31. 30 #2
“Annie,” she replied, laughing into my ear as she clutched me back with equal fervour.
We parted, and I took her in from head to toe. “Are you well? How is Yona? How is the Eclipse?”
She giggled again and held my hands. “We’re all well. But I think Yona is worried about you. You should visit her, or write.”
I nodded, struck with a combination of guilt and grief. Guilt, for Yona. Grief, for Jusia. Daisy had the same Meldoran accent, and I didn’t expect the sound of it to hit me in the stomach. “I will.”
“How are you?” she asked, glancing over my shoulder. “Are you aware you have a Samiscan shadow?”
“That’s just Fella.” I grinned. “You know they’re not as weird as everyone says.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.”
“You should visit.”
She laughed as if the very idea was ridiculous. Then she studied me, and her eyes roamed across my mask, my dress, and the empty wineskin someone had gifted me. “Annie, you look…”
“I know,” I said, the shame of my Ekrissian teachings rising up. My shoulders stiffened, awaiting the reprimand on my behaviour. We were never supposed to be at these events. Talia would scold me silly if she saw me in this state.
Daisy squeezed my hand. “You look alive.”
I smiled a little, until I saw the fiery sincerity of her gaze. Then I laughed, the shame shedding away like an old reptilian skin. “That’s not what tonight is about.”
She tutted. “That’s exactly what it’s about.”
Daisy rejoined her group, who had started arguing about a wine emergency: it seemed they had run out. But not before pleading with me to come see her again soon. I promised her I would, and I meant it.
Fella slung an arm around my shoulder, and asked me nothing as we continued to swell towards the city.
We were more than halfway when she pulled us into a taverna to make use of their bathroom.
A number of other patrons of the Night of the Dead fell in with us, and we all laughed as the barkeep yelled at us that we best buy a drink if we’d be wanting to take a leak.
I was out before Fella, and felt guilty enough to slap a silver onto the counter top.
I exited and leaned against the wall, hoping for even the chance of a breeze.
The night’s enjoyment had already built a sweat in me, and I checked around myself before pushing back the cloak and taking off the mask.
It helped a little with the stuffiness. I closed my eyes, feeling my pulse in my head as the wine took its aim.
A nudge at my elbow. “You left word with my master.”
I jolted away from the wall as I laid eyes on the man beside me.
He was dressed in black, but obeyed none of the other frivolities of the night, with no mask, cloak, or candle.
His dress seemed more of a coincidence than a statement, and his face was so plain and unremarkable I don’t think I could have picked him out even a second later.
He waited, and didn’t advance, his expression as bland as his appearance.
I blinked. “What?”
“You are Lady Fopdoodle.”
A statement, not a question.
“Ah,” I said with an apologetic smile for the strangeness, and glanced around once more. “Yes. What word from your master?”
The man’s face did not react to my embarrassment, only speaking in a low voice without pause. “He bids you to come to the faded yellow door along the waterfront, after the second fishing jetty to the right of the spit.”
The wine swirled in my brain. “Can you repeat that?”
“Have a good night, my lady.”
And then he was gone. I blamed the wine for how quickly it all seemed to happen. One minute he was at my elbow, and the next, he had disappeared into the throng of people following the procession.
“Shit.”
Granville, or Vasile, or whatever his real name was, had granted my audience. I repeated his instructions as best I could, my lips making the shape of the words as I repeated them in my head. Faded yellow door, waterfront, second fishing jetty to the right.
He hadn’t said when. No time, no day. I would go tomorrow, and hope that would be acceptable to him.
Fella arrived not ten seconds after I’d lost him, and I pulled my mask back into place as she lifted a full oenochoe of wine from under her cloak like a trophy.
I grinned as she beckoned us away and back to the group. It had moved on a fair chunk while we’d been away from the procession, and we were now near the very back of the group, and the drums were a distant pounding.
Fella guarded the jug of wine as we moved through the revellers. She turned to me, walking backwards and somehow managing to avoid clattering into anyone. She tipped the jug back and drank deeply from the neck itself.
She lowered it, and offered the oenochoe to me as easily as a skin.
I shook my head with an unstoppable giggle. “No cups?”
She lifted her hands into the sky and yelled into the darkness. “This is not a night for cups.”
