by Rin Chupeco
“I’m so sorry.” I had so much penance to do, so much forgiveness to ask for. Haidee—my long-lost twin, Haidee!—still had a deadly grip on one hand, so I used the other to tug Lan closer. “I should never have allowed the galla to consume me,” I sobbed. “I thought I could control it. I thought I could temper the shadows and save us all—”
“Shh,” she soothed. “You rejected them. That’s all that matters.” She lifted her head to stare warily at Haidee. “You’re not supposed to be alive,” she finally said.
“I was told the same thing about her,” the girl said softly. “But if you must know, I am so glad that you are. Mother was not as good at keeping secrets as she would like to believe.”
“Why are you here at Brighthenge?” I asked her, squeezing Lan’s fingers tightly, though she made no sound of protest at my tight grip.
“For the same reason you are, I suspect—to find a way to heal the world, to see if there was a way to overcome the Breaking.” She smiled sheepishly. “You had more companions for this journey than I had, though.”
I glanced over at her friend, a tall dark-skinned man with a thick cloth wrapped around his head like a scarf, and a gun in place of a hand.
Oddly enough, she blushed. “He was the only one willing to see this through with me,” she muttered. “I still can’t believe we made it.”
“I’ll say,” the boy rumbled. “She’d be damn lost without me.” But for all his bravado, his eyes were very soft when he looked at Haidee, a small affectionate smile I doubt he was aware of playing on the sides of his mouth.
“They mentioned,” I said, more shakily this time, “that one of the goddesses was supposed to die, so that the other could rule Aeon unopposed.”
Haidee nodded. “That’s what I gathered too, from what we’ve discovered on our way here.”
“But—both our mothers are alive. Do you think that’s what caused the Breaking?”
“I don’t know for certain. But we need answers from them both as soon as possible.”
“Haidee . . . who is our real mother?” Mother had concealed so many things from me, but I’d always believed that I was her daughter. That I might not be even be her child—that she might have lied—hurt.
Haidee’s face mirrored my distress. “I don’t know. I don’t even know why they seem to hate each other so much.”
“And what does that say about the two of us? Have they permanently disrupted the ritual? Or—in order to bring the world back to what it once was, does it mean that we have to . . .”
Haidee’s face changed; angry and anguished all at once. “I really don’t want to think about that. We’re in unexplored territory. Maybe it’s not an issue anymore. The world is turning again. Didn’t you feel it? Surely there’ll be no need for a sacrifice.”
“But what if—”
“I’m going on the belief,” she insisted firmly, “that if we need another way to cure the world, we’re going to find it together, without anyone else suffering for it.”
She looked so much like me, but we had our differences, too. She had more courage than I ever had, a courage I could only achieve through my pact with the galla. Now, without it, I felt more at a loss than ever. “All right.” I rose to my feet despite Lan’s protests. “Show me Brighthenge,” I proposed, hoping the confidence in my voice matched hers. “If we want answers, I suppose it’s best that we start there.”
“I remember now,” Lady Lan said, staring at a large statue before the temple. She raised her hand, intending to touch the stone surface, but let her arm drop at the last minute. “This was the portal the shadow sent me through. I . . .” Her gaze drifted to the empty ground before it, and her hands shook. “They should be here. Their—bodies. Where did they—”
“It’s all right,” Odessa said sharply, rushing to her side. She glanced at me and I knew, without her needing to put the thought into words, that she wanted Arjun and me to go on ahead. Clearly the Catseye knew something about this place that we didn’t, but I didn’t want to pry at this point. Not yet.
We set to work. By the time we were done with Brighthenge, I’d taken copious notes of every prophecy marked on the walls. We’d explored it from top to bottom and sideways, gleaning all the information we could. The prophecies were still a mystery, but I was confident that we could break the riddles soon enough. “We might be able to find some clues back at the Golden City,” I told my twin when they rejoined us, with Lady Lan noticeably calmer. “I know someone who might have access to some rare books. If he can find some about the goddesses, then we can see if any of the prophecies match up with their lives.”
