Shards and Ashes

Harmony’s voice was soft, neither threatening nor reassuring to anyone who didn’t know her, as she said, “No. You should get out of town, preferably at night when they aren’t as active.”

The old man snorted. “You think? I’m not a fool, but I can’t see well enough to drive out, especially in the dark.” Bracing himself against the wall, he tottered forward. “But I have a car.”

“Really?” Chris examined him more carefully. Cars weren’t easy for anyone to keep, especially vagrants.

The old man cackled. “Well, maybe not have, but I can start one if you help me drag the fuel out to it.” He nudged a piece of cardboard with his foot. It slid to the side, revealing a dirty jug. “Got three jugs saved up. You help me carry the fuel out to one of them cars, and I can wire it.”

Chris studied the man and saw no telltale signs of deceit: his clothes were unkempt, his eyes white with cataracts. His health was pretty far gone. The Center had yet to find a case where Nidos sacrificed culinary tastes for strategy.

He glanced at his partner.

“We’ll help you,” she said.

After a bit of fumbling around, the old man picked up two of his jugs.

Cautiously, Harmony stepped forward and grabbed the third. Chris’ already tense muscles stiffened. Their work was always the sort of thing that required all of his attention, but lately, it seemed like every day they were on duty was busier. Being on the front line of the fight was a sure way to see the daily proof that the humans weren’t winning this war.

As they moved away from the shadows of the alley, the man didn’t bother to wipe the tears that fell. His voice was low as he said, “I know I’m old, but that isn’t any way to die.”

“I know,” Harmony murmured. “You’re not going to die in a vat. Right?”

“Right,” Chris promised. They’d get the man to safety, one person saved, and then Chris would go home and get drunk for the two days he had off.

By the time night fell on her second day off, Harmony thought she was going to climb the wall. The down days were to help them recover, rest, and work out. She did all of that—and she still felt like she would go crazy if she didn’t move. The calm that had come from the last days of work had faded by the end of her first day off. On the second day she’d woken midday, and then she’d watched the sun slowly drop with the same lack of patience she always did at the close of the second rest day.

She paused in front of the mirror. The scratches in the matte black painted surface revealed swaths of the glass. Before things changed, she’d spent hours looking in that mirror. Then, she had prided herself on her healthy appearance. Harmony knew that it wasn’t likely that she’d enjoy seeing her full reflection now; better to see only fragments.

When she had first painted over the mirror, she’d dragged her then-manicured fingernails over the still-tacky paint. Tonight she trailed her now-short nails over those scratches in the ritual she enacted every time she went hunting. She couldn’t swear that the rote actions had any real impact on her survival, but that first time, not quite two years ago, she’d left angry and untrained—but somehow survived. Now, she was composed and trained. She couldn’t do anything more to guarantee her safety, but she took comfort in the small rituals she had. Ritual worked; faith mattered. Everyone on Earth knew that now.

“Blasphemer!” her father yelled again.

His fists thudded on the door; the shelf she kept in front of it shuddered. Her mother’s porcelain angels, remnants of an old forgotten faith, rattled in time with the pounding as Harmony leaned in close to the mirror and outlined her eyes with smudged kohl, giving herself a sickened look. The shadowed eyes added to her regular pallor and made her whole face look wan and vulnerable.

He threw something in the hall. The tinkle of glass was followed by the bitter stench of alcohol, confirming that he had thrown another bottle. She couldn’t see the mess, but she knew what she’d see tomorrow.

As Harmony surveyed her eyes in the exposed stripes on the mirror, she lifted her hand to touch her shaved head. The first night she’d gone hunting, she’d hacked her hair off before shaving it. Now, she could only shave the stubble. It wasn’t exactly the same, but it was the closest approximation of the ritual that she could manage.

“They’ll find out what you’re doing and kill us both. You’re as bad as your sister was, and look where that got her,” he called through the door. That was almost a ritual too. Sometimes she wondered if she stayed here out of love or because she’d come to associate these pre-hunt rants with survival.

He was sobbing now, drunk and broken, but she’d learned months ago that sobs would shift back to curses if he saw her—and that curses were followed by punches all too quickly.

“Wear your charms,” he begged.

A flash of silver was shoved under the door. She paused and stared at it. The chain held a tiny locket, a heart, and a few other trinkets. She had once insisted Chastity wear it, believing it brought her luck, and after her death, Chris had returned it.

“Thank you, Daddy,” Harm whispered.

She fastened it around her throat, and then she returned to the mirror. She finished shaving her head, not needing the slivers of mirror for this part of the routine. She closed her eyes and completed the task with the same precision she’d once used for curling her hair. It seemed like such a long time ago that she’d been so foolish, before she understood how dangerous Nidhogg was, before Chastity had died.

Before I knew that gods could be monstrous.

He started pounding on the door again; this time he kicked it too. “I won’t die because of you. Are you listening? Harmony!”

She walked over to the door and reached a hand between the shelves barricading it. She laid her palm flat on the door.

“I am,” she whispered. “I listen to every word, Daddy.”

He couldn’t hear her, but their best conversations always happened when he didn’t hear her.

“I’ll be home late tonight,” she whispered.

She pulled her hand away as he began quoting from the New Scripture. He’d obviously been drinking early if he was already on scripture. Before the New Religion, he didn’t drink, but she was grateful that he did now. When he was drunk, he was more likely to stay home where he’d be safe.

Harmony slid a homemade dagger into each boot; then she grabbed her prized blade: a real machine-made serrated eight-inch knife with a good handle that didn’t get too slick when it was bloodied. She kissed the side of the steel, as she had the first night, and carefully slid it into the front pocket of her trousers, through the slit in her pocket, under the fabric, and into the sheath on her thigh. Her pants were loose enough now that it didn’t show.

“Stay safe, Daddy,” she said loudly enough for him to hear. She didn’t tell him she loved him anymore. She hadn’t said those words to anyone since her sister died.

Harmony opened the window and jumped toward the branch nearest the house.

Love is a mistake when we’re all going to die any day now.

The familiar burn of her palms connecting with the bark was quickly followed by the thud of her boots hitting the ground. The calluses on her hands dulled the sensations, but it was the reenactment of the steps that mattered, not the sensations themselves.

Chris waited, not nervously but with the ever-present edge that came from the fear that tonight would be the night that she wouldn’t show. He’d tried to convince her that sharing quarters was wiser. Most teams did. For reasons he couldn’t understand, she refused. Most days, she claimed she couldn’t leave her father —but other nights, she insisted that she couldn’t step into her dead sister’s life.

Although we both know that she already has.

He flicked ash onto the street, realizing as he did so that he’d only taken one drag from the cigarette. He was just about to pinch the cherry off—smokes were far too expensive to waste—when he saw her. She stayed to the shadows, but her movements were deliberate. She looked nothing like prey.

Yet.

Within another hour, that would change. Harmony would adopt the guise of a victim. She’d become the very thing that the devotees of Nidhogg found alluring: weak, sickened, and ready to be delivered to their god.

“You’re late.”