How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic

by Emily Croy Barker

  “I can’t feel my legs.”

  “Your spine is probably broken.” Lemoes’s tone was almost casual.

  Oasme moaned. “I can hardly breathe.”

  Lemoes sat back on his heels, saying nothing.

  “Help me!”

  Lemoes shook his head. “I know what you did,” he said.

  There was something clean and stark in his expression, his angel’s face now sculpted in a more adamantine stone. Oasme blinked up at him with a faintly furtive air and wriggled as though he were trying to sit up.

  “You knew she was going to kill them,” Lemoes said. “You emptied the hospital. You brought them here for her.”

  “No, that’s not right. Ah, that breath, like a knife—my ribs, broken.” Oasme groaned again. “I saved the ones I could. Told them to leave.”

  “And the rest?” Lemoes nodded at the wounded pilgrims. “You let her have them, the way you did before.”

  “She was mad.” Oasme licked his lips, frowning weakly as he tasted the blood dried on his skin. “Horrible. Wouldn’t stop. I didn’t know she’d kill them all.”

  “What did you expect? She killed almost everyone before, except for you and me.”

  Oasme turned his head away from Lemoes’s cool prosecutorial gaze. His eyes fell upon Yaioni and her patient nearby, a ganoi woman named Three Finger. “Wait. She was there, I know. They’re not all dead, look. Look!”

  “The goddess brought them back,” Lemoes said. “The true goddess.”

  “Ah, the true goddess. Your goddess. Your protector.” Oasme laughed shakily. Nora remembered how he had seized her arm when she was fighting for her life with Olenan and reflected that she herself was probably responsible for at least some of his injuries.

  “You never believed in her, did you?” Lemoes asked.

  “I served the goddess that I had.” Oasme’s smile was wry and sad. “You were lucky.”

  “You will know the true goddess now,” Lemoes said. “She gives life, and she takes it away. Bless this sacrifice, Lady.”

  With one hand he pinched Oasme’s nose. The other he clamped across Oasme’s mouth.

  Oasme’s eyes widened. He tried to move his head; his mouth worked as though he were trying to speak. His upper body squirmed and trembled. Lemoes’s shoulders clenched as he pushed down. It seemed to Nora that he looked almost as frightened as the other man.

  “No,” said Nora. Her levitation spell knocked Lemoes ten feet, throwing him against a column. Oasme took an abrupt, honking breath.

  Hirizjahkinis raised her head from the patient whose gashed chest she was stitching. “Please try not to injure yourself,” she called to Lemoes. “We are very busy at the moment.”

  Lemoes glanced around, as though trying to measure his own trajectory. “I slipped,” he said.

  “Help me!” Oasme managed a surprisingly resonant cry. “Save me—”

  “Oasme.” Yaioni glided toward him, one eyebrow cocked. “You are safe now.” She gave Lemoes an unreadable look, then knelt next to Oasme. “The wounded will always find succor at Erchkaii,” she said calmly. “We do not need to kill anyone anymore.”

  I’m so tired of people dying, Nora thought. And I’m pretty sure the goddess is, too.

  Wearily she looked around her. Lemoes had gone over to help Hirizjahkinis with her patient. Aruendiel, frowning, was bandaging a head wound.

  Behind them, about where Sisoaneer’s statue had once stood, water cascaded down to what had been the temple floor, blossoming into pure foam, then flowing sweetly, unhurriedly through the wreckage. It lapped at the limbs of the dead and the living alike, washing away dust and blood in its cool oblivion, before making its way outside into the wider world. The river had found a new course, Nora saw. The realization made her almost happy.

  She had undertaken, as part of her duties as High Priestess, to cleanse the goddess’s temple. A different High Priestess might have done it more neatly, Nora thought, but in the end she had finished the job.

  Chapter 35

  Over the days that followed, as Nora moved invisibly through the temple complex and observed the activity around her, it seemed to her that almost every able-bodied person was perpetually busy—tending the injured, mostly—and yet there was a sort of desolation imbuing the whole place, a stunned, collective anomie. The daily rhythm of prayers and work and meals and more prayers had been broken, and there was no particular shape to each day.

