Fingit had thought a lot about these self-contradictory questions. There wasn’t much else to do in the Dim Lands while you’re waiting to be reborn, especially if you’re lying there ripped into bits. He hadn’t yet answered the questions to his satisfaction, but while pondering, he had spent many days staring at the Dim Lands themselves. He knew them well.
After being thoroughly elevated by Lutigan, Fingit opened his eyes on a land that was not dim at all. The black sky held a vast, prismatic web of stars. Velvety black grass, edged with reflected starlight, brushed against Fingit’s skin. The dense, motionless shadows were probably trees, but they could easily be monsters, worshippers, or statues of naked girls. The air shushed as some invisible creature glided overhead, and a breeze whiffed against Fingit’s forehead.
These were not the Dim Lands.
“Are you awake yet?” Sakaj’s voice came from beside him.
Since he hadn’t heard Sakaj speak in years, Fingit turned to look at her. Actually, he experienced a complete failure to turn to look at her. He couldn’t turn his head at all.
Ah, yes, I was decapitated by that grunting turnip, Lutigan. I’m trapped in the Void knows where, and I’m just a head! Who the hell knows where my body is around here?
Sakaj said, “I’m sorry about arranging for Lutigan to chop off your head, but I had limited options for getting you here.”
“Where is here?” Fingit asked, his voice breaking.
“I call it the Dark Lands. You know, we live in the Bright Lands, we are elevated in the Dim Lands, and we… do something else in the Dark Lands. I don’t think it has a real name though, so you can call it what you want. Afterworld, Other Realm, Unicorn Town, whatever.”
“How did you find it? How did you get me here? How do we get out?”
Sakaj chuckled. “I found it through an enormous amount of agonizing trial and error. I was able to bring you here because of my deep knowledge of the mysteries, and because we elevated at almost the same time and place. Getting out of here will be, well, immensely complicated, to be honest. By the way, I do wish I could have found a different elevation for us. Being a disembodied head is such a handicap. I prefer to commit suicide by snorting sulfuric acid or by swallowing my tongue or something similar. That way, once I get here, I can still walk around and do things.”
“All right then, why don’t you just drown yourself every day and always have a functional corpse or body or whatever?”
“I have to elevate myself in a different fashion every time.” She sounded as if she were explaining how doors work to a child.
“Holy rolling toads, why?”
“Because on the other side, I’m rat-chewing crazy! Do you think that someone sane figured all this out?”
It almost makes a horrifying kind of sense. Or maybe this makes no sense at all. Maybe Sakaj has sucked me into her fishbowl of insanity. Fingit forced his jaw to stop trembling. “Of course, Sakaj, that makes perfect sense. Let’s make the best of it until you take us home, which I’m sure will be soon. What is there to do around here? You know, if we were capable of doing something.”
Sakaj laughed. “There isn’t a single thing to do here. But there is something to see. At least today there is. Look up.”
Fingit strained to look up as high as he could, considering that he didn’t have much of a neck. He whistled at the mass of stars, as thick as the hair on Krak’s chest. “Wow, that’s pretty. Those are some really neat constellations. A lot like all the constellations I’ve seen before over thousands and thousands of years.”
“They’re just a shade different. Look hard.”
Fingit rolled his eyes. At least I can still do that. All right… plain star, boring star, a cluster of boring stars… that are moving awfully fast. Most of them are sort of sitting there, but once in a while, a group moves around. And the colors—
“Krak and all his whores!” Fingit hissed.
“Indeed.”
“Those are men! Those are men, right there!”
“Yes—”
“That rain-down-damnation enormous tree is…” Fingit’s brain flopped like a fish on the riverbank.
“Yes, it is.” Sakaj laughed again, louder.
“Have you called them? Can they hear you? Have you done a deal yet? Dammit, I wasted a day on a useless chariot.” Fingit squinted and stuck out his jaw, trying to get a better look.
“Fingit, hush! I haven’t exactly called them. It’s complicated. Subtler than forging a hammer with which to bash things.”
Fingit swallowed so hard his head almost toppled over. “We have to tell Krak.”
“No!” Sakaj bellowed, and then she paused. “Krak will bring everyone else, and they’ll ruin everything like mice in a soup pot. This requires subtlety.”
“But Krak—”
“Look at these people, dear Fingit. We know one of them.”
Fingit stared so hard his eyes watered. “I think I see… no. They just look like people. Meat that walks around.”
“Look at the skinny one sitting on that barrel.”
Fingit realized the futility of trying to shake his head. “So?”
“That is the Murderer. We own him.”
Fingit squinted. The man sat swinging his legs, listening to five nasty-looking fellows scream abuse at him while their mule watched. The Murderer looked like a rag-picker, not a sorcerer. “Well, great! Call him, trick some power out of the boob, and take us home. I’ll make you a weapon, and you can ram it into one of Cheg-Cheg’s less impervious places.”
Sakaj sighed. “Oh, Fingit. Sadly, it’s more complicated than that.”
“Shit!” Saliva escaped the corner of Fingit’s mouth, and he used his tongue to try to wipe it off. “Why is everything so flipping complicated with you?”
“Well, I am the Goddess of the Unknowable. Don’t hate me for that.” Her voice caught as she said it.
“All right, I’m sorry. What’s so complicated?”
“That was graciously done. I accept your apology. The
