Sister Cities

Part 51: Vi

And I know one day, Hell will catch up with me

And I'm sure that I will burn eternally

One day, it will come to claim its pound of flesh

When it's done, there won't be anything left

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I swim back and forth between a sore, quivering darkness and a room with a high ceiling where the sweet-voiced shadows want me dead. No matter what I say, no matter what I promise, they won't bring her to me. I hope maybe she'll come on her own if I call her name loud enough. I know she won't.

The shadows themselves come and go, and once, when I've run off all but one, I sink away from the room and find myself somewhere other than the dark. It's a place I know better than I know myself.

My hands and my knees sting. Every part of me that I can feel is bruised, and my eyelashes stick together with salt and soot each time I blink. My hair hangs ragged over my face; Vander lies dead in front of me. Take care of Powder. And she appears, footsteps clapping underneath the hiss of rain and the crackle of fire, so thrilled to tell me what she's done.

One thing, though: I'm not seventeen here, like I'm supposed to be in these dreams. That's me now. Powder is still a scrawny twelve, ash streaking her bare skin and staining her clothes. I see us both from the side and try with everything I have, but I watch myself choke out my response as heat waves roll over me, and there's nothing I can do to stop the body that hugs herself and then swings.

Maybe it's not a dream this time.

Powder drops to the ground. "Why did you leave me?" she shrieks, sobbing, gazing upward as I tower above her.

I grab her face in my hand. I try to let go, but I can't. "Because you're a jinx! Do you hear me? Mylo was right."

She gasps for breath, blood dripping from her nose. "Violet, please!"

I try to kneel and pull her into my arms. Instead, I stare at the blood on my palm and my knuckles and feel the world tear, and I drag myself to my feet through atoms as heavy as skyscrapers and I leave her to save her. Except I can't. She's a ghost and I'm a god, but I can't save her.

Then I'm back at the start, me standing over Vander, Powder running to me, but this time, she's even smaller— five, with a short braid sticking out from the side of her head. And I'm not ten.

"You did this?"

Fire. Fever. I've never seen it, but I know it.

"Why?" I ask. "Why did you do this?"

"I was saving you." She sees, and she understands, but she shuts it all down and looks to me to reverse it. "I only wanted to help," she says distantly. "I only wanted to help. I only wanted to help, I only wanted to help—"

"I told you to stay away."

"Please, please, please—"

"I told you to stay away!"

Her bird bones crack like rotten wood. The blood running from her mouth muffles her cry.

"Why did you leave me?"

"Because you're a jinx! Do you hear me? Mylo was right."

The words shake her. "Violet, please!"

I turn to leave again, and the scene starts for a third time, but there's no Vander and no fire and no rain. There's grass, the kind you only see across the river. There's nothing wrong. Not anywhere in the world.