Page 22 of Come Tumbling Down

“Banishment, of course,” said Jack. “Remind me, how many people did she kill? How many more would she have slaughtered in her effort to reclaim what she thought was hers by right? I could send her back to the world of our birth, and when she carved a path through the bodies of its innocents, looking for a door to bring her home, would that blood be on her hands or my own? I have trouble enough staying clean. I would prefer not to make things worse.”

Silence fell over the wagon, broken by the rattle of wheels against the ground, the hammering of hooves, and Pony—only Pony, not Bones—breathing. Finally, Sumi leaned over and patted Jack on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, we’ll still love you after you kill your sister.”

“How delightful for me,” said Jack, and urged the horses on.

The smell of the sea reached the wagon moments before the sound of the water itself crashing against the unseen beach. It drowned out the thudding of the horses’ hooves, growing louder with every passing second.

“A few ground rules, if you don’t mind.” Jack’s voice was a razor, slicing across the crashing of the waves. “The villagers who live in the shadow of the Drowned Gods are pleasant folk, but they have strange appetites, and stranger ideas about hospitality. Accept nothing they offer. Assume that any pleasantry comes with attached strings, and ask yourself how many fingers you need before you return it in kind. They won’t harm you if not given permission, but they may take simple courtesy as permission, and they are always, always hungry. Mind you”—amusement crept into her tone—“the one time a group of them came to meet with Dr. Bleak in the village, I heard their leader giving much the same warning about those who live in the shadow of a vampire lord, so it’s entirely possible there’s no strangeness here at all, merely a few small cultural differences and a great whopping dash of xenophobia.”

“Don’t you mean racism?” asked Christopher.

“’S’not the same thing,” said Sumi.

“Much of the population of the Moors is made up of the descendants of travelers whose doors opened all over the world. In this case, I mean xenophobia,” said Jack, voice surprisingly pleasant. “Were we attempting to parlay with the gargoyle kings, who detest and fear anyone not made at least partially of stone, I would mean racism. Regardless, I must ask you to be on your best behavior, at least until we reach the abbey. If you wish to offend them, do so with my blessing. I’ll be standing at a safe remove, watching to see how far the entrails fly. Do we have an understanding, or must I provide details?”

“We understand,” said Christopher hurriedly. “Please don’t provide details.”

“Excellent.” Jack gave the reins a snap. The horses slowed. “We’re here.”

The others turned and beheld a wall that looked high enough to scrape against the omnipresent moon. It was made entirely of blackened timbers, barnacles and dried-out clams clinging to their sides, like they had been harvested from the greatest shipwreck the world had ever known. Slowly, the vast gates swung open, and with another flick of the reins, Jack drove them through, into the dubious safety of the town.

The gates slammed shut behind them with remarkable speed, and everything was quiet, and Christopher knew, with absolute certainty, that not all of them were going to make it home.

PART III

WHERE THE DROWNED GODS GO

10 WHERE THE SHADOW MEETS THE SEA

BUT WE MUST go backward, briefly: we must go back to a girl running, running, running across the vast sprawl of the Moors with her heart in her throat and her lungs achingly full of unfamiliar air. Air has never been her harbor, never been her home, and this air is less hers than most. This air burns. And still she keeps running, racing toward the shadow of the sea.

That’s what called her, of course. The sea, the sea, the sea. A sea, not the strawberry soda of Confection, not the muddy turtle pond that kept her from drying out at school. She missed the depths so much some days that she couldn’t concentrate on anything except how much she wanted to go home. The other students would talk longingly about endless skies and forests filled with talking flowers, but none of them understood, because they’d always been air-breathers. They’d gone from one world filled with wind and light and gravity to another, and they didn’t know how much she’d lost.

In the Trenches, “up” and “down” had been a matter of consensus. Oh, the surface and the bottom existed, but they were inconsequential things. The people of the Trenches measured by depths and shallows, and they danced their way from one side of the ocean to the other. They breathed the living sea, and the sea rewarded them by keeping them as safe as she was able—which wasn’t very, because the water was filled with countless dangers, and none of them mattered in the face of the absolute, indisputable fact that the water was home.

When Cora’s door had tossed her unceremoniously back into the world of her birth, she hadn’t only lost adventure. She’d lost weightlessness, freedom, flight. She’d lost her entire native environment. She ran, as caught as any fish snared by a fisherman’s lure, and wondered distantly whether she was going to throw herself off the first cliff she saw, convinced all the way to the bottom of her bones that she’d transform as soon as she struck the sea.

She wondered whether it was going to hurt.

She wondered whether she was going to care.

Behind her—far behind her, for she had always been the more athletic of the pair, the more equipped for the rigors of heroism—Kade struggled to keep up. The bracken and briars that seemed inclined to let her pass unhindered snagged at the hems of his jeans. Holes opened beneath his feet, and he stumbled, he staggered, he swore. But he kept running. Sometimes, after all, that’s what must be said to make a hero: the willingness to keep running even after it becomes clear that the entire exercise is doomed to failure. Sometimes heroism is pressing on when the ending is already preordained.

Cora ran, and Kade pursued, until the windmill was a speck in the distance, until it disappeared altogether, and there was only the Moors, and the glaring red eye of the moon, and the vast, alien darkness of the sea.

When Cora reached the cliff she stopped, wobbling at the very edge, chest heaving with the effort of breathing in the unforgiving air. Kade, gasping, staggered to a stop some fifteen yards behind her. He couldn’t run any farther, and he tried to tell himself it was exhaustion, and he knew that he was lying, and he knew he was afraid.

“Wait,” he wheezed, the word half-swallowed by his gasped attempts to breathe. “Cora, wait.”

There was no way she could possibly have heard him. But she turned, and smiled, and it was the most beautiful expression he had ever seen. Heroes would have gone to war for that smile, would have died for even a shadow of its grace.

“It’s all right,” she said, and the wind carried her voice to him, each syllable polished and perfect as a pearl. “Can’t you hear them? They’ve been waiting so long for me to come home. Tell Jack thank you, and that I forgive her. Tell her not to look for me.”

“Cora, don’t do this.” Kade staggered forward, one step, then another, trying to reach her before she did anything that couldn’t be taken back.

“I’m home,” she said, and stepped backward, over the edge, toward the welcoming sea. Her expression faltered—only for an instant, but long enough for Kade to see the terror in her eyes, shining through the glazed, artificial serenity.