Necroepilogos

Serin stood in statue-still silence, with one skinny stick-and-skin arm protruding from inside her ragged black robes. She showed off her gruesome tattoos like battle trophies. Crossed-out skulls dripped with imaginary blood in the shadowy red of Pheiri’s strange night-time firelight.

Amina thought the tattoos were beautiful; Amina thought Serin was beautiful.

In life, before death and descent into this hell, Amina would never have imagined anybody wanting to paint skulls on their own body. Her parents would have been horrified. Her sisters would have shrieked, and probably dragged her away to scrub the offending nonsense off her skin. She would have been treated as a mad person — and besides, she would never have done such a thing anyway. The notion would never have occurred to Amina.

But Serin wore her inked skin with pride; the skulls meant she had killed very bad people, torturers and monsters, the servants of evil, the Death’s Heads who had dared to hurt the angel and put a muzzle around Amina’s face. The skulls were beautiful because of what they meant, and because Serin was so very proud of that meaning.

“Alright, Serin,” said the angel — the Commander, Elpida, Amina’s lamp in the dark. She sounded a little unimpressed. “You received the gravitic weapon and the crescent-and-line symbol from the same source. Are you going to tell us who that was?”

Vicky snorted and rolled her eyes. Her dark skin was even darker in the dim red light. “Of course she’s gonna tell us. She just likes drawing things out with dramatic flair. What were you in life, Serin? A theatre kid?”

Serin’s eyes crinkled above her metal mask. Amina liked that very much; she could tell exactly when Serin was smiling, and even take a good guess at the emotional subtleties of the smile. Serin’s emotions were very easy to read, unlike so many other people, despite the mask over her lower face.

Perhaps it was her eyes. Serin had such beautiful eyes, glowing like hot coals against pale wood.

Serin said: “In life? I was a prostitute.”

Amina tried not to react. She could tell that Serin wasn’t joking — but surely that wasn’t the truth?

Vicky hesitated and frowned, then cleared her throat and averted her eyes. She took another bite from the greasy block of pressed food. She looked angry and ashamed at the same time.

The angel sighed. “Serin, are you going to tell us, or not?”

Serin dipped her head; Amina could tell she was being cheeky, teasing her captive audience, enjoying this performance. Amina didn’t mind, but she wished the others were not so quick to anger.

“Yes, coh-mander,” Serin purred. “The one who gave me the gun. Taught me the cause. Was my saviour. A mentor. A friend. How it happened? Mm, a long time ago now. I had been here a while. Maybe a dozen years. Maybe two dozen. Died more times than I had counted. I was becoming mindless. A bottom feeder. An animal. She pulled me from my coffin. Saw there was still light behind my eyes. Took a chance. Because she believed.” Another one of Serin’s thin pale arms snaked out from inside her robes. She tapped the crescent-and-line symbol on her own arm with a long and spidery fingertip. “In this.”

Elpida asked: “What was her name?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Serin purred. “But. Veerle.”

Vicky rallied after her earlier embarrassment. “Where is she now? You’re a lone wolf these days, right? Unless you’ve been hiding a squad out there this whole time.”

“Beyond the graveworm line,” Serin rasped. “Evolved. Ascended. Doing the same work as before. She and I parted, only because I could not follow.”

Amina listened, doing her best to understand.

The others had spoken of matters lofty and horrifying — of meat and murder, of tiny machines inside their bodies, of the great metal house in which they all now lived, of ‘Necromancers’ and devils and monsters. Now they were doing it again. Amina had so many questions, but she swallowed them all, nursing her knife clutched down in her lap, cradling her restless demon deep inside her chest.

She could do little else.

Amina had long since given up on full comprehension, let alone on maintaining a strict system of cosmological classification. Angels, demons, lost souls in hell; the last few days had made a mockery of all her efforts to categorise and clarify her experiences. She was still certain that Elpida was an angel — cast out from heaven by a God who hated all life, raising a banner of true divinity in defiance of her faithless creator. Amina had experienced Elpida’s blessing first-hand, via the ambrosian bounty of Elpida’s own flesh and blood. The circumstances had been horrible, trapped by monsters, chained up in a cell, prepared for torture; but the angel had bidden Amina to smear her crimson life on Amina’s own hands, and then ordered her to lick those same hands clean in a desperate act of love and hunger.

