Excerpt from The Weight of Ananke (a book I'm writing)

5

Atlas was still on the empty beach, his limbs aching, his flesh salt-burned and battered. The tempest had gone, but had left him shattered in more than one way. His arms and legs pained him, the lead of the sea's wrath still running through his bone. When he was at last capable of standing upright, burning pain stabbed through his ribs, and he doubled over, hissing.

The silence that had closed over him was oppressive. No gulls cried overhead, no waves gently lapped at the horizon—only the wind keening over the empty ground, talking to him as though he was the only one worthy of being heard.

Or anything.

"You are safe now."

The voice in his mind was a gentle hum, winding through his thoughts like a calming caress. "You survived, Atlas. You're stronger than you ever imagined."

His breath remained with him. He prayed so. That he was strong. That his suffering had not been for nothing. But he gazed around at the world surrounding him and saw but devastation—upturned rock torn up out of the earth, gnarled trees that bore no fruit to offer, and the wide expanse of barren land. The island itself was tiny, barely a stain upon the face of the ocean, and there was nothing here. No water. No food.

Just him.

Atlas strained and struggled under his convulsing form. His legs shook with rage, frail and unreliable, but he had none of the time to spare. He struggled on, his lungs bound against his battered ribs where the pain pulsed like a new heartbeat. His abdomen clenched—not yet with hunger, but with the knowledge that it would follow.

"You will live." The voice whispered. "You always do."

The words swirled around him like a lullaby, comforting and calming. Atlas reached out and understood, to the awareness that he was not always as alone as when the only voice was his own mind. He'd weathered the storm. He'd weather this too.

Wouldn't he?

The first day passed in a haze. He walked the beach, his eyes combing the sand for something—driftwood, remnants of the broken ship's barrel, something he could utilize. But the storm had left him nothing but broken remnants of his lost ship, the wood splintered and unusable. No water, no food. His throat dry, his lips already beginning to stiffen.

Atlas pushed the thought aside.

On the second day, hunger began its merciless exploitation. It began as pain, a torment he could ignore. But as the hours ticked by, the hunger became specific, clawing in his bowels with satanic obstinacy. He walked inland from the sea, where trees reached out like bony fingers to the sky. Its trunk was rigid and rough, the small fruit it carried tiny and unsound in looks, its color unearthly. As Atlas reached out a hand to take one, his hand hovered over its wax-like skin, horror-stricken paralysis freezing it.

"Not yet," the voice whispered. "They will hurt you."

His belly protested, still he'd withdrawn his hand. If the voice was truthful, if the fruit was poisoned—he'd be causing more damage. He had to find water first. That was the need. Water would last him longer than food would.

So he searched. Hours, then days.

And nothing was found.

The island was a cemetery of rock and dust, cursed to lack rivers, wells, or mercy. The truth crept up on him slow, like sunrise in the atmosphere—that this was going to kill him.

Atlas leaned back against a boulder, his forehead against the coolness of the rock. His body trembled with exhaustion, with thirst, with the growing weight of despair that churned in his chest.

"You are not alone," the voice reassured. "I am here."

He tightened his fists. He should be grateful for that. He should be comforted by the familiarity of the whispers. But something in him replied, in skepticism.

Because the voice—his voice—never indicated what to do next. It reassured him, yes. But it never revealed a way of living.

And always had before.

Atlas closed his eyes. His head was a weight, dragged down by his body. When he breathed in, he could hear the gentle grate of dehydration in his own throat. Days melted into one. He slept fitfully, waking stiff with knotted muscles, his mind floating on an ocean of thirst and hunger. His sense of time melted, each hour seeping into another. His thoughts were tides of sand dispersing on a wind.

Had it been two days? Three? Longer? His body was a stranger to him now, frail and stooped, his movements taken on from the shell of what had once been.

"You are strong," the voice told him. "I will not let you fall."

But he had fallen already, hadn't he?

Atlas leaned his head back, gazing up at the huge, indifferent sky. Strange, how it was beautiful despite this miserable world. The sky did not know he was dying. The stars would continue to shine or not, as he lived or died.

His vision began to blur at the edges. He tried to straighten, to force back the fatigue seeping into his muscles, but to no use. His body was betraying him, failing him. He had wanted adventure. Escape from the mundane grayness of his village. But now he would give anything to hear the creak of wooden doorframes, the cries of merchants in the distance, the endless boom of waves on the familiar shore.

Had he done something wrong?

His lips parted, but there was nothing. His throat was too parched, too inflamed, even to whisper out his apology.

Atlas fell into the sand, his breaths rasping for air, his head spinning from the blackness of exhaustion. His muscles wailed, his ribs complaining under the effort of holding himself up, and still he did not stir. He was too exhausted. Too frail.

And then—

"Atlas."

The voice was closer now, louder than it had ever been. Not far away, not on the wind, but here, beside him, inside him. He could have sworn he felt fingers sketching his forehead, a presence sculpting his shaking form.

