Much world building is only expanding outwards in all directions from a few key details.
She lifted the flag, handing it to me unceremoniously. She ducked under to kiss the hollow of a spiral carved into the gate, and flattened her hands in specific ways. Her forefingers found nooks I would not have seen, and she breathed heavily into the spiral.
The gates slid away with cranky groans. Water spilled out over our feet, washing pottery and broken wood past us into the desert.
Aniv took me into the great welcoming yard of New Spring, which she said was as far as we could go until we dismantled the system of mines. “Find a perch, pacer, and wait.”
I stared at the knee-high water all around. “The mines could be anywhere.”
“Yes. Be careful, and disturb the water itself as little as possible.” She pressed my hand. I pressed back, then walked slowly toward a broken cart that leaned against the blue-green-white tiled wall of some public house. It was awkward but not difficult to climb and then swing up on an old pole from which a sign should have hung. I scrambled to the first balcony, then used windows and the tiny tile decorations along the rooflines to climb to the third balcony. This one was hardly large enough for me to crouch upon, being meant for flowers or pottery, not a man, but it had no rail to be in my way. I could slip down quickly, too, if need be, and see not only the entire yard but well into the surrounding neighborhoods.
Aniv stood in the center of the flooded yard, water lapping her knees, dragging at her soaked robes. She wore blue, green, and black stripes, with occasional thin shocks of orange. That orange was all that kept it from seeming she rose out of the dark water, a thing of water herself.
She spread her bare hands over the water, palms down, and remained still.
For hours.
The sun rose to its pinnacle. Sweat prickled my scalp and slid down my back. I was glad of the veil I still had tied over my hair, soaking some of the sweat away. The edges of it flared out on my brow to shade my eyes somewhat. I stared down at her, let my awareness grow, let the hum fill my skull and slither along my bones. I breathed, I watched, I studied.
Water rippled green everywhere, humming through abandoned buildings. The silk bridges were tattered in places, hanging and drifting like cobwebs. No sign of people, but plenty of bird droppings and evidence of rats, maybe smaller cats. The kind who can live roof to roof. Very few insects other than some beetles. No obvious mines, though I counted sixteen potential hiding places in the surrounding thirty or so meters.
I parted my lips to let the hum into my teeth.
Clouds pulled across the sky.
Aniv was a sundial, tall and straight. Her shadow pointed two hours past noon when I realized there was an angle to the hum.
“Aniv,” I whispered hollowly.
All she did was turn her face to me and nod through the sheer veil.
I went, climbing carefully, and then slipped into the water with as little disturbance as I could. The water sank over the top of my boots, soaking my socks again; the only sound was the quiet lapping of it against me. Ripples rushed gently from me to her, then back again, making an intricate, interlocking pattern.
“What did you see?” she asked me.
“The water … it’s … there’s something about the water itself.”
Aniv stared down at it. “The entire city is wreathed,” she whispered.
“How is that … the water?”
Slowly, she nodded. She touched the tip of one finger into the water. “Rafel, it was not a star mage or insurgent. The mines were set, and the flood itself connected them. The desert did this. I can use the water to do the opposite.”
This city was always wreathed, but it was Brenna’s idea that the water itself somehow connected the mines— nature did what mages could not. Very thematic. I liked it, so I did it.
“Alone?”
“I have you,” she said, with a slant of irony in her gaze that I could read even through the veil.
The world itself connected these flower mines.
Swallowing, I glanced up at the sky. “Tomorrow might be better. We only have maybe five hours of solid light.”
“No, now. I know the layout, I know the water level, and I don’t want to risk it all changing because of wind or nighttime elements. I can do this, and you get as high as you can and watch. Listen. Feel.”
I took her hand. “Are you truly powerful enough for this, Dinah?”
Her mouth twisted. “Late to doubt me now.”
“This task is immense,” I whispered.
Wind rippled the floodwaters, teased at her veil. She suddenly dragged it off her face, pressed it to her chest where it would not get wet. “Rafel.”
I gripped her elbows. The hum connected through my hands, as if I’d grasped the hilts of my sabers. I felt it in my teeth. “I believe you, Aniv. I will watch, and warn you if anything goes wrong.”
As I let her go, she said my name again. “Rafel. Stay high, as high as you can. If anything goes wrong, it will go very, very wrong.”
“You brought the wrong pacer for that,” I said, attempting a smile. “I run toward explosions, remember?”
“Toward me.” Her voice was thin, tense.
“Toward you.” I kissed my knuckles to salute her and made my way slowly through the water again to find my highest perch.
I knew the climax of this story took place in a drowned city, and it involved Aniv and Rafel doing something only they could do—together—that also involved the flower mines. When I began, that’s all I knew about the ending. But I didn’t worry about it, because I hoped writing the story would reveal to me what it needed to be in the same way that working out world building often reveals to me new potential roads and solid answers. I was right: this climactic bomb brings together elements from basically every other example of a flower mine that I explicitly described.
Sometimes it’s okay to trust yourself and just write and hope.
