90. Now Illusion
NOW: ILLUSION
The room was so spare, I did not know it was a room, only that it was a space with a floor. I understood there was a table and that there was a box the length of a person on it.
I was in an old dress I used to wear when I was teenaged. Understanding that the source of light that allowed me to see the table and the box was behind me, I turned.
The man was tall, his arms thick and strong and joined to him by broad shoulders.
His sharp cheekbones sat above a beard. His nose was noble, brow proud.
I would have thought him naked, but he was made of flames.
They shimmered on the frame of what would have been a large mortal man.
His legs were more loosely outlined. If my eyes lost focus, he was a column of fire.
“Daughter,” he spoke, and there was such gravity in his voice.
I felt myself go very still, felt my throat close up but not from having been choked by Starling moments before. It was because I recognized it. Despite always praying to Mother Earth over him, despite my denials, despite my not understanding my penchant, I knew it was him.
“Father,” I replied, and I heard the brink of weeping in that one word. “Am I dead?”
He shook his head, and little sparks flew from him at the movement. “Not yet. There is yet time. You are here because I would ask for your forgiveness.”
I did not know what to say.
“I am the weakest of the four of us,” he went on.
“So singular in my powers. I can only warm you and help you shape metal. I am not my beloved sibling who fills your lungs and makes your feet, hearts, and minds swift. I am not my sister who bathes you and rids you of thirst. I am not my other sister who stretches herself so thin across the world, there is little of her left. I have done my best. I was the first the fates cut down when they came here. And so, I have always felt I had little to offer but light and heat. I tried to be there for you in the box. I tried to warm you. The fates constrained us all, but they kept me farthest away. I am the most restrained.”
“You saved me,” I burst out. “On the banks of the Oberlong.”
He smiled, a flicker of flames taking on the shape of lips. “You saved yourself. Such a good, clever, marvelous, angry girl.”
I began to weep. His words, words that I had seldom heard in my life, full of approval and pride, were more than I could bear. I asked him, “What do I do? We are outnumbered. We are losing.”
He pointed to my chest and then my head.
“The answers are within you. My own words are cut off by the fates. I can only speak in guidance, not in answers. I wish I were a better father. I wish I could have the strength to have protected you more. Perhaps this last effort will grant me your grace. Let us find the answer together now.”
“I know you were there,” I keened out, my sobs heavy in my mouth. “I knew it. I thought it was Mother Earth, but it was you.”
He nodded. “Think of what you know of the fates.”
I scrubbed at my eyes and tried to think. “They came to this world and cut your children off from your magic and lessened the magic some of the children had. And a drop of blood is still enough to awaken some magic.”
“And what do you know of Fear?”
I went to pace but remembered that all I could really see was the floor, the table, and the box.
On this surreal plane, wherever I was, I had nowhere to go.
When I turned, I saw the box and looked away as I always had in church.
I turned back to the burning god, who, despite being made of swirls of white and orange heat, seemed to have kind eyes that were trained on me.
“Ah, alright then,” I began, wiping at the corner of one eye.
“The Life of Una. Fear is the most powerful of the fates, second only to their king. Fear was bitter he did not get to break the air god. The other fates broke you and Mother Earth and Sister Sea, but Brother Air was unbreakable. Because you cannot break what is formless.”
“Keep going,” said Father Fire.
I cast my mind to The Life of Una and what I could remember about that passage of the ancient princess’s understanding of the origins of the known world.
The god wanted their children to know they were not abandoned. They borrowed a bit of their brother’s light.
Aloud, I said, “When he went to feed on Brother Air, they borrowed a bit of your light. And when his tongue licked the air god, it burned him.”
‘It burns! My king, the zephyr has scorched me! My tongue!’
I had not read the book in so long, had only lovingly stroked it like a good luck charm, had only held it to my chest on nights when I missed Avery.
The second copy—which had appeared on my doorstep the morning after they burned all of the books, both mine and the other Sheridan women’s—I had hidden away, fearful of losing it a second time.
I was desperately trying to remember Fear and the air god’s confrontation.
“Fear cannot understand this,” I rambled on, watching my god burn before me, his proud head dipping in encouragement.
“And Brother Air said Fear had tasted the hearts and minds of Tintarian children. And then Fear tells Brother Air that he has repeatedly destroyed worlds with his making souls fear what they don’t understand.”
“What is the last of it?” the man made of flame asked.
“Brother Air says, ‘I gave them the best of me.’ Then there is something about the wind in the woods and the flame in the night meeting and defeating Fear. But I can’t remember the rest!” I felt myself on the edge of despair.
The god then asked, “What god blesses the man you love?”
I blinked. He meant Reed, but that word “love” had thrown me. “Air.”
