all too similar. I did not mean to give the impression that detachment saves you. If anything, it’s simply a matter of a different expediency. It’s the choice of what you can take on: and what way you can bear looking, ahead or behind. For me, I think, it was always this, the look over my shoulder. Always trained on what had been, even before my birth, before my passing through the world. Lot and his pillar of salt, no? ❞ He pushes a smile at the notion. With his knuckles, he slides the bottle over, light flashing inside it and burning onto the wood grain.

location: the sickbay.  time: a few days after the end of the hunt.  with: open. 

there was far less color in the sickbay now. his lovely purple flowers, doing better since his return from the island, growing straighter and bolder in their violet hue, had been tossed to the sea. empty vases at an empty desk. his books, truly useless things, laid scattered about the sickbay. one thought, beating louder than all the others: doorways could be opened again. ( what is taken to another room is not always lost, it is simply misplaced. ) vladimir might still be saved. was jonathan not a healer? was this not his duty to try? 

jonathan sat with his notebook on his lap, open to a page with the sketch of some twist of a creature he had thought he’d seen. a gaping mouth, a hand with an eye on it. how might one draw a scream? like this, like this: lines and lines and ink scratched so heavily onto the parchment that it bled through, that it cut through, that it tore at the notebook itself. his hand rested above the page, ready to write, unknowing what he might record now. 

footsteps approached the sickbay, and he closed the notebook with a sigh. 

( what is the worst confession, dear doctor? that this taste of answer has left you with want of more, or that you wish to follow him, not to death but to the place on the other side? will you ever be satisfied until you do? ) 

“apologies for the mess,” he said in lieu of greeting. the brief return of his smile, however small. “do come in. there’s no need to hover at the door.”

The only way around it is through it. An old hat trick, a mundane axiom. Yet what isn’t, these days? When the night fell inside the night, when the veil fell over their eyes, Iskender was back in Tunis. Iskender was bathing in a river of blood. Even now, he can still feel the rust of it, the currents of milk and soot; it sticks to the line between his pelvis and his calve, the divot at the bottom of his spine. There are traces of dried blood on him, plainly: it was no more an illusion than anything that came after.

How to explain this?

It was a trance, only it wasn’t.

It was a possession, only not his, not done to him. He had been himself, all throughout. That’s the horror of it, that’s the only thing they’ll never forgive in one another. He suspects they had all still been themselves. Mute to it, mute to the sight of the people that came for them. Squirmed, squashed through the keyhole of another realm.

The rifle shot, the ice splintering. The broken scream of the soldier dying.

Iskender remembers seeing it, hearing it, and not caring. He only cared about the sands.

He cannot ask the others where they were. What they were.

The only way through it: it’s unspeakable. The only way out of it: there isn’t one.

He sits down, barely makes for the chair. The professor’s movements are rigid, reined in like bones badly healed, but he picks on Jon’s smile and turns it into a focal point. Then he presses a finger to the bridge of his noise, and finds that he must hold it there until the room stops quivering, stops spinning on a shattered axis.

❝ Wasn’t hovering. Thanks, though. ‘s more like part of me wanted to be sure I can get here in one cut. Step inside without pitching face-forward. ❞ He doesn’t smile, but it’s there anyway, a feint softness sticking to his voice. He had so little chances at softness with Jon, he realizes. To show the younger man this side of him in better circumstances. Well     no point. When he tips his head, trying to find a way to make it hurt less, his eyes snag on the notebook.

elias doesn’t remember how he gets to the professor’s quarters. there is the impression of a touch, a hand to his lower back that makes him jump so suddenly he nearly trips, cold metal under his hands– a ladder? a railing? as far as certainties go, it might as well be a gun, a garrote. a cool shank of bone.

his eyes refocus as the academic is rolling up his shirtsleeves, drawn to earth by the cold tack of bloodied cloth peeling from skin. worse than the sting is the reminder of iskender’s own ruined cuffs, sending elias’s eyes wide as saucers, and he would clasp a hand to his own mouth if he weren’t too busy being stock-still. if he could– if he wanted to– ignore the direction. not that it had ever been spoken, but. still he knows. he knows. the natural order of things, for the one who fucked up to keep quiet, to not get in the way. shut up while the real professionals fix his mess. so he swallows the sound of dismay and tries not to think of the fact he has ruined another beautiful thing, even if it’s just a shirt. ( it’s different, because it belongs to iskender. it matters. )

he sees iskender approach but still nearly jumps from his skin when contact is made. stares at the fingers on him dumbly– useless, useless, he thinks. you idiot. stop him, before you waste a moment more of his time than you haven’t already. before you bleed all over some other beautiful bauble of his. then iskender uncorks the bottle with his teeth, and elias realises he’s not going anywhere, because if he tries to move at all in this moment he surely will pass out.

