News hit the streets like a flood. Citizens whooped and hollered, and it was all she could do not to unleash a few beasts on them. She grumbled and got her petticoats in a twist before tramping down the spiral stairs and grabbing the first screaming idiot by the throat. "What in the hours is going on here?"
He gaped and spluttered before answering, "The ships have come in, princess, we didn't lose Efreet! The war is over!"
"Over?" She repeated while releasing him. (He scampered off quickly.) She hadn't seen Pinok in months. Is he waiting for me in that mob?
The faintest swish of gowns reached her ears, so around she swiveled and hexed her sister. The girl fell on the ground clutching her stomach and still holding the long bladed knife.
"By the towers, what's the reasoning for killing me now?" She cursed and kicked her in the ribs.
The writhing female sneered and threw the knife at her in a last ditch attempt. "Brother's dead. They'll probably crown you within the hour."
"I see. Well then I suppose it's proper to watch the sailors disembark and dead be carried in." She blinked, then with a nonchalance becoming for a bored Rapunzel, gutted her sister.
. . .
She retained a dignified walk to Avernus' harbor and aimed her sharp elbows at nearby stomachs to create a semicircle of space as a viewing point. The soldiers leaped from the boats in a mad rush, but she kept her eyes keen for Pinok. She knew that her heart would draw her eyes to him and his to hers. Oh! To see his handsome chiseled features and rough bindings. To hear the deep tenor of his voice and feel his hands on hers again.
And, ah, there he was. Covered in a few more bandages and limping down the dock. A broad smile grew on her face as she skirted through the crowd to wrap her arms around him.
Finally, they were together again, and she could feel him, so real—
"What are you doing?"
She loosened her grip and looked up at him. "What do you..mean.." Her voice trailed off as she took in the eyes and sunken face that were not his. "Pinok?" She whispered, as if voicing his name might change the image in front of her.
"Why don't you check the dead for your precious Pinocchio and let me alone?" He spat at her feet and hobbled off.
As the words reverberated in her head, she felt her heart beat wild in her chest, her breath shortened, and her consciousness seemed to spiral down to her feet. It took a moment to realize precisely how afraid she was. Terrified. An emotion she didn't feel often, and perhaps never had. She could not lose him.
However, before she had the chance to calm herself, dismiss the idea and search among the crowds, the trumpets blared and the giants moaned from beneath the boards. The death march had begun.
The second ramps to land hit the dock with a simultaneous Crack and the instruments and wind continued playing hollow sounds, as if ghosts haunted the harbor. Someone lit the bonfire, and it grew in time with the moans and hums of Gorgossium's citizens.
The first of the bodies were carried from the hull. A man on a stretcher carried by two shadowy forms, as if the flickering fire had given the darkness shape. The soldier was dumped into the fire and the chants reached a peak, causing licks of flame to change color and leap into the air. It was the man's soul giving up its last bit of energy for the Night to use once again. The unbroken circle of death.
When the left side of her burned with heat and her feet had grown numb from standing, she saw her brother. Her last brother. Looking like any other soldier whom the dark gods behind the stars had chosen to take. She cared so little, forgetting his name even as royal purple jets of flame spewed in her direction. There.
No one could have called Thant simple-minded. She survived this long on the most hellish scape the Abarat could offer by weaving such webs and drinking of the powerful congealed blood of her victims. Quite the wicked widow she made, standing in waves of ash and watching her beloved be carted off back to the ooze and brimstone from which he came. This is not how it ends.
For all the light of the fire, her skin grew darker; every shadow finding solace upon her body. The smoky tendrils whispered thoughts like the sharp bite of incense, and her eyes, though two, glared with the ferocious terror of eight.
Don't leave me alone, a cry in the night, of heart-wrenching sorrow and soul killing fright.
"DROP HIM." The shadowy minions of the damned paid her no heed, for truly she encompassed only a witch with a growing seed of power. She tossed her way into their path and grabbed his body from the air, sinking down to her knees with the blood encased Pinok in her lap. The spirits wavered and dematerialized back into the Gorgossium darkness they were made of, leaving her prone, with a mob of eyes and the devil dancing a high jig in the center of them all.
She looked upon the half of his face not wrapped to quell her inner fear and stoke the hunger in her heart. "My brother will not die with your heathens." She said, while beginning to enfold her soldier's body in sticky shadows and desire. "My poor brother. My sweet, dead, prince."
