She fell a long time.
It was like sleep, and unlike it. The darkness yawned before her, unfathomable, and the silence stretched on, and on, and on. There was no time, and nothing but time – Croe could not tell if time was passing at all. She would have wondered if she were dead, except that she had met the Reaper, and was fairly certain the goddess would not leave her to obliterate into nothing. If not for her own sake, then for Mallos’.
Here (which was nowhere), she was herself. And not herself. She felt herself slipping away.
The maze came later (Or at the same time).
Croe found herself in a long corridor, lit at the far end with muted, cool light. It was a hallway from her childhood, she realized quickly, but it bore a striking resemblance to the tunnel it was said one travelled in death. Her steps made no sound on the marble floor, and though there were open doors lining one side of the corridor and windows lining the other, light only spilled from the furthest one – the rest of the hall was dark. It felt familiar, and not familiar. It was the sounds, mostly, which were all wrong; the traffic of busy streets in place of the gardens she could see through the windows, a car door slamming, a shout. A tremor rumbled suddenly through the walls, sending a chandelier swinging. Croe stared at it.
“Nepenthe.”
She turned toward the voice, but there was nobody in the hall with her. Croe frowned, flexed her fingers numbly, closed her eyes against the light which had brightened to a glare. The traffic sounds had stopped – there was silence, seething from the stones beneath her feet and the looming, darkened doorways. She opened her eyes and strode through one, the first one she came to, looking for the source of the call.
She stood in darkness, absolute. Her blind eyes went wide, then shut, squeezing. The numbness began to recede, first a flicker across her lips, then her wrists, then down into her fingers and up her arms and through her chest and suddenly, painfully, her heart. Her heart. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. She tried to scream his name.
This is a dream, she told herself. But when she opened her eyes a second time, she was back in the hall.
Fuck this dream.
She walked into the second doorway, her footfalls whispering like a cat’s. There was a room behind it, this time, but not one she recognized. It was a bedroom; she was standing at the foot of the bed and Mallos was sitting on it, staring down beside him. He leaned down toward the opposite pillow, awkwardly, as if someone were there for him to kiss. Then he straightened again, or half-straightened – Croe had never seen him look so tired. His shoulders sagged beneath the weight of something invisible and heavy. She longed to reach out to him but found she could not move. “This would be a shitty time to tell you I love you, if you could hear me. But I’d tell you right now if you woke up.” Who was he talking to? There was nobody there…She opened her mouth to ask him, but her voice came out wordless and sharp and staccato. A crow’s voice. And then she was standing in the hallway again.
Fuck this dream, she thought again, loudly, and broke the nearest window with her fist. Time dilated – she watched her fingers clench, the practiced motion of her arm propelled through the hip and shoulder, the spiderwebbing cracks that preceded the moment the glass shattered and sparkled to the floor. She saw Mordred’s face reflecting in each tiny puzzle-piece of glass. The walls rattled, warped. Croe jumped through the window, out into the open air beyond the cliff her family’s home had perched upon, the crystalline waves of the mediterranean sea glittering far below her. But she fell only an instant before she was standing on a sand dune, solidly, as if she had not fallen at all. Her boots sank into the sand, and the grains dispersed around them with a hiss.
Croe turned a circle, squinting against the glare. There was nothing but dunes, in every direction. It was still preferable to the hall. Croe wondered if “Hall” was what was mean by “Hell;” A mispronunciation that had transformed into misunderstanding. She cawed, frustrated. Then she began to walk.
The walk was interminable.
She was sure it had been weeks since she started, but the sun never set over this desert. The sense that she was completely alone, and yet somehow being watched at all times, unsettled her. There were no plants, no animals – only the faint whistle of wind over sand, reminiscent of the song that had dragged her here. Croe kicked at some of the sand, at the memory. Bastard, she thought. A sound that was almost a word clawed at her throat. Then a voice that was almost a thought whispered across the dunes: Rest. Stay a while. Croe grunted, snarled. I am the peace of oblivion. I am the sleep that never wakes. I am the eternal twilight, the half-life immune to death. Embrace me, and you will fight no longer. You will hurt no longer. You will fear no longer. Let go…
“No,” Croe spat, the word making her mouth go dry. She gagged on the suddenly brittle air.
It is not so easy to shirk off my mantle…
She coughed, grimaced. Where before she had been numb to the dry heat, now it began to blister on her skin, in her throat. She spat, cursed. But she was tired, suddenly – bone-tired, the leagues she had walked over shifting sand abruptly burning through her joints. She found she had fallen to her knees. The sand was soft and warm.
“¡Mamá!”
Her head jerked up, bright with rage.
“Go fuck yourself.” Croe staggered to her feet. The sky had darkened to the eerie orange light left behind by an eclipse. She stumbled down the leeward side of the dune, but her progress was awkward, slowed by the sand sucking at her boots. Soon she was knee-deep in the fine white grains, then waist deep. Neck deep. The sand sounded like rain as it cascaded down over her head, burying her alive. She breathed in sand – sand burned her eyes. Then everything was black, and still, and silent. Sleep, said the voice.
No.
In the real world, Croe’s hand flexed beneath a pressure. Then she gasped as if she were drowning, her eyes flying open, her mouth parted to gulp down the temperate air of the room, the unspoilt air, free of sand. She managed only one such breath before she changed, the crow’s form finding her instinctually, her frantic flight around the room blind with panic as her claws clattered against the windows, wings flapping fiercely. There were feather-prints on the panes by the time she exhausted herself, limping across the carpet in the center of the room. She collapsed to hands and knees, surrounded by scattered feathers, the tattered remains of her clothes. Her breath continued in ragged gasps. She stared at her hands where they shook, bloodied, trying to steady herself. After a moment, she raised her head. Her eyes met Mallos’ eyes.
“Hi,” she croaked. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
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