Chapter Thirty-Two Cat #2
‘You are still a child,’ Cat murmurs aloud, startled by the thought even as he gives it air. Gillage’s nostrils flare. ‘You are a king…but you never actually grew up, did you?’
‘You’re going to die,’ Gillage seethes. He glares and grinds his teeth together, but he doesn’t do more than that. Perhaps Cat was wrong. Perhaps he has matured.
It doesn’t matter.
There are no temple guardians here to enforce good behaviour.
There is no one to offer rights or to explain procedures.
Gillage’s honour guard, Nured included, waits at the bottom of the stairs leading to the Proving Ground, standing in a tightly packed bunch as if some invisible line keeps them from encroaching upon Cat’s side of the room.
Cat only has four followers, though. One a figment from the past, just barely remembered.
One a general who owes true loyalty only to a country that may never accept Cat as king.
One a woman who saw a child once and believed in him enough to defy tradition.
And the last, who holds his hand tight and sure, who would be heartbroken if here in the end Cat abandons him like he has always feared his lovers would. ‘I’ll come back,’ Cat promises.
‘I know,’ Elician confirms. Their hands part, and Cat turns towards the final set of stairs.
The final journey. He swallows hard and walks alone.
He and Elician have already said everything that needs to be said to each other, and Cat cannot explain what will happen now.
He cannot prepare him. Equally, Elician cannot help Cat from this point further.
He can only watch, and wait, and bear witness to the Proving.
Cat takes the first step towards the dais. Gillage huffs angrily and stalks up faster. He takes the stairs two at a time, impatient and unyielding. He has no intention of being shown up, either in speed or punctuality. ‘Monsters last,’ he hisses as Cat takes his place at Gillage’s side.
Cat barely hears the words. Before them is a statue of the goddess.
She is holding the moon in her hands, and it glows now with reflected light from the night sky up above.
Mirrors guide the light down, dozens of them placed at every angle to ensure that even as the real moon travels across the sky, this statue stays illuminated always.
It is almost a mirror to the Temple of Life in Soleb – and the ever-turning statue of a god who always has his eyes on the sun.
At her feet is a shape, half hidden amongst the growing plants and leaves meant to form the earth.
It reminds him, strangely, of a nightcat, but the more he stares at it, the more the shapes and lines disappear, as if they were never there at all.
‘Honourable Goddess,’ Gillage calls out, more deferential than Cat has ever heard him, ‘we call upon you in need of advice and wise counsel.’ Gillage puffs up his chest. The crown slips a little but does not quite fall.
‘I am King of Alelune and this challenger seeks my throne. Upon whom do you bestow your grace?’
His voice echoes in the room. It bounces off pillars and statues and constellations made of gossamer that shimmer in redirected moonlight. Cat keeps his eyes on the statue’s face. He is still not prepared when it moves.
The head turns a little, just enough to angle its gaze down to the ground and not up at the stars.
The eyes of the statue stare straight at Gillage and Cat standing side by side.
It didn’t even make a sound. Cat almost wishes it had.
He wonders what stone would sound like as it rotates and bends, but there is nothing.
When the voice comes, it doesn’t use the statue’s lips. Perhaps it doesn’t need to, since it’s not truly the statue that has power. And yet, Cat cannot help looking up at its pale eyes. ‘Who am I?’ the statue asks.
‘You’re the Night Mother,’ Gillage announces swiftly, as if worried Cat will answer first. ‘You’re the Moon, and Death, and the end of everything.’
And he is right, Cat knows. He has given her all the correct epithets.
He has drafted the correct response for her introduction with all requisite pomp and circumstance.
But it is not what she is looking for. ‘You’re Life,’ Cat murmurs.
He doesn’t need to shout. He doesn’t need to let his voice carry down to all his followers so they can applaud his great brilliance.
It’s not for them to hear. It’s not even for Gillage to hear.
Even so, Cat meets the statue’s eyes and whispers, ‘You’re me. ’
The statue smiles, and white light fills the room. It coats Cat’s vision, blinding him from his brother, the Proving Ground and every quilted figure in the sky. The light burns hot and painful, but Cat forces his eyes to stay open. He doesn’t want to miss anything. He doesn’t want to forget.
The light doesn’t become easier to tolerate, but it shifts and becomes fractal. Rainbow fragments skitter from one side of the room to the other. Light envelops Cat like a physical shroud. It touches his skin, sheathing him in its power, holding him steady in the face of its nature.
‘Tell me a story, Little King,’ the voice asks him.
‘Life was born to a great barren nothingness,’ Cat says.
His words are quiet at first, unused to narration.
He swallows and presses on, reciting a tale he knows by heart, drafted by his own hand and modified from a story the rest of the world knows.
‘Life emerged, shapeless and undefined, and found the nothing sad. Life longed to fill its spaces, and so Life began to create. First came the ground that became known as Earth. It was hard and firm and designed with all the colours Life could imagine. Then Life made Water to explore everything that Earth had to offer. And when Water explored too much, and reached too far, Life became Death so that Water could go back to the beginning and try again.’
‘And what is death?’ the voice beseeches. ‘What are you?’
‘Death is life,’ Cat says. ‘I am life. I am alive, and I give things life. All things must die, because to die is to make life, and all life is sacred. I am Water and I am Earth, I am Life and I am Death. I am learning, and I am exploring, and I am creating new paths. There is no Life without Death; there is no Death without Life. You are and always have been the same. I am you, and you are me, and we live and we die for that is what it means to exist.’
The light burns brighter. His eyes stream tears that flow like creeks down his face. The rainbow fragments grow more vivid. The heat on his skin holds him tight, constricting flesh and muscle and bone.
‘Tell me your name,’ the voice demands.
Cat’s hands are shaking. His throat constricts.