“I’m not sure Latona would be happy to accommodate you, Haidee,” Arjun said pointedly.
“I’ll find a way. We could stay with your clan instead. If you have enough room for us,” I added, blushing.
He arched an eyebrow. “Are you trying to figure out if I have a room to myself back home? Because the answer is no.”
“Of course not!”
“But there are—other ways to get privacy, if you know where to look.” He paused, sent me a quick, searing look that told me he had no intention of backing down since his confession at the abandoned village. “And I do.”
I flushed harder. “That would be . . . nice.”
Arjun turned to Lady Lan, who was side-eyeing us with a faint grin on her face. “I suppose you’re a Catseye,” he said with a short grunt, extending his arm. “Haven’t introduced myself yet. Name’s Arjun. Lady Lan, right?”
“Not a—uh, yes, and nice to meet you.” The girl reached forward. Her fingers brushed against his stump, and she blinked down. Arjun, the asshole, just grinned. “Kidding,” he said, offering his intact hand. But the Catseye had gotten hold of his stump anyway, her eyes glowing, and the man froze. “You’re not taking as much care of this as you should,” the woman said matter-of-factly. “It feels like you’ve had a rash of infections every few months because you’ve been hoarding your medicine. It will blister soon enough if you don’t take care.”
Whatever the Catseye was doing worked; Arjun’s shoulders sank down as the tension melted away, though that didn’t stop him from letting out a snippy, if grudging, “I’ve lived my whole life in a desert. We’re not exactly swimming in water and ointments.”
“I still can’t believe it.” My twin—Odessa—clung to me often, and I to her, like letting go meant something worse was about to happen. “Mother said that you died at the Breaking. That you and my aunt Latona perished, and that we were the only two goddesses left.”
“My mother refused to tell me anything about you,” I countered, happiness and anger quick to trade places. We’d both been lied to. In the heady hour that had passed after we had done the unthinkable and bridged the gap across the Great Abyss, we talked and laughed and hugged like we had known each other all our lives. And we bore the same growing grudge against the parents who had raised us without knowledge of the other. “She would only say that she killed Asteria in self-defense.”
Odessa shook her head. “My mother said the same, but with their roles reversed. And—they both claim we’re their daughters. Who’s telling the truth? What would either of them stand to gain with these lies?”
“Janella would know more about this.” The other warrior—Noelle, I believed—had emerged back from the fog, glowering. “She’s not at camp. They’re all gone.”
“Who is she?” I asked her.
Lady Lan straightened up. “A spy for Asteria. She knows more about the goddess’s motives than any of us, and no doubt she’s off to report her failure as we speak.”
“But how does she intend to return to your city alone, without aid?”
“There’s—” Lan’s fists clenched, relaxed. “There may be a way to return without having to travel that distance. I’ve been here before. It’s that statue outside the temple. I might have—triggered—a portal within it that could transport us. Perhaps both Asteria and Latona chose to build their respective cities where
they were not by choice, but because that was where they were brought after the world broke.”
“A portal, then? How do we activate it?”
Lan let out a strange, gulping sound. “Through sacrifice, last time I checked. That was how . . . I made it back.”
“We’re not seriously doing the same, are we?”
“No, but Janella might.” Lan rose to her feet. “The others might be in trouble. We have to make sure she hasn’t attacked any more people.”
“‘The world torn asunder. Night and day rule from their two thrones,’” Odessa said softly. She had come to a stop at the very same plaque that had horrified me so, the plaque that should have one of our names inscribed there but was missing. Her finger trailed down to the end of the prophecy. “‘She will grieve endlessly for the sister who slumbers in the house of the dead, but her tears will save us all.’ Who are they referring to here? Was it me, or you?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But I hope it no longer matters.” The world was spinning again. In time, water would return to the desert, and the changing weather would offer more temperate, livable conditions across the world. The prophecies no longer meant anything. Why should they?