Amina could not explain her bliss in any other way. She had engaged in a kind of communion with the angel, accepted in body and soul. She was cleansed inside and out. She was renewed, even here, down in the pits of hell. She had been blessed.

But if Elpida was an angel, then what was Arcadia’s Rampart? Divine machinery beyond Amina’s wildest dreams? An angel who had cast off God’s chains upon the body as well as the soul? And Pheiri — the moving house of imperishable metal — was apparently Elpida’s brother. Did that mean he was an angel, too?

Amina could not even begin to think about the giant golden sky-diamond. Was that God’s wrath, unanchored from God’s love or God’s will? Was it another kind of angel, come to empty hell of all the lost and the damned, to consign them to true oblivion?

The golden sky-diamond’s blinding light had burned Amina’s right hand with invisible fire. The skin was blistered and peeling, red and cracked, weeping clear fluid beneath the tight bandages. Melyn had been so sweet, wrapping Amina’s burn in dressings and salve. But it still stung and ached whenever Amina flexed her fingers or moved her wrist.

The things she did not comprehend could still kill her.

The others — mostly Ilyusha — had explained to Amina that this was not really hell. It was just very far in the future.

But it was hell, by definition. How could it be otherwise? God was clearly absent. Perhaps he had abandoned his creation. Or maybe God was dead.

All this was too much for Amina. Her categories were fraying and breaking.

She wanted to pray. But to what?

Ilyusha — or rather, Ilyusha’s more talkative and articulate demon, a secret from all the others except Elpida — had tried to explain many things to Amina, as they had lain in bed together, whispering to each other beneath the thin blue covers. She had taught Amina all sorts of new terminology this time: airship, nanomachine control locus, atomic fusion, nuclear explosion, area denial, thinking machine, artificial intelligence, ecosystem, armoured fighting vehicle — and on and on and on, until Amina’s head had felt fit to burst.

Amina was not stupid; she understood the words in isolation, and she could even see how they might fit together. For example, Pheiri was a thinking machine. He was like a person, but in the shape of a ‘tank’. A tank was a kind of armoured fighting vehicle, which was like a big wheeled cart covered in metal, with cannons mounted on the outside for defence. That wasn’t so hard to comprehend. If Amina applied her intellect she could mostly piece together what Ilyusha was trying to tell her.

But she had woken up hours later and been unable to return to sleep. She had stared at the wall on the other side of the bunk room, mind racing with fear, feeling smaller than she ever had in life.

She did not wake Illy, because Illy would just teach her more words, and those did not help. The words would allow her to name things, but they would not help her to understand.

Pheiri was a tank, a thinking machine, an armoured fighting vehicle. These were real words that meant real things.

They meant nothing to Amina.

Pheiri was an angel, like Elpida and Thirteen. That was easier. That made sense. She was protected and safe, in the belly of an angel.

In hell.

Amina was very happy to be included in the conversation, in the soft dim red shadows of the crew compartment, as Elpida questioned Serin, but she kept most of her thoughts to herself. Elpida had been both clear and kind — if Amina did not understand something, then it was okay to ask questions, even stupid questions. Amina had never been treated this way before. In life, in Qarya, her parents had not been unkind: her father had doted on all his daughters; Amina had never been struck or beaten; she had been taught to read, and how to do arithmetic. Two of her elder sisters had even begun to help their father with the sales from his olive groves. But she and her sisters had always been expected to listen first, to learn through instruction and obedience. Questions were for later, after lessons had been absorbed from one’s elders.

Apparently Elpida did not think like that.

But Amina knew that if she asked every question she had, they would all get very tired of her. There were simply so many things she did not understand, not in the way the others seemed to. Even Melyn and Hafina — who was still naked, which Amina kept trying not to stare at, despite Haf’s many-coloured, shifting skin — seemed to comprehend matters on a level Amina could not approach.

