All feedback welcome, but mostly curious how well it holds reader attention. Feel free to call out where you stopped reading if you did. Thanks!

Prologue – Serenity 

 

“You’re asking to hold a million fires behind your teeth. All that bitter flame will devour you. To be kind we must forget the unkindness suffocating us.” 

“Of course you’d lecture me during your own funeral march.”  

“A chatterer ‘til the grave… I wanted to burn in your stead—saints know I tried.” 

“Tell me where to start, dead man.” 

“…the story of forgetting. It’ll be the first that comes to you.” 

So, that’s where I begin, the story of forgetting—of the first death. We all have one. Sometimes it’s the only story we get.  

This one begins with the sky on fire. 

 -----

Serenity walked beside her father as the sky burned. Following him meant death. Following him was all she knew. 

Dad would be quick to point out that ember storms mostly took place too high up to cause death by conflagration. He’d add that death by suffocation was far more likely. Ignited clouds eat the oxygen of the troposphere like cake, so tighten your mask again, sleepy goose. This was his idea of comfort. Serenity was beginning to understand why her older brother, Adlin, had chosen to go to war rather than live with Dad any longer. 

Serenity’s younger sister, Zephyr, was nowhere in sight. Most likely, she was dead already.  

Serenity balled her fists, angry at Zephyr for running on the eve of an ember storm, angrier at herself for being the reason her jackal-bit sister had fled home. 

Cinders drifted from clouds veined with fire, pooling on skyscraper roofs. The massive buildings glowed like candles, crystallized from countless ember storms and ready to collapse at any moment. They passed streets lined with cars cocooned in charcoal. Shivering like paper, Serenity wondered which would eat them first: the flurry of burning tongues dropping from the sky, the poisoned storm air tugging at their respirators, or some yet undiscovered monster. 

Conversely, Dad hummed his favorite bar chanty. 

The song stirred memories in Serenity, of late-night stumbling, slurred apologies, and one-sided fights between her brother and dad, whose participation always devolved into inebriated laughter no matter how angry Adlin became. 

She tugged Dad’s long coat and tapped the tank on his back, reminding him that chanties required a luxurious amount of air. He nodded, seeming to see the wisdom in her fear. Supporting himself with his birch walking cane, he unfolded the heat shield and held it over their heads. Serenity squeezed beside him under the shield that resembled a red gossamer umbrella, hoping he was taking the threat of the storm seriously, but he absent-mindedly began to hum again. Serenity did not complain this time. The song was nostalgic, comforting enough to drive Serenity forward. Following him was all she knew. 

Around the corner loomed the largest building she’d ever seen, black and holed like a charred tusk, so tall it disappeared into the toxic clouds. Dad never spared a glance for the dozen other buildings that could’ve easily swallowed Zephyr up. His destination was this singular obelisk. His humming echoed off the huge, soot-striated, metal façade as they approached a door.  

“I met your ma to this song,” he said through his respirator, surprising Serenity. “It’s usually only sung in bars when you’re already walking a slant, so, lyrically speaking, not the mos’ romantic.” Dad dragged his fingertips down the door, leaving lines in the flaking dust. “But when my mind wanders,” he continued, “the melody is always there.” 

Serenity’s Mom had died five years ago when Serenity was only nine. Her father had told her that Mom died of a worn heart. In Adlin’s most recent letter, now over a year old, he’d warned Serenity not to trust Dad. She didn't know what to do with such a warning. At the very least, she didn’t argue with Dad like Adlin had. 

Still, Mom’s warn heart bothered Serenity. The description made less sense the older she got. Once when she was younger, she found Zephyr inconsolable, terrified her own heart would wear out. Serenity had taken an ice cube from her drink and held it over her chest. She convinced Zephyr it would slow not just her heart, but time itself. She knew her sister still performed the ritual from time to time. Serenity found comfort enough that she could provide comfort to her younger sister, but just days ago Zephyr had found a letter from Mom among Dad’s old maps that changed everything.  

Now when Serenity thought of Mom’s heart, she couldn’t help but remember Mom’s hand-scrawled phrases, “I love you” and “forgive me.” 

Zephyr and Serenity had spent hours re-reading their mother’s letter by flashlight. She wrote she’d left them each an earring, but Serenity saw only two empty holes where they’d once been pinned to the paper. Their absence amplified the letter’s sting, urging Serenity to tear the paper into pieces so small every word would be obliterated. She hadn’t, mostly for Zephyr’s sake, instead returning it to the lockbox covertly. 

