Chapter 17 Feather
Feather
The space in front of the Great Gate was almost as big as an American football field. When we left, it had been empty of shadows, but now it was at least half full of them. Hundreds of them floated between us and the gate.
Arabella and I watched them for a few minutes. She was glaring at the gate, and I allowed myself to feel my exhaustion and panic just a bit while the group caught up. Finally, Truth, Percy, and Hope were all standing by our sides. All equally stumped.
“Arabella, you have any idea how we can get around them?”
“I’ve got nothing,” she said. “Nothing good, that is.”
“Can you talk to Revel for us?” I asked. “He might have an idea. He was full of them when I grabbed his”—I shuddered—“his doorknob.”
She sighed. “No. I’d have to be much closer. On this side at least, his voice sounds like it’s miles away. I can barely make out the words unless I’m practically pressed against the surface.”
“If I may ask, Exalted One,” Perception said, bowing to Arabella. “What was your mission? You said you were a Celestial Messenger. But you haven’t completed your task, have you?”
She smiled. “Percy… Perception. You do credit to your name. No, I have not completed my task.” She tapped her chin with one finger. “Actually, I couldn’t talk Revel into it. He wouldn’t let me. I was sent here to relieve him.”
Percy’s jaw dropped. As usual, he understood more than she said. “The gate, Revel… wants to remain, even after we’re all gone?” he asked, incredulous.
“I wouldn’t go that far. We’re the youngest of all the First Children, and he’s very much like me.”
“Wait,” I said, feeling like I might throw up. “Relieve him. You were supposed to… take his place? Stay here?”
She nodded. “You’ll be happy to know that Revel turned me down. He said he had a vision of what may lie ahead, and is choosing to hold on for a while longer. To give you and the ones you love—and this realm—a chance to survive.”
“So he has to stay here forever?” I felt terrible that her words had relieved me. Revel deserved his freedom. He’d been stuck as a gate for millennia already. But I was secretly glad she wasn’t taking his place. “Wait, you were going to be trapped here forever? That was your whole mission?”
“No, not forever. I was to stand in for him until a gate was no longer needed.” I gaped at her; that was essentially a yes.
Her mission had been to take over his awful job? For how long, exactly? I had a sudden, inexplicable urge to demand to see a manager. Who had come up with this terrible plan? Or combination of plans. This clusterfork of crappiness. My fingers itched to write a scathing online review, or something.
“No longer needed? When would that be?” Truth spoke my thoughts aloud. “From what I know, the gate keeps—or kept—the Abyss from entering Sanctuary. But more importantly, it keeps the shadow imbalance from affecting the Celestial Realm, right?”
“Yes, young one,” Arabella said. “Your name is Truth in the Smallest Detail, is that correct?” He nodded, blushing. “As your name shapes you, mine also sets the course for my life.”
She stepped to my side, and took my hands in hers. Staring into her exquisite face, I had a really, really bad feeling, but I had to ask, “What is your name, Beauty?”
The green ring in her eyes almost seemed to expand.
“It’s short, and simple, and it made my siblings very sad to use.
So they called me their beautiful one instead.
But I think all older siblings see the babies of the family as exceptional.
” She stroked my hair. “I know I do. My true name is Thysia,” she said.
“It means sacrifice. The Dreamer of All Dreams wove me into being when She saw that one day, there would be a need for one of Her children to make a Great Sacrifice, to save all the realms. So She created me.”
“That’s some bullshizz right there,” I protested. “You’re more than a sacrifice, Beauty. You’re a person, a being. You deserve to live a good life, and have fun, and eat chocolate, and rub honey on as many abs as you like, in whichever form you prefer—” Her hand landed on my mouth.
“Little sister, you are one to talk. How many abs have you rubbed honey on, in all your years as a sacrifice?” She tapped my nose when I exhaled. She wasn’t wrong; the answer was none. My knee-jerk reaction had always been to sacrifice for others. To be the Great Sacrifice, like…
I had a sudden, unworthy thought. “Is that why I do it? Because there’s some of you mixed with me.” Were all of my best parts… really her?
“You think I’m why you choose to help others, again and again?
” she asked, visibly shocked. “Feather, no.” She kneeled down and pulled me into a tight embrace.
