The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing

by Tara Maya

  Dindi had dressed for the occasion as well. Despite the cold, she wore her shimmery Aelfae gown of white and gold, which left her graceful arms and feet bare. Her face, however, was as pale as her dress.

  “I’m so sorry I dragged you into this,” she said. “But I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t go up there.”

  She clutched Umbral’s tunic. Given how she loathed touching him, he was too surprised to chide her. He just stared at her while she babbled.

  “What if I mess it up? What if I do it wrong and hex everyone? You know, Kavio told me that a girl messed up a dance once and caused a famine that killed half the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe.”

  “Dindi.” Umbral folded his hand over hers, against his chest. “You saw an Aelfae mummy reanimated by the foulest magic in Faearth and you rushed forward to hit it with an ax. But now you’re going to back down because of a little stage fright?”

  She caught her breath at his touch, but she didn’t pull away as he’d expected.

  “You don’t understand. I’ve never danced for anyone before.”

  “You’ve danced for me.”

  And for me, whispered Kavio from some unwanted corner of his mind.

  Umbral squelched the voice.

  “You were a Tavaedi in your troop,” he said out loud to Dindi.

  “But all I did was put out the drums or ribbons,” she said. “Or help the dancers change their masks. I’ve never actually danced in public.”

  Come to think of it, that was true. It was one of the reasons she had been so hard to find when he was hunting her.

  “You can do this.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “But…”

  “You’re the Vaedi. You were born to do this.”

  She blinked at him. “You really believe that.”

  If only he did not.

  “Just do what you did for me,” he coaxed her, “except don’t summon a Vision. To be safe, why don’t you give me the corncob.”

  For a heartbeat, she stood so still, with her hair hiding her eyes, that he wondered if his arrow had fallen wide of the mark; or if she would realize her danger and fight him here and now, for her life. That’s what she should have done if she had known what he intended. But she brushed the veil of dark hair back over one ear, and looked up at him with eyes that shone with trust.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  From around her neck she tugged a cord and pulled out an amulet that he had seen every day for two moons and yet somehow overlooked. It was a little doll, not much bigger than a finger, carved from a corncob. A corncob doll—that was what Kavio had meant. This was the fetish Dindi had been channeling all along to focus her power. Except for Kavio’s slip, he might never have noticed it at all. The doll worked very hard not to be noticed.

  And she handed it to him, innocent as a child.

  “Crush a snail,” he said.

  “What?” She looked startled.

  Umbral allowed himself a tiny grin. “It’s what they say in the Labyrinth to wish you good fortune before a ritual. It would be dangerous to say ‘good luck’ and attract the attention of envious fae. So they say, ‘crush a snail.’ But it means the same thing.”

  “I…knew that,” she said.

  Then he knew that Kavio had told her the phrase. Perhaps in the exact same words Umbral had just used. For once, though, Umbral refused to be jealous. He would not let anything ruin this moment for her. Let her shine. Just one time, let her shine as she would have if she had never met him.

  “If he were here,” Umbral said, “it’s what he would have wished you.”

  “Thank you. For…for letting that part of him still live.”

  “Go on, they’re waiting.”

  She turned to the ladder, but tossed one last glance over her shoulder. “You’ll be in the audience too, won’t you, Umbral? Watching me?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  But he lied.

  Dindi

  Dindi climbed the ladder onto the stage at the end of the lodge. By mistake, she must have eaten rocks for morning meal, because they were knocking around inside her belly right now. It was all well and good for Umbral to tell her she was born to do this, but she was the one who had to decide what to dance. On the one hand, she could not dance like a pixie, unplanned and spontaneous, in front of a human gathering. On the other, none of the tama she had learned with her troop had any relevance to the Spider Weaver clan, or what Dindi wanted to prove to them.

  Horrible memories paralyzed her. She stood in the circle of megaliths on the Stone Hedge, an Initiate all over again.

  I will fail now, as I did then.

  No!

