Night Shine

by Tessa Gratton

  Were her eyes even open? There was such complete darkness. She thought she held her hand before her face, and yes, touched her cheek, but saw absolutely nothing.

  The thought made her panic just a little, which in turn made her laugh.

  Then tiny motes of aether appeared, drifting on some eddy through the blackness. She reached for them, and pain screamed through her, white-hot, peeling back her skin, cracking her bones.

  Shine screamed—she knew she screamed: it burned in her lungs, and pure cold replaced the pain, freezing her, and she couldn’t move, she couldn’t blink couldn’t think couldn’t

  —peace—

  Peace.

  Shine drifted in a slow-moving river of darkness, warm, comforting, held up by many small hands. Tender hands, gently caressing her, soothing her as she gasped for breath, slowly calming down.

  A hand thrust up through her back and into her body.

  Shine arched in surprise, but it didn’t hurt; it only ached like nausea drawing up and down her flesh, and she didn’t want the hand there, inside her; she didn’t want it, so she pushed—

  Fire played around her. She was inside a bonfire, itching as the flames charred her hair, from scalp down her spine, along her arms and legs to her toes, but it was all right; she was fire; she knew fire; fire couldn’t hurt her—

  A whip of pain sliced down her front, splitting her open from chin to groin, and stars spilled out, flaring and arcing: stars leapt up gleefully, shot away as if they could escape! Now they were free! Shine’s ribs pulled open like butterfly wings, and there her heart spun in a tight fist of molten rock—

  She was sucked down, down, down into an ocean of salt, dragged through clinging weeds, her heels knocked on coral, and she breathed water that tasted like blood, but there were vents in the ocean, too, hot gasping trails of fire from the core of the—core of—

  Shine sprawled limp against the rocky floor, exhausted, spent, too weak to open her eyes.

  Her lips hurt, dry and cracked, and she breathed harshly. Shallow. Slow.

  She was Night Shine Over the Mountain; she knew her name. She was a demon reborn, but her flesh was delicate. More delicate than a mountain’s flesh should be.

  A dull thump-thump echoed in her skull. She thought maybe it was her heartbeat.

  Kirin. Sky.

  Her eyes shot open.

  She closed them instantly, for it was too bright.

  Spreading her hands, palms down on the cool rock, she moved them stiltingly. She explored. Her fingertips tingled with tiny licks of aether.

  Shine flexed her hands, and flexed something else, too—a spirit muscle, a magic tendon—and pulled that aether into herself. It burned her fingertips, and she gasped.

  Immediately she felt a slight reprieve from exhaustion.

  This time when she opened her eyes, she could handle the fairly dim bluish aether-glow.

  She was in a cavern, surrounded by the thin bars of a stone cage. The bars grew in a circle around her, arcing up to meet high in the middle.

  Shine took a deep breath. She felt better. Her chest hurt, though, like a bruise wrapped her ribs from her heart all the way around.

  When she managed to sit up, nausea rolled through her, and she broke out in a cold sweat.

  Shine flattened her hands on the cool stone again, and this time pulled hard.

  Aether flushed up from the mountain into her arms, brightening her on every level. Her skin felt like it was pulling apart, splitting from the inside, a dumpling with too much filling!

  Stop! something growled.

  She gasped, then laughed: she was a torch, brilliant in the darkness.

  The light faded, leaving her eager and strong.

  In the far corner of the empty cavern, a tiger crouched. I said stop.

  Shine yelped and scrambled to her feet.

  The tiger stood. Aether sparked off its body, like little scales constantly shed.

  It was a spirit.

  “Hello,” Shine said, her voice unrecognizably raw. “I am Shine. What’s your name?”

  The tiger spirit snorted, and its fur rippled back from its head in a long shrug.

  “Is this your mountain?” she asked. “Am I…?”

  The barge. The ice on the Selegan. The eagle. Now this mountain.

  This was one of the Living Mountains. Another sorcerer had her. Which had a great tiger spirit for a familiar?

  “Where is your master?” Shine demanded.

  Resting, the tiger said into her mind. You wore them out.

