Thirty-Six
LYTHIA GUIDED THEM TO ANOTHER ROOM IN THE SPIRALING BUILDING, where she provided them with a selection of white clothing much like her own.
Oskaren and the two men opted for sleeveless billowing shirts and loose trousers, while Thia was in a clinging dress that halted in a layered flair just below her knee.
The material had the same glitter as the dew that surrounded them, but it was opaque and soft as butter.
“It is spider silk,” Lythia told them, when Thia commented on the texture.
The Losrohiri woman waved her hand, and a yellow flower grew from the ceiling vines.
She plucked it, and the bud opened, revealing a pool of swirling gold.
“For your skin,” she explained, and proceeded to paint them in the same way Mydaeth had been.
At the Luminae’s request, Mavrel had gone off with another Losrohir, who claimed the bird had “much to discuss.” Thia had left the decision to Mavrel, and the bird had eagerly departed with a fluff of his feathers, something Thia tried not to be too jealous of.
She had started thinking of him as hers, but it was a reminder that the creature remained his own.
Now, they walked down a path lit with more glowing buds, the trees arched in a woven canopy like the Vale.
There were no leaves here, however; pale and skeletal branches tangled above the trail, the lack of foliage allowing view of the sky.
The moon was high, the air cold, and Thia shivered in her thin costume.
She was barefoot, but the forest floor was softer than it should have been.
Her hair was piled on top of her head and held in place with a circlet of white flowers put there by a wave of Lythia’s hand, leaving her neck naked to the breeze.
A familiar arm fell across her shoulders.
Thia shrugged him off. “Dess. You’ll mess up our paint.
” His face was a work of art, the golden swirls arching in smooth circles that brought out the warmth in his hazel irises and sharpened his cheekbones.
Only the smudge on his forehead reminded her of the boy he was, where he had clearly disrupted the still-wet dye to brush chaotic hair out of his eyes.
He released her, shivering as a particularly crisp breeze swept through the tunnel of trees. “What I wouldn’t give for a cloak right now,” he commented.
Lythia glanced back. “You will be warm before long.”
After a few minutes, the trees ended in an enormous glade, a towering bonfire at the center.
The edges of the clearing were lined with smaller torches embedded into white stumps at ten-foot intervals.
Around the bonfire, perhaps a hundred or so Losrohir stood in a circle, painted bodies shimmering with rivers of gold in the flickering light.
“I thought they didn’t believe in killing,” Dess whispered to Thia, eyeing the fire.
Lythia turned. “The Festival of Impartation is a celebration of renewal. Through our songs, we replenish the energy that gives life to the forest. The trees offer themselves, for there can be no renewal without a casting off of old things.” She fingered the stump holding closest of the torches as they passed. “The ashes become our conduit.”
As they entered the clearing, the circle of Losrohir parted, creating a space for the newcomers. Without bodies blocking her view, Thia noticed another smaller circle of Losrohir sitting at the edge of the fire on blackened stones, enormous drums braced between their legs.
Lythia turned, offering a smile to Thia and her companions. “Who will dance with us?”
There were more stones at the far side of the clearing, nestled between torches. Thia eyed them longingly. Having largely avoided dancing every year of her life in Kansas, she wasn’t about to start in Eldris.
But Dess grabbed her hand. “Come on.” Before she could say no, he tugged her into the empty space in the circle. Thia stumbled after him, coming to a halt beside a Losrohiri man with the cold white skin of silver birch, charcoal hair left long and loose.
“Welcome,” he said, lips twitching as Thia straightened, trying to pretend she hadn’t nearly fallen on her face. She couldn’t tell if he read her mind, or if it was apparent in her clumsiness, but he added, “It is not a challenging dance. The drums awaken freedom, not precision.”
On Thia’s other side, Dess grinned. “That’s good,” he said. “Because precision will be lacking.”
Lythia appeared on his right. “Your friends have decided to watch the festivities,” she said, indicating to where Thran and Oskaren had taken a seat on one of the stones Thia had longed to escape to.
She was still eyeing them enviously, when Lythia whispered, “So it begins.”
Thia turned her attention back to the circle.
Myrdaeth had stepped forward out of the ring of bodies, stretching his hands up.
His long silver hair tumbled down his back as his chin tipped skyward.
“My kin. I stand before you as your Luminae, a descendant of Vanda?, to invoke your Impartation,” he said.
His voice was loud in her ears, though he was yards away, and his tone was that of casual conversation.
“Let us renew the earth that sustains us, joining in its song until the final day, when this too shall pass, and what is returns to what was.” He lowered his arms, his lips stretching into a smile. “So mote it be.”
Together in one voice, the Losrohir echoed, “So mote it be.”
For a breath, there was utter silence. Myrdaeth stepped back into the circle, and then a deep note rumbled through the clearing.
It was the Losrohir, Thia realized. Singing. Low at first, hums that rose up from deep in their throats, rattling Thia’s bones as the sound tore through her. They held it as the drummers pounded a single beat.
Thia felt the strike in her chest. A shiver ran down her spine, the hairs on her arms standing up at the raw power in the note.
The drums clanged again.
That deep note grew louder.
Another pound of the drums. And another. Faster and faster as the Losrohir began to move. Their bodies swayed in eerie fluidity in time with the rhythm, the light of fire and moon shimmering on their painted bodies, turning them into flames.
Thia’s heart thundered along with the beat, faster as it gained momentum, her lungs squeezing.
Then just as suddenly, the music stopped, and the Losrohir froze, bodies contorted into strange curling statues.
In the stillness, Lythia’s voice rang out across the clearing.
A high, crystalline sound, it sang two yipping calls that set Thia’s hair on end, then cascaded into a delicate, haunting little melody.
When she had repeated it three times, the woman to her left added her own voice to the song, singing a shimmering harmony.
And so it continued, the song passed around the circle, each Losrohir adding a new harmony or countermelody until the clearing was alive with music, and Thia’s blood pounded in her veins.
When the final Losrohir joined the song, the drummers lifted their arms. As they brought hands down into a new rhythm, more complex this time, the Losrohir began to dance again.
Now, however, it was not slow and fluid, but untamed and leaping as they sprung from their statuesque positions, twirling in time with the wilder beat.
Thia was mesmerized. The very ground was alive with the rhythm, both of the drums and the pounding of feet.
The strange music steeped into her bones, making her feel as though her entire frame was vibrating.
She wanted to leap, to scream in abandon.
To pound the earth with her heels until she was only flesh and blood.
Dess’s hand slackened in hers. She turned to him, seeing his features lit with the same ferality. “Shall we?” he asked, his breath a rasp.
She danced.
Twirling away from Dess, she threw her arms out, letting the music carry her.
As the Losrohiri man had said, there was no precision, only surrender.
She felt the rhythm crash through her and allowed her feet to match it in whatever way they chose.
She lost sight of Dess in the crowd as the song consumed her.
She tipped her head back and laughed as she spun, drinking in moonlight.
Joy.
This was pure joy. Joy in its essence, joy as it was newly birthed into the world. It was life without fear, without anxiety, without pressure or inhibition. It was freedom.
She danced with her head thrown back, until she forgot herself, until she was nothing but a body eating up stars.