  She wasn’t a supplicant this time. She was the one in charge. She was the Tavaedi. Most importantly, she wasn’t here just for herself. She did no more than glance at Farla, who sat beside her mother close to the stage, knowing both of them would be scowling. Instead, Dindi focused on the Loom which stood upright and tall in the center of the stage. Umbral had made a few changes to the structure, and also, at her request, strung Farla’s weaving onto the frame. The top of the wood frame was as high as Dindi’s shoulder. If she had been born in Farla’s place she would have been allowed to be a Tavaedi just because of her height. The entire year of her Initiation would have woven a different pattern.

  The crowd shifted. Dindi stood posed, but frozen, and they were growing restless. They began to heckle her.

  “I thought you were going to dance!”

  “She’s from Green Woods—maybe that’s her imitation of a tree!”

  “Cut her down!”

  “And burn her as kindling!”

  Nasty laughter spread through the crowd.

  “She’s wasting our time!” shouted a woman whose unpleasant voice Dindi recognized. Farla.

  I need a tama. I need a Pattern. Something old, but something new. Something of mine, something of theirs. Something they will recognize, but something that will change their minds.

  Who knew dances as old as time and new as rain?

  The Aelfae.

  There it was, right there on the Loom in front of her. Farla’s pattern of spiders and webs and faery dancers. The Spider Clan was descended from Spider Woman, as Dindi’s own Lost Swan clan was descended from Mayara. And Spider Woman, like Mayara, had been Aelfae. Her pattern was still there, in the weave passed down from mother to daughter, children who had become blind to the meaning in the stiches, to the truth of their own history. Spider Woman had not completely died as long as her children kept the pattern of her life intact in their weavings. All Dindi needed to do was turn that pattern of physical threads back into threads of light one more time.

  Dindi lifted her arms and spun into a pirouette. She had never danced this tama before, but she did not need to make it up. It was emblazoned on every rug and blanket in Spider Weaver clanhold. Even on Essi’s rugs, though the colors were as muddied as the clan’s collective memory.

  The throng fell silent, mesmerized.

  She felt the colors of the loom flow into her aura. Umbral had taken the corncob doll, but she did not need to hold it to use it. She had channeled Vessia many times. She had channeled Mayara too. Now she opened herself to a new Vision, a dancer more ancient than either of them, and another mind joined hers to guide her steps.

  Umbral

  A doll.

  A mucking doll.

  Umbral stared at the object in the palm of his hand. A child’s totem. Ugly, tattered, forgettable. Was this truly the object of power that enabled Dindi to peer into the life of the White Lady, the Last Aelfae?

  It made no sense.

  Who made it? Where did it come from? How had it come to Dindi, given no one knew she was the Vaedi? He knew objects of power. The Obsidian Mask he wore, which to his ongoing annoyance gave him Kavio’s face in Dindi’s eyes, was such an object. He knew who had made it. Lady Death. She had made three objects of power, and the Aelfae had made three, all during the War. Ther
e was rumored to be a seventh, the Windwheel, but that had been lost. Umbral knew of no corncob doll made by either side. Nor could he sniff the magic of either side on it. Deathsworn? Aelfae? Rainbow? Shadow? As far as he could tell it was just a… doll.

  But if Dindi had used it to see the White Lady, Umbral was damned if he couldn’t do the same. He had six Penumbras. He would bend this toy to his will.

  With Dindi and the whole clanhold occupied, he had the yard behind Farla’s hut all to himself. He began to dance.

  He punched the air, he kicked, he assaulted the insult of existence with his furious revolutions.

  He expected the corncob doll to fight back.

  Instead, the Vision leapt up joyfully around him, as if it had been waiting all along, like a child who has to bite her fingers not to laugh and run out during a game of hide and seek. He had the strangest feeling the doll knew him, perhaps better than he knew himself.

  He saw the White Lady, twenty years younger, more beautiful and cruel than he could have imagined. But it was not her eyes he saw through, or her thoughts that wove into his. It was someone with her.

