Chapter Four: Prices and Prospects

 The Emblem of the Star-Crossed Lovers (Interitus 1: Book X)

            Chapter Four – Prices and Prospects

             

            I wasted years of my life wide awake but sleeping. She saved me from my sleep and soothed my sordid soul, but she came and left as if I were just dreaming. But this dream of lost love left a hole, so like a nightmare I wake screaming. She poured like water from a broken bowl—a bowl cursed such that it can never be full. But even while sleeping, I heard her voice still singing. Even while dreaming, I could not stop from screaming. I was incomplete without her.

It was three days after I killed Aziel and assimilated his merciless soul that I arrived at the door to the tunnel. It was only with his stolen sense of direction that I managed to find the door in the first place. It was only with my ambition and his will that I withstood the force of my own starvation.

Bellaina had said that she would welcome me back into Bones City in this place so that I could pay my debt with servitude, but I had been gone for weeks. Any ordinary person would have simply assumed that I had died a pointless death in the endless desert. Even as I set my hand upon the door to the tunnel, a part of me believed that I had actually died in the desert; this part believed that I had simply hallucinated this journey as an afterlife to placate me if I died alone without Alyssa. I could practically feel her heavenly hand holding mine, guiding me through the badlands as I stepped upon the edge of death.

When I banged my fist on the locked door, I could feel my own evanescent existence approach its end, but I had come too far to turn back now. I want to say that Aziel had galvanized my spirit, but the truth is that our two souls had converged in that starlit shower of blood. I could not even tell us apart anymore. Just as Aziel cannibalized the bodies of weary wanderers and assimilated their flesh into his, I had cannibalized Aziel’s soul and integrated his valorous heart into mine. I envisioned the future for which I had fought in the desert and sacrificed myself; it catalyzed a surge of strength which shot through my arms and into my sword. I struck the door twenty-eight times until it finally shattered into a shower of woodchips.

Even after the shambles settled on the staircase in a space lit only by starlight, I could hear footsteps storming through the underground tunnel. Desperate to escape the badlands and the monsters which dwelled there, I drove my dying body to descend the staircase. When I heard a steel door unlock and saw the fiery glow of a torch destroy the darkness, I dropped my sword and collapsed against the dusty wall. One of my discoverers rushed up the staircase, but the other hoisted me onto his shoulders. When he helped holster the sword I dropped, I saw a flash of his face in the fiery light. I could see the flame shimmer in his dark green eyes; I could see his short golden hair familiarly flicker from the wind which flowed from the desert into this tunnel. But just as I slowly came to recognize him, he similarly recognized me. Despite that we were almost on the other side of the city, he was the same man who first led me to Bellaina on the night I left Bones City.

“Asivario! I hope this doesn’t sound crass, but I really didn’t think we’d see you again! What was it like out there?” asked the friendly man with the short gold hair.

I shook my head and said with a wince, “Please forgive my impertinence. Do you have any food? I don’t mean to be rude. I walked for days in the desert and nearly met death. It may be any minute now that I draw my last breath.”

The kind man answered as his green eyes grew wide, “We do have some food, so please come inside.”

I barely remember the moments that followed. Like a runner fueled by euphoria until they cross the finish line, I did not even realize the extent of my exhaustion until I stepped foot inside the city walls. One man locked the door behind me while the other guided me into a dreary chamber lit by a flickering lamp. I may have fallen asleep during the entire experience, and it wasn’t until partway through the meal that I emerged from my fugue state. I can’t help but wonder if my hunger had devoured me because I had assimilated Aziel into myself.

“It must have been hard. Do you think you can speak?” asked the kind man when I finished my feast.

“I felt like a wave cursed to never reach shore. I pushed myself forward like a soldier in war; I lived only because she’s worth fighting for,” I said to the man who let me in through the door.

But he merely chuckled and said with a grin, “There you go speaking in riddles again! Our dark queen doesn’t appreciate your words like I do, but that’s alright! You still have a place in our organization anyway!”

I stifled my chewing as I tried to say, “I owe her a debt I intend to repay. Though I could run, I instead choose to stay. I will find my Alyssa again one day; I will find her again in Ember Bay—the woman for whom my heart was forged in flame. But until we are to meet again someday, I will do as she asks and work the days away.”

The man stood beneath the flickering lights and said, “I don’t know your job since we thought you were dead. Bellaina is the queen of this city’s underworld, but I am her courier. She lives in a home at the edge of the riverbed, so I will bring you there to learn her expectations. It’s likely that I’ll have to show you our rendezvouses around town, so I suppose it’s only fair that we formally meet. I am Donovan, the courier of the dark.”

