by Megan Bannen
Nothing.
He sinks in on himself, his spine curving, bent by his own helplessness, his hands and face pressed to the tree’s rough surface. The accusation grinds its way through his clenched teeth one last time, a prayer of resentment and fury and defeat.
“You chose us.”
Fifty
He refuses to break me, and I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t break him either, not for anything.
I’m honestly not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. If he doesn’t break my body now, what happens to the spirit inside me? Does She finally return to the world? Or will She be trapped forever inside Her mortal Vessel? Do I even care at this point?
Tavik won’t break me, but he’ll hold me until I’m gone.
He’ll probably hold me for a long time after that, too.
We sit at the foot of the Mother in Her tangle of roots, Tavik upright and cross-legged, me draped across his lap, my head leaning against his shoulder.
“Are you cold?” he asks me.
“No.” It’s true. My body feels very little now. Even my voice is disappearing in slow, painful increments.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I shouldn’t ask you to speak. Save your strength.”
“For what?”
His chin trembles. He clutches me more tightly, nestling my forehead into the crook of his neck.
I make my hand move to his chest and press my fingertips over the place where his heart beats beneath the mark of my handprint, and I sing inside him.
What the Mother joins in life cannot be separated in death.
He gasps and kisses the top of my head.
I press my face into his neck. “I should tell you not to waste your water, but I won’t.”
“Shh.”
I’m the one who’s breaking, yet Tavik is the one who is falling apart.
“It doesn’t matter now.” And then I sigh his name just for the simple pleasure of saying it. “Tavik.”
He bursts like a broken dam, weeping, clinging to me as if I were a doll. He rocks us back and forth as he sobs, and still I live. When he has cried himself out, he shifts, cradling my head in the crook of his arm to watch me die, breath by breath, while he can do nothing to stop it. He strokes the cooling skin of my hollowed cheeks with his fingertips. He looks to the sky for a moment, but his eyes return to my face, and he speaks one word—prays it—“Please”—and I don’t know what it is he’s asking or from whom.
There’s a rustling in the woods to the south, movement, and I can sense Tavik’s hope surging inside him, his trampled faith assuring him that his Mother and his Father have not abandoned him. But it is not hope that approaches us. Goodson Anskar emerges into the clearing, walking along the stream. He must have found a way to cross the Fev River so he could follow us on the north side of the tributary. As he comes into view, Tavik and I both understand, finally and completely, that our lives are nothing to the gods. We are only a Vessel and a Sword to them, objects to be used, then cast aside when we are no longer useful.
The Goodson startles when he spots us cradled in the roots of the Mother’s body. He steps across the brook and comes to a halt several yards away, keeping a cautious distance from the tree. He speaks to Tavik rather than to me. “Is she . . . ?”
“No,” Tavik answers shortly. He can’t bear to hear the word spoken aloud in any language, not by the Goodson, not by anyone.
“Goodson Anskar,” I call to him, weak and mewling, but his eyes are on the tree, gazing up and up, taking in the expanse of Elath’s earthly body before turning his troubled face back to Tavik.
“Have you done it then? Have you released the Great Demon?”
Now that my own belief has been demolished, it seems impossible that the Goodson’s faith should continue to burn so brightly. Tavik gapes at him, then barks an incredulous, bitter laugh. “You have eyes,” he answers in Rosvanian.
The Goodson wears his relief as clear as the Hand of the Father emblazoned on his chest.
“Goodson,” I call again with a voice that refuses to go far. I want to reach out to him, but my hands will no longer obey me. “It’s over.”
He steps closer and finally addresses me. “No, Daughter, it’s not over. It will never end until the body is cut down once and for all, and the Vessel is secured.”
“Me,” I murmur.
He nods, his eyes curving down with sorrow. “You.”
I know what he is, and yet it stings more than words can say that his faith is stronger than his love.
“I’ll make you hurt for this,” Tavik spits at him in Kantari.
“Calm down, heathen. You know that I am not going to kill her. That would only set the Great Demon free. The Vessel must be put somewhere safe before it’s too late.”
Tavik pulls together the Rosvanian words he needs. “What you do to her is worse than death.”
“It’s a mercy. I will carry the Vessel to Saint Balzos—”
“The ‘Vessel’ has a name.”
“—and the world will thank me for it. Don’t you see? If only you had taken Rusik’s hand.”
“If only I had killed you at the convent when I had the chance,” Tavik answers in Kantari.
“I can see you care for her. I understand. I have loved her as a father loves his daughter. But what we want, whom we love—none of that matters. There are things that are bigger than you or I. As hard as this is, there are things that matter more than just one girl.”
Tavik slides himself out from underneath me, taking his warmth and comfort away when I need them most.
“Don’t,” I plead, but he lays me down in the cradle of leaves between the roots. He kisses my hands. “Water of my thirst, blood of my body.”
“No,” I beg him as he rises and pulls the Sword of Mercy from its scabbard.
