He pinches his lips together and looks away, first at my feet, then at the salt flats, then up at the rings.
“How do the gods make souls?”
I asked the question so quietly I didn’t think he would hear it, but he did, and his attention returns to me. “Souls? I do not know, Maire. I am not a god.”
“I’ve seen them,” I murmur, keeping my eyes on the rings, “when they come down to actuate a world. They’re silvery and they glitter, brighter than anything I’ve seen. They funnel down like stardust and seep into the skin—”
“Maire.”
“And then the bodies move, and they’re alive, and it’s beautiful.” A few more tears trace the path of the ones before them. “How does it work?”
Fyel shifts, raising his wings, and leans over to wipe one side of my tears with his thumb. “It works because they are gods,” he says, soft and paternal, feathery. “Because each of us is assigned our task, and that is theirs. They may wonder how we create what we do.”
“But they can create what we do.”
“Do you want to be a god?” It’s barely a question, and it carries no weight, no judgment. He knows the answer.
“No.” I say it anyway. “But why do they share souls with mankind?”
“Why do they share creation with us?”
I shake my head, trying not to be frustrated. I hate feeling this way. Angry.
But I’ve seen them do it. I’ve seen the gods reach deep, deep into the ether and pull from it light and lightness, wholeness. I’ve seen whole worlds awaken time and again.
I touch my stomach, one of the places that distinguishes me from mortal women. I feel for the scar of birth that doesn’t exist.
“Why would they create us to be alone?” I whisper.
Fyel takes my hand. “You will never be alone.”
In my house of shadow and snow he lies before me, a garment cut and stitched and ready to be worn.
I take a deep breath and reach into the ether, grasping as far into it as I can, thinking of light and glitter and souls.
I gather the threads and weave them together this way and that, creating patterns of beauty and complexity. Halfway through, the tapestry melts in my hands, turning into dark sludge without shape or purpose. It drops from my hands and fizzles back into the ether.
I reach again. Deep, deeper. I knot and loop the threads. I get a little further before they melt, before they dissipate.
I try again, and again, and again. How many Raean hours, days, and weeks I spend doing this, I’m not sure. Time is relative in our space.
But it happens. My tired fingers meticulously weave and sculpt a soul that shines, and I don’t think, This is wrong. This is against my nature. This is breaking eternal law. I think, This is beautiful.
I place the tapestry inside of him, and his chest fills with air. It passes through his nostrils, almost steady. In and out, in and out.
He opens his eyes and blinks, searching. His fingers twitch.
The silence breaks.
“What have you done?”
Fyel’s voice pierces my back with a thousand needles. I spin around. He’s unraveled part of my wall, my concealment. He’s witnessed this, and it’s as if I’m unraveling, too.
“I—”
His wings push him forward, his gamre eyes wide as they take in the man’s slow animation. “Gods in heaven, Maire. What have you done?”
“H-He’ll hear you,” I manage. Every muscle in my body winds tight, making it hard to speak, to breathe. “I . . . I did it, can’t you see?”
But Fyel is mortified, his face long and even paler than it should be, paler than the ether around us. He hovers backward as my creation sits up.
For a moment I forget Fyel, forget the sting of his eyes. “Can you hear me?” I ask the creature, whom I’ve fashioned in the shape of a human. I touch his knee. It’s cold, but he was only just born. It will warm.
“Mmmmmuh,” he groans. When he lifts his head, his bright eyes meet mine, and there is recognition in them. There is memorizing. There is knowing.
“Maire.” Fyel grabs the base of my wing and pulls me toward him, away from my creation. “Maire, this is wrong. So wrong. You have to unravel him!”
“But he’s alive!”
“Only gods can make souls!” he shouts, and it startles me. Fyel so seldom raises his voice.
“No.” I jerk away from him. “I did it, Fyel. Look at him! If mankind can do it and the gods can do it, surely we can! We’ve just never tried!”
He looks ready to cry. I don’t understand him. Why is he so upset with me?