Smoothing out the bumps when you aren’t totally sure as you draft is exactly what revision is for.
• • •
Oh those hours.
Aniv did not put her veil back on, but spread it before her so it floated nearly invisible on the water. It drifted with the gentle, subtle flow of the floodwaters as they curled throughout the city. Like a sniper’s wind-guide, I thought.
She knelt down so the water lapped at her chest and shoulders. Her bound hair turned even blacker as it soaked, the twists like snakes around her shoulder blades, coiling just beneath the surface.
I hummed. I pitched my breath to the hum itself, letting it inside me, vibrating my bones, making my teeth ache. I focused on Aniv, but also on the entire world of lush green water, white-red city, audacious blue sky, small balcony, heartbeat, breath, and most of all, the hum.
I sipped from my narrow, long waterskin, wished to remind Aniv to do the same. She would not, though, not without my putting it to her mouth. Interrupting.
I never needed to relieve myself even as the sun lowered enough to cast long shadows, and knew I was dehydrated. How much worse Aniv must have been.
My vision gradually washed with light that felt somehow the same frequency as the desert song. Perhaps it was a function of fasting, perhaps we needed to be deprived, sun-bloated, balanced on a precipice of nothing but hum and magic, between water and fire.
• • •
She moved so suddenly, so unexpectedly, my humming faltered, my boot slipped.
There’d been no warning, no placing of a net, no altar of opals and carved charms, though how could there have been when water surrounded everything?
Aniv slapped her palms to the water’s surface, then drove her hands under.
All of her followed.
She vanished underwater, swallowed up.
A pause just long enough for me to thrust to my feet—then the center of the yard exploded.
Water rose in a massive bubble, bursting up, tossing her veil away. It flowered out in hundreds of curve
d petal layers, a spray of orchid, the bulk of a rose, pink and vibrant purple, then scatters of yellow and white seed-explosions like a dandelion.
I did not see Aniv.
The water rushed away from the zero point, ripples of shock wave that I saw moving as if the water was a living explosion.
But not in concentric circles, not in every direction. From my vantage I saw it plunge east.
The ripple of magic traveled fast, only going a dozen yards before another watery explosion, then another, and another. They popped like beads around a pearl necklace, one at a time, unevenly spaced, running in one singular direction away from us, around the city.
I stood there, watching, listening to the angry, buzzing hum, and realized—knew—what was happening.
She’d set the wreath off one at a time, like dominos. But the wreath was a massive, connected, circular net, and the beginning point would also be the ending point.
Panicked, I nearly threw myself off the balcony, barely managing to take measured footholds, grip tightly, wait to find the right place to dig my fingers.
The entire city trembled. My chest shuddered and shook from the constant, impossibly loud echo of the wreath.
I fell the final few feet, landing hard in the water, then ran for her.
The hum grew louder and louder—the explosions that had distanced were returning. I heard thunder and slapping rain, I felt the pulse of it.
She was still underwater. I dove into the shallow flood, dragging my fingers along drowned cobblestones, mouth open to call her name, choking on water—all with that screaming wreath running back at me, running, running, bringing the city and floodwater with it.
• • •
I found her, the edge of her robe, and I struggled to bring her to the surface, dragging at too much weight. But I managed, yelling her name, pulling her, limp, against me. She was cold and soaked, but her mouth opened and breath was there. Her eyelids fluttered. I shook her, jumping up and down. “Aniv!”
The thunder was upon us.
She suddenly threw out her hands, toward the coming power, and knocked her head back like she would embrace it with her entire self.
I wrapped around her, dropping us both down.
I made myself into a shell for Aniv, my back to the approach of death.
It drove hard and sharp through me, into her.
Aniv’s body flared with vibrating heat.
My skull shook, I ground my teeth together and roared, screamed just like the screaming city, as my entire body pulled and shattered.
In my arms, Aniv caught it all.
• • •
I don’t know if she’d have been fine, had I stayed up on my balcony, or if she’d have died. If I interfered and that’s why it was so hard, or if I saved her.
#theme
• • •
I drifted on water, floating faceup because she had turned me over. It was the only reason I breathed: my mouth was to the stars; flowing, comforting, healing water buoyed my aching body. No pressure of gravity to ruin my lungs even though every breath made the fire in my ribs burn and burn. I heard nothing but the water, the ocean of blood in my ears, dull, but filling everything. Maybe she said something, but her voice was blurred like a voice through water. Water blinded me, filled my nose, ruined my ears and all my skin so I felt nothing but the air on my lips and the fire in my rib cage.
• • •
They found us floating, both of us unconscious. A team of special service and one of the other star clan mages, led by Jarair. They’d followed after us, and even Jarair heard the desert shriek when the city exploded. Later, I was told Dinah Aniv woke as they were taking me away, pulling us apart. She said my name, said, Rafel Sal AnLenia, the Desert’s Pacer.
• • •
I still don’t hear anything but the ocean of blood in my head. At least I can sleep.
