Chapter 30 #2
Its horns were larger than I remembered, catching silver light from both above and below. They were achingly beautiful, their points as sharp as the thorns of the Eldermaze. Lichen grew up and down their length, trailing almost to the forest floor in strands studded with purple blooms.
Its eyes, liquid black with stars, gazed unblinking at me.
I should speak first. No pleasantries. No useless human words. This god had no use for them; what good were thank-yous to a creature crowned in thorns, with antlers taller than me?
"I have a request of you."
The stag’s nostrils widened; its barrel chest expanded with breath. “Most unexpected, Eurydice Waters of the Kingdom of Storms.” The voice chimed through my mind like wind stirring a bell.
I took in a sip of air. Just one. "Will you hear it?"
The stag seemed to consider me. Its head inclined by a few degrees, and one hoof pulled slowly through the grass. That was assent.
“I've escaped the Eldermaze," I said. "But others still remain inside. Is that true?"
A pause. The black eyes blinked, slow and ancient. “And how are you certain I would know such a distant truth?”
"I can’t be," I said. "I’m a human from another land. I don’t understand your nature."
Somehow, I knew the stag was amused. It hadn’t moved, but its feeling thrummed through my chest as if it were my own.
“And yet some logic brought you to this likelihood.”
"Yes."
The stag remained silent and expectant, like a teacher waiting on a student’s answer.
"You speak into the mind," I said slowly. "I believe this ability extends to all your people, and to the bounds of your lands. Which the Eldermaze lies at the edge of."
And?
This time, I was certain it hadn’t spoken aloud; its voice was nowhere but inside my head.
“And if you can hear me,” I thought, “then you can hear them. The fae born to worship you must hear your whispers like a song.”
A bird’s harsh call rang out nearby. A breeze passed through the trees. Somewhere, deep in the wood, a moan raised fresh goosebumps from my forearms to the nape of my neck. The wraiths were out there. Perhaps not as far away as I’d hoped.
The stag’s nostrils flared again, and it huffed, a sound like a great oak exhaling.
“Twenty remain alive inside the Eldermaze. What is your request?”
Twenty alive. Only two dead in over a week. It seemed impossible—but these fae had been chosen by the stag itself. After what I had seen Dorian do, I no longer knew what was impossible.
I did know one thing, though: we two were the first to escape the maze in hundreds of years. Thalassa had taken two centuries to figure out the trick—and she had practically handed the answer to me.
How many would be so fortunate?
Who was I to condemn them?
I straightened, hands clasping in my lap. I knew what I wanted, but to state it aloud… that was a sacrilege against an old queen. That was a bucking of the wheel. To state it aloud was to become the deviant I’d only imagined.
Do it, my mother’s voice said. Be big when the moment calls.
Funny, how her voice seemed to expand in my mind only now in death. In life I had thought her quiet, a woman of floury hands and few words. But she had so many words for me now, all of them wonderful.
“I would tell them,” I said. “I would tell them the way.”
The stag and I gazed at one another for a long time. I didn’t look away—I couldn’t. If I did, my request would become toothless, unfelt. I had to show this creature I understood the gravity of what I was asking—and that I would stand by it.
Finally, the stag said, “Do you find me to be a cruel god?”
The answer rose from my chest without permission, without thought. “Yes.”
“Because you are small and na?ve. Because you have never seen your people cull chaff from wheat.”
Culling. That word again.
I didn’t know anything about chaff or wheat. I only knew Faun’s face—and that she was still alive in that maze. Twenty alive. She had cleaned my room, graced it with some small portion of her life. I knew from my mother what it meant to serve and to go unseen.
“I am small,” I said. “I will always be small, and perhaps na?ve. I admit I don’t understand—”
“Silence.” The stag’s hoof struck the earth, and the sound of it froze me to the spot. “You would ripple the pond when you understand nothing of how it formed. There are reasons for the world’s turn, human, of which you know naught.”
“Yes, but—”
“This is a betrayal of the Sylvanwild Court. Do you know what such betrayal merits?”
I stayed still except for the back-and-forth shake of my head. But I did know. I did.
“Death. Your death.”
The stag’s nostrils widened and shrank, widened and shrank. I had no doubt it could leap the pond and spear me with those antlers before I even rose to my feet.
My eyes wanted to drop to the pond’s surface, to the reflected moon—but they remained locked on the creature’s. My mother wouldn’t have allowed me to die that way.
“And yet…” The stag exhaled a great huff and lowered its head until the enormous crown of its antlers nearly touched the earth. “Betrayal is outdone by courage. You, Eurydice Waters, have no dearth of it.”
I sucked in the sweet air like I’d been given back my life. I didn’t—
“I know your request,” the stag said, its head still bowed before me, “but you must state it for me to grant it.”