There in the space twixt one breath and the next lie a world of infinite possibilities. Behind, the world of what was known and true, tested and resolved with every choice made. Ahead, the nebulous unknown that held the whispers of a thousand things without ever truly promising a thing. Somewhat like the flicker of a fluorescent bulb swarmed with moths and tiny insects, that potential glowing warmth could mean just one situation better than one’s current predicament.
These moments exist in a myriad of places and times, that feeling of deja vu and esprit de l’escalier, the hairs on the back of one’s neck rising in time with a phantom breath that touched the soul in all the wrong places.
In these places and moments, life and death were held at bay with the fragile hope of butterfly wings and spider silk. This was the kind of place that she loved the most, the quiet winter silence where she could breathe out and see the shape of worlds yet to come.
Of course, the first snow tended to make a poet of even the most hardened soul, especially after spending so very long away from home. The snow crunched under her boot heels as she strode up the quiet driveway. She had thought her father would have shoveled it this year, late in winter as it was. But her father wasn’t a young man anymore and her older brother should have remembered that.
She scowled beneath her well-worn beanie, lurid yellow pompom bobbing with her mismatched gait as she carefully picked her way up the slippery slope. A bit of salt or sand wouldn’t have gone amiss as she hobbled her way up with the help of her trusty blackwood cane. She left her suitcase in the trunk of her rental car for her brother to fetch when he could deign to help his youngest sibling out, and simply did her best at making her way to the cheery red painted door of her childhood.
The door opened before she could knock, the dour face of her brother all she saw before she was pulled inside by a painful grip on her upper arm. Her cane clattered to the ground and the door was slammed behind her with a hiss.
“Of course you came. You could never stay away, could you?” The flecks of spittle that hit her cheek as he breathed down the side of her neck was all she needed to know that her brother had yet to even allow her into the foyer. Her shoulders braced against the familiar wood as she tried her best to crane away from her dearest relative and not fall over at the same time. “Have to beg for more money for your fancy city school? Keep your greedy freak paws off my inheritance.”
He let her go and she slumped to the carpet with a muffled sob. Roger had taken the aftermath of the accident with far less grace than the rest of her family had. Their family would never truly recover from the accident, what with their Mom gone and their sister ruined forever. The hospital bills alone had eaten into what Roger had always assumed would be his as the eldest whenever one of their parents died, and what was left had been scrimped together to help Wendy achieve a basic life on her own.
Wendy scooped up her cane with practiced hands, careful to put her weight on her good leg so that her braced leg wouldn’t have to be involved in her sibling struggles any more than it already was. Roger had never been the best of brothers, and their mother’s death had only brought out the absolute worst in him. Crying only encouraged him, at least as far as Wendy was concerned.
Out of the three London children, Roger had only ever felt that Wendy deserved to be rejected by all of them. It had started as a joke when they were small that had blossomed into an ugly sibling rivalry with no end. Wendy was just the ugly red-headed stepchild, the greatest sign of their mother’s infidelity, and didn’t even have the courtesy of looking like their father.
A throat cleared from a room off to the side, and Wendy couldn’t stop the grateful smile that spread timidly across her face as she looked up. “Well. You always were a right little prick, but you could at least be less of one for Christmas.”
Roger blanched at the small crowd of relatives crowded into the narrow doorway, peering out from behind Harriet’s legs. The middle sibling of the London trio, Harriet had that effortless beach body that so many women would kill for and a tongue sharp as a razor. She was always the height of fashion, and she wore her ash blonde hair in a delicate updo some random celebrity had made famous on social media.
Harriet London had more style in the tip of one red-bottom Louboutin than any of the London siblings had a right to be, and she had passed on her genetic victory to her children. Both girls peered around their mother’s legs to stare up at their Uncle Roger even as Harriet sneered at her only brother. “Jesus, Roger. I think you should go home. We’ll see you for dinner tomorrow.” One manicured nail stabbed in the direction of the door, no hesitation wrinkling Harriet’s brow. “Now. Before you make this any worse.”
Wendy made way to the coat closet, content to let Harriet do what Harriet did best. She pulled off her beanie with a sigh, dyed black locks tumbling out into their usual shaggy mess, and shoved her well worn jacket on her usual spot on the coat rack. “He’s just-”
Harriet overrode her sister with a wave of an imperious hand. “He’s just being an ass. Dad’s not even dead yet and he’s after his money again. Probably for some two-bit hussy that he calls his girlfriend.”