He cannot breathe. He gasps, trying to find air, but the air does not come.
He is drowning, water surrounding him like a fever dream from long ago.
He knows it isn’t real. He knows that he is standing in the Proving Ground and there is no water, there is no voice telling him that he will be fine.
There is no current that promises him a path forward if he only just dares to believe.
There is no stepfather waiting for him to die, no watery grip at his wrist pulling him down.
There is no ethereal voice whispering in his childish ear, asking, Do you want to be a good king?
There is no baffled response from an innocent child who doesn’t understand the bargain he’s making. Yes.
There is also no going back. For even if the water from his memories is not truly there, the feeling that courses through him is still the same.
He drowned, years ago. He died and he became something new.
He closes his eyes to the light, allowing himself one final moment before responding to the voice.
He breathes in, and he breathes out. He brings his hands to his chest, feeling the heat that is all but scalding his skin in the surging waves of imaginary water.
He creates an image of himself, an image that he has fostered for years.
It is a small boy, a broken thing that has been beaten and battered for so very long but who stood up each time he was pushed down and who dared to look in the face of a god and demand to be heard.
He holds that beloved image close, then he extends his hands and lets the image go.
He lets it travel the space between himself and the future before him.
He opens his eyes, and he speaks.
‘My name is Alest, son of Alenée, born of Earth and remade in Water, King of Alelune and Prince Consort of Soleb.’
And the god of life and death speaks back: ‘Yes, you are.’
The light snaps out in a wink. The statue stands still and perfect before him.
Its gaze is back on the sky, looking up at a moon and stars that glisten and twinkle high above.
Out in the wilds of space, the sun is shining on the moon.
After all, the moon’s light is and always has been the sun’s, a reflection of a soul desperate to touch all the things it loves.
There is a scream behind him, shrill and filled with horror.
Alest turns on his heel. He sees his brother first, bloodied and broken and shattered into pieces on the ground at his side.
His brother is dead. How long was he ensnared in his vision?
A knife lies in Gillage’s hand, still gripped tight in his fist, as if he had tried to stab something and been stopped, as if his body had been torn asunder and lay frozen in a bloody rictus, punished for sins past and sins yet to come.
Alest looks further, down towards Nured and all those who have been loyal to Gillage. All who are still standing there, now staring at him in stunned awe.
‘Release the Reapers from their cells.’
It is Alest’s first order as king.
A woman at the back of the group all but runs out of the room.
She is shouting for someone to go down to the cells.
The rest of the entourage is silent. Partho, though, Partho is grinning wildly, madly.
‘My king,’ he calls out as he falls to one knee.
He bows in this position, arms at his side in perfect subjugation.
Leferge is second to kneel, barely seconds behind Partho and no less perfect in her form.
Leonde hurries to follow, and after her, all those in Gillage’s entourage do the same.
One after another they kneel. They stare at Cat, eyes wide and filled with an adulation he has never once seen on their faces.
They never looked at Gillage like this. They never looked at his mother like this.
They stare at him like he is something they cannot comprehend but don’t dare to defy.
It is one thing to know that the royal line has been chosen by a god, it is another to watch that god bestow her favour and to name him, truly, her moon-blessed king.
Only one man remains standing. Elician climbs the steps. He bows, low and formal, but his fingers are twitching and there’s tension in his neck. ‘You are still my husband,’ Alest reminds him.
Elician rises just a little, just enough to tilt his head back and look at Alest with an all-too-relieved expression bordering on the desperate. ‘And you are still my king,’ Elician reminds him in turn. ‘For here, I am your consort, beloved.’
‘Ah.’ Alest reaches for Elician’s hand. Elician takes it. It is still warm. It is still flush with life and power, and Alest nearly sighs in relief at the thought that some things have not changed even while others almost certainly have. For he can feel it now. The possibility.
Alest looks at his brother’s body. Gillage was a child, spoilt and arrogant and terrified of being thrown away.
A child raised by the jealous and the plotting, and his mother never saw to his education either.
She never wanted him at all. Gillage watched their mother try desperately to replace him.
And failing at that, she still preferred something the world perceived as nothing more than a dead thing over her living son.
Alest moves to Gillage’s side. Elician offers commentary as Alest kneels. ‘You said something to Death, I couldn’t hear, and then Gillage had that knife, and he went to stab you, but…’
‘He died instead,’ Alest finishes. Someone always dies during this challenge. It makes his heart ache. He reaches for the knife in his brother’s hand. He takes it away. Then he rests his palm on Gillage’s cheek.
There are wounds on Gillage’s body. He looks as though he exploded from the inside out, bursting at the arms and legs. These are symptoms that point only to Death. ‘The death of Death is Life itself,’ Alest explains softly. He feels Elician shifting at his side.
‘You are Death,’ Elician says slowly. ‘And so you are Life.’ He did hear something after all. Alest smiles faintly.
He feels his brother’s very essence through the palm of his hand.
He isn’t finished becoming what he needs to be yet, he prays.
Then he ends everything that was winding down to death.
He demands the symptoms to cease, the termination to end.
He tells platelets to move, kidneys to activate, a heart to beat.
He undoes Death’s work. Live, he orders.
Live to die another day, at another time, when a different water will come and reclaim his soul.
Gillage gasps awake. His entourage startle in stunned amazement.
Elician’s hand clasps Alest’s shoulder. ‘You’re not finished, brother,’ Alest says to the child that died before he understood what it actually meant to live.
‘You have mistakes to fix. And your victims deserve a chance for you to fix them.’
Gillage stares at him, mouth gaping wordlessly. His crown fell off his head some time ago, leaving his brown curls wild and free. Alest offers him his hand. Gillage does not take it. He just stares, dumbfounded beyond belief.
That is fine too.
After all, they have plenty of time.