Dead Boys (31 page)

Stranger still was the crown’s construction. He could spy no wires, screws, or threads between its flexible parts, yet it held together even when he pulled it with all his might.

At last, he stopped analyzing and accepted its invitation. Etienne put the crown on his head.

“Prince of the dead,” he murmured, walking to his room to look at himself in the mirror on the dresser. The pages he’d copied lay on its wooden surface. His eye caught on an error he’d made in transcription, and he realized that he could read the Book.

His fluency came and went with the crown, which he could wear for roughly an hour before he risked a crippling headache. Slowly, sixty minutes at a time, he compiled a second book, a glossary of the language of the Old Ones, as the many voices in the Book called it. Soon he could read, write, and speak without the crown, which he kept in its box on the bookshelf. As he studied, he learned the stories the Book’s authors had told of the Land of the Dead, where his forebears had once traveled as a rite of passage. Some entries were nothing but lists of births and deaths, while others taught Etienne about Tutankhamen’s Second Rule, the Plains of War, and the Walkers, giants “with strides three times the width of Earth,” who had journeyed through the world between worlds in the time before time. Wherever the Walkers slept, a new cosmos arose, “each with the seed of a world of little dreamers embedded within.”

“Ours is a twofold cosmos,” said the Book. “Two dreamings birthed it, on two consecutive nights, each as long as an age of men.

“The first dreaming birthed the Earth and the endlessness around it.

“When the Walkers awoke from that dreaming, they decamped.

“When they decamped, they left one of their number behind.

“He whom they left behind had fallen ill.

“The second dreaming was his alone.

“The second dreaming was his last.

“The dying Walker dreamed alone, his fever gnawing through the world that was. The power of his dying dream birthed a little world, a world without an endlessness around it, a world like a growth on the side of the first.

“In other worlds, when little dreamers die, they pass into the world between worlds, the substance of their will diffused, to be drawn into life again.

“Ours is a twofold cosmos. Our little dreamers are tugged through their deaths into the waters of the dying Walker’s dream, dragging fragments of their dreams behind them.”

Beside such riddling tales were the rudimentary foundations of what might be called a travel guide to worlds beyond the reach of the living: lists of suggested supplies, etiquette for greeting centuries-dead ancestors, travel restrictions, geographical descriptions, and cultural ephemera. Etienne searched the pages for a detailed account of a crossing but found only the vaguest of references. He learned that those who crossed were required to be “at the age of living-in-death,” a term for late adolescence, and that one was a “wearer” while the rest were “carriers.” But beyond these terms, which must have referred to wearing the crown and carrying the supplies necessary for the trip, the catalyst that would reveal the veil between worlds remained a mystery.

He’d been sleeping poorly since he’d first put on the crown of bone, and his obsession was only deepening. Had something sealed the door between the worlds? Had the ceremony been forgotten? Was the cosmos breaking down, preparing to end? As questions piled up, he grew convinced that his translation of the book was at fault, and after another sleepless night, he wondered if wearing the crown while he read might offer clearer insight.

That evening, as a thunderstorm rolled over the mountains, Etienne lowered himself into his Amma’s armchair, vowing to study until the sun came up, headaches be damned. When the power went out, as it so often did in that part of the world, he read by the light of a pocket-sized, battery-operated torch, and in its glow, with the crown heavy on his temples and the rain drumming on the ceiling, he fell asleep.

Later, in the leisure of his starvation, he would reflect that in the language of the Old Ones, one was said to “wear” his dreams, “the many masks of sleep.” Thus “wearer” had a double meaning: in order to part the veil between worlds, he wore the crown and dreamed. Likewise, the “carriers” carried not only their supplies, but their little dreamer, too, keeping him safe during his slumber.

Etienne had no such luxury. When he awoke with the Book in his arms and the torch in his fist, the veil was already closing behind him, granting him only a glimpse of the world between worlds before his eyes were forced shut by the sands of the Moving Desert.

His body thudded on the sands, and the cloud was everywhere, grating against his skin, shaking and rebounding in his eyes and ears. He found his feet and began to run, falling down, dragging himself up, choking and coughing, barely noticing when the crown tumbled from his head; he was suffocating, and would have died then had he not collided with Shailesh, who was just embarking upon his third scouring.

