Evan Burl and the Falling, Vol. 1-2 (15 page)

"Enough!" My eyes darted from Mahalelel to the people in the streets. I thought I would see fear there, written on their faces. But I saw only contempt. The people had forgotten to fear me. Mahalelel had forgotten to fear me.

Mahalelel stepped close to me. "I used to be jealous of you, that Father kept me in the dark. That he taught you sapience. And you, you aren't even his real son. You're just an orphan."

"Silence fool."

"I realize now why Father spared me. He kept me from sapience because he loved me more than you."

I lifted my hand to strike him down, but someone from the crowd shouted. "Murderer!"

Others joined. They began to chant. "Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!"

Only when necessary.
 

I crushed the 300 year old Winterend goblet in one hand, wine burst between my clenched fingers, dripping to the dusty street below like egg mixed with blood.

Peace. Mouths hung slack. I shut my eyes for one euphoric moment to drink in the sound, then, ripping the bottle from the undersecretary's hands, I threw it at the scaffolding above both juras. Wine splattered across their faces. "Tear them both to pieces."

Then I stared down, daring them to give me one single reason to break my vow.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Evan

Thursday

9:29 am

37 hours, 20 minutes until the falling

Someone rubbed my arm. I tried to focus and saw Yesler and Ballard standing over me. My head ached; someone might have been pushing needles through my skull.

"You're doing it wrong," Ballard said.
 

"What would a worthless lump like you know about it?"

"You're supposed to gauze the wound then use a pad that won't stick to it before putting on the wrapping."

I tried to lift my head. Some kind of haze swallowed me; I felt smothered, chained to the bottom of a lake. Images and sounds broke inside my head; nightmares from the restless spell I had been under. Pushing the images away, I tried to focus my strength, to find the power to fight Ballard and Yesler off. I had to find Pearl. But my body wouldn't cooperate.
 

The floor appeared in blurry detail. A scorpion seemed to stare at me, about six inches from my face. It took a few steps, paused, then scurried off.
 

A shadow appeared. Blurry, then sharp. The head of an asp leaned over me. It swooped down, fangs dripping with venom. I covered my face, but it didn't strike. When I looked again, the asp was gone. In its place stood Ballard. He rubbed gauze on my arm.
 

"Pity we have to clean it at all," Yesler said. "We could save time and take off the whole arm." Yesler lifted my head then poured something that tasted like vomit mixed with oil into my mouth. I sputtered. He held my mouth shut until I swallowed. The world tilted sideways. Their voices grew faint.

Flexing my stomach, I tried to sit, but gravity wouldn't release me. Nightmares floated up through the cracks in the marble landing—corpses' hands pulling me down into the earth. Creatures appeared. Faces. Little Saye. Anabelle. Lucy. They said, "time to sleep."

"You should be more careful," Ballard said.

"Why's that?"

"He could get angry."
 

"I'm not afraid of Mazol."

"Not Mazol." He pointed at me, only the tip of his finger in focus. "Him."

"The gimp's an eggplant." Yesler kicked me in the gut. "See."

"He won't sleep forever."

"He's always sleeping. Even when his eyes are open."

Footsteps moved down the hall, their voices grew faint.

"Evan didn't do anything to deserve this," Ballard said.

"He was born. That was enough."

"Maybe he'd turn out different if he had a proper family."

"You want to be the gimp's daddy?"

"No—"

"None of us have fathers; we turned out fine."

"I had a father."

"Yeah, and he beat you stupid..." Yesler's voice faded.
 

I tried to keep breathing, pushing my hands against the floor. Had to fight the dreams, had to find Pearl, but the hands were vices. They pulled me through the marble floor, into the nightmares, into a gravebox buried beneath the tiles.
 

Pearl lay next to me. She stared, eyes white. Her lips never moved, but she spoke. "You said you'd take care of me."

"The skull—" I started to say.

"I don't want it anymore. Take it back."

