Chapter Twenty-Four #2
Daziel must have seen the uncertainty on my face, because he switched tactics.
“Let’s at least complete the betrothal.” His concerned gaze seared through me, with none of the mischievousness I was used to from him.
“It might give you some protection. And the next few months aren’t going to be safe. ”
“You’re going to leave, then.” Though his father had commanded it, it hadn’t sunk in.
“He’s more powerful than me,” Daziel said. “I’m not sure I can resist him. And I don’t know what’s left for me to do.”
Be with me, I almost said. Instead, feeling dizzyingly light and numb, I gathered up our bowls and headed to the kitchen. Daziel followed me there, and then we went upstairs. How could Daziel leave? When he had said he would prove he wanted to be with me?
But then, with the world ending, shouldn’t you go home? Should I go home?
“So now what?” I asked as we crawled into bed. “We give up? We’re done?”
“I don’t know,” Daziel said. “I hate that I keep saying that. But I just don’t know.”
Holding each other tight, we turned off the lights and shut our eyes. I didn’t know what else to say. Stay with me. I love you.
But those things were scarier to say than the world ending.
Daziel fell asleep quickly, a skill I’d always envied.
I lay there, thoughts whirling. Outside, I could hear the howl of the winds, feel the strange rumble of the streets.
I tossed and turned, trying to sleep. I caught the edge of it, the strange drifting from where you can never remember your thoughts, and tried to let myself fall.
Images flashed through my mind—Daziel, the scrolls, my friends, the river, the caves, Mom, Dad, my sisters—
A high, thin voice: Don’t let me drown.
Another tremor jolted me awake. Great. Now I’d never fall back asleep.
I got out of bed quietly, trying not to wake Daziel. He murmured something and shifted, then lay still again.
I curled up in the armchair by the window, tucking my bare feet beneath me for warmth, craning my gaze up to see the moon.
I couldn’t imagine leaving Ena-Cinnai myself, let alone with everyone who lived here.
It seemed impossible. And if all natural magic was thrown off, there might not be anywhere safe. I didn’t know what we’d do then.
In the distance, silhouetted against the moon, soared the long, slim shape of a heron—its kinked neck, the long feathers of its plumage, the broad, distinctive wings.
I blinked. Had I really seen a bird, here in Talum, where we had no more birds?
Well, why not? The Ziz, Master of the Birds, was dead. Perhaps it no longer needed its court gathered to rend their clothes and sing a funeral song. Perhaps they’d all been released to go back to wherever they had come from. What else would they do without a new ruler to follow?
I stilled.
A new ruler. Most things did get new rulers once the old one died—kings and emperors for humans. Queens for bees.
Did mythical beasts? I’d assumed there was only one Ziz, eternal and immortal, and with its death, everything would end.
But…
Once it dropped an egg, which flattened cities…
An egg. A baby.
The Ziz controls the winds.
I thought of the winds pushing me toward the caves. Caves leading deep under the island. The wind wasn’t whispering to me now. But it had.
I thought of the odd shape of Talum, of our island and the islet curving toward each other. Like a volcano had erupted, leaving a caldera. But. Not only volcanos caused depressions.
The idea was so preposterous I almost laughed. I could accept the primordial beasts being part of the physical world, but it was more difficult to accept them interacting with it so bluntly, like in the stories.
An egg. An egg that flattened cities.
But it made a strange sort of sense. Like puzzle pieces clicking together. A heavy stone dropped from the sky could leave a crater. Maybe an egg from a legendary beast could do the same.
I shoved Daziel awake. “Daziel. Daziel, what if there’s an egg?”
He was sleepy and not built for waking immediately. “Hm?”
“What if that’s what the wind was trying to tell me?
” I hadn’t thought about it recently, hadn’t connected the tugging wind to the Ziz’s ability to control the winds.
Maybe the Ziz had tried to send me somewhere.
“What if it tried to direct me into the caves—deep into the island. What if it sent those winds in particular? What if it was trying to send a message?”
He blinked. “And you think the message was…”
“That it dropped an egg here.”
Daziel stared. “What?”
“Not recently. Centuries ago. Millenia. Look at Talum. We’ve formed around a crater. What caused the crater?”
He shook his head helplessly.
“You don’t know,” I filled in. “No one does; it’s always been there. A volcano, some say. But what if it was an egg that fell from the sky, so large it could flatten cities?”
“I wouldn’t expect the egg to survive the fall,” Daziel said, but he sounded thoughtful, not disbelieving.
“Maybe it had a really thick shell.”
