Missing Piece

by Robert Priest

  “Well, maybe that’s actually true. Maybe the piece of me in you is making you sick like the piece of you in me is making me sick, but either way I want my piece back.”

  “I’m really not going to get dragged into your nasty little life again, Tharfen.”

  “You know we have pieces of each other inside us.”

  “I know we did once. A day when, as I recall, you insisted on dragging us all into Shissillil.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I spat out that little piece of filth long, long ago, as soon as I could.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Face it, Tharfen,” he said, and she still couldn’t tell if he was lying, “I have nothing of you in me, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn’t want to pay the terrible price of being near you again to get rid of it.”

  “You’re a liar.” She hated that she was almost crying.

  “You are a child and a liar.”

  “What have you done with Saheli?” she demanded again.

  “Saheli is gone, you fool.”

  “I know you did some kind of spell over her. I heard you say it.”

  “If I have such powers as that, why don’t I just snap my fingers and incinerate you right now?”

  She felt the piece go battering away at her insides like a fly at a web. “I’m not thirteen years old anymore.” She pushed her blade so that the point left a little dimple in his neck and she brought her face close to his in a sneer. “So don’t be trying to scare me.”

  She hated him so much right now she almost hoped he would suddenly lunge at her. Then her fine point would definitely puncture his pretty flesh and who knew where else deeper it might slide. Xemion didn’t lunge at her. He spat straight into her face. She drew back, horrified. At this he darted off, grabbing his sword as he fled. She wiped her face, disgusted, and clenched the hilt of her sword tight. She was furious, but he was some distance from her now, and he’d always been a faster runner. She could feel his joy at getting away from her.

  “I will kill you!” she bellowed. She lifted her sword over her head and almost flung it at him.

  He turned, raised his hand in a rude gesture, then fled to the wall and disappeared over it.

  Tharfen continued wiping her face fiercely. She sheathed her sword. She considered following him and dragging him back with her, but she thought better of it. He would soon be in the dark under the thorn canopy and there he would have the advantage over her. She knew where he lived, but he didn’t know she knew. That was an advantage to her. He couldn’t feel her like she could feel him. She could go and get him when she wanted. Half-believing this, she set off back to the infirmary. When she rounded the corner where she had collided with him, she saw the book. It was a big book sprawled facedown, open in the dark. She picked it up carefully and her eyes scanned the words on the title page: Brief Poems of Rondell.

  Wide-eye Sloithe, one of Lirodello’s agents who had been following Tharfen, stepped out of the dark nook he had been hiding in and watched her till she was gone. All the little silver specks had long since faded, but he didn’t need illumination to find his way through the dark under the thorn canopy. He was a nocturnal Thrall, and he was now much closer to what he wanted. Without a sound, he set off after Xemion at a trot.

  40

  Star Dance

  Mr. Stilpkin was ecstatic to receive the volume of poetry by Rondell from Tharfen. “I told you, did I not, that the two of you were being drawn together? Now look what fruits it bears us — a long-lost volume of our greatest poet. Imagine what other prizes will be returned to us as you are returned to each other.”

  Tharfen was not happy. She regretted not going after Xemion and dragging him back to Mr. Stilpkin. The piece was bothering her even more now. It was banging around inside of her, ricocheting off the inside of her skull, skipping up her digestive tract like a stone over water. She longed for what she used to be —whole, and separate. But the only way she could get that was with Xemion’s help, and the scorn with which he had refused her stunned and hurt and maddened her.

  “I could find my way back there easily,” she told Mr. Stilpkin. “I’ve steered a boat through the great fjord on a starless night with only my instruments.”

  “But what would be any different if you did? Wouldn’t he still refuse?”

  “This time I would drag him back. I would tie him down and—”

  “It wouldn’t do a bit of good, Tharfen. As I told you, it can’t be one-sided. It must be mutual.”

