Never (16 page)

“You dare!” Piotr snarled in its decomposing face. “You dare touch my
solnyshko moyo
? This is not to be allowed!”

The Walker grinned nastily up at Piotr. Most of its teeth were long gone, leaving open, festering holes in its jaw, some crawling with worms and maggots or yellow with pus, and others just seeping black, gaping decay.

“This is not for your ears, Rider,” the Walker said and looked over Piotr's shoulder to where Wendy, still reeling from its frigid touch, rested against the wall.

“She wants to say to you, Lightbringer, one thing: ‘
Mother
.’” The Walker said the word so softly that Wendy was forced to strain to hear him.

Flummoxed, Wendy glanced between the Walker and the Rider, hoping that perhaps Piotr knew what the Walker was talking about. “‘Mother’? I don't—”

The Walker threw back its head, laughing. Then, before Piotr could do more than gape in surprise, the Walker drew out a long, sharp dagger and, shoving Piotr's hands aside, jammed the dagger between its own ribs.

Unimpressed, Wendy expected nothing to happen. This was a Walker, after all. She'd seen a Walker get nearly beheaded before and nothing had happened. She was stunned when the Walker's body began smoldering. Piotr, yelping, pushed away and grabbed Wendy by the arm, yanking her over the Walker's corpse as Light began eating holes in the Walker's shape. Thin tendrils of smoke poured out where each pinprick of Light punched its way through the flesh and fabric, searing holes in the walls of the Never around them.

“What the hell is happening?” Wendy asked Piotr, panting, her heart pounding in her chest. “Where did he get a knife like that?
And why would a Walker go
kamikaze
? They like sticking around, not offing themselves.”

He could only gape and shake his head. “I know not.”

Moments later, it was done. The Walker was nothing but a dry pile of dust. The knife it had used was blackened from bolster to butt. The blade had been seared away by the Light.

Slowly, carefully, Wendy knelt down and picked up the remains of the knife. The handle was marked with fine lines—swirls and whorls and delicately etched knots. Wendy held the knife up in the dim overhead light, squinting.

“I've seen something just like this,” she said at last, stunned. “This…I think this knife belongs to the Reapers. Look.”

Frowning, Piotr took the knife from her, peering at the handle. He ran his thumbs along the etchings, and where Piotr touched the marks his skin turned momentarily more translucent. After several seconds, Wendy could just make out the faintest scent of burning. If it hurt Piotr, though, he kept his complaints to himself.

“I believe you are correct,” Piotr said and began to say more, but a shout from outside their enclave cut him short. Pocketing the knife, Piotr led the way through the side wall into the bathroom, and from there into the hallway where Eddie crouched on the floor at the foot of the stairs, bleeding essence and sporting a gash in his forehead.

“Eds!” Wendy gasped, hurrying to her friend, only to be shoved aside at the last moment by Elle. An icy figure darted past them, swiping at Wendy's face as it went.

Despite the attack, Wendy was startled to realize that Elle and Lily, bone weapons drawn, were chasing another figure from the house. Face grave, Piotr knelt beside Eddie. Wendy, trusting that Eddie was in good hands with Piotr, followed the girls out of the house, her heartbeat pounding in her throat.

The intruder sprinted away beneath the streetlights and Wendy realized it was a girl, heavily tattooed, and painfully skinny beneath
a thin spaghetti-strapped shirt. Her blonde hair was silvery beneath the halogens; her tattoos were familiar.

“Reaper!” Elle snarled, reaching for an arrow.

“No!” Wendy yelled, “Don't!”

“What the hell, Lightbringer?” Elle asked, clearly perplexed. “Why not?”

“She can't hurt us or she already would have,” Wendy explained. “She's in training. None of that ink is heavy-duty, it's all just the early stuff. Like mine, see?” Wendy pushed down the neck of her hoodie to show Elle her tattoos. “If she were dangerous, she'd have ink like Jane or Emma…intricate as hell, all over her arms and legs, not just around her neck. There's nothing. She's nothing.”

The girl stopped at the end of the street and flipped the bird at the house before pounding on the back door of a parked minivan. The headlights blazed alight and the door slid open. The girl darted into the backseat as the engine caught and the van peeled out.

“She can't see us,” Wendy marveled. “They sent her to break in, probably to go through our stuff, but Jon and Chel came home…Elise wasn't expecting that. The girl ran rather than face them.”

Cursing an impressive stream of flapper
patois
that Wendy struggled to make out, Elle impetuously shot a bone arrow after the van. It arced through the back window and disappeared, but the Reaper didn't reappear. The vehicle turned the corner and vanished beyond the dense, bushy trees at the end of the street.

“That Walker had a Reaper-to-be only rooms away—one that had no clue it was there—and it didn't even try to eat her. Wow…the Lady Walker really has them marching to her beat,” Wendy murmured. Beside her Elle was still shaking and yelling at the departed van.