  Vio (20 Years Ago)

  Vio grabbed his spear, already aware from the footsteps that there were too many ambushers. He and Vessia were trapped.

  More than a dozen armed men and women jogged into view from behind a spread of boulders. Archers popped up on top of the rocks, bows drawn.

  “Drop your weapons!” an older, ax-faced woman commanded them. She wore the ochre face paint and feathered bonnet of a Raptor Rider. A Morvae Tavaedi from the Labyrinth, who had once served under Vio, stood beside her, holding a spear.

  Vio snarled at the man. “You traitor.”

  “Fa,” said a new voice, “I think that feather belongs in your headdress, Vio.”

  The Bone Whistler strolled out from behind the boulder. The other warriors parted to let him through.

  All the blood drained from Vio’s face.

  “You’re dead,” he whispered. It felt like a fist closed around his throat.

  “Why? Because Vessia killed me?” The Bone Whistler laughed. “Vessia has been in my bed far more often than in yours, boy. Oh…she didn’t tell you that?”

  Vio did not believe it for a heartbeat. Not a word. Not until he looked into Vessia’s stricken face.

  “Tell me he’s lying,” said Vio. He heard a horrid grating crunch, like a pestle crushing bone, and realized it was the noise from his own teeth grinding. “Tell me you didn’t sleep with him, Vessia. Tell me you didn’t let him live. Tell me you didn’t aide my worst enemy and lie to me about it. TELL ME. Tell me you didn’t LET HIM LIVE TO CRAWL INTO YOUR MUCKING BED!”

  Suddenly, he was shaking her, shouting so loud, so close into her face that his spit sprayed her cheek. It was as if another man, no, not a man, a beast, an ogre of rage, had taken over. His face purpled, every vein popped. The small part of him that was still sane could only watch aghast as liquid wrath engorged his blood.

  “You are mine!” he raged. “I should never have let you out of that cage! That’s where I’ll keep you from now on! I won’t share you with him!”

  “Get your hands off of me!” she shouted back. She shoved him away.

  The rage ogre who had taken control of his body called her every ugly name in the language. Filthy, beastly names. Worse and worse.

  She slapped him.

  Her face was as flushed as his, she was just as angry. But she was still so fragile compared with him, that her slap did not hurt him at all. He didn’t even feel it.

  His return blow knocked her to the ground in a bloody heap.

  It snapped him back to his senses. The rage ogre disappeared, leaving Vio alone with what he had done.

  The sight of the woman he loved on the ground, bleeding, was too close to the last terrible time he had seen her fall because of him. The night he had thrown the stone that killed her. The Bone Whistler had used the Bone Flute to force Vio to do that, and dance all the while, a puppet in a sick show. But no one had forced his hand today. He had hurt her all on his own.

  He was terrified he had killed her. He almost collapsed with relief when she stood up. He cringed at what he had done. The whole side of her face was a mess. He’d blackened her eye, broken her nose, her jaw too. As he watched, she drew magic into herself and her face resumed its flawless beauty. But the expression in her eyes damaged him more than any blow.

  “Vessia…I didn’t mean to…” He choked on the futile apology. It sounded hollow even to him. “I could not lose you.”

  “Maybe she would forgive you if you returned her wings, Vio,” said the Bone Whistler.

  Vio pulled the opal out of the leather bag hitched on his belt. He handed the shimmering white stone to her without a word. Anything. Anything to make it right again.

  “But…” said Vessia. She looked confused. “How did you get this, Vio?”

  “When I gave you my bag to hold your wings, I switched the stones.”

  “You stole my wings? It was you, right from the start? It was you, all this time? Why, Vio? Why, why, why?”

  “I told you. I cannot lose you.”

  “I believe that all this time, she has been unfairly blaming me for that crime,” said the Bone Whistler. That hateful, taunting purr was the tone the tyrant had used with all his victims as he had them tortured to death. “Now at last you see him for what he is, Vessia.”

