by Lana Popovic
All three of them drew to a stop, and Mara began to sing herself.
It was nothing like my own song—it had no nuance, no emotional range. Instead it was a simple, indomitable demand, like a gushing geyser. It sounded like an essential summoning, the very pinnacle of a command.
To love her, to come to her, and to obey.
Mama wasn’t singing, but I could see her hand bruising under Mara’s grip, though her face didn’t even flicker with a hint of pain. Whatever they were doing, they were doing it together. Maybe all that sheared-off will keeping Mama alive still belonged to Mara somehow, as a reservoir that she could tap into and use to strengthen her own gleam.
The three remaining creatures lifted their heads, twitching. Along with the daughters who’d fallen and risen again, they dropped what they were doing and began a slow skulk toward Mara, irresistibly drawn by the bugling of that goddess-song.
Once they reached the trio, they froze in their tracks, heads tilted to the side like curious dogs.
That was when Dunja sprang to life.
I had forgotten my aunt’s ferocity. Her gleam so finely honed by Death, like a freshly whetted blade, that it didn’t need any sharpening.
I’d also forgotten what she had done the last time this hall had been a battlefield. The hypnotic dance that had held the daughters captive while she attacked Mara. The fierce stomp of her little foot and the shock wave it sent out, tumbling them down.
While the creatures and the fallen daughters stood enthralled, Dunja flung herself into motion like a whirling dervish. She cut her way through them like a scythe, landing blows that cleaved them limb from limb.
It must have been such a heartbreak for her, even with so little heart left to break. The creatures were just things, but the fallen daughters were her family—the upline of mothers and sisters she had known and loved.
She couldn’t afford to spare any of them.
Not even Nev.
THERE WERE SO few of us left. Of Mara’s two hundred daughters, only about forty were still alive. Amrisa had made her rounds, doing what she could for the wounded. But some of them had been beyond even her help.
It was impossible to imagine how we’d ever mourn them all, and we were far from being safe enough to even consider sinking fully into grief.
I should have felt at least an inkling of victory, now that I’d finally found my will. It meant we had hope, that Mara would be free to fight Herron when winter finally broke.
But we’d lost so much, too much for me to feel like we’d won anything at all.
We couldn’t stay at the chalet. It was all upended from the inside, as if a hurricane had blown through it. Every time I found the strength to lift my head from where I sat bundled up with Niko—Luka in between, with his arms around both of us—I kept having near-hysterical thoughts of Tasmanian Devil cartoons. Everything that could be broken had been mangled, and all the windows gaped like mouths with shards of glass for teeth. Tatters of the Turkish rugs that had lined the mahogany floors were spooled around the splintered furniture. All the wall hangings had been torn, hanging askew on shattered frames or in pieces on the floor.
And anywhere you stood, you could feel the mountain air gusting through the house. The most bereft feeling, being so open to the elements with a roof still above your head.
That was how we all felt too, I could hear it. The unique desolation of a home stripped bare of doors and windows, so empty it whistled with the wind.
We couldn’t stay.
“Why would Jasna agree to take us in?” I asked Naisha as I piled into the last of the caravan of cars that had begun trundling up the road from Žabljak this morning. Driven by silent, stone-faced locals who’d clearly been paid enough not to ask questions. “We’re dangerous. He’ll follow us there, come after her. We could go somewhere else, one of the other coven strongholds. Shimora said . . .”
Shimora, our grandmother.
Who was one of the dead.
“Because Jasna wants to protect you,” Naisha said gently, running her fingers through my hair as I bit back burning tears. A score of welts ran down one side of her narrow face, where one of the creatures had raked her with its nails. They looked inflamed, but nowhere near enough to bother Amrisa for healing. Not today. “And besides, if we fall, nothing will be safe from him.”
Before we pulled away, I twisted in my seat to watch the chalet disappear from view. Amaya had stayed behind, and I could see her burst into flame like a phoenix. That near-sentient flame she commanded looped around her body, raced up the auburn wick of her hair. She walked toward the chalet, dripping with amber-and-sapphire fire. Sparks fell from her, little licks like molten gems. But none of them caught on grass or pine needles like they should have. They burned only where she willed them, reined in by her gleam.
