The Tears of the Dead

 

Mark Rookyard

 

 

Seventh Day, Third Circle

This is my first entry. Well, really it’s my second, but Father read the first one and tore the page out and threw it into the water. It floated there, staining brown and dirty before it sank into the darkness. Precious paper gone to waste. I thought I was in trouble. I looked at Father, trying not to cower, but he was smiling at me. His eyes looked sad but he smiled, and then he was gone into the darkness for a moment, the candles flickering as he passed.

When Father came back, he had something wrapped in a ragged cloth. ‘This is very precious,’ he said. It was a book. Not just any book, Father said. A dictionary. I’d never heard the word before, but Father said it was a book about words. Now, if I don’t know how to spell a word, I have to look in this dictionary. Dictionary. That’s a hard word to spell, too.

I have to look after this dictionary, Father says. He showed me some faded writing in the book, it was slanted and full of loops. ‘That’s your mother’s name, son,’ he said. ‘That’s her writing.’

He put his hand on my shoulder, he never does that, and he told me to look after the book as though it was the last fish that I would ever eat. I wrapped it in the cloth and hid it behind a loose brick in the wall. I’ll only take it out when I write in this book. I have to keep it dry, too, Father says.

It’s hard to keep things dry down here.  The brown water gets everywhere and makes them sludgy.

 

Tenth Day, Third Circle

Father was very pleased with my writing after he gave me the dictionary. I’d spelled precious correctly, and dictionary, and wrapped, and many other words too. He patted me on the head and smiled. His smiles look sad these days. He used to have great big-toothed smiles.

He’s been arguing more with Joe lately, though. Joe is the leader down here. I don’t know why, or who chose him, or if he chose himself. He always has the first choice of the females, and he always chooses who goes upstairs. I wonder if that’s why Father has been arguing with Joe. I hear my name a lot when they fight. I just asked him, he’s here with me cleaning the sludge from his boots. He said he’s always argued with Joe and it doesn’t concern me.

Joe was one of the first of us. His skin is thick and grey, hard. His eyes are darker than any of ours, almost black. Joe remembers better than any of us what life was like upstairs before the Ship came. He doesn’t tell us stories though. Father is the one for stories. He tells us what life was like before the Ship came.

I just asked him how old he was when the Ship came from the sky. He said six summers. I wonder what a summer is.

 

Sixteenth Day, Third Circle

Father says not to read my dictionary or write in my book when the others are about. None of them can read or write, he says, and they might get jealous if they saw me. He says they might steal the precious books. People get jealous when they can’t do something right, he says. Like us living down here in the dark, we hate those who live upstairs in the sun and we steal from them. They surrendered to the Wizards from the Ship and we hate them for it, but we are jealous, too, we wish we were there with them in the sun.

Father says a lot of things in the darkness, while we’re huddled together away from the others. I don’t agree with him all the time. I can’t imagine the sun. Wouldn’t it burn my skin, hurt my eyes? And the Wizards from the Ship, those who came with the magick that burned us all, turned our skin hard and our nails long, they’re still there, upstairs. I wouldn’t want to be near them.

But when Father talks like that, his eyes look faraway and I just let him talk while I go to sleep. Sometimes then I dream of the sun and it is large and red and burns my skin and the Wizards from the Ship watch and laugh.

 

Second Day, Fourth Circle

Father and Joe have been arguing again. Father’s skin was even greyer than usual when he came back to our corner.

One of the others found an old chair in one of the tunnels and brought it back. The paint is peeled and the back ripped, but Joe claimed it for his and now he only speaks when he’s sitting in this chair. He still has the black gown as well that Tim stole for him last circle.

Joe thinks I need to be blooded, Father says. Father says nobody needs to be blooded and warned Joe to stay away from me. Last night, though, Father said he might be away for a day or two. He told me to hide my precious books, not to get them out while he was away. I don’t like when Father goes away. Joe always comes to talk to me. When Father is here, Joe ignores me.

Father is getting ready now. He’s put his boots on and his cleanest cloak. It’s green with a hood. When he hides his skin and eyes, I know where he’s going. Upstairs. He has a knife, too. It looks dirty and rusted, the handle is broken. Father has tucked it into the folds of his sleeves. He’s told me he has to do something. He doesn’t want to do it, I know. But he’s going to do it for us, to keep us safe.

I’ll miss him. When he isn’t here, I sit in our corner and watch the others in the flickering shadows. Usually Joe will choose a woman while Father isn’t here as well. He always goes first and then lets the others after. I don’t like that. The screams are loud here, echoing off the ceiling. And then, when the candles go out and the screams are loud in the dark, that’s when I feel most alone.

Father’s told me to stop writing now. He says he’ll be back as soon as he can and that he’ll miss me.

 

Sixth Day, Fourth Circle

Father’s back! He was gone longer this time.  He looked tired. I noticed blood on his cloak, but he smiled and said it wasn’t his blood. I wonder whose blood it was. I was full of questions, but he had to talk to Joe first. He was there until the candles nearly burned out, and they shouted at each other.