Six Seekers bearing a seventh shifted their weight, reassembling above the rising sands. The storm, too, shifted, settling a crackling mantle of dust around the broad shoulders of Shailesh. He reached out and accepted the sand-heavy skull of Etienne, cradling it in his hands. He lay his thumbs on its brow, between the empty sockets of its eyes, and all the company saw his memories projected against the shifting screen of the sands.

Shailesh was deep in the marrow-grip when the living boy fell into his arms, and his first thought was that the eternals must be right: repeated scouring caused madness, after all. Then the sight of the boy’s blood smeared on his bones sobered him, and with haste Shailesh bore him out of the cloud, into the safety of White City.

The boy was thin, his body soft and far more fragile than a corpse’s. His skin was very dark, darker than Shailesh’s had been, with a reddish glow that seemed to boast of the blood within. His eyelashes and sighs alarmed the Seekers who crowded around his place of rest, to whom he was at once an angelic and a shameful object; while none denied his beauty, Shailesh, like the others, struggled with his hatred for the boy. He even fantasized about killing him, and Shailesh had never been able to stomach bloodshed.

“It’s what a woman seeing God would feel,” said Mistress Ai. “In the presence of the original, we experience a violent awareness that we are but imitations. Each breath he takes recalls us to our last. We’d do anything to avoid that memory. We’d even kill, were it not for our vows.”

They nursed him all the same, though out of wary obligation, not tenderness. His skin was raw and wanted washing, and he badly needed sleep, which they watched with quiet mistrust. When he awoke, he complained of hunger and thirst; they could only satisfy the latter, and though he said the river-water tasted sour, “like rotting vegetables,” it seemed to revive him.

He had not meant to come without supplies, he said. He needed the crown to return to the living world, he said, but no one who ventured into the storm could find it. He spoke hopefully of his ancestors, but none of the Seekers had heard of his Old Ones.

“You should speak with the Poet,” said Shailesh, “the eldest among us. If any will know of your ancestors, it is he.”

“Where is he?” said Etienne.

“On White Peak, composing.”

“When will he return?”

“No one knows.”

“Well, I can’t afford to wait,” said Etienne. “I’ve got to find the Old Ones before I starve. They’ll know how to get me back.”

Shailesh accepted the tome but protested the boy’s decision, describing all the ways that a Seeker could travel that were barred to one so breakable. “Your only possible path is through the Plains of War, and I shudder in my soul to think of you there!”

“I know what the Plains are,” said Etienne. “I’ll take my chances.”

“Very well: but I can take you no farther than the far side of White Gate. Our people have vowed never to set foot in those lands again.”

“That will be fine,” said the boy, his cracked lips splitting in a grin. “I’ve read about those warriors, and I’m willing to bet that I’m faster than any of them.” Then down they climbed, and off the boy walked, setting like a blood-red sun in the crooked hall that led to the Plains. Shailesh launched himself to the top of White Gate, fretting that he’d sacrificed a greater vow to a lesser one. It was a doubt no amount of scouring could clean from his bones.

Six Seekers bearing a seventh withstood the storm, feeling the head’s suffering like a prolonged electric shock.

Jacob felt Etienne’s story rippling through his body—no, he thought, through his skeleton. He couldn’t see himself, not in the midst of this granular onslaught, but the longer he remained in the storm, the more the mass of sand and dust spoke to him. He saw, he felt, in flashes that seemed to belong to the desert. His worn clothes had disintegrated, his boots had been tugged off, and his flesh had been all but stripped away, reduced to a few patches dangling from tangled threads of fishing-wire. As he tore them free, he discovered one last holdout: the pouch was still tied around his wrist, hanging on by a stubborn, gristly strip of leather.

Wondering at its tenacity, Jacob shivered in his bones as he yanked it free, clasping its rumpled oval in one claw-like hand. He’d promised to keep it close, never to let it out of his sight. Now that it had lasted so unaccountably long, should he try to protect it from the ravages of the storm?

It would be impossible, unless he left the desert immediately. But an inexplicable tingle rippling through the sands gave him the distinct impression that this had been Ma Kicks’ intention all along.

