by Megan Bannen
“Shh!” He puts his arm around me, but my mouth refuses to contain the sound of my sorrow. It just goes on and on, and selfish sinner that I am, I know I’m not weeping for this bird. I’m weeping for myself, because I am the bird and the bird is me.
As I touch my long fingers to the soulswift’s feathers, I fling back the blanket that shrouds Elath, and I drink deeply from Her power. The border between us blurs. Our souls overlap, and in that juncture, there is more power than I ever dreamed I could hold inside me. I didn’t know my eyes were closed until I open them, and the world is full of light. Tavik cries out, but I could not stop this now if I tried.
Elath’s strength sears my flesh, rising from my toes and careening from my mind, all of it streaming through my fingertips into the bird’s lifeless body. My mouth yawns wide in agonizing rapture as the light pours out of me, running down my chin, streaming across my shoulders, shimmering down the skin of my arms and hands. Beneath my fingertips, the soulswift twitches. Her death-dulled feathers brighten, a lively blue against the backdrop of a dying world. I pick her up tenderly, cupping her between the palms of my hands, and I hold her high, blowing on her, riffling the feathers until her chest expands with breath. The bird takes flight, circling upward, higher and higher, singing her ecstatic song.
The light leaves me, and I collapse into the mud, numb and joyous and frightened by what I have done.
“Gelya!”
Tavik sounds far away as he hoists my limp body out of the sludge to hold me like a baby. My head lolls, so he props me up against his strong shoulder and cups my cheek. His face—his beautiful face—is painted with panic.
“Come on! Don’t do this!”
I try to say his name, but I can’t move my tongue. All I can do is watch and listen as Tavik falls apart.
“I’ve done everything You asked! Why are You doing this to her?” he shouts, not at me, I realize, but at Elath. At his Mother.
I see the fingertips of my handprint on his chest peeking out from beneath his tunic as he leans over me. It’s not one solid mark, but a series of tiny symbols all coming together in the shape of my hand—Sanctus, right there over his heart. My body comes back to me, and I place the tips of my fingers against Tavik’s song.
A skinny boy pushes a stool just below an enormous book with the words Atlas of the World embossed in gold down its spine as the nib of his mother’s quill scratches its familiar music behind him. The book is half as tall as he is, and he nearly topples over as he wrestles it free from the shelf. But when he lies stomach-down on the floor and opens to the first page and sees the vibrant colors of the book’s illuminations, he knows it was worth the effort.
He’s just old enough to sound out the name of each country: Sudmar, Wesmar, Ostmar, Ukrent. There are deserts and mountains, goats and olive orchards, each illumination lovelier than the last. His eyes drink in the blue-gray-green color of the seas hugging the coastline, an unimaginable horizon of water.
The pictures grow stranger as the pages move north, an alien landscape of forests and grain fields stretching through Tovnia and Rosvania to the hills of Auria and the Great Wall of Saint Balzos. He knows what the wall is for, and it makes him shiver, though the library is hot and stuffy.
He turns the page.
The Dead Forest. Its trees grow close together, punctuated by ominous black spaces between the trunks. He’s certain that if he stares into the darkness long enough, he will see the monsters that lurk there—the telleg—hungry and waiting.
He turns the page.
And there they are, thin and ragged, their cloaks billowing around them like phantoms. One of them has its hood thrown back, revealing a skull-like head with a mouth full of jagged teeth. The boy scoots away in terror, and his mother races to him when she hears him sobbing.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, stroking his dark curls with a gentle hand.
He points to the open book without looking at it and sniffles. She sighs and takes her son by the chin. “Listen to me, my little soul. There are no telleg in Kantar. And even if Grama were full of monsters, you’d be safe. Do you know why?”
He shakes his head.
“Because your mother will protect you. Always.”
He nods, but he knows that a book has told him the truth in a way no adult ever could.
She holds him by the arms and gives him an affectionate jiggle. “Would you like me to read you a story?”