The others waited outside Joe’s tunnel, and they murmured and looked at each other every time they heard the shouts. They looked hungry, hunched and waiting like that. I didn’t like the way they itched and shuffled whenever they heard Father raise his voice. It made me worry about him, I don’t know why. Everyone is afraid of Father, even though he isn’t the biggest.

He’s back with me now. The others are in Joe’s tunnel and I can hear him speaking to them, almost shouting. Some of them are shouting back, or cheering. Father looks tired and he sits across from me, the fire casting quivering shadows on his grey cheeks. He’s still in his cloak, the hood thrown back. His hair looks thinner, sticking up in tufts. He caught a fish on his way home and now he cooks it over the fire. None of the others cook their fish, they eat them raw and bloodied. Father says it’s important to cook the fish from the brown river.

He’s read some of my book. ‘You’ve been practicing,’ he says. ‘This is an important book.”

I didn’t know how anything I wrote down here in the tunnels could ever be important. Nobody else here can read apart from me and Father.

‘For posterity,’ Father says, helping me spell the word. It means for those who come after us, he says.

I say I didn’t think any would come after us. When our young are born, we wrap them in towels scavenged from upstairs and put them in the brown river.

Father looks even more tired when I mention this. I think he thought I didn’t know. But I’m getting older, I see more. I hear more, too.

‘Yes,’ Father says, ‘you do hear more.’

He’s told me to put my book away now.

 

Tenth Day, Fourth Circle

Another young one was born yesterday. Nearly all the women have big bellies lately. Gert was the one; she fell to her knees screaming and waking everyone even before the candles were lit. It was noisy and dark and everybody was running about. I slipped into the water and my clothes still stink.

It seemed like Gert screamed for hours. Joe was pacing about in his black cloak, and soon he started shouting as well. He said he was going to kill Gert if she wasn’t quiet, so Father gave her a stick from the water to bite on. Her eyes were big and she looked scared.

When the young one came, I knew it was the same as the others. Joe, Father, Kirt and some of the others circled around the creature as Gert begged and pleaded behind them.

Joe shouted and swore, and then punched the wall until it cracked and the ceiling shook, candlelight flickering all about us. Father looked sad, and for once, he and Joe spoke to each other quietly. It reminded me of when they had been friends.

The quiet didn’t last long. Gert was still begging and pleading for her young one when Joe pointed at me. ‘The boy needs to become a man!’ he shouted, the little creature screaming in his arms. It was small with big arms, its skin hard and it looked as though it had only one eye and its teeth were large in its little face.

‘No! He’s too young,’ my Father said.

‘Young? Look at this!’ Joe shook the creature in his arms. ‘We need men! He hasn’t even been upstairs yet. You coddle the boy, let him become a man!’ The young one in his arms screamed and tried to bite Joe’s hard skin.

I wanted to support Father.  He’s looked so tired lately. But I thought he was tired from trying to keep me safe from the others, from arguing with Joe all the time.  I stood. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

Joe smiled and Father looked disappointed. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the young one. When Joe gave me it, it tried to bite me, twisting its large head, its teeth yellow in the candlelight. Its one eye was distended, and its grey skin mottled more than any of ours. It was a monster.

I wrapped it in a blanket. I wanted to cover its face but somehow this seemed a cruelty too far.

I could hear Gert’s screams follow me down the dark tunnel as I looked for somewhere quiet to give the young one to the brown water.

 

Thirteenth Day, Fourth Circle

Father didn’t speak to me for almost a day after that.  Joe seemed unusually happy. He’d even slapped me on the back with one of his great clawed hands. His nails are thicker even than Father’s, his teeth large and yellow when he smiles.

I think Father has forgiven me now. He’s just been telling me of upstairs. He says upstairs people live in buildings that are taller even than Joe’s tunnel. He says they have windows, big holes filled with glass that they can look through and watch the City. He says there is no sludge up there, and the people have soft skin and clothes that aren’t torn and muddied. He said he once saw one of the four that came on the Ship. Father says they are great Wizards and rule over the City with an iron fist. I don’t know what iron is,  I’ll look it up later.

I was falling asleep when I heard Father mention Mother. He said she still had some soft skin when she lived down here. She wasn’t like us, all grey and tough and mottled. He looked sad when he mentioned Mother; he always does. He then said that’s why he protects me from life down here, because Mother would have wanted more for me.

He went to sleep then, but I couldn’t. It makes me restless when I think of Mother. I can barely remember her. I remember a soft voice. I think she was singing, or maybe her voice just sounded like music to me. I remember white, as well. Perhaps she wore white once. After thinking of Mother, the tunnels here seem small and dark and c;losing in on me, and the water sounds loud and greedy, stinking the tunnels with the foul waste it carries.

I think it will take a long time before I sleep tonight.

 

Seventeenth Day, Fourth Circle

Joe called me into his tunnel today. He said Father has been protecting me too much. I know the others look at me differently, even those I grew up with like Brin and Dex, even Iris. They think I’m weak and wrinkle their noses as I walk past.

Joe sat in his chair. He’s got some kind of staff now with a golden ball on the top of it. He’s taken to wearing his hood up when he ‘holds court’, as he calls it.

