Page 72 of Awry
“The … marble mausoleum?”
I nod.Then I step back out into the rain.
“Zaya?”Rath snarls again.
I glance at him over my shoulder.“Why do you think I owe you answers, Rath?”
It’s a genuine question, without any heat, but it literally stops him in his tracks.His fists clench, and his nostrils flare as I wait for his answer.
“You’re in Outcast territory,” he finally says.
“I am my own territory,” I say, and now I’m the one trying to be gentle.“Wherever I am, but most definitely here, on this land, I am my own … domain.”If he knew my aunt as he claims, then he already knows that.I wait for him to try again, to offer up another reason.
He doesn’t.
As I walk back to the path, nothing impedes me, nothing feels off this time.I take the right fork, leading across the width of the property.Well, the width of the habituated, cultivated section of the property.
“I’ll meet Harls at the gate,” Cayley says behind me.“Might take her a bit to get here … she sold the Corvette.”
“Sold?To you?”Grinder asks, confused.
“Zaya,” Cayley says with a sigh, sad and frustrated.
I’m too far away to hear the rest of the conversation, and too numb to worry about any of it.For now.Rath has overcome his sudden reticence and is on my heels again, his strides long enough that he catches up without effort.
I don’t look back.Not at him, or in general.
I never do.
I am only the Now.
Even if deep down, buried under a lifetime of conditioning and understanding, I ache to be more than simply the Now and to have some say in what more I could be.A future that could be woven in the moment, instead of me being born into a tapestry already constructed for me.
But there are no subtle shifts in my destiny, no choices to be made, forks in the path, or threads to be followed.Not anymore.
The salty windand rain increases as full dark blankets the estate.The family plot, the mausoleum that Grinder mentioned, can’t be seen from the house or the beach.Behind its wrought-iron fence, that area spreads beyond the grayed-cedar-sided barn, beyond the overgrown orchard, set on a slight rise edged by the forest.
We don’t bury our dead in the family plot.We inter ashes.Though I was raised to understand that our physical bodies are simply vessels for the power, the essence, the abilities that flow through our immediate family, generation upon generation of Gages have been cremated — often wherever they’d died, all over the world — then interred in this plot.When I was younger, I witnessed my mother, two uncles, and a cousin I’d never met being set within the marble niches of the mausoleum.All but my mother arrived by courier, already collected within urns.
During my core training, my aunt insisted that no power, no energy, remained in a vessel beyond death.Now that I knew more about the other powers that exist in our universe, and specifically the power wielded by a mage with an affinity for the essences of death and the dead, I suspect that was a half-truth.
I suspect that we Gages are cremated for a fundamental reason.We are already terrifying to most when we walk the earth under our own power.But piloted by a death mage or dire mage with no moral compass, no allegiance to maintaining the delicate balance of the universe?We Gages — dead or alive — could be wanton devastation incarnate.
The remains, cremated or otherwise, of the Conduits who came before my aunt are not interred within the family plot, however.Because when the universe is done with a Conduit, nothing remains.Or so I’ve been told.
Still, that supposed fact isn’t currently stopping me from looking for my aunt.
I step through the already-open iron gate, vaguely noting Rath’s hesitancy to enter the fenced grounds behind me as I wander over to the main white marble mausoleum.Stark against the rain-clouded night sky, the structure is arched and open on two sides, just tall enough to walk within.For me, at least.Rath would practically need to bend in half and walk sideways.
Every space of the mortuary walls is filled with small niches, some open, some sealed.As I pass, I run my fingertips over the names carved in the exterior niches at shoulder height.Various pieces of white marble statuary are also collected within the plot, set against the wrought-iron fence, and mostly ornamental in nature.Angel and demon motifs dominate.
I don’t have to look at the names etched in the marble to read them.And at the far end of the mausoleum, the farthest exterior corner, I linger.As I always linger.My fingers, feeling just as cold as the stone, press to my mother’s name.
From this viewpoint, I can see legs sprawled across the ground just around the side of the mausoleum, clad in work pants.
Mack.
I look up at the sky instead of stepping forward to investigate.Just for a moment.The rain is so heavy that it runs down my face.I’m so cold that I’m beyond shivering.