Ilyusha had attempted to explain nanomachines, but the idea made Amina deeply uncomfortable. She could not accept the notion that her body was made of billions upon billions of tiny clockwork mechanisms. That made her think of bugs crawling beneath her skin, bursting out from under her fingernails and exploding from her mouth. If she cut herself, would her blood swarm like maggots? If she sneezed, would spiders drip from her nose?

But she had bled ordinary blood. So had the others. Ilyusha had explained that the machines were too tiny to see. Amina didn’t like that any better. It made her want to scratch at her skin.

She had decided to focus on what she could understand. The debate about meat made perfect sense to her. The only source of food was other people, but nobody really wanted to kill other people, unless they attacked first, and being inside Pheiri meant nobody would want to attack them. Amina understood this instinctively. Her demon murmured treacherous suggestions about making bait of herself for the sake of the others, about sinking a knife into soft and yielding flesh.

But the demon’s heart wasn’t really in it. Murdering random people was of zero interest. Amina’s demon had been quiet and sated for days now, ever since the angel’s guts and the angel’s blood had blessed Amina’s pitiful soul.

Right now, she was more interested in Serin.

Serin was telling a story, and Amina could tell that Serin was enjoying the telling. Her voice purred from behind her metal mask, filling the gloom inside the crew compartment. Amina paid close attention, snuggling down inside her blankets, gazing up at Serin’s face.

“Veerle was one of six,” Serin was saying. “A group. Coherent and strong. Heavily modified. On the cusp of leaving the graveworm safe zone forever. They shared portions of their thoughts with each other. Near-field nanomachine transmission technology. ‘Hacked’, she told me. From the corpse of a Necromancer they had slain. A dozen or so years earlier. By judicious application of gravity.”

Vicky snorted softly through her nose, shaking her head. “Does that mean they pushed one off the top of a building? ‘Cos Kaga hit our Necro with gravity. All it did was pin the thing in place, not kill it.”

Serin said, “Veerle did not lie.”

Vicky snorted again. “Says you.”

Elpida gestured for Vicky to calm down. “Please, Serin, continue.”

“Mmm,” Serin purred. “They shared thoughts. Those six. Lost portions of themselves to each other, gained something greater in the process. All of them were called Veerle. By then. Funny. Thought it was funny.”

Vicky muttered, “Yeah, real laugh riot.”

Serin ignored her. “They raided a tomb. My tomb. One of their last gestures of goodwill. Before they committed to life beyond the graveworm line. Tried to save the girls inside. Wanted to show us there were other ways. Leave some hope behind. Before they left.” Serin shook her head. “All the others fought. Did not see it. Did not understand. They thought Veerle was there to kill and eat them, like all the rest. I fought too. Naked. With claws. Nothing else. But Veerle got lucky. Shot me through the legs. I was last out of the coffins. So they could save me. They cauterised my stumps. Took me with them. Fed me. Raised me again. Treated me like one of them. I was proof.”

“Proof?” Elpida echoed.

“Proof that any bottom feeder is still human,” Serin purred. “Proof that no matter how far fallen, we can all be lifted back to our feet.” She tapped the crescent-and-line symbol again. “By this.”

Serin fell silent, waiting for a response.

Amina swallowed. The sound was so loud in the crew compartment.

Vicky popped another chunk of food-stick into her mouth, and spoke while she chewed. “So, a bunch of good Samaritans screwed up a ‘humanitarian intervention’ into a tomb opening. You’re the only survivor. They take you and look after you, and tell you they did it all because of, what? A symbol?”

Serin turned crinkled eyes upon Vicky. “Yes.”

Vicky laughed once. She did not sound amused. But Amina could tell that Vicky had softened. She wasn’t angry anymore.

Vicky said: “People don’t do things because of symbols. They do things because of what the symbols represent. Yours represents shooting fascists and pulling girls out of tombs to look after them, even when you’ve screwed up and shot them in the legs. Sounds alright to me. I don’t see why you have to be so damn secretive about it.”

Serin smiled wider. She was enjoying this.

