Chapter 16
Chapter 16
When I pull away from Heartwood, he lets me go.
“What?” A dry laugh escapes me. “That is—”
“Absurd, yes, I know,” he finishes for me, the word half-formed on my tongue. He looks at me almost wryly, rubbing his chest where my hand just was, as though I’ve burned him. “And no, I can’t demonstrate.”
I was about to ask him to. To prove it. Reasonable deduction on his part, I think, but find myself shaking my head.
It takes me a beat to find my voice again. “I’d ... I’d call blasphemy, but—”
“You’ve never been particularly religious.” He looks out over his garden, again guessing my next words. Again striking me speechless. He can’t read my mind ... can he? “There are many gods,” he continues, quieter. “I am not one necessitating worship.”
I laugh again, because I don’t know what else to do. I walk down the path a ways, then come back, albeit not as close as before. “Well, maybe I’m a goddess. And I also can’t demonstrate.”
Heartwood sighs, like I’m a child, and it instantly puts me on edge.
“Okay, Heartwood”—I fold my arms—“from some other Serpent-made world, if we’re to believe the lore. Why in the universe are you on Tampere?”
His answer softens me. “I’m searching for my sister.” He meets my eyes. “What Moseus said about the tower, about the wall, was not false.”
My shoulders are so rigid, they start to ache. I force them to relax. “And what, is she a god, too?”
He pauses. “I should not have burdened you with this.” There’s something else he wants to say; I can see it in the movement of his lips. But he adds nothing.
“Well, I’m burdened.” I stride past him to the rock he perched upon earlier and sit. “Explain.”
He rolls his lips together, debating.
“Tell me where you come from, Heartwood. Give me that.”
He exhales long and slow. Without looking at me, he says, “We trace back—all of us—to the Well.”
“The Well of Creation.” I’ve heard of it. Amlynn is really into the legend.
He nods. “It was in the beginning. It made the fabric of the universe, the stars—”
“What are stars?”
He points to the sun. “The first life to extend from its depths was the World Serpent.” He gestures to me, knowing I’m aware of the great snake. I swear on it often enough. “And after, it stemmed the gods.”
Still skeptical, I ask, “And what number are you?”
A wistful cast envelops his face. “I do not know. After Ether.”
“Ether?”
“My sister.”
“They’re ... kind of all your siblings, aren’t they?”
“In a sense.” He kneels down on the path, then sits, folding his long legs before him. Pieces of hair have loosened from his braid and catch on the subtlest breeze that scoops into the gorge. For some reason, it ... does make him look a little godlike. With the right lighting, he could have an etherealness about him. He’s always been lovely, in that sense.
“So the Well just spit you all out, and you, what, followed the World Serpent around until you settled down?”
He shakes his head. “You are always so matter-of-fact.”
“Am I?”
Heartwood’s gaze turns inward. “The Well made the essence of our forebears, which the world formed. I am not a creation of the Well itself, but a child of it. My parents, if you will, formed me in the depths of a forest a long way from here. Thus my animus.”
“And Moseus was formed somewhere ... like this.” I gesture widely.
He cocks an eyebrow.
“Somewhere peaceful,” I specify.
I get a smile from that, and I push back against the fluttering it ignites in my stomach. “I’m glad you find it peaceful.” He considers. “Moseus is very old. When he formed, it was very ... quiet.”
“And this sister, Ether, she just ... formed in the air somewhere?” It was a joke, but Heartwood nods, which makes me feel stupid. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m thinking about this too literally. I still only half believe him. And he gets that half because he is so other. So unlike anyone else in Emgarden. And because he bent steel to his hand, and not a bone on that hand looks like it’s ever been broken.
I don’t know the names of most of the gods—there are hundreds, at least. But I know the name of one. “I guess Ruin was real pissed when it came around.”
The ground rumbles in agreement.
Heartwood is an interesting creature. An emotional one, yet severe. To save my life, I cannot imagine him at the counter of the alehouse. He sounds very sober when he explains, “Ruin was the last of the first. The Well gave everything it had. Life pulled every last drop from its recesses, until all it could do was take. That is what Ruin is. A consumer. Devourer.”
“Balance to the universe.”
He frowns. “Some have said.”
Movement across the garden catches my eye. “Moseus,” I say, less in greeting and more in warning. He stands at the entrance of the garden. He looks off—not just from the perturbance nesting itself on his brow, but the hollowness in his cheeks. In truth, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in good lighting. It’s evident that while this garden renews Heartwood, it does not have the same effect on Moseus, no matter how peaceful I find it.