He laughed but not mockingly. More astonished. “And the reason the wind pushed you would be…”
“Because I was working on the spell to heal the Ziz. It knew I wanted to heal it—or, well, I was just working on the fragments, I didn’t know about the Ziz yet, but maybe it guessed. Or it didn’t have much focus, like your magic doesn’t, but maybe it said, ‘Send someone who will help to my egg.’ ”
“I feel obligated to point out this is all conjecture,” Daziel said.
“It’s a theory. And until it’s proven wrong, isn’t it worth investigating? Unless you have a better idea.”
Daziel shook his head, grinning wryly. “I have no other ideas.”
“Then we should look. Underneath the water, maybe, between here and the islet.”
“Through the caves. The wind directed you to the caves.”
Which caves, though? Without the wind guiding me and opening up hidden routes in solid walls of rock, I had no idea where to start.
Or maybe I did.
“At the Rocks,” I breathed. “The Rocks is all caves, and they go deep. We’ll start there.”
We left a note for Aunt Tirtzah—she probably wouldn’t stop us, but why take the risk?—and headed for Testylier House. Thousands of stars filled the night sky, a dusting of diamonds, a whirl of white.
“If there’s an egg, we might still need to cast the spell,” Daziel said.
It’d be the worst of ironies if the beast hatched only to die because it had no parent to care for it, especially when we had a spell designed to strengthen the Ziz’s health.
“Which means,” he added apologetically, “we should complete the betrothal.”
I closed my eyes. Of course, “I’d rather do this if we were sure. Of us.”
He drew his signet ring from his finger. “I am sure of us,” he said, his voice and gaze steady. “I want to give this to you, not because it will allow us to tap into a greater magic but because I want to marry you.”
My heart twisted. Too many feelings overwhelmed me, joy and disbelief and hope. My protest came out weak. “Eighteen is too young to get married.”
He smiled and parroted back what I’d said to others when they raised the same objection. “It can be a very long engagement. I love you, Naomi. I want to marry you.”
Warmth spread through my whole body, leaving me flushed and dazzled. I couldn’t believe he’d said it, the words I’d craved so badly but been too scared to say myself. “I love you too.”
“You don’t have to say it back,” he said, looking mulish. “Just because I did.”
I started laughing. A pure exhilaration made me feel as if I was going to float into the sky. “I wouldn’t. I do.”
Hope started to dawn in his eyes, like he’d been just as scared and uncertain as me, as though it had been a terrible risk to say the words, but he’d done it anyway, even though he hadn’t known what he’d hear in return. “Really?”
“Really.” I flung my arms around him, and he caught me with a surprised gasp. I burrowed my face in his neck, luxuriating in the feel and the smell of him, in the fact that he was mine, that he loved me, that we didn’t have to let go.
He slid the ring onto my finger. “Then be with me,” he said. “Stay with me.”
I pressed my lips to his, trying to convey all the emotions hurtling through my body. He gripped my hips and pulled me closer, then wrapped his arms around my body until we were flush together, the two of us drenched in moonlight.
It took a while to return to business, and when we did, it was with my arm tucked through his, smiles plastered on our faces. Still, Daziel’s voice was serious as he spoke. “The spell requires four casters. With you channeling my power, we’ll want someone else to take your place reciting it.”
I nodded. Yael, Gidon, and Stefan should be three of the four; they were intimately familiar with the spell. And any of my friends would rise to the task. But the best spellcaster I knew, the one who would easily pick up a new, complicated spell in a foreign language…
I groaned. The best spellcaster I knew was the last person I wanted to ask. “Maybe we can ask Professor Altschuler.”
Daziel shrugged. “It’s up to you. If you don’t think he’d shut this down…”
He would definitely shut us down.
Which is how we wound up knocking on élodie’s door half an hour later. She opened it, wrapped in yellow silk from head to toe and looking like she wanted to murder someone. “Tell me you have good news.”
I almost stepped back in the face of her rage. “You heard?”
“That the Ziz is dead? It’s all anyone is talking about.” She looked furious. “The Sanhedrin wouldn’t even believe the Ziz existed, and now they’re up in arms it’s dead. It’s ridiculous. Why are you here?”
“We want to go to the Rocks.”
She squinted. “Your plan is to get high and dull your mind from the end of the world?”
“We think the Ziz might have dropped an egg here thousands of years ago. The cave system might allow us to reach it, deep under the river. And once we do, we want your help casting the spell to strengthen it.”
“You’re insane.”
“Do you have something better to do?”