anthocene

Stories by Braden Liatris

The Beasts of November

The house was full of strangers.

A young woman who had tried and failed to sleep padded down the stairs of a new house on the edge of a city that was home to a hundred thousand souls. She discovered a young man—her cousin—was sitting at her kitchen table, nursing a cup of lukewarm tea.

"Couldn't sleep?" inquired Elias, the young man.

"No more than you," Jessamine parlayed.

"You'd think I'd be exhausted," he mused, "but I guess being tired and wanting to sleep are two different things. The kettle should still be hot if you want a cup."

It wasn't, but that was simple enough to fix. If only everything could be that easy.

"Should we go sit by the window, for old time's sake?" she offered. "We can look out at the night and see what it holds."

"I'm good here, thanks," he grumbled.

There had been no sign of either the light or the dark since that night a little more than ten years ago, and not for lack of observation. There were creases on Elias's brow where there ought not to be on a man his age. The half-moons beneath his eyes suggested that insomnia took him more often than it didn't. She could relate.

They both knew what they'd find if they looked out that window: nothing at all.

"How's Yusuf?" Jessamine asked. "You got in so late that we didn't have a chance to chat."

Her attempt to change the subject to something happier had apparently failed, because Elias's countenance became even more glum as he tried to formulate a pithy response.

"I'm almost surprised he came along," he admitted, at last. "It's been rough waters, lately."

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"It varies," he said. "Yesterday, it was something along the lines of: 'I want a man who's more interested in me than he is in some old book.'"

She raised an eyebrow, not wanting to ask the obvious question out loud.

"It's a very interesting old book," he muttered.

"Oh, Ellie," she sighed.

"Well, what would you expect?" he snarled. "I'm a folklorist. He knew that when he married me. He was a researcher, once, too—I thought he'd understand. Light knows I love him, but I don't see how he can expect me to just drop all my work when he's in a mood. You know how it is. Or maybe you don't, being half of a famous pair of lovebirds."

She laughed in surprise. Comments like that reminded her how far apart they'd really grown. If only he knew, maybe he'd think differently of her.

"We make it work," she summarized poorly.

"And look at what you've achieved!" he gushed. "You have a house in the suburbs. You hold stable jobs. You've got a whole long future ahead of you, whatever you want it to be."

Jessamine wasn't sure whether frantically jumping between day labor and whatever freelance work she could get her hands on counted as stable, but Will's practice was stable enough to count for the both of them, she supposed. She didn't know what she'd do without him and she suspected Elias didn't care.

Elias took a long drag off his tea, wincing when it proved to have gone entirely cold.

"He came, though," he said, softly, "so I guess it can't all be ruined. Maybe we can extend our vacation. I'm sure there are some places in the city he'd like to—"

"Hush up," barked Jessamine. "Did you hear that?"

Elias's mouth hung open mid-sentence.

"You're joking," he spat. "I'm not afraid of the dark, anymore."

"No joke," she insisted. "Be quiet and listen."

In a chilling echo of that night in the attic, he listened and he heard soft and steady footsteps, coming up the flagstones of the back walk, drawing close and closer until they culminated in three sharp knocks on the kitchen door.

"Expecting company?" whispered Elias.

"Not tonight, I'm not," Jessamine confirmed. "Certainly not at this hour."

Rap, rap, rap, the three knocks came again. No louder, no faster, just an insistent reminder that the phantom presence was no phantom at all.

Jessamine rose and crossed to the door, drawing the belt of her dressing gown tight, as if it carried a sword. She took a deep breath twisted the knob, inviting the winter's chill into her home—and on its heels, a stranger.

Tall and fit in a pale gray suit and a trim red beard, the man must have been in the blaze of early middle age, for he looked handsome and weatherbeaten and well-used to himself. She had surely never seen him before, but he had a familiar air about him, like the feeling you got when you'd climbed a mountain and walked to the edge and looked down at the world below, like a swift wind could sweep you away and you'd fall forever.

More than anything, Jessamine knew him by his eyes, only they were all wrong: they were a wise, dazzling gold and they should have been a feral, gleaming orange.

"Thusia," she gasped.

"Good evening, Jessamine Less," the stranger replied. "May I come in?"

She practically fell over herself making room for him to step over the threshold and slammed the door just as soon as he had cleared it, hard enough that she worried she might wake the sleepers.

"Thusia?" repeated Elias. "How can you be Thusia?"

"Yesterday, I was Thusia," the man said, "but today I am made anew. I am he who gave the loathly lady back her sovereignty, Uther's daughter's son, first to seek but last to see. I am here to rally the gloaming beasts. It is my time."

"Yesterday?" stammered Jessamine. "That was ten years ago."

"Time does not flow for all things equally," he explained, "nor always at the same pace. A day for us may be a decade for you, or an era the span of minutes. Yesterday, we earned a great victory for the light. Tomorrow, we will fight our last battle against the dark. Today, with your help, we prepare our forces for that confrontation."

"What do you need?" she asked.

"Hold on," Elias interrupted. "What do we call you if you're no longer Thusia?"

"I am Escuz," said the man.

He bowed to the both of them, low and generous. It was far too courtly a gesture for a little kitchen in the suburbs.

Elias, fidgeting, checked the kettle to see if it was still warm.

"Would you like tea?" he offered.

"I would very much," said Escuz.

Jessamine said nothing while Elias steeped the fresh cup. Two titanic emotions were at war within her. The first was an overwhelming sense of hope and relief that Thusia—or something near enough like her—might still exist in this world. The second was a boundless fury that she'd gone a full decade believing Thusia was dead and gone, never to return.

"Answers," she blurted out, distilling her basest needs into that one word. "I need to know what happened that night, ten years ago. I need to know why it happened. I need to know what's going to happen next."

Escuz took the teacup and held it up to his face, inhaling so closely and so deeply that he seemed certain to scald his nose. Perhaps he was immune to such harm in this incarnation, as he sighed with great contentment and no apparent discomfort.

"I assure you, Jessamine Less," he said, "that without your help, I would never have made it to the appointed place at the appointed time."

"The place where you died," she spat.

Jessamine feared she might still be a child, for all the passage of time.

"I tell you now as I told you then," Escuz continued, "that it was as it was meant to be. Blood on the White Stag to stem the tide of the dark. The crimson smear of the light at dawn."

"What would have happened if we hadn't made it to Chalk Hill in time?" asked Elias.

"Then," he said, "the dark would have taken me. Had I died too late or too soon, my blood would have been spilled over profane ground and the sun would not have risen."

"Literally?" asked Elias.

"Little in the long war between the light and the dark is literal," he remarked with a lilting chuckle. "I imagine that the hounds would not have passed from the world as a figment of the hallow night. They would have been made able to burst forth upon the day and worse things would have trailed behind them. The dark would have havocked upon your world and the war would have been lost."

Jessamine was happy Elias was there to ask these things. It had taken all she had to get the words out, before, and some part of her was still afraid that if she ever opened her mouth again, she wouldn't be able to keep from screaming.

"As to your other question," said Escuz, "I cannot tell you what will happen next. The last battle is yet to be fought and the winner yet to be determined. I can only tell you what I will need of you today, and that is to stand by my side as we court the gloaming beasts."

"You mentioned them before," Elias observed. "What are they?"

"An enigma," he answered, simply. "Unlike mortals, we spirits are drawn inexorably to the light or to the dark, but there are a few who, by nature or by action, withstand that pull. They are the gloaming beasts, the ones caught between."

"Why seek them now?" asked Elias.

"Even they must choose a side before the end," said the spirit. "It is our mission to convince as many as we can to stand with us and not against us."

Jessamine set down her empty teacup.

"So," she said, "what do you need?"

"I will call on you three times," Escuz declared. "At each, we will visit a gloaming beast."

"That's it?" said Elias, incredulous. "No running? No hounds?"

"The task is not without danger," the spirit admitted. "The dark ever opposes us, for they wish to rally the beasts as much as we. Nor are our quarry beasts in name alone. But you will be by my side and I am come into my full strength, if not my full power. I am no longer a helpless kit."

Something thumped upstairs and Elias cursed under his breath.

"That'll be Yusuf," he guessed. "I need to go up or he's likely to come looking for me."

With barely another glance in their direction, he set down his cup and set off, going back up to his bedroom. Not that it much mattered. Jessamine could tell that he'd made up his mind the moment the spirit had stepped inside, just as she had. All Escuz had to do was call and they would answer.

Perhaps Escuz knew this, as well, as he made no further explanation. He drank the last of his tea and set his cup on the table next to the other two. The moment he pulled his hand away, Jessamine crashed into his chest. He responded warmly, cradling her in his arms as tightly as she had held Thusia in her final moments.

"I am sorry, Jessamine Less," he said, without prompting. "It is no gift to be a child of the light."

"What does that really mean?" she sighed, holding back tears. "Am I like you?"

"No," he confirmed. "You are mortal, through and through. But you bear our mark and you may carry our standard. In the ways we are bound not to fight for ourselves, you may fight in our stead. Thus, the battle goes on in the space between our days."