He turns his back on me to face the Goodson. “Nothing matters more than her.”
Goodson Anskar nods again, but there’s nothing sad about it this time. He draws his sword and takes the crouching, offensive stance of a man long used to fighting. “Let’s get this over with.”
Tavik can’t not fight the Goodson now, and I know it. Even as his blade meets Goodson Anskar’s, I remember when I asked him about The Ludoïd, what it means.
So by that logic, it is better to die for the love of one person than to sacrifice what you most love for the benefit of the many? You think entire nations should fall for the sake of the love between one man and one woman?
And what did he say in response?
Love trumps hate. Every time. Even in the face of world destruction, love is the better choice.
And that’s why Tavik is winning.
When the Goodson strikes, he blocks, and when Tavik attacks, he gets closer to victory. He pushes Goodson Anskar on the defensive. He makes him step back, moving him farther and farther away from me. When the Goodson lunges, he feints and shoves the seasoned knight down with his foot, sending him sprawling to the ground, as ungainly as the Mother’s roots, knocking the Hand of the Father out of his grip. The ancient sword slides away through the carpet of rotting leaves and snow as Tavik holds his one blade to the Goodson’s neck, ready to strike down his enemy at last.
“No!” I whimper.
I’m sure Tavik can’t hear me, and yet he stops, his blade unmoving. When he speaks at last, it’s in Kantari.
“I’m not going to kill a man as pathetically deluded as I have been, not when Gelya still loves you.”
He casts aside the sword in disgust.
“There. I offer you the Sword of Mercy,” he says in Rosvanian before giving up and switching once more to Kantari. “It doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters now but her.”
He turns back to me, and I’m glad to see his face again, to watch his chest rise and fall with life.
Then, with a sudden, violent jolt, Tavik’s body arches backward, bending into the searing point, the place where his own blade has pierced his back. The Goodson rams the Sword of Mercy so hard through Tavik
’s body, it emerges from his stomach. His eyes widen. His mouth contorts. His whole face becomes a mask of agony, sending a shaft of anguish into my own chest. He cries out as the Goodson withdraws the blade, and he drops to the ground. He manages to roll onto his back, but already the hungry earth soaks in his blood, feeding the roots of the great tree that cradles me.
The Goodson stands above him, holds the sword high, and drives it down into Tavik’s heart, pinning him to the ground like a moth to a board. Tavik takes his last breath, then looks on the world with eyes that no longer see, and there is nothing left but pain and the Goodson and the Mother’s arms stretching to the gray sky above.
Fifty-One
The sword that tore Tavik’s life away from me drips red as the Goodson pulls it free of his body.
Silence looms over me, so incongruous in the aftermath of fighting and death that I want to scream into the void. There is only the creaking of frozen tree limbs, the call of a crow in the distance, Goodson Anskar’s ragged breathing. The color of the world is a desolate gray-white from the sky above to the frost-coated ground below.
My heart shatters. My entire body breaks. And still I live when Tavik doesn’t.
His left hand, swordless and empty, splays without intention in my direction, the back resting on the earth while his fingers curl toward the sky, the skin under the nails purpling already. I smell his blood, like rust and woodsmoke, cutting through the crisp air.
He is so close, but I am so weak.
I force myself to roll onto my stomach and crawl toward him, clawing my way inch by inch, grunting with effort even as the effort of grunting pushes me closer to my own death.
“Gelya.” The Goodson’s voice cracks with heartbreak.
I will not turn toward that voice.
I press forward and reach for Tavik’s hand. I have done it before. I can do it one last time. This is how I choose to die.
The Goodson’s footsteps crush the frost beneath his feet as he crunches his way to me and lifts me in his strong soldier’s arms. “Poor little Gelya. Come. I shall carry you now.”
“No.” I stretch my hand toward Tavik, but his touch has been stolen from me almost as quickly as it was ever given.
“It’s done,” Goodson Anskar whispers, holding me high, cradling me as he did so long ago.
I look down at Tavik. His skin has turned the same dull color as the sky, as if he was a blazing fire, and now all that’s left are the ashes. The only color left in the world is the green of his blank, open eyes.
Where has he gone, the blood of my body, the water of my thirst? To his underworld? To a heaven he doesn’t believe in?
I try to push myself free of the Goodson’s arms, but he holds more tightly to me, and I am too cold and feeble to resist.
We failed, Tavik and I. We came all this way for nothing. What does it matter now? Why did any of it matter in the first place? Gods and demons and wars and monsters . . . it all seems so small and ridiculous now that I’ve reached the end.
I sway in the Goodson’s arms as he carries me away, my head lolling. I watch Tavik’s body, determined to keep him in my sight for as long as I can. From the earth at his Mother’s feet, where his blood has soaked into the soil, a small green shoot curls upward and fans out two tiny green leaves.
The son gives his death so that the Mother may live, Elath sings inside me.
I feel no joy, but I understand now: we didn’t fail after all. This is not the end. This is the beginning.
