“She did this for me?” She looked in the direction of the hall of stones and I knew she recalled the tree.
“Let us go see it,” I said.
She nodded, as she stroked Bendo. The kids sensed their mother’s devotion to her mistress and crowded around El. She petted each of them and promised to give them names when she returned.
As we walked to the Temple, we explored the new vista. “Where’d they all go?” El asked, meaning both the Venusian and seemingly vanished sapients.
“I don’t know.”
My goddess and I never discussed what would happen when Terra was remade into the planet it had been before our visitation. I only knew that every Venusian, every Kyprian, would become a part of it. Embedded in nature, my kin would live in the natural atmosphere. The trees, lakes, fields, flowers, moonbugs would all hum with the vibrations of our fire. That was the promise made in the tome. Kyprian would live and flourish in the rich, verdurous land of its new home. Terra came alive with Venusian matter—we were the seeds of everything terrestrial.
“What will we do now?” El said, as she reached for my hand. We walked together along the rickety cobblestones, stripped of their gold and covered in moss. “Everything is alive.”
I wanted to tell her I was alive too, but I was afraid she would not believe me.
When we reached the Temple, the structure had partially collapsed and revealed the deep pits into which the baths had sunk. They made large holes in the ground, sinking under the pressure of their weight. The slate tubs were heavier with the molten liquid, having been filled since last moonscape. El pointed to the gold chains she had pulled each time she arrived. They had dropped from the roof and were poking out of the soil like gargantuan stalks of wheat.
“They’re not gold anymore,” she said.
“Nothing is.” It was as if the planet had swallowed the gold and buried it deep in its core. “You have to dig to find gold now.”
The tinselly cypress and flaxen sycamores were no more. The trees had burst from their metal coating and stood tall, parading their thick rind and new buds. They would soon be showing off their leaves too, reaching up to the sky and the eye’s rays, married as they were to the soil of their new home.
When we cut up the path to reach the hall of stones, the ground was soft at our feet and we dug in our heels to take the incline. I held El’s hand and led her through the forest as I’d done long ago. When I turned to look at her this time, the sensation of contact was entirely different. I could lean down and kiss her if I wanted to. I longed for the moment when I would feel my goddess’s lips, her skin, her heart touch mine.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “I see her.”
Saturnia’s sister stood tall above us, hanging over the ledge of the cracked solarium I had built for my goddess. Her leaves had multiplied and she blocked the eye from the path, shading us as we made our way into the hall where the magic had vanished. When we stepped through the glass, the atmosphere remained the same. We no longer floated, the bright lights and Venusian flames were gone, and the jade stones had been destroyed with Midan. Saturnia’s sister stood among others now. A forest of living trees had sprung up around her, a family of saplings for the healer to tend.
“She’s still beautiful,” El said, as she gazed at the enormous tree.
“She is.” I was overcome with emotion when I saw my sibling, her sacrifice. I silently thanked her for it again.
“I’ll never forget her,” she said. “She was good to me.” El stepped forward and laid her hands on the tree’s thick rind. She stroked the surface and then threw her arms around the tree. “I’ll always cherish you,” she said. “And so will my descendants.”
We heard a warble at the top of the tree and looked up to see my sibling’s second gift. A delicate creature fluttered in the sky, hovering at the tip of its maker’s leaves and dancing from branch to branch as if its nature were established long ago.
“Did you know about this?” El turned to me with surprise.
“No,” I said. “How could I know?”
“Didn’t she tell you before …” She searched for the right words. “She set the plan in motion.”
“Why would I know any of this?” I wanted to tell her I was unaware which species my goddess’s healer would bring back to life and which she would newly invent, but I was afraid to reveal myself.
El studied me for a moment and then looked at the tree again. “Let’s go back to the garden. I want to name the goats.” She smiled and held her hand out to me. I took it and admired how it looked much like her creator’s and yet she was a creature of her own kind, a new breed of being.
“Have you thought of names yet?”
“Just one,” she said.
“What is it?”
She smiled at me and reached for my cheek, caressing it with the tips of her fingers. She caught my gaze and I recalled her as she was on her pedestal. Goddess, I repeated over and over in my mind. My goddess.
“Onine,” she said.
I could barely speak, wanting to kiss her as she had kissed me once in our terrestrial forms. “You want to name one after Onine?”
She shook her head and leaned in closer. “Onine,” she said again.
I could see the recognition in her eyes, the change that came over her when she looked at Tal but saw me. “How did you know?”
“Saturnia’s sister left me a final gift,” she said.
“She told you?”
She shook her head again. “Tal’s eyes were dark like mine. Yours are violet.”
My sibling had made the switch without my knowing. She had left the trace for my goddess to find.
“May I kiss you now?” I asked.
“Now and forever.”
I took my goddess into my arms and we exchanged worlds properly this time, without fear of fire or clay because we were both.
The End
El and Onine Page 15