“Calm, Elle,” Lily urged, sheathing her knives and resting a hand on Elle's shoulder. “Peace.”

“I'm getting tired of being waylaid,” Elle sneered, shaking with rage. The minivan was long gone at this point, but Elle shook her
fist in the direction it had turned and spat after it. “Walkers! Reapers! More Walkers!”

“Be still. We will soon be on our way,” Lily agreed, taking Elle's shoulders in both hands and guiding her back toward Wendy's house. “We will find a location where we cannot be found so easily.”

“The Reaper-wanna-be dropped her cell,” Wendy said. It was a cheap flip-phone, dotted with glitter hearts and sparkling under the streetlights. Wendy knelt down beside the phone and poked it. It did not move. She was disappointed; part of her had expected to be able to feel it in some way, maybe even shift it a little in the living lands.

“It's after midnight,” she said, standing up. “Since it's New Years, the highway is going to be crawling with cops looking for drunk drivers come home after parties, and probably CDoT crews to deal with the earthquake fallout, too. An hour there, an hour back, minimum, and both the toll roads and I-80 are closed right now, thanks to stupid drunks.”

“Are you certain, Wendy?”

“Pretty sure, yeah. Hell, even if the wanna-be Reaper borrowed a cell and called home base
right now
, the chances of getting another Reaper out here in less than a couple hours are pretty slim. They'd probably have to take the back roads the whole way.”

Lily raised an eyebrow. “Even so, a few hours is not a great deal of time.”

“It's enough,” Wendy said. “Enough time to…” she drifted off, biting her lip in concentration. The sky was dark. Dawn was maybe five or six hours away, and yet Wendy fancied that there was an unsettlingly bright light burning on the horizon, a thin strip of scarlet color that she had to squint to make out. Had the rent in reality gotten so big already, that it could be seen as far south as Mountain View? Wendy thought of the heavy clouds in her dream, the baleful eyes in the storm.

Premonitions? Or something more?

“Enough time to?” Elle prompted.

“Enough time to blow this pop stand.” Wendy sighed and hopped to her feet, trudging toward her house. “Let's go share the good news. No rest for the less-than-wicked.”

Piotr was waiting for Wendy in the side yard as the girls approached. Wendy felt her heart flutter at the sight of him standing still and pale in the moonlight.

“Piotr?” Lily asked. “May we be of aid?”

“Go inside if you will,” he said, smiling at the girls. “I would speak with Wendy but a minute.”

They waited for Lily and Elle to vanish through the wall before Wendy said, “Okay, what's u—”

Piotr stopped her question with his lips. Wendy guiltily sank into his embrace and enjoyed the stolen moment. When he pulled away she was flushed and happy, despite her reservations.

“What was that for?” she asked.

“I wanted…I wanted to show you another memory,” he admitted, threading his fingers through hers. “Will you go with me? Will you see what I have to show you?”

Wendy was tempted. The last memory had been so intense, so personal, so very Piotr. But she knew they didn't have time to dally.

“If you fear the time,” Piotr said, correctly interpreting the desire and concern warring within her, “I assure you, it will be but a moment here. Shared memories…move more swiftly. All of them do, this I promise you.”

“No time lost?” Wendy asked.

“No time lost,” he promised her.

Wendy bit her lip. Upstairs she could see Eddie, standing in the window.

“Okay,” she said as he drew back and out of her sight. “Just…just for a minute.”

“Take my hand,” Piotr said, rubbing her knuckle with his fingers. “Close your eyes.”

Wendy did.

Wendy found herself once more in the vast world of white with Piotr beside her, holding her hand. The terrible bloom encasing his torso was back, but this time it had worked its way up his chest and had wrapped tendrils around his throat and curled around his ears.

Wendy wondered if he even noticed it was there.

Piotr chuckled and ran his thumb over her chin, tilting her head forward so he could kiss her forehead. “Since we have this brief moment, Wendy. I wanted…I need to show this to you. These memories are important to me. I don't dare lose them again. I need someone to hold them for me…just in case. Someone special.”

Uncertain, Wendy bit her lip. “Are you sure, though? It just seems so personal.”

Piotr raised an eyebrow. “Of course I am certain. If not you, with whom would I share these things?”

Wendy flushed. “I don't know. Lily?”

Chuckling, Piotr hugged Wendy close. “Jealousy from the Lightbringer? It does not become you.
Net
, Wendy, Lily may one day learn these secrets, but today…today only you shall know the inner workings of my past. Of my heart.”

Swallowing deeply, Wendy nodded. That Piotr would express so much made Wendy uneasy, as if he were preparing to say goodbye. Roughly, she shoved that thought out of her mind. “Okay, so last we left off on MemoryTV, your mom had gone home to Valhalla or wherever, right? To do the honorable ‘I failed’ thing? So what happened then?”