Mollified, he grins back at her and leads her through the stacks to the place where ropes cordon off a great stone slab carved all over with lines and swirls. “That,” he declares.
She undoes the rope and brushes the symbols with her fingertips. “I can tell you the story, but I’m afraid that only a Vessel from the Convent of Saint Vinnica could truly read this.”
“That’s all right,” he assures her.
She looks on him with warm eyes, the same green as his, and she begins, “‘Call down the Mother’s voice, the song of the lark, to sing the tale of Ludo, Breaker and Broken.’” She tells him the story of the greatest Two-Swords of all time, and for once, he regrets that he prefers the library to his brothers’ sword games. But his regret is short-lived, because his mother cocks an eyebrow at him and says, “Didn’t I ask you to fetch water an hour ago?”
Grumbling, he trudges home and slings the yoke over his narrow shoulders, the pails squeaking from rusty handles. As he passes the Temple of the Mother and Father on his way to the well, he peers into the courtyard, where boys can always be found playing Ludo on the pitch. When he doesn’t see Raran or Barri, he tiptoes past the iron gate, but a moment later, he hears Raran’s voice behind him. “What’s this? Too good to play Ludo with us, little brother?”
He turns, his shoulders slumping as he answers, “I was sent to fetch water.”
Snorting, Barri yanks the yoke from the boy’s shoulders and hands it to Raran, who casts aside the buckets, plants his foot at the yoke’s center, and pulls on one end until the wood breaks in half. Then he tosses the pieces at the boy’s feet. “There. Now you have two swords. Play me.”
With shaking hands, the boy picks up the two halves, but before he can speak or move or think, Raran raps him on the hand, cracking a birdlike bone beneath the skin. The child cries out and drops the sword as Raran strikes him behind the knees, forcing him to the ground. The gathering crowd of boys roars with laughter, but Raran is not amused. He pokes his little brother in the penis with the tip of his weapon. “You were born with a sword. Use it. Get up.”
The boy obeys, fighting the urge to cry. He blocks his brother’s hit this time, but the blow strikes his knuckles, and he drops the sword again.
“Pick it up.”
A single tear leaks from the corner of his right eye. Raran throws down his own weapons, grabs him under the arms, and hoists him off the ground, nose-to-nose with him. “Don’t you dare waste your water.”
The little boy spits in his brother’s face, and the square goes deadly silent.
Raran’s cheeks turn purple with fury. “If you’re so eager to waste your water, let me help you.”
“No!” the boy shouts, fighting to free himself as Raran carries him toward the dark mouth of the well.
Barri’s smirk evaporates. “Raran, stop.”
“He can’t keep hiding in that library, Barri. This is for his own good.”
“Please, no! I’m sorry!” The boy wraps his thin legs around Raran’s torso, but Barri, nodding sadly, pries him loose.
“Catch!” says Raran as he hurls the child at the dangling pail. The boy flails his arms but grasps the bucket, sending a sharp pain shooting through his injured hand. He hangs over the opening as Barri operates the crank, lowering him into the shaft. By the time the rope halts, he’s sobbing shamelessly. “I’m sorry! Please!” His voice ricochets off the brickwork before Raran’s last words echo down to him: “You need to learn how to use your sword, Tavik.”
“Raran! Barri!” But there’s no answer, so he pulls himself up ont
o the pail with his good hand, making the bucket swing back and forth like a pendulum, his stomach lurching with the motion. The dark water below is awake and waiting—a living thing. He squeezes his eyes shut and hugs the rough fibers of the rope to his cheek, and still no one comes for him, not even his mother.
Horrible noises crash down on him from above, clashes and cries and booms, blending one into the other like a terrifying chorus. Tendrils of smoke billow into the well’s shaft, burning his lungs, making him wheeze and gasp for air until he’s so weak he can’t hold on any longer. The bucket tips, pouring him out, and he falls.
He falls.
