Sea God of the Sands: Book One of the Firebird’s Daughter Series (Firebird's Daughter 1)

by Kyrja

  “Normally, you’re right,” Denit agreed. “But, in their defense, not every child is born being able to set their parents on fire.”

  “What?!” Denit watched as Aidena’s eyes flew open in surprise, then made an obvious effort to control her own emotions – and the automatic fear she’d seen manifest in the faces of those few she’d ever told about her abilities.

  “Well, when you’re born with that kind of thing, it’s obviously not something you asked for, or intentionally developed,” she shrugged. “And it’s not something you can just stop either.”

  “No,” Aidena agreed, and to her credit, her voice was calm and reasonable, with no hint of fear. Yet. “I don’t suppose it is. So what did they do about it?”

  “They reasoned that such a “gift” could only have come directly from Sov, so they took me to the heart of the desert, and left me there.”

  “Alone? As a baby? That’s just crazy!” her companion protested.

  “Well, what else would you do with a baby who has no control over her own actions – or reactions? Think about it, what do babies do? They eat, sleep, and shit. And they cry when they are unhappy. That’s just what babies do. You can’t reason with them, you can only feed them, cuddle them, and clean them up. But what are you supposed to do when your newborn sets things on fire instead of crying when she’s hungry?” Denit drew in a deep breath, and almost chuckled. Mostly a nervous reaction to telling the story, she knew. It was never a pleasant experience, and this was no exception. She was making herself vulnerable again, and still wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, no matter what her intuition told her. She looked at Aidena, knowing the girl wanted to argue that something else should have been done, other than leaving a helpless infant to die. But there wasn’t anything she could say in return, the deed had been done a long time ago, the outcome was already determined. Nothing either one of them could say would change what happened next.

  “Well, you obviously survived, so something happened. Did they come back?”

  “No,” Denit whispered, her throat suddenly closing on the emotions she felt crowding in too close. Damn it! Why was she even doing this? Aidena was a young girl, how could she be expected to understand? She cleared her throat, rubbing her hands over her face. It was really too late to stop now. What difference did it make? Maybe knowing her own experiences would help her to … what? Not feel like she was alone? Denit snorted quietly to herself. As if that would ever make any difference. She would always be alone, no matter how many friends she had, and so would Aidena be. Not only did others fear her, but she could never be certain their friendship wasn’t based on the hope they would be able to use her in some way.

  “No,” she repeated, “they didn’t come back. Giya came. The Earth Goddess. She picked me up and took me with her.”

  “The Goddess?” Denit heard the mixture of awe and disbelief in Aidena’s voice, and could well imagine the difficulty in choosing which one to feel.

  “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” Denit scoffed. When Aidena remained silent, she said, “Of course it is! And now you’re wondering whether all the stories are true and I really am crazy! I would be thinking I was crazy if I were you!”

  “Sure, but you didn’t just ride a giant sea creature across the desert with the son of Amphedia,” Aidena looked at her, her eyebrows raised.

  Denit couldn’t help herself; she laughed out loud. And it felt good. Very, very good. Especially when Aidena joined in.

  “So?” the girl asked. “Now that we know we’re both crazy, maybe it won’t be so hard to tell the rest of the story. And maybe, once you’re done, you’ll tell me what Giya really looks like.”

  “And you can tell me more about Amphedia’s son. I’m not so happy to hear he has returned from the dead again, but at least that explains the manta ray.” She was glad Aidena had decided to tell her about Savaar. She’d known, of course, but the fact that she was willing to be honest with her made a very big difference. She had worried what it meant that the Storm Goddess’ son should appear just after the goddess herself had taken Jarles. She hoped Aidena had some answers for her to calm her fears that Amphedia and her son were using Jarles as a pawn in the ages-long war between them.

  “Giya raised me herself because she was the only one I wasn’t able to set on fire. As for why I was born the way I was? I can’t tell you. Nobody has been able to give me an explanation.”

  “They couldn’t, or they wouldn’t?” Aidena asked, obviously suspicious.

