Chapter Seventeen Adela
I walk home, but it is not far enough away from the gorgeous, distracting novitiate. I can still feel him, and all I want is to go to him. To fling myself into his arms and beg him to take me again.
I need to do something with my hands, and my mind. Beside the back door is Bartholomew’s golden mask. Four days since he’s been gone, and it feels like a lifetime.
I suppose it’s my mask now. I should put it away with the rest of my matcher items upstairs or give it to Beadda.
But a small part of me wants to keep it.
To keep both—the phoenix and the matcher position.
My conversation with Cecelia about accepting what I want and who I am, even when I’m ashamed, circles through me.
If I cannot rid myself of the phoenix, but I could match, I would have so many more options.
I could stay in the valley, or—there was a time when people moved in and out of the valley easily.
It’s in the old matcher journals. Perhaps I could do that.
I could serve both the Huntress and my community.
I could have Kian. I could have Dad, and Cecelia, and Etana.
Everyone I love.
And then I catch the thought that slid its way in without me noticing. No. I do not love Kian. I enjoy the way his body feels, and the way he makes me laugh, and looking at his gorgeous face when it’s not covered by a phoenix skull, but surely I don’t love him. Not yet. It’s still so new.
Maybe in time, if we have more of it. If I go to Insborough with the order.
To decide what future I will embrace, I need to know what my options are. I snatch my cloak, throwing it on my shoulders, and grab a carrot in case Etana is nearby, then march out to face my fate head-on.
The sky is bright blue with wisps of clouds peeking out over the mountains. I inhale deeply. No matter how impulsive I am, how much I do things I never mean to, at least the late afternoon sky does not judge me.
I’m supposed to be heading to the matching hut, but there’s something pulling me toward the forest. A compulsion I don’t understand. I let it guide me, assuring myself it’s not just to avoid the skulls and what I may or may not still be capable of.
I step into the forest, and the moment my feet hit the squishy floor, littered with pine needles and decaying leaves, waves of emotion overwhelm me.
Some of them are my own. I haven’t spent much time in the forest since I was young, but in the year after Mom left, I spent almost every waking hour here.
Walking. Thinking. Crying next to trillium and wondering what was so wrong with me that she would just…
leave. Praying to the great goddess that she would come back to me.
Bargaining everything and anything I could think of.
I would have traded the world for my mom.
Mom, with her silvery-blond hair and eyes that were always either crinkled with laughter or streaming tears, and rarely anything in between.
Mom, who gave the best, squishiest hugs and told me I was more rare, more powerful, and more beautiful than the long-extinct phoenix.
She’s really one of the only keepers I know who even told stories of the phoenix, and I wonder if she somehow knew what my future held.
But no, of course not. How would she?
We didn’t even know the skulls were up there. It was just one of the silly things she said to make her silly daughter feel special.
And it worked.
My tears soak into the bone of the phoenix skull, and a wave of hurt and overwhelm flows through me. The phoenix has feelings about the forest as well. Fear and anger, sorrow and pain.
She urges me deeper, into the heart of it.
The trees become thicker the farther we go.
In the summer, the undergrowth here would be sparse, starved of light by the thick canopy above.
Today the leaves are still just buds, and eager shoots sprinkle the ground, stretching toward the thin early spring light straining through the heavy clouds.
I walk on, crushing as few of the little plants as possible until I find the narrow path we keep clear for the orders to use on their way into to the valley.
As a symbol of the novitiates’ ascension to full priesthood, it’s intentionally winding.
It’d be silly of me to follow the entire thing, but taking it for a while is easier than forging my own way.
And by now, I suspect where the pull is leading. In the center of the forest is a massive oak. As kids, we used to trek out and climb it between chores, daring each other to go higher and higher into its branches.
The phoenix flashes images of it at me. Not visions, precisely, but quick memories.
It is smaller than I remember it, but also more vital.
To me, it was always just a big old tree, beautiful but insignificant.
To her it is something important. But I cannot figure out what.
