Shadowlark (12 page)

It had been so long since I’d seen my own reflection that at first, the girl in the journal seemed utterly unrecognizable. Familiar, like I’d known her once, long ago—but there was no moment of instant recognition. Until I started flipping pages backward.

They’d given me and Oren each a room to stay in. Though they were barely bigger than closets, they had enough room for a bed. Oren was eating and showering—who knew when he was last clean? But I’d refused to do anything until they brought me the journal.

It was really more of a sketchbook. After the first few pages, which were covered in handwriting, the rest of the pages were filled with drawings and only the occasional caption or paragraph of text. Schematics for machines, mostly, with numeric notations and little else to contextualize them. Some I recognized from the machines I’d seen walking around the city outside, and others were wholly unrecognizable. I couldn’t even tell whether some drawings were of machines or simply geometric patterns, nonsensical.

But here and there, tucked into margins and occasionally dominating half a page, were sketches of a girl.

Me.

At first, early on, the drawings were clumsy, inexpert.

Drawn by someone with the ability to create technical drawings but for whom faces weren’t easy. But the artist had gotten better. Gradually, as the pages went on, the lines smoothed out. The eyes were more confidently placed, the hair following much more graceful lines. The drawings changed from something almost childlike to something admirable.

Even so, it was the early faces that seemed most like me. It was as if the artist had known me long ago and was drawing me from memory—but even as their talent at drawing increased, the specific details of my face had started to slip away. The last entry in the journal was just my face, a pencil sketch. Artistic, sweet. The mouth didn’t seem quite right— the cheeks were too round, the chin a bit too long. But the eyes were mine, and they stared back at me from the page, as though the child I’d once been had caught up to me. Below it was my name,
Lark Ainsley.

When I flipped all the way back to the first page, my fingers froze.

Written there, in the neat, perfect lines of machineformed lettering, were the words:

Property of the Institute of Magic and Natural Philosophy

The journal was from my home city. And then, in that instant, I knew whose it was.

I bolted off of my bed and shoved the door open so hard that it slammed into the wall. Retracing my steps wasn’t easy—so many of the corridors looked alike. But after a few wrong turns, my heart slamming in my ribcage, I found the War Room, as Olivia had affectionately called it.

“Whose is this?” I gasped, brandishing the tattered journal.

My eyes scanning startled faces. Olivia wasn’t there anymore, but the man who’d recognized me—Parker—was. He looked from my face to the journal and then back again.

“Lark—” he began slowly.

I knew that tone. It didn’t mean anything good. “Tell me!” I could hear my voice cracking and didn’t care. I was so close. “Where is the man who owns this journal? Tell me, or I swear I’ll walk right out there and find Prometheus and tell him where—”

“If I could tell you, I would!” Parker shouted over me. His voice rasped uncomfortably; he was clearly not a man used to raising his voice. When I had to stop for lack of breath, he spoke more quietly. “We don’t know whose it is. It was here before we were.”

My stomach roiled. The jolt of recognition, of adrenaline as I ran through the corridors, receded, leaving me nauseous. “What do you mean, before you were here?”

“We’ve only been living in the walls for three, four years. It was after Prometheus took over and named our city Lethe. That’s when it became unsafe for Renewables to live openly. The earliest rebels against Prometheus are all gone now; it’s not exactly a healthy life choice to go off-grid. But the story goes that when the very first Renewables went on the run from Prometheus, they only found this place because someone else did first. Someone else made the door, the ladders.”

Someone skilled at moving underground, unseen. Someone at home in the tunnels under the world. My eyes stung, and I willed them to stay dry. I still didn’t know what these people wanted from me—I refused to let them see me weak.

Parker was still watching me, the others in the room silent. “We keep the journal close at hand. To study it. He or she had made it their job to study the machines here, figure out how Prometheus’s walkers and blades and ornithopters operated. And there are machines here Prometheus has never even dreamed of that we’re trying to build, to get the upper hand. It’s our only real weapon against him.”

I shook my head, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “This person—where is he now?”

Parker shook his head. His expression was wary—he hadn’t forgotten how ready I was to use magic against them earlier. But there was a sympathy there too, in his brown eyes, that made me look away. “He was long gone before we found this place. We always assumed . . . ” He hesitated, and I could feel his eyes on my face. “We always assumed that he made a move on Prometheus and failed.”

