Page 12 of Inkpot Gods

She turns to face Deborah, and the light is still there, still steady, still pouring from the older girl like honey from a beehive. She frowns. “Deborah.”

“Miss?”

“You’re glowing again.”

Deborah blinks and straightens, and the glow dims but doesn’t die. “I’m sorry, miss. It’s not exactly something I can control.”

“Why do you glow sometimes? My uncle says you have to answer me when I ask you things. He says I’m going to be the mistress of this house someday. That means you’ll answer to me, and I want to know. Why are you glowing? You said you’re not one of the winter women. What are you?”

“I’m the moon.”

It’s a small answer, simple on the face of it, and yet it’s large enough to change the world. Floretta frowns. “How can you be the moon? The moon is in the sky, and you’re in my bedroom. It doesn’t work.”

“I’m not always the moon, only sometimes. I’m a minor moon goddess, Selene. I shine in the dark places, and sometimes I open doors into the space between our world and the center of the universe, so that I can shine on the heart of reality and keep it beating properly. Olympus calls me home when there’s need of me.”

“Olympus is real?”

“Yes, and no. It’s not a place the way Boston is a place, but it’s a sort of impossible city where the forces that control everything around us can gather and keep the world turning. It’s where the rules are made. It’s where I belong. I just can’t go there more than once a month, when my Lunar’s heart is full and shining through my skin. I’ll go there tonight, and I’ll shine and shine and shine until it hurts me deep inside. That’s why I glow. Because I’m the moon.”

“I don’t like it,” says Floretta sharply. “People shouldn’t be moons.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” says Deborah. “I was born like you, and then one day Selene woke up and told me that I was also going to be her. Like with the winter women. You said the one near your village had changed, that the new one left footprints in the snow. That’s because the old one died, and someone new had to become the winter in order for the seasons to keep turning. The world is a lot stranger and more structured than you realize.”

“If you’re the moon, why are you here?”

For the first time, Deborah looks truly uncomfortable. “Everyone has to be somewhere, even the moon,” she says, deflecting.

Floretta is not to be dissuaded. “Yes, but why here?”

“Your uncle is a … a powerful man. He studies a branch of science known as alchemy. Do you know what that is?”

Floretta has heard the term before. She nods.

“Alchemists know a great opportunity when it’s presented to them. It’s why he wanted you. There’s something about you, Floretta. I just don’t know exactly what it is.” Deborah’s voice turns achingly sincere. She means what she’s saying, every nonsensical syllable of it. “But something about you is born to moonlight and starlight, snowfall and sun. You’re not an embodiment. You have our fingerprints about you.”

“And you’re here because my uncle wanted you?”

“Your uncle doesn’t know about me, not in the way you mean,” says Deborah. “He can’t know about me. Alchemists … when they know about something, they want to own it. They want to take it apart and make use of it.”

“So he could use you?”

“He could. And he could probably kill me in the process. You can’t tell him about me.”

“Then why would you tell me?”

“Because you asked. And because if I’m going to trust you—and I want to trust you—I have to start somewhere. We’re watching your uncle because something great and terrible is going to begin in this house. We want to be here when it happens. If you’re willing to help us, we could stop whatever it is from hurting anyone who hasn’t already been hurt.”

Floretta considers this a moment, then turns back to the mirror, resuming the slow detangling of her hair. “I understand,” she says.

“So you’ll keep my secret?”

“Will you take me to Olympus with you?”

“I can’t. You wouldn’t be able to survive the passage.”

“Oh.” Floretta continues brushing. “It’s not fair to ask people for favors you aren’t willing to return.”

“If you tell him what I am, he might hurt me. If I take you to Olympus, I will hurt you. They aren’t the same favor.”