"Why hasn’t there been anything for ten years?" she demanded. "Ten years, Escuz. Ten years! The ghost of you has haunted me all this time."

Escuz pressed his forehead against hers. His skin was cold, colder than she would have imagined, cold as a windowpane on a winter’s night.

"I see the truth of it," he said. "It is a burden I would see passed to another, were any other able to bear its weight. But, knowing what you know now, would you let it go?"

"Never," said Jessamine, before she could consider her response.

He released her and moved back to the door.

"You should rest some more before the morning comes," he instructed. "I will return when the time is right. You will be ready."

Could she ever really be ready? But she knew what he meant. She'd go right now if he asked her to—out fighting the dark in her dressing gown. He stepped out into the world and left her alone in the kitchen. She turned off the lights, sat down at the table, and spent a while staring at the three empty teacups before she went back to bed.

////

When morning came properly, the sun breaking across the sky, she'd only slept a little more. It would have to be enough. Jessamine slipped again from her bed, evading the attention of her drowsily-waking companion. She took a shower, long enough to soften her nerves, and then put on her holiday best, bar the concession of sensible trousers over a festive, flowing skirt.

"What happened?" Will asked, when she finally let herself face him. "Is something wrong with Ellie?"

"No," she countered. "No more than usual, anyway. It's not that."

"What is it, then?" he pressed.

"Thusia's back," she murmured in return.

Jessamine had been so quiet that the words were barely audible, but judging by Will's reaction, she might as well have shouted the news. No one was more aware of the toll these intervening years had taken on Jessamine's psyche, and she suspected that his particular cocktail of anger and elation was not so different a mix from her own. He hid it better, maybe, and he didn't hold it against her. It wasn't his job to march to the frontlines of a transcendental war—he just had to pick up the pieces of whatever bits of her made it back home.

It only took a few minutes to catch him up, but they sat a while longer in silence, hand-in-hand, letting it all wash over them.

"Okay," said Will, at last. "We'll figure it out. I was doing the bulk of the cooking, anyway, and Yusuf's offered to help where I need it. No one else is arriving until after noon, so we have time. Do you think you'll be finished by then?"

Jessamine shrugged. She had no idea.

"That's okay," Will reassured her. "We can delay as long as you need. You are coming back, aren't you?"

"Always," she said. "Always, Will."

She didn't think it was a lie, but neither of them held much faith in her promise. Who could say what the spirits would ask of her, this time around?

Elias and Yusuf preceded them in the kitchen. They stood clinging together, no hint of unrest about them, just the warm glow of their shared presence. It had always been a whirlwind romance—a typhoon romance, even—and if perhaps they were not now, Jessamine knew that they had once been very much in love. She hoped they'd find a way to work it out.

"Good morning!" chirped Elias, as if he hadn't seen his cousin scant hours before. "Coffee's ready and pancakes are on their way."

"Great!" Jessamine gushed, affecting the same cheery guise.

"I want to thank you again for inviting us into your home," said Yusuf. "El won't admit to it, but it's been hard for him to live so far from home. He was so pleased when you and Will decided to move closer."

"You're welcome in our home anytime you want a break from the University," said Will. "Or any time at all, really. I only wish it weren't quite such a long drive..."

They slipped into easy conversation—not quite small talk, but nothing to give anyone pause. If anyone noticed that Jessamine's gaze slid to the clock a little too often, or that Elias would sometimes lose his train of thought at the tickle of a far off sound, they did not say so. There was no discussion of war or duty, material or metaphysical. There was sympathy and there was laughter and, for a short time, they were nothing but a family getting reacquainted.

"Pancakes in five," Elias announced.

Not a moment later, someone knocked on the front door.

"I'll get it," said Jessamine, without hesitation, making no apologies for her rapid departure.

Escuz was there, looking somehow different in the daylight than he had in the night, a bit more real for the sun shining on his head, a bit less unusual for standing on their front steps than in their garden.

"It is time," he said, as expected.

"I've got our coats," offered Elias, joining them in the foyer.

"The pancakes?" Jessamine asked her cousin.

"Will took over," he reassured her. "He'll take care of it."

Something occurred to her, then.

"Ellie," she said, with uncharacteristic hesitation, "does Yusuf not know?"

"How long will this take us?" Elias asked Escuz, ignoring Jessamine entirely.

"Time is never certain," said the spirit, "but I can exert some force on it. At this eventide, the dark may no longer steal away your hours. I might even have means to hasten our journey back. If all goes well, the time should pass here as minutes alone."

"We'll be back in a few minutes!" Elias called out in the general direction of the kitchen.

Just like that, he was out the door, brushing past the spirit and waving them both on, as if he knew where to go. Jessamine closed their front door and followed, glowering.

It was a cold November—winter had come in early and hard—but the sky was clear. The snow-drenched trees glittered in the early sun. Escuz's stride was long and his pace was swift and it was not long before he had overtaken Elias and assumed the lead.

They walked in uneasy, purposeful silence until Escuz halted them at a junction where suburban sprawl met the edge of old forest, five or six blocks from Jessamine's front door. She and Will hadn't been living here for even a year, but their neighbors spoke of these woods with palpable unease. Most local children avoided them entirely, even the older kids in search of a refuge from adult oversight. The place had a bad vibe, they said, and Jessamine understood why.

"Do you see it?" asked Escuz.

He pointed a long, pale finger at a pair of crooked trees which bent towards one another, their branches intertwining to form a vague arch.

"What am I looking at?" Jessamine asked.

"It is a passage," the spirit stated, "by which we may pass from your domain into mine."

She looked at him skeptically. True, Old Man Wexler's had been enveloped in a kind of otherworldly darkness as they fled from the hounds of the dark, and yes, she had seen those same hounds leap whole from slivers of shadow, but it was one thing for spirits to work their magic on the real world and another thing entirely to leave it.

"Our domain is a perpendicular plane of existence," Escuz explained further. "It is everywhere and it is nowhere, a place in-between your waking reality and the collective unconscious. You might call it our home, but it is perhaps better to think of it as our nest, the place to which we return when our passage through your world is done."

"But we can go there?" she asked.

"Indeed you can," he said, "and indeed we must. We must enter one of its grayest corners, the lair of a gloaming beast, and thus confront its occupant."

"What's to stop somebody from just walking between those trees and ending up on the other side?" asked Elias.

"Were they not a child of the light or the dark and without a spirit to accompany them, the passage would reject them," said Escuz. "We do not welcome mortals at random. Now, time is wasting. We must be on our way."

Escuz strode confidently across the empty street, pressing his luck that there would be no traffic at this hour on this day. The cousins followed as quickly as their legs would carry them, accelerating so as not to fall behind as the spirit effortlessly picked up speed. They were practically sprinting by the time the spirit passed between the two trees and vanished into thin air and their momentum carried them through the passage behind him.

Jessamine was abruptly submerged in rippling heat and resplendent light, like diving into the heart of some measureless sun-drenched pool. She drank in as she drowned. The not-water filled her lungs, nourishing her, healing her. Even as she sank, she was cradled in its womb-like embrace, their two pulses beating in synchrony against the madness of the cosmos beyond.

And then she stood in a darkish courtyard, Escuz and Elias at her side. Her cousin coughed and sputtered as if water—or not-water—had gone down his windpipe. He shivered beneath his winter coat, which was hard to fathom when she felt so warm. She gave Escuz a worried glance, but the hard cast to his brow told her that this was not the time to ask the question that played on the tip of her tongue. Instead of opening her mouth, she took in her surroundings, giving her cousin the time he needed to regain his composure.

The sky above them was a mass of shifting ashen colors, all blues and grays and greens. The stone below was jet black, run through with broad streaks of chalk and silver. It was arranged in interlocking blocks, but no human craftsman had hewn those edges, nor quarried those blocks, which met at all angles and were many times longer and taller than any mortal creature. Across the vast yard was a fountain, though no water flowed through it. On the other side of that was a high wall, its rough blocks interlocking in an endless not-quite pattern. Beyond the wall, she could see no more.

A woman in a green dress sat on the edge of the fountain.

"You're late!" she cried, voice echoing across the yard. "I was about to go in by myself!"

Her tone was viscous, like honey or olive oil, so rich that you almost couldn't taste the bitterness that danced along its edges, so appealing that it made you crave beyond your appetite.

"If you could have gone in alone," Escuz boomed, "I have no doubt you would have. Spare us your tantrum and make yourself ready."

Jessamine saw that some vitality had returned to Elias.

"Are you okay?" she whispered as she helped him to stand a bit straighter.

"I will be," he grunted, unconvincingly.

They drew closer to the fountain in Escuz's wake, which gave Jessamine opportunity to appreciate the woman's figure. She curved in ways that defied logic, ways that were never quite the same out of the opposite corners of your eyes. Her green dress shimmered like a sea of emeralds and bared no neck at all, but split in the bodice and exposed nearly all of her overfull bosom. From her bare feet to the iron spikes that pierced her ears, everything about her dripped with an unbridled energy that set Jessamine's stomach twirling.

