The Beautiful Dead (15 page)

“I’m not sad.”

“Don’t you so
loathe those pretty clothes you were given?” he goes on unwearyingly, “That
pretty hair? Those eyes of such chilly, unnatural hue? Why do you accept this
body that was
given
to you, child? Why cannot your body be your own, as
your soul is, as your Anima?”

“Get to the
point,” I say, irritated enough not to care what the hell an Anima is.

“Take care to
watch your tone,” he warns me sweetly, like a parent warns a cute baby. “The
very chair you sit in is made of those who lost such tone.”

Too slow to
have realized the armrests I’m gripping are made of actual arms, I quickly stand,
edging away from the chair. I don’t want to look disgusted, but I am.

I glance at
Helena again, so quiet and unmoved. She almost looks bored, sprawled out,
chained to that table.

“You are
different than your friends,” he tells me. “I see a lot of myself in you … A
fire inside. Don’t you?” My squinted eyes and smirk answer him. “You are
vibrant.”

I find it
curious there’s no guards in this room. That I’m trusted to be here with the
King. Is this even a sign of trust, or is it rather a subtle clue that the King
is such a dangerous figure in this world—a person with formidable, unseeable
power?

“You belong
here,” he says, reaching up to remove his enormous crown, “but you don’t yet
see. The path to peace in this dead world—the one and only path—is acceptance.
Accept the dead. Parade the dead. Embrace the dead.” And he pulls back his
hood, revealing at last the face of the Deathless King.

Deathless Queen.

I slap a hand
over my mouth to keep from emitting a shriek. How I recognize her as a woman,
it’s hard to say, because all that remains of her face is a chin, half a
forehead, and two beady eyes that seem almost pink in tone. Horrifying at first
sight, it’s like the center of her face has been removed, only the hint of a
jawline remaining. What’s left of her lips almost form a plush black heart, and
colorless hair falls down into her robes, creating an illusion that it goes on
forever. Something seems to glow beyond her teeth, back where a brain might be,
something of an azure nightmare that pulsates.

“Deathless I
am,” she says. “Deathless, forever be.”

I was not
prepared for this. I’ve no words, none at all. This faceless, Deathless Queen,
a sight I cannot wrench my eyes from, a sight I wish quite frankly I’d been
spared.

“Here we are.
Six feet under … now six feet above. I think the greatest regret in life is
living it,” she declares, the side of her teeth like alien piranha fangs
visible even as her jaw snaps shut at the abrupt end of each sentence. “What’s
the point in any life if it’s simply to be taken away? Only Death is forever.
So here we are. Snack?”

She offers up
what appears to be a tiny platter holding slices of deep red fruit. I can’t
help but wince at the sight and, politely as I can manage, shake my head no.

“I like you.
Do you know what the best part about ending is?” I think I see the left corner
of her bony jaw—whatever skin remains there—pulling up into what I daresay is a
smile. “Starting over anew. Don’t you agree?”

After being
assaulted with the view of the Queen’s real face—or lack thereof—it takes me a
moment to gather enough gall to actually speak: “I wouldn’t—excuse me—I
wouldn’t know. I don’t know what my life was, so I don’t know what ended. I
only know what’s started.”

“Winter,” she
states. The sound of my name coming from her toothy maw inspires chills down my
arms. “You started Winter, knowing not what you ended for price.”

“What’s the
point? What are you going to do to me? Or her?” I ask finally, my courage
deciding to show up.

She tilts her
head. “Let you choose, of course.”

“Choose what?”

“Deathless …
Or death.”

I’m tired of
the riddles, her every answer inspiring another question. “We belong at home.
Not here in this filthy, vile place. Let us leave.”

“Us,” she
breathes, her tone changing to something a notch less pleasant. “Us, you say.”
She begins to slowly pace across the balcony. “People of Trenton, you mean. The
Pretenders, to whom you refer. I wonder if you wonder whether
you
even
belong with them?”

