This seemed to be a memory the grave had, rather than a memory of Hazahnahkah’s. He oversaw the temple in the space station from any point he wished. Everything was so alike when he placed his forehead against it that he thought for a moment he’d simply used his First Terror by accident, and had somehow overtaken the free will of the structure itself.

  But this was not the case.

  Crowds upon crowds of people dressed like Zalahak stood about the grave. They came in lines up and down its staircase ascents, offering gifts, letters, and faces dipped with frowns. People had brought their finest offerings to this place—people brought everything they had left to give.

  The chamber spun slowly, the rotation pressing faintly against the feet of those who had just arrived. The altar stood still at the center, pale stone slicked with condensation. The embedded bells caught the light from the curved windows, half-swallowed by the stone. Footprints marred the black polished floor. A mother and her daughter parted them as they made their way to the dais before the grave. They stood unlike anyone else: chins high, eyes wide, shoulders back. They paid no attention to their offerings—only the grave which sheltered them.

  The mother’s face was difficult to carve out from the onyx ash of funerary pyres and messy blonde bangs. She had painted her face. Around her eyes. Her plump lips. Her green eyes were hemmed with red, two gardens swamped with blood. Tissue and knuckles had swollen the skin beneath them purple. She was the most sorrowful woman Hazahnahkah had ever seen, but she was also the most beautiful beneath the ash.

  A man with an owl’s mask lifted a measured hand, his robe falling straight from shoulder to floor. “It was his choice,” he said. The words cut the air without heat. “No one could have forced it.”

  Her jaw flexed. She exhaled slowly, leaning slightly forward. “His choice?” Her voice rose, but not loud, just precise. “You all stood by. You sanctioned it. You made it possible.”

  The daughter stood behind her. Hands folded at the waist, straight posture. Eyes downcast. Faint quiver of fingers. A shiver passed through her as the mother’s gaze flicked over her briefly. She did not move. She did not speak. If not for her fear, then she would surely be prettiest. When her mom stepped towards the grave, she held her back.

  Zalahak leaned on the railing at the side, his hand loose at his hip. Eyes fixed on the floor. One foot shifted, as if he might leap in to stop them.

  A woman with the mask of a fox spoke. “He will be honored. You will be honored. We must make peace. Is this not the Incarnate way?”

  “Walking one’s way does not mean walking alone,” the mother whispered.

  “He is not alone,” a woman with a firefly mask replied.

  “You are with him,” a man with an amaryll’s mask added. “We are with him.”

  The mother’s eyes narrowed. She continued their aphorism with sarcasm. “And we are as one.”

  Another woman joined the silent fray. Her bat’s mask tilted. She spoke more strongly than the rest. “Vrast, I understand how you feel, but what can we do? The Garden needs its Gardener. That is the reality The Serpent dealt us.”

  Vrast’s memories. This is Vrast. Hazahnahkah couldn’t believe it. If Knife was once a woman, then maybe he was once a man. No, that couldn’t have been true. Zalahak said he had made him.

  “Zalahak has volunteered himself as tribute to be Harvester,” said the woman with the firefly mask. She spoke brightly, as if this were some act of compensation for whatever had occurred to make the mother and her daughter so sad.

  Vrast straightened. She moved to step forward. One foot in front of the other. Pause. She raised her head toward Zalahak. “And you?” Her words were measured. “You watched. You let him go… You all let him go.”

  Zalahak’s jaw tightened. He did not answer immediately. One shoulder twitched. “I did.” His mouth locked up. He clearly wanted to say more, but could not.

  “And…? What do you have to show for it?”

  “The future.”

  “The future never comes. Your decision was based on fear.” Vrast’s eyes sharpened as she seemingly shook herself from the sorrowful stupor. “You belong in the Garden. You should be the Gardener. You’ve committed crimes, but you are too scared to face them the real way. That is why you’re facing me. That is why you are here when he is not. That is the future you have created. A thankless one–”

  “I am thankful!” Zalahak blurted. His clench on the railing tightened as he threw himself forward, grunting with heartache. He was strong. Despite the durability of the metal composing the constructs, the railing whined, buckled, and creaked like a pod of stranded whales. It echoed and reverberated, seemingly without end. Zalahak glanced around at this, guilty and apologetic. He tilted his head in humiliation. “Your husband! He is a good man! A perfect man! I can’t blame you for hating me and loving him, for it is he who saved my life. I should be among Rapscallions in the Garden… I… I am one.”

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  Vrast combed the front row of her teeth over the ash painting her bottom lip. The white in her grimace was then stained black. “I don’t hate you. You were a brother to him.” She shuddered and pulled the hood over her face to hide it just a bit more. She hadn’t meant what she said. She hated Zalahak. Hazahnahkah could feel the tonality of hate. Hate was such a rigid, twisted sound. It carved out depth from words spoken, and it thrummed like a knife to the head.

