Moru hurries from beneath the canopy to usher me inward. “Goddess, we have saved the place of honor for you. Please, if you will be seated, we will begin.”
He guides me to the centermost seat, the only place at the low tables that has a cushion. The guests of the feast are divided, the Terasanai at a perpendicular table to my left and the Helenai at one to my right, with the bride and groom directly to one side of me and Moru and the bride’s mother opposite. All stand, awaiting my arrival. Tora joins Etricos, Huna, and the groom’s sister. Demetrios, Aitana, Ineri, and Ria fill out the table designated for the Helenai.
I sink to my cushion without a word, my heart in turmoil. The rest of the company sits. A serving woman carries a covered dish from the fire pits they have built further downhill and presents it to me.
“This is a traditional dish of the Terasanai,” says Moru from beside me. My mind registers a nervous tremor in his voice, but I am fixed upon the earthenware bowl. The servant removes its lid, and that nostalgic aroma billows into the air on a steam cloud.
“This is curry.” I shift my attention to him, tears stinging the corners of my eyes. “You have brought me curry.”
“If it is not to your liking—”
But I have already picked up my spoon, have already dipped it into the dish. The flavors are not the same, but the spices flood my senses. So, too, does a homesickness stronger than any force I’ve yet encountered. It engulfs me, transports me momentarily to the world I left behind and then drops me back in place with a crushing ache for what I have lost.
I can’t cry here. I’ll have death-paint rivulets running down my face.
“Is there more spice to add?” I ask Moru as the company gapes at me. The food of the Helenai, even at its very best, has been bland. I have missed this burning heat, just as I have missed the father who indulged me with it, the mother who shunned it, and even the sister who despised it. Moru passes a small jar from further down the table. To my great joy, its spices tingle my nostrils when I sniff the contents. His jaw drops as I ladle a heaping measure into my bowl, and when I take a generous bite of the result.
I have nothing precious in this world except a bowl of curry. Some things never change.
A laugh bubbles in my chest at that thought. I’m ridiculous to be so emotional over a humble dish, but I can’t help it. My mouth burns as I eat. The warmth spreads through me, both a comfort and a harrow to my soul.
The Helenai cannot stomach spicy food. Etricos gulps his drink after the first bite, fanning his mouth against the heat. The others laugh but take this as a cue to proceed with caution. They raise their spoons cautiously, taste the fragrant sauce, and reach for their cups. Some recoil, force themselves to remain calm, and try again, wary of offending their hosts.
On the other side of the feast, the Terasanai heap more spice into their bowls, as I did. They exchange amused glances at the antics of their rival tribe.
“It is different from our traditional style,” says Moru to my left. “We have not the same vegetables or meats, but substituted with what this land provides.”
“It is wonderful,” I tell him. I am still closer to tears than I would like. I shore up my emotions behind a temporary wall. They are an injury I must not touch or nurse until I am alone. For now, I focus on the heat of my food and the mannerisms of my dinner companions. I watch them through new eyes.
Etricos and Tora attend to one another. He squeezes her elbow in encouragement as she drowns her curry in more of the bland, boiled root the Terasanai have provided as its base. His eyes water and his nose runs because he is too proud to dilute the spice of his meal.
Aitana frequently glances in his direction. Why had I not seen it before? She has sought his approval, has sought to impress him many times in my company. Demetrios was always beside him, though. I assumed her affections went toward the younger brother instead of the elder. Perhaps they are split. She favors Demetrios with her attention throughout the meal as well.
He sees her glances towards his brother. His face remains unreadable. He alone among the Helenai consumes his food without any external signs of discomfort. He does not add to the spice, but he does not dilute it, either.
He also notices my observation. It does not matter. I am nothing but a path to salvation for these people. I may observe them as I please, for I will never be one of them.
Night is thick around us as the feast comes to its close. Only the piper remains in the darkness, twiddling a quick tune to the stars overhead. The dancers have returned to their homes beyond the opposite hill. The bride and groom rise to depart.
“Goddess, will you bestow a blessing upon them before they go?” Moru asks.
“A blessing?” I repeat. “What blessing would you have?”
“A sign, perhaps,” he says. “Something to send them forward into their lives with hope for the coming days and years.”
Under the collective gaze of the wedding party I rise and pass from beneath the canopy. Straggling wisps of clouds spread low against their stellar backdrop. I gaze upward, my mind racing for what I might say.
The second superlative of magic is that it answers from afar. Bid, and it will obey.
The superlatives instruct the manipulation of magic not at one’s fingertips. They allow for control of a spell even after you release it, and of sparks that were never yours to start. That makes them the most difficult to learn and the most frustrating to master.
The feast-goers have followed me out into the night. I turn to the bride and groom at their center, she with her lovely smile and he attempting to look stolid and mature. They are both babies, embarking on a life together.
“May the stars in heaven smile upon you all your days,” I tell them, and I cast a ball of magic upward. It grows as it arcs higher and higher into the air, mesmerizing in its brilliance. As its reaches the apex of its path, I twist my hand. The magic explodes into a thousand pieces trailing across the sky.