  “Why? I could cut him up into little pieces until I find the piece I want. And then—”

  “I’m sure you’re only darkly jesting, Tharfen. Besides, you would be better to go and beg him.”

  This outraged her. “No, I wouldn’t!”

  “Or attempt to persuade him, at least. Perhaps make him some kind of offer.”

  “I want my piece back.” She could almost have wept. She could almost have thrown the lamp at the wall.

  “The way I see it, Tharfen, is that it’s not just about you recovering a part of yourself, it’s about allowing his Spell of Return to fully manifest in both of you. If you could somehow just carve your piece out of him and wear it around your neck, the spell would not be discharged and you would still be spell-crossed. His piece needs to go to him and your piece needs to go to you, and that will take willingness to receive, willingness to give.”

  “That just makes me so angry.”

  “Anger won’t help. You have to go under the anger. Maybe you can find some faith or friendship under there that will—”

  “Maybe?”

  “Tharfen, this is conjecture. I’m telling you what I suspect. I could be wrong. Another way might be just to accept what’s happened to you. It didn’t seem to prevent you, after all, from sailing around the world.”

  “It made me miss, and I never miss. And it made me puncture my heel, and … What am I supposed to do? Just stay half a world away from him forever? Turn my ship over to someone else every time I get near the Phaer Isle? And how long before it starts messing me up even when I’m far, far from this accursed island? If I ever do get away from here, considering that my ship has yet to return. Considering I’m trapped here and I have the whole Cyclopes navy after my hide at this point.”

  “Have you ever tried a star dance?”

  “No, of course not. Because that is all superstition and nonsense.”

  Mr. Stilpkin harrumphed. “And yet, it has helped many a lost soul find their way.”

  “I am not a lost soul. I know just where I’m going and, believe me, as soon as my ship returns, I will be on my way there.” Tharfen was getting angrier with each word she spoke.

  “I’m not talking about a location. Tharfen. I’m talking about destiny. What if the collision and the cross-spell have somehow knocked you off your star-aligned course?”

  “What if you’re speaking pure nonsense to me?”

  “You must find your star and realign yourself with it. Every word you say convinces me of this.”

  “Is that all you can say? I thought you were a healer. Don’t you have some power in that green hand?” She was almost shouting at him.

  “It’s not my power that is required here. It is your own. And you have a lot of it, with or without the piece. You stood in front of that dragon and kept your wits. No one else I know could have done that.”

  “Yes, but I wanted to do so much more. My people used to ride those dragons. I wanted to ride that dragon. But you know why I didn’t? I would’ve had to open myself up even deeper to that disgusting piece of him … and … and I would rather die! I would rather cut off my leg than have to accept such a piece—”

  “But you were wise not to attempt to ride that dragon. That beast would have dropped you into the sea and that would be the end of you.”

  “Well, I ain’t doing no star dance.” Once
again as she grew more and more furious she had slipped into her old voice — the voice she had arrived with five years ago, before the enunciation training. “You have really reached the bottom of the barrel with that.”

  “I’m afraid, Tharfen, it may be you who has reached the bottom of the barrel.” At that, Mr. Stilpkin, who was beginning to feel his own share of irritation at Tharfen, turned and left.

  She almost wanted to cry for her mother now just as she would have done not so very long ago back at her home in Ilde. But her mother wasn’t here. There was no use. Clang. Clang. The piece seemed to be bouncing off of her bones, pinging into her veins, sailing through her blood like a shard of stone. She could just about scream. She hated how Xemion had blamed it all on her. Had she really intended to cause him so much trouble? She pictured his lovesick face mooning over Saheli and caught herself sneering. Surely I had more reason than that, she thought. That and the contemptuous way he’d always treated her, as though he were so much better. As though being the child of a woman with seven husbands was some shame. As though being a little girl was some shame. While he told his stolen stories standing up on the stump in that big put-on voice he had.

