Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson

Author:Micaiah Johnson [Johnson, Micaiah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2024-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Fifteen

We haven’t even made it to Ashtown proper when I begin to see them. At first, I think the long dark shape is a mudcroc, out in the daytime and too close to people. I swerve before processing that what I mistook for the ridges of a reptile’s spine is the exposed rib cage of a human, pushed up and out by the same mystifying force that took Helene X.

“Fuck,” I grit out, swerving even farther away.

There are others when I look too far out toward the horizon, long patches of dark red catching shadows with the harsh sun behind them. Soon enough, I’m jumping at shadows, dodging harmless bushes. Normally I’d never drive this recklessly with two rulers of the wastes riding along, but I don’t know what would happen if I drove through a body in that state, felt that crunch like the runners of old.

I think I might lose my mind.

I may have two rulers sitting near me, but all I can think about is the missing third. It doesn’t help that when I look in the rearview mirror, Cara’s always staring back, like some kind of wise nightbird or evil serpent. Some bad omen. Something that already knows it’s too late. I know I didn’t experience time travel. I didn’t slip between worlds. I hallucinated and my brain just used what it already knew. That’s why Cara was saying things I’d heard her say before. But it still feels like I’m living under the axe of fate. Like I’m running out of time.

I slide into the palace grounds so hot I stop sideways, a cloud of dust announcing our arrival to match the long stretch of agitated dirt I’ve already left in our wake. Despite the disruption we must have made no one comes out to greet us, or to see what’s wrong. Everyone here already knows what’s wrong. I’m the one about to find out.

I run toward the crowd gathered at the end of the yard, where the column of smoke is already a beacon to others who are lost, grieving, or just curious. I elbow through, prepared, but never really prepared, to see Exlee lying, forever silent, waiting for Viet.

But when I get through all I see is a tangle of what once was leather, flesh, and…braids.

I know Nik Nik is behind me, but I have to turn and reassure myself he’s alive and whole. Only a decade of the hardest training in the desert keeps me from hugging him.

“It’s…you,” I say.

The crowd has noticed us now, and the reactions are a mix of cheers, from those who were here to mourn, and dismay, from those who thought the great dragon of Ash had finally gotten what was coming to him.

“Not me,” he says, pointing to the shiny bits around what probably once was a head. “I haven’t tipped my braids in years.”

He sounds sure, but he must be shaken. What must it do, to see your own corpse? Even if you can barely recognize the body, how do you ever feel real after that?

Cara steps up beside us then.

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