His body sinks into the murk like a stone, and he is in complete and utter darkness. He hangs suspended in the water like a baby in his mother’s womb. Then the darkness thins, and a light rises up to meet him, as gray and insubstantial as a ghost. He can no longer see the walls of the well. Instead, he finds himself drifting inside a ring of trees far wider than the well’s circumference. Beyond the ring is an entire forest, more trees than he could imagine.
And he is not alone.
The telleg drift toward him from between the tree trunks, caped wraiths with hoods thrown back, revealing faces grown over with pale gray skin, so pallid they glow in the gloom.
He screams, the last breath in his lungs bubbling out of his mouth in silent terror, as a telleg reaches for him, moving unnaturally fast. He darts away only to back into another, and he watches in petrified horror as a mouth cuts itself across the monster’s face and bites into his arm. Pain like nothing he has ever felt sears his entire being.
His mother comes for him then. Her eyes are his eyes. Her dark hair fans out around her in the water. He reaches for her, longing to be held, but when she stretches her arms out to him, it isn’t warmth that touches his hand. It’s cold, sharp steel.
His mother has handed him a sword.
Tavik wrenches my hand off his heart, yanking his song from my body, leaving me limp and powerless again, as if he had ripped my bones out, too. I can’t move, and to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I want to reclaim this body of mine with all its hurts and griefs.
Tavik dabs at my bloody nose with this damp sleeve, coaxing me back to myself. “Come on. Come back. You can come back now.” He sounds calm, but his sweat and waxy complexion and terror show me the scared boy I saw in the tunnel beneath the convent when we escaped the parlertorium.
“Gelya,” he calls to me.
The pain of living in the world begins to seep in, a coldness that freezes me to the bone.
“Can you hear me?”
My voice is small when I answer at last. “Yes. I could hear you all along.”
“Thank the Mother. Can you move?”
“A little. I just need to rest for a minute.” Even saying that much is exhausting.
“Whatever that was, don’t do it again. Do you hear me?” Tavik focuses his attention on cleaning my face, avoiding my eyes.
“I won’t,” I tell him, but there’s a part of me still drifting beside his childhood self in the water of the well, scared and alone in a world full of monsters, just as part of me never left the Dead Forest.
“You’ve seen them,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I was just a kid. I imagined the whole thing.”
I put my icy hand over his warm one, and I have the strength to sit up after all. I take his left arm in my hands, and he lets me. I pull back his sleeve, and he lets me. I trace the silver scars on his skin.
He lets me.
“This is not your imagination.”
He shuts his eyes tight.
“Don’t you understand?” I press. “I’ve seen them. And you have seen them. And we’re still alive. And neither of us is alone anymore.”
He opens his eyes, his striking irises made lovely with threatening tears. I’m not sure how long we stay like this with my fingers pressed against his scar, brown eyes looking into green with very little for either of us to hide behind. But then he pulls away, slipping out of my hands. “You’re going to make me waste my water all over the place,” he gripes as he lodges his fingers in my hair and dishevels it like mad again.
“This is my new least favorite habit of yours,” I protest, annoyed that he destroyed the moment.
He gives me a lopsided grin. “That’s too bad, because it’s my new favorite thing to do.”
“You are a nightmare.”
“Tavik: rhymes with havoc,” he reminds me. “I need to get you out of this rain so you can rest. Think you can make it to some shelter?”
I nod, hoping that I have the strength to do what must be done. He hauls me to my feet, and we walk in the pouring rain, albeit slowly. Each step takes us a little closer to the Monastery of Saint Helios, where the Father knows what is going to happen, but at least I’m not alone in this.
We cross paths with an abandoned shed, which seems like a miracle beyond asking. Tavik breaks a rusted lock to let us inside. “I wish I could light a fire for you tonight, but we can’t risk it,” he says as he clears some old rakes out of the way, “You’re sleeping with me. No arguments. We need to get you warm.”
I don’t have it in me to protest, and frankly, I don’t care. There’s nothing amorous or romantic about the ad hoc bed I share with Tavik. It does me little good anyway. No matter how tightly he holds me, I can’t get warm, and neither of us can dry out.
