To Rakesh’s relief, sweet, sustaining rage bubbled up inside him. It swept through him, giving him a new wave of strength.
“Yes, The Nothingness! It’s a chance. We could be laying in the streets of Iskawan right now, our heads sawed off. But we’re not. What we have is bleak, but it’s something! Now, get it together, Jiro. I don’t want to be here either, but here we are. We’ll work together. Things will work out. Look! We can ask to enter.”
Overwhelmed with the need to do something, Rakesh threw himself against the North Doors, banging on them with his uninjured hand. “Please!” he screamed. “Please, let us back in!”
He paused, pressing his ear to the heavy wood, and thought he heard someone laugh.
He looked up as, though he could find some form of unexpected support in the dark sky, but his gaze met something else.
On the walls and dimly lit by fairy-fires stood a bird-like creature resembling a big owl. The beast, coated in silvery feathers, looked down at Rakesh with piercing red eyes.
Rakesh had never seen anything like it in his life.
To tell the truth, he had never even seen an animal bigger than a rat in Iskawan. How could any animals have survived in that place?
As he tried to make sense of the apparition, the creature wailed, a wail so disturbing that it made the dark place seem even more sinister.
Rakesh felt his soul tear out of him. He put his right hand on his chest and knelt, burdened by the chilling sound.
Then, the sound ceased, and the creature vanished.
Behind him, Jiro started to laugh. A deep, guttural, terrifying cackle rolled out of him in long waves. The terror behind it set Rakesh on fire with panic.
“Please! This is a mistake. Please let us in!”
Rakesh pounded furiously on the doors despite the tearing, stinging, numbing sensation it created through his back. Cuts broke out on his knuckles, splitting them in half. Blood, thick and coppery, spilled onto his hands. He clawed at the wood, screaming. “Noooo! Let us in!”
The laughter continued, ringing in the background, disappearing further and further back into Iskawan.
Rakesh sank to his knees. Hopeless, frightened thoughts consumed him.
He would never see light again. He would never see her again. He would be another casualty forgotten, another life from Iskawan snuffed out.
He would be nothing.
Rakesh straightened, shoving off from the dirt. If he must die – and die he would – then he would die fighting. He wouldn’t give The Hangman the satisfaction of winning his soul with his darkness.
“Jiro,” he said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “Come. It’s time we go on. We’ll find shelter. Water. We’ll find or do something, and then go from there.”
Rakesh reached out a trembling and weak hand. Just standing up had cost him strength, but he had done so, forcing his shaky knees to straighten. He pressed his fingers into Jiro’s shoulder on the only spot without whip marks.
“Jiro?”
A high-pitched scream erupted from Jiro. He stood up, throwing Rakesh back, and ran. With his hands in the air, he disappeared into the smoky darkness, his cry trailing along behind him.
Rakesh stared at the spot where Jiro had disappeared into the darkness.
“Jiro?”
Rakesh stumbled forward a step, but then stopped.
He couldn’t save Jiro from the dark lands of The Nothingness. He couldn’t even save himself. And he would certainly die if he followed Jiro and his madness into the night.
In keeping his sanity, Rakesh still had a chance.
A very small chance.
Tears trickled down his face as Rakesh lowered himself slowly to the ground. He pressed his whole hand to his cheek, and silently sobbed. “Jiro,” he murmured. “You are gone. You are gone.”
Several more tears skidded down his cheeks – the final ones. He let them go, then straightened.
He must find a route. A place to go. Somewhere that he could hide, recover his strength, and find water.
Using the solidness and strength of the doors as a guide, Rakesh slowly stood yet again and faced the dark lands.
“I am not your prey,” he whispered. The words rang in his head with reassurance.
In the distance, a low, mournful sound filled the air. Rakesh swallowed. His heart beat in his throat with a heavy staccato as he took his first quiet, steady step into the dark lands of The Nothingness.
Hadjia
Hadjia stepped high through the marshy grasses of Jagu, feeling the slick squelch of mud beneath every footstep. It oozed between her toes, as warm and fluid as the blood that had spilled onto ground that was far behind her now.
Murky, shallow waters stretched off to her right, almost as far as the eye could see. A tall, twiggy loon bird sifted through the waters, searching in the mud for food.
Next to Hadjia, Renji and Kaneko walked, their eyes trained on the ground as they proceeded through the marsh. They slipped along with silent grace, their small, childish bodies moving through the verdant undergrowth with unusual ease.
Despite his care and the fact that he hardly made more than a breath of noise, Renji seemed distracted. His eyes tracked the ground, but he seemed far away.
“They looked scared.”
The words came out of Renji in what seemed like a shout, although it had hardly been more than a whisper. Hadjia hadn’t realized how loud the silence had become until he broke it.
Kaneko sent Hadjia a quick, discreet glance, as if to warn her not to speak. Hadjia looked away from Renji. She didn’t know what to say.
“Death brings fear,” Kaneko said.
Which means so do we, Hadjia thought.
The loud call of a howling monkey sounded overhead, followed by a rustle of tree branches. In the distance, a low roll of thunder moved through the forest.
“But they . . . they didn’t do anything,” Renji said.
“You don’t know that,” Kaneko snapped. “Those were evil people. Mother Sigunta would never sentence a good person to death. You must trust our leader, and not breathe a word of fear or doubt once we return to school.”
“They didn’t do anything to me,” Renji objected.
“Is Mother Sigunta’s wisdom not enough?” Kaneko hissed. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll be silenced in death or have your tongue cut out. Possibly both.”
Renji opened his mouth, then closed it again. His brow wrinkled when he stared off into the distance, toward the broadest portion of the marsh.
“I feel different somehow,” he whispered.
Kaneko reached out, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Because you’re a man now. An assassin for the Red Moon school. You can’t achieve something with such impressive dignity and not be different for it. You, Renji, are special. You’re strong.”
Some of Renji’s uncertainty seemed to ease with each word Kaneko uttered. His shoulders straightened. He drew in deep breaths. “Yes.”
Kaneko squeezed his shoulder. “Mother Sigunta has never led us astray, has she?”
“No.”
“And she never will. Erase such preposterous thoughts. We serve goodness. Those were wicked, evil people. Would the gods allow them death if they weren’t?”
Renji’s face smoothed out. “No. No, they wouldn’t.”
“So you see? You have done much good today – for yourself and for the world. Mother Sigunta will be very proud.”
Renji nodded, his confidence returned. But at his side, his fingers still twitched. And his nose. His entire body seemed a little too on edge, with his eyes darting around. But if he held any further doubts, he gave no indication.
The trio pressed back through the marshy ground. Hadjia caught Kaneko’s gaze and Kaneko nodded, her eyes drooping as if in relief. Hadjia reciprocated with a little smile.
They continued on, pressing on through the soft mist.
Less than an hour later, Hadjia caught her breath in surprise. The familiar curled edges of the Red Moon school’s roof revealed themselves in the distance, although somewhat hidden behind a slowly moving curtain of fog. Had they made it back already?
A pit formed in Hadjia’s stomach at the thought of reaching home, but she didn’t know why. Then Renji’s words whirled through the back of her mind.