  “Either way, the result is the same. I don’t know. Do you know how old I am? Take a guess.”

  “I will guess you are probably around fifty or so, given that Jarles is probably about 25,” Aidena replied.

  “Good guess,” Denit smiled into the darkness. “Now add a couple of hundred years onto that.”

  “That’s not possible,” she stated flatly, frowning.

  “And neither is this, right?” Denit asked her, holding up her hand so all four of her fingers were pointed upright, touching her thumb, then lighting them on fire. It was just a small flame, no taller than half a finger’s height, but the small blaze seemed to be coming from all of her digits, and was a bright beacon in the darkness. She only held it for a moment, before allowing the flame to be extinguished.

  “It took me a very long time to learn control, Aidena. Giya … well… she did something that made me stay a child for more than a hundred years. I don’t pretend to know what it is. In fact, there is still a lot I don’t know, but I know it’s normal for me.”

  “But why keep you as a child? Wouldn’t you understand things better as you grew older and became more aware of yourself and how your actions affected others if you were older?”

  “I didn’t have any choice in the matter. And since there weren’t any other children, I didn’t know I was different. You’d be amazed how much you take for granted because you have always lived with other people.”

  “So you were alone all that time?” Aidena asked.

  “No, Giya had a lot of other things to tend to during that time because, well, because she is the Earth Mother, and is responsible for more than you might guess. There were other people who came in and out of my life; mostly teachers. And I was a terribly stubborn child. The one thing about my childhood that I remember clearly is how many times Giya would say I was just like my father. I always had the sense she was talking about Sov, and not my human father.”

  “Did you ever ask her if Sov is your father?” Aidena wanted to know.

  “A hundred times. A thousand times. You don’t know Giya like I do. She is patient beyond enduring! She always answered the same: ‘Sov is everyone’s father.’ It was infuriating, and told me nothing. And then I started to grow up. Or grow older at any rate.”

  “But,” Aidena interrupted, “if you are Jarles’ grandmother, you had to have been with other people at some point.”

  “Yes, but you’re getting ahead of the story. When I was a around ten years old, or what passed for it, Giya told me I would have to go to live with others soon, and so she started teaching me how to act so I would fit in. Again, it took a very long time, but eventually I learned what I needed to so I could be accepted. By then, I had been alive for two hundred years.”

  “That’s amazing!” Aidena exclaimed. “To be a child for such a long time must have been incredible!”

  “You have to remember, though, I thought I was normal. That everyone else lived the way I did. The teachers who came had very strict orders about what they could and could not talk about. While they were all pretty nice to me, they weren’t any fun. They weren’t supposed to be. And in my mind, they were very old, so I wasn’t very interested in them either.”

  “What a strange way to live,” Aidena shook her head.

  “It gets stranger,” Denit assured her. “It wasn’t too long after Giya told me I was going to have to live with other people that she planted a seed inside of me. It was the strangest thing that ever happened to me.”
<
br />   “What kind of seed?” Aidena asked right away, a frown on her face.

  “When she did it, all she told me was that it would change the fire energy inside of me to earth energy,” Denit explained.

  “Did it hurt? What did it look like?”

  “I will never forget that day,” Denit replied, her voice turning soft, as if she had a secret to share. “It looked like nothing so much as a lump of clay, if you want to know the truth. It was neither wet nor dry, warm nor cold. At first I thought it was a rock she held in her hand, but it was less solid than a rock, and more cohesive than a fist full of dirt, but more pliable than any clay I’ve ever seen.”

  “Pliable? What do you mean by that?” Aidena wanted to know.

  “I think I only say that because it seemed to stretch and grow once it was inside of me.”

  “You said it was a seed,” Aidena said, spreading her hands, as if envisioning it, “does that mean it grew inside of you?”

  “I only called it that because that’s what Giya said it was,” Denit explained. “I’m not really sure what it is. I just know that, at first, it helped me because instead of lighting fires everywhere I went, I grew flowers instead.”

