Hymn

by Ken Scholes

  She glanced to Chandra, but Winters could tell by her tone and the way her eyes locked to Rudolfo’s that he was who she truly intended her words for. “And hear my wishes well: He is to use the Firstfall Axe to cut my heart free and he is to plant it in the shadow of the Firsthome Temple. Do you understand?”

  She saw the Gypsy King nod his head and saw Amara’s mother do the same. The woman stood still for a moment and then inclined her head. When they responded in kind, she moved to Isaak and Marta.

  “The People were fragile in their earlier generations,” she said, “and they made likenesses of themselves to do the work they themselves could not do. Sometimes that work was for the light, and sometimes it was for the dark.” She rested a hand upon Isaak’s metal chest. “You are not the first of your kind to be used to destroy, but it was not why you came to Lasthome. You were part of the Home-Shaping Song, along with the Keeper’s Hatch and the Seedling’s Heart, and down long reaches of time, it fell to your people to hear the Song of Sowing and reignite the Continuity Engine to fulfill the Terms and Conditions of Frederico’s Bargain. That you were used by wicked men of dark intentions is secondary to your primary truth: You have been the abacus used to recalculate the worth—and the survival—of a species. And it falls to you, Isaak, to seek one final song with all that you have learned. When the children cut my heart from Lasthome, my crèche will finally fall and the last of my blood will be free to aid you and your Choir of Life in the work ahead.”

  Her eyes went from Isaak to Marta. “As you go about this work, I beseech you to trust your heart, for it is noble and strong.”

  Then, the Grandmother Tree inclined her head again. She looked to Neb and then met Winters’s eyes, and she saw something in them that lived beyond her words. It was unspeakable love and overpowering weariness. “I have spent myself to give you a home,” the old woman finally said. “I will sleep soon, and I will not awaken this time.” She smiled. “I’m dreaming again—about home but not this home.” She held Winters’s eyes for a moment longer, then looked over to Jin Li Tam. “It is the home I left behind. The family I said goodbye to before I made my own bargains and left to serve the Continuity Engine of the People.” When the old woman smiled, Winters saw sorrow and memory within it. “I will dream about things I’ve not remembered since before my heart was planted in Lasthome.”

  She looked to Winters one last time. “And dreaming,” she said, “is a fine, fine thing indeed.” Then she took in Neb. “The ghost of your father bargained for the day of your birth, Nebios Whym, and twice before, his seed sprang into our world to prepare a way for this time. You have finished your father’s work, and now it falls to you to find your own work and leave behind a better dream to follow for those who come after you.”

  She inclined her head, and Neb did the same. Then she walked up and down before them, and Winters tried not to notice her wrinkled skin and sagging, empty breasts. She stopped at the administrator and took both her hands. “Your people have served well. The Time of Tending and Gathering is past, and I task you now with finding a new home for your people for this Time of Singing and Sowing.”

  The old woman walked the line again and stopped in front of each. She looked into each set of eyes for a moment and then continued to the next. Then she walked back to the base of the tree. “The new terms and conditions are executed,” she said. “It is finished.”

  And then Winters blinked her eyes open against red light. The axe was hanging near the heart again, and her mind was quiet in a way that it hadn’t been before. Because she is no longer with me.

  Slowly, she followed the others as they filed out into light that faded, though its position in the sky remained unchanged. The soldiers had finished cleaning up the meadow and had retreated to the tree line. And the quiet in her head seemed to follow into this place as she reached over and took Neb’s hand.

  It felt warm and strong in hers, and she looked down to be certain she held it now. After so long not, it felt good to intertwine her fingers with his. And yet it felt foreign to her as well.

  “I have kin-dragons for you both,” Petronus said, “and we’ll want to use them again.” He was holding a blue stone, and his brows were furrowed. “It seems the Firsthome Temple is … singing.”

  Winters felt her own eyebrows rise. “Singing?”

  Petronus sighed. “Never a moment of peace and calm.”

