Page 65 of Fable for the End of the World

By this point, I can barely do more than whisper. The deer’s blood is dripping onto the floor.

“Those weeks were just a blur. I was in the shooting range. I couldn’t even lift my gun. I was back on the table for another Wipe. I woke up in my room. A Mask forced food into my mouth. I went back to the range to try again. Another Wipe. Over and over... by the time I surfaced, by the time I was sort of lucid again, Keres was gone. Azrael had retired her and done a final Wipe. She didn’t even remember my name.”

Finally, the truth. At least, all the truth I know. I have no explanation for the fire. And I have no explanation for why, whenI close my eyes, I keep seeing Inesa’s face; I keep remembering her touch. There’s some glitch in my mechanics, all the carefully constructed systems sparking and then going dead silent. It’s gotten dark enough in the cabin that my night vision keeps flickering on and off again, plunging the world into eerie green and then back into low, golden light.

“That’s why you didn’t kill me,” Inesa says. “I didn’t understand before. You were on top of me, and then it started raining.”

I press my fingernails into my palm. “All those Wipes and Echoings for nothing. I’m still weak.”

“I can’t exactly say I’m sorry you didn’t succeed.” Inesa looks down. The blood on her hands has dried to a bleak, rusty color, more brown than red. A few moments pass, and then she looks up again. “You don’t remember her name, do you? The girl’s?”

I shake my head. At least Azrael managed to strip that away, for all the good it’s done me.

“Sanne,” Inesa says. “Her name was Sanne.”

Something flickers inside me, like the flame in the chimney of an oil lamp. And then I remember what I thought, when I first touched down in Esopus Creek.I’ve been here before.

My breath catches in my throat. The walls of the cabin are still standing, but I feel like every wall inside me has collapsed, folded in on itself, and I’m left crushed in the wreckage.

“She was from your town,” I whisper. “I... I remember now.”

I had been in Esopus Creek. My stomach fills with bile. All the Wipes that didn’t take, the Echoing that jammed the memory like a knife between my ribs—all of it, just for Azrael to send me backagain. A single word crests out of the dark water of my mind.Why? Why? Why?

“Sanne Dekker.” Inesa’s voice is low, but resonant. Without hesitation or contrition. “Her father is Floris Dekker. He brought her body into my shop, a few days after the Gauntlet. I saw her spread out across the table.”

Sanne. I remember now. Her name humming on the screen above her vital statistics, Azrael pointing and gesturing. I felt sick to my stomach then, the way I do now. And then—

“It was a test,” I bite out. “That’s why Azrael sent me. That’s why he chose you for the Gauntlet. He wanted to see if he’d fixed me. If I could kill another girl from Esopus Creek.”

There’s no silence in the cabin, because the wind is howling and beating at the wood, spasming off the tin roof with a thunderous rumbling sound. Inesa stares at me without blinking, and there’s a damp glaze in her eyes. Anger at the forefront, and grief burning low behind. Moments pass in the eddy of what I know is a coming storm.

“And I’ve failed,” I say. “Again.”

The knife glints on the table between us, the blade slicked with deer blood. Inesa could snatch it up and have it at my throat within seconds. I could reach for it, too, and I’d probably be faster. But the instinct just runs through me and then vanishes, like an electrical current reaching a wire’s dead end.

“You know,” Inesa says at last, “there’s something my dad used to tell me.”

I stare back at her, brow furrowing.Surely, I think,this is all just a preamble to killing me.

But instead of lunging for the knife, she just continues: “He said that Caerus has created the conditions that allow some organisms to thrive and others to die. That we’re land animals in a drowning world and they’re sea creatures. But if the lakes and the rivers dried up and the sea level fell, we would survive, and they would die.” She pauses. “He said a lot of nutty things, especially when he was drunk. But I think he was right about that.”

A clever breeze sneaks in under the door, and the flames inside the oil lamps snap. But just for a moment. Then they flare to life again.

“So what are land animals supposed to do,” I ask, “when the sea levels rise?”

“Survive,” Inesa says. “Just survive.”

There’s a strange pricking at the corner of my real eye. “In order for some creatures to live, there are always others that have to die.”

“That’s true.” Inesa holds my gaze. Steadily. “You know, everyone in Esopus Creek hates the mutations. They think they’re disgusting aberrations of nature. I should hate them, too, considering they’re eventually going to put Luka and me out of business. But I can’t make myself hate them. I never have. They’re just surviving. Even the Wends are just surviving. Who knows what they would do, if they had another choice? If they knew they were safe? If they were free?”

By the time we eat and clean the mess the best we can, the oil lamps are burning low, more dark smoke than fire. Hung close to the billowing heat of the woodstove, Inesa’s clothes have finally dried. She picks up the shirt, the pants, the socks. Drapes them over her arm. Waits.

“I’ll turn around,” I say. My voice sounds odd and strangled.

“Okay,” she says.

I face the opposite wall, where the cabin’s original owner hammered in pegs to hold his various tools. The hand axe, the bone saw, the rusted rifle I haven’t gotten a chance to test yet. My eyes trace the shape of its barrel, trying to focus on anything but the knowledge that Inesa is changing behind me.

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