by S. M. Beiko
Phae kept the Horned Quartz, the hollow, lightless shell of it, inside another shell. She’d put it in a locket, where she couldn’t touch it with her skin, because it was a painful empty hope that it would reflect its unique warmth into her. It wouldn’t ever again.
While Saskia didn’t pretend to have a window into Phae’s mind, or her secret pains, she knew that Phae didn’t open up the locket often, and that she took it off when she showered in the mornings. Saskia had been careful, when she was finally allowed the privilege to walk to and from the Old Leg facility on her own, to test the weight of rocks and rubble she picked up on sidewalks, on boulevards, at abandoned construction sites. Eventually, she found one similar to the size and weight of a triple-god’s heart.
She held the Horned Quartz now on her walk home, pulling it free from her ETG uniform pocket. Since it was made of material not of this dimension — she scoffed out the chancellor’s word — it wasn’t detected by any of the body scanners during her daily searches. She’d become good at taking risks.
Finding the dummy rock to be the Quartz’s stand-in had been easy. But lying to Phae had been even easier than that, and that unnerved Saskia most.
This job seemed tailored just for her: part of the wretched signal filtering unchecked in her head; Barton’s message coming through just to her; the Moth Queen’s mission. All of it converged with Saskia. She didn’t want to think about the implications of that just now and had successfully plunged through her second week, thinking of nothing other than the work at hand, all of it, even this dead Calamity Stone she’d borrowed from the woman who’d taken her in. The deeper she went, the more determined she was to succeed, and the more alone she felt.
All the lying made her feel like Ella. She’d barely thought of the girl she’d lamely thought she loved. There was barely any room for her right now. She spared her one thought, even if it felt inauthentic right now — When this is all done, I’ll do everything I can to save her. This was quickly overridden by that storyteller’s voice: Maybe she doesn’t want to be saved.
Saskia stopped, running a finger over the crack in the Quartz. It sang, Phae told her. It harmonized with the voices of all the sister stones forming a chorus. And there was another song, too, one that came from the answering dark. It was like no music you could ever hope to remember.
During the day, in the labs, Saskia was only focused on the signal. Parsing it. What she found or thought about it, she kept to herself. It’s not like the other techs were sharing their findings just yet, either; they pettily wanted a reward, a pat on the head, and everyone was racing for that praise. Saskia had already found all she needed, and if she was lucky she could test her theory as soon as tomorrow, before the chancellor forced her to share what she’d discovered. After he’d dropped the signal on the engineering team a week ago, Grant had flown away again halfway across the world for some dire meeting at the United Nations. He would be back at HQ within the next day or two, in fact, so she’d have to be quick about it. Now that she knew she could sneak the Quartz in, undetected, it was just a matter of willing herself to carry out her plan.
Beneath the signal’s wavelength, and in the back of her own head, it wasn’t just broken static. It was a song. It could be plotted on a staff, like music on a sheet, but there were a few bars missing, overlapping notes that were too faint to pick up. If Saskia could run the signal through the Quartz . . . the schematic for building a device that could do this had come so easily, and now it was close to being finished. This was the only superpower of hers that she could possibly believe in.
She’d brought the Quartz today to test it, but that was all. Before she did anything too drastic, Saskia needed to talk to someone. Anyone. Out here in the overcast, the biting cold, she was tired of being alone. She thrust the stone back in her pocket, then pressed her thumb hard enough into her forehead to start a headache.
“I know you’re watching me,” she said, standing there on the boulevard on Broadway. There were ETG guards everywhere, but what did she have to worry about them for? She was one of them now. If they saw her talking to herself, they’d maybe think her crazy, but they wouldn’t question the uniform. No one did.
She pressed harder, never closing her eyes. The place where she’d seen the mark, back at Omand’s Creek. She’d tried all this before, and only felt stupid afterwards, but there was nothing lost in trying again.
“You’re not one of them,” the Moth Queen said. She hadn’t been there, then all at once she was everywhere, flickering like a candle about to gutter out in an autumn windstorm. Those weren’t leaves filling the air.
