“Can’t do anything about it, Avery,” Zed told her.
Zed, like Avery, was bundled up, in improvised cold-weather gear. It looked like he was using sleep clothes for a scarf, flannel wrapped around his lower face, held there by the collars of the knit shirts he wore. He had a hat on, hood up, and a leather jacket over several layers. He was a bit on the short side and muscular to begin with, and the layers made him look very stocky. He still managed to look cool, hands in his pockets, bag packed with tech over his shoulder.
Avery wore her fall jacket, black with reflective orange panels, over Lucy’s sweatshirt, borrowed, and she had her track pants on under her jeans. She’d worn two pairs of socks with her running shoes, but had ended up taking it off, because it was making her feet hurt with the long hike.
The deer thrashed and screamed, in a repeat of the earlier sound. The wolves darted in, and the deer’s eyes roved, wild, more whites than anything else, as it tried and failed to keep the predators in view.
“Think of it like a photograph of something bad that happened once,” Zed told her.
“What if we put it out of its misery?” Avery asked.
“You wouldn’t be putting it out of its misery. It is misery, or panic, or helplessness, or some combination of those things. You’d just be putting it out. Water on a fire.”
Avery sighed. Her breath fogged. The snow came down in quarter-sized dollops, wet and ice cold, each bit hitting her like a sharp jab with a finger or pen.
“It’s so uncool that you care,” Snowdrop said, “Tch.”
“Tch,” Avery echoed, “You good?”
“No, I’m not good,” Snowdrop muttered. “I’m exploring this awful place with you, it’s the pits.”
Snowdrop wore a shearling lined coat with opossum-style ears on the hood, and teeth at the edges. A scarf covered her lower face, the ends slung over her shoulders so they sat over her shoulderblades, her eyes the only part of her face that was visible, large with dark shadows around them. The ends of her scarf read ‘First play dead’ and ‘then play dirty’. Well, it was the other way around, but Avery got how it was meant to be read.
“Using salt would at least make it be quiet,” Avery said. “Makes it easier to hear things that matter.”
“It would,” Jessica answered, as she walked through the slushy snow. She wore a fluffy hoodie under her raincoat, and it didn’t look like nearly enough in weather this crummy, but she wasn’t suffering nearly as much as any of them. Snow wasn’t piling up on her, either. She stopped, took stock, then said, “But we don’t want to do that. This place is built of scenes like this. Especially this facet of the Ruins. Take out one piece, and things will collapse inward.”
“Things? Other scenes?” Avery asked.
Jessica nodded. Then she crouched. “Look. See how wet the ground is?”
Avery nodded. The deer’s trampling footsteps as it danced, trying to free itself, were making the ground a muddy puddle beneath it.
“There’s also water running down the branches. Now see how dark it is?”
The grouping of trees blocked out most of the light, not that there was a ton of light here. It made the whites of the deer’s eyes and teeth stand out more. Front legs kicked at the air.
“Clean salt can remove that scene from this tapestry, but you’d plunge back into Ruins more familiar to you if you tried.”
Jessica nodded. “The screaming is a way of pushing its echo outward, too. You could get snared if you hear that scream up close. Tangled the same way it’s tangled.”
“Are the wolves a danger?” Snowdrop asked.
“Props for the scene. There are worse dangers here. I saw signs of some while looking around.”
“Anything to worry about?” Zed asked.
Jessica looked around, and walked away a few steps, circling a tree and looking at the trunk.
“Answer whenever,” Zed told her. “I’m just here, freezing.”
“The cold doesn’t matter. How you feel about the cold matters,” Jessica said, still studying tree trunks.
“I recognize the distinction and I don’t like it,” Zed told her.
“Call Brie,” Jessica said, pulling something from a tree trunk. It looked like a coin, but it was lumpier.
Zed pulled out his phone. He selected Brie from the contact list while asking, “Why? Danger? Do we prepare for a fight?”
“You don’t fight these things.”
“What’s that?” Avery asked, indicating the bit of metal.
“A token. Certain inevitable forces will leave them places. Like an Other closely related to Love leaving behind roses or rose petals, or an Other related to Mania leaving a pitchfork embedded in something.”
“Brie wants to know if she should abandon the fire.”
“Leave it. Let it burn out. It doesn’t matter. Have her come straight here, avoid any lights. If she gets lost and has to cross a road or path, have her stop, hide, and call us.”
“Tell her to be quiet. If she runs into any kind of trouble at all, she should let loose, as much as possible. Let those children free.”
“You’re making me nervous here, Jess,” Zed spoke, his voice low.
“I’d say… five percent or less chance we have any trouble,” Jessica answered. “But we want to make sure she does the right thing if she has trouble.”
“I could go. It’s best if we pair up.”
“You could,” Jessica said, sounding unenthused.
She’s so used to doing things alone.
“Do you want me to go?” Avery asked.
Jessica turned, looking her over.
“It’s part of why I’m here,” Avery said. “I know you’ve been down in places like this with Jessica a lot more than I have, Zed, but-”
“No,” Zed answered her. “You’re better at navigating this place. My only worry would be, you know, if you got hurt instead of me, I’d feel like the biggest piece of shit.”
“Ave’s useless,” Snowdrop said. “Don’t let her.”
“Are you tired? Sore? Cold?” Jessica asked.
“Barely, a little from the other night, and barely. Running might help warm up my toes,” Avery answered.
“It won’t make you too slow for the return trip? Going out there and back?”
“Go, then. I’ll stay and keep an eye out.”
Avery picked up, grabbed the black rope from her pocket, took Snowdrop’s hand, and led her around a tree.
Felt good, being trusted. And when so much of this place felt bad, it was like a much-needed light in a very dark place.
She slipped in and out of this desolate winter, that had so little of what made winter great. There was no snow that was pristine or great for snowmen. It was dark and gloomy and drippy, the ground treacherous, and somehow it managed to be a difficult trudge uphill and a slippery slope downhill.
Jessica had described the ruins as being like a cube. The side they were closest to and most familiar with was at the edge of two sides, wet and dark. Close to depression and apprehension. Humans and civilization dwelt pretty close to that. They’d taken a side track, now.
