Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet (25 page)

What have I done? What have I done?

I hear Fyel call my name, but it’s so distant. Have I flown so far? I whirl about to look for him, but my creation fills my vision, drooling and screaming, “
Maire Maire Maire
!
”

I fly. I will myself away from him, but he follows me as though we’re tethered by a string. Did his soul affix to me before I bound it to him?

“Stop!” I cry, and I fly “up,” moving my hands to unravel him, but he’s too fast. He tackles me, and we spiral out of control. He grabs my hands with his larger ones, and his teeth sink into the side of my neck. I scream.

The ether booms as if it’s about to rip apart.

The gods are coming. They will find me with this thing, with my creature.

And I think of a world,
cling
to a world, any world, anywhere where I can unravel him, somewhere I can run from
them
—

It appears before me, a blue planet striped with fingerlike continents, straw and green and russet. I get closer, enter its gravity, but this broken man grabs on to my wing. I can’t right myself. I can’t get my hands—

We fall, fall, fall.

My wings harden. He rips the right one out of my skin. I scream. We break apart, and this world’s power flings me one way and him another.

I fall, wind rushing into my ears, drowning out all thought, stealing away my breath.

I hit every tree branch on the way down, crash into the rusty earth, and—

CHAPTER 27

“Are you all right?” the woman asks me, looking me over, tilting my head this way and that. We’re on a long road between fields. There’s a faint carmine coloring to the earth. Her hair has a few grays in it, pulled and pinned away from her face. Her eyes focus on mine, and heavy lines mark her forehead and brow. “Are you running from someone?”

Am I? I touch one of the fading bruises on my body, this one below my ear. It’s ring shaped, almost like a mouth.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I don’t . . . I don’t remember.”

Her face falls, but her gaze is sharp. “This won’t do at all. Come with me. Can you walk?”

I eye the basket on her arm, the one full of bread, and nod.

She notices. Without hesitation she reaches for the top loaf, a beautifully baked bread with braided crust, and rips off the heel. When she hands the still-warm bread to me, I shove it into my mouth before I can think to thank her. I don’t remember anything tasting like this. It’s almost . . . forbidden.

“Come on.” She takes me by the elbow and heaves me to my feet. “My house isn’t too far from here. Let’s clean you up and figure out what’s what. Come on, dear. What’s your name?”

“It’s . . .” My name. My mind swirls, searching for it, and I find a strange darkness there, orb shaped and hard, like obsidian. I prod it, grazing over its smooth surface with my fingers. From its depths I glean a single word and nothing more: “Maire.”

The woman smiles. “My name is Arrice,” she says, and puts an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry, Maire. You’re safe now.”

I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her I found her.

Happy.

CHAPTER 28

Fyel pulls me into the ether, into the space between mankind’s world and the gods’, and instantly I’m against him, my face pressed to the side of his neck, his arms wrapped around my shoulders, our wings brushing together with the fineness of dandelion seeds.

Tears hit the valley between my neck and shoulder, and I recognize the passage of time as though I can taste it.

Nearly five Raean years. We haven’t been apart so long since we became lahsts.

Fyel didn’t know where I’d gone. Which planet. When I hit the ground, Raea translated me into the closest thing it could—a human. Such a transformation would have broken our tie. Fyel couldn’t find me. He’d searched dozens of worlds for me.

I stare into the pale ether as these thoughts seep into my skull, imagining the situation flipped, if Fyel were the one who fled from me and then
vanished
without a trace, breaking our bond.

I shudder and exhale a broken breath.

And I . . . I made Allemas. I created my own captor. I broke eternal law. I abandoned Fyel.

I tried to craft a soul.

I shrivel until he is the only thing holding me up, his wings supporting us, and I weep into his collar, soaking the white fabric. My hands fist his shirt, and I cry and cry and cry, turning myself inside out, my heart growing sore from its wrenching and cracking.

Fyel’s strength is unrelenting, and he whispers into my ear the lyrics of a song I haven’t heard for nearly five Raean years, a song sung by the people of the first world we ever made together.

What have I done?

I stutter apologies between sobs, but Fyel shakes his head against mine, whispering words I can barely grasp, words of forgiveness and love and relief. I cry until I have nothing left to cry, until my eyes are swollen, my mouth is dry, and my throat is raw. Still Fyel holds me, floating in the unformed ether, where there is light on all sides and no compass to speak of.

“Thank you,” I whisper once my breathing is somewhat steady. “Thank you for coming for me.”

His voice, so warm and close, answers, “There was never another option.”

I hug him as tight as I can, just under his arms, desperate to be as close to him as possible. Wanting no space, even an iota, to exist between us.