"I will protect you."

Atlas could not even find the strength to shudder. His head fell into a whirlpool, his body deeper into the arms of the sand.

"You don't have to fight anymore."

His eyelashes fluttered, and he saw something within the haze of semi-consciousness—a form standing up in the misty moonlight. A tall figure, standing.

And then, at last, he relaxed his grip.

6

Atlas awakened to the warmth of something on his lips.

"Drink, my love," the voice whispered. "You have to drink."

He had no strength to fight. His body was a husk now, his arms skeletal, his belly empty, his lips dry and cracked. The promise of water—real, living water—was one he could not resist. His parched lips opened, and he let the cold liquid pour over them, swallowing avidly with no care for safety.

Relief swept through him. The dry burn within his throat was soothed instantly, the burn swabbed away by a holy, cool dampness. He was drinking from a mountain brook, as if spring rains had come after scorching months. He drank hungrily, gulping full after full of something close to hope.

His trembling, shaking hands searched for and found what he hoped was a bowl—perhaps, perhaps his own cupped hands, he had no idea. It was far, a feeling he did, and his brain too fuzzy to hold more than the simple, mindless pleasure of swallowing.

"Good," the voice whispered. "You are safe, Atlas. You are loved."

He had to believe it. He needed to believe it. His body yearned for this moment of peace, a reprieve from the agony that had tortured him since he'd washed up on shore. No more stabbing pain in his belly, no more burning dryness searing his throat. Just. nothing.

Peace did not last.

As the universe solidified around him, reality imposed its pressure on his relief, rending its way into his gut like a slow-acting disease. His breathing slowed. His fingers cramped on the surface of the fluid, and for the first time he sensed it,

The wrongness.

The cold he had been so pleased to endure now seared his skin, marking him with a secret stamp that seared his fingertips crimson. His domesticated tongue recoiled from the vile taste that was not clean, not pure—but bitter. Acrid.

A shudder wracked him as one understanding cut through the haze.

No.

His eyes fell, and horror clenched in his belly.

The fluid he had consumed just a second before was not water.

It was salt.

Atlas gagged, his body protesting the lie. He retched at the attempt, his throat closing off as his stomach heaved in revolt. His hands scrabbled at his mouth, at his throat, as though he could tear out the feeling, as though he could take back what he had just tried to do. But already it was too late. The salt was in him now, coursing into his blood, leaching out what little water his body had.

No, he rasped, his voice barely a scrape. His stomach churned, sickness writhing in him like a blade. He doubled over, retching, but his own body was too depleted to expel what had been drunk.

The voice crooned low and singing. "Shh, love. It's all right. You were so thirsty… I only did it to help."

Atlas's eyes blurred. His breath tore out in ragged sobs. Aid?

He reached back at his stomach, the betrayal burning more bitterly than thirst ever had. Had seemed so real. Felt so real. Had he dreamed it the entire time? Dreamed the relief?

Or had something caused him to feel what wasn't there?

He struggled onto his elbows, movement stiff and jerky. His arms trembled beneath him, his body sagging. He needs to shake his head clear. He needs to think.

Atlas's gaze tore back and forth along the desolate shoreline, his own breathing in rough, desperate gasps. The wave line taunted him, actual water—actual water—so close and yet so impossibly distant. How long? How long had he been lost to dream and waking?

His fingers crustied into the sand, clawing at it as if it was the last thing anchoring him to the world. But that too was being ripped from him now, as if his own body was no longer his to control. The salt water roiled in his stomach, a bitter reminder of his own hopelessness.

"Bad thing," said the voice. "You only wished to live. There is no shame in that."

Atlas closed his eyes, his head swinging back and forth. No. No, no, no. He did not hear it. Not now.

But the voice coiled around his mind like a snake. "This is not your fault. You were thirsty. You were in pain. And I… I only wished to make you feel better."

Atlas's eyes snapped open, glaring into the darkness as if he could hear the voice itself, as if he had the power to tear it out of his head. He was panting, his throat still burning, but there was something within him that was sharper now. Something had done that to him. Something had made him believe a lie.

His fingers curled into fists. He did not know what scared him more, the manipulation itself or that some part of him still wanted to believe it.

For the voice was gentle. The voice was low. It was the one presence that stayed with him in the storm, the one presence that whispered comfort in the wilderness. He wanted to curse it, and yet he did not want to be free of it.

For then he would be alone.

Atlas winced, coughing as the dry burn of thirst ripped at his throat. His body was failing him. His mind was coming apart at the seams. And the worst part of it?

He didn't even know what was real anymore.

The thought gave him a chill down his spine. How long would he hold on like this? How long until reality and insanity were a memory? Until he was gone completely to the voices?

Before he passed away.

A low, ragged moan was torn from his lips. He had thought the storm the worst of it. The devastation. The pain. The starvation. But this—worse.

Worse than death was to have forgotten what he once was before he did so.