I’m on another planet. Castle-shaped rocks. Colors the likes of which nature doesn’t make. And a mountain that looks like a cake. Lemon, with meringue on top, but the sunset is slowly changing the flavor. Lemon to orange, orange to chocolate. I think I can smell it. Sweet, warm cake. The temperature dropped, or my temperature dropped. Either way I’m cold, tired. I need to rest for a minute. Just … one … minute …

  WAKE UP, LOLA! I’m not dying and neither is my daughter. Not today. Not here, next to fucking cake mountain. I need to keep my legs moving. I need to stay awake.

  I sleep with the lion between the dragon’s ribs.

  That’s not a star—stars are headings, not destinations—it’s a place. I just haven’t found it. The dragon’s ribs could be anything. The whole Babylonian creation myth is crawling with dragons. The big one is called Tiamat. Tiamat wasn’t always a dragon; she was … seawater, I guess, and then she hooked up with freshwater and they created the gods and cosmos. Bad shit happened, of course, and Tiamat went berserk. She created all kinds of monsters and turned herself into a giant dragon. She wreaked havoc until Marduk showed up. Before Marduk was the king of the gods, he specialized in thunderstorms. He stopped Tiamat with some kick-ass wind and killed her. Then he chopped her up. He took half her body to make the heavens, half to make the Earth. Hello, body part metaphors. He makes mountains from her breasts, rivers from her eyes. I think morning mist is the dragon’s spit. It’s gross and awkward, but in the end everything is dead dragon.

  I needed a lion. I got a wolf instead. I’ll get the next part right, I guess—follow his dying heart into the underworld—but I fucking failed at everything else. I didn’t have to come here. I’m pregnant, for Chrissake. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all costs. I knew better, but I did it any—

  Lights. I see lights ahead. There’s a Jeep! There’s people!

  —HELP!

  I hope they can see me.

  —HEEEEELP!

  Oh my god. She’s coming. They saw me.

  —Oh, mon dieu! Here. Let me help you. Laurent! Elle est couverte du sang! Va chercher la trousse de secours dans la voiture!

  French. That was French.

  Tout va bien aller, mademoiselle.

  What are these people doing here?

  —Who are you?

  —Je m’appelle Marie-Thérèse.

  —Why are you here? Pourquoi … êtes—

  —We were on a tour. We came to see the mountain.

  —What?

  —La montagne. Sherkala, the lion’s fortress.

  53

  Live to Tell

  I jumped when I saw my reflection in the hospital window. My hand looked like I’d put it through a meat grinder, but I hadn’t seen the rest of me. Carrie on prom night, with bonus claw marks all over. My hand hurt so much I barely noticed the wolf had plowed my chest and back. I must have scared the crap out of Marie-Thérèse. They drove me all the way to Aktau. The clinic in Shetpe couldn’t handle it and their one ambulance had a broken transmission. Thank god for French tourists. Nine hours I spent in surgery. They put me back together as best they could. Screws and bolts, and a whole spool of suture. It’s not pretty. There’s half a pound of metal in my forearm, but my baby’s fine and I won’t lose my hand. That’s good enough for me. And they didn’t draw blood, so I won’t have to burn down half of Kazakhstan.

  It’s my fault—I know that—but it’s not as if that was a good thing. I really wish there were someone else I could blame it on. I wanted an adventure with my mother. Well, I guess that was an adventure, and I sure feel Mom’s judgment right about now. It’s not all bad. I found the sleeping lion thing. I almost died right in front of it, but I found it. What comes next should be easier.

  Follow his dying heart into the underworld.

  The star of the Lion’s breast. That’s what’s the Babylonians called Regulus. It’s in the constellation Leo, a lion to this day. I’m supposed to follow it when it sets, but I don’t need to. We drove by what I was looking for on the way to the hospital.

  “I see her breast again where the dragon lays its eggs.”