“You do not know the consequences,” he says through gritted teeth.
“He is my son,” I snap.
“Guuuurrrrr,” my son says. He hasn’t learned language yet, but he will, in time. We all learn, in time.
“Here, slow now.” I take him by the elbows and help him upright. He totters, finding his balance, and then grins once he does.
I smile back at him, but he’s still cold under my fingers. Why hasn’t he warmed up?
I hear a soft snap, and one of his arms drops in his shoulder a few inches, making it longer than the other. It startles me. I flap my wings and hover back.
“That shouldn’t happen,” I murmur, feeling Fyel’s presence at my back. His physical form never worried me, for I’ve made them before. Everything I make is physical. Only physical.
“How does a soul interact with its host?” Fyel asks. There’s a strain to his voice, like his larynx is being pulled in opposite directions.
“I don’t know.”
“Then how can you make one, Maire?” he cries.
My son winces and grabs his head. I can only assume it’s in reaction to Fyel’s shouting. His hands dig into the orange curls, and his knees bend until they give out, and he collapses to the floor of the house.
“Stop, would you?” I snap at Fyel. “It’s all right,” I say soothingly, floating over to the new man. “Come on, let’s try again.”
I take his elbows and try to help him stand, but he hisses and slashes out at me with one arm, raking his nails over my collar. I gasp at the sting. Three slim cuts open on my red skin.
“Unravel him!” Fyel shouts. He would do it himself if he could; I have no doubt of that. He’s probably already tried, but my son is too complex to be unraveled by another crafter.
I turn on him, my lahst. “So he doesn’t work perfectly within the first minutes of his birth, and you want to kill him?”
Fyel scowls. “Do not call it ‘killing.’ It is not ‘killing,’ if the being is not alive.”
“How is he not alive?!”
The ether outside the house rumbles, not unlike the thunder of a storm on one of our worlds. Something has happened in the gods’ space.
My blood runs cold. Surely they don’t know. They couldn’t already know. I have a plan. A plan to hide him away, to raise him away from godly eyes. He can live on one of the worlds, and because I made his soul, he’ll always be able to see me when I descend from the ether to watch him.
I don’t have much time.
Fyel shakes his head and repeats his first, condemning words. “What have you done?”
The ether shakes. My son startles at the noise, wide eyed. He screams and leaps at me, wrapping his arms around me in a mix between an embrace and a stranglehold.
Fyel flings himself at him, grabbing his wrists and shoving him back. Though my son is larger, my lahst is stronger.
“Stop, he’s just confused! You’re scaring him!” I cry. Because this can’t be wrong I did everything right he’s mine I want him to be mine why can’t he be mine?
Fyel releases him, but I hear it. Another snap, just like what happened with my son’s arm, but I can’t see it. I can’t see his body shift or change.
My heart grows heavy despite its hastened beat. The snap came from within. Did his soul break? Did I make a mistake?
“Maire!” Fyel cries out.
“M-M-M-
M-M-Maire,” the creation stutters, his eyes crossed.
For a moment, my heart stops beating. I did it wrong. Gods, I did something wrong. This isn’t how he’s supposed to—
He rushes for me before I can fix him, before I can unravel the broken parts. There is fire in his eyes, and his hands stretch out like elastic talons.
I run.
I crash into the shadowy wall of my hideaway, half unraveling it as I do. Its pieces splinter around me and bite into my skin. The creature roars and zooms after me, navigating the ether unevenly. The ether shakes again, louder, harder. The gods are coming. The gods know.
What have I done? What have I done?
I hear Fyel call my name, but it’s so distant. Have I flown so far? I whirl about to look for him, but my creation fills my vision, drooling and screaming, “Maire Maire Maire!”
I fly. I will myself away from him, but he follows me as though we’re tethered by a string. Did his soul affix to me before I bound it to him?
“Stop!” I cry, and I fly “up,” moving my hands to unravel him, but he’s too fast. He tackles me, and we spiral out of control. He grabs my hands with his larger ones, and his teeth sink into the side of my neck. I scream.