He said I’m the last of my breed to go upstairs. All the others have been upstairs and brought back some trophy to prove they are kin. I’m the last. Joe wanted to know if I was kin, or some soft-skin.

Joe’s tunnel is full of treasures from upstairs now. Gold and silver things that shimmer in the candlelight. He says that if I prove to be kin then I can take a turn with the females. I thought of Gert and the creature I let slide into the brown water, and I thought of the screams I hear when the candles are burned out. I wouldn’t want that, but I do want to be kin.

I’m sorry Father, but I do want to belong.

 

First Day, Fifth Circle

Father was angry when he read my last entry. I knew he would be, but it was the disappointment I saw in him that hurt the most.

We had a long talk and he told me that he would take my turn this time, and when he gets back he will tell me why we’re different to those who live in the City, why we hide down here. He says it’s important to understand this before I go upstairs.

He also said I should learn of what Joe will want of me when I go. I didn’t like the look in Father’s eyes when he slid the knife into his sleeve. He pulled his hood up and didn’t look back when Joe called to him.

I saw the way the others looked at me when Father left. I’d never noticed before, but now I saw it for what it was: scorn. They think I’m weak and hide behind my Father, letting him do my work for me. Being weak is the worst thing anybody can be here.

Now I’m here in my corner alone with the candle burning low, I feel afraid as I hear the others shuffling about in the darkness, and hear the females’ screams.

 

Fifth Day, Fifth Circle

Father isn’t back yet. I’m worried about him. I even dreamed about him one night. I could hear his raised voice, arguing with Joe, as usual.

Joe called me to his tunnel today. He had his hood pulled low over his face and sat proud in his chair. The others huddled in the shadows, snuffling and watching me.

‘Your Father has been gone too long,’ Joe said from the shadows of his hood.

I had to admit that Father had been gone for longer than usual.

Joe smiled and the candlelight flickered on his black robe. ‘I’ve often worried about your Father’s love of the soft-skins,’ Joe said. ‘He’s brought you up more soft-skin than a true brother. I know you feel it in your bones.’

I know I’m different to the others. Even as I sit here writing while they are in the darkness whispering, some of them fighting deeper into the tunnels, I know I’m different. I didn’t want to admit this to Joe, though.

Joe beckoned me closer with a wave of his hand. He has grown his nails longer, they’re thick and tough, a sign of his strength. ‘Let me tell you of the soft-skins,’ he said. ‘You know what they are?’

Father told me they were the survivors of the Cataclysm, the survivors of the Wizard War after the Ship came. I knew that this wouldn’t be the answer Joe was wanting.

‘They’re the craven,’ Joe said. ‘Those who surrendered to the Ship from the sky. The ones who left us to suffer and burn under the magick of the invaders. They live up there now in the sun cowering under the rule of the wizards from the sky. They stole our life from us and leave us here forgotten in the darkness.’ He clenched a fist, his thick nails scraping on the grey skin. ‘This,’ he said, throwing back his hood and showing me his mottled forehead, the sagging eyes and large teeth, ‘this is what we and our ancestors got for standing and fighting against the invader. They are the ones who should be hiding in shame, not the ones who stood and fought.’ He smiled and lifted back his hood to cover his face. ‘Am I right or am I wrong?’

Joe has a way of talking that makes me think of strength and what is right. I think that’s why he can work the others into a screaming frothing frenzy sometimes, work them so that they draw blood fighting one another.

‘I’ve seen you writing,’ Joe said. ‘What good are words on paper here? Who will read them? Words,’ he made a dismissive gesture, the sleeves of his robe shivering with the gesture. ‘Words are like the tears of the dead to us. We need strength. Your Father needs strength. Do you know what the soft-skins will do to him if he is captured up there?’ I saw a flicker of a smile within the darkness of his hood. ‘He loves them I know, but they hate him. They hate all of us because we are a reminder of their own cowardice.’

I heard the sneers and jeers from the shadows of Joe’s tunnel when I said I would look for my Father. Joe’s eyes looked bright when he gave me a knife to take on my journey.

I’ve practiced here in my corner of the sewers, slipping the knife into the sleeves of my robe as I’ve seen Father do so many times. It falls with a clatter to the floor when I try.

I heard the sniggers in the darkness, so I reached for this book instead.

It makes me feel closer to Father.

 

Seventh Day, Fifth Circle

I did it. I went upstairs.

I came up into a dark alley. Water was falling from the sky. Not brown water like our river, clear water falling from broiling clouds in a dark sky. Towers loomed all about, some with openings that seemed to burn orange in the blackness of the night. Some of the towers leaned towards each other, almost touching above the alleys as though they whispered secrets to one another.  I stood and let the water fall on my shoulders, running down my cloak. I even risked turning my awful face to the cleansing water, closing my eyes and feeling it soak my hardened skin. The water was good and pure like this new world surely was.  I had never felt so clean, so free.