Failed. I stared at the wall, numb. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was all a coincidence.

Parker took a step back. “But we do have the other things he left behind.”

I couldn’t speak—my mouth was too dry, my throat too tight. But Parker must’ve seen my face, because he turned and went to one of the many chests lining the room. He lifted out a few papers, glancing at them and then setting them aside. Eventually he found what he was looking for.

It was a small box, no bigger than a backpack. He hadn’t left much behind. I sat down on the floor, ignoring the way the stares of everyone in the room burned holes in my back. There were a few commonplace objects in there. A lighter, a canteen, a roll of bandages and a tube of ointment. A flashlight. A pocket encyclopedia, a couple of other small books. A few parts from unidentifiable machines.

And a paper bird.

My fingers stopped a hair’s breadth from the crumpled, grubby paper object in the bottom of the box. Eyesight blurring, blood roaring in my ears, I almost missed Parker’s question. But only almost.

“Do you know who wrote the journal?”

“My brother.” I swallowed, but it didn’t help. My voice still sounded strange, like it didn’t belong to me and never had. “The journal belonged to my brother, Basil Ainsley.”

Oren came to my room that night after I’d managed to swallow a few bites of dinner.

I had eaten apart from the others on Parker’s advice, both to let myself have some time, and to let the others come to terms with my existence. Apparently, the “girl in the journal” was almost like a religious figure among the resistance movement. I was the only name associated with the person who’d unwittingly founded their anti-Prometheus movement. There were those who thought that Lark Ainsley was the one who’d written the journal. A few even thought I’d come back to finish what I started and take down Prometheus once and for all.

I’d taken the box of Basil’s belongings with me when I left the War Room and spent the time sitting on the cot in my tiny room, searching each item for answers. I couldn’t quite bring myself to read my brother’s journal, not yet—it was too much like reading his last words, bidding him farewell.

After I’d answered his knock, Oren stood in the open doorway, characteristically quiet. His eyes rested on the objects strewn across my blanket, didn’t lift to look at me. He was looking better—less like he felt the need to pummel the nearest bystander, at least. I’d gotten used to the sky after a few days, so maybe he was slowly getting used to being underground.

“They don’t know what I am,” he said eventually, surprising me. I’d expected him to say something about my brother— no doubt he would’ve heard any number of things at dinner.

Part of me resented the fact that Oren, the monster, could move freely amongst these people, with no one staring at him or whispering his name. But I saw how much more settled he looked, how his shoulders had dropped and his barely scabbed-over hands had relaxed, and I couldn’t keep the resentment burning.

“I think there’s enough magic in the air here that you’d be fine, even if I wasn’t around.” I dropped my eyes back to the blanket. The paper bird my brother had carried with him lay next to mine. But for the fact that his was dirty, more crumpled, and torn, it could’ve been the twin of the one that had rested in my pocket since the day I fled my home.

Oren made a noncommittal sound, still lingering in the doorway. It wasn’t a big room, but I wished he’d decide whether he wanted to come in or leave. Abruptly, I remembered the chill in his voice when he said that saving my life in the woods by giving me food was a mistake.

“You could stay here, you know.” I kept my eyes on the birds, the identical folds and creases. “You wouldn’t have to risk hurting anyone else.”

The question caught me off guard, despite the fact that it’d been lurking at the back of my thoughts for hours. How could I stay in a city ruled by the man who killed my brother? And yet—where else could I go?

I heard him shift, the metal doorframe creaking a little as he leaned on it. “Parker says that Prometheus is one of the best manipulators of magic anyone’s ever seen. He’s responsible for almost all the machines here, and for the magic in the air. The lights, the air filters, everything.”

“But he does it using Renewables as slaves. And he’s a murderer.”

“Maybe.”

I looked up to find Oren watching me, his usually clear, fierce eyes troubled.

“But they say he’s been studying the—the shadows, as you call them.” His lips twitched around the word “me,” but he didn’t say it aloud. Our hallway was hardly private. “I’d be interested in finding out more about his research.”

I knew what Oren was after. If he was cured, he could live anywhere and never have to worry about the monster inside him ever again.

Despite the way he leaned against the doorframe, he seemed taller, more assured. He wasn’t sweating anymore, and he’d gotten a change of clothes from someone. Gone were the patched pants, the transparently thin shirt. He’d washed the Eagle’s blood from his face and hands. But for a few bruises, he could’ve fit in anywhere.

