Chapter 20
Chapter 20
For the next several cycles, I keep to myself.
Scrounging and digging for resources lets my body take over for my mind. Coiling and twisting roots, twine, and wires for a cable keeps me present. The Pell I was before never got this far. She didn’t assemble a cable long enough to reach down five stories and back up again. She has no relevant memories here.
She was a different person, one whom I do not know.
It’s the truth, and that truth grounds me. Keeps me focused on work and draws my thoughts from both Heartwood’s kiss and Moseus’s dark, gaping hole. Separates me from the literal gods I share this tower with.
I wonder what it will be like, when the others are free. I doubt they’ll stay here. If I were a goddess, I wouldn’t settle on Tampere.
Nofe is a word in my native tongue. It means goddess.
But I’m not Nophe. Those words become a mantra as my fingers blister and callus, assembling this never-ending cord, until finally, twenty cycles later, it’s finished.
Once I replace the lever and fulcrum nestled in the heart of Machine Five, it’s able to drop down to connect with Machine Four. I make a slow walk through the tower, inspecting each machine, all the way down to Machine One, where Moseus greets me.
“They should all function now.” I press a hand to Machine One, to the part I earlier rigged up for a turning rod. “We just need to figure out how to fuel it. There’s nothing I can find.” I’ve gathered a lot of emilies, but it’s not nearly enough. And I don’t know how to connect a separate power source to this tower.
“Can you alter it?” Moseus asks, hands clenched beneath his long sleeves, voice eager. I try not to look at him. When I do, I see only that gaping hole. “Like you did when you wound it?”
I click my teeth together a few times. “I mean ... maybe. To use manpower on each machine would have to involve Emgarden. A lot of Emgarden. But these machines weren’t designed to function that way. I can’t wrap my head around how the Ancients did it.” I circle Machine One with my small lantern, as though the mechanism will finally reveal its last secret to me. It doesn’t. “I think emilies could also be a power source, but ... it would take a lot of emilies, and there’s nowhere for them to go.”
I haven’t yet tested how long the energy of an emily can last. I think Nophe knew, but she hasn’t deigned to tell me. The tower shivers as the earth moves below, but neither tower nor Tampere want to tell me, either, so I ignore them.
“Hmm.” Moseus approaches Machine One until his nose nearly touches its outer coils. “I have meditated on this a great deal, trying to expand my mind. But”—he sighs—“I do not know, either.”
I guess even gods aren’t omniscient.
“I’ll do the same,” I offer. “Give my mind a rest and see if something comes to me.” I’ve been in and out of all these machines. I know every millimeter of them, and nothing has given me a clue as to how to power them. I’ve speculated about everything, from the liquid mirror draining down into the tower and turning the mechanisms itself, to all this being a ruse by the Ancients to play with mortal minds. I genuinely don’t know where else to turn.
“If Emgarden must,” Moseus grinds out the words and punctuates them with a wearying breath, “then we will accept their help. But only if it must.”
I turn around. “Where is Heartwood?”
“I am not his overseer. He is capable of tending to himself.” Moseus rubs his forehead. “To be so close, and yet so far.”
I hug myself, catch myself, and fold my arms instead. “We’ll figure it out.”
“See that you do.”
I guess he missed the we in that sentiment, but I don’t point it out. Moseus retires to his meditation. I stand there, waiting for something I cannot name, another vision or revelation, or for the tower to speak to me, but it answers with dark silence, punctuated only by the sound of my breathing.
I fixed the machines, didn’t I?
So why do I feel as empty as when I first arrived?
I don’t know what to do with myself.
When I get home, I eat and try to rest, but I can’t. My mind spins. So I bring out a slate and attempt to work out the tower machines, but I don’t know where to start, so there’s nothing to write. I decide to work on something else, but the wells are fine and no one has died. I consider helping out on the farm, but by the time I get there, everyone has wrapped up. It’s late sun, and the mists are near, and while it’s not impossible to tend the crops in the mist, it’s not the easiest, either. So I find my rover to see if it needs any maintenance—it doesn’t—and wander home again.