  I saw the dragon’s eggs. They’re hard to miss. Large spherical rocks as far as the eye can see. They call it Torysh, or the Valley of Balls. It’s a good name. Not the most poetic thing, but it is a valley with balls. It looks like a man-made set for a cheesy sci-fi show. Spectacular in a trippy sort of way. It’s not just the balls. Sherkala, the ridges, everything. This whole region is one big Dalí painting. It’s also intact. In any other place, I would have to use my imagination to picture what it was like three thousand years ago. Not here. Except for a small road here and there—and Marie-Thérèse—I don’t think the Eight could tell the difference.

  There’s only one line left on the bow.

  “And hide inside her heart where death will not find me.”

  This is the end, Kibsu for “X marks the spot.” I have a pretty good idea who Death is. I watched my home burn because of him. I just need to find her heart. Her heart. That’s Inanna again. Mother and I found her heart already. I reach for her breast. It’s Antares, the heart of the scorpion goddess Ishara. Of course, the Eight didn’t hide anything in the sky; she hid it in the Valley of Balls. All I need is to find the right ball. How hard could that be? My first instinct was fuck it, I’ll just go there and figure it out, but noooo. I learned my lesson. I got aerial photos of the place and spent three days staring at them. It felt very adult. I looked for any set of balls that resembled the constellation of the Scorpion. I ignored the smaller ones—they might have moved over time—only looked at balls big enough to stand the test of time. And I found it, I think. It’s … Well, it’s a ball, where Antares would be if it were a constellation of big rocks. With any luck, whatever I fought a wolf for is buried under there. I just have to dig it out.

  That’s what we’re here for. Me and a couple of guys with shovels and pickaxes because my arm is in a cast. Shady characters, both of them, but I told them they’d only get paid when we were done. Besides, I kind of need shady for this. I’m not sure who owns the land, but I’m fairly certain digging through here is not the most legal thing I’ve ever done.

  54

  The NeverEnding Story

  The traitor earned herself a mausoleum. It is rather small but evidence she did not die unremembered. I am thankful for that. It feels wrong to catch up to her here, to disturb whatever peace she found. I tell myself she brought this sacrilege on herself. One could say she asked for it, leaving her mark everywhere she went. According to the tablet we found, she took her orb with her into the underworld. If any of us has a soul, I wish hers had a safe voyage, but I hope she traveled light. The sphere belongs to me.

  —GOOD GOD! It stinks in here!

  —Don’t be so loud, Uriel. Show some respect.

  —Like you did to those cops outside?

  That was different. Their arrival was untimely, their deaths unfortunate. I took no pleasure in it. Uriel can’t understand that. He revels in violence like our father did. I am ashamed of my brother, embarrassed I brought him here, because my prey might think less of me. The dead don’t care, but I no longer pretend to be rational when it comes to her. I am beguiled, and I hope that besting her and finding the sphere will not put an end to the spell. It is only when dreaming of her that I feel truly awake.

  Here she is. Her stone tomb appears intact. The etchings on its sides are remarkably well preserved. I wish I could spend the time and decipher them. Perhaps they tell a different part of her story, perhaps all of it. Unless she gave instruction to the artisan herself, these words are testimony from people who knew her, as a teacher, a priestess, a friend. I wish I knew what they had to say, but we’d better not linger. I left two eviscerated bodies by the entrance.

  —A little help, Uriel? We can push the cover to this side.

  —Say when.

  —I will not. Just push.

  Uggghhhh.

  —What the actual fuck, Sam?

  Well said. She is … gone. There are no remains in her tomb, but the sphere is here. I suppose it does not matter; we did not come for a body. I am, nonetheless, quite impressed. This is certainly one trick I did not see coming. She is not here. She has risen.

  She left me my prize. I find it difficult to grasp the full significance of this discovery. Three thousand years of effort are finally coming to fruition. Every minute of every life we have lived has led to this, this very moment. I always imagined that finding the sphere, if I were the one to find it, would fill me with immeasurable pride. This is an oddly humbling experience.

