Chapter 22
Chapter 22
Tears stream from my eyes like they are two broken wells. I lift dust-covered hands and press them to my mouth, stifling clipped breaths. My throat aches and swells. My fingers tremble.
Oh gods, Heartwood.I forgot him. I don’t know how, or why, but I lost all of it. It’s been ... a year? Since that last memory. And all this time he stayed cooped up in that tower, while I went about business as though he never existed. As though we never existed.
I stand, dizzy from the blood pooling in my feet. Why didn’t you come to me? Would I have accepted his explanation? No. I know I wouldn’t have. But he could have tried! Why didn’t he try?
You betrayed us.
“But I didn’t,” I croak, and the tears wash anew. I have no recollection of betrayal. If I stole something critical, I hid it somewhere even I cannot find it. And if I stole something critical, how do the machines work?
But they don’t work. Not yet.But I would remember dismantling the power sources for five behemoth machines and then patching up the work to make it look like they never had them. I’m no blacksmith, no welder. I couldn’t have possibly—
The deep hollowness in my chest echoes so emphatically that I gasp and press both palms over it. Heartwood. I would have been so miserable, to be cut off so cleanly. Shattered. If he forgot me, us—
I have to see him. Now. I have to fix this.
I love him.
Surely it isn’t too late,I think as I sprint through the mist to the tower. His coolness toward me, his aloofness, his pain makes so much sense now. Bearing my presence when I could not fathom his. Sucking it up, in part for Moseus’s sake, no doubt. Our story closed half-unwritten, with Heartwood’s part left to wander between the lines that once were.
Machine Three. Heartwood said it had something to do with Machine Three. But what did the Ancients hide there? What did Heartwood and Moseus awaken when they opened that hole through the floor to reach it? And why hasn’t it affected them in a similar manner?
Because they’re gods.My lungs start to sting. I force deeper breaths as I run, refusing to slow.
I remember it all. Heartwood and Moseus had been alone for some time before reaching out to me. Heartwood is a passionate creature by nature; he took an interest in me from the start, albeit not a romantic one. I sensed he was lonely. Made an effort to speak to him, though it was awkward at first. Heartwood conversed with me like a toddler learning to walk. I would have given up on him, if not for the work.
He became my sounding board. Every problem, every frustration, I took to Heartwood. We butted heads often. We were so very different. We are so very different. And yet his genuine nature and honesty drew me to him. His openness, his willingness to help—
The Heartwood I met the second time was a shadow of that man. Looking back, I can see glimmers of his true self shining through. Searching for Casnia, because he knew how important she was to me. Spotting me on the protrusion, worried I’d fall. Letting me into the garden we’d once shared. Gods, he even helped me dig that hole, knowing it wouldn’t lead anywhere.
My legs ache as I near the tower. I imagine our roles reversed. Heartwood devoured by the machines instead of me. It would gut me. I would hate him, and myself, and this damnable tower. I would never recover.
He’s already lost his divinity. Already lost his sister.
I crash through the tower doors. “Heartwood?” The first floor greets me with its usual hush, so I rush up to the second and throw open his door. “Heartwood?”
The room is empty. I climb the ladder to the third floor. Seeing no one, I hurry to the lift and take it up. Moseus studies the machine there, trying to learn what I have not.
Breathless, I ask, “Is Heartwood here?”
Moseus looks at me, confused. “I don’t believe so. Why? What has happened?”
But I don’t take the time to convey it to him. Moseus was never a fan of our relationship, though I doubt he knew how deep it went. I shake my head, swallow against a dry throat, and make my way back downstairs and out of the tower.
Please don’t be hunting,I plead, forcing my body to continue running toward the slot canyons. Please be there.
The mist dissipates as I sprint. I slow to a jog in the punishing heat of the sun. When I finally reach the hewn stairs of the slot canyon, I trip down them, then press my back against one of the tall red-rock walls, desperate for air. My chest heaves in protest. My legs buzz like they’re full of flies. Water, my throat pleads, but there’s water in the garden. I can make it to the garden.
Pushing off the wall, I can’t convince my body to sprint, so I lumber through the narrow canyon, steadying myself against rock walls. I understand now how I found the garden the first time. I’d been here before. Heartwood showed me. I spent so much time here. Time with him. Gods, let him forgive me. I didn’t know.
