Silverblack fear bled into her body, and those feelings could only belong to one person — Tav.
Eli spun around, drawing two blades: stone for defence and pearl for attack. She was ready to fight.
There was nothing. Only Eli and a rock and miles of empty space. With a burst of energy, she understood — her companions had been swallowed by the land.
By her dream.
Eli dropped to her knees and started digging with her blades. Her throat tightened, choking off her breath. Her eyelids twitched like the legs of dead spiders.
How had she let herself dream? What was wrong with her?
Eli’s eyes teared and burned under the angry light of the three suns. Her hands became battered and bloodied by rock. The sand under her fingernails bit into the fleshy nail bed and she gritted her teeth in pain.
But she was getting closer.
Don’t die, she thought desperately. Please don’t die.
That would be a mistake she couldn’t fix.
Images flashed in her head, memories dredged up by panic and set free by a world that thrived on powerful feelings. Memories sharpened by fear. Waking nightmares.
Looking up through blue waves of light.
Chlorine eating away at their mouth and lungs.
Their eyes start to close.
Eli dug faster, using the handle of a blade to break apart clumps of soil. She could almost taste the chlorine in her mouth, could almost feel its burn. There are many ways to drown, and Tav and Cam were caught between water and sand, dying again and again and again.
Eli’s thumbnail caught on a stone and ripped, leaving it bloody and staining the sand red. Smoke spiralled from the wound. She pushed on, shoving her raw arms into the earth.
She caught the scent of pine and vanilla. Suddenly, a new memory crowded her mind.
Hands slamming against the metal door.
The smell of urine and cigarettes and bleach.
“Come out, faggot!”
Cam. The memory was clear and strong, as pain clawed its way to the surface. Scars broke open. The past scratched its way into the present. Not all humans were haunted by magical ghosts, but all humans were haunted.
She was getting closer.
Eli screamed in frustration, dropped her knives, and scrabbled at the earth with ragged nails. Her heart was beating so loudly it felt like thunder was cracking in the sky around her head. Her body was electric, alive, fighting as hard as it could.
A glint of silver.
An earring.
Eli lifted it to her face, fingers trembling. She was so close.
She closed her eyes.
Bring me to them, she commanded the wastelands. She focused her willpower on the sand. She would make it obey.
She could hear the angry winds rising at her order, throwing hot dust into her face.
Let them go! She released the full force of her energy at the earth and plunged her arm back into the silt.
She felt hair. She grabbed and pulled, heaving with her whole body. As soon as the shape of a head emerged, Eli used both hands and stood, dragging the body out of the sand. Then she went back and dragged the other body out, too.
They lay side by side like corpses. Eli watched over them and waited. The wind died down. The wastelands were eerily silent.
And then, in unison, they gasped for breath. Tav curled over and began coughing up sand. Cam was still gulping for air, like a fish stranded on the shore.
Eli exhaled deeply and felt the tight coil of her chest start to unwind.
Tav was the first to stand. They managed a few steps before vomiting sand and bile.
Cam was shaking, trying to wipe the filth from his body.
“I remember —”
“Don’t think about it,” said Eli. “Get up. Move.”
“I was trapped inside for hours,” he whispered. “No one came to find me. They were just out there, waiting for me.”
“I found you.” Eli dragged him to his feet. “You’re not trapped anymore. Breathe, Cam. Breathe, okay?”
“I was drowning.” Tav’s eyes were wide. “I drowned.”
“Not yet, you haven’t.” Eli put a hand on Tav’s shoulder. “Come on. We have to keep moving.”
Guilt pressed at her diaphragm.
She had let herself dream.
Eli forced herself to walk ahead, fists clenched at her sides. She wouldn’t sleep again. She couldn’t risk making another mistake. She was losing control.
The stain of truth was growing, spreading through every synapse and skin cell.
She was a broken tool.
Twenty-Two
Neither Cam nor Tav spoke again about being buried alive, but Eli caught glimpses of their memories while they slept. Crawl spaces and car crashes, bones ground into dust, a pressure against their skulls so strong that it felt like their eyes would pop out of their head.
Eli watched over them, holding the obsidian blade, ready to kill any nightmare that tried to come out. She didn’t know what human dreams could do in the City of Eyes, but she wanted to be ready. A couple of times she woke them, terrified that the sand would re-form in their lungs and they would drown in their sleep.
But their dreams, like their world, were safe. Only Eli was a threat.
After the nightmares, they walked in silence, like sleepwalkers. Eli kept them on course, looked for physical injuries (there were none), and waited.
The heavy shrub was thinning again, turning back into naked desert. Eli had no idea what the change of landscape meant. Even the rocks were crumbling into pebbles, and Eli had seen nothing but a few oxidized buttons for the last hundred steps.
Then she saw it — a patch of land that was smooth and red like an open wound.
“What is that?” asked Tav. Their voice was hoarse, worn raw by sand and screaming.
“I don’t know.” Eli frowned. She couldn’t see or feel any magic in that spot. “It’s dead.”
“Let’s go around it,” said Cam. “I prefer the deadly plants you seem familiar with. The devil you know, right?”
Eli shook her head. “We have to keep going.”
“Why?” Cam rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. He looked tired and a little afraid. His moustache wax had worn off, and the ’stache hung limply on his face.
“So there is a reason you’ve been taking us in a straight line,” said Tav. “At first I thought it was some superstition thing.”
Eli rolled her eyes, then switched to her magic set and rolled those, too, a glint of light on shiny black.
“That’s a bit unsettling,” Cam told her.
“There’s a children’s song about the wastelands,” said Eli. “The only way to escape is to walk straight in any direction for one hundred thousand steps.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Cam.
“What step are we on?” asked Tav.
“Lost count. But that dead spot is in our path and we’re going to walk through it. If we get separated, just keep moving forward. Don’t worry.” She turned to Cam. “I have my knives if anything attacks us.”
“That’s not comforting.”
Eli shrugged. “I told you this was a bad idea.”
“Let’s just do it,” said Tav.
“Oh, so now you trust the assassin?”
“Hey, you’re the one who let her crash on our couch.”
“It’s a kid’s nursery rhyme. They probably sang it skipping rope. It shouldn’t make a difference if we walk around it or not!”