Her daughters made a show out of covering their ears, gasping all the while. Harriet frowned down at them and shooed them off before advancing towards Wendy with her arms open. “Enough of that. Where’s my beautiful baby sister?”
Wendy let herself be folded into her sister’s vanilla scented embrace, tucking her nose into the crook of Harriet’s neck and gripping tightly as her statuesque sibling leaned down to embrace her properly. Harriet smoothed the black fluff on her diminutive sister’s head, sliding the short curls through her fingers before she scowled at their brother’s back as he fumbled to put his shoes on.
“I never got why you dyed your hair. Shame to waste it like that.” Harriet had always been fond of Wendy’s riot of red curls, even as Wendy herself compared them to rusted pipe cleaners. The eldest of the London siblings glared at the two sisters as he stumbled through putting his boots on.
Roger opened his mouth to speak, and Harriet overrode him yet again. “Some people have no sense of when they’ve outstayed their welcome. Not to name any names or point any fingers, isn’t that right, Roger?”
Wendy was released with an absent shrug. The holidays were always an awkward time for the Londons, and she was content to leave her older siblings to bicker and determine the pecking order for the holiday. Harriet would say mean things, Roger would say crueler, Harriet would bring up her independent wealth and Roger’s poor work ethic, Roger would bring up the fact that no one knew who the father of Harriet’s children was, and they would continue on and on until their father emerged from the kitchen and made Roger go get firewood and Harriet to corral her daughters.
She smiled to herself. Strange as it was, this was the norm for the Londons, and the constant bickering was a pleasant background noise as she picked her way across the well worn carpet. It had been a brilliant green once in her childhood, a blend of emeralds and golds that brightened the foyer and matched with the carpet runner on the stairs. Now it had been worn into strange green mud, and Wendy still liked to pretend from time to time that she was a child and hop from woven gold stream to stream.
This wasn’t one of those times. She kept her head down, hid behind her hair as much as humanly possible, and shuffled her way up the stairs to her room. Or it had been her room, before she had gone off to college. Now it had become a shrine to the Wendy before the accident. Her father hadn’t wanted to pack up all of her things, so everything was exactly where she had left it when she left.
Exactly as it had been when she could still rise on pointe and her greatest joy was the way her mother always smiled when she brought home another role.
Or at least everything was supposed to be. All of her posters of indie bands were still on the walls, stickers still covering portions of her wallpaper, random scraps of paper still littered her desk. But there on her nightstand where her alarm clock used to be was something different.
Wendy closed the door behind her with a soft click, wool socks muffling her steps as she minced across the room. She coughed through the dust the filled the air, settling around her in swirls. Ten years of her life had been spent learning how to be absolutely perfect, to time every movement with the tune of a piano. All that time, and she still hadn’t learned how to move without the ache of melody behind her.
Such maudlin thoughts filled Wendy’s head as she ran a finger across the top of her desk, sighing at the trail she left behind in the dust. Not precisely how she wanted to remember her own room, but she could understand why her father didn’t want to be reminded of what he had lost.
Wendy picked up one of the awards she had slaved so hard and for so long to achieve over the course of her life. This one she had won the day of the accident, and her father had tried to leave it on her nightstand for her to see when she came home for the holidays. So much of her life wasted now that she couldn’t dance and all she had to show for it was a bunch of useless awards. She let it fall from between her fingers, watched it fall with a loud thud to the old blue rug and break into pieces. The little ballerina’s arms snapped off to land somewhere she didn’t care to find, the silver paint not enough to save the figure from snapping off the marble base.
Wendy London, second place finalist in the junior division.
She had paid for it with her mother’s life and her left leg, a cost too high for a single award that wasn’t even first place.
At least her father had saved her room for her. Probably because her mother had loved Wendy’s ballet recitals, and anything to remind her father of the peculiar way her mother used to smile was at least understandable. There wasn’t anything she could do to bring her mother back, and thinking otherwise was just hubris.
The door creaked open with a quiet click, breaking the stillness like a gunshot. She turned as rapidly as she could, limped on one leg to look at the intruder.
