Afterlife Read online

  Reluctantly, I emerged from the soothing memories of Nik and returned to the here and now. “We have find Isfet,” I said, answering Mari’s question without looking away from the flames. The wood crackled and popped as the flames consumed it.

  “That’s a big duh,” Mari said. “But what’s the plan? Or do you already know where to find her, Dom?”

  Dom glanced at Mari over his shoulder. “No, I’m afraid I do not.”

  “I do . . . sort of.” I chewed on the inside corner of my mouth, eyes narrowing as I recalled the place where I’d come upon Isfet in the echo-dream. “She’s in a forest of birch trees,” I said. “They’re coated in something that looks like ice but isn’t, and something that looks like snow—but isn’t—is falling. It’s covered the ground in a thick blanket of . . . well, whatever it is. Deep within the forest, there’s a clearing, and in that clearing, there’s a huge oak tree that looks like it’s made entirely of metal—the trunk is tarnished silver, and the leaves are bronze and gold—and it reaches high overhead, its branches stretching out over the forest as far as the eye can see.” I paused, almost able to see the scene in the flames. “That’s where we’ll find Isfet—by the tree.”

  “Right, so . . . we know where she is, but we don’t know where she is?” Mari said.

  “Yeah,” I admitted, “pretty much.”

  “Does that place sound familiar, Dom?” Mari asked.

  As she spoke, I watched my half-brother out of the corner of my eye, quietly hopeful.

  He nodded slowly. “We call it ‘the grove,’ though I have never seen the place myself.”

  I turned to face him, mounting excitement making my heart beat faster. “Do you know where it is?”

  Dom raised his gaze, meeting mine.

  I held my breath.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, little sister. I cannot say that I do.”

  My excitement fizzled out and I exhaled my disappointment, but like a dog fighting over a bone, I wasn’t ready to give up yet. “Well, someone around here must know where the grove is. If you know about it, then someone’s been there,” I said, thinking aloud. “They can take us there.” There was, of course, the chance that this someone would be unwilling—not a big deal. There wasn’t a better trio than Dom, Mari, and me where coercion was concerned. “They have to take us there,” I added.

  “Or at least they can draw us a map,” Mari said, raising one shoulder in a half shrug.

  Dom set down his fire poker and rested his forearms on his thighs. “It is not that simple,” he said. “You see, Aaru is not like the physical realm. It’s not laid out in a fixed pattern.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Dom inhaled deeply, exhaling slowly. “Think of Aaru like a series of concentric rings. The outermost ring is what we call the ‘mist plane.’ Everyone who comes to Aaru enters there, and they must wander through the mist until they find an anchor point—

  “An anchor point?” I asked.

  Dom nodded once. “One of the fixed points connecting the mist plane to the second ring in.”

  My eyes widened as a lightbulb lit up in my mind. “The archway—that was an anchor point, wasn’t it?”

  Again, Dom nodded. “There are hundreds, maybe thousands of anchor points in Aaru, and they never move, but the anchor point they match up with is constantly changing,” he explained. “Imagine that the rings are all shifting endlessly, spinning and rotating in every direction imaginable.”

  Mari perked up in her armchair. “Like an armillary sphere!”

  I glanced at her, picturing one of the intricate, ancient bronze astronomical devices I’d learned about in physics class, back in high school. Surprisingly, her analogy helped me picture the layout of Aaru in the way that Dom was describing. “Huh,” I grunted, then turned my attention back to Dom.

  “Yes,” he said, “very much like an armillary sphere . . . only on a much grander scale, and far more complex. You see, only when two anchor points match up is an archway activated, allowing one to travel through to another portion of Aaru. But”—he raised one finger—“as the rings are in constant motion, the window during which an archway is active varies in duration from hours to minutes to just a few seconds, in some cases.”

  I narrowed my eyes, thoughts working in overdrive as I recalled the way Syris had kept his hand in the archway all the way up until we passed through. “Unless someone’s holding the anchor points in place,” I said slowly. “Like what Syris did when he was waiting for us back in the mist plane.”