“I’m not a Denizen. Not loyal to the ETG. I’m no one, just doing what you told me to do.”
Saskia folded her arms, looking out into the traffic-heavy streets, thinking about how every person in every car passing by had a story, had their own precious world, influenced by and influencing all the worlds of everyone else around them. Saskia’s life had become about slipping into another world — but whose?
“I’ve been thinking. About why I was marked.” She toed the dirt with her regulation boots. “I’m a Mundane. We can’t see the Moth Queen, can we? You’re just a projection, in a way. The shepherd of death appears differently to everyone else, but the Moth Queen is only visible to descendants of Ancient. You told me your reasons for needing me, but I still —”
“Question them?” The Moth Queen had risen and seemed to be expanding, the needle fingers working in a way that suddenly made Saskia feel like she was weaving someone else’s cocoon, right there in front of her. “You are right to. And, you are right.” The fingers stalled, tented. “I appear to those touched by Ancient, and its many tendrils. You were touched by one of them.”
A needle finger pointed upward. Saskia didn’t look; she didn’t want to hear that horrible noise again, to see red. Her inner ear itched with the promise of it.
“The Darklings? But they’re not descended from Ancient. They’re Ancient’s cosmic enemies. Destruction versus Creation. The inverse. Ancient didn’t make them.” The Moth Queen’s small mouth closed, and nothing moved in her large eyes.
Saskia corrected herself. “Okay. Fia did, I guess.”
Saskia couldn’t help frowning, then she turned and started towards the back of the Old Leg, towards the river, where she could walk under the bridge to get to the other side.
“You are afraid of the signal and what it means that you have the missing piece of it,” the Moth Queen said, following her in a riptide of little wings. “You are right to be.”
“I’m always right, huh?” Saskia retorted, feeling her temper rising. “You said the choice was mine, but you lied. Everything is predetermined. The Narrative. That horror moon. Roan and Eli thought they were doing the right thing. So did Barton. What if I do everything the way I’m supposed to, and it all goes wrong anyway?”
“That’s life,” the Moth Queen answered. “That’s not my area of expertise, alas.”
Saskia snorted. “Right.”
A moth big as Saskia’s hand brushed against her face, and Saskia’s vision went out just before she crossed the back lane behind the compound and into the path of a Hummer. It jackknifed onto Reclamation without a backward glance.
“It’s not your time yet,” the Moth Queen said now as she had earlier, extending one of her countless palms to the great Atlas moth that had stopped Saskia mid-step. “If only you could see with my eyes. But I can only see with one.”
The moth on her hand turned over, revealing two eyes on its wings — one hazel, one amber.
Saskia nearly swallowed her tongue. She had seen those eyes before.
“Roan?” she asked. “You can . . . see what Roan does, through her spirit eye, in the realms?” Then the Moth Queen knew so much more than she was letting on. And this meant that Roan was alive, whatever that meant now.
The Atlas moth fluttered off, devoured by the ongoi
ng hurricane of wings that seemed to both follow, consume, and comprise the Queen when she manifested. “Roan was marked by me. So were many others before her. Was that also part of the plan, or the result of a choice? Was stopping that plan Roan’s idea, her grandmother’s, or mine? If Zabor still lived in this river, would darkness have still found a way into the sky above? These are the questions that even an eternity can’t answer. All the world’s a prism, and there are too many ways we can be refracted through it.”
Saskia grabbed a fistful of her shirt, as if she were going to rip it clean off. She crossed the street, walked past the Moth Queen, and paused at the top of the stairs leading down to the river path.
She turned to the great, hulking creature that had come to her, of all people, for help. Death herself with her own desires. “And what if you can’t shine a dark thing through a prism?”
Suddenly, the Moth Queen’s face was in Saskia’s. There were many eyes there, changing, pulsing. It was terrible. It was beautiful. She could see inside Saskia in a way that Solomon Rathgar couldn’t. Saskia had been lying to everyone so much, and to herself, that she was afraid the Moth Queen would eventually see that anything good in her had been swallowed, so long ago, in a forest in the Highlands.