“What is she doing?” Niko whispered beside me. She was on her knees on the supple leather seat, like a little girl. Her cold hand nestled in mine—she hadn’t let go of me since the battle’s aftermath. Both of us knew how horribly close we’d come to losing each other. She still sounded like aftershocks of panic, a maddened thrash of flapping wings.
“Burning everything down,” Luka replied from the front seat. His voice was hoarse from the steady patter of comfort he’d rained down on us both. And from tears, I thought. Oriell had fallen toward the end, protecting him. I’d seen him on his knees beside her, baring his teeth at the sky. Now I could hear his guilt and the devastation, like a fault line cracking thunderously open.
Another lover he hadn’t been able to protect.
“Why?” I choked back tears. “It’s just broken things. It could all be fixed.”
“Because of the bodies, Linka,” he said gently. “There’s too many to bury, and there’s no time for it anyway. They can’t leave them for someone else to find. So they’re letting Amaya light their pyre.”
Twenty-One
Iris
FJOLAR AND I NAPPED TOGETHER AFTER, IN THE NEST OF our discarded clothes. It was so warm that our skin dried quickly, moisture wicking off into the air. Once we left the water, the languor settled over me like a weight; tucked into the curve of Fjolar’s body, I was asleep before I even registered my head settling into the pillowed crook of his arm.
The sleep was dark and dreamless, a satin black I wound around myself like a tangle of bedsheets. I might not have woken for hours or even days—or whatever passed for that amount of time in this place—had something sharp not scratched insistently at my face.
I woke blearily, and slow, squinting into a sky that hadn’t shifted even a shade away from its gilded twilight streamers. It gave me a lurching sense of lost balance that I’d only felt once before, in the bone desert. We were usually on the move long before I felt any visceral wrongness at the sky’s unchanging state, the absence of markers for the passage of time.
The owl sat on my chest, blinking at me. She was raven black this time, with a star of white blazing on the down of her throat and belly, her eyes still a striated golden and jade. One of her talons hovered in midair, as if she had been preparing to poke me again.
She struck me as a very authoritative kind of owl.
“Hello again,” I said to her, giving in to a jaw-popping yawn. I was still so tired, steeped in fatigue. Yet I felt an urgent pull to stay awake—especially when I saw Fjolar still asleep next to me with a fist curled under his chin, eyelids twitching as if he were held fast by a dream. He’d never seemed anything other than vibrantly awake to me before. Even when I stole naps next to him, I always drifted off alone beneath his wakeful gaze.
“Does Death sleep?” I asked the owl. She cocked her head to the side and gave a startlingly emphatic hoot. “Right, I didn’t think so, either. So what’s this about? Does it have something to do with you?”
She ruffled up her feathers, then picked her way daintily to the ground. I’d never seen an owl walk before, but her waddle was neater than I’d have expected, more elegant. And the perky flare of her tail f
eathers waggling back and forth was actually kind of cute. At the very edge of the path that led down from the Devil’s Punchbowl, where it dipped to the trail that wended around the cliff, she turned and waited, exuding an air of politely restrained impatience.
“You want me to come with you, really?” Shaking off my stupor, I worked my way sluggishly up to my feet. I’d had to lift Fjolar’s arm from where it draped over me, and he hadn’t even twitched when I set it back down, heavy as a log. Something beyond the pale was definitely happening here. Death, captive to sleep. “This is like every childhood fantasy I ever had, I hope you know that.”
Three slow, skeptical blinks.
“I get it, I’m coming.” I pulled my black tank top over my head and tugged on my jeans, worked my feet into my sneakers. “All right, ready when you are.”
She spread her wings and led.