“Oh. Hello Roger. Did you finish fighting with Harriet?” While normally Roger and Harriet had spectacular shouting matches while Wendy hid in her room, it was always Harriet that came up to tell Wendy that the coast was clear and all had been settled. For Roger to be the one to fetch her was strange. What made the moment all the stranger was the way his eyes glanced from side to side, from the door to her feet. Something wasn’t right, something so wrong it made the hairs on the back of her neck rise. How strange it was that Roger had no witty comeback or cruel thing to say in light of her discomfort.
She cleared her throat in hopes that it would shock her brother into saying something, anything at all except for the unending staring. Instead he reached behind him to close the door with a cold stare. “You should have just stayed at school.”
Wendy blinked at the frigidity of Roger’s tone. He may have not liked her, but he always managed at least a margin of civility when he interacted with her. “What…?”
There was something wrong with his smile, all his teeth glinting in the dim light. “You know damn well you aren’t wanted here. Perfect little Wendy with her broken leg, and you’ll be the first.”
He stalked toward her with every word until he was breathing spittle in her face. Wendy reacted the only way she could, belting him with her cane across his shins as she shuffled away. “HARRIET,” she screamed at the top of her lungs as she hopped her way to the door. She flung it open with a scream straight out of a horror movie, doing her level best to run to her older sister.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Wendy made it to the top of the stairs before her ankle was grabbed in a slide that would have made a baseballer proud, forcing her to stop awkwardly at the top of the stairs.
She saw her sister, staring up from the bottom of the stairs with a look of horror and arms spread wide to try to catch her youngest sibling. It wouldn’t matter in the end, not as she rushed towards the stair edge headfirst. Wendy tried to catch herself, skinned her chin on the rug and bumped every step on the way down.
She’ll never forget the look on Harriet’s face as she fell.
There is a cold and dreary pit where the City used to be, lit up with the faint traces of fluorescent moss. Shattered stones and twisted hunks of metal reach haphazardly in a thousand directions, waiting for the people who used to inhabit it.
They’ll never come back from the war. Not a soul remains from a civilization long dead, wasted by their own greed and left to be worn away by the ravages of time. No one knows how they built the City That Was and there remains no one to ask.
History has long since forgotten the shape of the people who dwelled in the City That Was, but the city remembers.
It flickers sometimes, when someone gets too close to the fringes. Strange shapes and patterns that flash into dust and dissolve into geometric darkness. The City That Was yearns to hold people again, nestled in its warped carcass.
The City That Was sings if you listen, the winds howling through the unidentifiable metal, bringing with it the melodies of an age long past. No one knows the words it cries into the wilds, past the ochre and gravel trails that lead to nowhere. The City had a name, lovingly uttered by its people and cursed by its enemies, but no one knows what to call it now.
Her village grew out of a tangle of salvaged metal shacks, stolen from the City That Was while it still had a name the villagers were scared to utter. It was a ramshackle cluster of unstable buildings, but it was her home and she had no other to compare it to. The villagers of Korantin built their lives out of nothing but determination and hardship, farming the dusty and cracked ground with all the desperation of a peoples that had been left behind.
Korantin was not a place for the faint of heart or weak-willed. She knew that better than anyone, recited it to herself as she perched precariously from the edge of her family’s sunbaked shack. The metal was blistering under her, parts of it rusty from age and others flaking chips of rust orange paint. Her great-great-great-grandfather had built their shack, pulled it straight from the Wall and hauled it back on his rickety old cart.
Every member of her family had been Born within the walls of their shack, each one opening their eyes to the same rusted patch of metal. They lived and died within the confines of their tiny home, eking out their meager existences through the skin of their teeth, fading into the background like another rust stain on the metal that comprised Korantin.
Fil would have settled for the same kind of life as every other member of her family, if not for the gleaming glow of the City That Was on the horizon. There was a mystery, a chance for something more than the repetitive drudgery that the Hayes family was known for.
No one went in the City That Was, no one went across the Wall.
If she stood in just the right spot at just three ticks past the second sunrise ur, the City would always sing the same song. Fil would never tell anyone what she was doing up on the roof of their shack, skin salty with sweat and head fuzzy with the vertigo of being so high.
She was slated to wear the sign of her designated System Regulation after her soul recollection was finished, and Fil wanted it more than anything else. Because wearing a Mark meant she could finally see what truly lay on the City’s fringes.