When our legs touch, I feel no pain or crookedness, and that coaxes me to release him just enough to look down. The wooden splint has unraveled—it is world made and thus cannot exist in the ether. My clothes, too, have gone. But my leg is whole, unscarred and straight. I marvel at it, spinning my foot one way, then the other. It seems like such a long time since I saw it like this.

My leg. The trap.
Allemas.

I look at Fyel, meeting his eyes. “Allemas, he’s . . .” I swallow. “He’s learned. He speaks; he understands.”

Fyel nods, solemn.

I pull away from him, supported by my own wings, though all I want is to touch him and never stop touching him. Guilt twists and spirals inside of me, a tornado of glass. I can’t ignore my sins.

“He’s broken,” I whisper. “I broke him.”

Fyel frowns—a soft frown that draws on his eyes—and reaches for my hand, clasping my ring finger and pinky. “You cannot break that which was never whole.”

I press my lips together, fighting the urge to cry despite being dried out, worn out. Allemas. My
son
. I’d wanted him. I’d wanted him
so badly
.

Fyel’s arms encircle me again. “I am sorry,” he murmurs.

Resting my forehead against his shoulder, I weep without tears, without gusto, just rough breaths and tremors.

As if to mimic me, the ether trembles.

I reel back, my heart in my throat. “They know,” I whisper, breathy. The gods know I’m here. I shouldn’t be surprised—they are gods. It doesn’t take long for them to know.

“Maire—”

“I won’t run,” I promise. “I can’t . . . not again. But I left him, Fyel.” I hug myself, my skin cold, as though my own soul has shattered. “He—this—is my fault.”

“You did not realize—”

“I knew what I was doing.”

Fyel licks his lips. I straighten out, finding any reserve of strength that I can in my hollow body.

Breath in, breath out. “I have to go back to him. He’s my responsibility. All of this . . . is because of me.”

Fyel again takes my hands.

“No,” I whisper, though the word is barbed as it passes over my tongue. “No, I must do this alone.”

“You will never be alone,” he says.

I squeeze his fingers. I don’t argue because I don’t want to. I want Fyel to be right.

That’s where the reserve is—my lingering strength. Fyel holds it in his palm.

The ether quakes. Fyel reaches into it and crafts clothes for me, then waves his hand and opens a hole, below which spirals endless black speckled with stars.

Together, we descend.

Raea.

Dī.

Carmine.

When we arrive, carefully flying between trees so as not to touch them, I hear Arrice, Franc, and Cleric Tuck still calling me. Franc has entered the shadowy woods behind the farm, whereas Arrice walks the long rows of burned onions and waterplant, a lantern swinging from her hand, my name hoarse on her lips. Cleric Tuck walks the long roads between the house, the shrine, and the bakeshop, his words issued as a prayer, his hair and clothes disheveled.

I fly toward Arrice, but Fyel grabs my wrist. He doesn’t need to explain.

I’ve been restored to my former self. Arrice, Franc, and Tuck can’t see me. They won’t hear me. I’ll never be able to tell them my story, to tell them what happened, to tell them I’m all right. To tell them what they meant to me, taking me in when I had no one. My heart twists in a very human way at the thought. They’ll never know, and that will be my fault, too.

They will be separated from me without answers, just like after the marauders’ attack, but this time it will be forever.

Shamed, I turn away and hover toward the window of my old bedroom, but the bed lies empty beyond the glass, as I had feared. I head for the wood. Not where Franc searches. No. His calls would scare Allemas away. Allemas is frightened. I know he is.

I hover above trees—pine and rackberry—and reach my hands out to them.
Do you see him?
I ask in my mind, coaxing their faces toward me as I would coax joy or wit into a cake. It is a small request and almost permissible. I picture Allemas in my mind, the way I knew him on Raea, not the terrified creature I created in a house of shadow and snow.
Do you see him? Do you hear him?

Some of the trees rustle without breeze. I follow their sounds, searching the narrow spaces between them by the light of the half-moon. Flying on wings I once looked at with mortal eyes and thought strange. Fyel follows behind me, silent, and when I glance back at him he is whole and opaque.

The trees still, and I hear him. Allemas, whimpering below.

I see his shadow. It’s tattered and stumbling, carried with an uneven and unsure gait.

“Stay here,” I say to Fyel. “You’ll scare him.”

Fyel nods.

I wait until there is an opening in the trees, a grove, and I float down near a stream filled with white rock that reflects the moon’s light.

“Allemas.”

He freezes, his left shoulder to me. He turns his head until he sees me, his chartreuse eyes wide. His mouth falls open in mourning. He sees my wings. He knows.

“No,” he says. “No no no no—”

“Allemas.” My voice is soft, but it cuts through his words. He turns toward me, facing me directly. The fingers on his right hand twitch.

“I’m sorry.”