“What do you expect happened? My mother was supposed to gather every soul that afternoon—the bandits, the brothers except for Kirill and Borys, my father—to take them all in one swoop. Kirill was supposed to live and the soul of my father…well, he was
different. Freyja had requested him specifically. His gift in the fields was known even so far as Fólkvangr and Freyja wanted him to till her land, to make merry with the other chosen soldiers, and wait as the rest of the host gathered and prepared themselves for the final upcoming battle.”

“So the boss-lady was pissed.”

Piotr's lips quirked. “That is one way of phrasing it. She gave my mother another chance to collect my father's soul. He had, inexplicably, survived his wounds, as did my uncle Kirill. Together they toiled in the fields, tilling the land and providing sustenance for the village in the vee of the river. But, despite the itch of healing and the long, hard days without two of his brothers, my father could not forget my mother's face. Many girls of the village were intrigued by him, but his brush with death—or, rather, Death's handmaiden—had left him uninterested in their attentions.”

“Well, seeing as they're your mom and dad, and not ‘that birdlady’ and ‘the dead dude,’” Wendy said dryly, “I'm guessing Eir failed her second chance at collecting him.”

The mists in front of them cleared, exposing a long row of vegetables. Borys was on hands and knees in the dirt, pulling an onion from the earth and examining it closely. The ground was clear now, free of snow, and the scent of the fresh-turned soil warming in the sun was intoxicating.

Just as suddenly as before, Eir appeared, stepping from thin air and striding swiftly across the field to where Borys sat back on his heels, squinting at the green onion roots and frowning. Wendy was interested to note that her armor was gone. She was dressed as a girl might be, in a long tunic and a pair of simple sandals, her hair drawn back in a long, glossy braid. She held her cloak loosely over one arm; a thin and familiar chain glittered at her throat.

“If I am not mistaken,” Eir said, leaning over his shoulder from behind, “you peel it first.”

Borys wasted no time in leaping to his feet and grabbing Eir up,
hugging her close. She tucked her head into the curve of his neck and shoulder, dropped her cloak in the dirt, and wrapped her arms around him. If she noticed Borys treading on her cloak to lift her up, Eir didn't seem to care.

They kissed.

The mists closed again and Piotr turned to Wendy, drawing her close, crushing the spirit web blossom between them. He pressed a chaste, sweet kiss to her forehead. His hands on her shoulders were trembling.

“She gave up immortality to be with him,” Piotr said, lips ticking her temple, “she hardly knew him, but whenever we would ask her, ‘Momma, why did you marry Papa?’ she always said, ‘He had the kindest eyes.’”

Piotr laughed, but it was not a joyful sound. It was broken and tired and forced. “For him my mother removed her cloak of feathers and magic and buried it deep. In time, away from the fields of the host, Eir bled like a mortal woman, drank Borys’ liquor and tasted his salt, and devoured deer meat killed with her own hand. All this she did to stay by his side. Eir became mostly flesh.

“Time…time moves differently in the Bright Lands than it does here. My mother had many, many years with my father before Freyja realized that Eir had not returned to Fólkvangr with the farmer as requested.”

“How many years?” Wendy asked, pulling away and wrinkling her nose. The flower felt wrong beneath her hands; fetid and soft, like limp, sweaty skin pressed against her collarbone, clinging with tiny, tiny burrs to her flesh.

Piotr stepped back. His eyes crinkled as he mimed counting on his hands and toes. “Oh, about twenty-one, maybe twenty-two?”

Wendy glanced left and the mists were gone now, obliterated by the hot streaming sunlight and the intense green-gold of the meadow. She could hear the nearby river rushing by, see the edge of the meadow clearing meld with the tall trees of the forest, and there,
striding across the thigh-high grass was Piotr, four young girls trailing behind him and one older girl, no more than twenty, bouncing a babe strapped to her hip at the back of the pack, following along at a more sedate pace. The girls were mostly dark-haired except the oldest and youngest. They were true carrot-tops, though the baby's hair was bright, glossy auburn.

“Keep up!” Piotr-in-the-memory demanded, stopping to scoop up one of the youngest, a child of no more than six. He balanced her on his hip and waved a hand toward the sounds of the burbling river. “Mother says the nest is this way!”

Wendy was startled to realize that Piotr's twisting scar—the one that ran from his temple down the side of his face all the way to his jaw—was conspicuously absent in this time and place. His face was clear and smooth, his eyes bright with playful older-brother bossiness.

“Piotr, put Þrima down! There's no need to rush, we have all day!” laughed the oldest, jiggling her baby to make the infant giggle and squirm. “Uncle Kirill and Yuri won't be back from the trading until closer to sunset at best. And there's no guarantee they'll even be here today!”