“At least,” the Moth Queen said, “darkness is consistent.”
Just as soon as the Moth Queen had appeared, she was gone. Saskia sighed, then turned, determined to at least get home and replace the Quartz before Phae noticed.
In the path in front of her, under the bridge, stood Ella.
“Saskia,” she croaked, a painful whisper.
Saskia was already running three steps down at a time, but she came up short when another figure materialized from the musty shadows of the bridge’s recess.
Tears ran down Ella’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said. Even with the tears, she didn’t look sorry.
“Miss Das.” This voice Saskia snapped to immediately: Solomon Rathgar. “We need to speak with you.”
Her fists shook. “I’ve heard the stories about you,” Saskia said. “You hurt her, didn’t you?”
Solomon glanced at Ella, then back to Saskia. “What stories might those be?” he asked, hands folded behind his back. “There were always too many to catalogue.”
Ella moved towards Solomon, as if seeking comfort. He did not touch her, but she looked terrified, despite that. “That you’re a traitor!” Saskia shouted. “Leave Ella alone! What do you want from me?”
“Traitor.” Solomon seemed to be tasting the word. His wavy, iron-grey hair still made him appear like a diminished circus lion, his strength long fled but still with all his teeth. “I’m sure when the stories about you are told, they’ll say the same thing. Traitor to Denizens. Traitor to Mundanes. Traitor to your family.”
Saskia was still looking at Ella and hissed, “Why don’t you fight him? Are they controlling you?”
Ella’s face hardened. “No,” she said. “But someone’s been controlling you.”
Saskia glanced down, realizing she was still wearing her ETG uniform. She slapped a hand over the starburst crest too late. “I can explain. I can explain all of it. I’m doing it for — I’m trying to —”
“Save the world?” Solomon sighed. “That platitude does get rather old. But then I remember how young you are.”
There were only the two of them. Saskia could run, but he could stop her, mid-step, if he wanted to. Solomon Rathgar was the most powerful Owl still allowed to move around by day. And Ella was Saskia’s girlfriend. Ella wouldn’t —
They’d been apart so long Saskia had forgotten that Ella was fast, a holdover from dance class, while Saskia’s sport was cross-country running. Ella had grabbed Saskia’s forearm tightly before she could think of doing anything else.
She tried to shove her off without hurting her, but Ella wasn’t so cautious. She landed a blow directly to Saskia’s stomach, knocking the air right out of her, and when she crumpled, Ella pivoted behind her, wrapping her arms around her waist, holding her up and keeping her from falling.
Saskia gasped, coughed. Ella had put her arms around Saskia so many times since they’d known each other. Some rebelling neurons overrode her fight impulse.
Saskia choked, “Ella — stop.”
Solomon strode forward, leaning on a cherrywood cane. He lifted his fine-boned hands and pressed his thumbs gently to Saskia’s temples.
Saskia tried reason. “You said you wanted . . . to talk . . .”
“More accurately,” Solomon cut in, “I need you to sing.”
Solomon’s gaze darted over Saskia’s shoulder to Ella. She let Saskia go abruptly, stepping aside so quickly Saskia nearly fell over, but the power of Solomon’s suggestion kept her upright. Solomon was only grazing her with the barest touch, his mind gentle. He was not there to control it, Saskia suddenly felt, but that was no comfort. Not after Ella.
“I’m going to help you,” she heard him say, “and when I do, you’ll surely help the rest of us. I just want to make sure what I heard when we first met is still there.”
But Saskia could barely hear him. She stared straight ahead, Ella on the edge of her sight. She tried to hold on to her, but she was getting farther and farther away. Saskia didn’t understand, but Ella was alive, and she smiled, like she was dreaming.
Solomon threw his mind into the painful knot inside Saskia’s. His face contorted wretchedly as it hadn’t during his assessment in the lab.
