“Do you have any other family?” I try.
The boy shakes his head. The girl cries silently into his shirt.
I lick my lips, taking in the two children. Arrice and Franc are getting too old to take in more strays, and we haven’t the money to—
Part of my memory, separate from the darkness, sparks. Crouching down again, I offer the children the crystal and say, “I know where you’ll be taken care of. Would you like to go?”
The girl turns her red-splotched face toward me and eyes the crystal. She nods once.
“Hold on,” I instruct, and once we’re nestled together, I think of gingerbread—not the house in the woods, but the dough rolled out on a narrow countertop under the supervision of a loving, childless woman. I think of her sweet-scented walls and careful decorations, her sloping roof and tinted door window.
We appear on the street, and a man down the lane starts, stares, then looks around to see if anyone else saw us materialize. Ignoring him, I point to the blue house with the peeling paint.
“The woman who lives there is named Daneen, and she’s very nice. She’s been expecting you,” I half fib. “Go knock on the door and tell her Maire sent you, okay?”
The boy looks at me with quivering eyes.
“I promise it will be all right. Go on. Aren’t you hungry?”
He glances to his sister, who presses a hand against her small belly. Grasping her other hand, he walks the two of them up to the blue house as I backtrack down the road, stepping nearly out of sight. After a long moment the door swings open. I can just barely see Daneen’s forehead and skirt as the little boy talks to her. She gasps and ushers them in, leaving me smiling.
“You just appeared,” the man from down the street says behind me, scaring me. I turn toward him as he says, “I saw you. You’re different. Where did you come from? How—”
I clutch the crystal and disappear, stumbling when the glade again appears around me. I press a hand to my belly just as the little girl had, kneading it, urging it to be well. I stare at my greatest creation for a long time—the gingerbread, biscotti, date bars, and marshmallows—before pocketing the crystal and walking up to it. The windows are dark and show no movement, but I avoid them anyway.
Pressing my palms to the sheetwork, I ponder slavery and sickness and heartache and think, Be bitter. I feel the sourness flow out of me and into the edible house. This place will entice no more children.
I reach into my pocket and thumb the crystal. You must find the other, Fyel’s voice echoes in my mind, bouncing off the dark void within it.
“Other? There’s another crystal like this?”
I lean into the stale gingerbread to stay upright.
Another crystal.
Allemas. That’s how he did this.
Allemas has it.
I remember the sound of something hard hitting the floor when Franc and I dropped Allemas onto the bed. I hadn’t seen anything, but the crystals are nearly transparent, and the shadows beneath my bed are so dark—
“I know where it is,” I whisper, and no amount of nausea can keep me from thinking of home, of my room with Allemas lain up on my bed, of my closet and my trunk and the small table that holds my candle. I picture its every crevice and nook, the height of the ceiling, the smell of Arrice’s cooking wafting out from under the door. I’m so focused that I barely notice the churning of my stomach or the spinning of my head.
I’m there, crouching on the wooden floor, listening to the sounds of Arrice and Franc and Cleric Tuck outside, calling my name, searching for me.
But I don’t heed their voices.
Allemas.
He still slumbers in my bed. Shadows line the walls and the furniture. The last residues of cloud-choked twilight seep through the window.
I put my hands against the floor, my right still gripping the crystal, and crawl forward.
Allemas’s breathing sounds like a drum in my ears. It isn’t even. He isn’t asleep. Or, at least, not deeply. Not anymore.
A board creaks under my knee. I freeze. Listen. He stirs. A sigh escapes his lips.
I shift forward until my shoulder hits the base of the bed; then I lower myself onto my belly. I move the crystal to my left hand and reach out blindly with my right, running my fingertips over the floorboard. Dust clings to my clammy skin. I touch the hairpin, the piece of charcoal.
I inch farther, wedging myself as far as I can into the narrow space between the bed and the floor. Hold my breath. Reach.
I feel the tip of something glassy. My pulse speeds. Straining, stretching, I pinch it between the first knuckles of my index and middle finger and drag it out from beneath the bed.
Now that my eyes have adjusted to the weak light, I can see it: a crystal identical to mine. I marvel and pick it up.
Fyel, I found—
Both crystals buzz in my hands, vibrating faster and faster until they begin to sing, until they glow a pale fuchsia. I stare, blank, and open my hands.
They fly from my palms, arch through the air, and shoot down into my arms just above my elbows, piercing through skin, muscle, and bone.
I scream, my vision red as they drill down, tearing and shredding and ripping and searing. Hot blood bubbles up from their destruction, and for a moment I’m blind, deaf, and numb, touching a world gray and black and endless.
And then they clamp, and my skin suctions, and the crystals grow and stretch and bloom, forming long stems and feather-like petals. The crystals ripple, almost as if liquefying, and I recognize them. They’re just like Fyel’s.
Wings.
And it’s like the roof collapses on top of me, like the now-passed storm rushes down my throat, like a key has finally turned in an old and rusted lock. The black space in my mind shatters.
I remember.
I remember everything.