The things that lived here in this cold were well past depression and into grief and despair. The people who lived in those emotions were far removed from things- their homes and rooms like cabins in remote wilderness. Animals were far more familiar with that resigned despair, starved and trapped, so they occupied a lot of this space. Their echoes were strongest here. Like the deer’s.
There was an echo nearby, a canine, emaciated and starved, howled, caught in a trap. It had tried to gnaw off a limb and stopped halfway, too weak to continue. She remained a generous distance from it as she skirted around. She still felt twinges in her own leg.
Echoes of this sort had a wide reach, and they snared. An echo of a lonely disabled guy had caught her like tar, earlier.
Not many were mobile, at least. They remained where they were, many in a bit of a dip, ditch, or low point.
Figures, gaunt, pale, draped in furs and collected curios, and eyeless, lurked at a ridgetop, crows gathered around and on top of them. They didn’t move, only waiting. One turned its head, the eyes of the feline skull it wore following her, but it didn’t move.
Part of the reason Brie was here was to test the bindings. And they’d failed the test. The Choir had started to leak out around her, and so she’d stopped to sit by the fire and try to fix the binding up again. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was a deal.
“Go,” Snowdrop huffed.
Avery stopped in her tracks. She looked at her companion. “Tired?”
“I can’t hear her.”
Avery stopped, listening. Snowdrop’s head turned sharply as she looked off into the woods. Avery matched the angle.
“You okay to run?” Avery asked.
They ran. There were more of the eyeless here, and Avery held off on using the black rope, because she wasn’t sure if they saw her, and a slip and fall could mean sliding down the wrong slope.
Like drafts of wind, impressions of starvation and mourning flowed over and past Avery. The starvation blew into and through her, leaving her feeling hollow and weak, and the mourning messed with her head. An animal mourning her cubs she couldn’t feed.
She squeezed Snowdrop’s hand.
“I’m a wimp, I can’t take this.”
“Free and clear ahead!” Snowdrop’s raised her voice, a contrast from earlier.
Avery stopped in her tracks. Snowdrop had beat her to it, and was an anchor that held her back from going too far.
Echo-y, coyote-like animals, starved and distorted by that sensation, stalked their way out of snowy bushes. Darkness had leeched into them, and sparse, patchy fur clung to gaunt, blackened bodies. Some had only one eye.
The leader of that pack led from behind. Its back was about even with Avery’s ribcage, and it was so gaunt it was little more than skin wrapped around a canine skeleton, eyeless. Organs throbbed against that skin at the belly and ribcage. Moisture wicked from it. Some from the pelting snow, some like sweat.
Jessica had said to be confident in the face of things like these.
“There’s easier prey, big guy,” Avery addressed it.
The lesser hounds circled around.
Snowdrop’s grip tightened.
The smallest hound, which still had two eyes, wheezed, giving away its position as it moved behind her. Avery tapped her foot.
It lunged, and Avery kicked. By all rights, in a normal circumstance, it would have gotten its teeth around her shoe and held on, she would have fallen, and the rest would have descended on her and Snowdrop.
But she wore wind shoes. It propelled the runt back and away, tumbling down a slope, and made Avery jerk forward. Snowdrop held onto her to keep from going too far in the opposite direction, right at the big one.
She was off balance, though. The big one came at her, teeth gnashing, and Avery reached to her charm bracelet, which was at the wrist of the hand that held Snowdrop’s, and pulled the Ugly Stick from the bracelet, swinging it. Glamour peeled off as it swung, and it grew to full size by the time it passed by the big hound’s head.
The sudden attack from the weapon made it shy back.
It bolted, running. The rest followed.
Other things were encroaching though. A mourning wind blew from behind, and a trio of eyeless humans were trudging through the trees.
She and Snowdrop started running in the same moment. Same wavelength.
An eyeless figure lay buried in snow, and birds like crows with skin peeled from their faces pecked at the body, tearing away strips. She avoided those, using the black rope to jump up to a tree branch. The rope was harder to use when she brought Snowdrop with her, because they both had to be entirely out of sight. It required large trees, or groupings of tree big enough.
They moved from branch to branch, and in the midst of it, jumped straight into an echo going full-tilt into a starvation despair.
These were the things that made the Ruins so tough over the long term. She could escape that effect, but feelings lingered and her body responded to it. Stomach clenching, changing how it handled the food that was already there. If she was exposed to that for too long, it would lead to her actually starving in fast motion, or something similar.
Get hit with an echo, then recover nine-tenths of the way. Rinse, repeat.
She found a perch at the edge of the woods. Brie was making her way over.
No evasion, no sneaking. Brie marched on, and to Avery’s sight, she was streaked in blood, small child’s hand-prints in crimson painting the ‘false’ body parts the choir had given her, even over the heavy clothes. Avery’s Sight created a mist, and the markings on Brie’s hand and neck cut through that mist, clear as anything.
An echo was making its way toward Brie. A man in a hospital gown, bare-legged, trudging through slush.
Brie looked at him, slowing. The light and shadow around her changed, the mist getting thicker, and she sagged a bit. Feeling the echo’s influence.
Then the waifs started appearing. They rose up out of the snow around her. A girl in a bunny hat, a boy with a bike helmet, and a girl with a leather jacket covered in zippers. However they were dressed, they acted similar; the ones with the bunny hat and bike helmet charged in, moving through the slushy snow like it was easy, pouncing on the echo and tackling it to the ground. The girl with the leather jacket hesitated, glancing around, then jumped him, fingers dragging through his stomach to tear cloth and skin. For every bite she got in, ten more bites worth of echo dissolved. The others tore at arm and face, respectively.
Brie straightened and moved on, same pace as before.
Avery descended, bringing Snowdrop with. Brie looked her way, and Avery raised a hand in a wave.
She could have gone to Brie’s side, but the Choir was out. Just five kids now. The Echo the waifs had tackled was gone, and so were the waifs.
The same pack of hounds that had come for Avery were surrounding Brie, now.
“Hey!” Avery shouted.