But all good stories began with an ending.
The sunset was all the sign she needed that it was time for her to return to her family for the final test of her childhood. She slid down the rope and pulley system that she had labored so long to rig for herself.
Fil knocked on the rusted metal door for luck, before slipping into the crowd of family members to take her place in the pack. And there on the kitchen table was her fate.
She wished her story hadn’t ended so violently with such a soul crushing finality, but it had ended all the same. Not that Fil could truly say her soul had been crushed, not really. The death of a dream was still an end, especially one that had been held since she could remember.
Her fingers shook as she read the cursed Letter for the third and still uncomprehending time. It would not change its damning contents, but her heart shuddered with each repetition. Fil’s lips trembled, nose clogging as she tried her best not to scream and shout for all the Gods to hear.
Life had ground to a halt in the Hayes household as every pair of eyes watched the two girls read their Letters. It was all but guaranteed, but the formality of it still had to be observed. Not a single Hayes had ever gotten anything but a Rejection, except for Cousin Merric who had gotten a Sword Acceptance letter that had been meant for their neighbor one shack down.
Cadence had already read her Letter aloud, practiced lilts and laughs getting her through an almost perfect recital of her Rejection Letter before it was her uncomprehending twin’s turn.
Cadence, perfect Cadence, already had her Apprenticeship lined up. She was confident enough in the Hayes normality to live her dreams of being the first Hayes Healer. Everybody already knew that Filomeena was already solidly established as a Journeyman Guard, having already passed her Exam a year past. All good Guards had started young, and Fil had been no exception.
But a law was a law, and the Hayes twins had put off their Testing in favor of choosing their own destinies for long enough.
Fil choked back a sob and let her Letter slide through numb fingers. Cadence set her own down with a frown, ignoring the Rules to reach a concerned hand out to her younger twin.
Their father rose to his feet, the bulk of his heavy Farmer’s body tilting the table as he used it to push himself to his feet. “Come on now, girl! Get on with it,” he bellowed, the tip of his bulbous nose beginning to redden with the weight of his shame. “We don’t have all day!”
Fil blinked back tears even as her twin handed her the slim packet that spelled her doom. But she had to read is out loud, just once, lest she summon the Sword and bring even more shame to the Hayes name by making a scene. The spell would transmit her voice to the Hall of Records, and the Swords did not take kindly to tampered records.
Trembling fingers unfolded the packet and she cleared her throat. To preserve her family’s place in society, her dreams and that of her sister’s had to die. It was the only way, much as she hated the very fragments of the idea. So she cleared her throat again and clenched her teeth for just a moment.
“Hayes, Filomeena. Gender, female. Age, nineteen. City of birth, Korantin. Current designation, Undetermined.” She wet her lips with a nervous lick, and Cadence gripped her shoulder with a shaking hand.
She felt a kiss pressed to her brow and Fil took a long breath. “I hereby accept the contents of this Result within the scope of all Gods and with all soundness of my mind.” Fil couldn’t stop now, not after swearing to all the Gods in the presence of her entire family. “I have submitted my soul and its merits to be measured in accordance with all rights and laws under the rule of the Pantheon of the Zone.”
Fil swallowed, mouth dry as paper. “My results are as follows,” and she couldn’t bear to think of what her family must be dreading, for no one feared it as much as she did. “Race, human. Alterations, none. Magic, positive. Resonance, positive.”
The chiming crash of broken porcelain and the collective gasp from her family made her shut her eyes for a long moment. It could be worse, even Fil knew that. But nobody wanted a Guardian with magic, and no Elder Other blood to balance it, not this far from the Wall or on this side of the Gate. And no one sane wanted to tangle with a person confirmed with Resonance of all things.
Her sister pressed her lips against Fil’s ear, tucking the ragged ends of her auburn hair out of the way as gently as she could. “Finish it,” she urged. “Finish it or we all face the Swords, Fil.” Something made her voice tremble as she whispered, and Fil was terrified to think of what. “Finish it or tomorrow we pay.”
For Cadence, Fil would do anything. And so she squared her shoulders and faced her end with all the courage she could muster.
“I acknowledge that all decisions made are based solely on my personal results and will take no action to alter or contest them without the supervisory arbitration of the Sword and Shield or the Department of Mysteries.” She locked eyes with Cadence just once more before the plunge.
