Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts)

by Sara Wolf

  “Wait for me.”

  The wildfire in his gaze roars higher, eating me like kindling. The ring—his ring—around my finger feels so solid, so wonderful, the only unpainful thing in the world as every little muscle in my body strains to force the First Root back together. The tremblings of the ground grow wild, nearly throwing us off-balance, but Lucien refuses to let even the earthquakes tear his gaze from my face. The ceiling of the little cave starts to collapse in places, chunks of dirt and stone leaving puckered holes into darkness that reveal the glowing rainbow tree above. It seems more real, somehow—its branches now strongly shimmering.

  Varia suddenly breaks free of Lucien’s spell, her wooden-fingered hand darting out for my throat. She squeezes and squeezes so hard I fear my head will come off—squeezes like I’m the source of all her rage and fury. But Varia’s grip is nothing compared to the iron grip of Lucien’s command, the hunger peeling apart my willpower like it’s nothing more than dry lace. He knew all along, maybe, what I was going to do. But he had a plan, too. He didn’t want to command me, but he knew he would if he had to. He’d pour all his magic into that one command if he had to.

  I can’t stop him.

  But I can love him.

  “If I don’t do this, Lucien,” I gasp, “I’ll be hungry forever.”

  It’s not the I love you he wants. It’s not the I’ll stop, and let you do this instead. It’s not the I will consider my own safety above all others’ he wants to hear. He wants me to be with him, to be us, together at last, and in peace.

  And I want that, too.

  Varia’s grip closes in around my windpipe. I breathe deep, for maybe my last breath, and say, “Please trust me. Wait for me.”

  It’s a promise, and a cry, and a prayer.

  It’s unfair to ask him. Selfish.

  But maybe I’ve earned a little of that, at the end of all things.

  Whisper isn’t the type to linger, but Lucien is. So I know it’s Whisper who pulls him away from me, who breaks his eye contact, who is there one moment and then gone in shadow the next. The sound of popping, everywhere, outside the cave. Clattering as swords fall to the floor, as bowstrings unwind sharply, the clank of metal as Yorl’s matronic falls, as every beneather and friend is teleported away by Lucien’s sheer power, the sounds of battle emptying in a split second, and all I can think is thank you.

  I love you.

  Varia digs into my neck. I feel it happen, but she can’t stop my hands. I press with all effort, all breath, into my two palms, forcing the First Root’s wound flush against itself. My neck creaks, groans, resisting her force trying to decapitate me. Around her fingers buried deep in my neck, blood and life leave me, and I see her face. I see her expression—no, the Bone Tree’s expression—as she realizes I’m putting her together instead of taking her apart.

  I’ve never seen joy. Not really. Not until this moment.

  It’s a deep, old, eternal joy, the sort the New God priests crow about in the temples. Divine joy. Joy that makes moving mountains possible, that makes the sun rise and set and rise again by the buoy of sheer gilded ecstasy. She—no, it—looks at me, milky, shriveled eyes somehow filled with gratitude.

  “Thank you.”

  The bones sticking out of Varia’s choker and piercing into me suddenly retract, small and slender and like jewelry again. There’s a clicking sound, and the bone choker comes loose, one fang at a time, until it falls to the ground and disintegrates into white dust.

  Varia staggers as if she’s been cut free from some string holding her, her knees tumbling to the ground and her body unmoving, her head on her chest. My six eyes start to blacken at the edges, but I force myself to focus on my hands, on holding. I can feel the Root’s wound starting to close, inch by inch. The tremors are worse now, great clots of dirt falling on our heads, cracks and crashes beyond the little cave as boulders fall and the canyon faces start to shatter.

  “V-Varia, wake up,” I stammer, throat scraped raw and open. “Your Highness…wake up, please.”

  Lucien’s magic can’t reach me—not anymore. He’s gone from the Tree of Souls, not a scrap of the power it was giving him to be found. He’s far, too far, so far my heart necklace can’t even help. I can feel the white rush of noise crawling up my half-broken spine, ready the moment I let my Weeping down to freeze me in place, keep me here screaming soundlessly for all eternity. He can’t heal me. He can’t help me. He’s gone.

