Perfect Ruin

“Did you have anything at all?” he says.



“My pill,” I say, cringing.



“New prescription?”



“No,” I say. “And tea. At lunch.”



I hesitate for only a beat, but Basil knows what I’m thinking. Recognition and anger fill his eyes. “You were with that specialist at lunch,” he says.



“Basil,” I snap.



“Could she have done this to you?”



“Specialist?” Lex says. “You’ve been talking with a specialist?”



I hesitate.



“Tell him,” Basil says.



“Her name is Ms. Harlan,” I say. “She’s been asking me things, mostly about our family; I didn’t tell her anything. I swear.”



I expect my brother to be angry—he hates when anyone who works for the king starts nosing into our affairs—but he doesn’t ask me to elaborate. Something about that name has made a crumble in his calm veneer, and there’s a quiver in his voice when he tells Alice, “There’s an orange liquid and a blue. Do you see them?”



“Yes.”



“And a measuring bottle.”



“Have that.”



“Lex?” I say. “Do you know her? Who is she?”



“No one you should be dealing with. Alice, I need you to measure something out for me.”



My brother may have abandoned his trade, but his trade has clearly not abandoned him. He has all those bottles memorized. Alice is his eyes, quickly reading the names on the labels he touches, measuring the exact amounts he tells her to.



“Is there something I can do?” Basil asks.



“Just keep holding her hand,” Alice says. “You did good bringing her here; she wouldn’t have made it to the hospital.”



The train speeds past and I feel as though I’m going to fall from the table as the vibration rattles it.



Basil will never be allowed to love another girl if he loses me now. It’s forbidden. You get one partner and it’s your job to take care of each other. Loners are loners for life.



I don’t want to leave him. I don’t want him to be broken the way that Judas is broken.



“I don’t want you to be charged with my murder,” I say.



Basil touches my cheek. “You aren’t going to die,” he says.



Lex says, “You’re delirious, Sister.”



“I’m not,” I say, although the ceiling is blurring. “Pen is right. You’re forever picking on me.”



“Talk all the nonsense you want if it helps to keep you conscious,” he says.



I look at Basil’s eyes, and I see what he’ll be like in his dodder years. I see his skin wrinkled, his expression still soft and kind. I want to live to grow old with him, and I feel that future being drained out of me as though someone has cut a hole in my skin.



Across the kitchen, Alice is holding the measuring bottle up to the light to see that the elixirs form the richness Lex is describing.



They’re talking softly. I don’t hear Alice’s question, only Lex telling her, “I can’t neutralize something if I don’t know what it is. I have to force it out.”



He comes back to my side. “Morgan? Staying awake?”



“Yes,” I say.



“This is going to make you sick,” he says. “But you have to drink all of it.”



That’s the only explanation I get before Alice is emptying a vial down my throat. It fizzes and burns. Her hand covers my mouth so I can’t cough it up.



It’s not long before the concoction takes effect. Basil holds back my hair when I vomit into the bowl Alice is holding before me.



Lex is at a distance now, trying to stay in his medic frame of mind, but wincing at the sounds I make.



“How does she look?” he asks.



I slump against Basil, gasping to catch my breath.



“Still flushed. Sweaty,” Alice says. She grabs my chin, looks right through me. “Pupils are still dilated.”



“Sweat is good, at least,” Lex says, taking my pulse again. My heart is pounding, and from the way his bottom lip juts, it’s got him concerned. “Are you certain all you had today was that tea? Nothing else, not even a headache elixir or a study aide?”



“There was a pharmacy bag on the counter when I got home, but I didn’t take anything,” I say, finding it’s easier to get my breath now. The sharp pains in my stomach are less frequent. “Must have been delivered this morning.”



“Opened?” There’s an edge to the word. He’s wary of medicine, but this means something more to him, and it compels me to be honest.



“Yes. Mom always takes them after work,” I say. “She didn’t want you to know.”



“Did you see her?” he presses. “Talk to her?”



“She was sleeping when I came home.”



“I’ll get her,” Alice says. And before another word can be said, she’s out the door. I’d like to know what’s going on, but speaking would bring the nausea back.



Lex feels the vials in the container and then holds one of them up to us.



“Is this green?” he asks.



“Yes,” Basil says.



He uncorks it. “I need you to mix this in a glass with two parts water.”



