by S. M. Beiko
This moon was in pieces, though, if this was it, floating as little connected platforms. Saskia crossed ascending bridges between them, knowing that at the top she’d find the person she was looking for.
“We can’t ever know the gods, though,” Saskia had said, wishing it weren’t true. “I mean, maybe the Paramounts did, because of their connections to them . . . but it’s like any family. If only they’d talked out whatever had happened, things could’ve been different.”
The truth, whatever it was, had always been too hard. Across history and mythology and stories. If only everyone had been honest with each other. If only people — and gods — weren’t motivated by fear. In that way they were all the same, at least. That meant that gods, like people, had flaws, and could course correct, even at the eleventh hour. Old gods and new ones. Saskia clung to that.
The Onyx strobed, and she felt it trying to get inside of her. That sliver of the darklings that had always scared her, teasing her heart, and she tripped, grasping for the Fractal crown, to shut it off, but her hands wouldn’t work.
“No,” she seethed. “We’re separate. Remember our deal.”
No deal, the dark answered, only truth.
She saw the Darklings, all three of them. Then she saw a god who must still be inside the Onyx, the old Quartz, and its triple-horned head. Saskia saw a vision of Darklings in Fia’s reflection, beneath them. Fia said, “My children,” each of their heads swivelling. “I wish I could take it back.”
Saskia found the switch and collapsed with dizziness in a broken hall on the last platform before the top. She was close to ripping the crown off and hurling it over the side, but this wasn’t over yet. She thought of everyone relying on her, of those she’d lost. Papa. Mama. Albert. Even Killian. Then Roan and Eli and Barton and Phae and Natti and Baskar and the Moth Queen and the gods and Ancient and — and —
The story for all of them wasn’t finished and neither was Saskia.
She got her legs back under her and stood at the bottom of a great staircase. She tilted her head to look above, wondering if she stared long enough she’d see the underside of home. There were only stars, constellations she would never recognize.
She sent a prayer up there, like an arrow, to Phae. That love was stronger than Saskia’s fear, and it always would be. She put a foot to the stairs and climbed.
* * *
The Owl King knew she was coming. He put the book away, having read it for a time past counting. A story he already knew. But Roan, obviously, had rejected it. She might never embrace what they’d come here for, because it meant she’d have to face herself. If that’s what she wanted, he’d give it to her. Forever.
Soon the girl, Saskia, would be at the door. And he would give her the answers she sought, but he wasn’t sure what good it would do her, or him.
The Heartwood was the end of it all. And this girl, walking bravely now over the threshold to the top of his domain, was keen to see the page not only turned, but to write that ending herself.
They’d all been so young.
“Saskia.” Eli inclined his head, as if he wasn’t the king here. “My Eyes tell me you’re here to give me that curious, death-grasping stone you brought with you.” His hands, tipped with their black talons, linked before him and brushed against his folded wings which covered his shoulders, his chest. Keeping the Therion shape made him feel further away from the man he’d once been, made him feel safe. “Of course, it’s not true.”
Eli’s broken throne was on level ground. Saskia stood quite far from him, but even at this distance, he could see how tired she was. He knew that feeling well.
“I came here to remind you and Roan of your purposes and to ask why you didn’t fulfill them,” she said.
Eli spread his hands. “We are fulfilling our purposes,” he replied, tone mocking. “Playing our parts. Just like you are.”
Saskia turned red. “You’re both running away! You tried to fix things once, and when it didn’t work out, you hid. Everyone was counting on both of you! And now I have to —” Her voice caught, but she still held her ground, thrusting a finger at him. “You’re both acting like children. But you’re going to be made accountable. And you’re going to tell me exactly what went wrong.”
Eli tilted his head. “Are you done now?” He held up the book, and Saskia faltered. “If it’s all just a story, then what does it matter if it never gets told or finished? Roan and I realized that, in our own ways. We put away the things that made us weak and told a different story. Now we’re stronger for it.”
Saskia walked towards him, fists clenched. “I wish I could put away my responsibilities, too, but I made a choice — a promise,” she said. “I need your help. I need you both to remember. I need the world not to end, because there are still people in it that I care about.”
She lifted her hand to the crown on her head, but there was a black rush in front of her, around her, and suddenly she was hoisted up by a hand and dragged, screaming, until she was dangling over the side of the Roost.
“This story will go on forever, as long as we allow it.” Eli scowled as he held her with one hand. In the other was Baskar’s book, that forbidden story, which he released over the precipice.
“We tell ourselves all kinds of stories,” Saskia choked, grunting under the pressure of his squeezing fist pushing the bones of her wrist against each other. “What kind of story have you and Roan been telling each other?”
Eli’s eyes flexed. “Maybe you don’t deserve to know.”
Then he grasped the Fractal, crushing it, and the switch that controlled it, like it was made of tinfoil.
The Onyx opened like a jaw and swallowed them both.
* * *
The song this time was two melodies — the Onyx, once the Quartz, had its own unique discord. The Moonstone, though cracked, was a gentle flute. They reached for each other tentatively, swirling, recognizing that, despite their differences, they were cut, ultimately, from the same song.