"Always you say the nicest things to me," the woman trilled.

"Always I remind you of what you renounced," Escuz spat back.

Jessamine was surprised at the ferocity of the spirit's words. If the woman's bitterness was masked by sweetness, he maintained no such airs. There was a history between them and it was neither pleasant nor without remorse. Strangely, Jessamine felt an awful pang of jealousy creep in, driving the pleasant swirls from her stomach just in time for the woman to notice her and Elias's presence.

"Do you intend to bring these pets into the Labyrinth?" the woman inquired.

"There is no prohibition," said Escuz.

"So there is not," she agreed. "Perhaps I should find a mortal toy of my own. Or perhaps I'll take one of yours?"

When had she drawn so near? One moment, she had been so far away, at the edge of the fountain. The next, she stood so close that Jessamine's nostrils were flooded by the heady stench of her floral perfume. The woman reached out a lithe, pale finger and laid it upon Elias's bottom lip. At her touch, a low groan erupted from deep within his chest.

"Come, child," she entreated. "I promise to take ever-so-good care of you."

Jessamine flared, striking the woman with barely-open palms and pushing her away some three or four steps. Electric pain lanced through her hands where they made contact with the spirit's body—for surely there was enough evidence by now to call her out as such.

"Ah, well," said the spirit, unfazed by Jessamine's attack. "Give it time. Shall we begin?"

She addressed this last question to Escuz, who nodded and gestured for her to go on ahead. He followed close behind, leaving Jessamine and Elias to pad along after, as they had before. They stepped around the fountain and proceeded towards the stone wall on its other side. Where they approached, a high archway opened like a proscenium, materializing where before that had been solid rock. The four passed under it without comment and entered a short corridor, which forked in two directions at its end.

"I will take the bend sinister," said the woman.

She set off down the left-hand path at all speed, darting around the corner and out of sight.

"And we will take the righteous," echoed Escuz, for no one's benefit but his own.

The path beyond their corner was mostly straight, but grew more wild with every passing minute. Smooth, black masoned walkways were covered over with windswept dirt and moss, softening their footfalls but shifting the ground beneath their feet. Woody roots sprang through the stone walls of the maze like they were no more than clay, covering the floor like a net. Thin, at first, the roots grew increasingly thick and knotted as they traveled further, making every step more uneven than the last.

"Who was that?" asked Jessamine, when she was satisfied that they had the time and space to talk along the way.

"The dark ever opposes us," Escuz repeated, "and she is the face of their opposition. Rejoice, for you have met Bertolais, the Green Lady, spirit of the dark."

Jessamine hadn't considered that spirits could be sarcastic.

"What's your history with her?" she pressed. "Clearly you've met before."

"In another lifetime, yes," said the spirit. "But that is not important now. All that matters is that our aims run counter to hers. We are here to rally a gloaming beast to our cause. As this is the Labyrinth, the Sentinel needs must await us at its center, and the Green Lady will use every trick in her considerable repertoire to reach him before we do. We cannot allow this."

"Is that all?" mused Elias.

He sprang forward like a shot, shaking off his earlier malaise to barrel ahead down the corridor several meters before he abruptly dropped from sight.

"Ellie!" Jessamine shrieked.

Escuz, too, leapt into motion, following Jessamine to the place where her cousin had vanished. He had not gone far, tripping into a hidden pit some eight or nine feet below the ground level.

"Ow," he coughed from below.

"Are you hurt?" she called down.

He checked himself over, clambering to his feet and checking the depth of the pit. It was too far for him to climb out on his own, even if he jumped.

"Just banged up," he said. "But I need a hand."

"Work quickly, Jessamine Less," Escuz urged from a few steps back down the path. "Get yourselves to the other side of the pit."

She didn't like his tone at all. Not one bit.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Why can't you help?"

"The pit was not the trap," Escuz explained, gravely.

The clicking sound started like the far-off rustle of wind through dry leaves, but there were no trees or grasses in the maze, only roots and dirt and stone. The sound came from the walls themselves, reverberating along their lengths, as if something—many, many somethings—moved along them with tiny, tapping feet. Thousands and thousands of tiny, tapping, tapping feet.

Instinctively, Jessamine reached for her hip, but there was nothing there but her belt.

"I don't have a weapon," she worried aloud.

"You do not need one," Escuz crowed. "I am a spirit of the light at harvest time and the sun is rising. I am all the weapon you need."

Had there always been a sword at his side, a broad and gleaming thing in a polished and bejeweled scabbard? Had his pale gray suit always been made not from cloth but from plates of cold steel? The spirit was an Arthurian romance made real. His sword sang out with knightly valor as he drew and raised it high.

"Go!" he commanded. "Get Elias from the pit!"

"I'm not going to like what's coming, am I," her cousin groused.

"Nor will I, I think," she agreed. "Now let me think."

The pit was deep, but only six feet or so across—she could make it with a running start and there was no sense in them both having to make that jump. Just before she leapt, she looked back over her shoulder at Escuz and immediately wished she had not. She could see what was making all that racket, now.

No hounds, the spirit had said. He'd said nothing about an absence of monstrosities.

Three quick steps and a windmilling tumble through the air brought her to the other side of the pit, rolling uncomfortably against the irregular ground. Hooking her toes around the root structures, she lowered herself halfway into the pit and extended her arms to Elias—only to withdraw them, a moment later.

"Ellie," she addressed him, "does Yusuf not know?"

"Is this really the time?" he squeaked.

He hadn't seen the source of the danger, yet, but he could hear the cacophony of metal on stone growing louder and closer.

"You didn't answer before," she countered. "And then there was that business with the Green Lady. I need to know that I can trust you."

The wedge between them that had formed that night in October had only grown in the years since, a gap born from a difference in understanding and a failure to communicate. They were family—they would always be. They had grown apart, but that didn't change the fact that they had been children together. She had seen Elias at his best and at his worst. She had seen his moments of deepest sorrow and his moments of highest joy. She knew what he looked like when he was in pain.

Or so she had thought.

"Ellie," she repeated, one last time. "Have you told Yusuf anything?"

"No," Elias spat. "I haven't. He doesn't know any of it was—is—real. He thinks it's my professional obsession. He thinks it's all just folklore."

She pulled him up by his forearms, unable to convince herself that the grimace that enveloped his face was from the strain of the climb.

Escuz's blade snicker-snacked. With every swing, a handful of silvery spindles flew like ribbons, but still more gnashing things bore down on him, each new apparition climbing over the shattered shell of its nearest kin.

"Go on!" the spirit shouted. "I will follow!"

"Come on," Jessamine agreed.

She dragged dragged cousin into a sprint. He had seen the spiders, now. He didn't argue.

The corridor wound in hard angles. It rose and fell in jagged slopes. They lost their footing more than once, but still they carried on, ignoring their scuffs and scrapes. Who knew if the Green Lady was encountering the creatures, too. Could they be her doing, not the Sentinel's? Who was this Sentinel, anyway? Why was he trapped inside of the Labyrinth? Was this a prison of his own design?

There were no answers to be found in running, but still they ran, preferring their doubts ahead to the dangers that chased behind. On they went, through black halls of weathered stone, over ancient and gnarling roots, beneath a shimmering, impossible sky. On and on they ran—until they reached the curtain of fire.

It burned blue-hot in a vast translucent sheet, rising as high as the walls around them, and had charred the roots and glassed the dirt at its base. There was nothing but the air for it to consume, but it burned just the same. It warped and swelled, now seeming thin as paper, now thick as iron. Jessamine thought that she could make out the corridor on the other side, beyond the tongues of flame, but that did little to quell her fear that the fire would consume anything that passed through it.

Escuz, true to his word, had kept on their heels, but so had the snicker-snacking horde. He had outrun them, had driven them back, but not for good. Not even for long.

"What do we do now?" snapped Elias.

"Go through," said Escuz with half a smile.

"Through the fire?" he stammered. "Are you kidding me?"

Jessamine said nothing. In some way, she had expected that.

"Fire is sacrifice in elemental form," Escuz explained. "It is matter-made-energy, life-giving, light-making. It will not harm us here, not we who are guided by the light."

Elias took one look back down the corridor, where unspeakable horrors chittered and crashed against the narrowing walls, gave a quick shrug, and dashed through.

His sudden exclamation of pain turned Jessamine's stomach upside-down.

"Hot!" Elias yelped. "It's hot! But—I think—uh—I'm okay. It didn't burn me!"

"Now, you," Escuz encouraged.

Jessamine laughed, took a deep breath, and stepped into the blue.

It was hot. Of course it was hot: it was fire. But the startling sensation was quickly gone and left no trace of harm upon her.

Escuz stepped through after her. His armor glowed orange for a few brilliant seconds before it quickly cooled back to burnished silver.

Moments thereafter, the first of the creatures collided with the flame and burst into sparks and slag with a scream like shearing metal. More followed and more again, mindlessly rushing towards their quarry, even though it meant their deaths, until it became impossible to keep watching them die, between the terrible noise and the awful light and the sickening feeling of wasted life, even life such as this.

