How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

A girl once surrounded by beauty and bounty now sits in a “skeletal” tree looking down on a strange city that walls itself in at night (254). The girl is hungry, cold, and tired so quickly falls asleep. She awakens starving and cautiously heads toward the city. When she gets to the ground, she can feel an oncoming earth “shake” (256). She lays down on the ground and digs her nails into the dirt and stone, breathing heavily and feeling “power” surge through her (256). She grinds “her teeth” against the bursting earth beneath her (257). The earth shifts and breaks, causing an “avalanche” before moving on (257). She stands up feeling full after the ritual, which turns “the power of the earth” into “force and destruction” (266). As such, she understands she is now in danger and starts to run away.

She wakes up warm but in pain and in prison. She listens but does not hear any threats so quickly falls asleep again. She next awakens to a woman named Ykka accusing her of almost destroying Ykka’s city. She asks if Ykka is “going to kill” her and then attempts to kill Ykka (261). Ykka acknowledges the girl’s murder attempt and asks her how far she plans to go with her destruction. The girl explains that she doesn’t “kill cities”; she only wants to kill enough people to allow her to eat and be warm (262). In response, Ykka assures the girl she will be killed if she ever attempts to destroy the city again, then says she is interested in observing the girl so she can decide whether she is worthy of training.

Ykka exits; the girl tries to move, but it’s painful. She thinks about how the “vinegar man” must be somewhere in this city and about how she must find him before he destroys it (264). She tries again to move but finally concedes that her wounds are too serious. She looks up and sees the same statue she thought she “hallucinated” earlier (265). The statue starts talking and she recognizes it as a “stone-eater” (266). While she thought stone-eaters were merely elements of fiction, it’s clear that is not the case. The statue offers her a chance to escape. She asks why the stone-eater wants to help her escape and they say it is to give her another chance to destroy Ykka’s city. 

The stone-eater creeps her out, so when they offer to “carry” her out, she hesitates (267). They say they will come back later and “shimmers” into thin air (267). The staff at the prison helps rehabilitate her, though she remains physically unable to escape.

Soon, the stone-eater appears again and repeats the offer. The girl asks if they can help her find the vinegar man. The stone-eater asks her to “share him with me,” so she reluctantly touches the stone-eater and thinks about the taste of the vinegar man, hoping her memory will transfuse into the stone-eater through touch (269). The stone-eater says that they recognize the vinegar man from her shared memory. She explains that she wants to “kill” the vinegar man and the stone-eater offers to help (270). She can’t understand why they want to help her, but she accepts aid anyway. The stone-eater holds her, and she feels “a stifling amount of enclosure and pressure” before arriving in a “courtyard of the city” with the stone-eater by her side (270). He points her in the direction of the vinegar man, and she hobbles off on her crutches in pursuit of “revenge” (271).

After a difficult ascent up some stairs, the girl runs directly into the vinegar man. She immediately says, “I’m from Arquin,” letting him know she has come from the beautiful, thriving place he once destroyed (272). At this, he senses he is in danger and retorts, “You’d have done it, too, if you were me” (273). She summons her powers from within and starts causing the earth to crack and heave around him. He starts to “harden” and become riddled with ice, before dying in front of her (275). Witnesses called Ykka to the scene with a “black-haired” female colleague (275). The colleague tries to kill the girl, who can’t help being “giddy” at her recent success, but Ykka stops her colleague and asks the girl why she did it (277). The girl explains by saying “[h]e owed me” (276). Ykka accepts this explanation, urging her colleague to consider that “we […] all deserve to die for some reason or another” (277). She warns the girl that someone will also want revenge on her someday, but the girl has already accepted that inevitability. Ykka asks if she wants to stay, and the girl says she does. Ykka allows her to stay in the city, and they join in their mutual fear of the stone-eater, whom they last saw standing happily over the vinegar man’s deceased body.