The Calamity Stones, once, had been the hearts of the gods. They trusted them to their descendants. But gods and people were also cut from the same song, and hearts, whoever they belonged to, were easily broken. Easily betrayed. Eli’s heart was no different, even if he tried to convince Saskia he didn’t have one.
Saskia imagined that the darkness both she and Eli were in now may have been inside his Moonstone, his heart, his memory. Whatever was there, he didn’t want Saskia to see it, but she sent her red song ahead of her like a javelin, then ripped the tear wider so she could see.
No, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to show her — he didn’t want to see it. Not again. He had put these things away, just like Roan had, so that he could survive in his cold kingdom, always fighting her. Fighting for her. He did not want to reclaim himself, though he had been trying to get Roan to do this exact thing. Somewhere along the way, he let himself go so he didn’t have to let her go.
They had become trapped by the past and by the uncertainty of what was ahead.
He wasn’t choking Saskia. She was holding him up, and he collapsed in this dark place, head in his hands.
“When I tried to force Roan to reclaim herself, I thought I’d lost her,” he said, looking at his human digits, like they were foreign now. He seemed utterly lost when he stared up at Saskia. “I was lucky she came back to me at all. I would have done anything for her.”
“You still would,” Saskia said, trying to get him up and moving. “Come on.”
He seemed to unravel more the farther she towed him. “But tied up in all the things I’d known about her were the things I — felt — for her.”
He didn’t have to say it for Saskia to understand it, as she saw it happening, felt it inside her, as they went deeper. When he’d tried to force Roan to remember, it was his own perspective he’d thrown at her, not her own memories. All she’d seen was how Eli perceived her. She
still hadn’t opened herself back up. She still didn’t really know herself.
And in all the things he’d forced her to re-learn were things about Eli. His memories. His experiences. And his own mistakes when it came to the Calamity Stones.
His grin appeared, and it was sick. “She’d seen exactly what it cost me, my mother, and my father, when it came to finding the Moonstone. That’s why I can’t forgive her for what she eventually made me do.”
Calamity Stones ruined those who claimed them. Roan knew that. And still she made Eli do this terrible thing. She’d made him do it again. And for her sake, he’d done it. Anything to keep their charade in the underworld going, because there was no future for them, certainly, if they woke Ancient. There was no certainty they just wouldn’t fail again.
What a fool he’d been, finally choosing love over power. He’d been angriest at himself.
The story unfurled before Saskia like an abandoned battlefield of broken promises.
* * *
Eli and Roan made their way beneath the Roost, to the place where Eli had fallen originally. Beyond it was something of a mountain, a last vestige of the Glen, perhaps. The place seemed familiar, even though Eli had barely left their corner of the wilderness in what could have been twenty years. Time meant nothing. This was certainly how the gods must have felt.
“How do you know where you’re going?” he’d asked Roan. He could have tried probing her mind, but he swore never to do it again, swore he could know what she was thinking without it. He’d nearly lost her to his pride, his imagining he knew better than her.
“Just trust me,” she’d said. And he had. He thought he always would.
* * *
Parts of Eli’s fragmented past, those he’d reconstructed with his mother’s help, snicked Saskia’s spirit like shrapnel blowing by. Demelza was a cursed princess in a fable. The Moonstone was put away by Owls because it was too powerful. But the Moonstone woke one day, seeking a Paramount. Phyr needed an avatar in the Uplands and would not be ignored. Her eye went to Demelza. Demelza told no one where it was, but Solomon found out that she knew. She’d trusted him too much. He’d tried to persuade her that it was for the greater good. Pregnant with his child, she sent him away and told him that if he ever tried to come back to either of them for the sake of ambition, she would do something they’d both regret.
But the Moonstone wouldn’t be denied. In its hiding place, it waited, and when Demelza refused it for the last time, it took her mind.
Slowly, at first. So she was still aware of everything coming apart at the seams. So she could know that her son had inherited the vision of the Moonstone’s location, and that it would be found by him eventually. The logic of her madness told her that if she took her own life, maybe the vision would die with her. It hadn’t. Then her spirit had waited many desperate years in the Deadlands, consumed by guilt and regret but holding it together, in case her son was stronger than she was. He wasn’t, it turned out.
His father did return to the little town by the sea and took his son with him into the hidden Denizen world, made promises of power, made Eli realize potential he’d never wanted but couldn’t give back. He grew up and grew hungrier, pushing anyone out of his path who would distract him. Pretending that the hole inside of him wasn’t there.
We’ll find the stone together, his father had said, once Eli had confessed Demelza’s vision. Solomon thought that, once they found the stone, buried deep under fault lines and wind-eroded pathways in an uninhabited place, the stone would cast its eye upon Solomon. He had wanted to spare his son. He had hoped Phyr would do the right thing.