  More people had survived Olenan’s killing frenzy than Nora had first guessed. Many of the ganoi had escaped into the hills. Oasme had warned off a few dozen pilgrims. The survivors drifted back to the temple gradually, cautiously.

  As the floodwaters receded, there were funerals for the dead, who in the end numbered more than twenty. No one could tell whether Nora was at the ceremonies or not, but attending them felt like an obligation she owed. The Ghakis built a long, boatlike pyre in the muddy main courtyard for their dead soldiers; a group of Pernish pilgrims constructed another down the river to their own specifications. The smell of burned flesh and wood lingered afterward.

  The ganoi removed their dead without a word to anyone. Following them deep into the forest, Nora watched them tie the bodies to the branches of oak trees, crooning long, quavering songs that might or might not have words. She felt more like an intruder there than at the other funerals, but something in their cryptic, wild music helped unbind the sadness that was still knotted into her heart.

  Aruendiel came to some of the funerals. More than once, she turned to see his long, angular figure on the other side of a crowd of mourners. By the time she made her way to where he had been standing, he was always gone.

  The hospital was beginning to empty out. Having come for a cure and lived through a massacre instead, the remaining pilgrims had no wish to linger at Erchkaii. If they were well enough to walk or ride away, they did; the sicker ones were bundled into donkey carts by their family members and bumped down the path to the lake.

  Nora patrolled the half-deserted wards, sometimes working spells to relieve pain or fever, although she was more cautious now about the risks of magical healing. She always seemed to arrive shortly after Aruendiel or Hirizjahkinis had finished their rounds, in time to overhear the patients gossiping about the magicians and what they had done or said. Hirizjahkinis was a favorite; Nora had the impression that the patients were a little afraid of Aruendiel but that they preferred it that way.

  Oasme occupied one of the private rooms—officially because of his status as a priest, but also to protect him from revenge attempts. He was not doing as well as some of the other survivors, but he would live. It was general knowledge—Nora learned from eavesdropping—that he had convinced the pilgrims to return to the sanctuary in the middle of the night, promising them an audience with the goddess, and then handed them over to Olenan.

  Nora slipped into his room one day.

  “Did you do it just so that she wouldn’t kill you like the others?” she asked Oasme. “Or did you really believe her, whatever lies she told you?” Oasme lay quietly on his pallet, his eyes half closed. “Did you ever believe in her?” Nora demanded.

  She didn’t expect an answer, even if he could have heard her question.

  Later the same day, sitting alone by the river, she had an imaginary conversation with her mother that followed a less predictable course. For the first time, Nora told her everything—almost everything—about what had happened over the past year or so. Her mother was silent for a long time, staring into her coffee. (They were back in the sunroom, as Nora pictured it.) “They’re all false gods, if you ask me, Nora,” her mother finally said, her eyes red. “Not just the big snake. This magic you’re so excited about, too. I’m still so worried about you.”

  “To be honest, I’m a little worried, too,” Nora said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I know you’re doing the best you can
, sweetie,” her mother said, surprisingly. She sighed, and her face took on a more resolute expression. “I dreamed about EJ last night. Usually he’s little, or it’s that horrible night, but this time he was all grown up, a man. And he seemed—happy. I was so comforted.”

  Nora said she was glad to hear that.

  “I felt God answered my prayers, He really did,” her mother said. “I’m going to keep praying for Him to look after you, Nora. It’s all I can do.”

  “Thank you, Mom,” Nora said, and discovered that her own eyes were wet.

  “Am I ever going to see you again, Nora?” her mother asked.

  She wasn’t talking about the invisibility spell, whether it would ever wear off. “Yes, definitely,” Nora said. Her mother smiled severely, clearly unconvinced, and took a long, ruminative sip of coffee.