Dad tested the gray doorknob. Serenity realized she’d prefer the known threat of the ember storm to whatever unknowns crouched behind the doorway. 

“It keeps me company, tha’ melody, near as a summer shadow.” He let his accent slur thickly, the same manner of speech Zephyr had inherited. With a push of his shoulders, he opened the door slightly. “When we enter, Serenity, you’ll keep jus’ as close.” 

The metal scraped across the ground as the door opened fully. Serenity didn’t want to go in but followed all the same. 

Dad shut the door, blinding them. Serenity heard him set down his pack and rummage. Their ember lantern spilled a disc of red-orange light across the floor. He adjusted the oxygen until the stone inside shone brightly and then hooked the lamp’s chain to a ring at the end of his cane. The fact that he chose the ember lantern only filled Serenity with further dread. 

“Why the ember lamp? Are there jackals here?” 

The chain holding the swaying lantern squeaked as loudly as she’d spoken. Dad leaned silently against the filthy wall for a long while, his bare fingers strumming a silent rhythm.  

“Won’t be here for long, Serenity,” he said finally, dawning his glove. “We’ve gone and stumbled into some shattered-space, but I ken jus’ where your sister has absconded to. Take care not to touch the walls. Nasty stuff, this mold.” 

She nodded, wondering how long her small air tank would last. The room was far smaller than the imposing metal door had promised: low-ceilinged and cluttered, with wallpaper peeling back to reveal veins of black mold. Piles of dust-coated refuse lined the floor like the discarded meal of a long-dead spider. They descended the lone stairway, entering a hallway that filled with the sounds of boots on marble, filtered breaths, and soon, the jaunty melody of her parent’s first meeting. 

The hiss of the ember lamp filled Serenity’s head with stories of jackals, the thought-eaters. Dad had taught her to keep a canary thought close—a distinct, succinct memory, one to wander to from anywhere in her mind. Tell no one what it is, he’d cautioned. If it’s gone or tampered with, get in ember light immediately. True, she was already in ember light, but she surfaced the memory all the same.  

Serenity recalled her mother standing by a cedar tree as wide as her outstretched arms. Mom wore a dress of black and gold. This image came from a photo, a memory of a memory. Serenity felt that extra layer of obfuscation kept it safer. For a moment, she felt better. 

The moment ended when red storm light lit up the ceiling, flashing against dirt-stained windowpanes. She dropped to her knees following the thunder. When the roar subsided Dad helped her stand.  

He held paper in his hands, folding it before she could see the contents. 

“Sorry for the racket. This way,” he said, leading them across the stairway. They paused before a door that bulged outwards, as if someone had attempted, and failed, to kick it open from the other side. More black mold leaked out the edges. 

Dad offered Serenity his cane with the attached lantern. She shook her head fiercely. “Your leg,” she began, but he placed it in her hand. In her youth, she’d begged to hold the lanterns, hoping to prove her maturity by handling the fragile tools. Now she held it at arm’s length, dreading another shout of thunder as he tested the door.  

The smell of ash, like an extinguished campfire, seeped through her respirator. The smell reminded Serenity of her mother’s solid black dress she wore in her canary thought. Mom had been sick for as long as Serenity could remember. Her mother had been suffering before the end. Serenity wondered…  had she felt relief when her mother passed? 

“Hope is the thing with feathers,” Dad sang as he wrenched the door open with a screech of wood on stone. 

Doorknobs, glinting like cat eyes from their lanternlight, lined a hallway. Wormy shadows squirmed as they entered. Each doorway sat closed. They stopped at an intersection. Serenity stared at Dad, puzzled, but he silenced her with a raised finger. He shuttered the lantern. She stiffened. Ember light protected them from jackals, so plunging them into the dark meant Dad feared something else stalked nearby.  

The shadows rustled restlessly. Metal rasped to their left. 

“Take the lamp,” Dad whispered, his voice free of his usual easy drawl. “When I say so, open the shutter jus’ for a blink. Tell me if the way behind us is clear.” 

He squeezed her hand and placed it on the shutter. 

The hissing increased—too loud to be just the lantern. She looked behind them at the darkness that engulfed her like an ocean. Her facemask could crack and shatter so easily, allowing her mouth and lungs to be invaded by nanophire-poisoned air or needling jackal hairs. 

With a click of the lantern shutters, a blink of red-orange light filled the hall for only an instant. 

