49. Chapter 49
Chapter 49
Viola
" U p, child, up. We have much to talk about."
The vaguely familiar voice creeps through my brain, but I pay it no mind. My body is exhausted, my magic depleted, and I just want to sleep. I don't mind that I am on firm, cold ground. All I want to do is rest, to let my body recover from the last day.
When was the last time I slept?
"You can sleep later, you must rise now."
The voice, again, prickles the back of my mind. I should know it. There is a familiarity there that I cannot explain. But my eyelids are so heavy. Maybe after a little bit more rest, I can find out who the voice belongs to.
"No more rest!" The voice is so sharp now that my eyes fly open.
I'd know that voice anywhere.
"Mother?" I say quietly, struggling to my feet. She looks exactly as she did the last time I saw her, in her Race clothes, her tawny skin, just a few shades darker than mine, still covered in the dirt from the Race. "Am I dead?"
"Of course not, child. "
"Why are you talking so strange?" I say, approaching her. "You never called me child before."
"Oh, my apologies." She looks down at her body curiously. "I'm not actually your mother," my mother says.
I stumble backward and away from her, searching for something to prop myself against. It's then that I realize there is nothing. For as far as I can see there is only shadows, an endless shadow vision. There are no sounds in the air, no other people.
Just my mother and I, in a shadow vision, facing off.
"What do you mean you're not my mother? Who are you?"
"I have been called many things, but in this realm, I am the Eternal Equinox." She sounds like my mother but softer, more nurturing, like who my mother was supposed to be. It's jarring to hear it come from her mouth. "Be a dear," she says, "and conjure us up places to sit, yes?"
Numbly, I shape some of the shadows into chairs for us, and we both sink down, facing one another. "Why do you look like my mother?"
"If you'd prefer, I could appear as your father, or Max, or Link. I just thought your mother would be the least likely to upset you."
"Please do not become them," I say quickly, my heartbeat racing. "Why do you not have your own appearance?"
She laughs, this stranger in my mother's skin, and shakes her head. "Because you have it." She gestures at all of the parts of me that changed with the magic that I absorbed, and a small smile graces her face. "We have much to discuss and limited time," she says, looking around the shadow vision.
"What do you mean, limited time?"
"Well, Shadowweaver, to explain that is to go to the beginning. Once, I was like you. I held all of the magic within me, and I looked over the realm from the veil between worlds. But I split myself into four, bringing forth the Gods that you have met, my children, into the realm. All that was left of me was a sliver, and that particular piece of magic is what allows us to speak here today. When you combined all of the seasons within you, you activated that magic. So you understand, it is finite, and we have so much we need to get through before you leave this vision."
"You made the Gods?" I say, my mind stuttering. It's taking more effort than I'd like to push past the image of my mother, so the words take longer to permeate than they should. "Why would you do that?"
"My motivations are my own, but it was not done maliciously. Unfortunately, my mistake was not realizing that by splitting them I took the balance away. As they aged and split pieces of themselves off for their high priests and to populate the world, they opened themselves up to the aspects of humanity that unbalanced them and led to what you experienced today." She crosses her hands daintily on her lap and hangs her head, a demure posture so unlike my mother that I can finally separate the two in my head.
"What happened, then? When the Gods were banished? Who's truth is the one to believe?" I feel desperate to know the true story of the banishing, to maybe alleviate some guilt I am feeling over the mistakes and choices I have made up until now.
Instead, the Eternal Equinox waves her hand. "What does it matter now? You cannot go back and change the choices you made. You did what you could with the information you had, however true or false it was. There is no need to know the exact details of the past, only how you are going to do better in the future. Every story, every legend, has a basis in fact. You made your choices, and you will live with them regardless of the truth of the past."
"That's not acceptable," I say, anger rising to the surface. "I deserve to know. I deserve to know if I made the right choices. If Himureal was truly wronged or if I fell victim to his ministrations."
"That's what you're worried about?" she asks softly. "That you may have been deceived by the Frostweaver?" She stands and walks towards me, that familiar gait making me feel like I am ten years old again as she squats in front of me. "I know empathy does not come easy to you, Viola Mistflow. And I will not tell you the truth and risk you losing one of the purest empathetic connections you've ever had. Don't you see? Even when you took his life, you did so kindly and without malice. I will not erase the empathy you provided my son in confirming or denying the stories you were told." She pats me gently on the thigh and then stands and returns to her chair.
"I was not so empathetic with the others," I mutter.
"Yes, well, the others made their beds, didn't they? You tried, Viola. With all four of my children, you tried your best to see the good in them and bring them back into this world."
"Please." My voice is embarrassingly brittle. "I need to know if the path I chose was the right one."
"Who is to say what is right or wrong? It is all relative to the experiences you lived." She crosses one leg daintily over the other and tilts her head to the side as she flays me open with her gaze.