Like fireworks in a world where they do not yet exist.
The astonished cries of my audience delight me. From the corner of my eyes I can see some of them cringe. I focus, though, on the sky above and the thousand shooting stars that fade across its expanse.
My smile fades with them. I want to go home.
The bride and groom must leave together first. They bow in thanks and wander arm in arm into the darkness below. She touches her fingers in reverence against the Eternity Gate as she passes it, then rests her head upon her husband’s shoulder. Moru and his daughters follow with Etricos and Tora in their wake.
Huna sidles up to me as others pass beyond the canopy’s firelight. “Twice tonight you looked supremely happy, little goddess. And twice you looked as though your world had ended. Why did one always follow the other so quickly?”
I cannot answer her. My emotions are too near the surface to speak of them. They will overtake me if I try. Instead, I remove my magnificent golden headpiece and proffer it to her. My scalp aches where the ornament sat for so many hours. “Can you take this back to my tent, please? I think I will walk to the ocean tonight.”
I entrust my necklace and my armlet into her care as well. The anklet can remain.
“Will you be very upset if I get the hem of this dress wet?” I ask.
She favors me with a reproving glance. “You are like a child, Anjeni. Take this.”
To my confusion, she hands me the satchel she has carried with her throughout the day. It’s the same one she keeps her sewing and mending in, her habitual companion wherever she goes. I look inside to discover a pair of pants and a shirt—one of my plainer shirts, even.
“I thought you might want a change of clothes,” she says. “You have lasted far longer than I expected.”
I soundly kiss her forehead. “Huna, you’re a doll.”
She shoos me away with an exasperated breath. “Do not stay out too late. I will worry.”
I smile but make no promises. Shouldering the bag, I start toward the distant shore.
Huna’s voice calls behind me, but she is not speaking to me. “Dima! Help an old woman down the hill in the dark.” I check back over my shoulder in time to see Demetrios cross beneath the canopy to the other side. He is my self-appointed guard. It’s likely he had started after me.
Silently I thank Huna yet again.
The moon is rising beyond a haze of clouds along the eastern horizon. The ocean before me reflects its light in glimmering waves. I pause beneath a shadowed outcropping of rocks to pull the pair of pants on beneath my dress, then I strip the filmy creation off over my head and replace it with the more comfortable shirt. I stow the dress in the bag and the bag in the rocks at the edge of the beach. I walk along the shore far enough to know I was not followed.
Then I plop into the sand, look up at the vast and starry sky above, and cry until my tears run dry.
I am alone, as I always have been. Most of the time the burden is easy to bear. Tonight it is a torturous weight upon my chest.
Chapter Eighteen
Night-swimming does wonders for my mood. Within the cold water, I scrub the remnants of Tora’s painted motif from my face. I spend my pent-up homesickness in battling the ocean waves as they crash to the shore one after another. Centuries from now, tourists and vacationers will clog this beach in the daylight hours. Statutes will require them to leave when the sun goes down. Tonight, the whole ocean is mine, with no one to order me otherwise.
The moon has risen forty degrees in the sky when I finally gather Huna’s bag from the rocks and start my sodden journey back to my tent. I have exorcised my internal demons for the present. My cot beckons me from my hill a mile away.
Halfway down the dark trail, a shadow detaches from the jutting rocks. I shriek and jump back.
Demetrios falls in step beside me with no acknowledgment of my start. And why should he acknowledge it? I’m not a real person to him. In some ways, that’s better than if I were. I don’t have to analyze everything he says and does.
I breathe in to calm the adrenaline that races through my veins. “How long have you been there?”
“Cosi was worried,” he says, dodging the question.
Etricos sent him?
“Why?”
“Because the goddess Anjeni gave him reason to worry tonight.”
I stop in my tracks. He proceeds two or three paces but pauses to look back at me.
“What reason did I give?”
His gaze shifts skyward, downward, over his shoulder, before it finally settles on me. “You have not forgotten the Helenai, have you?”
Uncertainty tinges his voice. It is so uncharacteristic of him that I question whether I only imagined it. “How could I? Everything I do is for the Helenai.”
“Tonight the Terasanai held your favor.”
Etricos and Huna are more alike than they care to admit, especially where their fears are concerned. I resume my path. “Your brother worries too much. The Terasanai were our hosts. Should I have met their hospitality with disrespect?”
He keeps pace beside me. “It was more than that, Anjeni. You were happy—happier than you have been.”
I stop again and glare at him. “So because I was happy Etricos worries? I was also miserable, more so than I have been. Does he worry about that as well?”
“Yes,” says Demetrios. “The Helenai still need you.”
“I know.” The phrase falls from my lips in a whisper more bitter than I had intended. I square my shoulders and start again toward the settlement. “I know the Helenai need me. I have a future to ensure. But I am not one of you. I do not belong here.”
“You do not belong among the Terasanai.”
As if I need the reminder. “I do not belong among any tribes in this place. I come from another world, but I don’t belong there either. There is nowhere I belong.”