A noise and someone swore an emphatic oath at me. I opened my eyes to see a great beast bearing down on me, its nostrils flaring and its hard-nailed feet rearing up at me. I twisted and turned, my cloak flying about me and drops of water spraying as the beast ran past, the carriage it pulled bearing the shouting driver as he whipped the beast in his fury. A man with a powdered wig leaned out of the window of the carriage to look curiously at me, but I pulled my hood down low and hurried on.

I stumbled from one alley to the next, making sure my hood covered my face, my cloak wrapped tight around me. Everything was so loud; more of the beasts clattered past me, great carriages rumbled through streets still thronging with soft-skins despite the late hour. And those soft-skins! They had curled hair, even the men. They wore fine clothes that clung tightly to their bodies. They spoke in clear voices and used words that only Father and myself would have ever known.

Some soft-skins called out from stalls where food sizzling over hot fires. Meats spat and glistened in the light of great candles. The air was thick with the smell of it. I felt weak at the sight and smells of it all and reeled away to somewhere quieter.

I prowled down dark alleys and cursed myself for a fool. Something told me I belonged here. Here with the soft-skins and their grand clothes and pretty, unmarked faces. Here with their fine foods and great towers. But how could I? Deformed and grotesque as I was. I thought of this book and the dictionary hidden away near the brown river, and I hated myself.

I would get Joe’s bauble and leave. How could I ever have thought to find Father in such a place? The noise, the colour, the forest of dark towers all about me. There, a quiet bright open space far above me.  A window.  I looked this way and that, and saw no soft-skins. I jumped up, my nails clinging to the rough brickwork, and I climbed. My nails are good and strong, nothing like Father’s or Joe’s, but they made the climbing easy enough. The water still fell, running in rivulets down the great tower, soaking my cloak and hood. All around I could see more towers, dark in the night, and shimmering shadows cast by great candles.

I reached the window and slipped in. Water dripped from my cloak onto the thick rug beneath my feet. The room smelled fresh and bright, not like the thick sludgy smell of home.

There was a bed in the centre of the room, candles around it, and pictures on the wall. I thought of Joe and his hatred of the soft-skins. I picked up a bright, shining thing to give to him. It was heavy and cool.

‘Hello?’

My first feeliing was shame, not fear. I pulled my hood around my face and turned to jump out of the window. Seeing all the soft-skins had made me think of my own terrible appearance, and the quiet voice almost made me tremble with self-hatred.

Then she said, ‘No, don’t go.’

I stopped and cast a fearful glance at her from the confines of my hood. She held a candle, long and white, in one hand and a book in the other. It looked well read, the spine creased in the fleeting shadows cast by the candle. She looked pale and afraid, but still stood there, brave in her nightgown.

‘You’re one of them aren’t you?’ she said, peering over the light of the candle. ‘One of those who live beneath the streets. I saw one of you before, when I was a little girl. He was being chased and climbed up the wall of a house to escape. I was afraid of him but my mother said you’re the lost ones, those who fought to the end. You’re to be admired.’

I looked at the bright thing in my hand, some bauble of yellow and white metal. I felt ashamed.

The girl kept her distance, holding the candle up high. She must have found me fearsome and terrible to regard. She was about my age, taller and thinner. They look so soft and weak, these soft-skins. The smell of her made me think of wide open spaces and cool breezes. Of places I had never been. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Are you hungry?’ A pause. ‘Can I get you something to eat? Or are you cold? You’re soaked from all the rain.’

Rain.  I looked at the sleeve of my coat, the water dripping from it and leaving dark stains on the rug. How terrible I must look. How was it possible to feel so dreadful and ugly?

‘My mother says it is the tears of the dead that fall from the sky.  Sometimes I leave my window open to see it.”  She looked to the window, saw the water pattering against the pane. ‘That’s why it rains so much since the Wizards came. The dead weep for the living.’ She smiled, a quirk of a delicate cheek.

I thought of Mother, and how she would weep for her son to see him standing here, how she would feel knowing she had given birth to such a monster. I backed away, stumbling into a chest, dropping the bauble. I was afraid of the way I looked and the way I smelled. There was something terrible and frightening in the girl’s goodness, in her beauty.

‘Mother says we should always remember you and your kind. We should always fight and never forgive. You’re the reminder of what the Wizards did when they came to the City.’ She reached out a hand to my hood. ‘What they did must never be forgotten.’

I leapt out of the window. I scraped and clattered down the bricks, trying to gain purchase with my nails. Sparks lit the night and I landed on the ground with enough force to knock the wind from me.

When I got back to the sewers empty-handed, I heard the laughter echoing across the brown water.

I know when I close my eyes I’ll remember her shining hair and gentle face, the goodness in her smile and voice. Joe says we must hate them, but how can you hate beauty, how can you hate goodness?

 

Tenth Day, Fifth Circle

I have to go back.

Ever since I returned, the others have been scorning me, knocking me with their shoulders whenever they come near. Mocking my Father, asking with bright eyes and big yellow-toothed smiles if I’d found him yet. I feel very alone now. The tunnels feel smaller, the brown water louder, the darkness here more cloying.