“Maire!” Fyel yells. He’s above me, his wings outstretched, his back to the ceiling, his hand extended toward me.
I leap to my feet and take it. We soar upward through a whirling white gap in the ceiling, a gap I can see, and we fly, up, up, up. Away.
Allemas screams.
CHAPTER 26
This is what I remember.
I am falling, falling, through mists and clouds and white, and Allemas is behind me, chasing me, and he reaches forward, grabs my right wing—
No, wait.
Before that.
Let me try again.
My home is shaped like a seed and built of vines and roots and leaves, some of which don’t appear on any world. They are simply mine, crafted together to make a space. I call it a bungalow because I like that word, and I like the world where the word was made.
Inside, tree branches stretch in every direction, upon which hang filament threads ending in teardrops of light. There is a waterfall and brook with no natural source, for this space doesn’t work as a true world’s would. This is the space in between.
I hear him because he chooses to be heard, because he crafts wind about his wings and music to his flight. At the sound, my soul opens as an eye and I fly out of my little sphere to meet him.
He slows but I don’t, and we crash together, spinning into the white ether that he so easily blends into, for the gods made him white, and I’ve always thought that funny. I would say we fall, that we spiral down, but there is no true down here. There is no up, either. Just ether. We are nowhere and everywhere.
He laughs, a soft, pretty laugh. His laugh. His wings jut out, and as he slows us down, he says, “I missed you.”
“Too long this time,” I murmur, kissing his neck. “There are too many worlds.”
“Too many die,” he whispers back, brushing hair from my face, reminding me always of the cycle of creation. Too duty bound, Fyel.
I kiss him and pull him back to my bungalow, my atrium of mimicked sun and sky, unlike any other crafter home I’ve seen. It would be so beautiful with birds, but I only care for the ones that truly live, not the puppets we create to wait out the gods�
�� hands. But everything inside it—the trees, the light, the air—feels alive in Fyel’s presence. He is the stars and the moon and the sun.
We lie in the cradle of branches at the base of the bungalow, where I’ve placed swaths of silk and blankets woven in the styles of Estadia of Yorn and Herekash of Fegrad, other countries on other worlds in which I’ve played a part, worlds I like to visit and watch from time to time. The décor is not completely true to those provinces. I could never touch something on an active world, made by mortal hands.
Fyel tells me where he’s been, a world of the newer gods that still has no name, for they bicker over titles despite the fact that the planet’s denizens will call it something else. I ask if it has rings—I always ask this—but it does not, and I’m disappointed. But it has mountains and plateaus and a sea so deep it licks the core of the globe and channels great saltwater geysers through cracks in the crust. Fyel tells me of long quartz caves and red rock and a deep river that will form a canyon in the millennia to come, and I decide I want to see this world, see the things that Fyel has created, for this world sounds different from others, and he is so proud.
My face falls at the thought. He notices.
“What is wrong?” he asks, again smoothing hair from my face. He rests on his back but leans on one shoulder. I lie on my side, half crushing a wing.
“I have to go,” I answer. “Two-Suns and Nebula will have a world made soon, and I am part of it.”
Fyel frowns. “So soon.”
I nod.
He no longer smooths my hair, merely plays with it, twisting the short locks and weaving them between his fingers. “I will wait for you,” he says.
The words I’ve thought so many times over the eons of his absence push against my tongue. I can’t stand being apart from him again. Not so soon. That gives me the courage to speak.
“You do not have to.”
He pauses, pulls his hand from my hair. His white brows skew.
I grasp his hand. “No, not like that. I mean . . . we could work together.”
Two breaths and he understands my meaning—I see it in his eyes—but he doesn’t voice it, so I do.
“We could be lahsts.” I almost whisper the words.
His fingers interlock with mine. “Maire.”
I swallow. My heart rattles. “I know . . . there are others—”
“There are no others.” His gaze is locked on mine.
I roll my lips together, watching him. Watching him watching me. The quiet between us is not silence; it is more. It is speaking the unspoken, it is knowing, and when I part my lips to breathe, I can taste it.
Fyel shifts closer to me, our hands still intertwined, and he kisses me, his lips soft and warm and unassuming. I squeeze his hands and press my mouth hard against his, opening it, exploring him, wanting so desperately for him to become part of me, for him to never leave. For us to stay.
I have always been the bold one. Perhaps it is the time we’ve spent apart, or the promise lingering between us, but Fyel is the one who moves us forward, unlatching our hands so he can cup my face, stroke my wings, unravel my clothes. I breathe him in, absorb his warmth, and lose myself in his world.
It forms between us as we move, a glimmer of gold light that heats and expands until it burns, until it burrows down between my ribs, just below where my heart beats. My breath hitches. Fyel holds me close, kisses my ear, and I forget myself in our union.
The bond holds, forever connecting us. Lahsts.
This, perhaps, is the most beautiful of my memories, but there is something missing in it. The gods can partake of each other just as we do, yet in them there is power. Even the humans and the animals and the insects of our worlds have this power—the power to craft the one thing we cannot.
The one thing Fyel and I can never have.
Fyel and I are never apart for long after that. The gods don’t separate lahsts.