I frown.
“Pretenders?”

“Isn’t it all
your life’s become since your Raising?” she poses. “Pretending to eat?
Pretending to sleep? Pretending to smile, to share, to laugh, to cry, to love
…?”

My eyes
disconnect, gaze casted to the floor. I don’t want her to see how her calm,
supple words are affecting me. Already I reflect on that uncomfortable evening
in the restaurant with Grimsky when I almost ate wax.

My unbeating
heart gives a jump. “Grimsky. Tell me where he is! I demand to know!”

“Grimsky?
You’ll reunite with him soon,” she assures me. “It was not wise to travel where
it rains. Our kind do not belong in such places, Winter. We are made of ruin.”

“
You
might be,” I spit back.

“The one who
was weakened by the rain, he is not so well,” the Queen notes in a syrupy tone.
“We may need to disassemble him for now and cast him to the Well … just as we
had to do with the uncooperative Judge.”

I clench my
eyes shut, as though to stop myself from picturing what she means by them being
…
disassembled.

“But that is
to be expected,” she goes on, “with a lady of her moral height. She will take
as much time as she needs in the Well to come around, if she ever does. The
poor thing will have all eternity.”

I can’t help
but imagine the pit Benjamin had so unhelpfully described … filled to the very
top with pulled-apart Undead … feet, elbows, thighs, heads … all of them no
longer knowing whose completeness they belong to, functionless and waiting to
be put back together … stranded, stuck, alone and yet surrounded. I wonder how
long some of them have already spent waiting—with only all of forever to look
forward to.

“The Well
isn’t your fate, child,” the faceless woman tells me, her voice attempting to
console an inconsolable me. “I have much, much better plans for you.”

I can’t hide
what I’m feeling from my face any longer. “Bury me up to my fingernails for all
I care.”

“I was
thinking more in the vein of … reuniting you with your princely pale one.” She
smiles wanly.

I look up,
incensed at once. “Grimsky?”

“If that’s
what you call him. The pale one is alive, and he awaits you.”

“How do I know
for sure?” I’m annoyed at how antsy I sound. “There’s no evidence of anything
you say! The only one I know is alive is
her
… My death mother.”

The Queen
stops pacing at once. Slowly, she turns my way and, with those sickly,
pink-hued eyes, studies me for a while. The wind, so fierce and biting on the
ground, is but a gentle sigh up here at the top of the Black Tower.

“Helena … is
not
your mother,” she says finally.

I smirk.
“Well, yes, unless she gave birth to me when she was a toddler, obviously she
is not my mother. You know quite well what I meant.”

One sharp
chuckle escapes Helena’s lips. It’s strangely relieving, to know that even in
this circumstance, her dark humor endures. At least everything tries to in this
world.

“Still
pretending.” The Queen’s voice is so sweet and light, but I know better. “Even
when you detest the very way of your life that you’ve been taught, you still
yet live it. Why?” She’s drawn closer to me. I automatically take a step back.
“Death is a dangerously delicate design. It isn’t meant for waste. I don’t
offer you a cabaret of fake smiles and dinner parties. What I offer you is
real.”

Once more, she
offers the tiny platter of fruit slices, wordless, watching me with her icy,
ghoulish gaze.

“Fruit?” I ask
carelessly. “Is this a peace offering?”

“Taste.” She
presses the tiny platter into my palm. For whatever reason, I don’t retreat or
pull away from the shadowy Queen. “Taste and, for yourself, experience.”

I glare at
her, my indignance too late finding me. “I refuse to eat something I can’t
name.”

“Call it the
Fruit of Life,” she offers tenderly.

This platter
could be poisoned. These fruit slices could be mind-altering or parasitic. This
“snack” could very well be dead flesh of some nasty 400-year-old rodent bathed
in the blood of the Deathless Queen herself for all I know, for all I would be
able to taste anyway.