Around us, several strangers jeered along with her, raising their own drinks.
The giggle spread into a laugh, and I gazed up at the twinkling stars above, hazy through the light of many candles. Then I tipped the oenochoe back and took a heavy swig.
“That’s the spirit.”
For the first time in weeks, I felt happy. Gleeful. Alive.
We had caught up to the drummer’s chariot by the time the street opened into our quarry, the main square of Dytho. Here, the House of the Sun sat opposite to the King’s Palace, its flag at half-mast in indication of the regent’s absence. The buildings were the two thrones of the city.
The chariots pulled in around the giant fountain in the centre, depicting the King and Queen of the Gods, the Sun and the Moon.
Instead of their true faces, each carved body held a mask over their partner’s face.
Otori, the Moon, held a moon-like visage over her lover; he in turn held a bursting sun over hers.
Their partnership, their constant following of the other was intermeshed in stone as the water flowed steadily around their feet.
I stalled my feet as we stepped into the square. Here, we were no longer following a distance behind the line of chariots, but in an open space, and the chariot holding my Prince of Darkness was pulling around to stop. I placed my hand on Fella’s arm. “What happens now?”
Fella gestured towards the first chariot. It had performed a full round of the fountain, and the horses halted on the side closest to us. The others were slowing behind it, and the drummers had slowed their steady beat.
But I could not draw my eyes away from him.
Drifted by the crowd pushing behind us, we were firmly in the square now, alongside perhaps two thousand other citizens.
Still, this was the closest I had been to him all night.
Not thirty feet away, he stood tall on the back of the chariot, waiting for something.
“Now, Davian, as our Prince, will do a speech,” Fella said. “Then he will choose a maiden.”
I flinched as if slapped. “What?”
Fella smirked, knowing this was an aspect of this night she had hidden. “A maiden. He must lead by example, of course, and encourage us all into living life to the fullest.”
I gritted my teeth. Living life to the fullest. This was the Night of the Dead people spoke about, joking about the number of ‘little deaths’ occurring this very night. “You didn’t tell me that part.”
Fella shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
I chewed on this, aware that Fella was watching me in her periphery.
She had saved this revelation, hoping for a reaction.
For what benefit? She had been my ally through this entire night, and had seemed a true friend to me.
Now, she told me the man who had caused me so much confusion was about to pick another woman in front of me?
Was it just the pageantry of the night? Would anything come of it? Was this symbolic, too?
I hated the jealousy that scraped over my heart like talons. If I had ever had anything entirely to myself, I might covet less. But for its sin, I could not help wanting to own Davian.
I stared at the Prince of Darkness. We had been nudged closer still, close enough now, with the light of all the candles, to see him in all his glory.
His face was covered entirely by a giant bull mask, its horns as long as my forearms and twisting up into the night.
His shoulders were exaggerated into spikes, with padded knees and a curved spiking boot that gave him the look of an evil spawn.
And yet, in mannerism, he was the lord of dance and joy, holding a bone horn spilling over with wine.
“Will he go through with it?” I asked Fella.
She held up a hand as the drumming stopped, and the laughter around us quietened to a dim murmur. “Hush, now. His speech is starting.”
I winced. “Fella.”
Davian gave the bone horn to a nearby outstretched hand, and then raised both hands. The crowd drew impressively silent.
“To all of you who have gathered here before, I greet you.” His voice was commanding. Many crowed in response. “And to all who have joined our dance for the first time, I welcome you.” A smaller number yelled back.
“This summer has been long, and far too hot. Beyond the walls of our great city, crops have scorched; within its walls, our most beautiful flowers have hidden from the heat,” he continued. “Soon, though, comes the longer night.”
There were some boos and hisses at this.
“Fear not the night, my friends.” His voice lowered, and everyone hushed even more to hear every word. “Fear not the cold, that breezes through your windows. There is ale that will warm you. Fear not the darkness, that crawls into your mornings. There are lovers who will pass the time.
"This night is only a flavour,” he said.
“This night is a taste of the eternal night that will one day take us all. Death and the Moon gave us this gift, so that we might not fear it when it comes. The darkness of sleep and winter is a rest. It is the veil before it is lifted, the night without the stars. After it, comes the sun, the dawn and the eternal life in the Garden for those who had lived well.”