Brie matched the number of waifs she had around her to the animals. One per hound. It didn’t seem like enough, and frankly, it seemed like prime bait for the hounds. Starving kids?
“I’m going ahead,” Avery told Snowdrop.
She tossed the black rope back to Snowdrop, then charged ahead.
The hounds went after waifs, and seemed surprised that those waifs fought back as viciously as they did. Most were on the defensive a second after the kids started biting back, trying to pull away and retreat.
The lead hound charged at a boy in a skull t-shirt with a mohawk, gripped him with blackened teeth, and hurled him aside.
More waifs reached out of the snow, flanking the hound, grabbing its sides, but it still had momentum, and Brie backed away a few steps, slipped, and skidded down a slope, out of Avery’s sight.
The song was audible now. Singing in the background, as the Choir swelled in number and strength.
Snow jabbed at Avery’s face as she crossed the distance. Four children fought to keep the lead hound back, and failed as it walked to the crest of the ridge where Brie had slipped.
Avery closed in, and the hound started to turn- that, at least, was a process the waifs slowed down. Avery gave it a sharp swat on the rump with the ugly stick. A gift from the goblins from a while ago, it was a weird weapon that was often too heavy duty to use, even in the serious situations they’d been in so far. They barely carried it with them.
It was gnarled, knotted wood in a club shape, it hurt like dammit, and it left lumps that were slow to heal. A hit hard enough to do any structural damage would change that structure. Break someone’s jaw and it would never be exactly right again. Knock out teeth, same idea.
She wasn’t interested in that part of things. She just wanted to scare off the hound.
Its back legs went out from under it as it finished turning on her, splaying out behind it, and as much as it gnashed its teeth at her, it couldn’t advance without those legs. She rapped it on the snout.
In a twisting scuffle, waifs biting and hound reeling, struggling to get its feet under it, the hound finally managed to pull free, and bolted.
One hound had been brought down by a waif, and the others ran off. The remaining waifs ate.
Brie was at the slope, waifs around her, holding onto her. At the bottom of that slope, in a bowl-shaped depression, was an echo of a family around a car, and a bit of the sort of guardposting that appeared at a bend in the road, to keep cars from going over. It looked like a crash, the family was trying to stay warm.
Brie slipped down another ten feet. Two-thirds of the way down.
The family reacted, changing position. Echoes were blurry and these guys were no exception, and blurs melded together. Flesh blackened and waxy by cold, shrouded by wisps of sensation and sentiment. The mist welled, the snow intensified, the mother cradled her child in her arms, and they looked like one singular mass, groping and reaching. Even the car seemed to be part of them.
Frost crept up Brie’s legs, and they stopped working. Sort of like how the hound’s had, but the hound had got it together enough to run off. Brie wasn’t able.
Waifs multiplied, scrabbling for their own traction and grip. The ones that found any supported others, and supported Brie. The echo got to them too.
“I’ll help!” Avery called out.
“Don’t come!” Brie raised her voice.
She pulled off her bag, grabbed the plastic screw-top water bottle she’d filled with salt, and got spell cards.
What was the symbol for time? She had to use process of elimination. Each one was a planet and a god. Trident-ish symbol was Neptune, sea and sky, to make stuff activate at a certain height or if it met water or some other environment. Mars was the whacking symbol, like she used for the hockey stick. Mercury for movement, like she used for her shoes.
She ended up sorting through her cards, taking a second to interpret each.
There. She had a time-delayed smoke thing, for cover so she could use the black rope. Little ‘h’ with a curl on the one leg and a cross at the top.
She copied that symbol onto another card, noted a time: thirty seconds, finished the diagram with two strokes, and then stuffed it into the water bottle.
“Things might shuffle, I think!” she shouted.
“Hold your breath, don’t panic!”
The echoes down here tended to remain dormant until provoked, and then they became whirlwinds of intensity or desperation. This was no exception.
The bottle detonated. Clean salt sprayed everywhere, and it cut through the echo, leaving gouges, causing parts to dissolve. The entire effect got weaker.
Brie moved her legs, finding footholds in addition to the handholds. Waifs were more mobile.
“Anyone!” the echo shouted. A man’s ragged voice, hollering in desperation. With the voice came a push of that cold effect. It hit Avery like a slap in the face, whole-body, a cold that reached past any clothes she wore to lower her core temperature.
It was all she could do to control how she fell, tipping over into a snowbank. Numb, she’d gone from 100 to 0, and she could feel herself slipping, sliding inch by inch toward that same slope, and she couldn’t move to do anything about it.
Snowdrop ran up, holding the black rope, and took hold of Avery’s arm, pulling.
“Anyone!” the man shouted, voice ragged and raw.
Brie was in worse shape. She slid further down that slope.
Waifs emerged. A couple dozen, now. They pushed through the cold, stumbling, grabbing and tearing. Each one seemed to get close and have time to do just one thing- one grab, one bite, and then collapsed. But they were solid ground for others, and the tide of them were like a wedge driven into the damage the salt had made.
Car, people, and everything distinguishing about the scene were torn to shreds.
The song built in intensity, in volume, and mirrored the level of violence as they ate and destroyed.
Avery shivered as the cold from the echo dissipated.
And with the scene gone, things began to slide around. A mini-avalanche, a bit of water. A tree fell, and let snow start to tumble. What looked like a hill flattened out into a sharp slope.
All converging on or aiming at the location where the echo had been. More echoes loomed at the ridge, ready to take up residence in the bowl-shaped depression. Each carrying their own effects and impressions. Feelings they would transmit to anyone nearby.
The good side of the effects of the echoes was that they left as fast as they arrived. Avery picked herself up, assessing the situation.
“Thanks, Snow,” she said.
She had a game plan. Now it was time to use those other cards. She finished one and handed it to Snowdrop, then finished the other.
Avery took off running down the slope. To Brie.
The Choir was around Brie, and two of them got in Avery’s way. One hissed.
She leaped over them. Helped by the fact she was on a slope, and she didn’t care that much if she happened to kick them in the heads in the process.
“You shouldn’t have-”
Other, smaller hands gripped Avery as well. She knocked one aside, waiting, hoping her timing wasn’t bad.
