Book One – Chapter 19

Yu got off the stool. He stumbled, caught himself, and kept moving. Suddenly, everything had to happen very fast. He felt sick, but he could not sit still. His body shook violently, yet he still pushed himself to move — walking, pacing, circling the centre workbench in frantic loops.

There was pain, but not from injury. It had no wound to claim it, yet his whole body suffered, as if flayed from within by something that had left no mark. There was aching, but not from work or want of rest, not from something the body had been denied, but from something it was desperate to surrender. And within this ache, the HUNGER festered. It was not the hunger to fill. Not the hunger to sustain life. No, Yu was starving to be hollowed out and flooded again by the same voice of vastness that had drowned him not one hour ago. The wanting rose like fever; rushing, surging, swelling, cresting, throwing itself against the mask again and again. He craved to suffer and to suffocate, if only to relive the moment his self had split — not the shock before, not the agony after, but that one perfect instant in between, when the had torn him open and poured through. The HUNGER rippled through him like a million memory insects burrowing through his flesh and biting through the mask.

Yu threw his wings against his face, bent over the centre workbench, pressed his forehead into the wood and kicked his trembling knees against the table legs.

This is insane! This is madness! Madness! To give in will give us nothing — Wrong! Before her, we had nothing! Our life was nothing! We were nothing! This is something. Something special. We have never felt like this before. In one moment, she gave us more than all the years before combined. She is everything we ever wanted. We have never felt better than in that one moment she touched us. We should never have. We are not well. We have never felt better! Never! Admit it. We should never have found her out. And yet we did! Because this is what the hearing is for. It had always been for her. To bring us to her. To hear her voice. She wanted it. She saw us. She chose us. She wants us to hear her again. We should never have listened. But to hear her again —

“It must be witchcraft!” His voice came hoarse through the mask, muffled against his wings. He fought to still his legs, and to control his breathing. “It must be something that makes me mad. This is not normal. This is not normal. This is not right. This is not real. This is not me.”