On that declaration, we walk in silence. I don’t care if he broods. For all I know, he’s reminiscing on his wonderful evening with Aitana—and well he may, as long as he doesn’t intend to use me again to secure her affections. I climb up the back of Monument Hill. The cook fires and canopy torches have long since extinguished. The grass of the dancing ground lies trampled flat. I pass through it and start down the other side, past the Eternity Gate that keeps its solemn watch over the valley below.
“Goddess,” says Demetrios out of the blue, “what do you do if you want something you cannot have?”
Is he seriously asking me for advice in the middle of the night? Aitana’s wistful glances towards his brother must really be preying on his mind. It’s not my responsibility to encourage him in that matter, though.
“Despite what Huna says, I’m not actually a goddess of fortune, Demetrios.”
“What do you do if you want something you cannot have?” he presses, undeterred.
My memories chase through a dozen years of magic lessons: the anguish, the yearning, the fruitless study and the crushing despair. I heave a sigh. “You convince yourself not to want it.”
“Does that work?”
I scoff into the night air. “Not in my experience.”
For all my resentment, all my denial, deep down I wanted magic more than anything. The façade that I didn’t care only made my failures that much more painful.
“So what do you do?” he asks again.
My patience wears thin. “I don’t know. You keep working for it until heaven and earth move and the fates align to give you what you want. And then you muddle through the million responsibilities that come attached to getting it.”
He is silent for a breath. “Is that so? Do the fates align, then?”
No worries about the resulting responsibilities, I see.
We have reached the bottom of the basin. The gibbous moon overhead casts silver light across the landscape. Tired as I am, I pause to face Demetrios. My epiphanies this night have liberated me, enabling me to view him and the world around me from my objective metaphorical fortress.
“The fates might align, and they might not. But if they do, you might sometimes regret it as much as if they never had.”
He studies me, his gaze intent. “What did you want, Goddess Anjeni? What did you want so much that the fates aligned to give it to you?”
I half chuckle. The last thing the Helenai need to know is that my entrance into their world also marked my magical awakening. “None of your business. But I pursued it for years, almost from my infancy. I learned everything I possibly could about it, tried everything I could think of to obtain it, and still it eluded me. And then, I gave up. Completely and utterly gave up.”
A puzzled frown descends between his brows. “But you received it in the end?”
I lift one shoulder in a wry shrug. “The fates aligned.”
He looks like he can’t quite wrap his mind around my words. “But you regret it.”
Do I? I’m certainly cynical tonight, but do I actually regret my magic and this journey that finally triggered it?
“No,” I say. “It’s not what I expected, and it has brought much difficulty, but my whole world depends upon it. I cannot regret it.”
“Was your wish to pass through the God’s Arch?” he asks, casting a suspicious glance toward the stone silhouette on the hill behind us.
I’m not about to encourage a guessing game. “No. I am tired now, Demetrios. You don’t have to follow me all the way to my tent. You can return to your brother and tell him not to worry any longer.”
He stubbornly keeps step beside me as I climb my last hill. “Everyone worried, Goddess. Tonight you looked at a bowl of over-spiced stew with more adoration than the bride looked at her groom.”
The visual is too much. I laugh in spite of myself. “That’s not true.”
Demetrios, pleased with my mirthful response, pushes the issue. “It is true. If we had known your affection could be so easily won, we would have crammed peppers into our supper pots for you long ago.”
He’s treading too close to my guarded emotions. Removed as I now am, I don
’t need to hold a grudge against him, but neither will I subject myself to being used. I’m not a weapon he can call upon to keep Aitana in line. We are not friends.
“The Helenai have my loyalty. They have no need of my affection.”
“What if we want it?” he asks.
I frown, too exhausted to muddle over his meaning. “You can’t always get what you want. You’ll have to learn to live with disappointment.”
“Unless the fates align,” says Demetrios knowingly.
The conversation has come full circle. I spare him a tight smile to acknowledge it, but this feels too much like he’s flirting again. I am detached, a goddess in a fortress.
An annoyed goddess in a fortress. Who does he think he is, to moon over Aitana all afternoon and then sidle up to me in the dark of the night? I’m not playing this game.
“Good night, Demetrios,” I say, and I swing my legs over the fence that lies around my tent.
“Good night, Anjeni,” he replies, his voice resolute.
I seriously might hit him. I knew from the start that he was a philanderer, and today only proved it. This flip-flopping of my heart is ridiculous.
He follows the circumference of the fence as I circle around to the tent flap, as though I might steal away somewhere else if he doesn’t watch my every move. I duck into the quiet interior, discard the satchel from my shoulder and collapse upon my cot, the lingering dampness of my clothes notwithstanding.
“You have returned at last, little goddess,” says Huna from her corner.
“Thank you for letting me go,” I mumble. Already my mind drifts. She answers me, but I cannot discern the words as I slip into a welcome, dreamless slumber.
Chapter Nineteen
The merry spirit brought by the wedding lingers across the settlement. The various tribes have made friendships through dance and celebration. Even my magic students seem happier as they practice. Aitana in particular holds her head much higher than before.
And why should she not? She has won back her beloved Demetrios.
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