I followed her down the path in cautious fits and starts as she wheeled above me, afraid to stumble and twist my ankle or snap a bone. Aside from the sound of water dashing itself into the pool at the falls’ base, the silence was absolute, like a domed bell jar had been lowered over the two of us. I hadn’t been by myself since Fjolar brought me here, and the absence of his presence and his voice was unsettling. As much as I wanted to relish being alone, I’d grown so used to him by my side, his hand always in mine.
Now, I missed both those things. I missed him.
The dismay of being away from him was distracting enough that I nearly didn’t notice our descent into a grove that definitely hadn’t been there before.
When Fjolar and I had first crossed over into this piece of the kingdom, there had been nothing to see but the loom and crash of the waterfall, like a natural citadel surrounded by green plains. That meant this thicket had to be something new, something recently grafted onto his domain. Even the grass inside it was a different shade of green, and the trees within were deciduous and dense, the kind of tall that came with ancient.
As soon as she crossed into the grove, the owl became a woman. There was no wavering of physical boundaries, no obvious transformation. It was more as if she’d been a woman all along, just as she now continued to be an owl.
Once I stepped over the threshold of this haven that manifestly belonged to her, she turned to face me, smiling in the most affectionate, benevolent way. Like I imagined an aunt might look at a favorite niece, one who’d spent a long time away but was no less loved for it. She wore crimson robes loosely belted at the waist, with nothing beneath them, the fabric a few shades brighter than the auburn waves of hair that cascaded nearly past her wide, round hips.
Her face was bold and pleasant without being beautiful: freckled cheeks, squared jaw, and a no-nonsense sort of nose. The kind of face Mama would have dismissed as “handsome”—though there was nothing about this woman that would brook dismissal.
Her eyes hadn’t changed from the owl’s gold-and-green, and her pupils had remained huge, black, and deep.
She held out both hands to me. Bracelets of braided metal circled both wrists, along with corsages of what looked like sprigs of holly and mistletoe, though the leaves weren’t quite the right shape for either.
I laid my palms on hers—dry and warm, a little rough from work—and she gave them a firm squeeze, wrinkling her nose in greeting like a mischievous schoolgirl. She smelled like sage and sandalwood, along with the sharp sweetness of mint. I could recognize the hum of power by now, from Dunja’s crackling ozone and Mara’s clustered bells, and this woman had it in heaps and spades. Yet there was nothing aggressive about whatever she wielded, nothing that suggested violence or a demand.
“Well met, love,” she said, still smiling. Her voice was rich and low, bright with the brink of laughter. Her brow was tattooed in dark blue, a full moon bracketed by waxing and waning phases on either side. The top of her head flickered every now and then, like a heat mirage. I kept thinking I saw a pair of massive, branching antlers draped with moss, but every time I focused on them I found nothing there. “You’ve led me on quite the chase in this swirling little maze. But I’m glad to have this time with you now, without him in tow. And look at you, so shining and lovely. Certainly one of hers, no two ways about it.”
“Thank you?” I hazarded. “One of Mara’s, do you mean?”
“I do,” she confirmed. “Though of course, you’re one of mine, too.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m known by many names, some freely shared and others oath-bound,” she replied serenely. “If you need some way to think of me, the Lady of the Dawn will do. Now, why are you still here?”
“Still here?” I couldn’t keep the indignation from my voice; she made it sound like I had a choice in it. “Because he brought me here, and doesn’t know how to let me out. So I’m not ‘still here’ so much as stuck, I’d say.”
The Lady arched an eyebrow, her gaze turning sharp beneath it. “I wouldn’t call it ‘stuck,’ love, and nor should you, if you abide by truth at all. What’s a prison like this to a might like yours, one who shares her far-mother’s infinite bloom? This world might be a lockbox, yes. But what is that, other than a thing held together by glue, and nails, and clasps? It may have been built with you in mind, but it was never built to hold you back.”
“You’re saying I could get out of here?” My heart began to pound painfully. “That it’s up to me somehow?”
“Of course it is. It’s always been. The only one telling you otherwise is him.” She made a little moue of distaste. “While I understand that her need was great, I will say I don’t approve of what she made of him. Things of his nature aren’t meant to dwell in flesh.”
