Epilogue 2
One could only imagine the amount of
effort a mume requires to fight one of their most basic urges, that
of curiosity. When faced with the choice between saftey and the
closure that may certainly lead to one's end, for a mume it is no
choice at all. Master Drte summed it up most elequently as Anna told
us this last part in person.
"You would read the last page in a
burning house!"
It was not a complement.
===
"How long have you been watching
me, Gravedust?"
Anna was leading the way, this time, a
torch in hand to light the yellow-orange walls of the catacombs.
"You gathered my attention twenty
or so seasons prior, Playth- I mean Anna."
Anna smirked. The black thing was in
her territory, now, lost in a maze of tunnels and passageways.
Occasionally, they would pass a Marf working on the internal
structures of the Plateau or outlining plans for future architecture.
Gravedust shuddered when they passed. "Their visage disturbs
me so."
"I gather that Gringill visited
you lot as part of her studies to become Red Guard." Gravedust
nodded unconsciously. "And that, no doubt, is where you
expressed interest in me. No Nara Nakki."
"My Queen had a passing wonder of
you. She did not truly fall in love until you visited. Her words,
'Such a keen brain sits atop that frame would explode every secret of
Annalow into view.' I was ecstatic at the thought of your
recruitment."
"Why?" Anna stopped. She
realized that the girl was no longer following her. "It's a
simple Ques-" She stopped because Gravedust wasn't thinking,
she was staring at Anna with the district expression of disbelief.
Anna looked around. There was nothing special in view. "What
is it?"
"Little playgirl, have you never
given thought to your own value?" Anna flashed a look of
confusion, then turned to continue down the passages.
"It's not something I think about,
no. I have rather more important things to process."
"You've heard it before. You are
not just intelligent, but remarkably lovely."
"Not enough to warrant obsession,
Gravedust." Anna rolled it around in her head. "And just
for the record, I prefer the company of males. Not that Cherry
hasn't tried."
The black think sighed. "It's
just as well. You would make a poor Cemetery Girl, Plaything."
"Finally, you've found how to
flatter me."
It was an hour still before Anna lead
them to an exit. The doorway left out into the Docks at the east
end, perhaps two blocks from the entrence to the garden. There was a
10 foot drop to a nearby building.
"This is no pathway."
Gravedust commented.
"It's as close to the grave yard
as I know, now help me down, then I'll catch you."
===
"As silent as the grave" is
an excelant description for the Docks Cemetery. The muffled sounds
of moans and screams were not present as then entered the gates. No
black clothed nightmare to greet them or slither from the coffins of
rock played or whispered. The graves were asleep.
Gravedust gripped Anna's fingers as she
led the way into the furthest crypt from the gate, on the opposite
side of Red Sleep's mound. When she spoke, she did so under her
breath. "The Queen waits for only you. Drips of pain fall onto
her guest below the filth of the dead, Anna Goldeyes, where no one
can hear him protest."
"Drips of...What does that mean?"
"Shhh. Keep your voice low."
Gravedust pulled at an iron gate to the crypt. She winced at every
creep and rusty squeek. "It means there needs to be at least
three dozen more words for agony, my sweet one." Anna was
guided in first, the gate closed behind her. "Do not worry,
Plaything. The was out is for you to take anytime you choose, but we
part here." She smiled. "For now. Watch for my eyes in
darkness." She kissed the bars and slid away, presumably under
a grave of her own.
Anna jabbed her torch at the dark,
clearing a path to explore. At the center of the crypt was a simple
stair well that decended deeper than Anna could know. There was a
sense of inverted vertigo. Anna spent more than an hour climbing
downward, and still there was no bottom to reach. The pathway
presented to her did not split or detour, but turned left and right,
back and forth. A disgn to hide sound, Anna guessed, because at each
turn, there was a noise distant that was being unmuted. The rythem
was that of a baby's cry, but as she grew closer to its source, it
sounded more primal, perhaps animal.
Finally, at the end of a long hallway,
there was a light. Anna extiguished her torch and tucked it under
her belt. She made an effort to avoid the few rocks in the soft dirt
floor and sneaked closer. The brighter the light became down the
hallway, the louder voices could be heard under the cries of the
dying animal.
"He's my son." Nara Nakki
sobbed to someone. There was a murmur, then "...no one could
have known."
The other voice was calm and pleasant.
Like a voice Anna heard in a dream she forgotten about. "Things
must balance. Anything else and I would lay it bare before you."
Anna braved an eye around the corner.
Inside was a simple antichamber with torches of its own. Nara Nakki
in her gold robe sat crying against a wall while a womume in white
cradled her head. The unknown womume was so pale her skin could be
marble, as was her hair. She turned her head to see their voyeur,
but Anna pulled away, back against the corner.