"That will hold the hounds," Escuz announced, incongruously, "but we cannot stop to rest. Bertolais will not be slowed any more than we."

The path ahead was clear of obstacles, but it forked in three distinct directions.

"Well, that's convenient," mused Elias.

"Indeed," Escuz agreed, though he didn't seem terribly surprised by this discovery. "Thus we are three against the Green Lady's one. It is that which will win us the hour."

"Will it be safe?" asked Jessamine, thinking more of Elias than of herself.

"I make can make no guarantees," said Escuz. "I am a spirit, not a god. I am not omniscient. These lairs of gloaming beasts are shrouded against my sight, but I expect that any danger will not be insurmountable. The Sentinel was not known for malice."

Jessamine looked back at the still-screaming curtain of fire.

"Our pursuers are not of the Sentinel's design," the spirit added. "Be assured of that."

"If the Sentinel isn't malicious," Elias remarked, "why are we worried about him joining the dark?"

"Great darkness can be brought forth in the absence of malice," Escuz observed. "It is the same for us as it is for you."

"Let's get going," Jessamine urged. "I'll go right. Elias, you go left. Escuz, take the center. If you reach a dead end, come back to this junction. The two who return will follow after the third. If you do make it through, keep going till the end—don't wait for anyone else."

Elias went off at a run, content to follow her direction and disinclined to discuss the matter further. Escuz lingered for the span of one breath, long enough to give Jessamine a hopeful, approving nod. She couldn't tell if that made her feel better or worse.

The roots in the right-hand path were thicker than at any point before, covering all but little pockets of gray dirt and black stone, slowing her pace to a crawl as she sought the best way forward. She chose speed over safety wherever she could take the chance and racked up the cuts and bruises to show for it. Despite this, her every step felt heavier and slower than the last, as though some ghostly hand had grasped the back of her coat, pulling her backwards as she pushed ahead. It only took her a hundred paces, if that, to reach a dead end, but Jessamine felt like she had run a marathon—and had done so only to find no finish line, just a blank expanse of interlocked stone.

She sank to her knees, bashing them on the roots and tearing through her trousers. In spite of her own instructions to turn back from a false path, she found that she didn't have the strength to rise now that she was here, let alone make the trek back to the fork. The roots seemed now to comfort her, to invite her to stay and rest. They wrapped and wound around her, forming a calm cocoon from which there would be no escape, drawing her down into the earth.

With a last, soft exhale of breath, her eyes fluttered closed.

Orange eyes stared back at her.

Jessamine roared into life and motion, ripping at the roots and severing the crop freshly-sprouted vines, whirling her way skyward in a torrent of pure adrenaline-fueled aggression, freeing herself from the Labyrinth's final trap and bringing the otherworld back into sharp focus. Her mind raced faster than her feet. She could retrace her steps, go back to the crossroads, but what was the point? Simply choosing the wrong route had already guaranteed that she wouldn't make it first to the center. But then, why put a trap down a dead-end path? Why add injury to insult?

She thought back to the curtain of fire. That which made light offered no danger to those who walked within the light. Not all walls were roadblocks. That which marked a path offered no barrier to those who walked the path. Jessamine placed her hand upon the stone and pushed.

It parted like a cloud, fading into a vaulted gateway that opened onto a vast central courtyard. The roots that had plagued their way continued on beneath her feet, growing thicker and darker as they wound towards the most central point of the Labyrinth, their source: a colossal ash tree, as big across as Escuz was tall, its boughs spreading out across the courtyard's open ceiling, so dense that they blotted out the colorful sky. In the heart of the trunk sprouted the statue of a man, embedded like a tumor in the bark, and from that statue spread that same singular stone, black as tar, shot through with silver and chalk, subsuming the material of the tree, making the timber more mineral than vegetation, and so too its roots. The statue and the Labyrinth and all that grew within it were one in the same, a massive, twisted, un-living organism.

She could study the statue in greater detail from the base of the tree, standing among its stony roots, themselves each as broad here as a mortal tree. The man depicted was unreasonably tall and broad and wore nothing but a sloping conical hat, a long cape, and a loincloth that hid little but the color of his modesty. His beard was long and his face was creased with wisdom but no laughter. In one giant hand he clutched a curved animal horn, embellished and jeweled, that radiated with life, even through the veil of stone.

Jessamine lifted curious fingers to touch the very tips of his toes.

In an instant, the figure was transformed. Black stone melted to reveal chalky skin, though even this was lined with pale, silvery streaks. His long beard sprouted blonde. Closed eyes opened and stared down at her, each one a startling, lustrous hazel. The muscled chest heaved with a long-held breath, now released. Callused fingers clutched tighter around the horn, which now shone with polished bronze and glittering topaz and many other gems for which she knew no name.

"Well done," cheered Escuz.

"Tch," clucked Bertolais.

Each of them had appeared in the courtyard at the same moment that she laid her hands on the Sentinel's feet. The spirit of the light carried her cousin in his arms, who woke now from the repose of deep slumber, blinking with astonishment at the giant tree, full of green life, and the giant who stood within. The Green Lady sulked on the other side of the courtyard. Her dress was torn and singed. Its tatters only enhanced her wanton appeal, but the anger in her curled lips soured any lusty welcome. With a final long look—to Escuz, Jessamine thought, or perhaps to Elias, who was standing just at his side—she turned and vanished into the shadows.

"I am glad that it is you who found me, Jessamine Less," the Sentinel boomed, as if his voice were made for speaking to the heavens, not these meek and craven things that crawled upon the ground, "for in my secret heart I have always wished to aid the cause of the light."

"You know me?" gasped Jessamine.

"We know all mortals who are of the light," stated Escuz.

"And of the dark," added the other.

"If you wanted to aid the light," scoffed Elias, "why didn't you?"

"My sin was selflessness," rumbled the Sentinel. "I spent many eons as watchmen for two worlds, guarding all souls, mortal and spirit, light and dark alike. In the end, I lost myself in service and became a beast."

"But now that wrong is righted," said Escuz, "and you will stand with us at Christmas."

He clapped the Sentinel on his bare shoulder as he stepped down from within the ash tree.

"Aye," the Sentinel agreed, "The Gjallarhorn shall serve the light."

The Sentinel held aloft the shining horn in his hand, which glimmered so gloriously that Jessamine couldn't help but stare.

"This is what the dark desired, far more than my blighted soul," the Sentinel explained. "When I sound this horn, it will call all the forces of the light, even those far away or long slumbering or forgotten, to the front lines of battle. But so it would have called all the forces of the dark, had they cause to possess it."

"We shall outnumber them from the start," noted Escuz, "and so the battle tilts in our favor."

"Now I go to prepare for tomorrow," said the Sentinel, "but your day is far from over. What others do you court for the light?"

"The Magician and the Trickster," said Escuz.

"Pernicious and vile," the Sentinel thundered. "Each more dangerous than the other. They shall be hard labors, but perhaps they may be redeemed as I was."

He looked to each of them in turn, lingering last and longest on Jessamine.

"Go swiftly, Jessamine Less," the spirit urged, "and do not fail."

The Sentinel stepped back into the empty nook of his tree, neatly filling the hole that his body had left behind. Its mossy bark closed back around him, beautiful ash, free of the beastly curse, closing over him entirely, sealing him wholly from sight. A silent calm fell over the Labyrinth, but Jessamine knew it would not last. There was nothing left for them here. It was time to go.

////

Elias coughed and shivered as he stepped onto frozen ground.

"How do you come out so calm?" he demanded, between labored breaths.

Jessamine did not answer him. Her focus was on the sky, where the sun hung just as high and brightly as it had when they first traversed the passage between the trees.

"You did it," she told the spirit.

"Near enough," he allowed. "It is beyond any spirit to gain us time, but we have lost no more than seconds for all our hours in the Labyrinth. Return home and rest. I will come again when the sun is at its zenith."

"Why so specific?" Jessamine inquired. "Why not just: 'When the time is right,' like usual?"

She was trying to be glib, but it worried her.

"My might waxes and wanes with the rising and falling of the sun," he stated. "We shall need triple-strength to court the Magician. Go, now."

Her fears thus validated, the spirit went without another word, not through the two-trees gate, but off into the forest. Soon, she could no longer see the flash of his pale gray suit—simple cloth again, but little diminished in valor. It was time for them to get a move on, too.

"Come on," she called to Elias. "Let's have some breakfast."

It occurred to Jessamine as they entered the house and were greeted as if they had only gone for a walk around the block that she and Elias were now out of sync with the rest of the world. They were a few hours older than they ought to be, jumping ahead of all the other things that had previously lived in parallel with them. They would die a few hours earlier than their natural lifespans—if they made it out the other side of this war alive at all—and it was only going to get worse: they still had two more gloaming beasts to court.

She considered telling Elias that he ought to stay home, but then she thought better of it—that look he'd given her at the bottom of the pit still weighed on her heart. Telling him how to live his life would only end in more pain for them both. Silence was a coward's choice, but there was already too much at stake. She would let the boy ruin his own life if it meant saving everyone else's.