Together we create dozens of worlds. Hundreds. Worlds full of oceans and speckled with islands, worlds swirling with green and yellow storms, worlds with moons and rings and snow and volcanoes. Not by ourselves; no crafter is strong enough for that. But Fyel shapes earth into buttes and hills and peaks, and from it I grow sprouts and shrubs and saplings. I learn to expand my talents, too, and fashion animals to help those who will work this ground: hens and oxen and goats. Animals that will give back to those who care for them, for that is the perfect balance.
I create them as still beings, like something painted or stuffed. I create legs and lungs, feet and fur, heads and eyes. Eyes that look glassy and dull and dead.
And when our worlds are done, we leave them and the gods roll out their magnificent power, breathing life into plant, bird, and beast. Giving them motion, giving them life. Giving them souls.
I come back to all of them to watch, to see how the planet evolves, how its people change. The trees grow tall, the vines grow long, and the animals multiply and provide for the greatest of creations. On Raea they are referred to as men.
I watch men learn to walk, learn to speak, learn to love, and eventually die, paving the way for their sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons, until their lives are as forgotten as the space between stars.
I watch women become women, watch them make love and give birth to generations.
For centuries, I find this fascinating, but as time passes, it starts to make me sad.
I cannot even touch them, these newborn babes, for to touch them is to be like them. No, I can only watch, and wonder, and yearn.
Fyel knows.
He’s often with me when I watch them, when we see the evolution of what we’ve together made. Today I watch them, people on a world with swirling turquoise clouds, a hot molten core, and a dwarf sun. I witness their strange customs and listen to the melody of their language. I smile at the plants they grow and nurture—plants I created for them.
I always feel Fyel when he’s close; such is our bond. He places a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“I’m all right,” I lie.
He doesn’t speak. He knows there’s nothing he could say to make it better. He simply waits for me.
“It’s just . . . they have it. They all have it. This godly power.”
“An imitation of godly power,” he says.
I shrug, watching the children running through the street or crying at their mothers’ hems. It takes little more than thought to appear where I want to appear, unseen by mortal eyes, though the atmosphere wears on me, and I am never able to stay long. These people, these men and women, have a power similar to ours, but it’s fundamentally different. Limited, but they can craft life.
Crafters were not built to create life. We don’t even have different sexes, as mankind does; we merely choose to imitate them. Despite that, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be one of them, to create a body and a soul that is half me, half Fyel. To create something that can look back at me, that breathes, that can grow and become and be.
It plants a seed in me, a sour seed that touches my blood with vinegar. I wish and I wish, but I am what I am. Every time Fyel and I make love, I think of the thing that is missing. I’m hurting him, I know, but I can’t pull this desire out like an unwanted weed.
I made the weeds, too.
What if I could?
What if I could create as the gods do, as the humans do?
What is it that makes a soul?
I watch them, the crafters who sculpt mankind. The humans and the fae and the karkadann and pooka and the other intelligent species that are left to care for the worlds we create.
I watch them pull color and texture from the charged ether and shape eyes, noses, mouths. A skeleton and a body to fit over it. Hair, sometimes. I study their technique, and most are happy to let me do so. This is our world, after all.
I make some of my own. They’re not too different from animals.
For a time, this makes me happy, but my creations are puppets. I don’t sculpt their minds. I can’t breathe int
o them their souls. A crafted human is just a tree with different limbs and colors, something that won’t grow or learn until it feels the touch of a god.
Fyel makes plants on occasion. He helped me create a pine forest once, but he’s content to spend his time molding minerals and craters and mountains. Somehow he finds peace in them.
Somehow they all do.
I think I can do it.
I’ve lived so many Raean years. Five thousand more than Fyel. I’ve witnessed so many worlds, crafted so many things. Flown beneath countless gods.
I make him in the ether, the layer in between. I make him in a house of shadows I built far from my bungalow, a house surrounded with snow and clouds to make it blend in with the ether. I work little by little, careful in every piece I craft. I never work on him for too long, for Fyel will find me if I do. He always does. We are lahsts.
I want my creation to be tall and strong. I want him to be beautiful, with fiery hair and bright eyes. I craft each of his fingers, each of his toes. I thread every muscle and every layer of skin. I pull him from the ether and paint him as the artists of the worlds do, one stroke at a time.
When he’s finished, he makes me nervous.
I leave him for a time, floating in the ether, in a realm only I can find.
“What is wrong?” Fyel asks me as we lie in a thick bed of clover I coaxed from the salt flats of an unfinished world. We can touch them when they’re unfinished. This is one of the worlds that has rings in the sky—dozens of them. They fill a third of the heavens and shine brighter than the stars, strings of diamonds looping from horizon to horizon.
“Nothing,” I whisper.
Fyel sits up and studies me in the ringlight. “Why do you think I do not see it?”
I don’t meet his eyes.
He runs his fingers down the length of my folded wing. “Maire,” he says, his voice papery and pleading. “What can I do?”
One tear, then another, streak from my eyes down to my ears. “I don’t know.”
Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet Page 21
