Reaper of Souls

by Rena Barron

  Before I had the chieftains’ gifts, I could only see magic, floating in the air in little colorful sparks. This is something entirely different. I can sense the flavor of my father’s magic, his unique impression. I wrap myself in the feeling of it, knowing that each time I walk into the shop, it will greet me with open arms.

  Essnai pats me on the shoulder and sets off for the East Market. At this time of day, her mother and siblings will be hard at work, measuring patrons for the next batch of sheaths. I imagine them showering Essnai with hugs and kisses as they push a dress into her arms that needs her keen eye.

  “Would you like one of us to stay with you?” Jahla asks from beneath her gray Temple hood. I’m still surprised by how well she blended in with them. “It may be some time before Rudjek can come.”

  I shake my head as I step forward in a daze. I want to be alone.

  “We should make sure it’s safe first,” Raëke suggests.

  I place my hand on the latch, and magic tingles against my palm as the door gives. I smile to myself, remembering a morning when I was very young and visiting my father’s shop. “The door will always open for you, Little Priestess,” Oshhe said, lifting me onto his hip.

  “Will it open for Arti, too?” I asked.

  “What did I say about calling your mother by her name?”

  “She doesn’t like it when I call her Mama.”

  My father drew in a deep breath and kissed my forehead. “To answer your question, no, the shop will only open for you and me when it’s locked. One day when I’m too old to run it, it will be yours.”

  Even then, my father had done so much to make up for the distance between my mother and me. This shop has always been my safe place, and now it will be my home. I always dreamed of working with my father, not crushing herbs or cleaning bones, but doing real magic. I’d heal people of their ailments, but I’d make frivolous things, too, like hair color for Essnai. I never thought any part of that dream would come true until now.

  The door creaks open as Oshhe’s promise echoes in my mind. Hints of thyme and lavender and lemongrass underpin the stale air. “I’ll be okay here,” I tell Jahla and Raëke.

  “We’ll stay close,” Jahla says as I step across the threshold.

  I thank them and shut the door behind me. The strap from my sack slides from my shoulder and drops to the floor, kicking up a fury of dust. The jars of oil set about the shop flare to life, and sparks of magic in brilliant colors rise from the shelves. I imagine my father sitting on the empty cushion at the back of the shop, sipping tea, waiting for me to join him. But that part of my dream will never come true—it will always be wishful thinking.

  I move through the shelves, taking stock of the pots of dried flowers and herbs, the animal bones, and the charms. Except for the dust, the shop’s the same as it was the night I first traded my years for magic. In the little room at the back, the pot I used to brew the blood medicine sits where I left it.

  With a few changes, I can turn the room into an apartment. Rudjek won’t be happy with my decision to live here, and neither will Essnai and Sukar. Rudjek, the new Crown Prince. His father has everything he’s ever dreamed of now—control of the throne and no more Arti to oppose him. Rudjek looked uncomfortable with the crowd’s undivided attention. Gods. He also looked the part—unwavering in his authority, beautiful, and charming. I wondered for days what I would say when I saw him again—what I would do. With this news, it feels like we have yet another thing to keep us apart.

  I take to dusting the shop to push aside my thoughts. Magic flounces around in a frenzy as I wipe down jars and pots and bones. I’m halfway through the task when it occurs to me that more sparks have floated through the shop’s walls. It crowds the air, vibrating with energy, pulsing with light, singing a silent song. “Why is it coming here?”

  I hold my hand out, and a ruby spark leaps onto my palm. I stumble back, almost bumping into a shelf. I didn’t call the magic, not like when I was healing Sukar. I only wanted to touch it. I look to the chieftains for an answer, and they draw me into a memory of the sacred circle at the Blood Moon Festival. The rolling beats of the djembe drums move through me, and I twist and leap, the magic in the night air shadowing my every step. The leaders of the tribes—the edam—danced at the start of the festival. I see it now through the Kes chieftain’s eyes.

