xii.

I licked my lips, their lips, once more. One last taste of the sweet air, one last breath into lungs that weren’t mine anymore.

Bearer Avida’s hand took mine, gentle like the sunrise, and I let go.

#

FAYNE

My senses returned to me all at once. The throbbing in my palm; fingers curled around the handle of the knife; Bearer Avida’s hand holding mine; the cold, sweet air so close to all the dried flowers.

“The Door,” I said, and it came out more a gasp than words. I tucked the knife to my belt, more out of habit than need. “Will you—”

“I’ll take you.” I’d never seen Bearer Avida so serious. “Come.”

For the first time since I came to the workshop to arrange and dress the bones—so long ago, it felt—I stepped foot into the Mortuary’s corridors.

Bearer Avida walked first. I held pace as she took us down the stairs and to the left, next to the preparation chambers where they’d carefully removed Enair’s skin and organs and flesh before bringing her to me, and then further down some other stairs behind a door I’d never stepped through. The entire wall to our left was glass like in the library, and I watched the blackened treetops far below, where they peeked through whenever the clouds parted. Further north, they gave way to manmade structures, the shells of those skyscrapers sitting silently as if in waiting for the tenants that wouldn’t return home. Perhaps somewhere deep beneath those structures was where the dewdrops chattered about stories and secrets, and one could find more clovers and snowbells one knew what to do with. Perhaps one would have to wear the glowing halo of a harvester, and still lean in very low and very close, to see blades of new grass perturbing from the ashes.

“I’ve never been here before,” I said when we paused.

“I know,” Bearer Avida said. She took out a key before yet another door, but sighed, hesitated.

“You promised,” I reminded her, touched her shoulder with a smile, and she nodded with new resolve.

“You’re right.” She turned the key in the lock. “To go back on a promise would be unkind.”

Nothing welcomed us in the chamber she led us to. No furniture, no people, not even windows. The white room smelled of nothing, clean and neither hot nor cold, perfectly round somewhere deep in the heart of the Mortuary I had thought I knew every relevant corner of. There was something old about it, something older than Avida or even any of the older Bearers, something almost breathing, almost beating where my heart hadn’t in a long time, as I took a step in. And more: there was a closeness. Whispers and existence right out of reach, calling, welcoming.