I nodded slowly and stood up from the table. I saw my own reflection in a pane of stained glass. My skin was stained by desert sand, and my bloodshot eyes revealed my exhaustion. Even after eating an enormity, my sunken face betrayed the truth of my emaciation. My hair was bound together by sweat. Though I had never cared about my appearance in the past, since it had been hidden by the walls of the tunnel which bound my vision, I could clearly see the criticality of my collapse. Even Donovan could see I was in no state to venture across the starlit city, so instead he sent me to the shower. Minutes poured away as my stains from the desert flowed down the drain. When I emerged from the shower, I collapsed onto a dusty cot in a dark room where I dreamt of the day I would see her again. It was a soft silence broken by her voice in the dark, like her immortal soul whispered to me in pieces a promise of our future love.

When I awoke from a long sleep and wandered down the staircase, I found Donovan in the building’s entrance. A kind woman stood a short distance from him as a television flickered in the background. Whispered words emanated from its speakers as blurry subtitles spanned the screen. Donovan’s words were eclipsed by the television in the background, but her words pierced the ambient din.

She said as the television lit her bright blue eyes, “I swear that this place will be your demise. Please be careful, my love. I know you have a good heart, but Bellaina and her cronies are dangerous. I know she pays well, but you can’t support us if you get hurt. Andrew and Dana need their father—you know that. Don’t you think this city has enough orphans as it is?”

Donovan nodded and whispered an inaudible response. I watched them embrace each other deeply in the dark room, illuminated only by the television flicker as the sound of static stole the silence. I could feel their love from a distance, but it was a love constrained by the limits of an unfair reality. Just as I lost Alyssa to her own ephemerality, their bond was obfuscated by the trials of life. I waited for her to leave before I entered the room where Donovan stood in silence. He smiled when he saw me and motioned toward the door. I nodded quietly, so he put on his hat and exited into the street.

Donovan said as we walked together in the street, “I think the way that you speak is really neat! You probably never had much trouble with women, am I right? Even if you did something to upset them, you could probably just make up some rhyme about the lights in the sky or something. Am I onto something here?”

“We loved with a love that was greater than love. I am the dying ember in the night, and she is the wind which sends sparks to summon flames which light our world. I cannot catch fire without her, but the stars themselves envy the inferno of our blazing love; they crossed and cursed us apart because we dared to light the dark. We will meet again and burn so brightly that we will bury every star in the sky. We are star-crossed today, but tomorrow the stars will beg for our mercy. No force is strong enough to hold us apart,” I answered.

Donovan asked because he was still unclear, “I take it that means she’s no longer here?”

I had no interest in answering his question. I let his words pass into silence as we walked from block to block, passing by quiet roads lit by the orange glow of streetlights. We walked past a small park where the silhouettes of young children danced through the darkness. It was empty scenery to me, but Donovan watched it as we walked by. Two children pushed themselves on a pair of swings, almost as if they challenged each other in a contest for height.

I asked as we walked on the block just past the park, “What does it mean to be the courier for the dark?”

Donovan answered with a dejected gaze, “It’s pretty grim stuff, but at least it pays. My Anna is my life, but she has a condition that she passed to our kids. The medicine isn’t cheap, but Bellaina offered to pay for everything. She has built an underworld beneath the shadows of this city. It’s more than just buildings with tunnels that lead outside the walls; she also traffics people inside the city. She has a network of people in her employ, and she pays them with the dead. She trades favors with aristocrats and politicians alike. She’s built an empire on the graves of the dead.”

“But what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that she built an empire and declared herself queen. Most people in this city turn a blind eye to their worries about the world outside the wall, so they convince themselves that everything here must be safe. I don’t understand it myself, but she steals quintessence from the dead. She trades that to her priciest customers. I arrange the meetings. I arrange the negotiations. I have helped deliver many vagabonds who were not seen again. I wish I didn’t have to, but it’s the price I’ve chosen to pay,” Donovan explained as if he believed there was no other way.

“I’ll admit I have never heard of quintessence,” I said, hoping to distract him from his penance.

“I can’t say I understand it entirely myself. This probably makes me sound like an insane person, but… I’ve seen Bellaina and some of her customers do some pretty crazy things. Like… supernatural things. I didn’t believe it the first time, but now, I’m pretty sure it’s somehow related to their rituals. Tell me, Asivario. Do you believe in the supernatural?”

