A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 40

Matters of Higher Justice

“That's why the mischief is here, Tanen. Don't you see?” Of course he didn't, but in that moment I felt as though he should. “It's blamed on the darkskins, because it coincided with their arrival in these lands – and it's true; they brought the disease. But they brought only the conventional illness. The kind of thing that passes from person to person. There's another side of the story.”

He stared at me, where he had risen to his feet, a grave and guarded look on his face as I delved into what I knew at last. And I stared up from my place in the rubble, Ombri's lifeless head in my lap, and told him.

“It would have devastated as any disease, had it been given the chance,” I admitted. “But it wasn't. It wasn't given the chance. Because those darkskins – all darkskins – were shunned from the circles of the Darathians. Enslaved and given a wide berth, avoided like the plague for their inferiority. So what do you think was left for the disease to infect? The land. The houses. The country itself. This cruel, godforsaken country of barbaric hosts and hostesses.”

A cool wind washed in from the fields, stirring over the rubble. And Ombri, dear Ombri, grew ever colder there against me on that ground. Tanen's hair stirred over his eyes.

“Refugees, Tanen. Enslaved and tortured. What god wouldn't be angry with a people who demonstrated such unwarranted hostility toward another faction of equally god-breathed children? And one in need. Where they sought refuge they were punished. Granted hell instead of haven. The gods are angry with Darath. And so justice is playing out in the most poetic and chilling of ways. The Masters have quarantined themselves on their superior pedestals, but this land is dying. The mischief, the strangeness... It's all symptoms. Symptoms of destruction that are bringing everything the white man has built to its knees around him. Many, so very many of them, are becoming casualties to the turmoil. Countless more whiteskins than dark have been the victims of this age. The tables are turning. This strange disease will wreak havoc, catching the white man where he thought he had risen above other things on this earth, and the slaves will be the majority that's left.”

I knew all this, had felt all this, in the essence of the rubble that spoke itself to my insightful touch. I did not know why I had been granted the means for insight, why me, Avante of Manor Dorn, but – as I had learned from the rubble itself – higher influences had their ways about them. Who was I to question it?

“This illness that so many of us have suffered,” I continued. “The illness I have recovered from, Letta has recovered from, and you have been spared from... It's the disease, Tanen. It tests those of us it still manages to catch, and if we are worthy of living we come through. That is the extent of any punishment we have to receive, the extent of the price we have to pay. But we always come through with a scar. A mark. A stamp of approval. I have it. Victoria has it. You do not have it.” I was back to my accusing voice, circled around to the point I had gone off about. “You are here because I bartered for your life. With that wily temptress of a figure who runs the Ravine in the city. It's a death trap. She traps whiteskins there, Tanen, to await their reckoning. She is the Ambassador for the Angel of Death, and that ravine is Death Row. I know you know of the place and the woman that I speak. I saw you there. She traps unworthy whiteskins there and breaks them of their offensive stance toward the darkskins by seducing them, winning them over even though it's too late. And you're next. It's happening. It can't be stopped. I tried, but it can't be stopped.”

I did not know if I was regretful, or bitter, or speaking in an altogether punishing tone. I just knew that it was pouring out of me, hot as coals, not to be stopped. Bottled up and provoked and charged with mixed emotions to the point of erupting, here and now, for better or worse. So much more reckless and uncontainable than what I had whispered into the ear of the woman who sought guidance, recently, in the wake of what befell her fated neighbors.

And that, which I had whispered so simply, so concisely that day,

'Let your slaves go.'

It was not that easy, where Tanen was concerned. He was far more provoking where the entirety of the truth was concerned. I continued with it; “I tried to change you, but I can't. And now this...” I bent back over Ombri, raw with pain all over again. “This, because of the mischief meant to punish those like you.” I raised my eyes back to him, burning with blame and heartbreak. “Ombri was a saint. Do you realize? The rest of us, light and dark – we fight, and contend, killing to survive, resisting fate, jading ourselves... And she, nothing but a kind little light and self-sacrifice. While the rest of us fight to live, this girl – half light, half dark – sacrificed herself for another. Without a second thought. If anyone in this world deserves to be saved, it is the girl lying dead in my arms. The halfbreed.

“The best of us all.”

*

Tanen said nothing, after my revelations. The atmosphere I spun for him there on that broken hilltop was not a welcoming one, and following the accusations and explanations, his inclination to be there lost all traces of heart. He retreated rather into himself, taking his eyes from mine, and slowly withdrew from the proximity. I did not pay him much mind past that – my attention returned to Ombri, where I took my time arranging her curls about her face, memorizing her sweet features, ingraining the memory of her in the records that my fingertips kept.