Grief squatted like a fat stone in her chest, and she gnashed her teeth and shouted orders to suppress it. She connived his body into a cart that was wheeled to the castle without breath cold as death and she followed. And the smoke continued after with wingless fluttering and mouthless muttering and frolicked in her skirts, defiling its pristine white with permanent gray and the screaming faces of the doomed.
. . .
When the crown was placed on her head, she chanted the Abaratian magic that bound it to her and her to Gorgossium. She enjoyed her victory, for sure, but it lacked a relish she expected.
"You look sour, my queen." A lanky man with sparse and thinning hair bowed to her as Thant rose from the throne.
"And you are?"
"Your new general."
She bundled up her skirts and beckoned him to follow her as she set a brisk pace for the kitchens. "How prestigious. You must be a very capable man, though you look…" She pinched his thin arms, "…weak."
The small man kept his eyes downcast and shuffled along in her shadow. Fortunately for him, he didn't swell with pride, for she might have smite him down where he stood.
"Since you appear so talented, you will be in charge of the Efreetian fleet. Take them back to their island and watch over them."
"Your majesty, by myself?"
"Yes, dear, and perpetually. Be sure to promote someone else who doesn't have the gall to call me sour."
He croaked, and slowed down, but continued to follow her belatedly. She swiveled and pounded her fist into his gut until he turned and ran away.
Still seething, the young queen strode through the narrow kitchen and startled the cooks working on her feast. She ignored them, and swung open the freezer doors. She found Pinok underneath a dirty tablecloth with ice shards forming in the crevices of his skin.
Her anger immediately dissipated, and she found the sponge she had used earlier. Thant rinsed it, then continued to wash the congealed blood from his bandages and body.
"I can't watch you slowly rot, my love." She cleaned his face tenderly. "And if I leave you here, someone will notice you are not by dead brother."
Then a strange thought came to her. A thought about the odd, squirming, rice-pouch flower that had reminded her of him for all the months the fleet had been away because of the amount of times it had tried to deflower her.
She stroked his face even as she madly started making supply lists. The thicker thread along the spine, perhaps, and she would need her most delicate for his face. Now those spools had been most hard to come by…so she was going to need to order the unraveling of a few of her tapestries. The depiction of the Qualm Ha battle could go too.
Thant traced his features underneath the bandages and let a smile slip onto her face. "This is going to work. We can do this together, Pinok. Just hold on."
The Todo rocks had barely had enough bubbling mud to fill a finger, much less his entire body. Thant had wasted precious weeks forcing miners deeper underground until a bubbling, stinking pit had arisen inside of what was now a cave-like outcropping. The living mud had unfortunately taken it upon itself to kill her workers afterwards, in anger at its slumber being disturbed perhaps. Ah, well, it had been for the greater good. Patches of Pinok's rotting skin needed replacing anyways.
Thant pulled a roll of parchment from its Todo mud, and sat on the wooden chair she had brought with her. The living mud had taken a liking to her immediately—stealing her shoes and running through her toes like a friendly squid—and it's blessing made her all the more excited to continue her work.
The blonde queen started the spell slowly, getting used to the words in her mouth before letting the trickle of magic turn into a raging current. It felt as if an otherworldly channel had opened in the pit of her stomach, and the energy burst along her tongue and teeth without her control. It tasted like twinkle, and it was delicious.
The glimmering light flew from her body and split Pinok's carcass from toe to sternum, then slowly dissected his head before dumping his guts and muscles into the center of their mudpit, like an odd feast. Thant coughed up the last few sparkles, and then the magic ceased. It had not been dark magic she'd used; in fact, it was just an old mummification spell the tribes of Xuxux had used in her father's time.
Then Thant Yeyla Carrion set to work with little more than the sly grin of one who was cheating death.
. . .
Nights and nights and nights passed, but her Pinok was becoming everything she'd hoped for. Dark threads along his legs to match his pants, and bright red along his chest for his uniform and scars. The thinnest peach along the lines of his palm so that you could hardly tell that she'd altered him at all. The soldier was plump with mud, but not quite finished yet.
Thant debated while she searched for another spool of peach. Pinok never allowed me to see underneath his bandages in fear for my safety. So, did she honor that decision now and stich him up roughly? Or should she sate her curiosity while seeking perfection?
She decided on perfection. Besides, in the future he would need to take the bandages off at some point, so it was a little nonsensical to fuse them to his body. Beginning at his left foot, she unraveled and sewed while the Todo mud leapt into the gaps she opened for it. The mud was even more excited, now that it was taking shape. To keep it from playing near her vision, she pulled her blonde hair back and tied it with a spare string.
