Namesake

by Kate Stradling

  Our own encampment hardly fared better. Charred trees jut toward the sky like blackened sword-points. The inferno destroyed most of the tents, along with any who slept within. Our allied tribes suffered the higher loss because they refused to heed Etricos’s warning for vigilance. Those who remain listen to him now.

  Eight days after that final battle, he decrees it time to return to our own lands. “But only if you feel well enough to travel, Goddess Anjeni,” he says to me in private.

  He knows I will not protest.

  His injuries, like his brother’s, are less severe than mine. The burns have crusted over and the cuts mend. Aitana has a broken arm. Ineri escaped mostly unscathed and has the joy of tending us all as her reward.

  We have fewer horses than people now and can travel only as fast as the slowest among us walk. Demetrios keeps close by me, as do my spark-bearers. Aitana’s brother and sister remain near her, both of them on foot. Their father died in the battle, leaving the pair with no family other than the sister they yet fear.

  Though we make a tattered, frightful group, Etricos rides at our head with his spine straight. One of his warriors cries out our victory to every village we pass. The inhabitants shout praises. Many of them gather their meager belongings and follow our company, until our numbers swell and straggle through the woods and plains in a long line.

  After five days, we arrive at the familiar sloping hills of our safe haven. The waiting city greets us with festivities and feasts. The people bow in reverence to me, though they eye the bandages that yet cover my arm and neck. The raw skin beneath throbs, and I self-consciously toy with the edges of the linen strips.

  “Your injuries are tokens of victory, Anjeni,” says Etricos from beside me. “You above all others merit our praise.”

  My attention strays to Demetrios, who has resumed his position as a mere warrior before the crowds in the council hall. Our return to the city marks a return to the distance between us, for his brother’s sake.

  “You merit more praise than I do, Etricos,” I say. “You have proven yourself a great leader.”

  He scoffs. “Leader? No. We have a goddess. What need have we of any other leader?”

  I look to him sharply. On my other side, Moru angles his head. “You do not aspire to lead the Helenai?” he asks.

  “To what end?” Etricos replies. “I will have no children to inherit. Let the people follow Goddess Anjeni and her chosen consort. The Helenai may establish their dynasty from her issue.”

  My voice lowers to a hiss. “I didn’t come to establish a dynasty. I came to establish a republic. The voice of the people will choose you as the first leader of Helenia.”

  He favors me with a smile. “They will choose you, Goddess. They know to whom they owe their deliverance.”

  “I was never meant to stay among you, Etricos.” The truth of those words—along with the absolute necessity of my eventual departure—thrums through me. Surprise flickers in his eyes. His brother never told him that I would one day leave through the same portal that brought me here.

  He recovers his wits quick enough. “Wherever you go, the people will follow.”

  “They cannot follow me back through the Eternity Gate!”

  A hush falls down the line of tribal elders. They turn from the celebration feast to fix their attention on me.

  Etricos, well aware of his expanded audience, quirks a half-smile. “That may be so. But as long as you are here, Anjeni, you will be the only leader I or anyone else will recognize. You have earned that honor, and we give it to you freely.”

  Moru nods his agreement, along with the other elders on either side of me. My voice catches in disbelief, but what can I say to refute them? Instead I seethe with growing dismay.

  As daylight bleeds into night and the festivities wane, Demetrios escorts me up the hill to my tent.

  “I have to go back,” I blurt. “When the Gate opens again, I have to go back.”

  He studies me, silent. My face burns with self-consciousness—more so beneath the bandage that runs along my neck. The injury disfigures me. I need no mirror to know that my right ear is mangled, and that the scar will encroach upon my cheek. Perhaps he will not lament my departure at all. Aitana’s pretty face emerged from the conflict without a blemish to it.

  “You would abandon me?” he asks.

  My breath leaves my lungs in a whoosh. The strain of the day’s celebrations—of the week’s travels, of the month’s battles, of all my existence in this era—cracks within me. “According to the legends of my time, Demetrios, you are the one who abandons me.”