  Fione, Mal, Yorl. They’re all gone.

  No—not gone. Safe.

  I have to keep my promise to Fione now.

  “Varia!” I gurgle. “Please! Get up!”

  Nothing. The wound is closing in my hand, the First Root mending itself quickly and the pearl liquid coming to a stop. It coats my hands, makes them slippery, my own blood spurting out of my neck not helping, but I cling on, dig my claws in. If I can’t get her to wake up, she’s done for.

  “HEY!” I scream. “ASSHOLE!”

  To my utter relief, she jerks up, eyes wild and plump and black again as she looks around like she has no idea where she is or what’s going on. Her skin is still sallow, but the skeletal hunger in her cheekbones is gone, and her neck wounds are dire holes that will leave scars, but nothing fatal.

  “What—” The princess blinks at me. Black eyes full of suspicion, of pride. She’s back. She’s herself. “What are you doing here? Where—”

  “There’s no time,” I blurt, blood bubbling out of my nose. “This is the Tree of Souls. You can use more magic here. Use it, teleport away. To Pala Amna.”

  She looks me up and down, at my mangled body “But—”

  “I’ll be right behind you! Hurry!”

  It’s just a second. Just a blink. But I know. How could I not know? She was my witch; we have history. She hurt me, I hurt her. But she led me here in the end, didn’t she? Her sheer determination to make the world better, no matter how misguided, led me here, to the Tree of Souls. It led me to make things right, once and for all. Varia held my hand, didn’t she? The whole way. She was the one who helped me stop the song.

  “I know you wanted to do it alone.” I wheeze a laugh. “Change the world. But Fione’s waiting. So. I’ll take over from here.”

  It’s just a second, but her onyx eyes soften. “You—”

  “Go.”

  Varia is her brother, but she’s not at the same time. She doesn’t linger, ever. No waiting for that one. Things to do, people to see, lives to change.

  But she lingers now, face broken and soft as she says, “Don’t you dare die.”

  All the animosity between us, all the history. It pivots on those words, and I smile. She’s there, and then in a faint popping noise, she’s gone.

  And I’m alone.

  “Never alone.” I can hear Evlorasin’s faint voice outside, struggling. Injured. “Never-goodbye.”

  Through the massive holes in the cave’s ceiling, I see the Tree start to glow. Hundreds of feet up, and through the darkness, the Tree of Souls grows hard, full of color, real. A pure white streaked with rainbow like oil, like blood, branches regal and extending for what seems like forever. Roots below, extending forever. Connecting us all.

  And it all starts to glow.

  It’s a hum. A hum that reverberates in my insides, in my unheart, replacing the hunger, blowing it out and away like a sweet wind. No more guilt. No more anger. No more pain. The golden flowers become real, whole, shining like little suns in the darkness, their faces bobbing even more happily in an even more joyous wind.

  Wind I can feel now.

  The glow becomes so intense that it turns to light, white light shafting through the holes in the cave’s roof. One beam shines down directly on me, and it feels warm. I can see a six-eyed face in it, a celeon maw and a wise smile, a paw reaching for me. To help me.

  Never alone.

  The light
consumes my eyes—pure white. No matter which way I glance, all white, and the heat of a thousand suns bearing down on me, full to bursting, full to burning me alive. Or burning me undead, as it were.

  I laugh at my own joke, here at the end of everything, and hold the First Root together tighter. Nothing can escape the light—the sound of my laugh scorched away instantly.

  together, my hunger—the Glass Tree—sobs.

  TOGETHER, the Bone Tree shrieks.

  I look up. “Together.”

  Never alone.

  A wolf to end the world, Evlorasin said. And it was right. I’m here, at the end of the world.

  And the beginning of a new one.

  EPILOGUE

  It is said that in the year 34EA, in the very middle of the summer season, a powerful earthquake rocked the Mist Continent as far as the Gold Shore in Avel and as high as the scholar-city of Breych. This cataclysmic earthquake, whilst capsizing much of the land surrounding it, heralded the rise of the King Without Crown, who went on to build the greatly peaceful and greatly influential Vetrisian Empire and who, by scheme or by purpose, has lost his name to the sands of time.