I could visit the alehouse. But I feel like a wet rag wrung dry, and I don’t have it in me to socialize. To pretend like everything is fine when it’s not. There’s no solution to this listlessness, plain and simple. I just have to endure until I ... get better.
I rub a spot between my breasts nearly to bruising. Something is missing, it sings. I know, I counter, but what am I supposed to do? I can’t power the machines on wishes and prayers. I can’t pack in this gap with dirt or effort or anything in between.
I pace the length of my house, then the width, back and forth, crossing and recrossing my path. I’ve never thought of this humble abode as claustrophobic, but with the mist seeping through its open windows, it feels stifling. I want to cry and scream and sleep, but I settle for nearly ripping my hair out at the scalp, then throwing the door open and climbing the short ladder to the roof. Sprawling out on the shingles, I let the fog roll over me, claiming me as its own, merging me with the rest of Emgarden and our little corner of Tampere. I breathe it in, slow and deep, and let it out the same. Close my eyes and find no rest.
Several minutes pass before I sit up, a sigh on my lips, and plant my elbows on my knees. The solution for the tower will come to me eventually. It has to. If not me, then Moseus or Heartwood. Someone will sort it out. We’re so close. We’re all so close, and yet the task looms monumentally over us, murky and confusing and utterly unachievable.
I’m no engineer. I’m a tinkerer. A woman with too much time on her hands, who likes to wander the dry expanses around her town looking for artifacts of a people long past. I am nothing more, and I never will be.
Gritting my teeth, I rub the heels of my hands into my eyes. Blink away pink points of light and let the mist fill my vision once more. And—
My mind voids thought. Breath catches.
And ... there’s something familiar about this.
I can’t pinpoint what. I’ve been up on my roof countless times. But something about it itches the back of my mind. Where I’m sitting? The fall of the mist? What? I want to ask the tendrils of fog, but I fear that speaking will somehow destroy this partially formed spell.
Leaning forward, I listen, search. Move up on the shingles, over, down—
Here.This is where I sat, before. With my toes against the eaves. And then ...
Standing, I walk across the roof. Pause. Climb down the ladder. Yes, I did this. I’ve done it so many times, but I did this ... then. I start back for my door, but no—that’s wrong. I went this way.
Step by careful step, I wend my way west. Pause, consider, and continue. Not toward the main road. Not toward the tower or Salki or anyone else in Emgarden, but over this way, toward the eroded stone wall surrounding the town. It’s more decorative than anything else. Not hard to step over it. I sit, then rotate on my butt and swing my legs over. Walk out a little farther into the mists, one hand out like I might run into something, though I know there’s nothing of note over here. It’s just ... away. But that’s what I was trying to do, wasn’t it? Be away.
I pause, trying to gain my bearings. Trying to hold on to the slip of memory that’s as intangible as the vapor around me. No, I didn’t stop here. I went farther out. This way?
I walk a little quicker, turning more south. Yes, this is right. I went this way. And ... quiet steps beside me. I wasn’t alone. Who, then? Salki? Heartwood? Moseus? Arthen?
Here.I pause again. Spin slowly, but only see dull gray mist. But something happened here. Something important. Crouching, I drop my head into my hands. Think, Pell. What was it? What happened that’s so important?
I suck in a deep breath. It’s fading. I feel it fading, and if it leaves, I’ll never get it back.
“Think, think,” I whisper, pleading. “Come on, you know this.” I swallow, palms moist. Lick my lips. Close my eyes. “Nophe, please,” I murmur. “Help me.”
Perched on the roof, I let my eyes unfocus. The subtle colors in an otherwise dreary mist come out when I do, showing pinks and blues and greens, not unlike the emilies sprouting across the road. I watch them for a long time, long enough for the mists to curl the ends of my hair. Long enough for my mind to empty.