and then: thank the heavens, there’s something for him to do. the relief, the gratitude, is like a slap. elias nods and nods, doesnt stop nodding until isk has looked away, and it’s just his wide-eyed stare on the back of his head, holding the compress for dear life as the professor asks if he’d like a glass. asks for his forgiveness. asks if he’s afraid.

i rather think i might be dead, elias thinks, instead of responding. because none of this feels real. it’s not the shock of the blood. nor the transition from the dark of the orlop to the pale light of khodja’s cabin. the threshold he doesn’t remember crossing. ( that’s how tricksters lured you in, wasn’t it? passed you over their door sill between one blink and the next? ) no: its how easily he knows he could get used to it. how he could dare to enjoy it, even. could lean into this touch, the competence of someone who knows better. who has things under control. 

the promise of a calamity being sorted and slid back into place, when he himself is a calamity walking.

he can’t bring himself to speak at the offer of a drink, not yet, only winces despite himself and shakes his head. smoothes down the corners of the compress carefully, intentionally. the question of blood, however, is surprising enough that it shocks an answer from him. “oh, no, not at all. i’ve seen a fair amount of it…” trails off, one sentence in. what a sight he must make, empty-minded and addle-brained. he forces himself to meet the professor’s eyes. breathes slowly, carefully, through his nose. “no, i’m not afraid of blood.“

then, sudden, and a hair– a mile– too desperate: "you’ll let me clean your shirt, won’t you?”

His first instinct is to ask, of course. A common enough impulse, in itself. Involuntary, too: he wants to lay the compress down, never mind the iodine staining their skin in the same spot, and say, well, what are you afraid of, then? Is it me?

But this opens it, invites it inside. Pushes down the barrage, the stampede of it. It’s not even so much of a deluge, as it is an unforgivable head-start, a going against the grain. He’s never taken liberties like this before. At the right sign that someone could lay themselves in your power, cosy up in the palm of your hand, it was only moral to take a distance. God, some distance, at least. Take the time to ladle it out, lay it out into the open. Does the boy know? Has the boy any idea of how easily Iskender could slip in, now, tug at the seams from within? Reshape it into another weave? No, this is cruel territory, that’s the beauty and gore of it. The only way to stay ahead of it is to speak. But to have him here, like this, with his lower lip already shaking each time Iskender draws back... well, alright, this place knew enough of temptation.

He can’t act on it. It would destabilize the pacing, the peace: event, evasion, method. It would make a mess of it all. But look at him, the boy stumbles on his feet      Gods, he stumbles standing. Iskender can hardly stop himself from righting him back up. No, what’s worse, what peals as the sobering truth inside this: he can hardly stop from pushing him on his knees.

A palm over his back, goes over easy. What’s one more? Then the slide of a hand under his arm, when he had to wring the compress away. He could feel how wet the shirt is: why does that snake up his arm, blows out a fuse? It has no business, this recounting of motion, this redistribution of heat, to find teeth, to find teeth and use them on him.

But it does.

He looks at Elias and thinks, what a fretful thing. It skips from under him, goes a mile a minute. Flash floods, not notions: say, oh, what an interesting way you have of being afraid. Say, Shaw, what an interesting way you have of asking for help.

In normal circumstances, this would be a mildly terrifying realization, how he wants to ruin this person. In these circumstances? Oh, here, it absolutely splinters him. Makes something detach from Iskender’s idea of self, idea of unity. Makes something step outside, hobble to regard this critically. Makes something measure the teeth this desire has grown and file down the details. File down the fangs.

Don’t, Soufian.

 ❝ Clean it? ❞ His voice is strained in his jaw. ❝ Come off it. The ocean is frozen. We have better uses for that boiler, hm? You can buy me a clean one, once we get back. ❞

He doesn’t even register the promise, not at first. This implication, that there is a future, that there is another place where they might cross paths. This bloody ring of forget-me-nots, which is almost as bad as him grazing his fingers over this stray, matting down the fur with a hush. No, the professor’s awareness doesn’t run so deep. He can only catch the way the air turns, warps onto another stage; the animal scent that moves around inevitable things.

It’s this that makes it dangerous. Not because it hooks him by the neck, under the jaw, but because he should know better. This is a jump across milestones, across boundaries. A permission before permission; an entrance that goes before all others. I would like you to be afraid of me, Elias Shaw, is the problem. I would like you to show me how much.