“There are no healing springs here,” Odessa said quietly. “No restoratives or elixirs like what my mother was led to believe. This is a library, not an apothecary.”
I remembered that Odessa and Lan had initially gone to Brighthenge seeking a cure for Odessa’s strange disease. Lan had examined me earlier, and found none of my twin’s illness in me. We had searched the ruins, hoping for a clue to some remedy, to no avail. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “I’m so sorry.” I did not want to lose her so soon after finding her. There had to be another way. . . .
Odessa smiled briefly. “It’s all right. I should have known it wouldn’t be this easy. But I don’t know if I can save the world when I’m not even sure I can save myself.” She turned toward Inanna’s Song, toward the strange silhouette of the goddess forever etched on the stone, surveying the ruins of her once-thriving empire. “‘Love continues to be the toll,’” she quoted its final stanza, “‘and she will pay.’ I want to believe that there’s some other way to save Aeon, Haidee—but I’m still very much afraid there won’t be.”
“Odessa!” Lan yelled from somewhere outside. “Haidee! We’ve got a problem!”
“Do we have everything we need here?” Odessa asked me.
I checked my notes one last time; they included a rough map of the temple, and some scribbled notes of anything else I felt had stood out or appeared unusual. “I think so,” I said. “Let’s go see what your Catseye has found.”
What the Catseye had found, as it turned out, were two very dead bodies. They were lying before the broken statue. The left half of it was glowing, and something swirled beside it, like a bright hole had been suspended in the air. Odessa gasped, her hand over her mouth. “Andre,” she choked out, “and Lorila.”
“Janella murdered them.” Lady Lan turned one of the bodies over. Smoke wafted from the lifeless form, and I spotted two holes in the center of his chest. “Firesmoke.” She checked the other body. “Same method.”
“But why?” I cried out.
“Why else? To activate the portal back to Aranth.” She gestured at the right half of the statue. Unlike its left counterpart, the energy around it had faded. “Some spell within this statue brought me back to Aranth last time. I’m sure of it. When the shadows—” She stopped, visibly pained. “Janella’s returned to report to Asteria, and made sure that we couldn’t follow.”
The other half of the statue was still bright, light spinning around the hole in the air as it shifted in and out of view, almost transparent. I could almost, very dimly, look past it and see the familiar shimmering of the desert sands within its center. “She did it deliberately—a parting gift, maybe. Janella’s been proving to be far more dangerous than she’s ever let on.”
“So we have no choice but to use the other portal?”
“The rest of our group is gone as well,” Noelle reported. “There’s nothing left but the remains of the camp. Did she convince Gracea and the others to follow after her?”
“We’ll worry about that later,” Lady Lan said bleakly. “Right now, we don’t have much choice. I guess the desert will be a nice change of pace from the constant rain and floods.”
“It’s really not,” Arjun muttered.
A strange, unexpected shaking sent us all flat on our backs. I had already conjured a spinning shelf of Air before I was even back on my feet, and realized that Odessa had done the same. Arjun’s Howler was wild with Fire, and he looked itching to point it at someone.
“There!” Lady Lan pointed at the Abyss. To my horror, I saw that more fog was rising from inside of it. It curled into the air, and shadowed beings slowly began lifting themselves out of the gap, red eyes trained in our direction.
“But that’s impossible!” I stuttered. “The world’s moving! We succeeded!”
“The Abyss has not yet been closed,” Odessa whispered. “We haven’t killed the shadows yet. Whatever we’ve done, it’s not enough. They want more from us. It’s not over.”
“Looks like the choice is out of our hands.” Lady Lan gestured at the rock. “Inside, all of you! We can figure out how to fix this later—for now, we jump!”
Epilogue
THE WORLD SPINS, BUT WITH its churning more demons rise.
A demoness is what men call a goddess they cannot control, it is said. And we cannot control Inanna.
