Iron Angel

The manikin was starving.

Mina Greene’s shutters remained firmly closed. To Dill’s horror, the wood had begun to deteriorate. Damp had softened and warped the lowest edges, and the shutters now appeared to sit crookedly in their frame. He spied patches of white mould and rust on the hinges.

“Something’s wrong,” Dill told Hasp.

“Something’s wrong with most of the people down here,” Hasp replied. “She’s bound to be miserable. She’s in Hell. And souls get worn thin over time. It takes great force of will to maintain your surroundings. Ignore her; she’ll be gone soon.”

“Gone where?”

“Nowhere. She’ll just slip between the gaps and become a shade. Her room will eventually bleed to death and drain into the Mesmerist canals. Happens all the time. Some people just aren’t strong enough to survive here.”

“Then she needs help.”

“What she needs,” the god said, “is oblivion. The Veil. That’s the best thing for her now, and that’s where she’s headed. Trust me-I’ve seen it a billion times before. Don’t get involved.”

Dill rubbed his wrist where Mina had inserted a tiny splinter of her soul. He imagined her sitting alone in the darkness surrounded by those dusty shelves of skulls. He pictured her chamber rotting around her as she lost the will to maintain it. Perhaps he should just check that she was all right?

He knocked on her window.

It was a queer sensation. As his knuckles struck the glass, a vision flashed in his mind.

— A crowd of Sandporters cheered and clapped in a wide town square-

He knocked again.

— A brightly painted wagon stood in a sandy glade, surrounded by colourful trees-

“I told you to leave her be,” Hasp said.

“There’s no response,” Dill replied. “I’m going to open the window.”

“Not a good idea, lad. How would you feel if a stranger broke into your soul?”

But Dill was already searching for something to break the window with. And then he realized that he didn’t have to search at all-this little part of Hell was entirely malleable. He glanced down to find that a crowbar had already appeared in his fist.

Hasp growled. “Don’t do it. That kind of contact sends tremors through the whole damn Maze. You’re not just risking her soul.”

Dill hooked the crowbar under the window sash and pushed down on it.

— A mangy little pup sniffed around the deck of a ship-

The sash sprang open. He hoisted it up. Now only the closed shutters stood between him and Mina’s room. Behind him, Hasp threw up his arms in frustration and stormed back inside his castle.

Dill pounded his fist repeatedly against the shutters.

— Something padded through darkness, a powerful hunched shape. Blood dribbled from a sword into a clay bowl. A wild beast howled-

The rotten wood had split where Dill had struck it. One of the shutters was already coming away from its hinges. Dill pressed both hands against the wood and shoved hard. The shutters flew open.

— An odor of loam and bark, and of freshly butchered meat-

Dill stared. The room beyond the open window bore no resemblance to Mina Greene’s opulent chambers. It was much smaller-a dull brick-walled space with an earthen floor. To the left, a single doorway led to another similarly gloomy cell. There were no pillars, no grand cupola, and no furnishings except for a long wooden box sitting in the middle of the floor. It looked big enough to contain a corpse.

“Mina!”

Dill climbed up onto the window ledge and was about to step through, when he heard a scraping sound. Mina backed through the doorway, dragging a second-much smaller-wooden trunk behind her. When she reached the long box, she paused to catch her breath.

“That’s far enough, Dill,” she said without looking up.

“What are you doing?”

“Packing.” Mina opened the small chest. Then she tilted the long box up, standing it on one end. It was almost as tall as she was. With some effort, she lifted it up, and then lowered it down again so that its narrow base rested inside the open chest on the floor.

Dill watched in astonishment as the tall container slid down until it had disappeared completely inside the smaller one. Mina went back through to the other room. In a moment she returned with yet another chest, smaller again than the one remaining on the floor. She repeated the whole process. By placing the narrow end of one container inside the wider mouth of the next, she eventually managed to reduce her luggage to the size of a jewelry box.

“Where are you going?” Dill asked.

“I thought I’d have a wander around,” she replied cheerfully. She made comical bug eyes at him. “See some demons. Catch some ghosts.”

“That’s not normal,” Dill said.

Her dark eyes gleamed. “It is for me.”

“But what happened to your room? Where is everything?”

She wandered over to him, holding up the little jewelry box. “All the important stuff is in here,” she said. “Iril’s canals can drink the rest after I’ve gone.”

“But…” A hollow ache had taken root in Dill’s stomach. He didn’t want her to leave. Absurdly, a loose thread hanging from a seam on the side of her dress caught his eye. Why did he find this tiny imperfection so suddenly endearing? She was so close he could smell her perfume: the warm scent of desert spice on her skin. Without thinking, he shifted his position on the window ledge.

“Dill!” she warned.

Dill reached up to grip the sash above, but the window flinched away from him. Suddenly he was gripping nothing, and overbalanced. He fell forward into the girl’s room.

A moment of extreme disorientation overcame him, as though he had stepped outside of himself, and was looking back at his own face. It was the oddest sensation, both familiar and utterly strange to him. He saw the wings of an archon, his wings, with a plush room behind, but he was also staring at a dark brick-walled space and a screaming girl in a rainbow-coloured dress.

He saw, or felt, Mina shudder; Dill couldn’t be sure. His senses were reeling now, confusing him. He heard the savage howling of a wild animal. He reached out to Mina, or thought he did, but suddenly he was reaching out to himself, a young angel standing in a dismal cell. A girl stood by the window, her arms outstretched.

His fingers brushed another hand. The touch sent a powerful shock through him. Nausea cloyed at his throat. He heard shrieking, followed by the deep growl of a hound. Perfume mingled with the thick stench of animals. It was too much to bear. He staggered back from the angel, from the girl in the bright dress. His hands gripped something. A window frame?

He fell backwards.

“Fool!” Hasp’s voice roared somewhere behind him. “Close that window now! You’d better hope the Mesmerists didn’t feel that commotion.”

Dill’s thoughts still spun. “What? I don’t understand…”

“You stepped inside her soul,” Hasp growled. “Did you think her reaction to an intrusion like that would be subtle? You just violated that girl in the worst possible way.”

“I’m sorry,” Dill stammered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t-”

But he was cut off by a sound like an earthquake. His whole apartment-his whole soul-groaned and shook.

“Light and Life,” Hasp said. “Get back from that window!”

Dill rose unsteadily. Through the open window he could still see Mina. She was wailing uncontrollably, clutching the jewelry box to her chest. Dust shuddered free of the walls and clouded the air around her.

“Get back! Don’t make me come in there.”

But how could Dill leave her in such distress? Whatever was happening was his fault. By setting foot in her