The big, bald wrestler had his fist around her collar. She was like a little bird in his grasp, terrified and fluttering to get away. Still half naked, I knew what he wanted even before his lust-filled eyes turned toward me. Like an angry bull, all I saw was red.
“You ugly gargoyle,” I hissed. “You shit-eating goat fucker. I’m gonna kill you.”
I wanted him to toss Cricket aside, to come at me and let her flee. But he held her as he came, dragging her by the collar to face me.
“One-eye, you own this girl?” he croaked. I could smell his drunken breath.
“I don’t own her. Nobody owns her.” My hand went to my sword. “Let her go.”
He stood up even taller. “I want to buy her. I have gold.”
A crowd gathered behind me, but no one moved to help. Somehow I had to get Cricket free of him.
“Let her go, and you’ll die in one piece,” I warned. “Otherwise you’ll just be a lot of little bits.”
His eyes were the color of stone. “Are you afraid of me, One-eye? You look afraid. Where’s your fat friend?” He look around for Sariyah. “That black-skinned hyena’s not around to save you?”
“You’ll have to let her go to fight me.”
“Not fair, little man. Your sword.”
All my life, my anger has made me stupid. Right then, all I thought about was my hands on his throat and how good it would feel to strangle him. As I undid my sword belt, Malator screamed at me.
No!
But I didn’t want his help. The wrestler gave a smarmy smile as he hurled Cricket toward me. She stumbled then bolted up again like a cat, spitting at the man. I pushed her aside.
“Take my sword.”
“No, Lukien, just kill him with it! Just-”
“Take it!”
I shoved the sword into her arms. Malator shouted in my head as I stepped forward. The crowd behind us swelled. I faced the wrestler, feeling my muscles coil. In a lawless place like this, no one would care if I killed him.
Faster. .
Big men move like syrup. I struck like lightning. My boot smashed his groin, my fist his shattered nose. His face came down, gushing blood. His arms encircled me. Beneath the fat of his neck, I targeted the vertebrae. My elbow a hammer, I struck. The wrestler faltered. . and held on.
Faster!
He lifted me, a doll on his shoulder, spinning me toward the ground. I reached back and found his face, clawing his eyes, holding him and sliding head-first down his back. I didn’t let go, dragging him, tugging his huge bulk back with me, sure he would tumble. My face smacked the street.
And still he had me.
On the ground he was an octopus, pulling me, his arms and legs like tentacles. I scrambled, rolling to avoid his hold, driving my fists wherever I could find him. But I was in a puzzle box, and the more I moved the more he tightened. Staring at the sky, I summoned my strength as his calves closed around my neck. Cricket was screaming. Malator tried to reach me. My throat closed up, and my sight went black, and I knew the wrestler’s next move would kill me.
He twisted, and my neck snapped. I heard it without feeling it.
And I was gone.
8
Gone.
To a place I couldn’t see or feel or comprehend. Floating in a space that terrified me. Blind, without a body or pain.
Alone.
* * *
I was dead, or very nearly dead, and I knew that my mind had left the rest of me behind. But my soul, if that’s what it was, didn’t drift freely up to heaven. I was trapped, suffocating in a blackness that went on forever. I searched the darkness but saw nothing, horrified that I had no eyes at all now.
But I could remember. I knew who I was and what had happened to me. I wondered where Cricket was, if she was dead like me. Or worse.
“Malator?”
My voice carried through the void. I tried to feel Malator, hoping he was somewhere in the darkness.
“Malator, I need you!”
He was gone. Like me, he didn’t exist any more. If I had eyes, I might have cried.
“Malator. Help me.”
* * *
After a while-after forever, maybe-I realized I wasn’t dead. I couldn’t be dead. The dead were like the Akari. Once the spirit leaves the body it dwells forever in its special place. Like Cassandra in her apple orchard. She wasn’t floating mutely through eternity. She had another life beyond her mortal one. She had a world around her.
I had only darkness, and that’s when I knew I was still alive somewhere. Barely, yes, but alive, although I couldn’t imagine what kept me from death. The wrestler had broken my neck. No one could have survived it. He might as well have decapitated me.
Yet here I was.
“I can’t stay here forever!” I screamed. “I’m alive!”
That’s when I felt him. Just a tremor at first, far away, invisible out there in the blackness.
“Malator!”
I put everything I could into my cry. All of it, all of me. Anything to reach him. Suddenly he was there with me, like a mother over the bed of a sick child. Still invisible, but I could feel him.
“Malator, where am I?” I pleaded. “What happened?”
“Wait. Not now.”
“Where’s Cricket? Is she all right?”
“Lukien, you’re almost dead.”
“My neck. .” I understood. “Can you save me?”
“I will save you, Lukien,” he insisted. “No matter what it takes of me.”
“You can let me die, Malator. It’s all right.”
I heard him laugh, and it cheered me. “Same old Lukien. You have a mission, remember?”
“Now can you tell me what it is?”
“I can’t talk, Lukien. I need my strength. You have to fight, too.”
I imagined reaching out for him, but he was already gone.
* * *
Except for Malator, I thought I was alone in the void. I thought I could just wait-until I realized something was in there with me.
It was the first thing I had seen in however long I was trapped there. A shadow among the shadows, moving across my consciousness. I had no body, no flesh to grow cold, but it chilled me. Suddenly I felt it everywhere, and I couldn’t run from it or fight. So I watched, and for a moment it appeared like a pile of bones, then bloody rags of skin, and then as just a pair of horns. Finally it looked at me through the eyes of a dozen decayed faces.
Human faces.
“Leave me!” I cried.
It fled so quickly it stunned me. But I knew what I had seen.
* * *
Time passed, more and more, until at last Malator returned. This time I could see him. He brought light with him. His weary face nodded at me, and I knew he was too tired to speak. But he had saved me. I would be alive again.
“Malator,” I said. “I saw the monster in the sand.”
9
Malator told me to wake up, and I did. I imagined myself being born, struggling through the tunnel of my mother’s womb. I imagined a light beckoning me out, out, into the world. My hands reached for the light. My one eye blinked open.
I was alive again.
Above me twinkled the night sky, fretted by tree branches. I could feel the air in my lungs. I was afraid but not panicked, and knew I was in a forest somewhere. Somehow. My ears perked awake at the sound of insects chirping. Weight pressed upon my chest. I glanced down and saw it was Cricket. She lay over me, slumped with sleep, my chest her pillow.
“Malator,” I whispered. “Thank you. .”
Cricket heard me and stirred. She sat up groggily, her eyes struggling with the darkness.
“Hello,” I rasped.
“Lukien?” She leaned closer. “Lukien!” She flung herself at me then stopped in horror. “Oh, I’m sorry! You-are you all right? Can you move? I thought you were dead!”
My mind was so cloudy I could hardly grasp her questions. “I’m alive. Malator. .”