The Brink of Darkness (The Edge of Everything #2)
Jeff Giles
Kiss
the mouth
which tells you, here,
here is the world.
—Galway Kinnell
Prologue
He saw her at last—she was up on the grassy dune above the harbor, a pale shape cut out of the darkness.
How long had it been since X had seen her? He had no way of knowing. He’d been in his cell in the Lowlands, deep in the earth, where there was no clock, no sun, no future, only the dead and damned.
She hadn’t noticed him yet. She was searching for him, her eyes everywhere. He stood on the dock below her. It creaked and floated up and down, like the water beneath it was breathing.
“Here!” he called.
She turned toward him. She beamed.
“I know that face,” she said.
X spread his fingers, and a soft corridor of light appeared—a trail for her to follow to the water. She started down the hill too quickly. She stumbled, fell on her knees, pushed herself up without bothering to brush off the sand.
“Hi, I’m Zoe and I’m a runway model,” she said.
He smiled. He hadn’t in a long time.
“I love your voice,” he said, “even if your meaning eludes me on occasion.”
“My meaning eludes everybody on occasion,” she said.
He tried not to rush at her when she reached the dock. He was afraid he’d alarm her. She ran at him anyway. She kissed his cheeks, his chin, his forehead. He did the same to her, and they laughed at how frantic they were: they couldn’t find each other’s lips.
“How much time have we got?” she said.
“A few hours, at most,” he said. “Then I must return to the Lowlands with the soul they sent me to capture.”
Zoe slid her hands under his shirt. Something like silver spread through his chest.
“We need a boat,” she said. “I’m having a sudden urge to lie in a boat with you.”
“I would lie in a boat with you until the sun dried up all the sea,” he said. “When I was young—”
She breathed into his neck.
“Less talking and more boat-getting,” she said.
X scanned the harbor. There was a cluster of fishing boats. Otherwise the water lay empty. He peered at the end of the dock, where it seemed to narrow to a point in the dark, and saw an orange rowboat tied to an iron cleat.
Zoe stepped into it first, spreading her arms for balance as it rolled beneath her. A seat—a wide wooden plank—bisected the boat.
“We can’t lie down in here,” she said. “There’s not enough room.”
X shattered the plank with his fist, then tossed the scraps onto the dock.
“That’ll work,” said Zoe.
X laid his coat on the floorboards, and went to untie the boat. The knot was complicated, so he just yanked the cleat off the dock. Again, the sound of splintering wood ricocheted through the harbor.
“Man, they are never gonna give you a job here,” said Zoe. She frowned. “I’ve got to stop with the jokes. I just can’t believe you’re here—and by the time I do believe it, you’ll be gone.”
Whoever owned the boat had taken the oars. X crouched next to Zoe, and pushed the craft away from the dock with a superhuman shove. They flew backward so fast that the boat nearly left the water. Waves rose on either side, and spilled in around their feet.
X had a plan he longed to tell Zoe about, but he was impatient to feel her hands again.
“I beseech you,” he said, “do not darken the moments we can be together by dwelling on the moments we cannot.”
Zoe pulled him down by the front of his shirt.
“I like it when you beseech me,” she said. “Beseech me some more.”
part one
Life Without
one
Sometimes Zoe felt as if she were being hollowed out bit by bit. She had lost so many people in the last six months, and every one of them had carried part of her away. Eventually, she’d be like one of those chocolate Easter bunnies that the stores were suddenly selling again—you could poke her with your finger and her heart would cave in.
It was a Saturday morning in Montana. Early March. Zoe was driving her decrepit old Taurus to a memorial service for Bert and Betty Wallace. The farmlands were drab, gray brown, just starting to recover from winter. Zoe was thinking about the Wallaces, but also about her father and X. She’d had to say good-bye to them all in one way or another. She prayed that her father would never come back—and that somehow X would. She hadn’t seen either of them since a terrible day in the snowy woods.
Her friends Val and Dallas were in the car, too. Val looked beautiful, though she hated church clothes: half her head was shaved, the other half a futuristic silvery blue. Dallas was dressed like a jock at an awards dinner (navy blazer with gold buttons, khaki pants, tie decorated with baseballs), and there was a round Band-Aid on the cleft of his chin, where he’d cut himself shaving. Zoe used to go out with Dallas. Kind of, sort of, a little. She thought he looked adorable. Val, she knew, had no patience for him. Val was convinced that Dallas still had a thing for Zoe—he insisted he was going to ask out a girl named Mingyu, but kept putting it off—plus, Zoe had told Val that Dallas used to flex his pecs when they made out.
Zoe had agreed to give Bert and Betty’s eulogy even though she dreaded public speaking. The Wallaces had been like grandparents to Zoe and her little brother, Jonah. She’d written out every word of her speech on orange index cards, which sat in a stack on the dashboard. She needed the cards because once she stepped up to the lectern, she expected to go into a terrified fugue state where anything, including ancient Egyptian, might come out of her mouth.
She turned onto Twin Bridges Road. The stack of index cards collapsed, and slid across the dashboard in a smooth orange stripe. Val gathered them up.
“You okay?” she said.
“No,” said Zoe. “I’m kind of underwater.”
“Do you want me to make fun of Dallas?” said Val. “Would that help? I’m willing to do that for you.”
“No, but thank you,” said Zoe. “You’re sweet.”
“Wait, whoa, how is that sweet?” said Dallas.
He leaned forward between the seats. Val pushed his fuzzy, buzz-cut head away, saying, “Back in your cage.”
Zoe drove across Flathead Valley. In the distance, the mountains still shone with snow.
“Do you want me to talk about nature?” said Val. It was a joke: Val liked being indoors. “Look at all the nature!”
“You’re not helping, dawg,” said Dallas. “I’m going to rap for you, Zoe. Val, give me a beat.”
“On what planet do you think I would give you a beat?” said Val. She looked at Zoe. “Don’t you dare give him a beat.”
Dallas rapped anyway: “My lyrics devastate / Check this flow I create …”
“Really?” said Val. “This is happening?”
Zoe smiled, but just couldn’t swim up to the surface—it was like her legs were tangled in seaweed. She glanced at the cards in Val’s hand. She had rewritten the first sentence of the Wallaces’ eulogy 11 times, crumpling so many index cards in the process that the wastebasket by her desk looked like it was full of orange flowers.
Betty had taught Zoe how to use an ax—and Jonah how to knit. Bert, even when he’d gotten senile, used to cut pictures of cute animals out of the newspaper and mail them to the Bissells. Jonah taped them all over his walls. And then, two months ago, a man named Stan Manggold had burst into the Wallaces’ home looking for money, and beaten them to death with a fireplace poker.