“I was created to be a sacrifice. But you were the beautiful one.
Your name was to have been Arabella. I may have taken some of your wings in the Well, but you shared something more important, more valuable.
You changed me from just a sacrifice, to a beautiful sacrifice.
You transformed my act—the sacrifice that I must still make here—into one that will live forever, in glorious songs and stories.
You changed my task from an onerous, necessary one, to a commitment I am more than proud to make.
“Your love, little Feather. Your beautiful love and your bright spark are what will cause my soul to remain from now until the end of time. I will live forever, because of you.”
“What do you mean?” I said, grabbing at her hands as she stepped away. But there were hands holding me back. “You’re not taking Revel’s place, you said that!”
“You are correct. I am, however, required to live up to my name: Thysia, the Glorious Sacrifice.”
I fought to reach her. “You can’t! I just found you again. I won’t let you go into the gate for—”
She spoke over me. “Feather, the Dreamer of All Dreams created me for this purpose alone, out of a unique material, perfectly suited for one thing. To be a sacrifice.”
“But you’re not just a sacrifice. You’re my big sister.” My heart felt like it was breaking open.
Her green and gold eyes shimmered with tears. “Yes, I am. It was a gift I never expected. You made my life mean so much more. I always had a purpose. But you gave me joy.”
“I could give you more. You don’t have to go.” She sighed. We’d both heard the false note in my last statement. The power inside her was breaking free, and there was no more time. I wept as she stepped back.
“I will draw the shadows to me,” she announced to everyone around us, her eyes beginning to shine brighter and brighter.
The creatures near the back of the massed horde started to drift away from the gate and toward her.
“And then I will ask Revel to open. As soon as the way is clear, follow behind me.”
Hope choked back a sob. I didn’t bother, letting my tears trace lines of fire down my face.
“I will live in your love, Feather. Don’t be sad. This is what I was born for. Why should you cry when a soul like mine finally achieves the pinnacle of what it was meant to do? And because of you, I go with a sense of renewed hope.”
“I’ll miss you so much.”
“Why?” Her smile reminded me of a sunrise, filled with possibility. “When you were unmade in the Abyss, were you not still present in all your parts?”
“Well, yes,” I said, “but Rumple put them back together.”
“And who do you think taught him how to perform such a miracle?” Her smile was even wider.
“My Mother would never throw away one of Her children. Would never give up. So who am I to believe that this is my ending? Perhaps it is my beginning.” She leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead.
“I believe I will see you again, little sister. Look for me.”
“I will. I promise.”
She sighed heavily. “Tell Gavriel I’m sorry I couldn’t speak to correct his mistake all those years ago. If he had known I was not his mate, none of this would have happened. You would be happy with him.”
But I wouldn’t be with Mikhail or Righteous, I thought.
I would never have known Rumple either. No.
For all the pain of all the years I’d suffered, to be able to know that my two mates could never be taken from me, to have had all those years with Rumple singing to me, teaching me… I wouldn’t change a thing.
“There, you see?” Arabella said quietly, her fingers tracing over my eyebrows.
“You understand. It’s all as it must be.
” She raised her voice so we could all hear.
“Close your eyes now if you wish to keep your sight. All of you.” As she spoke, she dropped her robe to the ground.
No one saw her but me, since they had all followed her instructions.
I shocked myself by laughing through my tears. “You birch! You didn’t tell me you took my boobs as well as my wings!”
“Nah, baby sister. These are all mine. Now close your eyes.” She winked, then turned and ran toward the gate, singing at the top of her lungs.
I slapped my hands over my eyes, but peeked through my fingers for the first few seconds.
She went from her normal Celestial glow to an eerie incandescent flare.
The light she emitted was far brighter than the gate, and I slammed my eyes shut.
Then the darkness behind my eyelids turned bright red, and a sudden, punishing heat seemed to sear them shut.
For a moment, I felt a strange sorrow, but not for her or myself. For all those shadowed souls, the ones that had been trapped in the Abyss and had become these beasts. They would all burn up and die. Be unmade, and never reach the Celestial fields.
It wasn’t right. If what Rumple told me was true, if no soul was beyond redemption, then what sense did it make to value the ones in Sanctuary more than theirs? I felt hot tears slide down my overheated cheeks as the fire grew more intense, and I knew Arabella had become a divine bonfire.
