by May Peterson
She was the messenger. The one who had first helped him bring his letters to me. And she had no doubt paid when Umber had discovered them.
She didn’t blink. “Risk is a good way to express it.”
My heart sagged inside me, but I wasn’t swayed. “Help me understand, Tamueji. You were tricked into this. Umber has too many memories to draw on, too much time to plan, so you’ve given up fighting him. I get it. So let us go. Come with us. You said it yourself—there’s nothing to go back to. Not here, not anywhere.” I swallowed, trying to loosen the dust in my throat. “So come somewhere new. We actually have a choice.” Hei had taught me that.
A dry laugh fumed from her. Dawn-light was falling upon her head, just hitting her face. And she did not hide from it.
Tears shone on her cheeks.
“No we don’t. We can go to those mountains on the other side of the world, just like you wanted, Ari. We can build a sweet little house, living happy little lives away from it all. And one nod from the witch puts us all right back here again, without even realizing what we’ve lost. We have never had a choice, and it isn’t only because of fucking Umber. I’ll tell you what I think.” Her voice was so clenched it stung to hear. “The fact that you keep believing you have a choice is what will kill you. It nearly killed me. I mean actually killed, not the kind of the death that we were brought back from. A permanent one. And the person that will deal the final blow is Kaiwan.”
Tremors raced through my body, set my sight uneven. This was moving too fast again. The way she said Kaiwan’s name sounded fraught, vehement, as if they had a personal connection. Her story of never having found the witch seemed abruptly thin.
Tamueji went on. “I think Kaiwan keeps us here. Umber is only a symptom. The real problem has always been her. If she really were both kind and powerful, she’d have cleansed this entire place already. Instead we’re just the scum building up around her misery. She doesn’t want to make a new future, just keep everything here, forever. Because she knows that eventually, no heart on earth will be strong enough. Not even hers. Time will win.”
I did look at Hei now. Tamueji wasn’t moving. He was inching closer, and I crossed the space between us, put one protective arm over him. Still she did not strike. But epiphany was swirling through the mist, about to pounce.
Tamueji choked out a sob, wiped her face. “Umber is hoping to turn the clock back one more time. Enough hearts to sacrifice to his personal goddess, and he can keep trying for eternity. Until she cracks, and it all goes down with her. It needs to end, Ari. The cycle needs to close.”
Hei had buried his face against me. I smoothed down his hair, no longer able to stare directly at Tamueji.
“This is the lesson we must learn.” Tamueji’s wings began to beat, her torn one already regenerated. “Some wounds just can’t heal. Maybe they never should.”
The wind carried her away, Serenity swallowing her whole.
Chapter Twelve
Now that the morning was upon us, it was like boiling water. Clear, purifying, scalding.
I staggered back into the shade of the hostel’s awning, releasing Hei. But the moment of dawn suffocated me, bringing all the tundra’s imitation fires to life.
Hei shaded his eyes, watching me. Lightray glowed with amber and pink reflections, highlighting the blood streaking his body.
I beckoned him closer. “Come here.”
He neared almost shyly, as if afraid of what change Tamueji’s revelation had unleashed in me. But I enclosed him in my arms, let his sweat and scent seep past my boundaries. I bit my tongue and let molten silver flare in my veins, emanating virtue outward into him. As softly as rain washing away silt, his wounds began to close.
“I don’t want to say it.” Hei met my eyes, turned them downward.
I nodded, the epiphany Tamueji’d given me like a lump of iron under my tongue. Uneven, bitter, hard.
“She found Kaiwan after all,” I said. “Maybe even had her miracle dangling in front of her. And—”
The rest fell into the air between us, shriveled. And she had decided the danger was too great, a precipice too high for anything to fly from. Not even hope.
So they hadn’t all been lies of omission.
“Hearts.” Hei was wriggling, rearranging his bandages. “So Umber has been using people to feed Kaiwan. Probably to try to get her to alter time for him.”
