“I know you’re there, Blake,” I heard the Barber call out. “I can see you with the Sight.”
The walls rattled. I paused mid-climb to maintain my grip.
He kept talking. “I negotiated with the Barber. They aren’t about suffering, per se. They aren’t evil. That’s an affectation we gave them, just like the human shapes and symbols were. Once my eyes were opened, I understood it all. I saw the issues, I saw where we stood, in the midst of it all, and all I had to do was ask. It’ll only be able to do its work in a small area. Jacob’s Bell, Mags’ hometown, Port Hope, a sliver of Toronto. I’ve asked it to be quick. Merciful.”
I reached the top of the wall. I paused, hesitating to show myself.
“You’ll all be snuffed out like a candle flame. Absorbed into the… what you see above. Time and space and id and ego won’t mean anything, there. They’ll become momentary and endless, existent and abstract. Compared to what we face every day, even on good days, it’s the kindest thing. To not be.”
There was a note of humanity in his tone at the end of it all. I looked up at the great spheres above us.
One was opening, closer than all of the rest. Was that what he was doing, right now?
“That isn’t you speaking, Johannes!” I heard Mags.
The dragon roared. I heard an impact. I shut my eyes, forehead pressed against the stone wall in front of me.
We can’t win this like this, I thought. Rose. Please, you needed me to take over so you could think. Do something.
I felt her move.
Words. Names. Titles.
The Welder. The Nurse of Darnby. Bristles.
Stop, I communicated.
Stop. I can’t practice.
There was a pause.
Another thud, an action on the Dragon’s part.
She tugged.
Not at a memory, or a feeling, or an idea. Not at an experience of an internal structure within me.
At me.
I drew in a deep breath.
“Don’t…” I started. I started to have second thoughts. To abandon the others to the fight, instead of taking point? It felt irresponsible.
But wasn’t that the same arrogance I’d accused Rose of?
“Don’t?” Green Eyes whispered.
“Don’t let me fall,” I said.
Then I receded. I left the strength and the armor and the bogeyman bits where they were, and I retreated inside Rose, back to the deeper recesses. The safe territory she’d gone to, to think.
I lost the ability to see, to hear, to think. I wasn’t tapped into those senses, or those parts of the body.
My expectation was for Rose to summon her strength, to take over again, ready with the names at the tip of her tongue.
She didn’t.
Deep within, she met me.
I knew I was piecemeal. I was surprised to find that Rose was much the same. We were two broken stained glass windows, all ragged edges and hard lines, crudely constructed, both glowing from fires that burned within us. The fires were pretty dim. Too much of a push, and either of us could collapse inward.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked.
“We need to unseat the king from the hill. Everything follows from that. It should be fast, if we can manage it.”
“For this. Right here. We can’t budge him. He’s strong, he can go wherever he wants, and he has a damn dragon. Do you have a plan for this?”
“In part,” she said. “I’ve gathered names. I could use them, given a chance. Bogeymen. Dug through the recesses of my memory. Stuff I looked at online, stuff I looked at in books that I might have left in the mirror world, when we changed places. They’re not ones we’ve summoned and used up.”
“Bogeymen won’t win this for us,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “No, they won’t. And even getting that done is hard. I’m… not assigning blame. But you’ve kind of left my body in bad shape. If I take it over, I think I’ll be in too much pain to do anything. It’s not… not me, but basic humanity. Agony is a thing.”
I nodded. “So. We need my toughness and your practice. You’re not going to suggest we merge back together or something?”
“No,” she said. “That’s not possible. The damage done is permanent. If it was even remotely doable, I’d have already done it.”
I nodded. I’d had to ask, but I wasn’t surprised in the slightest.
She said, “I need to patch myself up enough that I can deal with the pain. I don’t think I can fix the damage that’s already been done. I can use Conquest, for a bit of an Edge, but that’s a problem while you’re occupying me, and it’s not enough on its own.”
“Spit it out, Rose.”
“Your humanity. I need some of it. Maybe most of it.”
“Take it,” I said.
She stared at me.
“Take it,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “There’s a tangential benefit here. Because there’s not really much of you left, it’s not very useful. You won’t default to a human shape.”
“Something else.”
“Yes. Keep that in mind. It might be easier if you don’t try.”
Not a human shape. Alright.
“I understand. You’re kicking me out, then?”
“Yes. I hope Green Eyes is ready to catch us, because this is going to suck.”
I could see the white flowers creeping in around her. Out of some affectation, Rose had them white. Conquest.
She extended a broken hand, and let the flowers grow there, unfolding, vines stretching.
The vines reached for me, and began to pull me apart.
My awareness faded as I felt true pain, right at the heart of me. Where we’d scraped each other before, this was something else altogether.
Taking my form.
I reached for something, a place to occupy, and I felt the branches and bones move, but they weren’t rooted in anything.
Just the opposite, they were being forced out. My connection to Rose’s inner self and to Rose herself was cut.
The branches came away, a jumble. Green Eyes’ iron grip on my wrist disintegrated as it ceased to be a wrist altogether.
I could feel the rush of wind, and I knew that we were falling.
I kept my eyes, I thought.
Kept my face.
The composition, however, was gone. Rose had taken that, to fix scrapes and gouges in her own face, burns at the side of her neck.
I found them, digging inside, and pushed them out and forward.
I opened my eyes, and I saw the demonic realm of the Barber all around us, and I saw the tower top, disappearing. Green Eyes, at the very edge of it, looking down with her namesake eyes.
As we turned over in the air, I could see the sea of spikes below.
Any form I want, I thought.
I reached out, and found anchorage along Rose’s arms and shoulders. I found the skin of my face, not yet taken, scraps of meat that had lingered here and there, and stretched it all out as far as it would go.
Rose hadn’t patched up the holes in her own body. She was light.
I gave her wings. I was the wings.
I had an idea of how to glide, to fly. I used it.
My vision was distorted, skewed. I could see from the crooks of Rose’s elbows, where the wood was thicker, recesses in the knotting, overlapping mess of wood serving as eye sockets, in the absence of flesh. Both eyes too far apart.