Blood Sky

I take my place on the low plinth, adopt the star pose. Orin glides the soft tip of the brush over my skin, up and down, long strokes. Ankle to hip. Wrist to shoulder. I feel his breath on my neck, on my freshly shorn scalp. His hand is steady, muscle memory perfecting his movements, but I can feel tension in him. It’s in me too.

When the adhesive is in place he takes up the wicking, strips of white material, and layers them side by side on every part of my skin. Nothing can show, but it mustn’t overlap too much, or it won’t work. It must be perfect. The pressure of his fingers on me is a comfort, his hands are as familiar as my own.

‘Reach,’ he says, and I lift my arms higher, feel the already attached strips over my shoulders pucker. Neither of us breathe as he spreads each piece from the middle of my ribs to my elbows, covering my arm pits. A gap or overlap here could be fatal.

‘Twist.’ His voice is a low melody in the chamber. I obey, turning my arm so he can check his work. He layers my legs next, and then sits in the stool with the high handles. I lean forward and hold on to each one, and then hook my leg over his shoulder, exposing myself in ways I have done many times to him, in the practise chamber and elsewhere. But we know this time is different, and he takes a second to compose himself before spreading the wicking on my groin, one side then the other.

When he’s finished, I bend and lift and turn like I imagine dancers used to, but my only audience is Orin, and beyond him, the Before, two shadowy figures just beyond our circle of light. They’ve done this too, but now it’s us, we’re the Chosen. When he’s satisfied, it’s his turn to be painted. I dip my own brush, press it to his smooth skin. Up and down, long strokes. Ankle to hip. Wrist to shoulder. The Elders have been praying for us since last night, the song chants reverberate through the chamber, more feeling than sound, it guides me.

When his skin is covered, every beautiful plane and angle, I take up the wicking and begin to lay it. As I cover his glistening lower abdomen one of his muscle’s tics, and my hands fail. I leave a gap between one strip and the next. I have to peel it back and relay it, my heart pounding. I take a breath, and another. I can’t afford to sweat yet. I haven’t made a single mistake in six months, yet today I have to relay. I could vomit.

‘Lilah,’ he murmurs from above. ‘Just keep going, rakkaani. It was my fault, not yours.’

His alabaster skin disappears beneath the whiter wicking. He sits so I can reach his own shaved skull, which gleams. It reminds me of last night, of our final preparations, when we cut and then bladed to remove every strand from each other’s scalp. This is the only part we do not practise, because it would be wasteful of the blades to keep up. This is skin of his I have not seen. He has a birthmark just above the shell of his left ear and I want to kiss it, but instead I pass over it with the brush, promising myself later.

We both stand, fully wicked save for our feet, hands and faces. Every inch of epidermis bonded. The Before come forward, now they dress us as we will dress the next Chosen. Metal bands click around our wrists and elbows, ankles and knees, our necks, heavy but reassuring.

They each pick up a web, glittering in the dimness. Delicately spun, they layer them over us, and we shine, every limb its own intricate lace, checking our wicking as they go. Then the keepsafes, leggings and over shirts that fit snugly, but not tight. They attach with another click to the bands, they will not loosen until deactivated now. It’s our turn again, and this part I hate, so Orin always goes first. He pulls on his purifier, strapping it to his back, tightening it around his waist so it’s secure but he still has free movement, and then he kneels before me and looks up at me, trust and love. I reach over his shoulder for the mouthpiece, unravelling the fine tube that sits within it. He opens his mouth and I quickly run the tube down his throat and into his stomach, watching in fascination as it clings to the pink of his cheek. Once it’s in, you barely feel it. I tape it to his cheek.

But now it’s my turn. Even until recently, the tube was making me heave and gag, its slithering almost too much to cope with. But I hardly feel it, in the end.

The Before turn back to us, having looked away from the intimacy of the tubing, and pick up our gloves. Thick but supple, made from some skin of old, I don’t know what. They twist them into place above the bands at our wrists. Our feet we place into wicking socks, banded again at the top, click, and then into heavy boots, thick soled and hard. I hear the sucking hisses of the webs attaching to the purifiers. Then the hoods that form domes over our heads, with visors that reduce our sight to narrow, downward facing strips.

‘How many hours have you done in vision?’ asks Baltis, as if he doesn’t already know the answer, having seen me there himself every day. Maybe he has to ask.

‘Two hours, twice a day, six months.’ My answer does not speak enough of the deep headache that comes after the light therapy, the pain of dry eyes, the stars that move across your sight after. He grunts in response, then flicks his finger against the hood. I see Jonil do the same to Orin.