Then, right before I blacked out, I thought I heard the sounds of a party.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Claire

Everyone over the age of thirty must think kids don't grow ears until they start shaving. I've heard adults talking about how spoiled I am plenty of times, and they're probably right. But I'm tired of being one of Terillium's spoiled daughters. I don't want any more furnished dollhouses or Connemara ponies or pink silk dresses with curled ribbons and bows or diamond stud earrings or whipped banana pies. I saw a picture in Papa's office one time, an elephant with ears so big he could fly. Maybe my ears are too small; maybe they'll grow so large that by the time anyone notices I have them, I can just fly away.
 

But I can't fly away, not yet at least. Until then, I guess I have to put up with Miss 1000-Times-More-Spoiled-Than-Me-Anastasia and her birthday party, pretending the smiling man with the skewer behind the cake isn't a murderer.
   

By nightfall, hundreds of servants had transformed our courtyard into the kind of birthday fantasy world that made regular old spoiling look like a night in the stocks. Cakes and cookies and treats hid around every corner; I didn't eat a single one. Pink and white lace draped from every balcony, but I thought they looked like the ones Papa used last year. Countless candles hung in overlapping rows filling the courtyards and gardens with flickering sparks; irresponsibly dangerous. Then there were the fire breathers and musicians and jugglers and story tellers and fat little women in scary masks and skinny tall women in scary masks and unicyclists and clowns and men on stilts surrounding me for as far as I could see in any direction. Boring.

All through the night, guests presented Anastasia with birthday gifts (you would think she was already Lictora with the way these people were acting) and, as was tradition, gave me matching presents. Papa insisted his daughters be spoiled equally. A dozen handmaids were standing by to whisk the gifts back to our rooms when we were done playing. I made up a story about not feeling well so I didn't have to open any of them. I didn't want to make the guests feel bad—it isn't their fault Papa's a murderer.
 

The party stretched on forever. I just wanted to go to bed. Papa filled the air with tiny floating sparkly lights that tasted like vanilla or banana or mango or chocolate if you caught one in your mouth—not that I tried to. Then there were the dancing ballerina dolls in the fountains. They twirled and spun, gliding out across the water's surface and no one could explain how. 'Just something I picked up in my travels.' And no party is complete without floating fire-lanterns.
 

At 9:00, as the bells that hung from our home's tallest tower rang, the dancing ballerinas paused their pirouettes. The candles and torches and floating lights dimmed, until the whole courtyard grew dusky as the jungle's under-canopy outside the city walls. The stars seemed bright as flames, until they too, seemed to dim, like layers of fog had rolled over us. It became so dark I couldn't even see my own hands in front of my face.
 

Folding my arms, I leaned against a lamp post. I had a headache and had seen the whole routine before. Everyone went silent as little flames appeared deep in the fountain bath. Though the water was only a few feet deep, it appeared as if the orbs were further away than the stars in the sky. Slowly, the flames grew brighter and brighter until the first fire-lantern broke the surface of the water, sending soft circular waves out like raindrops in a puddle.

Everyone gasped.
 

The fire-lantern, shaped like a ship, didn't stop. It emerged from the water, dry and burning bright. It took flight and sailed up into the sky above us. Why couldn't I have been born a firelamp?

Soon, a second, then a third and fourth fire-lantern joined the first until the sky was filled with warm flickering flames. That, however, was not why everyone watched with held breath. They were still waiting for the finale. With a fizzing crackle, the first floating lamp imploded, as if it had been swallowed by the night. Then it burst with a gut shaking boom into a canopy of shimmering sparks that fell around the entire party.
 

Everyone cheered at the sight. I plugged my ears. One by one, each fire-lantern followed the first. They began to explode faster and faster until the sky was filled with every color. Shapes of flowers and ships and scary creatures of the jungle devoured one another, falling like a fountain around us. The umbrella of radiance shone so bright it could have been noon on a summer day.