A sour grin stretched my facial muscles. “Makes sense. I can’t imagine he would ever risk Kaiwan’s test himself. Not to mention letting anyone into his heart.” And this may have been going on for centuries.
Tamueji clearly had no faith laid up for Kaiwan. Maybe Kaiwan had been accepting this service from Umber, striking a bargain, miracles for fresh hearts, yet another form of trade and deceit. Unless some piece was still missing. Unless Kaiwan had more within her than the stained spirit animating the city now. She had seemed to yearn to defeat Umber, so full of ancient sorrow.
As if sensing my thoughts, Hei breathed into my neck, “Do you think this was a mistake? Trusting Kaiwan to do what she says? Maybe I—”
His lips closed gently, misery swimming in his eyes. Every line of his body seemed to cry, Please tell me it wasn’t a mistake.
I shifted, building space between us. The mere proximity of his blessed stone was becoming too much. “I doubt it. Kaiwan spent almost everything to bring you back. Why do that, if we’re just a resource to her, some sparks of color to be harvested?”
He received that, seemed to weigh and measure it in his mind. The sorrow in his gaze lightened somewhat, lost some of its pall of regret. I noticed, right then, that he was shivering. To him, the air would still be freezing.
I brought him inside, confirming that the hostel must have been cleared out before Tamueji had struck. We washed our bodies with the remaining water as best we could, and I helped Hei back into his travel gear.
We needed a new plan. The old one had been a tattered possibility at best, and it was shot to hell. The flock would anticipate our escape from the city. I could try to take us directly vertical, enter the solemnity of the mountain. But the cold and thin air might be lethal to Hei, and it wouldn’t prevent being followed. Fly high enough, and every eye in the abyss would spy us.
Hei fastened his top button, cemented Lightray’s position on his back. A weathered smile softened his face. “So that’s why they wanted me whole. Why Umber was willing to play games with me. He wanted me to make my pact with Kaiwan all along. Hoping that he could take advantage of her power.”
Hei’s purpose—the one Umber so greatly wanted to help him fulfill. Except how could Umber demand any favor of Kaiwan, in the fullness of her might, if she didn’t wish to serve him?
Enough hearts to sacrifice to his personal goddess, and he can keep trying for eternity. Until she cracks, and it all goes down with her.
Something told me the crack had already formed.
I scanned the empty street, the whispered indications of sabotage and freedom beyond. The mountain hovered with the aura of a threat, the earth itself raising arms to lay stake in this battle.
“We could lie low.” I glanced at Hei, realizing that I had begun chewing my own lip. “If we hide long enough, there’s a chance we can slip through when the guard finally goes down.”
Hei’s brow furrowed, his worry apparent. “But it seemed effortless for her to find us.” A light rose in his eyes. “We could also go to Kaiwan. She said only to try if it was the absolute last choice. I can’t think of any other good choices now.”
I studied him for what felt like a long time. Maybe waiting for one last alternative to materialize.
It didn’t.
Grimly, I nodded, and drew him to my chest.
One way or the other, we were going to lose each other again.
Unless there was a miracle left somewhere for us.
* * *
Flying wavered between tricky and torture with the sun pouring itself into Serenity’s mouth. I had to hop between shadows, interspersed with pelts through full blast light, as if dashing between islands over magma. Blew any thoughts of a desperate daytime flight across the tundra from my head.
Hei clung to me, as he had that first day, when I hadn’t known who he was. The glow of morning emphasized the color in his cheeks, the radiance of his brown and gold skin. It made me want to weep, until all my thoughts seemed to be tears.
I couldn’t let him die. He deserved to survive. Everything that made him who he was had been lifted up for this wish, for the chance that survival could become something more. He didn’t deserve to be thrown aside for his troubles. I had to find a way for him to survive.
But I had no defense against the possibility of Kaiwan’s despair claiming him. A quiet, heroic corner of me wanted to jump into that gauntlet myself, see if I could spare him. But I would fail. My heart would never endure the darkness time had created.
