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Because that’s the other thing I forgot in my self-doubt: the gods of Otera think they’re all-powerful, that they’re above the other beings in the empire—even the ones they birthed. I, at least, know I’m no better than anyone else. Different, yes, but not better.
It’s a humbling thought.
I nod. “You are correct, Sayuri,” I say. “I do know what I lack. Achingly so. But there’s more that happened at the summer house, more I have to tell you. Both of you.” I turn pointedly to White Hands when I say this.
“Oh?” My former mentor’s pipe freezes close to her mouth in a dramatic fashion.
“I saw Anok there. She was hiding inside an indolo.”
“As one does.” White Hands inclines her head as if this is perfectly reasonable.
“The others didn’t see,” I continue. “They thought I’d fallen asleep, except I hadn’t. I was talking to her.”
“And what did our divine mother say?” This sneered bit of sarcasm comes from Sayuri, who, as always, is no admirer of the gods.
“She said she loves you. Both of you.”
Sayuri falls silent, eyes rounding. These words, it seems, were unexpected.
As she processes them, I turn to White Hands. “She wanted you both to know that, and that you are perfect.” By now White Hands’s eyes are large, the largest I’ve ever seen them, and something like a sob emerges from her mouth.
She hurriedly looks down, but not before I see the tears shimmering in her eyes, tears I’ve never, ever before seen, not once, in all the time I’ve known her. I’ve seen so many of White Hands’s faces—smug, hateful, conniving, even sad. But I’ve never seen such sheer joy. Because she has tears in her eyes not from despair; they’re because she’s happy—blissfully so.
I can only imagine the guilt White Hands has felt over leaving Anok in that temple, knowing that she—her true mother—had been imprisoned by her own sisters, and that we eventually will have to end her life. But she’s always kept her feelings close to her chest and stayed the course, no matter how difficult it got. No matter how painful.
And now she’s finally received proof that Anok isn’t angered or saddened by her actions but that she is, in fact, proud.
As yet more tears stream down White Hands’s cheeks, I look away, knowing she would not want me to stand witness to this moment of vulnerability any more than I already have.
Instead, I focus my gaze on Sayuri, who’s now watching me intently, her eyes gleaming in the darkness. “There is one other thing,” I say quietly. “Now that I’ve been in the presence of my kelai, I have an idea of how to find it.”
“Oh?” Sayuri leans closer. “Do tell.”
“Well,” I whisper conspiratorially, “it has to do with the combat state….”
31
There’s no better way to enter the combat state than in one of Ilarong’s hot springs. The waters are warm, the night is cool, and stars twinkle above us. I can focus on them, let them lead me to the utmost serenity. That’s what I need to accomplish the task I’ve set for myself now. I have to find my kelai, have to follow the trail it left to discern where the jatu took it. Before, I thought I needed Mother’s body. But that was never necessary. All I truly needed was to feel my power, to understand the shape of it. To understand how very much a part of me it is.
All this time, the gods have been whittling away at it, parasitic leeches sucking at its teat. That’s why I never truly understood what it was, never truly felt the thread that linked this body to it. But now I’ve felt it in its fullness. And now it’s time for me to fight back—to beat the gods at their own game.
Before Okot comes to me, I’ll go to him. I’ll steal my power from right under his nose even as he’s plotting to do the same to his brothers.
I remember now what he said to me: that he would relocate my kelai and then steal it out from under his brothers’ noses. There’s only one reason he would need to do that: all the Idugu were involved in moving my kelai from Gar Fatu. Okot alone would not have had the power to do what they did earlier today: slip all those groups of jatu into Gar Fatu and then extract the successful one well before Melanis and her hunters could catch them. Okot needed his brothers to move my kelai, and now they’ve hidden it somewhere near their temple. Somewhere in Hemaira, likely.
But Okot wants it all for himself. Needs it, so he can save Anok and himself.
But before he does so, I’ll take back what is mine.
I let this thought waft away as I breathe slowly in and out. What I’m about to do requires relaxation. I can’t hold on to my rage. I have to breathe and focus on the stars, letting their distant pulses soothe me, sink me into the combat state, the deepest version of it I’ve ever reached.
It takes some time, but I feel it when the world recedes, feel it when my friends and Ixa, who are all gathered on the stones surrounding the spring, fade into white shadows and then something more than that and yet less: they meld into infinity, becoming one with it. As do I. And then all that’s left is myself and the universe, an entire vastness around me. The vastness I know is the Greater Divinity. How ludicrous that the Idugu would distill it into the farce of a pretender they called the Infinite Father.
The Greater Divinity washes over me in warm, calm waves, that feeling of peace that I still, until this very moment, did not trust. It’s not a presence, per se. Not even an entity. More like an energy. A force….
What are you? I ask into its vastness, curious.
But my words return to me. What are you? What are you? What are you?…Except I didn’t say them. It wasn’t my voice that echoed back. It was a thousand voices, reflected back at me. A thousand lives, all interconnected, all coiled into each other, inextricable. Or is it a million? A billion? Billions? Perhaps even more? I don’t know any words that can count an amount greater than that number or manage to comprehend the sheer number of lives held in the vastness. Suddenly, the weight of all that connectedness is pressing down on me, and I’m feeling my body again, feeling the heaviness in my chest, like I can’t even breathe, like I can’t even—
