Chapter 23 Little Gnat
Little Gnat
Sascia wakes to a bowl of soup.
It’s placed on the sofa inches from her face. It smells briny, like ramen; some kind of baked good is balanced on the rim of the bowl. Sascia is suddenly aware of how empty her stomach feels, how slow and weak her limbs.
Last night, after making her Heart Claim, she was escorted to what must once have been a staff break room, with two beaten-up sofas facing each other, a row of mass-market paperbacks abandoned on a side table, and a water cooler growing a whole colony of fungi in the corner.
She tended Mooch back to health and cleaned her own wounds as best she could, then sat on one of the sofas, her arms wrapped tight around her knees.
She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but now, as she begins to stir, her body creaks and groans all over.
Nearly a day must have passed since she jumped into the Maw—she imagines Danny and the cohort, her parents, huddled together, worry lining their sleepless eyes.
Yet she slept. She, who found herself among thousands of elves, narrowly survived their Trial, and volunteered for a second one. Guilt straps tight around her chest—her choices, however noble, mean that somewhere above these tunnels, her loved ones are hurting.
A knot of cerulean flames twines in midair over Nugau’s hand. He is watching her from the sofa opposite hers, elbows resting on his knees. Thalla is perched on the arm of the sofa behind him and the large, winged elf, Orran, leans against the door.
She didn’t get a good look at Nugau’s friends yesterday, but today, Sascia lets herself study them.
Lady Thalla’s Darkprint pulses a soft blue on her cheeks, just as it did yesterday.
She is small and lithe, with long legs that curve back like a deer’s.
Her eyes are far apart; no discernible eyebrows frame them.
The lower half of her face is covered with black chiffon.
Orran, on the other hand, takes up nearly half the room: shoulders so broad they pull at the seams of their scaled jacket, thighs so thick they could crush a tree like a woodchipper.
Their skin is dark, a russet hue compared to Nugau’s gray-blue and Thalla’s light turquoise.
Enormous iridescent wings sprout from their back, so large that the tips drag on the floor.
The Darkprint on their cheeks is a mix of purple and white, one of the elusive genders that human scientists haven’t been able to decipher yet.
“Eat,” Nugau says, gaze dropping to the bowl.
Sascia drags herself into a sitting position and takes an experimental spoonful. It’s rich and salty, like all the best foods. Under Nugau’s stare, the working of her jaw feels too mechanical, her bites too loud.
After what feels like an unnecessarily long time, Nugau looks away and speaks, tonelessly, as though he’s not addressing her at all.
“That is Orran. In the terms of your language, you will address Orran as both he and they. Lady Thalla, you can address as she, but she has also been known to be she-and-they.”
“And you signal this change through the marks on your cheeks?” Sascia asks.
He nods once. “All aesin can shift among genders, but not all choose to. Thalla and I prefer to change; Orran and the Queen, among others, prefer to stay in their chosen gender. Blue is female, purple is male, and white is closest to what your people call nonbinary. Two or more colors signify an open fluidity among those genders. How do we address you?”
Sascia holds his gaze. “I prefer she. And you?”
“Me,” Nugau drawls, “you claim to know.”
“I know only your name. Your pronouns seem to change.”
“In Itkalin, I am siff. Your language has no direct translation. The closest word is all, all genders and all colors, but in terms of pronouns, your gender-neutral they will suffice. In fact, it will suffice in any situation when you are unsure. If I am before you, you will address me as what I prefer in the moment.” He taps at his purple Darkprint. “Right now, I am he.”
It’s gratifying to hear Shivani’s theory on the many facets of gender in the Dark confirmed, but this is more than an introduction.
This feels like instructions. On how to address his friends, but also the rest of the elves—the aesin, as he called them.
There is no purpose to such directives unless he expects Sascia to be here for a long time.
“Am I to stay, then?” she asks.
“You gave the Queen no other choice. She will set a new Trial for you when she returns from her duties.”
At her nape, Sascia senses Mooch’s wingbeats.
The moth emerges from the tiny pocket of Dark between her hair and goes to perch on its new favorite spot: atop her left ear.
Nugau and Thalla pretend not to notice it, but a string of hushed words slips out of Orran’s mouth.