  He recoils. “What? That’s a lie.”

  I shake my head and resume my path up the hill, but he clamps a hand upon my shoulder and drags me back.

  “Anjeni, it’s a lie. I would never abandon you.”

  I can’t meet his gaze. I shouldn’t have spoken, but I cannot retract my words. He releases his hold upon me and steps back a pace.

  “This is truly what your legends say? I thought I was to choose my own future.”

  Music floats up from the city, a merry tune that contrasts with the somber mood between us. I swallow my emotions and disclose the ugly truth.

  “The warrior Demetrios, the goddess Anjeni’s lover, abandons her for another woman. Anjeni vanishes into the Eternity Gate with a broken heart.”

  “What other woman?” he asks, his voice tight. “Did they give my paramour a name, or am I to run off with an unknown, unsung entity?”

  At this point, I might as well reveal that final detail. I turn my gaze upon the city that glows bright against the darkness around it. “Our legends say that you abandon me for Aitana.”

  “Your legends are absolute rubbish.” He is angry, and rightfully so.

  I raise my hand to his face, though I am surprised that he allows the touch instead of bucking away. “I’m sorry. I should not have spoken. You are not the Demetrios of legends.”

  “But you have believed all this time that I was.”

  “I believed what I had been taught in my infancy, yes. I believed it when I first arrived, and for many weeks afterward. But as I came to know you better, I often thought it would be my fault rather than yours.” My breath squeezes in my chest as I consider this possibility anew. “Perhaps it is my fault still.”

  He grasps my hand upon his cheek and kisses the palm with such ardor that it shoots a wave of goosebumps to my toes. Then, throwing caution to the wind, he wraps his arms around me and kisses me in full view of the celebrating city.

  Fireworks, that’s what this moment needs. They explode in my head, but they should be bursting in the starry sky above.

  “So long as you are here, I will be by your side,” Demetrios says, resting his forehead against mine.

  I steady my breath and will my racing heart to calm. “So long as I am here, your brother will not ascend to his rightful place. Would you lead the Helenai in his stead?”

  A frown wrinkles his brows. “Cosi is a fool. You should command him to play his proper part, and he should obey.”

  I chuckle at the simple solution, but we both know how well it would work. Etricos, having set his mind to a particular course, will not deviate from it.

  Demetrios turns his attention elsewhere. “I am to be your lover but not your husband, then? I don’t like that.”

  “You can be my husband, if you want—if you can find someone to marry us, and if you’re willing to become the consort of a scarred and fraudulent goddess. But not until after the bandages come off, I think.” I raise my right hand, where the linen binds my hidden wounds. What lies beneath that wrap is an unsightly mess.

  “I see no cause to wait unless you wish it, Anjeni.”

  “I think I do.” Uncertainty of the future still roils within me. I cannot rush into such a commitment while my mind is yet in such turmoil.

  With a sigh, Demetrios drapes an arm around my shoulders and guides me toward my waiting tent.

  I contemplate his earlier words
as we walk. “The legends aren’t rubbish, you know. They’re only incomplete—fragments of fact woven together by fancy.”

  “I intend to prove them wrong, at least where my reputation is concerned,” he says.

  Really, I’d be more than grateful if he did.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The city spreads quickly. With the Bulokai vanquished, people flock to the fledgling nation of Helenia and the goddess who watches over it. Tents mushroom and buildings multiply. In council, Moru proposes that I move my dwelling to the hill above the Eternity Gate, where Etricos’s pavilion stands.

  “That is where the leader of Helenia will live,” I say.

  “And you are our leader,” Etricos pipes up. Though the people hail him as a hero, he seems content to farm the plot of land alongside Tora’s grave. He even builds a house there now.

  I have discovered that there’s no point arguing about my leadership. My tent moves from one hill to the other, and the council talks of erecting a permanent structure. I can’t argue against that proposal either. Huna, my perpetual chaperone, deserves a solid roof over her head.