I can’t help thinking of the world upstairs, of the City. The smells and the wonder and the beauty of it. I felt something there call to me, as though I belonged there rather than here, but then I look in the brown water and see my mottled grey face, the sagging eye sockets and the large teeth, and I know I’m only fooling myself. This is where I belong. These creatures are my kin.

I told Joe what had happened with the girl. He was silent a long moment after I told him. ‘Didn’t you have the knife I’d given you?’ he finally said. He had two of the females sitting next to him on the ground. Both of them looked at me from broken eyes. Both of them have big bellies.

I’d forgotten about the knife.

Joe lifted his hood back and looked at me from green-black eyes. They are both heavily hooded, the skin there rippled and tough. ‘Remember, they are to be hated. All those who surrendered to the Wizards from the sky are enemies to us. You find a lone female and she is to be killed. Your Father knows this and so should you if he had raised you properly.’ Joe’s smile was filled with teeth that glistened bright and yellow under the light of the many candles. All around us were baubles of the City, stolen by the others for Joe’s room. ‘You are still not kin, young one,’ Joe said. ‘And if your Father still hasn’t seen fit to return to us, you’re here on our good graces. You eat our fish on our good graces.’

He leaned forward and I could only see darkness under his hood.

I have to go back.

 

Twelfth Day, Fifth Circle

Her name is Daniella.

It was only as I looked up to that familiar window that I realized my feet had taken me there once more. I had sneaked there with my head hung low. The rain soaking my cloak. The tears of the dead heavy on my shoulders.

I climbed the wall easily, my nails strong, the bricks bright in the rain. She was sitting by the window watching me climb, and when I neared the window she moved to the far side of the room. This time the room was lit by four candles in each corner, enough to light the room, but still leaving enough darkness for me to hide my deformities.

‘I wondered if you would come back,’ she said. ‘I hoped you would.’

‘Why?’ I said. The first word I ever said to her. My tongue felt thick, and my teeth large, the single word too loud and uncultured. It hung in the air like a broken promise and I wanted to whip it away, hide my shame.

Daniella only smiled. She kept her distance and I wondered if this was so I could hide in the shadows or if she was afraid of my great nails and teeth. She was slim beneath her white dress. Her shoulders were thin, bright curls falling around them. That there could be such beauty made me feel empty inside, as though my own deformity separated me from the wonders of the world.

She took me to a window on the other side of the tower and showed me the Ship that had come from the skies, the home of the four Wizards who had come to rule the city. It is a great tower now, a green so dark it is almost black. It has lights the length of it, orange and yellow, and a ghostly blue light that constantly traces up and down its length.

‘From there the Wizards rule us,’ Daniella said.

‘They must be great and powerful to rule this place,’ I spoke slowly and awkwardly, my tongue and teeth feeling too large in my mouth.

Daniella looked at me and smiled, raising an eyebrow, something strangely angry in the expression. ‘Great and powerful? They are monsters. This City was great, the greatest in the world. There were flying cars, medicine to cure all but the worst illness. There,’ she pointed to a shadowy yard in the distance, just visible through the towers and the bridges. ‘We had to give up those cars and now we must travel by horse. And the schools? See those towers, crumbling as though a giant bird has bitten them? They were the schools that taught us about history, about the stars. Forced to close on pain of death. That book,’ she pointed to the windowsill at our side. ‘I would be taken to the Ship for possessing such a thing.’ She smiled a twisted smile. ‘Never to be seen again.’ This last was said in a lilting refrain as though it was part of a song.

‘But why?’ I couldn’t help asking.

Daniella only shrugged a delicate shoulder and looked up to the stars.

We talked long into the night. Or rather, Daniella did. She told me of the Wizards War. Some had fallen to their knees, worshiping these conquerors from the sky, but some had stood against them, refusing to bend the knee. A great man led the resistance, a man called Kinar. He was a wizard himself, but the final clash had been of such bitter strength that the magick had spilled over the field fouling anything that stood in its way.

I looked at my hand when she said this, clenched my twisted fist. She reached for my hood. ‘Let me see,’ she said. ‘There are those who remember what your ancestors fought for, what they sacrificed.’ I pulled away.

‘Here, before you go,’ she said. I can hear her voice still, if I close my eyes. ‘You were looking at this the last time. I’d like you to have it.’ She pressed the yellow bauble into my hands, closed my misshapen fingers over it. How hard and cold my skin must have felt to her.

The bauble is in Joe’s tunnel with all the others now. He has great piles of precious things scattered about. He always says these precious things should belong to us, they are but a small part of what the soft-skins stole from us.

My heart felt cold when he put Daniella’s treasure onto the pile with the others.

I wish I’d kept it so I could hold it and think of her.

Joe says I am nearly kin now and I might be able to stay if Father doesn’t return.

He will though, he will come back. I want to tell him of Daniella. Who else can I tell? Who else can I speak to of beauty and goodness? All Joe and the others know is hatred and bitterness.

 

Fourteenth Day, Fifth Circle

Father isn’t coming home.

Joe came to find me today. He took me through the tunnels.

Father was there in the brown water. His throat had been cut. He was staring at the sunlight burning down on him through the grates above.

Joe said the soft-skins must have found him and thrown him through the grate. He shook his fist and vowed revenge.

