1 My braying heart continues in spite of itself: I am. I am. I am. I do not know why I am here, but it is clearly not to Die. I see them, the Dying people, spiritually aged, faces bleached of all color by worlds of weekdays; I see them stumbling through the cathedral forest beneath the Dome. My God, I think they are like birds. Piloted by instinct. I'll spend hours birdwatching there, watching them Die-their bodies evaporate like smoke and the last look on their faces is peace, the first true peace they have known in dozens or hundreds or thousands of lives.
Peace comes like a broken clock. I hate them for that, the idiot birds who get to Die. If it were within my power to deny the Dying their Deaths, I would. Why should they find peace while I find none? -Sylvia Plath, Empty Skies & Dying Arts Cooper opened his eyes to see a spirit shaped like a woman, who cradled his head in her hands, her hair a halo of pink light that fell over his face. Angel eyes the color of wet straw looked down on him, and she smelled of parchment and old leather. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that her freckled skin was tan, nearly brown, and for a long moment Cooper waited for her to speak. This is heaven, she would say. You will find peace here, and oblivion.
We will heal your hurts, friend. Welcome home, she would say. You have been away too long. Cooper would smile, and submit, and she would guide him somewhere radiant. He did not expect the slap to his cheek. Nor the second that followed, stinging. He did not expect the angel to drop his head onto the hard ground and declaim, "I can do nothing with this turd." "My friend was not wrong, Sesstri," a man said, cursing.
"That is what makes him my friend and not my dinner." The woman pulled away and light came pouring over Cooper's eyes, almost as blinding as before. Struggling, he could see that it wasn't the light of heaven needling through his pupils-the sky above was jaundiced and cloud-dappled, and he lay in the rain on an odd little hillock that bristled with yellow grass. Above him, the two strangers just stood there, glaring down at his body. And suddenly his body was all Cooper could feel: lit up with pain, scalded. How had he thought himself dead, let alone at peace? His bones ached and his bowels shuddered, and an abrupt crack of lightning overhead seemed to pierce his skull and live there, screeching agony between his temples. He tried to sit up but couldn't. He couldn't even roll onto his side, and when Cooper opened his mouth no words came out-he jawed like a fish in air, and flopped as helplessly.
Flocks of birds pinwheeled across the sky. Bells rang and rang. What happened? Cooper scrambled inside his head to reassemble some kind of continuity of experience. The last thing he could recall was drifting through a borderless sleep into a half-dream of lightless depths. He recalled sensing bodies in motion, masses larger than planets drifting through the murk below his dream-self. He could not see them, but somehow-he knew them. And maybe then he had passed beyond shadows. Maybe then he'd seen a city.
… "Bells for the abiding dead, what a waste of my time!" The man standing above Cooper cursed again and raised his boot. Cooper had time to blink once before the crunch of boot-heel slammed him back into darkness. When he next opened his eyes, Cooper could tell by the quality of the light that he'd been moved indoors. He heard voices, the same man and woman from earlier, still arguing. He'd been dropped onto something hard but covered in padding, and when the wood creaked beneath his weight and a pillow found his cheek, he realized it was a sofa. Something about creaking wood and narrow cushions felt instantly recognizab≤ for half a second, Cooper worried that he'd broken the furniture, an old, familiar thought. He closed his eyes before anyone could see he'd come around, playing detective with his senses as rapidly as his addled mind could muster. He smelled kitchen smells-soap and old food-and something pleasant, like flowers or potpourri.
Peeking out from between his lashes, Cooper saw a blurry image of his saviors-captors?-the man and woman who'd taken him home. "I've finished examining him, Asher. You can come back in." The woman, who sounded annoyed, smoothed strawberry-blond hair so pale it fell past her shoulders like a bolt of pink silk. "I cannot help you with this. Anything your friend said you'd find on that hill is between you and the sheep guts, or whatever absurd claptrap he employs to disabuse you of your coin. I'm not going to rifle through every corpse that wakes up south of Displacement and Rind for you, anyway, so you'll have to do the dirty work yourself." "Fine, forfeit your fee, Sesstri," said Asher, and Cooper noticed that the tall man, broad-shouldered but gaunt, had skin and hair the pale gray of old bones or nearly pregnant clouds.
"I'd pay you for examining his body, but since I carried him back to your house, I think we're even." Cooper squeezed his eyes shut again and felt them approach, felt them hover over him. "He's as heavy as he looks," said the gray man. Sesstri made an unhappy noise. Cooper didn't need eyes to feel her scrutiny. He kept still when she jabbed his chest with her finger. When she spoke, Cooper could tell that Sesstri had turned away. "He is just a person.
He's just like everyone else." She hesitated. "A little green to wake up here, but nothing unheard of-I only died twice before I came here myself. Whoever he may have been, he is not the 'something special' you are looking for. He will heal no wounds, diagnose no conditions, and answer no questions." She left the room, seeming more interested in the singing teakettle than the men defiling her home. "Muck up the place all you like," she called out, "I haven't seen the landlady since the day she handed me the keys." Asher knelt close and brushed Cooper's face with his hand.
"You can open your eyes now, friend. We don't need her." He whispered, tobacco on his breath, and Cooper peeked through his eyelids. The face so close to his own was a silver mask that smiled: "Welcome to the City Unspoken, where the dead come to Die. In my city, everything old is made new again, and anything new is devoured like sweet eel candy." Cooper looked at Asher's ghostlike hair as he pulled away and turned to stir something at the sink beneath the window. Over his shoulder, the window showed a square of lemony sky and an unfamiliar, pale green sun. When Cooper sat up, head throbbing, Asher turned to him holding a tray piled with buttered toast and two steaming mugs.
His gray skin was smooth and his eyes flickered like strange candles, red and blue and green together. He was handsome and repulsive at the same time, like a great beauty embalmed. Something wriggled inside Cooper's head, an instinct trying to name itself. It didn't come. Nothing came, Cooper realized-no panic, no outrage, no bewilderment or dispossession at waking to find himself … well … wherever he'd found himself. Nothing came but fog in his mind and an empty-headed sense of confusion. Asher smirked when he saw Cooper awake, but said nothing, content to lean on his hip and observe the new arrival. The moment stretched.
Then it snapped. "What…" Cooper blurted, then faltered, unable to pick one question from the dozens that crowded his tongue. "Why is the sun green?" The last thing Cooper remembered was lying down fully clothed on his own bed after another long day of work and text messages. But these weren't his friends, this wasn't his apartment, and he certainly hadn't been sending texts to any ash-skinned thugs. All he knew for certain-this was no dream. It hurt too much, and the logic didn't follow itself moment-to-moment as in a dream. "Welcome to the waking," Asher said with a smile. "Drink this.
" His long-fingered hands were huge. "Sesstri's taking notes." He handed Cooper a mug steaming with the scent of jasmine and spice. "I left the room while she strip-searched you, though, if that spares your ego any." Cooper looked down at the mug shaking in his hands and fought the urge to throw it in the stranger's face. His gut, as always, told him to say "fuck you," and, as always, he said nothing. He grimaced, though the tea and buttered bread smelled like heaven. "Drink it," Asher commanded.
Jasmine and pepper filled his mouth, hot and real. And it did bring Cooper back, clearing some of the fog from his head. He began looking at his surroundings in earnest while rolling sips of tea across his dry tongue. They sat alone in a room, the wallpaper calligraphed with unfamiliar symbols. On a wooden table against one wall spun an odd-looking Victrola, its mouthpiece carved from a huge spiral horn, and a low table piled with books. In fact, every available surface seemed piled with books. Asher handed him a plate and this time Cooper accepted it eagerly.