Page 96 of Godslayer
They steal your soul and leave you adrift on the spark sea. Floating on the movements of time for all eternity.
A million ideas flood into me—You could jump in to the sea, become part of it! You could float up into the sky and turn into a star!
You could?—
You could?—
You could?—
But she can’t. She is trapped.
Before I came, she had nothing.
Now, she has but a name.
“It’s enough,” I tell Majesta. I don’t know if I believe that, but I say with confidence. “I won’t forget you. I remember you, Majesta. And…” I look over her shoulder to the thousands of women behind her. Then at all the other ships. How many?
I don’t know.
But I make her a promise. “I will remember you all,” I tell her. Then, for some reason, I bow a little. And when I look up, she is stepping back and another woman is stepping forward. Reaching for my cherry of spark in my head. Begging me to look into her little light and remember her life too. She is from Gamma City Factory and the memories play out in much the same way. Fear. Slavery. Abuse.
Hers is a life of absence. Of emptiness. Of futile existence.
Again, I name her—lighting up another spark symbol on my black, empty outline of a body—and then I apologize. I don’t know why. None of this is my fault. I just feel compelled to try and make up for their sadness. Because I wasn’t sad in my factory life.
I really wasn’t sad at all.
If you gather up all my moments of satisfaction and happiness and weigh them against the ones filled with fear, my misery amounts to something near zero.
And this makes me feel… guilty.
And so, I am compelled to wait in place as one by one, they come forward. And one by one, I see them. I acknowledge them. I remember them. I name them and let that name becomepart of me when they claim a symbol on my body. None of the memories are happy. Out of millions of lives, not one was good.
They were nothing but the spark they produced.
They were power, but not the kind onewields, just the kind of power others take.
And after each remembrance, I tell them, in my most humble and sincere up-city Spark Maiden manners, that I am sorry. Even though I don’t feel responsible, I say it anyway. If there was something else I could do to mark their lives and tell them it mattered, I would.
But this is all I have. A name and a pitiful apology.
Years pass as all this remembering, and marking, and naming, and apologizing takes place. Decades. Centuries. Eternities. But I stay. I do not even try to back away early. I process every single cherry of light and turn it into a memory. And with each memory, I give them names.
I call them every name I know. Changing letters here and there to make them unique when I run out of ideas. Brittney, instead of Britley. Harriet, instead of Haryet. Cassidy instead of Casey. Pippa instead of Piper.
And that’s enough, I think. Because after they are seen, after they are all remembered, I float back up in the air, hovering above my armada of Spark Maidens as the Godships retreat back into the nothingness. Becoming nothing but a blur of glowing blue outlines against a sea of emptiness.
Suddenly, a movement to the right catches my eye. I turn, and look, and smile. “Hayret! You’re here! I was wondering…”
But she’s not here. Not really. Not like I am. She’s just another one ofthem. But instead of being anchored to a Godship, she’s floating in the air like me.
At least, that’s what she appears to be at first. She has the cherry light in her head like all the rest, but she’s got another light too. It glows pink in her chest, where her heart would be.
“What’s that?” I ask. Pointing to it. I float forward in sparkmist, hovering above the sea. But the outline of Haryet shimmers, breaking apart. Becoming pieces.
“Wait!” I put up a hand and float backwards. As I move away, she pulls herself together.
“Haryet, what is happening? Why can’t I come near you? Why do you wither?”