Then, right before the end, all of the ashes and sparks which had long since fallen to earth, shot up together as rays of white into the starless sky until the fire-lanterns themselves seemed to become shimmering stars. The party-goers seemed to be sucking up every last moment as if it might be the last night they had to live.
 

I busied myself making sure all my finger nails were exactly the same length. Finally, after what felt like hours, everyone roused from the trancelike state they had fallen into. The musicians struck up a tune. The ballerinas danced. And the party entered its second half. This night was never going to end.

Anastasia made me come with her—like always—quietly threatening Terisma on me while I slept. I followed as she danced in the courtyard, played in the garden mazes and under the stilts of the high-walkers, laughed at the clowns, and tried to distract the musicians from their sonatas—violin and bell melodies that sounded ghostly after what I learned about my Papa that morning.
 

During the party, the house was off limits to anyone but a few servants, so Ani and I could have a place to rest. It was nearly time for cake when Anastasia decided she needed a break. She wanted to try on a new dress that shimmered like it was lit with flames.

Inside the house, the guests' noise was muffled behind the thick stone walls. Papa offered to give us both rides up to my sister's changing room. I refused, choosing to walk slowly up the stairs while he ran past me with giggling Ani on his back. I thought they resembled an ostrich with a fat pig riding on its back.
 

After he was done with Ani, I darted behind a bookshelf and snuck to the edge of the balcony just as my mother walked in. The entrance room was round, at least as tall as it was broad, with a white paneled, arch ceiling. Duckie called the style bar-oak, or something like that. It looked gaudy. Bright oil lamps lined the walls and one oiled-bronze chandelier, with hundreds of little flames, hung from the center of the arch above where I crouched. The servants set the lights to burn low at this time of night, so the room was dim and eerie. The marble floors, which helped keep the house cool in the summer, were covered with elaborately embroidered tapestries that Papa brought back with him from trips over seas. Two wide staircases made from paneled wood and platinum embedded stone curved up each side of the round room and met in the center, where I hid.
 

Not ten feet from me, standing next to a small hutch along the wall, I could see my mother frowning at Papa. "Is that behavior really appropriate for someone of your stature? And at your age? You could kill yourself."

"Ha. Imagine that?"

She didn't smile.

"I was just having some fun with my daughter," he replied. "You should try it sometime."

"You have enough fun for all three of us."

"Sorry." Papa held his arms up like a surrendering soldier. "Let's not argue about that again tonight, alright?"
 

He put his hand on her shoulder. She pulled away.
 

"What do you want from me?" Papa asked. "You have everything you've ever wanted. You live in the finest mansion for a thousand miles, your pantries are stuffed with the best food and wine, and you have a beautiful, healthy family. I return from months at sea, and you act like you didn't even miss—"

"If I wanted a fool to entertain me with platitudes, I certainly wouldn't have married one. You know why I'm upset."

Papa paused, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"I haven't decided yet..." he said.
 

Mother folded her arms under her breasts, making it look as if her dress's neckline was cut too low. "We can't keep living like this. You promised you would decide by the time you returned."
 

"It's not as simple as you think."
 

"Everyone is going to figure out that something is wrong eventually," Mother said.
 

"I'm careful," he said without looking at her. "They won't figure it out."

"You're still giving your daughter rides up the stairs. If anyone did the math, they'd have to assume you're at least ninety years old. What are you going to do when they start asking questions?"

"You sound like the man who came to visit me today." Papa pulled a blade he often carried from his belt and placed it on the table. I had seen the knife before; Papa always got a gleam in his eye when he stared at it, like it was even more beautiful than Mother.
 

"I heard about him," Mother said as she eyed the blade. I wondered if she was jealous. "I don't like that man."

"No one does."

"What did he want?"

"He never changes. Thinks I should give it all up. Just like you."

Mother's eyes shot up at Papa as he polished the blade on his sleeve.

"I'm trying," he said, "but it's not as simple as you think."
 

Sighing, Mother leaned her back to the wall. Maybe if she didn't insist on women wearing those insufferable corsets, she could breathe easier.