  “Huh!” Aidena was amused. “I’ll bet that was pretty strange for you!”

  “It was, actually,” Denit agreed, chuckling. “You can’t warm your dinner on a bed of flowers, no matter how many you grow! And believe me,” she said, leaning forward, “I know! The more I tried to start a fire, the more flowers there were everywhere – which only made me all the more angry!”

  They were silent together, each lost in their own thoughts, something Denit found peaceful It had been some time since she’d had someone to talk to, and for the moment, she was glad she’d shared part of her story with the young woman. She hoped Jarles would lower his guard enough to be friends with her too. Once they found him.

  “So Jonath was your son, then.” It was more of a question than a statement, and Denit was sorry all over again she had even started this conversation. Of course, she’d known she would have to talk about him, once she’d begun, but it was still impossible to believe he was no longer alive.

  “I started to age normally once I started living with other people.” She paused then, remembering. “You cannot image how frightening that was for me. Instead of taking decades to age, my body was suddenly changing all the time. And now,” she paused again, holding out her arms, as if inspecting them for obvious changes, “I’m growing old almost overnight. It’s very, very strange to me.” She let her arms fall again.

  “But you wanted to know about Jonath.” She sighed, then smiled, always feeling the bittersweet wave of emotions wash over her when she thought of her son. “Giya told me what to expect, of course. She always did. Even when she wasn’t there, with me, she would whisper as the voice of the sand, or she would visit me in my dreams. One day, she told me I must choose a mate, and then told me who it must be. And so it was done. Kerr was very, very lucky I’d had so many years to learn how to control my emotions, because I never did like him much.” She sighed again. “Nor has Giya ever seen fit to tell me why he had to be my son’s father. I simply did as Giya asked, trusting her to guide me in all things.”

  “Even in the choice of your mate?” Aidena protested.

  “It doesn’t seem as though either one of us had much say in who would father our children,” Denit observed, glancing sideways at her companion.

  “Good point,” Aidena conceded, obviously disgruntled by the comparison. “Still,” she countered, “it seems to me that you’ve made very few choices of your own. You just keep turning to your goddess to solve all your problems.”

  “Except for Jonath,” Denit replied, pointedly, standing abruptly. “She wasn’t able to save him, was she?”

  “Wait!” Aidena said, reaching out a hand to touch Denit’s arm. “What happened to him?” She paused, searching for the right words to say. “I mean, I know he was Jarles’ father. I think everyone knows that! But why did he die? I don’t understand.”

  “Because he was a young, foolish boy in love, that’s why!” Denit exploded. “Or haven’t you heard the whole, wretched story by now? Obviously not, since you seem to think everyone knows Jonath was Jarles’ father!”

  “How does that make any sense?” Aidena yelled back. “What difference does it make that he was in love with S’ray?”

  “Drena! Her name was Drena!” Denit shouted, visibly upset. “That damned Amphedia tricked Jonath! He had to agree to die in order to be allowed to … to … make love to the woman he loved. How stupid is that?” she knew she had allowed herself to become hysterical, but couldn’t seem to stop, now that it was all coming out. “And not only this life, but his eternal life! He can never be reborn!”

  “But why Denit? Why?” Aidena persisted, doing her best to ignore the fact that the madder the other woman got, the more flowers seemed to grow out of the sand.

  “Because that dried up lump of dung of a goddess said so, that’s why!” She started coughing, her throat raw from screaming. With precious tears threatening to fall, she turned to Aidena saying, “Our people are dying, Aidena. He wanted to save them. Save us. Sov won’t leave us alone, so the desert is expanding, but the water isn’t. We have to have water to live.” She reached for her own water skin, draining the last few drops she found there, licking her lips, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “So why doesn’t Amphedia give it to us?” Aidena asked, handing the other woman her own container of water.

  “What do you mean?” Denit asked, with a nod of thanks.

