by Alyssa Wees
A book, a man, simple but clever answers. Some riddles are harder than others, and some have multiple parts to them, but always they have one clear solution.
But this? This is something else entirely.
How is a girl like a sky?
I think of what Varon told me when I was the Witch, that he would always find me because all worlds saw the same sky, even in dreams. And how, in the darkness of the attic, he said that if he is a single star burning, then I am an entire sky full of them.
My confident smile shrivels as I clench my jaw.
The king is mocking me.
“This isn’t fair!” I shout, and the sphinx grumbles, low. “You said I had to answer a riddle, but this is more like a cruel joke!”
“Is that your answer?”
“No!”
“You are running out of time.”
I clutch the sides of my head as if that will help me think harder, faster, but my mind is completely blank, and panic is washing through me. “I don’t know, I don’t know!”
“Then you lose,” says the king, and the sphinx grumbles again, but in hunger this time. “Eat.”
“Varon, close your eyes!” I cry as I bring my hands up, acting almost without thinking. “Alita alor!”
A starburst of searing light explodes from between my hands as I clap them together, so bright that for a split second the whole room is illuminated. I squint through the brilliance but still catch the barest glimpse: of the towering sphinx with his paws holding Varon in place, the half-moon of decaying tooth thrones, the shriveled body of my grandfather, the glint of his crown. The sphinx shrieks, reels back, and disappears, the king’s concentration disrupted in the sudden flash.
Varon gasps as the pressure on him is released. I stagger forward, reaching for him.
“Thanks for not letting me get eaten,” he says as I find his arm and help him to his feet.
“Who s-says you’re not going to be eaten?” I grin up at him even though he can’t see me. Even though I’m shaking so hard that I can barely speak. “I was only s-saving you for myself.”
He starts to laugh, a true laugh, something I’ve never heard from him before. Quick and deep, slightly hoarse. But the sound is cut short.
“I see,” the king says, and I press myself closer to Varon’s side. “You will not let anyone kill the boy. Not me, not a nymph, not a sphinx. Perhaps that honor should be yours alone?”
I grip Varon’s arm, my nails sinking into his skin, deeper and deeper. He doesn’t cry out, but his muscles go taut. I try to release him, but I can’t.
I can’t.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I say as a prickling pain snakes down the back of my neck and through my chest, and claws all the way to my fingertips, like a long, curving splinter thrust under my skin and into my nervous system.
“I know it’s not your fault, whatever happens,” Varon says quickly. “But, Rhea, I—”
“Stielle,” the king says, cutting him off.
At once I raise my hands, and lunge.
Varon only barely evades me, twisting and darting away. But as long as I feel him there, the prickle of his magic, then I can still find him. And the king can too.
“Shoot him,” the king says, and I close my eyes, concentrating on pushing the king’s magic out of my mind. I picture it as a stake driven into my heart, but when I reach to yank it out, my hands won’t obey me, even in my own imagination. “Forla.”
A hard, glimmering crystal sphere of magic forms in my palms, its light cutting through the dark as I hurl it. I try to aim to the side, avoiding Varon as much as I can, wrangling against the king’s command, the itching, consuming urge to direct it at Varon’s chest. I can barely see. I can barely breathe, and I definitely can’t think straight, but there is no cry of pain or crunch of bone, and I know I’ve missed him. I haven’t killed him.
Yet.
Again the king tells me to shoot, and again I let loose another crystal knot, and again I miss and again Varon jumps aside. But somehow his dodging seems only reflexive. He is not determined—he’s resigned.
“Go after him!” I gasp, fighting against the king’s control for use of my voice, at least. At another word from the king, I stalk forward, another crystal blooming in my palms, ready to fire just as soon as I locate him. “Don’t let me do this!”
“Not on my own.” Varon’s voice comes from a spot very close, too close, just a little to the left. “I can’t match him on my own.”
“Shoot!” the king bellows. The crystal arcs out of my palm as the king’s will digs ever deeper into me, barbed and poisonous. Varon swears, and I know I’ve grazed him. I can only pray it’s nowhere vital. We circle each other, squinting in the dim.
Briefly I wonder why the king doesn’t simply command Varon to stay still so that I can hit him, but then I realize that the entirety of his energy is focused on me. If his attention were divided, he could not control me so easily.
“Let’s play a game,” the king says then. “A guessing game. Guess my name, and I’ll let the boy go free.”
I ignore him. I know there will be no end until his heart or mine has stopped beating. Another crystalline shot of magic rips from my hands, but at the last second before it strikes Varon, I shout “Fifalda!” and the bullet turns into a butterfly, harmless.
“Then fight me,” I beg Varon. “Don’t make me do this! Varon, come on.”
“I will not hurt you,” he says, and I spring toward his voice, this time clawing at the air with my fingers, reaching for him. If I touch him, I will destroy him.
I must not touch him.
I try to wrench the king’s dark magic from my mind, but it is jammed in too deeply. I attempt a spell, but the words won’t come out right. “Release—I mean, liesig—I mean”— fumbling, foggy, I mutter “licsen” by accident. Snow swirls down from the sky, cold and thick and stinging my skin, the wind whipping my hair into my eyes.