I fought to bring up enough of Sanctuary’s power to fashion a shield, and protect the ones I was with before we were all burned up with the shadows. It worked just in time for the intense flare to explode. The shadows caught in the blast didn’t cry out in pain, though. They sang.
They sang a song of redemption and overwhelming joy, and when I could open my eyes and see again, I realized what she’d done.
The gate stood wide, open to all of us. Arabella was gone, but there was a trail of light that led across the void, and I knew where it ended. The area in front of us wasn’t empty, though. The shadows were still there. Only they had become light.
They had been purified. The bright forms were almost all human, but a few had glowing wings of light as well. Some of them looked familiar, but their faces were too indistinct to be sure. And my eyes were too tear-filled.
“So beautiful.” Hope was breathless next to me. “That was more than a Great Sacrifice. She redeemed them all.” I nodded, staring in wonder as the glowing creatures began to race for the open door, following the pathway she had made for them.
“Feather, she cleansed us as well,” Perception murmured on my other side. He held up an arm, and I noted the sparkles.
“No, Percy,” I corrected him, licking my finger and rubbing it on his bicep, then showing him what I’d done. “That’s glitter. It’s already the perfect artistic medium.”
He’d just begun to reply when I realized the gate was creaking shut, an inch at a time.
“Everyone, sing your names!” I yelled. “And run for it!”
I’d been caught in a stampede once, trying to save a little brother who’d been wandering on the plains far away from our village.
There were dark clouds in the distance, and I mistook the thundering hooves for the brewing storm.
A noisy flock of egrets had flown up in front of me, and distracted me from the thundering herd of wild cattle.
Until it was too late, and they’d left my body broken underneath them.
This felt exactly like that. Beautiful and deadly.
Almost every being in Sanctuary was singing their name as loud as they could.
It was cacophonous, but somehow it worked.
The notes stacked on top of each other in an exquisite harmony, like a chord I had never thought to imagine.
I was entranced. If my friends hadn’t grabbed me—Percy on one arm, Hope on the other—and dragged me up into the air, I would have been trampled again.
A thousand or more Guides and Protectors raced for the slowly closing gate, running over each other to get through before it shut.
I saw Truth and the naked octet, holding their position and singing their names in beautiful eight-part harmony.
They marched at the back of the crowd, helping some who hadn’t gotten out of the scrum to their feet.
Discarded robes littered the floor, like enormous petals of white and gold.
It’s almost pretty, I thought as Hope and Percy set me down right outside the gate. And it would have been beautiful, but the cost of opening that gate had been far too high.
When it was only wide enough for two people to fit through, Truth and his octet slipped out. “See you on the other side,” Truth called to me.
“I’ll be right behind you,” I replied. His eyes shot to mine as he slapped a hand over his mouth, feeling the effects of my lie. I sighed in relief when I heard him singing his name again.
Hope started dragging me to the exit, and I dug my heels in. “Hope, no!”
“She will kill me,” Hope yelled, spinning around, her blue eyes flashing with anger and desperation. “Your best birch will never forgive me if I leave you here, Feather. Don’t ask me to.”
“I can’t go. Not without them.”
Perception leaned down, gave me a hug, and said, “Feather, I understand. I’ll take care of the refugees until you all join us.” He pressed Gavriel’s soul knife into my hand and was gone, though I could hear him singing his name even on the other side.
The gate was closing, and Hope stuck one foot in the gap, as if she could delay it. “Don’t do this, Feather,” she pleaded. “What am I going to tell them?” I knew who she meant.
“Tell them I would come back faster if they’d promise me some sword crossing in bed. I am owed an orgy for this,” I teased as she slipped through, already singing her name.
Then the gate shut, and the Hall was utterly silent.
I stood with my forehead pressed against one of the columns for no more than a few seconds, wondering if I’d just killed myself and all my mates.
Then I wheeled on one foot and ran for the basement, calling up more than threads from Sanctuary.
I demanded and received ropes of burning fire, and began rolling them over my arms. I had a job to finish.
Everyone else was safe now, so all I had left to do was save the man I had been meant for from my childhood.
And I suppose Gavriel, too.