Chapter 13 #4
A domed cathedral stood crooked on the waterfront.
Its pillars had outlasted its walls, and the stained glass ceiling still shimmered in shades of rose and gold, drinking in the afternoon sunlight.
Yemi cursed as she tripped over the warped wooden boards of an ancient walkway.
She caught her balance against a pillar, causing something to shift and groan, and a flutter of white birds flew screeching from a hole in the roof.
Nova startled and looked back as if ready to save her from the collapsing building, but Yemi held up a hand, the pang of helplessness still something she was content to run from.
They rounded the corner on a sunken amphitheater.
The first few stairs were visible in the shallow water.
They descended before the unmistakable tips of giant white stone tentacles forming a crown around an algae-crusted island in the shape of a woman’s face turned up to the sky, her ears sunk beneath the lapping waves.
“This… looks like something.”
“If that’s Ursla’s face, this has to be the temple.”
They stood in awed silence for a while, gazing at the site.
Yemi tried to envision the grandeur of the filled amphitheater, the entirety of the statue beyond just Ursla’s head.
Songs and prayers would have lifted from voices other than those of a small cadre of somber, white-clad priests.
These would have been joyful occasions, the actions committed out of love for the Mer.
That love had been dwindling a long time before her grandmother was cast as Ixia’s great villain on the throne.
Nova stepped to the water’s edge and splashed her face and arms clean of the blood and caked body salt that stained them. “They thought the world of Ursla once,” she muttered.
“And then they abandoned her,” Yemi replied. The cool sea breeze shook her free of the sadness that had crept up on her before she turned back up the hill to the orange grove.
“What was that?” Nova asked as she followed.
“What was what?”
“ ‘They abandoned her.’ The sympathy for the sea witch.”
“It isn’t sympathy. There’s just precedent for Men ceasing to honor the things they once honored,” Yemi replied.
“You mean your family.”
“I mean the institutions they created. Their worship practices. Their royalty. There are real people, real beings, at the center of these things who are cast aside for the caprices of mankind. I’m one of them. It isn’t hard to imagine she could be, too.”
Nova said nothing, and Yemi looked back, sure she was being given some judgmental glare.
“Well, am I wrong?” Yemi asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Nova assured her.
“Right. You can’t, because I’m not.”
Nova stopped. “She killed Van, Yemi.” Her tone was incredulous, and her eyes seemed to hold a fury she was trying to contain.
“I mean, I did… what I had to do, but it was the witch in them that brought them to that field and fired that flare. And I think Ursla did it on purpose because she knew… she knew what it would do to me, and she wanted it to do something to us—”
“Why would she—” Yemi started, but Nova shouted over her.
“And I can see that happening when you say shit like you can fucking relate to her!”
“Whoa!” Yemi soothed, holding Nova’s face.
“Okay. I get it, I do, but we are going home. Together. Whatever else they take from us, we will remain. Forgive me. You know Mother always insisted that I develop my empathy. I applied it the wrong way to be a smart-ass sometimes, and now the habit’s stuck. ”
Any retort was halted by Yemi’s backward squelching step in a mire of rotted fruit.
“Shit,” she muttered, gagging on the pungent odor. She swatted furiously at the flurry of flies that spun up into her face. That managed to get a glimmer of a smile from Nova, so she considered it worth it.
They made their way to the cliff’s edge. The water below was a calm and glittering blue, the line between the shallows and the deep clearly defined.
Yemi pierced the orange with her spear and crushed it slightly in her hand to allow it to bleed before binding it with the tobacco leaf. Nova then launched it off the cliff, and they watched it hit the water in precisely the right place.
They sat in the grass away from the fruit-sodden patches of earth and reclined against a cluster of rocks. Yemi took the first deep breath she had in some time, surprisingly refreshed by being so near the ocean again and content to be making progress.
“What do you think is the significance of the blood orange?” Nova asked as she stretched her legs over the soft grass.
“The blood part, probably,” Yemi replied, putting her head in Nova’s lap.
The waters here were calm, separated from the more violent ocean by towering karst islands of cobalt-blue stone. They fortified this particular Ixian coast from naval attacks, and from certain angles they formed myth-like constellations.
“I have never been so exhausted.” Nova yawned.
“Right. Wait, no. Pop’s fortieth, when you ran the Torrine with… rabbit pneumonia?” Yemi said.
“Hare fever. Did I win that one? I only remember being completely dehydrated.”