"How long until he comes back?" asked Will, taking a seat back at the table.

Yusuf had strenuously insisted on taking care of the dishes from breakfast, so that left the three of them a moment or two of privacy while he thrashed around in the sink.

"What makes you think he's coming back?" chirped Elias, uncharitably.

"El, you wouldn't look like that if that work was done," Will observed. "There's more to do and I know it. So: how can I help?"

"Solar noon," said Jessamine, answering his initial question. "So, a bit after twelve, right?"

Elias nodded.

"Shuhui might be here by then," said Will, "but Vic and Perry are always late. You'll probably miss them."

"That's okay," she said. "It's probably better that way. Less to worry about if they don't see me at all. What about Domi?"

Will shook his head.

"All flights are grounded," he said. "The armistice is technically in effect for the region, but that doesn't mean much. It's just too soon."

Jessamine sighed. She would never blame someone for choosing the world over her family—I mean, look in the mirror—but it still stung. Maybe she should say something to Elias, after all.

"You know," she half-mumbled, "this would be a lot easier if you told Yusuf what was going on."

"Easier how?" Elias sputtered. "And what about you? You can't tell me that all your guests know what's going on."

The truth in Jessamine's eyes skewered Elias better than any words. Yes, they did. She didn't hide things from her family. That just wasn't who she was—who she could ever be.

"Light," he swore, covering his face in his hands.

"What're you all chatting about?" inquired Yusuf, innocently, on his way back from the kitchen to the table.

"Sports," interjected Will.

"Seriously?" cackled Yusuf. "How in the world did you get our Elias, noted athletic curmudgeon, to chat about sports at the breakfast table. This I have to hear."

Will spun a yarn that was shockingly plausible and immediately put Yusuf at ease, in spite of Elias's apparent and increasingly dark mood. He'd always had a knack for that sort of thing and she loved him for it, dearly. It made it easy for them to settle again into small talk and easy, meaningless conversation, discussing the state of the world without really saying anything at all. They moved from sports to art, dipped briefly into and rapidly out of politics, and ended up—as they always seemed to—talking about the weather.

Somewhere along the way, Elias made up his mind about what story he was going to tell. Why bother with the unlikely truth when something that felt true was easier to believe?

At a quarter to noon, he stood up from the table and bolted out, barely stopping to grab his coat before he slammed the front door, ignoring his husband's cries of protest and concern.

"I'll go after him," offered Jessamine, already halfway out of the room.

"Should we delay dinner?" asked Will.

"No," she said. "If we're not back, eat without us. Give my love to everyone."

Yusuf, forlorn and confused, tried to follow her out the door, but Will put a hand on his chest, stopping him dead. Jessamine didn't know what yarn he would spin to make him accept this sudden reality, but she had to trust that he would. That he could.

Jessamine had to run to the end of the block before she caught sight of Elias, aimlessly retreating.

"Ellie, stop!" she called out to him. "Where are you going?"

"Do you think it matters where we are?" he asked, when Jessamine drew within earshot. "Do you really think the spirit won't find us, no matter where we go?"

He had a point. But still.

"You didn't have to do that," she scolded.

"It's not the first time I've stormed out of the house without a word," he said. "He's used to it. He already thinks that one of these days I just won't come back. Maybe today will be that day."

"Don't say that," she muttered. "You're coming back. We both are."

She reached out to wrap her arms around him but he quickened his pace, slipping once more out of reach. Why did he have to make this so hard? Why couldn't he just be honest? Why wouldn't he just save himself and let her be the one to disappear?

Escuz's appearance saved her from having to think about the answers to any of those questions. He perched on a street corner, apparently loitering by a crosswalk stanchion, looking somehow as if he'd always been there, always waiting just for them to arrive.

"This way," he said, simply.

He led them in the opposite direction, back the way they'd come, but that didn't last. They took a sharp turn and wended out of the residential district, into the school zone beyond. There were no children around, as this was one of their brief vacations. Even the parks and playgrounds were empty with everyone home and waiting for their dinner.

The spirit took them onto the high school grounds by a back gate, which had been left suspiciously unlocked. As they crunched through the day-old snow that clung to the practice grounds, Jessamine thought to ask a question, if only to break the interminable silence.

"What can you tell us about the Magician?" she inquired. "Does he have some magical thing that everyone wants, like the Sentinel had the Gjallarhorn?"

"Indeed he does," Escuz assented. "Gáe Bulg, the terrible spear, a weapon of unthinkable brutality that slays any being it strikes, be they mortal or spirit."

"That sounds bad," said Elias.

"Quite," the spirit agreed. "It is vital that we win him to our side. Better such a weapon be used against our enemies, if it must be used at all. Given the Magician's disposition, I expect this shall be a martial contest, for though his magics earned him his title, he was a warrior first and foremost."

"We'll have to fight?" asked Jessamine.

"I hope not," said the spirit. "I should be all we need."

They descended into the football stadium, passing through a concrete thoroughfare, unimpeded by ticket gates, and out onto the field. The moment their boots touched the turf, they were transported. Invigorating warmth and brightness surrounded Jessamine, held her close, and let her go on the other side, feeling even better than she had before.

Elias's reaction, however, was getting worse—and he suffered more for having food in his stomach, spilling the dregs of his pancakes onto the ground that sprung up beneath their feet. As before, she gave him a moment to collect himself while she took in their surroundings.

They stood within the arc of another stone wall, this one encircling a shallow basin of sand and gravel. The presence of a wall was familiar, but the stone itself could hardly be more different: it was sun-bleached in a land with no sun, reflecting the hazy gray-and-yellow sky above. It almost seemed organic in its structure, not built up from interlocking blocks but carved away and worn smooth by restless wind and endless time until only this, the wall, remained. Atop the wall, in contrast to the organic shapes of the stone, rose the inorganic shapes of stepped timber frames, ruined and splintered but still enough to convey the meaning of their form. This was a Colosseum.

The stands of the arena were empty except for one, and on that one sat the gloaming beast.

Surely, it was the Magician, for what else could that fearsome creature be? It held the approximate shape of a man, but bristling hair like coarse wires jutted out from every surface of its body. One of its eyes was sunken so far inside its head that it appeared a pinprick, while the other dangled against its cheek, suspended by a bundle of distended nerves. Its lips hung half off its jaw, exposing two rows of jagged, hooked teeth above a neck that seemed to have been twisted twice around and which pulsed with dark blue veins. One arm was thick as a telephone pole. The other ended in a club-like fist.

The Magician beat its fist against its breast, a low sound that shook the gravel at their feet.

GOOOOOOOOOO AWAAAAAAAAAAY

The command was uttered in a voice so loud and deep that she could hardly call it speech, nor describe her experience of it as hearing, but its meaning was inescapable.

"Not likely," suggested the Green Lady.

Jessamine hadn't noticed her arrival, although from the way he stood, cheated to keep each of the other spirits in the corner of one eye, Escuz had. Her green dress had been restored to its former glory in the time between their affairs—if anything, it dipped lower and clung tighter than it had, this morning.

"You know why we are here, Magician," said Bertolais. "Grant us your labor and prepare to leave behind this tepid existence."

DIIIIIIIIIIE

Trap doors opened beneath the sand of the basin, releasing twin creatures onto the ground above. They appeared like lions, but with scales where they ought to have fur and too-long fangs that dripped with luminous poison. Immediately, they began to roar, an ear-splitting, wordless bellow that buffeted the basin, filling it with a swirling fog of sand and dust.

"What are those!?" Jessamine cried.

"They are the Magician's doing," Escuz yelled back. "They have no name."

Instinctively, she followed his lead, putting her back to his and moving slowly towards the center of the arena, protecting themselves from an attack from any side. Only, she had no weapon. Escuz's sword was in his hand, but he only had the one. And where was Elias? He had been standing by the Green Lady when the dust cloud kicked up and she had lost him thereafter.

"Ellie?" she called out.

Her cousin did not answer, but Bertolais did.

"You cannot win this fight," she whispered. "They will die and you will be left alone, a little lost mortal in our domain. You do not need them. I will guide you to where you need to go."

Jessamine realized slowly that the spirit wasn't speaking to her, but rather to Elias, wherever he was, her words carried along as a whisper on the restless wind.

"You are not like them," Bertolais cooed. "Don't tell me you haven't noticed. You feel the pain each time you pass through the void, like a piece of your soul has been torn away. You see the way Escuz looks at you when he thinks you aren't looking at him. You hear the way the spirits address poor Jessamine Less, as if you were hardly there."

Jessamine's heel caught the edge of something hard and she paused, kneeling in the dirt. Groping blindly, her hands closed around the haft of a long and timeworn spear, etched and rusted but still sharp.

"Yes, I pity her," Bertolais whispered, "for she serves the wrong masters. The light will burn her up and leave her as no more than ash upon the Christmas hearth. Have they not told you that their war ends in fire? But we are not so ignoble."

