Those Beyond the Wall (The Space Between Worlds #2)

by Micaiah Johnson

There will be those that say in the end, Nik Nik never loved his brother, just used him up then paid him back for abandoning him all those years ago. They’ll be wrong. Because there was nothing but love on Nik’s face as he pulled the trigger, nothing but hurt on it after. Loving someone enough to put them down, even when you’re the one who will miss them most, is a gift. I hope one day I am loved like that. I hope Cheeks knows he was.

My brother will mourn for Adam, but I’d have shot him myself to keep Cara here. It’s not just knowing her. It’s her special rareness. It’s all of the impossible things she’s seen. Watching her go won’t even feel like witnessing a human dying. It will be like saying goodbye to another creature entirely, something that was the last of its kind.

Ruth was right. I told you: Oldheads always are eventually. Snakes don’t crawl back into their old skins. They eat them for extra nutrients. Cheeks isn’t the only old skin I’ve outgrown. Wiley was first. Now I’ve destroyed it to fuel my own growth. Just like snakes do.

“How do you do it?” I asked Dell. “How do you love someone who feels so out of reach?” “Loving someone who feels larger than life, who feels too close to power you can’t comprehend? It’s easy, once you learn to be grateful for every second, and not assume you’ll be granted a future.” Dell’s eyes were unfocused, and it took me a second to realize she wasn’t talking to me. She was looking straight at Cross.

Burial restrictions aren’t the only rules being broken tonight, and Cross is wearing a tunic he isn’t even supposed to own and reading from a book he’s not supposed to touch. But no one could condemn him for giving Nik Nik the gift of seeing someone who understands grace speaking about his brother like he is a part of something bigger.

“Adranik Nazarian, I commend you into the earth, whom you loved, and whom you tried so hard to know. I return you to the denser reality of the creator of all. Don’t be scared. Don’t regret. Good or bad, the mark you made will remain. In your dark and your light, we will recall the shape of you always. Whatever time you had, it was enough. Whatever you accomplished, it was enough. We will remember your good deeds for the rest of our lives. We will forget your wrongdoings forever. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for spending your time in the dirt with us.”

I may have forgotten what I have seen, but there are things I won’t allow myself not to know. Like how I know that even though I will never be a person for whom there is only one other, the holy runner I’ve chosen will be the one who is with me through it all. That on the day I fear the most—the day my brother takes his place in the bogs, the day I stop being a sister forever—Cross will be holding my hand the way Exlee held Nik’s when we sent Adam away.

To the flawed but brave, ephemeral but essential, passionate but irrational freedom fighters of The People’s Plaza at Ida B. Wells Plaza June 12, 2020–August 13, 2020 And to anyone who has stood against injustice in the face of an opponent larger and more powerful than themselves, whether it be in Nashville, Cop City, Iran, or your stepfather’s living room.