Free Chasing the Dragon by Justina Robson Page B

boat and water, and there were boats last time."
    "Dare I ask what you're talking about?"
    "I went to try and save my parents, with Tath," she explained.
"But I couldn't. They crossed the water into Thanatopia proper...."
    "No," he corrected. "Thanatopia is the place you were in; you cross
out of it."
    "Are you sure?"
    "Yes," he said. "Faeries can go to Thanatopia but they can't cross.
We call it Uldis, the thing that lies under Under. We're much changed
there, so we never go. Not ..." He glanced at her for the first time.
"What happened to your clothes?"

    But Lila was not going to be deterred. "So what happened to
Poppy and Vid? Jack killed them."
    Malachi winced and shuddered. He made a warding sign and Lila
felt the car engine catch for a second. "Gone," he said.
    "Dead."
    "Gone," he repeated with slow solidity. "Not dead. Gone for all
time gone. It wasn't Jack that killed them, remember." He slammed
on the brakes suddenly, barely managing to stop at the light, and
swore under his breath.
    The last line was a warning to her not to mention what he was
speaking of. She knew what he meant. The Hoodoo. That had killed
them because they had violated the terms of Zal's trial and tried to save
him against the too-powerful force of the Giantkiller. She resolved to
know and understand more about this, but it wasn't the moment.
Malachi was gentle, but she took him seriously enough to know when
to stop. His tension signalled fear and he was rarely afraid. She sank
into the seat and felt one of its springs pop underneath her.
    Lila asked for a detour to get takeout. Mal paid for it and they
stopped to eat it streetside in the busiest part of downtown, watching
people go by.
    "Were you dead?" he asked finally after she'd gone through half a
box of special noodles and he'd picked over and not eaten monks' vegetables.
    "I don't think so," she said, taking hold of his box of dinner and
starting on that too. Sauce dripped on the dress but she was glad to
spite the thing.
    Mal delicately opened a box of Faerie Flumsie and began to spoon
it into his mouth. The stuff was sickly. She didn't think she'd ever seen
him eat it before. "Bad day?"
    He snorted at her. She crammed bean sprouts into her mouth; she
just couldn't seem to get enough in fast enough. Who knew that a
brush with death could make her so hungry? She wasn't even sure that eating was a habit more than a necessity. The food was so good. Her
piglike manners made him squirm and she grinned to herself.

    Malachi almost choked on the Flumsie and at last admitted defeat,
dropped the spoon into the gooey sticky mess, and dumped the box on
the backseat. "I thought you were dead," he said, looking through the
windscreen at the city street. "I had this feeling, and I'm not wrong
about these things. Just for an instant. It wavered. I put it down to my
imagination. And then the report came through about the accident
and I ..." He beat the steering wheel softly with the thick paw palm
of one hand and took a breath. "I felt like there was suddenly no purpose for me anymore, like it was time for my name to be wiped off the
roll of interesting things, unstitched from the pattern and put to the
edges where the colour's all flat and finished. The strings pulled. I
almost didn't come out to see. I figured if it had happened you'd have
meant to do it and you'd have done it right."
    Lila stopped eating. Noodles hung out of the side of her mouth.
Her throat felt too big, stuffed up. She couldn't swallow. His tone was
so hurt.
    "Did you do it on purpose?" he asked, turning and staring at her
with an intensity that was way out of character for him. Through the
black lenses of his shades the orange fire of his eyes blazed bright
enough to show like embers.
    A flare of shame at her secretive self-destructive ways made her face
heat up. With great difficulty she bit through and gulped the salty,
slimy mass in her mouth. She wanted to shake her head no, but she