With a mighty cry, Escuz struck at the first of the lion-things as it came within reach, cleaving one scaled paw from its foreleg. It yowled and retreated, but it did not go far enough. Jessamine whirled around and thrust her spear at the wounded creature as Escuz anticipated the attack of its twin.

"Evil?" Bertolais scoffed. "Who among us has ever spoken to you of good or of evil? The dark and the light are not so different, any more than the sunlit side of the hill is different from the shaded. But in this Colosseum, only we can claim the Magician and his Gáe Bulg and soon you will know the truth of my claim. When only the dark remains at the last battle's end, you will wish that you had answered our first offer."

The hale lion-thing leapt, but Escuz moved more quickly. He ducked beneath its claws and severed its grinning head from its shoulders in a single stroke.

The other lion-thing fatally underestimated Jessamine, too, for when it lopsidedly lunged, she was ready. She let the creature's own pounce drive her spearhead through its gullet. Its fangs tore at the air, but they could not arrive at their target, stopping with a sharp tug when the tip of the spear lodged in its spine.

In the silence that followed, the dust began to clear. Elias stood just where she had left him, pool of sick around his feet. The Green Lady was nowhere to be seen.

Did he know that she could hear what she had heard? Would he tell her?

"What happened?" she demanded. "Where did you go?"

"Nothing happened," he growled—the liar. "I've been here the whole time."

Escuz shushed them both with a wave of his hand.

"Magician!" he hollered up at the stands. "We have faced and overcome your monsters. Now I would face you myself, that you would understand which of us is the stronger."

At first, it seemed the Magician would not reply. But then, the answer came.

FIIIIIIIIIINE

The Magician grasped the edge of the wall with his giant hand and, in one swift motion—too swift for such an unwieldy bulk, but her eyes did not deceive her—vaulted over the side. She saw now that his legs were perhaps most deformed of all, each one twisted in a painful helix so that his toes pointed back and his heels pointed forward. Even his knees bent the wrong way around. Yet on those reversed limbs he easily loped, drawing Jessamine's spear from the corpse of his lion-thing.

"That is not your spear," goaded Bertolais, appearing on the other side of the Colosseum. "Why not use your Gáe Bulg?"

TOOOOOOOOOO EAAAAAAAAAASY

The hand that held the spear at the end of the Magician's unreasonably thick limb was so disproportionate that it was almost normal in stature. Jessamine wondered how he could even move with all those mismatched parts. But then, in a cracking, whirling moment, the sense of his terrible disfigurement was made plain. His head stayed still, dangling eye locked on Escuz, but his body spun, uncoiling like an overtightened spring between his neck and his legs. The club hand flew like a pendulum bob, keeping the circle true as he loosed the spear. It flew like a bullet, aimed with deadly accuracy at Escuz's chest.

The spirit had not embellished his triple-strength. In one precise glint of steel, he split the spear from tip to end. The two halves floundered harmlessly to the ground behind him. He moved like lightning, sword held high, shooting across the field in a wave of sand. Without another javelin to hurl, it seemed the Magician was helpless for all his hideous bulk. He had not counted on missing.

The whole exchange had taken seconds and the Magician stood no differently than he had at the start of their contest, except that he was twisted the other way around and had Escuz's sword-edge resting coolly along his knotted throat.

A wry applause rang out across the Colosseum.

"He is quick, I'll give him that," said the Green Lady. "But what valor is there in speed? What might is there in threats? Is true courage not found in submission?"

Escuz's blade did not waver, but his expression clouded.

"I offer you a new contest," said the spirit of the dark. "Escuz holds your life in his hands, yes, but I wager that for all your deadly potency, you cannot kill me. As proof, I ask that you strike me down. Cut off my head with this blade."

Bertolais knelt a moment and drew out her own weapon from the sands of the basin, a jagged and barbed short sword.

"If I rise from your blow," she continued, "you will name me the strongest of all and you shall join with our cause."

"She means to trick you," hissed Escuz. "I have fallen for this legerdemain before."

"Are you not the Magician?" mocked Bertolais. "Can you no longer see through paltry deceptions, now that you are a beast?"

IIIIIIIIII CAAAAAAAAAAN

With his defer hand, the gloaming beast pushed aside Escuz's sword. He lumbered slowly across the yard, all his earlier swiftness departed, to where the Green Lady offered her small sword.

Jessamine hurried to Escuz's side, ensuring with a harsh glance that Elias stayed close behind her.

"We have lost," the spirit lamented.

"How can you be sure?" she queried.

"It is as I said," he remarked. "I have fallen for her deception before."

He sounded weary. She wanted to press, but she had a funny feeling that if she tried to seize this moment, it would slip away instead. Perhaps he had already said more than he meant to. Perhaps he would say no more. Either way, all she could do was wait.

She did not have to wait long.

"Not all spirits were always so," he began. "We have had other lives than these. In those days, she served the light, if by another master than mine own. She bested me with a subterfuge much like the one that I expect you are about to see."

"She used to be of the light?" asked Elias, suddenly taking an interest. "What changed?"

"It was another time," the spirit sighed, "and it is a tale of woe. In my knightly travails, I came into the service of a lord. He sent his wife to woo me as a test of my virtue. I spurned her attentions and thus passed his test, but the testing cost her as much as it gained me."

Elias looked confused.

"Many years later, I wed," the spirit continued. "My wife was a loathly lady, cursed with ugliness of form, but I devoted myself to her. By my submission was her curse lifted and only then did I behold her true face: she was the same lord's wife, twice-spurned, first by me and then by him when her love for him faded in the aftermath of his grave misuse."

"And that was Bertolais?" asked Elias. "Your wife?"

"No," said Escuz, with a sad little laugh. "Bertolais was the lord. He could never forgive what he saw as her betrayal—and mine."

Murky feelings swirled within Jessamine's chest. The odd jealousy she had felt before was consumed by a sympathetic rage. She didn't want to hate the spirits of the dark—hate made her less human than she strived to be—but such benevolence was becoming untenable. Bertolais, whoever she had been before, had taken advantage of Escuz's good heart twice and abused the love of a good woman—and all before she had become a spirit. How much more harm had she done in the days since?

"What's her trick, then?" Jessamine interjected.

The gloaming beast had reached the spirit of the dark by now. He reached out and took the little sword from her grip and examined it lazily, testing its weight.

"Watch and you will see," said Escuz.

The Magician needed little of his full strength for such a simple blow on such a feeble target. He brought his arm down and cut through her neck in one rough stroke. The Green Lady's head fell, spilling blood in great gouts, staining the sand red. And then, like nothing had happened, her headless body bent down and picked up her missing piece, lifting it back up and placing it again between her shoulders. Life blinked back into her face. Before any of them could see quite how her wounds healed, the dark stains down the front of her dress became the only sign that any act of violence had transpired, a moment before.

"You may try again, of course," she offered, "but the result will be the same. Accept it, Magician. You are bested."

The gloaming beast fell to one mangled knee. As he descended, change overtook his body. His waist and throat imperceptibly unwound as his limbs shrunk and balanced out against his trunk. His teeth receded and his lip mended and his one eye was sucked back into its socked while his other eye popped forward, each settling under a thick and regal brow. Where once he had been clad in wiry hair, now layers of oiled furs girded his altogether handsome and human form. He took the Green Lady's pale hand in his and laid his lips against it.

"My sin was selfishness," lilted the Magician. "I fought and won so many battles. I reveled in the death of my enemies, mortal and spirit, light and dark alike. In the end, I lost myself in hubris and became a beast."

"You are a beast no more. Rise, Magician of the dark," Bertolais commanded. "Stand at my side. It will not be long now until the last glorious fight. That is, my adversary, unless you wish to try your challenge now?"

Jessamine saw her own rage reflected in Escuz's golden eyes, which frightened her more than any pallid feeling her own heart could conjure. She could tell that he was tempted by her suggestion. He was at the peak of his strength, now—and he would only weaken as the day went on. He had beaten the Magician before. He could do it again.

"Come on," said Jessamine, grabbing the spirit by his sword arm. "The day isn't over yet."

For a fraction of a second, she felt him resist and her heart sank. She couldn't hope to budge him if he didn't wish to be budged. He was more powerful than her in every way that mattered right now.

"Once again, Jessamine Less," he said, too slowly and too calmly, "your courage saves us all."

He let her lead him away by the arm, Bertolais's cruel laughter ringing in their ears. They had nearly reached the prisoners' gate at the back of the Colosseum when she realized that Elias had not similarly heeded her guidance. Her cousin stood rooted on the sand, staring at the two figures in the heart of the arena, one draped in carcasses, the other drenched in blood. His face was half-hidden in the dim daylight, but Jessamine spied a kind of lust in his gaze.

"Ellie," she addressed him. "We need to go."

He blinked and grunted, then followed her in silence, three long steps behind.

////

Elias didn't stay on his feet for long. The moment they returned to the football stadium, he collapsed on the concrete walkway. There was nothing left in his stomach for him to eject—he'd left his breakfast in its entirety back in the Colosseum—but still he sputtered.