  I fill my days with teaching my spark-bearers. More and more join our ranks from the incoming tribes, no longer in hiding now that the threat of certain death has vanished. Ineri and Aitana share in the responsibility. We feel of Ria’s absence every day, along with the six others who perished in the Bulokai flames, but our younger students steadily progress. One day they will fill the gap their predecessors left behind.

  The dry season looms before us. The afternoons grow hot and the storms ebb from downpours to spitting. On the day that Huna determines my bandages no longer necessary, I remove the dressings and study the scars left behind.

  The mark upon my arm twists from my hand to my shoulder in an angry reddish pink that clashes with the natural earthy color of my skin. It is fire inscribed upon my very flesh, a lifelong reminder of the battle I fought. The mark upon my neck curves up and around toward the back of my head, into the hairline. My earlobe is gone and the shell above it crumpled. The surviving hair closest to it was shaved while I healed, but it will grow back to cover the disfigurement.

  If I wish to cover it.

  The rest of my hair falls past my shoulders now. I study my reflection in a polished disk of metal. I hardly know the woman who looks back at me.

  Should I veil this face and arm from view, to maintain my dignity as a goddess of this people?

  But these scars are tokens of victory, as Etricos said. They prove that I once faced a formidable monster and triumphed.

  I set the mirror aside and bind my hair into a high ponytail. The ruined flesh upon my arm blazes bright as I cross from my tent into the outside world.

  “We wish to return to our own lands, Goddess Anjeni.”

  I sit in counsel with the elders of Helenia. Twenty men, women, and children stand before me. They belong to one of the first tribes to seek refuge with the Helenai, but their elder on the council does not stand in their midst. Instead he shakes his head.

  “There is safety here,” he tells them.

  “And we are grateful for it,” the leader of this small group replies. “But we yearn for our home in the mountains. The snows there will soon melt. Spring and summer will allow us time to rebuild what we have lost. Goddess, please, we wish for your blessing to depart.”

  I look to the elder of their tribe, who shakes his head again. He has done all he can to persuade them, but if they will insist, we cannot force them to remain.

  “The journey will be difficult,” I say. “Your families and your flocks will face danger from marauders along the way.” The remnants of the Bulokai, small bands of warriors who evaded destruction, now haunt the highlands, harassing travelers that pass through their domains. Etricos contends that, in time, we will hunt them to extinction. For now we must focus our efforts elsewhere.

  The leader of this small faction remains undeterred. “We hope, with your blessing, to take ships up the coast and start our trek from there.”

  We have ships now—small, light vessels that bob upon the ocean to catch the fish so essential to this people’s survival. “You wish for a ferry north, then?” I ask.

  The spokesman nods. “Yes. And…” He twiddles his fingers together nervously. I wait for him to gather his courage. “And we invite any who may wish to come with us—farmers, hunters, warriors… spark-bearers.”

  The murmur in our daily crowd deadens to a hush. Everyone focuses on me to gauge my response.

  But I refuse to make a spectacle. “Those who wish to join you may do so. This is a free nation.”

  He glances at the onlookers. Most of them frown, skeptical of the decision.

  “Goddess, I would like to join them.”

  I turn curious eyes upon Aitana. She separates herself from the other spark-bearers that sit in attendance during this morning council. With a stiff neck she meets my gaze.

  Does she expect me to challenge her? To beg her to stay?

  But her attention flits to Etricos, and then to Demetrios at his post by the wall. It is not my reaction she seeks. If she desires opposition from either brother, their disinterest surely must cut her to the quick. Etricos spares her only a sidelong glance before returning his attention to the petitioners. Demetrios merely offers her a wooden smile.

  Aitana’s face flushes with chagrin. “May I join this group, Goddess?”

  Yes, and good riddance.

  “The choice is yours,” I say. “Would your brother and sister go with you?”