  Mari looked at me, blinking as her mind put the pieces together. Her eyes widened suddenly, and her mouth fell open, like she couldn’t believe that I’d gotten there before her.

  The corner of my mouth lifted into a faint but very pleased smirk.

  “Precisely,” Dom said, so focused on his explanation that he missed our exchange entirely.

  “I can see why a map would be out of the question,” I commented.

  “Yes,” Dom said, “quite so. And complicating matters further, imagine that each ring of Aaru is divided into sections, also connected by anchor points, and those are constantly shifting around too.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Mari was tapping her pointer finger against her lips, stare distant. “So, the only way to keep track of how exactly to get from one section of Aaru to another is to keep track of the precise series of sections and anchor points that must be followed in order to get from point A to point B.”

  Dom nodded.

  “Sounds like there’s a lot of waiting involved,” Mari said.

  I frowned, tension tightening my shoulders. Waiting around was the last thing I needed to be doing right now. It felt like all I’d done by escaping from the Netjer universe and coming here was trade one impossible task for another.

  “Some waiting, yes,” Dom said, “but as the rings are constantly shifting, and there are multiple routes one can take to travel from one section of Aaru to another, it is less an issue of waiting and more an issue of timing and attention. Patience and precision are the keys to successfully navigating this place.”

  I blew out a breath. “Well that’s good news, because time is one thing we don’t have.” I pushed away from the mantle and started pacing—five steps away from the hearth, turn, five steps back. Repeat. “Now, all we need is someone who knows the way to the grove.” I glanced at Dom. “Please tell me you know where to find someone who knows how to get there.”

  For seconds—eons, it felt like—Dom didn’t respond. He didn’t even move.

  I stopped mid-stride, slowly turning to face him. “Dom . . .”

  Dom bowed his head in a single nod. “I do know of a man who has been to the grove.”

  “And you know where to find him, I assume?” I said, eyebrows climbing higher. I didn’t get why he was being so cagey about this. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he had bad news and he was avoiding sharing it.

  “I know where he is, yes,” Dom said.

  “Great.” I rubbed my hands together, eager to hit the road. “So, who is this guy?”

  “The First.”

  I tilted my head to the side, certain there was more coming. When Dom remained silent, I asked, “The first what?”

  “The first Nejeret who ever died and entered Aaru,” he said. “He is the only one to have ever laid eyes on Isfet.”

  “Alright . . .” I eyed Dom. “So what’s the catch?” Because clearly there was one. “Is he hard to track down, or something?”

  Dom was quiet for a long, drawn-out moment. “Finding the First is not the hard part,” Dom finally said. “He’s been in the same location for thousands of years.”

  I swallowed, throat suddenly dry. I had the distinct impression that the other shoe was about to drop.

  “And he has been asleep for just as long.” Dom locked eyes with me. “We will find him easily enough, but it is waking him that will be the true challenge.”

  7

  “Many have tried to wake the First,” Do
m told us. “Some try still.”

  “And fail,” Mari guessed.

  Dom tilted his head in assent.

  “Awesome,” I said, easing down into the armchair opposite Mari’s. I was suddenly exhausted. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy? “You know . . . I saw him once—the First,” I told them, my stare returning to the flames. “The first time I went into Duat. His death was one of the moments in time that Anapa showed me when he was explaining how a Nejeret ba affects the song of ma’at.”

  My eyebrows drew together as I remembered looking through the transparent film separating Duat from the physical realm, watching the ancient Nejeret succumb to his grave injuries in a firelit cave, tended only by his human brother.

  “He was so afraid,” I said, voice remote. “He called out to us as he floated through Duat.” I hadn’t understood his language, but I hadn’t needed to; he’d been begging for help. He’d been terrified. “And then,” I said, “Aaru swallowed him up.”

  “That’s great,” Mari said, drawing my attention to her, not a hint of sarcasm or sympathy anywhere to be seen.