Amina swallowed very hard, opened her mouth, and said: “Serin? W-what does it mean? Please? Just tell us what it means.”

Serin looked down at Amina. She suddenly looked very sad.

Amina could tell that Serin liked her.

Serin’s affection was not like Ilyusha’s affection, carnal and physical, nor was it akin to the affection that Amina felt for Elpida — a dangerous blinding white-hot fire low in her belly. Serin’s affection was almost like having a big sister. Serin was some kind of terrible demon, wrought from aeons of severance from God, but she was nice to Amina.

Serin was also very beautiful. Amina was having trouble with that.

The angel — Elpida — was beautiful too, of course. But Elpida was beautiful in ways that Amina could never approach. Amina could not imagine herself ever looking anything like Elpida. The idea made her shake with shame and disgust.

But Serin was beautiful in a different way, a new way. She was tall and strong and confident — and afraid of nothing. She had slept out on Pheiri’s hide, in the dark, in the open! Amina could barely raise her head out there. Serin’s red eyes glittered in the dark, like flesh made of fire. Her skin was pale — not really skin at all, but like a plant suited to grow in dark places, down in the undergrowth, hidden by shade and feeding on secret blood. She smelled of mushrooms and rotten wood.

Amina wanted to be like that. She wanted to thrive in the dark.

Amina’s demon was fascinated by Serin too. Amina’s demon preened and curled in front of Serin, aching to be acknowledged.

“Please?” Amina repeated.

Serin spoke, voice soft with melancholy: “It is a dream. A paradox and an aspiration. A utopia. Always out of reach. A belief that there is a better way than this. It is solidarity. Do you know what solidarity means, little one?”

Amina shook her head. She felt a pang of disappointment. More technical terms, more words that meant so much to everyone else, but so little to her. She braced herself for a lecture. Her demon closed its eyes and lapsed into slumber.

But Serin said: “It means you and I are on the same side.”

Amina’s eyes went wide. Her demon reared up inside her chest, maw open, eyes burning.

“We … we are?” she whispered.

“Mmhmm.” Serin nodded. “You and I. The coh-mander here. The tank. Iriko. The lowest bottom-feeder. The most developed cyborg. All of us, little one. Even the death cult. Though they don’t know it. Or they refuse it. All of us. We are all on the same side. All against Necromancers. Against the great hand behind them. Against the hunger. All of us.”

Serin trailed off. Amina’s heart was racing. She was almost panting. Sweat was soaking into the edge of the dressings on her right hand, stinging her burn wound.

Vicky snorted. “Now who’s changing their tune? Didn’t you call Elpi naive, earlier?”

Elpida said: “Vicky, it’s alright.”

Serin looked around at Vicky. She smiled again, sadness forgotten. “Ideology does not survive practical application intact. The death cult have made their choice. I make mine. I change the world. One bullet at a time.”

Elpida held up a hand. “Serin, I agree with the principle of solidarity, but I am asking for practical intel. Does the symbol represent a coherent group, of which Veerle was one component? Is it a network? A loose confederation of allies? I need to know if we have potential allies out there. Please.”

Serin shook her head. “No, coh-mander.”

“So, it’s more like the Death’s Heads? A statement of allegiance to an ideal?”

Serin lost her smile. She growled behind her mask. “There is no comparison.”

“I didn’t mean to imply—”

“You were hoping for a secret army,” Serin said. “Weren’t you. Coh-mander? You were hoping for your own Telokopolan truth, to be already self-evident. Already thriving. But you have no soldiers. Not even me.”

Elpida nodded as if giving ground. “Then where does the symbol come from? Why still wear it? Where did your mentors get it from?”

Serin rolled her shoulders — a strange motion which looked like it should have produced a clattering sound, but instead made only silence. “There are times when enough zombies can stop fighting. Stop eating each other. Face a worm. Try to wreck all this. That is where the symbol came from. Longer ago than any zombie knows.” Serin shook her head. “But it never lasts. Hunger erodes solidarity. Or Necromancers and their fools stamp it out and murder the best. It is a cycle. Like resurrection. Wear the symbol if you want, coh-mander. Some will flock to it, in knowledge, in hope, in solidarity. Others will try to destroy it. Few will understand.”