  I thought they had called the magic that night, but, no, it willingly came to them like it’s coming to me now. I smile as more magic dances around the shop like an instrument awaiting a player. We could make beautiful music together—music to heal, bring rain to crops, and build something new. The possibilities are endless. I lose track of time as I put away the items from my traveling sack. It’s near nightfall when there’s a knock at the door. A rush of excitement sets my nerves on edge. Gods. I have to pull myself together.

  On the way to answer, I stop by the mirror and startle at my reflection. I hardly recognize myself. The face staring back at me is gaunt, with sunken cheeks and eyes rimmed in dark lines. My braids are fraying with the first signs of gray sprouting at my roots. I poke my tongue into the gap where my tooth fell out after I summoned my ancestors in an attempt to stop Efiya. I can take away these scars with the chieftains’ magic, but I wouldn’t have the reminder of what I’d lost—my father, my grandmother, my whole world. Magic can’t erase the past or bring my family back. I won’t put on a more pleasant face. This is who I am now.

  The knock comes again, and I grimace, feeling self-conscious. I open the door, but it’s not Rudjek. A round woman stands with her hands on her hips. It’s Chima’s mother—a friend of my father. “Mami!” I say, hiding my disappointment.

  She bustles into the shop, and I catch a glimpse of Raëke and Jahla behind her, their looks questioning. I raise a hand to let them know it’s okay. “I came as soon as I heard,” Mami says, her eyes bloodshot from crying. “I’m so sorry, Arrah. May your father’s soul become one with the mother and the father.”

  I wrap my arms around my shoulders—pushing back the sobs that threaten to burst from my chest. I don’t tell her that my father can never ascend because Efiya ate his soul. “If not for Arti, he’d still be here.”

  Mami glances at a shelf of charms, her gaze roaming across the trinkets. “Despite the bad your mother did in the end, she wasn’t always like that. She opened the orphanage, educated the poor, and fed the hungry.”

  “Spare me the speech, Mami.” I temper the anger in my voice. “I do not need reminding of my mother’s deeds, good or bad.”

  Mami clicks her tongue and removes a bag from across her shoulder. “Never mind that. I brought you something to eat.” She sets bowls and food wrapped in cloth on an empty shelf, and I catch a whiff of tomato, onion, and cumin. “I was hoping that you’d come stay with us—no reason for you to go back to that big villa alone. I have grandchildren your age . . . and Chima thinks of you as a daughter.”

  I force a smile, thankful for her offer. “I have a place to stay.”

  Mami’s face creases in heavy lines like she’s got something else on her mind. “Some folks are planning to go to the tribal lands and search for survivors.”

  “There’s no one left,” I whisper as a shiver racks through me.

  “We’ve all heard the stories, child.” She places a reassuring hand on my arm. “People are hurting. They need to see for themselves that the tribes are really gone.”

  Mami offers a gap-toothed smile that reminds me of Grandmother, and I notice an odd vibration in her touch—an uneven, unsteady beat. It takes me a moment to understand what’s happening. Through the chieftains’ magic, I’m hearing the rhythm of her heart. It sounds all wrong. “How long have you been ill?” I ask, realizing at once.

  “Just old age.” Mami shoos off my concerns. “Your father used to help with the pain.”

  I frown. “Did he?”

  “Why are you so surprised?” She narrows her eyes. “Oshhe saw more people with failing health than rich patrons looking to c
heat old age, girl.”

  “You exaggerate, Mami,” I say. “I would know if my father had healed so many people.”

  Mami gets that look—one that says she is about to set me straight. “Your father would see patrons from the East Market from sunup to midday, and he never asked for a single coin. You would’ve been in lessons during that time.”

  I shake my head. It isn’t that I don’t want to believe her, but my father had never mentioned it before. “Why didn’t he ever tell me?”

  “One who milks his neighbor’s goat does not do it for glory,” Mami says, reciting a tribal proverb. “To truly help, one does not need recognition in return.”