  She saw a speck of blood and leaned closer. “Your nose is bleeding,” she told him.

  A dark look washed his face, and he wiped the blood onto the back of his hand. His eyes looked faraway and hard for a moment before they were once more upon her. “We should go soon. I would say any goodbyes that need saying.” He glanced at Jin Li Tam where she stood apart with Rudolfo and Jakob when he said it, and she swallowed a lump in her throat. Winters nodded and released Neb’s hand.

  She approached slowly, feeling a moment of hesitation at interrupting. But Jin Li Tam saw her coming, touched Rudolfo’s arm briefly, and passed Jakob over to him. Then she met Winters and took her arm. “Walk with me,” the Gypsy Queen said.

  They strolled to one of the ponds just out of earshot, and Winters found herself unsure of what to say. There were too many words, too many questions. “She said your ending would be changed,” she finally said. “What does that mean? Are you still dying?”

  Jin shook her head. “I do not know. But I know she told me to say all of my goodbyes and then come back to her.” Now Winters saw the woman’s resolve finally break as she wiped a tear from her eye. “And I know that I’m not ready, whatever it is.”

  Yet Winters could see in those fierce eyes no regret for the choice made. It had been the calculated tactic and accepted sacrifice of a Tam. And behind her, Winters saw Rudolfo standing with their son, watching from afar, his face a mask that she knew concealed heartache.

  I must let them have their time together and say my goodbye. She hesitated and then failed utterly at holding back her tears. Her words came out with a sob. “I will miss you,” she said. “I’ve learned more about being a queen and a mother and a wife from you than I could have ever learned from someone else.”

  Jin’s smile was wry. “I’m not as certain of those lessons, Winteria, but I know you can dance the knives with the best of them and hold your own.” And her own tears flowed now, making Winters’s flow all the more. “And you have taught me,” she said, looking over to her husband and her son, “to believe in dreams of home.” She pushed the girl away now, holding her apart with firm hands upon her shoulders. “Go build the home you’ve dreamed of all your life upon the moon, Winteria bat Mardic. Build it with Neb and the others that have followed your dream. Be queen and wife, mother and warrior, seeker and dreamer as you will, but first and always, be Winters and be true.”

  “I don’t know how to say goodbye,” Winters said, and her sob became a laugh.

  “Just that,” Jin Li Tam said, and embraced her again. Then she put her back to Winters and walked away. She did not look over her shoulder as she went, and when she reached Rudolfo, she took back her son and stood with him while Winters watched.

  She felt Neb’s presence behind her. “It is nearly time to go,” he said.

  Winters nodded and sniffed as he took her hand. “Do we know what the singing is about?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But before we go, there’s something we need to do.” He tugged at her hand. “Walk with me.”

  Only as he walked, he did not walk along the edge of the pond. He walked onto it, its surface bearing his feet. “Petronus has a kin-dragon for you waiting at Endicott Station,” he said. “One for each of us. But you can’t fly it unless we finish your restoration.”

  My restoration? She looked down and realized she had joined him on the silver pond. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “I know,” he told her, “but you will.”

  And then Neb kissed her, and as she found herself lost in the kiss, she also found herself descending slowly into the pool,
the blood of the earth hot around her as it forced its way into her around the edges of their kiss.

  This is our heritage, she heard Neb say into her mind. Peace, no fear. The blood of the earth will bear you and serve you.

  Yes, she heard the Grandmother Tree whisper.

  When she came up from the pool she was still wrapped up in Neb, his mouth still pressed to hers, but now she felt something electric move over her body as a tingling fire came alive within her and the smell of Neb filled her. She felt her eyes grow wide and saw that his nostrils were flaring from the force of it all.

  “What is that?” It had been a while since those heated, shared dreams when their love was newborn. Those had been steamy enough to keep her blushing, but this was a forest fire compared to that flickering candle.

  Neb smiled. “It’s the Calling.” Then he blushed as he realized what she’d known for a little while now as the evidence pressed firmly into her stomach. He stepped back. “We should go.”