“C-crawvone,” I say, a new plan forming, and the snow congeals like blood, clumping together in the shape of a thousand icy crows just over our heads. With a peal of chilling caws and the fluttering of slushy wings, the murder of wraith-birds flies up and out of the ballroom, their frozen feathers glinting faintly in the starlight.
The starlight.
With the snow gone, I can see it: the sky.
The king—he’s weakening. His darkness wavers.
As soon as I think it, he tightens his clutch on my mind. At his urging I jump forward, and Varon is right there; we collide, crash to the ground. I land on top of him and hold him there, pinned on his back with my knees on either side of his hips, even though we both know that he is physically stronger than I am, bigger and broader, and that he could easily push me off him. He could push me off him and run. Escape.
But he doesn’t do either of those things. Stupid, stupid! I want to shriek. But instead I whisper, words meant only for him.
“Tell me a story.” I place my palms on his chest and lean down closer to him. “A fairy story.”
He does not hesitate.
“We live in a house with no attic,” he says, so softly that I could curl up inside his voice and sleep forever. “Every morning, I kiss you awake.”
My fingers crawl up, up toward his neck, as I fight the darkness inside me. I can barely breathe around the scream stuck in my throat, joy and despair all mixed up together. He is a wish I want to come true again and again and again.
“It’s not too late to save him,” the king says quietly, almost soothingly, as if he understands my situation and truly wants to help. “All you have to do is say my name.”
I shake my head, crying thick, fast tears. “You don’t know yourself, do you? That’s why you want me to guess. You’re tricking me into giving you your name back, because there’s power in a name, and without one, you ar
e nothing.” Varon struggles to sit up, but I’m still on top of him and he can’t move much. Propped on his elbow, he reaches up with his other hand to wipe my cheeks dry. His fingers are warm, and the gesture only makes me cry harder.
“You don’t have a name,” I tell the king. “Maybe you did once, but not anymore. You’re just a pit of blackness, where all the crushed things live. Where all the gutted things go when they are not beautiful anymore, and will never be beautiful again. The things that can’t be redeemed.” I take a ragged breath and keep going. “And even though you talk of glory and deathlessness, I think you are afraid of your darkness. I think you are afraid of what you will become. You don’t want my heart—you just want your name back. You offer me your crown only because you want someone else to bear your burden while you walk free; you want to feel the sun on your skin again, unwrinkled and whole. Sometimes, though, there’s no getting back what we’ve lost. Speaking your name will not be enough.”
There is a long, hard silence.
“Squeeze his throat.”
I push Varon back down, roughly, so that his skull slams into the floor. My hands crawl to his throat. I sob, and for once I’m glad that I can’t see his face.
“Asmorihin.”
My fingertips jab into Varon’s warm, soft flesh, press on his windpipe.
The wind leaves his chest, and I try to pull back, but I can’t. I strangle him.
I strangle him.
I am strangling him.
I tip my head back and look up.
“Help me,” I say to the stars. “I am so small. But you—you are vast and bright.”
And they say, Silly girl.
They say, Don’t you know how expansive you are, how endless?
They say, All you have to do is ask.
A question, not a command. Not like the king, who forced the stars down to scorch the forest.
“Will you come?”
They do not answer.
Instead they fall.
Well, not quite. They don’t fall, exactly; it’s more deliberate than that.
The stars—they slash, they slice, they scythe, flushed and flashing, coming to set the night on fire.
I watch them, and I think the king sees them too.
“What is my name?” demands the king as they get closer and closer. Desperate, pleading: “What is it, what is it, what is my name?”
I laugh, shaky and relieved. Glitter-mist puffs like frozen breath from my mouth, bright in the air around my head. The stars dart down, and I peel the king’s magic off me like a scab, revealing the shiny pink skin underneath.
I let go of Varon as the first streak of snickering starlight strikes the floor near us, burning a ragged hole in the stone. The stars streak like rain, sizzling where they land. All around us, the old wing of the castle is melting.
For a second Varon is still, and I am reduced to this, just cold lips and sleeplessness, a girl with a heart hung upside down to dry out, shriveled and preserved at the very moment it stopped.
I wait.
I wait.
I wait.
He inhales, and my heart starts again. I roll away from him, letting him catch his breath. He puts his arm around my shoulders, and I support him as we stand.
The star-spray is everywhere, lacing the room with light, touching down all around but never touching us, avoiding our vulnerable skin and the souls within.
“Can you run?” I ask, a golden glow illuminating his eyes, his cheeks, his lips.
He nods. “Let’s go.”
We run, never stopping or slowing, evenly and steadily across the room as the darkness churns and strains against the dazzling starshine filling up the space. The Star Fire catches on the castle, and even its steel skeleton bubbles and burns.
The king groans.
I let go of Varon as we reach the door, so that I can lay both my hands against it, and spirals of silver scissor through its wooden surface. The doors crack open, and I turn back to the room one last time. More stars plummet, and patches of spreading flame smolder across the floor like a trail of fiery crumbs, twisting from the spot where we just were. Marking the way to the darkest place in the castle.