  “I mean, I think you will,” Nora said. “I hope so. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  Her mother nodded. After that, neither of them seemed to be able to think of anything to say, but somehow it didn’t feel as awkward as Nora would have expected.

  Being invisible made you a little weird, no doubt about it.

  The spell showed no signs of weakening. She could see her own body, but no one else could. Nora spoke to every person she met and brushed against people until it began to seem creepy; no one ever responded. Sometimes, forgetting, she fought down a sense of hurt that everyone around her seemed to be ignoring her on purpose.

  She had no shadow, which was more troubling than she would have expected, and she had no reflection in either water or a battered silver tray, rescued from the wrecked temple, that she peered into hopefully. Several times she tried to attract attention by splashing in the river and then leaving wet footprints on the path. It made her happy to see them, but the pilgrims and the ganoi passing by seemed to be looking anywhere but where she wanted them to look.

  She thought for certain that when she sat down in the refectory to eat one of the sporadic meals that were still being served, other people would notice her bowl floating through the air or her chair pulled out or her food vanishing, but everything she handled seemed to share her own obscurity. She was not quite sure whether the objects truly became invisible, or people simply didn’t notice anything that seemed unusual, or some combination of the two. She even tried walking around naked one day, after discarding the rags of her maran, on the theory that nudity would trigger some kind of subliminal recognition, but the obliviousness of everyone she passed was so disorienting that after an hour she gave up and stole a ganoi gown from the hospital storeroom.

  This is what being a ghost is like, she thought.

  Her current state was worse, in some ways, than being caught in the nothingness between worlds, where thinking of Aruendiel had brought her to him. Now, perversely, it seemed that the more she wanted to see him, or anyone else, the less likely they were to cross paths. Wherever she was, he was not. He was staying in one of the visitors’ rooms near the hospital, and one night she sat at his door for hours, determined to catch him. Near dawn, not seeing him, she dragged herself back to her own room to find the oil lamp empty, the window open, and on the floor a long gray feather, as from an owl’s wing.

  When she did encounter Aruendiel—and it was always by pure chance, when she least expected it—she was struck by the dry, tense watchfulness in his face and the hunch of his shoulders. Instinctively she would go to stand where his pale eyes were searching, for the momentary satisfaction of meeting his gaze.

  She said inane things, like “I’m still here!” and “Can’t you hear me at all?” and “How many years before this spell wears off?” There were much more important and complicated things that she needed to say to him, but it was too hard to speak them to unhearing ears. What she really wanted was to hear the deep burr of his voice speaking to her and only to her.

  In the end, she came back to Donne, who—she now realized—had thought a lot about invisibility, albeit in a slightly different context. In poem after poem, he had considered the elusive relation between the flesh and the soul. Twice or thrice had I loved thee, before I knew thy face or name.

  Still, you needed more than what Donne called some lovely glorious nothing. Love must not be, but take a body, too.

  Nora’s outstretched hand slipped numbly from Aruendiel’s arm as he moved away, his eyes somewhere else.

  Six days after the killings at the temple, a delegation arrived from the Ghaki king, some thirty soldiers in uniform and their commander, accompanying a red-faced nobleman in armor and two shaved-headed men in yellow robes and oval pink caps, worn at an angle, that to Nora looked distractingly like Mrs. Kennedy’s pillbox.

  As they progressed into the central courtyard, the bald men looked around with a proprietary air, casting an appraising eye on the hospital buildings and the sparse crowd that had gathered, and Nora suddenly realized who the two visitors were: priests from the other temple of Sisoaneer, the one at Nenaveii.

  Lemoes went to greet them, looking very young and slight next to the armed men. He accompanied the priests and the noblemen as they inspected the ruined temple, taking in the new waterfall and the stream merrily plunging between the topless columns and broken statuary. On a flat stone in the middle of the rubble, someone had set up a new, makeshift altar, covered with flowers and a couple of dishes of food.

