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I don’t want to pity you, Lillian.
Then don’t. All I’m asking is for you to let me show you some of my memories. We’re both unconscious and barely alive. There’s no easier time to communicate across the worlds than now. I thought you might like to know more about me. And maybe I want one person to understand me in case I die.
Okay, Lillian, but only because I need someone, too. Pain is lonely, isn’t it?
It is, Lily. It really is. But fear is even lonelier.
Show me your fear then, Lillian, and let’s be lonely together.
Lily was no longer on the raft. Nor was she herself. In joining Lillian’s memory she became Lillian. She wasn’t simply recalling what had happened to Lillian, she was reliving it. The first thing she felt was terror …
… The air is wrong. It’s choking me and burning the back of my throat. Ash is floating fat as snowflakes. Did I even worldjump?
I had Captain Leto’s men build my pyre far from the walls of Salem. In the world I am trying to get to there is no need for the wall anymore, and from my spirit walks with the shama
n I have seen this other Salem is substantially different from the one I live in. I’ve learned that when I worldjump I end up in the exact location I left—only in a different universe—and if I were to worldjump from the top of the wall or from the fireplace in my rooms at the Citadel, I might appear inside a piece of furniture or forty feet in the air. The only safe place to worldjump is from the ground, and even then it’s still dangerous. You never really know what dangers await when you cross the worldfoam.
Leto had been reluctant to set my pyre so far outside of Salem. He worried about the Woven, but what I couldn’t tell him is that where I was going, there would be no Woven in the woods to fear. I didn’t want to promise too much in case the shaman was wrong. Leto and his soldiers are from Walltop. From their vantage, they’ve seen more of the evils of the Woven than have any other citizens of the Thirteen Cities and have more reason to want them eradicated. More reason to fear them.
I sit up. There’s no flame under me. That means I’m not on the pyre anymore. I look around. There’s nothing but charred ground and blasted trees as far as I can see into the murky distance. The air isn’t just acrid. On the elemental level it roils with huge particles. Damaging ones. They tear through my cells, wreaking havoc.
I’m in the wrong world. One of the cinder worlds. I knew it would be dangerous to worldjump without a lighthouse, but I did it anyway. Rowan says I never listen to anyone, but what choice did I have?
I don’t have time to panic. I stand up and run to the trees. I need to build another pyre to fuel a worldjump and get myself out of this dead place. When my hand touches the trunk of the first tree, the bark crumbles in my hand and falls through my fingers like the dried-out walls of an old sand castle. The next tree is the same. And the next. What caused this? The huge particles I see on the elemental level, destroying the life-helix? If so, what caused them? It’s almost as if the surface of the sun had reached across the void of space and grazed this planet, scouring it of life.
I scan the horizon for Salem. I see the walls, but they aren’t the right shape. There must be something wrong with my vision. I squint, trying to understand what I see before me. The walls are not in the process of being pulled down because they are no longer needed, like I saw on the world that got rid of the Woven. Here, the wall is just a useless tumble of rocks and judging from the angle of the stones, it looks as if they’d been blown down by a fearsome wind. No greentowers soar behind the walls nor can I see the spires of the Citadel. I look at where they should be, but they’re simply not there. I stagger closer, unable to take my eyes off the ruin that was my city. It’s nothing but rubble and ash. No hurricane, no matter how great, could have done this and there’s no explosion I know of big enough to cause such total destruction.
Except—no, it can’t be. Who would be insane enough to use elemental energy—the energy of the stars—as a weapon? But the shards of elements, crashing through all organic life in this world, are huge cell killers. They are the product of this kind of energy, and no other. You can’t see the elemental shards in a spirit walk, but now I understand. That’s what makes a cinder world. That’s what destroys what life remains on those worlds after the initial firestorm has cooled. I never understood until I came and saw the cause with my witch’s eyes.
I have to find unburned wood or I will be stuck here until I die of thirst. Or worse. I could be found by someone ruthless enough to survive in this place for however long it’s been since the holocaust. The longer it’s been, the more animalistic the people here will have become. I’ve seen things on my spirit walks, even though the shaman told me not to dwell on the cinder worlds or wonder what caused them. I’ve seen what the survivors do to one another in the years of never-ending winter that follow the great burning.
Enough.
Stop crying.
Pull yourself together and find fuel for your pyre, Lillian …
Lily felt herself being evicted from Lillian’s memory, despite wanting to see more. Whatever happened next, Lillian either didn’t want to share with Lily or didn’t want to relive herself. Lily looked across the raft at Lillian.
What happened, Lillian? How did you find enough fuel in that cinder world to build a pyre?
The answer to that is what made me who I am now. You think I’m a monster, but I think if you could see what made me who I am, you’d agree that my choices, as ruthless as they seem, are justified. The only question is, are you sure you really want to understand me?
Curiosity dug at Lily, but so did distrust. There was a reason Lillian had only showed her a fragment of a memory, and a half-truth could be more manipulative than any lie. Lily knew this, but she still couldn’t say no outright because to understand Lillian’s story would be to understand something huge inside herself. They were, after all, the same.
I honestly don’t know, Lillian.
* * *
Juliet turned her head to the side, gagging.
“Easy,” Rowan said in his low, steady voice. He reached out to brace Juliet by her elbow and stopped. His hands were covered in the charred skin he had just peeled off Lily. “Do you need to go outside and get some air?” he asked kindly. Not that there was any difference between the outside air and the air inside the living room at this point. Rowan had insisted they keep all the windows open and it was colder than a meat locker in there.
“No,” Juliet said, shaking it off. “I got this.”
Rowan narrowed his eyes for a moment, weighing Juliet’s resolve, and must have seen more strength in her than she was feeling because he nodded once and bent his head over Lily.
The jewel at his throat throbbed with that eerie dark light and he went back to his task. He directed a tendril of light under a small patch of necrotic skin and even though his burned hands were bandaged, he used the light to ease Lily’s skin away with a precision that no scalpel could ever match. She barely even bled.
