I destroyed the world twenty-three times, but on the twenty-fourth, I took her hand and never looked back. For her sake, I won’t ever question my role again.
Itrit drove his spade into the ground, pressing on the heel and ripping up the earth, roots and all. He wiped his wrinkled brow, his joints aching with the motion, but like a stubborn mule, he kept going. His hands remembered the way below the permafrost, winter’s breath, and a corpse’s stiff leg, guideposts for a thankless job.
This wasn’t the first grave he’d dug, and it wouldn’t be the last.
“Father,” Illene looked over the edge, brushing off her cowl. “We’re finished with the others.”
Itrit planted his spade and leaned on the haft. “Well done, my child,” he said, taking her hand and stepping out of the grave. “Their journey has begun.”
He pulled a glittering gold lens from his pocket and affixed it to his right eye; a godless merchant’s attempt at brushing shoulders with the divine.
“How many will survive?” A middle-aged cobbler asked, counting his nails, sitting atop one of the four wooden coffins. “It all seems rather overwrought.”
“If fortune should find favor with me. She’ll give us one, maybe two at the most.”
Illene licked her lips, drawn to the hired hand, centuries of discipline undermining the hunger in her eyes—the eldest of his flock, but still in control, and without a drop of ice in her heart. At least, of the little heart she had left. Her resistance surprised even him; perhaps her resonance with several leviathans accounted for her peculiar taste, or maybe such resistance came at the price of two devils instead of one.
“You court Lady Death so freely,” Illene said, brushing her hair over her ear; the leash snapped from her would be supper. “One might suspect an affair.”
Itrit chuckled. “Can I rely on you, Illene?”
He scratched his chin, deciding between one of the four coffins, bedframes of oil-soaked lumber, each filled with impure iron pellets; the feathers of an oxidized mattress.
“So you’ve already decided.”
“I have.”
Illene pursed her lips. “I’d rather you didn’t tell me,” she said. “But I know in my heart it will be him.”
“Your faith is always inspiring.”
Itrit lay in the coffin on the far right, metal pellets digging into his back. He breathed deeply, crossing his hands over his chest and nodding to the cobbler. Illene knelt by the corpse’s box spring and laid two coins over his eyes.
“I wish you a swift journey,” she said.
“Charon always knows the way. I’ll see you again soon.”
The cobbler slid the lid over the top of the box, hammering it in place, each strike resonating throughout his cedar tomb. Then, they lifted him into the open grave and buried him alive.
— ✦ —
Itrit had done this before—quite a few times, in fact. Counting the breaths rarely helped; suffocation was a rite of passage and a subtle inconvenience to a man of glass. Still, panic crept close, an unwelcome bedwarmer, but had no purchase in the dark places of his box spring. He knew what to do, and knowledge was power between the realms of gods and men.
The in-between felt so different from the weight of the earth; grave soil, a poor substitute for the collagenous matrix that made up the boundary. Afloat in a dense abyss as cold as winter’s icy grip. The transition between realms… never as smooth as that first time.
But then it was over. He felt his gut bottoming out as he slipped over the edge of a peerless cliff. His cedar tomb thumped against a solid floor, and something worked at the nails sealing his coffin. The lid popped free with an audible crack, and the coins were taken from his eyes, Itrit squinting painfully in the bright lights.
“I do hope, young master, that the trip was comfortable,” said a voice from a dark, imposing silhouette.
How many years had it been since someone had called him young? It was enough to make an old man chuckle, but relative to the gods, perhaps he was but a yearling.
“You have a traveler’s gift, Charon,” he said.
The creature bowed low, humanoid in appearance, dressed in a tapered, stately uniform, a camera lens flashing beneath an assortment of human expressions swapped like lenses from a pair of bent bifocals.
Itrit lifted himself from the coffin, his back aching, taconite dropping to the floor as he steadied himself against a post.
He stood in a cathedral with high-arching rib vaults made of pipes, and many pews faced the brick well at the center. A massive mechanical hand suspended from the ceiling, tapestries bound into double helices woven between its fingers and dangling into the well beneath it.
Morta, the duchess of death, sat near the drinking well with her back against a pale white horse. She dressed in a ceremonial robe, the woolen fabric folded and wrapped, shoulders pinned, the sides modestly sewn yet still accentuating her body. A boiler-shaped bracelet wrapped around her wrist with interlocking fingers; her left eye glowed a phosphorescent blue, and her hair was as black as midnight.
Death was a handsome woman.
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“Charon, you may leave us,” she said, yawning loudly, covering her mouth with a dainty right hand. “Tell my sister I’ll be there for the wedding.”
“And the shower?” Charon asked as he turned to leave.
“Yes, yes.” Morta waved her hand. “The baby shower, too.”
Her steed nuzzled her, the bleached skull of a horse covering the mechanics beneath, eight cloven feet clomping against the marble floor; an unholy union of spider, clockwork, and mare.
“I take it these fine young men account for your visit today,” she said. “Do they even know you poisoned them?”
Four tapestries lay across her lap, each shimmering like a mirage dipping in and out of his field of vision. Itrit adjusted his monocle. Even with Germana’s lens, fate wasn’t easily corralled with mortal eyes. Yet, he could see the fabrics grow sickened and frayed at the ends, fine needlework giving way to a coarse finish.
A knife slipped out from the back of the duchess’s neck, dangling against the middle of her back like a doll string.
“I should kill them all straight away,” Morta said, seizing the knife and pricking the tip of her finger. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Kill, kill, kill!” her bracelet chirped. “Doctor, barkeep, miser, and thief must pay the bill!”
Itrit prostrated himself, the marble floor cool against his brow. “Please, duchess, we need at least one for the bear. We’re blind in one eye.”
