Was this what the boy was always warning the wind about—that while man’s limbs reached heaven, his roots reached hell?
After a moment, the wind rustled the woman’s skirts and hid beneath their shadow. It was brave, it was courageous, but it didn’t want to witness this depravity.
Finally, the pixie-like woman’s skirt stopped swishing. She stilled. The wind unwound itself from her ankle and slipped under her skirts, dragging itself over a hard-packed dirt floor. The dirt was tinged red and smelled coppery. Blood then. Lots of blood.
The wind rose, climbing on an air current, until it was hovering over a large square room. It was a strange thing, this room. The first thing the wind noticed was the scent: coppery blood, sickly-sweet jasmine, rotting flesh. The second thing it noticed were the heads. The wind couldn’t count. The wind had never been able to count. But there were as many heads in this room as a squirrel’s stash of acorns collected for a long winter. They were strung like a garland from the ceiling or thrust on poles and spaced around the room. It was a strange, macabre decoration.
The pixie-like woman raised her eyebrows, and the wind shrieked at the beings in the room. There were quite a few of them—enough to fill three city buses. They ignored the line of people being shoved into the room and instead focused on a man.
That was the third thing the wind noticed.
The man.
The Maker?
The wind sped across the room and slid up the man’s legs, bouncing up his bare chest to peer into his gray eyes. The wind shuddered. It had often wondered how long the solemn one could hold onto his sliver of good. Now it knew. Not long.
There had always been a shard of light in his gray eyes. It reflected the thin shard of love splintering his heart. Nothing had been able to dislodge that sliver of love. Not death. Not pain. Not even the rocklike one. The shard had wormed its way so deeply into his heart that the solemn one swore he’d never let it go. The pain of that good had been agony. The wind knew a tiny sliver of light always hurt when everything else was dark.
He had promised to love the girl forever. That promise was the only thing keeping him from losing himself.
The wind moaned as the solemn one dispassionately studied the line of beings marching into the room. His eyes had changed. They were the flat, pitiless, inhuman gray of the rocklike one now.
Oh, solemn one.
How much had it hurt to lose himself?
Had he cried when that splinter of love dissolved?
The wind tapped a freckle on his cheek. It tapped another. The solemn one didn’t smile. The wind didn’t think he could anymore. Besides, nearly all his freckles were covered by a thick, russet beard. His hair was long now too. It tangled to his shoulders. They were bare and covered in tattoos. His arms, chest, and back too. The solemn one had always worn tattoos. There were more now. But there were other things that were different.
Before, he’d been muscled like a knife. Thin. Strong. He was quick, fluid, brutal. The wind hadn’t thought there was any softness there. But there had been. It only knew it because all that softness had been carved away, and now, there were only hard planes, muscled limbs, and gouged surfaces. He’d lost weight and been chiseled into a new thing.
The wind trailed over his scars. It was strange. They ran over him in raised rivulets, crisscrossing every inch of his skin, so it looked like he’d been caught in a scalding metal net that had seared him and scarred him. There was one raised line dragging down from the corner of his gray eye. It looked like it had traced the path of a tear.
The wind knew what this was. It had seen the game the rocklike one played with his mines. He cut himself, and they bled. It was a controlling game. A subjugating game. But he always healed them after. Why had the solemn one kept his river of scars?
The wind hummed a question and then shied back when the solemn one’s attention shifted to the line of beings. The people in the room jeered, but the “new ones” only smiled blankly, staring in stupefied awe around the room. What did they see that had them gazing happily at horrors?
“Maker,” the shouting one said, quivering as the solemn one’s gaze settled on him. “I brought you new ones. What’ll you make of them?”
The solemn one stood, and the wind shrieked, gusting backward.
What was this?
What was this thing?
The solemn one wasn’t himself. The black, ropey vines that clouded the sky were a part of him. When he stood, a mass of long black tentacles unfolded from his back. They extended from his shoulder blades and his sides as if they’d been grafted to his skin. They swam around him, tasting the air, swaying like giant, eyeless snakes. Some of them reached for the ceiling, connecting with the ropey clouds that invaded the indoors. Others sniffed the living creatures, and when they did, the beings shied away. Some curled around the solemn one, petting him and rubbing his scarred skin.
The solemn one tilted his head as if he were listening to the whisper of the black tentacles. He walked toward the line of new ones, kicking a head out of his way, and stopped in front of the young man.
“What’s your depravity?” he asked in his deep, solemn voice.
The young man stared glassily at the solemn one and whispered, “Murder.”
The wind shrieked as one of the solemn one’s tentacles snaked out and sliced through the man’s neck. The solemn one ignored the young man’s body as it toppled to the ground.
“Take them to the arena,” he said.
