Inkling

6.6 Elsewhere

12:35 P.M.

The tunnel was dark and damp and smelled vaguely of cheese. That in itself was a bit unsettling, but as soon as Max's feet hit the ground he heard a soft, cheerful sort of music coming from down the tunnel. "Is that my imagination, or is there a curious song in the air?"

"What are you talking about?" Lincoln stumbled down next Max, grabbing his shoulder to steady himself. He didn't move his hand right away.

"Something wicked this way comes." Max whispered, and Lincoln looked at him in surprise. Max did not look at him but replied to the expression he was certain was being given. "There is not time to discuss Macbeth."

"But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!" Lincoln whispered breathlessly.

"Are you two done?" If Sophia noticed Lincoln's hand still resting on Max's shoulder, she said nothing.

"Probably not." Max whispered, just as something odd began to happen. Max had never met anyone who had had the unlucky circumstance to claim to have been struck by lightning, but he suddenly felt as though he could make such claims. There was a bright light out the corner of his eye and Max felt as though he had been struck in the back of the head. He felt an electrical shock all the way down to his toes. He could feel it winding down his legs, wrapping around his flesh. In and out of his body as it fell to the ground. First onto his knees and then sideways onto his shoulder.
There were voices, yelling voices, hands grabbing his shoulders. Touching his face and yelling his name. All Max noticed, though, was an odd silhouette emerging out of the darkness. A faery. Nothing wispy and lovely. It was something out of a Grimm tale, something from Christenson. Something terrible and sharp. It's features materializing only to be swept up in the surrounding grey-blue smoke before materializing again - differently.

Max tried to rub his eyes, they felt full of sand, but he had no hands. No body. His body was laying on the ground elsewhere.

When the faery spoke it was a terrible softness, like trying to listen to another's conversation in a crowded market. He was hearing everything at once and yet nothing at all. Countless things were said before Max could finally focus on the right things. The right words.

"What are you doing here?" There it was. The only thing meant for him. Maybe all the other things were conversations the faery was having, just somewhere else.

"I have questions. I need to speak to someone dead." Max found his own words nearly as difficult to articulate, like his head was underwater and he needed to speak to someone in another room.

"The dead do not speak to just anyone."
"Ira Rose. I need something he had, or I'll stay cursed and hunted forever."

"Tragic."

Max could not think of anything compelling, nothing to prove that this was actually tragic. The faeries had been persecuted for millennia. They were said to be ancient beings - gods - cursed into an existence with a fraction of the power and none of the reverence. There was nothing he could say or do that would instill pity in their hearts.

"Do you have a heart?" Max found himself saying. He caught a glimpse of something in the swirling faery's form. Something softer. "Even gods have hearts, right? Compassion, pity, spite. Anger and fear. Feel compassion for my anger. Pity for my fear. Because I am angry, someone has reached into my soul and left their mark upon it. A mark where there should be nothing, a mark I did not want and cannot remove. I fear what will happen if I do not deliver what I have been tasked to deliver."
Something seemingly like laughter, but which more resembled thunder, came from the faery.

"If I told you that this man, the one you say reached into you soul, was asking about speaking to the dead not long ago. What would you say to that?"

"I would ask you who you would favor: one who curses, or one who seeks to break curses?" Max half expected to be smited again. His mother's God would have smote him where he lay for speaking as though he knew His troubles. The faery, however, only looked at him. The eyes had stopped shifting from yellow to green to red to nothing. They had long slits, like a cat's.

"And if I told you Ira Rose could see the dead, when he was, in fact, living?" Max felt his skin crawl. Skin he did not feel any attachment to, but still, he knew what he would be feeling. Like a tonne of bricks had been dropped from his throat, straight through his belly.
"I would say that maybe, just maybe, he had reason for being as crazy as he was. But that it still would not explain the book, or its importance."

"Men would kill for a book which tells of the dead."

Max could feel himself drifting away from the faery, the silhouette was already receding.

"You do know that magic cannot be taught, right?" Max could hear, faintly, as the smoke was fading.

"Wait, what?"

"It's a myth, that magic can be taught to someone without the natural ability. Unless you know of someone who proves this to be wrong." The words were almost lost but Max concentrated harder than he ever had before.

"That ... changes ... a great many ... things." The words caught in the air, in the blackness. In the nothing.

Because if he did not exist. If inklings did not exist. Was he not nothing?