Morta sighed, staring up at the ceiling. “Did you know I destroyed the world twenty-three times before this, Itrit? Perhaps this one belongs to the Devourer…” She smiled, scratching her horse’s chin. “I don’t need to tell you what happens to mortals who live beyond their years, and I know you cannot control their appetites forever. The mangle will consume their body and soul, and I will not allow a return of the reduced garden.”
“My lady, I know your role as the guardian of oxidation, but you must see the advantages our cursed flesh provides. Beyond death, we can resonate with them. Allow my children to serve out their time under my care and guidance. They will learn to control their appetites in the Astralarium, and the moment they don’t, their fates return to you, this I swear and have always sworn.”
“You have a bloody cheek, do you know that?” Morta said, rolling her eyes. “But if you must, a replacement for whom I took, you may have one of the four, on one condition.”
She spread her legs, unholstering an instrument strapped to her thigh. She snapped open the cylindrical chamber and slid a sleek metal cartridge into one of six wells before spinning the drum and slapping it closed.
“A little game of chance, I trust you know the rules?” Morta slid the firearm across the floor. “Youngest first.”
Itrit sat with his legs crossed and picked up the sleek barrel. Such strange technology reminiscent of their world’s flintlocks and muzzle-loaded rifles, but without the pan and priming powder. He turned it over in his hands, pressing his fingers against the ivory stock. The principle was the same, but how did the gods achieve primeless ignition?
“Youngest first, old man!” the duchess’s bracelet chirped.
“Shut up!” Morta slapped her wrist, and it went silent. “How long must I put up with your bullshit, Igor?”
Itrit pressed the barrel against the side of his head, closed his eyes, and squeezed the trigger.
Click!
His heart, encased in ice, still leapt at the sound. He exhaled, sliding the weapon back across the floor towards Morta.
“Tell me, my lady, how is the young heiress?”
Morta licked her lips, opened the revolving hatch, and spun the drum, resetting the odds. “Headstrong, impulsive, and much too impatient.” She snapped it closed and scratched her chin with the front sight and muzzle.
“Then it is true what they say about apples and trees.”
Click!
She smiled, tossing the revolver. “I’m proud of her, Itrit, but a half-blood, even a stubborn one, can’t succeed me, and I’d rather not discuss matters of ice; no daughter of mine will become his thrall.”
Itrit barely caught the instrument, which danced between his hands before settling in his palm. He opened the barrel and spun the drum.
“Are you stalling with small talk? You know damn well you owe me one more.” Morta yawned, covering her mouth. “I do so enjoy a good run through.”
“Illene still has control, and she carries the voices of two within her. She’s too valuable a trade for only one.”
“You can’t keep her forever, or do you plan to sink ice into her heart? Last I checked, the Basilisk is picky about whom he chooses…”
Click!
Itrit sighed, his shoulders relaxed, but the bundled nerves in his brow still twitched.
“You may have her when she can no longer resist and not a moment sooner, as we agreed, My Lady.” He slid the revolver across the floor.
She picked it up, repeating the ritual: snap, spin, and a click.
“Did you know?” Morta said, teasing her upper brow with the muzzle. “You have quite a set on you, old man. Flaunting your position in my face like that…” She smiled. “I like it; perhaps you’d come work for me? I could use a little rebellion to spice things up.”
“Perhaps another time, My Lady.”
Bang!
The revolver lurched, the flash leaving distinct powder burns on her temple as the bullet passed cleanly through her head, blood and bits of scalp splattering across her steed’s saddle. Morta slumped over, the blue sparks in her eye vanishing, and the firearm slipping from her limp fingers and clattering against the ground.
Her bracelet tsked. “I expected a larger borehole, given all the talk of .38 caliber rimfire; at least she pulled the trigger this time.”
“She’s always has a flair for the dramatic,” Itrit said, finding his feet. “May I approach?”
“Fortune favors you, old man. You may take only one.”
Itrit kept his head low in reverence as he knelt by the duchess’s corpse. Her steed whinnied, shaking its mane made up of dark-colored rubber-wrapped copper thread. He shifted his monocle. Each tapestry, molded to the curves of her lap, bore a distinct pattern unique in tragedy, twelve seams, but only one chosen.
One tapestry stood out above the others, buttonhole and herringbone rib stitches overlapping into the shape of an ashen colored pyre, and he could smell the acrid, vile stench of burnt hair.
He’d made his choice.
Morta’s hand twitched to life, grabbing hold of Itrit’s wrist as he lifted the otherworldly textile in his hands. “It’s the thief then?” Her eyes sparked with blue fire. “A darling choice, of course,” she said, probing the index-finger-sized hole in the side of her head.
“Lady Atropos, please talk with her about using protection.” The bracelet chirped.
“I have many times, dear.” She plucked bits of her shattered skull like flossing after a meal. “She never listens to me. It’s always about the size and depth of penetration, the resulting hangover be damned.”
Morta released his wrist. “Remember our deal, Itrit,” she said. “You may only borrow this tapestry for a time, but I will want it back before the finality of change.”
“You have my word.” Itrit bowed low despite the protestations of his joints.
“Leave me.” The duchess turned her attention towards the remaining three Fates. She licked her lips, positioning her knife along the seam’s edge. “I have work to do.”
“May I borrow a spade?” he asked.
Itrit lay down inside his coffin as crustacean-like instruments gathered, dragging the wooden lid across the floor.
“My darlings.” Morta waved her hand dismissively. “Please see to our guest and have Charon take him back at his earliest convenience.” She smiled. “I’m looking forward to her dress this time.”
The sentient clockwork drones tossed a small hand trowel inside the coffin before nailing the lid back over the top.
Itrit sighed, the tapestry of fate shimmering in the dark as he held the trowel. He hoped for something better, but he’d dug himself out of worse situations before.