Elpida said: “Thank you, Serin. I think I do understand.”

Serin laughed — low and scratchy, metal scraping on the inside of her mask. “Do you?”

Elpida nodded. “Solidarity. All of us, all on the same side. Even those who don’t know it yet. That’s Telokopolis, that’s what the city was for.”

Serin laughed a second time. Unimpressed and scornful. Amina wasn’t sure if she liked that. She wished that Serin and Elpida would be friends.

Vicky said: “Why all the secrecy? You’ve barely told us anything. There’s a symbol we can use to indicate, what? That we’re not assholes? Why’s that worth keeping secret?”

“Same as meat,” Serin rasped.

Vicky squinted. “Eh?”

Amina wanted to be useful — and for the first time in a while, she felt like she understood something that the others did not.

She spoke quickly, before anybody else could answer: “Because it’s bad for us to know.”

Vicky blinked at her. Serin tilted her head. Elpida nodded, and said, “Thank you, Amina. Good point.”

“Eh?” Vicky repeated. “Sorry, Ami, what do you mean?”

Everyone was looking at her — even Melyn, half asleep in Haf’s arms. Amina blushed, but her demon surged to the surface. She forced an answer from her lips, letting her demon take the reins: “Because it’s such a nice idea, so we might use it, without knowing what it really means. It sounds so nice, really nice. Make friends with everyone. What could be bad about that? But … that’s not what it really means. In practice. I think. I t-think it’s … harder to understand. Serin … Serin kills people, though she believes in ‘solidarity’. It … seems like it should be a contradiction. But it’s not. It’s not.”

Amina could not keep her eyes up as she spoke. She lowered her gaze to avoid the others, staring at the floor.

Vicky took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. “Good point, Ami. Fair enough.”

Serin rasped: “A fragile truth.”

Amina could tell that Serin was still lying, whether by omission or otherwise, but she had told them the part that really mattered. The symbol inked on Serin’s skin — the same symbol as on Ilyusha’s t-shirt — was not in itself salvation. It was a tiny, fragile, battered thing, held beneath cupped hands like a candle flame in a storm, hidden from the monsters, from the ‘Necromancers’, from the powers of hell. To wear it proudly on one’s chest was to draw hatred from the servants of evil, to make oneself into a target for the slings and arrows of everyone who still tried to please an absent God. Wearing it would change one to be more like Serin, a killer in service of ‘solidarity’.

Beneath her blankets, Amina moved the tip of her sheathed knife against her thigh, tracing the crescent-and-line on her flesh.

If she cut the symbol into her skin, would she end up like Serin? Could she be strong and fearless?

Elpida did not seem comfortable with this answer. She was frowning at Serin. Amina could tell something was wrong with the angel, but she could not tell what. Elpida seemed too tense, too snappish, too aggressive, which was different to how she was normally. She had almost openly argued with Vicky earlier, which had shocked Amina quite badly.

The angel said: “Thank you, Serin. Now, Vicky, let’s tell Serin about the Necromancer inside Arcadia’s Rampart. I think we owe her the intel, in return.”

Vicky seemed grumpy about this, but she sat back down and related all the things which had happened inside the giant machine. She told Serin about the things the Necromancer had said, about how she and Kagami had pinned it with gravity, and how it had been knocked unconscious. Amina could not make any more sense of this than she could of nanomachines or Arcadia’s Rampart. She had not seen the Necromancer herself — a shape-shifting horror able to wear other faces, imitate voices, and pretend to be whoever it wanted to be — but she could imagine it, and it made her shiver inside.

Why were the Necromancers their enemies? Serin had refused to answer why she hunted them. But when Amina thought about that for a while, she realised that Serin had answered the question in a circuitous fashion.

Necromancers were opposed to ‘solidarity’. Serin wore the symbol. So Serin hunted them.

She changed the world, one bullet at a time.

Perhaps Serin was a kind of angel, too.

