The clasp of grief tightens around my throat again – a reminder of further loss. I speak earnestly, a touch of desperation brightening my words. ‘Have you ever had any feelings of déjà vu? Any echoes or reflections, like you’ve already lived your life?’
His brow knots. ‘Are you getting all spiritual again?’
I try to mask the disappointment. But it feels like my chest has been punctured with something sharp and long and unforgiving. When I die, when the canon resets, he won’t remember me.
‘What is it?’ he asks.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ I study every line on his face, every pore, every fleck in those winter eyes, trying to burn his image into my retinas, because an even more heartbreaking thought has arrived.
I won’t remember him either.
The hovercraft begins to descend, and we hear an odd purring noise. It grows and grows until it becomes an angry buzz.
‘It’s the crowd,’ Ash says.
I’d forgotten about the crowd. Chanting, shouting, pushing – a seething mass of bloodthirsty Gems. Baying for the blood of the Imps. Me and Ash. The craft lands and it feels like the crowd surrounds us, hollering through the blacked-out windows, pounding on the metal panels with their fists.
A guard approaches us. He looks straight at Ash. ‘You’re in luck, gutter monkey. The President wants a single hanging today – says it will have more impact, whatever the hell that means.’
My body floods with relief. Of course the President only wants me on that stage. In canon, there was only Rose. Stoneback wants those two pieces of thread as closely bound as possible, ensuring the cycle completes and Alice returns home. I know Ash wouldn’t have died for real – he would have woken up at the beginning of the story, back in Ma’s kitchen, stirring soup – but I’m still glad he doesn’t have to go through all that pain. All that pain. I think I may puke.
‘No, wait,’ Ash says. ‘You want a single hanging, then hang me.’
The guards don’t listen. They unclick his handcuffs.
‘Wait, please,’ he cries. ‘Hang me, not Violet.’
‘Don’t worry.’ The guard laughs. ‘You’ll see your girlfriend from the Imp-pen.’
‘No, please, no.’ Ash strains against the guard, but he’s no match for the burly Gem physique. He looks me in the eye. ‘I love you, Violet.’
The emotional part of my brain dislodges like a jigsaw piece, and I find that I know things, yet no longer feel them. Ash is telling me he loves me. My Ash. Yet I feel empty . . . lost. In less than an hour, we won’t know each other. We will be strangers divided by more than a few lies, more than a wall or a forest of brambles; we will be divided by an entire universe, a shift in time, complete memory loss. Our love story is to become a tragedy, just like Rose and Willow’s. I appreciate this irony, even in my dissociated state.
Ash repeats the words over and over as he’s dragged from the craft. ‘I love you, Violet. I love you.’ They fade into the roar of the crowd until I can’t hear him any more.
He’s gone.
This thought snaps me from my inertia. That dislodged part of my brain slots right back into place and I no longer hover. The reality of the situation smashes into me: I will never see Ash again.
‘I love you too,’ I shout back.
But I’m too late.
Aguard unfastens my cuffs. My anxiety causes his features to blur together, but I see the glint of hate in his eye, sharp and clear. He drags me to the door and I prepare myself for the crowd, but when the doors slide back, I see only grey. The craft has landed in the city, beside the Coliseum. They want me to walk through the Imp gates, the gates of the condemned. Just like in canon.
I step from the craft and the stench of rotting bird hits me. For a brief moment, my heart soars. I take a moment to absorb my surroundings. I can see the walls of the Coliseum a hundred or so metres away. But I can’t see Ash. He must already be in the Imp-pen. And I see no other Imps. I guess they’ve squeezed into their hovels, watching the proceedings on scavenged television sets. I search for the city gates, but a swarm of armed guards obscures my view – bumping up against me, sweeping me along so I become part of a single, khaki entity.
From the other side of the wall, a shiny fanfare erupts. In ten minutes, I will hang. My legs stop working and the guards have to pull me along, my feet dragging behind me like two simian hands, as if I really am an ape. I reach the gates and they push me into an upright position. One of the flamboyant stylists appears. He wipes cotton buds beneath my eyes, rubs oil on my lips, combs out my hair.
I hear President Stoneback’s reedy voice rising above the Coliseum walls. He says the exact words from canon. Only this time, he’s talking about me.
‘Welcome to the Gallows Dance, fellow Gems. We are about to witness the death of Imp number 753811. A Night-Imp who used her animalistic ways to trick an upstanding young Gem into thinking he might have feelings for her. A Night-Imp who seduced and lied her way into a young Gem’s heart in order to access government secrets. A dirty little spy. Trying to bring down the Gems, trying to destroy our way of life.’
The crowd roars.
They all step away from me – the stylist, the squaddies. I sway on the spot, shivering in my overalls, staring at the impenetrable metal gates. I start to shake uncontrollably, worse than when they pulled me from the river, and I think my heart may be about to burst.
The President’s voice again: ‘So let’s meet this temptress, this spy.’
The gates begin to open. The crowd falls silent. I watch the slice of colourful Gem world expand and expand until it is all I can see. And despite the terror pulsing around my body, I still appreciate the irony that my very own black moment should be so filled with Gem colour. Densely pigmented suits of emeralds and scarlets, glossy sheets of hair, every colour of skin from porcelain to ebony. Yet every face looks the same. Symmetrical, perfect and hungry for retribution.
The silence holds. I stand perfectly still, just breathing and blinking and staring right back at them. I realize how much I hate them. And it surprises me how intense the emotion feels – more consuming than love, a physical thing radiating from me in waves. And that lacquered Russian-doll shell is back, encasing me like armour plating, holding me upright, delivering strength to my legs, my arms, all of me.
They want a hanging? I will give them a hanging.
‘And here she is, ladies and gentlemen. Guilty on two accounts. Relations with a Gem and high treason. It’s a shame we can’t hang her twice.’
The crowd laughs. I begin to take strong, hate-driven strides towards the stage. I hear Nate’s voice in my head and smile. Balls of steel. Balls of steel.