by Megan Bannen
Except there is a knight on our tail. The Goodson is behind us somewhere, fighting telleg of his own. He’ll do whatever it takes to keep Elath out of the world. If he’s still alive.
That thought saps even more of my energy.
“I’ve been thinking—” I begin.
“When are you ever not thinking?”
I click my tongue at him before continuing. “The river turned to ice beneath you when you fell off the bridge, but it wasn’t the Mother who did it.”
“You think it was the Father?”
“We know from the text that he cursed the Knights of the Order to haunt the Dead Forest. What if he means for them to protect the Mother’s body until She can return? What if the Father wants us to free the Mother?”
Tavik sits up and gives me a quizzical look. “I never thought He didn’t. The Ovinists may have abandoned the Mother, but we Elathians have always remained faithful to the Father as well as to Elath.”
I turn on my side to face him and curl my hands under my cheek. “Why have we never talked about this before?”
“I just assumed you knew. Of course the Father wants to bring Elath back. If someone took my wife from me, I’d move mountains to find her.” He speaks with a conviction that reminds me of the night we met, when he knelt before me and promised to keep me safe.
With the last breath of my body.
He holds my gaze a moment longer, his eyes melting every organ inside me, before he rolls out of his sleep sack with his usual grace and heads toward the river with the canteen in hand.
I close my eyes and envision him kneeling before me again, only this time, I hold out my hand to him and feel his palm against my palm as I help him to his feet, and I lean in, and—
“Gelya, come here.”
I moan in protest. Aside from my fluttering heart and Elath’s blaring presence, my body feels like a deflated ball. And I was enjoying myself.
“Come on. You need to see this.”
I groan again and drag my weak body after his. Tavik asks his burning question before I reach his side. “So is this the Fev River, or is that the Fev River?”
My sluggish brain catches up, and I see what we failed to notice when we set up camp at dawn. We have arrived at the juncture of two rivers, one on the opposite bank running from north to south, the other—a narrow tributary on our side—converging into the first from the west.
“I think that’s the Fev,” I guess, pointing at the river we can’t reach without a bridge.
“Then what river is this?” Tavik asks, nodding toward the water at our feet.
My gaze drifts west, taking in the slow current snaking its way toward us. “No idea. There aren’t many accurate maps of the Dead Forest or Hedenskia.”
“Oh, death.”
“I don’t think it’s a problem. We need to keep heading west anyway.”
“No. Look.”
I follow Tavik’s dark gaze across the Fev. On the opposite bank, a man crouches beside the river and cups water to his mouth. Even from forty yards away, I recognize him.
The Goodson.
He looks up.
I can’t see his eyes from this distance, and yet I feel them boring into me, those gray eyes that held such softness for a girl he thought of as his own daughter. I can still hear the heartbreak in his voice.
What the Father asks of me, I must do.
I don’t know what to feel. Relief that he’s alive? Fear that he’s close? Both? Neither? It makes me want to drop to my knees and weep for days.
“How can he be here? How can he have made it this far?” Tavik asks, his words slathered with indignation.
“I don’t think you’re the only Sword. He was made to cross the Dead Forest, just as you were. He’s done it before, and now he’s doing it again.”
Goodson Anskar raises his hand. Is it a greeting? Is it his way of asking me to stop? Is he simply acknowledging the history between us?
Tavik’s fingers twine with mine, warming my cold hand. “He can’t lay a finger on you from over there, and I wouldn’t let him near you if he were over here.”
I nod. I know Goodson Anskar can’t touch me now, but what happens if he catches up to us? What will Tavik do to him? Or he to Tavik? The longer we dally, the sooner that becomes a possibility.
“Come on,” I say, pulling Tavik back to camp so we can pack up and be on our way, but not before taking one last look behind me at Goodson Anskar with a tight ache in my chest.
An hour after leaving behind the Goodson at the juncture of two rivers, things get a little troubling, which, considering everything we’ve been through, is saying something.
First of all, no matter how much I rest, I can’t begin to recover my strength. I’m starting to wonder if I ever will. As we follow the river west, I have to lug myself after Tavik with the walking sticks he found for me. Thanks to me, our progress is glacial.
Second of all, the tributary quickly grows narrower. Soon the distance between shores will taper enough to cross without too much difficulty. If the Goodson finds a way to ford the Fev, he could follow this river on the north side and reach us at last, especially at our current pace. It’s a threat as visceral as the Mother’s spirit, ever present, weighing me down body and soul.
Lastly and most alarmingly, while the Dead Forest remains much as it has been for the past week—leafless trees, gray light, a world always on the verge of dying—the view across the river changes dramatically. An army of snow-clad spruce and pine stands sentry over a winter landscape, still and silent on a thick blanket of white as a light snow tumbles from the sky.
“What in the name of the Mother? Is this normal?” Tavik demands as he squints across the water.
I shake my head. “This is definitely abnormal. I think it must be a boundary of some sort. Maybe this is where the Dead Forest ends and Hedenskia begins.”
That should be good news, but the unnatural fissure between here and there makes a dark unease take root in my belly, right alongside the Mother’s quickening presence.