I don’t know how he saw me up on that roof. I would have missed him, had his foot not crunched in gravel. I think he wanted me to see him. Heartwood has always been light on his feet, when he wants to be.
Blinking the colors away, I look down. Scoot forward on the shingles so he can hear me without yelling. He’s donned his black cloak; it makes him look foreboding.
“Not like you to wander town,” I say. The mist is too high to see for sure, but I know he smiles at that.
“I wanted to see you,” he confesses, and my skin pebbles. Not from the cool fog, but I blame the weather anyway, because it’s easier. Safer.
I hold out my hands. “Here I am.”
His head tilts to one side. That beautiful hair draped over one shoulder. “Can we talk?”
I don’t answer, merely stand and climb down the ladder. He’s there when my feet touch the ground, and I lead the way out of town; I know how he and Moseus feel about Emgarden. Best not to chat here. We’re silent as we walk, me sliding over the stone wall, him simply stepping over it. Needing something to do with them, I shove my hands into the pockets of my trousers, which are thankfully clean. We walk a little ways before the silence makes me itch.
“I just need to adjust the framework,” I say, “and the rest of Machine One should click in. There’s this one gear that—”
“I don’t want to talk about the tower.”
I glance up at Heartwood, taking in the way the mist dances around him, like he’s part of it. His hair loops in a conglomeration of plaits, and I wonder if he spent extra time on it, and why. Probably because he was bored. The tower seems unbelievably boring to anyone who isn’t elbow-deep in grease and metal.
“Oh?” I ask. “What, then? Interested in starting your own crops?” I’m goading him, but goading him is one of my favorite pastimes, and it helps me ignore the racing of my heart. I silently thank the fog for keeping my skin cool. “You have to dig pretty deep for the richer soil; the stuff on top is almost entirely sand, so you have to turn it over—”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “You are tireless.”
I turn and face him. “You like it. I dare you to tell me you don’t.”
Those vivid green eyes study my face for a long moment. I’m sure he can hear my pounding heart. It shakes my thighs and fills my head. “I do,” he replies, after eons have passed. “Unfortunately, I do.”
“Unfortunately?”
He adjusts his cloak. He knows better than to offer it to me; I snapped at him pretty good last time. “Moseus—”
“Needs some booze and a very long walk,” I offer.
He chuckles softly. “I have not been as subtle as I should be around him.”
I swallow. “Subtle how?” But I know. I’ve caught his glances too many times. Accepted his assistance fixing the machines even when there’s little to nothing he can help me with. I’ve lost sleep talking to him, only to be reminded by his counterpart of the criticalness of repairing the tower. Heartwood always sobers at the reminders—his sister is waiting for him, after all. I’m drawn to him, always, but root myself to the machines. He has nothing to root himself to.
He reaches forward and slides a knuckle beneath my chin, his warm touch a stark contrast with the fog’s chill. “Subtle in the way I no longer wish to be. Nophe—”
“That’s the second time you’ve called me that.” My blood rushes through my veins swiftly enough to make me faint.
He rolls his lips together. “Do you want me to explain it to you?”
“No,” I murmur, pushing his hand away and grabbing the front of his shirt. I’m too short to reach him, but he obliges me and meets me, his lips crashing into mine. The world around us slumbers, and yet a symphony sounds in my ears. His hands on my waist ignite me; I can’t help the tiny moan that escapes me, the release of want I’ve been carrying cycle after cycle. My fingers entwine in that glorious mane as my mouth demands, demands, demands, but Heartwood gives, gives, gives, and I am undone by his tender passion, overjoyed that this desperation has not been mine alone. I kiss him with everything in me, content never to let him go.
I blink, and the mist cascades around me. He was here, before. I loved him, before. I—
I gasp so hard I nearly choke on it.
Serpent save me, I remember.