Snowdrop exploded into a plume of snow. Avery winced.
Her own card went off, kicking up snow and wind. Hiding them.
She used her Sight to look clearly to her destination, then used the black rope, jumping herself and Brie to the top of the ridge.
Fumbling, she found Snowdrop, heavily covered in wet snow, now.
They navigated their way away from the cloud of snow, and Avery had a view of the echoes colliding and wrestling with one another. Two seemed to merge, and might have become kings of that particular pit if they weren’t torn in half by something animal that was hidden by snow.
It looked like that would take a little while to resolve. Each one had been pulled there by the absence of the car family, and now that they were close, they were switching to their ‘mad desperation’ states.
Small hands gripped Avery again. Fingers dug into flesh. She pulled away with a sharp movement. Snowdrop hissed at one who was presumably doing the same..
“Go,” Brie said. “I don’t want them to hurt you and I don’t really control them.”
“You were doing okay.”
“They keep me alive and well because if this body dies, they die.”
She did as Brie had suggested and backed off.
Thirty or forty feet separated Avery and Brie. The kids led the way, flanked, and followed Brie. The singing was faint.
“Yeah,” Avery replied.
“Glad you skipped class for this?”
“Needed to get away, a bit,” Avery replied.
“Is this really better?”
Avery looked around. At the unfriendly, battered trees, the forest that was more fallen branches than undergrowth, the gritty, slushy snow that promised no snowmen or snowballs, the distant, ruined shacks and cabins.
“The way Lucy was talking about it, you don’t have that long to study what you need to study,” Brie noted. “Or to reach out to those students you want to keep around?”
“Do you want to talk about it? Those students, or, on a lighter note, studying? I’ll be studying here for a bit, while I get things sorted.”
“I mean, for studying, they’ve got the morning class handled. I could spend the day in the library, instead, but we thought being alone with other students might be dangerous, and I’d really rather be doing this. Hands on learning, direct with an expert.”
“Studying in its own way. Sure. Are you going to become a necromancer? Tapping into echoes and working with the other forces that dwell here, to affect Death? Something like that?”
“No. Just… exploring. Learning how otherworldly places work.”
“How’s your binding?”
“Not good, I think we have to do the long fix,” Brie answered. She pushed up her sleeve. The tattoos were broken up, and as Avery used her sight, the lines peeled away, drifted, and formed loops and bubbles that pulled away and disappeared amid snowfall. A second or two later, a waif appeared in roughly the same general direction.
Gabe. Shirtless, vomit streaked across his lower face, mouth ajar, with a mushroom cut. Ten or so, skinny.
He looked at her and yawned his jaw open to crack it audibly.
Could Avery have gone down a similar path? Lonely at school, if Mrs. Hardy hadn’t reached out? Or if she hadn’t had sports as an outlet? Would she potentially have snatched at an answer, if that newsletter had found her?
Avery swallowed, shook her head, then reminded herself she was part of a conversation. “What does it mean, to do the long fix?”
“Proper tattoos, redoing the initial ritual. I have to fast for a few days, which isn’t a problem, because, well…”
Because Brie had finished the Hungry Choir ritual and she would never again have problems related to food.
“Just annoying?” Avery asked.
“Yeah. Putting life on hold again. No books to read, no TV, no movies, no phone or internet. The first time it was okay, except I was worried it wouldn’t work. This time it just feels- I don’t want to make this a thing I have to do every few months.”
“At least you have Zed for company.”
“Yeah,” Brie answered. She smiled.
Avery glanced at Brie now and then, while still keeping an eye on Gabe, who was getting closer to her than some of the other waifs had. Brie seemed to have more energy and enthusiasm than before, just from the mention of Zed.
“Do you have a plan for after? Work?”
“It depends on a lot,” Brie said. “We don’t know how or if we can totally bind the song within me. It’s… not going perfect, so far. If we can seal them in, then long sleeves, a high collar, and I’ll look for a job. If not, then we control it, so there’s always a little bit of their power leaking out, and I manage that, and I’ll do some work that doesn’t require me to show up much in person.”
“Huh. What about draining it? Tapping it for power? Doing the ritual, in a different way? You guys ran the ritual for a group after the binding, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Brie said. “They did the last part the weekend Bristow took over the school. Five of the eight participants made it.”
“Forced a rules consistency. So the last round was like the prior ones. We drew some power at the start, gave you guys a share of that. We’ll give you more as we figure out how to tap the rest. If we can keep the numbers going like that, drain the reserves…”
Gabe hissed. Brie stopped.
Gabe looked over at Brie, and Brie looked down at Gabe, then from Avery to Gabe again.
“You knew him?” Brie asked.
“He was a classmate. We barely talked.”
“He was there that night.”
Brie made a gesture with her hand. Gabe disappeared the next time a tree blocked him from Avery’s view.
“I was there too,” Snowdrop declared.
“Maybe if you were, Snow, we could have done something,” Avery told her. “One extra set of hands for the people that needed help.”
“Are you okay?” Brie asked. “You’re avoiding your friends-”
“I’m not, I mean, I am, but that’s not the main objective. Just… a breather.”
“And you sound down about stuff in the past.”
“I liked what you said, before we did Jessica’s ritual. We chatted for a minute or so, we talked about wanting things to be better, to share, to support. More like friends are supposed to do.”
“I want that too, and I think it’s doable, but it’s like we’re doing it all at the edge of a cliff, and it’s so easy to push things too far. And then it’s a long, long way down.”
“I’ve been dwelling on that too. You’re thinking of Gabe?”
“And Bristow. And-” Alexander. “Reagan. I had a close call, myself. Almost got Lost and I might never have gone home again.”
“If you ever need to talk…”
“Can’t talk to me,” Snowdrop said.
“…and you can’t talk to Snowdrop, you can call,” Brie told Avery. “Zed has neat phones. We’re almost always reachable.”
“Thank you,” Avery said.
“I mean it. I owe you guys.”
“And I mean it when I say thank you. I- I’m collecting names at this point, kind of. A bit of a support circle of people I can call. Which might be important, because I don’t know what’s waiting for me at home.”