  “Who?”

  My sorcerer, A Dance of Stars, and Still Wind.

  The sorcerers of the Second and Third Mountains. “Are you the Second Living Mountain?”

  I am. But we are here within the First Mountain. What are you?

  “A-a girl. I used to be a demon, though.”

  Patience.

  Shine frowned. “No. I have to get back to Kirin. I can’t wait. Let me out.”

  They want to know how you were made.

  “They were hurting me,” Shine said softly, as she realized it herself. The pain, the cold, the fire—it had been the sorcerers peeling her apart to discover how she worked. She shuddered. “Let me go. You don’t want them to keep hurting me.”

  They can’t hurt you.

  “They certainly can! They did. And I could die.” Shine gripped the stone bars of her cage.

  The tiger spirit watched her steadily with wide blue eyes. Its broad face was bluish white, every hair shifting constantly, and it opened its huge mouth in a yawn. Fangs sparked with power. I am guarding you, it said, and lay down primly, staring at her.

  Shine plopped to the ground again, drawing up her legs to her chest.

  She didn’t have time to worry. She didn’t have time to be shocked. “Do you know if Kirin is here? Or The Day the Sky Opened?”

  The tiger rippled in another shrug. Only you.

  Shine wrapped her arms around her shins. She put her chin on her knees and stared back at the tiger. The certainty she’d always felt regarding Kirin was gone. Without the binding, she didn’t know if he was alive. Shine closed her eyes tightly, refusing to consider his death, or Sky’s. Or the poor Selegan River’s, who’d been struggling to defend them.

  Could she draw enough power from the First Living Mountain to weaken the tiger, break the cage, and escape all at once? When she’d taken just a little bit, her fingers had caught fire. Would more burn her to a crisp? This was the problem with being new: she didn’t understand what she could or couldn’t do. She’d felt so massive when she’d renamed herself, but the sorceress had told her to be gentle with her body. And when she’d dragged at the aether just now, she’d thought maybe she’d pop like an over cooked dumpling.

  But it was worth the risk. She had to escape and find Kirin again. Before these sorcerers killed her. Or worse—and she was certain there could be a worse.

  Shine breathed evenly for a few moments.

  As she settled herself, she thought about each part of her body, inside and out, noticing temperature and clothing—she was wearing only a thin slip; all her other things were gone—how her bruised flesh pressed to the floor, the touch of her fingers woven together, her wrists against the front of her knees, the rawness in her throat, her fluttering heart, and the heat it pumped.

  She thought of stars and the night sky, that vast feeling of infinite strength cupping the Fifth Mountain. She thought of the stars as butterflies and remembered when the sorcerers sliced her open how the stars inside her had popped and swooped and fled just like a scatter of butterflies.

  When Shine was ready, she didn’t need to press her hands down to the stone. She was inside the mountain, and aether slipped through the air as easily as through stone and flesh.

  Shine blew out a long breath, then paused, and when she breathed in again, she pulled on the entire world.

  THIRTY-SIX

  THE MOUNTAIN SHUDDERED AND gave itself over to Shine.

  She cried out in sur
prise—it was too much! She thrust the power away as fast as it spilled into her: she was a river, like the Selegan, a narrow corridor of rocks forcing vast amounts of water through tighter and faster to make rapids, to make a waterfall.

  The power poured in, lighting her on fire! But it passed through, passed everywhere, channeling through her small body with a roar.

  Shine opened her eyes just as the bars of her cage shivered and turned to powder, falling around her like snow. She rose off the floor, ascending on eddies of aether, which knotted her spine and heart. Her teeth hurt and her eyeballs, too. She was cooking, a boiling goose, from the vibrations of power!

  “Stop!” she croaked, and the word was enough.

  The power shut off like a snuffed candle—a candle the size of a mountain.

  She fell to the floor of the cave, landing softly.

  The tiger was gone, and the cavern was made of crystal—moon quartz—not granite. She’d changed it.

  Shine understood that much. She understood fundamentally how rock became fire became crystal or rock again, how stars were made and planets, and—

  She swayed.