‘Testing.’ My voice is dry, but firm, I do not shame myself by trembling.

‘Receiving,’ replies Orin, his disembodied voice close to my ear, static twined.

‘Receiving.’

Now finally, the long walk.

The Before leave us at the entrance to the tunnel each lifting a pale palm in farewell, two stars in darkness. The incline is steep, but we are as strong as we will ever be, and it does not tax us. As we get higher, I realise the cool of the downside is fading. I have never felt this before, the sensation is alien, as if I were in a lung, some place of dampness and warmth. At the end of the tunnel is the raising platform, it looms before us. Our travois is there, which we will pull in turn. The containers, for the bitumen it is our duty to collect.

With a jerk, the winch begins, shrieks of grinding metal echo up the shaft as we begin our ascent to upside. Our voices begin the meditation almost perfectly in synchronisation, folding into each other’s, keeping us calm, our heart rates low. We are not children anymore. It feels like forever, the platform shaking beneath our feet, but then it stops. We tilt our heads back to see the other tunnel before us. I pick up the handles of the travois, Orin will be the one to haul back the precious bitumen. Already the heat is intense. It will be worse soon.

The light increases despite our down gaze vizors, brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter. I feel my lips parch inside my hood, blink over drying eyes. Our purifiers begin to whine as the webs pick up our sweat from the wicking, piping it back to the machine to be cleaned and funnelled down the tubes into our stomachs. The feeling of it filling is strange, but not discomforting. Not a drop can be wasted out here, for out here we now are. The stone floor of the tunnel has given way to cracked dirt.

We tilt back our heads to find the path, well worn.

‘Eyes on the path,’ I tell him.

‘Eyes on the path,’ he confirms.

There is nothing but dirt, miles of it, packed down, cracking and blowing, it patters against our keepsafes and dims the brightness as it gathers on our visors. I keep my eyes on the path. Orin is the guide here, he is the one to tilt and realise we are finally come to the pits, where we lay the pump.

When I twist a dial it begins to splutter and gulp, great spouts of blackness surge into the first container, filling it with oozing waves. I wonder if the sun burns upon us, or if the sky is dust. I cannot see and must not look. I could not, with the visor, even if I desired it. I should not think of this. We keep our eyes on our duty, and on the path.

When we are finished, we turn back, and then I fail. My eyes stray from the path, caught by something that shines. Something that shines from a twisted mess of parched bones. Something I know better than even Orin’s face. My mother’s heart shaped locket, our only upside memento, the only thing our forebears could bring save themselves into the downside. Lost with her when she didn’t return from her duty. Lost when she left the path, but now I see it. I see her. I see her bones, dirt bones. I see the locket.

I forget Orin. My feet leave the path, I do not think. I run to the bones, stress on the purifier, I do not think. I kneel, I do not think, not even as a sharp stone punctures my keepsafe, breaks my web, brings my blood to stain the dirt beneath me. Instead my gloved hands scrabble at the locket, still shining, so brightly. I remember the faces within, the ones that left an echo in my own. I want to see them again.

‘Lilah!’ Orin’s voice is a whisper above the whining pant of my own breath.

‘Lilah, come back to the path! What are you doing?’

‘Orin, Orin…’ I don’t know if he hears me. He knows not to leave the path, not to stress the purifier, he knows how long we have before they begin to fail. It will not be an easy death if we overstay on the upside.

‘Lilah!’

‘I can’t get it!’

‘Get what? Lilah, what are you doing? Get back!’

My gloves are too thick, it must be why the Retrievers did not bring it when they came here to strip her of her keepsafes and purifier, when she failed, when she left the path. When she took too long. When she never came back.

‘The locket, our locket. My gloves, I need to take them off, it’ll only be a minute!’ I don’t think, I unscrew one glove then the other, and I reach for the locket. Orin’s footsteps behind me.

‘Oh god, Lilah, no…’

It’s too late. As I fumble the catch, my hands begin to wither and twist, and then the pain hits me. Back arching, body twisting pain, flames in my blood. I scream, and I scream, and my purifier stops pumping as I collapse on my back, Orin above me.

‘Go, Orin, go. You have to leave me, go…’ my voice crackles in my drying throat, I try to say I’m sorry, that I love him, but my words are done. Our training overrides all else, and Orin leaves me, returning to the path and the travois and the precious cargo. Leaves me twisting in the dirt, in agony as I am leeched of water by the ravenous heat. I look up, I look for the sun, but there is no sun, there is nothing but a blood red sky, and pain.