  It looks like copper. One-half is covered in patina. I see no button, no mechanism, nothing to break the smooth surface except for a seam in the middle. Perhaps there is something on the other side. It feels so strange to touch it, to hold it in my— This is odd. It weighs almost nothing. Something’s not right.

  I wonder if I can separate—

  Oh.

  My.

  It’s empty, except for some straw and a small … wooden figure at the bottom. There’s nothing here, just two copper bowls squeezed together to form a ball. A wooden doll with a large smile carved onto it.

  She is laughing at us.

  —AAAAAAARRGGGHHHHHHHH!!

  —Are you okay, Sam?

  —No, Uriel. I am most definitely not okay.

  Thirteen years! We spent thirteen years of our lives playing her game. We did not find the clues that led us here because we were clever; she wanted us to find them. Three generations, one name. She wanted us to find her. She made sure the right people knew where she was going. She left bread crumbs everywhere she went. She sent us on a wild-goose chase halfway across the globe. She …

  She was smarter than us.

  55

  We Belong

  We did it, Mom.

  We found a buried treasure. It looks like gold. Maybe it is. It’s … perfect. Perfectly round, perfectly smooth. It’s spellbinding. I can’t stop looking at it and my warped reflection can’t stop looking back.

  Unfortunately, I know what it is I’m staring at. Some sort of beacon that will lure countless more like the Tracker to this world. I know the one who tortured Grandma could have lied about it, but I don’t see the point. This thing exists. They’re willing to kill for it, and we’re willing to die to keep it from them. I think I’ll take the devil at his word on this one. What do you think, Mom?

  I’d give anything for you to be here right now. I don’t know what to do, not that I ever did. We climbed the mountain together because it was there to climb. Now you’re gone and I’m stuck on the summit, too fucking scared to get down. Everyone’s gone. I’m alone. I remember when you told me to picture the Eight. I couldn’t, but I can see her now. I see her leathery skin, her scarred body. She stops right in front of me, reins in her horse, and gives me the most gentle, heartfelt smile. And just like that, she’s gone. I don’t bother running after her. I watch her fade into the sun again and I know that she is relieved. It was on her before, unrelenting, weighing her down like lead running through her veins. Now, for the first time, she’s free. It’s not on her anymore. It’s on me.

  She left us a note. Three words on a piece of leather. I wonder what she did to preserve it. “Useless without … naptû.” My dictionary says the word is “opener.” Maybe the sphere opens, but I think it means key, something to activate it. I was … disappointed. I don’t know why—well, I do know. I’m a child who got a broken toy for Christmas, but I also know I could never use it. You’re making fun of me now, aren’t you, Mom? Yes, I’m mildly disappointed. I’m also fucking grateful it doesn’t work. If I had found this thing thirty years ago, I wouldn’t even know what I was looking at. I would probably try to turn it on. Tinker tinker, then beep beep or whatever. I’d have undone everything without— I need to think about something else. I’m giving myself an anxiety attack. Then again, it might not matter. Even if everything the Tracker said was true, this is three-thousand-year-old news. A lot could have happened since then. They could all be dead. They could be sipping space margaritas on a blue sand beach and not give a damn about this planet.

  There were teeth—at least I think they were teeth—next to the sphere. Someone was buried with it. The Eight obviously did it. I wonder who the body belonged to. An enemy, a friend. A child. That’s my guess. Someone she cared deeply for, someone whose final sleep she did not want disturbed. Maybe that person was meant to watch over the sphere, like that old knight guarding the Holy Grail from Nazis. We’ll never know because I didn’t touch the teeth. Like, eeew.

  What would you do, Mom? Would you put this thing back in the ground, let someone else find it three thousand years from now? Would you destroy it right here? I thought I would, but the Eight could have done the same thing. Maybe there’s a reason she didn’t. What would you do, Mom?! I need your help …. I know you’d have picked up those teeth.

  Right. So this is it. This was our time. One last Coca-Cola together before you leave me for good. I don’t know that I’m ready, Mom. I don’t know if I can do this without you.