Was it her home? Where she died? There’s a sense of loss and longing and… hope, perhaps.
I am nearly to the oak’s base when my toe hits the edge of a root, and I go sprawling. I catch myself with my face, which is a very stupid way to catch oneself. The beak of the phoenix digs into the soft earth.
Beside me I see something little, red, and shining in the soft light. I pick it up, squinting at it, so out of place here in the forest.
There is nothing natural about this glass stone, and I wonder if the keeper children have been playing out here like we used to.
With the dragon still roaming, still hurting creatures and animals and people, they’ve been instructed to stay in the village, where it’s safer.
Or at least, hypothetically. After the cath palug attack, many of the keeper parents are keeping their children at home as much as possible.
I push myself up from the ground as a slender beam of sunlight breaks through the clouds and illuminates a spot on the path a few steps ahead. In the spot of sunlight is another red stone. I scramble forward and snatch it, then begin to search for more.
Again, farther down the path is another.
And a bit farther, another.
Someone has marked the path. I begin to follow the stones through the woods. The phoenix urges me forward. Whether that’s because they’ve caught her curiosity as well or just because we’re still heading closer to her tree, I am uncertain.
I collect another half-dozen stones before I feel the world shift beneath me.
We catch an updraft, soaring over the pegasus cliffs and the dragon caves, the wyvern warrens, and the gryphon nests in the far-off trees, enjoying the summer bounty below.
The safe and verdant valley. The land provides us with sustenance. The people on it, protection.
The magic’s growth is as swift as a lark trying to escape being my mate’s breakfast. Or, no, something far more dangerous. The magic is wild, viscious, destroying.
The gryphons are dying in birth from having too many babies at a time. The kelpie are shedding chunks of mane at the edges of the riverbank. The jackalopes so aggravated that in their fights for territory, they are killing one another.
And we cannot tell what is wrong.
The vision might be the most powerful one I’ve had yet. It was the clearest. I was the phoenix, and the world was sharp, not the golden haze of the usual ones. I’m having a hard time shaking the worry in it.
And then I hear a shattering equine scream from the other side of the tree.
I rush to find Etana on the ground in a pool of blood and mucus, Lathai over her. She’s giving birth. He paws the ground and flaps his wings, screaming again. He nudges her, and she moves, slightly, but is clearly exhausted. Her belly heaves, but no foal emerges.
I hurry to her, dropping the red stones on the earth beside me. I am no healer, not like Dad, but I hope instinct will be enough for me to help her, to save her.
Because like the gryphon in my vision, she is dying in childbirth.
Lathai screams again as I get to her, and the heavens open above us. Lightning and thunder and torrential rain.
“The timing isn’t great, my friend,” I say to the pegasus, who is obviously not doing this on purpose.
It’s like the pulses of magic that happen.
I am the cause, but not intentionally. Same with him and the storm, though I have never seen one so large caused by a pegasus.
They’re usually more like a summer shower.
This is full of rage and grief, just like Lathai.
He snorts at me and bares his teeth, stomping the ground again.
I raise my hands, palms empty and up, and dip my head. “Friend,” I say. “I’m her friend.”
He knows this. He knows me. But he is a wild creature, and his mate appears to be dying. Cautiously, I approach her, afraid he will attack. He does not like it. He paces as the storm rages above us. But he allows it.
I check Etana. Her breathing is shallow, and she’s covered in sweat. There should be a foal’s nose and two feet sticking out of her, but there’s nothing but a red, velvety membrane. This is bad. I reach forward to try to rupture the membrane, but Lathai snaps at me, not wanting me to touch her.
“Let me help,” I plead, and try to reach forward again.
He rears and lands hard next to me, a clear warning.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help. I want to scream, but it’s not Lathai’s fault he’s protective. And then it all gets worse. Lightning strikes the giant tree above us. Lathai protects Etana with his body and wings, but I am scraped raw by the flying bark.
Beside him, Etana rears, screaming a warning at the same moment that I feel a gust of too-warm wind at my back.