Then I remember Heartwood asked me not to tell Moseus I’d come here, and that Moseus told me to give Heartwood a wide berth, and my stomach sinks to my knees. My tongue twists, trying to taste out a lie, but I’m not sure what I’m lying about.
Heartwood doesn’t look overly worried. He stands.
“What are you telling her?” Moseus’s usual serenity weaves through the question, but I can tell he’s unhappy. Nervous.
“She asked,” Heartwood replies.
Rising to my feet, I put out my hands in surrender. “I won’t share it. I don’t even really believe it.” I’m not sure if that qualifies as a lie. I’m not sure of any of it.
Moseus holds Heartwood’s gaze for nearly a minute. The garden air practically thickens with it. The sun burns too hot. I take in the shadows of Moseus’s face and pin them to what Heartwood said earlier: that he cannot demonstrate his godhood.
He’s too weak,I realize. They both are.
I want to ask why, but I also want to keep my head on my shoulders, so I excuse myself and venture back to the tower.
Moseus and Heartwood don’t return for a long time.
I rest at home during the following mist, dreaming of gods.
It’s the kind of dream that’s hard to recount: more shapes and colors than anything else, but my mind finds a way to twist sense into it. I see a vast, endless universe of pale blue, and in it spins a great white ring, vomiting serpents and gods, until it turns inside out and becomes something else entirely. Something deep and hungry and dark. I’m eager to take my mind off the fading shapes and incomplete story. As soon as the next mist falls, its gentle, barely-there tone whispering on the breeze, I return to the tower.
Machine Four looks good. Most of its problems are at the top, which means climbing up its complex network of parts, but I enjoy it. Nearly drop my turnscrew, but I snatch it just in time.
“Kiss my mortal ass, Heartwood.” I gesture crudely to him and storm toward the stairs.
“You don’t know what it could do!” he barks behind me.
I whirl toward him. “You’d better walk before I show you what I can do.”
He throws his hands in the air and storms away.
I blink, one hand holding tight to a beam as the vision dissipates. What are—were? will?—we even fighting over?
Chewing on my lower lip, I lean into Machine Four. Press my forehead to its cool metal and close my eyes, replaying the scene in my head. Heartwood so animated, so unlike the version of him I know now. I wonder why—
“I came to apologize.”
I sit on the protrusion from the top tier of the tower, looking up at the sun. The mists have begun to gather across the Brume Mountains. I don’t answer. It’s childish of me, but I don’t.
A full minute passes. He sighs. “I hate it when you sit out here.”
Glad he can’t see my smirk, I reply, “I know.”
The vision evaporates. I wait, pressed against the machine, for another. Adjust my position. Roll up my sleeves, wondering if skin contact might trigger something new, but alas, the tower seems done with me, for now.
As I pull back, though, my hand brushes against ... rubber? There’s a short bar under this set of pistons, perpendicular to everything else. I think it’s debris lodged in there, but when I twist and get a better grip on it, it pulls up like a lever.
Machine Four bucks.
I shriek as the whole mass twists suddenly to the left, and I yank my hand free while simultaneously getting a better grip with the other. It’s falling, turning me under it. I’ll be crushed. I’ll—
The machine clicks loudly and stops, emitting a puff of air, leaving me dangling three meters above the floor. My tool bag, wedged between components, spills half its tools onto the floor. The lift buzzes, and as I’m trying to gauge how much it’ll hurt to drop, Heartwood appears. I wonder if it’s happenstance, or if he was lingering nearby and heard me shriek.
He rushes toward me. “Hold on, I’ll catch you.”
I adjust my sweat-slick grip. “I don’t need to be caught.”
“Stop being difficult.”
“But you like it,” I grunt. I’m losing my grip, so I let go, ready to bend my knees and roll to take off some of the shock of hitting stone, but Heartwood holds true to his word. His large hands grab my waist when I drop, slowing me down enough that I barely feel my heels touch the floor. My tool bag comes clattering down after me. Heartwood pulls me away from a toppling wrench, which results in my nose pressed up against his chest.
He smells earthy. Like his garden, but richer. Like plants I’ve never seen before.
My heart thumps hard. Forest.
Heartwood releases me first, obvious strain around his eyes. Picks up the wrench. I glance away, and—
“Holy ...” I can’t finish the exclamation. “Heartwood ... look.”
The machine’s rotation has revealed a perfectly circular passageway in the ceiling, where it previously connected, and just past it, I see ... light.
Rippling, silver light.