  ENTR’ACTE

  Let Not the Sun Go Down on Your Wrath

  1888

  —Stop staring at the sun, Annie! You’ll go blind!

  Emily had spent her life looking at the night sky. Her daughter, Annie, also looked at the stars, but she preferred them closer.

  Annie wondered how, in a world filled with such technological wonders as the gramophone and moving pictures, we had yet to understand what made the day bright. The sun had been right here, forever, and no one knew exactly what it was or how it worked. Progress had been made during Annie’s lifetime. When she was one year old, the spectroscope was invented. It allowed one to split light into different wavelengths, like a rainbow, and identify the chemical elements present based on the wavelengths at which light was absorbed. A year later, an Italian astronomer had the idea to combine a spectroscope and a telescope. One could now look at the stars and know what their surface was made of. As it turns out, the same chemical elements found here on Earth.

  But how did the sun keep on burning? Thanks to brilliant work by the likes of Joule and Lord Kelvin, the world now had principles of a new discipline called thermodynamics. With these understood, it became clear that chemical combustion was an insufficient explanation and that the sun did not simply burn coal, as had previously been thought. The theory by which the sun was fed energy by a constant influx of meteors was also losing favor. The prevalent explanation now was that gravity was causing the sun to shrink, creating pressure and heat. Annie had her doubts.

  Annie was one of the first students to study mathematics at Girton, the first ever women’s college at Cambridge. That made Emily both extremely proud and somewhat jealous of her daughter. Girton or not, Cambridge did not grant women degrees, but it was a step in the right direction, and something Emily had often dreamed of when she walked the campus grounds in her youth.

  Upon graduation, Annie moved to London and found a job at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich as a “lady computer” in the solar department. The job only paid four pounds a month, but she got to spend her days photographing the sun. Working there meant delaying marriage—married women could not hold a public service job—but neither Annie nor her mother seemed to mind. Though she died before seeing her granddaughter, Emily lived to be sixty-one years old. She was killed while visiting her daughter in London.

  It was a brutal murder. Emily was stabbed thirty-nine times with no apparent motive. She was neither robbed nor raped. There were no signs of a struggle, which meant she was caught by surprise. The police attributed her death to one of the gangs operating in the East End.

  It wasn’t until another woman was murdered on the same streets that Annie began to suspect something more sinister was at work. The killing was even more horrid. The victim’s throat was slit, her abdomen cut completely open. Parts of her insides were removed and her small intestines were placed next to her head. This was no ordinary cruelty. Annie began to consider the possibility that the unruly beasts she was raised to fear were responsible for her mother’s death.

  The Whitechapel murders continued, each more grisly than the last. Kidneys and uterus removed, noses cut off. Intestines again placed next to the victim’s head. One victim almost completely emptied. Annie was convinced: this was the work of the Tracker. She also felt something new, something more raw and powerful than anything she had ever experienced. Wrath.

  Annie was consumed by anger and a burning lust for revenge. She was also a woman of science but reasoned that these two things were, in this instance, quite compatible. Despite the uncertainties about the sun, what everyone agreed on was that it was doomed to die and everyone with it, which, in Annie’s mind, made understanding how it worked a moral imperative. It also cast doubt on the pertinence of the rules she was raised to follow since our sun’s looming death had not factored in their creation. There would be no one to take to the stars if ours stopped burning, and running from the Tracker now would undoubtedly slow progress. Removing the smaller threat was the best way to mitigate the larger one.

  Annie went to the post office and spent ten shillings on a gun license before purchasing what the salesperson described as a proper, ladylike pistol. For two months, she worked at the observatory during the day and roamed the inauspicious streets of Whitechapel when the object of her study disappeared. She posed as a prostitute and hung by the brothels and common-lodging houses where some of the victims were found.

  The nights were now cold and crisp. Annie did not mind; it made her work that much easier. November rid the streets of anything lawful. Whoever braved the outside past midnight had something ugly to hide.