Chapter 21 Memories
Stone scraped her knuckles, gouged her spine. Daisy crawled on elbows and knees, biting her tongue to keep from screaming. The spiral on her wrist throbbed with each heartbeat, the pain sharpening as she pushed deeper. Dirt filled her mouth and nose. The air was damp, laced with a bitterness that made her eyes run, and her lungs flutter.
She lost track of time. There was no up or down, only forward, following the faintest wisp of light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes she heard things behind her, a shuffle, a wet gasp, once the echo of her own breath reflected as if the tunnel was laughing. She crawled faster, driven by a fear older than memory.
Her fingers found a sudden emptiness, and she tumbled headfirst onto a ledge. The world opened, swallowing her with a rush of cold air. Daisy rolled, caught herself, and blinked grit from her eyes.
She stood in a chamber carved by giants. The walls soared up and up, lost in a ceiling that shimmered with the residue of old magic. At the far end, embedded in the living rock, was a door: iron, blackened, massive, easily three times her height. Spirals, hundreds of them, covered the surface, each line etched so deep she could fit a finger in the groove.
She staggered toward the door. Every step made her birthmark burn hotter, until it felt like the spiral was tunneling into the bone. She didn’t stop. She pressed her palm to the cold metal.
The pain was instant. The door sucked the warmth from her hand, then ramped it up, freezing, burning, boiling, all at once. Her skin sizzled against the iron, and the smell of it hit her in the face: char, copper, something sweetly rotted. Daisy tried to pull back, but the door clamped down, an invisible vise crushing her fingers in place.
Blood welled from her palm. But it didn’t fall. Instead, it crept outward in tiny red rivers, following the pattern of the nearest spiral. Where her blood touched, the carving glowed—first a dull red, then brightening, until it pulsed like a wound under the skin.
The door drank her dry. Daisy felt herself going light, legs trembling, head full of white noise. She braced her body with her other hand, but even that went numb as the spiral’s hunger spread up her arm.
Then came the visions.
She was not Daisy, not anymore. She was above the world, soaring, wings throwing fire over endless fields and black rivers. The wind was acid; the sun, a promise of violence. She reveled in her own might, in the way the world shrank from her shadow. She could feel her muscles, her claws, the infinite layering of scales, each a shield against time and hope and death.
She dove, crashed into the mountainside, and let loose a roar that cracked the sky. Men fled below, tiny and frantic. She saw their faces, and some wore the spiral on their wrists, their necks, their foreheads. They screamed at her, hurled words that burned like salt, but she laughed and scorched their world clean.
Then, betrayal.
A city on a hill, white with fear, banners fluttering. She landed in its heart, expecting the same as before: fire, submission, slaughter. But the spiral-bearers were waiting, not in terror, but in silence. They cut their own arms, let the blood run. They drew the spiral again and again, until the whole city was red with it.
They waited for her to come close.
When she did, they closed the circle. Blood became light, light became pain. The sky collapsed, and she crashed to earth, wings crumpling, jaws snapping in agony. The spiral-bearers sang, their voices a knife that cut through her mind, her soul, her name. She tried to kill them, but every one she crushed birthed two more, all bleeding, all singing, all bearing the spiral.
They chained her in darkness, bled her until nothing was left but memory.
Daisy screamed. The visions didn’t stop.
She was chained, bound, a thing for others to feed on. Time lost all meaning. Sometimes, the spiral-bearers were kind, their hands soft as they harvested her scales or drew her blood in silver needles. Sometimes, they were cruel, cursing her, slashing her flesh for fun. But always the spiral, always the song, always the blood.
She wanted to die, but she couldn’t.
Centuries passed. The city fell. The spiral-bearers starved, but new ones always came, each one more desperate than the last. Her name faded, replaced by theirs. She remembered less and less, until even her own voice was gone.
A flash. A girl, running, hunted, marked by the spiral. Daisy. The city was different, smaller, but the spiral was the same. Daisy pressed her hand to the door, waking everything up.
The visions let go all at once.
Daisy collapsed to her knees. She was herself again, but the world spun, the chamber shimmering with afterimages. The iron door glowed along every spiral. Her birthmark was burned black, still sizzling, but she couldn’t feel her hand at all.
The pain was good. It reminded her she was alive.
She heard voices, distant, echoing through the stone. The handlers were coming.
The door moaned, a deep, wet sound that rattled the bones in her chest. The iron buckled, spirals twisting, then split open, swinging inward on hinges that shrieked like lost souls.
Beyond, only darkness.
Daisy grinned. She staggered up, cradled her ruined hand, and stepped into the void.
The door slammed shut behind her, cutting off the shouts of the menagerie and the world she’d left behind.
She was falling, weightless, in a tunnel lined with spirals, each one glowing as she passed. The air grew colder, the pressure greater. She saw other doors, other spirals, each a grave or a promise. Somewhere far below, a light flickered. It grew as she fell, until it was all she could see.
She hit the ground hard, but didn’t break. She rolled to her knees, coughing blood and smoke, and stared ahead.
The spiral on her wrist was gone.
But its pattern was carved on her bones.
She laughed, low and ugly, and crawled toward the light.