  I glance around the shop at the magic fluttering like butterfly wings and take comfort in her words. In her own way, she’s given me another gift to remember my father by and hold close to my heart. “Come back in a day or two once I’ve reopened the shop,” I tell her. “I may be able to help with your pain.”

  “Bless you, Arrah.” Mami squeezes my hand and heads for the door. “The merchants in the East Market are putting on a street fair tomorrow night, now that things are back to normal. You should come.”

  I fiddle with my hands. “Things don’t feel anything like normal.”

  “The night may be long, child,” Mami says, “but morning always comes.”

  Once she leaves, I press my back against the door. For the first time in a long while, I can see a glimpse of a future for myself. I will make good on my promise to my father. I will not only be strong for him, but I will use the chieftains’ gift to help others. Their sacrifice will not be in vain.

  The Unnamed Orisha: Dimma

  In one beginning, I crawl out of the bowels of an inferno. Let’s call this my birth.

  In another beginning, I exist in eternal darkness. Let’s call this my death.

  Between those moments, my sister Koré brings me to the top of a mountain in Ilora. She found the snow and ice soothing after her birth, so she leaves me alone with my thoughts.

  I observe everything. The rustling of the wind, the rising and setting of the sun. Snow falling, ice melting. The restless churning of this world and all the worlds in the universe. The roar of the Supreme Cataclysm. The cycle of mortal life.

  I am thinking of these things when a boy with silver wings falls from the sky and cracks my frozen lake. Fractures blossom around his still form and stretch across the ice. It happens at the exact moment my brother’s light pierces through the clouds at daybreak. The feverish voice in the boy’s head—in his dreams—calls him Daho.

  The boy’s pain spreads across my soul and snaps my full awareness to him. I understand pain—it’s the one thing that the Supreme Cataclysm taught its children. For my making was two sparks slammed together, then shredded and twisted and molded. I remember every moment of the pain that left me writhing in the inferno. Pain that forced me to crawl out of the darkness at the end of the tunnel . . . to be born. His pain is different—it is much worse. It is hollow and all-consuming and deep. It wraps his soul in a cloak of shadows.

  I search the folds of his mind and absorb his memories. His people—demons—are my sister Koré’s first creations, her children. His family ruled over Jiiek, which covers most of Ilora, before a man with a scar across his face killed them. He escaped, but the man and his supporters hunt him even now.

  The boy opens his eyes, and they are pools of lush evergreen that glow in the sunlight. I see myself through them. I am a shapeless fog hovering over the ice. He is dying. It’s a concept that I do not yet understand. It is a condition of being mortal. The boy is mortal. I am not.

  I reshape myself into a physical body. I could appear as any of my brethren’s creations, but he only knows of his race and two others—endoyans and humans. I choose to become an endoyan—a cousin of the demon people, without their wings, but sharing their diaphanous skin, different from humans’ opaqueness.

  I see this new body through his perception. He is silver, and I am brown. His eyes are light; mine are dark. His hair is slick with mud and ice while mine stands up in a tapestry of coils.

  “Dimma,” he croaks, blinking back tears.

  The word means both beautiful and deadly in his language. He thinks that I am both.

  The boy’s injuries are broken strings. Strings I can pull and bend. His soul teeters on his frozen blue lips—a mist the same color as the fog rising from the ice. I have an unexplainable urge to touch his soul, and do so with the hand I have created for myself. It pulses against my fingertips, and warmth spreads up my arm.

  Am I dead? the boy asks through the cosmic strings that connect us.

  Yes and no, I tell him. You are on the cusp of ascension.

  His soul shudders against my hand—resigned, tired, regretful. Life and death are mortal constraints. Beyond that, there is infinite existence. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can change. Ascension is a cosmic compulsion to return to the Supreme Cataclysm to be unmade and made anew.

  I’m scared, the boy says. I don’t want to die.

  Convinced by his words, I push his soul back into his parted lips, and his vessel expands as he inhales a breath. I do the same, learning from him how to mimic mortal life in that way. His crooked and broken wing trembles while the rest of his body writhes in pain. I put my hands in the hollow space between where his wings meet his shoulders.

