Under the Lifeblood Sky

Amélie huddled in the corner of the cold skeleton; walls once bricked and beautiful, now reduced to crumbling faces and soot-like dust. The air was dank; thick with excrement and decay with no outlet to vent itself. It caught, musty and taut in her lungs like splayed filaments of spun cotton, fibrous and expansive. It reeked like the sewers her family frequented, moulding and rancid and so very dreary, but it was home. Something foul was drip-dripping against her forehead from the massive, sagging rafters, but she didn't have the energy to move away. It slid down her cheek, caught in the limp tangles of her tresses, mixed with the fine coating of dust there to dye a wash of raw umber. Amélie longed for the great outside-- up above --the adventures and the dangers and the heaving ocean with its mantle of blue-white seafoam. She yearned to feel the sun switch freely across her face like warm fingers, to have her golden curls laden heavy with morning dew instead of languid with condensation. Of these things she had only tales; sweet stories stitched to the fibre of her heart by rote repetition and the promise of more. The outside was not safe anymore, her mother warned. It had taken her father. It would take her too, if she gave it half a chance. There were monsters there, lurking in the dark, in alleys and entryways, ruins and graveyards and even churches. Hungry, brutish beasts that longed for little more than the opportunity to snatch her away. Mother said she wouldn't give them the chance. Amélie barely cared anymore. They were dying down here, in the lifeless dark. They had to do something.

The end happened long ago, back when the dark woods were young, the trees first finding their roots in the silty clay. Where once her people roamed, carefree and happy, now only relics remained; books of remembrance, of regret. Hymns and folk songs. Paintings of sun and sand. And monsters. Never forget the monsters. Amélie didn't know whether others survived, relegated to the shadows amidst the stench of vermin and chitinous insects. Digging for scraps like the mange-slicked curs she'd heard so much about, haunting the old world's back alleys and salted wharfs. Here in the underbelly-- the built-over remains of the old city --they'd never encountered another soul. It wasn't so bad, though, cold and starvation aside. There was beauty here, in the blue-black polka dot pattern of the mold ringing the walls, the rare clumps of spindly egg-shelled mushrooms, the lean-long shadows cast across the hard concrete on the odd occasion they found enough dry wood for a small fire. They must always take care with that, mother said, lest the smoke billow thick in the old buildings and choke them out.

Even so, mother said that one day they would rid the world of monsters, and the stars would shine on them once more.

James came and nestled against her shoulder, the fraying remnants of her sweater draping in tatters over his ashen hair. Her brother was half her age and so small, so frail. She'd slip him her food again tonight-- clearly she hadn't shared enough --he was wasting away before her eyes. Mother said this was life now. You had to take care of yourself or you didn't stand a chance of helping others. That's what she said, but Amélie saw how often she sneaked to bed without a meal, or saved the best and biggest rats for James and her. Even her mother's clothes were rotting far more than her own. They hung in thin strips, cloddy fragments dangling from the wisp of her skeletal frame. The only bauble left of value from her family's great fortune was a single golden locket-- heart-shaped --borne upon her mother's breast, safekeeping the image of her parents in their happy youth.

But now the sewers weren't safe, mother'd said. She and James were forbidden from helping her hunt ever since. Amélie didn't want to admit it, but she was bored. And, worse, she felt helpless. How would mother catch the rats without her to herd them?

James was dying and she couldn't even help. It felt wrong. She stroked a hand through the mats of his hair, loosening the dirt and grime. Her fingers shook. She didn't like this one bit.

"Where's mama?" he asked, his soulful eyes wandering, restless and a bit dazed. He looked pale.

She shook her head. "She'll be back soon, with a big ol' rat just for you. You'll see." Was she lying? She didn't know. Every time mother left, the fear that she wouldn't return grew and grew, jostling in her belly like the omnipresent gnash of hunger.

"I'm tired of rats," he said.

She sighed. They were all tired of rats. "I know, I know. But you need to eat, and rats are what we have. They're not that bad."

"Yes they are."

She leant her head to rest atop his crown. "They are," she agreed, "but starving is worse."

The days passed like seasons, barren and brown like the dead ivy twisting up the crumbling pillars, brown like the rare rat that scurried too close, brown like the spoiled blood left in their screeching wake. Cursed by the old gods, each moment an imploding eternity, a dying star collapsing upon itself. Mother always spoke of the stars; said we mustn't forget the night sky. But Amélie had never seen the sky, and mother wasn't coming back. Taken by the monsters, surely. The burden of survival rested now upon her.