Serenity saw. Blood rushed to her head as she whispered, “Behind us. The doors are open and there are hairs—jackal-webs searching for us.” 

Jackal webs. The mold lining the walls had come alive. The hallway, maybe even the whole building, had thought-eater fibers slithering through the walls and floors. 

Serenity tried to surface the picture of her mother and the tree… or was it an empty field she’d stood in? She tried to surface her mother’s face, her voice, her smile. But she couldn’t. What had happened to her canary thought? 

Calm came from a little voice inside her head that said, “You’ll lay in lamp lie, Sleepy.” She corrected the jumbled sentence to, “You’ll lie in lamplight.” It was the sort of thing her dad would’ve said, and it comforted her. Nothing could be taken away from her in the light she held in her hands. She thought of her mother’s note, the last thing she’d left them, the slanted loops of black ink, the two empty holes, her words, “Forgive me.” She surfaced her canary thought—but she couldn’t remember Mom’s face. 

Something fell on her shoulder. It broke her. Serenity ran. 

She opened the shutters as her feet pumped. The walls exploded as thought-eater webs recoiled from the lanternlight. She threw herself deeper into the hallways, not caring in that moment if Dad followed. The walls were fanged, the floor a lulling tongue waiting for her to slow. She tripped, dropping the lantern with a skitter and pop. The light sputtered, causing the walls to hiss. The shadows expanded and retracted with each flicker. If the light died completely the threads would feast on Serenity. She reached across the corridor for the dropped lantern when something to her left stirred.  

The storm boomed, illuminating the hallways. The slouched silhouette of a body filled the corridor six doors away. The body tried to stand, but its legs were gone from the knee down. Metal squealed as the hundred petals composing its skin blossomed and unfurled grotesquely. It was a snatcher opening to receive her. 

“Take my hand—hand—hand,” it rasped in its tinny voice while crawling towards Serenity. 

A hand fell upon her. Dad crouched low and shuttered the lantern so that the cone of ember light only struck them. Serenity couldn’t see the snatcher now, but she heard shrill metal and the slither of jackal web.  

Dad shone a flashlight where the snatcher had been, revealing a broken body, in one place a limb, in another a flailing maw of petals, hopelessly entangled in jackal web. 

“Take my hand—hand—hand,” it implored as the webbing pulled tight and hoisted it from the ground. The snatcher’s silver, hooked skin swayed like chattering mouths as it said, “and we will each of us be complete—complete—complete.” 

They fled before it finished, guided by fully un-shuttered lanternlight. They passed open doors, gaping black rectangles with hinges wrenched outwards. A snatcher could’ve waited in any of them. The light sputtered as they entered a concrete stairwell free of jackal hairs. Dad shut the door tight and waited. Satisfied nothing followed them, he sat on a step and studied their dying lantern. 

“Is it cracked?” Serenity stammered. 

“It would be eating storm air—burn brigh’ as a comet. No, it’s dimming… the oxygen canister is punctured.” 

She closed her eyes as thunder boomed again. Her knee throbbed, some injury suffered during the scramble, but the shame of having left Dad behind dwarfed the pain. As the roar ebbed, floorboards moaned around them. When she opened her eyes, she saw a knife in her dad’s hands. 

He held his respirator hose firmly to a stair step and drove the tip of his blade into the rubber. He took the lantern and disconnected the small hose that connected the ember crystal to its tiny oxygen canister, quickly sliding the opening he’d made in his own hose over the lantern's intake. He took a deep breath. 

The light brightened and dimmed with his every breath, a second set of lungs, encased in glass, devouring his oxygen so they could survive. Air whistled from the lantern. 

“It’s leaking!” 

How much air did it now take for Dad to breathe? Twice as much as before? More? 

He sat her down and said, “The anchor is close. It’ll last, Sleepy, it’ll last.” 

Serenity grew lightheaded but felt calmer. She took a deep breath. 

“The anchor…” she began, “they’re like the shelters, right?” 

“They’re a bit like... lifeboats. This city once had many.” 

“So… you’ve been here before?” 

“Aye. The anchor waits a short nip after the tunnel. It’s a big, metal cone—resembles those lunar landers we saw in those books of yours. Remember? People used them to visit the moon, ha! Well, back when there was just one hanging in the sky anyway…” As if she’d reminded him, Dad grabbed his small pack and produced the earlier folded paper, a map. Serenity saw city streets highlighted with red ink. 

“We started near here,” he said, pointing, “and the anchor is in this very building.” 

