22
THE ABYSS’S MAD GAWK
“A whole chocolate cake, a bath, a bed. In that order.” Zuzana ticked off three wishes on her fingers.
Mik nodded in appreciation. “Not bad,” he said. “But no cake. I’ll have goulash from Poison Kitchen, with apple strudel and tea. Then, yes: a bath and a bed.”
“Nope. That’s five. You used up your wishes on food.”
“My whole meal is my first wish. Goulash, strudel, tea.”
“Doesn’t work that way. Wish fail. I win. You and your full belly will just have to watch while I take my magnificent hot bath and sleep in my wondrously soft warm bed.” Hot bath, soft bed—what a delirious fantasy. Zuzana’s aching muscles pleaded with her for mercy, but it was out of her power. They had no wishes; this was only a game.
Mik’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh. I have to watch you bathe, do I? Poor me.”
“Yes, poor you. Wouldn’t you rather bathe with me?”
“Indeed.” He was solemn. “Indeed I would. And the wish police will have a hard time keeping me out.”
“Wish police.” Zuzana snorted.
“Wish police?” said Karou from the doorway.
They were in a series of small caves that Zuzana understood had constituted a family dwelling in the days of the Kirin. With four rooms, shaped with the flow of the rock, it was kind of like an apartment inside a mountain. It had its amenities—some kind of natural heat, and even a rock closet with a sluice hole that strongly suggested a toilet (though Zuzana wanted confirmation of that before proceeding)—but there was no apparent bath, or beds. There were some piled furs in the corner, but they were gross and old, and Zuzana was pretty sure that a variety of otherworldly vermin were living out rich, multigenerational sagas in them.
There was a whole complex of dwellings like this arranged around a kind of village “square”—a much smaller version of the extraordinary cavern they’d passed through on the way here. The soldiers were getting settled, not that there was much to settle. Well, Aegir the smith had work to do, and Thiago had gone off with his lieutenants to do whatever it is war types do before an epic battle. Zuzana could wrap her mind around none of that, and didn’t want to. Not the truth about “Thiago,” and not the epic battle, either. If she tried, she started to shake and her mind switched channels on her, like it was flipping around looking for the kids’ programming or—ooh!—Food Network.
Speaking of food, while Mik was scouting out the best spot for “resurrection headquarters,” Zuzana had taken a few minutes to help the funny little furred chimaera women, Vovi and Awar, set up a temporary kitchen and organize the supplies they’d brought from Morocco. It didn’t do any harm to get in good with the food-providers, and she may have gotten a few dried apricots in the bargain.
A couple of months ago, if someone had told her she’d get excited about a few dried apricots, she’d have given them the eyebrow. Now she thought she could probably use them as currency, like cigarettes in prison.
“We’re playing Three Wishes,” she told her friend. “Cake, hot bath, soft bed. How about you?”
“World peace,” said Karou.
Zuzana rolled her eyes. “Yes, Saint Karou.”
“Cure for cancer,” Karou went on. “And unicorns for all.”
“Bluh. Nothing ruins Three Wishes like altruism. It has to be something for yourself, and if it doesn’t include food, it’s a lie.”
“I did include food. I said unicorns, didn’t I?”
“Mmm. You’re craving unicorn, are you?” Zuzana’s brow furrowed. “Wait. Do they have those here?”
“Alas, no.”
“They did,” said Mik. “But Karou ate them all.”
“I am a voracious unicorn predator.”
“We’ll add that to your personals ad,” said Zuzana.
Karou’s eyebrows shot up. “My personals ad?”
“We might have been composing personals ads on the way here,” she allowed. “To pass the time.”
“Of course you were. So what was mine?”
“Well, we couldn’t write them down, obviously, but I think it was something like: Beautiful interspecies badass seeks, um… non–mortal enemy for uncomplicated courtship, long walks on the beach, and happily ever after?”
Karou didn’t respond right away, and Zuzana saw that Mik was giving her a disapproving look. What? she replied by way of eyebrow. She’d left out the “genocidal angels need not apply” part, hadn’t she? But then her friend dropped her face into her hands. Her shoulders started shaking, and Zuzana couldn’t tell if it was from laughter or sobs. It had to be laughter, didn’t it? “Karou?” she asked, worried.
Karou lifted her face back up, and there were no tears, but there wasn’t a whole lot of mirth, either. “Uncomplicated,” she said. “What’s that like?”
Zuzana glanced at Mik. This was what uncomplicated was like. It was wonderful. Karou didn’t miss the glance. She smiled at them, wistful. “Just know how lucky you are,” she said.
“I do,” said Mik.