A great shape filled the air, towering larger than any of the hellspawn that had come birthing out of this brimstone canal. It had no eyes, but it saw us. It had no mouth but it smiled. It had no face, but its expression shifted. It had not yet completely reconstituted itself, but we knew it would soon be ready to attack again, like it had before.
Daughters, it crooned.
The portal before us sputtered, offering us the sanctuary of the desert.
It wasn’t over. Inanna still hungered. Inanna still wanted her pounds of flesh. There was still some ritual yet to be completed, and what it would demand of us we didn’t know, and feared.
It wasn’t over, but this had to end, even if it had to end with us.
I took my twin sister’s hand, and she tightened her grip in mine.
And together, we jumped.
Acknowledgments
As always, to my agent, Rebecca Podos, for being my constant support and for never wavering in her belief that I am somehow a competent writer.
To the fantastic team over at HarperTeen, without which all of this would not have been possible: my editor, Stephanie Stein, who has an amazing eye for making stories shine, and who for some reason believes in this odd little book; Louisa Currigan, Jessica Berg, and Valerie Shea, who have all been painstakingly patient over my thousand and one fret-induced changes; Molly Fehr, Allison Brown, Michael D’Angelo, and Kristopher Kam for all their amazing work; and Florian Cohen for this absolutely stunning cover.
All my gratitude especially to the brilliant Jocelyn Davies, without whom this idea would not have even been possible.
Thank you also to Shealea Jenice Iral, who has been such an amazing cheerleader for this book and for everything else, and I am so very grateful. Also to Gail Villanueva, Kara Bodegon, Isabelle Adrid, Hazel Ureta, Stef Tran, and Kate Evangelista for being my constants throughout this series. Writing had always been a solo affair for me, but thank you for taking me in. Also to Myrth Alegado and Kate Heceta, for being absolute champions!
I was old enough to remember the 1990 earthquake that hit Luzon and killed over a thousand people; decades later, I can still recall the abject terror we felt then, seeing cabinets fall over and glass break. Old enough to remember Mt. Pinatubo erupting a year earlier, the ashfall great enough to blanket places as far away as Manila, where I lived, in gray soot.
I was definitely old enough in 2006 to remember Typhoon Milenyo, known internationally as
Typhoon Xangsane, which caused massive flooding, landslides, and power outages. I remember being stuck in traffic for nearly five hours when the worst of the storm hit, the call to suspend work too late for us to leave earlier, all my coworkers desperate to get away but not knowing where to go. I watched a billboard crash down along the highway, fortunately missing cars. My boyfriend’s place was flooded up to the waist in rat-and-roach-infested water. Even then, he was luckier; others had to flee to their rooftops because their homes were fully submerged; they had to wait hours for help to arrive.
The Philippines is very much like Aranth. We’re a country constantly beset by monsoons, and Filipinos learn early in life about tragedy through the riverwinds that flow above us, marking the path of incoming typhoons. We never know how bad it’s going to get until it hits. We don’t know how many of us are going to be washed away by the water until the storm passes.
I also remember other things. People returning to rescue children and pets who’d been unable to escape their houses when the waters rose without warning, as they often did. Long lines at supermarkets where people emptied the shelves of cans of food, blankets, medicine, milk formulas, and other essentials—not to hoard, but to donate to the numerous relief groups that often sprout up independently to assist victims. People using makeshift items—basins, homemade canoes, airbeds—to ferry other people to safety, sometimes at great cost. A young boy, Muelmar Magallanes, rescued his family and close to thirty people when floods overcame his village, only to be swept away and drown.
There are many other stories like these, of many other people whose names have since been lost. And when I first sat down to write this story, the idea that the country I grew up in might be so irrevocably changed—or may not even exist—in mere decades, was the incanta in my head that inspired this book and its forthcoming sequel. So many humanitarian crises are due to climate change. If you’d like to help, please do check out https://www.care.org/country/philippines to learn more.