Grumpy and bedraggled, the lark preened her feathers while balanced on her twig. Except it wasn’t a twig anymore—with each passing day, it had grown longer and was now a proper branch. A nice place for visitors to sit.
Wrevos came on that third day. The god of wisdom was gray as the clouds blanketing the sky. An owl perched on one shoulder, a crow on the other. His opal eyes were somber but kind as he told Trueblood more stories in an afternoon than the lad had heard in his whole life. He had so many questions, but the water he was carefully hoarding in his mouth kept him silent.
“All a story needs is a listener,” Wrevos said. “An aŭskultantos. The kheiron trusted you with his terrible tales. Quietly listening and promising to be careful with them was best thing and the only thing you needed to do, my one.”
Trueblood nodded, missing Fen desperately. The day was sliding into evening, but the clouds kept the stars hidden. He felt the wind of the third pegaso flying up into the branches, but didn’t see it, nor the new star, nor what lay on the other side of the hole in the sky.
Ele-Kheir said not everything was for the waking world, he thought as he fell asleep. The owl and the crow each left him a feather, which the lark tucked in between his plaits.
Velos visited him on the fourth day. She smelled of fertile earth, corn and grains. New flowers and dried leaves tumbled from her hair, for it was she who plowed the earth at springtime and reaped it in fall. Her realm on the other side of the sky was pink with new beginnings and brown with endings. Cows heavy with milk and possibility walked among the busy squirrels and beavers who loaded the holds of the earth’s ship.
“Balance,” she said. “It’s all about the correct distribution of weight, Pelippé. Knowing what the right amount of ballast is and when to let it go.”
“And knowing that outside dimensions don’t always match the inside.”
The goddess nodded. “Secrets take up a lot of room. It’s why Fen looked thinner when he came back from Altynai.”
“It’s why a hiding serves some purpose—it makes your skin sting as much as your conscience, and then you feel balanced again.”
She laughed a cornucopia, which he nibbled on as the sun went down. Lejo had now anchored two branches in the west, while Raj had fastened just one in the east. Nydirsil listed on her roots. Trueblood’s eastern peripheral lit up hot and glaring with the pilot’s effort to equalize Nydirsil’s scales. He could feel Lejo, whose soul went down fifteen flights of stairs into a warren of secret rooms and passageways, frantically re-organizing the world’s cargo into a counterweight.
Isn’t that what love is though, Trueblood thought. Helping the one you love stay balanced on the journey?
The fifth day was terrible. Meros, the war god, filled Trueblood’s dry mouth with the taste of metal, flooding his eyes and nose with the smoke of burning pine and cypress.
“You’ve learned how men make love with each other,” Meros said. “But how they make war on each other is as important a lesson. From the horrors of battle, we learn the value of gelang.”
“I don’t like gelang that comes at a price.”
“Everything has a price, Trueblood. Something as priceless as love is worth fighting for.”
Through the choking haze, Trueblood glimpsed an ironbound land criss-crossed with veins of bloodstone and sardius. The air rang with the clashing of swords and the whistling of arrows. Warriors screamed on the offense, bellowed in retreat, cried out on the giving and receiving ends of death blows. Chains rattled in the blood-soaked earth, dragging enslavement and rape behind, tearing open wounds that could never heal.
The furious day went on and on until it killed itself. When Meros’s star burst into being, it shone angry red all night long.
The sixth day it rained again. Trueblood filled his mouth but his jaw trembled and the water leaked out his teeth and ran down his chin. His feet and hands had long disappeared. The pain in his body so profound, he couldn’t remember a time it wasn’t there. He welcomed the end of it all.
Sweet Nyos came to him in a dress of green velvet, embroidered all over with red and gold leaves. She gathered up his plaits, kissed their ends and murmured, “You are an especial monster, Pé.”
Mami, he cried in his head. Mami, Mami…
The goddess of love wrapped him in beaded, emerald softness. In especial beautiful penmanship, she described a temple of diamond and carnelian, its domes topped with copper. She wrote of butterflies, hummingbirds and dragonflies that followed Minos around the verdant fields of wildflowers. He wore a ridiculous crown of daisies around his horns and his muzzle was forever sticky and slick with honey. Every night Nyos shot him dead and every morning he forgave her.
Trueblood was a slave to the thought of death now. He hurt all over and between the razor-sharp spasms, he recalled Fen’s description of the fadara addicts in Arcodolori, their veins howling in withdrawal, begging their captors for mercy.
This is what it’s like for Belmiro. All day long, every day, nothing but pain.
He begged Nyos for compassion. He cried for his mother, saying he was done, he was tired, he wanted to go to bed, he wanted a story, he wanted her lap, he wanted to be picked up and taken away and godsdammit, wasn’t that Noë’s job?
Please, Mami, don’t you love me anymore?
Up from the ground flew a pegaso, then out to the east with Raj. The goddess drew her mighty bow, its arrow fletched with peacock feathers. The eyes of the stars were in her aim. She never missed. It was her triumph when she brought down Khe, and her undoing when she slew the thing she loved most.
Please, Mami.