By the time he yanks himself back, the room is dormant. The ceiling blinks with something like humanity. And Iskender, well, Iskender has already swallowed so many times his tongue feels bloodied raw. The metal is a nice counterpart, he supposes: a grounding point, slathered heavy on flesh. He steps away, intent to put the paraphernalia back where it came from. Order, yes. He’s not too far gone as to not make heads of it.

❝ Is that how you usually go? ❞ The question is leveled, but that’s only because he’s as far from the steward as room and reason allow. Iskender is looking at his hands, when he says this. Tries not to picture them inside Elias’ shirt, inside the inner workings of him.

His throws open the cabinet, focuses on the wall partitions that have to swing shut, so that some eventual wave, as bloody if, won’t smash it all away. He thinks the ocher bottle is looking at him grinning. He thinks if he doesn’t keep away from warm-eyed creatures, he’s going to lose his fucking mind.

and so they moved on, close together, an expert leading the ( near ) blind. jonathan would not complain; he would walk until black tinged his limbs and his skin cracked like the ice beneath them. he would walk until iskender told him they had arrived. he would let trust guide him here, in this place intent to rob them of it entirely.  

“if there’s one thing this creature has proven, it’s that it is good at the hunt — it seems to have completely shaped itself to be good at the hunt. i never thought this would be one-sided.” in its disguises, in its hallucinations, it ruled; he had yet to see it outside of the hunt. “but i hope… i hope that there is more to it than that.” 

even monsters must feel more than hunger. 

“we ought to stick to our plan: no less than pairs.” excitement crept into his voice, unable to be helped. “what do you imagine its true shape will be? surely, it cannot look like the dead at all times.” 

                                                      ⁎⁎⁎

❝ I have imagined so many things, Jonathan, about it. Painted so many dreams and horrors upon this creature, slathered it with all the names and all the intentions I could find: each more unfounded, more unmoored than the next. So that I have come to truly loathe the act itself. Imagining. I will have no more of it. ❞ He gives a short, brusque shake of his head. A sound carries over the ice, bridles the rest of his speech. He pauses, listens, his forearm coming heavy across Jonathan’s chest to curb the advance. Then it’s quiet once more.

The professor adjusts the collar of the oilskin coat, buries his cheek into the fur. Dispelling the blade his words had unsheathed, maybe, or leveling the field once more.

He doesn’t mean to annihilate Jonathan’s enthusiasm, nothing furthest from it. And yet it always seemed to come about. Gods, he never consciously intended to do anything more than spur it on, but he could feel himself becoming more cautious with each burst of green naivete paraded by Dr. Bhavsar. He had thought it overcompensation: a rightful balance. But it’s like as not that it’s merely an after effect of his character, a consequence to the way he structures thought and diatribe and language. He had meant to encourage Jon, always. Even back on the ship, in the sorrel lights of the surgeon’s room where the conspirators gathered, he had pledged himself on Jon’s side, donned the doctor’s conceptualization of mission and motive.

His laughter curls into the air, up and up until the wind sweeps it away in its current. Yet another ghost for this place to take. But she is glad that it was there at all, the laugh. It is how she knows that her insides have not yet curdled or rot. Underneath her coverings, a hidden smile forms and her eyes crinkle in innocent satisfaction. If she fails in leading them back to safety, at least she can say they laughed while walking straight into damnation. 

She is steadied by his arm, not just physically but in her mind as well. As a rhythm of feet on ice establishes itself, she focuses on what they might expect; what nightmares will greet her again, as unwanted old friends. Then, he breaks her thoughts with observational notes, notes of which she is the subject. It figures a professor would notice what others overlook, read between the lines; find characteristics from actions. Pull meaning from words. Anything to find the humanity beneath mythos. “Oh––Thank you. Yes, I suppose so…And there’s another crack. Careful. The sky should be getting light soon…But to answer your question: no!” She infuses more mismatched chipperness into the two lettered word. “I have never, in my life, been so far up north. All my other expeditions have taken me east, into more tropical waters. Don’t judge me on my hubris, Iskender. I was a different person then; but luckily, a fast learner, hm?”