It could be
mango. “I still don’t—”

“Taste,” she
says slowly. “You will understand.”

Whether this
Deathless King-Queen is ensorcelling me with her lies, or telling nothing but
truths, I guess it doesn’t matter in the least. Whether I cooperate or not, I
know I’m never getting free of this place, Helena assured me of that. Neither
is the Judge, who’s in pieces and cast into a pit somewhere, apparently, soon
to be joined by her men. I’m a goner, whether above ground or not.

The platter
still patiently waits in my hand.

Casually, I
pop one of the fruit bites into my mouth and chew. It tastes like nothing.

“Alright,” I
murmur, shrugging. “What now?”

“Weren’t you
angry?” she asks, peering at me with what I daresay is concern. “The world is
dead. The world and all its history, its people, its societies and cities and
countries and laws. Yet here we are.” She squints, noticeable only by the tiny
wrinkle of forehead she has. “Does that not anger you to the bone?”

“Am I supposed
to be tasting something?”

“All that
progress humanity made, gone. Who’s to blame, girl of Winter? They were
selfish, humankind, and they’re paying the price. They deserve the price, just
as we wretched deserve this fateless fate. Think on the many, many choices a
single person can make … and so many, many chances humankind forfeited.” She
smiles. “The Old World. That’s what it is called, but I doubt you’ve ever been
told the name by your … Pretenders.”

I frown at her
use of that word, which I find suddenly to be very derogatory.

“They don’t
mention the Old World because they hate so very much to be reminded where they
come from. They Pretend they were just
willed
into existence, as though
they weren’t once Human themselves, the ignorant lot of them. We all had a
first life we utterly wasted. We made bad choices and hurt people.” She steps
closer. “Here, there is no death. Here, there is no life. We endure forever.
Humans, they are so temporary … so delicate. Even their bodies, where just a
centimeter underneath is something so soft and gooey you couldn’t keep it in
your hands. So tragic … Tell me, what do you think happened to that Old World?”

I take another
bite, annoyed to my fingertips. This tasteless fruit is starting to taste quite
nasty, in truth.

“Fury, forever
… Abandon. Terror. Accept the dead. Embrace it.” Her eyes go dark. “Humans
deserve to die.”

“Including
that little girl in the cage next to me?” I ask, teeth clenching. “She deserves
to be tortured and fed to you filthy people? What on God’s Dead Earth has she
done to deserve that?”

“What could
have been, forever will never be.” She smiles eerily. “You and I, child … We
can change that.”

I start to
feel uneasy. I brace myself against the nearest wall … Maybe that’ll stop the
room from spinning.

“Is this—Is
this—Am I dying?” I rasp.

“No. No more
death or dying, not for any of us. Do you understand? You live in a Deathless
world now.”

“This,” I say,
spitting out my last bite with a grimace, “tastes gritty and terrible. What
kind of—?—or is—”

And then I
hear what I just said.

I stare at the
plate and the bite I spit out, astonished. I’m putting something together, but
I’m still not sure what it is. “Taste,” I murmur slowly. “I … I could taste
it.”

“Could you?”
the Queen asks with a crooked smile.

The bitterness
on my tongue of metal … of blood …

“What
is
this?” I breathe, my tone changed, wrinkling my nose at the taste—the
taste
—on
my tongue.

And then
something else arrests my attention entirely, something shining through the
balcony, something that may have been there the whole time but only now finds
me, somehow, someway. I slowly move toward it as though compelled, equally
fascinated and frightened, drawn to the light … The sunlight. The sky is not a
silvery-grey mess, not in this moment. Instead, it bursts with a vibrant blue,
set ablaze on its far horizon by the shimmer of a rising sun which, hiding
beyond the distance, I cannot yet see.

“How is this—How
is this even possible?”

I stare off
into the cloudless blue.

“It takes a
little Human … to be a little Human,” she says simply, like a riddle. “Life is
ours to seize, if only we’ve the sense to reach.”