The ether booms as if it’s about to rip apart.
The gods are coming. They will find me with this thing, with my creature.
And I think of a world, cling to a world, any world, anywhere where I can unravel him, somewhere I can run from them—
It appears before me, a blue planet striped with fingerlike continents, straw and green and russet. I get closer, enter its gravity, but this broken man grabs on to my wing. I can’t right myself. I can’t get my hands—
We fall, fall, fall.
My wings harden. He rips the right one out of my skin. I scream. We break apart, and this world’s power flings me one way and him another.
I fall, wind rushing into my ears, drowning out all thought, stealing away my breath.
I hit every tree branch on the way down, crash into the rusty earth, and—
CHAPTER 27
“Are you all right?” the woman asks me, looking me over, tilting my head this way and that. We’re on a long road between fields. There’s a faint carmine coloring to the earth. Her hair has a few grays in it, pulled and pinned away from her face. Her eyes focus on mine, and heavy lines mark her forehead and brow. “Are you running from someone?”
Am I? I touch one of the fading bruises on my body, this one below my ear. It’s ring shaped, almost like a mouth.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I don’t . . . I don’t remember.”
Her face falls, but her gaze is sharp. “This won’t do at all. Come with me. Can you walk?”
I eye the basket on her arm, the one full of bread, and nod.
She notices. Without hesitation she reaches for the top loaf, a beautifully baked bread with braided crust, and rips off the heel. When she hands the still-warm bread to me, I shove it into my mouth before I can think to thank her. I don’t remember anything tasting like this. It’s almost . . . forbidden.
“Come on.” She takes me by the elbow and heaves me to my feet. “My house isn’t too far from here. Let’s clean you up and figure out what’s what. Come on, dear. What’s your name?”
“It’s . . .” My name. My mind swirls, searching for it, and I find a strange darkness there, orb shaped and hard, like obsidian. I prod it, grazing over its smooth surface with my fingers. From its depths I glean a single word and nothing more: “Maire.”
The woman smiles. “My name is Arrice,” she says, and puts an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry, Maire. You’re safe now.”
I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her.
Happy.
CHAPTER 28
Fyel pulls me into the ether, into the space between mankind’s world and the gods’, and instantly I’m against him, my face pressed to the side of his neck, his arms wrapped around my shoulders, our wings brushing together with the fineness of dandelion seeds.
Tears hit the valley between my neck and shoulder, and I recognize the passage of time as though I can taste it.
Nearly five Raean years. We haven’t been apart so long since we became lahsts.
Fyel didn’t know where I’d gone. Which planet. When I hit the ground, Raea translated me into the closest thing it could—a human. Such a transformation would have broken our tie. Fyel couldn’t find me. He’d searched dozens of worlds for me.
I stare into the pale ether as these thoughts seep into my skull, imagining the situation flipped, if Fyel were the one who fled from me and then vanished without a trace, breaking our bond.
I shudder and exhale a broken breath.
And I . . . I made Allemas. I created my own captor. I broke eternal law. I abandoned Fyel.
I tried to craft a soul.
I shrivel until he is the only thing holding me up, his wings supporting us, and I weep into his collar, soaking the white fabric. My hands fist his shirt, and I cry and cry and cry, turning myself inside out, my heart growing sore from its wrenching and cracking.
Fyel’s strength is unrelenting, and he whispers into my ear the lyrics of a song I haven’t heard for nearly five Raean years, a song sung by the people of the first world we ever made together.
What have I done?
I stutter apologies between sobs, but Fyel shakes his head against mine, whispering words I can barely grasp, words of forgiveness and love and relief. I cry until I have nothing left to cry, until my eyes are swollen, my mouth is dry, and my throat is raw. Still Fyel holds me, floating in the unformed ether, where there is light on all sides and no compass to speak of.
“Thank you,” I whisper once my breathing is somewhat steady. “Thank you for coming for me.”
His voice, so warm and close, answers, “There was never another option.”