In my mind, I stand at a stream so narrow, I could jump across it without even dampening my boots. Is it time? I ask the woman who stands across from me, a goddess who somehow manages to be both Zofia and my own mother. She nods and smiles and reaches out a strong hand to steady me. I put my small, grubby child’s hand in hers and take the last step.
I feel a pulling at my stomach, a tugging ache in my heart. I am a song trapped in a cave, the newly lit wick of a lamp, brightly burning in the darkness. The seedpod cracks and bursts open, and from within the husk of my body comes light, so much light.
And wings.
And feathers.
The lithe body of a small blue bird.
The weight of the Mother’s soul soars out of me as I surge into the air, free of the burden. My entire being turns inward until there is nothing left but the burning pinpoint that is the heart of the bird I have become. The Goodson cries out as I take flight, a dazzling thing, alive and vivid in a colorless world.
I did not know how heavy my body was until I became light. I am freed by feathers. I am buoyed by song and air. I hear the soft breath of animals waking in their winter burrows, taste the promise of spring on my tongue, smell the loamy soil that waits beneath its frozen blanket of earth.
I know what I am now.
My new eyes see what my human eyes could not: Tavik’s soul buried within the flesh and bone of his own heavy body, a pulse made of laughter and pain and love, all the things he is.
I fly to him, landing on his still and cooling chest, and call to him in my birdsong. He comes to me, rising from the shell of his body to the place where I perch on the handprint over his heart. I take the light of his soul in my tiny bird’s grip, holding the luminescent threads of his colorful life in toes as thin and delicate as strands of melted glass, and I lift him up.
All around us, the world wakes in the Mother’s footsteps, in the air that the goddess breathes, warm and green and brimming. The Father wipes away the bleak clouds with His great hand, and I soar into the blue sky as if it were an open window, holding Tavik close to me as I circle higher and higher. I sing as I raise him up, a song so excruciatingly beautiful it could pierce any living soul.
The Goodson listens to my heart-wrenching call, watching me climb into the heavens until he can see me no more. Then he falls to his knees, so broken he cannot even weep for me.
And still I fly, up and up, carrying Tavik’s precious soul with me.
Epilogue
A HYMN FROM THE SONG OF SAINT ANSKAR
There is no poetry in the Spear of the Father.
There is only death.
I wear my name to remember what I have been.
When I drove my sword into Saint Tavik’s body
And felt the flesh yield,
And heard the slick sound of blade against blood,
I gave the Mother his death for Her life.
Death for life, all things in balance.
Saint Gelya became blue feathers and birdsong,
Excruciating in her beauty,
Circling into the sky until I could see her no more.
Such a tiny bird to carry something so vast, so heavy as a soul.
We set the goddess free, the three of us,
And when I saw the world turn green and good around me,
I understood that my life as the Spear of the Father had been a lie.
I thought I could not bear to have been wrong.
But the Mother called my name,
And who am I to defy Her again?
I sing The Song of Saint Gelya to anyone who will listen,
And The Song of Saint Tavik,
The Song of Saint Zofia,
The Songs of the Mother and the Father,
Life and Death,
All things in balance.
They are the only songs worth singing.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to A’ishah Amatullah, Rebecca Coffindaffer, Christie O. Hall, Natasha Hanova, and Alejandra Olivia for their insightful feedback and suggestions at various stages of this project. Thanks also to the KS/KCMO writing crew for the support, comradery, and excellent food (and, more recently, for the comforting Zoom sessions). To my critique partners Kathee Goldsich and Jenny Mendez, and to my fellow Nebulous Dread Cloud band members Miranda Asebedo and Amanda Sellet: thank you for lighting my way time and again.
I hereby dedicate my most impressive dance moves to my agent, Holly Root, who is the literal best. Air fives to the whole Root Literary gang and
to Heather Baror-Shapiro as well.
Heaps of gratitude go to Renée Cafiero, Alison Donalty, Jacqueline Hornberger, Catherine Lee, Maxime Plasse, Sasha Vinogradova, the Balzer + Bray team, and everyone at HarperCollins who played a part in this book’s journey to publication. Caitlin Johnson has been stellar throughout the editorial process, and my editor, Kristin Daly Rens, deserves canonization for her patience and guidance. Thank you for seeing what this book was meant to be when I couldn’t, Kristin, and for sticking with me until I could. I shall sing your song for many years to come.
About the Author
Photo courtesy of the author
MEGAN BANNEN is a librarian and the author of The Bird and the Blade. In her spare time, she collects graduate degrees from Kansas colleges and universities. While most of her professional career has been spent in public libraries, she has also sold luggage, written grants, and taught English at home and abroad. Megan lives in the Kansas City area with her husband, their two sons, and a few too many pets with literary names. She can be found online at www.meganbannen.com.
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Books by Megan Bannen
The Bird and the Blade
Soulswift
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Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
SOULSWIFT. Copyright © 2020 by Megan Bannen. Map copyright © 2020 by Maxime Plasse. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.