“
No!
” he shouts at me, stalking forward. I hover back, just a little, keeping a wide space between us. He sees this and stops short, his features sagging.

“This is my fault,” I continue, speaking just louder than the crickets, though most of them have quieted. “I’m so sorry I’ve hurt you.”

Allemas bares his teeth. Both hands form fists.

“You’re smart.” I hover a few inches closer, keeping my feet a safe distance from the earth. “You found me.”

“
He
found you,” he growls, and he looks about the grove, no doubt searching for Fyel. Neither of us spots him.

“I don’t belong here,” I say, and my throat starts to close. I open it with a deep breath and add, “
You
don’t belong here.”

Allemas goes lax. Every part of him—his face, his arms, his hands, his torso. His glare softens like butter in the morning sun. He knows he’s lost. He knows I can’t be chained or kept in a cage of thorny weeds, not anymore, and when he speaks his voice is overwrought and weak.

“Fix me,” he pleads, and those words slice through me, sharp as an arrow.

I do have more tears, for a few glaze my vision and soften Allemas’s edges, merging them with the shadows of the forest. I try to speak, and no voice comes out. I swallow and try again.

“I can’t.”

Allemas drops to one knee.

“I can’t fix you.” I force the words out, though they’re choked and high pitched, barely understandable even to my own ears. “If I had known how to make you, you wouldn’t need to be fixed.”

“No.”

I push forward, feeling empty, ghostlike. “It’s not fair. I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head back and forth. His body seizes, and he falls to his hands and knees, shivering as his soul mutates with him, as it pokes and prods and tries to find a way out.

I fly a little closer and extend both my hands. “
You are still
mine
,”
I tell it. If I focus, I can see the strings of my once-beautiful tapestry beneath Allemas’s skin. They’re knotted and unwinding, and so many have turned into sludge, unable to reach the ether of which they’re made. “You will hold together a little longer. You will stay encased in him. You will not hurt him.”

I concentrate until my head hurts. Were I still human, sweat would bead along my hairline and the dip of my spine.

The soul abates for now. Allemas gasps for air.

“You won’t hurt anymore,” I whisper, kneeling, though I do it in the air. Almost close enough for Allemas to reach out and grab me, though I don’t think he will. Not this time. “I can’t fix you, but I can repurpose you.”

Staring at the forest floor, Allemas says, “You’re going to leave me.”

“No.”

He looks up.

“I’m going to stay with you,” I promise. “I’m going to make it stop hurting. You’ll be everywhere, Allemas. You’ll be in the ether, where I am. You’ll be all around me, and when I come here to see this world or to make another, I’ll carry you with me.”

I touch my heart. That is a promise.

Allemas starts to cry. The sound of his tears makes my wings heavy. Makes it hard to stay above ground.

Across the grove I see Fyel, enveloped in moonlight. My strength. My compass.

This has to be. There is no easy resolution for my sin. My own soul splits as I raise my hands.

Allemas winces, weeps.

“Andel.”

He looks up.

“The one thing I can give you,” I whisper. “A name. Andel.”

“Andel,” he murmurs. “Andel,” and his lips quirk into a smile.

I call him to me, not by his new name or old, but with my soul, beckoning the complex patterns of ether that make his skin, his muscles, his heart, his soul. They shimmer white as they pull apart, deconstructing the only child I’ve ever had—the only one I ever will have. I guide them skyward, like thousands of fireflies, toward the space in between. Back to the ether, where they will rest and, someday, be remade.

The weeping stops. The crickets restart their song. A cloud passes over the half-moon, shading the dark grove. A pile of his clothes lies before me. It is all that is left.

A tear trails down my cheek and falls off my chin. It hits the earth and becomes a small, clear pebble, translated by the laws of this world.

There are only a few feet between me and the ground that nourished me for four and a half years. Were I to touch it, I would become human again. I would lose my flight, my ability to craft, but my body—my nature—would change. I would be able to bear children.

Fyel takes my hands.

The possibility crumbles to ash. No. I will not lose my memories again. I will not sacrifice the life Fyel and I have created together. Even if we touched the world at the same time, neither of us would remember what we were, or what we may have wanted. The risk is too great.

I swallow against a hard lump in my throat. “Not yet,” I whisper. Flapping my wings, I fly up toward the sky, then over the trees, sailing for Arrice and Franc’s home. Fyel follows me.

I stop just beside it, floating next to the chimney.

“I’ve already broken our greatest law,” I whisper, holding my palms out over the earth. “This can’t hurt me more than that.”

I beckon the grass and the weeds and the wild things I have created to listen to me. They remember me and come to my call to grow, drawing energy from the soil, from
me
. They rise up and braid together, blooming where nature would never have them bloom—the flowers are the deep red of carmine with centers of gamre, though the latter color is not native to this place.