My head aches, my body wains and sways as much as it can with ropes digging into my chest and wrists. My mask is gone and the floor is moving beneath me. I'm on a train. I look up to see a figure in front of me.

  “And who might you be?” I can hear him smiling from behind the mask, something in his voice gives him away.

  “And better yet where'd you get this mask.” I can hear him pull back his gums, showing his teeth he's ecstatic, erratic, deranged.

  “You were the one hiding, watching, at the exchange earlier. Weren't you.” he laughs a cold empty bitter laugh, as he begins to calm, shifting his weight forward leaning down to me.

  “The name's spider, and I think we're going to get along just fine worm.”

  “Bug.” I look up to face him.

  “The name is Bug.”

  “Bug, I see. You are a little mite! aren't you? And you've already gotten a name. Well then congratulations are in order." He removes his mask. He has what look like chickenpox scars, small divots on the forehead and jawline, and he has the scallops rooted to the face causing raised branches and loss of skin swimming in and out of the muscle. He's had the plague.

  “What? Not a pretty sight? I don't blame you, it's a curse, not your normal virus or disease. Anything from memory loss, and personality changes then there's the tremors, oh and of course the muscle stiffness. Starting to sound familiar?” he pauses watching my face go white.

  “Oh but of course we've never been able to cure a silly little prion before. I got lucky, this here.” he gestures wildly at the scars.

  “a fancy little airborne bacteria. A lovely gift from the mother, a trade off for a name like ours, like that name of yours.” he begins to laugh.

  “You know why we get named after bugs, Bug? Because no matter how worthless and small she thinks we are, we will be the thing to cut the roots.” He’s lying. I can feel it.

  “Now then I’ll put aside the little tiny detail of how you got the mask, just for today. Because, well? You're going to need it.”

  The train began to slow, he slips his mask back over his face and hands me mine. Carefully untying the ropes allowing me to stand again. But before I could take a step forward, a hand was placed on my shoulder. A man that had been standing behind me unnoticed till now makes something very clear.

  “Behave, it would be a shame if something happened to you now." His nails dug into my shoulder, just as Spider opened the doors into some kind of train depot. The snow is still falling heavier now. The building is brick and stone, maybe a warehouse or an old military base, its unassuming quiet even more so in the white wild of the woods.

  “Mantis, why don’t you take him down to the saints, I'm sure this little one is already getting bored.” He removes his hand from my shoulder and walks me into the building. There seems to be two entrances. Once outside I saw the other Morrowmen unloading both people infected by the Prion, and the bacteria taking them through one of the far doors. I follow the larger man as he leads me down one of the halls, my shoes clicking on the linoleum, the soft smell of burnt juniper and rue.

  He stops by a door knocking twice and waiting for a response.

  “Enter.” a soft voice calls, Mantis turns to me as nudges me inside.

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  “Hello?” A small thing turns to me dressed in black tendrils of lace and silk.

  “No need to wear your mask here, it's clean I promise." I do as I'm told, and remove the mask. She looks at me for a moment. I'm not who she was expecting, I'm sure.

  “How old are you, little one?” I don't respond.

  “They called me, you know, when they decided to bring you along, you've caused quite the ruckus, wearing that mask.” She turns to the desk some kind of apothecary.

  “Have you heard of herb-of-grace?”

  “No, Mam.” she nods and smiles.

  “Do you like stories, little one?” I looked up to meet her eyes.

  “I was one of the first to find the Maw, The mother, it matters not what she's called, nor what you think of her.

  You know the ash from the fires that day they followed me here to where the saints kneel, I knew nothing of what this place wrought, it took my family from me, my freedom, my life.

  And yet all I did was make a dish seasoned by the salt of my tears, even now your boots hold the only thing that's holy in this place, and yet the only thing that's out of place here.

  Living among the dead.

  You aren't like them, your name, they don't deserve to speak it.

  old enough to know better they are.

  They know what they're doing, they've always known.

  After all they saw the before times I showed it to them they'll see it through to the end they have to, no one will forgive them for what they started, there's no going back. forgiveness; history; it already has their names ensnared in the web… in their web. Time will never erase what they've done. Started with the bugs then the birds now us Little one,

  don’t be like them.”

  “I don't understand?”

  “You don’t need to, not now at least, give us more time like this.”

  She grabs my arm and pulls me behind a veil not unlike the one she wore, placing me on a mat to kneel. She runs her hands over the lit flames and pulls a black sludge in an old mint tin, out of the smoke it smells like pine the same as the masks but it's heavier, maybe ash, maybe blood or clay… it's not right.

  “Face the light, Hun.” She places the sludge above my eyebrows and beneath my eyes, over my ears and under my chin. It's gritty and it pulls like dried leather.

  As it dries I feel a cold numbing chill beneath the skin. Slowly sleep begins to creep into the crevices of my mind, its tendrils slowly following the crevices of my mind into every last piece, as it fades.

  The spine, the spread, the beginning to the end.

  The mind knowing fear before reason,

  before the reason.

  I see it now, the scars? A blessing.

  Ignorance in the curse.

  Never on purpose, they are afraid. Fear is reason enough.

  The fearful never found, safe.

  The bold, favored in his eyes.

  Your eyes… Who are you?

  “I'm you aren't I?”

  “No, I’m not you.”

  “Yet you're them?”

  “I never wanted to be.”

  “An ant knows nothing more than this. You serve mother no longer, you serve me now.”

  “I serve no one.”

  “That is not a choice to be made, there is no you. They saw it in you that day, something in your voice, your eyes, your name. But it took time until your blood soured. How does it taste now?”

  “I don't understand.”

  “They do.”

  “Why?”

  “Life.”

  “Your life?”

  “I'm not alive, if I was, maybe I could be killed.”

  “We are all alive? How can you not be?”

  “A mistake. That is what I am, a flaw?”

  “Yes. A flaw.” They smile.

  “Afraid? Kill me, and you'll kill us both. Are we the same then?”

  “No.”

  Time shook and the room spun, I turned back to her, she wasn't there anymore.

  Just a few loose feathers remain.