  Winters blushed now, too, grateful that the evidence of her own arousal was less obvious as she watched his broad shoulders. And beyond the Calling, her body felt alive in a way that it hadn’t before. The air was full of smells and tastes, and the colors were more alive than before. She held out a hand to the pond beneath her and furrowed her brow. “Clothe me,” she whispered with intent.

  She felt it as a mist first as it moved up over her ankles and legs, spinning light until she wore a robe like Neb’s. Winters laughed and caught up to Neb.

  The last of their goodbyes were a blur—a rush at the end with Petronus calling them to the pond impatiently.

  She hugged Marta and Isaak both but couldn’t remember what words were passed. Something about visiting on the moon one day. And then she swam the light again and stumbled into a mauve sunrise to call down her kin-dragon and learn to fly.

  Winters could hear the song now, faint, and they followed it out into the sea. The Calling was here, too, only now she had no way to blush as she realized that Petronus stirred a similar reaction. So she focused instead upon the light in the waves and the wind upon her silver skin.

  She wasn’t certain of how long it was before she saw the massive white arches of the Seaway. As it grew to fill her horizon, she saw the subtle difference in sky and sea within those arches.

  And as she passed through them, Winteria bat Mardic thought for the briefest moment that she saw something in the water below. But before she could be certain, the air warmed and the sky became a fiercer blue beneath a bright morning sun.

  The sea bubbled and foamed, and at first she thought it was a byproduct of the arches and whatever strange science connected the two oceans. But as they moved away and north, she saw that the waters roiled as if being heated.

  The song was loud now, too, and she heard within it the familiar notes of Frederico’s Canticle for the Fallen Moon. Only now, the canticle had become a hymn that rang out from the white tower that loomed ahead of them and boiled the lunar seas beneath a cobalt sky.

  Roaring upon the wind, Winteria bat Mardic gave herself to that new and lunar sky, winging her way homeward at long last.

  Chapter

  25

  Jin Li Tam

  Blue-green light flashed within the silver pond as Petronus, Neb and Winters vanished, and Jin Li Tam released her held breath. Already she could tell that things were shifting within her. Gone were the strength and agility she’d had, along with the heightened sense of smell. And with Petronus and Neb now away, she no longer felt that other heat—the one she’d not been prepared for. Whatever the Grandmother Tree’s sap had awakened within her was ancient and feral, and she was glad it had finally passed.

  She turned to Rudolfo and considered the man as he held their son. He was taking everything in stride given that when he’d woken up that morning, he’d been in the Named Lands meeting with Orius. She didn’t know how long it had been since he slept, but she saw the circles beneath his eyes. Still, he smiled at the boy in his arms. Jakob was still waving at the pond and laughing. “Bye,” he said, and down the shore, Amara repeated him.

  Someday they will swim the light, too. It brought to mind the ghosts that were sometimes sighted in the seas far south—the ones named for those apparitions. They were called the d’jin, and it was from those ghosts that her father had taken her name. And with eyes that moved sometimes between blue and green depending upon her mood, Jin was an apt name. Now, having traveled by lightway and having watched it, she wondered even more if they weren’t right to call them ghosts.

  Now Isaak and Marta were the last. She’d watched the two of them, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about the fierce affection the girl regarded Isaak with. She would’ve considered it some kind of odd puppy love brought about by bizarre circumstances, but she’d heard the howl of despair in the girl’s voice when the Grandmother Tree restrained her and had seen the look upon her face when Jin had finally taken Amylé’s head and the others had come out to gather up what they could of Isaak.

  She’d seen the metal man after the bomb at the library had nearly killed her and Jakob. The explosion had damaged him badly, but it was nothing compared to what Amylé had done with the axe.

  Isaak stood before them whole now, but he’d been in pieces when they’d gathered him up and laid him out in the pond. And Marta had met her grief as one who had met grief before, only she had no shame for her tears and shed them openly. And she’d shed even more when he climbed up from the liquid, shining dimly in the evening light.

