Monster Planet(118)

Wait a minute. What riddle? She'd thought Nilla was speaking in metaphor. Yet there was something about the eididh, something in its very nature that seemed to make metaphor impossible. Things in that stripped-down place were simplified, unsophisticated. Complex thoughts couldn't even get started, much less develop.

'Wait,' Sarah said.

'There's not much else I can do in here but wait,' Nilla told her. 'And in another sense there's no such thing. What's on your mind?'

'The riddle,' Sarah said. 'When Mael Mag Och said I had failed I assumed that my role was to kill the Tsarevich, that I had failed at that.' The thought in her head squirmed: it was getting too complicated and she might lose it. She calmed herself and tried to simplify. She said it out loud like a postulate. 'He planned for me to kill the Tsarevich. I failed.'

Nilla squatted down at the shore of the lake and picked up a pelvis out of the piled bones. Perhaps she was accessing a memory of her own. 'No, no. That was Ayaan's job.'

'I'm just supposed to answer the riddle.' Sarah tried on the sentence for size. It fit like the second leg of a syllogism, almost audibly clicking into place. Now she just needed the conclusion.

'Yes. That was my idea. It was the only way I agreed to be a part of all this. I said we had to give the human race a chance. It's only fair, right? So he thought up a riddle. If one of you could guess the answer he would submit to you. He would call off the end of the world. This wasn't something he offered lightly, mind you. It took us years of arguing back and forth to figure out our deal. For him it means going against his god's commandment. But druids think of riddles as a class of magic spells. They can't resist them'he figured Teuagh would understand that.' Nilla's head inclined forward, bowing in sadness. 'It's too bad you didn't figure it out until now. You might have worked out the answer in time.'

'The next day,' Sarah said. She had it.

'I beg your pardon?' Nilla asked. She had no eyes, nor eyebrows or lashes to register surprise. But she dropped the pelvis she'd been holding as if it had turned red hot.

'The riddle. He asked me the riddle, just a little while ago. 'What's more important than the end of the world?'' Sarah wanted to slap herself on the forehead but she was afraid the bones of her hand would just fall off.

The answer was easier than the question. Ayaan had shown her as much, by way of example. By example of her entire life and also by recent events.

Her father had shown her the answer the day he left her behind. The day he turned her over to the Somalis and asked them to care for her.

In their own self-serving ways Gary and even Marisol had demonstrated the truth of the answer. Every survivor, everyone who had lived through the Epidemic had shown her the answer. The whole living world was the answer. It had been for twelve years.

The next day. The only thing more important than apocalypse was what you did afterward. What you chose to do when the world stopped making any kind of sense.

'The next day,' Sarah repeated. 'That's the answer. The one thing more important than the end of the world is the next day.'

The eididh itself bent and curved around the correct answer. Sarah was pulled sideways through space and time and plunked down on the flatbed, right where she'd been before. Ayaan was there, and all the ghouls, and the transfixed Mael Mag Och. Except none of them were moving. Sarah looked down and saw that her flesh was back, though she wasn't breathing.

'I've stopped time for a few seconds, at least time as you perceive it,' Nilla said. She stood beside Sarah, perfectly clean and enfleshed in her white clothes. Where she sat Sarah was at eye-level with Nilla's belly button, which was surrounded by a black sunburst tattoo. She looked up and saw Nilla looking down at her. 'We have no time left to waste. You'll need the sword, the noose and the armband. The relics, right? The Tsarevich knew that Mael was up to something and he figured out the right spell to truly trap him in that jar. He sent his best lich to collect them'Amanita, I'm sure you remember her. She was after the three items he needed to really bind Mael. Then you beat her to them. That was a really good thing, Sarah. It's going to save us now. So show me the relics and let's get started.'

'I, um,' Sarah said, actively pulling breath into her lungs and then pushing it out again, 'I had the relics, yes. I still have the armband and the noose''

Nilla interrupted her. 'What about the sword? The sword is the most important part. It's the only relic he bonded with in this epoch. At the height of the spell you have to drive the sword right through his brain. Yeah? Because that's what binds him. I mean, it's kind of obvious you need the sword. Please, Sarah, tell me you have the sword.'