“I’d give you a hug right now if I could,” Brie told her, still walking forward, with the group of waifs around her.
They walked for a bit. Zed and Jessica stepped out of the trees, banishing a lesser Echo as they approached. They walked fast and looked intense.
“Heard the singing of the Choir before we saw you,” Zed said.
“What’s up?” Avery asked.
“Walk fast. You guy are covered in snow. You okay?”
“We had a scary run-in with an Echo,” Brie said.
“Knit together. Whole family,” Avery said. “I don’t think Brie ended up needing me. She pulled out the choir and dealt with it.”
“I could’ve, maybe,” Brie said. “But I would be more tired than I am. And we have to travel back. If I’d fought on my own I might be too tired to walk all the way home.”
“You okay to walk right now?” Zed asked. Brie nodded.
“What’s got you guys spooked?” Avery asked. “Does it have to do with that token? The bit of metal?”
“A group of lesser incarnations,” Jessica said. She reached out, holding the token like she was going to drop it. Avery put her hand out.
The bit of metal, slightly triangular. A squashed bullet, edge sharpened. It was wrapped up in cord.
“My best guess is this is Hunt,” Jessica said.
“The hunter distilled, seeking, tracking.” She motioned with her hand, then dropped something else.
A bit of glass wrapped in more cord, curved and smooth on one side and broken on the other, like it was from a magnifying glass or marble. There was blood on the pointiest corner, worked into the cracks.
“Inquest or Inquisition.”
And a ring, snipped, the band twisted so it formed a curl, where the snipped ends didn’t meet but crossed instead. There was a heart shaped hole at the center of the band, opposite the mis-aligned ends. The cord was threaded through the hole and around the ring itself.
“I don’t know. But it’s compatible with Hunt and Inquisition, that token represents it. If you let them drop from your hand, they fall into a position that forms a triangle. Don’t actually drop it. I don’t want to waste the time.”
“Okay,” Avery said, holding the tokens in her hand.
“They fall equally distant apart. The triangle shape appears in the tokens, too. They’re a team of three.”
“What do you need, and what do I need to know?” Avery asked.
“We avoid them. This broad area is their hunting ground,” Jessica said. “Brie, this is where you might be important.”
“I normally back off in situations like this, return home, or find a long way around,” Jessica stated. Her eyes roved, searching. “I don’t want to, this time.”
“That’s fine,” Zed told her.
“You can leave if you want to.”
“I came to help,” Avery told her.
Jessica nodded. She didn’t say thank you, and her expression remained serious, her eyes fixed on distant points.
“Incarnations- I remember you calling the Hungry Choir a ritual incarnate? Am I right?” Zed asked.
“So you know the terminology. Incarnations are the same idea, but without the ritual attached. They’re a concept, distilled, and they usually manage or control that thing, draw power from it. And they’re inevitable. Which is a pretty deep concept that’s hard to explain. They’re stubborn. Don’t get between them and their target, avoid face to face encounters if you can, and remember you can’t stop them. You can deflect and distract.”
A starved wind blew past them. It made them all pause until it passed. Jessica seemed more wary in the aftermath, like she’d expected an attack or appearance, using the wind.
They passed through woods and entered a grouping of houses. Except the houses weren’t true houses. Instead, they were like rooms out of an apartment or hospital. Through the windows were scenes where the echoes were in full form.
It felt hazardous. The walls paper thin, containing some intense, miserable echoes within. A woman curled up on her bed in a room with so much trash on the floor that the floor wasn’t visible. A man holding a bucket for his daughter to throw up in. A young man holding a letter, reading, while parents stood behind him.
Avery felt for each of them. But she also felt worried that those thin walls would tear or something would give, and those echoes would wash over them.
“What were you two talking about, as you came over?” Zed asked.
“The choir,” Brie told him. “Feeling like this is all… precarious.”
Avery nodded. They slipped into a narrow passage between two buildings. Avery could feel pressure weighing on her from one side and sadness leeching into her from the other.
“This is a heavy place,” Jessica said. She held up her hand and checked the way was clear. They left the alley between the two buildings.
“School’s heavy too,” Avery said. “I wanted to ask, since you’re seniors, you know who the families are…”
“You might be asking the wrong guy,” Zed told her. “I’m gone half the time.”
“But you went here, right?”
“Some. I didn’t come at thirteen and then attend every year. But if you have questions about anyone or any family, I can try answering.”
Off in the distance, an eyeless thing, pale, humanoid, and as tall as a one-storey house, snatched up an echo. It held carved wood in the other hand, and pressed echo to wood. To a carved head and torso. Once the echo’s head and torso were stuck inside, it began attaching a multi-jointed arm.
“Dark,” Snowdrop murmured.
Snow was pointing at a distant house. Where every other place seemed so dim, unlit within, there was a warm red light glowing within that place, to the point it lit up the exterior walls.
“In nearly any other circumstance, I’d go there,” Jessica stated, staring.
“Treasure. Distilled power. Echoes and things shuck off goodness, joy, and serenity here, and those things are pushed away by the grief, sadness, and despair. Those scraps gather and concentrate in a hallow, which pulls in more. Most are small. An apple that glows with a light within, in a dark part of the Ruins, or a small mouse that warms like a fireside without burning flesh. Even those are valuable.”
“That doesn’t look small,” Avery noted.
“No. Which makes me think it’s bait.”
Zed pulled his bag around in front of him to access it. “I’ve got a locator. It notifies us if they’re close, but it’ll make noise.”
“That’s fine,” Jessica said. “I think Hunt knows where we are by now.”
“Come,” Avery told Snowdrop. “Small.”
Snowdrop shrunk, going from holding Avery’s hand to being small enough to fit in Avery’s hand.
Avery tucked Snowdrop into her jacket.
“What families were you wondering about?” Zed asked. “If I don’t know, maybe Jessica does.”
“More like, um, after the thing with Alexander and Bristow, a lot of students hate us.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s hate, exactly,” Zed told her. “Not universally. But a lot of negative feelings.”
“Clementine and Shellie recommended we tackle the biggest threats first. So maybe who the big players who have reasons to be mad?”
