12. Vireth #3
“As soon as the tainted goods began to arrive from Valehar, things changed. Suddenly, our harvest yields began to slow, too. The beauty is something of an infection, and it seems that whatever is happening in Valehar is the root of it.”
Renard’s jaw tightens slightly. “We’ve been suffering under it for nigh on four years now. It’s a wonder we haven’t been entirely wiped out thus far, but I don’t think that will be far off. My people describe it as emptiness. They eat until they’re sick and still feel starved afterward.”
Ursula nods once, then looks at me expectantly, as though I should better understand what’s happening to Renard’s home, to my own home—hells, to my own body.
Anger flickers hot beneath my skin. Tiny white fungi bloom briefly along the edge of the table near my wrist before I wrench my power back hard enough to make my temples throb.
The seer watches the mushrooms shrivel without alarm.
“You know, I’m growing rather tired of everyone deciding I’m attached to every terrible thing currently happening in the world.”
“You misunderstand me,” she says calmly.
“Do I?”
“Yes.” She takes a sip of her tea, pausing interminably long before continuing. “I do not think you caused the imbalance.”
Renard stills slightly across from me while Ursula’s golden gaze remains steady on mine.
“I think the imbalance called to you. I believe the gods bestowed you with a kind of purpose because you already possess the gifts required to set the world to rights.”
Something cold slides slowly through my stomach, and I laugh under my breath, the sound more bitter than the dregs of this tea.
“Why?” I demand, ashamed by how desperate and shrill the word sounds.
“Why me? Surely there are others who are better suited, or more capable of fixing things. I’ve spent my life being unwanted and ousted, and now that some grand problem needs to be solved, how is it fair that the responsibility falls to me?
I simply want to be left alone! To do what everyone has always pushed me to do, and go fade away in silence on my own terms.”
It is only my bitterness that keeps my tears at bay, now.
“Oh, Vireth,” she sighs. “None of us can be left alone because none of us are alone. We are all part of this world. Everything is connected.”
Her words—my words from earlier—land like a slap across the face. I realize she is trying, very kindly, to tell me to make peace with what the fates have charged me with, and figure this out.
Renard leans back slightly, one forearm resting against the table.
“You said before that something was preventing the cycle’s natural end.”
Ursula nods.
“In my visions, I kept seeing the same thing tucked deep down in the soil—not a creature or a thing, exactly. A feeling. Or, more like…” She hesitates, searching for language.
“The sensation of pressure, like a wound sealed incorrectly. Like skin healing over a festering splinter without the offending thing first being extracted. I fear the world will not be able to heal until this wound can first be purged.”
My skin prickles unpleasantly, my mind whirls with too many heady words, weighing me down. Balance. Decay. I hate how neatly everything keeps circling back toward the same conclusion, the inevitable responsibility that I’d give anything to escape.
Ursula’s gaze drifts briefly toward the braids hiding my antlers. “Nature corrects imbalance eventually. Sometimes gently. Sometimes violently.”
“Three guesses what I’m foretold to be,” I mutter.
“I don’t know how the imbalance will be corrected,” she says.
“Only that it will. Usually, when the gods omit the finer points of a prophecy, it is often up to the subject to determine how it will come to pass. You do have some choice in the matter. It all depends on what you want to destroy, and what you want to save.”
“I don’t understand,” I say petulantly.
She’s thoughtful for a sip of tea. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘nourish to flourish’?”
I shake my head, but Renard finally pipes up.
“Yes, it means you must nurture what you want to grow. I had an old farmhand who used to say that every spring when we were getting the fields ready for planting, back when I was first exiled. I knew precious little about farming, and learned more from him than every textbook in the libraries of Valehar.”
“Fine, but what does that mean in this instance? If I want the land to flourish again, what am I to nourish? I wasn’t born with fertility magic. My magic does not nurture—it destroys.”
Ursula exhales softly. “You know, in the oldest accounts—the ones passed down verbally before we seers had the sense to write them down—the Blight Mother wasn’t destruction itself.
And neither are you, Vireth. You create your own kind of life: mold and mushrooms and insects and such.
Just because you can’t grow a flower doesn’t make it any less worthy. ”
“Well, where were you when my powers manifested?” I grumble.
She smiles, settling a gentle hand on top of mine. “Decay makes way for life. One cannot exist meaningfully without the other.”
“So, there’s no way to stop this thing,” I say quietly, gesturing to my antlers.
Ursula considers the question carefully before answering.
“If there is a way, I’m afraid I don’t know it. But in my experience, resisting change only makes it that much more painful.”
“Can you tell me anything else?” I practically beg. “Anything that might be useful. Any way to help do… what needs to be done.”
“You need to stop treating your power like contamination and… perhaps you need to look within to find the answers you truly seek.”
Gods damn her cryptic responses—her lack of clarity and my lack of understanding.
There’s a part of me, however, deep inside that suspects she is right, which might be the most frustrating part of all.
My power has been harder to contain for weeks now.
Leywort barely dulled the edges before I stopped drinking it entirely.
My emotions spill too easily into magic now—anger breeding mold, fear summoning spores from stone, overwhelming grief making dead things stir.
Outside, the wind picks up and the fog closes in around the streets of Morsell while the fire burns low beside us.
For the first time since leaving Hollowmire, I feel truly inescapably exhausted.
Not just physically, but a soul-deep exhaustion that cannot be cured with a few nights’ rest. It’s as if the shape of my life has transformed without my say so, and now every path ahead disappears into the fog.
Renard studies me for a long moment before speaking softly.
“You are not alone in this,” he murmurs.
It’s the second time he’s sworn as much, and as much as I want to believe it, I cannot trust that he will remain here when all is said and done.
I fear I am too easy to leave. So, while he offers it honorably—despite him sitting only a few feet away—I have never felt more profoundly alone in my entire life.