The Weasel
Occasional shapes disrupt the landscape—if you are foolish enough to brave far. Mounds of snow that might cover forgotten megaliths or might cover nothing at all. Glaciers that thrust up sharp fingers made of pure blue ice. No animals are foolish enough to tread here.
The only movement comes from beacons of color wavering across the sky, just like the old No’Amatsi tales described. Several hours ago, those Threads were not there.
Today he will play a traitor.
When she was a human, she had tried to come here once—into the Sleeping Lands—thinking perhaps there was some truth in the old tale about the monster gathering honey. But it wasn’t true. At least not for her. The Moon Mother never appeared; no task was ever given to her.
Leopold crouches beside his bird and before the weasel. His cheeks tick, meaning someone has made him angry. Very angry.
But the weasel already knew that would happen. The strange sisters from the mountain already told her that.
She purrs as Leopold pats her head and strokes her fur.
He was never a bad master, so much as a misguided one.
And really, the weasel can relate. She spent her whole life focused on a task that bore no fruit—what difference does it make that he spent many lifetimes doing the same?
A failed attempt is still a failed attempt, no matter how long it takes to get there.
“We have more work to do,” Leopold says, his voice a tired thing.
He is angry, yes, but he is also lost. “No one has gone where I sent them, and they have not fulfilled the Lament as it was seen. So I must start anew. I can sense that magic has stabilized, but this isn’t the way She wanted it to be. ”
“And how do you know that, Rook King?” The person who asks this is a child, her face young but her eyes ancient as she emerges from where she was hiding behind the ice.
Leopold spins toward her. He recognizes her immediately—that is evident in how his eyes flare. How he rears back for half a beat, before snapping his gaze toward the second girl now stepping out after her sister.
He gives a harsh laugh, his eyes sliding back and forth between them. They are both Sightwitches; they have both been gone a very long time. They do not approach Leopold fon Cartorra, but instead take up sentry ten paces away.
“Now you awaken?” he demands of them. “Now She releases you from Her ice? I needed your help a thousand years ago. What good are your visions to me now?”
“Oh, Rook King.” This is the younger sister, Cora. “It isn’t always about you.”
“It never is, actually,” Lisbet agrees.
The prince’s nostrils flare. He stands taller, which prompts the Rook to clack his beak twice at the weasel.
It is a signal that means nothing to Leopold, just as the weasel’s answering double chomp of teeth means nothing.
But this was their agreed-upon signal, and after they have both finished, they scuttle and hop out of the way …
Right as the third child finally arrives.
In a blast of stone and power, she thunders through the magic doorway. Fast, hard, and with the mountain to seal up behind her. A zipping of granite. A silencing of magic.
And now Leopold fon Cartorra understands what is happening.
The weasel, if she were still a human, would have laughed. After all, this is exactly how it was in the old fable, when Moon Mother’s Little Sister Owl trapped Trickster and the world once more felt peace. He, of all people, should have known how much truth there is in those stories.
“Owl,” Leopold says. “You must let me back into the mountain.”
“No.” She shakes her head, and her dark hair—loose and tangled like a nest, with silver lines gleaming—flips against her pale cheeks. “You are finished now, Rook King.”
The Rook King’s cheeks tick faster. He knows he is in trouble, for the Dreaming does not work here. The walls in the Sleeping Lands are not merely thin so much as torn down entirely. One cannot use magic of any kind, and that is why Owl lured him here in the first place.
Or rather, the weasel and the bird did, bit by bit as they helped the last Sightwitches—Cora, Lisbet, and Ryber—do what needed doing.
“You have failed no one,” Lisbet says, offering a sweet smile that belies her near-infinite knowledge. “Except perhaps yourself, Rook King. So many years with your Paladin soul fixated on one thing—a thing that never really was.”
“You mean the Lament was not real? Is that what you are telling me? But you saw it. You were the one who told Eridysi what to transcribe.”
“Yes, but it was never meant to be interpreted. It was never meant to be collated and used as a guide.”
“And yet,” the prince bites out, “so much of it has come true, has it not? The one turning on five, and now…” He opens his arms to them. “Five appear to be turning on one.”
Cora laughs. She is the youngest of the three girls and the silliest at times. “It only appears to be true because you’re looking backwards. You’re fitting what was written to what came before—but you could have just as easily fit other words here instead.”