  Suddenly she was very cold, and she looked down at her hands: they were covered in fine lines, cracks.

  Far below her the mountain trembled.

  Someone else was awake. The sorcerers would come for her.

  Shine pushed to her feet and ran.

  She hit the crystal wall with her hands and quickly searched for a seam, murmuring to herself, “Door, door, I need a door,” until a section of crystal shivered away and she ran through into a corridor.

  Aether shimmered along the walls and floor, thin tendrils like tiny vines. They could trace her path. She had to hurry. Out, out, out before this energy faded—she hadn’t swallowed it, only channeled it, so maybe it wouldn’t last, but she didn’t have time to worry.

  She found an arched doorway and pushed through carved wooden doors into a large chamber of wood and plaster. Doors opened to either side, and another arched door faced her. She chose right and ran into another hallway with a lower ceiling of carved wood. The air was warm, and the aether clung differently, maybe because this was a building now, not a living mountain. She was in a manor perched on the side of the mountain. “I need an escape,” she said. “A door.” But buildings probably didn’t respond the way mountains did.

  Shine paused and touched the wood. It was warm. She heard distant wind. There was a window somewhere ahead, or another door.

  How was she going to get back to Kirin?

  Frustration made her clench her jaw, and she shivered under an onslaught of nausea. The power had been too much too fast. She didn’t know what she was doing.

  She had to keep moving or the sorcerers would find her.

  They’d probably find her anyway.

  Fear snapped at her heels as she took off again. She found a staircase and nearly tumbled down it, catching herself against the wall. This room had pillars carved like trees, holding up a web of rafters. Beautiful water paintings hung between the pillars, and the air smelled like incense.

  Shine ran across the reed mats covering the floor and burst into a side room tiled with blue glass. The walls glowed warmly. This had to be an external room, with sunlight filtering in through the blue glass. What if she broke through the wall? But anything could be on the other side, including a cliff, and she certainly couldn’t fly.

  She turned and went back into the large chamber, choosing a different door.

  Her feet felt heavy, and her stomach rolled; she was losing energy. It had been taken wildly and drained away with the same sudden chaos. Her fingernails were cracked and blackened like they’d been thrown in a fire.

  Through another short corridor she found a warm bathroom, with long in-ground tubs tiled and filled with steaming water and lily pads.

  Shine stopped, looking for drinking water, or spirits. A fountain in the center flowed with clear water, and Shine ducked her head under a stream to take a drink. The water cooled her insides, and she splashed her face.

  Then she ran again.

  When she found a kitchen, empty, it finally occurred to her how strange it was to have met no people or spirits or anything. Even the sorceress had a few companions. Insistent Tide and Esrithalan and her invisible servants. Had the sorcerers no guards or servants? Where were their familiars?

  She was never going to escape. This was no plan at all. The First Mountain was hundreds of miles from where she’d left Kirin. How could she get back to him? She didn’t understand her magic and she didn’t have her pear!

  The realization nearly tripped her, and she gasped. The thin slip had no pockets or ties to carry anything.

  When she’d been taken, the pear had been in her tunic. They had it. The sorcerers had it.

  If she wanted it back, she’d have to bargain with them.

  Maybe the best thing to do would be to sit down right here and wait. Make sure she got a chance to talk to them. To make a deal.

  Shine slowed her pace, panting with effort. She touched the walls, trailing her hand through the thin lines of aether but taking none of its power.

  The sorcerers were supposed to be allied to the Empress with the Moon in Her Mouth. Surely they’d bargain with a friend of the heir.

  When she turned a corner and found herself in another stone room, she stopped, shocked to be back inside the mountain. But this one was no cavern. It was built of stone blocks. In the center was a cage like her own had been, and inside it lay a person.

  Shine darted forward unthinking, but it wasn’t Kirin, nor Sky. This person was small and pale like herself or the Selegan’s youth form. Their eyes were closed, their breathing shallow and fast. Blood pooled under their head, soaked into the ends of their black hair. Deep cuts bled from their cheek, arms, and legs. A thin gray tunic stuck to their flat chest with blood soaked through from beneath.

