Taji shouted after, her voice indignant, “You believe that story?
Neci said, almost out of the room, not looking back, “I believe… that she believes that story.”
30
THE FIRST MURDER
“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
The patter of rain draped over her, lulling her into sleep. She was tired. Her muscles ached. There was throbbing in her wrists where she had been held down by the Sisters. The bed was soft. The comforter warm. The room was quiet except for the rain and that only added weight upon her, pushing her into the dark of sleep.
She didn’t want to sleep. She didn’t want to close her eyes. Around her, beasts roamed. Wolves that looked like her. Wolves with her eyes and lips.
But they aren’t me, she told herself.
Their faces floated through the darkness of her room. There was a hunger to Neci. Anger in Taji. Something reluctant and broken in Kerwen. They were spin-offs of her own soul. She had felt that same desire that consumed Neci. She had lived in fear that it would all be taken away. Wasn’t that hunger the one that had led her to this Disc? The hunger for more than she had?
If she was an Eve, she was the most Eve of all of them. Born in the Garden and tempted by the unknown that she could not possess. Everything at her fingertips in abundance, and yet, the possibility of something else on the other side of the gate had lured her. There had not been a snake though, no whispering seducer. It had just been her own need for someone else. She’d pursued her white rabbit.
And now she was possessed in equal measures by the anger of Taji and the fear of Kerwen. She saw in their eyes what she felt, only her emotion was magnified in them as if the volume had been turned up. As if those emotions were all that was animating them.
Taji seemed unable to feel anything but anger. The source of her survival? Had she powered through everything else with rage and clung to it now in fear that it might seep away or be stolen? Was rage comforting? Yes, it was. Syn knew deep in her heart that she had been angry at Blip and at Captain Pote and at the creators of the ship or the colonists over the years. In those moments, flouncing through Aja, anger was welcome. It was warm and compelling.
She understood Pigeon too. Fearful and sad. That fear was a shadow that she had never escaped and even now, now as Syn drifted into the depths of sleep, that fear took a new form. She wasn’t scared of being alone. She was scared that these were the only companions she’d ever have. All she was had been contracted to that single room, to her own skin. She had never realized it before, but in her Disc, in her world, there were no borders to who she was. She felt she was the Disc. She ran and let herself be as big as it wanted. All was hers, and she was everything.
But these new others reminded her that there were borders. Meeting the Sisters had communicated to her, you may go this far, but only this far. She was smaller than she had ever been.
Had she shrunk even as she lay there? She dreamt of herself as a tiny figure lying on a vast ocean. She became smaller and smaller until she was about to disappear completely. As she dropped smaller, she found it hard to breathe. She took a breath and could not. The air was blocked. Her mouth was open, but she couldn’t breathe. She clawed at the air around her and found herself swimming up from the great ocean to some dark surface above her. Could she reach it? She had to. She was desperate for air. A meter away… With a rush, she swam toward the surface and broke through.
She wasn’t swimming. She wasn’t a small figure forever shrinking. She was Syn, and she was lying in a bed in Zondon Almighty.
And she still couldn’t breathe. She opened her eyes. In front of her, she looked into her own eyes. Her own gaunt face.
No. Not her face. Pigeon. Pigeon was above her, straddling her and pinning her down with the girl’s hand across Syn’s mouth. Syn wasn’t suffocating. She could still breathe through her nose. She turned and worked to put a foot against Pigeon and move her off.
The girl leaned forward and whispered with force, “Quiet. Shhh.”
Syn wanted her off and pushed against the girl’s lithe frame, but Pigeon had the leverage and kept shifting against Syn’s struggles. Again, Pigeon said, “Please, be quiet. I’m not going to hurt you.” Her voice was not much more than just a slight breath. But in the emptiness of the room, the girl’s words sounded crisp and clear.
There was no anger in Pigeon’s eyes and that was enough to move Syn to take a risk. She stopped struggling. Pigeon pulled up, and the weight on Syn relaxed, although the girl’s hand stayed planted on Syn’s mouth.
“If I take my hand away, you must promise to not talk. I’m going to do all the talking for now. Do you understand? Nod if yes.”
Syn understood. The burlys would hear. Pigeon was doing something she didn’t want the others to know about. Syn nodded. Pigeon lifted her hand up and put a finger to her lips. She glanced back over her shoulder to make sure that no one else was in the room.
Syn moved her head and looked at the door too. It was shut tight. There was nothing disturbed at all. The girl had done it again. She could enter and leave without anyone noticing. A gift. An illusion. Or maybe a hidden path.
Pigeon pulled the comforter back and crawled into the bed next to Syn. She grabbed the edge of the large, thick blanket and pulled it over their heads.
Syn could no longer see the other girl. Under the comforter, she could see nothing. The sound of the rain was muffled but still a constant.
She could feel warm breath as the girl inched closer, her lips a few inches from Syn. “They can’t hear us if we whisper.”
“Why are you doing this?” Syn whispered.
“You need to know about them,” Pigeon said, “They’re worse than you imagine. You must get away if you have the chance.”
“Why don’t you leave then? If they’re so terrible, run away!” Syn pleaded, “You can get in and out of here without anyone knowing.”
“No. Rooms are one thing. Shadows are one thing. Agayu is something else.”
“Agayu?” Syn wasn’t sure what she talking about.
“The Desert. I named it Agayu. Neci hates the name, but it is true. She called it Hell to fit her new world. But it does not respect that name. Agayu is angry. We never go out and in without a loss. She always demands a sacrifice. How you made it here is a mystery.”
“It’s sand.”
“It’s the dust of the thousand dead.”
Syn grimaced at the image, and her memory of never being alone as they walked across the desert. Always a sense that someone was watching. “And their souls.”
She could feel Pigeon nodding in agreement.
Syn continued, “Are you scared?”
Pigeon didn’t answer immediately. After a moment, she said, “Not of Neci.”
“Then what?”
“You should be scared of Neci.”
“Pigeon, please—”
“That’s not my name.”
“I’m…” Syn started.
Pigeon said, “My name is Avia.”
“Avia,” Syn tried the name.
“But you must call me Pigeon.”
“But now? When they’re not here?”
“No. You must not get used to that name. It is mine, but they don’t let me use it. I haven’t used it since we were thirty.”
“Thirty?”
“Time is of no matter here. I have stopped counting years. Instead, I count by the Sisters remaining. They gave me the name Pigeon when there were thirty of us only.”