  She’s not left his side since.

  “It is time for us to go,” Isaak said. “We will meet with Ire Li Tam at Endicott Station, and then Administrator Gras has arranged an airship to bear us back to Behemoth. From there, we sail north beyond the Named Lands and the Dragon’s Spine and into the polar regions.”

  Marta lifted a blue stone from a pouch marked with the insignia of the Expeditionary Force. “They’ve provided us with communication and recording stones, along with maps.”

  Jin watched the two of them and saw how easily and eagerly Isaak stepped in to continue. “New Espiran records suggest that P’Andro Whym’s scientist-scholars diverted the surviving members of Xhum Y’Zir’s Death Choir into the north, where they were buried in a glacier.”

  Now Marta interrupted. “If we can find them and if Isaak can learn what he needs to and refashion the song—and if they will help us…”

  Jin had heard it before, and she chuckled. “The world will be healed.” They’d said it about her son, too, and about the little girl he’d been betrothed to before his birth, for millennia even according to the Y’Zirite gospels. Then she thought of Winters. “But it is good to follow a dream.” She reached out and embraced Isaak. “And it is good to follow your heart.”

  Isaak inclined his head. “Thank you for your grace, Lady Tam.”

  She saw him then the way he used to be: fashioned with the best Androfrancine engineering, based on Rufello’s Book of Specifications, and shaped with care by Brother Charles. And brought back, without his maker’s knowledge, to bear the spell in a bid to defend Windwir from a newly discovered foe. And he’d born it and limped away from Windwir, co-opted by the man whose bed she shared in order to feed her father the best information. She’d met Isaak on the day she’d changed camps, when Rudolfo had sent her and the metal man north and east to take refuge in the Ninefold Forest. It was the first time she’d seen him in a robe. And now, he wore a borrowed robe marked in New Espiran rank she did not comprehend.

  So much has happened since that day. She was a mother now. And a wife. And a queen. And through it all, as much as it broke her heart, she was also her father’s daughter.

  And I am dying.

  The tears were there again, but they were never far away. Over the hours, there had been tears of anger, tears of sorrow, tears of regret, tears of hope, and tears of powerlessness.

  She forced herself back to Isaak and Marta. “Thank you, Isaak. I know you’ve been used terribly and that m
y family was involved both times. But you’ve also saved lives. Mine and Jakob’s, to be certain. You did not choose the ill that befell you, but you did choose to live beyond it. You did not ask for a heart that could break, but you have one.” She looked at Marta. “And you have a heart that is full of love.” She winked at the girl. “I think you need to listen to her more and guard her less.”

  Marta inclined her head. “Thank you, Great Mother.”

  Jin Li Tam let the title move past her and returned the gesture. Then Rudolfo passed Jakob to her.

  Rudolfo looked up at Isaak. “You told me not to believe the dark tidings, but it was too compelling.”

  Isaak nodded. “I’m sorry, Lord Rudolfo. I could not risk the Y’Zirites uncovering Lord Tam’s ruse until—”

  Rudolfo raised a hand. “I understand, Isaak. And you have seen him into my care. We will leave for the Named Lands in a few days.”

  She didn’t hear the rest of the conversation. She’d lost herself in her son’s eyes again, and she feared that it might be the last time. Of course, if anything, she’d learned that she never knew when that last time might be. That every time someone came or went through a doorway, it could be their last.

  Of course, that had been the mantra of her family, and the Tams bled lives in the Named Lands as they went about their father’s business. But this was different. And she was terrified that she might not be able to name that difference before the time came for her to lay down her life.

  It is time, Child. You will fade fast, and you will not want them to see you fading.

  She swallowed. Rudolfo was embracing Isaak now. “Come home to me soon, Isaak, and tell me how it has all gone,” he said.

  “I will, Lord Rudolfo.”

  He nodded. “I will watch for you.” He embraced Marta as well. “And you.”