Page 90 of Fable for the End of the World

It’s accompanied by a video, just a minute and a half long. In it, Melinoë stands behind a podium inside a large glass theater. She looks painfully thin in sky-high stilettos, her long legs covered in beige stockings, not quite the right shade to match her pale skin. It must be to hide the burn scars, I realize. The stretches of still-healing skin, grafted over the old wounds.

Her dress is short, icy blue, with skintight sleeves down to the wrist and a high neck. Her hair has been cut bluntly to her chin, and it shimmers, smooth and white, beneath the production lights.

There’s an eyepatch over her prosthetic. Or where her prosthetic once was. She told me that when Angels are decommissioned, their prosthetics are removed. Replaced with a glass eye that mimics their real one, aesthetic but nonfunctional. I guess not even Caerus technology has gone far enough to exactly re-create what has been lost.

Clutching her around the waist is a tall but slope-shouldered man. His face has the pillowy appearance of someone who has undergone too many cosmetic procedures, leaving him lookingmore bloated than young. His hair is too black to be natural, and it gleams like a slick of oil. He wears the charcoal-colored suit that’s the uniform of Caerus upper management, and its sharp angles look unsettling against the puffy roundness of his cheeks.

Hendrik Visser, the article says. Caerus CTO.

He speaks in Damish, but the video is subtitled. His words sound slightly stilted in translation, just a little bit off. Too literal.

I’m pleased to reintroduce Melinoë to New Amsterdam as my wife. We are very happy together. The wonderful thing about love is that it makes irrelevant all that came before. A vow of marriage is stronger than blood, a promise to leave behind all previous appetites and indulgences. I look forward to our new life, and many happy years of matrimony.

They don’t mention me. They don’t talk about the Gauntlet. Caerus doesn’t want anyone to think about the fact that I held her first, that I held her closest, before she was ever on this strange man’s arm. And they certainly don’t want Mel to remember anything.

The camera pans close to Visser as he speaks, but it never focuses on Melinoë. She stays in the background, partially blurred, and completely still. Her face is as smooth as a stone in the river. Her eye is glassy and empty.

The air is suddenly too oppressive and heavy. I could drown in it, I think, just like water. I slam out of the shop and step onto the porch, taking deep, shuddery breaths. But my lungs still clutch and seize, my throat too tight to allow them relief. I slide down against the shop’s outer wall, putting my head between my knees. I mightvomit, just from the lack of oxygen. But what I really want to do is scream.

I stare down at the wooden floor of the porch and watch the muddy water rush and churn through the gaps between the slats. How much has Azrael stolen from her, I wonder. Did he take enough that she hardly feels anything when Visser parts her thighs? Did he take enough that she forgot that she was made for anything else but this, that she was ever touched by someone who loved her?

I sit there for so long that my legs start to prickle with numbness. I wish it would spread through my whole body and into my heart. It’s about this time that I start wishing for the relief of a syringe to the throat.

I go back inside, but I can’t make myself return to work. Instead I just bend over the counter, replaying the video over and over again. What did Melinoë call it—an Echoing? Maybe, if I watch it enough times, I’ll teach myself to feel nothing at all.

After six repetitions, the door to the shop swings open. I blink the tears out of my eyes so I can talk to the customer without choking, but it’s just Jacob. I don’t know if that’s better or worse. Either way, my cheeks instantly fill with color.

“Hi,” he says.

He doesn’t cross the room toward me; he just waits in the threshold, hands in his pockets.

“Hi.”

“I meant to come sooner,” he says, gaze skimming the floor. “Ijust wasn’t sure what to say. If you’d want me to.”

I’m not sure I do, either. “Luka transferred the credits to your dad last week. For the car and all the gas. He got them, right?”

“Yeah, he got them.” Rain begins to drum on the shop’s tin roof. Jacob inhales, making his broad shoulders rise and then drop. Then, after a painful stretch of silence, he says, “I brought you something.”

“You did?” After we wrecked his car, I can’t imagine Dr. Wessels is feeling particularly generous toward us. Warily, I ask, “What is it?”

Jacob reaches into his pocket and fishes out a plastic package of chewable tablets, in a gleaming rainbow of colors. An instant fondness and nostalgia wells up in my chest. They’re cheap cannabis pills, which Dr. Wessels gives to his patients with chronic pain. Jacob has been filching them from his dad since we were twelve. We’d hang out in his living room, giggling uncontrollably at things that only seemed funny in the haze of our mild high. I’m sure Dr. Wessels caught on to what we were doing, since we had all the subtlety one would expect from a pair of doped-up preteens, but he never reprimanded us for it. I remember wishing, sometimes, that Dr. Wessels were my dad, and it was my house, and I didn’t have to go back to Mom.

We step out into the little grassy area behind the shop. The rain has lightened to a faint sprinkling that mists my skin like morning dew. It catches in Jacob’s hair and gleams. I count out three of the raspberry-flavored red tablets. Jacob takes the lemon.

I only have to wait a few minutes for them to kick in. Then myflesh feels soft and soggy, like it could fall off the bone. My head feels like it’s wrapped in warm cotton. I lean back against the wall of the shop and exhale, my breath white in the cold. Jacob stands next to me, close but not touching.

We don’t speak. And nothing seems funny now. My mind is just drifting away from my body, like smoke escaping from the pipe of a woodstove. I can’t think of much except what’s in front of my eyes. Relief makes my vision fuzzy.

“Inesa.”

Jacob’s voice pierces through the haze. I turn toward him, his face a little cloudy. “Yeah?”

He stares at me intently, biting his lip. I’m afraid, suddenly, that he’s going to try to kiss me again. My stomach curdles.

But he just says, “It’s her, isn’t it?”

“What?”

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