We sped to Kaiwan’s seal in silence. Dawn robbed the possibilities from each fading second, burning them up. The hour was now. No gentle cover of night would stay the blow. All rotations of the sky fixed on this moment, the endlessness of its light obliterating the stars.
Hei gasped as we descended. I saw. Our eyes had been trained by our personal dooms to be unable to miss this coming.
The seal was already open. Like a wound spreading into the mountain, emptiness welcomed our arrival. The array of rocks around the opening were like supplicants, weeping in plea.
Hei all but leapt from my arms, rushing to look closer as he arranged his tools. “He got to her.”
I lowered my wings, casting senses in all directions. There might yet be an ambush. “Apparently he’s been able to get to her all this time—or she at least allows him an audience. Unless Tamueji didn’t mean what we think she did.” She may not have been describing an alliance between the witch and Umber. After all, he’d been willing to let Hei find his own way to her cavern of wishes. It would be simple for him to cultivate a mass of lost souls, each with a unique way out of their suffering—if they could pass Kaiwan’s test.
My teeth ground of their own volition. Subterfuge like that was much more Umber’s style. And somehow far more insidious than the thought of Kaiwan being another of his partners.
Lightray was strapped to Hei’s back, one of his hands curled around the handle. Though his dark winter robe bulked up his frame, tendrils of white dangled from the insides of his sleeves like streamers. I could all but feel the pulse of his stone, coalescing intention next to his skin. Growing stronger on the same blood, the same substance of himself that he had given to me.
He was looking away. Up to the mountain, the moaning half-sky of Serenity’s domain, the promise of cold beyond it. A breeze ruffled his hair, a distant, helpless expression lighting his face. It was too much. It was suddenly more than I could take.
Because he was still falling. Armed to the neck, body a weapon, even his boots lined with silver inlays—he was falling. And I might not catch him this time.
He caught me out of the corner of one bead-bright eye, chewing his lower lip. “We can’t leave her, no matter what she’s done. She tried to save us—and we don’t have a choice now, anyway.”
The mountain might as well have been crashing down on me. I could see why she did it. Just turn it back. Let him never have met me. Let him find someone new. Let him never come here.
It was too late. Too late, too late, too late. For him, for me, for anything, for the drowning to ever end.
Spontaneously, I yanked him into a hug. He squeaked endearingly in surprise, but after a moment relaxed into my embrace. The sword brushed my hand, but I ignored it. I would swallow this pain for him. I would accept it for what he had given me.
“I love you,” I breathed, shaking. Each word singed my mouth, as if this hour had made them holy too. They encompassed the whole truth and yet could not be enough. “I love you, Hei. Thank you for finding me. No matter what happens, I’m glad you found me. I may not remember you forever. But at least you gave me back who I really am.”
It was true, I realized, through a veil of tears. The mist could not hide it from me anymore. Still empty of my living memories, detached from what I had been—I chose this. There was someone to write my name down. Maybe it would have been better for him to not have come. But I was glad that he had.
Hei held me tightly, face buried against my collarbone. “I will always find you again. That’s why I trust I can pass the test. You will be there to guide me through it.” He lifted his eyes, showed me once again the bravery and frailty of that smile. “No despair can be so great as to overcome that.”
My hope and grief and fear were enough to choke me. But it was time. We linked hands and entered Kaiwan’s seal.
The mountain corridor glowed with ominous intentions. Once more, I had the sensation of walking into a temple, the dirt of my feet far too profane to be permitted here. And yet we had been. Kaiwan had compelled us to flee, and yet left the invitation open. If she was a deceiver, her actions were far too strange to reconcile. Maybe even Umber existed on too small a scale to comprehend her.
The path wound in circles, but this time only for a space of minutes. As I was bearing down to navigate a maze, the corridor suddenly opened. The dim aura of the walls became darkness. We stepped through it, hands still clasped, the path ever widening. It was like walking through nothingness. And somehow, on the cusp of that abyss, I was not afraid.
Until the light returned. The gleam of glow-diamonds, announcing her admittance chamber.
The beams fell on her massive door, already spreading wide. The entire passage had the air of a ravaged mausoleum, something sacred but unearthed.
