Chapter Sixteen #3
Though he meant the words as a comfort, Oriana’s brow furrowed deeper and she glanced down the row toward Mavis and Thaddeus with wary eyes. Arden followed her gaze, noting that Thaddeus was outright glowering.
“Of course,” Oriana said, not sounding at all reassured.
She bit her lip, forcing her attention back to the stage, where the children were listing all the troubles humanity faced—war, hunger, disease, and more.
The eldest of the group, a girl in her mid-teens with pale skin and light-brown hair hanging down in two plaits, stepped forward, lifting her hands up to the sky.
“Oh, gods above, hear our pleas!” she cried out. “We know we are unworthy and overlooked, but we beg your help all the same or we will surely not survive this cruel world you have set us in.”
Arden stifled a cringe—not just at the stilted writing, but at the story itself. Had it always been so sanctimonious?
The crowd let out an awed sigh as light spilled from the girl’s hands, a golden glow that shone upward, her gift for conjuring light illuminating a new figure descending from the sky above on shaky legs.
“Ho!” the boy called out, his voice cracking.
He was young, no more than seven, with deep-brown skin and black hair, and he had little control over his ability to fly.
His arms were flung wide, and he wavered in the air like a trained elephant balancing on a ball at a traveling circus.
Arden couldn’t have been the only one letting out a sigh of relief when his feet finally touched down on the stage before the girl, who was looking at him expectantly.
She mouthed what Arden presumed were his lines at him.
“Ho!” the boy said again. “’Tis I, Hilsteth! God of the Air! I have heard your plea and was moved to tears by your pitiful desperation!”
The boy was enthusiastic, if nothing else, which was more than Arden, personally, had brought to the role of Hilsteth as a boy, when he’d used his newly honed power of invisibility to appear before the Lack humans from thin air.
“Great God of Air!” another boy cried out, running toward him. “My father has been lost at sea for a fortnight, and I fear he is dead! Will you please send a wind to bring him home?”
“Mighty Hilsteth,” another girl added. “There is a frightful storm bringing ruin to my farm, and I fear it will destroy my crops. Please, will you blow the storm far away or else my family will surely starve!”
Others piped up with concerns of their own, other issues they required the help of the god to solve, but Hilsteth refused to assist them himself.
“There are far too many of you and only one of me,” Hilsteth said. “But as I look at you, I see a scant few who are worthy of acting on my behalf—an elite number who I see have the hearts of gods, far greater than your fellow humans.”
Hilsteth waved a dramatic hand in the direction of the other children, and the light-conjuring girl summoned her power again, using it to bask five children in the same golden light as the god.
One child waved his arm, summoning a gust of wind that he directed to sweep across the audience, strong enough to ruffle Arden’s hair and cause Oriana to smooth her hands down her billowing skirt.
“I will bring your father’s ship home,” he said to the first boy who’d sought the god’s help.
A girl who was also basked in golden light tipped her head back and closed her eyes. There was no storm present to dispel, but she did manage to nudge some clouds away from the sun, causing the sky to brighten. “And I will protect your farm from being ravaged by storms.”
As more children showed off gifts that were bestowed by Hilsteth, god of air, Arden stifled a yawn, glancing sideways to see how Oriana was faring only to find that she had somehow managed to get hold of a book, which was now open in her lap, obscured from view of anyone else in the folds of her gown.
He couldn’t begrudge her that escape. In fact, he envied her for it as he forced his attention back to the stage, where the show was continuing on with another god, this time Mista, goddess of the sea, come to bestow water-themed magic on more Luster ancestors.
It repeated again and again with the rest of the gods, until each child on stage had shown off their magic, to the amusement and delight of their parents, and the boredom of everyone else.
When the children finally gathered together to take their final bow, polite applause broke out among the audience, but above the din, Mavis could be heard, her great, heaving sobs drowning out all else as she applauded with vigor, getting to her feet.
“Brava!” she shouted down at the children, tears streaming down her face as Thaddeus tried to pull her back down to sit, his face the same shade of red as the dress worn by the girl playing the fire goddess, Embra. “Brava!”
Though Arden couldn’t bring himself to approve of Mavis’s cons, even he had to begrudgingly respect her ability to put on a far more entertaining show than anything on stage.