“That is, uh, a very complicated question,” Zed replied. “If your reason for coming today was to ask that, it might have been better to go to Nicolette.”
“I came today to help. And to get away. And this is secondary. I figure while my friends are in class, I should try to work out next steps.”
“Clementine may have the right idea,” Zed replied, “But to narrow it down a bit more, I don’t think it’s the big threats who have reasons to be mad that you should be worried about. Small threats could be more dangerous.”
“Worry about the people who would take the time to find you and ruin your day, or hurt you,” Zed answered.
“The Tedds? America and Liberty aren’t that strong, and their reasons are a bit shallow and stupid, but they absolutely would gun for you.”
“Because America had a running joke about having a crush on Alexander, and with the way her head works, I could see her targeting you guys as a capstone for the joke. Doesn’t have to succeed or fail, just…”
“Has to ruin our day? Be dramatic enough?”
“That’s exactly what we don’t want. Problems for tomorrow.”
“Ray says something similar.”
“Ray recommended we do this. Get out ahead of this.”
“Ah,” Zed replied, and his expression changed a bit, a little more taut.
Brie’s, meanwhile, softened a bit, as she looked at Avery. Like… like a plea for something.
“He helped us out in the end, and was pretty cool,” Avery ventured.
Maybe, from the look on Brie’s face, that wasn’t the thing to say, or the thing Brie had wanted Avery to do. Maybe Brie hadn’t wanted anything at all.
But it wasn’t like it set Zed off. He barely reacted, only shaking his head a bit.
“Belangers,” Jessica said, from the head of their group.
“Or Ex-Belangers. I don’t know. But I think that group had a lot riding on stuff.”
“More stuff to ask Nicolette,” Zed said.
“Except she’s super busy, and she doesn’t want to get involved,” Avery answered.
A cold wind blew, and it didn’t have a feeling to it so much as it carried images. Phantom figures, flickering, suggesting, promising. Some were feminine, alluring.
“Shhh,” Jessica shushed them, her voice nearly lost in the wind.
Zed’s radio whispered. “Mark five and chatter… by the houses, end of the valley…”
“They hear us. Do you hear me? We’ve found you. You can stop looking now, boy and girls. Life is a long and empty search…”
Zed scrambled the channel.
“…and now you can finally stop,” the voice came through on the new channel.
“They must answer for being here first,” a stern voice added. “Then you can have them and they can have you.”
“But I don’t want them all broken and bloody…”
Jessica peeked around the corner. Avery ducked low to do the same. In the distance were three figures. All androgynous. One hooded, carrying a bundle under one arm, long branches, twigs, and bits of metal.
One with a tunic that tapered down to a point at the knees, head partially shaved and less-partially scarred. They wore gauntlets and metal boots, and broken glasses over their eyes. They had a heavy book under one arm.
The last one was underdressed for the weather, slender, shirt unbuttoned, hair long in a way that hid eyes. Bangles like the ring encircled the arms and rings were at the finger, and they looked heavy enough that they kept the arms from swinging as the lesser incarnation walked.
That last one raised those heavy, decorated arms.
Zed and Jessica’s eyes flashed with Sight as they focused on what it was doing. Brie and Avery followed suit.
As those arms raised, connections were forming, snapping into existence, and warping, between them and it.
“Yearning,” Jessica said.
“What? It’s Yearning?”
The hooded one dropped the bundle. Bits bounced out into the slushy snow at their feet. The one with the book raised their free hand to their mouth and whistled. Calling something.
“Good thing about it being Hunt is it’s about the pursuit, not actually catching,” Jessica said. “Same for Yearning.”
“What about Inquest? Or Inquisition?” Zed asked.
Jessica didn’t reply, focusing on running instead.
“You said you needed me,” Brie said.
“If they get close, the Choir is the only thing that can push back. It only buys us time.”
Galloping hooves were getting closer.
Avery broke away from the rest of the group.
“Careful!” Zed raised his voice. He had a device out.
They could distract, not stop. A bash with the ugly stick wouldn’t put them down, but if she could lure them away-
Avery used the black rope to cover ground.
Inquest was on a horse, draped in similar outfitting to what they wore. Avery whistled.
The horse was nimble. A second after the whistle, it had turned, and lunged into the trees, Inquest ducking low to avoid being clipped by branches.
Avery ran. And she couldn’t outrun a horse, but she could use the black rope, cutting this way and that, to be as unpredictable as possible.
She hadn’t expected the pressure, though. The way this woman on horseback seemed to read her mind, and veer in the right directions. Avery made a move, thinking she would get a good thirty feet away, and found Inquest within a second or two of grabbing her. Another move, a feint this time, and Inquest didn’t fall for it.
Her Sight helped her see movement. She tracked the figure on horseback and tried to lead it away from others.
She could also see connections. Some from Yearning. And those connections were vibrating, moving. Each was a film reel of scenes and the reel was… winding up?
She saw the final bit of retraction out of the corner of her eye, like the tape measure slapping its way into the container, rounded a tree, and saw Yearning within arm’s reach, reaching.
She expected a firm grab, those rings digging into her arm.
Instead, a soft touch on the cheek.
Avery stopped running, eyes locked to the figure, looking past the hair to eyes that had stars in them. Yearning smiled, hand resting against the side of Avery’s face.
The horse reared up as the rider stopped. “She called to me.”
“I got to her first, Inquest.”
The horse, still rearing, slapped hooves to snowy dirt.
Staring into Avery’s eyes, Yearning sighed, smiling.
Avery remained frozen, unsure what to do.
A tumbling sound came from their right, but neither looked away, even as the horse whinnied.
A stampede. Waifs, rushing in. They were fast, and they were hungry. They bowled over Inquest and the horse, and Inquest rolled, rising to their feet at the end of the roll. Waifs grabbed Inquest and tried to pull them to ground. They couldn’t.
It felt like a long ten seconds before the waifs ran over Avery and Yearning, separating them. It was probably only a second or two. Yearning smiled in the last second before the waifs hurled them to ground.
Avery was pulled away too, but the waifs disappeared.
“I told you to be careful!” Zed shouted, angry.