  Without thinking, she knelt at the bars and grasped them, gently pulling aether out of the stone. The two bars she held shivered, cracked, and disintegrated. Shine touched a few more, drawing carefully on the aether. It hurt, but less if she worked very slowly.

  She leaned into the cage and touched the person’s neck: their skin was clammy and almost translucent it was so sickly and pale, stretched taut to sharp cheekbones and jaw, a thin nose, and their hair was like ebony silk. Their lips were colorless, and they didn’t seem to breathe, but beneath their thin, blue-bruised eyelids, movement darted.

  Shine took a deep breath and pushed aether out of herself, shoving it into them.

  She closed her eyes and imagined aether-threads sewing up the wounds, filling their stomach and poking their heart into stronger beating.

  It hurt her, a little bit, to be so careful, but Shine didn’t want to wound them by pushing too hard or too much. She clenched her jaw tightly.

  “Thank you” came a whisper.

  Shine looked, sitting back in surprise.

  The person was whole. They sat up, and with warmth in their cheeks and pink in their lips, they seemed older than before—Kirin’s age, around nineteen. Their black hair fell straight and sleek as rain, shimmering with rainbows, and their eyes shifted back and forth from silver to blue like clouds passing quickly over a cold winter sky.

  Aether swirled around them, caressing them like they were magic’s favorite person.

  This was one of the sorcerers. Shine tripped in her hurry to stand, and the sorcerer’s smile faded into concern.

  “Wait, please,” they said. “I will not hurt you, not as those other fools did.”

  She didn’t listen but turned and dashed away.

  The door to the stone chamber remained open for her.

  “Please, Night Shine, come back,” the sorcerer called.

  She made it out of the chamber and down the hallway before she stopped. Her chest heaved and she leaned against the wall with one hand, head dipping. Sweat trailed down her temples, and she wiped at it with her wrist. She’d wanted a chance to talk with
one of them. She had to be brave now.

  Kirin would put on an arrogant smile and return calmly. Sky would—what? Sky wouldn’t have gotten himself into this position in the first place. The sorceress would tell Shine to be herself: volatile, cunning, bright.

  That, Shine took comfort in. The sorceress would say that Shine could do this and do this well. Volatile, cunning, bright.

  Shine returned to find the sorcerer standing in a long gray dressing gown embroidered with lines of aether and slippers with up-tilted toes. Their hair fell past their shoulders, sliding around their jaw and slender neck, and they smiled in a way that touched their eyes and slowed the shifting of silver and blue.

  “How did you know my name?” she asked, trying to sound calm. She didn’t remember saying it aloud here, but there might be plenty she didn’t remember.

  “I can see it, pulling out from you.” The sorcerer tilted their head, looking her over from crown to toes. “You should guard the fullness of it better, Night Shine.”

  “Just Shine,” she said.

  “Shine.” Their smile broadened. “Welcome to the First Living Mountain, Shine. I am The Scale, but you may call me Lutha, as you used to.”

  Shine’s mouth fell open.

  The oldest sorcerer in the world.

  And they knew her—or had known her before.

  “I called you a name before?” she asked, barely getting the words past her teeth.

  “We have been friendly for centuries. I knew you when you were a newly great spirit called A Meadow of Fire Balsam, and I knew you when you were a demon called Patience.”

  “Patience!” Shine laughed in disbelief. What a name for a demon. “That can’t be true.”

  “And yet…,” The Scale said, shrugging only one shoulder. “I imagine it was part of a longer name like, The Trouble with Patience, or perhaps Patience Never Pays.” They laughed, a bright, amused, friendly laugh, and Shine understood this ancient sorcerer was teasing her.

  Shine’s knees felt weak, and she slid to the floor, forgetting to be volatile or sly.

  Patience. Had the sorceress called her that?

  In that moment Shine wanted only to ask, to see the sorceress and ask what the name Patience meant. She longed for her cool smile and that summer-green graveyard eye, the haunting, bone-white eye.