But we will not need to find our way back. Never ever.
“Imagine this,” I say to the king as tiny specks of stars stick to him and eat away at his skin. “A child. Lying in bed at night, trembling in the dark, picturing the monster beneath her bed. And that monster? It may have green scaly skin, or blood-dipped claws, or a thousand dilated eyes, but that monster is always, always you.”
A faint, brittle voice: “Only if the child is always you.”
“You’re forgetting: the child can exist without the monster. But the monster is nothing, nowhere, no one, without the child who dreams it into being.”
There is no reply, only this: a brief, urgent, echoing scream.
Varon and I stumble-spill out of the burning palace doors, tripping and holding each other up as we scramble out of the darkness and into—well, more darkness. The sun is just beginning to peek over the horizon, as if checking that the coast is well and truly clear before rising for the second time in the same day.
My family and Gabrielle and Shay and hundreds of others are waiting for us, so many more than were here before we went inside. Their cracked chains are heaped to one side, as those who are unfettered help liberate the ones in cuffs. While my parents berate me for a solid ten minutes for leaving them and running off into the darkness on my own, I take in the free maculae reuniting with their enchained kin, and the humans helping slick-skinned nymphs to hand out cups of water and rolls of bread. Sylphs susurrate spells to redirect the wind to nudge the sun back up, while sphinxes—the kind ones—tell riddles to the frightened children of all species to make them smile. It seems that most of the soldiers loyal to the king have fled, but the children of the Forest Forgotten circle around us with their weapons, ready to defend against any unwelcome attacks.
But there shouldn’t be any more of those—no battles, no war. The stars are back in the sky, leaving only their flames behind on the ground, spreading from the stone wing to the rest of the crystal part of the castle. Nothing else is on fire—only the palace, burning to the ground, and the darkness with it.
Dad gives me another hug, and I know he’s done scolding me.
“It was like you vanished,” Dad says, shaking his head. “I tried going back into the castle, and I thought maybe we were going to disappear one by one again.”
“You couldn’t have found me without magic,” I explain.
“Well, never do anything like that again,” he says, but his eyes glisten and his voice wavers. “I am proud of you, though, Rhea. We all are.”
Mom sweeps me into a tight embrace, judging that I’ve been reprimanded enough for one day. “Rhea,” she says, “you saved me. My darling girl, you saved me.”
“It wasn’t me,” I say, squeezing her back. “I mean, it was me, but only a little. Rose is the one who gave you her magic.”
“Yes, she told me.” Mom pulls back, and we both turn to look at Rose. She stands separated from the rest of us, talking to Varon with her eyes on the ground. Finally she looks up, and when he offers his arms to her, she steps into him. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make it up to her. That’s her brother, isn’t it? Her biological brother? I’m still a little confused about everything and keep thinking I just need a good night’s sleep—but then I remember that I’ve had enough sleep for half a lifetime.” She laughs, and when her gaze lands back on me, she stops. Her smile softens but does not slip away completely. “Look at all these people you’ve freed. You did that, Ree. Your father and your friends helped, yes. But none of it would have been possible without you.”
I can’t look at her. “I shouldn’t have run away in the first place.”
“Honestly, Rhea, I don’t want to think what would have happened if you hadn’t.” I still can’t meet her eyes, so she reaches over and wraps an arm around my shoulders, tugging me to her and kissing my head, right above my ear. She doesn’t let go. “If you had stayed here, your wrists in iron, you might eventually have found a way to undermine him. But all of this—this chaos still would have happened in the meantime.”
“Maybe,” I concede, tilting my head against hers. Together we watch as Dad circles the group, pausing to shake hands and speak with each and every person, even crouching down to give the children hugs or an extra roll, humble but confident in his role. I can’t help smiling a little; he truly looks like a prince.
We stay like that for a while, Mom and I, just watching, not moving, and eventually my quasi-adopted sisters wander over. Varon has disappeared. I scan the crowd, but I can’t find him. Rose sees me and sidles close.
“He went to look for our parents,” she says. “Our birth parents, I mean. But I—I don’t think he’ll find them.”
“Rose, I’m so sorry. I—” I stop. What more can I say? There is nothing, nothing that will make this okay.
“At least I have all of you,” she says. “But Varon…”
“He has us too.”
She nods but says nothing, only rubs her fists into her eyes, reminding me of how tired I am too. I want to sleep for a thousand years—but at the same time, I never want to sleep again.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, pressing my hand to her forehead, expecting her usual coldness beneath my palm. But instead there is heat, her skin sweaty and strange. “Rose, are you all right?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She stiffens and turns away from me, my hand falling from her face. “I just—I think you were right. It wasn’t the magic itself that made me feel so sick. For so long, magic was the reason I had to stay hidden, the reason I could barely leave my house, the reason my parents had their second hearts removed and my brother was taken away. I thought magic was the enemy.” She pauses, pressing her palms into her eyes, trying to hide the tears now twisting down her cheeks. “But it wasn’t the magic’s fault at all. It was just the way I perceived it. The way the king perceived it, and the way I began to see it too. I believed I was cursed because of it.”