  But was that all? There was no answer immediately, but that sinking feeling at the bottom of her belly deepened. Her heart was weighing her down with the certainty that she may have acted poorly and rashly. And out of stupid vengeance. If she hadn’t done it, he wouldn’t have been taken out of the class. He wouldn’t have missed seeing Saheli. And all the rest that happened right up to the time Saheli died wouldn’t have happened.

  That night Tharfen awoke, put on her uniform, descended the three floors to the back exit of the infirmary, and went out into the night. The more she walked the better she felt, so she started to run, which felt even better. She ran until she came to a field. It had once been a civic square, but was now overgrown with grass and bushes, some of them waving from atop toppled monoliths.

  She looked up at the stars and felt weak, foolish, and superstitious. That’s how desperate I’ve become, she thought. As though there really were some series of shapes I could make before the stars and suddenly something will lock in with me and them and I will once again be one with myself, with my destiny.

  After double checking to make sure no one was watching, she closed her eyes and began to jerk her shoulders to and fro rigidly. Arhythmically, stiff as a hook, she began to stamp one foot, keeping time with herself, if nothing else. She stretched her arms out to the sides, let her wrists go limp, and moved her fingers like weeds in a spring. She began to let her spine undulate like a river eel. There was no music, no wind, no one watching.

  Her hands were like rainbow fish swimming in tandem, coming close together and then farther apart, revolving around each other as she began to sway her hips. She felt as though she could skip her heart like a stone over waves of light. As though her whole body could shatter like an image in water and flow back and form again. There was something at her core that gloried in doing this. As though all of her movements were just streamers to its joy as she danced herself into place. Skin, bones, eyes, organs. All the length of her now was one flexible stalk that undulated up from her feet and ended in her brow so that the coils of red hair danced in rhythm with it — a brood of coiled copper snakes held in thrall.

  Tharfen tilted her head back and fastened her gaze on a star above her, and all the stars around it seemed opulent and mystical and meaningful, yet so distant, so out of sync with her and Xemion. Something rushed up from the soles of her feet. Her mouth jerked open, she clenched her fists and shrieked, “Staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars!” and it sounded like a child abandoned at the bottom of a well.

  She didn’t return to the infirmary that night. She found an empty house near the field. Half of it was collapsed but there was one usable room on the east side and she’d had enough of Mr. Stilpkin and his superstitions. She wanted to be alone.

  41

  Footnotes

  Racing back to the tower earlier that night, Xemion hadn’t been able to shake what Tharfen had said about their missing pieces. After the horrors of the Second Battle of Phaer Bay and the spell to bring Saheli back, all thought of that particular event in Shissillil had faded away. People gain and lose so many pieces. If Tharfen still had a piece of him, it was because she was holding onto it. That was her problem. And he wasn’t going to have anything to do with it.

  Still, he was almost in a frenzy of fear by the time he got back to Saheli. Immediately he took the little hand mirror and held it over her lips. This time he almost dropped the glass. It was covered in vapour. She had breathed! This so stunned him he didn’t at first notice the hole in the centre of the film of moisture. He reached for her hand. It was warm! “Saheli!” he cried out ecstatically, not noticing that one of her fingers was still cold. “Saheli. Saheli.” He felt her forehead. It was warm. Only then did he notice that the hyacinths on her chest had come back to life. They were as full and beautiful as the day he put them there. Except … except there was one petal that still remained withered and dry. His heart dropped a thousand miles. Once again he grabbed her hand and this time he felt that the tip of her index finger was ice cold. He put the glass again to her lips and again it misted over, but this time he did see the hole at the centre of the mist. When he confirmed that there was also a deathly cold spot in the middle of her forehead, he cried out “Saheli! Saheli!” But there was no answer.

  “Tharfen!” he cursed. Had she been right? If there had been a piece of him missing when he spoke the Spell of Return, would Saheli come to life with some part of herself missing? With a hole through her forehead where the sun shone through? He paced to and fro not knowing what to do. Could Stilpkin really help? Was there really a way for him to get his piece back from Tharfen? And if he did, could he rectify his spell? Was there enough time? Or was it too late? Tomorrow the Great Kone would complete its first full turn. At the thought of the Great Kone, a chill like a cold snake’s tongue flickered into his body. It quickly intensified into pangs of craving much sharper than any he had known previously. There was only one thing that could stop him running out the door.