"I must go, precious Queen. Be
well."
And then silence. The music of
cracling torches spun their tale of stillness. Even Nara Nakki had
stopped sobbing, opening a case filed with something. "It's
alright, Anna. You can come now."
When Anna leaned around the corner, it
was hesitantly. She had felt like the first time she witnessed her
parents making love in the living room. As if she had interrupted
something personal. The chamber had no other exit than the heavy
stone door behind Nara Nakki and the way Anna came. "Who...what
was that?"
"Unlike Gravedust, we offer
nothing for free, Anna Goldeyes." Nara Nakki hadn't moved and
her eyes were still red from tears, but she had two long stemmed
pipes. She stuffed petal into one of them and offered it to Anna.
"Shall we pick up where you left off? It's alright, we're quite
alone."
"Have you been told that your
voice sounds like you've eaten too much honey?"
Nara Nakki smirked. "Sit."
Anna obeyed. "I've only been told that my screams were
beautiful and I shouldn't leave the world poor of them." Nara
Nakki stuffed the second pipe. "I am new to this, so be on
guard."
"I don't think I'de ever want to
understand you lot." Anna said, pulling a bundle of tendertwigs
from her jacket. She struck one and lit her pipe, pulling on the
petal slowly before lighting Nara Nakki's. The Queen choked and
coughed, unable to hold the smoke in. Anna chuckled. "Yeah,
you're new, alright."
Nara Nakki regained composure before
trying again. "We do not strangle each other, Anna Goldeyes.
It's too dangerous, and I'll not lose my girls if I have to."
The second breath ended with another cough.
"You're trying to hard. Pull the
smoke into your mouth, but don't inhale, yet." The Queen tried
it. "Now pull away the pipe, open your mouth and breath in.
Good, do that a few times before you start really breathing the
petal."
So it was for the next few minutes.
Anna taught the Queen of the dead how to smoke the purple flower.
Eventually, Nara Nakki got the hang of it. "This is quite
nice."
"Draw it in slowly and hold it as
long as you can. Madeline showed me that." The two womumes
leaned agains the wall. A quite scene if not for the animal noises
behind the door. "You may want to stop at one pipe tonight,
Nara Nakki. You'll feel sick later on."
"Is it night? We have no concept
of it here in the Docks." the Queen sudelly jerked toward Anna.
No, that wasn't right, she was jumping away from something. Anna
saw it and giggled. "You can see it? What is it?"
"It's just a ribbon of smoke.
They gather around you as the fog sets in." Anna shove the
Queen back over. "You're very strange when you're not being
strong for the troops."
Nara Nakki tightened her skeletal grip
on her pipe and stuck the stem back in. "We've not had a good
day, Anna Goldeyes." She sighed a purple wisp from her lips.
"But we are doing our best to keep things even. You're Mister
Felfkin that you speak with, he said something that stuck with me."
"Stop reading my letters."
Nara Nakki ignored her. "He said
'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
"Things must balance." Anna
quoted the strange womume.
"Yes. Things must balance. And
for us, the coins and trade must be equal."
"And since you value pain."
Anna looked behind them at the door. "I think I understand, but
there's more, isn't there?"
Nara Nakki's smile was weak. "We
have birthed perhaps 100 children, Anna Goldeyes. Most of them
girls."
"And yet you've never had the
petal!" Anna laughed.
The Queen rolled her eyes. "Technology
is getting out of hand these last fifty years. Alchemy is no
exception." She looked at her pipe. "Who thought it would
be a good idea to inhale a smoke that stangles you when you try it?"
Back into her mouth the pipe went. "We can count ever boy
we've sired. Welton Nakki, Mortemer Nakki, Achlen Nakki, all
beautiful creatures and all understood the value of pain, giving and
receiving." She took a moment to draw long on the pipe. As she
spoke, tendrils of purple left her. "Never have I had a child
so determined to resist this idea that pain is for trade. That when
you hurt another, there needs to be a trade of something equal."
"You're insane, Nara Nakki. You
think you can equalize this by torturing your son?"
"Oh," Nara Nakki shrugged,
"that's an easy chapter to write. He lessens his suffering by
offering us something in return. You have such a thing on you now."
Anna subconsciously fiddled with the needle in her jacket. "But
lives were lost, and that's harder to replace."
"And hearts broken."
"Yes, there's a lot of debt. So
much to be put into balance. And he is not strong enough to replace
all he's stolen."
"So you're...what? Going to have
him sire twenty or so little girls?"
"Yes."
"What?!"