  She inclines her head. “They are unaccustomed to this climate. The lands further north would suit them better.” As though she makes this decision on their behalf rather than her own. The strongest of my spark-bearers will hold a high position in this new community. She might even believe she punishes the Helenai for not valuing her more.

  Pity she doesn’t know that I am meant to leave this place. She would be my logical successor here.

  A strong spark-bearer among our allies will ensure them protection on their journey. She can be a teacher should the spark manifest among them.

  All the same, if Ineri were the one asking to go, I would do everything in my power to dissuade her.

  The group leader looks as though he might cry for joy to have such a remarkable addition to his ranks. The word spreads through the city, and when all is decided, roughly eighty souls choose to leave our safe haven for this new destination. Preparations ensue, with an alliance established between this offshoot and the fledgling Helenia. These people will reclaim their lands under our banner. The nation expands through colonization rather than war.

  As their departure nears, Aitana finds excuses to speak with Etricos and Demetrios. She talks of the opportunities, of the mountain homeland they left behind and how the climate of this new settlement might be similar. She hints with everything but words that they should come with her or insist that she remain.

  Etricos has no desire to stray from his beloved Tora’s grave. He ignores her hints outright. Demetrios, fiend that he is, listens and smiles, and when her back is turned he winks at me.

  When the group’s day of departure arrives, a crowd accompanies them to the shore. Etricos and Demetrios go to see them off. On Moru’s advice, I remain behind. The council of Helenia does not wish to encourage others to leave this land; though the goddess might grant permission, she shows no special favor.

  As sunset descends I exit my tent to trailing clouds upon the horizon. Earlier I could spy the little boats upon the ocean, mere specks against the ribbon of glittering waves, but they have moved beyond sight. Most of the farewell crowds have returned. Isolated on Monument Hill, I have encountered none of them, but I expect Demetrios will make his way over sometime this evening.

  Unless Aitana clubbed him over the head and dragged him with her into a boat, that is.

  My steps take me to the hillside where the Eternity Gate looms in its vigil above the city. Shadows stretch across the buildings as the fiery
orange in the sky recedes into purpling darkness. I lie in the grass, as I did in days long past, and contemplate my existence among this people.

  My nerves will calm once I know Aitana is gone. Talented as she is at magic, her sour attitude grates on me daily. Part of me still fears the fate I always believed would occur—particularly when I catch sight of my reflection and the mangled ear I refuse to hide.

  I’m not sure at what point my mind registers the humming. It sounds at first like low white noise, as though it has always been there, but it grows stronger when I focus on it. In confusion, I sit up.

  The air within the Eternity Gate shimmers.

  “Oh.” The syllable leaves my throat on a sigh. Dismay, regret, confusion pervade my thoughts. Is this the universe telling me my purpose here is complete? I glance around. Huna is in the city, Ineri with the younger spark-bearers. Etricos and Demetrios linger somewhere along the path from the ocean, I assume.

  I would have liked to say goodbye.

  A familiar cityscape flashes in the gap, and my heart quickens.

  Home. And yet no longer home. My fear that the Eternity Gate might send me to another time and place dissipates, but a disconnect from the modern world before me lingers. How long has it been since Tana shoved me through? Minutes? Days? Years? How will the people of my era react to the Gate opening? Do they even know it opened a first time?

  I push away from the ground and approach with caution. In wonder, I touch the rippling energy and receive the same electric shock I suffered almost a year ago. I jerk back my hand and hold it protectively to my chest. The cityscape interlaces with its primitive foundation, daytime skyscrapers overlaid upon nighttime huts.

  The Gate may never give me another chance. It may connect elsewhere if it ever opens again. Whether I’m ready to pass through it is of little concern.

  Etricos must ascend to his proper place. That legendary event at least I must honor.

  If I go, I will stride through with triumph and dignity. The goddess Anjeni will return in a blaze of glory, her heart mended from wounds the legend did not know she bore.