MORTAL COILS

MORTAL COILS

OTHER BOOKS BY ERIC NYLUND

Pawn’s Dream

A Game of Universe

Dry Water

Signal to Noise

A Signal Shattered

Halo® Novels

Halo®: Fall of Reach

Halo®: First Strike

Halo®: Ghosts of Onyx

MORTAL COILS

ERIC NYLUND

   
This is a work of fiction. All of the
characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this

   
novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

   
MORTAL COILS

   
Copyright © 2009 by Eric Nylund

   
All rights reserved.

   
Reader’s Guide © 2009 by Eric Nylund

   
A Tor Book

   
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

   
175 Fifth Avenue

   
New York, NY 10010

   
www.tor-forge.com

   
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

   
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

   
Nylund, Eric S.

   
Mortal coils / Eric Nylund.

              
p. cm.

       
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

       
ISBN-13: 978-1-4299-8237-5

       
ISBN-10: 1-4299-8237-3

       
1. Twins—Fiction. 2. Teenagers—Fiction. 3. California, Northern—Fiction.

    
I. Title.

   
813’.54—dc22                                                                                               
2008038363

   
PS3564.Y55M67 2009

   
0   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

For everyone with family . . .

by blood, marriage, or circumstance

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Syne,
writers can be hermits, bears in caves that growl at all outsiders. Who but
another writer to draw me out and keep me sane and civilized with your love?
One could not ask for a better soul mate.

Kai,
my marvelous son, you were three and four years old when I wrote this, and you
helped breathe life into fictional son and father. Daddy promises he’s not the
Prince of Darkness.

My
sister, my mother and father . . . and so many more whom I call “family,” you
have all been inspirational and close to my heart at all times.

Thanks
to my early readers, Elisabeth Devos and Jenny Gaynor, who helped me refocus my
attention on the twins.

For
my final readers, John Sutherland and Alexis Ortega, a debt of gratitude for
your kind words and enthusiasm.

To
Tom Doherty and Richard Curtis, my appreciation for your patience, guidance,
and support.

Special
thanks to Eric Raab. Your editorial acumen and friendship have made all the
difference.

And
to all my readers, a huge “thank you,” especially those that have dropped me a
note or e-mail over the years.

EDITOR’S
NOTE

Due
to the controversial nature of all Post Family stories, and recent revelations
that some popular “nonfiction” titles are slightly less than accurate, the
editorial board at TOR Books has at this time decided to classify Mortal Coils
as “fiction.” We have no interest in entering the debate over the authenticity
of Post Family stories in the popular press.

Footnotes
to pertinent resources have, however, been added throughout, so enthusiasts and
scholars of modern mythology may follow up with their own research and draw
their own conclusions to what is the most exciting contemporary legend of our
time.

ERIC
RAAB

Editor,
TOR Books

New
York

When
we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must
give us pause. There’s the respect

That
makes calamity of so long life,

For
who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The
oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The
pangs of despis’d love. . . .

WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE

Hamlet
ACT 3, SCENE 1

SECTION
I

BIRTHDAY

1

TWO
LITTLE NOBODIES

Eliot
Post and his sister, Fiona, would be fifteen tomorrow and nothing interesting
had ever happened to them. They lived with their grandmother and
great-grandmother, who, with their iron-fist-in-velvet-glove ways, held them
captive from anything exciting.

Eliot
slid a plastic milk crate to his dresser and stepped up to see into the mirror.
He frowned at his mop of unruly black hair; the bowl cut had grown shaggy. At
least it covered his ears, which stuck out. He looked like a dork.

He
smoothed his fingers through the mess and it fell into place . . . then the
cowlicks sprang up.

If
only he had some hair gel. There was, however, a rule banning brand-name
shampoo, soap, and other “luxury” items. His great-grandmother concocted
homemade versions instead. They cleaned (occasionally stripping off the first
layer of skin) but left something to be desired in the fashion department.

Eliot
glanced at the pages taped to the back of his bedroom door: Grandmother’s 106
rules that governed every breath he took. The lack of hair gel was covered by
RULE 89.

   
RULE 89: No extravagant household products—including, but not limited to,
store-bought soaps, shampoos, paper towels, and other unnecessary disposable
goods.

Fortunately
this did not include toilet paper.