Amina allowed her eyes to drift shut. Her demon was quiet in her chest, satisfied by the stiffness of her knife in one fist. The others talked on and on about Necromancers and Arcadia’s Rampart and what direction they might take next, but Amina could not think of anything she needed to say, and her mind felt very tired. Hafina was already sleeping, dozing with her eyes closed while sitting upright. Melyn was well on the way too; she had contributed almost nothing to the ongoing discussion. The ‘artificial humans’ had very little to add. They weren’t zombies.

Amina didn’t feel much like a zombie, either. She did not feel dead.

She considered getting up and returning to the bunk room. Why not snuggle back down in Ilyusha’s arms? She wasn’t made for this. She wasn’t smart and swift and sharp like Elpida, or clever and cunning and kind like Vicky. She would never be like Serin, either. Serin was cleverer than anybody else, and Amina was a fool from a tiny village, with weak arms and a weaker mind, reliant on the protection of others, unable to even grasp the true meaning of this new word, this ‘solidarity’, this—

“I would like to talk with the little one,” Serin purred. “The two of us. Alone.”

Amina’s eyes snapped open. Her demon surged with skin-searing passion. She looked up at Serin, stunned. Amina’s heart beat so fast she thought it might burst from her chest.

“W-why? What for?” she stammered.

Serin regarded her with burning red eyes. “You deserve answers. Did you not want them?”

Elpida and Vicky shared a look. Vicky shrugged.

Elpida nodded, then said: “Amina, are you comfortable with that? Do you want to talk with Serin?”

Amina could not believe what she was hearing. She panted and swallowed, trying to get her breathing under control. She nodded several times. “Yes. Y-yes, yes!”

Elpida smiled, but Amina could tell she was faking. Elpida was uncomfortable and conflicted. About Amina? Amina could not tell. But she needed this.

Elpida said: “Serin, are you going to be staying with us any longer? I would like to talk further. And, once again, you are welcome to stay inside Pheiri for as long as you like. You are welcome to the safety and security.”

“Mm,” Serin grunted. “For the little one. Perhaps.” Serin held out one spindly hand. “Do you have paper? Writing instruments? I can provide my own. But I would rather not.”

Melyn was roused from slumber to provide Serin with one of her notebooks — an empty one, the pages blank except for little blue lines where the words were meant to go — and a single black pen.

Amina stood up from her blankets as the others moved around, as Melyn yawned and grumbled, as Elpida and Vicky looked on. She was shaking so hard that she could barely feel her feet or hands. Was she shaking with excitement? Or with fear? She could not tell the difference. Her heartbeat made her bandaged right hand throb with pain.

Serin drifted into the infirmary without a word, expecting Amina to follow.

Elpida nodded to her. “It’s alright, Amina. We’ll be right here, in the crew compartment. None of us are going anywhere.”

Vicky said, “Yeah. If she does anything weird, you scream for us, okay?”

Amina’s chest swelled with offended pride. “She— she won’t!”

Vicky blinked with surprise. Elpida smiled, but her eyes were full of suspicion and doubt; perhaps she could smell Serin’s half-truths as clearly as her fungal scent.

Amina turned away and stepped into the infirmary.

Serin towered in the middle of the cramped and narrow room, standing over one of the slab-beds. The floor was still covered in dried blood and medical detritus. Melyn’s empty notebook was open on the bed before Serin. The air was filled with the scent of mushrooms and rotten wood.

“Shut the door,” Serin rasped.

Amina did as she was told. She closed the infirmary door until it met the frame with a soft click. Suddenly she was alone with a very different kind of angel.

Her heart was in her throat. Her knife was in her fist. She was shaking from head to toe. Her right hand burned and itched inside the dressings.

Serin said: “I won’t hurt you. I am keeping a promise. Come here and see.”

Amina nodded and padded over to the slab-bed. She could barely stay on her feet, her knees felt so weak. Serin was twice her height, a giant of ragged black robes, reeking of the deep woods, of rotten trees and their fungal ruin. Amina felt drool fill her mouth. She did not understand why.