“And won't he be a dear, hungry for dinner and none on the table, Róta?” Piotr replied tauntingly, sticking his tongue out at the older girl.

It took Wendy a moment to realize that this easy familiarity was a shade too easy, their camaraderie a bit too relaxed. She didn't know why, but Wendy had initially thought the girl was perhaps Piotr's wife and that the baby was his child—they were the right age and the girl was very pretty—and Wendy had been sitting very firmly on her emotions, worried that her animosity toward the lovely girl would show.

Now her petty jealousy suddenly felt very silly.

“Piotr…are all these girls your sisters?” Wendy demanded, disbelieving, as the older girl cheerfully flipped Piotr a foreign gesture
Wendy instinctively knew was rude. “How many brothers and sisters did you
have
?”

“Three older sisters,” Piotr chuckled. “Five younger.”

“EIGHT siblings?! No…are you kidding me? Were they all girls?”

“All but me.” His eyes twinkled. “Nine children in all, and every one of us survived past infancy. My mother was a very patient woman. In the village she was lauded as being a very healthy woman, and a lucky one, for never having to bury a babe.”

“I'd imagine,” Wendy murmured wryly. “Today the grocery bill would've been insane. Good thing your dad was a farmer, huh? But in that day and age, I bet he wasn't thrilled about the overabundance of girls.”

“On the contrary,” Piotr said as his past-self guided the girls to a shady, marshy area where several large geese and more than a few goslings trundled amid the high grass.

“My father adored all of us. He didn't begrudge Róta the dowry we could scrape together for her, even when her husband died hunting shortly after the wedding and she was forced to return home. We all took turns cooking and tilling, weaving and scrubbing, hunting and fishing and fowling. We did not begrudge one another any success.”

“How very modern of you,” Wendy said dryly. “You're telling me that you scrubbed pots just like your sisters did and they went off and stabbed furry animals?”

“I did no more than my sisters and no less. Wendy, we were a family on the farthest edge of the village, the closest farm to our nearest enemies. We had to work as one in order to survive, even the youngest among us. Every one of us was taught how to weed the garden as soon as we could walk, how to sweep the floors and how to tan the leather of whatever animal we could catch and kill.”

Piotr looked at the memory moving around them and laughed. The blossom's petals shivered at the sound. “For example, Þrima's
about to learn how to catch dinner on the wing, if I'm not  mistaken.”

Past-Piotr waved to one of the middle girls. She approached and knelt down, pulling from her pack a large, closely woven net made of fine, shining thread. Wendy's brow furrowed. “Is that…is that hair?”

“Mother was an adept seamstress,” Piotr said, shrugging. “She could take any material and weave it into…well, into something like gold for us, since her wares sold highly in the village market. An hour in her hands could turn forest spider webs into a cloak for the chieftain's newest bride or simple willow fronds into the sturdiest fish snares you've ever held. But for items around the farm—practical items, or useful, everyday things—she always incorporated my sisters’ hair, especially Róta's or the other redheads, and these items were always stronger than similar items, more durable or flexible. My sisters knew to never cut their hair if they could help it. Every night the eight of them would sit in a circle brushing one another's hair, with Róta combing her own as well as Þrima's. At the end of the evening my mother would sweep the floor and pick clean the brushes, setting aside the hair for her projects.”

“That is both fascinating and disgusting,” Wendy murmured, watching the scene before her.

Beside them, past-Piotr and Þrima snuck up on the closest goose, little Þrima doing her best to mimic her older brother's every deliberate step. Downstream the other girls and Róta sat on large flat rocks and let down their elaborate braids, pulling their skirts up to their thighs, sunning themselves and finger-combing any debris out of their long, long hair.

Piotr sighed. “It is a beautiful day,
da
? It is warm, the fields are growing, and we are a family.”

The tableau before them darkened as he spoke; a fast-moving storm cut across the sky, clouds rolling over the sun and cooling the girls sunning themselves within minutes. Róta, scowling, gathered up her ankle-length hair in one arm and lifted her baby from her lap
with the other. Piotr and Þrima had captured their dinner—a pair of fine geese with freshly-broken necks—and as a group, glancing up at the threatening sky, they hurried across the meadow as fast as they could, back toward the forest.

“What happened?” Wendy asked.

“Eir,” Piotr said, the blossom on his chest drooping along with him, “was remembered. And since she was Freyja's favorite Reaper, Freyja decided to give her one…last…chance.”

The three warrior women rode horses as tall as houses.

Unlike Eir, who'd simply stepped into being wherever she needed to be, these three were intent on making a scene as their horses pounded across the sky over the village, setting dogs to howling and roosters to crowing at the wrong time of day, feathers and chaff dusting the air.