The anger was enough to jar Avery back to reality.
“I only have a minute of battery,” Zed told her, as she reached him. Brie was there, too, directing the waifs. Dismissing them any time they got too close to Avery.
Zed clicked a button on the handheld device.
It was like the device that had created that plastic-bag-head Other. The fake environment. They kept running, but now there were walls between trees, then more walls, and then they were indoors, running through a long hallway.
Avery glanced back and saw Yearning, two kids holding each arm.
“Don’t look back!” Zed barked. “Can you keep up, Brie!?”
“Yeah. Where’s Jess?”
Zed didn’t reply, instead taking time to tap on the device.
“What are you doing?” Avery asked.
“Concentrating. Trying to adjust the space-”
There was a tearing sound, and Zed hurled himself into the wall.
No- not hurling himself. A wooden arrow as long as Zed’s arm had punched through the wall, alongside Zed, and impaled the device he held.
The walls he’d thrown up fizzled out. Zed remained where he was, The arrow stuck through the sleeve of his leather jacket and attached him to the tree. He tugged and didn’t budge.
Avery turned. Past about a hundred trees, barely visible, was Hunt, holding a crossbow about as large as Hunt’s entire upper body. They dropped another arrow into it, holding it level.
“Here!” Jessica shouted.
Avery looked over, looked back to Zed.
Avery went to Zed, hefting the ugly stick, and shouted, “Down!”
There was no room or good angle for the swing, so Avery chose a bad angle, and trusted Zed to get out of the way. The club hit the tree and splintered wood, smashing, blistering, and scattering fragments of arrow.
Zed came free, and stumbling forward, hauled on Avery. Both off balance and pushing off the other, it was a moment that could have made their falls that much worse, the two of them landing in a heap. Should have. But Avery was in the zone, focused on moving and getting away, and Zed might have been too, and together they stayed upright.
Brie ran alongside, a few trees over. A waif on a branch caught an arrow meant for Brie, and slammed into her. She found her feet.
Avery started to move in Brie’s direction, wanting to help. Zed stopped her.
“Straight, go straight,” Zed urged. “She’s a survivor. Trust.”
Avery focused on going forward, one hand on Snowdrop so she wouldn’t jostle her too much.
Jessica had found a way. An echo surrounded by heavy mist.
Yearning laughed as they plunged into the mist.
Their pursuers didn’t pass the threshold.
Another facet of the Ruins. Buildings loomed on either side, only vague silhouettes, shrouded by fog.
Figures darted in and out, or they watched, obscured. Echoes moved through the fog as well, and they didn’t have the wide, sweeping effects that the other echoes Avery had run into did. These were tighter, more personal. Focused on their own things. They brushed up against Avery, surprising, and pushing ideas and things into her head. Desires, wantings…
“Fog of… love?” Avery asked.
“Attentiveness, wariness, anticipation, the veil that tempts interest,” Jessica said. “Very different, and we aren’t staying long.”
“She had a damn close call,” Zed said. “That was dumb, Avery.”
“I thought I’d distract.”
“You distracted us too.”
“She did okay,” Brie said. “She just underestimated that they’d be good at closing the gap-”
“Can we-” Avery started, stopped.
“Can we what?” Zed asked.
“Just… save the arguing over how I screwed up for after? This is a lot,” Avery winced. Her heart was still hammering and the echoes here, while subtle, were nagging at her brain, like they had fishhooks and barbs.
Snowdrop, nestled near her belly, gave her a nuzzle. She gave Snowdrop a pet through the material of her jacket.
“After, then,” Zed said. “Sorry.”
“Reminds me of my Sight,” Avery mused, looking around.
“The veil?” Jessica asked.
“Yeah. I’ve heard people theorize that the Sight might lean on these sorts of things, depending on who we are. Desolate ruins for anger, darkness for fear and apprehension. Cold for mourning.”
“I See the world as dark with laser outlines,” Zed said.
“I see the world the Hungry Choir brought me into,” Brie said.
“Yeah,” Jessica replied. “I don’t see anything too different. I needed clear vision, going in.”
Figures in the fog taunted, tempted, distracted. Avery flinched away from looking, then flinched again as one brushed her arm. Greed, theft, stealing, selfishness…
“Need a chocolate covered protein bar?” Jessica asked.
Avery nodded. Those starvation winds and echoes had done a number on her midsection.
“What else? Do you want to stop?”
“I want to get through here,” Avery replied. “Distract me?”
“With?” Jessica asked.
“I dunno. Your girlfriend? I know how Zed and Brie met. Or is that too personal?”
“Yes,” Jessica said. “It’s personal.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Avery felt her face flush. Zed was mad and Jessica was offended, and Brie had her own stuff to deal with. She shouldn’t have come.
“Jess,” Zed said, “Come on. She doesn’t want to pry. She wants… guidance, I guess? You hinted at that the day you came to school.”
“Yeah,” Avery said. She still felt the heat of flush at her face.
“What do you want to know?” Jessica asked. “Turn. Watch for trouble.”
They turned a corner. The mists were darker, the echoes slippery. It was hard to think straight, because it was a crowded alley and there was nowhere to go that didn’t involve brushing up against something and getting ideas pushed into her head.
Jessica forged the way at least, walking a few feet ahead, parting the incoming crowd of figures that were barely visible in dense fog.
“How did you meet? When did you know?”
“When she kissed me. She was my friend and then she kissed me, and asked me to think on it before saying anything. So I did. And now we’re together.”
Avery huffed out a laugh. “That easy? You didn’t know before?”
“No. I had other things to think about.”
They passed through a patch of dark, and cold wind blew.
Weird, that this desolate wintery sadness would be a relief. Avery shivered. Getting cold, not-cold and then getting cold again had sweat running down her body now, chilling her.
And they still had to get home.
An echo stumbled toward them. Looked like a teenager who’d blown off his hands and face with a firecracker.
“I keep meeting people who… I get tempted into thinking they might have answers,” Avery said. “And then they don’t. No offense, or anything.”
Jessica snorted, and Avery had no idea how to read the snort.