I stumble through the stone archway and find him, ten paces away, planting something in overturned soil. My heart lodges in my ribs. He glances at me, then stiffens and rises to his feet, his face knit with concern. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t take my eyes off him. How did I not see it before? How did I not recognize him the moment we reunited?
Despite my thirst, my eyes run again. I hate crying, but I haven’t the strength to stop the tears. That alone has him marching forward to intercept me. “I remember,” I blurt, my voice rough.
He freezes two paces away, rooted to the ground like the wickwoods.
“Heartwood, I remember you.” I sob. “I remember us. I’m so sorry. I’m so ... so sorry.” Weariness consuming me, I tilt to one side. He rushes forward to catch my elbow, the skin around his eyes tight, his brow furrowed. I grab the fabric of his sleeve in fists. “I don’t ... I didn’t mean to. I don’t understand how, but Heartwood, please forgive me. Please.”
His lips part. One hand cradles my jaw and turns it toward him. His eyes dart back and forth, searching for truths, for lies. His fingertips are cool against my hot skin, his breaths nearly as rapid as mine. Does he not believe me? Or is there hope behind that shimmer in his eyes?
“Nophe,” he whispers, quiet as the fog. “Do you really ...”
The question is too delicate to finish. Too broken to voice.
I grab the sides of his face. Stare until I see the trees in his eyes. “I love you, Heartwood,” I whisper. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, “And I was right about Machine Two.”
The sudden openness of his expression shreds my insides to ribbons. He falters, as though his own strength has wavered. His hands clasp my wrists, but he does not pull me away. He whispers, “Nophe—”
But I’m done apologizing.
Pushing onto my toes, I kiss him, tasting sage and salt and Heartwood, reclaiming him for my own. It takes only a beat to convince him of my truth, a beat for him to respond, and I’m swept into his arms and off my feet, challenging him with lips and tongue and teeth, desperate to relearn every part of him. I drink his hurt, his loneliness, and his sorrow, choking when it mixes with my own. It is not so easily healed. Perhaps it never will be. But these are my scars, and I claim every last one of them, making a weld of remorse and renewed devotion, a poorly wired atonement and bereavement for all that we’ve lost.
Stone presses against my back. Our hands roam and pull and demand, but it’s not enough. Our sorrow becomes need becomes heat, and it rages between us, devouring our flesh and searing our souls.
We are both entirely selfish, craving and taking, ravenous. No touch can allay the ache of our time apart, but there’s a solace in it, a temperamental peace shattered and reforged as we remember together, until the garden and the tower and Tampere fall away, and there exists no world but ours.
After, I lie against him in a loose bed of fairy wisps, toying with a long lock of hair from his obliterated braid. Ear to his chest, I listen to his heartbeat and take comfort in the rhythm of his breaths. We stay long enough for the desert wrens to return, and only when they sing does Heartwood, drawing circles on my back, whisper, “Truly, Nophe?”
So I start from the beginning, detailing his somewhat violent manner of asking for my assistance at the tower. I detail the state the machines had been in, far worse than my second time around. My voice grows coarse, and I excuse myself for a drink before returning and stretching myself over him once more. Tracing his eyebrows and nose, I tell him of every stupid thing he ever said to me, and each rude retort I gave back, all the way to the dismantling of Machine Two, before he stills my hand with his own and pleads, “Enough.”
I grin at him. “Then you finally believe me?”
He lifts his head and kisses me, wiping dried tears from my cheeks with his thumbs, marveling at me anew. “I do. But how?”
“You ask me this after partaking—”
“Nophe.”
Brushing hair from his face, I kiss his nose, then slide back to his side. “I don’t know,” I admit, quiet enough to be ignored by the wrens. “I’ve been remembering in fragments, but the pieces were so disjointed, I could never connect them. But whatever spell took my memories was breaking. I was on my roof in the mist when I felt the pull to know. I followed it, and I remembered.” A lump forms deep in my throat. I swallow, but it does little good. “I’m so sorry.”
Heartwood runs a hand through my hair before guiding my mouth back to his. I kiss him slowly, lazily savoring him. When I pull back, he murmurs, “I’ve always wondered what you thought, seeing me again. The only memory you would have had of me was pulling that knife.”
I blink. “Knife?”