"For starters. And this,"
Nara Nakki waved at the screams, "will never end. We have ways
to keep him alive for many many years. We, personally, have ways to
make him immortal, tho that won't be necessary." She rubbed the
door softly. "When he's allowed to die, his debt will be paid.
By then, I expect, he will be quite mad. Insane with years of
unending agony. We've seen what that can do to someone. It changes
them in horrible ways and twists their minds with spite," She
shrugged sadly, "but things will be equal. And we will continue
to replace the sprinkler over his body with his own blue paint."
"Why are..." Anna almost
didn't want to know, "Why tell me this? I thought you gave
nothing away from free."
Anna's head was pulled to the Queens
breast. They weren't as clammy as she expected. They were warm and
natural, contrasted against the burned boney hands that held. Was
Nara Nakki crying?
"You gave mercy to my son. You're
retrieved him in such a way that would heal a wound on the city he
afflicted with this savage outcry that was the last girl's body."
"I...uh..."
"Idiot womume," Nara Nakki
sobbed. "Still ignorant of the waved you make in this pond. If
he was simply captured, Annalow would be in chaos and the debt he'd
have to pay would last forty life times. Now, at least, he will be
allowed to die."
Anna shook off the queen. Her tears
confused her and her praise was strange. "You make no sense,
Nara Nakki. I didn't do this for him!" Anna stomped, trying to
regain control of her anger. "I don't care if he burns in
electric fire until the Gods claim back all of Mash'ta! I did it for
the souls who suffer still, haunting that broke ally ways of MY
CITY!"
"And yet, it doesn't matter, Anna
Goldeyes. When you see justice done, you do everyone a goodness."
Anna grunted in frustration. "Even the thieves of lives."
Angrily, Anna ploped down in the dirt, opposite the Queen. She bit
hard down on her pipe and pulled in the smoke, trying not to look at
the pale womume. "It doesn't please you that Peter Nakki
suffers so much like this victims?"
"No." She mumbled. "It
doesn't bring back the children."
"And do you think it pleases
them?"
"No. They don't care, either.
Mandra save their spirits that curse the allyways."
"She shall." Nara Nakki drew
again on the pipe. "Do you think that we don't already know his
burning pain satisfies no one?" Anna stared hard at the Queen,
giving no answer. "Because we do. So the question stands, Anna
Goldeyes, Why do we torture him so?"
"Because," Anna pointed the
pipe at her, "you Cemetery Girls are the twisted inmates that
assume it matters. Because you think everyone else values pain, just
like you."
"Please. Tomorrow, go into a
tavern and mention that you know what happened to Lily Rpper. Say
that he suffers perhaps for eternity at the hands of his brethren for
the crimes he's committed. Ask them if that's justice."
Anna said nothing for a long time.
They say and smoked and entered the fog together. Eventually, the
pipe ran dry and Nara Nakki put her's down. "It seems that's
all we should try for today. Thank you, Anna Goldeyes, for helping
me understand this new thing with Petals. Is there anything I can
give in return?"
"Yeah, tell Gravedust to stop
stalking me."
Nara Nakki opened her red eyes wide,
her look of insanity. "Oh no, Anna Goldeyes. She's more fond
of you than I am. But I will say she's spoken of watching you bath
at night. You may want to do that during the daylight from now on."
"Thank you." Anna stood up
and emptied the pipe on the ground. "That does actually help."
Stretching her mussels, Anna tried to clear some of the purple fog.
"Are we equal, now?"
Nara Nakki didn't move. She took the
pipe from Anna and put both away in a rumorwood box. "I feel
you hold the upper hand, still."
"Then I have one other question,
which has bugged me since I left the farm. You must have traced me
there with effee magic that seemed to have come from Madeline. Even
she seems aware that the Effees have magic, but she didn't seem to
know what you were talking about when you mensioned my friend's
delivery methods. How did you get Maddy's help with the alchemy when
she herself didn't know how to use the effee flower?"
"She told you not to call her
that." Anna shrugged. Of course Nara Nakki would have
overheard. "And to answer your question, she didn't, I used it.
We made a trade for the flower, not for her help. We used to be
High Priestess, after all." Anna coughed and sputtered. "Of
course we would know how Effee Magic works."
"Are you..." Anna slapped
her forehead. "You couldn't be...Needessa?"
The pale womume smiled and closed her
eyes. "We believe that settled our trade, Anna Goldeyes. Leave
in peace. The next time you come, we would like to do things to you.
Gravedust especially."
Anna lit her torch and did just that.
She left first at a study pace. Upon hearing Nara Nakki's laughter
she walked a bit faster. The echo left behind spured her to climb
the stairwell quickly, and when the silence was behind, she decided
that she was done with the Cemetery for life. She left through the
gates of the grave yard in a dead run.