Serenity noticed another mark on the map close to where they’d started. “There’s one on the other side?” 

Dad froze, and the lanternlight dimmed. He’d held his breath, Serenity realized. Finally, he shook his head. “Tha’ one is… unreliable.” He handed her the map, pointing out a route. “If something should happen, you’ll need to lead your sister. The anchor will ship you out of shattered-space-” 

Serenity folded the map quickly, not liking that thought at all, and instead concentrated on how close the next anchor was. But something still nagged at her. “I didn’t know these ruins were here. I thought it was all desert-” 

“It was.” 

She’d heard stories about what followed a storm. Burning skies, the jackals… did Dad mean to say the storm brought an entire city? He even had a map for it. Her mind grappled with the impossibility, then wandered back to Mom’s letter. If it had stayed forgotten, they wouldn’t be here. But words seldom kept to graves, and the ember storms were especially eager to dredge the dead.  

Hours ago, she’d awoken to Zephyr whispering beneath her sheets. Zephyr had stolen the letter back from Dad’s lockbox, she’d even opened the window so she could read by the storm light that smoldered across the entire horizon. She whispered the words of the letter or the words of Dad’s song like a prayer. 

Driven by the letter’s repeated taunting, exacerbated by her interrupted sleep, Serenity’s reaction was immediate and angry. She resolved to destroy the letter for good. Serenity grabbed Zephyr’s arm, eliciting a yelp as she snatched the letter. Zephyr darted away, nursing her wrist at the back of the room.  

Guilt welled up alongside Serenity’s anger, but the latter won out when she noticed that Zephyr glittered. Two unfamiliar earrings, one brass and one silver, adorned Zephyr’s ears. 

“That’s mine!” Serenity hissed, startling Zephyr to slide out the window like a panicked finch. They kept a ladder at the window in case of fire. Serenity resisted the urge to chase, even as she heard Zephyr scramble down. She quietly approached to find Zephyr had already reached the bottom and pulled the ladder away from the house to evade pursuit. Serenity knew yelling after her sister would alert Dad to not only the conflict but the letter’s initial theft. Besides, Zephyr would have no choice but to return before the stormfall. 

She waited for an hour. Then two. Finally, on the third, when the storm light had become bright as dawn, she woke Dad. He prepared the respirators and their ember lantern. Serenity had led him to each of Zephyr’s hiding places, and each turned up empty. 

She was in tears when they came upon Zephyr’s furthest spot. She wasn’t there. Dad took them into the desert, even as the air thickened with hot dust. They’d traveled perhaps thirty minutes from the village before a gale of ash swallowed them. Dad pushed through the gray curtain as it battered against their masks. And then, somehow, the ash lifted to reveal the city.  

Now they were trapped in a stairwell at the center of a thought-eater’s web.  

Dad led their ascent. They climbed stairs until her mask fogged, until she tasted metal as her respirator strained to keep up with their labored pace. Finally, they left the stairwell and entered a massive space. Her mask cleared. Storm light flickered through a wall of windows, some broken, some blocked—a thousand blinking eyes staring down at them. Serenity froze in terror. 

The eyes illuminated ten-thousand strands of jackal web that coalesced into a single sphere, like a massive egg sac hovering at the room’s center. Beneath it sat a large metal cone, the anchor, dormant and unopened. Someone stood before it—her sister, Zephyr. 

“There you are, Breezy,” Dad said casually.  

Zephyr rotated towards them, her face obscured. Webbing ran through her neck and chin and what Serenity could see of her jaw, wriggling beneath the skin and under her mask. Serenity was told Zephyr’d been bitten once before, shortly after Mom had passed. It’d marked her permanently, leaving her memory, and parts of her body, porous. Now seeing the fibers, as good as fangs, permeating her body, Serenity knew there was no possibility she’d survive a second time. Dad didn’t pay this any mind at all as he added, “Still have your ma’s dagger, I see. Good lass.” 

Zephyr held her toy wooden dagger at her side. Even the jackal web invading her body couldn’t separate this cherished keepsake from her, her link to Mom. 

“It doesn’t feel like her anymore… part is missing, Da.” 

“I ken, Zephyr. I’m keeping it safe with me.” 

“I went looking for it. There was a note…” 

Serenity couldn’t make sense of their exchange. Zephyr sounded raspy. Serenity’s throat tickled at the thought of the jackal hair filling her mouth. 