“Ella,” Saskia heard him grunt, “cover your ears.”
Saskia opened her mouth.
That horrible, high-pitched whine in her head, the red strobing in her eyes. She wanted it both to stop and to slow down so she could read the message. It was too fast. It was so loud. The stones sang to each other, Phae said, but something from the dark answered . . .
The red song filled her every sense. It was far more terrifying than the Moth Queen could ever promise. The blanks of the ETG’s signal filled in. The sigils formed its message.
Saskia felt herself scream somewhere inside, then felt herself fall.
Zephyr Rising
Scotland, 1987
Demelza was a fair-haired beauty on the island, as wild as the sea and the wind that stirred it. She clung close to family, minded her god, and dreamed, most highly, of love.
“Be careful,” Agathe warned. Agathe was old even when she was really Demelza’s age, always ready with a warning or a proverb or an extra scarf against the chill. Demelza wouldn’t trade Agathe for anyone, not even a lover.
“I’ll be fine.” Demelza waved Agathe off now, but she was already staring across the meeting hall, unable to keep from smiling at the man who’d glanced at her from the corner of his eye.
Those eyes were fierce, almost calculating, and definitely troubled. Demelza had, of course, heard of Solomon Rathgar, knew exactly what he was about. Who didn’t? A progressive, forthright man, older than her but likely no wiser, and keen to upend the Council of Owls with his radical ideas. Others feared what he would do with his new seat as their de facto leader, feared it would change everything.
She was predisposed to like him already.
This was likely because Demelza feared little. Least of all this Denizen man with his night-black city suit and chestnut locks. He looked too well groomed for the fishing village of Uig, far too controlled for the wild sea that had rocked the Isle of Skye for thousands of years. If he was a Son of the Wind, it was the kind that felt like a clean papercut on your cheek. Like a reprimand.
So she savoured the look of real shock on his face when she opened up her mental wall and fired a psychic spark at him, mental contact static. “Knock, knock,” the spark said.
Rathgar smiled at her. Maybe against his better judgment, Demelza imagined.
But he didn’t approach her. He was engaged in conversation with Uig’s councilman, also an Owl, and the room was buzzing
with still-capped anticipation for the ritual and revels ahead. He turned away, then, and left a telepathic message in his wake that only confirmed he’d pursue what she’d just instigated: “Later.”
The gathering went as it always did, in Demelza’s twenty-some years of knowing it: they met within the central meeting hall beneath the kirk, then went out together while there was still daylight, trekking towards the Fairy Glen like any herd of single-minded sheep. Down the highway, left on the unmarked dirt road, and into the roaring windy field and hills. This place had been Demelza’s beloved playground and a sacred place to the Owls of the Highlands.
It was the annual celebration of the summer solstice, a marking of time past and things to come — the Owls of the area called the gathering the Zephyr Pull. Demelza had grown up amid these seasonal events, had marked her life by them as so many had in their own parts of the world, but now that the Owl Council had come to Skye, with their brimstone-enigma leader in tow, she was more than curious.
After the long walk, they gathered beneath the caer, a twenty-foot crest of red rock nestled in the conical hills that could be climbed from behind if you were young and foolish. Rathgar took his place in front of the crowd, to deliver what Demelza imagined would be the usual opening message of Family unity, of loyalty to the burden the Owls carried in shielding all Denizens from those who would do them harm. Rathgar waited as the assembled crowd adjusted their psychic barriers to let his message in, rather than waiting for him to shout above the high gales rippling through the hills.
But when the words and images fed into Demelza’s mind, her lowered guard made it feel more like a sucker punch than a reassurance. Her breath hitched as Rathgar revealed his true reason for coming.
She had heard the rumours, of course, long before this day. At first, with her usual cynical scoffing, the whole thing had sounded like a bold lark. Now that it was confirmed by Rathgar himself, by the plan he unfolded before them as a carefully drawn blueprint, there was nothing remotely amusing about it.