For a strange, confusing moment, I missed his ferocity. In my mind that was who Oren was—all action and quick thinking, instincts honed for survival. Strong, uncompromising. Even when he was afraid in the outside city, it was the fear of a caged animal waiting to be set free.

But now he had purpose.

“Then you should definitely stay,” I said, forcing myself to look down at my blanket.

The doorframe creaked again as Oren stopped leaning against it. He didn’t speak right away. I tried to imagine him hesitant, uncertain, but I could only see his new sense of purpose, changing him.

Eventually, he just said, “Good night, Lark.”

When I lifted my head again, he was gone.

I stared at the empty doorway for a few moments, then got up to shut the door with a screech of rusty hinges.

Why wasn’t I more excited for Oren? If Prometheus had information that could help him, it would change his life. The life I’d ruined by revealing his secret, the one he didn’t even know he had. If I’d never come along, Oren would never have known what he really was.

But if he were cured—it would change everything. He wouldn’t have to hate me for what I’d done to him. I wouldn’t have to feel that same disgust, imagining the things he’s done, every time he touched me. I’d be able to kiss him and not taste blood.

And yet. If he were cured, there’d be nothing tying him to me. He’d no longer be forced to stay close to me, leeching my magic to stay human.

I tried to shove thoughts of Oren aside and sat back down on the bed. I piled everything Basil had left behind back into its box, but for the books and the journal. Leaning back against the wall behind the cot, I sorted through the tiny pile. There was an encyclopedia of plants, languages, animals, geography, and basic science—everything a city boy would need to survive beyond the Wall. It was marked with the same line of ownership as the journal. The other books, however, had no seals of ownership. Either he’d gotten them later, elsewhere, or he’d stolen them from the Institute and not given them a chance to claim them. One, a heavily worn paperback, was a handbook on aerodynamics. Another was a small, thick book on magical theory—it was ancient, nearly falling apart. Probably from before the Renewable wars. And the third—I stopped and reached for it, frowning. The last one was a book of stories. Basil had never shown much interest in stories beyond those he made up to tell me as a child when I had nightmares. At home, he was never that interested in reading at all unless the books were about machines and magic, because he dreamed of becoming one of the vitrarii, the glassworkers who created the circuitry to carry magic.

I opened the book to its title page.
Myths and Legends from Long Ago,
it read. Collected and presented by one Tiberius L. Minton. I skimmed some of the pages, which were filled with odd tales of imaginary creatures, supernatural powers, and pantheons of petty gods and goddesses. It wasn’t until I started flipping through the rest of the book that it fell open, and I realized that one of the pages had been dog-eared and marked.

My heart skipped as I saw the name printed there in the title of this particular story:
“Prometheus and the Fire of the Gods.”

For a wild moment, I considered the idea that the leader of the city was some kind of legendary being. Then sense reasserted itself, and I realized that he must have taken his name from this story. And that Basil had been trying to figure out why.

I kicked the blankets away from my legs, trying to keep cool, and started to read.

Prometheus was a figure in the stories from a culture I’d never heard of, an ancient race called the Hellenes. It seemed that in their time, Renewables were considered to be divine, descended from a pantheon of gods and goddesses that lived on high and dabbled in mortal affairs for their own amusement. Prometheus predated this all, part of a group called the Titans, from whom the Hellenes’ gods were descended.

According to the Hellenes, the time before Renewables was lost in a terrible darkness. Men were cold, hungry, and—I swallowed, sick to my stomach—cannibalistic. Mankind knew no better because there was no fire in their lives. There was a footnote there, but most of it was worn away at the bottom of the page. Something about literal versus figurative translation, but beyond that I couldn’t read.

Prometheus saw mankind struggling and destroying one another and felt sorry for them. And so he stole the fire of the gods and delivered it to them. And after that, mankind was enlightened and could lead normal lives. The phrase “fire of the gods” had been underlined, but there were no notes to explain why. I reread the passage, searching for some kind of clue as to why the city’s leader would choose this figure as his namesake. From the description, it sounded as though fire was a metaphor for magic. Without it, men became savage shadows. But this city was here long before Prometheus came to power, according to Olivia and Parker. So it wasn’t as though he had saved them from being shadows, or created this haven in the midst of the darkness outside.