                                                      ⁎⁎⁎

Their steps make light work of the tattered soil, skipping crevices for several miles more, until the plateau of the frozen ocean gave way to the slope of the beach. Nimble through the darkness, as though bolstered by it, their steps held the ease of children at play. She had that air about her, the girl did. A reckless wisp, laughing & launching headlong into the unknown. He had worked with young people like her, at times. Field agents and the sort, clever eyes peering into shanties, girls who had grown up on the banks of battlefields. Jungle trekkers, translators, their names still patched somewhere in his own journals and mind. But he can remember few to have been so pure, or so hazardous, about their own curiosities as Mrs. Hartfield was. On the usual, people were pulled by their passions, whether they called it flesh or shelves or flower stems     but she seemed to be pushed towards them instead, a force with no recoil. It should’ve made him more cautious. More certain about his own expertise, the affective distance garnered with years, with chances taken, chances missed. He wasn’t sure that was altogether the effect.

Her courage made him feel elated instead. Not yet so far gone as to be giddy, but, well. It felt like something they took for themselves: a secret they stole, a knowledge they insinuated upon, a finger on the shoulder of this place. He might’ve been surprised she’d never been this far north, but when he examined it closer he realized that no, no, not at all, it’s no great shock. He had never worked in the Arctic either. This geography, this genealogy of spirits and barren rocks, made sages of all of them. It was amateurish. It was bordering on the sacrilegious. And it was, every second through, and more and more as they made their trek across the night, bloody exhilarating. It felt like a task whose meaning is ten times more final, more permanent, than his regular expeditions. The Professor tried, hard against the grain, not to pick favourites. He respected all jobs he took on, all the matters he researched. Above all, he did his best to respect all the peoples and folklores, and the areas that gave life to them both, limb and legend too. But here they were. Stealing into the inner sanctum. He looks at her and pushes back a smile. Fast learner? I should say so.

❝ What we’re doing has nothing to do with learning. It’s tantamount to adultery, or blasphemy, or whatever sin you actually worry about. We’re barging into this place, pounding at the gates, practically. Hoping the forces that corrupt it, or control it, or both, will deign to listen. But     it is what it is. It’s the choice we made. Learners or not. East, then, Miss Hartfield? Yes, the Paris Academy loves their Orient, loves it a whole lot. What part of the tropics did you work in? ❞

“What’s beyond the glade but the trap?” For surely any good hunter knows to box a creature in, steer it toward the place it is most easily slain- the true hunting ground, familiar territory. It might be what le silencieux wants. To see all of them traipse toward that island, toward home turf; all compelled by desperation. Although not all scared there by a piercing sight or the weight of being watched, but simply to ensure they step in the trap so someone else does not. To look for the pitfalls and punji sticks and mark them down, draw a map of avoidance for those left behind. 

“Do you wish to nudge me toward it? See me fall?” He curves around her as though he’s pinning her in, distance or not, to keep her still for long enough. Words at her shoulder, an echo at her ear.  And so she moves, but it’s nothing like a scattered doe or a breach of sound from the wings of birds. Just fluid movement, a tight turn, until she steps into his last path of intent, a place he has passed, catches herself on imaginary trackmarks to conceal her own. 

Slips a hand to skim the air, stirs up some branch that would inevitably reach his shoulder to prevent her. Could be it’s a kinder thought, so she does not tap at it and stir some ire instead. It’s the surrounding that will whisp and displace, not enough to seem a breeze but at least a hint of it. 

It’s an odd sensation to still be reaching out, even if she does not touch, even if she does not offer. After all, this is what she planned, this is what she thought about. This is what she told herself. That even in an excess of night, there is only recognition for darkness by the sight of light. By the knowing of it. By the bearing of it. There can be no creature who does not possess a single flicker, if only to prove the rest of it is shadow.  And so she must reach out with a flame or a spark or some hope, some dreaded hope to tell them that they can simply believe the light and make it real, let it surround them, let it keep them. It’s not pride, it’s all she has. 

For doesn’t she turn belief to reality? Doesn’t she tell herself she’s able to be kind instead of a curse, that she has to always offer a smile for those who have none. What would she be if she didn’t try, if she didn’t hope. 

“I am afraid it will kill you all.” Not us. “There’s nothing beautiful about it.”

Shifts again, steadies herself at the table. “Shall I be lain out here for Casimir to cut me open, because Jon is already gone? Will that be pretty? Do you long to see it?” Picks up a lantern instead of the knife, brandishes it the same, keeps it hovering over the phantom corpse. “Emma-Rose, will there be enough of her brought back? It’s already stripped flesh from her, stolen blood and morphed her bones.”  Tilts her hand and shakes the flame, lifts her chin to look away, to look to him, “What do you want from me? What do you want me to say? Do you need permission like it does? Shall I allow you to hold the knife and say I am a lamb?” Gestures to the blade, sets the lantern down beside it. “One minute you plan death for me, and the next think I ask to be saved. Talk to me of pride again. Start speaking of what you know, for I already see what you are.”