Tavik crosses his arms and bites the inside of his cheek. “I feel like I’ve been here before.”
“Me too.” My mind grasps at the memory of this place. I wasn’t a child when I stood here before. I was me, as I am now, expecting to find Zofia on the opposite bank. The trees across from us were green then. There was no snow.
I saw this place in a dream, and Tavik was with me.
And I touched him.
A lot.
Oh.
But that wasn’t real.
Was it?
I make the mistake of turning to Tavik at the exact moment he turns to me. When our eyes lock, Tavik, of all people, turns as scarlet as I do. I didn’t even know he was capable of blushing, and I’d be delighted if I weren’t absolutely mortified.
We both turn our heads back to the river so quickly that our brains rattle in our skulls.
After a brutal five seconds of silence during which I repeat the words It wasn’t real in my mind like a prayer, Tavik clears his throat. “I guess we should keep moving.”
So we keep moving.
In more silence.
And in that silence, I remember the heat of his hands on my waist, pulling me close to him.
“Want to play a game of Ludo?” I joke, breaking the unbearable silence and holding up my sticks as I cling to humor, the language Tavik and I speak best.
He cocks a magnificent eyebrow at me. “Are you kidding? You’d have me beat in three moves, tops.”
“I’m so weak I couldn’t beat a mouse,” I reply with a laugh as pathetic as my body.
“You’re not weak.”
I snort.
He stops me with a hand on my arm, and there’s not a trace of humor in his voice when he says, “You’re the strongest person I know.”
He gives me an earnest look that makes it next to impossible for me to breathe. He’s not lying. He really thinks I’m strong in a way that matters more than physical strength, and that a
dmiration sends my pulse soaring through my veins.
Tell him, I think. I love you.
“And why would you want to beat a mouse? Heartless!” He shakes his head with a comical scrunching of his nose and removes my hat for the specific purpose of mussing up my hair.
“I’m not heartless! You’re heartless!” I complain, dropping a stick to bat his hand away. He picks it up and beams at me with his perfect teeth on full display, and my insides melt all over again.
I don’t think Tavik is heartless when it comes to me, and I know I’m not heartless when it comes to him. I just don’t know how to broach the subject. It’s like crossing a river without a bridge. I might make it to safety, but there’s an equally good chance I’ll fall in. Is that a risk worth taking?
Eventually, we find ourselves at a place where the unknown river takes a sharp turn north, but the uncanny boundary between the Dead Forest and the winter landscape to the north continues west as if the river still divided them. Two groves of snow-clad gelya trees create a wide lane in front of us, their red berries vibrant against the gray sky and white snow. If we cross the boundary, we’ll have to walk through it to get to the other side.
“Holy Mother, just when I think things can’t get weirder, they get weirder,” says Tavik. “What do you think?”
The Mother hums like a bee greeting an open bud, although I’m not sure if it’s the presence of the Father or the call of Her body nearby that inspires Her. “I think someone rolled out the welcome mat for us.” When I catch Tavik studying me with a lopsided grin, I add, “What?”
“It’s funny. I think you’re more dedicated to the Father now than you were when you were His Vessel.”
“I don’t know about that. I’m only saying that, if He’s real, He’s a greater god than I was led to believe.”
“Considering the fact that you were taught to believe He was a jerk, your opinion didn’t have anywhere to go but up.”
As we get closer to the odd boundary, I say, “I’m starting to get nervous about this.”
“Starting? I’ve been nervous since I got my marching orders back in Kantar.”
“I mean that we’re close now, but we still have no idea what’s going to happen if we—”
“When,” Tavik corrects me with a wag of his finger.
“When we find the tree.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“And it couldn’t be worse than what would happen if we didn’t find the tree,” I add. A stark look flutters across Tavik’s face, disappearing as soon as I catch sight of it.
By now, we’ve made it right up to the line. Our toes mere inches away from the snow that falls on one side but not the other. Close up, the gelya berries blaze against the white winter. I’ve never seen so many all in one place, and their beauty here, where death ends and the living world begins, clogs my throat with emotion.
“What are they?” Tavik asks me.
A tearful smile spreads across my face. “Gelyas. They’re gelya trees. That’s where my name comes from. Goodson Anskar said my gift is like their berries in winter, bright and alive and lovely when all else seems to have died. Not a very fitting name for me, is it?”
The sight before us is stunning, but Tavik turns to look at me instead. “I cannot imagine a more appropriate name for you.”
He is better than all the gelya berries of the world combined.
“Come along, dearest wife.” He offers me his arm, and I drop a stick to put my hand in the crook of his elbow.
“Let us be off, darling husband.”
And we step out of the Dead Forest and into Hedenskia.
V.
The Soulswift
Forty-Seven
The crisp air nips my nose as a breeze whispers through the pines. Everything feels loud and overwhelming, a land filled with sights and sounds and smells, even in winter. I had no idea how much the Dead Forest muffled the living world until Tavik and I crossed over into Hedenskia.