  I stared at her in bewilderment, a disturbed laugh dying in my throat. From my end, it had been troubling and mildly traumatic. Definitely not great.

  She waved my affronted reaction away. “Not that you watched him die and all that,” she clarified, “but that you know something about him. You got to see a moment from his life—and a big one, at that.” She scooted to the edge of her chair, lowering her bare feet to the floor. “Maybe we can use that to wake him up.”

  “Maybe . . .” I rested my hands on the arms of the chair, tapping the fingers of my right hand against the upholstery in a slow rhythm. I shifted my attention to Dom. “How did he end up in his eternal slumber, anyway?”

  Dom picked up a pair of sturdy iron tongs and crouched down, reaching the end of the tongs into the hearth. “According to legend, when the First entered Aaru, there was only the grove and the mist surrounding it,” he said, clasping the handle of the teakettle with the tongs and hanging it on a hook mortared into the stone surrounding the hearth. “The First found Isfet there, fast asleep, nestled among the roots of the great tree. For years—maybe a hundred, maybe more—it was just the two of them.”

  “Did she ever wake up?” Mari asked.

  Dom looked at her without moving his head, the orange flames reflected in his dark eyes. “Nobody knows.”

  “She told me I woke her the first time I entered Duat,” I said, fingers stilling. “If that’s the case, then maybe she was asleep the whole time . . . which meant the First was basically all alone for who knows how long.”

  “That must’ve driven him mad,” Mari added.

  “Indeed,” Dom agreed. “Some believe Isfet woke, and her company kept him sane. Others believe his love for her was a product of his insanity.”

  “His love for her?” I asked, brow furrowing. My eyes opened wider, my lips parting. “You mean—he fell in love with Isfet?”

  “So the story goes,” Dom said. “I, personally, do not believe he lost his mind.” Dom folded his arms across his chest and leaned his shoulder against the side of the hearth. “At least, not entirely. Some semblance of sanity must have remained for him to accomplish what he did.”

  “Meaning what, exactly?” I asked, resuming my tapping.

  “The First was sane enough to deduct that if he came to Aaru when he died, then other Nejerets would eventually join him,” Dom explained. “It is said that he feared he would have to share Isfet with them, so he hid her grove, building an arduous maze around it with only his thoughts, making it so complex that he and he alone would be able to find her again.”

  I shook my head. That part of the story didn’t make any sense. I knew Isfet, and she wasn’t one to just let some man hide her away. If she’d been awake, she wouldn’t have put up with such misogynistic bullshit. Which meant, either she never woke, or the First built a maze around the grove to protect the rest of Aaru from something in the grove—maybe from Isfet herself, or maybe even from the Beast?

  “The maze,” Mari said, “that’s where we are right now, aren’t we?”

  Dom nodded, and I understood why he thought the First couldn’t have been completely mad. “In time,” he said, continuing the story, “others joined the First in Aaru, but he shirked their company, finding he’d grown used to his solitude. He became obsessed, building the maze ever larger and more complex . . . until he reached the mist plane. You see, he’d expanded the shell surrounding Aaru as far as it could go. He could build no more. His purpose—the thing that had kept him going for thousands and thousands of years—was gone.”

  I frowned. The legend felt disjointed and wrong, somehow, like thousands of years of being passed down had warped it into something nonsensical. Parts didn’t connect logically, which made me think it had been twisted too far from the events it was based upon to be no more reliable than a fable. I mean, we didn’t even know the First’s name . . . there was no way to guess his reason for building the maze.

  “So,” Dom said, “one day, the First wandered into a cave and retreated within himself, falling into a deep, endless slumber, and there he remains to this day.” After Dom finished the story, silence hung in the air, only punctuated by the pop and crackle of the fire.

  I cleared my throat, shifting forward in the armchair. “So, how far away is this cave?” I asked.

  “Not far,” Dom said. “Just a couple anchor points away.”