  Vio thought he had lost her when he punched her, but now he realized he might have won her back even from that. She was not as fragile as her form, and the immortal fae were used to a level of happy-go-lucky mayhem that would have destroyed mere humans.

  But this. Taking her wings. This was the thing she would never forgive. This was the betrayal he could never recover from.

  “You have lost me, Vio,” she said sadly. “You’ve lost everything. Xerpen is going to kill you now. Aren’t you, Xerpen?”

  “Not just him,” the Bone Whistler said cheerfully. “Every last filthy human on Faearth.”

  Vio felt dizzy. It was so obvious, he had never guessed. “You’re Aelfae.”

  “That’s right, Vio. Vessia and I are the only survivors of the last massacre. But I’m going to use your death to bring back a few sleeping friends of ours. And with their help, I’ll resurrect our entire people.”

  “And I am going to help him,” said Vessia.

  Umbral

  The Vision dissipated but Umbral had seen enough.

  One. The Bone Whistler was alive.

  Two. The White Lady helping him.

  Three. Dindi had known this and led him on a wild goose chase to give the Aelfae villains time to complete their hex to destroy humanity. Lady Death was right. Dindi was a traitor to her own race.

  The girl had played him for a fool.

  She wasn’t the only one to blame. He had let Kavio’s memories tie him in knots. Fa! Umbral had almost come to believe he himself was in love with the girl. But that wasn’t him. Umbral, Henchman of the Black Lady, did not fall in love.

  Enough.

  He had let her string him along for long enough. He should never have spared her life even for a day. He was the blade to her throat. It didn’t matter how much he hated himself.

  It was time to make the last cut.

  Chapter Seven

  Loom

  Vessia

  For a thousand generations, I fought humans.

  Deep in the night, when sleep evades me, and depression gnaws me like rats in my throat, I still see the faces of my lost companions. My best friend, Mrigana, with her long dark hair and sardonic smile; jolly Hest, who was always ready with the perfect spice for a roast or a healing herb for a wound; Lothlo and Yastara and their daughter Kia, poor Kia who always tried too hard; Gwidan, whose strength of arm was matched only by his breadth of heart; and my own beloved Xerpen. There were many other Aelfae friends and relatives I loved and lost, but those seven were with me to the bitter end.

  One by one, I watched them die at human
hands, until Xerpen and I were the last living Aelfae.

  Those last years of the War between humans and Aelfae were the bitterest of my existence. All of us became hardened by the constant killing, the constant attempt to flee the humans, who always found us, followed by more killing, more dying. Always, more of us died than they.

  We knew we were losing the War.

  We were desperate. Once, we even tried to travel into the future, to see if the humans would defeat us, and if so, what we could do to change our fate. It was for this purpose that I built the Windwheel. Though I told no one, I put most of what magic I possessed into it. When it failed, my magic was diminished—I never recovered my full strength.

  That was the beginning of the end for us. It was after that my friends started dying before my eyes. And because I had wasted my magic in the useless Windwheel, I was powerless to help them.

  I often wonder what would have happened if the Windwheel had worked.

  I often wonder what I would say to the Vessia of that long-ago yesteryear if I were to meet her today.

  Vessia (Present)

  The time had come for Vessia to cross the Bridge of One Thread to the far summit. No human besides Xerpen who went there left alive.

  I am not human, she reminded herself.

  She was Cursed with mortality, however, and she felt her age and weakness and, yes, dread, as she and Amdra and the dozen Tavaedies who guarded her, waited for the signal from the other side that it was time for her to cross.

  Typical of Xerpen to demand her presence then make her wait on his leisure here, at the very edge of the cliff. He knew fear festered in anticipation.

  Vessia crouched at the brink, the place where any movement caused pebbles to careen over the chasm. The mountain was top heavy, with a thick lip that jutted out over the sheer drop to the arroyo far below. Xerpen had taken her wings. She considered throwing herself over that edge nevertheless.