I hug him as tight as I can, just under his arms, desperate to be as close to him as possible. Wanting no space, even an iota, to exist between us.
When our legs touch, I feel no pain or crookedness, and that coaxes me to release him just enough to look down. The wooden splint has unraveled—it is world made and thus cannot exist in the ether. My clothes, too, have gone. But my leg is whole, unscarred and straight. I marvel at it, spinning my foot one way, then the other. It seems like such a long time since I saw it like this.
My leg. The trap. Allemas.
I look at Fyel, meeting his eyes. “Allemas, he’s . . .” I swallow. “He’s learned. He speaks; he understands.”
Fyel nods, solemn.
I pull away from him, supported by my own wings, though all I want is to touch him and never stop touching him. Guilt twists and spirals inside of me, a tornado of glass. I can’t ignore my sins.
“He’s broken,” I whisper. “I broke him.”
Fyel frowns—a soft frown that draws on his eyes—and reaches for my hand, clasping my ring finger and pinky. “You cannot break that which was never whole.”
I press my lips together, fighting the urge to cry despite being dried out, worn out. Allemas. My son. I’d wanted him. I’d wanted him so badly.
Fyel’s arms encircle me again. “I am sorry,” he murmurs.
Resting my forehead against his shoulder, I weep without tears, without gusto, just rough breaths and tremors.
As if to mimic me, the ether trembles.
I reel back, my heart in my throat. “They know,” I whisper, breathy. The gods know I’m here. I shouldn’t be surprised—they are gods. It doesn’t take long for them to know.
“Maire—”
“I won’t run,” I promise. “I can’t . . . not again. But I left him, Fyel.” I hug myself, my skin cold, as though my own soul has shattered. “He—this—is my fault.”
“You did not realize—”
“I knew what I was doing.”
Fyel licks his lips. I straighten out, finding any reserve of str
ength that I can in my hollow body.
Breath in, breath out. “I have to go back to him. He’s my responsibility. All of this . . . is because of me.”
Fyel again takes my hands.
“No,” I whisper, though the word is barbed as it passes over my tongue. “No, I must do this alone.”
“You will never be alone,” he says.
I squeeze his fingers. I don’t argue because I don’t want to. I want Fyel to be right.
That’s where the reserve is—my lingering strength. Fyel holds it in his palm.
The ether quakes. Fyel reaches into it and crafts clothes for me, then waves his hand and opens a hole, below which spirals endless black speckled with stars.
Together, we descend.
Raea.
Dī.
Carmine.
When we arrive, carefully flying between trees so as not to touch them, I hear Arrice, Franc, and Cleric Tuck still calling me. Franc has entered the shadowy woods behind the farm, whereas Arrice walks the long rows of burned onions and waterplant, a lantern swinging from her hand, my name hoarse on her lips. Cleric Tuck walks the long roads between the house, the shrine, and the bakeshop, his words issued as a prayer, his hair and clothes disheveled.
I fly toward Arrice, but Fyel grabs my wrist. He doesn’t need to explain.
I’ve been restored to my former self. Arrice, Franc, and Tuck can’t see me. They won’t hear me. I’ll never be able to tell them my story, to tell them what happened, to tell them I’m all right. To tell them what they meant to me, taking me in when I had no one. My heart twists in a very human way at the thought. They’ll never know, and that will be my fault, too.
They will be separated from me without answers, just like after the marauders’ attack, but this time it will be forever.
Shamed, I turn away and hover toward the window of my old bedroom, but the bed lies empty beyond the glass, as I had feared. I head for the wood. Not where Franc searches. No. His calls would scare Allemas away. Allemas is frightened. I know he is.
I hover above trees—pine and rackberry—and reach my hands out to them. Do you see him? I ask in my mind, coaxing their faces toward me as I would coax joy or wit into a cake. It is a small request and almost permissible. I picture Allemas in my mind, the way I knew him on Raea, not the terrified creature I created in a house of shadow and snow. Do you see him? Do you hear him?
Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet Page 22