She had a beautiful spirit. I glimpsed it, as I touched her face – felt it as I pulled her close and held her.

In hindsight, I could recall to my mind's eye the awareness of Tanen rousing Victoria and carrying her back down the road to Manor Dorn when he withdrew, so when I finally drew myself up from my grief to take care of Ombri, I found myself relieved of the duty of having to likewise see to Victoria.

I gathered Ombri's bird-like little body in my arms, stood from our resting place, and carried her down the back side of the slope. A memory akin to this very same likeness flitted through my mind – a memory of the first time I had met her, unconscious in her wintry prison, and carried her back to Manor Dorn. I had returned her to this life, and now I would return her to another.

It was heart-wrenching, carrying her back into the city, the life gone out of her. We had been so pleased when she pulled through and awoke from her dormant sleep on her cot in Manor Dorn. Now, having to return her...

I bit back an undignified whimper. I did not feel much like being strong, right then, but if I allowed myself to break down I would not be able to carry her the rest of the way, and I was determined to see her safely to some greater resting place.

Of course, I did not know where to find such a place, and so my feet took me to the only place I knew that dealt in celestial matters of death. I stopped at the edge of the Ravine, and knelt there, cradling Ombri at its precipice. With one hand I scraped up a fist-full of dust from the ground, and tossed it into the chasm. The heavy grains hissed as they rained into the the shadows, the lighter particles spreading into a golden pall and drifting down more slowly.

It was a summons. The Ambassador would feel the disturbance, I hoped, as surely as crumbs of dirt sprinkled over spider web, and she would come.

A stretch of silence and stillness was the only thing that responded, at first, but then there was a shift of motion at the corner of my eye, and I turned my head to see the Ambassador making her way down the channel toward my perched summons, her great golden gown an endless, rippling tide behind her. It looked heavier than ever, today, its folds many, its layers evolved from the last time.

She came to me, and stopped, and gazed up at me where I had brought someone to her.

“Avante,” she greeted. “One has never sought my presence as keenly as the habit you seem very much to be cultivating.”

I met her starry eyes gravely, and it seemed she had a slightly more empathetic slant in her gaze, today, suggesting she knew something of why I had come calling again. I did not suppose death really saddened her, though.

“I didn't know of anyone else to come to,” I confessed, and unfolded Ombri from my embrace so the Ambassador might see why I'd come. “She died in a shift, but should not have. It was in sacrifice for another. We could bury her, like so much skin and bones for the earth, but... She is of greater things. I hoped you might be authorized to take her. Somewhere...”

The Ambassador did not wilt with sympathy, but she didn't scoff, either. She turned her considering eyes to Ombri's form, and my heart swelled with hope that she was truly considering my request. When she came to a decision, it was simple;

“I can do as much.”

Relief spilled through me. “Where will she go?”

“I did not say I can reveal the secrets of the afterlife. But I will take her. She will indeed find a higher resting place. If that is what you seek for her, rest assured, Avante. That is all I can offer.”

I swallowed, and nodded. Stared down at Ombri's peaceful face and tucked a curly strand of hair tenderly behind her ear.

It was goodbye.

The Ambassador waved her hands in a few graceful motions, and baubles of rubble gathered before her as if by magic. They collected and piled one on top of another, creating stairs, and she ascended them until she was at a level to receive Ombri into her arms.

With painful resignation, I transferred the young girl to her care, and just like the Ambassador retreated into the Ravine with my Ombri against her chest. Goodbye, Ombri...

I watched until the tail end of that golden gown dragged away across the bottom of the canyon, and then I made myself rise from that edge and trail back toward home. I let the edge of the Ravine guide me for the beginning of the trek, wandering down its length, where I came upon the bridge that had declared its significance in days past. I stopped when I saw it, numb but still sensitive to its noteworthiness, for it was almost complete, now. It spanned the entire Ravine, and only just failed to touch down on this side. I wondered over the significance of such, for a moment, but I was not of a mind to care about making further connections in the mischief, that day.

So I left it be.

I left it be and wandered back toward home, devoid of the heart I had come to feel in recent times yet also mildly comforted by the things that I knew that were greater than us, now, in what small way those could counter grief and how we mortals were still meant to experience it, in all its wise cruelty and melancholy glory.