  But in what scraps remain of the seminal history annals entitled Recordings and Observations from the War of Trees by Yorl Farspear-Ashwalker, there resides significantly more detail on the event, and it is as follows: in 34EA, on Highmoon day 17, a category three earthquake gripped the Mist Continent for exactly seven seconds, the epicenter of which was the beneather city-fortress of Pala Orias. When it subsided, there were approximately 142 aftershocks over the course of five days. Yet this ushered in a prominent era of peace for the major nations of Arathess, politically spearheaded by the newly formed Vetrisian Empire, and such a time of growth and prosperity as we now live in is referred to as “the Contentment.”

  —Excerpt from Archsage Tessal Miroux’s dissertation, entitled A History of the War of Trees, or, an Attempt to Trace the Five-Hundred-Year-Old Origins of Arathess’s Great Change.

  …

  Lucien,

  Try not to get too angry at the polymath who’s delivering this to you. I asked him to. He’s just the messenger. Shoot me, if you must. With an arrow of love. Ha-ha!

  It’s strange, isn’t it? Trying to write to someone you talk to all the time. I feel like I can be much more serious in letters—it’s the lack of body language options. Or maybe the lack of my body, period. How can I make jokes if all I have is ink and not my wonderful bosoms? Oh, does a lady not speak of her bosoms in a letter? I’m terrible at this. Send me back to Y’shennria for five more years.

  I’m writing this, mostly, because I’m nervous. And maybe that’s a bad idea, because you know me—I get to blabbing when I’m anxious. Too many words, but none of them with any meaning.

  So. I’ll cut myself off and cut to the point.

  I love you.

  Did you know that? Even if you did, I wanted to say it one last time.

  But no one is ever really gone.

  I wish you the happiest of lives. A long life, too. But not too long. You know how I feel about eternity.

  Wherever you go, I will be.

  Yours,

  Elizera Y’shennria

  Sitting in his chair at the high table of the negotiations room of the palace, Lucien d’Malvane felt as though the Pendronic ambassador was looking at him with the eyes of a hungry hyena.

  “Surely Your Highness is aware he is approaching twenty-two years of age now.” The ambassador licked his lips uneasily. “The Golden Empress wishes to express her high regard of you, and of your ancient bloodline, and begs you consider her daughter—”

  “And I’m very flattered, to be regarded so highly by the Golden Empress.” Lucien wove his voice in the careful silks politics required. “But I’m sure I’ve sent out more than one notice of the dissolution of the kingdom of Cavanos and its noble hierarchy, sir. All noble families are in the process of being formally stripped of their lands and birthright, and the assets redistributed among the commonwealth. This, of course, includes the royal bloodline.”

  The ambassador’s fine red mustache twitched as he made a small bow in his chair, ruffled collar barely containing his hidden disdain. “Of course, Your Highness.”

  “Then, if the royal family is dissolved,” the former prince began slowly, but not too slowly as to offend, “it seems there’s very little need to call me ‘Your Highness,’ am I not correct?”

  “You are, your—” This time, the ambassador caught himself, and he coughed into his sleeve. “Your Excellency.”

  The tall, pale beneather sitting against the wall among the ambassador’s silk-clad guards rolled his ruby eyes. Lucien prayed to whatever god was left that Malachite could hold his tongue long enough for the former prince to drill the facts of the new Vetrisian Empire into the ambassador’s head.

  “Ah-ah.” Lucien put up one finger and waved it playfully at the ambassador. “Excellency is still a noble title.”

  “Th-Then—” The ambassador stuttered. “What should I call you, sir?”

  “Sir will do nicely, I think.” Lucien smiled at him brightly.

  The man practically went beet down to his boots. “B-But—but you are the ki—”

  “Head of State,” Lucien interrupted him smoothly, a chuckle on his lips. “Though my people do still cling to tradition. Have you heard? They call me the ‘King Without a Crown.’ Silly, really. And so…theatrical.”