He embraced me but I felt so alone.

The night feels dark and cold down here next to the brown river.

 

Second Day, Sixth Circle

Joe has been coming to me a lot lately. I sit in the dark and watch the brown river oozing past. I think of Father lying in the water, his hair filthy from the waste in it. I think of the water licking his gaping throat.

‘We spend too much time thinking of the past,’ Joe said, sitting next to me, watching the water. ‘That was your Father’s mistake. He thought of what we once were, soft-skins who loved to read and write. He never thought of what we are, of what we can become.’

After he left, I took out the dictionary and this diary. The words, the act of writing, make me feel closer to Father and the Mother I never knew.

It makes me feel closer to Daniella.

Dac and Liand have come here now, they look at the dictionary with dull eyes and at my writing with ill-concealed scorn.

I say nothing to them.

 

Seventh Day, Sixth Circle

 It has been many days since I wrote in this diary. Many days since I did anything but sit and look into the brown water. My reflection mocked me, shifting and rippling in the filth of the water. Is this what I am, this thing that shouldn’t be looked upon? If somebody cut me open and looked deep into my soul, would they see nothing but dirt and shame and ugliness?

Joe is louder since Father died. He takes the women more often and hurts them more. He laughs more too. Great big laughs that make his teeth shine in the candlelight.

I see the fear in the others when they look at him. Iris even came to me earlier today. She asked about this book. I think she was mocking me so I told her I’d thrown it into the brown water.

 

Eleventh Day, Sixth Circle

I went to see her today. I waited until dark and wrapped myself in my cloak. I stumbled as carts hurtled past, almost upon me before I saw them from the confines of my hood. Drivers shouted at me, their curses almost lost among the bawling vendors.

I rushed to the confines of the familiar alley. A man slumped there, his legs sprawled before him. Sick or dead, I didn’t know. I thought of the medicines Daniella said the Wizards had taken from the people.

The window was open. Open for me, I dared to hope. But something gnawed in my breast. Hope is a thing to be hated, to be feared, isn’t it? How could I dare hope that Daniella would ever leave her window open for such a creature as me?

I climbed the wall, my nails biting into the brick and doubt and fear biting into my stomach.

She wasn’t there when I slipped into her chamber, but I could hear her singing, a voice that made me think of light and air and goodness. I followed the sound, darting from doorway to doorway, hiding behind curtains that caressed my skin with a softness I had never known, until I came to the room where she sang.

People with curled hair and perfumed clothes sat before her on chairs of red, and Daniella sang for them, her hands clasped together and her shoulders bare over a dress of the purest green.

Her voice tore at my heart with a pain such as I’d never known, the pain of of love and beauty and a life I will never have. And words like I never imagined words could be. Not as meanings from the dictionary, but as things that lifted my soul, made me feel what the world could be, what I could be.

She sang of battles and sacrifice, beauty, pain and loss, heroes and villains, tall cities that stood against the Wizards, and the great leader Kinar, his wife Helena by him to the end.

When Daniella sang of my own kind and their sacrifice, her voice fell to a whisper and there were tears among her audience. I knew then that she had seen me, her delicate shoulders rose as her voice soared and her deep blue eyes sought me out in my feeble hiding place. Hiding, creature that I am.

I fled, fled from the beauty and the pain of that awful, wonderful voice.

The white curtains, fine as cobwebs, were still shivering in her chamber when I arrived. I went to the window and looked out and my heart pounded as I saw some dark shadow landing on the cobbles below. I jumped through the window, my nails screeching on the brick as I fell to the ground.

No sign of the shadow, so I followed the sound of the screams. A woman lay on the cobbled street, her stomach slashed by some fleeing demon, and I followed, my cloak flying behind me as I ran, my breath coming in great gasps.

More than once I saw my quarry, barreling through the crowds, even the horses shying and rearing away from its passing. More than once I thought I would catch him, but he was too strong, towers no obstacle as he raced up them, leaping from roof to roof.  Soon he was gone in the darkness.

When I returned to the tunnels I glanced into Joe’s cavern. He was there, a strange glint in his eye, and I saw blood on the cloak tossed onto the floor among the fish carcasses.

I must watch him.

 

Second Day, Seventh Circle

Today Joe told me we’re dying.  We stood together looking at two young ones. They were Jen’s, two born together. One looked strong, but it had no face that I could see. It was as though the mottled grey skin had sloughed over it inside Jen’s belly. Strong little arms grabbed at its sister on the ground next to it. The girl was weak and mewed at us from a swollen mouth. This one had a single blind eye and twisted legs.

We are dying.

‘There may be a way we could survive,’ Joe said. He looked at me from dark eyes and I thought of the shadow in Daniella’s room.

Iris and Drek have joined me now, looking at my words as I write, asking what they mean. Could I teach them words as Father taught me? I look at them and their dull eyes and I feel alone. Who is there to guide me now, to strive for something better than this brown river and these dark tunnels?

I will try to teach them. Perhaps I can be their light in the darkness as Father was in mine.