"Why?" he moaned. "Why does it hurt me so much every time? Why doesn't it hurt you?"

Escuz looked down at him with such pity and silent reproach that Jessamine had to look away.

"Tell me!" Elias howled. "I know you know!"

The spirit of the light looked to her. Elias was her burden. He was also right: she did know.

"You're not a child of the light," Jessamine whispered. "You never were."

"I'm not?" Elias whimpered.

"You are not," Escuz confirmed.

"How can you be sure?" the boy railed. "How do you know?"

"It's not just a title, Ellie," she sighed. "The light marks you. I... see things. I have ever since that night on Chalk Hill."

She closed her eyes, just for a second, but more than long enough for orange eyes to lance through the depths of her soul.

Elias made a vague attempt to rise, only to stumble and fall again onto the concrete with a soft, scuffing thud.

"Does that make me a child of the dark?" he asked, forlornly.

"The dark marks its children, too," said Escuz, "and less kindly, at that."

Jessamine swallowed a rude comment before it could leap free of her throat. She had many words for those orange eyes inside her mind, but "kind" was not one of them.

"If you were a child of the dark," the spirit added, "the passage would not harm you any more than it does your cousin. There are many ways in which the distinction between the light and the dark are vitally important, but this is not one of them. The passage hurts you because you are neither. You are a mortal child, born in sunlight and weaned beneath the moon. Liminal things find little safe harbor in our domain."

"The gloaming beasts," offered Jessamine.

"Just so," said Escuz. "Were you to stay in our domain overlong, you might become a beast, as well, Elias. You feel the beginnings of that transformation even now. The wounds deepen with each passage."

At first she thought her cousin had been stricken with another round of dry heaves, but then she realized that he was weeping. She moved to comfort him, but he waved her off with a violent swing of his hand.

"Why bring me along at all?" he asked, after a while. "Why take me to Chalk Hill in the first place if I didn't belong there?"

"She was not ready to face that burden alone," said the spirit. "Your companionship was a necessary component of our success. We would have failed in our quest without you."

"I needed a driver," said Jessamine.

"And now?" he scoffed. "Now do you need me at all?"

She didn't have an answer for that. They both knew that all he'd done so far was hurt himself and make himself a ripe target for the Green Lady. It wasn't his fault that they'd lost the Magician, but he certainly wasn't helping their cause.

"You can still go home," she said, instead. "Go back to Yusuf. Give thanks. Eat your fill."

"No," Elias growled. "No, no, no. I've spent the last ten years of my life chasing spirits. I've read every book and deciphered every scroll. I've learned everything there is to know about the war between the light and the dark. I've given my whole self to your cause. That has to count for something. It can't mean nothing at all."

Escuz sighed. When he spoke, his words were drenched in that same weariness she had seen in the Colosseum. It was barely afternoon, but for the spirit, the day had already grown too long. She wondered if the shine was coming off of him—or if spending so much time with them was simply rubbing it away.

"There is no prohibition," he acknowledged, at last. "I will not bar your companionship, should you choose to continue on at our side. But know that there is no mercy in our domain. It will not spare you the consequences of your actions, no matter how strong your will."

"How long do we have to wait before we court the Trickster?" asked Jessamine. "When will the time be right?"

"The time will never be right for the Trickster," Escuz grumbled. "Nor will my strength be of any meaningful assistance to our cause, I fear. It therefore matters not. We can proceed whenever you are ready."

Jessamine examined the state of her cousin. He had managed to pull himself upright, though he remained planted on the ground. Tears had stained his eyes and cheeks red, not unlike the Green Lady's dress. He looked immeasurably tired, but brimming over with rage.

She could relate.

"Let's get it done, then," she decided. "Ellie, are you coming with?"

Her cousin nodded and dragged himself up from the ground. She did not offer him a hand.

Escuz lifted his nose into the air, like a foxhound catching a scent.

"The passage is not far," he declared. "This way."

They made their way from the school and back to the village, still the only souls that walked these streets, whether by fate or fortune. The afternoon was crisp and mild, but the three could little appreciate it for the melancholy that dogged their every step. They skirted through the little downtown and out onto a meandering track that terminated in a vast cemetery. Headstones towered in even rows along untidy pathways, skyscrapers in miniature in a city of graves.

As they went deeper, the dirt beneath their feet grew over with moss and a clammy mist gathered around their ankles. It rose higher and thicker until it saturated the air around them, dropping them into near darkness despite the high sun. Were it not for the brief embrace of the sunlit void, Jessamine would hardly have realized that they had crossed over. Elias shook and trembled beside her, but he managed to stay on his feet, either too numb or too stubborn to be broken by the sudden assault on his mortal form. Escuz marched on ahead, clear of purpose if not of vision, pausing only occasionally to shake off the dewdrops that collected on the twill of his suit.

A structure awaited them on the indistinct horizon, sketched out by a collection of dimly flickering points in the fog. The closer they drew, the more it took shape, resolving from a blocky silhouette into an overwrought Château of brick and stone, set aglow in the gloom by a lit candle in every oriel.

Bertolais stood at the top of the front steps, her emerald dress restored a third time to pristine grandeur and a made second time more revealing, its central split now running from nape to navel. She was also not alone. Who could say whether the stranger at her side was in truth the Trickster, but looking at it certainly felt like a trick, so that felt a safe enough assumption for the moment.

The thing—for what else could she call it—vaguely held together in the shape of a small person, but composed of equal parts animal and statue and only a very little human flesh. Its legs were clad with gnarled fur, back-bent like a goat's, and capped with cloven hooves. Its arms were inscribed with intricate tattoos, tangled knots of blue and black ink, and ended in hands that had more claw than finger. From its crotch to its throat, the stranger was encased in a seamless bronze shell, like armor but sculpted in the style of a Parisian nude, complete with two smoothly peaking mounds that rivaled the Green Lady's own bosom.

Most disconcerting of all, the thing wore a helm that was riveted to the collar of its bronze carapace. Where the rest of its body, natural and unnatural, was uncomfortably present with detail, its headpiece was a formless, featureless ovoid, polished to a perfect mirror sheen, such that when Jessamine came close enough, her own face was reflected back in the place of the stranger's.

"Welcome, welcome!" the bewildering creature trilled, its dulcet voice unhindered by its helm. "We've been waiting for you all to arrive. Come in, come in, come in!"

It pushed at the vast double doors and they swung inward without a sound.

Improbably, the whole interior of the Château appeared to be a single enormous ballroom, appointed with more crystal chandeliers and gilded candelabras than could be counted, all shining on a hypnotic parquet floor, so brilliantly lacquered that it reflected a whole copy of the hall above as a phantom hall below. That would have been chaos enough, but the room was filled with guests. Some danced in erratic circles, some sang ribald songs, some juggled wine in wooden goblets, some carved roasted meats, and some performed unmentionable acts amid clusters of rapt voyeurs, but all of them had something in common: every last one was identical in appearance to the thing that had welcomed them inside. They weren't just cousins or fellows of a species—they were exact duplicates, a hundred or more copies of one gloaming beast.

"Welcome now to the masquerade," cheered the door-beast. "Mirrors, mirrors do you see, but there is only one of me. Find me if you can!"

With this parting challenge, the beast spun away and vanished into the crowd of copies. Or maybe it didn't. It was hard to tell.

All the beasts writhed and fluttered, each in its own way, but all as one, so that sometimes they seemed one massive, many-figured creature and other times a multitude of singular fascinations. By chance or machination, then, Jessamine barely noticed that she was being displaced, fluidly and irresistibly, from the periphery of the ballroom to the beating heart of the mob until she realized that she was surrounded by nothing but copies.

"You know," she shouted over the crowd, "I'm beginning to wish that we could go back to the giant metal spiders!"

"I'll show you a spider," snickered one of the nearest copies, flashing her an incredibly rude gesture.

"Which one of you is you!?" she demanded of the lot.

"I am Robin Goodfellow, master of this feast," replied the nearest copy.

"Sometimes I mind my manners," suggested another.

"And others I'm a beast!" professed a third.

At that last declaration, a copy grabbed two fistfuls of her bottom and gave them a squeeze. She yelped and swatted it away, but she couldn't tell which one of the dozen within touching distance—if any of them—had been the culprit.

"I need some help here!" she cried out.

Escuz was nowhere that she could see. She caught a glimpse of Elias in the crowd, but a flourish of emerald green followed just behind. Oh, no. She had only been thinking of his weaknesses, never his strengths. Jessamine was no good at riddles, but him? This wasn't just a riddle, this was folklore. He would never have a truer moment, if only he could resist the Green Lady's wiles long enough to seize it.

"Shakespeare," blurted her cousin, from somewhere in the throng.

"Shakespeare?" she called back.

The nearest copy regarded at her with a quizzical shrug and dumped the whole of its wine goblet over its mirrored, mouthless face.

"I never liked Shakespeare," Elias yelled. "It always seemed like he had something important to say, that maybe if I read him closely enough or interpreted his words in the right way it would all add up—but it never did. It was all just nonsense! Nothing in any of his plays meant anything at all to the light or the dark."

