Chapter Ten Adela #2
Everything shifts. That is not an option. I might not have wanted to be a matcher, but just the thought of leaving my community to go join the Order of the Huntress is agonizing.
Kian places fingertips beneath the edge of the skull just like Dad did. The phoenix basically purrs, a feeling so deep that it resonates through me as a sound.
His fingers are warm and soft against my temples.
I lean in to his comforting touch.
He whispers unintelligible words in a sweet tone, and I can feel the phoenix relax ever so slightly. He is able to get fingers underneath the skull, up to his second knuckle. For a brief moment, I have hope that this time will work. That I will be free.
The moment I think it, the phoenix clamps down, pinching his fingers and scraping me raw. I feel something warm and wet trickle down my cheek.
Dad steps forward and wipes it away. His thumb is bright red with my blood.
“We have to get this off of you,” he says.
Before I can agree, the world goes hazy.
I am flying across a clouded sky alongside my love. Below us is a field of corn that should be golden and rustling, healthy. The humans should be harvesting the ears as jackalopes and ordinary hares and birds hop around, munching on spilled kernels.
But the keepers are hidden away in their building. The creatures’ and animals’ bellies rumble with hunger. The cornstalks do not rustle. They are black and wilted.
Rotten.
With a gasp, I return to the present just in time to see a golden pulse of light.
Etana rears up, coming down hard beside Kian, who is sitting next to me on the ground, holding his head. He doesn’t react. My phoenix is distressed at his distress, but before I can move forward to check on him, I hear the screams of children.
No. Not again.
As I scramble up, I pray to the great goddess. The first time Enkidus attacked was just after I had recklessly put my cheek against the skull. The last time just after I matched with the phoenix. Let this not be another.
I cannot be responsible for this much death, this much destruction.
Etana rears again, snorting and throwing her head.
I ignore her, too busy rushing out of the hall, hoping that the dragon will stay far away, satiated with her gryphon meal.
Though he’s wobbly on his feet, Kian joins us.
The phoenix is glad for his presence. Or perhaps I am.
It’s hard to tell what is the two phoenixes drawing us together and what is our own, very obvious, chemistry.
We burst out of the hall and down the steps. The screaming of small voices continues, growing louder as we near the open field next to the school. There, I pause and take in the scene before me.
Half a dozen children huddle tight together on the ground while three spotted cath palugs circle them.
Cath palugs are disturbing. They’re like large house cats, with their round eyes and sweet faces, and unnaturally fast, aggressive when they feel threatened.
They’re also typically reclusive, living in the mountainous caves at the far outer edges of the valley, and not coming anywhere near the village except when they are about to die.
I have seen only a glimpse of a single cath palug in my entire life as a keeper. Never within the boundary of the village, which is protected by magic from any ill-intentioned creatures.
And now here are three, who’ve invaded just after the golden light pulsed through the valley, at the heels of my vision. A chill goes through me. This is most certainly a result of my actions.
At least it’s not Enkidus. Though cath palugs are plenty capable of bodily harm. As they’ve already demonstrated.
The large feline creatures stalk back and forth.
A handful of other keepers have arrived, including some parents of the children.
One, Marcella, steps forward out of the gathering crowd.
She tries to get to her daughter, Aya. The little girl wails as blood drips from a seemingly shallow cut on her cheek.
A cath palug hisses and swipes sharp, hooked claws at Marcella when she gets too close. The swipe connects, cutting open her shin so deeply that I can see the shine of white bone beneath. She falls too far to help her daughter and struggles to get up again.
The cath palug crouches, preparing to pounce.
On the other side of the bloody scene, I yell, catching the attention of the creature. She paces away, allowing Frederic and Taylor to pull Marcella back and start to help her staunch the bleeding.
Some of the keepers grab sticks and small rocks and wave or toss them at the cath palug. No one wants to risk throwing things with any heft in case they hit a child. The cath palugs hiss and growl.
The order arrives, but do nothing but watch, concerned but useless. Not that they could do much, despite the skulls they wear. They’re mostly novitiates. Untested and untrained.
“Why are you just staring?” Marcella screams at them in pain and panic. “You have magic! Use it! Help them.”
High Priestess Sarai and Sister Roberta are the only competent magic-wielders, and they wear a unicorn and a pegasus.
Depending on the strength of their magic and will, they can set magical barriers and affect moods, or influence the weather.
Not exactly useful for an offense against large, magical felines.
Marcella knows this. But she’s desperate with her child in danger. Who wouldn’t be?
Cecelia arrives from the library. She cries out as the largest of the three creatures stalks forward, predator eyes very clearly focused on Cordelia, her littlest sister.
The small girl is at the edge of the group of children, curled into a ball, her back to a cath palug.
She whimpers softly, already covered in blood from a large, jagged cut down one arm.
A slightly older boy tries to pull her into the center of the group, but he doesn’t have the strength to move her on his own, and the other children are concerned with the other two cath palugs, who keep lunging at them.
I yell and rush forward, Etana on my heels. I have nothing with which to defend or attack, but I can’t just stand and watch Cordelia be killed.
The phoenix is noisy in my head, trying to communicate something to me that I can’t understand.
An unfamiliar pressure builds up inside of me, but I push it down deep.
She wants to help, but I don’t understand how she could—no living person has any idea what magic a phoenix contains, and even if I did, I would not know how to wield it with any certainty.
I’m not going to risk wild, uncontrolled magic around children.
The two cath palugs nearest me turn their attention my way when I get close, including the one stalking Cordelia. If they are intimidated by my noise, or the massive unicorn at my side, they do not show it.
