“Buruu!” she screamed. “Buruu!”
Blood pounding in her temples, spilling from her nose, reaching down into the depths of herself, stretching to her limits across the void below, the hatred rolling across its surface. Clutching at him, refusing with every ounce of herself that it must be this way. Her voice was a ragged scream, her throat torn and bleeding.
“BURUU!”
And in the distance, fading with every breath, she heard his faint reply.
YUKIKO.
She clawed the hair from her mouth, eyes filled with tears.
You can’t do this, brother. You can’t!
I MUST.
No. No, it doesn’t have to be this way …
WE KNEW, THE BOY AND I. THE PATH WE MUST WALK. A YōKAI-KIN MUST DIE THIS DAY. BUT WE LOVE OUR SISTERS TOO MUCH TO ALLOW EITHER OF YOU TO FALL. SO WE FALL FOR YOU.
Not you, Buruu, please, not you …
WHO THEN SHOULD CARRY HIM? MY PACKMATES? MY BRIDE?
You said we’d be together!
WE WERE. AT OUR GREATEST. AT OUR BRIGHTEST. WE WERE GLORIOUS, YOU AND I.
A smile in her mind.
WE WERE LEGEND.
But you promised! You promised we’d be together until the end!
BUT DO YOU NOT SEE, SISTER?
His voice growing ever fainter.
THIS IS THE END.
Buruu, please. Come back. Please gods, COME BACK!
I WAS LOST WHEN I MET YOU. EVERYTHING I WAS. AND IN ALL THAT DARK, ALL THAT DESPAIR, YOU FOUND ME. YOU WHO NAMED ME. ONLY YOU. MY SISTER. MY EVERYTHING.
But you can’t leave! You’re leaving me alone!
YOU ARE NEVER ALONE. I WILL BE WITH YOU IN BLUE SKIES AND CLEAR WATER. YOU WILL SEE ME IN THE EYES OF THOSE CHILDREN WITHIN YOU, HEAR MY VOICE WHEN THEY CALL YOUR NAME.
He filled her with a loving, crushing warmth.
THIS IS NOT THE END FOR YOU.
Sobs wracking her body. Aching in her lungs. Too impossible to grasp. Too cruel and unfair. Of all things, this was the price they had to pay?
This is what their folly had cost them?
Him?
I CHOOSE THE EASY PATH, SISTER. IT IS A SIMPLE THING I DO NOW, TO CLOSE MY EYES AND SLEEP. IT IS YOU WHO MUST ENDURE. WHO MUST REMAIN AMIDST THE WRECKAGE, AND TEACH THOSE WHO COME AFTER OF WHAT WENT BEFORE.
Buruu …
GOOD-BYE, SISTER.
Don’t. Please gods, don’t say that …
WHAT THEN SHOULD I SAY?
Tell me you’ll see me soon. Tell me we’ll be together again.
BUT WE WON’T.
We have to be! I can’t go on without you!
YOU DO NOT MEAN THAT. YOU ARE STRONG AS MOUNTAINS. ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. ALWAYS WILL BE.
But you’re the best of me. The one who makes me strong. Who will I be without you?
YOU WILL BE WHO YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN.
His voice almost lost beneath the flood of her tears.
YOU WILL BE YUKIKO.
Just a whisper now.
I LOVE YOU.
Just a breath.
GOOD-BYE.
*
They hurtled across the sky, water-swift, formless and perfect. The gloom was filled with horrors and the snows with poison and all about them was death and sorrow and suffering the color of raven’s claws. But they walked between it all, hand in hand, voices echoing in the dark of each other’s minds, here in this ringing solitude.
Here we are, Mockingbird. Tiptoes at the edge.
ARE YOU READY?
Yoshi thought of a beautiful boy, a smile he’d see again soon.
Doubtless.
They fell, down through the flood of shrieking black, spiraling toward the ripples on the face of the dark. Closer. They could hear it as they approached, louder with each passing second, the song, the words within, clear enough to finally discern. A song of love and hate, of loss and longing, of the fear and sorrow entwined with abandonment. Forgotten. Alone.
Closer.
Yoshi focused on the deepening dark, drawing near, eyes wide, every sight, every sound sharper than he’d ever known. Behind him, he heard the Earthcrusher crack wide and daub the sky with fire, a blast-wave of heat and impossible light filled with the screams of the Endsinger’s children. A burning sponge to wipe the chalkboard clean. And to his utter amazement, he found his lips curling in a crooked smile.
Strange thing, this life.
Thunder rolled in the black, a woman’s scream beneath, almost too faint to hear.
IT IS INDEED.
If you’d told me last summer what winter would bring, I’d have called you liar, Mockingbird …
MUCH CHANGES WITH THE SEASONS.
… Not everything.
THE SHAPE OF HEROES, CERTAINLY.
So I look like a hero to you?
The thunder tiger smiled into his mind, speeding toward the black.
A blinding arc of lightning seared the sky.
YOU LOOK LIKE AN ORDINARY BOY.
All became bright.
SO YES, YOU DO.
And daylight bloomed.
53
EPITAPH
All was ashes.
Ashes on her skin and in her eyes. Caked upon her face and painted on her lips and smeared thick across her tongue. Tears cutting through the snow-white mask on her cheeks.