“At the machine.” Seeing the confusion in my face, he props himself up on his elbow. “After you forgot ... I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand. And I kept asking you, and I scared you, and you pulled a knife on me.”
I scan his face. Nothing but sincerity. Twisting around, I find my clothes—don the undershirt, just in case we have visitors—and pull Arthen’s blade out of my trouser pocket. “This one?”
He doesn’t need to examine it. He nods.
I turn the blade over in my hand. “No, I ... I didn’t know you at all. When I first saw you, that time, I just thought you looked like Moseus. I thought you were brothers. When Moseus came to ask me for help ... I had no recollection of either of you.”
Heartwood frowns. Tucks my hair behind my ear. “But now you remember the rest?”
“Yes.” I recount more to prove it: work on the machines, stopping to repair a well, sleeping with him in my home. “But not that knife.” I shake my head. “Arthen kept asking me where it was. I told him I didn’t take it.”
Heartwood frowns.
I lower the knife. “I didn’t take anything else, either, Heartwood. I swear it. But ...” But something is missing.
Heartwood said I pulled a knife on him after losing my memories. So I should remember pulling it. But I don’t.
If Machine Three took my memories the first time, what took them the second?
“Perhaps time affects the Ancients’ malediction,” he assures me. “In time, you will recall.”
I mumble an agreement, not because I believe it, but because there’s no point in arguing. Not when I can’t remember. I stare at the budding retalia, the poisonous chrystanus, and the verdant fairy wisps, as though they might reveal something to me. My relief to be with Heartwood again, to have his forgiveness, overwhelms my simmering frustration. I have him.
Putting the knife away, I ask, “How often does Moseus come here?”
He considers. “Perhaps three times since we first came to the tower. It is unlike him.”
“Good.” I push him back into the fairy wisps and climb atop him. “Because we have a lot to make up for.”
My head pressed against Heartwood’s chest, knees curled up, sleep comes easily.
I carefully align the sprocket with its track, balance the track on my shoulder, and twist the screw into place. It took me forever to figure out where these internal pieces on Machine Three go. My first guess seemed correct, but it would require me to bore new holes into the metal, which is not only difficult, but wrong. The Ancients made these machines a certain way for a reason. They functioned, long ago. I have to learn their patterns and follow them, even if it takes more time.
My clammy hand fumbles around the turnscrew. Heartwood should return any moment now. Over and over I’ve rehearsed what I’ll say to him and how I’ll say it. Prepared myself for a litany of reactions and a defense for each one. But he has to know.
Before I act, he has to know. He’ll understand it better than I do. He’s a god; he has to understand.
No, that wasn’t it. I’m missing something.
Deep breath, focus. I check behind me, scanning the room before zeroing in on the hole in the floor. Listen, but it’s silent. Too silent? I’m not sure. I never paid attention to the noises of the tower before. I’ve always been the loudest thing here.
I carefully align the sprocket with its track, balancing the track on my shoulder, and push the screw into place. I miss, the first few times. My nerves are getting the better of me. I wish Heartwood hadn’t left. If he’d been here, it’d be different. I’d feel safer.
It took me forever to figure out where these internal pieces on Machine Three go. My first guess seemed correct, but it would require me to bore new holes into the metal, which is not only difficult, but wrong.
Holes. They make me think of him. Of the way her body crumpled. I’m trying not to. I have to wait for Heartwood. I fear that lingering in Emgarden will give me away.
Focus on the work, I remind myself.
The Ancients made these machines a certain way for a reason. They functioned, long ago. I have to learn their patterns and follow them, even if it takes more time.
My clammy hand nearly drops the turnscrew. Heartwood should return any moment now. Over and over I’ve rehearsed what I’ll say to him and how I’ll say it. Prepared myself for a litany of reactions and a defense for each one. But he has to know.
I hope I’m wrong. I pray to the World Serpent and the Well of Creation itself that I’m wrong. She’s dead, either way, but there’s a difference. An enormous, fundamental difference.
Before I act, he has to know. He’ll understand it better than I do. He’s a god; he has to understand.
Drawing in a deep breath, I steady myself. Step back and roll the sprocket forward, verifying its track is straight.
I don’t hear Moseus behind me, but when his cold hands grab the sides of my head, I immediately know it’s him. A scream bubbles from my chest and up my throat as I try to beat him away and—
And ...
Where am I?