I turned the page to see a gruesome woodcut depiction of a man—Prometheus, according to the caption—sprawled on a rock, having his stomach torn apart by a bird of prey. The same bird, I realized, that figured on the badges of the officers. Eagles.

I kept reading and found out that the gods were infuriated by Prometheus’s intervention. They punished him by chaining him to a rock for all eternity and sending a giant eagle to peck out his liver every day. And every night he’d regrow it, so he could suffer the same torture the next day.

I shuddered, shutting the book with a dull thud. What kind of man would ever want to model himself on that? And why name his personal police force after the creature that tortured his namesake?

The kind of man who uses Renewables as batteries. The kind who killed my brother.

Part of me just wanted to flee, get out of this city while I still could, but an even larger part of me wanted to unravel the mystery of it, take it apart, see what made it all tick.

On a whim, I opened the book again. There was an index in the back listing all the entries alphabetically. I slid my finger down the columns until I found the one I’d been looking for:
Lethe.

I flipped back to the right page. It was a story about a girl named Persephone in the Underworld, but I wasn’t interested in her. I scanned the sentences until the word popped up.
“
...
the river Lethe, whose waters allowed the dead to forget their earthly lives and cares.”

I pushed the books away, head spinning. Had my brother found something in these stories that I’d missed? They were about a mythological figure, not the real man in power. If only Basil were here to explain. Trying to retrace his steps was like trying to assemble a puzzle where most of the pieces are missing.

If only Basil were here.

• • •

Sleep was impossible. Though I knew that my door wasn’t locked, that I could leave whenever I wanted, it felt so much like my room in the Institute that my eyes wouldn’t stay closed. I found myself longing for the outside, for fresh air and the open sky. Here the air was too warm, too humid. Too close. I’d become used to tracking the sun, to letting nature dictate when I woke and when I slept. Here I just flipped a switch, and the world changed from day to night.

For another thing, I couldn’t stop thinking about Basil and Prometheus and what had transpired between them.

There wasn’t much in my tiny room, just a chest for clothes I didn’t own and the box containing Basil’s belongings. I half-expected to open the clothes chest and find sets of tunics and trousers made for children, like in the Institute. I could feel the weight of expectation bearing down on me like the low ceiling—these people weren’t all that different from the architects. They needed me for their plans.

Eventually I gave up, throwing back my blankets, which were clammy with perspiration. I pulled my shoes on and pushed open my door as carefully as I could, every creak and cry of the hinges sounding like an alarm in my ears. They hadn’t told me I had to stay in my room, but creeping down the empty corridor, I still felt like an intruder.

I hadn’t had enough time to make a mental map of the place. From what the others had said, the spaces in the walls existed everywhere, throughout the city. Around it, beneath it, inside it. But I could at least explore my immediate surroundings, so long as I kept track of how to get back.

There were dim lights spaced at intervals along the corridor, just barely enough to see by. Creating a false night, I supposed. I traced the wall with my fingertips as I walked, listening to the dull echoes of my own footsteps.

I saw a brighter light in the distance. When I got closer, I realized that it was a light from someone’s room, shining through their open door. I hesitated, remembering what Parker had said about giving the rebels a chance to get used to Lark Ainsley being a flesh-and-blood girl. Moving as silently as I could, I crept up to the wedge of light. Stopping at its edge, I peered inside.

Olivia was sitting on an overturned packing crate, unwrapping her hands. The skin beneath the tape was red, irritated, but otherwise undamaged. I could see her in profile, her head bowed, the light from her lamp catching in her golden hair. She gave no sign that she saw me, focused on her task.

When she’d pulled off all the tape, she flexed her hands, grimacing a little. I’d never thought about the fact that it might hurt the puncher as much as the punched—and Olivia was hardly a large person. A little taller than me, but nowhere near as big as the man she’d decked earlier with one blow.

“Can’t sleep?” Olivia’s voice made me jump. She turned her head a little, looking at me out of the corner of one eye with a faint smile.

I cleared my throat, feeling my cheeks beginning to burn. “I’m sorry. I was exploring. I didn’t mean to—”

She gave a dismissive wave of her hand and got to her feet. Massaging her knuckles, she turned toward me. “What’s the matter?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It wasn’t that I didn’t know, but the opposite: there were so many things the matter that I didn’t know where to start. But none of these things make their way out of my mouth. Instead, I muttered, “I’m not used to there being no nighttime.”