The
clock on his dresser made a rusty “ping.” It was ten o’clock. The lunch shift
started at Ringo’s All American Pizza Palace in forty minutes. He suppressed a
shudder, already tasting the sweet dough and pepperoni grease that would
permeate his skin.

Eliot
grabbed his homework off his desk. He flexed his hand, working free the
stiffness from writing all night. It’d been worth it. He was proud of his
report on the War of 1812. Grandmother would have to give him an A.

His
thoughts of the Chesapeake campaign and “The Star-Spangled Banner” vanished as
a car drove past outside. Three stories on the street below, its radio thumped
and bumped into Eliot’s room.

The
music washed through him, swept aside all thoughts of homework, pizza, rules,
and for one moment he was somewhere else: a hero on the high seas, cannons
blasting, and wind screaming through the sails.

The
car passed and the music faded.

Eliot
would have done anything for a radio of his own. “Music is a distraction,”
Grandmother had told him over and over. There was, naturally, a rule for it,
too.

   
RULE 34: No music, including the playing of any instruments (actual or
improvised), singing, humming, electronically or by any means producing or
reproducing a rhythmic melodic form.

It
sucked. All of Grandmother’s rules did. He never got to do anything he wanted .
. . except, of course, read.

Three
entire walls of his room were not walls at all, but floor-to-ceiling
bookshelves installed sometime in the Precambrian era by Great-Grandmother.

Two
thousand fifty-nine volumes lined his tiny bedroom: red spines, gray cloth
covers, faded paper jackets, and gleaming gold letters, all exuding a scent of
moldering paper and well-worn leather, the entirety a solid mass of age and
authority.1

Eliot
ran a hand over their vertebrae—Jane Austen . . . Plato . . . Walt Whitman. He
loved his books. How many times had he escaped to different

1.
Excavation of what experts believe was the Oakwood Apartments building (the
alleged Post Family residence) revealed the remains of more than one hundred
thousand books on all floors: leather bindings, partial pages, literally tons
of parchment ash, and a handful of intact volumes. These fueled the intense
blaze that eventually caused the entire town of Del Sombra to burn to the
ground. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 11: The Post Family
Mythology, 8th ed. (Zypheron Press Ltd.).

countries,
centuries long past, with colorful characters as his companions?

He
just wished his life could be as interesting.

Eliot
went to open his bedroom door, but halted before the pages of Grandmother’s
rules. He glared at them, knowing the biggest rule of all was unwritten. RULE
0: No escaping the rules.

He
sighed, twisted the doorknob, and pushed open his door.

Light
spilled into the darkened corridor. At the same instant a second rectangle of
light appeared as his sister’s door opened. Fiona wore a green gingham dress, a
tattered suede belt, and sandals that laced up her calves.

People
said they looked alike, but she was five foot five inches, while Eliot was
still only five foot three inches. For being his twin sister, she didn’t really
look anything like him. Her posture was wet-noodle limp, hair in her eyes
except when it wasn’t pulled into a tail of frizz, and she chewed on her nails.

She
stepped into the hallway at the exact same second as Eliot. She was always
pretending this synchronicity thing to annoy him. The myth was that twins
always thought the same thing, mirrored each other’s motions— were practically
the same person.

She
must have been waiting at her door, listening for his to open. Well, he wasn’t
buying it.

“You
look sick,” Fiona said, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. “Naegleria
fowleri?”

“Haven’t
been swimming,” he replied. “So maybe you’re the one with brain-eating
amoebas.”

He’d
read Rare Incurable Parasites, volume 3, as well.

This
was their favorite game: vocabulary insult.

“Lochsmere,”
he said, and eyed her contemptuously.

Her
brow scrunched in concentration.

That
was a tough one—a character from the thirteenth-century Twixtbury Chronicles by
Vanden Du Bur. Lochsmere was a plague-ridden dwarf, evil and puppy-drowning
vile.

The
Twixtbury text lay on the top shelf of the hallway bookcase, covered in a layer
of dust. No way she had read it.

Fiona
caught his look, followed it, and smiled.

“You
have me confused for noble G’meetello,” she said, “master of Lochsmere . . .
who is obviously you.”

So
she had read it. Okay. The score was still nothing to nothing.

Fiona
half-closed her eyes and murmured, “Sometimes, little brother, I think your wit
so tantalizing it would be better for everyone if you were at Tristan da
Cunha.”

Tristan
da Cunha? He didn’t know that one.