Across the distance stood Kaiwan, on her dais, emanating stillness and magnitude like a goddess statue carved of ice.
Before her, at the mouth of the room, with at least a dozen winged crow-souls bowing their heads to him—was Lord Umber.
His gaze was aimed directly at me. It flamed with desire, as if he’d lusted for this moment his entire afterlife.
“You are well come, my boy.” His voice was a slash of venom across my senses. “Well come indeed.”
* * *
Tamueji stood at his side, unarmed. Face downturned, back slightly bent in reverence. I had never seen her bow to him before. The sight was chilling.
She lifted numb eyes to me as we approached. Her bitterness had hidden itself again—yet I could all but taste it.
Hei stepped forward without hesitating and drew his sword. The blade hummed with its own devastating music, and seemed to break me from a trance, allowing me to take in the scene.
Counting Tamueji, it looked as though Umber had brought exactly a dozen crow-souls with him. They all stood in half-shape, dark wings at their backs. They bore no weapons, not even Tamueji. But many had talons shaped and at the ready, prepared to draw blood. Cold faces, leers of malice, masks of rage made up the cloud of their images, as if they all blended together.
I’d misread Kaiwan. She wasn’t poised with solemnity, but rigid with tension. Her pale sleeves hung like icicles in the unmoving air; a gleaming polearm was raised in her grip, angled down toward the gathering of crow-souls. A red sash dangled to the floor like a trail of blood. Her face was hard, but palpable emotion sung from it, the most intense I’d witnessed in her. Scorn, absolute contempt, sharper than her blade.
Wielding hope like a sword.
For an ice-cold moment, it seemed the worst possibilities of Tamueji’s story must be true. That Kaiwan was revealing her disdain for our feeble yearnings, that she was the greater spider between herself and Umber, and we’d been snared at last. Except that the instant her gaze fell on me, it softened. Something like regret twisted the line of her mouth.
“You did not escape. That
is...a shame.”
Just as when her hand had touched mine, the linking of our eyes was a connection. In it, the eons of lost potential seemed to swim around us, replacing the cavern’s air with the tears of glaciers. The life I could have lived with Hei. The infinite unwinding threads of all these lives, each beating heart in Serenity, the footprints they’d never be able to retrace. Snow was covering everything, erasing what had come before. Even the whole realities Kaiwan had repaired, hidden under the debris.
A shame indeed.
Hei strode forward until he was almost looking right up at Umber. Lightray swung haphazardly in his grip. “You.” He aimed the blade’s tip at Tamueji. “You were the one who opened the seal this time.”
She didn’t flinch. Of course—because she’d opened it before. I had no scope for the extent of Kaiwan’s powers, especially with her magic so weakened. She may not have been able to tell who was accompanying the next person to knock on her door. I pictured Kaiwan building this refuge under the auspices of more potent days, ages in which her magic had not abandoned her. Days when she had been able to rely on her greatness and capability for change, the source of that immense grandeur. Now, in the skeleton of who she had been, she had only the gray, ruinous remains of her work.
Tamueji looked as if she wanted to swallow the sword whole. Just then, her wounds also became clear to me. This would be yet another death she had to count. Yet another memory she would be forced to retain, as everyone she tried to help was drowned in the river of blood. The river leading to Kaiwan, the river Umber had carved out of time. No wonder Tamueji had given up. No wonder despair was her only defense left.
I could have cried. My life had been nothing more a piece of detritus, one of billions of jagged half-souls, floating on the current. Yet for me, for Hei, Kaiwan had turned the tide back.
“It matters little.” Kaiwan’s voice was weary under her severity. “The king of crows may have sought me out again at any time. I have awaited the hour when he would reveal his face once more. Long has he sent these lost souls to me, hearts in need of remaking. For centuries, perhaps it was my own desire to believe better—that no force could be consciously divesting them of hope—that led me to ignore the hand at the oar. But eventually it became clear that this day must come. I choose to meet it now, rather than wait for—”