There Is Music After This

This week, Martin Cahill takes us to the Underworld, where Eurydice sits in the aftermath. ~ Julian and Fran, September 15, 2024

This month, we are delighted to share with you another spectacular group of stories by Alaya Dawn Johnson, F. Brett Cox, Martin Cahill, and Alexander London. We are also grateful to discover ourselves World Fantasy finalists for The Sunday Morning Transport, which is both stunning, and utterly impossible without our immensely talented authors, dedicated editorial team, and you, our brilliant readers. Thank you all so much.

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There Is Music After This

by Martin Cahill

He lets me weep for a time. It’s the absolute least he can do.

I feel the weight of my keeper’s world on all sides; the heavy embrace of the afterlife shrouds me, weighing me down in shadow as thick as linked chains. A part of my brain, feral with loss upon loss, rails and snarls, mouth frothing, desperate to pull free, be free.

But—

But that wasn’t the bargain, was it?

At least not the one he made with a tender and desperate musician, the porcelain faith in his heart already trembling in fear at failing. Nor was it the deal the dead girl agreed to, eager to be with her musician once more in the light of the world of the living.

Her freedom was supposed to have been found in faith unshattered.

Yet, it was lost, upon his turning.

My keeper’s voice eventually finds me in the darkness that is him, rich and silken. Mournful, even.

I, too, know what it is to want to leave this place. To watch the one you love ascend, up and away, leaving you bound to your hell.

Does she ever look back? I ask through tears, growling with grief. Still raw, the hurt. The betraying turn.

The darkness sighs. He will only ever be able to relate so much.

No, he finally confesses. She does not need to; she knows she’ll be back when her season ends.

It does not have to be said that my love will not be returning. That he even made it out of here alive is miracle enough. And even if he wanted to, even if he now beats his knuckles bloody against the floor of the earth, begging his hands to shatter if it would let him come back to me . . . that hadn’t been the bargain struck.