“Like Clementine?” Brie asked. “She’s pan, I think, with someone nonbinary. That’s what you’re talking about, right?”
Avery nodded. She hadn’t known for sure about Clem, specifically, but that was confirmation. Cool. “I wanted to ask Clementine stuff but we didn’t get the chance and I have her email but I dunno how I’d word the really basic, stupid questions.”
“My face,” the echo with the massacred face mourned, stumbling.
“You can’t ask your parents?” Jessica asked.
“My face!” the echo raised his voice.
“Shut up!” Avery shouted at him. “Screw off! Geez! Have some manners! I’m talking with people here!”
The echo remained where he was, rocking in place, ruined hands held near his ruined face.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, but what do you want me to do about it? Do you want me to salt you? End that? That sucks, really, but I don’t know what else to do for you.”
The echo swayed, then muttered, “So sorry.”
She watched it stumble off.
“Sorry,” she said. “I hope you find peace or whatever.”
“Your parents?” Zed asked.
“Different. I dunno. I go home in a few days or a week and a few days, and I don’t know what it’ll be like, but I think we’re having that conversation. Whatever they could tell me about love and looking for love I just… I think it’s way different. My circumstances. There’s apparently nobody for me in Kennet. Like, an Other told me that. How do you even deal with that?”
“Here,” Jessica said.
They walked up to a lakeside.
“Careful on the ice. If you fall through, you end up in the Abyss, not the Ruins, and it’s a lot harder to get out,” Jessica said.
“I’ll calibrate. You talk to Ave,” Zed told Jessica.
This was their destination. Using Zed’s tech to get Jess a concrete lead. But they had to be in the right place, in the right facet of the Ruins.
“I thought we were similar, because we’re both explorers, we’re gay, we… strike off on our own, I guess,” Avery said.
“Sorry,” Jessica answered. “I’m not good at this. I could ask my girlfriend. She might be more similar to you.”
“I’m trying to improve myself, and become someone better, that attracts cool people, but that feels shaky when we’re currently struggling with half the school hating us.”
“Which is tough with certain key classmates, I’m told,” Brie said.
“Yeah, we kind of had almost-friends here and there, and now we don’t as much. You guys, but you’re older.”
“Yeah. You could always ask those other students outright, if they want to make a connection. It’s awkward if you’re leaving, but things can be established long-distance.”
“Kind of,” Avery admitted. “That’s more Lucy than me, though.”
“Is it?” Brie asked, sounding surprised.
“Isn’t it?” Avery asked. “Why does this feel… are we talking past each other?”
They walked on the ice, and dark shapes moved beneath the surface. Here and there, a footstep produced a cracking sound, but Avery didn’t see actual cracks.
On the far side of the lake was a bird.
“My witness,” Jess noted.
As they got closer, Avery could hear a dog barking.
They walked up to the bird, and it remained very still. Zed slipped on his power glove, then put his hand up, lifting the bird from its perch.
Pale, the songbird began to take on color, until it glowed from within.
“There,” Zed said. “Freshly fueled, bright, easy to track.”
“The last four times I found this bird, I got close,” Jess said.
“And you know the general direction from the failed ritual.”
“But you do know,” Zed told Jess.
Jessica rubbed her hands together and blew on them.
“See you later?” Zed asked. “A few weeks? Months?”
“Unless things go badly.”
“Get in touch after. Let us know how it went.”
They stood there awkwardly for a bit. Zed lifted the bird from his finger and moved it to Jessica’s.
There were distant shouting sounds, men and an alarmed child. A dog’s barking continued, incessant, mingling with the faint, barely audible song of the Choir.
“You can find your way back, I hope,” Jessica said. “I can’t lead you.”
“It’s why Avery’s here, in part,” Zed told her. “You’re pretty good at navigating this place.”
“Good,” Jessica said. She hesitated. “Thanks.”
“Thank us with a call after. I mean it,” Zed told her. “I don’t want us to never talk again because you don’t need us anymore.”
Then, without further fanfare, she headed out into the cold Ruins, following the pointing beak of a bird-shaped echo that had witnessed her cousin being dragged away by authorities.
Leaving Brie, Zed, and Avery standing there.
“We can talk on our way back,” Brie said. “I don’t know what advice I can give, I’m… a pretty boring girl who likes tough guys with a nerdy interior.”
“I’d like to think I’m tough and nerdy, inside and out both,” Zed said, flexing the glove with the keyboard and buttons built into it, before giving her a peck on the lips.
“Again,” Brie told him. “Warms my Self up, and that’s important in this place.”
Zed kissed Brie more seriously.
“So yeah? Good to head back?” Brie asked. “Mission successful?”
“Warms me up, Jessica getting what she wants. Seeing you guys happy,” Avery said, quiet. She peeked down past her zipper and confirmed that Snowdrop was fast asleep. Which was annoying because she had to keep Snowdrop propped up so she wouldn’t fall out the gap between jacket and pants. “Before, you were talking about-”
“Fernanda?” Brie asked, interrupting.
“Fer-what?” Avery asked, her brain stumbling mid-thought.
“Sorry, that was blunt. We were talking about your plans.”
“Oh. Ohhhh. Students we don’t want to be our enemies. Yeah. So it’s sounding like the Belanger circle, or what’s left of it, maybe the Tedds as a danger we could try to sort out. And a couple others.”
“And the opposite of enemies?” Brie ventured, voice gentle, giving Zed a look.
Zed helped out. “Students you wanted to keep in touch with. Closer connections, alliances, more-than-alliances?”
“Wait. This goes back to Fernanda?”
“Your friends were concerned, after you told them you were bummed that you missed out on talking to Clementine,” Brie said.
Zed added, “Which in a roundabout way, led to us agreeing to take you on this outing.”
“Yes, but what? What? Where does Clementine fit into this? Or that? Or Fernanda?”
“And they gently made sure we were already aware you were gay before broaching the topic of your crush on-”
“Fernanda?” Avery interrupted. “Crush? No.”
She paused. The three of them stood on ice above the dark Abyss, in a snowy hellscape of sad, all bewildered, failing to connect the dots.
“Verona. Verona talked to you.”