The string dropped with a twang. Nydirsil shook as she was pierced in both branch and trunk.
Trueblood opened his eyes. He leaned his head against the shaft of the arrow embedded a hairsbreadth away. Exactly where Nyos aimed it.
“I guess you do love me,” he whispered.
So great was Nyos’s love, it allowed him to go away and stay away until twilight of the seventh day. He opened his eyes. The sky reeled with seagulls and a new visitor sat on the branch. His back to the trunk, long legs stretched out, clad in white breeches and black boots. His braids moved in a gentle breeze.
Trueblood pried his mouth open and croaked, “Da?”
The black face turned to him. Gold eyes twinkled above a giant grin. “What’s troubling my Trueblood?”
“Da, I can’t finish this job.”
“Oh, horseshit you can’t.” The black man tossed his head, clattering the little shells tied at the end of each plait. He crossed his triple-spear over his lap and extended his arms, beckoning two of the gulls. Golden scales circled his wrists.
“Oh, it’s you,” Trueblood said unhappily.
“At your service,” Truvos said, posing with a bird in each hand.
“Hold still while I get my oil paints.”
“I detect some sass here, Pelippé Trueblood.”
“This is all your fault.”
The sea god’s mouth fell open, the portrait of indignation. Then he sighed and looked away. “I’m afraid it is, my one.”
“I hope it was worth it.” Trueblood never imagined he’d be arguing with a god, but his abject misery gave him both courage and audacity. “You fucking ruined everything. Cracked the world open, took the Nye away, unleashed war and killed my mother. Opened the sea floor and let Murder take my father. Was it some kind of joke to let Misery almost kill me? That was fun. I bet you had a great time watching me suffer through the worst moments of my life. Did you watch I and Fen make love and laugh your ass off, knowing what was coming?”
“Of course not.”
“Why me?” Trueblood cried. “Why am I the one cleaning up the mess you made? Why am I bringing back what you stole? You’re a god. I’m just a sailor. You could’ve fixed this ages ago. Instead you chiseled some bad poetry into a rock, then sailed of
f and fucking sulked for millennia. When you were done moping, you couldn’t man up to put the stars back where they belonged so you fobbed them off on ele-Kheir. What the fuck was up with that? No, don’t answer. I don’t want to know. I just hope you’re happy with how it all turned out. I hope you’re at least fucking grateful.”
“Thank you,” Truvos said.
“Kiss my ass,” Trueblood yelled, spooking the gulls into a cloud of shrieking, flapping chaos.
The sea god blinked at him, a portrait of confusion. Then he smiled like one who’d discovered the meaning of life.
“I see,” he said. “You’re trying to get me to kill you.”
“You couldn’t kill me if you tried.”
“Oh, my one, I assure you—”
“Go on,” Trueblood said, straining against his bonds with the last bit of muscular strength he could find. “Kill me, you son of a bitch. I dare you.”
“Let’s not bring my mother into this.” Truvos slid off the branch and walked across the air to stand in front of Trueblood. He put a knee down on nothing, then the other.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If it’s any consolation, Pelippé, I love nothing and no one the way I love you.”
“Shut up,” the mariner cried through his teeth. “Only my father tells me that. You’re not allowed to say those words.”
“It’s you because it could be no one else,” the sea god said. “It’s you because you were born for this job. It’s you because you strive for excellence at a task which everyone else would settle for being mediocre. It’s you because of all the people who had the privilege to come along on your voyage. It’s you because no one else can tell this story.”
He touched the tips of Trueblood’s boots. “It’s you because I love you.”
“I hate you,” the mariner whispered.
“I know. And that’s the beauty within the tragedy, Pé. You’ll go on being excellent at this job even though you hate it. Because you know no other way.”
He glanced to the west. His braids lifted off his shoulders in the gusts made from pegaso wings. His hand shot out and the triple-spear flew into it. His elbow bent and aimed three golden, deadly points at Trueblood’s heart.
Thank you, the mariner thought, slumping against the tree. I did my best.
Truvos fired. The tree shuddered. The gulls scattered. The seventh star appeared.
Trueblood leaned his head against the pillow made by the embedded trident and slept.
He opened his eyes on the eighth day to find himself awash in feathers. Brown and red and yellow. Larks and finches clung to every inch of his body.
“They don’t quite know if you’re to be born or if you’re to die,” said Helos. The goddess of birth and death lay on her side along the branch, elbow bent and head propped on her hand.
“Please let me die,” Trueblood said.
“Soon,” she said, sitting up. “It’s almost over. You’re doing beautifully. But then again, we knew you would.”
“You did?”
“Mm. You gave us quite a scare, though. We thought for sure we lost you that one time.”
“When? After my father died?”
She shook her head. “Ele-kheir had that under control.”
“When Misery got me?”
“Goodness, no. Fen would never let you die. We barely worried.”
Trueblood was barely human now. All physical aspects of himself had fallen or floated away. Hunger, thirst and pain no longer had description. Trying to remember the close calls of his life was like trying to piece together someone else’s dream. His exhausted mind squeezed like a fist, wringing out his encounters with death.
“Was it when the minotaurs killed my mother?”