  Lucien could swear he heard Malachite scoff a soft “you love it,” but the rest of the room was quiet, uneasy at the unheard of shift of etiquette. The constant knocking of hammers on the palace walls and the deafening hiss of white mercury machines was but a dull undercurrent of noise here in the negotiations room, the shouts of workers and the stomps of the metallic matronics doing heavy lifting ringing far louder along the half-finished marble halls.

  Lucien stood and made his way to the window, his black robe sweeping out behind him. He touched one finger to the sill, the paint still fresh. He’d ordered that the palace be the last thing to be rebuilt—housing and infrastructure first. And to his joy, the city had blossomed in the three years since. Well…since the end.

  He shook himself out, holding his wooden hand tightly to his side.

  New Vetris had sprung up around the crater of the palace slowly, but also in a blink. Time worked strangely in that way—constant negotiations, drawing up papers and trade requests and refugee inventories, sleepless nights of city planning with Fione, with Yorl, with the People’s Council. It all blurred together, melded and stretched and compressed until he was standing at the window today, in the fresh sunlight of spring, watching the city hum below. The horizon still looked different with the Red Lady gone, with the temple’s spire much smaller. Sometimes he’d blink and expect it to be there, wished it to be there, if only because that meant she would be there, too.

  Time, reversed enough to give them time.

  He scoffed softly under his breath.

  Of all the rebuilding and restructuring New Vetris had accomplished together, the People’s Council was his proudest achievement. It was comprised of sixteen representatives from every walk of life, elected entirely by the people. The disenfranchised nobles had snuck in their man, of course, but outnumbered fifteen to one, his entrenched opinions barely held much sway. Bribery had tried to happen, naturally, but Fione had made the very prescient suggestion Lucien strip said nobles of their land rights. And so that had begun in earnest. T’was only doable because the nobles’ landed armies had been wiped out in the War of Trees—otherwise, civil war would’ve surely descended.

  Lucien smirked to himself. Fate had given him the perfect time to step in and change things.

  So, too, had it taken every other happiness from him.

  But she’d be proud of him, wouldn’t she?

  His sharp onyx eyes fell on the blac
k rosebushes of the former Y’shennria manor, properly trimmed and maintained. It was an orphanage now, for all the children orphaned by the War of Trees, with Lady Y’shennria managing it gladly and well and as warmly strict as could be. He could hear the children faintly shrieking, scrambling about in the yard as they played.

  On the difficult nights, Lucien would wander over to the orphanage and pick a single black rose to put in his room, to let the fragrance fill the empty spaces in his bed.

  “My apologies, sir.” He turned from the window and back to the ambassador. “I’m afraid I grow weary. Shall we continue this on the morrow? Does midmeal agree with you?”

  “Verily.” The ambassador stood, his guards standing to attention with him. “I would appreciate such kindness thoroughly, your—sir.”

  “Then.” Lucien nodded and smiled as he swept past him and out of the room. “Farewell for now.”

  His boots clipped on the sawdust-strewn marble, joined quickly by another pair with a far longer, lazier stride.

  “The Pendrons think they’re so big,” Malachite scoffed at his shoulder. “Just because Varia forgot to touch them during the whole thing.”

  Lucien laughed. “To be fair, not even the valkerax want to cross the Redlands.”

  “They could’ve just taken the ocean,” Malachite grumbled.

  “The ocean is very, very big, Mal.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “So you’ve seen.” Lucien laughed louder. The quiet descended quickly between them. The ocean. He, of course, meant Rel’donas. The Black Archives. That little island full of fond memories. A tender place now in his heart.

  Together they walked through the palace, nodding at workmen carrying great loads, chopping and sanding and refitting walls. The two young men passed a particular room being rebuilt—a room that once held old portraits of an older family, and then burned portraits of a family made suddenly much smaller. Lucien had started to forget their faces halfway through year two, his father’s face last, his mother’s first, nothing left behind of them but their blackened skeletons in their beds. They had been terrible rulers but kind parents. Forgiveness, and longing, and gratitude that they were gone enough for him to undo the damage they had done. His family had become but a dust devil in his busy mind—a tremor of a memory.