“Yes.” Lisbet nods. “That is the thing about our Goddess. She dreams what she dreams, and we Sightwitches do our best to make sense of it. But the truth is never so easy and the words—as you know yourself—are never so clear. Sometimes what Sirmaya dreams happens more than once. Sometimes, what She dreams is so strange, we cannot express it in words.”
Leopold sniffs, a hateful sound that puffs steam from his nostrils.
“So you have cornered me here, in the Sleeper’s own land, to tell me that She”—he flings a hand toward the sky—“made a mistake, and I should not have spent the last thousand years doing what I did? Yet I have healed Her, have I not? The sky no longer splits, the mountain no longer quakes.”
“Yes,” Owl replies quietly, and she extends an arm so that the Rook will fly to her. “And in this, you did well, Rook King.”
The prince’s cheeks twitch again as he watches his bird obey. He glances at the weasel, expecting her to follow. But she stays where she is, several paces away. Not because she has chosen Leopold’s side, but because she recognizes her own sly ways within him.
He has one more trick left to play.
The weasel respects that about him. He coordinated so many and managed so much over the last thousand years. Countless puppets doing as he wished without ever building a Loom. It might not have worked as he’d hoped, but there can be no denying the scale of his accomplishments.
The same was true of Ragnor. Silly men she learned from but never truly served.
Leopold’s cheeks are red with cold. His nose too, yet he gives no outward indication that the chill bothers him. He is the poised performer. The prince trained for this moment since birth. Then it comes: the trickery.
He swipes his cloak aside in a flicker of silvery gray, and he withdraws what remains of the broken Blade of Eridysi. It whispers with a sound that is too loud for the Sleeping Lands. That makes the ribbons of the sky flare momentarily with Severed Threads and makes a wind kick up with icy claws.
But where the weasel expects the prince to turn this blade on Owl, he instead turns it on himself. Jagged, cruel edges that are barely longer than fangs—but vicious enough to pierce his clothes, his skin, his abdomen.
He makes no sound. Only a sharp exhale followed by a widening of his eyes as the pain punctures in. His knees give out. He hits the snow. Blood splatters across white.
“That which is closest,” Lisbet murmurs, “she cannot see.”
“A knife with two sides,” Cora adds.
Then together, they murmur: “Blood on the snow.”
Leopold sinks down, his life draining fast. And not just his life, but his Threads too. The weasel does not need her old magic to see how the sky soaks him up. How the goddess is taking back what she had once given out to a man she loved.
Owl is the only one to approach Leopold, her steps careful with the Rook now on her shoulder. She sinks to Leopold’s side and places her hands atop his. He stares up at her, the sea green of his irises growing duller by the heartbeat.
“I only did what I thought was right,” he says.
“I know,” she replies, and the Rook hops off her shoulder to land upon Leopold’s other side. The bird nuzzles his old master, which makes the prince smile. “But you mistook purpose for love,” Owl continues, “as did your old general, and that path never ends well for anyone.”
“No,” Leopold agrees.
Owl strokes his brow. And slowly, slowly, the prince’s eyes close. Until eventually, Owl leans down to whisper something in his ear. Some final good-bye that no one else can hear, save perhaps Sirmaya. He smiles again, more brightly. More true.
Then Leopold fon Cartorra slips away.
The Rook squawks, a sound of both grief and surprise—even though he knew that something like this must be coming. He nudges, he nips. But the prince doesn’t respond. And soon, ice scuttles over the body. It seals him in like a tomb.
It also scuttles over the blade, as if reclaiming whatever droplets of magic might still remain inside.
Cora is the first to move, coming to Owl. She offers her a hand. “What did you tell him?” she asks. “Because it gave him great comfort at the end.”
Owl swallows, looking first at Cora’s hand. Then at the ice stretched before her where a prince will sleep forever.
“I told him that I loved him,” she said without inflection. “And that he would no longer be alone.”
Cora sighs. “I see.” And the weasel feels a similar response unfurl inside her. It is like an ancient hunger loosing. Like pieces of herself being made new again.
She startles when hands suddenly grasp her. She hadn’t noticed Lisbet approaching, she’d been so focused on what it might mean to no longer be alone. And now she is clutched. Now she is lifted. Now she is placed upon Lisbet’s small shoulder, where she can leap back down …
But she does not.
“Come, little cousin,” Lisbet murmurs into her white fur, “the Sightwitches are awakening. Enough magic has returned for the world to settle, and there is a new spring we must all prepare for.”