Basil is only away from my side for seconds, and then he’s feeding me a glass of pale green liquid. In contrast to the other concoction, this is minty and smooth and I don’t have to choke it down.



“It almost tastes good,” I murmur.



“Your pulse is rapid. This will slow it back down,” Lex says. “Let’s see if we can stop this from spreading.”



“Stop what?” I say. “What is it?” The words are thick; my tongue and cheeks feel numb.



He doesn’t answer.



My body goes heavy. I lie back against the table and fight to keep my eyes open.



The walls are murmuring. My mind is hovering outside my skull.



Lex is pacing, pacing. He rubs his hand along his cheek, hard. I hate to see him so worried about me.



Basil is stroking my forehead and whispering some nice words that don’t quite reach me.



Alice comes back. Her steps are slow. I don’t understand why my mother isn’t with her, but I can’t muster the strength to ask.



She steers Lex into a corner and I try to focus on them, but my vision is tunneling. I have no choice but to give in to this feeling of weightlessness.



I close my eyes and at last Basil’s words find me.



He was saying, “I love you.”



19



I cannot say for certain whether we would be stronger without the notion of gods, or weaker.



—“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten



THE DARKNESS IS EMPTY OF DREAMS. There are stabs of red pain, hands pushing back my hair. I’m going to spend all of sixty years in this darkness, clawing at moments of awareness. I’ll never be free until I’ve become ashes.



Something burns in my throat and I struggle. “We’re here with you, love, we’re here,” Alice says, somewhere high above the surface of the black. But then I’m alone again.



Her voice was so sad.



Another voice finds me. If anyone could reach me here, it’d be my brother. He knows his way through every kind of darkness.



“Let her pull through,” he whispers. I think he’s talking to the god in the sky. He doesn’t even believe there is a god anymore. “I haven’t requested anything for three years. You owe me.”



The last time I heard my brother talk to the god in the sky, it was when I was seven or eight. He was supposed to be watching me, and I was sour that he was more interested in his writing, so I hid in a tree that surrounded the pond so that he’d be forced to look for me.



I waited for him to notice I was gone. When he did, he called my name. His voice changed each time he said it. It became more afraid. He didn’t consider that I might be hiding in the trees. He ran to the lake first, where I’d been setting leaves on the surface and watching them float when he last saw me.



Uniform and all, he dove into the green water. Pages of his manuscript were scattering in the wind and grass. But he didn’t call to them—he called to me.



I couldn’t answer. His fear had me paralyzed.



I’d only wanted to make him care. Just for a little bit. That was all. But I wasn’t prepared for the power of what I’d done.



Please, he’d said.



“Please,” he says now.



I’m a little girl in the trees. I can’t find the footholds to return down to him. I can’t go back to that day and undo it.



I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. I’m sorry.



20



As a child, I trusted the god in the sky with decisions like life and death. It wasn’t until I began studying medicine that I learned these are decisions made by humans. Flawed humans—as though there were any other kind.



—“Intangible Gods,” Daphne Leander, Year Ten



A MOMENT BEFORE I OPEN MY EYES, I hear Ms. Harlan’s words:



Your family must love you very much.



It’s a warm thought. I have a family. This floating city is filled with people, but I belong to only a small number of them.



Then the thought breaks apart, is replaced by shadows and lantern light.



“Morgan?” Alice’s voice is eager.



There’s a smell like metal, sickness, and candle wax.



I don’t know where I am. The lantern on the ceiling is swinging, swinging, making the room jolt. Alice reaches up and steadies it.



“Is she awake?” Lex asks. His voice is hoarse. He’s slouched in a corner, but the room is so tiny that it’s nearly impossible not to be in a corner.



“I think so. Her eyes are open again.” Alice is kneeling in her dress, leaning over me. Her copper earrings catch the light; her hair is coming unwoven.



And I remember that I ruined the dinner she and my brother were going to have before Basil burst through the door carrying me, and everything was swept from the table.



I’m not on the table anymore. I’m lying on some kind of mattress on the ground. It feels as though it’s stuffed with sheep shavings. This room is unfamiliar, and as my mind slowly clears, I become certain that the walls and low ceiling are made of metal.



“Morgan?” Alice says again, pushing the hair from my eyes. My skin feels so tender that the touch gives me chills. “Are you back with us?”



I open my mouth and remember the sick taste on my tongue. Ghosts of my earlier agony are webbed between my ribs, and they stir the moment I move to sit up. “What happened?” I ask.