  The boy screams. The raw sound of his voice disturbs the peace of my frozen lake. His pain flows through the strings that connect us, and I jerk away. Mending the strings of his life isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I must proceed with caution.

  I lift him in my arms and hold him against my chest. The cracked ice beneath my bare feet gives way to the water beneath, and the fog grows thicker to support our weight. As I carry him, his pain lessens, and he loses consciousness.

  I focus on the snow, where I often ponder my existence. A shimmer of light sparks and grows, shaped by my will and his memories of safety and comfort. It isn’t the cavernous palace that sits high above Jiiek that he thinks of returning to one day. In his dreams, he’s in a little wooden house tucked in a forest that borders the palace grounds. The place where he used to watch his father, covered in sawdust, carve and paint figurines.

  I remake the house by reordering the space around me—the same as I’ve done with my body. A room to wash. A hearth to keep him warm. A bed to rest. A table covered in miniature beasts, carving tools, and wood chips.

  While Daho sleeps, I stand in front of the window, looking at my frozen lake. It is no longer pristine, as it was before Daho came. Something is comforting about the change.

  Shadows gather beside me at the window and take a shape that resembles a mortal body. I recognize the new presence as one of my brethren. His name is Iben. “This moment is the beginning of the end,” comes his voice, at once eager and grave. “I thought it would be more . . . dramatic.”

  “The end?” I echo.

  “I couldn’t stay away,” he confesses. “I had to see this for myself.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” Iben pats my shoulder, and I experience two strange sensations—frustration and confusion. “Only I can travel the threads of time, and I must keep its secrets.”

  Here’s what I do understand about time. It intersects with the physical world. Every decision and indecision creates a possible future. Some decisions have far-reaching implications, and others are less significant. “You would not be here if this moment was not important,” I conclude.

  “You are correct, sister,” Iben says. “For now, it is only important to know that this is the beginning of the end, and you are the catalyst.”

  Five

  Arrah

  Smoke curls from the chimney of the little wooden house with snow on the roof. A white curtain flutters at the single window. My breath aches in my chest as I watch the two people inside. They sit at a table facing each other, as stiff as statues, but I can’t tell if they’re frien
ds or adversaries. Their body language somehow suggests both. The curtain keeps getting tangled in the wind, so I can’t see them well, but it is unmistakable that one has wings. I stumble back from the house.

  I wake with a start, drenched in sweat. It takes a moment to remember that I fell asleep on the pillows in the open salon where my father used to serve tea. I’m beneath an old blanket and shivering as if the cold from my dream has seeped into the shop.

  I wash at the pump in the back room, which draws from one of the communal wells that connect the buildings of the West Market. The cold water feels good against my skin, and the dream fades away. I’m bursting with purpose as I go over the things I’ll need to reopen the shop. The biggest concern is finding space to grow herbs for blood medicine. I could use my father’s garden at our old villa, if it’s still standing, but that would be my last choice.

  I clench my fists as I look to the empty shelves along the back wall that once held my father’s scrolls. Arti had made him burn them, so I wouldn’t find a ritual to stand against her. Soon I’ll be able to build a collection of my own. Once I convert the storage room into an apartment, it won’t take much time to get everything else ready. But I can’t do any of these things if Rudjek hasn’t convinced his father to reverse my banishment. I could be getting my hopes up for nothing.

  It’s midmorning when there’s a knock on the door. I know who it is before I cross the shop. Rudjek’s anti-magic is a gush of warm air that almost steals my breath away. My magic responds to the danger of it like a viper curling up inside me ready to strike, but I don’t care. It’s been weeks since we’ve spent time together alone—much longer since that private moment beneath Heka’s Temple. His soft lips pressing against mine, his hand finding the curve of my waist.

  I am most definitely blushing by the time I open the door. He’s standing there with a twinkle in his dark eyes, his wild curls tamed for once. He’s wearing a gendar’s red elara, his tunic embroidered with a golden lion’s head stitched across his chest.