He lost the stars, first. Then the sky around them, and after the sky the borders of the horizon. He lost the waves next, and beaches, and the vast and lucent sea. The mountain too faded. Wind stilled. The universe compressed to his block, his house, his apartment, all trees wind leaves and stone, all human life and structure, all bars and fiddle-players and dancers and drinkers, all lovers and friends and gamblers and back-alley muggers and red-faced priests fallen away until only he remained, and then he even lost himself. Pen met paper, and paper and pen fading left, at last, the line. Not even the line: the point of contact, a wet green moving dot in a space without time or dimension.

But this space was not empty. Emptiness collapsed, while this stretched, defined by relations between invisible enormous beings who swam like whales in the deep. Closer than these eminences, small by comparison, hovered snowflakes of light, snowflakes such as he had not seen since in childhood he first caught them on the fine hairs of a wool mitten. Snowflakes, very like, but made of bone. Skeletons hanging in the night, tied to one another by strings of dried skin and muscle. Flayed crystal corpses, bodies human and animal and every mix of both, skyscraper horns and suspension bridge wings, rib cages thick as magisterium trees. The skeletons twitched, mocking life.

A skull the size of a small moon turned to him, a massive hand extended, a mouth moved. No sound could carry in this absent space, but still he heard someone speak.

We have missed you.

He recognized the voice.

Then the door burst open behind him.

Chapter 42

42

When Izza was a block away from Margot’s house she felt Penitent footsteps vibrate through the paving stones. She swore and sprinted up the alley, dodging trash cans and broken glass until she reached Margot’s backyard wall and climbed it. Still the footsteps shivered in her legs and chest.

She pulled herself over the wall. Margot bent at his desk by the window, transfigured. Before, his focus made him seem to burn; now, his skin actually shone. Izza blinked, looked away, looked back, but it was true. He glowed green, as if his body were a wine bottle with fireflies trapped inside. Light flowed from his eyes and fingers. Flames licked the tip of his pen. He did not look up. Did not notice her, or the shaking of his apartment as the Penitent climbed the stairs.

Paint and quartz on the Penitent’s stone skin caught the streetlights; its eyes gleamed blue. The stairs shuddered under the statue’s feet, and Izza heard its prisoner groan: a new recruit, adjusting still to pain. Margot wrote on, oblivious. The statue reached the top of the stairs.