I lean more and more on him as the chill pierces my flesh, freezing my limbs, making it hard to move. The Mother’s fire blazes inside me, but since She’s using my body as kindling, I don’t enjoy the benefit of Her warmth.
I can feel Tavik watching me. He tries to turn away when I catch him in the act, but I always get a glimpse of his concern before he resets his face and tries to cheer me up with a joke.
“I’ve heard the Hedenski don’t bathe. Think we’ll smell them before we see them?”
“May I remind you that you were not exactly a fragrant rose when I met you?” I point out.
“The Tovnians transported me to the summit in a circus wagon. It’s not my fault I smelled like tiger piss.”
“Oh, so that’s what that smell was.”
He laughs, but I don’t, which seems to worry him even more. And he already has so much to worry about, such as the fact that the Hedenski have a reputation for executing foreigners. Even if they don’t want to murder us, will they help us, or will they stand in our way? And what will the Hedenski make of me? Will they see me as one of them, or do I simply not belong anywhere in this world?
We’ve come so far that our last hurdle seems like our hardest, and even if we manage to get past it, neither of us truly knows what we’re supposed to do once we find Elath’s body. An undercurrent of doubt pulls up a chair right next to the Mother’s enormous presence inside me.
Tavik releases me to adjust his boot, and I take the opportunity to totter ahead a few paces to see how far I can go on my own two feet without him.
“Whoa,” he breathes.
I turn back, but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are on the ground between us. I follow his gaze to the footprints I left behind, every one of them melting the snow within, leaving behind a trail of foot-shaped patches of bare earth from which tiny green shoots begin to spring up: the fiddleheads of fern fronds, the jagged lines of miniature oak leaves on straight red stems, the first delicate needles of an infant pine tree.
For a moment, we gawk at the miracle between us. Then I take a step toward Tavik and turn to watch as the snow melts in the footprint I leave behind, sending up small sprouts of life. All at once, the Mother’s power surges inside me, buoys me. With unbridled laughter, I leap and bound through the trees like a deer, stopping only to watch in delight as the earth turns green behind me. I am full of life, giddy with it.
“Gelya!” Tavik calls to me, but how can I stop? I race past him in pure joy as the world comes to life all around us.
“Stop!”
But I don’t stop. I’m a child again, dancing by the cliffs over the salt sea, too caught up in my own game to listen. I stretch my hand to a tree branch above my head and watch in utter delight as the snow melts at my touch and the first buds of spring leaves burst along the tip, then down the branch, all the way to the trunk, breathing life into the slumbering oak until the whole tree awakens beneath my fingertips.
The skin of my hand gleams gold. My sleeve falls back as I reach higher, and veins of power snake down my arm, glowing bright, like a candle’s light shining through a crack. And I am laughing with the joy of it.
Life.
“Stop!”
A boy grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me away from the tree, and the world that was full of life and joy and music goes suddenly silent. I look back at him in dismay, this boy whose name I think I know, as all that power drains out of my body, and my legs give out beneath me. My dead weight makes him stumble, but he keeps us both upright with a crushing grip around my upper arms. He eases me slowly to the ground and leans my back up against the oak tree I just woke from its winter slumber.
“Gelya?” He still holds me up, but gently now. Thick blood drips from my nose, dribbling down my lips and chin.
“Mother and Father, speak to me.”
But I don’t, because I can’t. My body is not mine to control. A long time passes before I can move or think or remember. And then I recall his name: “Tavik.”
His body
is strung taut as a bow, and he’s yelling at me, so upset that tiny red veins stretch across the whites of his eyes. “You have got to stop doing that! Can’t you see what it’s doing to you?”
But I still feel only half here while the rest of me floats in the air we breathe, trembles in the earth beneath us, skims the green surface of the oak leaves above. My gaze drifts, taking in the scene beyond Tavik’s face, a mismatched forest of green and white.
Tavik gives my shoulders a shake. “Gelya? Gelya!”
My gaze falls away from his face, down and down to the long, freckled hands in my lap. The Mother’s light lingers in them, making them shimmer. My veins are gold beneath the surface, like fissures, like a candle’s flame burning between the splints of a basket.
His hands are on mine, grasping them with his fingers. “Let her go,” he says.
“I can’t,” I tell him, disoriented, pushing the words past my lips with heroic effort.
“I’m not talking to you!”
My soul recoils inside the shell of my body. I’m only the Vessel. He’s speaking to the far more valuable thing I carry inside me. He may as well slap me across the face.
“Why are you doing this to her?” he demands of his goddess, his face contorted, his eyes wet and raw. “Whatever you need me to do I’ll do it! I’ll do anything!”
You’ll do anything for Her, I think bitterly. If he were still looking into my face, surely he’d see the hurt and anger in my eyes—my eyes. But instead, he unclasps his coat and yanks down on the neck of his shirt, exposing the handprint over his heart—my hand. Then he snatches up the same hand that branded him and presses it over the mark, a perfect fit.
“Just tell me what to do!”
I blink, and when I open my eyes, we are back in the courtyard of the Convent of Saint Vinnica.