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He and Britta move to stand in front of me, a wall of protection. Ixa paces in front of them, snarling, his ears flattened in fear and challenge.
But Mother turns to me, her eyes filled with bewilderment. “Deka, is this real?” she asks, seeming stunned. “Am I truly here, in Otera?”
I’m so disoriented now, so thoroughly shaken, I don’t know what to say. This can’t be Mother—Mother is dead, a spirit bound to a temple on another continent. And yet, when I glide into the combat state, staring at the soul that’s inside her body, the soul is hers.
There’s no question of it. It truly is Mother. She’s truly here.
And yet she can’t be.
No matter how much I want it to be, no matter how many hopeful scenarios I imagine, there’s no way that that’s Mother. Even though she smells so familiar, that wonderful musk of flowers and cakes I know so well…. I take a trembling step toward her, stopping only when Keita and Britta stiffen even more, Ixa growling beside them.
“Mother?” I ask warily.
She nods, eyes filling with tears. “It’s me, Deka. I know it seems strange, but it is.”
Britta brandishes her war hammer. “I don’t know who or wha ye are,” she says threateningly, “but ye will leave that body right now. Ye will leave this place or we will hurt ye. Don’t make us hurt ye.”
Mother turns hastily to me. “Deka, I don’t know why I’m here, but I do know this. I have your kelai. Here.” As my friends and I tense, confused, she carefully bends toward the portion of her hair curled around her feet. Then she pulls out a very familiar black box from under it.
The moment she holds it up, an ocean of power washes over me.
If the remnants of my kelai I felt in Gar Fatu were a few rays of sunshine, this box is the sun itself, its warmth washing over me, filling me from the inside out. How I didn’t feel this before, I don’t know. It’s so all-encompassing now, it’s like a physical weight. It takes everything I have not to stagger under the sheer power of it.
“My kelai…,” I whisper, a thousand emotions running through me.
All my feelings are suddenly so intertwined, I don’t know how to separate one from the other. The only thing that’s clear is relief. After everything I’ve endured—all the battles I’ve fought—I’m finally within reach of the source of my power. All I have to do is take a few steps, and then I will have it—the thing that turns me into a god. That allows me to smite all the gods and finally bring peace to Otera. The thing that will keep me and my friends safe for infinity.
Except my feet won’t move.
“Deka,” Mother beckons hurriedly again, offering me the box. “This belongs to you. It’s everything you’ve been searching for.”
But my heart is now pounding so swiftly, I can scarcely breathe. A cold sweat mists over me, adding to my confusion. Why aren’t I taking the box out of her hand?
“Deka, are ye all right?” Britta whispers as she glances back at me.
I force myself to nod. To calm my whirling thoughts. I exhale again, slowly this time, forcing myself to breathe out every thought, every worry. Once my mind is completely clear again, I turn to Mother. Or rather, the person my body does not think is her.
“Explain,” I say swiftly. “If you truly are my mother, you will explain how you came to be here.”
“It was the Idugu,” Mother replies without hesitation. “They stole through the shadow vale into the Hall of the Gods after you left, and took my spirit. I woke up here and all those jatu were waiting around me.” She shudders as she points at the corpses. “They were saying such awful things, how they were going to serve as vessels for the Idugu, how the Idugu planned to use me to bargain away your life.
“My life for yours, that was the deal those gods meant to strike with you.”
Mother shakes her head grimly, her expression so familiar now, my heart twinges. “They forgot that I was a Shadow before. That I was once a mistress of the sword. How foolish they were. But that is a mistake they’ll never make again.” She offers the box to me once more. “Take this, hurry now! There’s no time to waste, pet, else the Idugu will return with reinforcements.”
At her words, every muscle in my body stiffens. “Pet?” I ask quietly, all my suspicions now confirmed.
“What?” The woman standing in front of me frowns in confusion.
“You called me pet.” I unsheathe my atikas as I walk forward, a quiet coldness sweeping over me. She’d been doing so well, this impostor…oh so well mimicking Mother. But that last slip, it was too egregious to overlook. “Mother—my real mother—would never call me that. But you’re not her, are you?” When she just blinks, I point my atikas. “You must be very desperate, Etzli, to use my mother’s body as your vessel.”
To her credit, the goddess doesn’t even bother denying it.
The moment I say the words, a change comes over her, Mother’s skin taking on that golden gleam I’ve become so intimately familiar with, her eyes becoming that consuming, overwhelming white. When she speaks now, her hair writhes around her, the same way Etzli’s vines used to move whenever I entered the Chamber of the Goddesses back in Abeya.
“But you can’t open the box by yourself, can you? I have to do it. At least, if I’m alive, I have to.”
“Clever, clever Deka,” Etzli says, her voice returned to the divine resonance I remember well. “You always were too clever for your own good.”