Jessamine kicked at a copy that had decided to take a great interest in mending the torn knees of her trousers with a comically oversized needle and thread.

"Get to the point, Ellie!" she bellowed.

With a crash and a flurry, Elias climbed onto one of the scattered cocktail tables, letting him tower over the horde. He was bleeding from a freshly-opened gash across his brow, but he didn't seem to notice.

"I don't like him," he continued, "but I've read him more times than I can stand. I remember Robin Goodfellow: he's Puck!"

"So?" she screeched.

"Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck," Elias recited, "you do their work, and they shall have good luck. You have to be kind! Treat him with respect and he'll return the favor."

That might prove difficult. In the time Elias had been raving about Shakespeare, Jessamine had brained three copies with a now-disfigured candlestick. She reached out her hand to the most recent of these.

"Can I help you up?" she offered.

The copy hissed and rolled away across the floor like a pillbug. There had to be a better method. With so many copies prancing about, it would take hours to isolate and interrogate them all, if they could even keep them apart long enough to maintain a tally. They might not be back in the Labyrinth, but this was still a race.

Following Elias's example, she shoved her way to the nearest table and jumped up onto it, scattering goblets and platters onto the floor, adding to the general din. She could observe most of the ballroom from here, with all its devilments and debaucheries. The spirits were easy enough to see, now, a streak of silver and a slash of green among the sea of copies. Elias still perched on his own little island, a stone's throw away.

How did one show kindness to a creature that was fundamentally unkind? Unless that was the trick. If Puck's essential nature was to be respectful, then it wouldn't be engaging in the acts of mayhem and self-interest that occupied its false selves. When they weren't in the business of comforting themselves, they seemed only to be interested in discomforting others. A true Puck, among these liars, would do nothing at all.

Jessamine pointed. There. A copy stood silent and still. It was the eye of the storm.

Elias saw, but so did Bertolais.

"I've got this," her cousin yelled.

He leapt off his table, using a cluster of copies to break his fall. It didn't matter. No mortal could be as fast as a spirit. There was no mercy in their domain.

The moment Elias entered her orbit, the Green Lady grabbed Elias by the throat. She held him dangling, toes off the ground, looking bemused by his flailing attempts to resist or escape. At this display of real violence—not the mere shadows of true offense—the copies scattered to the corners of the Château, allowing Escuz and Jessamine to close the distance unhindered. The remaining Trickster, the real one, acted the part of a statue, unmoved and unmoving, within their reach but closer still to the spirit of the dark.

"You have not earned a second chance," Bertolais told Elias, "but I am nothing if not magnanimous. Pledge yourself to me and I will make you a king among mortals."

Elias managed to laugh, though it was a sad and choking sound.

"Being mortal's kind of my whole thing," he quipped in a strangled whisper.

"Mortality is easily cured," the spirit noted with a murderous glint in her eye. "But have I ever been less than truthful with you, child? Did I not tell you truly that you were different from your cousin? Did I not tell you truly that the Magician would come to the dark? I tell you truly that Escuz will perish. I tell you truly that fire will take Jessamine Less. I tell you truly that you will be lost and alone in our domain and you will become a beast. I am your only way out. Know this before you spurn my love."

Elias, on the verge of losing consciousness, shrugged.

"That's it?" he murmured.

The spirit roared and let him fall, turning her baleful grasp on the Trickster, grabbing it by its bronze collar and hoisting it up over her head. Something slipped from its grip as it rapidly ascended, cracking against the floor and bouncing towards Jessamine with a steady click, clack, clonk.

"And you?" the Green Lady snarled. "I offer you glory and bliss! I offer you anything that can be dreamt of in all the worlds that are! I offer you the chance to be victorious in the last battle of our eternal war! What more is there that anyone could desire, be they spirit, beast, or mortal, be they not a damned fool?"

Jessamine snatched up the Trickster's fallen item before it could roll too far across the parquet. It was a marble—a shooter—blown from clear glass. Suspended inside was the whorl of a tiny and magnificent blazing star, sparkling with with flares of gleaming orange, dazzling gold, and searing white. She turned it between her fingers and wondered for half a heartbeat, in spite of her better nature, whether anyone would notice if she slipped it into her pocket and kept it forever, an impossible heirloom of this impossible world.

The Trickster hit the floor with a sound like a struck gong as the spirit of the dark discovered that, for all her strength, she could neither make the Trickster speak nor shake it free of its confines.

Jessamine knelt beside the little beast and helped it climb to its cloven feet.

"You dropped this," she told it, holding out the shining object.

It plucked the marble off her palm, moving its claws so gently and precisely that she barely felt them graze her skin. Every copy had been identical to this one, but for the first time she noticed that the back of the Trickster's hand was covered in a fine, soft fuzz, so lush and delicate that it begged to be fondled, for such a thing could hardly fail to bring you peace.

"Thank you, Jessamine Less," said the Trickster.

There came a sound like breaking glass, but multiplied a hundred hundred times. Jessamine covered her ears to keep out the cacophony, but kept her eyes wide open. She watched the bronze shell fall to pieces around the Trickster's body, revealing a hirsute but humanoid chest where its fur-covered legs ended. She watched the mirrored helm shatter into glitter around the Trickster's head, revealing a young face with high arching eyebrows and floppy pointed ears and a little spike of a beard on its chin. She watched the Trickster smile.

"My sin was no self," chirped the Trickster. "I was for all my life an agent of mayhem, leading everyone I hap'd upon to bedlam, mortal and spirit, light and dark alike. In the end, I lost myself in chaos and became a beast."

The Trickster bowed lower and lower with every word, until its nose touched the ground at Jessamine's feet. Without the copies to fill it up, the ballroom was too cavernous by far and felt cold for all its crystal chandeliers and gilded candelabras, but in the space where the satyr stood, warmth and light still blossomed. Escuz and Elias joined them, the latter smiling despite the purple marks blooming across his throat. It was hard not to be merry in Puck's proximity.

"We are overjoyed to count you among our number," said Escuz.

The Trickster might have replied, but a black thorn burst out from the center of its chest. Another followed the first. They seemed to multiply like tendrils of ice on the surface of a cold pond, piercing through its skin at every angle, at wrists and thighs and throat and nostrils, until it resembled nothing better than a briar patch. When at last it fell forward, onto its ruined knees, they saw the black shaft at the base of that ghastly shrub.

Soon after, they spotted the thrower.

"Gáe Bulg," cursed Escuz.

"Let battle commence," trumpeted the Green Lady, "and let suffer the light its first casualty!"

The spirit of the dark surged forward like the demon she was and tried to tug the spear-haft from the Trickster's back, but it was buried too deeply for a clean extraction.

Escuz grabbed Jessamine by the shoulders, turning his back to his enemy.

"You must flee," he urged her. "This place is not stable without a living host."

"What about you?" she demanded.

"Bertolais has lost her way," Escuz lamented. "She has ignited the last battle on the eve of its appointed day. There will be dire consequences for all of us, light and dark, if I allow this madness to spread further. I will keep her here, hold her back until the threat is ended, but you must go on without me or you will be the next to taste Gáe Bulg's barbs."

"How do I get through the passage without you with us?" Elias interjected.

Escuz pointed to Puck's marble, which had rolled within reach.

"Take that with you," he instructed. "It will get you through the void, if only once."

Elias picked it up and started for the door, but this time Jessamine lingered behind.

"No," she whispered.

The spirit's golden eyes were full of dread, but she did not care.

"Not this time," she insisted. "I've carried your blood on my hands for ten years. I'm not going to leave you behind to die again."

Escuz gathered Jessamine in his arms, holding her tightly to him in an impossibly warm embrace. He laid a soft kiss on her forehead as he began to laugh—or to cry.

"Be at peace, child," the spirit soothed. "Oh, the things you remember and the things you forget. I am meant to die, that you might live. I am your sacrifice, as I am your shield. I am a fleeting thing, here but for a moment, but without you we would all be lost."

She hugged him back with all the violence of her love, locking her hands behind his back to never let him go. A gentle push was all it took for him to break free.

"Take her from here, Elias," he commanded as he went to war.

Jessamine could barely see the path ahead through the haze of her tears, but Elias pulled her onward through the mist and the gloom. The world of darkness turned warm and light, then cold and bright. Her bare and bloodied knees collied with the ice-encrusted dirt of the old graveyard at the edge of the place she called home.

Jessamine looked to Elias, who stood a few paces away. He blew the little mound of glass dust off his palm, filling the air with a momentary puff of sparkles.

"Was it any easier, this time?" she asked him.

"No," he replied.

The sun hung low in the afternoon sky. Minutes in the Château had lost them hours here, restoring the balance of their accelerated time. They had certainly missed dinner, but maybe not dessert, if they hurried. Still, they hesitated, strangely reluctant to go home, where they both knew nothing but relief and comfort awaited them.

"Are you ever going to be okay?" he asked her.

"No more than you," she replied.

Elias said nothing in return, but a dark mirth rekindled at the corners of his eyes.