Chapter Twenty-Six #4
It is not amusing anymore. Vaire whips the three aside with a root. Cadoc is the first on his feet, charging forward. Before Vaire can deal with him, a blinding light sends them all stumbling back.
‘Enough of this,’ Sulan snaps, standing between them. ‘Nature, you were the one advocating for harmony with the humans.’
‘That was before they chose to disrupt that harmony!’
The light dims and Sulan faces him. ‘I warned you they were dangerous. But Nature, you still have growth on every part of this earth.’
‘They cut down my forest!’ Vaire cries, stepping forward. He is surprised at the tears stinging the corner of his eyes. ‘They stripped my darkness bare!’
Sulan tilts her head. Vaire realizes what he said and closes his eyes, jaw clenched.
‘My darkness,’ he repeats, deciding it is truth and not a mistake. He sinks to his knees and covers his face. In a moment, Sulan is beside him, wrapping him up in her arms and he lets her, leaning into the warmth.
Her hand strokes over his hair. ‘I know the pain of losing a large part of yourself to make room for someone else,’ she murmurs. His eyes open. ‘But sometimes that is harmony.’
He sits up, looking into her eyes, the bright gold one and the filmed, unseeing white. She smiles and cups his face, wiping away his tears. ‘Let the humans have this land. Perhaps there is a solution where we can both have as much as we want.’
‘What do you mean?’
Sulan turns to the civilized gods standing across from them. ‘If humans believe something, it can be made real, can’t it? They believed in you, and here you are.’
‘Yes,’ Eithne says cautiously. ‘But what they create with their minds is not quite as defined as what they create with their hands.’
‘All the better.’ Sulan pulls Vaire up. ‘Tell your humans that there is a land of gods, exactly like this land. Tell them until they believe it. We can do our own defining.’ Eithne looks to Cinaed, who nods.
‘Very well,’ Eithne says. ‘If you leave the rest of the croplands alone.’
Sulan looks to Vaire. He averts his eyes, staring hard at the ground.
‘I will,’ he says at last.
It is a long while yet before enough humans have enough faith for the gods’ land to be created. Long enough for Vaire’s threat to be forgotten and humans to return to cutting down trees and rebuilding what they lost. He tolerates it. Not for Sulan, or Eithne, but because Kyarin tolerates it, too.
‘I think that is the way of things,’ he says. ‘Harmony never remains.’
‘It is my fault,’ Vaire tells him. ‘I should have listened to you. Instead I let the humans unbalance everything.’
‘It will return. Whether we will be here when it does…’
‘What are you saying?’
Kyarin rests his head on Vaire’s shoulder. ‘The universe must find balance somewhere. And it favors the humans.’
‘Do we serve the universe, or ourselves?’ Vaire asks.
‘Is there a difference?’ Kyarin responds.
Vaire can’t answer. His fingers slip through Kyarin’s hair, grazing over and around his ear, settling his palm against the side of his head.
He leans into the touch, curling his fingers like gentle wisps of mist around Vaire’s arm.
Resting his forehead against Kyarin’s, they close their eyes and breathe together.
Eventually the stories and legends and songs bring into existence a land exactly the same, but free of human touch. Well, save what structures were there when the humans imagined it as so alike to their own world.
At first, it is a fascinating wonder. Even the civilized gods cannot help but wander astoundedly through it.
The wild gods spend a few decades there—the blink of an eye.
The mystique wears off when they realize the land is no different from human art.
Colorful, pretty, but static and lifeless.
Nothing has a heart, a soul. Nothing is connected.
Vaire feels no connection with the growing things, Terrin feels no embrace from the earth, Nuada feels no pull from the sea.
It is like walking in a dead land, but even Dihen doesn’t like it.
It is not dead, they say. It was never alive to begin with.
So they return.
In the time they were gone, humans had carved another large swath of forest out of the land. It hits Vaire like a sword slicing through a limb and he buckles the second they are home. Kyarin holds him up, silent and stoic under his own grief, but Vaire’s pain is felt by the others.
We need to speak with the human gods again, Terrin tells them all gravely. But the human gods rebuke his offer to meet. So they all gather on a cliff by the sea.
‘The humans have begun digging into me,’ Terrin says.
‘So does sea,’ Ailel points out. ‘Crystal grows inside you.’
‘Sea and crystal fill parts of me that were empty without them. They do not dissect me to rip out my insides for their own use.’
‘What can we do?’ Geom asks. ‘Their gods have no will to defy them.’
‘We cannot negotiate with the humans themselves,’ Sulan says. ‘They are too scared of us to see our presence as anything but a threat.’
‘You and air have nothing they can destroy.’ Terrin shakes his head. ‘Nature is being felled. Darkness is being ripped apart. This is more urgent than you can perceive.’
‘I was the first to caution against humans,’ Sulan reminds him.
‘This is my fault,’ Vaire says. ‘I was too captivated by them to see the danger they posed.’