I didn’t think of my revelation as a secret I should keep, nor did I feel much like lying through my teeth. I said as we walked past a pair of seedy bars, “I believe that our lives are painted in the stars. I believe the stars steer the course of our fate, and so we are cursed to walk the path that they state. And though I know our souls will cross again one day, I hate that I lost her more than words can say. Even if I know she will echo into my life someday as someone else, I am lost in the night like a space between what I want and what I have. I don’t want to be lost if I am lost without her. I would send the stars from the sky to strike the city if it meant seeing her again.”

Donovan shook his head and chuckled. He motioned to the left side of the street where I saw a river flow behind some buildings. The reflections of starlight shimmered on the surface of the flowing water, and streetlights illuminated the alleys that led to the river. It was a sign that we were close to our destination at the riverbed house, but a part of me enjoyed the peaceful walk with Donovan.

“It seems that we’ve both found a way to justify crimes committed for love. But to tell you the truth… you won’t find many others like us in the underworld. Bellaina is a very fair businesswoman, but she destroyed any human attachments a long time ago. She’s merciless. Morality means nothing more to her than a joke for the poor,” Donovan warned me as we walked up to her door.

Donovan took a deep breath before rapping his knuckles on the door. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound reverberate through the large structure at the edge of the riverbed. It almost sounded like a clamor in the dark when you want nothing more than to hide safely in the shadows. I measured time by my accelerated heartbeat as I held my breath. Three pairs of footsteps clattered quietly upon the floor inside her home, but I only opened my eyes when I heard her door creak open. I saw the shapes of two large men standing in the shadows, but behind them stood the queen of the dark. Bellaina glared at me with sharp blue eyes which pierced my soul.

“You are different now than you were before,” she said as she stepped outside her door.

“I journeyed for weeks across the endless sand,” I answered as my legs struggled to stand.

But Bellaina shook her head and stepped closer. I felt a cold sweat cover my skin as she reached for the sword I kept hidden in my holster. She unsheathed it just slightly and peered into the blade which shimmered in the streetlight. Even with only inches of its metal exposed, she could tell by its battle scars that it was not the same sword with which she had left me. She could hear the steel whisper its stories with a steady stare.

“The man to whom I gave a sword was one too weak to see the power it could give him over other men. This is not the same sword, and you are not the same man. The mysterious man I met was too weak to take what he wanted from this world, but that isn’t true anymore. In just the time you were gone, you changed. I can see it in your eyes; I can breathe it from your soul. It’s almost a shame that your only use now is to serve as a cog in the machine that orchestrates the darkness that drives this city.”

Though I was unnerved, I managed to say, “I owe you a debt I intend to repay.”

Bellaina chuckled before she finally said, “I will have you serve as a courier, but for the dead. Just as Donovan drags desperate clients and commodities across this city, I will charge you with burying the refuse. Our disciples depend on us to dispose of the dead, and our last gravedigger in the end suffered the same fate as those he once buried. This will be your task from now and on, but rest assured that you will be paid properly. Mateo, please prepare the wagon for our newest associate.”

“If that is my task, then that is my role,” I said to the woman whose eyes pierced my soul. She merely chuckled to herself without another word to say; she walked into her house, and then she walked away. Before long, her henchman hoisted a heavy wagon outside. As he set it down and left, he smirked with pride.

Donovan faced me and said with a smile, “Just bury the bodies somewhere safe for a while. As long as they’re bones by the time they’re found, no one can trace it back to her. It’s hard to make a cemetery inside the city, but I know you can do it. I’ve really got to run, but there should be some places by the north edge of the city.”

I nodded and thanked Donovan for his time. Though I was charged to scour the streets of the city and find a suitable cemetery for the victims of the dark, I decided instead to search for the space where my next life would begin. I carried the heavy wagon behind me, straining my muscles to overcome the force that fought to keep the dead at peace. As if destiny itself taunted me in a cruel twist of irony, I saw several spaces on the way which could have served as burial grounds for the bodies I carried. I found favorable fields without wandering witnesses anywhere in sight. I found old buildings which had not seen a soul in decades. I mentally noted these locations, but I trekked instead toward the ocean. My heartbeat accelerated when I saw the starlight shimmer on the steaming sea. Even when I stepped onto the sand of Ember Bay, I could tell that this was the place where we were destined to reunite; this was the place where my next life would begin.