“What did my sibling do when they wanted their children to know they were not abandoned?”
“‘They borrowed a bit of their brother’s light,’” I quoted. “I—I don’t understand. Please! Help me!”
There was a crease in his brow. “I am held back from speaking. The fates are at their own war, even as mortal souls wage another. Hate, War, and Greed ready themselves to ravage the coast of our children’s home, poisoning their own children’s minds, seeping in, telling them they do not own enough riches or land, that folk different from them are to be feared.
Here, Fear fuels the king of this land. He gives them power as they feed him in return.
The other fates, those who would keep this world on an even keel, they fight this.
But even those fates fight it not because it is a battle of good and evil.
They play at world-making. And so Consequence and his two brethren seek fairness only because, to them, there are simply rules and this is all a game in the end. ”
“And you cannot give me the answers.”
He shook his head. “You are closer than you know.”
“They say that there will always be winds and flames, that when the magic of wind and flame come together, it is a thing that will defeat Fear’s greatest power, no matter—” I stopped speaking so abruptly I began to choke.
“No matter how thickly it flows!” I cried out. “The tongue river! It is incendiary.”
The god’s shoulders sank somewhat, as if he was exhaling. “Yes.”
An instant hope swelled in my breast. “That is why they are so adamant about no flames! That is why Starling was half mad with worry when Gerard’s torch fell.
That is why they only brought cresset torches, closable torches, in the tower.
The very spittle of Fear’s tongue can be set ablaze. Like liquor or hot pitch!”
“My sibling’s essence, clothed in my light, set the fate’s foul spit aflame. It burned him.”
“All I need is to get to one of those torches.”
The god shook his head. “You will not get that close, daughter. There is yet more for you to know. Keep going. I ask again, what god blesses the man you love?”
I wilted somewhat and shrugged. “Air! I don’t understand.”
“Your hand,” he answered me, and it sounded like he himself was choking. “Not in this place, not in this pocket of illusion you and I stand in—back in the skull of the fate. Think of your hand.”
Now, in this pocket of illusion, as he had said, I held my hands out in front of me. They were just my hands. Then I said, “I have Reed’s blood all over my right hand?”
“Yes,” he gasped out. “Fear’s only fear is my rage joined with air’s gift of an open heart and a curious mind. What else does my sibling say about wind and flame? What other words do they use for—” He broke off his speech in a cough.
I watched him struggle, still choking, watched him burn hotter for a heartbeat in distress that he could not speak directly to me, watched him nearly flicker out for a second heartbeat, almost disappearing before flickering back to himself.
“Zephyrs and torches!” I guessed.
“You can be your own torch with the breath of the zephyr,” the god choked out. “There is no time. Open the box. You have to go back. Remember the flame you need is right before you.”
“I still don’t understand!” I cried out.
He drew himself near, so close I should have been singed, but all I felt was a warm comfort, like the blanket Brother Tibolt had laid over me nearly thirty winters ago.
“You will. It will come to you. I know you’re scared.
But the box is the way back from this place.
And this place is disappearing. I’m not supposed to make worlds.
I’m not supposed to speak to you. Our time is short. ”
“No!” I cried. “No. I am afraid of it. I still am.”
“I know you are. Open it though. Remember the flame is right before you.”
“What if I fail? What if I condemn us all to our deaths?”
His flames were less opaque and he was fading. “Open the box.” The god’s voice was barely above a whisper.
My cheeks were wet again. And despite the perilous straits I and others were in, despite the reassurances of a deity who loved me, I did not want to turn around and look at that box on the table. Everything hinged on it, but I did not want to do it. Lifting that lid seemed an impossible feat.
“Remember the woman who shouted at us in the forest?” Father Fire said, and his voice was so weakened but there was so much admiration in it.
“She was once the girl who held her head high in church and was not cowed by grown men putting her in that box. She never abandoned herself. And she was so tiny, Robbie. If she can do it, surely you are able.”
There was a whine in my mouth, a scream of terror building.
But I, eyes shut, turned and faced the table and the box.
I stepped forward, a hand outstretched, realizing I had never feared the god behind me reducing me to ashes, but the plain box before me, remarkable only for its size and length, made me want to spill up my guts like I had when we discovered the tongue river.
“I never thought I would have to be here again,” I wept.
I heard him say, “You have always saved yourself, daughter. Such a good, clever, marvelous, angry girl. Do not forget. The flame you need is right there.”
My gut in my throat, bile rising, I lifted the lid. It was empty. I blinked and, surprised, as if I had expected a body or something else shocking within, I said, “It is just a box.”
And the pocket made of illusion, crafted by a god who wanted one chance to speak to his child, vanished.