His own eyes narrow at the blindside of hers. He can almost notice it, these spots of black and bleak absence, this slants that light cannot reach or thwart. She’s adamant about her own limitation; insistent to paint death and sacrifice as being one thing, and one thing only. She’s also insistent that everyone’s life holds some intrinsic value but her own.

Which is not only wrong, but slanderous. A calumny he takes like a personal insult. Not that any deity has somehow died, resigned, slipped to the sidelines, and christened him the absolute authority on what life is, on what it should be. No, far from it. Iskender knows he has only caught a glimmer from the pool, from the puddle of light and rainwater, of lava stratum and fossilized oceans. He knows he can no more embed it into language than she can.

But he also knows life is nothing but the altar it’s given on. That’s the sacrosanct circle of it, the ever recurrent tale. Whether you call the altar child-bed, and fall down to it     whether you call it territory, and are felled by it; whether you call it freedom, sainthood, romance, star-crossed guilt and star-crossed fictions, star-crossed lovers in their beds of clay. Whatever you call it, the altar is the only thing that gives it shape. It molds it, and through it, hallows it.

If the shape of your life is yielded over to this place, then it would be no more, and no less beautiful, than if you would give it on a foreign battlefield, a pasture, a timeworn crusade. He had thought Ayla Dowling understood this above all, and made their peace with it. No, more: that they drew their peace from it. That his nestled, as it did in Jonathan, at the crux of their sacrifice, the wing-span of their willingness to go. To go for good.

It should be humorous, the irony of it. The same reason she’s so incensed, so righteous about this decision, would be the same reason her uncle, her friends, her mentors would likely die to protect. This is clear, clear even to him, who doesn’t really know the people in the doe’s life, those who have led her to the glade, those who have watched her, or who looked away, upon seeing her drink from the wrong river. This is not the Lethe, he wants to croon to her. He wants to run his hand down her cheek until she understands. This is not about forgetting. This is not about leaving any part of yourself behind, but about walking into it. About inhabiting it at last.

This is what the place wants, from you. For you. How can she not see it?

How can nobody, truly nobody, see it?

He’s heard it all, from hypotheses that they are dead, and the Passage is actually a passage of a different sort     convictions and indictment, fingers pointed, fingers twisted back; that someone brought the curse on, that someone owes a debt to this creature, that they should cudgel the castaways until they’re naught but pulp and righted balance. He’s heard everything he has thought humans capable of, and more. And worse. And lesser.

But the one thing he hasn’t heard is: this place wants truth. Even if it means finality.

Especially if it does.

He believed she got it, for a second. That she might be the one who does. He thought Ayla Dowling saw through its design. Why else propose it? Why else venture to make the trek at all?

His lips open, and then they close. A smack of disappointment rings out in the silence. The professor’s tongue clicks against his teeth, and he stares them down, stares them out of the dark. Light distorts around him like a bunched up scarf.

❝ I thought you were close to it, for a second. That your reason for finding this creature was seeded in something clear, something carved of salt and iron. Something ancient. That you meant to find yourself, rather than fall prey to your own weakness. You are a creature terrified of loss and suffocated by guilt. Don’t think it all too rare - you only wear it more secretly, and more beautifully than most. ❞  

Iskender watches the blade, the non-blade, the glass and the fog, reflect the panic in her eyes. He meets it at face level. He meets it indifferent, unflinching, and swallows it down.

You have no fear inside you I haven’t drank to the dregs, doe. You have no fear that can cleanse this place. The only reason to do it is through courage, but then, no, that would be impossible, wouldn’t it? Because courage sounds like cruelty to you. Because you have no notion of strength that isn’t perverted; even your uncle, hunched down by blame. Even yourself. The tunes of power and corruption have become tangled up inside your head, and it would take a knife to cut through them. A knife nobody is brave enough to field. 

He snaps his fingers in front her face. Like calling a colt back to attention; like sending a hawk out into the hunt. Twin motions, twin purposes to them. He gestures for her to put down the fire.

❝ What is the notion you’re cooking up, now? I can see your hands around it, like stoking a flame; I can see the way you’re hunched up inside your head. Do you think I’m    what, the creature, the heart of this place? This is a story you weave when you cannot bear kindness. And because the only kindness you know, Ayla Dowling, smells of fetters and locks, you think it’s proof of love to forbid others their choice, to make it in their stead. You think you’re ready to eat up the darkness for all of them, is that it? That’s not kindness; that’s idolatry. And this place has had enough of saints. ❞