Ember Bay was far from the markets and the factories. Ships would sometimes set sail from the pier, but the waves were turbulent and rarely allowed passage. Moored boats waited in the waves like wingless birds. There wasn’t a soul anywhere in sight. Large clusters of rocks glistened in the water just offshore, discouraging beachgoers from choosing this as their venue. I couldn’t see or hear anyone in any direction, so I unlocked the container in the wagon which concealed the corpses. I saw three men inside, all covered in facial hair and timeworn scars. They looked to lament the lives they lived long ago, as if their misery stained their face in the same way that a spring stretched too far can never unstretch. Their bodies showed no signs of injury or poison, so I checked for a heartbeat or any sign of breathing. Every vital sign confirmed their death, so I suspected that they were somehow asphyxiated. They suffered a terrible death at the end of their hopeless lives, almost as if the stars had cursed their souls to an eternal anguish.

I slashed through the sand at the water’s edge and dug a deep hole. Like a child building a sandcastle by the water, I protected the hole from the steaming sea with the very sand I upended from the ground. A part of me wished I had chosen somewhere else to bury these broken bodies; it felt like I was defiling hallowed ground by sinking corpses in the sand. I convinced myself that it was too late for fate to change its mind, and if I used this place as my own private cemetery, then I could continuously come to Ember Bay. I could continuously inspect the beach for the woman with whom I would walk into eternity. In that way, the bodies I buried were like little steppingstones leading to the place where our paths would cross and conjoin forever. It was only fitting that our eternal convergence would literally take place on the backs of the dead as a testament to the reality that I would sacrifice anything for her. There was no price too expensive to pay. There was no line I would not cross. I could kill my conscience and burn the world to cinders if it meant she would somehow emerge from the ashes on blazing wings of reborn love.

So with a dirt-stained sword in my hand, this became my routine. Almost like a loop or a life left in limbo, I went through the motions, waiting for the day we would meet again. I found a letter on my door each morning in the starlit mist. It gave me the location of a place where Bellaina needed bodies removed. I would wallow and wander through the streets of Bones City as workers shuffled through the markets. Though I was not the only person pushing a wagon on the way to work, I received perplexed glances from others in the crowd. I wondered if perhaps they knew that my soul was stained by the badlands and the underworld, or perhaps they could sense that I was meant for an eternal love which transcended the mortal binds of their ephemeral lives. It made no difference to me. Sometimes I would purchase some fruit using the money with which Bellaina had paid me, and the merchants seemed friendly enough. Sometimes I would wander wearily through the artist markets, watching with wasted wonder as painters and musicians strived to share their craft with the world.

Each morning, I would arrive at another one of Bellaina’s dens where the underworld discarded the dead. Each afternoon, I would wheel the wagon through the shadows of the city in its quieter streets. Sometimes there were only two bodies, but sometimes I had to push as many as five. Sometimes I would inspect the corpses, although they were almost always the same. Their skin was stained with the scars of a long life lush with lost light. But no matter how many faded lacerations marked their bodies, I never saw any sign of the killing blow. The curiosity tempted me, almost like dying embers licking at my heels, but it made no difference in the end. So each day in the early evening, I would wheel the wagon onto the starlit shore and bury the bodies beneath the sand. The waves would wash away all evidence of my crimes. I would scour the sand and the sea one more time for her, and then I would retire to my bed and dance in my head with the girl I’ve never met. I did not know what Alyssa would look like in her next incarnation, so even in my fantasies, she remained a blank slate.

This cycle repeated itself so many times that I eventually lost count. I envisioned our first meeting on that starlit shore so many times that I discredited the reality when I first found her standing in the shallows. I convinced myself that it was a vivid prayer in the form of a daydream—a rewritten reality but only in reverie. She stood in the shallows with skin stained by scars of sandstorms from a life long lost, but her hazel eyes ignited in the moment her gaze met mine. I did not know anything about her in that moment; I knew nothing of the life she lived or the actions and consequences that led to our convergence. I did not even know her name in this incarnation. All I knew was that our souls were destined to dance as twin flames in an endless spiral, unconstrained by the mortal chains of time and death. She stumbled toward me on bloodied feet, but she nearly collapsed when a weak wave washed by. I caught her in my arms and embraced her in the steaming sea. Saltwater shimmered in the starlight as it fell from her hair like rain. Her clothes were plastered to her skin.

 I said to her as I transcended my abyss, “I buried old memories just to clear room for this.”

She whispered as she set my right hand on her scars, “Our trials in this life are written in the stars. I always thought they had condemned me, but something unspoken drew me to the city. It was like a spark in my heart or an ember in my soul.”

“It was a light like the stars which dance around us now.”