The other Owls agreed that he’d make the best Paramount. But the stone had its own will then, as it did now, and it chose Eli, smothering the last bit of the innocent boy with the demands of the long-dead. Maintain the Narrative. Protect Ancient’s story, Ancient’s plan, whatever the cost. Do this and we will give you great power, the stone’s voices promised. Eli had done terrible things. Allowed terrible things to happen, just like Solomon had. In order to wake up every day, not consumed by this, Eli had put it all away. Demelza had come back to tell him he needed to take all the mistakes, all the darkness, and accept them now. Accept that they were a part of him. Heal around your grief. Help Roan heal from hers.
He’d tried. He’d failed.
“We’ll find the stones together,” Roan had said, and when they crested the top of a cliff she pointed across a chasm of mist to a slab of white that had crashed into a summit just beyond. Eli had seen it in a vision once. The top of the Roost. Phyr’s former throne. Roan was already making for the narrow pass to it, and he knew then he couldn’t stop her. Knew then it was too late.
The only way she’d have known was if another stone, a sister stone, was leading her there.
Eli confronted her when they climbed to the shattered platform, and she stood with her back to him.
“You have the Opal,” he said, clenching his fists. “You had it all along, and you . . . you kept it from me.”
Roan turned in profile, holding a bundle that had been wrapped up in shreds of what may have been the hoodie she’d worn, once upon a time, when they’d come down here together. She unspooled the pieces carefully, and the broken Opal shone, defiant.
“I think I knew I’d need it one day,” she said. “With it, we can both be made new. There are no Uplands for us, Eli. Down here is a new land. Fresh and free from our mistakes.”
“This place is the result of our mistakes. Please, Roan, don’t make them again.”
She was shaking her head, holding the stone lovingly to her chest. “The fire can’t live with all that pain.”
“If you do this,” Eli said, “then you’ll break what is between us forever.” And once that cord snapped, there would be nothing that could ever see them home again.
She gave him a pitying look, then slammed the Opal to her breast. She gasped, maybe in pain, maybe relief, and when a corona shot from it, it cut through the pale rock at her feet, and she fell, cleared away the rubble, and pulled the white-gold stone into her hands.
“You know it has to be like this,” she was saying, cradling the Moonstone as she had cradled Eli close, convincing him that they were moving forward. “You answered it once. You can do it again. And we can become what we were always meant to be.”
He couldn’t believe they were back here again. “I won’t. You know I won’t do it.”
She put the Moonstone down then and backed to the edge of the platform. “You’ll have to.”
Eli rushed, the wind rushed, but it was too late. Roan tipped over the side and fell to the mist. Eli had no wings to catch her and couldn’t make them without the Moonstone.
She really was the only one who knew him, and he screamed, smashing the stone into himself before diving after her. He grabbed her out of the sky, his wings and talons ripping through him with the thrill of an addict’s rush, and she pulled him to her, kissing him with everything they had left before their golden tether broke.
* * *
The dark of the Onyx cradled Eli and Saskia, the two kneeling before each other in this remembering place. They were still inside the Moonstone, inside Eli’s memory. He looked shaken, like he’d just been woken from a draining slumber.
“You loved her,” Saskia said, “and she betrayed you.”
Eli held Saskia’s hands loosely. When she looked down, she saw they were the hands of a child. The Eli before her, in his mind, was so young, a child from a distant shore. Saskia’s age when all of these conflicts were thrust on her so harshly.
Young Eli smiled. “Love and betrayal. It’s what she and I do best.”
Then he showed Saskia what he meant.
* * *
When they touched ground, the two of them upright, Eli held Roan close. She was hot, almost burning in his hands with life. He was shaking — with rage, with absolute despair — and she w
as grinning from ear to ear. He was so relieved to see that grin, to hear her voice, that he hated himself even more.
He let her go.
“Look at you!” she crowed, triumphant. “Now we are the same. You can feel it, I know you can. You look every bit the god you were meant to be.”
Eli stared at his taloned hands in a way that regret couldn’t cover. “I didn’t want this,” he said. “I didn’t.”
“Come on,” Roan said, dusting herself off, as if Eli had seen sense, finally, and all was forgiven. As if things were as they always had been, though they couldn’t ever be again.
She tightened her blade belt and turned to him, holding out a hand. “Now we can do this as we were meant to. Together.”
He stared at her hand, sorely, terribly tempted. His chest throbbed.
So Eli stepped closer. Then he was upon her, talons slashing. They grappled, spinning in their perfected dance, all grace and calculated symmetry. They knew each other too well, though, and she caught his wrists, holding her ground as he struggled. Eli bent over her, shivering with madness. Her feet slid wider on the ground, shuddering, but she pushed back.
Roan’s grin evaporated when she saw the tears streaming down Eli’s face.
“I should kill you for this,” he sobbed. Something inside him cracked, in the general latitude of the Moonstone, where his heart might be. “You keep making the same choices again and again. We were so close. And you . . . you ruined everything.”
Roan’s forehead creased with the effort of holding him back. She was genuinely confused that this wasn’t what he wanted. His hands wrapped around hers in a flash, squeezing so hard he felt the geometry of her bones change. She let out a high-pitched cry from the back of her throat, but she wouldn’t give in. She would break first. Her hands were white hot.