“But he says he doesn’t know any way out, not for someone here in body as well as soul,” I protested.
“And he’s always been so straight with you, has he?” she replied tartly, tossing back her copper hair. The sometimes-antlers on her head appeared just long enough to catch the light before they winked out. “Nary a lie out of that one, I’m sure. A paragon of honesty.”
“You’re saying he’s lying to me even now? Even still?” The pain that bloomed at that prospect climbed up my throat like a creeper rose, lined with thorns. “So what else are you saying? I assume you know there’s a soul hidden here, that I need to find. I can’t leave before I do that, anyway, and we—I—still have no idea where it is.”
Her nostrils flared with frustration. “You already know more than enough about this world to find what you need, if only you’d seek higher ground, observe the greater scale of things. I can’t tell you more than that—this is his domain, and I overstep merely by being here—but goodness, girl. Think on it. Even he’s given you enough to work with, and now I’ve done what I can.”
I racked my brain for any hint of understanding, and still came up short. “I just don’t see any greater scale . . . ,” I began, balling my hands in frustration and smacking one against my thigh.
Her face softened into sympathy. “Maybe it is a lot to ask,” she conceded. “You may be of her rarefied golden blood, but you’re also a very human, very tired girl. Why don’t you come and rest with me a bit? I’ve been known to make some burdens lighter. Would you like to stay a spell, here with me?”
I found that I would, that I craved her continued presence. She felt like lingering summer in September, like the satisfaction of full larders before the fall of winter. “Yes, please, if you don’t mind . . . ,” I said, nearly finishing the sentence with a name that balanced like a sugar cube at the tip of my tongue before melting away, leaving only a faint sweetness behind.
A different name; her real name, not the placeholder she’d given me.
The Lady turned with a swirl of crimson robes, and strode deeper into the leafy enclave of the grove. Each step of her bare feet was both balanced and precise, and I noticed that her soles were caked with rich, red soil.
She crossed from tree to tree, as if considering, before stopping in front of one with a slim, dark trunk and full canopy, its branc
hes heavy with a crop of bloodred berries—just like the ones around her wrists. She trailed her palms fondly over the bark, then slid down its length to sit cross-legged where the roots snaked into the soil.
“Rowan, one of my very favorites,” she said, patting the trunk behind her as if it were a pet. “Sometimes also called mountain ash, or quicken tree. Powerfully protective, but also good for inspiration. Sitting beneath its crown with me might be exactly what you need. Perhaps something will strike you.”
She drew her robes across her thighs and patted her lap in invitation, the slant of sunlight through the leaves casting lacy shadows across her face. I knelt down next to her, leaning against the rowan for support. The bark scraped rough against my palm like any other tree, but beneath that it did feel a little like what she’d said.
A buzz of something ferociously protective, and a sense of something both gentle and fortifying.
She patted her lap again, and, like a little girl, I scooted down and rested my head along her soft, robed thigh. For a blessed moment, the knot of constant tension I carried with me, threaded through the fretwork of my being, loosened to nearly nothing. I released breath after peaceful breath, letting myself relax.
“That’s it,” she soothed, laying a light, warm hand down on my hair. “You’re already halfway there, love, you just don’t quite know it yet.”
I made a noncommittal little sound, burrowing against her thigh. Wherever I was or wasn’t yet, all I wanted was for her to keep stroking my hair. And she did, in steady, even circles, like a mother at a bedside rubbing her baby’s back—exactly like my mother had done for me, when Lina and I were still little and Mama was still sweet.
The motion and the memory altered my perspective just slightly, like the shadow from a sundial shifting.
Mothers.
Circles.
Spirals.
Gifts.
And just like that, I understood what she had wanted me to know.
I WAS SO furious with Fjolar that I lingered at the waterfall’s base long after the grove behind me had vanished, melting away into nothing like an oasis in a desert mirage. It had been here only while the Lady was here, and once she was gone, no trace of it stayed behind.
