Page 10 of Fable for the End of the World

Keres is older than me, twenty. That’s a short life span, even for an Angel. And Keres was good—better than Lethe. Her record was almost as perfect as mine.

“Why?” I whisper.

“Keres asked, Melinoë,” Azrael says. His voice has gained a sharper edge. “When I told her you were out of commission, she said she didn’t want to be an Angel anymore, not without you.”

You’re lying.It’s the first thought that leaps into my mind, and it shames me. Azrael has no reason to lie. But... my gaze travels to Keres in the crowd, her sleek black hair shining under the lights, empty expression on her face. She wouldn’t choose this. Not if there was a chance I might come back. We had talked about it, before. Promised each other we would retiretogether.

Lethe’s voice plays over again in my mind.Van Wyck wanted her.I blink and blink and blink. Caerus dulls the nerves around our tear ducts so we can’t cry, but I feel it rising in me, the urge to sob. I want Azrael to fold his arms around me, press my face into hischest, so I can hide my shameful, distraught expression.

I know if I asked, he would.

Did Keres think of me, when Azrael strapped her to the table for the last time? Does it even matter now? All the nights we spent huddled under the covers together, laughing and whispering, all the times she helped me take down my hair, peel off my sodden hunting suit, her fingers dancing gently along the notches of my spine—gone. I’m left holding on to them alone, and the memories are so, so heavy for one pair of hands.

Visser sidles up to me again, seemingly oblivious to the disruption. And then I can’t—I can’t take it anymore; the water is rising up and drowning me. I lift my gaze to Azrael’s. I don’t speak, but he knows me well enough to recognize the desperate pleading in my eyes.

Save me, please, get me out of here.

And he does. With a few polite words, he shakes off Visser. Then it’s Azrael’s arm sliding around my waist and down to the small of my back, leading me out of the room. In the hallway, I take off my heels, leaning heavily against Azrael to steady myself. Neither of us says a word.

He walks me to my room in utter silence. When we’re standing outside the door, an almost-memory rises in me. Somehow, I can gaze through his crisp black suit to his bare chest—I know what it looks like; I’ve seen it before. And then the not-memory dissipates, as quickly as it appeared.

“Get some rest, Melinoë,” Azrael says. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Inside, I strip off my dress, my jewelry. My scars look cartoonishly ugly in the bathroom’s fluorescent light. I choose the shower’s coldest setting, and step into the unforgiving stream.

In the morning, I’m at the shooting range again, rifle in my hands. I see the girl at the end of the long gallery, blond hair flashing, the pulse of her tracker pounding in my left temple. It matches my steady heartbeat. My breathing is measured, even.

I kill her twelve times. Thirteen. I let the memories run over me like rainwater. This time, they slide off my back, painless, disembodied. I was in the wet tangle of those trees once, but I’m not now. I killed the girl as she sobbed and begged for her life, but it’s what I was made to do. She was doomed long before I cornered her in the forest. I’m Azrael’s instrument, a mere extension of the rifle in my hands. Her death had already been determined by a tally of red marks, by a Caerus algorithm, by a Mask tapping numbers into a tablet.

When the girl’s tracker has gone silent and I let my rifle fall, Azrael walks down from the observation room to join me. He holds my face in his hands delicately, turning my head slightly from side to side. As if to examine me, very intimately and with pride. I am, after all, his greatest creation. There’s more of his machinations within me, titanium and circuit boards, than my own parents’ DNA.

“Melinoë,” he says, voice soft and thin with relief, “I’m so proud of you.”

I want to say that it was easy once I realized I wasn’t just doing it to put on a show for the anonymous live stream audience. Once I realized it was a fight for survival. Every Lamb I kill is more distance between Visser and me, more distance between a final Wipe that will turn me into an empty, mindless doll, opening my legs numbly for a husband three times my age who I barely know and could never love.

It was easy once I understood that it was the girl’s life or mine. Survival is the most natural thing in the world, as natural as breathing. Stripped down to its essence, any creature will choose to save itself. Even if it means stealing the breath from another.

The next girl, whoever she is, will be no different.

Three

Inesa

The next weeks pass in a rush of storms, relentless and torrential.If I didn’t know better, if I hadn’t lived in Esopus Creek all my life, I’d worry they would never end. But they always do. Eventually, nature permits us a bit of sun.

I pole down to the shop before dawn, the sky humming a tender, pretty blue-pink that belies its ugly origins: air pollution wafting from the City that traps all sorts of noxious gases beneath the smoggy stratosphere. Mom and some of the older folk in Esopus say the air used to smell different, fresher. They always talk about some mythical “before” time, when seasons were drier and milder, when white-tailed deer were abundant, when the trees were filled with birdsong.

It bothers me to hear them talk about it, not because I’m envious, but because this is the only world I’ve ever known. They treat it like the dismal end of some story, but for me, it’s the beginning, whether I like it or not. I’m seventeen, and I’ll never see a dull sunrise.

Main Street is already busy with punters and rafters, people from Lower Esopus shaking out their wet hair. I’m relieved to see Mrs. Prinslew hunched on one of the punts. The deck of her shop is soggy and rotted, the sandbags split open, but the cinder blocks beneath have held firm.

Dr. Wessels is stepping through the door of his shop; his son lingers behind on the porch. I remember when Jacob Wessels was five inches shorter and following Luka, ever popular, around like a puppy. Now his limbs have lengthened, wiry but strong, and his dark curls are cut close to his scalp. His skin is a deep bronze even in this sunless place. He gives me a wave, and my heart flutters.

“Hey, Inesa,” he calls.

I pole over to him and step off my raft onto his porch, stamping my boots dry. “Hi,” I say. “You’re here early.”

---