“Hush now, Breezy, put it all from your head… Hope is the thing with feathers—” 

These words Dad sung caused the jackal webs to snap taut as tuned guitar strings. Zephyr’s body lifted from the ground as her limbs stretched from the distressed webbing, a marionette ready to perform. 

“No! There’s something here to remember,” Zephyr growled. Something else lived in her voice, old and decaying. Just beyond Zephyr, nestled in the belly of the jackal web sack, Serenity saw movement. Their lanternlight, a frail bubble of safety, just barely reached into the tangle of fibers. Serenity froze as a pair of coals smoldered within the nightmare of hungry hairs. She recognized something ancient and primal, stalking the edge of campfires since campfires first illuminated bodies. It was death, incessantly waiting for the campfire to die—a thought-eater eager to fatten and butcher their memories like livestock. 

“And you need to forget it. Some things are too heavy to lift, daughter o’ mine,” Dad said. 

“Daughter? Stimulating story… not had since… sky was punctured.” The voice issuing from Zephyr was utterly alien to Serenity now, shrill and vibrating like a bow raking a violin.  

“I’ll have her back and leave you to your city.” 

“City? Prison. Pantries? Dust dry.” Zephyr pointed a crooked arm at them and said, “Leave? Oh, morsel,” the webs sprang and tensed excitedly around them at the word, causing Zephyr to spasm and Serenity to recoil. 

Dad thrust the lantern into Serenity’s hands. Before Serenity could react, the lantern burst like a fireball, blinding her. Dad’s voice broke into a lion’s cry. He pulled forward, straight into the predatory threats until he was before Zephyr and the cocooned thought-eater.  

“You,” the jackal growled, “plucking my strings, again.” 

Through rapidly blinking eyes, Serenity saw Dad’s air tank at her feet. The implication of this hit her immediately. He’d disconnected the hose from his mask and fed it directly into the lantern which grew incandescent while feasting on his air.  

The room shook with thunder. Jackal threads snapped with the violence of firecrackers. A pattering like rain drowned Dad’s yells and the grating warbles of the jackal. Serenity realized the windows high above had shattered, raining glass shards upon her.  

Serenity tried to ignore the shower of glass. She knew Dad couldn’t breathe. She fumbled for the air tank, feeling for the small dial. If she could control nothing else, she wanted to keep the air from emptying entirely. She found it, twisted too far, and the lantern stuttered.  

In her panic she grasped for the mental image of the photo of her mother in the empty field, blank as a page. You’ll lay in lampligh’ her addled mind repeated.  

“Serenity,” a voice of gravel called from across the room, surprisingly clear in her ears. “My eyes are shot… are you still there?” 

The violent heaving of the room settled into the storm’s dull rumblings.  

Serenity’s dying lantern meekly illuminated the body that had called out to her. Dad’s mask hung around the body’s neck. His exposed face looked charred, the eye sockets black and crinkled. His irises burned, just like the jackal. He held Zephyr, motionless, in his arms. Burning threads trailed from the high ceiling, mirroring the shower of cinders outside.  

“It’ll be okay, Sleepy. You lay in lampligh’.” 

A klaxon sounded in her head. Dad’s accent, his tendency to drop hard “t” sounds, had made the words “lamp light” into “lamp lie.” The grammar was also his. This was the phrase that had been repeating in Serenity’s head when she’d tried to recall her canary thought. 

She tried to recall it now. Her head ached.  

“Stop,” the burned man growled. “Stop speaking of your mother! We need to forget her… for now… trust me to pull us out of this.” 

He outstretched his hand. They’d been in the lanternlight the entire time. Dad had been sure of that. A bubble where Dad and Serenity existed. “Lamp lie.” The words, so strange in her own head, had come from him. Maybe it happened in this storm, or maybe some years passed, but all thought-eaters started out as people. All of them had fallen just as Dad had. 

Adlin had warned her, “Don’t trust Dad.” She knew following him meant death. It was all she had known. 

Serenity also knew thought-eaters couldn’t see anything in ember light.  

She twisted the knob on the tank. The lamp awoke with a sputter as the sky bellowed.  

# 

He’d torn through my canary thought, chipping something away from my memories. I had no way of knowing what. When he’d stopped singing, his silence flooded my ears. I realized that fearful silence had ever hung around him like water, waiting for the songs and jokes to pause to flood the gaps and choke him. If I stayed it would drown me too. 

Flame blasted the sky. The air rattled, threatening to break. I ran back into the twisting corridors, down so many flights of stairs I felt as if I were falling, falling away from what had been Dad. I would never follow him again.