 

Thirteenth Day, Seventh Circle

How foolish I was! Foolish in so many ways. How could I have thought them interested in learning, in writing, in understanding?

It is painful to write, my twisted and broken fingers only beginning to heal.

Iris, Drex and some of the others had come to me for days and I taught them words. Even showed them my dictionary though it felt a betrayal of Father and Mother to do so. I gave the others shards of slate to practice writing on the walls.

All the time I taught them, I looked towards the entrance to the tunnel expecting Joe to come in a fury, tear the slate from their hands and dash it against the walls. ‘Words are like the tears of the dead to us,’ he’d said. Why wasn’t he coming to stop me? Why was I teaching them when I knew it would enrage him?

My own stupidity hurts more than the tear in my chest that even now stains the bandages red.

Wend, one of the females with the big bellies, screamed and fell to the floor, holding her swollen stomach. I said I would get Joe. Iris threw her slate to one side and grabbed my arm. ‘No,’ she’d said, her smile big-toothed and her dark eyes wide. ‘We’ll see to her. Joe doesn’t need to be bothered with this.’

I shrugged her off. Joe always wants to see the young ones in case one of them might be able to survive and be his heir.

I searched through every tunnel, but nobody knew where he was. I remembered the shadow in Daniella’s chamber. I remembered the way it had scaled the towers with great flashing nails, its cloak black bright in the rain. My breath was lost to me, almost a physical pain. Daniella!

I ran back to the others, and seeing the fear and guilt in their misshapen eyes, I knew I was right. Shouldering them aside and ignoring their pleas, I took my knife and cloak. For a moment I thought they would try to stop me, but they must have seen something in my eyes and they let me be.

Rain fell from the sky once more, great lashings of it as though the dead wept and raged at what the world had become. Lantern candles fluttered madly as I ran through the puddles to the familiar tower. Flakes of stone and brick fell around me as I climbed, blinking against the rain. Fear gave me strength and I was soon through the window.

He was already there, grasping her, silencing her with his great clawed hand to her mouth. I gasped in terror and leapt on him, only to be knocked back.

‘She’s mine!’ Joe shouted, beating me about the shoulders and back with his great fists, his claws ripping my cloak, scraping my skin. ‘For our future, the future of our kind!’ I knew what he had planned and it sickened me, even as the blows rained down.

I fell to the floor, helpless under his fists, pain blackening my mind. He grabbed me by the neck, lifting me and throwing me back down again. His strength sent ripples of fear skittering through my being.

Daniella was on him then, beating at his back and screaming, and Joe tossed her aside. I roared my anger like the beast I am, and flung myself at him, beating him and clawing at his face with hate and desperation. Nobody had dared strike Joe before, and for a moment, he retreated under the ferocity of the attack. Still I struck, and when my claws cut open his cheek and dark blood spattered against the walls, we both paused and looked at one another.

‘Traitor!’ Joe bared his great teeth. ‘Soft-skin lover!’ He grabbed me, his claws sending a flare of white-hot pain through my back.  He heaved me through the window, spinning and crashing down to the ground below.

I heard screams, the sound of running feet. Rain streamed into my face, the dead cooling me with their quiet sorrow, and I saw a dark-cloaked figure jumping from the window above and landing with a thud next to me. It looked down at me, its face an empty hole of darkness in its hood. ‘Just like your Father,’ he said as he lifted me from the ground.

He threw me against the wall, and struck me again and again, beating my face, my chest, blows hard and fast. My blood darkened the grey stone around me as I slumped to my knees.

‘Your Father knelt before me when I killed him,’ Joe said, his teeth wet and yellow as he smiled.

And then we both stopped and looked at his chest, at my hand holding the knife there. I’d slipped it free of my sleeve in a second, all thought lost to me. Blood pooled around the hilt. I twisted it, and Joe howled, looking up into the falling rain. Three times I hit him then, claws biting into his tough skin.

My strength drained from me and I doubled over, coughing blood into the river of rain sweeping down the cobbled path. ‘She could have been the mother of our future,’ Joe said, his voice quiet under the pouring of the rain. ‘Our children would have been strong.’ I raised a hand to ward away the final blows, but there was no fight left in Joe.

He pulled the knife from his chest and hot blood gushed over me, bursting from the wound. Feeling his life’s blood pouring onto the ground around us, Joe raised his hands to the clouds above and fell to his knees. He slumped onto me, the weight of him horrible as armour-clad guards ran up, swords at the ready.

Joe looked into my eyes as he died. ‘She will never be yours,’ he whispered.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘No!’ Daniella cried from somewhere far way, somewhere in the sky where the dead weep for the living. ‘No! Don’t hurt him!’ And darkness overwhelmed me.

 

When I woke, I was in a bed with clean sheets that caressed my aches and soothed my soul. I could have lain there forever with my eyes closed, forgetting the terrors of the world. Joe was dead. Still I could see him standing over me with his great teeth and massive nails, rain spattering on his shoulders. I groaned and turned away from the memory, every movement sending burning pain rushing through my body.

‘Is this really how you live?’ Daniella asked, her voice quiet.