With two fingertips, he pried the pouch open. White dust and shards of bone rose jittering into the air. The pulverized finger of Ma Kicks swirled into the cloud, pouring through the Seekers’ open skulls.

She stood on the riverside with one hand on her belly and one on the handle of a slop-bucket. Lazarus Quay was chock-full of marks, but this boy was so fresh Clarissa caught him trying to breathe when he thought no one was looking. He was hiding something else, too—in the hip pocket of his dusty tunic was some kind of rectangular doodad. It must have been valuable, considering how often his hand drifted there.

But he couldn’t guard it forever. Sooner or later, he’d have his rigor mortis. She’d just have to be there when it happened, then turn his treasure into time in her account.

She’d never cared much for the Dead City Welcome—it was a nasty way to bring anyone into this world—but she had her child’s future to consider. The baby wouldn’t stay in her womb forever. She knew that much from the way it was wiggling these days. Her firstborn would want an afterlife of its own, and what did she have to offer but bad luck, mounting debt, and a dead-end job in the skankiest bar in the Tunnels?

Nothing, unless she took advantage of this immigrant boy’s arrival. She’d be a fool to pass him over, and if she did some other enterprising corpse would snap him up just the same. Why should somebody else, somebody with purely selfish motives, benefit from his naivety? The boy would learn the same lesson one way or another.

She glanced at the surface of the river, where she’d already scavenged two buckets of past-due produce. Her reflection was still looking all right. There was no mistaking her for a living girl, not with those marks on her throat. And they weren’t the worst of it, not any more. When Clarissa’s life had slammed shut she didn’t look a day over seventeen, but by now her skin had slumped enough to make her look a little matronly, plastic barrettes or no.

It would have to do. She hiked up her buckets and swung her hips past the spot where her mark was sprawled. As soon as he turned those big, shiny eyes on her, she stumbled, and a bucket full of rotting bounty slopped onto the street between them. She let out her best woe-is-me wail, bending down low.

The boy wasn’t looking her way, though. His eyes were fixed on the pile of slops, rifling through half-rotten apples, slimy leaves of cabbage, and heels of bread soaked in Lethean muck. It was only then that she noticed how skinny he was, like he’d starved to death in some shit-heel corner of the Lands Above.

He must still think he was hungry. She hoped she didn’t have to watch him try and eat—he’d probably bite off his tongue, which was still so moist with river-water that she stopped looking at his face.

How’d he get so
dusty
? she wondered. It was like his insides were the only part that had gotten wet.

“May I help you with that?” he said, voice wavering.

“You sure you wouldn’t mind?” she said, shoving her revulsion aside. “Packed these buckets too heavy for a girl in my condition. Tell you what, though: you give me a hand, and I’ll stand you a drink when we get down below.”

He scooped the slops back in, making weird little grunting noises.

Damn, but the baby was kicking hard today. Wouldn’t be long now.

With the time she made off this rube, she’d fill up a whole nursery with toys.

When he’d gotten a handle on the bucket, Clarissa led the boy through the streets, steering him down a wide, dirt-paved ramp teeming with corpses. Then, when the darkness closed around them, the boy pulled the flashlight out of his pocket and clicked it on, pointing its beam at the floor.

She turned, looking hungrily at it. How the thing was still working after being dunked in the river she’d never understand—was it wrapped in plastic when he’d died?—but she wasn’t about to ask any questions. With that thing in hand, she wouldn’t just buy out her debt, she’d buy her own bar.

“Honey, your eyes work just fine down here,” she said, hoping he’d save the charge in those precious batteries.

“It—it comforts me,” he mumbled.

Dead boy scared of the damn dark, she thought, shaking her head. Lethe sure did deliver the goods.

“Hush now,” she whispered to her belly, where the baby was going plumb crazy. “What got into you?”

As they passed through raucous bars and crumbling hallways, Clarissa kept her back to the boy, trusting the wobbling beam of his flashlight to assure her he was keeping up. He lagged behind whenever she went around a corner, and it wasn’t long before she heard the awful sounds of his jaws smacking around a mouthful of slops, his gullet working overtime trying to force that half-rotten food down. How he managed to swallow with his throat gone cold she couldn’t imagine, but immigrants did the strangest things before the mortis came.