  “There is water everywhere, Denit,” she proclaimed, throwing her arms wide. “I can feel the water, remember? I know where it is all the time. All the time. It’s much deeper in the desert than anywhere else, but it’s still there. You’ve seen it yourself, each time Jarles brought water to the surface for all the people following him. Think about that. I have. There is absolutely no reason that I know of that Amphedia couldn’t make it easily available to everyone all the time, no matter where we live.”

  “If she chose to,” Denit clarified.

  “If she chose to,” Aidena agreed.

  “But why go through the trouble of creating an heir if she could just …” Denit’s voice trailed off.

  “Because she can’t?” Aidena suggested.

  “But why would a mortal be able to, when a goddess can’t?” Denit asked, frowning.

  “Because he was born to!” the younger woman suddenly exclaimed.

  “Because he was created specifically to save the world, just like the lore has said all along,” Denit put a hand over her face, shaking her head. “Is it really possible, do you think,” she asked quietly, “that Amphedia has been doing all of this to save us?”

  “It seems pretty absurd,” Aidena answered, “I have to admit. But wait!” she cautioned, suddenly excited. “Giya told you who to mate with! You said so yourself, can she possibly be a part of this whole thing too?”

  “I don’t know,” Denit answered slowly. “I’ve never thought about it like this. But then, wouldn’t that mean that I am a part of that whole process too? I don’t even know who my parents were!”

  “Maybe not, but it wouldn’t be important for you to know who they were, only that you were born. Once you were, they’re not important any more. At least,” she amended, “as far as creating Amphedia’s heir is concerned.”

  “I get that,” Denit replied, distracted. “But wait a minute,” she said, bringing a hand to her mouth in a gesture Aidena knew meant she was thinking and putting pieces together in her mind. “Something you said, that Amphedia can’t do something.”

  “That she can’t give water to everyone?” Aidena suggested.

  “Yes, but that’s not it.” Denit lowered her hand, her lips pressed together, her brow furrowed, a look of anger on her face. “When Drena went to the city all those years ago, Jonath went with her, to protect her. She went to the Temple of Life, like
every other Undia does, but once she got there, everything changed.”

  “Right. I’ve heard that part,” Aidena volunteered. “She was told she was going to be the mother of Amphedia’s heir.”

  “Yes, but it was more than that. The High Priestess told her Jonath would be the one to father the heir.”

  “And that upset just about everyone,” Aidena interjected.

  “Except for Drena and Jonath, of course,” Denit retorted. “Until Amphedia told them the price they would have to pay anyway.”

  “But what does any of this have to do with Amphedia not being able to give everyone water?” Aidena asked, confused.

  “I have always been able to feel where Jonath was, even when he was in the city and I was in the desert. The same way I can feel where Jarles is.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why I know he’s still alive, Aidena. And that’s why we’re going to the city now. And,” she added quietly, “that’s how I knew when Jonath had died.”

  “Oh,” Aidena said, “that had to have been terrible for you.”

  “I waited for a little while, so Drena could collect his life water, then I brought her back to the desert.”

  “What does that mean? Were you there?”

  “No,” Denit inhaled deeply. “Giya had told me what to expect, and asked me to bring Drena back to the desert, to her own people, so she wouldn’t have to suffer any more than she already had. I opened a passageway through the earth to bring her back to me.”

  “You brought her back…” Aidena said, understanding dawning.

  “Yes.”

  “Not Giya.”

  “No.”

  “Oh,” Aidena replied. “And you think Giya couldn’t do it, just like we think Amphedia might not be able to give everyone water.”

  “Aidena,” Denit sighed, “I’m not sure about much of anything right now. I’ve never trusted Amphedia, and I don’t see that changing any time soon, but it does make me wonder if keeping Jarles from her was the right thing to do.”

  “Can you bring Jarles here?”

  Denit was quiet for a moment. When she answered, she was very quiet. “Yes. I’ve thought about doing it ever since Amphedia took him away, but I’m not sure if she wouldn’t just kill me outright if I did. And I’m not sure what good it would do, if she could just take him back again.”