"This is your truth now, Viola. And nothing I say will change it."
I want to yell, fight, and demand to know the true history of Krillium. I want to know every part of it so I can dissect every choice I made and every sacrifice I made to ensure I ended up where I was supposed to be.
But I don't.
There is no use.
She's right. I cannot go back and change it. What good is the knowledge at this point? The decisions that I have made up until this point will define me, and knowing the past won't change that.
"Why am I here, Equinox?"
The soft smile that graces her face cuts open a wound I did not know existed. When did my mother ever smile at me like that? Maybe I should ask her to change forms. This is brutal. Her dark hair is short and straight, caressing her jaw in a way Max's sometimes did. Her muscular body is relaxed, dressed in shorts and a vest similar to my own.
She is my mother, but she is not.
"You're here so I can give you advice as the new Equinox."
"I'm not the Equinox," I insist. "I am the Shadowweaver."
Her chuckle echoes in the shadowy expanse. "I know that. But the Eternal Equinox is called that for a reason. You are eternal. It is your responsibility to balance the realm now."
"I do not want to go to the veil," I say quickly, fear of losing those I love clogging my throat.
"And you will not have to," she says kindly. "You are a human of the Lowlands first. You will reside there, just with the powers of the Equinox. I believe being among others is the key to success." The Equinox rubs the back of her neck with her hand, eyes downcast. "That was my downfall, I think. I was crushed with loneliness in the veil, and that is why I created the Gods of the Seasons, my children. In Krillium, you will have others to help you balance and guide you. You will succeed where I failed."
"I never asked for any of this," I say weakly, knowing it will have no effect. This is a trajectory I have been heading towards from the moment I slipped through Jaz's window.
"Which is why you will be so good at it." Her eyes, twins to my own, crinkle with kindness.
"I don't want to be eternal." Avidor's taunts about how Gods are immortal and that fae are not roll through my brain. Thinking of living forever without those that I love is enough to cause the pain in my chest to flair up again.
The eternal being in my mother's flesh shrugs. "So don't. I can teach you how to pass the power on safely when you are done."
"That's possible?"
"My child, you are the magic that sustains the realm. If you will it, it will happen."
A calm washes over me. "So I am not trapped?" I ask hesitantly. The idea of being locked into this is the worst thing I can think of. I know right now I am needed in this role, but it won't be forever. I look at my hands, still covered with Himureal's blood, and stare at the rot that creeps up the back of them.
"That power you see is dangerous, Viola," the Equinox says. "It cannot go to just anyone."
"How will I know who should have it?"
"You will know," she says unhelpfully. "Just as you knew your high priest, you will know your successor."
The still-fresh wound Zeph left inside me throbs at her words. When I don't respond, she speaks quickly, explaining the process for passing my power on without destroying my mortal body. It's complicated and involved, and I will probably forget the process in the years it will take for me to find my successor and be ready to move on. She insists I'll know, though, and it will come naturally to me.
I'm not sure how long we spent in the shadow vision, discussing my responsibilities toward the realm and how I can ensure that what happened this time does not happen again. She shared her theories about why the prior high priests were not the appropriate counters and conduits for their Gods. I heard stories about the Gods when they were younger and the hopes and dreams the Equinox has for the realm.
By the end of the conversation, the Equinox did not look like my mother anymore. Somewhere during the conversation, her face aged, her hair whitened, and she began to seem weaker and weaker.
"I do have one question," I say when there is a lull in the conversation. "My high priest always wondered, and I… I want to know for him." I scratch the back of my neck to disguise the prickle that arises there when I think of Zeph. "What season does Water fall under?"
Zeph told me plenty about the debate about what season took responsibility for the Nereids. That lack of belonging is what drove Nimh to Himureal. Something about it answering to Winter has not set right to me, though.
The Equinox laughs. "None of them, of course." I balk at her words, and she waves her hand. "And all of them. There is water in all of them. The showers of Spring, the tides of Summer, the storms of Autumn, and the frost of Winter. Water is not meant to be contained. It changes and travels, but it is never owned by one."
I stretch back in my chair, looking into the aged face that my mother would have worn if she had survived Ytopie. "The magic is running out," she says quietly. "I do not have much time left here with you. Remember, Viola, growth is not linear. The mistakes you made in the past are left there. When you wake from this vision as the Eternal Equinox, you will have many choices to make. Listen to your magic, to your high priests, and to yourself." She stands slowly, her body hunched and hobbled with rapid aging. I mirror her, rising to my feet.
"Wait, high priests? As in plural? "
She laughs, moving towards me and wrapping me in a warm embrace. My eyes drift closed at the touch, and when I open them again, I see the ceiling of my home in Rainworth.