I started at the sound of her voice, and tried to move, to hide, but my weakened body betrayed me and I could do nothing but move my head. She sat in a chair next to my bed, this book on her knee.

‘Where… ’ I licked my lips. How horrible I must look to her. ‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.

Daniella shrugged, a delicate motion of a bare shoulder. ‘I came to check on you one day and found this on the table. A dictionary was with it too. Perhaps a friend left them for you?’

I tried to smile, but then remembered my yellow teeth. ‘I have no friends.’

Daniella did smile. ‘You have me, don’t you?’

‘I was the one who put your life in danger.’

‘You saved me.’ She held the book up. ‘I’ve read this. I wondered what a circle was.’ She pointed at the open book in her lap.

She’d read the book. She knew how I loved her. She knew my innermost thoughts. It was a wonder I didn’t die from the shame of it. But, what she asked about was the circles, when she could have asked how a monster like me could ever think to love anything.

I wanted to take the book, but hadn’t the strength. ‘My Father,’ I shifted in the bed, groaning at the pain that shuddered through my body. ‘He would take me to a grate and through it show me the ball in the night sky. Sometimes it would be a great ball of pale red, sometimes we would only see a piece of it, as though some monster had taken a bite from it. He would tell me there were wondrous things in the sky we could never imagine.’

Daniella smiled and touched my brow. She saw me cower, and moved her hand away. I can feel her touch still, if I think on it.

‘That is Garandil, the second moon. My father had a model, before the Wizards’ Keepers took it from him. It showed the way the moons and the sun moved around the City.’ She smiled a strangely hard smile for that pretty face. ‘It even showed other worlds, worlds that look little more than stars to us in the night sky.’ She sighed and it was an effort on my part not to touch her shoulder with my clawed hand. ‘Soon we will be forbidden to know of the moons and the stars,’ she said.

As we spoke into the night, for long moments I could forget who and what I was. When I look back on this night, I will try to remember everything that was said, the way she smiled, how I had made her smile, the way she touched her hair, the way she held her hands when she spoke. Will I remember all? Even now I feel it slipping away, like trying to grasp a beam of sunlight. Fickle memory! I will remember for all eternity the feel of Joe’s blood upon my skin, the smell of his breath as he sought to kill me, but Daniella’s smile? The way her eyes brighten when she laughs? It feels a slender thing that could be gone in a moment.

Is that what beauty is? So delicate, so precious that if we hold too tightly, it vanishes? I remember a silken flying thing finding its way to the brown river once. Small, the size of a child’s palm, but so lovely. Its wings were finer than any paper, and the colours, more than I could count, in spirals and whirls more beautiful than any artist could ever conjure. I was entranced, but Father wouldn’t let me touch it. ‘Such beauty comes at a price,’ he told me, kneeling close to it. ‘Should we touch, or come close to touching it, we’ll damage it forever and it will never fly again.’

That is how I will remember that night. Carefully and with great delicacy. Hold the memory too tight and it will never fly again.

Such beauty comes at a price.

 

Farewell Daniella. This is my last entry. I’ve left this book for you, to keep and remember me by or to throw in the fire, as you see fit.

As you’ve read and sung these past days, I saw the love you have for words and for history. You brought the heroes and the cities to life, and with every telling I fell more in love with you. The way your eyes brighten and your heart swells with the stories is a beauty I never thought to see.  I thank you for showing me what the world can be.

How can I repay you. Perhaps there are ways.  You asked me where I’ve been these past nights: I’ve been at the taverns, hood slung low.  I found drinking men talk freely.  I keep my ears open and my questions simple and I learn more every day.  About the Wizards’ War.  About the Ship from the stars.  About my own kind. It seems every man has a tale, and the tale I want to hear and tell is why the wizards made people become less than they were.

Some say there is a man outside the City who knows the ways of magick. Some say he knew Kinar.  If I could find him, I wonder what true tales he could tell me.

And one night I went back to the tunnels. I found it hard to look upon my kin. They stared at me with wonder, shuffling, then eyes downcast they offered me Joe’s chair. I thought of taking it, of teaching them to better themselves, to learn to write and think and wonder. But who am I to teach them? Would I be no better than Joe? Than the Wizards from the Ship? And how could I stay when the search for truth now had a burning hold on me?

When I’m with you I try to forget what I am.  I dream that I am more than I could ever be. But then I touch my face or look in a river.  You told me stories of how we were made, but they speak of nobility and courage. I see no nobility when I look in the river, and the whispers I hear in the taverns… I’d hate to tell you.

I could come see you and listen to you sing the Poets’ words, and dream that one day you could love me. I could lie to myself year after year, and hold that dream until I die. Would that be so terrible? Yet the search calls, even as I write this and look at the Wizards’ Tower and at the clawed hand that scratches out these words.

I have my pen and the books you gave me.  I will tell stories. Not about me, about the world.  To show others the wonder of what the world can be and the truth of what has burned us all.

Goodbye, Daniella. Though you never love me, I will write, and dream that one day I can repay my debt to you with songs you wish to sing, stories you love to read, and truth that brings you as much joy and as little sadness as possible.

And now, I have new circles to learn the meaning of.