I spin in time to see Enkidus descending quickly, her taloned feet stretched toward me.
I remember the way Duschwa’s insides spilled out of her, the way Bartholomew’s body lay broken and half-devoured in his home.
I fling myself backward at the same moment Etana flings herself forward.
But no. She was just barely surviving birth. And now she is up, using hooves and her horn to kick and rend. To protect me. Lathai jumps in as well, nipping and kicking.
Enkidus was coming for me, but she defends herself from the attacks, like any living thing would. Lathai dodges the dragon, but Etana, who is closest, slowest, as weak as she is, cannot move fast enough.
Enkidus slashes at Etana. Deep-red blood gushes from a wound on her back, yet Etana fights.
Somehow she manages to pin the dragon’s wing to the ground and uses her horn again.
It sinks deeply into Ekindus’s eye. The dragon cries out and then lashes with her tail, catching Etana hard in the belly and throwing the unicorn off, then launches herself into the air.
She hovers momentarily, pulling her neck back. She’s going to spit fire.
“Etana, run!” I shout, but she can’t. She can barely stand.
Enkidus hisses flame. The fire catches Etana on her back.
She goes down, hard, skidding across the old leaves and pine needles.
Enkidus flies away with Lathai chasing her, and I hurry forward.
Etana’s belly is heaving, her back is covered in blood, and along her neck are burns so bad it looks as if her flesh and hair have all melted.
I gag at the smell of it, like burnt meat.
“Etana, my love. Stand up for me.” We have to get back to the village. We have to get to Dad.
She struggles to do as I ask, but she cannot stand. She is making low, awful noises, and her breathing is shallow and raspy, a rattle I do not trust. I stand, considering my options. I can stay with her and watch her die, or I can risk the trek to Dad. She still might die, but she’d do it alone.
I scream into the night sky.
At the skull on my face.
At Etana, trying to protect me instead of running away and saving herself.
But mostly at myself.
This is my sin, my fault my star sister is dying at my feet. If I hadn’t polished the phoenix, the first pulse would never have gone through the valley in the first place. Enkidus wouldn’t have lost her mind.
I have to fix it. I have to save Etana.
I run back to the village. Or at least, I do my best. It’s too far for me to sustain a straight sprint, but I move as fast as I can, ignoring the stitch in my side and the clamoring phoenix skull on my face, which wants me to return to the forest, to the tree.
She seems to care nothing at all about the dying unicorn who just saved us both. But she does not have feet. I do.
“Stop!” I yell into the night, to her, frightening a rabbit from the underbrush. “Unless you can get me to move faster through your mysterious magic, I don’t want to feel another thing from you.”
Surprisingly, the phoenix listens, falling still.
In time, I make it to my house. Dad is not there. He could be anywhere in the village.
I go outside and practically run into him. Thank the goddess. He takes one look at my face and asks what’s wrong.
“Etana,” I manage between gulps of air. “Dying. Dragon. The foal.”
We hurry back to the forest, as fast as we can. I fill him in on the way, and the more I share, the faster we move. But Dad is not a young man. We do not move as quickly as I’d like, and I half wish I’d taken the time to get one of the horses.
The whole way, I silently say prayers to the goddesses.
The Spinner, for strength. The Pupil, for my father’s wisdom in how to keep Etana alive.
But most of my prayers go to the Huntress to stay her hand.
To show mercy, though she is not known to do anything of the sort.
I make promises I’m not sure I can keep.
That if she will spare Etana and her baby, I will go to the order.
I will serve her, gladly, for the rest of my life.
When we are close, I hear another scream. We get to the clearing and find Lathai back. His anger has waned, and the storm along with it. He is on his knees beside Etana, nudging her gently. She is already dead. I brought Dad too late. I was too slow.
I left her here, to die without me.
“I’m so sorry,” I say to the night. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Dad crouches down beside her, checking her vitals. He sits back, shaking his head.
“She’s gone?” I ask.
He looks at me, tears in his eyes. “Not yet. But now is the time to say your goodbyes.”