James was shivering and pallid, his wasting frame tiny in the space of their frigid home, the walls around them seeming to grow and grow until they spiked like mountains from the dusty earth. He needed food, yes, but more than that he needed hope. No answers lay beneath the new world, in the ashes and decay, in the rot of the sewers, in the miasma of home and tomb. She would venture to the surface, and she would not return until she had that hope in hand. James' life was hers to save or spoil, and she would not accept anything but salvation. With whispered love and promises, she disappeared into the eternal night.

Through hidden passageways and claustrophobic caverns she flew, upward bound, expecting devastation as she climbed. But the surface was no wasteland. There was no hint of venom nor decay. The soil was not fallow; green trees burst forth in screaming displays of unburdened life. Birds chirped from their branches, and a stone city of no darkened mien or withered stature stood, stalwart, on the pale horizon. Grass sprouted from the fetor of wormy, arable land, golden as Elysian fields. She shook her head, a crooked grin on her parched lips. Mother and her stories.

Mother. Was it all a lie? To what end? No, now wasn't the time. She bundled her fetid dress in her hands and trudged towards that hope-filled horizon.

The village was smaller than she had imagined, only as big as a stretch of sewer. But it was bricked, and maintained, and full of life. As she strode down the main way she spotted a family, fair of hair and pale of complexion, not unlike her and James.

"Mama! Mama! Come, quick!" the youngest girl shouted, rushing towards Amélie with a look of great concern furrowing her little blonde brows. "An urchin, half-starved and wasting! Quick! Let us help her to our empty cot."

Amélie was shocked. Such kindness, such health, such good fortune. She could barely believe her eyes. She followed the child in a daze, not strong or willed enough to lunge for the juicy cat that ambled about their yard, so close. These folks must be rich indeed, to keep such food unfettered within their domain.

The water tasted like flowers, and she tried not to make a face as she gulped it down. It was better than nothing. She was hungry, and so was little James, but her host wanted only to play with dolls. It was strange; beyond belief or comprehension. Amélie had never seen a doll before, but here there were dozens. She tolerated this childishness for now-- the last thing she wanted was to appear discourteous or uninterested. The adults were busy with work, and so the children were left unattended. This was no surprise. Survival required great toil, after all.

She tried to focus on the doll's names, on the role she was meant to play, but all she could see was golden hair twirling about a fattened torso, and James' pleading eyes.

But there, beneath the girl's silky hair, something caught her eye. The barest twinkle, a golden light. "Wait," she said, surprised by her own boldness. "May I--" she hesitated. There upon the child's neck lay her mother's gilt locket. "Child," she began, forgetting the girl's name altogether and not much for caring, "from whence does that trinket come?"

"Oh, this?" the child asked, nonchalantly, as she flipped the jewelry open and shut, barely sparing it a glance, "My father gave it to me for my name day. From the last of the monsters, he said. It's not a very good gift, is it? See how there's only two of the beasts pictured inside?" She edged closer, conspiratorial, even as she spread the locket's wings to reveal Amélie's parents, caked in blood and age, "He didn't even clean it. But it's better this way, right? Spookier. He took its fangs as a trophy for himself," she whispered, miming a monstrous hiss and claw.

"Father was a hunter, see, but a time came when there was nothing left to hunt. We faced insolvency, can you imagine! Luckily for him, mother has a talent for baking, or we'd be out in the fields. Us!"

Amélie could take no more. "You're a monster," she hissed under her breath, "Mother was right! How could I be so blind?"

"What did you say to me? You're nothing but a street rat I've taken in! How dare you!" She raised her hand to slap Amélie, hard across the face, but her palm did not connect with skin. She stumbled on air, instead.

A foul shriek emanated from Amélie, the kind spared only for hunting and mourning-- of which this was both --as she lashed out. "Blood god take you!" she cried, fury made flesh. Her claws grew, black and sharp as little daggers, and the monster before her bloomed in crimson, a deep, welting wound three fingers wide across her pretty gown. Viper teeth sprouted from Amélie's canines, for injecting venom and ingesting blood. But this wasn't about the feast. This was justice incarnate. She looked on as the youngling creature before her tried to scream but gurgled and drowned instead.

The village stirred to life to the sounds of death throes. Amélie snatched her necklace and ran, faster than she'd ever run before, back to her home, back to James. She would see him fed, and then…

A new age had dawned. One of fear, of darkness, of vengeance and seafoam and the night sky. She would see the true monsters pay, she would hear the wind whip through her hair. Night by night she crept, feeding upon that cesspit of a town one demon at a time. Soon, James would join her, and nothing in the world would stop them.