I could dip into the burning heat at my center. I know if I touched Her, She would fill my veins with fire. Temptation unfurls like a spring fern, but Tavik’s words burn brighter in my mind. Whatever that was, don’t do it again. So I lie awake, bitterly cold as I nestle against his lean heat. I think of his mother, the woman in the library who promised to keep him safe from the monsters.
Always.
How strange to know her face when my own mother’s face remains a mystery to me. I even know her name: Semla.
Thirty-Two
I spend the next day grappling with the fact that I raised a soulswift from the dead. Or Elath raised a soulswift from the dead. Or we both did. The line between us is becoming disturbingly blurry. I’d be more panicked about this if I weren’t a walking, talking coma right now. Besides, I can tell Tavik is worried enough for both of us.
After another night of inadequate shelter, he insists that we take the risk of knocking on the door of a farmhouse and begging a roof for the night, even though we’re within a few miles of the monastery. I want to tell him it’s too risky, but I also want to melt into a useless puddle in front of a fire. Thank the Father, we’re not approaching the monastery from the south, so we can avoid the town at the very least.
A young woman answers the door, and her eyes bulge when she sees two Knights of the Order dripping on her doorstep.
“Forgive us, miss, but could you ask your father if we might stay here for the night?” I ask in my deepest voice. “We’re headed for the Monastery of Saint Helios, but I don’t think we’ll make it before dusk.”
“You’ll have to ask my husband,” she answers doubtfully. “Um, come in.”
“Thank you,” Tavik says, stepping past her, and I follow him inside.
The house consists of two rooms, one that serves as a kitchen, dining room, and parlor, and another that I assume is the bedroom. Statues and icons of the saints sit on every dusty shelf, and there is a yellowed painting of Saint Ovin cleaving the Great Demon in two framed on the mantel, a brutal and bloody depiction that makes Elath’s presence inside me squirm uncomfortably.
“Tea?” the woman asks us.
“Yes, please,” I answer. As she busies herself over the stove, I whisper to Tavik, “You see? Ovinists can be charitable.”
He eyes the tiny saints. “I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be as charitable if she knew who we really were.”
“Here.” She thrusts a mug of weak tea at each of us. As she turns back to the stove, I notice the swell of her stomach. She’s pregnant, though I’d swear she was about my age.
Tavik and I hang our
dripping cloaks from the rafters, then steam ourselves dry in front of the fire, a simple pleasure you only learn to appreciate when it’s been taken from you. As our boots and socks bake on the heart stones, I begin to feel better, stronger.
“What’s your name?” I ask the young woman, more and more convinced that she can’t be more than eighteen.
Her frightened eyes dart between Tavik and me. “Pruda.”
I speak gently, trying to set her at ease. “Pruda, my name is Brother Elgar, and this is Brother Remur. We are truly grateful for your hospitality.”
She gives me what I think is meant to be a smile before turning back to the stove, where something gamey boils in a stockpot.
Tavik is using the privy when Pruda’s husband returns. He’s much older than she is, a man in his late thirties or early forties with a wiry frame and piercing blue eyes.
“What’s all this?” he asks his wife, tracking mud across the floor as he crosses the room to her, glaring at me all the while.
“They’re Knights of the Order,” Pruda tells the side of his face in a rush. “They asked for shelter from the rain. The other is in the privy.”
Something about him sucks all the air out of the room. I’m frightened of those blue eyes.
You’re supposed to be a man, Gelya, I remind myself. For the Father’s sake, act like one.
I feign ease, even though the husband’s hard look makes me quail inside. “I’m Brother Elgar. Your wife was kind enough to let us in to dry out. We’re on our way to Saint Helios but would be glad of a roof over our heads for the night.”
His icy eyes catch sight of our pale blue cloaks hanging from the beams above. “Of course,” he says, suddenly servile. “Pruda! Make these men a feast fit for the Holy See. Go get a chicken.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I assure him as Pruda looks down at her feet and says, “That will take hours to prepare and . . . and . . . we only have three hens left.”