Not until Thant reached Pinok's left hand did the oddity of War appear. His skin had been smooth and hairless underneath their wrappings, but now she noticed the lack of nails, and the smooth expanse of skin giving not a wrinkle. If fortune tellers read palms, then did War have a past or future? Thant flipped the hand up and down, examining it. It was strange, like a peculiar rubber that had only stretched over the bones, but certainly not frightening. He thought too little of his enemies and herself if Pinok had thought War would have them running in fear.
His face was featureless as well. War lacked an eye and mouth and ear. A weird egg-shaped head he made. Perhaps it was shocking to see a creature such as this on the battlefield. Perhaps the lack of emotion made him appear indestructible. "But you aren't are you?" She whispered sweetly, stitching him an eyebrow. "You always did think too highly of yourself, Pinok."
After filling his head with mud and sewing him closed, Thant stared down at the last gaping wound she had avoided. The hollow of his chest lay open to her, and she watched the Todo mud bubble in the cavity. She worried that just the living mud and his skin wouldn't bring back his soul. If she had kept his heart, she could have used that, maybe. Plopped it into his ribcage of mud to hopefully not be devoured.
The moon came out from behind a silvery cloud, and the light glanced off a golden thread she hadn't formerly noticed. It glimmered in the patches that the moonbeams hit it, but when she tried to grasp it, it passed through her fingers. Only then did her eyes trace the life-string to her own heart. The Skein. Her Skein, that connected her to the Abarat and everything else in it. A piece of intangible life and of her very soul.
Thant didn't even hesitate. She sliced her Skein near her heart, and a perfect length fell into her lap. It was golden with shimmery energy, and supple with youth.
She tied it with growing excitement to her best needle. This will work. This is a life that mud could never give him. Skein-mates, indeed.
A knot at the sternum, and she clipped the thread. The gold light gleamed once more from the bright cross-stitch, then faded into dullness. The air of Gorgossium went still, and his eyes
quietly.
snapped.
open.
Slowly, the stitched up man got to his feet, focusing his eyes on the woman in the chair surrounded by the stinking Todo mud. The blank side of his face began to twitch and roll, and his second eye slid open, bloodshot and angry and black black black. His mouth formed out of the folds of skin, all teeth and grinning terror. The rest of War shifted into being faster. Grotesque, mottled colors and bones in places they shouldn't be and pointed serrated barbs where they should. Streaks the color of blood stained over him, lending even more to the look of a dead man.
We he was finally complete again a strange howling laughter escaped his throat, and his hands, War and Peace, gripped the back of her chair. His rancid breath blew into her face.
"Pinok? It's Thant, you remember? Your Yeyla?"
Both halves of his face continued to stare, unblinking. Their shared grin, unnerving.
She trembled. "Love me the way you used to."
His grin distorted and his voice rumbled and tore through his uneven teeth. "Love...you."
"Yes, yes!" She cried, "Love me!"
War and Peace smiled again—a horrifyingly pure smile—then ripped her dress in half.
"Pinok, please, don't you remember us? Our walks and conversations?" His serrated flesh felt up and down her body, leaving bloody trails in places. He seemed no more delighted or disgusted at the marring of her skin, and the dead face held the same expression throughout her pleas. "Please, PInok, please." But he found her legs anyways.
It felt like he had rammed a spike inside of her, like she was resting on a skewer. What hurt worse was the eye she knew, Peace's eye, enjoyed her demise just as much as the blackness of War's. "I order you to stop. Soldier, your queen commands you." The trembling in her voice did little to help her case.
No magic came bidden to her lips; her sobs halted any words that tried to form. After Thant had split herself from the rest of the Abarat, after sewing in her own Skein over his heart, she had lost her right to share her love with another, or to seek mercy. She wept as the revelations swept over her, and for the mocking grin her personal monster provided as he fucked her. The Abarat has no love left for you it said.
When Pinok finally left her, Thant ripped open his chest with her own nails. Her blonde hair was tangled and wild, and her eyes held a dark anger that would never be sated, could never be quenched, because they were allowed to feel nothing else. They did not have the liberty to feel the joy the Abarat had to offer. They would sink slowly to madness.
The stinking mud bubbled and popped in its ecstasy, and Thant fell to her knees, pushing the wilted body away from her.
She wiped the last of her tears from her cheeks.
Her very last.
A little bit of an odd ending I guess. I hope you enjoyed it. And understood it. And were completely freaked out.