  Nora, too far away to hear what anyone was saying, could still read disapproval in the older priest’s stiff mien and his abrupt pivot from the little altar. Curious, she followed them all back to the refectory, where, she was pleased to discover, Aruendiel and Hirizjahkinis joined them. Whatever repulsive force was keeping Nora apart from him, it seemed to be lessened when they were part of a group.

  The older priest, who had sturdy features and a slight paunch, spoke first—since, as he made clear, he was now in charge of Erchkaii. A few days before, some of the pilgrims whom Oasme had saved had reached Nenaveii, where the chief clergy were already concerned about the provocative rumors that the goddess Sisoaneer had appeared at Erchkaii. Obviously some kind of appalling fraud and sacrilege had taken place, the priest said now, and his mission was to restore order. He pulled a scroll from inside his robe.

  “We have an order from His Gracious Majesty for the arrest of the woman who led the criminal heresy against the true religion of Sisoaneer and the Ghaki throne, resulting in the death of many innocents,” the priest said. “Styling herself High Priestess, she spread the false rumor that the goddess herself had returned to Erchkaii. She is to be taken into custody and removed to Nenaveii for the disposition of her case.”

  “What!” Nora squawked. “Are you talking about me?” But of course they were; they needed a scapegoat.

  She glanced at the others. Lemoes was wide-eyed. Something about the set of Hirizjahkinis’s mouth suggested that she could not decide whether to laugh or be furious. Aruendiel’s black eyebrows lifted interrogatively.

  “On what grounds have you determined that this woman is responsible for the criminal heresy, as you put it, and the murders here?” he asked.

  “Oh, there has already been a trial,” the priest said. “There was testimony from several witnesses, and the High Priest rendered his decision.”

  “With His Gracious Majesty’s approval,” interjected the nobleman.

  “Yes, exactly,” said the priest.

  “I have always heard that the cardinal virtue of Ghaki justice is its swiftness,” Aruendiel said.

  The priest bowed. “That is our particular pride.”

  “But we cannot turn over the woman you seek. The onetime High Priestess of Sisoaneer has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” The priest frowned.

  “Completely vanished,” Hirizjahkinis said.

  “And you don’t know where she is?”

  “She has not been seen since the day of the killings,” Hirizjahkinis said. “The day the grea
t serpent appeared.” She nodded encouragingly at the priest.

  “The great serpent?”

  “The black snake that had pursued the High Priestess from the bowels of the mountain,” Hirizjahkinis said.

  “A serpent is one of Sisoaneer’s totems, I believe,” Aruendiel said.

  The priest exchanged glances with his yellow-robed colleague. “That is a local legend,” said the younger priest.

  “Very local,” Aruendiel agreed. “I saw the snake myself. It seized its prey, and then the creature went into the earth again.”

  “You mean this snake devoured the heretic priestess?” The older priest turned to Lemoes. “Did you see this, boy?”

  “I was too far away to see very much,” Lemoes said. “But I have not seen the High Priestess since, and neither has anyone I’ve spoken to, either.” He cleared his throat.

  It would be just my luck, Nora thought, for the invisibility spell to wear off right now.

  “‘High Priestess’ is a false title,” the priest said irritably. “That is another part of the heresy. It is not respectful to the gods to have women in the clergy.”

  Hirizjahkinis smiled. “You are sure your goddess agrees?”

  The priest ignored her question. “In fact,” he said, “we understand that other women have been serving as clergy at Erchkaii. That will cease immediately; they will be stripped of their offices.” He consulted his scroll again. “Where is the one called Yaioni?”

  “She has already resigned from her office,” Lemoes said. After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “There is also Uliverat, but we have not seen her, either, for some days. She was not among the dead—”

  “Do not concern yourself with that one. She has been accounted for,” the priest said quickly, and Nora knew the name of at least one of the witnesses who had testified at her trial in Nenaveii.

  The discussion moved to the subject of Oasme. The priests from Nenaveii had already heard reports of his role in the massacre, although—Nora was interested to hear—he apparently had not yet had his own trial. The Ghakis would take him back with them, his fate to be decided later.