Serin stared down at her, two points of crimson light burning in the red-lit gloom.

“Do you want to know?” Serin purred.

“Know what?” Amina whispered. Her voice cracked.

“How far you can go.”

“I … I t-think I do?”

Serin extended two hands from beneath her veil of black, both spindly and thin, pale and soft, smelling faintly of fungus. One hand braced the pages of the notebook. The other held the pen.

Serin drew a little circle at the far end of one page, shaded it with delicate strokes of the pen, then labelled it ‘Earth’.

“Us,” she said. “Here. This rock. Understand?”

Amina shook her head.

“The earth is a ball of rock floating in an empty void. Accept it. Move on.”

Nobody had ever spoken to Amina like this before. Her head whirled. She did as she was told. She accepted. She nodded.

Serin drew more circles, shading and labelling them as she went. “Venus. Mercury. Also balls of rock.” Then she added a massive semi-circle on one end of the page. “The sun. A vast ball of fire.”

Amina stared, trying to take all this in.

“That’s sunward. Now, the other way.” Serin went on with more circles, in the opposite direction. “Mars. Asteroid belt — lots of small rocks. Jupiter. That one is gas, mostly. Many moons. Io, Europa, Ganymede. Saturn, more gas. Some liquid, rocky core. Many more moons. All of these are worlds. Uranus. Neptune. Ice giants. Pluto and Charon. The little ones.”

The circles went on and on, spiralling outward into the black. All of these were worlds? Amina accepted, but she could not comprehend.

Serin drew one final circle, far beyond all the others, at the other end of the page. Her pale, spindly hand paused. She added dots around the final circle, then the labels.

“Furthest,” Serin said. “In the Oort Cloud. A hidden place. That is where I came from. In life. Do you understand?”

“No,” Amina admitted. “I’m— I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Serin’s eyes crinkled with real amusement. “Few did, even when I lived. It was a cold and dark place. It still is, likely enough. Jovians and Belt-Born pretended they were outsiders, but they were nothing. We came from the end of creation. The edge of the void. Beyond us, nothing but echoes and dead cylinders full of frozen corpses.”

Amina tried to imagine. She could not. “I’m really sorry, b-but I don’t … I don’t understand.”

Serin’s expression did not soften. “All you need to understand is that I am like you. We all are. No matter where we came from.”

Amina cast about for a handhold. “Did you … did you really used to be a prostitute?”

Serin nodded.

“Was that difficult?”

Serin grinned behind her mask. “No. I enjoyed it.”

“O-oh … ” Amina did not know what to say to that.

Serin turned to the next page of the notebook, leaving the terrifying void-circles behind. She touched pen to paper again, hand moving quickly.

Serin drew a picture.

Amina gasped as the drawing took shape. Serin was an artist!

Serin drew a young woman — the kind of young woman that Amina could never hope to match. She was beautiful, with a bright and shining smile, long legs and wide hips, heavy curves and a tiny waist beneath thin clothing, and luxuriously long hair all the way down to her backside. Serin could not provide any colours for the illustration, but Amina projected her imagination onto the picture. She gave the young woman Serin’s mushroom-pale skin and white-blonde hair.

Serin finished. She withdrew the pen.

Amina couldn’t find any words. She said: “This was … you?”

“Mm. In life. Close enough.”

“You were … ” Amina’s voice cracked. Tears prickled in her eyes. She looked up at Serin — a scarecrow wrapped in black rags, taller than even Elpida. Lank hair clinging to a pale skull, arms like albino twigs, eyes red as fire-lit blood. There was no resemblance with what she had once been, if this was the truth. “Don’t you want to be like that any more?”

Serin said: “Then, yes. Now, no. I am different now. As are we all.”

Amina’s throat was bone dry. “I think you’re beautiful.”

“Then, or now?”

“Both,” Amina whispered. “I-I-I’m sorry, I—”

“You can be either, little one.” Serin closed the notebook, picked it up, and offered it to Amina, along with the pen. “All your choices are your own. Eat or die. Or live and change. Up to you, how far you go. Even to the furthest. Dark and cold as it may be.”