  There were many pockets in Vallaine’s coat and Xemion’s desperate hands slid in and out of every one of them over and over looking for the book. This continued even after he knew the terrible truth — it must have fallen out on the ground when he crashed into Tharfen. He had such a sudden surge of hatred at the thought of her and this loss — another of her crimes against him.

  Sudden, cold terror overtook him. He grabbed Saheli’s hand and held on to it desperately, but it didn’t help. He had to read something. He ran back to the work table where he had been stripping the spell staff. But there was still more than half of it covered in the thick lacquer. There were hours and hours of work left to go and he had nothing else to substitute, nothing to place over the howling wound shrieking through his heart.

  There was no time now for delicacy, even if the scroll got damaged. Xemion took the blade and ran it down the edge of the lacquer all in one swoop. He had to do it now while he had the concentration. Ten long scrapes and most of the lacquer was roughly hewn off. He stood it on one end and examined the concentric whorls of paper. Sweating, shaking, he inserted the knife under the outer edge and wedged up the first thin corner. Already he could see the signifiers in tiny Nain print gathered in rectangles of text. He focused intently, keeping his gaze on one large letter, the letter E, pronouncing it in his mind while inch by inch he wedged up the rest of the outer edge of the scroll. He only had to get the first inch of it up to confirm that this was just as Vallaine had said: a dictionary. His eyes fixed on the first entry: Eenem. He began to read the definition even as he continued gently wedging up and unrolling the scroll. He had always understood the word Eenem to mean a kind of love, but the second part of the definition here proclaimed it to be synonymous with hate. Both love and hate had asterisks. Without thinking, his ey
es followed this cue and just below he found in even smaller text the footnote related to each of these usages. He stopped wedging up the paper and one hand groped along the table until it came upon Vallaine’s lens kit. He swivelled open the largest of the magnifiers and began to read the footnote. Before long he came to a tiny number above a word and his eyes jolted down to the bottom of the first footnote and found a further, even smaller footnote beneath it. Without taking his eyes from the text, his hand swivelled the second of the magnifiers open and he read on. This footnote was composed of commentaries, explanations, and qualifications necessary to a full understanding of the word denoted in the original footnote. Normally Xemion found finicky delineations of definitions as lain out in other dictionaries he had consumed dry and annoying, but today he was utterly compelled. In fact, he had a feverish passion about them so strong that when he came to an even tinier numeric superscript in the footnote to the footnote, he resorted to Vallaine’s most powerful magnifier. This one read right through to the end without asterisk or superscript, but that was just the first of the footnotes to the original footnote. Eagerly his eyes reverted to the overtext until he reached the second of the footnotes and down he went into another set of gradations and delineations and references, finding in one of them an even smaller set of numeric subscripts. Somewhere in his mind he realized that this was taking a lot of time. And he began to get thirsty. His neck was tired and his body ached and he needed to decide what to do about Tharfen and the piece and Mr. Stilpkin, but his fascination with the meaning of the word Eenem, his need to know it in full, was the far larger craving. He considered tearing his eyes away for a moment, but he dared not for fear he’d never find his place again. And so he read on through the cascading levels of ever-sharpening definition as the night passed and the morning came. By then he was very hungry and thirsty. And somewhere in the feverish grasping for completion of the text, in his mind he thought he heard Saheli sigh. He needed to tear himself away from this text. But he couldn’t. He had fallen victim to the safety spell that all mages cast upon their personal spell staffs. He was in thrall, caught like a fly in honey, like a moth in tar, no flapping, just an ever deeper descent into the impenetrable and bottomless. Saheli sighed again and something in him called out desperately, “Loceklis!”