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“Always is quite a long time,” Bala remarks.
“Indeed, young deity.” Sarla, god of wisdom, flows into the conversation, as do all the other gods of Maiwuri, who rise from their thrones to gaze upon me now that I have returned to their gathering chamber. Mother is here too, and I lay her corpse at her feet.
When she sees it, her eyes widen. And then she sees me, the small part of me that is visible to her now that I am a god. And that small part is enough to send her falling to her knees. “Deka!” she gasps, eyes round. “You’re—”
“Restored?” I incline my head. “Indeed. I am divine once more.”
Mother nods, seeming almost sad, though she tries not to show it. But I can see the blues of melancholy drifting around her spirit. “So it is time for me to go,” she says quietly.
“Indeed.” I walk over and take her hand. It feels almost warm. But that is because I’m touching her essence, the truest part of her spirit. “You have done enough, Mother,” I say. “It’s time for you to rest.”
She smiles ruefully. “I do deserve it after all these years, don’t I?”
“Yes.” I touch a hand to her cheek, marveling at how delicate she is, how fragile her existence. “More than anyone, you deserve rest.”
She looks around. “Where will I go?”
“To a place where all your troubles will seem like a distant memory,” I say, following behind Bala, who is already opening the pathways. A golden warmth suffuses the temple, birdsong echoing in the distance. “I will walk with you the entire way.”
“I would like that.” Mother smiles. “You know, when you were a child, you would toddle behind me, saying exactly that when I tried to pick you up. You were very stubborn.”
“I can only imagine….”
Mother doesn’t say anything else. Behind me, her body is swirling, every part of it turning into starlight. Returning to the glory from which it came.
And then we’re there, in the wooden cottage at the edge of the forest that contains Mother’s memories from the fondest period in her life. The door opens, and Father pokes his head out, a child beside him. Me, although it is the version of me that died when I was reborn a god. The version of me that will never understand what I am now.
She too deserves happiness, and I smile as she beckons eagerly to Mother.
“Hurry, Umu,” Father says, beckoning as well. “I just felled a horned deer by the lake. Massive one too, you should see the meat on him. I’ve got a roast going.”
Mother wipes her hands on her robes, excitement shining in her eyes. She looks at Father and the child as if she’s seeing them for the very first time. “I suppose I’ve got to hurry and help, don’t I?” she asks him.
“Or you could just stand there and give me compliments,” Father suggests—his favorite thing. “ ‘Oh, Elrond, how wonderfully you roast that deer,’ ” he mimics in a high-pitched voice as he begins closing the door behind her.
Mother turns to me, gives me one last smile, and then she’s gone.
A feeling suffuses me—not quite sadness, but something near to it. I watch my family through the cottage window as it fades from view. “They seem happy,” I say.
“They are happy. That is what the Blissful Lands are for.”
“And the girl?”
“We are all,” Bala reminds me.
“And we are one,” I finish. Then I look up at him. “Will you follow me to one last place? I confess, I am nervous.”
“Nervous—another human emotion,” Bala muses. “What does it feel like? I have tasted it through Myter but never experienced it myself.”
“It feels like the first rumblings of a newborn volcano. Alternatively, it is a hive of bees in your belly.”
“I shall have to try it once,” Bala says, the locks of his hair already extending to create another pathway.
40
The palace grounds are a different place from when I left them. Perhaps that is because the moment I emerge, flowers spring in my wake, the sun focuses its gentlest beam in my direction. Or perhaps I am that beam, making my way across the grass to my companions, who kneel around my former body, their eyes overflowing with tears, their bodies broken by grief. Ixa curls around me in the kitten form I love so much, his grief a living thing—one echoed by his mother and the other ebiki, who follow this solemn procession in their smaller, humanlike forms. They all wail and cry tears as bitter as the blood now salting the land of Otera.
And yet I am here. I am as I always was, and somehow I am more. That is the conundrum of divinity. I wonder if I will get used to it.