They place the knuckles of their index and middle fingers against their lips, in a gesture that looks—and sounds—like reverence.
The slow drumbeat of thousands of fists against thousands of breasts echoes in Sascia’s mind.
Last night, for those brief moments when the aesin cast their vote, she had felt aglow with essence, incandescent with purpose: out of everyone up in the city, out of everyone down here, Mooch chose her.
In the human world, Sascia’s affinity with the moths was just one of the many abnormalities of the Dark, but here, it is power, a skill she can wield to her advantage, the kind of magic she has longed for all her life.
“What happens now?” she asks.
Over her covering, Thalla’s cheekbones rise as though she is smiling—or smirking. “A bit late to regret your Claim now, human.”
“I don’t,” she says resolutely. She has proven herself; perhaps it’s success, perhaps it’s the itka’s favor, but she feels like she can do so much more.
“A version of you from the future came to me for help,” she tells Nugau.
“You were poisoned and dying. You told me a war is coming that neither my kind nor yours can survive. That we’ll try to stop it—and fail.
That I would face a labyrinth of terrors and nearly die in it.
But yesterday, I did not come close to dying.
I won. I changed how things came to pass. I plan to change the rest of it too.”
Nugau looks at her impassively, but behind his back, Thalla and Orran share a glance. They speak to the prince in the tongue of the aesin, wearing matching frowns.
“I didn’t know,” Nugau replies. (Is the English for Sascia’s benefit?) “In the tunnel, she only said she has met me. Who poisons me, human?”
“You are betrayed. That’s all you said.”
That sparks a long back-and-forth among the three aesin.
Sascia can’t understand a word, but a lifetime in a dual-language household comes in handy.
She watches their gestures as they speak, notes the changes in tone and emotion, marks repeated and emphasized words.
They are disagreeing over ymneen. Knotted time.
“I can tell you everything,” she offers, cutting through their conversation. “We can work together to stop it—”
“No.” Nugau punctures the word with a slice of his hand through the air.
“Ymneen is a curse. I have no interest in engaging with it, with the decisions of a self that will never be. The future you glimpsed will never come to pass. I will make sure that I am never betrayed, and that I never have to stoop so low as to be at your mercy.”
“Believe me, I don’t want that future either,” Sascia bites out. “Together, we can ensure it never happens. You can help me prove myself as a messenger of peace. We can convince your kind that war is not the answer. I want to help you.”
“And what gives you the right to want, human?”
Nugau’s outburst is quiet yet sharp, carving Sascia open to expose all the tender parts underneath.
She has kept that question sheathed all her life, terrified of its cutting edges.
Who is she to long for more, long to be special, to be magic herself?
She is no better than anyone else, after all; hasn’t life proven that already?
She has no answer to give him, only irritation. She jumped into the damned Maw to save him, she went through the harrowing Trial he volunteered her for, she signed up for a second one to try to make peace between their worlds, and here Nugau is, mocking her.
She lets herself just say it. “Why do you hate me?”
The question takes Nugau aback. His pointed ears flatten against his head, yet his voice seethes with revulsion. “You do not know me. You do not know the chaos your kin have brought unto my world. You don’t know what war means. What peace costs. Hatred is too small a word for what I feel.”
Her stomach twists into knots. She can understand his anger, his fear and confusion; she feels those too, a jumble of emotions ramming between her ribs, but hatred?
No, Sascia doesn’t understand hatred. From the moment the unknown burst into her life, all she has ever wanted was the freedom to love it.
“I am not your enemy,” she hisses around the thickness forming at her throat.
“You are human. To the aesin, you’ll always be an enemy.”
To the aesin. It’s an odd way to phrase it. It feels like a choice, not to say us.
“And to you?” she asks.
“To me, you are nothing.” His features marble into the crystalline indifference he donned while facing the Queen.
“An enemy is dangerous because they are an equal. But you, you are just a girl starved. The itka might have led you to us, but it was your hunger that made you follow. It was your greed that made you Claim to be more than you are. And what you are is a little gnat. Vexing but ultimately too ephemeral to be of any consequence.”
She should be offended. She should snap back a string of insults. But instead, her mind snags on two words, spat like a curse between clenched teeth: little gnat. Nugau has called her that before, when he begged her to kiss him.