• • •
It’s been months. I can run again, after so long being unable to catch my breath, after waking every few hours with sharp pain in my chest or back, my body refusing to listen to my screaming mind, begging to breathe, to breathe.
Three of my molars fell out of my head, crumbled from grinding, shaking magic.
My ears are ruined. The roar of blood overwhelms words, the wind, music, anything I should be able to hear. My mother gave me a chalkboard so she could write down specific things she wanted to say.
Rest, stretching, slow walks with a cane, all of it embarrassing for a young man, especially the now-famous second son of the Queen’s youngest niece. Though Rafel the Desert Pacer would not be famous if he wasn’t so broken. If he hadn’t done what he did in that drowned city.
With her.
Without her.
Running is hardest on the beaches below Mother’s cliff house. Where the footing is loose and uneven, where I wish the pale, bone-colored sand were vibrant red or the orange of life and twilight. Where I can see the rhythm of the waves, but not hear it at all.
Sometimes if I stand still, if I kneel where the foamy surf swirls around my legs, sometimes then I can feel the rhythm of the ocean, the song of An Riel. It is not the hum, but it pounds in my bones and vibrates up my teeth.
• • •
I tear off my dull blue coat and toss it into the ocean surf. The salt water floods it, darkening it, until it is only a shadow of darker blue against the blue of the water. When I return to the house, shivering, I tell my mother I want something brighter.
• • •
When my mother talks to me, writing at the same time, I hear the tone of her voice, a blur of sound, and I see her lips move. Sometimes I can read it, and I think of Dinah Aniv caressing the smooth ceramic lines of an orchid mine. I think of her heavy black hair, her large, soft hands, and I think of her secrets.
Our secrets.
Aunt Lusha talks to me about my future, says I need work to focus my melancholy. Her handwriting is scratchy and bold, impatient. I tell her I’m not melancholy, and she lowers her chin, eyes me suspiciously and asks if I’m dumb then, in addition to being deaf, or lost in memories of the Sweet, or in love.
Oh, she’s not surprised when I startle at that. She makes a disgusted sound I can’t hear but can easily read in the shape of her mouth.
I want to tell her all of it. I don’t want this to be a secret. My heart.
In the beginning, Rafel did not want to tell his secrets to anybody, but he’s changed. I shouldn’t have to put a line in the text reminding readers of his initial reluctance to share secrets, not if I’ve done my job right.
• • •
There are letters from all over An Riel, there are summons from ladies and the royal city, but not from the Queen herself, so I can ignore them for now, pretend I’m still recovering, pretend it’s nothing personal. Besides letters, all my aunts come, and my sisters. Even my brother, the first son of AnLenia, Onor. His sons are with him, little fat boys with eager hands and smiles, reddish cheeks darker than mine because Onor’s respected wife is as brown as amber trees. Onor’s sons—three of them, unbelievably; the second one I’ve only seen once when he was a babe, the third never at all—draw sun and flowers made of sticks and triangles onto my chalkboard like words, and even though I can speak just fine, I draw the shape of the desert for them, and flowers shaped like roses and tulips and danger.
Onor cuts my hair, shaves my face, and only nicks my skin once, apologizing but not well. He calls me Pacer like it means Worm because I’m his little brother, but when his sons are with us, he tells them to be as strong as their uncle if they can.
Before he leaves, he tells me he is glad I was injured enough that I can never go back to soldiering. “If you went back again,” he whispers, “I fear we would never even find your bones. And those crazy desert gods do not know how to remember men like you.”
• • •
I write it all down because it sticks in my gut.
These ending sections mirror the beginning, because while there’s been change and
character development, we’ve cycled back around to the questions from the beginning. While this story has been asking those questions, I’ve only suggested answers. That’s in part because this is a novella, not a novel. I like to end my short works with open endings: they ask questions and at most suggest what the answers to those questions might be. I present my “case” in the form of the story and leave it to the reader to decide what’s next, to come to a conclusion based on the evidence I’ve provided.
Novels, on the other hand, require more answers. They end with a period, not with ellipses.
• • •
Jarair came to see me. He wrote his greeting on the chalk slab, but then just clapped my shoulder and grinned. His hair is shaggy, and out of uniform he dresses surprisingly well, like a middle son angling for the attention of fine, royal women. Good thing all my sisters already chose their men.
Before he could say anything, I handed him this entire sheaf of paper, everything up to this point, and he read it. His brow lifted in humor or wrinkled in surprise. He frowned, he frowned harder, his mouth went expressionless, and when he was done, he let the last page flutter down against the pile and stared at me. He only said one harsh word in response.
It was an easy curse to read in his mouth.
I said it back, with more emphasis.
• • •
I do not know what to do with myself but write. Feel the ocean’s rhythm and pretend it is like the hum. I don’t know if I can send her a cuff of mother’s pearl and a note that it reminds me of her red-pink-purple robe. I only know she lives.
• • •
There’s nothing left to say; there is everything left to say.
• • •
Today I—
• • •
Today I was told the great star mage Dinah Aniv, Gift of the Desert, is here in An Riel.
The Anatomy of Curiosity Page 16