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Her smile waned a fraction. ‘Oh, the usual.’
Which wasn’t too great. I stuffed the rest of my blackberry tart into my mouth at once; perhaps it was better if I just didn’t talk until my brain had been granted some time to wake up.
We spent the entire morning fixing a leak in the cottage’s hay roof, ate porridge with warm apple and raisins for lunch, and gathered chicken eggs in the afternoon. When darkness fell, I taught Zera my best technique for darning socks, and we stitched up holes by the fire until we were both drowsy with warmth and exhaustion.
I asked questions as we worked and as we ate and as we sat by the fire and didn’t do anything else, and received answers to only those I didn’t care about. No, she still couldn’t tell me about the bindings. No, she couldn’t tell me where the others were. No, she couldn’t tell me how to kill the Mother.
And still no one showed up to look for me. Still no demon messages arrived, not the slightest reassurance Creon was indeed alright as Zera insisted.
I snuck outside after she had gone to bed, unable to find the peace of mind to lie down and sleep. The night sky was brilliantly clear. My eyes traced the shapes and patterns I knew, the constellations Creon had drawn for me twinkling down in pinpricks of silvery light. There was Istia, the Star-ship with its recognisable sails … Alyra, the mythical proud eagle who flew too fast and found herself stuck behind the firmament … Kothro, the Slumberer, infamous for its flickering star …
I blinked a sudden wetness from my eyes. Creon had spent several sheets of parchment on his attempts to explain the matter of the flickering star to me, in a burst of mathematical delight that had rendered his signs close to unreadable and sent his wings trembling excitedly. Something to do with breaking light and angles and fractures. I’d failed to fully grasp the theory.
Right now, I realised, clutching my arms around myself, I’d give my life to watch the stars with him and feel like an idiot as he patiently explained the essential properties of ellipsoids to me for the fifth time.
‘Where are you?’ I breathed at the black- and purple-flecked night sky, my breath creating little clouds in the chilly air. ‘I need your help.’
No sweep of velvet wings eclipsed the light of the stars.
Minutes went by, me peering at the darkness in the silence of the sleeping forest, before I realised I was looking at the wrong sky.
They were constellations I knew, stars I knew. But we were in the last days of wine month, and Istia was not supposed to appear until the last frost of mud month came around. The flickering star of Kothro was a harbinger of thaw, not of approaching winter. I was looking at a spring sky during the cold fringes of autumn – a notion so ridiculous I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn't spent hours browsing through theEncyclopaedia of Starsto memorise each of the signs above me.
Were we outside of time entirely? Outside of even the seasons that governed life in the rest of our world?
I crawled into bed feeling unfulfilled and hopeless, unsure what powers I was toying with, and even more unsure how I’d ever come out of the game victorious.
The morning of the fourth day brought more clarity of mind, combined with a flare of some much-needed annoyance. Zera had been right: I really thought best when I was irritated.
I’d been on this bloody island for three full days now, and although that had taught me a thing or two about the gods, the prehistory of my world, and the hidden shadows of my own motivations, I’d achieved exactly none of the things I’d come for. Creon’s voice was still as much out of reach as it had ever been. The Mother was no closer to being defeated. If I considered the matter objectively for a moment, I was progressing absolutely abysmally, with little outlook of improvement. I’d have been more useful with the nymphs on Tolya; at least there I could have left a decent impression on the rest of the world.
So something had to happen. Either I had to get some work done, or I’d have to leave.
Leaving sounded far too much like giving up for my taste, so I climbed from my makeshift bed with renewed determination to prove I was nothing like the Mother and her violent ambitions. There was a compost pile badly in need of turning behind the house – I had noticed while we were looking for eggs the previous day. Surely Achlys and Melinoë would never stoop to shovelling chicken shit and rotting fruit?
A good hour of sweaty labour and rotting apple peels later, I came to the conclusion that perhaps there were things I had in common with the High Lady of all fae, such as a deep-felt wish to never lay eyes upon another compost pile again.
Taking a quick bath in the crystal-clear lake around the small island was not the relaxing endeavour I’d hoped for either, due to the presence of a giant dragon watching me suspiciously from the other shore. I splattered out of the water as soon as I’d scrubbed the last mud stains from my skin, slipped into the loose shirt and trousers Zera had lent me, and went to look for the goddess, hoping at the very least the effort had not been entirely in vain.
That was an idle hope, again.
For another long afternoon, my every question on the bindings was gently but resolutely shoved aside. We discussed Bakaru Sefistrim – ‘an unpleasant relic of a bygone age’ – and the state of Agenor’s magic – unbound until Korok’s death, Zera confirmed – but never the questions I had come to ask, never the answers I’d have killed for.
‘See,’ the goddess said mildly when I grumbled something to that effect, ‘that may be the entire problem. For all your good intentions, thereisa darkness inside you, dear.’
‘There’s darkness inside you too,’ I said. ‘You just told me Bakaru should be dead.’
‘Not in those words,’ she said, although her chuckle suggested agreement.
I huffed a laugh. ‘I’m pretty sure you were thinking it. What’s the difference?’
‘The difference,’ she retorted without hesitation, ‘is that my darkness is kept in check by empathy. It’s hard to mercilessly destroy people you understand, even when you do not agree with them.’
The last to choose sides in the war. Had she understood the Mother’s fight, even if she decided to resist it in the end?
Did I understand?
I’d thought I did. But I’d explained myself to Zera time and time again, and she still believed I was missing something – agoddessstill believed I was missing something. So maybe I was. Maybe I was utterly, laughably wrong about myself; maybe my desperate attempts to keep everyone happy would easily lose the fight to my sharp edges; maybe it was better for everyone in the world if I ceased my attempts to become a second Mother right this minute.