“My application for passage through the Gate of Wind has been accepted and approved.” And oh how Fil wanted to laugh at that bold lie. “Upon first light, in accordance with the wisdom of the Courts, I will report to the Gate of Wind for further assignment.”
Tonight would be her last night with her family, or the Swords would come and escort her on her destined path by force if need be. The only way it could have been worse would be if her designation had been as a Sword or a Mystery. Fil took a step back and away from her twin as if the slight distance would save her from the will of the Gods. “My designation has now been changed in accordance with my divinated Results. Previous designation, Undetermined. Current designation, Crown.”
She could hear her mother sobbing as she read, and Fil wanted nothing more than to stop and pretend that none of this had happened. Her stomach was in her throat and it was only the firm pressure of her sister’s fingertips on her shoulder that carried her through.
“So be the will of the Gods.”
Fil closed the Letter with a long sigh.
And the shack erupted into a cacophony of madness, even as Fil burst into tears. In one night, her entire life would be ruined. Her aunts and uncles had already begun backing away, averting their eyes in tradition. “No,” she croaked out through a tongue that suddenly felt like tree tar. “I didn’t want this!”
It was her mother, her sweet and perfect mother, who rounded the ramshackle wooden table to sweep both of her daughters into her pillowed embrace. She did not yet bear her Mark, had not yet reported for that mystical branding that would let all of Korantine and the Zero Zone know her place.
But for now she was still Undetermined, and the Undetermined were allowed to be held by their mothers on the Night of Revealing. The first rays of the sun would damn her, but for that night she was still a part of the Hayes family.
“Hush, love. Hush. We’ll think of something,” murmured her mother as she stroked the base of Fil’s wrist thick braid. “Imagine that! My little Fil, a Crown all along.” She hummed and swayed, the same strange lullaby the twins had heard all their lives. “And my little Cadence, Unmarked like your father. Whatever will my girls be, hm?”
Cadence would Choose her Mark on the morrow, and it would be a dull thing. Her Mark would be magic-less and fade like all inked Marks in the sun, driven into her skin with a thousand pinpricks. The twins had decided on their Marks before, identical in all but one symbol.
Fil would never bear the matching half. Her Mark would be pulled out of her by another Crown, shimmering forever with the brilliance of the magic she would wield for the betterment of the Zero Zone and its people. Fil’s people now, and she would never be able to favor one family in her life. Her magic would make her Mark and place it, and the glow would tell everyone what kind of mage she would be.
Their family had filed out and climbed down to the street in a roiling mass, each one determined to ignore what had just happened in the confines of the Hayes shack.
Fil could see the glow of the traditional lanterns through the dusty panes of their one real window. The parade of lanterns was enough to summon the rest of the Haye’s neighbors who would slowly trickle out with lanterns of their own.
Cadence was the first to break their mother’s embrace. She had always been the practical one, and she clapped her hands loudly for attention, echoing against the metal walls. “Well, you always did like causing a fuss.” The quick flash of her smile vanished in the face of the daunting separation in front of them.
“I will Walk with you,” Cadence proclaimed in that no-nonsense tone she was so fond of.
Their father harrumphed, wrinkled his nose and crossed his thick arms over his chest. “You’ll Walk first, that’s how it’s always been.”
Cadence’s smile was a dagger to their father’s heart. “Fil isn’t like how it’s always been.” She gripped her twin’s hand like death itself couldn’t pry her away.
Death was a questionable thing for the inhabitants of Korantin, but the rules were rules for a reason. For Cadence to sacrifice her turn meant that she thought Fil’s Mark would be something special, for the other half of her Mark to be wonderful enough to gain her passage through all the Gates.
Not that Fil would move all that fast, her leg still braced in what the Hayes’ could afford to slap together under Cadence’s guidance. She needed her sister’s help sometimes, unless it was through her own usual paths and haunts. But Fil was still efficient with her rapier, some strange part of her from before her Birth carrying over a kind of grace that made her twin smile.
Her Mark would change that, in ways she would never be able to recover from.
Fil would be one of the blessed chosen now, marked by the Gods and shoved out into the world beyond the Walls of the Gate of Wind. She could only hope that whatever held the other half of her soul would be as kind as the people who had loved her in her life before and after her Birth.