“No, you idiot. It was when you jumped off the Cay’s main mast when you were six. Holy horseshit, I still get nauseous when I think about it.”
“But I was fine.”
“Fine?” she cried, sending birds flying in every direction. “Have you ever seen eight gods have a simultaneous heart attack? Truvos nearly impaled himself on his trident when you jumped. What were you thinking?”
She paced back and forth in the air, waving her arms. “Do you know what kind of bargain we had to strike with Os to stop time long enough for me to get to you? You would’ve broken your neck if I hadn’t backhanded you into that pratfall, and then we would’ve been fucked.”
“Oh,” Trueblood said, too tired for anything else.
“If you ever wondered why your father’s disappointed expression made you feel like shit that day, it was because eight gods were looking through his eyes, wanting to take turns spanking you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t,” he said. “I learned not to grow careless once the end was in sight.”
Her stern expression softened. “And you never make the same mistake twice.” She took his face in her cool hands and kissed his brow. “You have no idea how proud you’ve made us.”
“I’m so tired,” he said.
“I know, my one.”
“It hurts.”
“It’s almost over. Raj is giving up his last star.” She kissed each of his eyelids. “Soon, Pelippé. The end is in sight. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be brave. You only have to be careful and finish the job.”
“Then die?”
“Then die. I promise.”
Trueblood sighed under her kisses. “Thank you.”
That night, the lark slept on one of his shoulders and a goldfinch on the other. A redfinch pulled a few of Trueblood’s plaits into a nest and slept on the crown of his head, filling his dreams with Fen.
All the pegasos were gone, except for Zoria.
Fen’s hands were empty, except for the thumb on his fivehand. Tonight at sunset, he’d give it up forever.
I’m still keeping my promise to Pé, he thought. If I wear no rings, no one can take them from me.
No one can take what I freely give away.
I fly no more. I begin and end as a man bound to earth.
I do this willingly.
I do this because I love you.
He had only one regret: that he hadn’t the time or the means to engrave the mariner’s name on the inside of his ringos. He and Pé, together, could hold the last branch to the sky and be as one within Estelos, the star of Os, who was One.
He whispered his khenom through the ring’s circle, then whispered, “And Pelippé Easy Trueblood Cay.”
Take us into your merciful heart.
Zoria carefully took the bit of silver in her mouth. Through her transparent shadow, Fen could see it sitting between her teeth. Her head passed through Fen’s body and her love soothed him an all-too-short moment.
Then she spread her wings and flew up the tree.
The morning of the ninth day, a bud swelled on the branch next to Trueblood. At the sun’s zenith, the pale green calyx split, revealing white petals within. One by one they unfolded as the sun dropped and the sky softened to periwinkle at the western horizon. A black stigma extended from the flower’s center, surrounded by eight slender filaments, each topped with powdery gold.
“Good job,” Trueblood said to Nydirsil.
They were his last words.
Zoria hovered before him, the breeze from her wings soft on Trueblood’s fevered skin. Her head bowed a moment, then she gently set Fen’s ringos in the little hollow at Trueblood’s throat.
One of my one, I honor thee.
The mariner glowed bright. A lamp in the branches. Light both glaring and sparkling poured from his heart, through the silver circlet and into Zoria, giving her form, turning her transparency opaque. Alive and magnificent from hooves to feather tips, she ascended to the end of the central branch and anchored it.
The ends o
f the divine loop touched as Zoria became the new pegaso living atop the Tree of Life. Bird and horse, the two faces of Os, who was One.
The circle closed as Pelippé Trueblood died.
The Ĝemelos came down from Nydirsil. Both were thin and pale, but Raj looked rattled at a cellular level. The eighth day had shaken him badly—the day when Lejo was finished with his stars but Raj still had one to go.
“It was hard,” he said. Even his voice trembled. “Having to carry it alone. Not being able to feel Lé anywhere. It…” His eyes welled up and he couldn’t go on. Lejo put arms around him from behind, his sweet, tired smile framed by dimples.
“See, everyone thinks I’m the more sensitive twin,” he said. “Raj is really the sap in the family.”
“Fuck off,” Raj said softly, holding tight to his brother’s wrists. “I always told you of the two of us, you’re the better man.”
“Stop crying and let Fen in.”
Six arms wove together and three heads pressed into a triangle. That the twins wouldn’t survive the ordeal had never entered Fen’s mind. His thoughts had been with Trueblood alone. Now, held up tight by the Ĝemelos, he fought through a retroactive anxiety, intensely grateful they were alive, wondering what he’d do without them right now.
“Telling you,” he said. “I don’t think anything will upset me or surprise me for the rest of my life.”
His heart lurched in his chest when the twins put his rings back in his hands.
“I take it back,” he said. “What the fuck?”
“Exactly what I said,” Lejo said. “I anchored the first branch, thinking I’d be using your ringosol as a nail.”
“It was more like a hammer,” Raj said.
“And a spoon. First I used the ring to scoop the star out of me.”
“Right, right,” Raj said. “Then put it into this little hole in the sky. Gods, Fen, the things on the other side?”
The Voyages of Trueblood Cay Page 41