Nearly in sync, they crouch down, then spring in one fluid motion of attack. Etana stomps and throws her head, getting between us. The cath palugs retreat momentarily but circle back. They’re pacing, watching, waiting for the right moment to attack again.
I need to defend us. I scan the ground for something, anything, to use and spot a large fieldstone half out of the ground. I drop to my knees and dig frantically, using my fingers to leverage it out.
It’s substantial. Using both hands, I heft it up over my head. My arms wobble with the effort, but when a cath palug gets near, I fling it as hard as I can.
It connects, but barely, glancing off the side of one of the creatures.
It’s enough to scare her, and she jumps away, toward Etana, who kicks and makes contact.
The cath palug flies through the air, landing in a limp, unmoving pile.
That one will never be worn by a priestess or priest. Even amidst the chaos of keepers rushing to it, I can see its skull has been crushed.
The other two continue their stalking and attacking.
Pip, Mathew, and Esme arrive with actual bo staffs. They swing the long poles much more effectively than those with small, randomly found sticks and branches. The cath palugs still easily dodge the sturdy poles. At last they’re distracted from the children, but they remain aggressive.
One turns to the small group of novitiates. When it focuses on Svena, the unmatched woman, the novitiate wielding Gilcriss steps out of their huddle. He inhales and raises his hands. I want to stop him. I want to encourage him. He has no training. But what else is there to do?
In the air, a pressure that feels like an oncoming storm begins to build. The hairs on the back of my neck raise with the growing magic. The cath palugs and Etana stop moving.
“No!” Cecelia and Dad call out simultaneously. But it is too late. The dragon-wearer drops his hands suddenly and dramatically.
His gestures mean nothing. It is his will that releases the wild, explosive magic. A torrent of fire flares up from the ground in a perfect circle around the children. The cath palugs scream, an awful, panicked sound that cuts through my soul.
Nearly instantly, they are gone. Nothing but two piles of ash. The fire dissipates almost immediately.
Parents rush forward to their children, scooping them up and attending to their wounds. Cecelia picks up her sister, who is still bleeding profusely, but her breathing is steady.
“Hi, Lia,” Cordelia says in a small voice, using their family’s nickname for Cecelia. “Those were mean kitties.”
Cecelia doesn’t bother correcting her sister on calling the creatures “kitties,” just carries her alongside the other wounded children into the squat stone school for caregiving. Dad follows, his healer’s nature irrepressible.
The children who aren’t hurt are bundled up by their parents and taken home, their little faces streaked with tears or frozen with terror.
No one is going to sleep well tonight.
I step back from them all, being neither a healer nor a parent, and bump into something firm. I turn to find Kian hovering.
He must see something around my eyes or in my posture. “You okay?” he asks.
“Of course.” The quiver in my voice betrays the lie. The muscles in my legs tremble. People and creatures keep dying; now children are hurt.
And all of it began after I had woken the phoenixes. If I had just done what I needed to do with a keeper’s willingness to serve, without impulsively chasing my disastrous curiosity, no one would be dead. No one would be hurt. I wouldn’t have a phoenix skull permanently attached to my face.
I hate that I cry. The skin around the skull feels bruised and broken, slick from the various fats I used trying to remove it, and stinging from the salt of my tears.
The phoenix tries to communicate with me in images and feelings, but I shove her to a tiny corner of my mind as well as I can and plop down on the mostly frozen ground.
Kian sits beside me. “How can I help, beauty?” His voice is as dangerous as the rest of him. He puts a hand on my shoulder, and a warmth flows through me, soothing me. Even the pain of my wounds eases slightly.
It gives me clarity. I have to sever this bond.
But not tonight.
I stare up at the sky. I wonder what the spring skies will bring to the valley. Likely another disappointing season, with too-frozen ground preventing a timely planting and then too much rain drowning the slow-growing seedlings.
It’s the same sky I have looked at my entire life. The sky that I have cried beneath, had sex beneath, dreamed beneath. When I was little, those dreams were silly. I wanted purple hair and a kitten.
Now I’m uncertain of what my dreams even are, and the sky feels wholly unfamiliar.
I turn my face to Kian, pressing the forehead of the skull against his forearm. I am borrowing worries from the future when I have one attached to my face to fret over now.
I am not particularly faithful. Faith has always been something that’s just a given.
The Spinner, the Pupil, and the Huntress are a given—three aspects of the great goddess.
As keepers, we serve her alongside the orders.
But she hasn’t meant much more to me, either as a force to fret about, or as one to lean in to for comfort or guidance.
I think about one of the last conversations I had with my mom, about how outside the valley, people do not speak to the great goddess.
They go to the orders and ask, or pay, for intercession.
But here in the valley, we are closer to her.
We care for her creatures, and in thanks, she hears us directly and answers us.
If only we are brave enough to hear her voice.
Mom said the goddess is complex, and her answers are hard to find, but answers to supplication come in three varieties.
Yes.
No.
Wait.
Silently, I speak directly to her.
Goddess of all, lightness and dark, the complex and the simple, growth and death, I beseech you. Guide my heart and my feet. Show me what paths I have available and provide me with clarity as I make my choices.
And please, get this skull unstuck from my face.
The clouds part. I see the wink of a star in the darkening evening sky. This is my answer. The star disappears behind a cloud. Wait, it seems to say. Wait and see what will be revealed, or hidden.
Whatever the future holds, I will figure it out. As long as I am brave enough to try.