“I definitely do,” agreed Zuzana, quickly, and with a little more gusto than was really her style. She still felt so… off. Oh, hungry, dirty, and tired, most definitely—hence her three wishes—but this went way beyond that. For a minute there, back in the entrance cavern, she’d felt like she was staring at the end of the freaking world.
What the hell was that?
When she was a kid, she’d had this favorite doll—well, it was a duck, actually—and she had apparently rendered it quite vile with the depredations of her toddler adoration, including, as her brother Tomá? liked to remind her, her habit of sucking on its eyes. She’d found it comforting, the hard clicky smoothness of them against her tiny teeth.
Less than comforting had been her parents’ campaign to persuade her that this could kill her. “You could choke, darling. You could stop breathing.”
But what did that really mean to a toddler? It was Tomá? who had driven the message home. By… choking her. Just a little. Brothers, so helpful in matters of death demonstration. “You could die,” he’d said cheerfully, his hands around her throat. “Like this.”
It had worked. She’d understood. Things can kill you. All kinds of things, like toys, or older brothers. And as she’d grown up, that list had just gotten longer and longer.
But she’d never felt it this powerfully before. What was that Nietzsche quote that Goth poet-types love so much? When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you? Well, the abyss had looked into her. No. It had gawked; it had glared. Zuzana was pretty sure it had left scorch marks on her soul, and it was hard to imagine ever feeling normal again.
But she wasn’t going to go complaining to Karou about every fear and freak-out. She had wanted to come here. Karou had warned her it would be dangerous—and okay, the warning in the abstract was a little bit like telling a toddler about choking, minus the demonstration… but she was here now, and she didn’t want to be the crybaby in this gang.
And as for lucky? “I’m lucky I’m even alive,” she announced. “When I was little, I sucked on duck eyeballs.”
Mik and Karou just looked at her, and Zuzana was glad to see Karou’s wistfulness give way to bemused concern. “That’s… interesting, Zuze,” she ventured.
“I know. And I don’t even try. Some people are just interesting. You, though, with your drab, ordinary life. You should get out more. Try new things.”
“Uh-huh,” said Karou, and Zuzana was rewarded with a glimpse of that elusive mirth. “You’re right. So dull. I’ll take up stamp collecting. That’s interesting, isn’t it?”
“No. Unless you’re pasting them onto your body and wearing them as clothes.”
“That sounds like someone’s semester project at school.”
“It totally does!” Zuzana agreed. “Helen would do it. But she’d make it a performance. Start out naked with a big bowl of stamps so people could lick them and paste them on her.”
Karou finally laughed outright, and Zuzana felt pride of accomplishment. Laugh achieved. Maybe she couldn’t make Karou’s life—or love—less complicated, and maybe she didn’t have any helpful hints when it came to, oh, angel invasions or dangerous deceptions or armies that clearly just wanted to start killing each other, but she could do this at least. She could make her friend laugh.
“So what now?” she asked. “The angels throw a magnificent banquet in our honor?”
Karou laughed again, but it was a dark sound. “Not exactly. Next is the war council.”
“War council,” repeated Mik, sounding a little dazed, as Zuzana most definitely felt. Dazed and far, far out of her depth. She imagined that every hair on her body was still standing on end from the weird, electric horror of the past hour. Seeing Uthem die? That was a first for her. She’d had to walk through his blood, and while that hadn’t seemed to fuss the soldiers (as cool as if they waded through blood every morning to get to breakfast), it had fussed her, though she’d barely had time to process it. She’d been so… spun by her own paralyzed terror, and what she was now thinking of as “the abyss’s mad gawk.”
Karou gave a hard exhale. “That is why we’re here.” On here, she made a quick scan of the room and added, “Strange as it is.”
And Zuzana felt even more out of her depth, trying to imagine what it meant to her friend, being back here. She couldn’t, of course. This was the site of a massacre. Maybe it was the echo of the abyss that brought it on, but she imagined walking up to her own family’s house and finding it deserted, the beds decayed and no one there to greet her—ever—and she sucked in a little breath.
“Are you all right?” Karou asked her.
“I’m fine. More to the point, are you all right?”
Karou nodded, smiled a little. “Yeah, I am, actually.” She raised her torch and looked around. “It’s weird. When I lived here, it was the world. I didn’t know that everyone didn’t live inside mountains.”
“It’s pretty amazing,” Zuzana said.
“It is. And you haven’t even seen the best part yet.” Karou looked sly.
“Ooh, what? Please tell me it’s a cave where cupcakes grow like mushrooms.”
Score another laugh for Zuzana.
“No,” said Karou. “And I don’t have any cake, either, and I’m afraid the bed situation can’t be helped, but…” She paused, waiting for Zuzana to figure it out.
Zuzana did. Could it be? “Don’t tease me.”
Karou’s smile was pure; she was happy to give happiness. “Come on. I think we can spare a few minutes.”