“You passed out, love.”
“Ah. Right, right.”
“Like, two steps in.”
“I got it.”
Yemi laughed, her breaths coming easier. The sun was warm and the breeze was easy, mellowing the scents of muddled fruit and Nova’s sweat.
“Have you thought any more about elopi—what?” Nova gasped.
Yemi’s “Noooooo” had started quietly enough, but she was shouting it at the sky now.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s more ridiculous now than it was the first time you brought it up!” Yemi insisted.
“You know, this time next year we could be anywhere in the world, doing anything,” said Nova.
“Hmm?” Yemi sighed with her eyes closed.
“Think about it. If you weren’t queen, what would you be doing with your life? What would you want if you didn’t have this huge destiny?”
Yemi raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you’ve thought about it for me.”
“Come on,” Nova replied. “Use a little imagination. Luzon could gift you a ship. We’d sail east, tour the world. Be entertained by people who find you fascinating instead of the source of all their problems. We’d settle down someplace and make friends of our own choosing.”
Yemi opened one eye wide enough to see that Nova appeared to be serious. “All these plans of yours seem to be for me. What would you do with your life in this fantasy?”
Nova shrugged. “My usual helpful violence, probably. Become a local champion. Build you a house you don’t have to wear a mask to leave.”
Her voice took on a wistfulness Yemi had only noticed maybe a handful of times before. They’d talked a lot about their future, much of it jokingly. Yemi had always assumed they’d both been resigned to make the best of the choices they didn’t have.
“You’ve never dreamed about us… building a world together? Being queen of a place we no longer have to fight for?” Yemi asked, hesitant, as if this was their shared dream unraveling.
“I never needed the crown. So far, it looks extremely stressful with minimal perks.”
“Fair point,” Yemi admitted. Still, she was worried.
Nova had a strong dutiful streak but this stress and strain could very well be approaching her limit.
Of all the things she knew she’d have to do, she’d never once considered she might have to do them alone.
What if in regaining the crown, she lost Nova?
“You understand this isn’t optional for me, right?” Yemi asked quietly.
Nova nodded slowly. “I understand you believe that, yes.”
“My family has bled and died to give me roots. Their bodies are here. I can’t just abandon them.”
“Of course.” Nova fidgeted. “My job is to keep you safe. I guess I just… gravitate toward scenarios that make that easy.”
“You have a very pretty imagination,” Yemi told her.
“Thank you.”
“But you’re not a very good liar.”
“Thank… you?”
Yemi watched yellow birds with long tail feathers coast on an updraft overhead. Their freedom registered as a lazy metaphor while she was lying here, trying to talk Nova into the prison of the life she needed.
“I know all of that is what you really want,” Yemi sighed. “And it’s nothing less than what you deserve. It hurts me that I’m not able to give it to you. Not in a way that wouldn’t make me completely unbearable to live with for the rest of our lives.”
“I’ve handled you pretty well until now, and you’re only semi-bearable.”
“Hush.” Yemi sat up. “How’s this: When we get home and everything is right again, I decree you’re given a Day of Days.
It’ll be a massive sporting festival. Food, tournaments, the whole thing.
People will come from all over the world for the privilege of being beaten up by you.
And then, when you’re finished, you can come join me every night in what will come to be known as our bed. ”
The corner of Nova’s mouth lifted in a smile, and Yemi felt infinitely better about everything in that moment. “That does sound like a good time.”
“And then you’ll be given land. Somewhere west, out in the country. You can build a cottage on it, and we’ll summer there and entertain as many weirdos—including your sister—as you’d like.”
Nova gave an impressed nod. “It’s a solid compromise. After this, I’ll definitely deserve my Day of Days.”
Yemi laughed and kissed her hand. “We’ll have our peace. I promise.”
· NOVA ·
Nova’s feet tingled. Yemi’s head was cutting off their circulation, and her butt ached from the unmoving position she’d maintained in the grass so Yemi could sleep.
Even resting, Yemi’s brow furrowed and her jaw clenched.
Nova had always been endeared to her drive but frowned at a niggling suspicion: Maybe Yemi was simply incapable of peace.
There was romance here—the two of them beneath the stars lost to the world and far from the oppression of the throne—but Nova couldn’t feel it. She didn’t want a title or a Day of Days. She wanted a bath. She wanted the feeling back in her fucking toes.
She wanted Van alive.