  And from Zalahak, Hazahnahkah sensed the most bewildering harmony: love. He was in love with Vrast, and love was out of touch. His heart broke with every beat, and yet still his breath held all the words unsaid, steadfast. He kept his thoughts to himself. All because of love. It was a selfless kind of love, malnourished and embryonic. It was a love that took time to die but persisted still for a century of suns.

  Zalahak tightened on the railings again; they bent and warped once more. But this time he could not hear it. His face was blank, lips drawn into a thin line.

  “Such fear…” Vrast whispered. “Fear of the future, fear of the Rapscallions, fear of The Serpent’s Ramble. How many more poor souls must be lost to senseless acts of self-sacrifice before we close The Serpent’s mouth?”

  “The Serpent eats itself,” a man with a possum’s mask said. “One Serpent, one Keeper, one Gardener—one Garden. It is a system that has been proven for millennia. It is simple, and it is practical. It is the only thing there is.”

  “There’s reincarnation.”

  The theatre of masks and hoods gasped at this. Their black holes for eyes felt wide with terror. They shuffled amongst themselves, a choir of whispers and echoes. The blue eyes beneath the man’s possum mask glinted as he scanned Vrast up and down, almost in disbelief that she was standing tall while saying this. He stepped back when she didn’t budge. “You would have us carry out the death sentence?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s immoral, for one.”

  “Since when have Angels ever used the shroud of morality?” Vrast asked.

  “But it’s Yurreth,” the woman with the fox mask seemed to breathe out the words, as if she did not want to fully commit to saying them.

  “Ms. Xibren, are we schoolgirls? Do we want to try answering that again?”

  Xibren looked around. She straightened out her fox’s mask, then cleared her throat. “I understand you’re in pain, but some respect is owed. I am your elder.”

  “I said, let’s try that again. Yurreth is a woman. No more. No less.”

  The owl’s mask stepped between them. “Yurreth is an abomination. Etthehm was an abomination. We do not need to run down the ever-growing list of abominations in The Ramble. It is beyond morality for one. Even if we could kill them, they would just reincarnate and haunt us not a hundred years later. This is the only method we have of avoiding ceaseless conflict and all-out war.”

  “Why are we fighting so hard to resist all the natural forces of the world?”

  “Natural forces? There is nothing natural about Yurreth’s pale heart.”

  “I’m referring to reincarnation.”

  The man fell silent at this.

  Vrast seized the moment and stepped bravely forward towards the grave. “Let me go.” She placed her hand around the locket at her neck. It was a small knife. Although it was buried black with charred soot and mourning paint, the emblazoned emerald slit still glimmered in its hilt with an unforgettable warmth. Vrast’s fingers loosened around her daughter’s hand, and the girl fully let her go, exhausted.

  Everyone began muttering loudly. The railing beneath Zalahak grew intense at this. Many of those in masks began shouting.

  “Absolutely not!”

  “It is absolutely unheard of to let the last remaining parent go forth into the dream!”

  “It is a madhouse in there! You have gone mad with grief, but that is not a proper reason!”

  “It’s impractical! It’s inappropriate!”

  “To send in the partner of an Incarnate is a wanton act of disrespect!”

  Vrast cut them all off. “I am far more powerful than my husband. If you allow me to enter through The Incarnate Methos, I will be the most powerful Rapscallion The Ramble has ever seen. I will kill each and every problematic prisoner myself, and you know that I can do so—I don’t need a hundred years in The Methostone. Give me ten. Ten years of rest. Ten years of Rambles. Really, I’d only need it to adjust to my new form. If Yurreth wants to become a devil, I will gladly give her one. By the time I’m done with her, there’ll be no mind left to reincarnate. She’ll wish she never did.”

  At last, one person considered Vrast’s wishes. It was the face beneath the amaryll’s. “Even if you enter the Ramble through an object, there is no method back. Once within, there is no reversal. The rules do not bend. None may enter, none may leave.”

  “I know that. I was the one who came up with it. The Incarnate Methos was by my design. I am surprised none of you are groveling before me, grateful for even having a method to seal those even death does not claim for long.”

  “Then, when will you enter?”

  “What else?” Vrast asked, pacing towards The Methostone. “I make the future, and the future is now.” She placed her head against The Methostone, and in the memory, Hazahnahkah felt the hot kiss of her face. Her forehead was burning, like the surface of a sunwashed plain. There was nothing cold about it.

  But how?

  How could no one notice then?

  There was barely a curve along the belly of Vrast’s body, but it was surely there?

  A second heartbeat.

  Vrast was undoubtedly pregnant.