  I nodded to myself, then yawned, jaw cracking. I was starting to get what Dom meant about needing rest before setting out. My eyelids felt heavy, my whole body—or rather, my soul—lethargic, an added irritant on top of the full-body aches caused by the bonding withdrawals.

  “The First’s cave is in a highly sought-after section of Aaru,” Dom explained. “The Nejeret who currently rules there built a fortress on top of the cave, and the only entrance is through the fortress’s dungeon.”

  “How cliché,” Mari commented, drawing her feet up and snuggling back into her armchair.

  I snorted a laugh in agreement. “And I’m guessing we can’t just walk into this fortress and ask the guy in charge if we can go down to the cave to pay the First a visit, huh?” I said, reading Dom’s expression. It was obvious that he was none too fond of this other Nejeret.

  Dom confirmed my suspicions with a nod. “The ruler of that section is a tyrant, and he keeps the fortress heavily guarded,” he said. “He chose that spot specifically because he wanted to be the only one with access to the cave, and rumor has spread that he has been spending most of his time down there, trying to wake the First. I’ve heard whispers that say he believes that if he can wake the First and force him to show him the way to the grove, Isfet will be able to help him escape from Aaru and return to the physical realm.”

  I scoffed. “Isfet can’t do that,” I said, thinking this guy was an idiot. “She can’t even get herself out of here.”

  “As you say,” Dom said with a side nod. “But you can.”

  His statement, a simple recognition of the truth, set me immediately on edge.

  “We must use extreme caution when infiltrating the fortress,” Dom continued. “If this Nejeret catches you, he will use any means necessary to discover why you are there—and learn what you are capable of—and once he knows that, little sister, he will never let you go.”

  A chill washed over me, giving rise to goose bumps and seeping into my skin, settling deep within my soul. We had to get into the First’s cave, and to do that, we had to go through the fortress. There were no other options.

  Finding my way to Isfet was becoming more and more complicated by the second. I was half tempted to tell Dom to shut up before he told me something that convinced me the mission was doomed and I lost heart completely.

  I gripped the arms of my chair, fingers digging into the padding until the pressure made my nails ache. I met Dom’s stare and nodded once, telling him I understood. I couldn’t get caught by the tyr
annical Nejeret. If I did, it would be game over.

  Again, my jaw cracked open with an insuppressible yawn. “We should go now,” I said, speaking through the tail end of the yawn.

  Dom shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. We need clear minds, or we’ll end up making stupid mistakes—and that we cannot afford. Rest, now,” he said, turning away from the hearth and walking over to a wooden chest set against the wall. He lifted the lid, pulling out a perfectly folded quilt and bringing it over to me.

  I was too tired to argue, and spread the quilt over my legs, letting my head rest against the cushy chairback.

  Dom returned to the hearth and opened the face of the clock on the mantle. Using his index finger, he shifted the hour hand to the six. A moment later, the minute hand ticked to the twelve, and the clock chimed six times. When it finished, Dom faced the room once more.

  “We’ll leave when the clock strikes twelve,” he said. “You have six hours. I suggest you use it wisely.”

  8

  Exhaustion held me hostage in sleep for some time, but when I woke, stiff from sitting curled up in the armchair, we were still nearly an hour out from our go time. The fire in the hearth had died down to little more than ash and embers, but it still crackled and popped gently, filling the hushed cottage with a soothing, residual warmth.

  I stared at the clock on the mantle between bouts of closing my eyes and attempting to force sleep. I’d slept through the last five check-ins with Nik—Dom had promised to let him know I was resting—and the next was still a solid fifty minutes away. I had nothing to do but sit there, haunted by the thoughts whispering at the edges of my mind like tempting demons.

  There were few things I hated more than the restlessness that came from trying and failing to sleep. It only made my withdrawal pains more noticeable, my brain feeling like it was throbbing in time with my pulse and my whole body aching like I had a fever. I finally gave up on sleep after another fifteen minutes had passed.