Chapter Thirty-Two. What Dreams May Come
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
She is swathed in something soft. Gossamer threads twirl her round and round, cottoning the world in clouds. They swaddle her in their breath, and drifting within their embrace, she comes apart.
Her limbs melt into a sweet slush that her bones slosh languidly through.
A sharp humming wind rushes up her spine, arcs against her scalp, falls in diamond tatters.
Cold presses into her arteries, spins and spins again, twirls them spring-tight until they burst, and then weaves them together again.
She lifts, breathes, lifts, breathes. Each shudder knocks something back into place. Or back into a new place, that it has never been but somehow fits, somehow ground and shifted and rearranged itself to suit. She loses old appendages, gains more.
Heaven and earth split, and now she is flying.
The sea is red and the sky churning, spitting clouds like froth.
A flock of birds soars through the currents.
As they come nearer, their necks raise and stiffen; their wings lift, clasp, billow, and now they are ships, sailing south.
Feathers curl and grow one limb and then another, gasp for life, totter across the decks peering up at the sun, which burns and lights the edge of a thousand islands.
Behind them sprout the gods. Steel-thumbed gods who sharpen ancient knives on their fingers for a battle they could see on the horizon if they squint.
Eight-eyed gods who sit on the prow painting fortunes into square tiles, the clacking sound of the paint pots like bones.
Monkey gods with sharp teeth and no monks.
Boy gods with spinning rings. Two-headed gods with a taste for lies, who perch on the lookout mast with one face pointed toward their destination and one face looking to home.
Gods with fractal eyes and red-wing skirts, gambling for futures, sailing toward a city only just beginning to catch alight.